🌞 The mystery donor funding education

Have you ever met a kid and thought: You are destined for amazing things?

Well, allow me to introduce you to 3-year-old Sarwagya Singh Kushwaha, who this week became the youngest chess player ever to receive an official rating. That’s right, at three years, seven months, and 20 days old, Kushwaha became the youngest chess player to be awarded an official rating from the International Chess Federation (FIDE).

Kushwaha’s father Siddharth Singh told Indian news channel ETV Bharat: “It’s a matter of great pride and honour for us that our son has become the youngest chess player in the world to achieve a FIDE ranking. We want him to become a grandmaster.”

Making power moves at age 3. Wild!

This weekend, the National Indigenous Art Triennial: After the Rain exhibition opened, featuring 10 large, immersive installations celebrating intergenerational Indigenous culture.

The Triennial contains work by established and emerging First Nations artists across Australia, including Archibald prize-winning Vincent Namatjira.

A First Nations curator leads each iteration of the event, with Tony Albert taking charge this year. According to Albert, “no matter where we come from, we can all engage through the universal language of visual art, and that’s why art is so powerful.”

The exhibition runs for 5 months across Australia and will conclude in April next year.

There’s your weekend sorted!

A university in the U.S. will spend an anonymous donation valued at $AU75 million on student fees.

The gift will cover the tuition of senior-year students enrolled in the University of Washington’s medical lab science program.

The uni said the donation is big enough to support students over the next 50 years. Professor and department chair Dr. Geoffrey S. Baird, said: “It has been a long-standing dream to provide more financial support to students... We are deeply grateful to the donor whose transformative generosity is making this and our program’s growth possible”.

Incredible!

Meet @mikelovesmugs on TikTok.

Dad and daughter duo, Mike and Payton, sing songs before bedtime. They alternate between learning and singing songs that Payton loves (Taylor Swift and Olivia Dean - she has great taste) and songs that Mike loves.

There are even features from Payton’s little brother, Michael, who shares his favourite words with the audience.

Regardless of the song, each video is filled with smiles, giggles and happy voices. What beautiful memories to be immortalising!

A new fiction literary prize for writers from refugee and migrant backgrounds was launched last week.

Publisher Footnote Press and organisation Counterpoints Arts partnered to launch the prize.

Their prize philosophy is that “refugees and migrants make hugely valuable contributions to our arts, culture and society… it is vital to keep platforming and amplifying these othered narratives in order to emphasise our shared humanity.”

The award, worth £15,000 ($AU30,000), includes both a cash prize and a publication agreement with Footnote Press.

Here’s TDA journalist Anju with something that sparked her joy this week:

“This week, I found out about repair cafes in the UK. Repair Cafes are community events that connect people with broken items to people who enjoy fixing them. Sounds like a perfect match if you ask me!

All repairs are completely free. By repairing broken items, the community builds useful skills, saves money and prevents useful stuff from going to waste.

There are over 600 cafes in the UK and over 3,000 internationally.

Of course, I had to see if Australia has them, and thankfully, we do. Check them out here.”

A world with fewer finger pricks might be closer than we thought. Engineers at MIT have developed a noninvasive way to measure blood sugar using light instead of needles. The tech uses near-infrared beams to scan the skin and analyse how the light scatters, which gives clues about glucose levels. Early tests show the readings are impressively close to what current invasive monitors deliver.

The prototype is still chunky, but the team has already miniaturised the system to something roughly smartphone-sized, with hopes of eventually turning it into a wearable. Clinical trials are now underway to see how it performs on a wider group of people with diabetes.

If it works, it could seriously change the daily reality for millions of people who manage their health through constant monitoring. How good!