UBER, BATTERY LEVELS & AN EXCITING UPDATE IN HIV VACCINES

Question of the week: does Uber charge more if your phone isn’t charged? Internet discourse suggests, maybe. A Twitter user shared that her Uber pricing (which is typically $25-$30) went up to $81 when her phone was at 18%, and prices then dropped down once her phone was charged to 25%. And, while there’s not concrete proof that Uber is purposely capitalizing on user’s desperation when their phone battery is waning, according to Forbes, the app can track what user’s phone battery percentage is, and through research, the company has found that users are willing to pay more if their phone is dying. Which makes sense! With all of that being said, though, Uber has denied that battery level plays a factor in pricing. And, as someone whose phone is genuinely always under 15%, I really hope there’s no truth to the speculations. 

Thanks to the success of Moderna’s and Pfizer’s mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, Moderna is starting trials for an mRNA-based HIV vaccine this week. Exciting! The shots will use some of the same technology that Moderna used to craft the COVID-19 vaccines and, as this Twitter user pointed out, it’s a full circle moment, as research for HIV vaccines actually helped further the research that made the COVID-19 vaccine a reality.

And finally, I’m giving you three TikTok videos this week, because there’s this trend where people simply share videos that make them smile and of course I would like to share that with you. A few of my favorite versions of the trend so far are this playful elephant, this cute old man dancing with a younger version of himself, and this tennis player who shares his  professional athlete perks with a ball boy when it starts to rain. 

—Darlene Kenney, Digital Strategist