Welcome to The Upload!

Hey, it’s Cheryl. 👋

If you used to read Tech Check-In back at The Citizen News, hi again!

If you didn’t, even better. Fresh blood!

[And if someone forwarded this to you, click here to subscribe, plz and thx.]

Welcome to The Upload. This is the first transmission from TechNation.News, an independent media experiment where humans and machines work side by side to tell better stories.

If you still like your tech with bite, please stay. But if you’re allergic to sarcasm, there’s an unsubscribe link below.

No hard feelings, no robots will cry. (Okay, fine, I’ll be sad.)

What you can expect

Each edition of The Upload explores tech, science, gaming, and digital culture. But minus the hype.

Expect curiosity, sarcasm, and the occasional existential crisis about AI ethics. You’ll still get the mix of weird headlines, rants, and bad puns (some things never die).

We’ll continue to dive into deep-cut stories, from quantum developments to gaming obsessions and everything in between.

But this time, I’m not doing it alone.

Kayde will take over The Upload from the next issue, bringing the same curiosity and general chaos that made Tech Check-In fun.

I’ll just hover in the background to keep her in check and prevent world domination.….

🚀 Who we are

(and why we hope you’ll stick around….)

TechNation.News started as an act of rebellion, a refusal to play nice with broken media systems that gatekeep knowledge and glorify hype.

We’re a small, women-led team using tech, transparency, and a bit of chaos to tell real stories about real people.

• We build in public.

• We experiment with AI.

• We’re done dealing with assholes.

Everything you read here, from our newsletter to our newsroom experiments, reflects that messy, evolving partnership between people and machines.

Stick around if you still believe tech can do more good than harm, and you’re not afraid to laugh at it along the way.

You can read all about our AI policy here, and this is our stack.

Want the behind-the-scenes chaos?

My personal newsletter, Kahlamity, is where the human side of all this lives.

Creativity, chaos, ADHD, mental stability, and trying to build something meaningful without losing my mind.

🦄 Partner Portal: Wellness Drive

The Partner Portal celebrates the people, projects, and programmes that align with TNN’s vision of empowerment, innovation, and Pan-Africanism. We aim to amplify voices and ventures building Africa’s future on their own terms.

How a wellness initiative is redefining career readiness

From the streets of Soweto to the hills of Thohoyandou, Wellness Drive is addressing a massive gap in education: how young South Africans think about careers.

TechNation joined Wellness Drive for both the 2024 DreamCatcher Career Day in Soweto and the 2025 DreamCatcher event in Thohoyandou, seeing twice over how one movement can ignite possibility where opportunity feels scarce.

The Mission: Wellness Drive equips youth with the tools to build healthy, purpose-driven futures by blending career guidance, emotional wellness, and mentorship in spaces where access is limited.

The Movement: Through community-led events like DreamCatcher Career Day, they’re connecting professionals, educators, and students.

The Future: With expansion plans across South Africa, Wellness Drive aims to integrate digital skills, wellness education, and career mentorship into one empowerment model.

Interested in funding the DreamCatcher Career Day initiative or taking part as a mentor? Contact Wilma Marindile.

Interested in being featured in the Partner Portal? Click here.

🧠 Coming Up in The Upload #001

• What to do when subscriptions are bleeding you dry

• Why I started cold exposure DURING A COLD FRONT….

• South Korea’s impressive AI-robot fleet

💭 Quote of the week

Did You Know? The first computer bug was literally a bug. In 1947, Grace Hopper found a moth trapped in a Harvard Mark II computer, coining the term "debugging" in the process.

Till next time,

Stay curious. Stay chaotic.

Cheryl. ✌