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motivatingspeech · 4 years

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The Story Of Nokia: How Nokia Went From Phone Titan To Obsolete

The Rise And Fall Of Nokia: How Nokia Went From Phone Titan To Obsolete Explained

Across the globe, Finland is known for various things: heavy metal bands, soreness, unique bus stop etiquette, and Nokia. Currently employing over 100,000 people worldwide and boasting annual revenues of over twenty-nine billion dollars, Nokia has risen to become a global force. But its beginnings in history are as unique as the country, where it all started. We’ll examine the rise of Nokia and how it became one of the world leaders in mobile phone technology. Founded over 150 years ago, Fredrik Idestam wanted to capitalize on Finland’s huge forestry industry and created a paper mill near temporary. Not long afterward he built a second paper mill near a town called Nokia, on the Nokia and Vertu River. A few years later, Fredrik Idestam partnered with a man by the name of Leo Mechelin, who had grander visions than running a couple of near paper mills in the backcountry of Finland. He convinced Fredrik Idestam the former public company Nokia AB and after Frederick retired, Leo Mechelin used the same River to start generating electricity in a new venture for the company. At the same time, a man by the name of Edward Pollan founded Finnish rubber works which made rubber products like boots and tires.

After World War I, Michelin’s Nokia AB was failing and was bought out by Finnish rubber works, enabling the company to continue generating electricity and paper products. A third company was also destined to join the Nokia family of companies. In 1912 Finnish cable works was founded and then acquired by Finnish rubber works 20 years later. The timing of their deal could not have been better. After the devastation of World War II, the Soviet Union was desperate to rebuild its infrastructure. For Finnish cable works, a company that sold telephone and electrical cables, they were positioned to make a fortune. The massive influx of cash helped the company strengthen its financial position. Expanding their opportunities into new markets. The conglomerate would grow into an unrecognizable company from the modern Nokia that we've come to know today. They operated within nearly every industry you can imagine. TV production, paper manufacturing, gas masks, plastics, and chemicals to name a few. The start of the new focus happened in the early 70s when Nokia invented a new digital switch for telephone exchanges. This began a long history of developing telephone technology that helped transform the cellular systems used around the world. In the late '60s, Nokia was already producing radio-telephones that were used in cars and by the military. By 1978 they claimed 100% coverage across all of Finland with their radio car phone systems. It was just a year later that the diverse Nokia took steps to align with a TV maker called Silora to develop a brand new Nordic mobile telephone network. It was the world’s first cellular network. An upgrade from the previous radio system used at the time. It was known as the 1G system. The very first cellular generation which used analog signal. By the early 1980s Nokia launched its first car phone the Mobira Senator. It was effective but incredibly bulky with each unit weighing in at 10 kilograms. Soon after they released the Mobira talk man, half the weight of the first version but still too clunky and only accessible in a car. The first truly portable cellular phone was the Mobira Cityman weighing in at just 800 grams. But it came with a huge price tag at 24,000 Finnish marks, the equivalent of 8200 U.S. Dollars today. Due to its exorbitant price a city man didn’t really catch on. That was until a photo of President Mikhail Gorbachev, president of the USSR was photographed using it in Helsinki in 1987. Almost overnight it became a cult status symbol. Owning it proved your wealth and power. It also earned the nickname the Gorba after the Soviet President himself. Nokia continued developing its cellular network establishing the 2G GSM network that went from analog signals to a digital signal. By 1987 the 2G system standard across all of Europe. It enabled data to be sent digitally. Eventually paving the way for SMS text messaging in July of 1991 the Finnish Prime Minister made the first phone call on the 2G network and about a year later the world’s first text message was sent. It read Merry Christmas. The 2G system would later go on to take the world by storm. Eventually gaining over 3 billion users. In the early 90’s Nokia was facing some financial problems. In an effort to streamline the business they started to sell off divisions and create separate entities. First went there paper industry, the origin of the whole company. Followed soon by tires and rubber production. After selling off most of the other industries Nokia had one singular focus: Telecommunications. In 1994 Nokia released its model Nokia 2100: a new entry-level phone series designed for anybody to use. It included the now-iconic Nokia ringtone and the game snake. Demand went through the roof. Originally Nokia predicted a run of 400,000 units for this series they ended up selling over 20 million worldwide. Nokia couldn't make the 'Nokia 2100' fast enough. They saw that managers were trying their hardest to buy just enough materials to keep their factories producing. They created a whole new division to overhaul its entire supply chain. In Western Europe alone mobile phone users went from 5 million to 23 million in just four short years. Faced with the same challenges as other brands like Ericsson and Motorola, Nokia had to make drastic changes if they were going to keep up with the increased demand for mobile phones. Instead of relying on one supplier in Japan, Nokia learned how to build their technology in their home country and taught it to a Finnish electronic supplier. They also outsourced their plastics to a Finnish company as well for their five factories around the world. Once they solved their supply chain issue, Nokia rapidly outpaced its competitors. From 1996 to 2001 they multiplied their revenue 5 times over. What’s also truly amazing is their domination of the industry. They had become the world's largest mobile phone provider. A position they held for 14 years. It appeared nothing could stop the rise of Nokia. But then Apple introduced the iPhone which would mark the beginning of the end for Nokia. The iPhone was more than a mere sleek device made from premium materials. A major upgrade from the cheap-feeling plastic used by other smartphones at the time. It was also the world's first smartphone to feature a multi-touch display. Overnight the smartphone touchscreen revolution was born. The world would begin its shift away from physical plastic to digital on-screen keyboards. Over the next few years, Nokia's global market share would crater to less than 5%. Today its stock prices plummeted over 90%, since the iPhone's debut. Nokia's greatest lesson is to be wary of complacency. Innovation went both ways. On one hand, the advent of 1G enabled their success, on the other hand, it was their unwillingness to take risks which allowed Apple the opportunity to steal their throne. Read the full article

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deltaponline · 4 years

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Bezos, Branson, and Gates rely on low-temperature residual heat with the help of pumps

Climeon uses energy-efficient Andritz pumps for its revolutionary Heat Power system Global energy demand will continue to rise because the world population is expected to grow by 1.7 billion people until 2040 according to market experts. Based on forecasts by the International Energy Agency (IEA), the demand for energy will thus increase by one quarter in the next two decades. To be able to meet this demand in the future, the IEA expects that annual investments of two trillion US dollars (approx. 1.75 trillion euros) will be necessary. A gigantic sum, considering that all available resources are not even used sufficiently today. More than 50 percent of global energy consumption is wasted in the form of low-temperature heat. This type of heat is generated as a by-product in various industries, like steel production or shipping, but also in geothermal energy. The latter can be found worldwide and is considered an unlimited source as it is available 24/7. This is a cheap and renewable form of energy with the definite potential to cover most of the demand, which today is covered with energy from well-established sources: coal, nuclear energy, oil, and gas. But how do you tap into these resources? A business for a better world

Climeon is a cleantech equipment vendor and world leader in converting low temperature heat into electricity. (Copyright: Climeon) This is Climeon’s motto. Founded in 2011 by Thomas Öström and Joachim Karthäuser, the Swedish company started building their first prototype for a unique Heat Power system the same year. This innovative technology generates clean energy utilizing low-temperature heat, using precisely those resources that have so far remained unexploited. This system usually operates in a temperature range between 70 °C and 120 °C and uses temperature differences between warm and cold water to generate electricity.

Climeon Heat Power Module 150M. (Copyright Climeon) The solution can be connected to any source of heat with differing flow rates and temperatures without any additional adjustments. Unlike wind and solar solutions, it operates independently of the prevailing weather conditions. Compared to traditional systems in this area, Climeon’s technology operates at a low pressure level, meaning the system has a compact and modular design and can easily be upscaled from a 150 kW module to several systems for larger installations generating a total of 50 MW. Moreover, its design guarantees that the solution can be operated at partial load with optimum efficiency. The module is started and shut down automatically as soon as fluctuations are detected in the heat source. It comprises only three moving parts: a turbine and two pumps. The pumps play an essential role in this system, as they have to pump out residual condensation left over from the liquid vapor used to drive the model's turbine. The challenge here is that hydraulic machines need to have an extremely low net positive suction head (NPSH). This number states the minimum pressure on the suction side of the pump, which every pump needs – depending on its design – to be able to work free of cavitation. Andritz was awarded the order to supply exclusively for the Heat Power module because the group met Climeon’s high, ethical requirements in terms of the company's sustainability, social responsibility, and environmental values. The international technology group has been successfully supplying single-stage centrifugal ACP series pumps through its local sales partner Processpumpar AB in Sweden since 2015. “We chose to work with Andritz not only because they could supply us with high quality pumps but also because of the great technical support they provided”, says Carina Osmund, Head of Production and Sourcing at Climeon. All-rounder in the world of pumps Andritz has been known globally for competence and innovation in engineering centrifugal pumps for more than 165 years. These decades’ worth of experience in engineering hydraulic machines and the company’s extensive expertise are reflected in the high standard of these pumps. They are robust and wear-resistant, thus meeting the highest customer expectations in terms of efficiency, lifetime, maintenance-friendliness, and cost-effectiveness in many different applications.

Andritz was awarded the order to supply exclusively for the Heat Power module because the group met Climeon’s high, ethical requirements in terms of the company's sustainability, social responsibility, and environmental values. With efficiencies of more than 90%, Andritz single-stage centrifugal pumps from the ACP series also contribute towards saving valuable energy. (Copyright Andritz) Andritz single-stage centrifugal ACP series pumps are available with a highly wear-resistant, open-impeller design. They are true all-rounders. Thanks to their low axial thrust and open channels, these pumps are suitable for conveying many different media. Depending on the impeller design, they can convey slightly contaminated and contaminated media with some solids content and a consistency of up to 8 %. As process pumps, they can cover a wide range of applications in different industries. Moreover, their modular system provides high availability, enables the use of tried-and-tested components and reduces the number of spare parts to be kept in stock. This type of pump is ideal for applications in the Heat Power module in that it achieves favorable NPSH values. With efficiencies of more than 90 %, the pumps also contribute towards saving valuable energy. Equipped with a basis in which to integrate special monitoring sensors, these pumps can be monitored and optimized continuously in terms of general efficiency, operating behavior, energy consumption, and other important measured values in the spirit of the Industrial Internet of Things. From steel production to shipping Provided with these high-quality centrifugal pumps, Climeon supplies numerous clients in different industries worldwide with its Heat Power system. This includes SSAB AB (former Svenskt Stål AB), for example. With an annual production of eight million tons and annual sales of 55 billion Swedish kronor (approx. 5.2 billion Euros), the company is one of the 50 largest steel producers worldwide. In accordance with its sustainability objective of a fossil-free steel industry by 2045, SSAB decided to make use of the residual heat generated during production processes by using Climeon. The first step – the order for a pilot plant in 2014 – was followed by an order for another module. Both plants have been in operation on the premises of SSAB's steelworks in Borlänge, Sweden ever since. They now convert previously wasted heat (e.g. hot water) into energy for steel production, with even the plant’s smallest Climeon unit saving up to 600 tons of CO2 emissions per year. Apart from steel production, shipping also produces a large amount of heat that usually remains unused. In 2015, the Viking Line decided to install a Climeon system on their passenger ferry “Grace”, which sails between Sweden and the Finnish Åland Islands. After a successful test phase with significant CO2 and fuel savings, which were higher than expected, the Viking Line decided to expand its collaboration with Climeon. On a ship like the Viking “Grace”, Climeon can produce up to 1 megawatt of power, thus reducing fuel costs by up to 5%. In 2016, the Climeon solution was installed on all new Viking Line ships and options for retrofitting on existing ships were tested. In August 2017, the Viking Line ended up placing a follow-up order to fully equip its newest passenger ferry. In addition to the Viking Line, Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Voyages has been a client of Climeon’s since 2016 and ordered a total of 18 Heat Power units for the first three vessels in its still expanding fleet. The Virgin Group’s founder is not only a client of Climeon, but also an indirect investor. He is a part of Breakthrough Energy alongside several other leading global businessmen like Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, or Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft and Co-Chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Energetic breakthrough Founded in 2015, Breakthrough Energy set itself the goal of all human beings on our planet being able to enjoy a good standard of living, which includes such basic needs as electricity, healthy food, comfortable accommodation, and means of transport. However, an important factor in this undertaking is to achieve all of these goals without contributing to climate change. For this reason alone, a fund was established with the name of Breakthrough Energy Ventures. It supports ultra-modern companies whose products, innovations and developments contribute towards achieving this goal. To be considered for investment, companies have to fulfill four core criteria. For example, the technology must have the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least half a gigaton a year, which is around one percent of the predicted global emissions for 2050. One of the companies that fulfilled this criterion as well as the other three criteria relating to other investors, scientific feasibility and potential for closing gaps in existing networks is Baseload Capital – a specialized investment company founded by Climeon, Blue, Gullspång Invest and LMK at the beginning of 2018. The company works on a global level to achieve its goal of providing thermal power operators with the financial means to build and operate regenerative thermal power stations. Carmichael Roberts from Breakthrough Energy Ventures explains the allocation of the 12.5 million US dollar investment: Combined with Climeon’s innovative technology, Baseload Capital has the potential to supply greenhouse gas-free power economically and efficiently on a large scale. Climeon holds 15.7 percent of Baseload Capital’s shares. It not only benefits from financial support from Breakthrough Energy, but also because Breakthrough Energy has access to international expertise and a network with several of the world's most knowledgeable people in the energy sector. This allows Climeon to make progress with the global distribution of low-temperature geothermal energy through its Heat Power module with the Andritz single-stage centrifugal pump. [email protected] www.andritz.com/pumps Read the full article

#Andritz #centrifugal #climatechange #Climeon #CO2 #Deltap #districtheating #energy #EnergySaving #energy-efficiency #heattransferfluid #heating #industrialheating #IoT #NPSH #powerplant #ship #steel

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smartmoneygains01-blog · 5 years

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Detailed Analysis of the Global CBD Market

Cannabidiol better known as CBD is a popular natural remedy used to treat many conditions and it’s experiencing tremendous growth. CBD is one of the 104 chemical compounds found in the cannabis plant that is extracted and diluted and now found in many consumer products.CBD is not psychoactive and can be found in many forms: oils, tinctures, creams, gels, capsules, sprays, patches, drinks and food products.

Retail sales of CBD more than quadrupled last year, according to the data firm SPINS, with most purchases taking place at natural grocery stores or online. The CBD market is expected to be worth $20 billion by 2022, up from roughly $600 million in 2018.

People have always had a fascination with finding the “silver bullet” for their problems and the rise of CBD follows a similar pattern. There has been little research conducted on CBD’s medical and health benefits because cannabis has long been prohibited by majority of the world and that has posed a challenge to finding out if all the claims are real.

This fast growing market provides investors with significant opportunity and everyone should look to capitalize on this growing trend and lock in some profits.

The Science Behind CBD

The endocannabinoid system is a biological system composed of endocannabinoids, which are neurotransmitters that bind to cannabinoid receptors. This system plays a role in a host of our activities, including mood, the sleep/wake cycle, inflammatory responses and more.

The body naturally produces cannabinoids to activate the endocannabinoid system and CBD when ingested or applied binds to the receptors in this system .The two major receptors of the system are known as CB1 and CB2 receptors.

CBD 1 – Receptors that are in the brain and nervous system and affect mood motion, pain and coordination. The CBD compound that binds with pain producing receptors to reduce and relieve chronic pain CBD 2 – Receptors that work on the body reducing inflammation and helping immune system.

Main Effects

Reduce pain

Studies have shown that CBD may help reduce chronic pain by impacting endocannabinoid receptors, reducing inflammation and interacting with neurotransmitters.

Reduce Anxiety and Depression

CBD has the ability to act on the brain’s receptors for serotonin, stimulating this neurotransmitter helps regulate mood, happiness and social behavior. In the US alone Depression affects 6% and anxiety 18% of the population so with further research and awareness many people can benefit from CBD.

Reduce Acne

Based on recent scientific studies, CBD oil anti-inflammatory properties can reduce inflammation that causes acne.

Ease insomnia and stress

In the United States, approximately 70 million people suffer from insomnia or another sleep disorders. People with sleep issues report that ingesting a CBD extract a few hours before bedtime can help improve sleep quality.

CBD Market Forces

Aging Population

According to the United Nations virtually every country in the world is experiencing growth in the number and proportion of older people. Globally, population aged 60 or over is growing faster than all younger age groups and in 2017 it’s estimated that 962 million people are aged 60 and over. The older population would be a prime customer for CBD due to the aforementioned anti-pain benefits.

CBD Legal approvals attitude change

So far, 29 countries have legalized cannabis fully or partially for medical and/or adult use and the wave of legalization is bound to continue. As long as companies keep their claims vague, they should be able to continue selling their products, especially ones that are applied externally. With attitudes towards cannabis changing around the world companies can expect more customers.

The US Congress passed the farm bill, which makes the chemical compounds found in hemp, including CBD, legal under certain circumstances. This will explode the US maret and many big companies are vying for a piece of the large market.

Top CBD Stocks to buy

Our analysts have identified two major cannabis producers that are best positioned to take advantage of the CBD market growth all while being a good fit for long term buy-and-hold investors. The Cannabis market has experience a lot of volatility and investing in solid market leaders that are well established provides the least amount of risk. Since CBD is a commodity considering the branding aspects of the new products launched is a very important consideration as that is what is going to provide a sustained competitive advantage for the companies that end up leading this space.

Price to Sales Ratio for valuing high growth stocks

Valuation in investing is vital but when looking to determine valuation for high growth companies with little to no profits investors need to use the Price to Sales Ratio over the Price to Earnings Ratio. P/E ration is for large established companies that show consistent profitability and does not work for high growth stocks.

The P/S ratio is determined by dividing the company’s market capitalization by its revenue. When deciding what company to buy make sure to use the industry average Price to Sales ratio of 393.57 as a gauge of how expensive a stock is.

Tilray (

NASDQA: TLRY

)

Market Cap: $7.38B

Quarterly Revenue Growth: 85.8%

Price to Sales Ratio: 230

Analyst Price Target: $131 ( 40% + upside from current level )

Tilray was the first Canadian company to list on an US stock exchange and has also recently gained approval from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to import medical cannabis into the U.S. for testing purposes. Tilray has products available in 12 countries with operations in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Portugal and Latin America. The company has a strong pharmaceutical distribution in Canada and around the world for their main medical cannabis business.

The reason this stock is a great option is due to their partnerships and recent acquisitions. The company is partnered with AB InBev the world’s largest brewer with a goal of creating cannabis infused beverages. The two companies plan to invest $50 million each in a new research partnership and should be able to launch products in the next several quarters. AB InBev brews a portfolio of 60 beers including Budweiser, Alexander Keith’s, Labatt Blue, Kokanee, Stella Artois and Corona and their experience and Tilray’s production should spell.

The most exciting announcement came on February 21,2019 when Tilray announced a $317 million cash-and-stock deal for Manitoba Harvest. The company is be the world’s biggest hemp food maker and with this development Tilray is planning to launch CBD-derived products in the U.S. as early as this summer. Products will include CBD-infused tinctures, CBD spray and CBD gel caps.

Tilray also announced that it is working with Authentic Brands Group. ABG manages more than 33 consumer brands and works with manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers. This will give Tilray access to 50,000 points of sale across retail stores and also strong branding assets they can use to market their CBD cosmetics products. The huge distribution network and access to brands costs $100 million in cash and stock. Tirlay receives up to 49% of net revenue from cannabis products with ABG brands with a $10 million dollar minimum per year.

All of these recent developments lead us to believe that Tilray will be a dominant force in the CBD market for the foreseeable future.

Canopy Growth ( TSE: WEED )

Market Cap: $20.4B

Quarterly Revenue Growth: 282%

Price to Sales Ratio: 134.7

Analyst Price Target: $70.54 ( 16% upside from current level )

Canopy Growth is a world-leading diversified cannabis company, offering distinct brands and cannabis varieties in dried, oil and capsule forms. The company has operations in 11 countries and has 10 production facilities in Canada.

Canopy Growth have been adding hemp assets to their portfolio since 2016 and their hemp division and is expecting to yield approximately 7000 kilograms of hemp-derived CBD this year. Canopy leads the way in lab tested cannabinoid research holding 40 cannabis-related patent applications filed representing over 1500 innovations. The company has stated they have developed CBD products and brands that they are unveiling in the second quarter of 2019.

Constellation Brands (NYSE: STZ ) invested $4 billion in Canopy Growth in 2018 and owns approximately 37% outstanding common shares. Constellation is the largest beer import company measured by sales, and has the third-largest market share of all major beer suppliers in the world. This partnership with Constellation Brands is aimed at production of marijuana-infused beverages and can help Canopy launch new products and expand globally with their large distribution networks.

The large production, patents, partnership and large cash position of the company have the potential to make Canopy Growth one of the leading players in the CBD market worldwide.

Bottom Line

CBD is proving to be a beneficial health supplement and the growth data shows that this is one of the fastest growing markets in the world. Investors looking for stellar growth stocks should make a point on picking up exposure to CBD in their portfolios so they can profit from the current explosion in interest in this space.

For more information visit SmartMoneyGains

#Global CBD Market

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rosecolored-gay · 7 years

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All the questions

Thanks Anon!

1: Is there a boy/girl in your life?

- Sort of?

2: Think of the last person who hurt you; do you forgive them?

- I guess I forgive her, but I’ll never forget it.

3: Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 23, give me line 17.

- “... and Florence almost enjoyed the attention she was getting” - RubyFruit Jungle

4: What’s something you really want right now?

- For it to be thursday night already.

5: Are you afraid of falling in love?

- I’m not sure, I just don’t want to get hurt again.

6: How can I win your heart?

- Be real with me, be funny. Listen to music with me, just be happy with me. And I love ugly selfies.

7: Have you ever slept on a couch with someone else?

- Yes, it’s really not comfortable.

8: What’s the background on your cell?

- My lock screen is me being licked on the face by a wolf, and my home screen is Abe and I.

9: Name the last four beds you were sat on?

- Mine, Abe’s, Brandi’s, Caitlin’s

10: Think of the last person who said I love you, do you think they meant it?

- It was one of my coworkers, Lex, she definitely meant it.

11: Honestly, are things going the way you planned?

- Hah, no. But I’m thankful some things happened because of the amazing opportunities I’ve gotten.

12: Who was the last person whose phone number you added to your contacts?

- I think it was Sofia

13: Would you rather have a poodle or a Rottweiler?

- Both

14: Which hurts the most, physical or emotional pain?

- Emotional

15: Would you rather visit a zoo or an art museum?

- Art museum. If I’m going to a place where there’s animals in cages it better be a sanctuary.

16: Are you tired?

- I am so tired.

17: How long have you known your 1st phone contact?

- It’s my mom.

18: If you had to delete one year of your life completely, which would it be?

- 7th grade? Or senior year of high school

19: Would you ever consider getting back together with any of your exes?

- I can thankfully say no to this one now.

20: When did you last talk to the last person you shared a kiss with?

- It’s been a week and we argued. Oh well.

21: If you knew you had the right person, would you marry them today?

- Nah, why rush?

22: Would you kiss the last person you kissed again?

- No. No. No. No. No.

23: When was the last time you were disappointed?

- About 4 days ago.

24: Is there a certain quote you live by?

- “Shit ain’t shit” - Jimmy Gold - Stephen King

25: What’s on your mind?

- Thursday night! I have a date :D

26: Do you have any tattoos?

- I have 3 pieces. The alchemy symbol for air, a heart, and the famous Houkasai piece

27: What is your favorite color?

- I love grey and aqua/teal

28: Next time you will kiss someone on the lips?

- Idk, let’s see what happens.

29: Who are you texting?

- Sofia

30: Are you superstitious about anything?

- Nah

31: Have you ever had the feeling something bad was going to happen and you were right?

- Yep. And it ruined me for like 4 months, but it’s all good now

32: Do you have a friend of the opposite sex you can talk to?

- Jimmy is my best guy friend

33: Do you think anyone has feelings for you?

- I don’t know?

34: Has anyone ever told you you have pretty eyes?

- Yes

35: What was the reason for your last breakup?

- That’s a long story.

36: Were you single on Valentines Day?

- This year, yes I was

37: Name one physical feature that you like about yourself, and one you dislike.

- I literally hate my body, but I have nice eyebrows

38: What do your friends call you?

- Almost everyone calls me Alyssa, but Cedrik calls me Aly, Jimmy calls me boo boo, and Abe calls me boobie or megatron. Sofia also called me an egg so..

39: Has anyone upset you in the last week?

- Yeah, but I stopped caring about them so oh well

40: Have you ever cried over a text?

- Yes

41: Where’s your last bruise located?

- My knee, I smacked it on a bag rack at work

42: What is it from?

- ^

43: Last time you wanted to be away from somewhere really bad?

- Um, like 2 weeks ago

44: Who was the last person you were on the phone with?

- I was on FaceTime with Abe yesterday

45: Do you have a favourite pair of shoes?

- I love my grey vans or my all black nikes

46: Do you wear hats if your having a bad hair day?

- Omg yes, I love my hats

47: Would you ever go bald if it was the style?

- Nope

48: Do you make supper for your family?

- My mom won’t let me near the kitchen

49: What’s the toughest decision you made this year?

- To finally push someone out of my life

50: Top 3 web-pages?

- Tumblr, Snap, Twitter

51: Do you know anyone who hates shopping?

- Me! Depending on what it’s for

52: Does anything on your body hurt?

- My feet are killing me

53: Are goodbyes hard for you?

- Sometimes

54: What was the last beverage you spilled on yourself?

- Water this morning

55: How is your hair?

- Fluffy and soft as hell

56: What do you usually do first in the morning?

- Check my phone and pee

57: Do you think two people can last forever?

- Yes

58: Think back to January 2007, were you single?

- I was 10, so yes.

59: Green or purple grapes?

- Purple!

60: When’s the next time you will give someone a BIG hug?

- Tomorrow when I see Megan!!!!

61: Do you wish you were somewhere else right now?

- Kinda yeah

62: What did your father teach you?

- How to be a good person.

63: Where will you be 5 hours from now?

- Asleep

64: What were you doing at 8 this morning.

- Sleeping

65: This time last year, can you remember who you liked?

- Yeah, my ex and I were still together.

66: Is there one person in your life that can always make you smile?

- Abe.

67: Did you kiss or hug anyone today?

- I hugged a few people. Heather, Lex, Robbie, and Starr

68: What was your last thought before you went to bed last night?

- “wow that was so cute”

69: Have you ever tried your hardest and then gotten disappointed in the end?

- This question is how my life is.

70: How many windows are open on your computer?

- 2

71: If you won 100 million dollars, what would you buy first?

- I’d buy my dad a new Jeep.

72: What is your ringtone?

- For phone calls it’s the default. Except for Abe. When she calls me, “Baby got back” plays

73: How old will you be in 5 months?

- 20 years and 6 months

74: Where is your Mum right now?

- In her bed

75: Why aren’t you with the person you were first in love with or almost in love?

-They broke my heart?

76: Have you held hands with somebody in the past three days?

- Yes

77: Are you friends with the people you were friends with two years ago?

- Some people.

78: Do you remember who you had a crush on in year 7?

- Ana

79: Is there anyone you know with the name Mike?

- Yes!

80: Have you ever fallen asleep in someones arms?

- Yeah, it’s nice. But I prefer having my hair played with until I knock out

81: How many people have you liked in the past three months?

- 2

82: Has anyone seen you in your underwear in the last 3 days?

- Yes because Abe never lets me pee in fucking peace

83: Will you talk to the person you like tonight?

- Yeeee

84: You’re drunk and yelling at hot guys/girls out of your car window, you’re with?

- Abe and/or Caitlin

85: If your BF/GF was into drugs would you care?

- I mean as long as it was only like pot and it was occasional no

86: What was the most eventful thing that happened last time you went to see a movie?

- I made a joke about lesbians during wonder woman and Abe slapped me

87: Who was your last received call from?

- Dad

88: If someone gave you $1,000 to burn a butterfly over a candle, would you?

-No

89: What is something you wish you had more of?

- Money

90: Have you ever trusted someone too much?

- Yes, bad idea

91: Do you sleep with your window open?

- Only if it’s cold out which never happens in florida

92: Do you get along with girls?

- Sometimes

93: Are you keeping a secret from someone who needs to know the truth?

- Yes, but I have good reasons.

94: Does sex mean love?

- Not always.

95: You’re locked in a room with the last person you kissed, is that a problem?

- I’d be annoyed as hell

96: Have you ever kissed anyone with a lip ring?

- No

97: Did you sleep alone this week?

- No, I slept next to Abe like 3 times last week

98: Everybody has somebody that makes them happy, do you?

- Yes

99: Do you believe in love at first sight?

- No

100: Who was the last person that you pinky promise?

- Abe

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315tohalf · 7 years

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Ups, Downs, and Ups Again

It’s been a long long time since I updated. Mostly I forgot and mostly because I was discouraged. Here’s a long ass post to talk about the struggle and what I’ve gone through so far. I’ve changed the name from 270 to the reality, 315. This is where I was stuck for over a year, up down up again. Sometimes 310. Sometimes 315. I did what felt like everything but still felt discouraged. First I tried Zumba. The classes were fun, high energy and I would be exhausted after. There was a teacher who came to my work once a week and was super fun… and super flakey. We would pay $25 for 5 classes, which wasn’t a bad deal at all really. It started off great! There were 20 women in the building who all signed up, the teacher was happy to have a big class, coworkers were happy to have a workout and place to connect. Then the teacher would start being late or missing the classes completely. Sometimes it was a scheduling conflict and she didn’t have a backup, sometimes it was she was sick, or she ran a marathon and was too tired, or this happened. Or that happened. After a certain point people were paying for classes they never got, and she expected people to keep on coming back and paying for the next class. Then she was asking people to come in twice a week, so we were now paying $50 a month for these classes. At that point I counted. She had missed over half the classes she scheduled in 3 months. I was gaining weight, missing workouts and feeling bad about myself. I said fuck it and stopped going. I did some research and found my work sponsored a membership for a stupidly expensive gym, so I figured why not? It was $80 a month, which I was already paying $70 with the Zumba and planet fitness combined. Plus the fancy gym had unlimited free classes I could join! And a pool! And a sauna! AND I got $300 of their fancy gym dollars I could use for something. I tried yoga and after the first frustrating lesson, I tried it again! The second time I loved the class. I came to love yoga more than Zumba. It was relaxing and it made me sweat like I was a soaked towel being rung out. I went to the gym, hanging out learning the machines, trying to figure out what on earth I could spend this fancy money on. Then I met this kind energetic personal trainer who would just go around talking to people, not even her clients, to encourage them to work out. I loved her positive attitude and how she never had a hint of judgement and knew that I needed to spend the $300 gym dollars having her teach me things. It was great! Since it was winter I didn’t want to go outside and run, so I would see her every Saturday. We would talk about life, our boyfriends, and do squats together. I would see her every Saturday and every Monday was yoga. I had a routine! Things were progressing! And I was losing weight! I went from 312 to 308 to 306! It may have taken me 3 months to get there but I was proud! I was doing this! I even decided to use my tax return on 2 more months of lessons with her. It was working and it was worth every penny learning everything. After the third month, she quit the company because she wasn’t making enough money and got an internship at a daycare that she always wanted to work at. She introduced me to her co-worker. He was this kind buff dude that was encouraging… but I just didn’t feel as motivated. Instead of every week I saw him twice a month. I would never do all the workouts he taught me. I was discouraged. I wanted to do well, but I felt alone. I didn’t have that fun time chatting with someone talking about life. Instead it was mechanical. I would still go to yoga, but not every week. I would work out, but not all the time. Enter now fiancé. Seeing me sad and discouraged. He joined the gym with me and it sparked new hope! Finally, someone to work out with! Do squats with! I had so many workouts written from the trainers I just decided to do them with fiancé. I figured when I have run out of workouts we can always hire someone for a month to teach us new stuff. Things were going well, but I wasn’t committed, so I still hovered. Sometimes 310, sometimes 315. And I needed something to kick my ass. In comes Beachbody with Shakeology. A good friend decided to become a coach and wanted me to join her “challenge group.” I figured why not? I was already drinking shakes every morning from protein mix at the gym. This was more expensive but they had a guarantee and I could get my money back if I didn’t like it. And there was the challenge group! Log 5 shakes a day and 3 workouts a week and then we get part of a cash prize split between everyone who completes it. I started at 315 and ended at 307. Four of those pounds were from having the flu in the last week… so that’s sort of cheating. But It was extremely motivating. I wasn’t worried about losing weight, I was worried about getting those workouts in so I could get that mystery pot of money! Would it be $5? $50?? $100??? Turns out it was $16. Not horrible and was still a good motivator. I came out of the challenge with a new fervor. I had a routine set and fiancé and I were following it. Tuesdays – Yoga Thursdays – Weight Training Saturdays – Running And then I would throw a workout in between of the Hip Hop Abs. Jumping around and getting sweaty. But then the scale would not move. Sometimes it was 308 sometimes 310. Rarely it would taunt me with 312. There was another challenge group, I was losing motivation. I just couldn’t do it. I felt like no matter how much I worked out it wasn’t working. I tried to keep with the routine. Sometimes I would miss a whole week, because I just felt like there was no point. Then I watched a magical anime. A stupid, silly, anime. It was all the right places in the feels, and it gave me a strange motivation. The anime was Kiss Him, Not Me. A story of a girl who loses a ton of weight because she doesn’t eat food when she’s depressed than an anime character dies and all these boys fall in love with her. It was dumb and silly. I loved how she had no interest in the boys… except for fantasizing about the boys being together instead. Then the plot twist happens and she gains back all the weight. Nothing works for this girl. They try to starve her. It doesn’t work. They try to force her to work out. It doesn’t work. They bend over backwards and nothing works. Then the boys have an idea. With every 5 pounds she loses, they will do something romantic together in front of her. She lost it all in a month. This sparked an idea in me. I am not a fan of boy love so that wouldn’t work. And I didn’t want to reward myself by losing weight because that’s discouraging. I devised my own type of reward system involving something I love: Food. Whatever works, right? In January of this year, 2017, I told myself if I completed 15 workouts in ONE month. I would get ramen. Not just any ramen, but the most delicious ramen I can buy in this area. With all the toppings. Anything I wanted. Treat yo self! Let’s make note I had NEVER done 15 workouts in one month before. The challenge group was the first time I had made it to 12! It was a real challenge. The important rule I gave myself was, it doesn’t matter what the workout was as long as it was at least 15 minutes of activity. AND IT WORKED! I didn’t lose a lot of weight, but inches were coming off! I could SEE changes in me! I was SO PROUD! But I was stuck at 310. Still. I figured, let’s do it again in February! And I did it!! 15 workouts! AGAIN! I was looking even better. Losing MORE inches. I was getting better at pushups and punches from the Beachbody workouts. I didn’t care where I was working out if I did it. Yoga, Weight training, Beach Body, Dance Central on the Xbox. ANYTHING to get that 15 minutes. The end goal was RAMEN! The end of February. 310. I wanted to cry. I did cry. I hated everything. WHY? WHY when I’m working SO HARD?!? I went to my doctor. Well more like this was perfectly timed because I was waiting 2 months for an appointment. I went through my medical history, I cried over my weight. And she asked me simple questions: “Why are you so upset?” “Because I feel like everything I’m doing isn’t working and I am just failing.” “Well, why not try something different? Have you ever followed a diet?” “Uh… no I would just count calories and focus on eating non bad food.” “Try the South Beach Diet. If that doesn’t work, don’t get upset, just try something else! Keep on trying until you find something that works.” A light bulb went off in my head. Why keep on hitting the same brick wall if it isn’t working? Why not try something different and see what happens? Per her suggestion, I looked up different diets and I liked the theory behind south beach. I talked to my fiancé and he said he would join too. We ordered 2 books and 2 cookbooks. We planned everything, breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack, dessert. Followed the book religiously. I started the diet still stuck at 310. Week 1 – 306 Week 2 – 303 Week 3 – 299 It’s the end of week 3 and I AM UNDER 300 POUNDS! AFTER YEARS I AM UNDER 300 POUNDS! That’s where I am at right now. Week 3 of the South Beach diet. I’ve lost 11 pounds in 3 weeks. And this month I’ve upped my goal to 20 workouts. But this time I get 2 rewards. 12 workouts I get sushi. 20 I get ramen. And today is Sushi day. Go me.

#long post #weight loss #south beach diet #shakeology #beachbody #yoga #zumba #progress

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wineanddinosaur · 4 years

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The Data Doesn’t Lie: Hard Seltzer Is Here to Stay

Any doubts over whether hard seltzer was just a “fad” were put to bed after last year’s sales figures came out: In 2019, U.S. drinkers bought more hard seltzer by volume than vodka. To be exact, we purchased 82.5 million 9-liter cases, or almost 2.1 billion 355-milliliter cans, according to global data firm IWSR.

In the last 12 months, hard seltzer’s total share of the overall alcohol market in sales by volume rose to 2.6 percent — a small figure until you consider it’s more than a third of the total volume sales of all spirits, which stands at 6.8 percent. It’s even creeping in on wine’s 11 percent. Hard seltzer is barely five years old.

VinePair’s own internal data confirms that consumers are deeply interested in the category. Per VinePair Audience Insights, consumer interest in hard seltzer was up an incredible 992 percent year-over-year across the 65 types of wine, beer, and spirits tracked. It finished 2019 as the single most popular type of “beer.”

Although it is, at this point, impossible to deny the category’s short-term staying power, its unprecedented popularity and sales raise bigger questions about spiked sparkling water. Namely: How the hell did we get here so fast? And how, if at all, can hard seltzer sustain its epic growth?

What Are Hard Seltzers?

Technically known as flavored malt beverages (FMBs), hard seltzers gain their alcoholic kick via the fermentation of malted grains or, in most cases, cane sugars. Previous hits in the FMB back catalog include brands like Zima and Smirnoff Ice — drinks that had their day in the sun in the 1990s and early 2000s, respectively, then faded like a worn Hawaiian shirt.

(There was also the once-hotly-tipped hard soda category, which ultimately failed to make a splash — no one needs a father-defying alcoholic root beer.)

What hard seltzers have that other FMBs don’t is their unbeatable wellness-culture-friendly nutritional values.

Hard seltzers offer drinkers an alcohol option with low calories (100 or fewer per 12-ounce serving), little to no sugar (1 gram or less), and barely there carbs (1 to 2 grams). They arrive in convenient 12-ounce servings, and their flavor profiles are light and refreshing, often resembling flavored non-alcoholic seltzers like La Croix and, in more “craft”-like cases, Spindrift.

The First Wave of Hard Seltzers

Although data varies slightly by market analyst, at the end of 2019, three hard seltzer brands enjoyed between 80 and 90 percent of the category’s sales: White Claw, Truly, and Bon & Viv.

White Claw leads the pack by a distance and currently holds a 50 percent share of the hard seltzer market, according to Nielsen data. Launched in 2016 by Mark Anthony Brands, the parent company of Mike’s Hard Lemonade (another early FMB), the brand shot to fame during the “White Claw Summer” of 2019, after its proliferation on social media platforms typically favored by millennial audiences. A highlights reel from the year might include a slew of internet memes, parody YouTube videos, and impossible-to-get-out-of-your-head phrases like “Ain’t no laws when you’re drinking claws.”

White Claw’s viral appeal is reflected in sales. On e-commerce platform Drizly, millennials and gen x’ers drove year-to-date growth of White Claw 577 percent, according to the company’s head of consumer insights, Liz Paquette.

Sales were so strong last summer that Mark Anthony Brands declared a nationwide shortage. (White Claw fans came up with their own term for the situation, declaring depleted retailers as being “declawed.”) Mark Anthony Brands is preventing a repeated catastrophe by constructing a 916,000-square-foot production facility in Glendale, Ariz., which is set to begin operations in June 2020.

Truly Hard Seltzer (formerly Truly Spiked and Sparkling), launched by Boston Beer in 2016, currently holds 22 percent market share, helping boost the share value of its parent company by as much as 45 percent in 2019.

“Over the past few years, Truly Hard Seltzer has really been pivotal for Boston Beer,” Casey O’Neill, the company’s product development manager, tells VinePair.

In 2019, Truly became the first brand to take hard seltzer airborne after signing an exclusive partnership with JetBlue. It also became the first hard seltzer available nationwide on draft. This January, Truly launched a hard seltzer lemonade, targeting those who enjoy the flavor of lemonade but don’t like the sweetness (or calories) that come with it.

(O’Neill denied the fact that Boston Beer launched the product as a direct rival to Mark Anthony Brands’ Mike’s Hard Seltzer, but we’ll agree to disagree.)

That leaves Bon & Viv Spiked Seltzer the third and final “top-three” brand — now the least significant in terms of sales, but a pivotal player in the category.

Originally launched as SpikedSeltzer by Connecticut-based beverage entrepreneur Nick Shields in 2013, the brand was the first widely available commercial hard seltzer. When numerous imitator brands launched, the evolving category became synonymous with Shields’ pioneering brand, with drinkers commonly referring to the beverages as “spiked seltzers.” (It wasn’t until 2019 that the category overwhelmingly became known as hard seltzer.)

Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev) acquired SpikedSeltzer in 2016 and enacted a complete rebrand, debuting the new “Bon & Viv Spiked Seltzer” in a flashy, conceptual Super Bowl ad in 2019.

Even with its head start — and the backing of a multi-billion-dollar beer conglomerate — Bon & Viv now accounts for less than 10-percent of hard seltzer sales. In a few short years, it has essentially become the MySpace of the hard seltzer category.

Behemoths Enter the Race

Hard seltzers dominated alcohol sales in summer 2019. The category is predicted to exceed $2.5 billion in sales by the end of 2021. Naturally, large alcohol brands are forced to take action or risk being left behind for good.

Come fall, in October 2019, Constellation Brands announced it was planning to launch Corona Hard Seltzer. To make up for lost ground, Constellation budgeted $40 million for the marketing alone. MillerCoors also aimed for an early-2020 launch of its own hard seltzer, Vizzy, targeting health-conscious consumers by focusing its messaging around the product’s high levels of vitamin C. (MillerCoors is currently entangled in a lawsuit filed by the previously existing hard seltzer brand, Brizzy.)

Meanwhile, AB InBev added two big-name hard seltzer brands to its lineup — Natural Light Seltzer in August 2019, and Bud Light Seltzer in January 2020. The latter is already making waves: According to IRI data, Bud Light Seltzer was the third most popular hard seltzer during the week leading up to the Super Bowl, registering $4.9 million in sales. And that was before the Post Malone ads.

Other big-name beverage brands rushing to get in on the action include E. & J. Gallo, the world’s largest family-owned winery, which has an estimated $5 billion in revenues. In January 2020, it announced it was launching the world’s first wine-based hard seltzer through its Barefoot brand.

The product follows a familiar formula: Each 250-milliliter gluten-free serving has 70 calories, 2 grams of sugar, and 4 percent ABV.

“Our consumers enjoy wine-based products and they are always looking for new tastes, formats and packaging that they can enjoy in new places or for new occasions,” Anna Bell, Barefoot’s vice president of marketing, writes VinePair in an email. “We are very confident in the hard seltzer category [and] believe [it] will continue to grow into the foreseeable future.”

E. & J. Gallo also offers another spin on the category through its High Noon brand, currently the only so-called hard seltzer made with vodka, rather than fermented cane sugar, malt, or wine.

Beer & Hard Seltzer: Frenemies

Despite its success in dollar signs, industry professionals remain divided on where hard seltzer’s incredible growth is coming from.

Speaking to Forbes in 2019, Sanjiv Gajiwala, vice president of marketing at Mark Anthony Brands, said 55 percent of White Claw’s volume sales came from beer consumers, while 20 percent came from wine, and 17 percent from spirits. The remaining 8 percent came from a mix of other categories, including cider and other FMBs, he said.

Brewers Association chief economist Bart Watson disagrees. In a 2019 report he authored, using sales data from research firm IRI, Watson claimed just 27 percent of hard seltzer volume was coming from beer. “My general take was that the consumers for hard seltzer don’t overlap with the classic craft beer consumer that much,” he says, noting that the light, easy-drinking hard seltzer category is far removed from the big, bold flavors typically offered by craft beer brands.

Hard seltzer is affecting the craft beer market in other ways, though. The Brewers Association’s most recent update to the “craft” definition shifted the goalposts for brewers. Previously, 50 percent or more of their production volume had to be brewed using “traditional or innovative brewing ingredients” (think: malted barley), and basically resemble something consumers would traditionally think of as beer.

Now, they only have to include beer in their portfolios and are free to make as much wine, liquor, hard kombucha, or hard seltzer as they want.

Watson agrees that hard seltzer offers a business opportunity for craft brewers that want to diversify, but stops short of predicting the category is here to stay. “It remains to be seen how much the seltzer market is actually a segment and a category, versus a couple of very powerful brands,” he says.

Craft Seltzer Boom?

For others, the future is clear, bubbly, and a little bit boozy.

“White Claw and Truly are always going to be massive,” Nico Enriquez, founder of Willie’s Superbrew, an independent hard seltzer maker based in Charlestown, Mass., says. But he believes that just as a very small number of large-scale brands dominate the beer market, craft hard seltzer brands can capitalize on the remaining market share. “We expect the category to mature very quickly and people will soon start trading up towards premium drinks,” he says.

While brands like White Claw and Truly create their products using “natural” flavorings, Willie’s uses fresh ingredients (fruits and spices) during fermentation. The advantage, he says, is improved and more depth of flavor, and a visually attractive beverage that has naturally occurring color (most hard seltzers are clear).

If and when consumers decide to trade up, Willie’s is poised to meet that demand. Enriquez and his team have spent the past four and a half years developing a production process that can be scaled up without compromising consistency or quality — two hurdles that have traditionally plagued craft beer brands, he says.

Enriquez also predicts the hard seltzer market will soon become more fragmented and specialized, much like craft beer did, and says nutritional values are the only constraints within the space.

“Whether it’s barrel aging, or blending in some crazy peppers, or doing something that has a benefit for an animal rights shelter, all of the playbooks you’ve seen in craft beer are going to be replayed in seltzer,” he says.

Learning lessons from the beer industry, especially with its close ties to the category, seems like a shrewd business move, though exactly how far away we are from Bourbon County Black Cherry remains to be seen.

In the meantime, 2020 should at least answer a few burning questions: Will hard seltzer sales continue to grow at such a staggering rate? (Probably.) Can Bud Light Seltzer declaw retailers of today’s leading brand? (Maybe.) And will Bon & Viv remain in anyone’s “Top Eight” list come December? (Who?)

One thing’s for sure: Only a fool would ignore their local weathercaster’s predictions of a long, hot, White Claw summer.

The article The Data Doesn’t Lie: Hard Seltzer Is Here to Stay appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/hard-seltzer-data-history/

0 notes

isaiahrippinus · 4 years

Text

The Data Doesn’t Lie: Hard Seltzer Is Here to Stay

What Are Hard Seltzers?

(There was also the once-hotly-tipped hard soda category, which ultimately failed to make a splash — no one needs a father-defying alcoholic root beer.)

What hard seltzers have that other FMBs don’t is their unbeatable wellness-culture-friendly nutritional values.

The First Wave of Hard Seltzers

Although data varies slightly by market analyst, at the end of 2019, three hard seltzer brands enjoyed between 80 and 90 percent of the category’s sales: White Claw, Truly, and Bon & Viv.

“Over the past few years, Truly Hard Seltzer has really been pivotal for Boston Beer,” Casey O’Neill, the company’s product development manager, tells VinePair.

(O’Neill denied the fact that Boston Beer launched the product as a direct rival to Mark Anthony Brands’ Mike’s Hard Seltzer, but we’ll agree to disagree.)

That leaves Bon & Viv Spiked Seltzer the third and final “top-three” brand — now the least significant in terms of sales, but a pivotal player in the category.

Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev) acquired SpikedSeltzer in 2016 and enacted a complete rebrand, debuting the new “Bon & Viv Spiked Seltzer” in a flashy, conceptual Super Bowl ad in 2019.

Behemoths Enter the Race

The product follows a familiar formula: Each 250-milliliter gluten-free serving has 70 calories, 2 grams of sugar, and 4 percent ABV.

E. & J. Gallo also offers another spin on the category through its High Noon brand, currently the only so-called hard seltzer made with vodka, rather than fermented cane sugar, malt, or wine.

Beer & Hard Seltzer: Frenemies

Despite its success in dollar signs, industry professionals remain divided on where hard seltzer’s incredible growth is coming from.

Now, they only have to include beer in their portfolios and are free to make as much wine, liquor, hard kombucha, or hard seltzer as they want.

Craft Seltzer Boom?

For others, the future is clear, bubbly, and a little bit boozy.

Enriquez also predicts the hard seltzer market will soon become more fragmented and specialized, much like craft beer did, and says nutritional values are the only constraints within the space.

One thing’s for sure: Only a fool would ignore their local weathercaster’s predictions of a long, hot, White Claw summer.

The article The Data Doesn’t Lie: Hard Seltzer Is Here to Stay appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/hard-seltzer-data-history/ source https://vinology1.tumblr.com/post/190824755454

0 notes

johnboothus · 4 years

Text

The Data Doesnt Lie: Hard Seltzer Is Here to Stay

What Are Hard Seltzers?

(There was also the once-hotly-tipped hard soda category, which ultimately failed to make a splash — no one needs a father-defying alcoholic root beer.)

What hard seltzers have that other FMBs don’t is their unbeatable wellness-culture-friendly nutritional values.

The First Wave of Hard Seltzers

Although data varies slightly by market analyst, at the end of 2019, three hard seltzer brands enjoyed between 80 and 90 percent of the category’s sales: White Claw, Truly, and Bon & Viv.

“Over the past few years, Truly Hard Seltzer has really been pivotal for Boston Beer,” Casey O’Neill, the company’s product development manager, tells VinePair.

(O’Neill denied the fact that Boston Beer launched the product as a direct rival to Mark Anthony Brands’ Mike’s Hard Seltzer, but we’ll agree to disagree.)

That leaves Bon & Viv Spiked Seltzer the third and final “top-three” brand — now the least significant in terms of sales, but a pivotal player in the category.

Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev) acquired SpikedSeltzer in 2016 and enacted a complete rebrand, debuting the new “Bon & Viv Spiked Seltzer” in a flashy, conceptual Super Bowl ad in 2019.

Behemoths Enter the Race

The product follows a familiar formula: Each 250-milliliter gluten-free serving has 70 calories, 2 grams of sugar, and 4 percent ABV.

E. & J. Gallo also offers another spin on the category through its High Noon brand, currently the only so-called hard seltzer made with vodka, rather than fermented cane sugar, malt, or wine.

Beer & Hard Seltzer: Frenemies

Despite its success in dollar signs, industry professionals remain divided on where hard seltzer’s incredible growth is coming from.

Now, they only have to include beer in their portfolios and are free to make as much wine, liquor, hard kombucha, or hard seltzer as they want.

Craft Seltzer Boom?

For others, the future is clear, bubbly, and a little bit boozy.

Enriquez also predicts the hard seltzer market will soon become more fragmented and specialized, much like craft beer did, and says nutritional values are the only constraints within the space.

One thing’s for sure: Only a fool would ignore their local weathercaster’s predictions of a long, hot, White Claw summer.

The article The Data Doesn’t Lie: Hard Seltzer Is Here to Stay appeared first on VinePair.

Via https://vinepair.com/articles/hard-seltzer-data-history/

source https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/the-data-doesnt-lie-hard-seltzer-is-here-to-stay

0 notes

wasilewskitbfrostzn64insura-blog · 5 years

Text

dodge ram 3500 insurance

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When will a house burn? It may depend on when it was built

PARADISE, Calif. — The sky was turning orange and the embers were flying from the Camp Fire when Oney and Donna Carrell and Donna’s father sped away from their Paradise home.

“I thought, ‘Oh, well, the house is done,”‘ Oney Carrell said.

A few days later, they learned otherwise. The Carrells’ home survived the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history with a couple of warped window frames, a partially charred down spout and a stubborn smoky smell inside.

Most of their neighbourhood was destroyed. A guest house in their backyard, where Donna’s father lived, was reduced to ashes, along with a couple of sheds. Yet their beautifully restored 1940 Studebaker sat untouched in the garage.

The arc of destruction the Camp Fire carved through Paradise was seemingly random: Why were some houses saved and others incinerated? As millions of Californians brace for another wildfire season, a McClatchy analysis of fire and property records shows the answer might be found in something as simple as the roofs over their heads — and the year their house was built.

A landmark 2008 building code designed for California’s fire-prone regions — requiring fire-resistant roofs, siding and other safeguards — appears to have protected the Carrells’ home and dozens of others like it from the Camp Fire. That year marks a pivotal moment in the state’s deadly and expensive history of destructive natural disasters.

All told, about 51 per cent of the 350 single-family homes built after 2008 in the path of the Camp Fire were undamaged, according to McClatchy’s analysis of Cal Fire data and Butte County property records. By contrast, only 18 per cent of the 12,100 homes built prior to 2008 escaped damage. Those figures don’t include mobile homes, which burned in nearly equal measure regardless of age.

“These are great standards; they work,” said senior engineer Robert Raymer of the California Building Industry Association, who consulted with state officials on the building code.

Yet despite this lesson, California may end up falling short in its effort to protect homes from the next wildfire.

Mushrooming cities such as Folsom, where an 11,000-home development is springing up, have the ability to bypass the state’s safety standards in spite of considerable fire risks. The state, which offers cash incentives to bolster old homes against earthquakes, so far has done nothing to get Californians to retrofit homes built before 2008 for fire safety.

It hasn’t helped that housing construction went into a deep dive in 2008 and has been slow to recover. Raymer said only 860,000 homes and apartments have been built statewide since the code went into effect. That’s just 6 per cent of the state’s housing stock.

According to Cal Fire, as many as 3 million homes lie within the various “fire hazard severity zones” around the state. Dave Sapsis, a Cal Fire wildland fire scientist, said there’s no way to know definitively how many of those homes were built before 2008, but he believes “it’s the preponderance of them, the majority.”

The situation is worse in rural California, where housing construction lags but the fire hazards are among the worst in the state, Raymer said. Fewer than 3 per cent of the homes in the path of the Camp Fire were built after 2008.

“Most of our inventory that was here prior to the fire was (built) between the ’40s and the ’70s,” said Paradise Town Councilman Michael Zuccolillo, a real estate agent. “The average home here was from the ’70s.”

That leaves thousands of homes at risk from the next inferno across California, their wood-shake shingles waiting to ignite.

“What are we going to do about the existing housing stock that’s been built in these places?” said Max Moritz, a wildfire specialist at UC Santa Barbara. “For the existing housing stock that’s out there, that isn’t built to these codes, we have a massive retrofitting issue on our hands. They have structure ignition vulnerabilities that are built into the situation, they’re baked into the problem.”

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‘THE WEAKEST LINK’

The Carrells, now living in a rental in Roseville, designed their Paradise home and did much of the interior work themselves; they knew that home was built with fire safety in mind.

“I knew we were in the middle of the forest,” Oney Carrell said during a recent visit to Paradise. “Why wouldn’t you do everything you could to make it last?”

But even he’s amazed that their home made it. Stepping over a blackened patio drain just a few feet from the back of the house, he wondered aloud: “I don’t know why it stopped here.”

It’s almost impossible to say for certain why some homes are still standing in Paradise, while others were ruined. Landscaping surely played a role; fire experts say homes buffered by so-called “defensible space” probably did better than those wrapped in shrubs. Luck was a big factor, too, as homes were no doubt spared by last-second shifts in the winds.

Nevertheless, experts say, McClatchy’s analysis reinforces their belief that California’s fire-safe building code can make a difference in an era of increasing vulnerability. Daniel Gorham, a former firefighter and U.S. Forest Service researcher who works for the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety in South Carolina, said the California code is becoming a model for other fire-prone states.

“California is leaps and bounds ahead of other parts of the country,” Gorham said. “California is on the forefront.”

Advocates say fire-resistant building materials aren’t particularly expensive. A study last fall by Headwater Economics, a consulting firm in Bozeman, Mont., found that “a new home built to wildfire-resistant codes can be constructed for roughly the same cost as a typical home.”

But getting Californians to retrofit homes built before 2008 is an enormous task. The state requires property owners in fire zones who replace at least half their roof to install “fire-retardant” materials on the entire roof. Other than that, however, there’s nothing forcing Californians to safeguard their existing homes against fire hazards.

A few California cities have taken matters into their own hands. In 2008, the City Council in Big Bear Lake, a community of 5,200 in San Bernardino County, passed an ordinance declaring wood shake shingle roofs “a severe fire hazard and danger” and ordered homeowners to replace them by 2012. Armed with state and federal grants, it offered cash incentives of up to $4,500 apiece for new roofs.

Although the grant program has run out, “I can’t think of the last time I saw a shake roof in Big Bear,” said Patrick Johnston, the city’s chief building official.

Most Californians, however, are on their own when it comes to spending the tens of thousands of dollars needed to replace a roof or install fire-resistant siding. The state offers no financial incentives for fire safety the way it does, say, for earthquakes — homeowners in quake zones can get up to $3,000 apiece from the state to gird their homes against seismic disaster.

There are signs, however, that the state is beginning to get more serious about retrofitting homes for fire safety.

A law signed last year by former Gov. Jerry Brown requires the state fire marshal to develop a suggested list of “low-cost retrofits” by January 2020. The state would then promote these retrofits in its education and outreach efforts.

California also might start throwing cash at the problem.

A new bill, AB 38, introduced earlier this year by Democratic Assemblyman Jim Wood of Santa Rosa, would create a $1 billion “fire hardened homes revolving loan fund” to help homeowners retrofit their properties.

The issue is personal for Wood, a dentist who spent weeks helping identify victims from the Camp Fire and the wine country fires of October 2017. Although eligibility terms haven’t been spelled out, the bill would offer low-interest and no-interest loans to help those who otherwise couldn’t pay for new roofs or other safeguards.

“A lot of these small towns are not as well off financially,” he said. “We need to find a way to help them, especially if they’re poorer.”

The fund might not be nearly enough to go around — not with hundreds of thousands of homes in need of retrofits, and a new roof alone costing $10,000 or more. “The $1 billion, indeed, that’s not enough to rehab every home,” said the Building Industry Association’s Raymer. But he said it’s “an absolutely excellent way to kick things off.”

Wood said state officials would have to figure out a plan for parceling out the money to where it’s needed most — probably starting with lower-income areas near forests.

“Obviously we want to affect the areas with the highest risk first,” the assemblyman said. “A lot of these small towns are not as well off financially. We need to find a way to help them, especially if they’re poorer.”

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MAPPING ‘SEVERITY ZONES’

The fire-safe building code had its origins in two significant fires from a generation ago — the Panorama Fire of 1980, which spilled out of the mountains into the city of San Bernardino; and the monstrous Oakland Hills Fire of 1991, which wiped out 2,500 homes and killed 25 people.

In response, the Legislature ordered the Department of Fire Protection and Forestry to start mapping major fire risks in California, in the hinterlands as well as urban areas. The result was a collection of maps of the state’s “fire hazard severity zones,” encompassing more than one-third of California’s land mass.

Based on factors such as terrain, vegetation and weather patterns, the zones represent Cal Fire’s attempt to predict the probability of a fire starting and the likelihood that it could become significant, said Cal Fire’s Sapsis.

The maps spawned tighter building standards. The Legislature mandated fire-resistant roofs in these fire-prone areas. Then in 2008 the state laid out a more comprehensive scheme. The California Building Standards Commission rolled out a suite of regulations, known as Chapter 7A, that set strict rules for roofing materials, siding, windows, decks and other elements of a home built in 2008 or later — right down to the minimum specs for the wire mesh that must be installed on attic vents to keep embers out (no more than a quarter-inch of space between the wires).

Experts said the regulations seem to be particularly effective at protecting structures from the types of wildfires that are increasingly common in California, where wind gusts can blow embers a mile or two ahead of the main wall of flames and do some of the worst damage.

“A window breaks, a vent breaks, the fire gets into your home and you’ve got an interior structure fire,” said Joe Poire, the city of Santa Barbara’s fire marshal.

Enforcement of the building code carries a few wrinkles. In the mainly rural areas where Cal Fire is in charge of fire protection, the Chapter 7A code is automatically enforced in any region that Cal Fire has designated as a “severity zone” — moderate, high or very high.

In urban areas that have their own fire departments, the code is generally used only in spots where Cal Fire says the threat is very high. Local governments have the discretion of rejecting the Cal Fire designation, and Sapsis said some city councils have been squeamish about the state’s maps because of fears that the Chapter 7A code will inflate construction costs, or for other reasons.

Yet interviews with local officials throughout California by McClatchy indicate that the vast majority of cities and towns go along with Cal Fire’s recommendations. Santa Barbara city officials extended the building code to coastal areas that had been overlooked by Cal Fire’s mappers. The map omits small portions of Paradise, but the building code is enforced across the entire town, said Paradise public information officer Colette Curtis.

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DANGER IN SANTA ROSA, FOLSOM?

Nevertheless, there are places where local officials are reluctant to impose strict building codes — even where fire has caused catastrophe.

Before Paradise exploded, Santa Rosa’s Coffey Park was the poster child for recent California wildfire disasters: Five people died and 1,321 homes were destroyed by the Tubbs Fire in October 2017.

Coffey Park wasn’t subject to California’s Chapter 7A building code. It still isn’t.

Unlike some areas of Santa Rosa, the neighbourhood hasn’t been designated a “very high fire hazard” zone by Cal Fire. City officials are OK with that. Although developers rebuilding Coffey Park are being urged to consider fire-resistant materials, city spokeswoman Adriane Mertens said the city doesn’t see any reason to impose the 7A code in the neighbourhood.

“There were very, very high winds that night,” Mertens said. “There were embers that were blown across the (Highway 101) freeway, across six lanes of freeway, into Coffey Park.”

Jack Cohen, a fire scientist in Montana who helped develop the 7A code, said he thinks Santa Rosa is committing “an error in judgment” by rebuilding without the safeguards.

In any event, Cal Fire is updating its fire hazard maps over the next year or so, taking into account more sophisticated data on wind and other climate factors, and Sapsis said spots such as Coffey Park could wind up designated as high-risk areas. Once the maps are done, any region placed inside Cal Fire’s “very high fire” zone will have no choice but to comply, under a bill signed into law by Brown last year.

But there will still be ways for cities to skirt the state building code.

Look at Folsom, widely considered one of the most vulnerable places in greater Sacramento to fire. The county’s hazard mitigation plan says 44,000 residents of Folsom are already at “moderate or higher wildfire risk.”

Now the suburb is building a development called Folsom Ranch, eventually to be home to 25,000 people, on a parcel south of Highway 50.

The development is on land that used to be subject to the strict state building code. Now it isn’t.

How did that happen? Years ago, the land was outside Folsom’s city limits and Cal Fire was responsible for its safety. Cal Fire’s maps put the land in the “moderate” risk zone — a threat level high enough that, under the state’s regulations, the fire-safe building code took effect. As it happened, no construction took place during that time, city officials say.

The situation changed when the city annexed the land to forge ahead with Folsom Ranch. Because the land has never been in the state’s “very high” risk zone, the city feels comfortable letting Folsom Ranch develop without the Chapter 7A building code.

Fire Chief Felipe Rodriguez said Folsom officials are still open to “the possibility of strengthening, hardening, our future homes.” But for now, the city is only requiring homeowners’ associations to implement a “vegetation management” plan and install fire-resistant fencing around properties that abut open space areas, Rodriguez said.

Is Folsom courting danger? Rodriguez doesn’t think so. The city will build two fire stations in the development and will “be able to suppress a fire during its early stages,” he said.

——

‘STICKS IN A FIREPLACE’

The hundreds of thousands of older homes in fire zones aren’t just more vulnerable in their own right.

Experts say they spread danger to new homes built to stricter standards.

“One little house built to a new standard, surrounded by a bunch of older stuff, is likely to get swamped,” Sapsis said.

Paradise provided a grim reminder of that problem. The Camp Fire destroyed more than 80 per cent of the 4,100 mobile homes in its path, whether they were built to the new code or not, according to McClatchy’s data analysis. That isn’t surprising, Sapsis said, given that many of Paradise’s mobile homes were jammed alongside one another in mobile home parks.

“They’re stacked so close together, they’re like sticks in a fireplace,” Sapsis said.

Sapsis and others say the lesson is that strong building codes aren’t enough. In particular, experts say communities must pay more attention to how they lay out their neighbourhoods, allowing for firebreaks and enough space between houses.

“In the name of affordable housing, we’re moving housing closer and closer to one another,” said Chris Dicus, a forestry and fire expert at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. “That serves to have house-to-house-to-house ignition.”

The problem isn’t limited to densely-packed urban areas. “I live in a rural community, and I have got six feet basically separating me from my neighbour,” said Dicus, who lives outside of Morro Bay.

In addition, experts say California is struggling to enforce the state law regarding “defensible space” around properties.

The law requires that property owners maintain as much as 100 feet of defensible space around homes and other buildings in and around “a mountainous area, forest-covered lands, brush-covered lands, grass-covered lands, or land that is covered with flammable material.” That means keeping trees and shrubs pruned and spaced far apart. Within five feet of the building, property owners are supposed to remove anything that could catch fire: mulch, plants, woodpiles and so on.

In practice, however, enforcement of the defensible space law has been spotty at best. Raymer, of the California Building Industry Association, said most property owners don’t understand how to maintain their yards. The state doesn’t impose penalties for non-compliance, and only a few local governments have chosen to do so, Raymer said.

Legislation could change that. SB 190, by Sen. Bill Dodd, D-Napa, would require the state fire marshal to develop a “model defensible space program,” including penalties, that local governments could adopt.

The problem extends beyond homeowners’ property lines. Gov. Gavin Newsom, finding some rare common ground with the Trump administration, is advocating for more aggressive management of forested lands.

A thinned forest northeast of Paradise provided one of the rare victories of the Camp Fire. As the fire raged out of the tiny community of Pulga, it essentially spared the northern part of Magalia. The reason was a series of forest-thinning projects conducted in recent years and overseen by the U.S. Forest Service, Sierra Pacific Industries and the volunteer Butte County Fire Safe Council. The council also worked diligently with area residents to clear brush from their property.

All that work “did exactly what we hoped it would do,” said Calli-Jane DeAnda, executive director of the council, which secured $1 million in grants to remove fuels from forested areas. “This investment of public money is so worth the effort.”

——

THE PARADISE ‘LAB EXPERIMENT’

The rebuilding of Paradise means thousands of homes are going to be constructed in the coming years to the stricter standards promulgated by the state in 2008. It represents the single largest test of the effectiveness of the building code.

“That is an absolute lab experiment for us,” Sapsis said.

On the streets of Paradise, though, community leaders are taking a more measured view. Zuccolillo, the town councilman, said asphalt roofs and stucco siding might “give us more of a chance” but he doubts they will guarantee Paradise’s safety.

“I saw metal buildings, metal and stucco buildings, burn to the ground,” he said.

Still, there’s plenty of evidence, all over Paradise, that the state’s building code can protect property.

The other day, Sean Herr pulled into his driveway on the west side of Paradise, where he and his wife Dawn were raising their two young children.

The first thing he did was bring out the ultimate symbol of resiliency: an American flag, the same one that flew on his front porch the day of the Camp Fire.

Like the flag, the house is still standing. The Herrs’ home, built in 2010, suffered a bit of scorching and some interior smoke damage — the smoke is bad enough that they’re still temporarily living in Chico and aren’t certain they’ll move back.

Still, they marvel at what a close call they had. A Ford Excursion and a boat parked in the front yard, just a few feet from their porch, were destroyed. Five motorcycles locked in a shed behind the house got ruined. Most of their neighbourhood is gone.

The Herrs believe their attention to defensible space — the house is mostly encircled in gravel — and the strictness of the building code probably made the difference.

“Our yard and the construction of the house saved it for sure,” Dawn Herr said, gesturing to a small scorch mark by the side of the house. “You can see it tried to catch on fire.”

——

Ryan Sabalow of The Sacramento Bee and Steve Schoonover of the Chico Enterprise-Record contributed to this report.

from Financial Post http://bit.ly/2GfhTr0 via IFTTT Blogger Mortgage Tumblr Mortgage Evernote Mortgage Wordpress Mortgage href="https://www.diigo.com/user/gelsi11">Diigo Mortgage

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psychotherapyconsultants · 5 years

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7 Winter Depression Busters

We’ve entered the “dark ages” as the midshipmen at the Naval Academy say — the weeks between Christmas break and Spring break when everyone turns a pasty white and the sidewalks are full of ugly slush. The lack of sunlight and the shorter days don’t help the pursuit of sanity. However, if you approach this time of year with a dose of creativity and enthusiasm, you need not fall down the rabbit hole of depression.

Here are some ideas to keep your mood sunny when the weather is anything but.

1. Go to the light.

I start using my light lamp in October. However, in January, this fixture becomes my best friend. Bright-light therapy — involving sitting in front of a fluorescent light box that delivers an intensity of 10,000 lux — can be as effective as antidepressant medication for mild and moderate depression and can yield substantial relief for Seasonal Affective Disorder.

Technically, we are moving towards more light every day in January, which is great news. But my circadian rhythm — the body’s internal biological clock that governs brain wave activity and hormone production — gets really out of whack following the holidays. I think it’s the cumulative lack of sunlight since September. So bright light therapy becomes an important part of every January and February day.

2. Clean and Declutter

I always feel like a massive hypocrite when I talk about decluttering and cleaning, but the evidence is in: messy environments affect your psyche. A 2011 study conducted by researches at the Princeton University Neuroscience Institute found that, when your surroundings are cluttered, multiple stimuli in your visual field compete for your attention, making it difficult for you to focus and limiting your brain’s ability to process information.1 Another study conducted through UCLA’s Center on Everyday Lives and Families showed that clutter affects our mood and mental health.2

January and February present perfect opportunities to at least start the process. Whenever I muster up the courage to begin to declutter, I feel the therapeutic effects. I think it has something to do with detaching yourself from the past and moving forward.

3. Get Creative

The winter months are also a good time to try a craft, whether that be pottery or painting or woodworking. Like cleaning, there are studies that have documented the therapeutic value of art therapy. For starters, in a 2016 study published in the journal Art Therapy, 39 participants made art using collage material, modeling clay, and/or markers. After they completed their work, they were invited to share any aspect of their work or their experiences verbally with the group. They were also asked to share a brief written description of their experience. Researchers measured cortisol levels before and after making art and found a significant reduction in cortisol after making art.3

In the last year, I’ve tried my hand at a variety of art forms to express my feelings, and I can attest to the power of art to access and heal difficult emotions.

4. Give Back

Ghandi once wrote that “the best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” Positive psychologists like University of Pennsylvania’s Martin Seligman and Dan Baker, Ph.D., director of the Life Enhancement Program at Canyon Ranch, believe that a sense of purpose — committing oneself to a noble mission — and acts of altruism are strong antidotes to depression.

You need not associate yourself with a specific cause or foundation. Sometimes a dollar and a kind word to a homeless person can make a great impact. So can calling up a friend you know is going through a rough patch. Anything we do that turns our gaze outward is going to help bolster our mood.

5. Be Around People

Winter weather gives you a great excuse to isolate yourself. Of course you don’t want to go out. It’s nasty outside. But isolation is only going to worsen your symptoms of depression and anxiety. Take it from the Queen of Isolation. “We have all known the long loneliness,” writes Dorothy Day, “and we have found that the answer is community.”

When we surround ourselves with others, there is a chance that we will forget about our problems for a few seconds and hear what someone else is saying. There’s also a possibility that we will discover that we are not alone in our struggle. On some days, that is enough to lessen our suffering.

6. Don’t Forget the Omega-3’s

During the winter, I’m religious about stocking a Noah’s-Ark-supply of Omega-3 capsules in my medicine cabinet because leading physicians at Harvard Medical School confirmed the positive effects of this natural, anti-inflammatory molecule on emotional health. I treat my brain like royalty — hoping that it will be kind to me in return — so I fork over about $30 a month for the Mac Daddy of the Omega-3s, capsules that contain 70 percent EPA (Eicosapentaenoic acid). One 500mg softgel capsule meets the doctor-formulated 7:1 EPA to DHA ratio, needed to elevate and stabilize mood.

7. Move Your Body

We’ve known for decades that exercise can decrease depression symptoms,4 but in a 2016 study by the University of California Davis Medical Center found that exercise increased the level of the neurotransmitters glutamate and GABA, both of which are depleted in the brains of people with depression and anxiety. The researchers evaluated 38 healthy volunteers who rode stationary bikes at a vigorous rate — about 85 percent of their maximum heart rate — for up to 20 minutes in three sessions, measuring GABA and glutamate levels in the brain immediately before and after the workouts.

Post-exercise scans showed significant neurotransmitter increases in parts of the brain that regulate emotions and cognitive functions. Participants who had exercised three or four times in the week leading up to the study had longer lasting effects. The study showed that aerobic exercise activates the pathways that replenish these neurotransmitters, allowing the brain to communicate with the body.5

Don’t worry about hiking 10 miles in the snow. Simply put on some groovy tunes and climb up and down your stairs for 15 minutes. The important thing is to move.

Footnotes:

McMains, S., & Kastner, S. (2011, January 11). Interactions of Top-Down and Bottom-Up Mechanisms in Human Visual Cortex. Journal of Neuroscience, 31(2): 587-597. Retrieved from http://www.jneurosci.org/content/31/2/587.long

Feuer, J. (2012, July 1). The Clutter Culture. UCLA Magazine. Retrieved from http://magazine.ucla.edu/features/the-clutter-culture/

Kaimal, G., Ray, K., & Muniz, J. (2016, April 2). Reduction of Cortisol Levels and Participants’ Responses Following Art Making. Art Therapy, 33(2): 74-80. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5004743/

Stathopoulou, G., Powers, M.B., Berry, A.C., Smits, J.A.J., & Otto, M.W. (2006, May 30). Clinical Psychology Science and Practice., 13(2): Exercise Interventions for Mental Health: A Quantitative and Qualitative Review. Retrieved from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1468-2850.2006.00021.x

Maddock, R.J., Casazza, G.A., Fernandez, D.H., & Maddock, M.I. (2016, February 24). Acute Modulation of Cortical Glutamate and GABA Content by Physical Activity. Journal of Neuroscience, 36(8): 2449-2457. Retrieved from: http://www.jneurosci.org/content/36/8/2449.short

from World of Psychology https://psychcentral.com/blog/7-winter-depression-busters/

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cryptnus-blog · 6 years

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Is The $70M University Blockchain Agenda Going Anywhere?

New Post has been published on https://cryptnus.com/2018/10/is-the-70m-university-blockchain-agenda-going-anywhere/

Is The $70M University Blockchain Agenda Going Anywhere?

Glowing bitcoin symbol over world map

Seventy-million dollars is a lot of money donated to one cause.

In this case, the cause is the future of blockchain and the donors are the Ethereum Foundation and Ripple’s University Blockchain Research Initiative.

Committing $20 million to over 70 organizations in 2018 alone (according to Executive Director Aya Miyaguchi), the Ethereum Foundation (EF), once named the richest blockchain company, is poised to be a leader in new waves of blockchain innovation. The EF is committed to funding blockchain-related initiatives across to a diverse range of organizations from universities to Hackternships. “It is our natural desire to bring in talented researchers, and universities are looking for new and interesting topics to research in both computer sciences and in economics,” says Miyaguchi. A leading player in blockchain innovations at universities, EF is a major grant maker to Stanford University. The university is currently the considered number one for studying blockchain according to CoinDesk and to Coinbase, which calls Stanford “the epicenter of crypto courses.”

Simultaneous to the Ethereum Foundation’s donations, Ripple has committed $50 million over a period of five years to 17 universities through its University Blockchain Research Initiative (UBRI). Recipients of funding include MIT and Princeton. Eric Van Miltenburg, Ripple’s SVP of Global Operations at Ripple UBRI believes that these partnerships only have upside. “We’re a little biased; Ripple certainly would benefit from [research on the potential of blockchain], but primarily as a philanthropic endeavor.” Alex Bouaziz, CEO and co-founder of SciDex protocol and an MIT alumnus who conducted blockchain research while enrolled at MIT, likewise believes that university partnerships with companies produce a positive mutual benefit and will “lead to the development of exciting new advancements.”

Even though both the Ethereum Foundation and Ripple have committed at least $70 million, there is a loose agenda for how universities will spend this money. Lacking one specific objective for the donations, Miyaguchi says that implementation is “rather flexible” and Miltenburg says that there’s “no prescriptive” way for universities to use the funds.

As these partnerships become increasingly popular, it is important to assess the progress of how they are working for both companies and universities. Andrew Moore, Dean of Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science tells the Computing Research Association, “Like any relationship, industry-academia partnerships do best when each member understands the other’s needs…and exactly what it takes to fulfill them.” The “sweet spot” of university-industry partnerships is where “the company, faculty, and students can explore areas that are high risk but might prove important in the future.”

While it does seem that these partnerships are sitting in this sweet spot of driving blockchain’s future, these types of partnerships may pose challenges and risks. This includes risking financial loss at universities, which won’t see much of the financial upside for tech innovations. There is also a question of neutrality in this research as the agenda may be driven by or biased to the company that’s doing the funding, according to this study on university–industry R&D partnerships.

Undoubtedly additional research initiatives like the UBRI and the EF will pop up in the coming years (for example, Cornell’s IC3). Millennials should pay close attention to these sponsorships and research collaboratives in order to invest wisely in the blockchain and to follow industry trends for your personal portfolio or professional goals.

In order to follow the latest research in the blockchain field, set a “Google Scholar” alert for faculty members whose research benefits from external blockchain funding. This will help you to hold blockchain companies and the institutions they sponsor accountable for their agendas while benefiting from the new knowledge created by this funding.

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totallymotorbikes · 7 years

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2017 Kawasaki Ninja 650 Review 2017 Kawasaki Ninja 650 Editor Score: 86.5% Engine 18.5/20 Suspension/Handling 12.0/15 Transmission/Clutch 8.5/10 Brakes 8.0/10 Instruments/Controls 5.0/5 Ergonomics/Comfort 8.0/10 Appearance/Quality 9.0/10 Desirability 8.5/10 Value 9.0/10 Overall Score 86.5/100 Up until now Kawasaki’s Ninja 650 has been recognized as a genteel gateway drug to the company’s true supersport model, the ZX-6R. For 2017 Kawasaki has further distilled more performance from the beginner-ish Ninja while maintaining the bike’s streetable mannerisms. In other words, the 2017 Ninja 650 is a more potent sportbike capable of shredding a twisty canyon road or closed course race track on the weekends, while performing commuter duty during the weekdays. The most substantive element of the new Ninja is the bike’s drastic weight reduction of 42 pounds, giving the 650 a claimed curb weight of only 419 pounds (426 pounds with ABS). In our Middleweight Intermediate Sportbike Shootout from 2014, the Ninja 650 tipped the MO scales at 465 pounds (461 pounds for the Honda CBR650F, 470 pounds for the Yamaha FZ6R). If we were to conduct that same comparison today the Ninja would have a whopping 35- and 44-pound weight advantage over the Honda and Yamaha, respectively. A breakdown of where Kawasaki engineers hacked weight from the Ninja 650, no small effort for an affordably priced mid-displacement non-supersport model. Interestingly, the 2017 Ninja 650 weighs a claimed 1.8 pounds less than its supersport ZX-6R model, 426 vs 427.8 pounds. A bike weighing 42 pounds less than its predecessor shouldn’t be taken lightly (aha… aha… aha…). You can’t help but feel the bike’s increased maneuverability at around town speeds, or especially when transitioning through a tight set of switchbacks. For newer riders, a lighter curb weight is less intimidating, while experienced pilots will appreciate its newfound flickability. 2017 Kawasaki Z650 First Ride Review Engine performance too has been massaged via a myriad of changes/improvements: fine-atomizing fuel injectors, 36mm throttle bodies and narrower intake ports, camshaft with modified profiles, airbox design, shorter exhaust pipe with no crossover tube all add up to an engine with greater low- and mid-range performance compared to last year’s model. No exact figures were provided but this rudimentary dyno chart from Kawasaki illustrates how the new engine fills mid-range cavities in the old engine’s power curves. Peak torque appears to be slightly more, while peak horsepower has decreased compared to the outgoing engine. In our 2014 shootout the Ninja 650 produced 64.7 hp at 8,900 rpm, and 43.0 lb-ft of torque at 7,100 rpm. Usable power from the Ninja 650’s parallel-Twin is abundant and corresponds with Kawasaki’s claims for improved low- and mid-range. The engine is a willing participant in almost any situation, whether it be building revs from as low as 2,500 rpm in 6th gear without shuddering to snappier responses in 3rd spinning at a more aggressive 6,000 rpm. Some vibes are going to creep through – mainly via the seat – but nothing excessive for two pistons in a parallel arrangement. In the technology department, the Ninja 650 comes outfitted with an Assist and Slip clutch which provides a light pull at the adjustable clutch lever, and the ability to row the gearbox with successive downshifts without fear of locking the rear wheel. The transmission also features a positive neutral finder that makes it easier to find that gearless position between 1st and 2nd. The restyled Ninja 650 is fairly aggressive for 2017, more closely resembling its supersport/superbike stablemates. The new 5-spoke wheels are lighter, and the shorter under-engine exhaust helps centralize mass. That’s possibly the best looking pressed-steel swingarm we’ve ever seen. To complement the Ninja’s sportier nature and aggressive new looks, Kawasaki reconfigured the bike’s seating position. The handlebars are now 25mm (1 inch) more forward and 42mm lower compared to the 2016 Ninja 650. As far as we’re concerned, this was a nice tweak to help performance while not putting too much weight on a rider’s wrist. In our previous shootout we complained that its front end was vague because there’s so little weight over the wheel due to the handlebar position. This new handlebar placement should help remedy that complaint. The taller of us MO testers also had problems with the seat-to-footpeg distance in that 2014 shootout. For 2017, Kawasaki moved the footpegs 60mm forward, and while they also lowered the footpegs 15mm they also lowered the seat 15mm. The shorter seat height should help less-taller folk, but during our day ride, the uncomfortable bend in my knee didn’t go unnoticed, so our complaint about the seat-to-footpeg distance will probably remain, at least for riders pushing six feet in height. What I definitely did like was the sloped, flat fuel tank – perfect for leaning forward and laying on for taking a rest during a long ride on a straight road, or to get out of the wind on a cold day. The new negative-lit instrument cluster is a huge improvement over the old one, and, incredibly, the digital readout is more legible in direct sunlight than it is in shade. Yah, we know, sounds crazy but it’s true. There’s also an adjustable shift light above the gear position indicator, while the tach needle also changes from white to pink to red to correspond with the shift light. Stopping power comes by way of new Nissin 2-piston calipers gripping 300mm discs up front, while a single Nissin caliper clamps on a single 220mm disc out back. We complained about how much pressure it took to get the old brakes to quickly slow the Ninja 650, and these new binders seem to perform much more efficiently. New ABS is the Bosch 9.1M that’s lighter and offers more precise anti-locking measurements. Non-ABS models remain available from Kawasaki, which offer slightly lower weight and price, but in our opinion, ABS is worth the few added pounds and dollars. The new negative-lit instrument cluster is a huge improvement over the old one, and, incredibly, the digital readout is more legible in direct sunlight than it is in shade. Yah, we know, sounds crazy but it’s true. There’s also an adjustable shift light above the gear position indicator, while the tach needle also changes from white to pink to red to correspond with the shift light. Big news in the suspension department is a new horizontal back-link KYB shock. Compared to last year’s linkageless shock, the new unit should provide a more progressive movement and reduce most occurrences of bottoming out. Rear suspension travel is the same as last year’s, and front suspension has gone unchanged. Any noticeable improvement in rear ride quality wasn’t apparent during our outing; a full suspension evaluation will have to wait until we can get a test unit. 2017 Kawasaki Ninja 650 + Highs Light makes right Improved mid-range engine performance Minimal price increase – Sighs Seat to footpeg ratio Basic brakes and suspension Cheap looking rear sprocket The 2017 Ninja 650 features a three-way adjustable windscreen. Other niceties include adjustable clutch and front brake levers, a narrow seat/tank junction, and comfortably dense seat material. Among other accessories, the seat cowl is especially stylish and dresses-up the look of the Ninja 650 for not much money. Kawasaki has really upped its game when it comes to fit/finish, and the Ninja 650 is another stunning example of the company’s attention to detail. The Ninja 650 isn’t an A-list celebrity, but Kawasaki sure seems to treat it like one. Everywhere you look on the bike speaks quality. About the only thing we found that visually says budget is the rear sprocket. Of course, steel is used in place of aluminum, and the suspension isn’t the latest fully adjustable Öhlins unit, but what you get for the price is a competent mid-level sportbike for which you don’t have to prostitute yourself to afford. Our cold one-day ride is only a glimpse into the improvements Kawasaki rendered on the Ninja 650. Once we get a test unit for a more in-depth evaluation, and a shootout against some of its competitors, we’ll know better how well the improvements perform. One thing we already know for certain, though, is you can’t go wrong dropping 42 pounds off of any model motorcycle, and for that reason alone the 2017 Ninja 650 is a winner in our book. 2017 Kawasaki Ninja Specifications Engine Type Liquid-cooled, 4-stroke Parallel Twin Displacement 649cc Bore and Stroke 83.0 x 60.0 mm Compression ratio 10.8:1 Valve system DOHC Fuel system DFI with 36mm Keihin throttle bodies Ignition TCBI with electronic advance Starting Electric Lubrication Forced lubrication, semi-dry sump Maximum power 67.3 hp at 8,000 rpm (claimed) Maximum torque 48.5 lb-ft at 6,500 rpm (claimed) Transmission 6-speed, return shift Final drive Chain Clutch Wet multi-disc, manual Frame Trellis, high-tensile steel Front suspension 41 mm telescopic fork Front wheel travel 4.9 in. Rear suspension Horizontal Back-link with adjustable preload Rear wheel travel 5.1 in. Front tire 120/70 ZR17 Dunlop Rear tire 160/60 AR17 Dunlop Sportmax D214 Front brakes Dual semi-floating 300mm petal discs with dual-piston caliper Rear brakes Single 220 mm petal disc with single-piston caliper Caster (rake) 24.0º Trail 3.9 in. Wheelbase 55.5 inches Seat height 31.1 inches Curb mass 419 pounds/426 pounds with ABS (claimed) Fuel capacity 4.0 gallon 2017 Kawasaki Ninja 650 Review appeared first on Motorcycle.com.

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