#I got more than six million experience points from handing in a high-quality pair of level 81 gloves for a daily grand company mission

[fell-court]

To anyone who might be curious as to how things are going gameplay-wise:

I am having a lot of fun =3

[fvlminare]

✗✗✗   you see [ camille rivas ] around lately? yeah i heard that the [ cis female ] is up to no good. [ she / her ] has been here for [ three years ] now but they’re still pretty [ calculating ] which is fine because they’re also [ ardent ] so it balances out. the [ twenty-six ] year old [ dancer at mayhem ] actually looks like a lot like [ sofia carson ], don’t you think? it’s best to watch out, though, because it’s been said that they’re really into [ the rush of cocaine in her veins & a vice grip on her throat ]. 

henlo it me again! i hope u guys aren’t sick of me yet bc here’s my other bb! say hello to my boss-ass bish gal camile! she’s sassy, classy and a lil badassy. she’s a rather feisty, fiery, ball of rage and anger who cba with ur bullshit tbh n she’ll tell u this too if u piss her off enough! she’s lowkey cutthroat and always out for number one, aka: herself. but, i mean, she does have some redeeming qualities and her hair is bomb af so that makes up for it all really, doesn’t it? basically that meme: ‘ she’s beauty, she’s grace, she’ll punch you in the face. ’ anywho, you know the drill, slap a lil luv on this n i’ll come pester u for all the good stuff : - ) 

fundamentals.

CAMILLE ALARA RIVAS     —     twenty-six, dancer at mayhem,   +   an honest-to-god vixen   /   hellcat   /   lil demoness ! 

aesthetics   ➤   dresses of black lace and red velvet, the scent of chanel perfume lingering in the air as she floats past, blood-red fingertips coiled around the pistol grip of a gun, red-bottomed heels clicking against marble floors, rose gold highlighter shimmering along the height of prominent cheekbones, satin dresses draped over a svelte frame that is shrouded in an air of mystery and intrigue, baby pink roses in a vase on the window sill, deft fingers stained with charcoal and oil paint, the melodic chime of piano keys, delicate digits adorned with moonstone gem rings, a coy smile spread across full crimson lips, long raven locks blowing in the cool breeze of a summer’s evening, battered books with dog-eared pages, a sense of freedom and carelessness when dancing for fun, & a sense of allurement and captivation when dancing for work.

nicknames. cam, cami, mil, millie, spawn of satan >:~)

date of birth. april tenth.

gender. cis female.

pronouns. she + her.

birthplace. manhattan, new york.

orientation. pansexual + demiromantic.

education. bachelor of dance degree obtained from nyu tisch school of the arts.

spoken languages. can speak fluent english, spanish, & latin.

negative traits. capricious, ornery, impulsive, guileful, caustic, brusque, obstinate, destructive, deceptive, & promiscuous.

positive traits. ardent, whimsical, intrepid, graceful, poised, elegant, headstrong, observant, independent, & confident.

strengths. optimistic, energetic, creative, practical, spontaneous, rational, knows how to prioritise, great in a crisis, & relaxed.

weaknesses. stubborn, insensitive, private, reserved, easily bored, dislikes commitment, & has a rather risky behaviour.

talents. ballet, knife throwing, hand-to-hand combat, horse riding, figure skating, piano, violin, painting, singing, & dancing.

physiology. hazel eyes. dark brown hair. five feet, four inches tall. of a petite, slender stature with subtle curves and long hair. has a long silvery scar on her back. her skin is clean of any tattoos. has both earlobes pierced. requires glasses but wears contacts most days. is right-handed.

psychology. aries zodiac. fire element. ravenclaw house. istp-a. true neutral. type seven enneagram. choleric temperament. intra-personal intelligence type. addicted to alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis. suffers from addiction and abandonment issues. her vices are lust, greed and wrath. her virtues are ... ( again ) honestly, probably just diligence tbh.

background.

possible triggers   :   child abandonment, abandonment issues, foster homes, alcohol, drugs, violence, gore, blood, murder, & death.

a synopsis.   ok so for this gal, let’s all give a big, warm welcome to sadness ( no, i was in no way at all inspired by salem from sabrina for that line ) bc boy oh boy, her life has been constant grief and pain, tbh. strap in for the bumpy ride, i’ll give u cookies for compensation. OK SO, camille was abandoned as a baby, never did—and still doesn't—know her biological parents and she doesn’t want to either, tbh. she bounced around from foster home to foster home, never sticking in one place for too long. given her turbulent upbringing, she was somewhat of a difficult child. too boisterous, too unruly, too stubborn, too inquisitive. too much of everything but never enough of anything. never enough for anybody to want her. it didn’t take the girl too long to figure out that it was just her alone, against the big bad world. from the age that she was old enough to realise it, camille knew that she had to fend for herself—that she could never truly rely on a single soul but herself. the hollowness inside her chest never quite satiated, leaving her empty and only too well aware of the lack of her real parental figures. as a young adolescent, this started to crawl under her skin and mess with her mind. it rendered her void of affection and unable to form genuine bonds with others—filling her with deep-rooted resentment that festered beneath the surface of the indifferent demeanour she plastered over herself every day. she always felt starved of love: as if some integral part of her heart was missing, leaving a gaping void that nobody could ever fill. anywho, she fell in with the wrong crowd which did little to aid her foster families hostility toward her. truthfully, most of her experiences in various homes were ... not pleasant. she’d encountered abusive ‘parents,’ horrible ‘siblings,’ and even worse schooling days. pressing the self-destruct button is this gal’s speciality thus she found herself gravitating towards her vices: things and people she knew were no good for her. drink, drugs, people, you name it. quickly, she realised that these things were no longer any good at keeping her dark side at bay: she needed something more, something deeper. thus, she began going down the road of petty crimes—stealing cars, smashing windows, theft, setting fires both metaphorically and literally. due to this lifestyle, she wound up entangled with some real shady folk who did … even shadier things. most specifically, she started dating a real jackass who was violent and truthfully, a horrible person, really. stupidly, she decided to run off into the metaphorical sunset with him * insert eye roll emoji here. * so, fast forward a year or so and things took a swift nosedive when her lowlife boyfriend’s hands were round her throat and not in the kinky way. while she’d clawed at him and tried to fight him off, she struggled against his weight and strength until, eventually, she lifted the first makeshift weapon she felt: a rusted pair of scissors. [ TRIGGER FOR VIOLENCE, GORE, BLOOD, MURDER, DEATH ] and, in a blind state of panic, she jammed them right into his jugular vein, his blood squirting out and decorating her face in crimson splatters. he’d stumbled backwards, clutched onto his neck, blood spurting from the webs between his fingers. naturally, camille was shook about this but somehow managed to flee the scene with less guilt rattling her soul than she’d imagined. [ TRIGGER OVER ] in her mind, it was an act of self defence. it wasn’t too long after the incident that she found herself in a rather perilous situation that resulted in her sudden realisation that she needed to get her damn life on track. therefore, she done the responsible adult thing and got herself a decent education. somehow, she managed to get into university where her life started to shape into a positive one—the kind she’d always dreamed of. once she graduated, camille decided that she wanted to see the world. following a couple of years travelling, she wound up in santa ysabel where she quickly fell into the employment of mayhem. admittedly, this was a far cry from the future she’d envisioned when she was just a sweet, innocent lil child. still, all in all, she kind of digs who she is and what she is: after everything she’s been through, she loves herself. it’s been a long and winding road but camille finally believes that she’s settled in her life now. tho she still refuses to let people in, her abandonment issues terrifying her to the degree that she feels that anybody she’d ever let into her life would eventually leave her in the end. * insert sad face emoji here. *

random extras.

her tell? playing with her hair: when she’s lying, nervous, flirting—you name it!

can drink any man under the table. 

she loves art in every form: paintings, sculptures, music, dance, people, etc. she loves the freedom that expressing herself through these mediums gives her.

she’s ... experimental. she’s experimented with just about everything: hairstyles, clothing, drink, drugs, people ...

can be hella calculating and vindictive so do not cross her.

quite power-hungry tbh.

she does have a shot at redemption but she doesn’t want it lmao. she’s already been to hell so why bother trying to right her wrongs?

and boy, are her wrongs a century-long list shkjsh.

high key is not above killing people who don’t do things her way.

doesn’t believe she’s capable of loving anyone.

she’s lowkey a perfectionist to the point of being ruthless, also cutthroat and egotistical.

if ya ain’t of use to her, then what the heck is ur purpose???

she’s v ambitious, v morally ambiguous, v self-serving and v self-involved.

she can be ... aggressive sometimes and most definitely has anger issues.

dry sense of humour one million per cent.

her signature look is her blood-red lips.

extremely skilled with knives and blades. and always carries one on her person at all times.

her most prized possession is her brushed chrome zippo lighter. it has her initials engraved into it and where she got it from, or who is something she’ll never tell.

always says she needs to quit smoking but never does and probably never will either.

did someone say ... resting bitch face???

tho when she smiles it’s like sunshine uwu

high key will sleep with anyone.

first place is the ONLY acceptable place, ok??? 

one of those people who just excels at everything she tries her hand at.

absolutely adores animals. much prefers them to humans.

she’s quite adventurous and loves to feel the adrenaline in her blood.

doesn’t take herself or her life too seriously.

always up for a good time and is usually the life of the party.

outspoken and quick-witted with a sharp tongue.

much too sassy and sarcastic for her own good.

really, she does what she wants to, when she wants to, without seeking the approval of others.

truthfully? she’s a bit of a spitfire if you really irk her. so, watch out.

you can find a pinterest board for her by clicking anywhere here.

[dippedanddripped]

Dear Fashionista: What's the most responsible way to dispose of shoes once they're worn past the point of no return? I don't want them to end up in a landfill, but I know I can't just put them out on the curb with my cardboard and glass for recycling.Perhaps your soles look like Swiss cheese or your high heels are so chewed up you're telling people the dog got ahold of them. If it's time to retire your loved-to-death footwear and you're looking for responsible, sustainable ways to do so, there's good news and bad news: You have options, but none of them are perfect. Of the 24.2 billion pairs of shoes manufactured globally each year, experts say that most of them end up in a landfill or incinerator, because there are simply too many shoes and not enough recycling solutions. "When you are generating this much product, most of it is sent back to landfill," says Dr. Sahadat Hossain, the director of the Solid Waste Institute for Sustainability at the University of Texas at Arlington.Still, you're right to resist the urge to toss shoes in the garbage. Once they're kicking back in the dump, shoes can leach plasticizers, heavy metals and other toxic chemicals, says Hossain. They also take a literal eternity to break down. While natural materials decompose quickly (cotton takes about six months while leather requires 20 to 40 years), most of our shoes contain plastic-based components that last much, much longer. "PVC and EVA are around 35% of all shoe materials, globally," explains Hossain. "They can take as much as 1,000 years to decompose." Of course, this is all theoretical, he adds. In modern landfills, which are lined in plastic and then sealed shut, our shoes sit intact "as long as you can imagine.

"WHEN IN DOUBT, DONATE

The simplest advice is to donate used shoes. "Worn out to you doesn't necessarily mean worn out to someone else," says Tiffany Fuller, a deputy director of Reuse, Special Waste and Apartment Programs at the New York City Department of Sanitation. 

In fact, according to the American Apparel and Footwear Association, we buy more than seven pairs of shoe per year, the equivalent of one new pair every seven weeks. Purchasing at this clip means that most of our shoes never truly get the chance to wear out. And reusing is better for the environment than recycling.

By donating, shoes will likely find their way to emerging nations (charities sell about 25% of what we donate locally and export the rest), some of which boast a thriving market for worn and even refurbished footwear.

"Some of them get washed and cleaned and, if need be, the heel is replaced," explains Steven Bethell, founder of Bank & Vogue, a global used clothing broker. In Guatemala, there's a sneaker cleaning plant, says Bethell, while in Pakistan men's dress shoes get resoled in large recycling facilities. If you're wondering if your shoes are fit to be reworn, Bethell's advice echoes Fuller's: "When in doubt, donate."

There's one major caveat with donating: Not all footwear will find a new home and developing countries are filled to the brim with our old stuff.

"There is greater supply than there is demand," says Liz Ricketts, co-founder of the OR Foundation, a non-profit that researches the secondhand industry in Ghana. In Ghana, she says, as much as 40% of clothing imported from the West is directly landfilled or burned. She suspects the percentage is even higher with footwear.

Still, Bethell says there are ways to boost the chances that your shoes will make the cut. Sneakers (both men's and women's), soccer shoes and men's dress shoes are most in demand in the international secondhand trade and are good options to donate. Fashionable women's shoes, on the other hand — especially high heels — are a "dime a dozen" and are a better option to repair and resell at home.

An Under Armor shoe sitting atop the Fairless Landfill in Pennsylvania.

Photo: Whitney Bauck/Fashionista

IF THEY CAN'T BE SAVED, SEE IF THEY CAN GET NEW LIFE IN ANOTHER FORM

If your shoes are truly beat and you can't fathom another person loving them — a good rule of thumb is that if the uppers are still in good condition, the shoe can have a second life — toss them into a recycling bin instead of the trash. Footwear recycling is not nearly as common as clothes recycling (apparel can be shredded and turned into new fibers or insulation, for example), because shoes are more complex. However, there are a handful of programs attempting it. And the options are expected to grow in the next few years.

Nike's Reuse a Shoe program, running since 1993, recycles worn out sneakers by any brand. They've processed 33 million pairs of shoes to date. After separating the shoes into leather, foam, plastic and rubber, the pieces are ground down and reused as surfacing for playgrounds, track tops, carpet padding and even new Nike gear, like maybe the soles of your Air Jordans. You can get in on the action by dropping your shoes at participating Nike and Converse Factory stores (here's a list of them).

You can also take beat-up shoes by any brand to Columbia stores and participating Asics stores (here's a list). These in-store take back programs are run by I:CO, a global waste handler whose parent company opened the world's first industrial-scale shoe recycling facility in 2018, which is working to find solutions for any kind of shoe waste, according to a company rep via email. Recently I:CO partnered with Adidas to turn bits of rubber from running shoes into rugs, for example.

Another option is to organize a shoe drive and send what you collect to Terracycle, a New Jersey-based recycler that finds buyers for leather shoe bits that can to be turned into flooring and furniture, while plastic becomes containers and soundproofing materials, among other uses, says Ernel Simpson, VP of research and development. But you'll have to pay for it. Collection boxes start at $109, making it a better option for offices, apartment buildings or schools.

Fortunately, footwear recycling options should expand in the near future.

"We are looking at shoe to shoe to recycling. Conceptually it's a new way of looking at things," explains Dharan Kirupanathan, technology lead behind Adidas's Futurecraft.Loop, an allegedly "infinitely recyclable" running shoe made of a single material that's currently in its pilot phase. And I:CO is planning to expand its footwear recycling options to more stores and brands in 2020.

THE BEST SOLUTION OF ALL? KEEP THEM KICKING

Before you act on any of the above, take a second look at the shoes in question. Chances are that your shoes aren't actually on death's door and could be brought back to life. In fact, there's almost no such thing as a worn-out shoe in the hands of a good cobbler.

"We can fix everything," says Jair Antonio Hernandez, owner of J&C Shoe Repair in Brooklyn, who has 48 years of experience and happens to be my personal cobbler. Many cobblers will take on unusual repairs, like replacing the cork on Birkenstocks, shampooing and reconditioning Uggs and rejuvenating your sneakers, too.

"We can do full resoles on sneakers, new heels and change the color," says Hernandez. Repairing truly worn-out shoes is more expensive, he adds, so next time, don't wait so long.

If you don't have shoe repair nearby, try an online shoe repair service, like My Shoe Hospital, NuShoe or Cobbler Concierge. Jersey-based SoleFresh has a mail-in option for sneakers. If you've bought a pair of high-end shoes (like Red Wing), check if the company provides in-house repairs.

You can also try your hand at some DIY shoe recovery at home. Shoe adhesives like Shoe-Fix, Barge and Shoe Goo are cheap and effective and can be used to plug holes in those paper-thin soles, reattach a flopping sole and — my favorite trick — build up a worn-down heel so you're not walking at a slant.

THE FUTURE OF FOOTWEAR

Luckily, the shoe industry is working on new ways to help curb this cycle of waste — and make it simpler to part with shoes without all the guilt. From upstarts like Veja and Everlane to industry stalwarts like Adidas, Nike, New Balance, Converse and Saucony, more footwear companies are moving towards non-toxic, biodegradable and recycled components. It's also easier than ever to give a pair of shoes a second life by listing them on resale platforms like TheRealReal, Depop and ThredUp or on sneaker trading platforms like Sole Supremacy, StockX and Fight Club.

At the end of the day, there's no magic bullet solution to getting rid of old shoes. Like everything else to do with sustainability, it's complicated and requires tradeoffs. And even recycling innovations can't replace the time-tested advice to buy the best quality shoes you can afford (leather still lasts the longest and is easiest to repair, says Hernandez) and to care for each pair as long as possible. Once you're past that point? It's worth remembering that old shoes also make great flower pots.

Got a sustainability question of your own? Submit it with "Ask a Sustainability Expert" in the subject line to tips@fashionista.com and we'll see if we can help answer it.

[baliemarabica]

Dropshipping success stories From Zero to $1M in 8 Months | Awesome Dropshipping Success Stories

During my years of doing dropshipping I’ve met countless people who wanted to make money online and build a lifestyle business where they can travel the world and work from their laptop. Of all of those people, I can count only a handful who really made it a reality. These people are self starters who actively search for other sources of income or who have turned selling on eBay into their main revenue source. But what about becoming a millionaire from ecommerce or making $30,000 a month? I know it sounds far fetched but in this post I will introduce you to three exceptional individuals who are the embodiment of dropshipping success stories.

Top Dropshipper #1: Irwin Dominguez

From zero to $1M+ in less than 12 months

Meet Irwin Dominguez from San Diego who within 8 months made $1,000,000 in profit as a dropshipper.

What drove Irwin to e-commerce entrepreneurship as a dropshipper ?

Dominguez happen to have a very good friend who was bringing in large amounts of cash on a monthly basis as a dropshipper. Irwin had no clue how to start dropshipping but he figured he would give it a try since he felt he had more to gain than to lose. He started by doing three simple things:

He learned about e-commerce using Google

He opened a Shopify account

He started using Oberlo which is a platform which helps you import dropshipped products into your ecommerce store and ship them directly to your customer

What was Irwin doing before dropshipping and how did he make his first sale ?

Before becoming a dropshipping success story, Dominguez was a local marketing consultant helping small businesses increase online traffic. The skills he acquired through this job no doubt helped him succeed in his new online venture.

He made his first sale using Facebook ads which he says ate into most of his profit but was well worth the investment in order to jumpstart his business. He swears by advertising on Facebook and says he owes most of his success to this form of marketing though he stresses that business owners must learn over time how to balance the cost of Facebook ads with profit margins.

Let’s talk numbers – what is Dominguez’s  revenue per day

On his best day of e-commerce, Irwin pulled in a cool $30,000 and on average pulls in $10,000 a day though he says he is trying to increase these numbers. He talks about finding a niche product but that at some point you have tapped most of your target market so you need to find new products in the same niche (learn how we found the perfect niche) or move on to a different niche entirely.

What recommendations can you give to aspiring dropshippers ?

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Pro tip # 1: Before dealing in large quantities, validate your product idea by making a few sales before jumping in head first.

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Pro tip # 2: Be prepared when the floodgates open! Once you find a product that is super popular, make sure you have a mechanism in place to deal with the demand.

Top Dropshipper # 2: Kate

$32,000+ monthly revenue from her dropshipping business

Kate is not making millions like some other dropshippers but I decided to write about her since I think her business story and strategy contain great actionable insights for dropshippers across the board.

Who is kate and what is her background ?

Kate works for Aliexpress’s e-commerce department creating and testing promotion strategy for dropshipping stores. But kate knew nothing about dropshiping just three years ago when she started working for Aliexpress – before that she worked as a journalist and as a saleswoman at an offline gift store.

From “Account Suspension” to “eBay awards”, we’re sharing everything from our journey to $100k in monthly sales.

We’re learning a lot and so will you.

And don’t worry, we hate spam too! You can unsubscribe at anytime.

What type of ecommerce store did Kate create ?

Kate decided to create a dropshipping store using anime (roughly: Japanese comics) theme based on research she did which told her that there was a lot of interest in this niche. Her logic says that many dropshippers can make money by pooling different items from a variety of dropshippers based on a common theme and thus create a dedicated shopping base.

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Pro tip: Kate stresses that her idea was perfectly legal as anime creators do not aim to profit from merchandise as opposed to Disney for example who absolutely does aim to profit from paraphernalia – make sure your themed drop shipping store is not legally infringing on anyone’s copyrights.

What is your strategy for finding successful products to dropship ?

Offer a large variety – Kate says that even when she got to 100 products in her store’s inventory it wasn’t enough to quench fan’s thirst.

New products – You constantly need to add new products, kate says. Don’t just look at ‘Best Sellers’ on Aliexpress or eBay, also look at the ‘new arrivals’ and you will often find your next top selling products.

Duplicate and modify – Constantly check which products are selling best and which are not. Try and get rid of the items which are unpopular and import more items similar to the successful ones in order to generate more sales.

How do you learn about your target audience?

Google Analytics – Kate uses google analytics to find out crucial information about her customer base such as age, gender and country. Since she now knows that most of her customers are young men from developing countries she tries to keep prices low in order to move more merchandise.

Targeted Facebook advertising campaigns – Kate says Facebook is also an integral platform both for advertising and data collection. Facebook and google complete and complement each other.

Tell us some more about how you promote your dropshipping store on the internet ?

Instagram – The store’s Instagram account currently has 1,851,910 impressions, 81,000, 8,272 posts and has an ever growing fan base.

Kate used a variety of simple methods to achieve these astounding results including:

Writing an appealing bio

Analyzing the most popular hashtags

Experimenting with different post formats

Using Instagram Ads

2. Facebook – On Facebook the store is also very popular with 34,000+ followers – the main tactic is providing high quality content and attracting buyers and visitors vis-a-vis Facebook ads.

Content Marketing –

This includes writing original content or rewriting original content which is related to the product and publishing this on the store blog and on Facebook. This is a great way to engage people and get them interested in your product in an indirect way.

Google Shopping –

This is a semi – automated option and generates 300 sales on average per month. When someone searches for something related to the product, in this case anime, a picture of some products and prices appear in the google search.

How successful is your dropshipping business ?

The numbers talk for themselves – as of October 2017 Kate’s dropshipping business had 922 orders and $32,000:

Note the conversion rate which is 1.31%, this is a standard conversion rate for eCommerce sales so there’s a lot of opportunity to improve here, as you’ve probably read already, we increased our eBay conversion rate by 220% by optimizing our eBay listings.

Top Dropshipper # 3: Aloysius Chay and Galvin Bay

$60,000 a day within a year of starting their dropshipping store

How did these guys get started in dropshipping and what were they doing before ?

Before becoming successful dropshipping entrepreneurs, these guys were professional poker players in the Vegas like city of Macau. Like so many others, they had heard of friends who were making big bucks and wanted in on the action.

What challenges did these guys face ?

Towards the beginning they really struggled to find the correct product and the correct market. They failed at the beginning, trying to sell 20-30 different items. “Creativity and perseverance are key to success”, they both say.

They started selling Jewellery in June 2016 but did not end up even breaking even but they did learn many things such as the need to target specific audiences by country.

Chay and Galvin don’t really have a niche – they sell products that seem to be in demand or try selling products that are new on the market (you may remember the post we wrote about what to sell on eBay, these guys are implementing some of the best practices)

How did they promote and develop their business ?

These guys swear by Facebook ads and say that this was hands down the best marketing tool at their disposal. They say that it is super user friendly and any information or skills they lacked were easily enough found in online tutorials.

The pair also recommends networking and sitting down with friends and family who are involved in e-commerce in order to exchange and improve ideas (you’re welcome to read some of our eBay selling advice and how to boost eBay sales to get ideas for your eBay business).

What do you love about running a successful dropshipping company ?

Chay and Galvin love the most obvious and envious things – the income and the freedom. Now that they are totally independent they have a large source of income and they get to decide when they work and when they don’t. For most people in the workforce this sounds nothing short of a magical dream.

What is your highest sales record and what advice do you have for new entrepreneurs ?

Their record is 5 figures in one day and they hope to make it to six figures.

As far as advice for new entrepreneurs – always add new products (learn more about finding the best things to sell on eBay)! This will keep your business fresh and customers coming back. They say that the risks of adding new products pay off in the long run.

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My pro tip: This is a valuable advice for any online seller, it’s very important to understand that as a business owner you must be on your toes all the time, ready to make bug changes in order to grow your business. I always say that a business who’s not growing is essentially slowly dying and finding new products is a lifeline to business growth.

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work”, Thomas Edison once famously said.  All in all there are many dropshipping success stories but also people who have failed. Failure lays the foundations for success and we can learn from both experiences. I hope this post gave you some insights into how to better start or run your dropshipping business  – I would love to hear your stories and experiences with dropshipping below.

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[micaramel]

When Jeffree Star and Shane Dawson launched their highly-anticipated makeup collaboration on Friday, it almost instantly sold out.

As diehard fans crashed the Jeffree Star Cosmetics website, critics questioned why people were buying makeup from a YouTuber with little experience in the beauty industry.

I purchased the entire line — except for the Diet Shane lip balm, which was unavailable — at a very busy New Jersey Morphe store that same day.

Though I initially had high hopes, I was a bit disappointed. Many of the eye shadows felt chalky to me and I found most of the liquid-lipstick shades unwearable, though I did appreciate the unique packaging.

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Eye-shadow palettes are the focal point of the Jeffree Star Cosmetics x Shane Dawson collaboration.

The $52 Conspiracy palette features 18 shades, while the $28 Mini-Controversy palette has nine.

In my opinion, the outer packaging of these palettes is enough to impress most shoppers. The larger palette is packaged in a black-and-white spiral-print box, while the smaller product is contained in a black box with a 3D static print.

Dawson and Star detailed the creative process behind creating these packages in their recent YouTube series.

The Conspiracy palette is arguably the most-anticipated beauty product created this year.

When Star and Dawson first revealed this palette in their YouTube series, I thought it looked really unique. My feelings stayed the same once I held it in my hands just days later. Its geometric box stands out from any palette I already own, and it's leather-like material feels high quality.

I was a little concerned that it would be too heavy to actually work with, but its weight hasn't been a problem since I've started using it. 

I couldn't wait to dip my makeup brushes into the colorful shadows.

When I first opened the palette, I thought the shadows looked less vibrant than they do online. However, this actually made the product seem more appealing to me, as I initially thought it looked both colorful and wearable.

I particularly loved the stamps embedded into each eye shadow, and appreciate that they really represent Dawson's work on the palette. 

Once I swatched the product, however, I became less enthusiastic.

While arm swatches do not make or break makeup, in my opinion, they can be telling of a product's quality. In my experience, the lighter colors barely showed up on my arms while the darker colors looked patchy.

From left to right, there's: Ranch, My Pills, Tanacon, Diet Root Beer, Just A Theory, Spiraling, Conspiracy, Pig-Ment, Food Videos, Trisha, Cheese Dust, and Flaming Hot.

However, I really appreciate the quirky shade names of each shadow.

Not only do the shade names stand out from the more standard ones created by other brands, but it also feels like you're sharing an inside joke with Dawson and Star.

From left to right, the above shadows are: My Ride's Here, Illuminatea, Sleep Paralysis, Not a Fact, Diet Cola, and What's The Tea?

I had a little bit more luck when applying the shadows on my eyes.

I started by applying the shade Tanacon in the crease of my eyelid. While the shade barely showed up on my arm as a swatch, it applied beautifully on my eyelid. In my experience, the eye shadow looked pigmented and blended easily.

That is, until I got to the darker colors.

Because I was going for a fall look, I wanted to apply a maroon shade on the outer corner of my eye. Though the plum shade "Not A Fact" looked appealing, I preferred the metallic "My Apology" shade from the Mini-Controversy palette.

Unfortunately, I found this shadow to be very difficult to use. In my experience, it didn't blend well with the other shade on my lid, and excess powder quickly surrounded my eye area.

The black shadow wasn't as pigmented as Star promised in a recent YouTube video.

In "The Dangerous World of Jeffree Star" episode of Dawson's series, Star commented on the black "My Ride's Here" shade.

"It's so creamy — holy s---," Star said in the video. "Blacks are kind of hard to perfect sometimes if you want a really true black."

However, I don't entirely agree with Star. I used the shade as an eyeliner, and found it to feel more chalky than creamy. To be fair, I didn't use the perfect brush for this technique, but the shadow could have been more pigmented regardless.

In my experience, these eye shadows were pretty messy to use.

After dipping my brush into the Tanacon shadow only once, loose powder flew everywhere. Typically, I don't mind a bit of kickback — I find it usually means the shadows are more blendable. 

In this case, however, I worried the excess product would muddy the other shades in my palette and coat my mirror in makeup.

My eye shadow could have turned out worse, but it also could've looked a lot better.

While I've certainly used worse eye shadows over the years, nothing about the Conspiracy palette really stood out to me upon first try. I had difficulty blending the shades, and the metallic colors seemed to fade quickly throughout the day. 

I've since used other shades in the palette, and have grown to like Conspiracy more than I did initially — but I'm not sure it's worth spending $52 on.

I also tried using one of the shadows as a highlighter on my cheekbones.

When the palette launched, some people on social media said they planned to use the eye-shadow shade Ranch as a highlighter. Of course, I had to try this technique for myself.

While the color was a bit too white for my taste, it initially looked great as a highlighter. After only a few hours, however, it all but faded. I even asked a colleague for their opinion on the highlight, to which they replied: "I thought that was excess powder from your eye shadow."

The following day, I tried the Mini-Controversy Palette.

The $28 palette is much smaller than the Conspiracy product, but looks just as stunning. As I mentioned earlier, Star and Dawson really nailed the packaging of this collection.

The palette contains nine eye-shadow shades.

While one of the shades — Diet Root Beer – can also be found in the Conspiracy palette, the other eight colors are unique to this product.

Personally, I love that Star and Dawson chose to create both large and small palettes. Not only is this option more affordable, but it's also great for beginners, people who don't wear tons of bright colors, and those who want to try Star's products without spending tons of money.

In my opinion, this palette provides a decent mix of wearable colors and vibrant shades.

Like the conspiracy palette, I wasn't too impressed by the shadows as I swatched them on my arms. 

From left to right, there's Flat Earth, Cry On My Couch, My Boyfriend's Purse, Controversy, Diet Root Beer, My Apology, Exposed, Cancelled, and The Simulation.

Overall, I enjoyed using this palette.

While I did find these eye shadows to be messy like those in the Conspiracy palette, the matte shades I used look stunning in person. It didn't take too much work to blend them or build up their color, and they also paired well with a liquid eyeliner.

Overall, I think the Conspiracy and Mini-Controversy palettes are nice, but I wouldn't reach for them every day.

I can understand why fans of Star and Dawson waited hours in lines — both at Morphe stores and online — to purchase these palettes. They're great collector's items, and would look stunning on any vanity.

Still, I just wasn't that impressed with the actual eye shadows. I found that blendability was an issue with every metallic shade I tried, and the mattes were a bit too messy for my liking. 

I also tried almost every lip product from the Jeffree Star Cosmetics x Shane Dawson collection.

The collection includes six liquid lipsticks, which retail for $18 each, and a clear lip gloss, which costs the same price.

An $18 Diet Shane lip balm is also part of the collection, though the product was not available at the Morphe store when I was there.

From the moment I saw these lipsticks, I was confused by the shade range.

Star and Dawson first debuted their liquid lipsticks in "The $20 Million Dollar Deal with Jeffree Star" episode of their series. Immediately, I questioned why they chose the shades they did.

In my opinion, the three metallic shades looked unflattering, and the matte pink color seemed outdated. Only the neon pink and vibrant red seemed to make sense to me. Still, each color looked promising when swatched on my arm.

From left to right, there's: Oh My God, Ryland, I Gotta Go, Shane, Jeffree What The F---?, and Are You Filming?

I was even less impressed when I wore the liquid lipsticks.

I really wanted to love these lipsticks, as I consider Star's formula to be one of the best on the market. However, I only enjoyed using two of the six products. 

The shade Oh My God, for example, didn't work for me, as it didn't suit my skin tone. I also found the shade to apply sheer — it took me at least four coats to get a semi-opaque look.

While I love Star's matte formula, I feel his metallic shades could use some work.

In my experience, the shades Ryland and Shane looked extremely unflattering. Not only did they apply patchy, but I feel as though they'd only work for Instagram-style makeup looks — not everyday wear.

I Gotta Go looked better, in my opinion, though I can't say I'd wear it frequently.

If you like wearing a statement lip color, the two matte shades from this collection are definitely worth purchasing.

In my opinion, Jeffree What The F--- ? is one of the best pink lipsticks I've ever tried. It looks vibrant and opaque, and also feels extremely comfortable on the lips. I almost forgot I was wearing it after it dried down.

Are You Filming? also stands out, though I think it only works when paired with a strong lip liner to keep it in place.

The collection's clear lip gloss has arguably the best shade name of any product in the line.

Dawson and Star named this $18 product Shane Glossin', a nod to the YouTuber's last name.

It's packaged in a clear tube with a pointed top, just like Star's concealers and other lip glosses.

I have no complaints about the Shane Glossin' product — it does exactly what it's meant to do.

In my experience, the product applies smoothly, looks glassy, and doesn't feel too sticky. While I do think you can purchase similar products at cheaper price points, the unique packaging of this gloss makes the extra cost almost worth it.

I also feel the product is especially perfect for people who don't wear makeup, but still want to support Star and Dawson.

Overall, I'm not sure the Jeffree Star Cosmetics x Shane Dawson collection is worth all the hype it's received.

In my experience, I faced too many roadblocks while using makeup from this collection to say it's worth purchasing. I find most of the eye shadows to be messy, and almost every lipstick shade feels unwearable. While the gloss works just fine, I'm not sure it stands out from others on the market.

I do love the product packaging throughout the collection, and think Star and Dawson did a great job adding unique details to their products — like the funny shade names and quirky eye-shadow stamps. Still, I'm not sure that's enough to save the collection.

I do understand why thousands of people eagerly purchased this makeup, and I think it's great that there's such a tangible way for viewers to support the YouTubers they love.

Still, as a makeup fanatic, I can't help but wonder if anyone would actually purchase these products if they didn't have Star and Dawson's names on them.

Read more:

I bought Jeffree Star and Shane Dawson's new makeup the day it was released at a Morphe store, and the scene was close to chaos

Jeffree Star fans are selling the YouTuber's sold-out beauty products for more than double their original price as customers wait for a restock

Shane Dawson's mom visited a crowded Morphe store to buy his makeup line, and fans banded together to make sure she got a parking spot

Here's everything featured in Shane Dawson's makeup collaboration with Jeffree Star

from Design http://bit.ly/2K8VLjN

[nayanasri]

Google’s first-party hardware has always been a drop in the bucket of global smartphone sales. Pixel devices have managed to crack the top five in the U.S. and Western Europe, but otherwise represent less than 1% of the overall market. It’s true, of course, that the company got a late start, largely watching on the sidelines as companies like Samsung and Huawei shipped millions of Android devices.

Earlier this year, Google admitted that it was feeling the squeeze of slowing smartphone sales along with the rest of the industry. During Alphabet’s Q1 earnings call, CEO Sundar Pichai noted that poor hardware numbers were a reflection of “pressure in the premium smartphone industry.”

Introduced at I/O, the Pixel 3a was an attempt to augment disappointing sales numbers with the introduction of a budget-tier device. With a starting price of $ 399, the device seemingly went over as intended. The 3a, coupled with more carrier partners, helped effectively double year over year growth for the line. Given all of this, it seems like a pretty safe bet that the six-month Pixel/Pixela cycle will continue, going forward.

Of course, the addition of a mid-range device adds more onus for the company to differentiate the flagship. With a starting price of $ 799, the Pixel 4 certainly isn’t expensive by modern flagship standards. But Google certainly needs to present enough distinguishing features to justify a $ 400 price gulf between devices — especially as the company disclosed software upgrades introduced on flagship devices will soon make their way onto their cheaper counterparts.

Google’s budget Pixel 3a starts at $ 399, available in ‘purple-ish’

Indeed, the much-rumored and oft-leaked devices bring some key changes to the line. The company has finally given in and added a dual-camera setup to both premium models, along with an upgraded 90Hz display, face unlock, radar-based gestures and a whole bunch of additional software features.

The truth is that the Pixel has always occupied a strange place in the smartphone world. As the successor to Google’s Nexus partnerships, the product can be regarded as a showcase for Android’s most compelling features. But gone are the days of leading the pack with the latest version of the operating system. The fact that OnePlus devices already have Android 10 means Google’s going head to head against another reasonably price manufacturer of quality handsets.

The Pixel line steps up a bit on the design side to distinguish the product from the “a” line. Google’s phones have never been as flashy as Samsung’s or Apple’s, and that’s still the case here, but a new dual-sided glass design (Gorilla Glass 5 on both), coupled with a metal band, does step up the premium feel a bit. The product is also a bit heavier and thicker than the 3, lending some heft to the device.

There are three colors now: black, white and a poppy “Oh So Orange,” which is available in limited quantities here in the U.S. The color power button continues to be a nice touch, lending a little character to the staid black and white devices. While the screen gets a nice update to 90Hz OLED, Google still has no interest in the world of notches or hole punches. Rather, it’s keeping pretty sizable bezels on the top and bottom.

Google Pixel 3 XL review

The Pixel 4 gets a bit of a screen size boost from 5.5 to 5.7 inches, with an increase of a single pixel per inch, while the Pixel 4 XL stays put at 6.4 inches (with a PPI increase of 522 to 537). The dual front-facing camera has been ditched this time out, instead opting for the single eight megapixel, similar to what you’ll find on the 3a.

Storage hasn’t changed, with both 64 and 128GB options for both models; RAM has been bumped up to a default 6GB from 4GB last time out. The processor, too, is the latest and greatest from Qualcomm, bumping from a Snapdragon 845 to an 855. Interestingly, however, the batteries have actually been downgraded.

The 4 and 4 XL sport a 2,800 and 3,700mAh, respectively. That should be augmented a bit by new battery-saving features introduced in Android 10, but even still, that’s not the direction you want to see these things going.

The camera is, in a word, great. Truth be told, I’ve been using it to shoot photos for the site since I got the phone last week. This Google Nest Mini review, Amazon Echo review and Virgin Galactic space suit news were all shot on the Pixel 4. The phone isn’t yet a “leave your DSLR at home” proposition, of course, but damn if it can’t take a fantastic photo in less than ideal and mixed light with minimal futzing around.

There’s no doubt that this represents a small but important shift in philosophy for Google. After multiple generations of suggesting that software solutions could do more than enough heavy lifting on image processing, the company’s finally bit the bullet and embraced a second camera. Sometimes forward progress means abandoning past stances. Remember when the company dug its heels in on keeping the headphone jack, only to drop it the following year?

The addition of a second camera isn’t subtle, either. In fact, it’s hard to miss. Google’s adopted a familiar square configuration on the rear of the device. That’s just how phones look now, I suppose. Honestly, it’s fine once you conquer a bit of trypophobia, with a pair of lenses aligned horizontally and a sensor up top and flash on bottom — as one of last week’s presenters half joked, “we hope you’ll use it as a flash light.”

That, of course, is a reference to the Pixel’s stellar low-light capabilities. It’s been a welcome feature, in an age where most smartphone users continue to overuse their flashes, completely throwing off the photo in the process. Perhaps the continued improvements will finally break that impulse in people — though I’m not really getting my hopes up on that front. Old habits, etc.

The 4 and 4 XL have the same camera set up, adopting the 12.2-megapixel (wide angle) lens from their predecessors and adding a 16-megapixel (telephoto) into the mix. I noted some excitement about the setup in my write-up. That’s not because the two-camera setup presents anything remarkable — certainly not in this area of three, four and five-camera flagships. It’s more about the groundwork that Google has laid out in the generations leading up to this device.

Essentially it comes down to this: Look at what the company has been able to accomplish using software and machine learning with a single camera setup. Now add a second telephoto camera into the mix. See, Super High Res Zoom is pretty impressive, all told. But if you really want a tighter shot without degrading the image in the process, optical zoom is still very much the way to go.

There’s a strong case to be made that the Pixel 4’s camera is the best in class. The pictures speak for themselves. The aforementioned TechCrunch shots were done with little or no manual adjustments or post-processing. Google offers on-screen adjustments, like the new dual-exposure control, which lets you manually adjust brightness and shadow brightness on the fly. Honestly, though, I find the best way to test these cameras is to use them the way most buyers will: by pointing and shooting.

The fact is that a majority of people who buy these handsets won’t be doing much fiddling with the settings. As such, it’s very much on handset makers to ensure that users get the best photograph by default, regardless of conditions. Once again, software is doing much of the heavy lifting. Super Res Zoom works well in tandem with the new lens, while Live HDR+ does a better job approximating how the image will ultimately look once fully processed. Portrait mode shots look great, and the device is capable of capturing them at variable depths, meaning you don’t have to stand a specific distance from the subject to take advantage of the well-done artificial bokeh.

Our video producer, Veanne, who is admittedly a far better photographer than I can ever hope to be, tested out the camera for the weekend. 

Although Veanne was mostly impressed by the Pixel 4’s camera and photo editing capabilities, here are three major gripes.

“Digital zoom is garbage.”

  “In low lighting situations, you lose ambiance. Saturday evening’s intimate, warmly lit dinner looked like a cafeteria meal.”

  “Bright images in low lighting gives you the impression that the moving objects would be in focus as well. That is not the case.”

Other additions round out the experience, including “Frequent Faces,” which learns the faces of subjects you frequently photograph. Once again, the company is quick to point out that the feature is both off by default and all of the processing happens on the device. Turning it off also deletes all of the saved information. Social features have been improved, as well, with quick access to third-party platforms like Snapchat and Instagram.

Google keeps pushing out improvements to Lens, as well. This time out, language translation, document scanning and text copy and pasting can be performed with a quick tap. Currently the language translation is still a bit limited, with only support for English, Spanish, German, Hindi and Japanese. More will be “rolling out soon,” per the company.

Gestures is a strange one. I’m far from the first to note that Google is far from the first to attempt the feature. The LG G8 ThinQ is probably the most recent prominent example of a company attempting to use gestures as a way to differentiate themselves. To date, I’ve not seen a good implementation of the technology — certainly not one I could ever see myself actually using day to day.

The truth is, no matter how interesting or innovative a feature is, people aren’t going to adopt it if it doesn’t work as advertised. LG’s implementation was a pretty big disappointment.

Simply put, the Pixel’s gestures are not that. They’re better in that, well, they work, pretty much as advertised. This is because the underlying technology is different. Rather than relying on cameras like other systems, the handset uses Project Soli, a long-promised system that utilizes a miniature radar chip to detect far more precise movement.

Soli does, indeed work, but the precision is going to vary a good deal from user to user. The thing is, simply detecting movement isn’t enough. Soli also needs to distinguish intention. That means the system is designed to weed out accidental gestures of the manner we’re likely making all the time around our phones. That means the system appears to be calibrated to bigger, intentional movements.

That can be a little annoying for things like advancing tracks. I don’t think there are all that many instances where waving one’s hands across a device Obi-Wan Kenobi-style is really saving all that much time or effort versus touching a screen. If, however, Google was able to customize the experience to the individual over time using machine learning, it could be a legitimately handy feature.

That brings us to the next important point: functionality. So you’ve got this neat new piece of tiny radar that you’re sticking inside your phone. You say it’s low energy and more private than a camera. Awesome! So, how do you suggest I, you know, use it?

There are three key ways, at the moment:

Music playback

Alarm Silencing

Waving at Pokémon

The first two are reasonably useful. The primary use case I can think of are when, say, your phone is sitting in front of you at your desk. Like mine is, with me, right now. Swiping my hand left to right a few inches above the device advances the track. Right to left goes a track back. The movements need to be deliberate, from one end of the device to the other.

And then there’s the phenomenon of “Pokémon Wave Hello.” It’s not really correct to call the title a game, exactly. It’s little more than a way of showcasing Motion Sense — albeit an extremely delightful way.

You might have caught a glimpse of it at the keynote the other day. It came and went pretty quickly. Suddenly Pikachu was waving at the audience, appearing out of nowhere like so many wild Snorlaxes. Just as quickly, he was gone.

More than anything, it’s a showcase title for the technology. A series of five Pokémon, beginning with Pikachu, appear demanding you interact with them through a series of waves. It’s simple, it’s silly and you’ll finish the whole thing in about three minutes. That’s not really the point, though. Pokémon Wave Hello exists to:

Get you used to gestures.

Demonstrate functionality beyond simple features. Gaming, AR — down the road, these things could ultimately find fun and innovative ways to integrate Soli.

For now, however, use is extremely limited. There are some fun little bits, including dynamic wallpaper that reacts to movement. The screen also glows subtly when detecting you — a nice little touch (there’s a similar effect for Assistant, as well).

Perhaps most practical, however, is the fact that the phone can detect when you’re reaching for it and begin the unlocking process. That makes the already fast new Face Unlock feature ever faster. Google ditched the fingerprint reader this time around, opting for neither a physical sensor nor in-screen reader. Probably for the best on the latter front, given the pretty glaring security woes Samsung experienced last week when a British woman accidentally spoofed the reader with a $ 3 screen protector. Yeeesh.

There are some nice security precautions on here. Chief among them is the fact that the unlock is done entirely on-device. All of the info is saved and processed on the phone’s Titan M chip, meaning it doesn’t get sent up to the cloud. That both makes it a speedier process and means Google won’t be sharing your face data with its other services — a fact Google felt necessary to point out, for obvious reasons.

For a select few of us, at least, Recorder feels like a legitimate game changer. And its ease of use and efficacy should be leaving startups like Otter.ai quaking at its potential, especially if/when Google opts to bring it to other Android handsets and iOS.

I was initially unimpressed by the app upon trying it out at last week’s launch event. It struggles to isolate audio in noisy environments — likely as much of a hardware as software constraint. One on one and it’s far better, though attempting to, say, record audio from a computer can still use some work.

Open the app and hit record and you’ll see a waveform pop up. The line is blue when detecting speech and gray when hearing other sounds. Tap the Transcript button and you’ll see the speech populate the page in real time. From there you can save it with a title and tag the location.

The app will automatically tag keywords and make everything else searchable for easy access. In its first version, it already completely blows Apple’s Voice Memos out of the water. There’s no comparison, really. It’s in a different league. Ditto for other apps I’ve used over the years, like Voice Record.

Speaking to the product, the recording was still a little hit or miss. It’s not perfect — no AI I’ve encountered is. But it’s pretty good. I’d certainly recommend going back over the text before doing anything with it. Like Otter and other voice apps, you can play back the audio as it highlights words, karaoke-style.

The text can be saved to Google Drive, but can’t be edited in app yet. Audio can be exported, but not as a combined file. The punctuation leaves something to be desired and Recorder is not yet able to distinguish individual voices. These are all things a number of standalone services offer, along with a web-based platform. That means that none of them are out of business yet, but if I was running any of them, I’d be pretty nervous right about now.

As someone who does interviews for a living, however, I’m pretty excited by the potential here. I can definitely see Recorder become one of my most used work apps, especially after some of the aforementioned kinks get ironed out in the next version. As for those who don’t do this for a living, usefulness is probably a bit limited, though there are plenty of other potential uses, like school lecturers.

The Pixel continues to distinguish itself through software updates and camera features. There are nice additions throughout that set it apart from the six-month-old 3a, as well, including a more premium design and new 90Hz display. At $ 799, the price is definitely a vast improvement over competitors like Samsung and Apple, while retaining flagship specs.

The Pixel 4 doesn’t exactly address what Google wants the Pixel to be, going forward. The Pixel 3a was confirmation that users were looking for a far cheaper barrier of entry. The Pixel 4, on the other hand, is priced above OnePlus’s excellent devices. Nor is the product truly premium from a design perspective.

It’s unclear what the future will look like as Google works to address the shifting smartphone landscape. In the meantime, however, the future looks bright for camera imaging, and Google remains a driving force on that front.

Android – TechCrunch

Pixel 4 review: Google ups its camera game Google’s first-party hardware has always been a drop in the bucket of global smartphone sales. Pixel devices have managed to crack the top five in the U.S.

[flauntpage]

Blue Jays Mailbag: Lousy Defense, and Justin Smoak's Future in Toronto

This article originally appeared on VICE Sports Canada.

Andrew Stoeten answers your questions in our Blue Jays Mailbag, which runs weekly at VICE Sports. You can send him questions at stoeten@gmail.com, and follow him on Twitter.

The All-Star break is upon us and the Blue Jays are... mercifully not playing again until Friday!

It's not been a very fun first half for the Jays, but that doesn't mean that there isn't still a whole lot to talk about it—mostly, at least in this edition of our weekly mailbag—centering around All-Star Justin Smoak! Words that are still so very, very strange to type in that order.

So let's have a look at what's on the minds of the masses!

If you have a Blue Jays question you'd like me to tackle for next week, be sure to send it to stoeten@gmail.com. As always, I have not read any of Griff's answers.

What do you do with Smoak? I know we've got him for 2018, but is he a candidate for the type of extension Bautista got in 2011? And if we're selling at the deadline, does he go? What sort of return could we reasonably expect? @terminal_avenue

Regardless of record do you trade Smoak if offered a quality under control outfielder? I know I know tons of variables but do you sell high? Steven

I've lumped these two questions together, because they're both essentially about the same thing: what to do with Smoak. Thing is, to understand what to do with him, we need to have a pretty good gauge of what his value really is, and... well... it's a really tough question, and I'm not sure either one of these quite hits on it.

Like, I appreciate the newfound Smoak love in these parts, and obviously he's having a great year, but... uh... there's still a lot of failure in that track record of his. Maybe I'm still scarred by Michael Saunders' All-Star campaign last year (and his subsequent turning into a pumpkin), but it's hard for me to get past how abysmal Smoak has been at the plate leading up to this point. He's been a different player this year, yes, telling Shi Davidi of Sportsnet of mechanical changes he's made. When he coiled to swing at the ball, Smoak said, "you'd see the whole number on the back of my jersey... because I'm trying to hit the ball 500 feet," but having eased up and accepted that 400 foot home runs count just the same, "it's enabled me to keep my swing in plane longer, it's enabled me to hit more pitches—the curveball, the slider—it's enabled me to lay off pitches." As much as I want to believe that the slight change to his hitting mechanics has unlocked contact skills that were previously dormant I think I'd have to see quite a bit more before I considered giving him a whole lot of money or, if I was another team, offering up the kind of player the Jays would insist on to part with him.

And would that player be an outfielder? With Dalton Pompey, Anthony Alford, Dwight Smith Jr., and maybe Harold Ramirez (if he turns his season in Double-A around) candidates to fill an outfield vacancy for the club next season, I'm not sure that's where I'd be looking to add—even though the club's outfield has obviously been a problem here in 2017.

When it comes to these kinds of hypotheticals, I always like to ask fans what sort of player from their own system would they be comfortable giving up to acquire Justin Smoak. Inevitably the answer isn't someone nearly as talented as what they're hoping to get back.

I might give up a Richard Urena to get a guy like Smoak, but I sure as hell wouldn't give up Smoak for a Richard Urena! At least, not unless the Blue Jays are intending to be very bad in 2018, which, despite all sorts of fans who've forgotten what terrible baseball looks like pining for it and saying that would be great, I don't think they intend to be.

That's All-Star Justin Smoak to you. Photo by Kim Klement-USA Today Sports

If Rowdy Tellez wasn't having such a rough year in Buffalo—in more ways than one—maybe the answer would be different, but unless they can sell rather high on Smoak, I figure they'll be quite happy to bet on his production next year for just the $4.125 million that he's owed. He has a 2019 option on his contract as well, which means that if he keeps it up, and the Jays end up in sell mode again next July, they could certainly revisit the idea of moving him. They'd certainly get more if he did.

That contract option, of course, makes his case quite a bit different than that of Bautista in his breakout 2010 season. It's... uh... one of many things that make their cases quite different. Jose was in his age-29 season when he broke out in 2010, and was set to hit free agency for 2012, when he'd have been 31. Smoak is now 30 and if his 2019 option is picked up, his first season under a new contract will be at age 33. And while Smoak has a reputation as a good defensive first baseman—the metrics generally say otherwise, but don't include players' ability to handle throws from other infielders, which is Smoak's calling card—he offers little defensive value compared to Bautista at the same age, who at that point could passably man right field, third base, or first base, and also had spent at least a little time at both second base and in centre.

More importantly, what made Bautista an extension candidate wasn't his impressive numbers at the break—his 143 wRC+ ranked 21st and he produced 2.4 WAR, similar to Smoak's 144 and 2.2 marks—but what he did in the second half: a 192 wRC+ and 4.1 wins, both tops in all of baseball.

Smoak's still got a long way to go. And even if he does do something similar to what Bautista did in the second half, he'll probably also have a bunch of Jays fans who think they're smarter than everybody else insisting that the club would be best to trade him rather than extend him... not that I can recall anybody who might have done that with Jose *COUGH*.

---

When should the Jays start considering converting Osuna to a starter? Charlie

That's a great question. As I discussed in last week's mailbag, I think this is the right path for the Jays to take with Osuna—especially given the fact that they're due to have a pair of holes in their starting rotation next season (Marco Estrada and Francisco Liriano are free agents, though it wouldn't surprise me at all to see Marco return on a reasonable contract, given his struggles here in his walk year). Maybe that ship has already sailed, but I think that they could certainly still give it a go, especially if they begin the process this season, and start the conversations about it immediately.

Osuna's high water mark for innings pitched in a season is just 74, which he accomplished last year. While those innings are higher stress than innings he'd pitch as a starter, I think the Jays would want to be careful with pushing him too far past that number, but—and I'm just spitballing here—maybe they could get him up over 100, with the thought of moving him to the rotation for the start of 2018, then reining him by moving him to the bullpen later on, and end up getting him to 130 or something, which would get them close to being able to set him loose the next year, and certainly the year after that—which would be his last year under contract, barring any kind of extension. I'd imagine that the club wouldn't jump into this too lightly, especially given the way Aaron Sanchez's innings needed to be managed last season, and what a quagmire that proved to be.

On the other hand, Osuna almost certainly could be a very good starter. He's got the repertoire (aka "repe-twah") and has ended up in the bullpen not because he failed in the rotation, as most relievers do, but out of necessity—and he's stayed there because he's been so ridiculously good. And a valuable starter is simply a better commodity than a valuable reliever. Plus, it maybe also doesn't hurt that switching him to the rotation would cut down on what the Jays will have to pay him in arbitration, which still pays out big for saves, meaning that Osuna has a legitimate chance to be a record-breaker for a reliever if the Jays ultimately choose to go year-to-year with him through that process.

If that's the path they chose—if only to try it out, with a spot in the bullpen always waiting for him if he doesn't succeed—they could get him six starts in September if they're running a five-man rotation. Because he missed some time early on, and hasn't been needed to close out as many games as he did the previous two years, he's behind last year's innings pace. Moving him to the rotation in September would almost certainly leave him shy of 100 for the season, but he'd get close. And maybe Liriano or Estrada are movable in mid-August trades—which seems a little more likely at this point than depending on how well the club plays between now and the July 31 deadline—that would let you, theoretically, get this experiment started a bit early.

By then the club should have a better read on their playoff chances, too. If they remain in the hunt, I think all of this goes entirely out the window. (Not that it's even in the window to begin with! I don't know what the Jays are actually thinking about Osuna's future, but if I had to guess, it's probably not this. Unfortunately.)

---

If you had to bet for the rest of the season; are the Jays good, medium or bad? David, mayor's office, Vancouver, BC

Well, I cashed out the pre-season bet I made on the Jays winning the World Series a long time ago, if that's the kind of thing you mean. But just because I'm not stupid doesn't mean that I don't recognize that there's a much greater chance of the Blue Jays playing well and making things really interesting down the stretch than a whole lot of pissy burn-it-all-down types want to admit. And I'm certainly not going to validate anybody who wants desperately to hear that they're bad, it's bad, and it's going to be bad. You won't have much trouble finding someone to do that for you—especially since I know all too well that you're on Twitter.

Hey, but just because I won't give you one thing that you want doesn't mean I'm a complete curmudgeon. Here's an article that I think will be right up your alley—really says a lot of the same kinds of things I feel coming from your tweets. Enjoy!

---

Is this Jays season a Radiohead album or a Coldplay album? @GrubersMullet

Did Hans Gruber have a mullet? I seem to recall there maybe being a little bit of party in the back, but not a whole lot. Still, gotta say I love what I can only assume is a reference to the last thing seen by Harry Ellis—"HANS, BUBBY!"—played by Toronto's own Hart Bochner!

*COUGH*

Anyway, my take on this—which almost nobody will agree with, I'm sure—is that the Blue Jays, in general, are more Radiohead than Coldplay... in that they've had the same number of decent albums since the mid 90s (1.5) as the Jays have decent seasons. (The albums are Kid A and Amnesiac—don't @ me). Whereas Coldplay have presumably never had any good albums, though to be sure on that I'd have to actually have ever listened to one, which... pass.

But if I had to bet for the rest of the season if the Jays are Radiohead or Coldplay, I guess I'd have to say Coldplay.

---

Just wondering how much of the Blue Jays' starting pitching struggles you think have been related to terrible defense? Obviously the injuries have played a role as well, but even Shapiro has acknowledged how bad the defense is. David

I also thought Shapiro mentioning the club's awful defence last week—both to Shi David for a piece at Sportsnet and on Scott MacArthur's radio show—probably deserved a little more attention than it got.

Like the offence, the Blue Jays' defence has left a lot to be desired. Photo by Peter G. Aiken-USA Today Sports

"What is absolutely maybe surprising, somewhat shocking, is that our defence has been as bad as it has," Shapiro told MacArthur. "We went from two years ago having among the best defence in all of Major League Baseball, to definitively having the worst defence this year."

I'm not sure what in the hell metric Shapiro is using to say that the Jays are "definitively" the worst, because none of the publicly available ones quite say that. But it's ugly.

They are 27th in UZR at -16.3 and 28th by DRS at -28. Worst in right field by DRS (-13), 21st by UZR (-4.7); 27th at shortstop by both DRS (-8) and UZR (-5.6); dead last in left field by DRS (-15), 29th by UZR (-10.8).

Even usual bright spots are not quite as bright. Kevin Pillar is in the top 10 in centre, but not a clear cut No.1 one or two. Mostly because of injuries to Josh Donaldson, the club ranks in the middle of the pack at third base. And their pitchers have been below average—a certain change from the days of good defenders like Mark Buehrle and R.A. Dickey.

How much has this contributed to the poor numbers being put up by the Jays' pitchers? Well, obviously it has. The Jays' BABIP against was the lowest in baseball in 2015 at .278, and second lowest to the Cubs last year at .282—this year it's at .306, the sixth-worst mark in the league, and nine points above league average in the AL.

We'd be kidding ourselves, I think, if we were to say that Estrada or Liriano have been undone solely by shoddy defence behind them. It clearly hasn't helped, but there are pitchers for this team who've been outstanding, and ones who have out-pitched their FIP, too. It hasn't ruined everybody, and isn't an excuse for anybody's poor performance, necessarily.

But it's a problem. And a serious one for the club. Especially the numbers at shortstop, where Troy Tulowitzki is signed for big money and multiple years (AVERT YOUR EYES: three more after this one for $58 million total, including the $4 million buyout of his 2021 option). The situations in right and left field stand to be quite different next year (or maybe even next month!), with Bautista a free agent and Steve Pearce being untenable out there (I said all along that, more than anything, he was brought in so he could compete for first base at-bats with Smoak, and hoo boy, has he looked like a first baseman out there in left!). But Tulo? He's not going anywhere. At least... not yet.

The good news is that he's been better than his backup. Tulo's posted a -3 DRS and -1.7 UZR in 457 innings, compared to Goins' disappointing and uncharacteristic -5 and -4.0 in 313. We could try to claim here that Tulo also has the excuse that he's dealt with a hamstring injury that landed him on the DL, and so maybe he stands to get back closer to his standard of play—which even last year was well above average (+10 DRS and +4.9 UZR)—but surely there's been some kind of cumulative effect of all the lower-body injuries he's suffered, and it's probably only a matter of time before the next one hits (unfortunately), so...

I don't know if that really answers your question, but yeah... the defence has been bad, the effect has certainly been felt, but how much or by who is harder to say, and maybe not the point—it could get anybody at any time!

There seems to be a path back to respectability, at least. Uh... in some spots.

Blue Jays Mailbag: Lousy Defense, and Justin Smoak's Future in Toronto published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[samanthasroberts]

Kimbal Musk takes the tech entrepreneur ethos and applies it to food

The younger brother of Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors, shares his same entrepreneurial spirit, but with a family of restaurants and a nonprofit to bring learning gardens to schools around the country

It can be tricky for anyone being the younger sibling, but imagine what it must be like to be the younger brother of Elon Musk, a businessman habitually referred to as a real life Tony Stark.

His reputation seems to get more outsized with each fresh headline. Just this week, the elder Musks company SpaceX filed paperwork asking for permission to use satellites to beam down Internet service from space. Meanwhile, his other high-profile company, Tesla, continues to make advances toward its ambition to make electric cars more ubiquitous. Then there is the fascination with colonizing Mars.

Kimbal Musk, 42, is a year younger than Elon and a very successful businessman and entrepreneur in his own right. But he admits the pair, who grew up in Pretoria, South Africa before moving to Canada to study and then the US, have a slightly different take on the world of business: We have similar views [though] his are stratospheric, while mine are more in the ground.

Food is a dominant theme in Kimbal Musks personal and business interests. He is a health-conscious chef, restaurant owner with his own sense of mission about subjects close to his heart: linking peoples food to their communities and tackling childhood obesity.

In an interview with the Guardian he speaks about his hopes for his food projects – and the inspiration he gets from his brother. The younger Musk, in addition to his work as a philanthropist, investor and entrepreneur, is a board member at Tesla, SpaceX, the Anschutz Health and Wellness Center and Chipotle Mexican Grill.

Ive always loved food, said Kimbal Musk, a co-founder of The Kitchen family of restaurants in Colorado and elsewhere, which make a point of sourcing from local farmers. Growing up, I cooked in the house, and when I cooked everyone would sit down and eat, and it was just kind of the way I connected with my family. I used to throw cooking parties in university. Everyone would come over sometimes youd just do a mac and cheese, but if you do that better than everyone else you can get people to come to you.

Kimbal Musk is gregarious and charming; his brother is intense and technical. Kimbal made millions working at a startup with Elon, and invested in his brothers biggest dreams along the way – and he is no less dogged about chasing a few of his own.

The differences between the things that give the brothers purpose are striking one Musk works to change the world through high-tech inventions, the other is most passionate about food, about teaching people to grow things and preparing meals that help people find a sense of community. Still, the younger Musk turns to a sports metaphor to explain how, different as they are, hes still learned plenty from his brother, whose business interests at times read like the pursuit of turning science fiction into reality.

When you think about basketball, and you watch someone like Michael Jordan play basketball even if youre a baseball player, theres still a lot to learn from there, Musk said. I really think about him more as my brother, to be quite honest. Its kind of a tough question to answer, because hes been so core to my life that its hard to describe specific things.

Elon clearly trusts his instincts, though, in light of the fact that, should he ever become incapacitated in some way, Kimbal is the SpaceX and Tesla trustee whod lead the task of figuring out what should happen with both companies.

Meanwhile, Kimbal has plenty of his own interests to keep him busy. He co-founded The Kitchen family of restaurants in Boulder in 2004, along with Jen Lewin and Hugo Matheson. It has eight restaurant locations today in Colorado as well as an out-of-town location, in Chicago. In addition to plans to expand in Chicago and Colorado, three new locations are on the drawing board for Memphis over the next couple of years.

The Kitchen actually refers to three related restaurant concepts. Theres The Kitchen, the organizations flagship community bistro, and The Kitchen Upstairs, a cocktail lounge with food prepared in a wood oven and artisan cocktails. Rounding out the list is The Kitchen Next Door, a community pub that serves things like burgers, salads, sandwiches, margaritas and beer.

For its Colorado-area restaurants, The Kitchen claims to source $1 million worth of product from local providers. In the Greater Denver area, The Kitchen serves 17,000 guests per week on average.

In 2011, Musk co-founded The Kitchen Community, a nonprofit that works to bring outdoor gardens Learning Gardens, as theyre called to schools around the country. Three years after its founding, the nonprofit had already built 200 such gardens in Chicago, Los Angeles and Colorado schools, reaching more than 120,000 children.

Its a different world entirely from the more fast-paced tech scene in which he once worked with Elon.

Their early partnership followed the younger Musks graduation from high school in Pretoria and decamping to Toronto to reconnect with his brother. Kimbal graduated from Queens College in 1995, the same year the brothers started the Web-based city guide platform Zip2, a venture which Compaq bought in 1999 for $307m. From there, the younger Musk began investing in tech companies, including Elons X.com, a payments venture eventually renamed as PayPal that eBay would snatch up for $1.5bn.

The brothers worlds diverged when Elon decided after some of his early successes to stay in the Golden State, while Kimbal moved to New York City and enrolled at the French Culinary Institute. He was there in 2001 during the terrorist attacks of September 11 and spent six weeks cooking for firefighters at Ground Zero, a formative moment for him.

My intent had been to go back to tech at some point, Musk said. Cooking for the firefighters, it was this just overwhelming sense of community that was created. Its impossible to describe how intense and awesome it was to see everyone doing that. It was simultaneously the best and worst thing that had ever happened to me to see 9/11 and be part of helping bring people together.

Doing that every day for 10-12 hours a day, six days a week, my brain couldnt go back to tech. I determined right there and then to open a restaurant.

He decided that it wouldnt be in New York, turned off somewhat by the intensity of the city. He instead traveled the country with his wife at the time and settled on Boulder, Colorado.

After Musk co-founded The Kitchen, the organization hummed along steadily for a few years. Then came a ski accident in 2010 that Musk calls a near death experience, one that left him hospitalized for months and helped crystallize his thinking about what would come next for him.

A restaurant, hed decided, could indeed be a positive force in its small corner of the world in things like the customers it touches, in the quality of ingredients it uses and in the care of preparation. But it couldnt really scale the ambition that drives so many entrepreneurs like the Musks, who crave big challenges, big wins.

After the accident, Musk said, I sort of got a new lease on life. I said I now have every excuse in the world to do what I want. And you know what? Im going to work on food culture and help food become fun and part of peoples lives again. The traditional restaurant is more commercial-oriented. But I want community through food.

That gave birth to his garden-focused nonprofit, which, when it comes to a new community, looks to plant 100 gardens at a time. The gardens are a combination play space and outdoor classroom that connect children to the process of growing food and give teachers an outlet for hands-on instruction. And The Kitchen Community raises $35,000 for each garden, a cost that includes everything from landscape design to site prep, while the finished garden can include things like internal irrigation, bench seating and curvilinear plant beds.

A mix of foundations and individual donors funds The Kitchen Communitys efforts across the states where its placed gardens. Today The Kitchen Community has more than 225 Learning Gardens in schools across Colorado, Chicago, Los Angeles and Memphis.

Tackling childhood obesity is a big motivation behind the gardens in schools.

When I look at the problem of obesity, its a depressing problem. So how do you create a solution that delights people? We came up with this design – my ex-wife, who Im still friends with, she knows how to create something where you go, Im so glad this is here. I really want to have this in my school. I want to learn here. The gardens, this is a product that really delights people.

In deciding where to take his garden concept next, geographically, Musk says the organization looks for cities that have foundations that can support a concept like this one. His team also looks at schools with districts amenable to the concept.

Not surprisingly, the level of support from one city to the next varies. If youre in a town like Boulder, he points out, theres not much foundation support from a problem like childhood obesity because its not a place where the problem of obesity is especially acute.

Meanwhile, gardens where children grow food while also learning about science, supporting local farmers and vendors, building operations that transform communities through food these are the among the things that occupy Musks mind, the things he wants to spend his money and time on. Innovation and purpose, to entrepreneurs like him, dont always have to involve gadgets and leaps in science sometimes it starts with a thing as mundane as the food we eat.

For me, I like to think in terms of three months out and 50 years out, Musk said. Three months out is what to do now, 50 years out is what Id like to do before Im dead.

If I look back and see specific communities where I made a difference using food, I will pass very peacefully.

Source: http://allofbeer.com/2017/06/23/kimbal-musk-takes-the-tech-entrepreneur-ethos-and-applies-it-to-food/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2017/06/23/kimbal-musk-takes-the-tech-entrepreneur-ethos-and-applies-it-to-food/

[jimdsmith34]

Kimbal Musk takes the tech entrepreneur ethos and applies it to food

The younger brother of Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors, shares his same entrepreneurial spirit, but with a family of restaurants and a nonprofit to bring learning gardens to schools around the country

It can be tricky for anyone being the younger sibling, but imagine what it must be like to be the younger brother of Elon Musk, a businessman habitually referred to as a real life Tony Stark.

His reputation seems to get more outsized with each fresh headline. Just this week, the elder Musks company SpaceX filed paperwork asking for permission to use satellites to beam down Internet service from space. Meanwhile, his other high-profile company, Tesla, continues to make advances toward its ambition to make electric cars more ubiquitous. Then there is the fascination with colonizing Mars.

Kimbal Musk, 42, is a year younger than Elon and a very successful businessman and entrepreneur in his own right. But he admits the pair, who grew up in Pretoria, South Africa before moving to Canada to study and then the US, have a slightly different take on the world of business: We have similar views [though] his are stratospheric, while mine are more in the ground.

Food is a dominant theme in Kimbal Musks personal and business interests. He is a health-conscious chef, restaurant owner with his own sense of mission about subjects close to his heart: linking peoples food to their communities and tackling childhood obesity.

In an interview with the Guardian he speaks about his hopes for his food projects – and the inspiration he gets from his brother. The younger Musk, in addition to his work as a philanthropist, investor and entrepreneur, is a board member at Tesla, SpaceX, the Anschutz Health and Wellness Center and Chipotle Mexican Grill.

Ive always loved food, said Kimbal Musk, a co-founder of The Kitchen family of restaurants in Colorado and elsewhere, which make a point of sourcing from local farmers. Growing up, I cooked in the house, and when I cooked everyone would sit down and eat, and it was just kind of the way I connected with my family. I used to throw cooking parties in university. Everyone would come over sometimes youd just do a mac and cheese, but if you do that better than everyone else you can get people to come to you.

Kimbal Musk is gregarious and charming; his brother is intense and technical. Kimbal made millions working at a startup with Elon, and invested in his brothers biggest dreams along the way – and he is no less dogged about chasing a few of his own.

The differences between the things that give the brothers purpose are striking one Musk works to change the world through high-tech inventions, the other is most passionate about food, about teaching people to grow things and preparing meals that help people find a sense of community. Still, the younger Musk turns to a sports metaphor to explain how, different as they are, hes still learned plenty from his brother, whose business interests at times read like the pursuit of turning science fiction into reality.

When you think about basketball, and you watch someone like Michael Jordan play basketball even if youre a baseball player, theres still a lot to learn from there, Musk said. I really think about him more as my brother, to be quite honest. Its kind of a tough question to answer, because hes been so core to my life that its hard to describe specific things.

Elon clearly trusts his instincts, though, in light of the fact that, should he ever become incapacitated in some way, Kimbal is the SpaceX and Tesla trustee whod lead the task of figuring out what should happen with both companies.

Meanwhile, Kimbal has plenty of his own interests to keep him busy. He co-founded The Kitchen family of restaurants in Boulder in 2004, along with Jen Lewin and Hugo Matheson. It has eight restaurant locations today in Colorado as well as an out-of-town location, in Chicago. In addition to plans to expand in Chicago and Colorado, three new locations are on the drawing board for Memphis over the next couple of years.

The Kitchen actually refers to three related restaurant concepts. Theres The Kitchen, the organizations flagship community bistro, and The Kitchen Upstairs, a cocktail lounge with food prepared in a wood oven and artisan cocktails. Rounding out the list is The Kitchen Next Door, a community pub that serves things like burgers, salads, sandwiches, margaritas and beer.

For its Colorado-area restaurants, The Kitchen claims to source $1 million worth of product from local providers. In the Greater Denver area, The Kitchen serves 17,000 guests per week on average.

In 2011, Musk co-founded The Kitchen Community, a nonprofit that works to bring outdoor gardens Learning Gardens, as theyre called to schools around the country. Three years after its founding, the nonprofit had already built 200 such gardens in Chicago, Los Angeles and Colorado schools, reaching more than 120,000 children.

Its a different world entirely from the more fast-paced tech scene in which he once worked with Elon.

Their early partnership followed the younger Musks graduation from high school in Pretoria and decamping to Toronto to reconnect with his brother. Kimbal graduated from Queens College in 1995, the same year the brothers started the Web-based city guide platform Zip2, a venture which Compaq bought in 1999 for $307m. From there, the younger Musk began investing in tech companies, including Elons X.com, a payments venture eventually renamed as PayPal that eBay would snatch up for $1.5bn.

The brothers worlds diverged when Elon decided after some of his early successes to stay in the Golden State, while Kimbal moved to New York City and enrolled at the French Culinary Institute. He was there in 2001 during the terrorist attacks of September 11 and spent six weeks cooking for firefighters at Ground Zero, a formative moment for him.

My intent had been to go back to tech at some point, Musk said. Cooking for the firefighters, it was this just overwhelming sense of community that was created. Its impossible to describe how intense and awesome it was to see everyone doing that. It was simultaneously the best and worst thing that had ever happened to me to see 9/11 and be part of helping bring people together.

Doing that every day for 10-12 hours a day, six days a week, my brain couldnt go back to tech. I determined right there and then to open a restaurant.

He decided that it wouldnt be in New York, turned off somewhat by the intensity of the city. He instead traveled the country with his wife at the time and settled on Boulder, Colorado.

After Musk co-founded The Kitchen, the organization hummed along steadily for a few years. Then came a ski accident in 2010 that Musk calls a near death experience, one that left him hospitalized for months and helped crystallize his thinking about what would come next for him.

A restaurant, hed decided, could indeed be a positive force in its small corner of the world in things like the customers it touches, in the quality of ingredients it uses and in the care of preparation. But it couldnt really scale the ambition that drives so many entrepreneurs like the Musks, who crave big challenges, big wins.

After the accident, Musk said, I sort of got a new lease on life. I said I now have every excuse in the world to do what I want. And you know what? Im going to work on food culture and help food become fun and part of peoples lives again. The traditional restaurant is more commercial-oriented. But I want community through food.

That gave birth to his garden-focused nonprofit, which, when it comes to a new community, looks to plant 100 gardens at a time. The gardens are a combination play space and outdoor classroom that connect children to the process of growing food and give teachers an outlet for hands-on instruction. And The Kitchen Community raises $35,000 for each garden, a cost that includes everything from landscape design to site prep, while the finished garden can include things like internal irrigation, bench seating and curvilinear plant beds.

A mix of foundations and individual donors funds The Kitchen Communitys efforts across the states where its placed gardens. Today The Kitchen Community has more than 225 Learning Gardens in schools across Colorado, Chicago, Los Angeles and Memphis.

Tackling childhood obesity is a big motivation behind the gardens in schools.

When I look at the problem of obesity, its a depressing problem. So how do you create a solution that delights people? We came up with this design – my ex-wife, who Im still friends with, she knows how to create something where you go, Im so glad this is here. I really want to have this in my school. I want to learn here. The gardens, this is a product that really delights people.

In deciding where to take his garden concept next, geographically, Musk says the organization looks for cities that have foundations that can support a concept like this one. His team also looks at schools with districts amenable to the concept.

Not surprisingly, the level of support from one city to the next varies. If youre in a town like Boulder, he points out, theres not much foundation support from a problem like childhood obesity because its not a place where the problem of obesity is especially acute.

Meanwhile, gardens where children grow food while also learning about science, supporting local farmers and vendors, building operations that transform communities through food these are the among the things that occupy Musks mind, the things he wants to spend his money and time on. Innovation and purpose, to entrepreneurs like him, dont always have to involve gadgets and leaps in science sometimes it starts with a thing as mundane as the food we eat.

For me, I like to think in terms of three months out and 50 years out, Musk said. Three months out is what to do now, 50 years out is what Id like to do before Im dead.

If I look back and see specific communities where I made a difference using food, I will pass very peacefully.

source http://allofbeer.com/2017/06/23/kimbal-musk-takes-the-tech-entrepreneur-ethos-and-applies-it-to-food/ from All of Beer http://allofbeer.blogspot.com/2017/06/kimbal-musk-takes-tech-entrepreneur.html

[allofbeercom]

Kimbal Musk takes the tech entrepreneur ethos and applies it to food

The younger brother of Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors, shares his same entrepreneurial spirit, but with a family of restaurants and a nonprofit to bring learning gardens to schools around the country

It can be tricky for anyone being the younger sibling, but imagine what it must be like to be the younger brother of Elon Musk, a businessman habitually referred to as a real life Tony Stark.

His reputation seems to get more outsized with each fresh headline. Just this week, the elder Musks company SpaceX filed paperwork asking for permission to use satellites to beam down Internet service from space. Meanwhile, his other high-profile company, Tesla, continues to make advances toward its ambition to make electric cars more ubiquitous. Then there is the fascination with colonizing Mars.

Kimbal Musk, 42, is a year younger than Elon and a very successful businessman and entrepreneur in his own right. But he admits the pair, who grew up in Pretoria, South Africa before moving to Canada to study and then the US, have a slightly different take on the world of business: We have similar views [though] his are stratospheric, while mine are more in the ground.

Food is a dominant theme in Kimbal Musks personal and business interests. He is a health-conscious chef, restaurant owner with his own sense of mission about subjects close to his heart: linking peoples food to their communities and tackling childhood obesity.

In an interview with the Guardian he speaks about his hopes for his food projects – and the inspiration he gets from his brother. The younger Musk, in addition to his work as a philanthropist, investor and entrepreneur, is a board member at Tesla, SpaceX, the Anschutz Health and Wellness Center and Chipotle Mexican Grill.

Ive always loved food, said Kimbal Musk, a co-founder of The Kitchen family of restaurants in Colorado and elsewhere, which make a point of sourcing from local farmers. Growing up, I cooked in the house, and when I cooked everyone would sit down and eat, and it was just kind of the way I connected with my family. I used to throw cooking parties in university. Everyone would come over sometimes youd just do a mac and cheese, but if you do that better than everyone else you can get people to come to you.

Kimbal Musk is gregarious and charming; his brother is intense and technical. Kimbal made millions working at a startup with Elon, and invested in his brothers biggest dreams along the way – and he is no less dogged about chasing a few of his own.

The differences between the things that give the brothers purpose are striking one Musk works to change the world through high-tech inventions, the other is most passionate about food, about teaching people to grow things and preparing meals that help people find a sense of community. Still, the younger Musk turns to a sports metaphor to explain how, different as they are, hes still learned plenty from his brother, whose business interests at times read like the pursuit of turning science fiction into reality.

When you think about basketball, and you watch someone like Michael Jordan play basketball even if youre a baseball player, theres still a lot to learn from there, Musk said. I really think about him more as my brother, to be quite honest. Its kind of a tough question to answer, because hes been so core to my life that its hard to describe specific things.

Elon clearly trusts his instincts, though, in light of the fact that, should he ever become incapacitated in some way, Kimbal is the SpaceX and Tesla trustee whod lead the task of figuring out what should happen with both companies.

Meanwhile, Kimbal has plenty of his own interests to keep him busy. He co-founded The Kitchen family of restaurants in Boulder in 2004, along with Jen Lewin and Hugo Matheson. It has eight restaurant locations today in Colorado as well as an out-of-town location, in Chicago. In addition to plans to expand in Chicago and Colorado, three new locations are on the drawing board for Memphis over the next couple of years.

The Kitchen actually refers to three related restaurant concepts. Theres The Kitchen, the organizations flagship community bistro, and The Kitchen Upstairs, a cocktail lounge with food prepared in a wood oven and artisan cocktails. Rounding out the list is The Kitchen Next Door, a community pub that serves things like burgers, salads, sandwiches, margaritas and beer.

For its Colorado-area restaurants, The Kitchen claims to source $1 million worth of product from local providers. In the Greater Denver area, The Kitchen serves 17,000 guests per week on average.

In 2011, Musk co-founded The Kitchen Community, a nonprofit that works to bring outdoor gardens Learning Gardens, as theyre called to schools around the country. Three years after its founding, the nonprofit had already built 200 such gardens in Chicago, Los Angeles and Colorado schools, reaching more than 120,000 children.

Its a different world entirely from the more fast-paced tech scene in which he once worked with Elon.

Their early partnership followed the younger Musks graduation from high school in Pretoria and decamping to Toronto to reconnect with his brother. Kimbal graduated from Queens College in 1995, the same year the brothers started the Web-based city guide platform Zip2, a venture which Compaq bought in 1999 for $307m. From there, the younger Musk began investing in tech companies, including Elons X.com, a payments venture eventually renamed as PayPal that eBay would snatch up for $1.5bn.

The brothers worlds diverged when Elon decided after some of his early successes to stay in the Golden State, while Kimbal moved to New York City and enrolled at the French Culinary Institute. He was there in 2001 during the terrorist attacks of September 11 and spent six weeks cooking for firefighters at Ground Zero, a formative moment for him.

My intent had been to go back to tech at some point, Musk said. Cooking for the firefighters, it was this just overwhelming sense of community that was created. Its impossible to describe how intense and awesome it was to see everyone doing that. It was simultaneously the best and worst thing that had ever happened to me to see 9/11 and be part of helping bring people together.

Doing that every day for 10-12 hours a day, six days a week, my brain couldnt go back to tech. I determined right there and then to open a restaurant.

He decided that it wouldnt be in New York, turned off somewhat by the intensity of the city. He instead traveled the country with his wife at the time and settled on Boulder, Colorado.

After Musk co-founded The Kitchen, the organization hummed along steadily for a few years. Then came a ski accident in 2010 that Musk calls a near death experience, one that left him hospitalized for months and helped crystallize his thinking about what would come next for him.

A restaurant, hed decided, could indeed be a positive force in its small corner of the world in things like the customers it touches, in the quality of ingredients it uses and in the care of preparation. But it couldnt really scale the ambition that drives so many entrepreneurs like the Musks, who crave big challenges, big wins.

After the accident, Musk said, I sort of got a new lease on life. I said I now have every excuse in the world to do what I want. And you know what? Im going to work on food culture and help food become fun and part of peoples lives again. The traditional restaurant is more commercial-oriented. But I want community through food.

That gave birth to his garden-focused nonprofit, which, when it comes to a new community, looks to plant 100 gardens at a time. The gardens are a combination play space and outdoor classroom that connect children to the process of growing food and give teachers an outlet for hands-on instruction. And The Kitchen Community raises $35,000 for each garden, a cost that includes everything from landscape design to site prep, while the finished garden can include things like internal irrigation, bench seating and curvilinear plant beds.

A mix of foundations and individual donors funds The Kitchen Communitys efforts across the states where its placed gardens. Today The Kitchen Community has more than 225 Learning Gardens in schools across Colorado, Chicago, Los Angeles and Memphis.

Tackling childhood obesity is a big motivation behind the gardens in schools.

When I look at the problem of obesity, its a depressing problem. So how do you create a solution that delights people? We came up with this design – my ex-wife, who Im still friends with, she knows how to create something where you go, Im so glad this is here. I really want to have this in my school. I want to learn here. The gardens, this is a product that really delights people.

In deciding where to take his garden concept next, geographically, Musk says the organization looks for cities that have foundations that can support a concept like this one. His team also looks at schools with districts amenable to the concept.

Not surprisingly, the level of support from one city to the next varies. If youre in a town like Boulder, he points out, theres not much foundation support from a problem like childhood obesity because its not a place where the problem of obesity is especially acute.

Meanwhile, gardens where children grow food while also learning about science, supporting local farmers and vendors, building operations that transform communities through food these are the among the things that occupy Musks mind, the things he wants to spend his money and time on. Innovation and purpose, to entrepreneurs like him, dont always have to involve gadgets and leaps in science sometimes it starts with a thing as mundane as the food we eat.

For me, I like to think in terms of three months out and 50 years out, Musk said. Three months out is what to do now, 50 years out is what Id like to do before Im dead.

If I look back and see specific communities where I made a difference using food, I will pass very peacefully.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/2017/06/23/kimbal-musk-takes-the-tech-entrepreneur-ethos-and-applies-it-to-food/

[itsworn]

Mopars Steal The Show At Mecum’s Indy Auction! Huge Gallery!

With both record prices and bargains, Mopars were the highlight of the 30th Annual Spring Classic.

The challenge to making any event last is consistency. Weathering the storms of business cycles, giving people a positive experience, and generating the idea that this is the one will all play into its legacy. The Mecum auction company has proven they know their target audience and can meet those marks. For 30 years, Dana Mecum and his crew have hosted an event called the Spring Classic, the granddaddy of their yearly schedule. It now takes over a majority of the display buildings at the Indiana State Fairgrounds on the northeast side of the capitol city of Indianapolis, where for five straight days they work hard to make automotive dreams come true.

That is because there is so much variety here. Mecum does pride itself as being the leading purveyor of great for-sale muscle cars, and there was no lack of them here. The truth that Mopar examples in general are nowhere near as commonplace as the competing brands had made Mecum very adept at interspersing either single cars or groups throughout each day. Early in the week are the cars that would work for a lot of buyers, sometimes needing some TLC but never junk (unless there is a reason the car is offered unfinished). Thursday, Friday, and Saturday is the “show” part of the show, when thousands of onlookers watch the action as cars trade hands for hundreds of thousands of dollars. 2017 was no exception. Let’s take a look.

That Virginia Collection

One thing that Mecum often handles are both estate and collection selling, and the Indy event saw no less than 13 groupings of cars of this nature, a number of which were offered without reserves. Among these were several that featured quality Mopars, including the Clarence Arnoldussen collection from Canada, the Dallas and Aimee Hawkins collection, and the 2010 Spring Collection, but for the hitters in the Mopar world it was a number of unrestored, original-paint, low-mileage cars in the group called “From a Private Virginia Collection.” These included a ’70 Hemi ’Cuda, an AAR Challenger, an M-code 1969 Road Runner, a 340 Swinger, and an amazing 1970 Duster in FM3 Moulin Rouge (Panther Pink in Dodge nomenclature) among other brands. The Duster got a lot of attention, drawing a hammer price of $46,000, which may well have been a record for a stock A-body/LA-engine Mopar. The Hemi ’Cuda, had less than 7,000 miles and in Top Banana yellow, took a $295,000 bid to bring home. Perhaps a little less than expected, the owner accepted this but took home a few Yenko models that did not meet his expectations. The ’Cuda was followed by the Road Runner at $120,000 and the 4,800-mile AAR at $110,000. Again, for people who appreciate survivor cars, these were blessed by Frank Badelson and needed nothing at all.

Dallas and Ammie Hawkins were selling a selection of their vehicles at no reserve, and we feel there were some good deals on these. Their Gator-grain roof 1970 Charger R/T with a U-code 440 brought $42,500, which was a great bargain for somebody on this car (we featured it on the Mopar Muscle facebook page before the auction). From the 2010 Spring collection, which were a group of cars previously bought from Mecum events back at that time and being sold again, was a high-compression 426 Max Wedge 1963 Polara 500 convertible that was top dog, banging out the door at $110,000 before buyer’s premium. A ’66 Hemi Charger with the scarce four-speed got somebody a true 426H driver for $50,000 right behind that.

The Arnoldussen cars were also strong, with Clarence and his car curator Dallas Harty only taking home two of 18 cars they brought. Action was led by a 1969 Dodge Daytona. Built as a 440 and painted white from the factory, this car had turned up without a numbers-matching engine and now sported an OEM-appearing Hemi install and a red wing and accompanying red interior. For the buyer looking for a show car without the stress of having a half-million or more in a real Hemi Dodge wing, it was a stunning car in appearance and quality, and took home a solid $225,000 final price. Based on trends, this was possibly more than it might have brought as a 440ci restoration to perfect stock.

Market Correction Or Correct?

Clarence, who operates a Chrysler franchise in Canada, represents what could be considered the “practical seller.” Rather than take a bunch of cars back home, he had realistic expections, saw the money was there, and cashed out. For example, his 1970 Challenger convertible, a beautiful restoration on a vehicle that was presented to Bob Hope, whose 1970 TV show was sponsored by Chrysler. The R/T is red with matched red interior, great options including power windows, and a U-code 440 four-barrel that allowed Hope to get air-conditioning. This car was bought very nicely at $105,000, which included a pile of signed Hope memorabilia, and Arnoldussen was wise enough to take good money for it rather than wait for “that one guy” to pay more for a 440-4BBL model. Same with his M-code Super Bee ($72,500) and 1969 Hemi Road Runner ($80,000). Solid money in hand, Dallas told us they were very happy with how much the sale of the 16 vehicles that sold generated.

Are there changes in the market for Mopars? Truth be told, there is a lot of money flowing into the real economy right now, and some of the cash we were seeing in all forms of collectible items is being used that way. So as result, we did not see what could be called “breath-taking prices,” but we also did not see “giveaway losses.” My personal feeling is that there is a correctness to the present pricing, meaning that the real-world money being offered is the true market at this moment. The prices were not because the big spenders were not there or were not spending, but simply that these were practical values on these cars. Seller Joe Cheeks let his amazing one-of-one Mr. Norm’s-sold 1970 Six Pack Super Bee sell for $80,000 as the event wound down. He had hoped for more, but saw the money, and decided to sell it through the Bid Goes On.

The one exception to this rule, again in my opinion, was the survivor 1970 Hemi ’Cuda, which seemed a little soft at $295,000, but hey, $295,000 is not $195,000, so that doesn’t appear to a true “big correction,” just real money, and the Mecum crowd was buying. Sell-through percentages were probably in the 70 to 75 percent range, a great achievement considering that reserves are offered at the Mecum events. The patented cry of “the reserve if off!” resounded again and again each day.

That left us with that Hemi Superbird. A number of wing cars had been at Kissimmee and sold with varying degrees of success. This car, showing less than 10,000 miles and nicely documented, was expected to bring in excess of $300,000. As the price moved above $225,000 asking $250,000, the seller pulled the reserve and the hammer came down with a $230,000 final price. Since the car did not have any significant issues in equipment or provenance, this might have been a correction, but an accompanying issue may have. It frankly did not display any “patina” endemic to most unrestored vehicles. Couple that to the column-shift Torqueflite, and maybe $230,000 was not that far from real-world. Still, most people I talked with felt it was the deal of the weekend for someone with deeper pockets than us. Great car at a great price…

The Bid Goes On…

The top non-selling Mopar was the Lee Smith altered-wheelbase car, which was hoping for a little action close to Smith’s northern Illinois home. Alas, $400,000 was understandably not enough to generate sold!  Nevertheless, this one-of-two remaining Plymouth factory “funny cars” is such a unique car it just may not have had the right type of buyer yet. Behind this was a beautiful Hellcat-powered 1971 Challenger convertible that was kept with a top offer of $175,000. These two were followed by a number of cars that were perhaps bid lower than expected but not by huge margins. Still, many experienced owners recognized this was a great event to sell at. Indeed, the Bid Goes On list was short from Indy and contained only 15 Mopar vehicles in the higher $50,000-up range.

In terms of pricing trends, what is evident in some cases is that the story accompanying a car is a good part of its attraction. A case in point was a meticulously-finished 1970 Challenger R/T, blue with white longitudinal striping, white interior, power windows and four-barrel 440. Often looked down against the Six Pack version, this U-code car had been owned by a single family since day one and brought a solid hammer price of $110,000. It seems there is an upward trend on 440 four-barrel E-Body models right now, which for many years were hard to delineate from the 383 base models. There were no 340 four-barrel E-Body convertibles at this event, which is understandable as good 340 cars in general are not in big supply.

Originality remains an important part of today’s hobby. While the FM3 Duster was expected to do well, an incredible blue 1968 Belvedere with a 225 Six, one family, and 18,000 miles, hammered to $30,000, a very big price for a six-cylinder B-Body. Continuing along those lines, surprising was the number of second-generation Charger R/Ts, and where they fell pricewise. The only Daytona on hand was the aforementioned Hemi-transplant at $225K, followed by a pair of 1969 Hemi Charger 500s which did not meet reserve, but a number of both 383 and 440 models from the 1968-1970 era were purchased at nice prices. These remain cars with strong interest in the hobby, and there appears to be a little room right now if you are not trying to buy an original Hemi car and can spend between $35,000 and $50,000. That’s not chump change, but it’s not $100,000 either. The same is somewhat less true on Six Pack models in B-Body form, regardless of brand. Convertibles with multiple carburation will remain the trend setters, and the scarce Road Runner droptops regardless of engine are now steadily above $50,000.

And if your budget is under $20,000? There are still big-block C-Bodies, including convertibles, that can be found below that margin, as well as modified vehicles based on A- and B-Body platforms. As noted above, if you are serious about buying that sort of car at auction, the best time to come is during the earliest days of the event, when you can examine the cars personally and then give it your best shot. Mecum hosts events nationwide, but Indy and the January event in Kissimmee feature the largest variety. Go to mecum.com for both the schedule and lists for specific auctions.

Mecum Sold! List Of Top 50 Mopars

F130.1 1970 Plymouth Hemi ’Cuda $295,000 F174 1970 Plymouth Hemi Superbird $230,000 S163 1969 Dodge Daytona $225,000 S197 1970 Plymouth Superbird $181,500 S144 2017 Dodge Viper ACR Voodoo II $170,000 F158.1 1970 Plymouth Hemi ’Cuda $162,500 S211 1968 Dodge Hemi Dart LO23 Super Stock $155,000 F141 1970 Dodge Hemi Challenger R/T $145,000 F127 1969 Plymouth 6BBL Road Runner $120,000 F261 1970 Plymouth 440 ’Cuda Convertible $120,000 F125 1970 Plymouth AAR ’Cuda $110,000 S94 1963 Dodge Polara 500 convertible $110,000 S144.1 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T $110,000 S164 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T convertible $105,000 F161 1969 Plymouth Road Runner $102,500 F100 1970 Plymouth ’Cuda $100,000 S133 1970 Dodge Charger R/T $90,000 S112 1968 Plymouth GTX convertible $87,500 S207 1951 Chrysler Imperial convertible $86,000 S135 1970 Dodge Super Bee $80,000 S167 1969 Plymouth Hemi Road Runner $80,000 F169 1960 Chrysler New Yorker convertible $77,000 S49.1 1970 Plymouth AAR ’Cuda $76,000 S57 1969 Plymouth Road Runner convertible $75,000 S70.1 1970 Plymouth AAR ’Cuda $75,000 S170 1969 Dodge Super Bee $75,000 F233 1966 Plymouth Hemi Belvedere II $73,000 S165 2013 Dodge Viper GTS $72,500 S168 1970 Dodge Charger R/T $70,000 S20 2015 Dodge Viper SRT-10 $69,000 F191 1969 Dodge Coronet R/T convertible $67,500 F171 1969 Dodge Charger R/T $66,000 T161 1962 Chrysler 300H convertible $65,000 F163 2016 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat $65,000 S83 1963 Dodge Polara Max Wedge $62,000 F234 1969 Dodge Super Bee $61,000 F75 1973 Plymouth’ Cuda $60,000 S179 1950 Chrysler T & Country Newport hardtop $58,000 F153 1973 Plymouth ’Cuda $57,000 S172 1934 DeSoto Airflow Coupe $56,000 F250.1 n/a Pedregon/Pat Foster dragster $55,000 S69.1 1969 Dodge Dart GTS 440 $55,000 S169 1970 Dodge Charger 500 $52,500 W179 1968 Dodge Charger R/T $51,000 F207 1936 Plymouth Coupe street rod $50,000 S93 1966 Dodge Hemi Charger $50,000 S166 1932 Plymouth Roadster street rod $50,000 W215 2006 Dodge Viper SRT-10 VOI.9 Edition $49,000 124.1 1970 Plymouth Duster FM3 $46,000 T104.1 1970 Dodge Charger 500 $45,000

  The Bid Goes On Top 10 Mopars

F146 1965 Plymouth funny car A/FX Haulin Hemi II $400,000 S210.1 1971 Dodge Challenger Hellcat convertible $175,000 F159 1968 Dodge Hemi Dart Super Stock $145,000 F164 1970 Dodge Hemi Challenger $145,000 S110.1 1969 Dodge Hemi Charger 500 $120,000 F187 1970 Plymouth Superbird 440 $110,000 S121 1969 Dodge Hemi Charger 500 $95,000 F83 1970 Dodge Challenger T/A $76,000 W113 2016 Ram 2500 SLT pick-up $75,000 F204 1970 Plymouth Road Runner movie car $75,000

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