#as opposed you know other parts of the giant food industry

[kid-from-space]

So simple i guess, vegans eating honey instead if agave will save the mexican long nosed bats.

Vegans of tumblr, listen up. Harvesting agave in the quantities required so you dont have to eat honey is killing mexican long-nosed bats. They feed off the nectar and pollinate the plants. They need the agave. You want to help the environment? Go back to honey. Your liver and thyroid will thank you, as well. Agave is 90% fructose, which can cause a host of issues. Bye.

[eyalnachumdiversification1-blog]

Eyal Nachum is a fintech guru and a director

Bruc Bond endeavor to lead the financial sector with sustainability, customizable product offering, and open communication. At Bruc Bond we aim to make 21st century banking straightforward, simple, and transparent.

Eyal Nachum is a fintech guru and a director at Bruc Bond. Eyal is the architect of the software that SMEs use to do cross-border payments.

The entire world of payments is constantly evolving. New engineering disrupt old methods to doing things, cutting edge entrants gobble upwards market share, and then a changing regulatory surfaces forces adjustment in addition to innovation. Here most people take a look at some of the trends in the global bills industry and the simplest way they’re likely to enjoy out in 2020.

The Rise with Mobile Payments Funds usage is gradually declining all over the world. With its place, be sure you payments ecosystem is usually shaping up to control you. By 2023, noncash transactions will word of advice over the 1 trillion threshold driven simply by increased credit card puncture, the spread involving smart mobile devices, in addition to a growing global funds infrastructure.

The biggest explodes in this area are consumed by Asian areas, some of which steer the pack around adoption of leading-edge digital payment treatments. Major markets inside China, India along with Southeast Asia can be saturated with a digital wallets, like Alipay and Paytm. Furthermore, users are speedy to adopt payment together with transacting in social networking apps like WeChat and Grab.

Within Europe and the YOU the pace associated with change is much more slowly. Traditional payment tactics are much better organized and entrenched, using credit cards dominating The country and parts of The european union. Still, mobile installment payments are on the rise with tandem with the extensive adoption of cellular phones and their benefit from for mobile searching. Likewise, apps just like Venmo are encroaching on small amount, recreational transactions between associates and acquaintances.

That shift to mobile or portable is only set so that you can accelerate in 2020 as consumers develop more comfortable with causing cash behind and is overtaken by digital and cellular payment methods. Naturally, this trend is definitely not equal across the plank. For example , mobile obligations in the US will enhance much faster than Uk, which is still predominantly reliant on bucks for small amount business, but the general phenomena will hold authentic: mobile is about to become the new king.

Most people Wants to be a Fintech In 2019 we’ve seen a lot of tech new york giants enter the bills and financial technological know-how space, and this craze is set to hasten. Google, Apple perhaps even Facebook are all looking at means of integrating funds technology into their tools. Apple has registered with forces with Goldman Sachs to offer your full-fledged credit card; Google and yahoo is planning to beginning offering checking provides as of 2020 together with US banks and additionally credit unions, apt to expand to the other countries in the world at a later date. Just like Apple, Google is actually intending to launch debit cards in the getting year. And Youtube is now letting owners in some jurisdictions distribute payments through a Messenger platform. Even more financial products from Twitter are surely coming.

While western web 2 . and software the big boys joining the crease in payments solutions seems like a have fun with of catch-up using their eastern rivals, they've been far form the sole tech giants typing in the payments breathing space. Uber has introduced its very own Uber Money, to improve financial operations because of its drivers. Amazon has announced bill money facilities to their assistance offerings.

We don't be surprised to see even more technician giants announce your intentions to financialise in the coming 365 days.

Full-Suite (Payments) Assistance Until recently, installment payments companies have sought for to be as horizontally as possible. The obligations infrastructure was viewed as commodity, using a high degree of agnosticism towards the industry for the client maintained during the entire payments sector. Thin air has this ended up more evident as opposed to the B2B payment room or space. B2B payments organizations have, generally, recently been slow to adopt ground-breaking tech developments. Your offerings have always been fundamentally unchanged usually, apart from the widespread use of payments APIs. This could change fast.

B2B customers get, in their private lifestyles, grown accustomed to your conveniences of entirely integrated technological fits cooperating to provide a wide purchasing and wearing solution. There is no factor such solutions must be inaccessible to company. The companies that will capitalise on this demand could make it big by giving, mostly, small in addition to medium enterprises by means of business management program that can handle bills for them as an other service, thus getting the SME’s went on loyalty to the country's payment services.

For the reason that Matt Harris, somebody at Bain Investment Ventures, recently advised Business Insider: “Imagine a florist whom runs their online business on florist application and is managing their particular inventory and their own purchasing of flowers and their payroll and their staffing, and then that software programs also offers payments. ” Pretty soon we could struggle to image the idea happening any other manner.

Machine Initiated Installment payments The most exciting improvements to come might certainly a little way out of, but their seed-stock have been firmly planned and planted and deserve notice. As tech the behemoths move into the funds space, they will need one undisputable edge: data, troves from data. What those hoards can allow it to offer customers is normally convenience beyond idea: machine-initiated payments.

This intricacies of present day life require protection, and a lot of it. Auto oil needs switching, food needs getting and delivering, stores require maintenance. All of these routine tasks need be remembered, scheduled, along with yes, paid for. Manufactured is not far away when ever these tasks could be completely unloaded to smart devices together with forgotten about. Sprinting low on get? If you set that as one of your meals essentials, your chiller could tack the application onto your next routinely purchased supermarket operated. Bills need to be paid back? Let Alexa apply it. As Byron Lichtenstein, principal at Wisdom Partners, recently talked about: “What's changed within the last few two years that we uncovered really interesting can be that dumb installment payments don't really -obviously, they exist -but they're not really a item anymore. ”

Which means there we have this, the trends very likely to take centre position in 2020: profit will continue it's slow, inevitable refuse from dominance, a lot more (giant) entrants within the crowded fintech arena, integrated software rooms with payments cooked in, and, it could be that, some consumer-grade obligations AI. Maybe a final is still far from truth, but we can simply hope that 2020 will bring us nearer to it.

[sepiadice]

Tales of Genius Ch. 3: Blossomforth Brides Pt. 1

(1/26/2019)

I’ve been wanting to get to this session for years. Literal years. Since the overly dramatic high school group, when I first introduced and used North Fort in a Pathfinder session, then reiterated on for years after, always dying to do this campaign.

What feels like a decade later,[1] we finally reach Blossomforth.

Shorter session this time. Limited player availability, late start, arguments over the difficulty dice in magic, my usual distraction making dinner.[2] The usual.

Hopefully I can coordinate sessions more often, since we actually stopped two-thirds of the way through my plans.

I’ll have to actually figure out what happens next. Dang.

CAST

Eli Roberts: (Played by Lyons) Child of Clio. Doctor, travelling to write a medical text akin to Gray’s Anatomy. He’s an Intellectual! Older gentleman, hits on women to fluster the GM.

Olivia Grayson: (Played by Maddie) Child of Thalia. Apprentice to Eli. Believes her Squirrel-raccoon companion is her boyfriend reincarnated. Murdered a dude, stole his clothes.

Fromthe: (Played by Jose) Child of Calliope. Military veteran and current mercenary. Also has some mercantile ambitions. Doing fine.

Jean De Ferrero: (Played by Anthony) Child of Terpsichore. Travelling con artist. Took aforementioned murder victim’s gun.

So we pick up where we left off last time: standing outside the Soldier’s Rest Mayor’s office, Eli with a letter. I had an idea for what they encounter if they backtracked to North Fort,[3] if they stay,[4] and of course if they actually move forward.

This is why it’s handy to be loose with session planning: gives you extra room to think up threads for other locations if the party goes rogue and wants to go back or over there. If you intend to mostly wing it, you can write out a couple sentence-long ‘this is a possibility’ suggestions, and be prepared to improv if you get called on it!

But the players tend to be good at minding my overly obvious plot threads. Maybe in an overly meta way. I have to learn subtlety.

Anyways, the party reviews the plot, and figures out how to advance. Namely, by going south to the nearest train station in Blossomforth.

They get a wagon ride and arrive about a half day later, in the evening.

Blossomforth is an agricultural town well regarded for its Strawberry Wine, which is exported even beyond the borders of Astree. Small town, traditional, and because I’d watched a Let’s Play of Night in the Woods, there’s a subtle undercurrent of the younger folks moving away and the older folks being afraid of the town fading away.

Eli happens to know someone in the town whose son he saved.[5] William lets Eli and pals stay at his home, noting his son moved to Taffyport and works at a factory.

Which is the first canon mention of Taffyport.

Unfortunately, due to winter, the trains aren’t running up to Blossomforth just yet. That’ll have to wait until after the Forest Bride Festival.

You see, every year, a little before spring, the town gathers to prepare for planting season and celebrate surviving winter. They open a barrel of Strawberry Wine prepared during the last Harvest Festival, dance, sing, play booth games, send a maiden into the woods for an ancient ritual, feast. That sort of stuff.

The party joke about human sacrifices. William gets uncomfortable. After some needling from Dr. Roberts, William comes clean:

The titular Forest Brides are supposed to come back. Historically, they do! Bring in a bottle of wine and food, supposedly talk to the local deity,[6] then come home.

The last two never came back. So the town’s divided. Be Tevye and continue tradition, or maybe stop losing girls to the woods... Forest? I’m not clear on that.

Anyways, Olivia hears forest and wants to go that way. We really need to examine why she’s learning medicine from Eli if she hates people so much.

The party manages to talk her into waiting for morning.

The next morning, she immediately heads towards the woods. The rest of the party follow. So I move a character from town to the woods so I can do the plot.

This is Ms. Marian Shepherd. In another, more elf-inhabited universe, the niece she shares a name with is often called Trix.[7]  Marian’s trying to get a pair of town guards to let her into the woods to investigate. Both Eli and Jean try to flirt, but Ms. Shepherd is more concerned about one of her pupils, Maryanne Diane, being this year’s Bride. Olivia hides amongst the trees.

Fromthe is businesslike, so she mostly deals with him.

She says they’d need to get permission from the town council, and agrees to take the party to them.

Olivia senses magic. There’s a lot of magic. Unfamiliar magic yet similar to what the party sensed in the mines they’d come from.

The party goes to where the festival preparations are happening and meet with the town council, who Eli decides he knows. I compromise, but mostly ignore the personalities he ascribes. We have Briggs, Sarah, and the third member who never got a name.[13] The party try to negotiate permission to investigate, mostly to Briggs.

Briggs is initially hesitant, but slowly comes around. The first Bride to go missing was his granddaughter, Ashley, but it’s not impossible she used the chance to run away and find a new life elsewhere. Fading town subplot, after all.

Councilwoman Sarah is opposed and doesn’t particularly like Eli, and tradition demands no trespass in the woods. Argue argue.

The third councilman, who most falsely assume is senile, speaks up and gives permission. As he’s the oldest person in a town that operates on a Town Elder system of governance, it’s the final word.

Briggs gives them a permission slip.

They invite Ms. Shepherd along, but she concedes she has nothing to offer, and was only trying to get into the woods so someone would be looking into things. Now someone is.

Into the woods.

The party follows the source of the odd magic, and eventually come upon a woman sitting on a boulder, eating a Corned Beef Sandwich with extra mayonnaise.[8] She introduces herself as Isabelle.

Oh, and Isabelle is wearing the same robes as the man Olivia murdered in the mine, and a rabbit skull mask. She also does not like seeing Olivia wearing the cloak and snake skull mask she looted, and demands to be allowed to burn it.

Olivia refuses, and after the party try to convince her to give the items up, Jean just grabs the mask, and eventually Olivia agrees to give up the cloak.

Turns out she’s here for the same reason as the party, more or less, and as they walk deeper into the forest, she provides some exposition.

She’s a Dark Shepherd, a secret society dedicated to maintaining cosmic balance and the traditions of Deep Magic, sometimes called dark magic or blood magic and the like. But it’s not really a morality thing, don’t worry.

The guy killed in the mines, however, belonged to a splinter group: the Feral Oaths. They think covering the land in iron and the growth of industry is bad and should be undone to return to the old ways.

She also says that, while deeply tragic, killing the giant snake in the mines may have been necessary, and doesn’t condemn the group. And while the loss of life is always sad, the man Olivia murdered[9] was a Feral Oath, so screw him.

They reach a clearing in the center of the forest. There’s a serene pond with a small island in the center with a tree on it. Isabelle takes a moment, concludes she doesn’t actually know if there’s a proper ceremony nor how to perform it, so she just sits.

A massive deer emerges.[10] The tree, as it turns out, is part of an antler. He’s really big.

He speaks. Probably in the mortals’ minds for the time being, but I didn’t specify that since I needed to get to a dramatic hanger.

So he’s been lonely. No one came last winter. Or the winter before that.

Which means the brides haven’t reached their destinations.

Huh.

Thus ends the session.

This is actually a little earlier than I planned, so I’ll have to figure out how to fill out the next session. I already have the general path Eli’s following, and I have schemes prepared for Fromthe and Olivia. I need to figure out something for Jean De Ferrero.[11] Probably should just talk to the player. Like a reasonable GM.

Lessons learned: nothing concrete comes to mind! I’m feeling more comfortable behind the screen, even though I still feel an amount of inadequacy. And I still need to confront my anxieties about my voice and speech impediment[12] before I can shift into a podcast project, but practice is always important. And hopefully a group that can lend gentle criticism and maybe argue about the magic rules less.

I think a good background thing is that it’s okay to have sidequests and plans that need to be triggered like a video game, and not to close options because the players didn’t jump on them. Narrative time is flexible, things can get moved, cooperate with players and grant them the chance to do what they feel is pressing and/or fun in the moment without sacrificing story or investment.

Until next time, may your dice make things interesting.

-

[1] Can’t be bothered to do the math. Write up should be on this blog.| [2] Everytime I tell myself ‘Next time, casserole’. Then I make something with curry. [3] Fun fact: in North Fort, I had a vague concept for what would happen if they decided to screw the catacombs/mine, and instead try going North to ask for help. Also an explanation the North Fort mayor would give for not trying this himself. [4] Both events could still trigger. Heh heh. [5] Lyons has picked up on my willingness to accept things that circumvent minor problems or non-issues. Would’ve let them grab an inn, but it doesn’t actually matter. He also names everyone because I’m garbage at names and haven’t enacted any solutions to said garbage. [6] Who isn’t a wolf that resides in wheat, and don’t you suggest I wear my inspiration blatantly on my sleeve! [7] Original, Pathfinder plan was this was a retired Trix, but things shifted, and Ms. Shepherd doesn’t have the right personality. [8] She needs the calories. [9] There were some lies about what happened, since he didn’t get a shot off, or really provide any characterization himself. [10] I decided to reference Princess Mononoke moments before I utilized it. So add it to the list of things I blatantly rip off. [11] Maybe he can found a confection company? [12] This has been occurring more often at work than the table, but still. [13] Lyons said third council-guy is name Lysander. I don’t recall this happening, so it’s a footnote of dubious canon now.

[emily295work]

Textual Poaching

In 1977, the US Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs was formed. With contributions from leading nutritional scientists, the committee created a document entitled “Dietary Goals for the US”, an advisement on how Americans should be eating in order to combat the rising rates of heart disease and diabetes. Their recommendation was to eat less meat and more plants.

This denunciation of meat quickly created intense backlash to the document from the powerful meat industry. Under political threat, the Committee soon issued a revised version of the document. Now, instead of recommending avoiding certain whole foods and consuming more of others, the Committee skirted around the political issues of whole foods by instead focusing on nutrients, advising citizens to monitor their diet based on nutrient intake. This led to the American fascination with “nutritionism”. These days, you can pick up a bag of potato chips and find that the FDA has given it a “heart healthy!” stamp of approval. The ideology of nutritionism has peddled to the advertising techniques of the food industry without solving the underlying problems of what is called the “western diet”. 

My art piece is a remix of the revised 1977 document. I highlighted parts of the document that mentioned specific nutrients and specific guidelines the committee gave, then paper-mached it onto a clay figure. I then created an IV for the figure to hold onto, but the IV bag is stuffed full of health claims and nutrition labels that I sourced from various food packages. The figure is trying to fix and underlying health concern, but the things that are being sold as healthy are the very things that are making them sick.

I am a consumer of the western diet. I try to eat healthy, but I often feel like I’m walking in a minefield of nutritional guidelines. Nutritionists and food moguls alike have used media to sell me ideas that oppose and contrast even themselves, and its frustrating to want to be healthy but not really know how. The more I focus on getting all the correct nutrients, the worse I feel. That frustration and paradox is what I wanted to recreate in this art piece. I was also inspired by Danah Boyds exploration of identity creation shaped by media. I think a really interesting facet of how we understand society through media is based on what corporations tell us through their advertising. Food companies sell “healthy” nutrients through advertising. In the same way that the teens Boyd studied wanted to put their best foot forward and control impressions online, food conglomerates respond to the media-inspired obsession with nutrients by obsessively adding or augmenting whatever nutrient scientists are recommending in the current social atmosphere. It’s not something we think about very much, but our western diet is strongly influenced by the media of processed food giants that do nothing to actually alleviate any of the concerns nutritionists share over the dangers of the western diet.

[val-kay-rie]

Lucky (Loki x Reader)

Summary: The God of Mischief is to reside with the Avengers for the time being, only to discover something familiar written along the back of your neck.

Warnings: I think like one swear word?

Word Count: 2,450

A/N: Hey, whaddup! This is my first work on this blog, so feedback is always welcomed! I apologize in advance for the lack of a "read more" separator thing and any typos or errors. This entire thing was written on the mobile editor so blame the phone, not me! Hope you enjoy!

Based upon a random Soulmate AU I thought up, in which the birth place of someone's destined significant other is tattooed on the back of one's neck.

"What the hell is a Jotunheim?" Tony asked, reading off your neck as you tinkered away.

"Wish I knew, Stark," you said, having grown accustomed to people wondering about the odd place that was so elegantly written on your skin.

Most people when they're born have destinations like Denver, San Diego or New York City marked upon their skin. Some people you've met even got international places like London, Tokoyo or Dubai. Not you, though. Instead, you got the weird, mythical place called Jotunheim.

Ever since you could remember, people asked about it, causing you to do some research on it once you were old enough to truly grasp the concept. Months and months of searching for the foreign location and all you had found was some mythological realm of ice and snow. After finding absolutely nothing that dealt with your actual planet, you decided that maybe your soulmate wasn't coming after all.

That was years ago. Now, you had recently landed yourself a job at Stark Industries as his lab assistant. Needless to say it took less than a week for him to come in all banged up in his suit. You were currently repairing his helmet while Tony stood a few feet away as he worked on repairing the actual suit. The billionaire asked you, "You haven't looked into it?"

"Oh, I have. But after finding nothing but a bunch of make believe worlds, I decided to just forget about it," you honestly replied. Typically you wore your hair down to cover it up and allow the rest of the world to forget about it as well, but doing lab work with long hair didn't exactly work out for you. This resulted in you tossing your hair up into a bun, leaving your neck exposed to whoever was in the lab with you. Thankfully that only consisted of Tony, and occasionally Pepper, both of which you knew you could trust.

"Helmet´s fixed," you announced, putting it on yourself for good measure.

Tony turned to you and laughed at the sight. He joked, "Wow, what would I do without you?"

It has been years since you were first hired, and life has changed drastically since then. Fighting off a villain with a robot army that highly resembled Tony's tech, hearing news that a super soldier from the 40s lived after being frozen for decades, and protecting yourself during an alien invasion aren't exactly things you thought you'd experience in your lifetime.

Yet the universe always had a way of surprising you.

Today, for instance, Thor had randomly dropped in with his brother Loki, saying that the both of them would need to stay at the tower for awhile as part of Loki's punishment for the chaos he's caused.

"So the King of Asgard, your father, bannished brother dearest and sent him to Earth?" Tony asked, trying to get the facts straight as the Avengers and their unexpected guests ate at dinner. After receiving a nod of confirmation from Thor, Tony asked, "Why?"

Thor swallowed a mouthful of his food before answering, "He has hopes that it'll change Loki's behavior, just as it changed mine when I was sent here years ago."

"Okay, but why Earth? Why send him back to the place of the crime?" Clint voiced, the man in question clearly growing uncomfortable as he sensed where the conversation was going.

"Show them, brother," Thor said in an encouraging tone.

Loki exhaled, for he had dreaded this moment since he arrived. Knowing that everyone would soon find out, he decided there was no point in delaying the inevitable and proceeded with his brother's wish. Loki placed his utensils down on the table and turned around in his seat before moving all of his hair to one shoulder. It left his neck exposed over the dark green tunic like top he wore, and the entire table was able to read the single word printed on his pale skin: Midgard.

"Midgard?" Steve asked, knowing it sounded familiar, but couldn't remember why.

"Earth. It means Earth," Bruce quickly responded, making eye contact with you as he did so.

Dr. Banner practically lived in Tony's lab after The Battle of New York - or The Incident as the tabloids liked to call it - so it was only natural that he knew about the strange birth place on your neck. He even helped you try to learn more about it after Thor took Loki and the Tesseract back to Asgard, but after finding zero cases of love across the realms, you deemed it as a lost cause once again.

Now, though, all you wanted was to excuse yourself from the table and pick up where you left off in your research. The mischevious god sitting across from you, someone you know to be born in Asgard, had suddenly given you hope that perhaps your soulmate was out there after all.

You were brought out of your thoughts as Thor began speaking again, "Father doesn't know of it, but mother discovered it and persuaded the Allfather to send Loki here, in hopes he may find his soulmate, as you call it."

"It's not common for anyone outside of Midgard to have a birth place across their neck," Loki stated as he turned back around to face everyone, "When mother found it and discovered its true meaning, she was all too eager to find a reason to cast me here."

"Well, good luck finding the poor soul with Asgard written on the back of their neck," Tony said after taking a sip of his drink.

Loki scoffed and muttered, "Right.. Asgard."

You noted the odd reaction, but remained silent as you knew he had family issues and you thought it best not to touch on that subject.

One by one, each seated member excused themself from the table to carry on with their day. You were one of the first, as you were eager to rush to the lab and begin on your old research. Upon arriving, you threw your hair up into it's usually mess of a bun and got to work.

Nearly half an hour later, you let out a deep sigh as you took a break from reading over your past notes. Nothing you had found then proved beneficial to your situation and it still didn't prove to be beneficial even after your discovery at dinner. You decided you needed a break, but weren't exactly granted that as the elevator dinged and you were met with the sight of the two Asgardians.

"Hello boys," you greeted, covering up any evidence of what you were previously working on. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"My brother requires some assistance," Thor replied, nudging Loki closer in a slightly aggressive manner.

Loki rolled his eyes and said, "Yes, thank you Thor."

You held back a laugh as Thor scanned the room and asked, "Where is Stark and Banner?"

"They went to give their opinion on some new technology SHIELD is developing, but I'm sure I can manage to assist your brother on my own," you politely informed him.

Thor seemed satisfied with your answer and said, "Excellent! I told Captain Rogers I would spar lightly with him, so I should be off. Behave yourself, brother."

With another eye roll from Loki, Thor left the room, leaving you completely alone with the God of Mischief. You carefully eyed him up and down, taking in the few chips in his armour he now wore as opposed to the tunic at dinner, before asking, "What do you need?"

"My armor was slightly damaged upon arriving here. It's nothing of dire need, Thor simply just wished for me to interact with others," Loki commented, not a drop of enthusiasm dripping from his tone.

"Surely you could've handled it own your own?" you inquired, knowing the trickster god had some sort of knack for magic.

Loki shook his head before informing you, "Before, yes. But the Allfather put a few restrictions on my powers while I am to live here, one of them being no personal uses of magic."

"Well that's highly unfortunate," you stated, Loki only nodding in agreement. You turned to retrieve a few supplies you would need to repair his armor as you instructed, "Take the chest piece off."

Loki did as you said, leaving him in his tunic once again, as he watched your retreating figure walking towards another section of the lab. Out of curiosity, he attempted to read the one hint every Midgardian is given about their soulmate, the task proving slightly harder as you continued to walk away. His breath nearly hitched when he was finally able to make out the word along the back of your neck: Jotunheim.

The god couldn't help but stare as his mind raced. There you were, his so-called soulmate, and you didn't have the slightest clue. He almost pitied you, for he couldn't imagine how confused your life must have been, nor could he imagine how disappointed you'll likely be when realizing you've been waiting your entire life for someone like him.

You turned around and began walking back towards him with different materials in hand as Loki thought about how to tell you, if he should tell you, that you were destined for each other.

As you approached him, you placed the materials you had gathered on a nearby table. Loki handed you his chest piece and cautiously asked, "Jotunheim?"

You froze, then quickly snatched the armor out of his grasp. By instinct, your free hand went to rub at your neck as you silently cursed at yourself for being so careless. The lab was such a comfortable place for you, and hardly anyone really visited, so you didn't think twice when you turned your back to the god in front of you.

"Dammit," you finally whispered. You let out a heavy breath before admitting, "Yeah.. Jotunheim, the realm of ice and snow and frost giants."

Loki took in the mockery laced within your words as he carefully dared to dig deeper, "You've looked into it then?"

"Of course I've looked into it," you told him, placing the metal chest piece on the table before rhetorically asking, "How could I not? Especially after you and Thor came down and proved Asgard existed, who's to say Jotunheim didn't?"

"I can assure you, it exists," Loki informed you, an underlying tone to his voice that you couldn't quite distinguish.

You shook your head as you sat down on a lab stool, a bitter chuckle escaping your lips as you spoke, "You know sometimes exactly what you wanna hear, isn't exactly what you wanna hear."

Loki took a seat as well in the lab stool across from you as he carefully asked, "You know of the frost giants then?"

You nodded and replied, "Yeah, which only brings about another unanswered question: how am I supposed to have a soul mate that I can't even touch without worrying about getting frostbite?"

Loki nearly grimaced, but kept his outward composure. The next few moments were held in silence as he thought on how to approach the subject with you, before deciding to just let it out. He started, "Shortly after I was born, Thor's father Odin had just ended a war and agreed upon a treaty with a.. certain realm."

"I don't see how this relates--"

"Just, let me finish," Loki said, he continued after you had fallen into silence, "Odin had just ended a war and agreed upon a treaty with the realm from which I am actually from."

"I thought you were from Asgard?" You interrupted, curious despite the fact you had no idea where he was going with this. After you had recieved a short look from Loki, you apologized, "Sorry, continue."

"Odin had stumbled upon a temple in the aftermath of the war, in which where he found me as an abandoned baby that was left to die, no more than a few months old," Loki told you, standing from his seat and taking a few steps towards you.

You grew more curious and slightly wary as he approached you, but you pressed on, "Where are you from then?"

Instead of giving you a verbal answer, Loki only stuck his hand out towards you. You looked at his hand before glancing up at him in confusion. Loki nearly cracked a smile at the amount of perplexity that swam around in your pupils. The eye contact between the two of you was held until you glanced back down at his hand. For some unknown reason, you felt the need to do as he wished, and therefore reached out to touch his hand.

As soon as you had made contact with his skin, you retracted your hand and stood from your seat in complete shock. His hand was ice cold.

"I-I don't understand," you stuttered out, daring to lock eyes with him again. Loki raised his eyebrows down at you, giving you a knowing look that was enough of a push for you to voice your suspicions, "Jotunheim?"

"Afraid so," he confirmed.

You couldn't quite process the information you had just received. All those years of seemingly meaningless research, just to have your soulmate appear in the building where you happen to work and live in.

Your soulmate, Loki, the God of Mischief and Lies.

Loki could sense your mind racing as he elaborated, "Odin took me to Asgard and raised me as one of his own. It wasn't until a few years ago that even I was informed on my true parentage."

"Wow," you breathed out, completely at a loss for words.

"I know it's a lot to take in--"

"Yeah, no kidding," you cut him off, still trying to wrap your head around the fact that you were meant to spend the rest of your life with an actual god.

You glanced up at him and really took in his features for the first time since meeting him. He clearly wasn't a sight for sore eyes, and he had yet to give you a reason to dislike him since arriving at the tower. Perhaps a lifetime with him wouldn't be so bad after all.

You couldn't help but laugh at your own thoughts and informed Loki, "You know, the others won't take this very well."

"No, I imagine not, nor will the Allfather," he said, nearly tempted to laugh himself.

Your laughter continued as thoughts reeled into your brain at a mile a minute. Loki only smirked at you as he allowed you to get your mind straight before engaging an any serious conversation with you as to what your future may hold. You told him, "Hey, just because we're soul mates and all doesn't mean I automatically trust you. You still have to earn that, you know."

"I know," he honestly responded, "I'd think you a fool if you had thought otherwise."

"Yeah, well lucky for you, I am no fool," you said to him.

"Oh yes," Loki said, believing that the fates may have actually chosen well as you smiled up at him, "Lucky me."

masterlist | thanks for reading!

[orbemnews]

What Would It Take to Vaccinate the World Against Covid? In delivering vaccines, pharmaceutical companies aided by monumental government investments have given humanity a miraculous shot at liberation from the worst pandemic in a century. But wealthy countries have captured an overwhelming share of the benefit. Only 0.3 percent of the vaccine doses administered globally have been given in the 29 poorest countries, home to about 9 percent of the world’s population. Vaccine manufacturers assert that a fix is already at hand as they aggressively expand production lines and contract with counterparts around the world to yield billions of additional doses. Each month, 400 million to 500 million doses of the vaccines from Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson are now being produced, according to an American official with knowledge of global supply. But the world is nowhere close to having enough. About 11 billion shots are needed to vaccinate 70 percent of the world’s population, the rough threshold needed for herd immunity, researchers at Duke University estimate. Yet, so far, only a small fraction of that has been produced. While global production is difficult to measure, the analytics firm Airfinity estimates the total so far at 1.7 billion doses. The problem is that many raw materials and key equipment remain in short supply. And the global need for vaccines might prove far greater than currently estimated, given that the coronavirus presents a moving target: If dangerous new variants emerge, requiring booster shots and reformulated vaccines, demand could dramatically increase, intensifying the imperative for every country to lock up supply for its own people. The only way around the zero-sum competition for doses is to greatly expand the global supply of vaccines. On that point, nearly everyone agrees. But what is the fastest way to make that happen? On that question, divisions remain stark, undermining collective efforts to end the pandemic. Some health experts argue that the only way to avert catastrophe is to force drug giants to relax their grip on their secrets and enlist many more manufacturers in making vaccines. In place of the existing arrangement — in which drug companies set up partnerships on their terms, while setting the prices of their vaccines — world leaders could compel or persuade the industry to cooperate with more companies to yield additional doses at rates affordable to poor countries. Those advocating such intervention have focused on two primary approaches: waiving patents to allow many more manufacturers to copy existing vaccines, and requiring the pharmaceutical companies to transfer their technology — that is, help other manufacturers learn to replicate their products. The World Trade Organization — the de facto referee in international trade disputes — is the venue for negotiations on how to proceed. But the institution operates by consensus, and so far, there is none. The Biden administration recently joined more than 100 countries in asking the W.T.O. to partially set aside vaccine patents. But the European Union has signaled its intent to oppose waivers and support only voluntary tech transfers, essentially taking the same position as the pharmaceutical industry, whose aggressive lobbying has heavily shaped the rules in its favor. Some experts warn that revoking intellectual property rules could disrupt the industry, slowing its efforts to deliver vaccines — like reorganizing the fire department amid an inferno. “We need them to scale up and deliver,” said Simon J. Evenett, an expert on trade and economic development at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland. “We have this huge production ramp up. Nothing should get in the way to threaten it.” Others counter that trusting the pharmaceutical industry to provide the world with vaccines helped create the current chasm between vaccine haves and have-nots. The world should not put poorer countries “in this position of essentially having to go begging, or waiting for donations of small amounts of vaccine,” said Dr. Chris Beyrer, senior scientific liaison to the Covid-19 Prevention Network. “The model of charity is, I think, an unacceptable model.” In this fractious atmosphere, the W.T.O.’s leaders are crafting their proceedings less as a push to formally change the rules than as a negotiation that will persuade national governments and the global pharmaceutical industry to agree on a unified plan — ideally in the next few months. The Europeans are banking on the notion that the vaccine makers, fearing patent waivers, will eventually agree to the transfers, especially if the world’s richest countries throw money their way to make sharing know-how more palatable. Many public health experts say that patent waivers will have no meaningful effect unless vaccine makers also share their manufacturing methods. Waivers are akin to publishing a complex recipe; tech transfer is like sending a master chef to someone’s kitchen to teach them how to cook the dish. “If you’re to manufacture vaccines, you need several things to work at the same time,” the W.T.O. director-general, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, told journalists recently. “If there is no transfer of technology, it won’t work.” Even with waivers, technology transfers and expanded access to raw materials, experts say it would take about six months for more drug makers to start churning out vaccines. The only short-term fix, they and European leaders say, is for wealthy countries — especially the United States — to donate and export more of their stock to the rest of the world. The European Union allowed the export of hundreds of millions of doses, as many as it kept at home, while the United States held fast to its supply. But boosting donations and exports entails risk. India shipped out more than 60 million doses this year, including donations, before halting vaccine exports a month ago. Now, as a wave of death ravages the largely unvaccinated Indian population, the government is drawing fire at home for having let go of doses. The details of any plan to boost vaccinations worldwide may matter less than revamping the incentives that have produced the status quo. Wealthy countries, especially in the West, have monopolized most of the supply of vaccines not through happenstance, but as a result of economic and political realities. Companies like Pfizer and Moderna have logged billions of dollars in revenue by selling most of their doses to deep-pocketed governments in North America and Europe. The deals left too few doses available for Covax, a multilateral partnership created to funnel vaccines to low- and middle-income nations at relatively low prices. While the partnership has been hampered by multiple problems — most recently India’s blocking exports amid its own crisis — the snapping up of doses by rich countries was a crucial blow. “We as high-income countries made sure the market was lopsided,” said Mark Eccleston-Turner, an expert on international law and infectious diseases at Keele University in England. “The fundamental problem is that the system is broken, but it’s broken in our favor.” Changing that calculus may depend on persuading wealthy countries that allowing the pandemic to rage on in much of the world poses universal risks by allowing variants to take hold, forcing the world into an endless cycle of pharmaceutical catch-up. “It needs to be global leaders functioning as a unit, to say that vaccine is a form of global security,” said Dr. Rebecca Weintraub, a global health expert at Harvard Medical School. She suggested that the G7, the group of leading economies, could lead such a campaign and finance it when the members convene in England next month. The argument over Covid vaccines harkens back to the debate over access to antiretroviral drugs for H.I.V. in the 1990s. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first powerful H.I.V. drug therapy in 1995, resulting in a plunge in deaths in the United States and Europe, where people could afford the therapy. But deaths in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia continued to climb. In 2001, the W.T.O. ruled that countries could allow local companies to break patents for domestic use given an urgent need. The ruling is still in place. But without technology transfers, few local drug makers would be able to quickly replicate vaccines. In 2003, the W.T.O. took a crucial further step for H.I.V. drugs, waiving patents and allowing low-income countries to import generic versions manufactured in Thailand, South Africa and India, helping contain the epidemic. With Covid, the request for a patent waiver has come from the South African and Indian governments, which are seeking to engineer a repeat of that history. In opposing the initiative, the pharmaceutical industry has reprised the argument it made decades ago: Any weakening of intellectual property, or I.P., protection discourages the investment that yields lifesaving innovation. “The only reason why we have vaccines right now was because there was a vibrant private sector,” said Dr. Albert Bourla, chief executive of Pfizer, speaking in a recent interview. “The vibrancy of the private sector, the lifeblood, is the I.P. protection.” But in producing vaccines, the private sector harnessed research financed by taxpayers in the United States, Germany and other wealthy nations. Pfizer expects to sell $26 billion worth of Covid vaccines this year; Moderna forecasts that its sales of Covid vaccines will exceed $19 billion for 2021. History also challenges industry claims that blanket global patent rights are a requirement for the creation of new medicines. Until the mid-1990s, drug makers could patent their products only in the wealthiest markets, while negotiating licenses that allowed companies in other parts of the world to make generic versions. Even in that era, drug companies continued to innovate. And they continued to prosper even with the later waivers on H.I.V. drugs. “At the time, it rattled a lot of people, like ‘How could you do that? It’s going to destroy the pharmaceutical industry,’” recalled Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser for the pandemic. “It didn’t destroy them at all. They continue to make billions of dollars.” Leaders in the wealthiest Western nations have endorsed more equitable distribution of vaccines for this latest scourge. But the imperative to ensure ample supplies for their own nations has won out as the virus killed hundreds of thousands of their own people, devastated economies, and sowed despair. The drug companies have also promised more support for poorer nations. AstraZeneca’s vaccine has been the primary supply for Covax, and the company says it has sold its doses at a nonprofit price. In January, Pfizer announced that it was joining Covax, agreeing to contribute 40 million doses at a not-for-profit price. So far only 1.25 million of those doses have been shipped out, less than what Pfizer produces in a single day. Whether the world possesses enough underused and suitable factories to quickly boost supply and bridge the inequities is a fiercely debated question. During a vaccine summit convened by the W.T.O. last month, the body heard testimony that manufacturers in Pakistan, Bangladesh, South Africa, Senegal and Indonesia all have capacity that could be quickly deployed to produce Covid vaccines. One Canadian company, Biolyse Pharma, which focuses on cancer drugs, has already agreed to supply 15 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine to Bolivia — if it gains legal permission and technological know-how from Johnson & Johnson. But even major companies like AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson have stumbled, falling short of production targets. And producing the new class of mRNA vaccines, like those from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, is complicated. Where pharmaceutical companies have struck deals with partners, the pace of production has frequently disappointed. “Even with voluntary licensing and technology transfer, it’s not easy to make complex vaccines,” said Dr. Krishna Udayakumar, director of the Duke Global Health Innovation Center. Much of the global capacity for vaccine manufacturing is already being used to produce other lifesaving inoculations, he added. But other health experts accuse major pharmaceutical companies of exaggerating the manufacturing challenges to protect their monopoly power, and implying that developing countries lack the acumen to master sophisticated techniques is “an offensive and a racist notion,” said Matthew Kavanagh, director of the Global Health Policy and Politics Initiative at Georgetown University. With no clear path forward, Ms. Okonjo-Iweala, the W.T.O. director-general, expressed hope that the Indian and South African patent-waiver proposal can be a starting point for dialogue. “I believe we can come to a pragmatic outcome,” she said. “The disparity is just too much.” Peter S. Goodman reported from London, Apoorva Mandavilli from New York, Rebecca Robbins from Bellingham, Wash., and Matina Stevis-Gridneff from Brussels. Noah Weiland contributed reporting from New York. Source link Orbem News #Covid #Vaccinate #World

[nelliievance]

Review of Sacred Cow: The Case for (Better) Meat

The full title is Sacred Cow: The Case for (Better) Meat: Why Well-Raised Meat Is Good for You and Good for the Planet by Diana Rodgers and Rob Wolf. The book looks into the ethical and religious, environmental, and nutritional aspects of eating meat, as well as not eating ultra-processed junk. They argue, quite compellingly, that we are being sold an oversimplified narrative that the only approach to improve our health, cause the least harm to all beings (human and animal), and save the planet, is to eat a vegan diet. If you can’t go that far, at least eat as little meat as possible, especially red meat. The truth is, to put it mildly, more nuanced than that. They obviously did a lot of work researching this, and their writing is superb. I could not recommend the book more highly, regardless of what your current views are on this. Remember, they are paleo diet advocates, and I lean more towards whole-foods plant-based. But I pretty much agree with everything in the book on ethical/religious and environmental issues, I had some nits to pick with them about nutrition, which we’ll get to below. But that’s kind of the point. If we find common ground on the ethical/religious and environmental issues, only then is it possible to have a rational discussion about nutrition.

I’ve touched upon this in the past, and the main point was that the ethical/religious and environmental arguments make the discussion much more contentious, so opposing groups will not listen to each other and look for common ground or compromise. I mentioned back then that we could defuse this by using the term “reduceitarian” (as in the book of the same name by Brian Kateman) instead of “vegan”, and that everyone could do their part to address the “less harm” and environmental issues by not eating junk, and reducing their consumption of animal products. I also pointed that the paleo diet is already reduceitarian by limiting dairy.

I think Diana and Rob might agree that’s a step in the right direction, except they don’t think the focus should be on meat consumption, but instead on replacing modern industrial agriculture, both plant and animal, with a more sustainable version. They definitely sold me on that point. I was especially fascinated learning about the environmental aspects, To me, feeding the world as nutritiously as possible, while doing the least harm, is an optimization problem. That’s in my “wheelhouse” because I used to write software for mechanical engineers to optimize their designs.

Up till now, I had read widely, and with an open mind, on the nutritional aspects of various diets (like whole-food plant based, the paleo diet, and low-carb). But I hadn’t investigated the ethical and environmental aspects deeply enough. I had bought claims like the standard statistic, “meat production causes more greenhouse gas emissions than transportation”. I think in the back of my mind I wondered if it was exaggerated, but I never dug deeper. That’s why this book was such an eye-opener.

Giant fields of commodity crops like soybeans, wheat, potatoes, and corn are unsustainably farmed just to make junk food. That does a lot of harm, to bees and animals in the fields being sprayed, as well as to the environment. So who is doing the least harm, a “junk food” vegan, simply because they abstained from meat, or someone who avoids junk and gets their plant food and meat from from sustainable and humane sources?

Of course these are not the only two choices. There are plenty of vegans who also don’t eat junk food and sustainably source their food. But I’m afraid the message is slipping into the mainstream consciousness that you can save the planet by eating your crappy diet as long as you substitute an Impossible Whopper for your meat Whopper to go with your fries and soda.

And what’s often left out of the picture is that a lot of environmental harm is done from unsustainable farming practices of some plant crops. Rice is a major contributor to greenhouse emissions. The authors give evidence that “riceless Fridays” might actually be more beneficial than “meatless Mondays”.

The authors describe some examples of extremist, and rude, actions by vegans, which I was sorry to hear about. All the vegans I know personally are nice and gentle people who do not judge others for their food choices. To be fair, I need to point out that vegetarians and vegans often face questioning and sometimes contempt for their choices. I know I did when I was a vegetarian back in my youth, even though I was never trying to proselytize or “convert” anybody. This is yet more evidence of the “religious-war”-like nature of this issue, which I’d like to see taken down a few notches by both sides.

Bottom line: These are examples of how the issue is more nuanced that “meat bad, plants good”. What I totally agree upon is that if we want to do the least harm to our fellow creatures and the environment, the focus needs to be shifted to sustainable agriculture of both plants and animals. It is “factory farming”, or modern industrial agriculture, that is the main problem. The authors take it further and teach us about “regenerative” farming which actually improves the ecosystem, and show that humane integration of animals into a combined farming system helps make it regenerative. A great way to learn more about this is on the website “a greener world“, which has certifications like “animal welfare approved” and “regenerative” approved”. I would love to see that take off, much like free range certification for eggs or fair trade certification for coffee and chocolate. Diana is on the board of their animal welfare approved branch.

https://agreenerworld.org/certifications/

You can get more of the details by reading the book, or read on and I’ll give you my take. I’m going to discuss the issues in this order: ethical/religious, then environmental, then nutrition. This is actually the reverse of the order in the book. But as I said, only after the first two issues are addressed can we talk about the health effects of animal products rationally, and carefully listen to each others views.

Ethical/Religious:

I (and the authors) respect the views of those who avoid meat and other animal products for religious regions or humane reasons. For example Buddhists want to reduce the suffering for all beings. Or people may have seen documentaries showing cruelty to animals in the farming industry. This leads many to become vegan or at least reduce their meat consumption. There is a lot of cruelty in modern industrial animal agriculture. That is why I’ve support the Humane Farming Association (and will now add Diana’s Animal Welfare Approved to my list): A lot of this can be minimized by more sustainable farming practices.

The authors show that modern industrial farming of plants also causes a lot of suffering, and give a strong argument that sustainable animal farming (or sustained farming of a combination of plants and animals) can actually lead to less overall suffering, especially if you include the welfare of wild animals. For example, current practice is to grow giant “monocrops” like soybeans or corn. Just plowing the field kills animals, The heavy use of pesticides and herbicides like roundup is killing off bees needed for pollinating.

My wife and I are enthusiastic fans of a show on RFDTV called “FarmHer”. It chronicles the contributions of women in the farming community across the US, including farms with animals. From the many first hand accounts, it is clear that many women and men in the farming community believe passionately in sustainable farming and care deeply about the welfare of their animals. So does Diana, as is clear from stories from her farm in the book.

But couldn’t you take the further step of better faming practices and abstaining from meat to do even less harm? It depends on what you’re substituting for your meat, tofu from sustainably raised soybeans may be a good step, tofu from soybeans conventionally farmed may not be, because it may be avoiding harm to farmed animals, but causing harm to wild animals. An Impossible burger, made from a variety of conventionally farmed ingredients, is even less likely to be a step in the right direction.

Environmental:

Let’s start with one of the biggest misconceptions that’s become something “everybody knows”: animal agriculture, especially beef production, causes more greenhouse emissions than the entire transportation sector. It turns out the calculations on which this statistic is based are inaccurate. The authors meticulously chased the numbers for the claim about greenhouse emissions from beef production. For the details I’ll leave you to read the book because it is complicated to explain. But here is one tidbit illustrating the bottom line: the Epa estimates the contribution of all livestock in the US is 4% (only half that from beef), vs. 28% for transportation. Transportation actually contributes 7 times the amount of livestock! Compare that to the exaggeration being bandied about that agricultural livestock contribute more than transportation.

Pronghorn antelopes, fantastic endurance athletes. They can run for an hour as fast as a human can sprint.

Here’s another fascinating point that is overlooked in this discussion. You might be thinking, “wait a minute, what about all the methane from those cow farts?” First of all, ruminants, like cows, apparently belch methane, not fart it. But we currently have 94 million cows in the US. In 1850, there were well over a hundred million total ruminants on the great plains, and sadly a great many are gone now. These included bison, elk, caribou, deer, and pronghorn antelopes. Their methane emissions added up to about 82% of the current methane emissions from cows. But the world’s methane emissions have gone up by about 2 and a half times (250%) since 1850. I don’t think we can blame that on the cows.

Returning to the optimization problem, of providing the most nutritious food while doing the least harm to the planet, I’d always thought some animals fit in the mix. A lot of the traditional healthy “Blue Zones” communities herd goats or sheep on marginal land not suited for growing crops. There are a lot of cows grazing on our hillsides in California. I never thought they were the issue, it was the feedlots where you see (and smell) the cows crammed together when you’re driving south on Interstate 5. I first heard the marginal land argument, specifically using the example of sheep herding in New Zealand, from Dr. Grant Schofield and his colleagues in the book What the Fat?.

But the authors go further than this. They show the role animals, especially cattle, play in regenerative practices, which actually restore the soil and improve the local ecosystem. They contrast this with conventional practices that they refer to as extractive (I’ve also heard them called mining the soil). A lot more plants and animals exist in the healthy ecosystem of a regenerative farm, vs a conventional one:

The authors powerfully argue that regenerative farming that raises animals and plants sustainably causes less environmental harm than industrial agriculture farming of plants. Practices include rotating fields with plant crops and animals. The fallow field (with last year’s remaining harvest, or planted with a cover crop, is grazed on by the animals, who of course provide free fertilizer. The details are fascinating and encouraging. Another way animals can contribute is by fertilizing hillsides they graze on which otherwise can get depleted by runoff. I can attest to this mechanism, since I hike in open spaces where cattle grazing is permitted. There’s plenty of cow fertilizer. It’s a very good incentive to be mindful when you walk!

Definitely sustainable combined plant/animal farming is superior to conventional farming. What about sustainable plant farming? That’s superior to conventional also, but the authors make a case that the presence of the animals actually improves the situation.

Here’s one crucial calculation: Can we produce enough food if we switch from grain-fed beef to grass-fed? They proved the answer is yes. And if we really want to make sure there’ll be enough land to make plant and animal food, a major step nobody talks about is to stop wasting the large percentage of cropland used for commodity crops to make junk foods. Grow something useful on it.

There is one other important misconception that needs to be addressed. That is the claim that it takes a lot more land to provide the same nutrition if its by raising beef rather than a plant crop. The authors investigate the claim and show the calculations are misleading. The thinking goes like this: “what if you grow corn, and eat it, vs. growing the corn, feeding it to a cow, and instead eat the meat from the cow”. This makes it seem like you’d need a lot less land if you just ate the corn. But even with conventional farming, only a small fraction of the food that a cow raised for beef eats in its lifetime comes from food directly grown for it (feed crops). It spends the majority of its life on pastureland, then the last few months in a feedlot. Even in the feedlot a good percentage of the “grain” it’s fed is not from feed crops like corn but from agricultural waste. Second, you have to compare the nutrients from the beef vs. the corn. To match the protein and micronutrients, you’d have to supplement the corn with other plant foods.

This calculation is important to me because I’ve had that misconception in my mind for over 50 years! When I was 18 I read the book Diet For a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappe. She showed how we can get high quality protein (the right blend of essential amino acids) by combining different plant foods, and that this has been done for centuries in traditional cultures (rice and tofu, tortillas and beans, etc.). This major contribution of her book has stood the test of time. But the title of the book comes from calculating how many acres it takes to grow the same amount of protein from animal protein vs. plants such as soybeans. For beef she estimated it would take over 10 times as much. But this calculations suffers the same inaccuracies as shown in the previous paragraph.

Nutritional

Summary:

Overall I consider the overlaps between the authors’ recommendations and those I believe are healthy, such as eating no junk and lots of healthy plant foods, to be vital, The main point of contention is over how much meat should be in a healthy diet. I readily concede is not zero, it is a number as high as 15%. The authors argue for a somewhat higher figure, and I’ll discuss the evidence below.

They make a very good point that nutrition needs vary at different stages of life, children vs adults, vs. aging adults. I totally agree and feel there is an especially important distinction between those in a growth stage vs aging (I am becoming experienced at the latter…)

The authors concede you can be healthy on a vegan diet but only if you know what you are doing, You have to supplement missing nutrients like B12 and omega3. And you can get enough protein but need to be careful to do so. I discussed protein combining above. Some vegan authors say you’ll get plenty of protein as long as you eat a variety of healthy foods. It depends on what you mean by plenty, as we’ll see below. I personally feel you need to at least audit your diet once in a while to assure adequate protein, and consider using concentrated sources like tofu or tempeh. The authors give some sad examples of children raised by vegan parents who didn’t know enough about nutrition.

The authors also argue that the evidence for the health consequences of meat eating are not as solid as presented in guidelines. This is a crucial point. If you concede, as I do, that some meat can belong to a healthy diet, the question becomes how much. Making an analogy with drugs, we want the optimal dose but minimal side effects. So it’s important if the evidence for “side effects” is solid or exaggerated.

They specifically cover protein, and argue that the guidelines may be adequate to avoid deficiencies, but not to thrive. I agree with that. The current guidelines are for about 10% calories from protein. I’ve discussed previously why that is too low, and came up with an estimate of about 12%. The authors argue for 20%, which is still way below estimates I’ve found for the safe upper limit of protein. I’m not going to squabble about 12 vs 20. My only comment is that they assume the entire 20% has to come from meat. Why not some from meat and some from healthy plant sources (mushrooms, lentils, etc.)? This is important because there are health and longevity concerns over excess animal proteins in the diet (details below).

Details:

Let me review some background on where I come from on nutrition before I delve into how it largely overlaps, but somewhat contrasts, with the authors. I’m mostly a WFPB guy. The authors are more paleo (but having read Robb’s book Wired to Eat. he is more flexible in his interpretation of paleo, as I am of WFPB). The term “whole food plant based” (WFPB) was coined to distinguish from an unhealthy vegan diet. WFPB is, in a nutshell: no junk, a variety of healthy minimally processed plant foods, minimal dairy, and reduced meat (including fish). A healthy vegan diet is a subset of WFPB that has no animal foods. Unfortunately, “whole food plant based is quite a mouthful”. So the shorter “plant based” is now in vogue. But french fries and oreos are plant based! Leaving out the “whole foods” takes us full circle back to “junk food vegan”.

Now let me contrast WFPB with the Paleo diet, which I discussed previously here. Paleo is an attempt to follow a diet closer to what we evolved on, specifically before the onset of agriculture. It can be summarized as no junk, a variety of healthy minimally processed plant foods, minimal dairy, minimal grains. Previously this diet discouraged legumes also, but now they’re considered OK unless you’re intolerant.

Note that there is considerable overlap between the two diets. The contrast is mostly between limiting meat in WFPB, vs. grains in Paleo. And as to grains, grain intolerant people can certainly follow WFPB and use gluten-free grains or pseudo-grains instead like buckwheat or quinoa (which are both really seeds).

One thing has always amused me about the raging controversy between WFPB and Paleo. Lots of authors in both camps recommend 80/20 eating. Nobody’s perfect, so strive to follow the diet really strictly 80% of the time, and “let your hair down” 20%. So I could be really strict about limiting meat most of the time, but allow it 20% of the time. A paleo follower could be really strict about limiting grains most of the time, but allow them 20% of the time. We might end up eating almost exactly the same thing overall. We’d only disagree on when we thought we were being strict!

Meat is the more crucial contrast between the two diets, especially in connection with discussing this book. WFPB recommends lower amounts than paleo.

Ok, on to the details. I readily agree with the authors on all points above except 4 and 5. I refer you to the book for details of the discussion of points 2 and 3. So let’s go over 4 and 5.

First I agree with the authors in their discussion of the quality of evidence from nutritional studies. Animal studies provide important clues, but not proof. And “Correlation is not causation”: the authors give an amusing example of this. I’ll add my own. Coffee correlates with lung cancer. Does it cause it? Of course not. It turns out heavy smokers tend to be heavy coffee drinkers as well.

Health aspects (“side effects”) of meat

A lot of the discussion of meat hinges on whether saturated fats are healthy. I’ll concede the authors point that the science on this is not as settled as commonly thought. Here’s my take. A major conventional argument goes like this: the ldl (bad cholesterol) number below which Heart attacks are rare in traditional populations, including hunter-gatherers, with and ldl (bad cholesterol) of 70 or less. Ldl is well-known to go up when you add more saturated fat to your diet. End of story. Well, not quire…

The latest word is that what really matters is oxidized ldl. The likelihood of having oxidize ldl is reduced if you have a high ratio of good cholesterol (hdl) to triglycerides, in which case TC or even the amount of ldl may not matter. As an aside, note that the second author of the “ldl under 70” study is paleo diet proponent Dr. Loren Cordain, who believes it’s important for meat consumed to be lean because that better approximates the wild game consumed by hunter-gatherers. Ok, on to other health aspects.

There does seem to be a negative association between protein intake from animal sources and all-cause mortality [2], But remember correlation vs. causation, above. So more evidence is needed.

The authors show the recommendations to reduce red meat (especially processed versions) because it is carcinogenic are not as solid as we think. These are based on WHO guidelines for hazardous substances, which say red meat is carcinogenic, but not how strongly.

Other aspects include harmful substances like TMAO, which I discussed previously. They give references that question how strong the claim is that these are harmful. I chased these and contrasted them to my previous references, and frankly do not have the nutritional biochemistry background to tell who is right. So I’ll just leave it that this point is controversial.

But there remains a vital point that was not discussed. I mentioned the role of nutrition in different stages of life above. The are substances which are healthy and beneficial for a growing organism, but actually can become harmful (e.g. cancer-promoting) in excess for an aging organism. These include IGF-1 (“insulin-like growth factor 1”) and mTOR (“mammalian target of Rapamycin”). There he goes with the alphabet soup again. Sorry. There is a really good discussion of this in Dr. Valter Longo’s book The Longevity Diet. It’s a fascinating story and it has to do with the long history of researching diet and longevity, including caloric restriction. It turns out the beneficial part of caloric restriction for longevity has been traced to restriction of animal proteins. The evidence in humans is more correlational [1], except we do have the evidence that all of the longer-lived Blue Zone populations eat lower amounts of animal protein than the general population.

What’s the Safe Upper Limit For Meat in a Healthy Diet?

This is point 5 above. Right away, based on the Blue Zones populations, I’d concede the safe upper limit is at least 15%, The authors argue for more like 40%, so we have a bit of controversy here. Their discussion is very well reasoned and with good evidence. One issue I have is that they accept Dr. Cordain’s controversial number of 45%-65% of calories from animal foods being in the diet we evolved on. But since we’re looking for a safe upper limit, I’ll concede that at least some of the population may thrive on this higher level. Our tolerances vary, as shown in Eat To Live. There are known genetic variations, for example, in the gene that determines how much salivary amylase we have in our saliva. Those with less tolerate less starch but possibly more meat.

The other way the authors approach it is looking for the right amount of protein, and as we saw above they came up with 20%. Since lean beef, for example, is about 50% protein, that leads to about 40% animal products. Normal recommendations for protein are about 10%, I’ve discussed how children, athletes, and older adults might need more like 12%. The authors correctly point out the protein has a high satiety value so more of it might help prevent overeating. But they assume all of our protein intake has to be from meat. That is the main bone of contention (no pun intended). Especially for aging adults, there is the issue of the relation between animal protein and longevity discussed above. This concern could be addressed by getting some of your protein from plant sources.

I would add an argument in favor of higher total protein (plant plus animal) for aging adults however, and that is prevention of muscle loss (sarcopenia). In his book, Dr. Longo describes the centenarians he knew in the region of Italy he grew up in (sounds like another Blue Zone). They are healthy, but somewhat frail. He thinks adding some fish to their diet would help with this. The centenarians in China described in the book Longevity Village are healthy and robust. And they have a significant amount of fish in their diet. The point is not fish specifically, but adequate high quality protein.

On Longevity

One of the problems with looking for traditional populations with good longevity is they don’t often have access to good health care, and may have a higher incidence of child mortality. The average longevity of the population seems lower, but if you compared those who reach adulthood and don’t die of infectious disease, they be healthier and longer-lived than modern populations. That argument is made here.

The real issue is preventing the scourge of chronic diseases like heart disease, diabetes, and cancer that have been attributed to our poor modern diet. The next best thing to proving longevity is finding populations that are free of these diseases. In addition to the Blue Zones populations, these all tend to be subsistence farmers, like traditional people in Africa and rural China. They all ate a diet with no modern processed junk, and also happen to eat a diet lower in meat, because subsistence farmers tend to be poorer and not able to afford as much meat as richer people or modern populations. There is at least one healthy traditional population that are a combination of subsistence farmers and hunter gatherers, the Tsimane in Bolivia, but their diet also only gets 14% of its calories from animal products. Are there any healthy populations that eat a diet higher in meat?

The Masai come to mind for many people. They traditionally ate a diet high in meat and low in animal products, but absent of modern processed foods, and are cited as being free of heart disease, but the evidence is not conclusive. They do not have particularly high longevity, but that is why I put in the caveat above. They are certainly robust. If facing down lions with spears isn’t enough, David Rudisha proved to the world how robust they are, including at the Olympics in 2012. Here’s the evidence they are free from heart disease: A doctor visited them in 1972 and was permitted to perform autopsies on 50 deceased men. They showed signs of atherosclerosis and significant thickening of the coronary arteries “which equaled that of old U.S. men”. But there were “very few complicated lesions” and he speculated they may be “protected from their atherosclerosis by physical fitness which causes their coronary arteries to be capacious” [3]. As I’ve discussed previously, a heart attack is not caused by clogging with plaque like a pipe. It is more like a pimple bursting, then the clot forming. “No complicated lesions” might be a hint this was less likely, and having larger coronary arteries doesn’t hurt either. This is compelling, but not conclusive, evidence. The other population that is often claimed to be free of modern diseases on their traditional diet, high in animal foods, is the Inuit in the Arctic but that appears to be a myth [4].

There is an article here that discusses the longevity of hunter gatherers, but the only evidence it gives is the Tsimane, who as we saw do not eat a high meat diet.

I haven’t yet seen scientific proof of healthy populations, free of modern chronic disease, that eat a diet that gets more than 15% calories from meat. It may be out their and I’m not aware of it. Please tell me in the comment section if you’re aware of any.

Conclusion

My overall take away is: don’t eat junk, and support organizations that promote regenerative agriculture, and try to buy your food from sustainable sources (local doesn’t hurt either). That’s the best approach to causing the least harm. And eat the amount of meat you think is the most healthy for you. Not eating junk is the most important step, health-wise, as long as you make that, you’ll be far healthier than those eating the typical modern diet. And please don’t judge people whose food choices differ from yours.

I personally believe that at least for people in my age group (that is the cue for millennials to roll their eyes and say “OK, boomer”), replacing some of your animal protein with healthy plant sources might be a good option.

Finally, thanks Diana and Rob, for the tremendous work you did on this truly eye opening book.

References

Hristov, A, “Historic, pre-European settlement, and present-day contribution of wild ruminants to enteric methane emissions in the United States”, J Anim Sci. , 2012.

Song, M, et al, “Association of Animal and Plant Protein Intake With All-Cause and Cause-Specific Mortality,” JAMA Internal Medicine, 2016

[3]. Mann, G, , “Atherosclerosis in the Masai”, Amer J Epid, 1972.

Caterina, R, “n–3 Fatty Acids in Cardiovascular Disease”, NEJM, 2011.

Review of Sacred Cow: The Case for (Better) Meat published first on https://steroidsca.tumblr.com/

[easyfoodnetwork]

Are You Dining Out Again?

Lilia in Brooklyn | Gary He/Eater

From the Editor: Everything you missed in food news last week

This post originally appeared on July 18, 2020 in Amanda Kludt’s newsletter “From the Editor,” a roundup of the most vital news and stories in the food world each week. Read the archives and subscribe now.

Last Saturday night I had a beautiful dinner on the sidewalk outside a French bistro across the street from Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn. It had just rained, in one 20-minute-long torrential fit, after a hot, steamy day, and the night was finally cool. Rain glistened off the street. The park was lush and empty. We ate mussels and pate and good bread and talked about the best local wine stores with the server, who poured us a slightly funky and exceedingly delicious Greek rosé. A French family with three kids (including a baby) sat at a table inside a makeshift enclosure in the road at an hour when most American children would be in bed. As we were leaving, lightning bugs lit up the air around the diners.

It was the first time I felt a true hint at my old life in so many months. But what was the cost? While everything seemed as safe as possible — masks on everyone, distance between the tables, no overcrowding — I’m keenly aware that many restaurant workers in New York feel uncomfortable serving customers, even outside, in the middle of a pandemic where cases and deaths are still rising. The fears are even more pronounced in cities where indoor dining is permitted. Meanwhile, many notable industry voices, including my colleague Ryan Sutton, have said they don’t feel right dining out right now due to ethical concerns.

Given the trajectory of cases in New York and the low likelihood of catching or spreading the disease when outside and interacting with other people wearing masks, I feel okay about dining outside at restaurants with proper protocols in place. But it is wild to be in this position as a consumer, just as it is wild to be in this position as a restaurant owner and staffer, deciding whether to reopen or return to work. Everyone is grappling with their own compass of risk and morality.

Ethical quandaries aside, I do appreciate how the need for outdoor dining spaces across American cities has led to creative streetscapes. Biking around New York, you see makeshift and luxe new seating areas, some filled with plants, some with umbrellas, some with fun signage, all bracing for the next surprise summer downpour. I appreciate that this emergency has led to a removal of the red tape for restaurateurs who have been waiting on sidewalk seating permits for the better part of a decade. Some of these city streets look almost Parisien.

Of course, New York isn’t exactly Paris when it comes to al fresco dining. Our punishing summer heat, surprise rainstorms, and corners stinking with garbage — not to mention aggressive rodents — make for an often inhospitable and unpredictable dining environment. But it’s hard not to appreciate the resiliency and creativity I’ve seen around town.

Anyway, I’m curious: Are you eating out? On the fence? Firmly opposed? If you’ve been out, have you had any highlights? Let me know at amanda@eater.com.

On Eater

— Closures: Odessa and Bouley at Home in New York; K-Paul’s in New Orleans; Jules Maes Saloon in Seattle; Louis’ in San Francisco; and Bellecour in Minneapolis.

— Scaling back: Indoor dining and bars across all of California and (briefly) outside dining in Oakland and Berkeley; bars in Louisiana; troublingly, you can still dine indoors in much of Florida.

— Chicago is starting to shut down restaurants for breaking social-distancing rules.

— Jessica Koslow, owner of LA hipster phenom Sqirl, was called out for questionable food safety practices, including an unlicensed and poorly ventilated prep kitchen, selling moldy jam, and not properly crediting chefs for their contributions to the menu.

— Chef Rick Bayless left his two restaurants with longtime partner Manny Valdes, and chef Trigg Brown is temporarily stepping away from his Brooklyn restaurant Win Son.

— Foie gras is legal again in California, so long as it’s produced out of state.

— Politician Julian Castro on why he’s calling for a boycott of Goya products.

— The sale of Ample Hills ice cream just seems so sad.

Louiie Victa

Pastries and cheese breads at Take It Easy

— Miami announced a $35 million relief fund for independent restaurants.

— Police shut down Riot Ribs, a mutual aid kitchen in Portland that had fed protesters night and day for 12 days.

— Openings: Take It Easy, a Colombian breakfast spot in Vegas; Crushed by Giants, a brewery in Chicago; Over Under, a casual and cool takwaway spot in Miami; and Silver Apricot, a Chinese-American fine dining restaurant in New York. And LA chef Mei Lin will open a fried chicken joint next month.

— Here’s a fun any-occasion gift guide from our shopping newsletter, Add to Cart.

— Oh hey, we are hiring for a very exciting and fun job: Editor of Eater NY. Please tell all your friends.

Off Eater

A day in the life of an ice cream vendor in LA. [LAT]

How campus dining is going to have to fundamentally change this fall. [NYT]

Flouting open-container laws during COVID is a privilege that not everyone shares. [GS]

This is a lovely little Q&A with chef Jenny Dorsey, who runs the culinary nonprofit Studio ATAO. [Taste]

How modern-day bartenders in D.C. are looking to the city’s elite Black bartending club of the 1900s for inspiration. [Punch]

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/3eLr54t https://ift.tt/32ETSp0

Lilia in Brooklyn | Gary He/Eater

From the Editor: Everything you missed in food news last week

This post originally appeared on July 18, 2020 in Amanda Kludt’s newsletter “From the Editor,” a roundup of the most vital news and stories in the food world each week. Read the archives and subscribe now.

Last Saturday night I had a beautiful dinner on the sidewalk outside a French bistro across the street from Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn. It had just rained, in one 20-minute-long torrential fit, after a hot, steamy day, and the night was finally cool. Rain glistened off the street. The park was lush and empty. We ate mussels and pate and good bread and talked about the best local wine stores with the server, who poured us a slightly funky and exceedingly delicious Greek rosé. A French family with three kids (including a baby) sat at a table inside a makeshift enclosure in the road at an hour when most American children would be in bed. As we were leaving, lightning bugs lit up the air around the diners.

It was the first time I felt a true hint at my old life in so many months. But what was the cost? While everything seemed as safe as possible — masks on everyone, distance between the tables, no overcrowding — I’m keenly aware that many restaurant workers in New York feel uncomfortable serving customers, even outside, in the middle of a pandemic where cases and deaths are still rising. The fears are even more pronounced in cities where indoor dining is permitted. Meanwhile, many notable industry voices, including my colleague Ryan Sutton, have said they don’t feel right dining out right now due to ethical concerns.

Given the trajectory of cases in New York and the low likelihood of catching or spreading the disease when outside and interacting with other people wearing masks, I feel okay about dining outside at restaurants with proper protocols in place. But it is wild to be in this position as a consumer, just as it is wild to be in this position as a restaurant owner and staffer, deciding whether to reopen or return to work. Everyone is grappling with their own compass of risk and morality.

Ethical quandaries aside, I do appreciate how the need for outdoor dining spaces across American cities has led to creative streetscapes. Biking around New York, you see makeshift and luxe new seating areas, some filled with plants, some with umbrellas, some with fun signage, all bracing for the next surprise summer downpour. I appreciate that this emergency has led to a removal of the red tape for restaurateurs who have been waiting on sidewalk seating permits for the better part of a decade. Some of these city streets look almost Parisien.

Of course, New York isn’t exactly Paris when it comes to al fresco dining. Our punishing summer heat, surprise rainstorms, and corners stinking with garbage — not to mention aggressive rodents — make for an often inhospitable and unpredictable dining environment. But it’s hard not to appreciate the resiliency and creativity I’ve seen around town.

Anyway, I’m curious: Are you eating out? On the fence? Firmly opposed? If you’ve been out, have you had any highlights? Let me know at amanda@eater.com.

On Eater

— Closures: Odessa and Bouley at Home in New York; K-Paul’s in New Orleans; Jules Maes Saloon in Seattle; Louis’ in San Francisco; and Bellecour in Minneapolis.

— Scaling back: Indoor dining and bars across all of California and (briefly) outside dining in Oakland and Berkeley; bars in Louisiana; troublingly, you can still dine indoors in much of Florida.

— Chicago is starting to shut down restaurants for breaking social-distancing rules.

— Jessica Koslow, owner of LA hipster phenom Sqirl, was called out for questionable food safety practices, including an unlicensed and poorly ventilated prep kitchen, selling moldy jam, and not properly crediting chefs for their contributions to the menu.

— Chef Rick Bayless left his two restaurants with longtime partner Manny Valdes, and chef Trigg Brown is temporarily stepping away from his Brooklyn restaurant Win Son.

— Foie gras is legal again in California, so long as it’s produced out of state.

— Politician Julian Castro on why he’s calling for a boycott of Goya products.

— The sale of Ample Hills ice cream just seems so sad.

Louiie Victa

Pastries and cheese breads at Take It Easy

— Miami announced a $35 million relief fund for independent restaurants.

— Police shut down Riot Ribs, a mutual aid kitchen in Portland that had fed protesters night and day for 12 days.

— Openings: Take It Easy, a Colombian breakfast spot in Vegas; Crushed by Giants, a brewery in Chicago; Over Under, a casual and cool takwaway spot in Miami; and Silver Apricot, a Chinese-American fine dining restaurant in New York. And LA chef Mei Lin will open a fried chicken joint next month.

— Here’s a fun any-occasion gift guide from our shopping newsletter, Add to Cart.

— Oh hey, we are hiring for a very exciting and fun job: Editor of Eater NY. Please tell all your friends.

Off Eater

A day in the life of an ice cream vendor in LA. [LAT]

How campus dining is going to have to fundamentally change this fall. [NYT]

Flouting open-container laws during COVID is a privilege that not everyone shares. [GS]

This is a lovely little Q&A with chef Jenny Dorsey, who runs the culinary nonprofit Studio ATAO. [Taste]

How modern-day bartenders in D.C. are looking to the city’s elite Black bartending club of the 1900s for inspiration. [Punch]

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/3eLr54t via Blogger https://ift.tt/3jq7Kta

[warmdevs]

New Post has been published on https://warmdevs.com/blockchain-success-stories-show-valuable-opportunities.html

Blockchain Success Stories Show Valuable Opportunities

Over the past two years, we’ve witnessed the cryptocurrency market explode onto the scene, minting billionaires overnight, followed by an implosion that has wiped out up to 80 percent of the market’s value. All along, the true believers have continued to insist that this is just the growing pains of a new and dynamic financial industry even as instances of fraud have further damaged the market.

The silver lining of the whole experience has been the rise of blockchain technology, which is expected to generate the real long-term value of the cryptocurrency wave.

So far, however, much of the public attention given to the blockchain has focused on startups that have built proof-of-concept blockchain products. Early-stage research and development have many issues still on the drawing board — but they are continuing to answer the questions.

There’s no escaping the fact, however, that blockchain projects have an astronomical failure rate, with some studies putting the number as high as 92 percent. Looking exclusively at the topline numbers is enough to write the blockchain off as yet another technological flash in the pan.

The reality of blockchain is far more complex and nuanced than was understood before. Blockchain is not unlike many industries that have survived — coming long before this phenomena.

The Reality of the Blockchain

While it’s true that the majority of blockchain projects have failed so far, a more accurate way to describe the situation would be to say that the majority of blockchain startups fail. We already know that the majority of startups fail — the greater part of new restaurants fails — the bulk of any new industry — well — fails. But we still have startups, and we still have restaurants. Google made it, Microsoft made it, the Internet made it, the much-doomed auto industry is still limping along. So what can we learn from these tech and non-tech take-aways?

Top line statistics include projects that weren’t viable in the first place, had part-time developers that couldn’t commit the time that their blockchain side-project demanded. Some of the blockchain startups never attracted enough financing in the oversaturated initial coin offering (ICO) market to even get started.

When you eliminate the projects fitting those descriptions, what remains is a collection of legitimate startups that didn’t make the grade — just as you’d find in any other technology space.

None of that means, of course, that blockchain is a bust.

There are already countless examples of blockchain technology already in use today.

Anywhere from the medical industry to forward-thinking ecommerce businesses, the blockchain is gaining a foothold in our everyday lives, and showing no signs of slowing down. The problem is that most of the blockchain tech has been built by some old-line companies that technophiles wouldn’t expect to be leading the charge into such a bleeding-edge type of technology.

Heads-up Blockchain Entrepreneurs — you have an opportunity — grab it.

If you look past the origins of old-line companies, however, some projects display the breadth and depth of the ways that blockchain will continue to be adapted to solve some significant global business issues. That, in turn, can serve as a valuable primer for tomorrow’s blockchain entrepreneurs to point them towards the kind of products that stand a real chance of success. Data security everywhere has a more exceptional edge with blockchain.

Here are some notable examples that barely scratch the surface in the nitch of Blockchain. These few companies listed fit the bill where blockchain is quickly moving ahead: TradeLens

One of the most successful applications of blockchain technology to date has managed to fly almost entirely under the radar, owing to its nuts-and-bolts purpose and decidedly un-sexy industry: logistics. The platform, known as TradeLens, is a joint venture between tech giant IBM and global shipping behemoth Maersk. These two ventures aim to provide real-time information to every level of the worldwide shipping container industry.

Since its launch in August, the TradeLens system has already left the beta stage and is now in production use around the world, with more than 100 entities connected, including shipping lines, port operators, and even customs authorities in several countries.

At the time of this writing, the system had already captured close to 254 million unique shipping events, making TradeLens one of the most-used commercial blockchain systems to date. It’s also one of the few blockchain platforms that have seen enough success to have already attracted competition, in the form of new rival Global Shipping Business Network, built on Oracle’s blockchain technology.

Tracr

Another blockchain-powered system that’s approaching mass adoption exists in an industry where you’d least expect it, but where it was most sorely needed. Tracr is the brainchild of long-time diamond industry giant De Beers group, and it’s designed to create certainty and transparency in an industry that has lacked both for centuries.

The system, which will track diamonds from the moment they’re mined, through the value chain, and into the hands of consumers, is aimed at curbing some disturbing issues in what many believe to be the oldest luxury business in the world.

Chief among those issues is the longstanding scourge of the conflict diamond trade which has plagued the industry for generations. Then, there’s also the task of authenticating natural diamonds at a time when lab-grown alternatives are becoming all but indistinguishable from their mined counterparts.

The system has already been used to track real-world diamonds on an end-to-end journey from mines to their eventual retail destination and is expected to be fully online early in 2019.

IBM Food Trust

There’s one company that’s been behind some of the most successful blockchain platforms to date, and it’s IBM. In addition to their partnership with Maersk that yielded the TradeLens system, IBM is also developing a number of standalone blockchain systems that are already seeing widespread use.

One of the biggest thus far is IBM Food Trust, a blockchain platform designed to provide transparency and traceability to the global food supply chain. The network was able to trace millions of individual food products from their origins to retail outlets during an 18 month testing period, and the system is now available for general use.

Already, global supermarket giant Carrefour has signed onto the project, making IBM’s Food Trust blockchain viable right at first launch. The system comes at a time when the global food industry faces some challenges, not least of which is a sharp increase in foodborne illness, making traceability a welcome feature.

According to early tests, the IBM Food Trust platform could reduce the time it takes to identify the source of a food-related disease outbreak to seconds — rather than days — which could save some of the estimated 3,037 lives lost each year in the US alone.

Interbank Information Network

Although cryptocurrencies were expected to revolutionize parts of the global financial system, it’s turning out that the blockchain is the real game-changer in the space. For evidence, look no further than JPMorgan’s Interbank Information Network (IIN), which is a blockchain-powered network that aims to speed up cross-border payments between global financial institutions.

It’s significant, not only because it’s the most adopted blockchain banking platform to date, with more than 75 institutions participating, but also because it’s one of the elder statesmen of major blockchain projects, dating back to 2017.

IIN’s developers are hoping it will be the eventual successor to the current interbank messaging standard, known as SWIFT, as it will facilitate international money transfers by decreasing the amount of time it now takes to resolve regulatory or other data-related delays. They expect such issues to be solved using IIS within hours, as opposed to the weeks required through manual processes like SWIFT.

The Blockchain Lessons Learned

Judging by these already-successful blockchain use cases, it would be tempting to draw the conclusion that there’s little room for entrepreneurs when so many moneyed interests are behind the biggest successes to date. The easy takeaway is that if you want to be among the 8 percent or so of blockchain projects that don’t fail, it sure helps to have billions of R&D dollars to invest (or to literally be IBM).

For everyone else, however, the real lesson to be learned here is that the most successful blockchain projects are those that seek to form a backbone service for a whole industry or market segment. In that way, it becomes possible to seek buy-in from multiple stakeholders, which increases the overall odds of eventual success.

That flies in the face of the ICO, go-it-alone route that so many blockchain startups have chosen over the last two years, and that in and of itself should be instructive. The bottom line here is if you have an idea for a blockchain solution, it’s best not to try and invent a new market alongside your new business. Instead, look for a market in need of efficiency or transparency facelift, and be willing to partner with as many industry players as you can. That’s the surest route to blockchain success in today’s environment – not riding the speculative wave that’s led nowhere for so many blockchain startups to date.

[gastroturf]

Acme Smoked Fish & Fish Fridays

In the heart of industrial Greenpoint, on an unremarkable street, behind an unmarked door, lies the largest smoked fish processor in the country: Acme Smoked Fish (30 Gem Street). And every Friday, and only Friday, from 8am until 1pm, you can take advantage of one of the neighborhood’s best (and worst kept) secrets when Acme opens its doors to the public for “Fish Friday.”

Abandon all hope [of leaving hungry] ye who enter here. © gordon lingley

Finding Acme is a bit like entering a prohibition-era speakeasy, but no password or secret handshake is required. Before entering the warehouse (and even after entering) you may question if you’re in the right place, but trust me, it’s very right. Many first time visitors (including myself) walk past the entrance, only to find themselves doubling back after consulting their phones. However, more often than not, a queue stretches onto the sidewalk (especially during the holidays), clearly highlighting the proper doorway. You’ll know you’re on the right track when you see people strolling down the desolate street carrying shopping bags overflowing with smoked fish.

You’re probably wondering why you should bother with Fish Fridays. For starters, it’s cheap. Far cheaper than you’ll find at any grocery store. For example, on Fish Fridays you can buy gravlax for $18/pound. By comparison, the new Whole Foods that recently opened on Bedford (and also carries Acme’s gravlax, among other things) charges $8.99/quarter pound (though I did see them mark it down to $5.99 during their opening week). Similarly, Frankel’s Delicatessen, who also source their smoked fish from Acme, charge $20/half-pound—double what you’ll pay at Fish Fridays. That’s considerable savings. Same goes for everything on the menu. The second reason is because there are some special offerings that can’t be purchased anywhere else, like “Gary’s Special” or beet-cured salmon (more on those below). Beyond that, this is New York, and everyone has a guy for everything, make Acme your smoked fish guy.

History

Like many companies who adopt the “acme” moniker, Acme’s founder, Harry Brownstein, chose the name because of its double duty. Stemming from the Greek “akme” meaning “highest point” or “the point at which something or someone is best, perfect, or most successful,” the word instantly/presciently branded Brownstein’s company as a leader in the industry. Also, at the time of its incorporation, in 1954, a name starting with “ac” was almost guaranteed to appear first in the phonebook—today’s equivalent of showing up on the first page of a Google search. (note: a phonebook was an annual publication listing the phone numbers and addresses of residents and businesses, in alphabetical order.)

The history of Acme Smoked Fish (which is well-documented on their website) is as classic as its products. Like many New York institutions, Acme’s humble beginnings started out of a horse-drawn wagon in 1905. 111 years later, now in its 4th generation as a family-owned and operated business, Acme continues to flourish, expanding its product line and reach. If you’ve had smoked salmon recently, even outside of New York, there’s a good chance it originated here.

Process

Out of their Gem Street production facility, Acme processes a staggering amount of fish on a daily basis—upwards of 24,000 pounds. Per. Day. Annual production is approaching 10 million pounds, making them the largest smoked fish processor in the country

My host for the afternoon, General Manager, Richard “Richie” Schiff, outfitted me for the tour (lab coat, hair net, and industrial strength rubber boots) and we made our way into the belly of the beast. As you can imagine, dealing with so much raw meat could be a health code nightmare, but Acme’s strict operating procedures from start to finish minimize any potential risks. One thing you notice immediately: for a place that deals with so much fish, it doesn’t smell like fish. Well, it smells a little like smoked fish, but it doesn’t smell like raw fish.

The first stop was a room filled with bins of fresh whole salmon, where a team of cutters skillfully and masterfully gutted and cleaned each massive fish. The messiest part of the job, descaling, is completely automated and done in an enclosed machine by high pressure water jets. Some fish are filleted, while others (primarily whitefish) are smoked whole.

From there we moved on to a room full of fish being brined in massive bins. The composition of the brine and the brining time vary depending on the type of fish and the desired finished product, but, in general, it’s a mixture of water, salt, and sugar.

Next stop: the smokers. On the day I visited they weren’t smoking anything, which allowed access to the apartment-sized smokers. Surprisingly, all of the smoke is created by a machine about the size of a keg.

The final stage is portioning and packaging. Whenever I see a packaging room, I can’t help but think of the “I Love Lucy” episode, where Lucy’s working the line in a candy manufacturer. Unlike that scene, Acme’s process is well-oiled, and though there are many moving parts, it’s like an orchestra with everyone playing a critical role in the finished product. One of the more fascinating bits of machinery was the device responsible for the paper-thin slices of fish in every package—a conveyor belt slowly inches each fillet forward, where a razor sharp, oscillating, serrated blade glides through each fillet with laser-like precision.

From there it’s immediately sent to distributors around the country, for although it’s cured, smoked, and vacuum-packed, it’s still basically a fresh product, with an expiration date. The entire process, with the exception of some products that require a longer cure, takes just a few days, allowing Acme to get the freshest product available to its customers. The only way to get it any fresher is to make it yourself (for which they offer DIY gravlax kits).

Over the years, the selection has changed a bit. Acme now operates as a Kosher facility, so no shellfish or bottom-feeders (though they do carry eel, which they import from Europe). To this day Richie still wistfully reminisces about the giant, smoked shrimp.

Helpful Definitions:

Lox: Traditionally lox was only made with the belly of the salmon, but now other cuts are used as well. Lox is salt-cured, creating a texture that is silky, rich, a bit translucent, and… salty. It is not smoked.

lox © acme smoked fish

Nova/Nova Salmon/Nova Lox: Traditionally made from salmon originating from Nova Scotia, Nova now refers more to the process rather than the origin (as there is also “Western Nova” that originates from the Pacific). While also brined like traditional lox, it is typically less salty and is also cold-smoked (more on that later).

smoked nova salmon © acme smoked fish

Gravlax: Traditionally gravlax was made by salting salmon and lightly fermenting it by burying it, literally, in the sand above the high-tide line (gravlax, the word, originates from the Scandinavian word grava, meaning “to dig”). Thankfully, the fermentation is no longer part of the process and the salmon is simply buried and cured under a thick layer of salt, sugar, and dill. Acme also sells kits for making your own gravlax at home.

gravlax © acme smoked fish

Kippered: Refers to a process of brining and then hot-smoking (or baking) the fish. The end result is cooked through but retains a moist and flaky texture, and more pronounced smokiness.

kippered salmon © acme smoked fish

Royal Cut: This simply refers to a thicker cut of salmon (closer to ¼ inch, as opposed to the super thin slices of lox, gravlax, and most others) taken from the belly of the salmon.

Sable: Another term for Black Cod, Sable is oily and subsequently more “fishy” tasting than some other fish. Thankfully, the smoking process mellows most of the fishiness and what you’re left with is an incredibly rich piece of smoked fish. At $25/pound, it’s the most expensive thing on the menu at Fish Fridays, and well worth the splurge if you’re looking for something different and luxurious.

sable © acme smoked fish

Whitefish: The term “whitefish” is usually used to loosely describe various white-fleshed fish, but true whitefish is a freshwater species related to trout and abundant in the Great Lakes. It has a particularly sweet, moist, delicate flesh and is a favorite for smoking. In Acme’s case, it’s most of the options in the “Specialty Smoked” section of their menu.

smoked whitefish © acme smoked fish

Cold-Smoked: Cold-smoked salmon is traditionally wet or dry brined before being smoked at lower than 80 degrees (F). Because the salmon doesn’t get cooked, the flesh retains most of its moisture as well as the characteristic translucent pink color.

Hot-Smoked: Usually smoked between 130-140 degrees (F), hot-smoking results in a more cooked texture and appearance, and greater smoke flavor. In the Pacific Northwest, this is often taken a step further to create “Salmon Jerky” or “Salmon Candy,” where the fish is heavily smoked, and often glazed, resulting in a product is both drier and sweeter than other preparations.

various hot-smoked fish © acme smoked fish

Tips:

Don’t be afraid to ask for samples, within reason.

The beet-cured salmon doesn’t taste like beets, but it looks amazing. It was developed for Black Seed Bagels, but they occasionally sell it at Fish Fridays. Worth getting for the color alone.

Get “Gary’s Special” if it’s available. The offering varies from week to week, but it’s generally a poke-like mix of smoked salmon mixed with other ingredients (on one occasion it was a Thai-inspired mix of ginger and peppers, while another week paired the salmon with avocado and mango).

There are two kinds of Pastrami Salmon available, one the “house” recipe and the other developed by celebrity chef David Burke. The original recipe uses more traditional spices, while the David Burke style is both sweeter and hotter. Both are delicious, so order a little of each.

Like many places in New York, it’s CASH ONLY, and things can add up quickly. Plan accordingly.

Acme Smoked Fish is located at 30 Gem St., just off North 15th. Fish Fridays happens every Friday from 8am until 1pm. Cash Only.

[newstwitter-blog]

New Post has been published on News Twitter

New Post has been published on http://www.news-twitter.com/2017/03/12/washington-post-can-supermarkets-save-dying-suburban-malls-35/

Washington Post: Can supermarkets save dying suburban malls?

For decades, department stores like Macy’s and Sears have anchored sprawling suburban malls. Now as their business has languished and they board up shop, another sort of tenant is trying its luck in their place: grocers.

“There has been a real acceleration of anchors closing their operations,” said Mark Ordan, who knows both sides of the equation as former chief executive of Fresh Fields and a former chief executive of a leading mall operator. “As traditional anchors leave, it’s an opportunity for both the mall owner and the supermarkets.”

Just last month, shares of mall real estate investment trusts tanked after J.C. Penney announced plans to close up to 140 stores this year. The mall-quake followed a spate of bad news in recent months from Macy’s and Sears, two traditional mall anchors who said they plan to close hundreds of underperforming stores.

[Macy’s is closing 100 stores: Does yours stand a chance?]

Ordan said malls are great locations for big grocery stores because of their parking, the visibility and the large format they provide.

“It makes it very attractive for the tenant,” he said.

It also suits the millennial shopper, who prefers the efficiency that combines a visit to the mall with retrieving that week’s groceries.

The grocery store inhabiting the mall isn’t exactly new, but “it’s certainly an emerging trend,” said Tom McGee, chief executive of the International Council of Shopping Centers. “Part of it is convenience, the ability to do things in one location. Millennials value convenience.”

Kroger Co., the nation’s largest grocer with close to 4,000 locations, recently bought a former Macy’s space at Kingsdale Shopping Center in Upper Arlington, Ohio.

At the Natick Mall in Massachusetts, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Wegmans Food Market is leasing 194,000 square feet of space vacated by J.C. Penney.

365 by Whole Foods is set to open this year at College Mall in Bloomington, Ind., the report said.

And other negotiations are underway.

Groceries or not, the traditional mall is looking different.

Higher-end malls with underperforming anchors such as J.C. Penney, Macy’s, Bon-Ton and Sears are renting to movie complexes, food courts, restaurants and fitness centers instead, emphasizing experiences and fun over shopping.

“Part of it is a survival tactic,” said Calvin Schnure, an economist with the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts. “E-commerce is changing people’s spending patterns. But in the process, they are changing the shopping experience in a mall.”

Grocery store experts say supermarkets would rather be the main attraction in a strip mall than take the anchor position in a suburban mall.

“The fact that there’s vacant mall space at the old-school, indoor malls and the hit they are taking from online companies is really significant,” said Jeffrey Metzger, publisher of Food World, a publication covering the grocery industry. “If you talk to Giant, Safeway or Kroger, the old-world mall is not their target. They would still like to be on Main Street.”

Jeff Edison is chief executive of Phillips Edison & Co., which owns 339 shopping centers across the nation, nearly all of which are anchored by a grocery store.

“The traditional grocers are going to continue to be three miles from people’s houses as opposed to the more regional locations like the malls,” he said. “It’s all driven by convenience.”

Edison said shopping centers allow grocery customers to park closer to the store and give easier access by being closer to their communities than malls.

“You may get your nails done and pick up dry cleaning next to a grocery business,” he said, “but it’s driven on a necessity basis as opposed to an impulse purchase, which is what the malls are driven by.”

Not all malls renting to grocers are troubled. Some individual tenants may be underperforming because of lack of reinvestments and upkeep while the mall overall is healthy. But a grocer can be a welcome replacement to exploit a prime piece of real estate.

Grocers can bring several assets to a mall, including heavy and routine foot traffic. A Kroger could generate $50 million in sales at its mall location compared with an aging department store generating $10 million or $15 million a year.

[By selling its European brands, GM ‘gets rid of a perennial loser’]

“Losing a mall anchor and replacing it with a grocery store adds a ton of value to a mall,” said Margaret Caldwell, managing director at JLL, a real estate services firm. “Some of these malls, the anchors aren’t generating a lot of foot traffic. If you put a grocer in there, people will be there doing their weekly grocery shopping versus shopping once a month at Macy’s.”

McGee said it has less to do with the disruption from online retailers and more to do with opportunism between landlord and tenant. He pointed out that online sales are still dwarfed by the nearly $5 trillion a year at brick-and-mortar retailers.

“As space opens up in a mall or regional shopping center, the property owner and developer looks at the demographics and needs and matches up the space with the needs of the area,” McGee said. “It is all about driving traffic, driving folks to the shopping center. The best way to do that is to look at what is needed in that area and match up the needs with this space.”

Cliff Logan worked as an executive at Giant Food for 12 years and now runs a sausage company in Northern Virginia. Logan splits his time between Boca Raton, Fla., and Arlington. He said many malls, particularly older locations, are being hit hard by Amazon.com and online purchases.

“Amazon is putting a big hurt on a lot of these malls,” he said. “There’s a mall in Palm Beach with two or three schools in it, a synagogue and newspaper publisher in it, and a place where you can buy a cup of coffee and doughnut. There’s not a single retail store in it.”

Read more:

A Trump voter’s message to retailers: ‘Keep your mouths shut about our president’

This beloved grocery chain is the latest company to face Trump-related boycotts

You’ll soon be able to get a Big Mac delivered to your door. But will you want to?

This post has been harvested from the source link, and News-Twitter has no responsibility on its content. Source link

[aurelliocheek]

How Making Consumer Insights a Cornerstone of your Strategy Makes You a Better Marketer

Scott Kepnach has been working in mobile growth since 2006, starting at Universal Music Group then moving on to top gaming companies Glu and Zynga. Scott’s experience includes managing teams of up to 20+, and working at early-stage start-ups including SwiftKey (acquired by Microsoft) and Drivemode (acquired by Honda). After 14 years working in mobile growth, Scott is currently leading marketing and partnerships at Latin America’s largest on-demand delivery platform, Rappi.

Learn more from his Mobile Hero profile.

In a world where we are increasingly more aware of the bubble in which we live, sometimes, at an alarming rate due to current events, the ability to empathize and better understand your customers can dramatically impact the success of your business, products, and specifically, your marketing strategy. It is your responsibility as a marketer to institutionalize the understanding of consumer insights into your organization’s primary focus.

It’s no secret that performance marketers live and die by the sword of data to justify their marketing decisions. What I am presenting here is not an argument against the data-driven approach but rather quite the opposite. Data has been the fail-safe measurement of all decision-making and rightfully so. However, time after time, we as marketers wholly rely on data to understand user behavior when user behavior includes a bit more nuance and inferred decisions about the useful products in people’s lives.

Humans certainly have quantifiable behavioral patterns and that is immensely helpful when marketing to them. However, as we all know, there are many layers to the onion when it comes to human beings, which makes us complicated and certainly unable to be defined by data alone. What I’ve learned from spending over a decade in performance-based marketing is that this is an outrageously skewed approach to user acquisition when the method is solely data-driven.

Marketing at its essence is psychological and driven by an emotional reaction to a product. Facebook has perfected harnessing this emotional reaction by learning about the things that create an emotional attachment and algorithmically shows us content to tap into our base-level emotional triggers to buy products. In the background, this is dictated by CAC targets and LTV arbitrage that our data tells us will make our business profitable. Programmatic advertising just makes it all easier for us, doesn’t it?

No. Truly understanding your customers is what separates the best marketers from the SQL machine/mega-human-performance marketers (you know who you are!).

A Giant Hole

What I haven’t witnessed with too much frequency in this industry is the profound lack of fundamental and ubiquitous dedication to truly knowing the people to which we are marketing. I have been in senior leadership at public companies and there have been roles dedicated to better understanding human motivation in new product and development demand planning. How big are those teams dedicated to this vastly important endeavor you ask? Two people, sometimes one and a half headcount. These are the people who regularly sit with users through a variety of methods: focus groups, surveys, max/diff analysis, and power programs and empowers some users to become brand ambassadors.

At start-ups, these functions don’t exist outside of “customer support”, a reactive business unit where the sole function is to serve the users (people!) who have problems or issues with the product.

What’s missing from most startups is a proactive method that emphasizes empathy and understanding of why people use your product. This requires a fundamental shift in how we as marketers approach our craft. Many of us use our products to understand the experience of it from our perspective, but certainly, that can be problematic when we’re all drinking from the same kombucha tap in San Francisco, Berlin, or New York City.

As marketers, to truly know to whom we are marketing to, it should be part of our process, and it doesn’t come from a CAC or LTV over ROAS yield report. Seek the intellectual curiosity to truly know the motivation and why people respond to it. We as marketers should be representative of that emotional response and translate it to the broader organization. Sing the good gospel of consumer motivation and why they enjoy what we build will only help your user acquisition and marketing campaigns.

4 Tips for Prioritizing Consumer Insights

Talk to the people that use your product through one-on-one conversations, focus groups, surveys, and other methods. When I worked for an early-stage company that built a driving utility app, I would message users directly and ask to speak with them about their experience with the app. What I discovered was a consistent affinity with brands and products that were commonly popular in middle and rural America as well as the tendency to be driving older model vehicles. We had previously produced a beautiful 30-second TV-esque video spot that we advertised on the standard mobile video acquisition channels, but it quickly saturated and had under-performing CTR’s and CVR’s. I then posited that these types of users in rural areas might respond better to low-quality, UGC-style video ads as opposed to an Apple commercial, so I decided to shoot my own videos on my iPhone, in my car, and in different distracted driving scenarios while driving around Palo Alto, CA and then edited them myself into 5, 10, and 30-second spots. These new ads created a 5x improvement in acquisition costs and became our evergreen creative that hardly ever saturated, even when running them against different audiences tied to different affinities. These ads better resonated with our users because they came off as more authentic and resulted in a stunning turnaround and efficacy in our acquisition campaigns over time.

Go into the field to recruit brand ambassadors and give them a feedback loop into the marketing and product teams. For an on-demand food delivery company I worked for in South America, I noticed through friends, colleagues, and users in different countries that even Spanish was hyper-localized to certain dialects and slang. So, we implemented a system for deploying and QA’ing creative in certain countries utilizing natives to that country. For example, one tag-line that was ubiquitous in our messaging all over LATAM was tweaked slightly for each country so that it spoke not only to the way people in Mexico interpreted it, but also to how Colombians generally would interpret it differently, and then also how the melting-pot Spanish that Argentines speak would. This led to a greater emphasis across all teams to hyper-localize messaging in Spanish on a country-by-country level and increased our CVR across a number of different acquisition channels. To underscore this point, I came across a quote that sums up this approach fairly well: many of our readers who live in the tech hub of the world may be familiar with the Golden State Warriors’ own, and one of the only Mexican- American basketball players in the NBA, Juan Toscano, who once said, “All my life I’ve understood Spanish, but I didn’t start speaking it until I moved to Mexico.” The nuance, in this case, was in the micro-differences in language, and thus proved to be a key differentiator between a click, and a scroll.

As a marketer, help lead and apply consumer insights throughout your organization. Foster a culture and workflow that allows marketers to communicate these insights to the product, creative, analytics, engineering teams, and other business units to help them understand the profile of the users who they are building products for, and that this information is not just for the marketers who message to them. A personally surprising experience for me came when working for a top gaming company with 1,500 employees, with a dedicated consumer insights team whose primary role was to manage the various activities mentioned above. But for a 1,500-person company with 10+ games in the market at any given time, do you know how many people led consumer insights to more fully understand our millions of users and help translate that to the entire company? At most two people, and often for a period of time, it was 1-1.5 of a headcount. If that company can’t dedicate enough resources to focus on the pivotal exercise of operationalizing consumer insights to the entire company, it then falls on us as marketers to help augment their efforts by regularly educating our partner business units to better understand user behavior beyond data. We can do this through creating a reporting process that is widely distributed, to participating in “Lunch and Learns” with your fellow colleagues in different departments, to a number of other methods to make the consumer’s perspective more top of mind to the rest of the company.

Do your part to shift a common culture “groupthink” problem that founders and product decision-makers develop, where in many instances the leaders have a great idea for a product that gains traction, but sometimes for a whole host of reasons rather than what the originator intended. Due to this, there’s a risk of developing a culture of groupthink, where a great product is built on the assumption that it is needed, gains traction, and then there are endemic proactive processes of going out to understand why that product was successful in the first place, or what those users and others might want from it in the future. To combat this means to encourage all members of your organization and teams to be intellectually curious because as we’ve seen in recent history, Silicon Valley and other tech hubs can exist in a bubble that can be disconnected from the people who actually use their products.

Finally, the intellectual curiosity that we tried to foster when I worked at a keyboard app developer who made an app to make typing more efficient through data and machine-learning technology. The CMO and I worked closely on our marketing and demand planning strategy, and when we decided to build a Japanese version of the keyboard due to the opportunity in the Japanese market, we spent a significant amount of time in Japan with partners, investors, business leaders, and our consumers to help us understand the nuances of localizing in their language. What we learned from our experiences in the country was that there are multiple styles that Japanese people used to type and expressing themselves. We spent a lot of time listening and observing in order to demand plan and prioritize which keyboard style to work on first and dedicate resources to The Hiragana vs Katakana vs Kanji methods of keyboard input in Japanese.

By spending time with people on the ground in Japan who use our keyboard for different reasons, and by spending time riding the JR Line for hours on end, we would observe what people on the train were using to type, partially to help us determine which strategy to prioritize, and one of the many experiences that have pushed me to focus on implementing consumer insights as a precursor to the development of my marketing strategy for years to come.

Full disclosure: to the people who rode the JR line in Tokyo with us in those months, I don’t speak Japanese so I had no idea what you were typing while I was quietly observing you, but I did learn a great deal about the preferred style of keyboard you were using and brought those learnings back to my product team in London to advise them on how to prioritize our product development pipeline based on the insights I gained while looking over your shoulder. Arigato. Dōmo Arigatōgozaimasu!

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[tripstations]

Finding the perfect hidden cocktail bar in Paris

While craft cocktails and speakeasy-style cocktail bars are a big part of American drinking culture, the phenomenon hasn’t quite taken over Europe yet. In places like Ireland and England, “cocktails” are sugary sweet concoctions, usually sold to young people who haven’t developed a more refined palate or can’t drink straight beer or whiskey. In France, people drink unadulterated wine or the occasional aperitif, which is usually something simple like a Ricard with water. The speakeasy theme that so many American cocktail bars have taken on doesn’t make sense in Europe, as Prohibition never existed there. You can find great cocktails at old bastions of the original cocktail like Harry’s and the Ritz, but they don’t offer the same ambiance that bars in the speakeasy cocktail world do.

The speakeasy-style mixology craze is starting to show up more and more in Europe, as drinks become more of a craft, similar to culinary arts. At the same time, exclusivity and a hidden element give modern bars a certain pastiche, even among tourists. In cosmopolitan cities like Paris, you can find a number of hip, cozy, or interesting spots to get mixed drinks of the artisan type (as opposed to the sticky-sweet type), as long as you know where to look.

The comfortable space: Sherry Butt

20 Rue Beautreillis

Just to clarify: A “butt” is a measurement of wine, equivalent to two hogsheads, or 126 gallons, to be precise. So the Sherry Butt would be 126 gallons of sherry. You won’t have to drink that much to enjoy this comfortable space, where there’s plenty of room to sit on a couch and sip a curated cocktail and have a quiet chat.

The bar is easy to find, halfway between Place des Vosges and the River Seine, and not far from la Place de la Bastille. It’s a great place to stop after dinner at a French cafe, or late at night if you’re ready for a nightcap. The music is quieter than some of the other bars on this list, making it ideal for a tete-a-tete with an intimate group of friends.

The true speakeasy: Moonshiner

5 Rue Sedaine

Possibly the most difficult of all the bars on our list to find, Moonshiner is a vibrant, hip spot for Parisians and tourists alike. To find the bar, you have to go through a kitchen and a freezer door in the Italian restaurant visible under the “5” address, which can be a bit unnerving if you’re unsure of yourself.

Once inside you’ll find a vivacious, if dark, scene. The bartenders are extremely knowledgeable and friendly, and even if you don’t see something on their list that you’d like, they can help you find the perfect cocktail for your mood. The place gets crowded later in the night, with people from around the world drinking and dancing, so be prepared to be jostled if you go during peak hours. Unlike many of these cocktail bars, there isn’t a doorman to help you find a seat or space, but that’s a great excuse to make new friends.

The hippest spot: Le Syndicat

51 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis

Hailed as “the best cocktail bar in Paris” by several publications, this little spot on the Rue du Fauboug Saint-Denis can be difficult to find if you don’t know what you’re looking for. There’s no sign on the outside, and the storefront is actually papered over, but once you find the address, you just have to go through the usually open door to find this chic bar.

The place runs like a machine, with a single bartender acting like a train operator, calling the shots for the servers and bar backs while mixing up insane cocktails like Explosive, which includes an actual sparkler attached around the glass. The menu changes every season, but is very thoughtful and fun, and well worth it.

The most artsy menu: The Little Red Door

60 rue Charlot

The Little Red Door is relatively easy to find, due to its signature little red door. However, there’s also a doorman outside who can help you get inside and situated. As with many of the bars on this list, the bartenders all speak perfect English, and many hail from other nations than France.

They’re also ready to sit down and chat about their cocktail list, which is made up of untranslatable words from other languages, interpreted into spirits, each accompanied by their own paintings. If that’s too artsy for you, simply tell them the kind of cocktail you usually like, and they’ll make you their own version to suit your tastes.

The industrial feel: UC-61

4 Rue de l’Arc de Triomphe

Designed to look like the interior of a real wrecked submarine from World War I from which it gets its name, the tiny UC-61 errs on the side of “cozy” rather than “bright”. The bar isn’t hidden per se; there’s a menu posted outside the bar’s metal door, and a doorbell to ring to get in.

But don’t be fooled – the industrial feel is a foil to the high-end, perfectly-detailed cocktails served within. The mixologists have curated a menu that experiments with flavors and unexpected elements, like eucalyptus, green tea, and even soy sauce, to deliver delightful surprises in a glass. And, of course, the friendly Bretons who founded the place will mix you up something less adventurous if you’re not inclined to try something new.

The dance party: Divine

61 rue d’Hauteville

The giant disco ball in the corner is a perfect detail to this fun bar, where you’re as sure to dance along with the bartenders to the soundtrack as you are to have a drink. While it may look like the kind of bar college kids go to, the knowledgeable mixologists and fine selection of liquors denote something with a bit more panache.

The cocktail menu is a great starting place, with surprising notes like umami, but what makes this bar truly great is the attention to detail to the clientele’s needs. For instance, if you leave to have a cigarette or use the toilet, the bartenders will put your cocktail in the fridge to keep it cool until you return. And unlike many of the other bars listed here, they also have a food menu, which matches the somewhat tacky decor by offering nachos and chicken wings.

If you’re looking for something more than a great glass of wine, these cocktail bars will certainly deliver. If you get lost, there are always helpful people ready to point the way, thanks to the popularity of these spaces among Parisians and tourists alike.

Ravi Coutinho is Founder and Lead Golf Travel Expert at Worldwide Golf Adventures. Worldwide Golf Adventures is a luxury golf tour operator that arranges custom golf vacations for clients around the world.

If you would like to be a guest blogger on A Luxury Travel Blog in order to raise your profile, please contact us.

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[orbemnews]

What Would It Take to Vaccinate the World Against Covid? In delivering vaccines, pharmaceutical companies aided by monumental government investments have given humanity a miraculous shot at liberation from the worst pandemic in a century. But wealthy countries have captured an overwhelming share of the benefit. Only 0.3 percent of the vaccine doses administered globally have been given in the 29 poorest countries, home to about 9 percent of the world’s population. Vaccine manufacturers assert that a fix is already at hand as they aggressively expand production lines and contract with counterparts around the world to yield billions of additional doses. Each month, 400 million to 500 million doses of the vaccines from Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson are now being produced, according to an American official with knowledge of global supply. But the world is nowhere close to having enough. About 11 billion shots are needed to vaccinate 70 percent of the world’s population, the rough threshold needed for herd immunity, researchers at Duke University estimate. Yet, so far, only a small fraction of that has been produced. While global production is difficult to measure, the analytics firm Airfinity estimates the total so far at 1.7 billion doses. The problem is that many raw materials and key equipment remain in short supply. And the global need for vaccines might prove far greater than currently estimated, given that the coronavirus presents a moving target: If dangerous new variants emerge, requiring booster shots and reformulated vaccines, demand could dramatically increase, intensifying the imperative for every country to lock up supply for its own people. The only way around the zero-sum competition for doses is to greatly expand the global supply of vaccines. On that point, nearly everyone agrees. But what is the fastest way to make that happen? On that question, divisions remain stark, undermining collective efforts to end the pandemic. Some health experts argue that the only way to avert catastrophe is to force drug giants to relax their grip on their secrets and enlist many more manufacturers in making vaccines. In place of the existing arrangement — in which drug companies set up partnerships on their terms, while setting the prices of their vaccines — world leaders could compel or persuade the industry to cooperate with more companies to yield additional doses at rates affordable to poor countries. Those advocating such intervention have focused on two primary approaches: waiving patents to allow many more manufacturers to copy existing vaccines, and requiring the pharmaceutical companies to transfer their technology — that is, help other manufacturers learn to replicate their products. The World Trade Organization — the de facto referee in international trade disputes — is the venue for negotiations on how to proceed. But the institution operates by consensus, and so far, there is none. The Biden administration recently joined more than 100 countries in asking the W.T.O. to partially set aside vaccine patents. But the European Union has signaled its intent to oppose waivers and support only voluntary tech transfers, essentially taking the same position as the pharmaceutical industry, whose aggressive lobbying has heavily shaped the rules in its favor. Some experts warn that revoking intellectual property rules could disrupt the industry, slowing its efforts to deliver vaccines — like reorganizing the fire department amid an inferno. “We need them to scale up and deliver,” said Simon J. Evenett, an expert on trade and economic development at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland. “We have this huge production ramp up. Nothing should get in the way to threaten it.” Others counter that trusting the pharmaceutical industry to provide the world with vaccines helped create the current chasm between vaccine haves and have-nots. The world should not put poorer countries “in this position of essentially having to go begging, or waiting for donations of small amounts of vaccine,” said Dr. Chris Beyrer, senior scientific liaison to the Covid-19 Prevention Network. “The model of charity is, I think, an unacceptable model.” In this fractious atmosphere, the W.T.O.’s leaders are crafting their proceedings less as a push to formally change the rules than as a negotiation that will persuade national governments and the global pharmaceutical industry to agree on a unified plan — ideally in the next few months. The Europeans are banking on the notion that the vaccine makers, fearing patent waivers, will eventually agree to the transfers, especially if the world’s richest countries throw money their way to make sharing know-how more palatable. Many public health experts say that patent waivers will have no meaningful effect unless vaccine makers also share their manufacturing methods. Waivers are akin to publishing a complex recipe; tech transfer is like sending a master chef to someone’s kitchen to teach them how to cook the dish. “If you’re to manufacture vaccines, you need several things to work at the same time,” the W.T.O. director-general, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, told journalists recently. “If there is no transfer of technology, it won’t work.” Even with waivers, technology transfers and expanded access to raw materials, experts say it would take about six months for more drug makers to start churning out vaccines. The only short-term fix, they and European leaders say, is for wealthy countries — especially the United States — to donate and export more of their stock to the rest of the world. The European Union allowed the export of hundreds of millions of doses, as many as it kept at home, while the United States held fast to its supply. But boosting donations and exports entails risk. India shipped out more than 60 million doses this year, including donations, before halting vaccine exports a month ago. Now, as a wave of death ravages the largely unvaccinated Indian population, the government is drawing fire at home for having let go of doses. The details of any plan to boost vaccinations worldwide may matter less than revamping the incentives that have produced the status quo. Wealthy countries, especially in the West, have monopolized most of the supply of vaccines not through happenstance, but as a result of economic and political realities. Companies like Pfizer and Moderna have logged billions of dollars in revenue by selling most of their doses to deep-pocketed governments in North America and Europe. The deals left too few doses available for Covax, a multilateral partnership created to funnel vaccines to low- and middle-income nations at relatively low prices. While the partnership has been hampered by multiple problems — most recently India’s blocking exports amid its own crisis — the snapping up of doses by rich countries was a crucial blow. “We as high-income countries made sure the market was lopsided,” said Mark Eccleston-Turner, an expert on international law and infectious diseases at Keele University in England. “The fundamental problem is that the system is broken, but it’s broken in our favor.” Changing that calculus may depend on persuading wealthy countries that allowing the pandemic to rage on in much of the world poses universal risks by allowing variants to take hold, forcing the world into an endless cycle of pharmaceutical catch-up. “It needs to be global leaders functioning as a unit, to say that vaccine is a form of global security,” said Dr. Rebecca Weintraub, a global health expert at Harvard Medical School. She suggested that the G7, the group of leading economies, could lead such a campaign and finance it when the members convene in England next month. The argument over Covid vaccines harkens back to the debate over access to antiretroviral drugs for H.I.V. in the 1990s. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first powerful H.I.V. drug therapy in 1995, resulting in a plunge in deaths in the United States and Europe, where people could afford the therapy. But deaths in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia continued to climb. In 2001, the W.T.O. ruled that countries could allow local companies to break patents for domestic use given an urgent need. The ruling is still in place. But without technology transfers, few local drug makers would be able to quickly replicate vaccines. In 2003, the W.T.O. took a crucial further step for H.I.V. drugs, waiving patents and allowing low-income countries to import generic versions manufactured in Thailand, South Africa and India, helping contain the epidemic. With Covid, the request for a patent waiver has come from the South African and Indian governments, which are seeking to engineer a repeat of that history. In opposing the initiative, the pharmaceutical industry has reprised the argument it made decades ago: Any weakening of intellectual property, or I.P., protection discourages the investment that yields lifesaving innovation. “The only reason why we have vaccines right now was because there was a vibrant private sector,” said Dr. Albert Bourla, chief executive of Pfizer, speaking in a recent interview. “The vibrancy of the private sector, the lifeblood, is the I.P. protection.” But in producing vaccines, the private sector harnessed research financed by taxpayers in the United States, Germany and other wealthy nations. Pfizer expects to sell $26 billion worth of Covid vaccines this year; Moderna forecasts that its sales of Covid vaccines will exceed $19 billion for 2021. History also challenges industry claims that blanket global patent rights are a requirement for the creation of new medicines. Until the mid-1990s, drug makers could patent their products only in the wealthiest markets, while negotiating licenses that allowed companies in other parts of the world to make generic versions. Even in that era, drug companies continued to innovate. And they continued to prosper even with the later waivers on H.I.V. drugs. “At the time, it rattled a lot of people, like ‘How could you do that? It’s going to destroy the pharmaceutical industry,’” recalled Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser for the pandemic. “It didn’t destroy them at all. They continue to make billions of dollars.” Leaders in the wealthiest Western nations have endorsed more equitable distribution of vaccines for this latest scourge. But the imperative to ensure ample supplies for their own nations has won out as the virus killed hundreds of thousands of their own people, devastated economies, and sowed despair. The drug companies have also promised more support for poorer nations. AstraZeneca’s vaccine has been the primary supply for Covax, and the company says it has sold its doses at a nonprofit price. In January, Pfizer announced that it was joining Covax, agreeing to contribute 40 million doses at a not-for-profit price. So far only 1.25 million of those doses have been shipped out, less than what Pfizer produces in a single day. Whether the world possesses enough underused and suitable factories to quickly boost supply and bridge the inequities is a fiercely debated question. During a vaccine summit convened by the W.T.O. last month, the body heard testimony that manufacturers in Pakistan, Bangladesh, South Africa, Senegal and Indonesia all have capacity that could be quickly deployed to produce Covid vaccines. One Canadian company, Biolyse Pharma, which focuses on cancer drugs, has already agreed to supply 15 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine to Bolivia — if it gains legal permission and technological know-how from Johnson & Johnson. But even major companies like AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson have stumbled, falling short of production targets. And producing the new class of mRNA vaccines, like those from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, is complicated. Where pharmaceutical companies have struck deals with partners, the pace of production has frequently disappointed. “Even with voluntary licensing and technology transfer, it’s not easy to make complex vaccines,” said Dr. Krishna Udayakumar, director of the Duke Global Health Innovation Center. Much of the global capacity for vaccine manufacturing is already being used to produce other lifesaving inoculations, he added. But other health experts accuse major pharmaceutical companies of exaggerating the manufacturing challenges to protect their monopoly power, and implying that developing countries lack the acumen to master sophisticated techniques is “an offensive and a racist notion,” said Matthew Kavanagh, director of the Global Health Policy and Politics Initiative at Georgetown University. With no clear path forward, Ms. Okonjo-Iweala, the W.T.O. director-general, expressed hope that the Indian and South African patent-waiver proposal can be a starting point for dialogue. “I believe we can come to a pragmatic outcome,” she said. “The disparity is just too much.” Peter S. Goodman reported from London, Apoorva Mandavilli from New York, Rebecca Robbins from Bellingham, Wash., and Matina Stevis-Gridneff from Brussels. Noah Weiland contributed reporting from New York. Source link Orbem News #Covid #Vaccinate #World

[thisdaynews]

Trump’s two-front trade war triggers alarms

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/trumps-two-front-trade-war-triggers-alarms/

Trump’s two-front trade war triggers alarms

President Donald Trump’s announcement poses its most direct threat to supply chains that depend on the free flow of goods across the border, especially the automotive industry. | Win McNamee/Getty Images

President Donald Trump’s decision to open a second front in his trade war sent tremors through global markets, unnerved corporate America and spurred economists to raise new warnings about the potential for a sharp economic slowdown just as the 2020 presidential contest starts picking up.

Trump’s surprise Thursday night threat to impose tariffs beginning at 5 percent and potentially rising as high as 25 percent on everything Mexico exports to the United States also threatened to raise consumer prices on everything from avocados to blue jeans and automobiles.

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The fresh trade war salvo came with markets already sagging on fear of an escalating battle with China and economists wondering whether the American economy could withstand the impact of bruising fights with two of the country’s biggest trading partners.

“A two-front trade war is clearly negative for growth, and I don’t know how our trade officials even have the bandwidth to deal with it,” said Megan Greene, global chief economist at investment firm Manulife. “It’s not just millennials not being able to afford their avocado toast. Auto parts in particular go back and forth several times before they get to the final product, and if each time you have to add a tax to that, it’s going to compress margins and could even put some smaller firms out of business.”

Trump’s announcement, born of his deep frustration at what he perceives as Mexico’s unwillingness to do anything to stop the flow of migrants to the U.S. border, poses its most direct threat to integrated supply chains that depend on the free flow of goods across the border, especially the automotive industry.

Around two-thirds of U.S. imports from Mexico, which totaled $371.9 billion last year, were “related-party” trade, meaning companies bringing in parts and products as part of their supply chain, according to data compiled by Deutsche Bank. The U.S. imported $124 billion in auto products from Mexico in 2018, which includes new and used passenger vehicles; medium, heavy and other trucks; and auto parts, according to the International Trade Administration.

Some auto parts cross the border as many as eight or nine times before becoming finished products, potentially opening up auto giants including GM, Ford and Fiat Chrysler to tariffs exponentially higher than the headline number.

“The most important and the second most important and the third most important part of this is cars, car parts, trucks and buses,” said Torsten Slok, chief economist at Deutsche Bank Securities. “This has everything to do with the auto industry, which is by far the biggest beneficiary of our relationship with Mexico and where you will see the most pain if this goes through.”

On any given day, more than $452 million worth of auto parts are traded in either direction across the U.S.-Mexico border, said Ann Wilson, senior vice president of the Motor and Equipment Manufacturers Association.

“Our members flourish in an atmosphere of certainty,” said Wilson, adding that Trump’s other tariffs on China, steel and aluminum, and the threat of penalties on all imports of autos and auto parts, have already impacted investment and hiring decisions by her group’s 1,000 member companies.

The big three automakers fought hard for adoption of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, Trump’s successor to NAFTA, which now awaits an uncertain fate in Congress. And they have strongly opposed Trump’s threats to impose tariffs on auto imports from Japan and the European Union.

The companies also celebrated earlier this month when Trump agreed to lift steel and aluminum tariffs on Mexico and Canada, which raised their production costs. They now face a new and perhaps graver threat. Deutsche Bank estimated the Mexico tariffs could raise the cost of vehicles sold in the U.S. by about $1,300.

Business groups in Washington quickly slammed Trump’s decision, which White House officials indicated came after a haphazard internal process and against the advice of some of the president’s more free trade-oriented advisers.

“Intertwining difficult trade, tariff and immigration issues creates a Molotov cocktail of policy, and America’s manufacturing workers should not be forced to suffer because of the failure to fix our immigration system,” National Association of Manufacturers President and CEO Jay Timmons said in a prepared statement. “These proposed tariffs would have devastating consequences on manufacturers in America and on American consumers.” The Business Roundtable said unilateral tariffs on Mexico would be a “grave error.”

“These tariffs will be paid by American families and businesses without doing a thing to solve the very real problems at the border,” Neil Bradley, executive vice president and chief policy officer of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said in a statement.

Shares in all three automakers fell on Friday. GM, which has the most exposure to Mexico, dropped over 4 percent in early trading. Fiat Chrysler was also down over 4 percent and Ford down close to 3 percent.

The broader market also took a hit from Trump’s announcement with the Dow down over 200 points, or around 1 percent, by midday Friday following fears about the deepening trade battles and a more uncertain future for the USMCA. The S&P and Nasdaq also dropped around 1 percent.

Bond yields also fell and prices rose as investors fled to safer assets while the trade wars intensified and the outlook for global growth darkened.

The selling, which began in Asia and in U.S. futures after Trump’s announcement Thursday night, came after a brutal month for stocks that saw the Dow down around 1,700 points, or over 6 percent. The broader S&P is also down around 6 percent on the month, and the tech-laden Nasdaq is down around 7 percent.

“This is a colossal blunder,” said David Kotok, chief investment officer at Cumberland Advisors. He said the advice of Peter Navarro, one of Trump’s top trade advisers who favors liberal use of tariffs, “is wrongheaded and sinking his president.”

Much of the selling began in early May after talks with the Chinese about a trade deal broke down and Trump threatened to impose tariffs of 25 percent on over $500 billion in exports to the U.S. from China. China has promised sharp retaliation both directly through raising the level of existing tariffs on all exports from the United States — notably farm products like soybeans — and by making it harder for U.S. firms to do business in the country and potentially limiting U.S. access to rare earth minerals used in a range of high-tech and defense industry products.

Trump’s move on Mexico raises uncertainty for businesses considering investments and clouds the outlook for corporate profits and stock prices, investors said. “This is just the latest worry to put on the fire for investors. The big question at the end of the day, though, is can we really fight two trade wars at the same time?” said Ryan Detrick, senior market strategist for LPL Financial, in a note to clients Friday.

The potential impact from the proposed Mexican tariffs would extend well beyond automakers.

U.S. kitchens and cupboards could also take a huge hit from an across-the-board tariff. The tariff cuts made possible by NAFTA opened the U.S. border to Mexico’s year-round growing season and a cheap supply of produce. Nearly half the fruits and vegetables the U.S. imports come from Mexico, according to Commerce Department data. It could also hit oil imports. The U.S. imported over $14 billion in crude oil from Mexico last year. Oil prices were on pace Friday for the biggest monthly decline in six months as the trade disputes threatened global growth and thus raised questions about demand for fuel.

U.S. produce importers said Americans could pay an extra $3 billion for avocados, tomatoes, mangoes and other fruits and vegetables if the tariff goes up to 25 percent.

“This is a tax on healthy diets, plain and simple,” said Lance Jungmeyer, president of the Fresh Produce Association of the Americas, an Arizona-based group that represents companies that import and transport produce from Mexico.

But the pain doesn’t stop in the produce section. Nearly a third of sugar imported into the U.S. comes from Mexico, and a cost increase could send a price shock through food and beverage supply chains. The U.S. meat industry imported more than $840 million worth of live animals, primarily cattle to fatten and slaughter for U.S. consumers.

U.S. pork producers are already reeling from retaliatory tariffs Mexico only recently lifted after Trump agreed to drop steel and aluminum tariffs to ease passage of his new NAFTA deal.

“Over the last year, trade disputes with Mexico and China have cost hard-working U.S. pork producers and their families approximately $2.5 billion,” the National Pork Producers Council President David Herring said in a statement.

Rather than Trump opening a new front in his global trade war, U.S. farmers and ranchers desperately want ratification of Trump’s NAFTA replacement deal. The renegotiation of America’s largest trade deal has caused nearly two years of anxiety among U.S. producers over future access to their two largest export markets.

Business groups on Friday also once again rejected claims made by Trump that other countries pay the cost of tariffs he imposes. “A 5 percent increase is noticeable and will hit people’s pocketbooks,” said the U.S. Chamber’s Bradley.

“There’s no money coming from Mexico,” he said. “Every dime of the tariff is going to be paid by an American consumer and an American business.”

The overall impact of across-the-board tariffs with Mexico, coupled with the reaction in financial markets and fear over the escalating tariff battle, has economists warning more strongly about a potential slowdown. The economy grew at a 3.1 percent annual pace in the first quarter, but forecasts made before the Mexico announcement mostly predict growth of 2 percent or less in the second quarter. And they would likely go lower if Trump follows through and Mexico responds.

“If this is implemented fully, then the probability of a recession has increased significantly,” said Deutsche Bank’s Slok.

Taylor Miller Thomas contributed to this report.

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[easyfoodnetwork]

Lilia in Brooklyn | Gary He/Eater From the Editor: Everything you missed in food news last week This post originally appeared on July 18, 2020 in Amanda Kludt’s newsletter “From the Editor,” a roundup of the most vital news and stories in the food world each week. Read the archives and subscribe now. Last Saturday night I had a beautiful dinner on the sidewalk outside a French bistro across the street from Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn. It had just rained, in one 20-minute-long torrential fit, after a hot, steamy day, and the night was finally cool. Rain glistened off the street. The park was lush and empty. We ate mussels and pate and good bread and talked about the best local wine stores with the server, who poured us a slightly funky and exceedingly delicious Greek rosé. A French family with three kids (including a baby) sat at a table inside a makeshift enclosure in the road at an hour when most American children would be in bed. As we were leaving, lightning bugs lit up the air around the diners. It was the first time I felt a true hint at my old life in so many months. But what was the cost? While everything seemed as safe as possible — masks on everyone, distance between the tables, no overcrowding — I’m keenly aware that many restaurant workers in New York feel uncomfortable serving customers, even outside, in the middle of a pandemic where cases and deaths are still rising. The fears are even more pronounced in cities where indoor dining is permitted. Meanwhile, many notable industry voices, including my colleague Ryan Sutton, have said they don’t feel right dining out right now due to ethical concerns. Given the trajectory of cases in New York and the low likelihood of catching or spreading the disease when outside and interacting with other people wearing masks, I feel okay about dining outside at restaurants with proper protocols in place. But it is wild to be in this position as a consumer, just as it is wild to be in this position as a restaurant owner and staffer, deciding whether to reopen or return to work. Everyone is grappling with their own compass of risk and morality. Ethical quandaries aside, I do appreciate how the need for outdoor dining spaces across American cities has led to creative streetscapes. Biking around New York, you see makeshift and luxe new seating areas, some filled with plants, some with umbrellas, some with fun signage, all bracing for the next surprise summer downpour. I appreciate that this emergency has led to a removal of the red tape for restaurateurs who have been waiting on sidewalk seating permits for the better part of a decade. Some of these city streets look almost Parisien. Of course, New York isn’t exactly Paris when it comes to al fresco dining. Our punishing summer heat, surprise rainstorms, and corners stinking with garbage — not to mention aggressive rodents — make for an often inhospitable and unpredictable dining environment. But it’s hard not to appreciate the resiliency and creativity I’ve seen around town. Anyway, I’m curious: Are you eating out? On the fence? Firmly opposed? If you’ve been out, have you had any highlights? Let me know at amanda@eater.com. On Eater — Closures: Odessa and Bouley at Home in New York; K-Paul’s in New Orleans; Jules Maes Saloon in Seattle; Louis’ in San Francisco; and Bellecour in Minneapolis. — Scaling back: Indoor dining and bars across all of California and (briefly) outside dining in Oakland and Berkeley; bars in Louisiana; troublingly, you can still dine indoors in much of Florida. — Chicago is starting to shut down restaurants for breaking social-distancing rules. — Jessica Koslow, owner of LA hipster phenom Sqirl, was called out for questionable food safety practices, including an unlicensed and poorly ventilated prep kitchen, selling moldy jam, and not properly crediting chefs for their contributions to the menu. — Chef Rick Bayless left his two restaurants with longtime partner Manny Valdes, and chef Trigg Brown is temporarily stepping away from his Brooklyn restaurant Win Son. — Foie gras is legal again in California, so long as it’s produced out of state. — Politician Julian Castro on why he’s calling for a boycott of Goya products. — The sale of Ample Hills ice cream just seems so sad. Louiie Victa Pastries and cheese breads at Take It Easy — Miami announced a $35 million relief fund for independent restaurants. — Police shut down Riot Ribs, a mutual aid kitchen in Portland that had fed protesters night and day for 12 days. — Openings: Take It Easy, a Colombian breakfast spot in Vegas; Crushed by Giants, a brewery in Chicago; Over Under, a casual and cool takwaway spot in Miami; and Silver Apricot, a Chinese-American fine dining restaurant in New York. And LA chef Mei Lin will open a fried chicken joint next month. — Here’s a fun any-occasion gift guide from our shopping newsletter, Add to Cart. — Oh hey, we are hiring for a very exciting and fun job: Editor of Eater NY. Please tell all your friends. Off Eater A day in the life of an ice cream vendor in LA. [LAT] How campus dining is going to have to fundamentally change this fall. [NYT] Flouting open-container laws during COVID is a privilege that not everyone shares. [GS] This is a lovely little Q&A with chef Jenny Dorsey, who runs the culinary nonprofit Studio ATAO. [Taste] How modern-day bartenders in D.C. are looking to the city’s elite Black bartending club of the 1900s for inspiration. [Punch] from Eater - All https://ift.tt/3eLr54t

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