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Jennifer Meyer, Turquoise Flower Diamond Stud Earrings

noreply@blogger.com (Hiep Duong Van) — Wed, 29 Dec 2021 11:43:00 +0000

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noreply@blogger.com (Hiep Duong Van) — Wed, 29 Dec 2021 11:33:00 +0000

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YouTube Ordered to Pay $170 Million Fine for Violating Your Kids' Privacy

noreply@blogger.com (Hiep Duong Van) — Fri, 06 Sep 2019 02:19:00 +0000

YouTube Ordered to Pay $170 Million Fine for Violating Your Kids' Privacy

By ALIX LANGONE

September 4, 2019

YouTube got its parent company Google put in the time out chair on Wednesday.

The tech giant was hit with a record-breaking $170 million fine to settle allegations from regulators that the video sharing site illegally collected children’s data, according to reports in multiple media outlets, including The Washington Post and The New York Times.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the New York Attorney General allege that YouTube has been using children’s data without their parents’ consent and — in what comes as a surprise to pretty much no one who’s ever looked at the site — making money off of that data via targeted advertising. The complaint alleges that Google and YouTube violated child privacy laws because they knew there were child-directed channels on the site and were aware they had users younger than 13.

Of the $170 million civil penalty levied against the tech behemoth, $34 million will go to the New York AG and $136 million will go to the FTC, making it the largest-ever sum obtained by the FTC for violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). COPPA states that websites orientated towards children must obtain parental consent to collect a child’s personal information if the child is under 13 years of age, along with a notice about the site’s information practices.

The fine sends a more serious message to Silicon Valley than this year’s earlier (and tiny) $5.7 million fine for the social media video app TikTok, but it’s still a far cry from the $5 billion the FTC fined Facebook over privacy violations in July. Privacy experts say the amount is merely a drop in the bucket for a massive corporation like Google.

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This Is Why Walt Disney World Tickets Are So Expensive

noreply@blogger.com (Hiep Duong Van) — Thu, 29 Aug 2019 08:24:00 +0000

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This Is Why Walt Disney World Tickets Are So Expensive
By

Jen McCaffery

From Reader's Digest

IMAGEBROKER/SHUTTERSTOCK

Tickets prices have increased as Disney has continued to attract more customers.

Have you always wanted to visit Disney World but were waiting for your kids to be a little older or for your boss to finally approve your time off? The most magical place on Earth isn’t far out of reach. But if you haven’t looked at ticket prices for a while, you might be in for a shock.

Disney raised ticket prices not once, not twice, but three times since the beginning of 2018. That’s for its annual Platinum Pass, which gives you access for a year to all four parks: the Magic Kingdom, Epcot Center, Hollywood Studios, and Animal Kingdom. In February, Disney raised prices for the passes from $779 to $849. Then in October, Disney increased them again, from $849 to $890. Then, because of the new Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge opening, they raised prices again from $890 to $1,119. Over the past five years, Disney has hiked fees at roughly double the rate of inflation, according to the Wall Street Journal. If you want to save some money after paying a fortune for your annual pass, here are some things you can get for free at Disney World.

So why are the tickets getting so expensive? Disney isn’t hurting for money, with $4.5 billion in operating profit during fiscal year 2018. But here are some reasons why:

Desire to dominate the market

When Walt Disney World opened in Orlando in 1971, a daily pass cost $3.50, the Washington Post reports. But the theme park has come a long way since just having a marching band parade down Main Street USA.

Since then, Disney has expanded exponentially, with new parks and attractions, pulling ahead of the competition and attracting double the visitors of its closest competitor. But when Universal Studios opened its Harry Potter attraction in 2010, Disney ramped up its efforts even more. “It was game-on in this business,” Robert Niles, the editor of Theme Park Insider, tells Business Insider. “All of a sudden Disney had a competitor again, and Disney does not like to lose—not just lose, Disney doesn’t even like to compete. Disney wants to dominate its competition.”

Over the past five years, Disney has invested more than $15 billion in its parks around the world, the Wall Street Journal reports. The strategy worked: 55 percent of North American theme-park attendance in 2017 was at Disney Parks.

A new pricing model

Not surprisingly, school vacations and summer are the busiest times at Disney. But Disney World and Disneyland are open all year. So in 2018, the company switched to dynamic pricing to better distribute the times when people visit. That means that tickets during the busiest weeks of the year are more expensive than the quieter months.

Tickets are broken out into three categories of dates: “value,” “regular,” and “peak” times. The cost per ticket can range from $100 for an average day to more than $120 when the parks are really busy, the Wall Street Journal reports. The system encourages people to buy their tickets further in advance. Here are 23 secrets Disney employees won’t tell you.

To attract wealthier customers

Disney has also increasingly targeted people with more money to spend, with private tours, dinners with princesses, and the opening of a five-star Four Seasons resort. “They know that the money is in the upper level, the top 10 percent, the top 1 percent,” Niles says. “They’ve created a wide variety of new products to try and, frankly, extract more money out of the people who have money to spare.”

When Disney World opened, staying at the Bora Bora Bungalows cost $29 per night. Now it can cost as much as $3,400! Again, the strategy is paying off, though. In 2018, per capita spending in the parks increased by 5 percent and the revenue per hotel room went up by 8 percent.

But is that what the man who dreamed up Mickey Mouse would have wanted?

“If Walt [Disney] were alive today, he would probably be uncomfortable with the prices they’re charging right now,” Scott Smith, an assistant professor of hospitality at the University of South Carolina, who worked as a cast member in Disney’s Haunted Mansion, tells the Washington Post. “They’ve priced middle-class families out.”

And the price increases might not stop there. In the coming years, Epcot will be completely renovated in celebration of the 50th anniversary. There will be new attractions, entertainment, dining, merchandise, and more. As these changes roll out, it wouldn’t be a surprise if the annual Platinum price went up even more.

If you don’t live in the area and just want to buy tickets for a few days without going completely broke, Disney just announced a new Mid-Day Magic Ticket. It allows you to have access to one park after 12 p.m. for a much cheaper price. If you purchase a two-day Mid-Day Magic ticket it will cost you $88 per day versus $116 a day for a normal ticket. Sometimes it pays to sleep in. Next, don’t miss these insider secrets from a Disney super fan.

Fashion houses launch manifesto to improve green credentials

noreply@blogger.com (Hiep Duong Van) — Sun, 25 Aug 2019 04:25:00 +0000

Fashion houses launch manifesto to improve green credentials

Coalition of 32 companies will present its Fashion Pact at the G7 summit in Biarritz

Extinction Rebellion stage a mock fashion show in London’s Oxford Circus to protest against the industry’s wastefulness and carbon footprint. Photograph: Yui Mok/PA

A coalition of 32 of the world’s largest fashion groups and brands has published a manifesto that details the practical objectives and targets it has set to minimise the industry’s impact on the climate, oceans and biodiversity.

The Fashion Pact, which was released on Friday and will be presented at the G7 meeting in Biarritz, says it “will not reinvent the wheel, but create an overarching framework for action”, and will make its findings open source. It intends to build on the work of existing organisations such as the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and Fashion For Good.

Key points include a commitment to 100% renewable energy across own operations by 2030; pledges to eliminate micro-fibre pollution and develop biodiversity strategies, which may include wildlife-friendly approaches to agriculture, mining and forestry that promote the conservation of key species; and a recommendation to eliminate single-use plastics in both B2B and B2C packaging by 2030.

It also details a joint initiative to ensure social inclusion, fair wages and respectful working conditions throughout the supply chain with a focus on “empowering small-hold producers and women in low-income countries”.

The initiative was instigated earlier this year by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, who asked François-Henri Pinault - the CEO of the Kering Group, which owns Gucci, Saint Laurent and Alexander McQueen - to form an coalition to address the fashion industry’s environmental impact.

Pinault outlined his vision for the coalition at the Copenhagen fashion summit in May. “This has nothing to do with competition,” he told delegates. “It’s a matter of leadership. Alone it is useless, you have to work with your peers. We might not succeed, but we will achieve more than not doing anything.”

Burberry’s CEO, Marco Gobbetti, said on Friday: “We know that one company cannot solve the environmental challenges facing our planet alone and we believe in the power of collaboration to drive real change.”

The pact comes as key members of the luxury fashion industry have come under fire for failing to publicly respond to wildfires in the Amazon rainforest. The lack of response has been contrasted with the millions of euros donated by Kering and its rival LVMH toward the restoration of Notre Dame.

Macron described the situation in the Amazon as an international crisis on Friday, and called for it to be top of the G7 summit agenda.

As the crisis escalates…

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‘Dummy wasn’t a chillout album. Portishead had more in common with Nirvana’

noreply@blogger.com (Hiep Duong Van) — Sun, 25 Aug 2019 02:56:00 +0000

‘Dummy wasn’t a chillout album. Portishead had more in common with Nirvana’

On the 25th anniversary of their classic debut, Geoff Barrow and Adrian Utley reflect on how the album came together

Jude Rogers

@juderogers

529

Comments

388

Geoff Barrow and Beth Gibbons in the early 90s. Photograph: Mark McNulty/Retna

Twenty-five years ago, during the summer of Blur’s Parklife and Oasis’s Definitely Maybe, a darker, stranger record was released that would soon become huge. Its title and mood was inspired by a 1970s TV drama of the same name, about a young deaf woman in Yorkshire who becomes a prostitute. The lyrics spoke of emotional extremes, sung in an extraordinary, rural-tinged, English blues by the Devon-born Beth Gibbons, of “the blackness, the darkness, forever” in Wandering Star, or of the feeling that “nobody loves me, it’s true, not like you do” in Sour Times.

Its sound, woven together by Geoff Barrow and Adrian Utley, helped define what is known today in music as hauntology, the sampling of older, spectral sounds to evoke deeper cultural memories (Boards of Canada’s TV-sampling electronica, Burial’s dubstep, and the Ghost Box label’s folk horror soundworlds would follow their lead). But despite its starkness, Dummybecame a triple-platinum seller and a Mercury prizewinner, perhaps because it struck a nerve in what Barrow calls our “sonic unconscious… when sounds can merge with other sounds from somewhere else, and ultimately create emotion”.

It’s a muggy, windy afternoon in a canalside corner of Bristol, the city where Portishead have been making music on and off since 1991. Barrow and Utley are in the studio of Barrow’s record label, Invada, scuttling around drinking coffee and fiddling with a new synthesiser. Despite there being 15 years between them, they have a funny, sweary, fraternal camaraderie. Beth Gibbons is not here, as usual, despite requests: only two short interviews in the mid-1990s revealed the chattier person behind her mysterious persona. (She didn’t do interviews either for her racked, bruising interpretation of Górecki’s Third Symphony with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, released earlier this year.)

With no reissue to support Dummy’s silver anniversary (a remaster was released in 2014), one wonders initially why we’re here. The trio haven’t released an album since 2008 (the abrasive, career-high Third) or played live since 2015; their last outing, in 2016, was a startling, bleak cover of Abba’s SOS for the film High Rise. But as the two hours unfurl, it’s obvious that this is Portishead’s opportunity to settle scores, to present what Dummy really was. There are also hints that the Portishead story isn’t quite finished yet. As we’re settling down, they talk about needing to speak to Beth to get photos together “for something”, but my nosy inquiries are quickly brushed aside.

When the two men met, Barrow was a ponytailed 19-year-old making demos with the 26-year-old Gibbons at the city’s Coach House Studios (Barrow and Gibbons had met at an Enterprise Allowance training day at the dole office in 1990: “She was a grown-up in my eyes,” he says). Utley was 34, a bored jazz session guitarist finishing yet another job in a room downstairs. “And I remember somebody opening the door upstairs and me hearing It Could Be Sweet [one of the first tracks written for Dummy]. I was all, ‘Fuck me, what is that?’ Just hearing the sub-bass and Beth’s voice – it was unbelievable. Like a whole new world that was really exciting and vital.”

The three bonded quickly. Utley mined Barrow for his knowledge of sampling (“Tell me everything! How are they making that Queen track go on and off?”), while Utley’s collection of TV-recorded spy films introduced his bandmates to unusual sounds from instruments such as cimbaloms and theremins. “It was a really exciting time, because there was this amalgamation of ideas and a lifetime of separate discovery with all of us. And the fact that we brought it to each other…” Utley beams. “It was like a new love.”

Barrow and Gibbons’s first ideas for songs had been recorded in Neneh Cherry’s kitchen in London (Barrow had been hired by Cherry’s husband and manager, Cameron McVey, to work on her second album, Homebrew, on which he co-wrote and co-produced the song Somedays; McVey spotted Barrow’s talent when he worked as a trainee tape operator on Massive Attack’s groundbreaking 1991 album Blue Lines). That working relationship had fallen apart. Barrow’s mental health had also declined. “I was in a terrible place. Through the Gulf war, I was really quite sick, physically and mentally. Mental stuff. I thought the war was the end of the world. I’d never had a breakdown before – I think it was just the pressure of the Portisheadstuff – I didn’t know I was having it. And no one ever talked to me about mental health in any way.” “You’re able to hide mental health issues within the music industry,” Utley chips in. “It’s completely acceptable to be a little bit crazy, drink too much or take too many drugs. It’s like: ‘Yeah, man, he was fucked last night’. No one asks, ‘why was he fucked?’ I think that ignorance has been going on for ever.”

Dummy motored on after Portishead, now a trio, moved to the Bristol district of Easton to record. “That was grim too,” Barrow laughs. “The only place to eat was Iceland or this horrible pub called Granny’s where your beans and chips would arrive with Granny’s thumb in it.” The lush soundscapes of Dummy rose from that bleakness. “But the process is never romantic, is it?” Barrow continues. “Listen to how New Order made their first records, or whoever, and it’s always going to be the same story. You’re in some shithole somewhere that you’ve made into something OK.”

Bristol has changed since then, but not in a good way, the men say. Homelessness and drugs problems are even bigger issues. “Plus you go somewhere like St Pauls – which was very much a community of Caribbean people – and there’s some posh student in a onesie,” Utley says. “Really privileged kids that have taken that area over.” In 2017, Bristol was named the most desirable British city to live in by one survey, but also the most racially segregated by another. Its past has always been unpleasantly divided, says Barrow, citing a book called A Darker History of Bristol, which recounts its history with slavery. “And still, lots of Bristol people only give a fuck about themselves,” he adds. “But there’s been an anti-establishment arts scene here too, for years, with a massive tongue in its cheek. It was there in the Pop Group, Smith and Mighty, the Wild Bunch, and Banksy [Barrow was music supervisor for Banksy’s 2010 exhibition, Exit Through the Gift Shop]. It’s always found itself.” A note of hope, then? He shrugs, still unsure.

Portishead have always been a political band on their own terms. A quote from Jo Cox (“We have far more in common than that which divides us”) was featured in their 2016 video for SOS; it still sits on their website’s landing page. Barrow and Utley also rant about Brexit, Trump and the Tories on Twitter feeds constantly; we meet four days after the new PM arrives, which Barrow calls “an absolute fucking disaster” (he later retweets Jeremy Corbyn’s plan to stop a no-deal Brexit).

Utley also mentions Gibbons’s lyrics being “very visceral and political” about gender and the politics of relationships, despite their abstract nature. He recalls Gibbons pointed out a “mansplaining” incident in a restaurant, and it reflecting one of her songs (they don’t mention the song, adding they don’t discuss her lyrics in detail). Barrow also recalls sexist record company A&Rs from their early days. “This real meat and veg vibe. Men going: ‘What’s this moaning bird on about?’”

By winter 1994, Dummy was everywhere. And in January it went to No 3 in the charts, behind Celine Dion and the Beautiful South. Sour Times and Glory Box became top 15 singles. Then came the Mercury win, at which Barrow ranted about prizes being preposterous (“I still agree with that”). He also recalls his mum being cross with Paul Morley (“he’d dissed us a bit”) and chatting amiably to Noel Gallagher. “I remember thinking, Oh, most musicians are dead normal. Or at least as mad as you.”

Barrow and Utley’s main beef is that Dummy is remembered as a sexy, chillout record in the UK. “When people say that, I find it bizarre.” He says Portishead had far more in common with Nirvana than any dance or chillout acts. “I know that sounds ridiculous – but they also had these visceral chord changes, never being harmonically correct.” He has a theory though: that the dance culture that happened in Britain didn’t happen elsewhere on the same scale, “so when everyone was partying and taking pills and coming down, the attitudes were different.” Portishead are just seen as a vocal-led band elsewhere, he adds, with Gibbons as a Polly Harvey or Hope Sandoval figure. They’re huge in France, Switzerland and the US, where Third entered the charts at No 7, and in Latin America: they played to 80,000 in Mexico City. Despite their recent silence, every Portishead musician remains busy. Barrow makes film scores with composer Ben Salisbury (his latest for the Octavia Spencer and Naomi Watts film Luce, is released in the UK this November) and “really loves” playing live with his Krautrock-influenced band Beak. Utley has made a soundtrack with artist Gillian Wearing for a George Eliot documentary recently, worked on Anna Calvi’s latest LP, and with the Paraorchestra of Great Britain on several projects.

They’re still passionate about new music. Both fathers, they like “that great gothy woman the kids like who makes stuff on Logic on her laptop” (we work out it’s Billie Eilish), James Holden, Idles, Hildur Guðnadóttir and Sharon Van Etten (Barrow), Kate Tempest, Thurston Moore and Perfume Genius (Utley). Things they don’t like include composer Nils Frahm, about whom they rant for five hilarious minutes. Barrow: “He’ll change his scarf half way through to prove how important he is.” Utley: “He’s grade 3 piano. He’s fucking Richard Clayderman.”

That joyous railing against everyone else, that sticking to one’s guns, makes you wish for Portishead to return as a musical entity even sooner. Utley confirms he was the last to see Gibbons: “The other week for lunch. It was great. We slagged everything off!” Will we see them back together soon? The men look at each other for a moment too long – moments later, as I start to leave, they’re talking about the photographs again. “It’s all up in the air, really,” Utley says. “If the wind blows hard enough, you never know.”

As I leave, a gale outside roars. Darker, stranger things keep on happening.

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Boris Johnson seeks legal advice on five-week parliament closure ahead of Brexit

noreply@blogger.com (Hiep Duong Van) — Sun, 25 Aug 2019 02:43:00 +0000

Boris Johnson seeks legal advice on five-week parliament closure ahead of Brexit

Secret plan to block any delay in leaving EU is likely to anger European leaders at G7 summit

Boris Johnson has asked the attorney general, Geoffrey Cox, whether parliament can be shut down for five weeks from 9 September in what appears to be a concerted plan to stop MPs forcing a further extension to Brexit, according to leaked government correspondence.

An email from senior government advisers to an adviser in No 10 – written within the last 10 days and seen by the Observer – makes clear that the prime minister has recently requested guidance on the legality of such a move, known as prorogation. The initial legal guidance given in the email is that shutting parliament may well be possible, unless action being taken in the courts to block such a move by anti-Brexit campaigners succeeds in the meantime.

On Saturday Labour and pro-Remain Tory MPs reacted furiously, saying that the closure of parliament, as a method for stopping MPs preventing a potentially disastrous no-deal Brexit, would be an affront to democracy and deeply irresponsible, particularly given the government’s own acceptance of the economic turmoil no-deal could cause.

Shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer said: “Any plan to suspend parliament at this stage would be outrageous. MPs must take the earliest opportunity to thwart this plan and to stop a no-deal Brexit.”

The prominent Tory remainer and former attorney general Dominic Grieveadded: “This memo, if correct, shows Boris Johnson’s contempt for the House of Commons. It may be possible to circumvent the clear intention of the House of Commons in this way but it shows total bad faith. Excluding the house from a national crisis that threatens the future of our country is entirely wrong.”

Dominic Grieve said: ‘This memo, if correct, shows Boris Johnson’s contempt for the House of Commons.’

Johnson has said he is “not attracted” to the idea of proroguing parliament and that he wants a Brexit deal, but has repeatedly refused to rule it out. After becoming prime minister he immediately promoted Dominic Raab, the first senior Tory to propose the idea of shutting parliament to get Brexit through, to the post of foreign secretary.

The email shows that the feasibility of a five-week parliamentary shutdown is under active consideration, from soon after the date on which parliament returns on 3 September, until the eve of the last EU summit before Brexit, on 17 and 18 October, when it will be too late for MPs to block no deal. The revelation will also anger EU leaders as Johnson makes his international summit debut at the G7 in Biarritz this weekend.

Johnson was due to meet US president Donald Trump for talks on Sunday, with Brexit and international trade high on the agenda. He will also meet EU council president Donald Tusk who said on Saturday that he would not cooperate with Johnson on a no-deal Brexit, but rather wanted to find a way forward with him to secure a deal on issues including the Irish backstop.

Tusk said as G7 leaders gathered that he was “willing to listen to ideas that are operational, realistic and acceptable to all EU member states, including Ireland, if and when the UK government is ready. The one thing I will not cooperate on is no deal, and I still hope that prime minister Johnson will not like to go down in history as ‘Mr No Deal’.”

Donald Tusk said he hoped Johnson would not like ‘to go down in history as Mr No Deal.’ Photograph: Ludovic Marin/AFP/Getty Images

Pro-Remain MPs have spent the summer recess planning how to block a no-deal outcome and, if necessary, force an extension to the Brexit deadline beyond 31 October, when parliament returns on 3 September.

Among the options being considered are taking control of Commons business for enough time to pass legislation that would mandate the prime minister to seek another extension.

An alternative backed by some Remainers is to amend Brexit-related legislation to force an extension.

EU leaders will be closely monitoring the clashes in parliament in September. Brussels sources say the bloc is reluctant to make fresh concessions before MPs have had an opportunity to tie Johnson’s hands by seeking to block no deal.

Speaking en route to the French resort, the PM urged MPs not to consider trying to do so. “I think it’s parliament’s job now to respect not just the will of the people but to remember what the overwhelming majority of them promised to do over and over and over again, which is to get Brexit done, to respect the will of the people, and to come out of the EU on 31 October. That is what I am confident our parliament will do,” he said.

The leaked email will fuel speculation that Johnson is prepared to make the delivery of a “deal or no deal” Brexit an issue of parliament versus the people. The email examines whether the prime minister could thwart MPs’ plans by shutting parliament until a Queen’s speech would herald a new parliament on 14 October.

A government source said there was a definite and clear plan to prorogue parliament being hatched by Johnson’s closest advisers.

In particular the memo examines whether Johnson could circumvent a previous amendment, championed by Grieve, that was inserted into a bill relating to the Northern Ireland Assembly earlier this summer. It requires ministers to report regularly to parliament on progress in restoring the Stormont Assembly. The email suggests the Grieve amendment does not necessarily prevent the prime minister activating the prorogation plan.

The news will add greater urgency to talks that will take place on Tuesday between Jeremy Corbyn and cross-party MPs on how to prevent no-deal. Corbyn has said he will call a confidence motion in the government when parliament returns, and if successful, would seek to become prime minister for an interim period before calling a general election. Starmer is understood to want MPs to try to pass legislation specifically to mandate the prime minister to ask the EU for an extension.

Senior MPs believe Johnson may think that he can win such a confidence motion, and believe that having done so that he would have a mandate to drive through a no-deal Brexit even if he had to shut down parliament to do so. Any move to prorogue parliament would enrage Commons speaker John Bercow who said recently at the Edinburgh festival that parliament could stop a no-deal Brexit.

The campaigner and businesswoman Gina Miller has said she will spearhead an immediate legal challenge should Johnson try to shut down parliament in order to drive through a no-deal Brexit against the wishes of MPs.

A government source did not deny that legal advice had been sought. They added: “As a matter of routine, No 10 officials ask for legal and policy advice every day.”

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I Survived 9/11—These Are the 15 Questions Young People Ask Me the Most

noreply@blogger.com (Hiep Duong Van) — Wed, 14 Aug 2019 10:59:00 +0000

I Survived 9/11—These Are the 15 Questions Young People Ask Me the Most

By Helaina Hovitz

From Redaer Digest

Twelve-years-old at the time of the attack, the author survived, and so did her family. But as the days continued and she saw her neighborhood covered in smog and debris and filled with flyers of people who lost loved ones, amid continued threads of more attacks and building collapses—she realized 9/11 was just beginning.

That morning

I was 12 years old, sitting in school three blocks away from the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, when the planes hit the twin towers. Our teachers had us all gather in the cafeteria. I remember parents rushing in to pull out their children amid the chaos. I began panicking, wondering how I would get home to my apartment building on the other side of the Towers where my elderly grandparents also lived. Then, my neighbor and her 13-year-old son appeared in the doorway, arriving late for the day after an appointment, to walk me home. We left just minutes before the first tower collapsed. What we ran from, saw, heard, smelled, and experienced as we pushed through crowds and ran for our lives from the collapsing towers—the first, then the second—as we tried to get home with police stopping us at every way in and bloody, ash-covered bodies running past us—has become common knowledge in the past decade. But it’s very different to live through it in real-time as a child, with no idea if we would be killed in an instant, what was going to happen next, and if the world was going to end before I could see my family again and say goodbye. I survived, but that morning was just the beginning of my trauma.

In 2016, I wrote a book, After 9/11 about my experiences and that of over a dozen of my former classmates, I began to receive emails from children across the country asking me questions and telling me their feelings about the day. I started video chatting with them in their classrooms as well. These are the questions I’m asked most frequently—along with my heartfelt answers.

Get a Look at the World’s Largest Underwater Restaurant

noreply@blogger.com (Hiep Duong Van) — Wed, 14 Aug 2019 10:41:00 +0000

Get a Look at the World’s Largest Underwater Restaurant

By Isabelle Tavares

From Reader Digest

Head Chef Nicolai Ellitsgaard's vision for a sustainable restaurant came alive with the vibrant ecosystem beyond the iconic panoramic window.

The salty air of the North Sea mixes with thick gray clouds settling into the background, a common scene for the cold coastal landscape. At the southernmost tip of Norway, Europe’s first, and the world’s largest, underwater restaurant welcomed guests on March 20, 2019. Under is the nexus of environmental design, marine research, and delicately artful food presentations.

The underwater restaurant experience

Reminiscent of a half-submerged whale, the nearly 111-foot monolithic structure is situated about 16 feet below the surface. The main attraction, a 36-foot-wide floor-to-ceiling window, invites guests to a rare viewing of marine life of the North Atlantic Ocean. Under was designed by Snøhetta, a Norwegian architecture firm, notable for the redesign of Times Square.

“Dinner is served in one of the most spectacular edifices that [has] ever been created for a restaurant,” customer Andreas from Denmark wrote. “It [is] a bit like a concrete bunker that has been dropped in the ocean and tilted so that one end sticks out.”

The environment was heavily considered in Under‘s design. The restaurant’s exterior will eventually integrate into the ecosystem as an “artificial reef, welcoming limpets and kelp to inhabit it,” per the underwater restaurant’s website. Location was a major factor as well. Guests can watch clashing currents on the ocean floor, as Lindesnes, Norway is famous for its moody weather and intercepts the Gulf Stream.

The layout of this underwater restaurant

The icy waters crash onto the dark rocks and then retreat as guests file indoors. The first floor is composed entirely of oak with a foyer and cloakroom. A walk down to the second floor, housing a champagne bar, will put guests in a water-and-land limbo. Guests then descend to the final floor where the iconic panoramic view is seen by no more than 40 guests.

IVAR KVAAL

Head Chef Nicolai Ellitsgaard says, “Fresh ingredients and pure, naked flavors are of utmost importance to us. At the same time, we want to provide a unique dining experience that ushers our guests beyond their comfort zone.” True to its structure, Under left conventional dinner expectations at the water’s surface. A total of “18 seasonally inspired” courses are served, small enough to give guests a taste but frequent enough to keep them full. It’s similar to its predecessor, the underwater restaurant in the Maldives, one of the 10 weirdest restaurants around the world.

“This is a restaurant that does not so much serve food as it makes culinary works of art. Every single serving in the [17-]course tasting menu is a carefully crafted work of art in two ways: it is both a tiny sculpture made from sand, stone, shells, seaweed, and occasionally water as well as a culinary work of art,” Andreas wrote. Include Under on your bucket list, along with these 18 one-of-a-kind adventures.

The underwater restaurant’s sustainability mission

A core part of the underwater restaurant’s vision is sustainability. Almost all of the dishes are from unused, or otherwise wasted, parts of local marine life, for instance, the throat meat of a lingcod fish or locally foraged beach greens, wrote customer Elizabeth from Seattle. The menu rotates with the seasons, as its dishes are tied to the available flora and fauna that can be seen from the window. Ellitsgaard says that “the local area is known for its bountiful varieties of wild mushrooms and succulent berries” as well.

What you can expect at the underwater restaurant

The day it opened, the restaurant had over 7,000 reservations, and it’s known for months of waiting time. You can book here. Although the wait is long—the underwater restaurant is almost completely booked until January 2020—those months will give you time to save for the steep price. A meal with drinks is about $430 or $260 without. If that, not to mention the trip to Norway, is a little pricey for you, dine in style stateside with 2018’s best-rated restaurants for everyday dining in America. If you decide to take the plunge, the underwater restaurant’s address is Bålyveien 48, 4521 Lindesnes, Norway, which is about an hour and twenty minutes drive from the nearest airport.

Why the World Needs Honeybees

noreply@blogger.com (Hiep Duong Van) — Wed, 14 Aug 2019 10:29:00 +0000

Why the World Needs Honeybees

By Isabelle Tavares

From Reader Digest

You'd be surprised by how much we rely on honeybees!

Why does the world need honeybees?

Honeybees are extraordinarily important to the world’s food supply: nearly $20 billion of the value of U.S. crop production is because of honeybees. One out of every three bites of food we take is pollinated by honeybees. Foods like berries, nuts, fruits, vegetables, honey, and coffee wouldn’t exist without the fuzzy buzzers. But, last winter, U.S beekeepers lost nearly 40 percent of their colonies, according to a survey from the Bee Informed Partnership—the “greatest reported winter hive loss,” according to NPR, since surveys began 13 years ago.

How do honeybees work?

A colony is composed of about 50,000 honeybees that live in a hive with divided roles—as a family does, said Hilary Kearney, bee education specialist and author. The queen is the single reproductive bee in the colony and keeps the cycle of death and birth in balance. Every day, nearly half of the colony leaves the hive to forage. As the honeybees gather pollen and nectar, they pollinate crops and then bring the food home for the hive.

What’s causing the decline of honeybee populations?

PITAKSUNTI/SHUTTERSTOCK

Many things: pesticides, loss of habitat, Varroa mites, climate change, lack of younger beekeepers to name a few. For instance, when a bee encounters pesticides, it brings the poisoned nectar to the nest which affects the colony. And that’s only if they’re about to get back to the hive—bees may never return because the poison affects their navigation skills. What pesticides are bees encountering? Neonicotinoid is the number one pesticide in the world and sold at places like The Home Depot, where home gardeners, commercial agriculturalists, or city park government officials have access to it, Kearney noted. “I don’t think people are aware of what they’re using, and they don’t understand what’s happening,” Kearney said. “Honeybees are not going extinct but are endangered because of pesticides.” Kearney explained male bee sperm count goes down 40 percent when exposed to pesticides and increases the chance of queen death. If the queen dies, so does the colony.

But, Kearney said this incident alone is not enough for them to come tumbling down. “It’s not like one bee eats poison, brings it back, and the colony drops dead—it’s a collective. It takes a few more stressors, like a cold winter combined with pesticides, to knock them out,” Kearney explained. And during those cold months, here’s where all the honeybees hide out in the winter. “Colonies are infinite. If they don’t encounter stressors, the colony can live forever.”

Marni Majorelle, green roof specialist and founder of Alive Structures, believes one of the main issues contributing to the decline of honey bee populations is the loss of natural habitat. “We’re losing huge swaths of natural habitat [including native plants] to invasive species, suburban sprawl, and the installation of concrete everywhere [habitat destruction],” Majorelle said.

And those funky weather patterns we’ve been experiencing as of late? Bees are so closely tied to the weather that erratic weather changes make it harder for them to survive, Kearney said. The fires, floods, long winters, and hot summers directly affect the number of flowers bees need to pollinate. Kearney has seen seven years of drought in California during her nine years as a beekeeper. She said that means there’s no food available for them, and beekeepers have resorted to feeding bees sugar water.

What would the world look like without honeybees?

Experts say there would be a sharp decrease in delicious fruits and veggies. “I don’t think anyone knows the answer, but the cost of food would go up because farmers would have to start hand pollinating,” Kearney said. “Honey bees are contributing to not only food but other plants that rely on insect pollination—if we were to lose honey bees we would lose the plants.”

Other bees are important, too

The honeybee is a crowd favorite for a good reason, but Kearney and Majorelle said local bees are just as important. A whopping 3,999 other bee species exist—comprised of wild native bees. “Honeybees are not as endangered as our wild bees,” Majorelle said. “They don’t make honey, but are responsible for a large impact on our agricultural crops.”

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noreply@blogger.com (Hiep Duong Van) — Wed, 14 Aug 2019 10:18:00 +0000