Health/Food Posts Tagged as 'Finance'
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By the time you sit on our planes, 'you're just pissed at the world'
United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz acknowledged key pain points customers face when traveling today, including airlines' increasingly shrinking seat sizes.
"I think we are nearing a point certainly that we can't do that anymore," Munoz told ABC News. The interview was conducted prior to the U.S. grounding of the Boeing 737 Max.
He said that air travel used to be a thrilling experience but has turned into a laborious process.
"It's become so stressful," he told the outlet, "from when you leave, wherever you live, to get into traffic, to find a parking spot, to get through security."
By the time you sit on our planes
Travel shaming has reached epidemic proportions
Millennials Will Get Sick and Die Faster Than the Previous Generation
Wednesday morning, Blue Cross Blue Shield published a 32-page report detailing the myriad ways in which millennials (my cohort!!!) will see their health decline and healthcare costs skyrocket over the next 10 years. The entire thing is a delight to read, and paired very well with my usual morning routine of “staring into my coffee and thinking about how fleeting life is :).”
In the report’s intro, analysts from Moody’s Analytics write that, in examining “millennial health patterns,” they found “several interesting and concerning findings.” Well… Pardon mon Francais, but I’ll freaking say so! Using a combination of data from Blue Cross Blue Shield, the CDC, and prior health studies, the report predicts millennials will achieve the new triple threat of being sicker, broker, and dying younger than the previous generation, Gen X. My fellow millennials have been essentially predicting this very outcome for years, just without all the fancy data, regularly joking that our parents will outlive us. Turns out…...we’ve been right the whole time!
Millennials Will Get Sick and Die Faster
Rich guys are most likely to have no idea what they’re talking about
Researchers embarked on a novel study intent on measuring what a Princeton philosophy professor contends is one of the most salient features of our culture — the ability to play the expert without being one.
Or, as the social scientists put it, to BS.
Research by John Jerram and Nikki Shure of the University College of London, and Phil Parker of Australian Catholic University attempted to measure the pervasiveness of this trait in society and identify its most ardent practitioners.
Study participants were asked to assess their knowledge of 16 math topics on a five-point scale ranging from “never heard of it” to “know it well, understand the concept.” Crucially, three of those topics were complete fabrications: “proper numbers,” “subjunctive scaling” and “declarative fractions.” Those who said they were knowledgeable about the fictitious topics were categorized as BSers.
Washington Post
Kids and parents are freaking out over no-gift birthday parties
For her daughter’s first birthday party at a bright indoor playspace, Melanie Okadigwe asked guests to pass on the piles of presents.
“We just have a lot of stuff,” says the school learning specialist from Prospect Lefferts Gardens. Besides, her daughter Twyla, now 2, “wasn’t playing with a lot of toys” at that point, anyway.
Children’s birthday presents are joining chain restaurants, American cheese and diamond engagement rings on the growing list of millennial casualties. Space-starved moms and dads are saying “thank you, next” to physical gifts, requesting their guests make charitable donations, give money or simply offer nothing at all. These proud, party-pooper parents say it helps them cut down on clutter and keeps their kids grateful for the toys they do have.
NY Post
Is This the End of Recycling?
After decades of earnest public-information campaigns, Americans are finally recycling. Airports, malls, schools, and office buildings across the country have bins for plastic bottles and aluminum cans and newspapers. In some cities, you can be fined if inspectors discover that you haven’t recycled appropriately.
But now much of that carefully sorted recycling is ending up in the trash.
For decades, we were sending the bulk of our recycling to China—tons and tons of it, sent over on ships to be made into goods such as shoes and bags and new plastic products. But last year, the country restricted imports of certain recyclables, including mixed paper—magazines, office paper, junk mail—and most plastics. Waste-management companies across the country are telling towns, cities, and counties that there is no longer a market for their recycling. These municipalities have two choices: pay much higher rates to get rid of recycling, or throw it all away.
Most are choosing the latter. “We are doing our best to be environmentally responsible, but we can’t afford it,” said Judie Milner, the city manager of Franklin, New Hampshire. Since 2010, Franklin has offered curbside recycling and encouraged residents to put paper, metal, and plastic in their green bins. When the program launched, Franklin could break even on recycling by selling it for $6 a ton. Now, Milner told me, the transfer station is charging the town $125 a ton to recycle, or $68 a ton to incinerate. One-fifth of Franklin’s residents live below the poverty line, and the city government didn’t want to ask them to pay more to recycle, so all those carefully sorted bottles and cans are being burned. Milner hates knowing that Franklin is releasing toxins into the environment, but there’s not much she can do. “Plastic is just not one of the things we have a market for,” she said.
Is This the End of Recycling?
INDIA IS CRACKING DOWN ON ECOMMERCE AND FREE SPEECH
WHEN IT COMES to cracking down on tech giants, India is on a roll. The country was the first to reject Facebook’s contentious plan to offer free internet access to parts of the developing world in 2016. Since December, Indian policymakers have taken a page from China’s playbook, enacting sweeping restrictions in an attempt to curtail the power of ecommerce behemoths like Amazon, and pushing proposals that would require internet companies to censor “unlawful” content, break user encryption, and forbid Indian data from being stored on foreign soil. In the past week alone, Indian officials have demanded that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey come before Parliament to answer accusations of bias, called for a ban on TikTok, and opened an investigation into claims that Google abused its Android mobile operating system to unfairly promote its own services.
For all its good intentions, India’s tech backlash could backfire, with potentially dire consequences for all tech companies—big and small—operating in India, not to mention free speech online. “There is an element of nationalism which is creeping into tech policy in India,” said Apar Gupta, executive director of the Internet Freedom Foundation, a digital-rights group. Gupta says this has resulted in a number of India-First-style tech policies being rushed through the government using the much quicker executive notification process rather than seeking parliamentary approval, which could have resulted in laws that would be more comprehensive and enforceable.
Wired
Customers Are Opting 'Out' of In-N-Out After $25,000 Donation to Republican Party
Opponents of the GOP are calling for an In-N-Out boycott after the burger chain donated thousands to the California Republican Party.
According to a public filing on the California Secretary of State’s website, the fast food corporation gave $25,000 to the state’s Republican Party on Tuesday. However, the news of the donation didn’t start to go viral until the filing was tweeted out by Washington, D.C.-based reporter Gabe Schneider the next day.
Time
Wealthy Americans know less than they think they do about food and nutrition
Socioeconomics play a significant role in attitudes about food – especially concerns about safety and purchasing behavior. And higher income doesn’t always correlate with informed choices. On the contrary, our research shows that affluent Americans tend to overestimate their knowledge about health and nutrition.
PBS
Americans Are Retiring Later, Dying Sooner and Sicker In-Between
The U.S. retirement age is rising, as the government pushes it higher and workers stay in careers longer.
But lifespans aren’t necessarily extending to offer equal time on the beach. Data released last week suggest Americans’ health is declining and millions of middle-age workers face the prospect of shorter, and less active, retirements than their parents enjoyed.
Bloomberg
Source: Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images Americans Face a Rising Risk of Dying Alone
More Americans lack health insurance since Trump became president
90% of Americans don't like to cook—and it's costing them thousands each year
For some Americans, going out to dinner is a treat, planned and budgeted for. For others, it's just another Tuesday night. And Wednesday. And Thursday.
And that second group of people is becoming the majority. The number of Americans who enjoy cooking is declining, while the prevalence of food delivery startups, meal kit subscriptions and culinary-centric television shows grows.
In the Harvard Business Review, researcher Eddie Yoon shares data he's gathered over two decades working as a consultant for consumer packaged goods companies. Early in Yoon's career, he conducted a survey that determined that Americans fell into one of three groups:
CNBC
The New Buy-Sexual? Straight Men Who Are Gay For Pay
We assume that these men are gay, or at the very least bisexual, and simply in denial about their sexuality. However, we now know that one subset of these men—straight men who enjoy getting paid for such sex—can, indeed, be heterosexual. It is not the sex that turns them on, it is the money! They have eroticized money, and the sense of value they derive from being admired and paid for performing sex acts with men.
Good Men Project
Your Roomba could sell maps of your home to Google, Amazon, or Apple in the future
Remember Roomba, the cute robotic vacuum cleaner who's been navigating around your house for years?
Well, its creator, iRobot, has hinted it may sell Roomba-derived maps of your home to one or more of the Big Three — Amazon, Apple and Google's Alphabet — in the next couple of years.
"There's an entire ecosystem of things and services that the smart home can deliver once you have a rich map of the home that the user has allowed to be shared," said Colin Angle, iRobot’s CEO.
If the idea of a device spying on your flooring plan — along with other data about your home — and then selling that info to companies to help them improve their targeted ads seems particularly creepy to you, that's because, well, it is creepy.
Mapping and space in general is the next big step in the tech industry's big push to make homes "smarter."
Mashable
Coffee recalled for undeclared Viagra-like ingredient
A Texas-based coffee company voluntarily recalled coffee containing an ingredient similar to what's in the erectile dysfunction drug Viagra, the US Food and Drug Administration announced. After an FDA laboratory confirmed the presence of desmethyl carbodenafil in the grounds, Bestherbs Coffee LLC recalled all New Kopi Jantan Tradisional Natural Herbs Coffee.
Desmethyl carbodenafil is similar to sildenafil, the active ingredient in Viagra, an FDA-approved prescription drug for erectile dysfunction, according to the FDA. The undeclared ingredient may interact with nitrates found in some prescription drugs, such as nitroglycerin, and may lower blood pressure to dangerous levels. Men with diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or heart disease often take medications that contain nitrates.
CNN
Meet the tech activists who want to turn Twitter into a user-owned co-op
With a user base topping 300 million subscribers, Twitter is one of the world’s most popular social media tools, and an increasingly important way to relay information across the globe in real time. But the 11-year-old micro-blogging platform has been a money-losing scheme for investors.
Slowing user growth, declining revenue growth and unprofitability has driven the company’s stock price from a peak of $66 a share in early 2014 to $18 today.
Twitter might not be earning much respect from Wall Street, but its users find tremendous value in it. Ironically, it’s the work users put into the platform — for free — that determines the value of the company. So if Twitter users are creating the company’s value, perhaps they should have a bigger stake in its future.
That’s exactly the idea that some tech activists have.
Salon
Margarine sales: investors can’t believe they’re not better
Data from Euromonitor International, a research firm, illustrate why Unilever is keen to leave the spreads business behind. The market for butter is far from saturated: global sales are expected to rise by 9% over the next five years, whereas sales of margarine are projected to stay flat. If Euromonitor's forecasts are correct, the spreads business may soon face a margarine call.
Economist