THE LOGICAL CONCLUSION OF 2ND AMENDMENT FETISHISTS

Candidate Running To Primary Elise Stefanik Says People 'Should Be Able To Own a Nuke'


A Republican challenger hoping to succeed House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik in the U.S. House of Representatives believes that Second Amendment rights should include the ability to "own a nuke."

Lonny Koons, a Republican challenger to Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), recently told a local paper that members of the public "should be able to own a nuke" under the Constitution's Second Amendment. Stefanik, the House GOP Conference chair, is pictured during a press conference in Washington, D.C. on May 14, 2021.

Carthage, New York resident Lonny Koons argued against legal limits on the ownership of guns and other weapons in an interview published by The Watertown Daily Times on Friday. Koons admitted that allowing ordinary citizens to own nuclear weapons would be "obviously extreme craziness," but maintained that the Constitution demands that citizens have unfettered access to any arms available to the military.

"In all technicality, if you wanted to own a nuke, you should be able to own a nuke," Koons told the paper. "That's obviously extreme craziness, but at the same time, if the whole point of the Second Amendment is to stand up to the government, if the government has nukes how can you stand up to that with a musket?"

Koons insisted that no limits of any kind could be imposed on what weapons citizens could own unless a new amendment to the Constitution were to go into effect.

An Army veteran, Koons moved to the area because he and his wife wanted to be close to the nearby Fort Drum Army base—although he had never personally been stationed there.

Stefanik said that she "will always stand up for the Second Amendment because our constitutional right to keep and bear arms is fundamental to preserving our liberty" in a statement after President Joe Biden issued a series of executive orders on gun control earlier this year.

Koons conceded that his chances of victory were slim due to Stefanik's popularity. He said he was hoping to "primary" Stefanik because her staff had ignored his repeated attempts to contact the congresswoman while allegedly telling him that his "issues weren't important."

"For four and a half years, I have been trying to get in touch with Representative Stefanik," Koons said. "All the calls I've made and the times I've shown up to their empty offices, I have spoken with one person, and was told my issues weren't important. I don't want anyone else to experience that."

Stefanik was easily reelected in 2020 and is a clear favorite to retain her seat in 2022. Her allegiance to former President Donald Trump paid Republican dividends this year when she became the House GOP Conference chair after the ouster of Trump critic Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming.

Koons, like Stefanik, agrees with at least some of Trump's false claims that massive voter fraud was a factor in the 2020 election.

Newsweek reached out to Stefanik's office for comment.

3 structural engineers explain why a building like the Surfside, Florida condo might suddenly collapse

awoodward@insider.com (Aylin Woodward) 

 Search and rescue personnel work in the rubble of the 12-story condo tower that crumbled to the ground on June 24, 2021 in Surfside, Florida. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

A condo in Surfside, Florida collapsed unexpectedly on June 24. At least 128 people are missing.

Insider spoke with three structural engineers to find out why such a building might abruptly fall.

Common causes include poor maintenance or eroding soil under a structure's foundation.

At least 20 people are dead and 120 are missing after the Champlain Towers South condominium in Surfside, Florida abruptly collapsed last week. As rescuers continue to search for buried victims, investigators have started sifting through building records, videos, and physical wreckage to determine what, precisely, caused the structure to fall.


While it's extremely uncommon for a building to collapse in the absence of a natural disaster like an earthquake or hurricane, there are a handful of reasons why it could happen, three structural engineers told Insider.

Some of the most likely causes include poor maintenance or overloading part of a structure with too much weight. Buildings are designed to hold up to twice as much load as is deemed necessary - but that strength decreases as a building ages and deteriorates over time.

"Very simply, structures collapse when the load that is placed upon them exceeds the strength of the structure," Ronald Hamburger, a structural engineer with the national engineering firm Simpson, Gumpertz, & Heger, told Insider. (A member of that firm, not Hamburger, is helping investigate the Surfside condo disaster.)

Erosion under a building's foundation, a corroded exterior, or a design flaw could also make a structure more vulnerable to collapse.

Here's how five problems may contribute to building collapses like the one in Surfside, Florida.
The building isn't properly maintained

© Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty A cracked concrete balcony in Odessa, Ukraine. Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty

Most often, a sudden collapse can be traced back to poor maintenance, experts said. That may include a lack of new paint, or a failure to shore up cracks in concrete and eliminate rust and stagnant water.

"You can have a perfectly designed building, and a perfectly constructed building per the engineer drawings, but if that building doesn't receive proper maintenance, that is an issue," Joel Figueroa-Vallines, a structural engineer from Orlando and member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, told Insider.

"Buildings are like anything else - the cars we drive, or even ourselves as human beings," he added. "If we don't maintain ourselves, we don't age well."

In Miami-Dade County, where Champlain Towers South is located, buildings are recertified 40 years after their construction. Builders finished the condo in 1981, and it was due for its 40-year inspection this year.

Some experts said that's too long to wait.

"If maintenance or inspection happened every five years, think of how much safer that would be," Kit Miyamoto, a structural engineer with Miyamoto International based in Sacramento, California, told Insider.
Part of the structure gets overloaded

Biraj A factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh collapsed in 2013. REUTERS/Andrew Biraj

A collapse can occur if there's more weight on one part of a building than the structure is designed to handle - what's known as overloading.

In 2015, six people died in Berkeley, California when an apartment balcony collapsed during a party. While part of the balcony had rotted, Miyamoto said, the excessive weight catalyzed the fall.

Overloading also contributed to a factory collapse in Dhaka, Bangladesh eight years ago.
Land underneath the foundation moves or erodes

A building collapse in China in 2015. Carlf Zhang/Reuters

Buildings "very rarely naturally fall," Miyamoto said, adding, "maybe every five years or so you hear of an abrupt collapse worldwide."

But sometimes, wind and running water can erode the soil underneath a building's foundation, or cause the land to sink. When these events happen, "it creates a vacuum that would definitely cause an instability," Miyamoto said.

In the case of the Surfside condo - which is built on top of reclaimed wetlands - it's possible that a large amount of groundwater is flowing back and forth under the building, which could exacerbate erosion, Figueroa-Vallines said.
Steel and concrete deteriorates over time

Two men inspect the bottom of a balcony in Champlain Towers North in 2020. 

Fiorella Terenzi

All three engineers agreed that deterioration could play an outsized role in building collapses like the recent disaster in Surfside.

As building materials interact with chemicals in the air around them, those materials start to break down.

"Buildings and structures located in coastal environments where they are repeatedly exposed to salt-laden air experience more corrosion than structures located in central US," Hamburger said.

After four or five decades, a concrete and steel structure is vulnerable to substantial rusting, he added.

That's why continually repainting a seaside building is critical, because the coating protects it from damage.

"Salt essentially melts away the concrete," Figueroa-Vallines said.
The building has a design flaw

A crowd looks on as a rescue worker operates a bulldozer in the search for bodies in the rubble of a collapsed building in Lagos, Nigeria on July 26, 2017.

 Pius Utomi Ekpe/AFP/Getty

Typically, buildings are designed with redundancies - if part of the structure fails or weakens to the point that it can't support the building's weight anymore, that load gets redistributed somewhere else. If the floor of an apartment building caves in, for example, it shouldn't drop to the floor below it.

These local accidents can be caused by several factors - a fire, corrosion, or even a truck backing up into a weight-bearing column in the building's basement, Hamburger said.

Normally, they shouldn't cause a catastrophic failure like the one at Champlain Towers South, he added. But some older buildings lack redundancies that stop local accidents from cascading into bigger, building-wide problems.

Amazon's new management principles

 are a sign of the times for corporates
sjones@insider.com (Stephen Jones) 

Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama, voted against forming a union, but the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, under which they would have unionized, challenged the results. Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images

Amazon has added two new leadership principles to its longstanding management code.

Following public criticism, Amazon pledged to be a better employer and to ensure responsibility.

The changes are a sign of corporates publicly adopting progressive values.

Amazon appears to be reappraising its purpose. In an update on its website , Amazon explained two new statements would be added to its 14-point list of longstanding management principles - to Strive To Be The Earth's Best Employer; and Success And Scale Bring Broad Responsibility.

The exact reason and choice of timing - just a few days before founder and CEO Jeff Bezos hands over the reins to Amazon Web Services boss Andy Jassy - behind the change is unclear, but echoes commitments made by Bezos in his final shareholder letter to make the company a more inclusive and better employer.

The changes follow widespread criticism over Amazon's treatment of in-house staff, and its impact on the environment. Amazon staff have also been calling for the addition of a management principle that directly addresses inclusion for some months.

While Amazon's critics will no doubt continue to feel the company should do more, the update to its core principles reflects a wider trend.

No company, even one as dominant as Amazon, can continue to ignore the interests of both its consumers and employees, many of whom value purpose and ethics when thinking about how they make and where they spend their money.
Amazon knows employees are influenced by ethics

"Increasingly, employees want to invest their time, energy and skills in an organization that is actively engaged on topics that directly impact their lives and align with their beliefs," said Joe Wiggins, director of communications, at employer reference firm Glassdoor.

"Today's candidates, especially younger job seekers, want to work at companies that take a stand and take action," Wiggins added.

Consumers also increasingly care about purpose and values.

According to research by McKinsey, 40% of US consumers said seeking brands that matched their values mattered to them, while 34% claim they have switched brands for purpose-driven reasons during the coronavirus pandemic. Some 9% of these more directly because of perceptions over how a company treated its staff.

A separate poll by Edelman in 2020, of 22,000 global respondents showed that whether they trusted a brand was the second-highest priority. 52% of US consumers believed that companies actively owe it to their employees to speak out against systemic racism.

"In this day and age, anything that leaves a slightly sour taste in your mouth, and that can come from lots of different responsibility issues, is just a reason for people not to use you," said Giles Gibbons, CEO and cofounder of Good Business, a consultancy.

The extent to which consumers say they'll do versus their actions is hard to say - value and convenience are still ranked as the most likely reason behind why a consumer said they're likely to switch products in both studies.

Nethertheless, companies have a desire to project a clean image.
Well-loved companies are expected to influence for the good

Amazon's decision is more likely a reaction to what it will believe is a perceived poor reputation in terms of employee welfare rather than simply just a convenient time of transition, says Gibbons. "The role of a principle is to set the direction of travel and then over time review against it. An organization like Amazon wouldn't be saying it if it didn't genuinely mean it."

It is in every organization's long-term self interest to care for its stakeholders, said Alex Edmans, professor of finance at London Business School and author of "Grow the Pie: How Great Companies Deliver Both Purpose And Profit."

"We often think that social issues should be addressed by governments through minimum wages, health and safety legislation, taxes etc - but global corporations can be more powerful than some countries, and this is the case for Amazon," Edmans told Insider.

Amazon declined to comment further.

Court strikes Trump EPA rule for full-year 15% ethanol sales

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A federal appeals court on Friday threw out a Trump-era Environmental Protection Agency rule change that allowed for the sale of a 15% ethanol gasoline blend in the summer months.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The decision deals a significant blow to the ethanol industry and corn farmers who grow the crop from which the fuel additive is made. They had anticipated increased ethanol demand through year-round sales of the higher blend.


Most gasoline sold in the U.S. today is blended with 10% ethanol. Corn farmers and ethanol refiners have pushed for the government to allow the widespread sale of a 15% ethanol blend.

The Trump administration made the change to fulfill a campaign promise to Midwest farmers. The EPA under President Donald Trump announced the change in May 2019, ending a summer ban on the E15 blend. Provisions of the Clean Air Act have prohibited the sale of certain fuels with a higher volatility from June 1 through Sept. 15 to limit smog. Congress has allowed 10% ethanol, and the EPA in its 2019 ruling revised the interpretation of the exemption to federal law to include the 15% ethanol blend.

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Ethanol supporters contend that using more of the corn-based renewable fuel is better for the environment and helps meet federal climate change goals.

Three judges on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia issued Friday's decision. They said it's clear from federal law that Congress balanced “wide-ranging economic, energy-security, and geopolitical implications” and that the wording of the law “reflects a compromise, not simply a desire to maximize ethanol production at all costs.” They concluded Congress did not intend to allow ethanol blends higher than 10% to be widely sold year-round. They said the EPA overstepped its authority.

The American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, the trade group for the petroleum industry that challenged the EPA decision, said the court simply followed government's interpretation of the law in effect for 30 years.

“There is no ambiguity in statute and the previous administration’s reinterpretation overstepped the will of Congress,” said AFPM President and CEO Chet Thompson.

The Iowa Corn Growers Association said it will continue to work with the Biden administration, Congress and state officials to maintain consumer access to E15 year-round.

"It does not make sense to reinstate barriers that could inhibit market access to a cleaner-burning fuel choice that combats climate change,” said Carl Jardon, a farmer from Randolph, Iowa, and president of the Iowa Corn Growers Association.

The decision is the second major court defeat for the ethanol industry in a week. On June 25, the U.S. Supreme Court said some petroleum refiners may exempt themselves from requirements to blend ethanol into the gasoline they produce, further cutting into the amount of ethanol blended into the national fuel supply.

Ethanol supporters could ask the full D.C. Circuit Court to review the decision of the three-judge panel. They also could ask Congress to change the law to allow for year around E15 sales.

The industry is hoping this year's sales will not be curtailed because by the time the court issues its mandate and the EPA is required to comply most of the summer season will have passed.

This is the third summer E15 sales have been allowed and there were indications sales were increasing. Sales jumped 24% in Iowa from 2019 to 2020, surpassing 60.5 million gallons in 2020, the Renewable Fuels Association reported. That increase was despite a 14% drop in the state's overall petroleum consumption from 2019 levels due to fewer people driving because of he coronavirus pandemic.

David Pitt, The Associated Press

NEW AGE AYN RANDI$M

Jeff Bezos believes multibillion-dollar failures are actually a good thing: 'If the size of your failures isn't growing, you're not going to be inventing at a size that can actually move the needle'

insider@insider.com (Ben Gilbert)

© Alex Wong/Getty Images 

As Amazon's CEO, Jeff Bezos said he made big bets that sometimes ended as, "multibillion-dollar failures."

This view lines up with Bezos' approach to life: Failure is better than never having tried at all.

Bezos will step down as Amazon's CEO on Monday, July 5.

What's the point in making billions if you can't make a multibillion-dollar mistake every now and again?

According to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, those types of failures are actually critical to Amazon's success.

"Amazon will be experimenting at the right scale for a company of our size if we occasionally have multibillion-dollar failures," Bezos wrote in the company's 2019 letter to shareholders.

"If the size of your failures isn't growing, you're not going to be inventing at a size that can actually move the needle," he said.

© Flickr/TechStage The Amazon Fire phone. Flickr/TechStage

He cited Amazon's infamous Fire phone as an example of a failure - but pointed out that work on the Fire phone assisted in the development of Amazon's Echo smart speakers and the Alexa digital assistant.


"While the Fire phone was a failure, we were able to take our learnings (as well as the developers) and accelerate our efforts building Echo and Alexa," Bezos said.

This philosophy - that it's better to have failed than to never have tried in the first place - is core to how Bezos looks at his own life.

"I knew that when I was 80, I was not going to regret having tried this," Bezos said in a 2001 interview with the Academy of Achievement. "I was not going to regret trying to participate in this thing called the Internet that I thought was going to be a really big deal. I knew that if I failed, I wouldn't regret that. But I knew the one thing I might regret is not ever having tried. I knew that that would haunt me every day."

© Amazon; Samantha Lee/Business Insider Amazon Dash buttons are no longer sold by Amazon. Amazon; Samantha Lee/Business Insider

In the case of Amazon, Bezos applies that same philosophy on a much larger scale.

"This kind of large-scale risk taking is part of the service we as a large company can provide to our customers and to society," he said. "We will work hard to make them good bets, but not all good bets will ultimately pay out."

Of course, this being a letter from the CEO of a publicly-traded company to its shareholders, Bezos has reassurance and tempering to offer as well.

As Bezos put it: "The good news for shareowners is that a single big winning bet can more than cover the cost of many losers."

Bezos will step down as Amazon's CEO on Monday, July 5. He's being replaced by Amazon Web Services CEO Andy Jassy.

SEE 

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2021/07/the-bezos-theory-of-value-is-deeply.html

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CORPORATE GURU SAYS WORK FOREVER SUCKERS

Jeff Bezos says work-life balance is a 'debilitating phrase.' He wants Amazon workers to view their career and lives as a 'circle.'
insider@insider.com (Katie Canales,Zoë Bernard) 

© Provided by Business Insider Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Alex Wong/Getty Images
Amazon's Jeff Bezos said in 2018 that the term "work-life balance" is a "debilitating phrase."

A top piece of advice he offers to staff is not to view the two as a strict trade-off.
Instead, he sees his personal and professional pursuits as a "circle" rather than a balancing act.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos isn't a fan of the phrase "work-life balance."

At an April 2018 event hosted by Insider's parent company, Bezos said new Amazon employees shouldn't view work and life as a balancing act. Instead, Bezos said that it's more productive to view them as two integrated parts.

"It actually is a circle," Bezos said. "It's not a balance."

Bezos said his new hires should stop trying to find "balance" within their professional and personal lives since that implies a strict trade-off between the two. Instead, Bezos envisions a more holistic relationship between work and life outside the office.


"This work-life harmony thing is what I try to teach young employees and actually senior executives at Amazon too," Bezos said. "But especially the people coming in. I get asked about work-life balance all the time. And my view is, that's a debilitating phrase because it implies there's a strict trade-off."

Bezos said he doesn't compartmentalize his career and his personal lives.

"If I am happy at home, I come into the office with tremendous energy," Bezos said. "And if I am happy at work, I come home with tremendous energy."

The billionaire Amazon founder will have to adjust to a new kind of workflow starting July 5, when he steps down from his role as CEO of the e-commerce giant. He will be replaced by AWS CEO Andy Jassy and will direct his focus to other endeavors, like being catapulted into space for 11 minutes on July 20.

Historically, the world's richest man has taken a nontraditional approach to work: He has said he made time for breakfast every morning with his family, doesn't set his alarm before going to bed, schedules surprisingly few meetings, and set aside a few minutes every day to wash his own dishes.

Read - and watch - the full interview with Bezos here.

SEE 

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2021/07/the-bezos-theory-of-value-is-deeply.html

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Bezos, Gates back fake meat and dairy made from fungus as next big alt-protein

Chicago-based Nature's Fynd has meatless breakfast patties and hamburgers, dairy-free cream cheese and yogurt, and chicken-less nuggets scheduled to hit grocers' shelves later this year.

The alternative foods sector grew U.S. retail sales 27% in 2020, and bringing the total market value to $7 billion.

Nature's Fynd is building a 35,000-square-foot factory on the site of Chicago's former Union Stockyards, the epicenter of the 20th-century meatpacking industry.

© Provided by CNBC Unearthed by co-founder Mark Kozubal as a microbe from volcanic hot springs in Yellowstone National Park, Fy is the fermented, versatile, protein-rich source that Nature's Fynd and its CEO Thomas Jonas are hoping becomes the next big thing in alternative meat and dairy.

As consumers become increasingly comfortable eating faux-meat burgers that look, cook and taste like the real thing, a food-tech start-up backed by Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates is using fungus as the primary ingredient to create alt-meat foods.


Nature's Fynd, based in Chicago, has raised $158 million in funding from investors including Bezos, Gates, and Al Gore. The company's meatless breakfast patties and hamburgers, dairy-free cream cheese and yogurt, and chicken-less nuggets are scheduled to hit grocers' shelves later this year.

The alternative foods sector skyrocketed in 2020, growing U.S. retail sales 27%, and bringing the total market value to $7 billion, according to the Plant-Based Foods Association (PBFA), a trade group comprising more than 200 member companies. Meanwhile, shipments of alt-protein products from food service distributors to commercial restaurants rose 60% year-over-year in April, according to research firm NPD Group.

The ascendant industry is headlined by Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, whose alt-meat burgers, chicken and sausage products have disrupted the $733 billion U.S. food manufacturing industry. That has prompted Tyson Foods, Purdue, Hormel, Cargill and other traditional meat producers to launch their own products in the category.

and restaurant closures. A recent report from J.P. Morgan claims that Dunkin' has dropped its breakfast sandwich using a Beyond sausage patty from most restaurants, though that has not been confirmed by either company (Dunkin' and Beyond Meat did return calls by press time.) Still, plant-based and cultured foods are projected to take a 60% market share of global meat sales by 2040, according to consulting firm AT Kearney.

Having lost 1% of its overall market to-date probably doesn't rattle meat producers much, but looking at the declining costs of alt-meat should raise their eyebrows. In mid-June, Beyond Meat was selling for $6.40 per pound, bringing it closer to the price of traditional beef, making some progress on a long-term goal of Beyond Meat CEO Ethan Brown to reach cost parity with traditional meat. Beef patties were then selling for $5.26 per pound, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Impossible Foods has cut its restaurant prices twice in the past year, and in February, the company slashed retail prices by 20%, lowering the price of two quarter-pound patties to $5.49.

Nature's Fynd was co-founded in 2012 — initially as Sustainable Bioproducts — by Thomas Jonas and Mark Kozubal, now chief executive and chief science officers, respectively. A few years earlier, Kozubal had unearthed a microbe, Fusarium strain flavolapis, from volcanic hot springs in Yellowstone National Park. He led an R&D team that formulated the microbe into what the company calls Fy, the fermented, versatile, protein-rich source for Nature's Fynd's products.

Fermentation has been used in making bread, beer, wine, cheese and other products for millennia, and is now emerging as a key alt-protein platform with major potential to align science with entrepreneurship, policy and investment, according to the Good Food Institute. Even so, Nature's Fynd has some catching up to do. U.K.-based Quorn, founded in 1985, has been offering its fungus-based meatless products in the U.S. since 2002. It was acquired by Philippine food maker Monde Nissin for about $830 million in 2015, according to Reuters. And the field of other potential competitors is growing.

Much as cows, chickens and pigs were domesticated centuries ago as protein sources, "now is the time for this second domestication," Jonas said in a recent interview. "The farming of this microbe is an efficient way of producing protein that is just as good."

Bringing the evolution full circle, Nature's Fynd is building a 35,000-square-foot factory on the site of Chicago's former Union Stockyards, the epicenter of the 20th-century meatpacking industry.
The climate-conscious food consumer

Beyond fungus, Nature's Fynd also is representative of the food sustainability movement, whose mission is to reduce the carbon footprint of global food systems, which generate 34% of greenhouse emissions linked to climate change.

"The challenge for this and future generations is to learn to do more with less," Jonas said. "Because with eight billion people, the Earth is not getting any bigger, its resources are dwindling and climate change is making it even more difficult to find land to grow crops to feed animals. The math just doesn't work. So, the whole goal of our new protein system is to increase the efficiency of the complete protein chain."

Consumer acceptance, of course, is paramount to Nature's Fynd business model. In February, the company launched a limited, direct-to-consumer sampling of its patties and cream cheese exclusively online. Chief marketing officer Karuna Rawal said the formal product rollout will focus first on retailers, with food service partnerships to follow. "It's important that we start with retail and be able to tell our story to the consumer in a way we can control the narrative," she said.

In that vein, Nature's Fynd packaging is emblazoned with a "Fy" badge, a la "Intel Inside," to create brand recognition and loyalty.

© Provided by CNBC With $158 million in funding from Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Al Gore and other investors, Nature's Fynd meatless breakfast patties and hamburgers, dairy-free cream cheese and yogurt, and nuggets, minus chicken, are scheduled to hit grocers' shelves later this year.

Not surprisingly, the greatest appeal for alt-meat products is among younger consumers.

"Gen Zers and millennials are the largest purchasers in the plant-based space," said Sabina Vyas, director of strategic initiatives and communications at the PBFA. "As their purchasing power builds, [food] companies are going to have to adapt accordingly."

Sixty-three percent of U.S. consumers between ages 24 and 39 believe their nutritional needs can be fully met with a plant-based diet, according to research from One Poll.

"I don't know anyone over 40 who is saying, 'I should eat more meat,'" Jonas said.

Chris Rivest, a senior climate-tech investor at Breakthrough Energy Ventures, established in 2016 by Gates and a coalition of private investors concerned about the impacts of climate change, said food is a commodity, with purchases based on taste, nutrition and cost.

He is a fan of the fungus, saying he was "blown away" by products he taste-tested (Gates was similarly impressed during a "60 Minutes" segment) and its nutritional value.

The company says the veg­an pro­tein includes all 20 amino acids, includ­ing the 9 essen­tial amino acids, and good lev­els of fiber, vit­a­mins and min­er­als, with no cho­les­terol or trans fats. It says Fy has one-tenth the fat of ground beef and 50% more pro­tein than tofu; twice as much pro­tein as raw peas.

Rivest also thinks the business can compete on cost. "We think the Nature's Fynd model can undercut costs of traditional protein sources," he said. "That's what really sold us on this opportunity."

Like many start-ups, scale is going to be critical for Nature's Fynd's success.

"We expect to have a lot of demand versus our [manufacturing] capacity, so we have to move fast and raise additional capital to move forward," Jonas said. "We're competing against the meat industry, which has been working on its supply chain for 300 years, so we have big catching up to do."

Enchantingly Strange 'Fairy Lanterns' Discovered Growing in a Malaysian Rainforest
Tessa Koumoundouros 29 mins ago

Within the depths of a Malaysian rainforest's shadows an astonishingly plant, lacking sunlight-eating leaves, bizarrely blooms. This small, otherworldly growth, belonging to a group of rare flowering plants known as fairy lanterns (Thismia), has just been scientifically described for the first time.

© University of Oxford The rare and unique fairy lantern.

They're tiny plants, too deep within the forest to receive sunlight, and often emerge beneath the leaf litter, so they don't bother with photosynthesizing and have lost the ability to do so. They have no chlorophyll; instead, they siphon food through their roots from the fungal network shared by other rainforest plants.

These incredible mycorrhizal fungal networks connect large plant communities together via their roots, allowing plants to communicate with each other using electric signals and even send resources to each other. In turn, the fungi receive sustenance from the plants.


a close up of food: (Siti-Munirah, et al Phytokeys, 2021)
1/1 SLIDES © Provided by ScienceAlert


Plants that do this, like fairy lanterns, are thought to have evolved from one of the plant parts of the mycorrhizal fungal partnership. They've cheated the system, however, and turned fully parasitic on the fungi network. This form of food acquisition is called myco-heterotrophy.

"The new species, which we name Thismia sitimeriamiae, is distinct from all other Thismia species known to science," taxonomist Mat Yunoh Siti-Munirah, from the Forest Research Institute Malaysia and colleagues wrote in their paper.


At only 2.2 centimeters (0.86 inches) tall, the greenish-brown plant was found in a primary rainforest of the Malaysian State of Terengganu, by photographer Nikong Dome in 2019, who lives alongside Indigenous communities in the area.

A delightful orangey-yellow, like a warm glowing light, T sitimeriamiae's flower is uniquely shaped – a delicate cone with an umbrella-like structure on top, as if it's providing some sort of shelter.



a close up of food: (Siti-Munirah, et al Phytokeys, 2021)
1/1 SLIDES © Provided by ScienceAlert
(Siti-Munirah, et al Phytokeys, 2021)(Siti-Munirah, et al Phytokeys, 2021)


While some species of fairy lanterns have been caught cavorting with fungus gnats, what pollinates T. sitimeriamiae is a curious mystery.

"The extraordinary architecture of the flower raises interesting questions about how it is pollinated," said botanist Chris Thorogood from Oxford University.


Siti-Munirah and colleagues have recommended the strangely flowering plant be classified as Critically Endangered due to its extreme rarity. Its home state has been deforested at an alarmingly rapid rate for logging and palm oil.

"Given the rarity and inaccessibility of the vast majority of species of Thismia (many of which have been found only once), [conservation in their original environment] seems to be the only realistic approach," the team wrote.

Only four individuals of T. sitimeriamiae have ever been seen. Wild boar activity has disturbed one of two of its only known locations. Sadly, it may already be extinct, as all attempts to relocate it so far have failed. But researchers are unlikely to give up on this unique flavor of life, just yet.

The plant has been described in PhytoKeys.

GRAVE ROBBERS RETURN LOOT

Costa Rica archaeologists in awe as Brooklyn Museum returns 1,305 artifacts

By Alvaro Murillo

© Reuters/STRINGER A detail of a pre-Columbian pot, repatriated from the Brooklyn Museum in New York, U.S., is pictured at the facilities of the Costa Rica's National Museum, in Pavas

SAN JOSE (Reuters) - An unfinished tombstone, a large ceramic vase painted with beeswax, human representations and ancient tools to process corn are artifacts of a collection of 1,305 pieces that have been returned to Costa Rica.

© Reuters/STRINGER An archaeologist holds a pre-Columbian ceramic urn, which was repatriated from the Brooklyn Museum in New York, U.S., during its classification at the facilities of the Costa Rica's National Museum, in Pavas

It is the second time the Brooklyn Museum in New York City has returned pieces, some older than 2,000 years, to the central American country.

Tycoon Minor Keith brought the artifacts, looted during the construction of a railway, to the United States in the 19th or early 20th century, along with shipments of bananas.

© Reuters/STRINGER Pre-Columbian statues and pots, repatriated from the Brooklyn Museum in New York, U.S., are displayed for its classification by archaeologists at the facilities of the Costa Rica's National Museum, in Pavas

Archaeologists in Costa Rica have been in awe since the artifacts arrived at the end of last year.

"The tombstone is a piece we have only seen as illustrations in study books here," Daniela Meneses, a researcher at the National Museum of Costa Rica, said at a viewing for the media. "It's amazing to see that piece now. It's very emotional."

It is believed to have been part of a tomb of an important person from a now-extinct civilization.

At almost half a meter high, one of the largest pieces in the shipment is a vase, presumably used to store seeds or water; it is adorned with human figures and peculiar geometric lines, painted with beeswax.

There are still more artifacts from Costa Rica in Brooklyn and in other museums in the United States.

But archaeologist Javier Fallas of the state museum highlighted the return as an extraordinary gesture: "We don't know why they did it, but it's something very good and atypical in the world."© Reuters/STRINGER Pre-Columbian statues, repatriated from the Brooklyn Museum in New York, U.S., are displayed for its classification by archaeologists at the facilities of the Costa Rica's National Museum, in Pavas

Seven years ago, four sites in the southern part of the country were recognized as World Heritage by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)

.

© Reuters/STRINGER Pre-Columbian stone statues, repatriated from the Brooklyn Museum in New York, U.S., are displayed for its classification by archaeologists at the facilities of the Costa Rica's National Museum, in Pavas

(Reporting by Alvaro Munrillo; Writing by Stefanie Eschenbacher; Editing by William Mallard)

© Reuters/STRINGER Pre-Columbian artifacts repatriated from the Brooklyn Museum in New York, U.S., are displayed for its classification by archaeologists at the facilities of the Costa Rica's National Museum, in Pavas

OLDE FASHIONED CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Class-action lawsuit accuses Amazon of 'exploiting consumers in their most vulnerable hour' through price gouging during the pandemic
ydzhanova@businessinsider.com (Yelena Dzhanova) 

The COVID-19 pandemic stands to boost multiple parts of Amazon's business, from e-commerce to advertising, Benstein analyst Mark Shmulik wrote. 

REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon/File Photo

A lawsuit filed in California says Amazon hiked up prices by as much as 1,000% during the pandemic.

"Some of the unlawful increases were on sales of products supplied by third parties, sales which Amazon controls and reaps huge profits from," the lawsuit says.

Consumers tried to buy food and supplies from Amazon while adhering to stay-at-home orders, the lawsuit says.

A lawsuit accuses Amazon of "exploiting consumers in their most vulnerable hour" by hiking up prices on medical items, cleaning products, canned food and other necessary supplies during the coronavirus pandemic.


The class-action lawsuit has now expanded to potentially include all Amazon shoppers across the US who purchased such products, the law firm Hagens Berman said on Friday.

The lawsuit says American consumers turned to Amazon and other online retailers at the height of the coronavirus pandemic in the spring of 2020, when stay-at-home orders and the threat of the disease made it difficult to purchase much-needed food and supplies.

"In this environment-consistent with the directions of government and public health officials-consumers have understandably turned to online purchasing, and Amazon in particular, to fulfill their essential needs," the lawsuit says. "Without venturing into public and risking exposure to themselves and others, with just a few clicks Americans can purchase consumer goods from Amazon that will be delivered to their homes."

Amazon did not immediately reply to a request for comment from Insider asking about the lawsuit.

The lawsuit alleges the e-commerce giant significantly hiked up prices of various goods. The cost of face masks, for example, jumped 500%, the lawsuit alleges, from $20 to $120. Disinfectant cost went up by 100%, the lawsuit says, while the cost of an ordinary staple pantry item like black beans went up by 672%. Among other items whose costs drastically went up on Amazon were pain relievers, flour, and cold remedies, according to the lawsuit.

The complaint, first filed in April 2020 in California's Northern District Court, says some items went up by as much as 1,000%.

"Some of the unlawful increases were on sales of products supplied by third parties, sales which Amazon controls and reaps huge profits from," the lawsuit says.

Though there is no federal law explicitly making price-gouging illegal, many states have outlawed the practice during an emergency, like a natural disaster or pandemic.

"Amazon is the functional seller of these products and is responsible when price-gouged sales violate the law. But in addition, Amazon has inflated prices on its own inventory of products, which Amazon supplies and sells directly to consumers," according to the complaint.

Amazon in May said Congress should pass a federal law against price gouging to make one clear standard and definition.

Hagens Berman put out a call on its website asking people who've purchased from online retailers during the COVID-19 pandemic to describe their experience.

"Unfair price gouging may have caused you to pay more," the call says, directing consumers to fill out a form "to find out your consumer rights to potential compensation."

In March of last year, Amazon said it removed almost 4,000 individual sellers for price gouging during the pandemic.

But months into the pandemic, sellers continued to charge up to 14 times more than other retailers for regular household products like soap and hand sanitizer.
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