Adidas Wilson's Blog, page 174
March 28, 2017
Elon Musk launches Neuralink, a venture to merge the human brain with AI
SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk is backing a brain-computer interface venture called Neuralink, according to The Wall Street Journal. The company, which is still in the earliest stages of existence and has no public presence whatsoever, is centered on creating devices that can be implanted in the human brain, with the eventual purpose of helping human beings merge with software and keep pace with advancements in artificial intelligence. These enhancements could improve memory or allow for more direct interfacing with computing devices.
Musk has hinted at the existence of Neuralink a few times over the last six months or so. More recently, Musk told a crowd in Dubai, “Over time I think we will probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence.” He added that “it’s mostly about the bandwidth, the speed of the connection between your brain and the digital version of yourself, particularly output.” On Twitter, Musk has responded to inquiring fans about his progress on a so-called “neural lace,” which is sci-fi shorthand for a brain-computer interface humans could use to improve themselves.
@BelovedRevol Maybe next month
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 25, 2017
These types of brain-computer interfaces exist today only in science fiction. In the medical realm, electrode arrays and other implants have been used to help ameliorate the effects of Parkinson’s, epilepsy, and other neurodegenerative diseases. However, very few people on the planet have complex implants placed inside their skulls, while the number of patients with very basic stimulating devices number only in the tens of thousands. This is partly because it is incredibly dangerous and invasive to operate on the human brain, and only those who have exhausted every other medical option choose to undergo such surgery as a last resort.
This has not stopped a surge in Silicon Valley interest from tech industry futurists who are interested in accelerating the advancement of these types of far-off ideas. Kernel, a startup created by Braintree co-founder Bryan Johnson, is also trying to enhance human cognition. With more than $100 million of Johnson’s own money — the entrepreneur sold Braintree to PayPal for around $800 million in 2013 — Kernel and its growing team of neuroscientists and software engineers are working toward reversing the effects of neurodegenerative diseasesand, eventually, making our brains faster and smarter and more wired.
“We know if we put a chip in the brain and release electrical signals, that we can ameliorate symptoms of Parkinson’s,” Johnson told The Verge in an interview late last year. (Johnson also confirmed Musk’s involvement with Neuralink.) “This has been done for spinal cord pain, obesity, anorexia… what hasn’t been done is the reading and writing of neural code.” Johnson says Kernel’s goal is to “work with the brain the same way we work with other complex biological systems like biology and genetics.”
Kernel, to its credit, is quite upfront about the years of medical research necessary to better understand the human brain and pioneer new surgery techniques, software methods, and implant devices that could make a consumer brain-computer interface a reality. The Wall Street Journal says Neuralink was founded as a medical research company in California last July, which bolsters the idea that Musk will follow a similar route as Johnson and Kernel.
To be fair, the hurdles involved in developing these devices are immense. Neuroscience researchers say we have very limited understanding about how the neurons in the human brain communicate, and our methods for collecting data on those neurons is rudimentary. Then there’s the idea of people volunteering to have electronics placed inside their heads.
“People are only going to be amenable to the idea [of an implant] if they have a very serious medical condition they might get help with,” Blake Richards, a neuroscientist and assistant professor at the University of Toronto, told The Verge in an interview earlier this year. “Most healthy individuals are uncomfortable with the idea of having a doctor crack open their skull.”
4 Ways Entrepreneurs Can Find Inspiration, Ideas and Motivation For Business In Everyday Life
Ideas are everywhere. Ideas can sometimes be a problem that just needs an answer. Inherent in every problem you face everyday is an idea that can change the world. Solutions are simply ideas that someone stayed and thought out after hours/days of deliberate ponderings. o current and budding entrepreneurs.
Ideas are sparked into existence usually by some independent and unexpected factor; they don’t come just because we will them into existence. Having an eureka moment is more probable when we decide to shift from routine and convention. When we do things we would not normally do, go places we have never being before or carry out routine activities differently.
Simply put, according to Andy Boynton, co-author of The Idea Hunter, “Almost all ideas can be found in the world around us”. So how do you go about positioning yourself to become an idea conduit? Here are a few tips that will get you out of your innovation rut and help you think creatively again.
1. Write down Every Potential Idea Down
You are not perfect, no one is. This implies that in the course of your life, you must have failed at something, anything. I failed in countless businesses before I finally succeeded with an e-commerce startup. Perhaps in your business, you have abandoned a job/activity, ignored it or failed to address it in an effective manner.
Keep an ever-updated list of your shortcomings and failings, as each is a potential opportunity/idea. No matter how weird it sound, any idea has potential to make you millions. A lot of people have become ridiculously rich by selling their weird ideas to people.
Ideas are everywhere. Ideas can sometimes be a problem that just needs an answer. Inherent in every problem you face everyday is an idea that can change the world. Solutions are simply ideas that someone stayed and thought out after hours/days of deliberate pondering.
When you jot down every idea that come across to you. When you pay attention to every details, problems and issues that arise around you, you’d find that you’re never dry of ideas.
2. Observe Foreign Locations, Cultures and People
Today we use grills, gas cookers, electric stoves and grills among others to prepare our edibles. In some third world countries, all they have is firewood and an occasional kerosene stove or two. We both arrive at the same product – food – albeit to varying degrees of efficiency and quality.
People all over the world, in different cultures from your own will always have things that they do different from you. This human and cultural variety provides a very wide pool of ideas. Take your time to observe people of other cultures, notice the way they approach problems, the principles and methods they apply towards problem solving. You will likely pick up a thing or two.
If you have to visit such places physically, plan a trip during your vacation, meet the people, participate in their culture and relish their diversity. Besides the stress-relieving attribute of taking vacations, there is the promise of the stimulation of your mind when you visit new environments.
The idea for Disneyland’s Magic Kingdom was born on such an expedition, when Walt Disney visited Tivoli Gardens, one of Europe’s oldest amusement parks. Remember, exploration and observation are the mothers of creativity and innovation, so explore like Walt Disney and prepare to reap the benefits.
3. Try to Draw a Lesson from Every Situation and Facts
Every failure has a lesson inherent in it. Learning from every situation is a habit. It’s a habit every entrepreneur should imbibe for maximum learning and progress in profession.
Everything that happens to you, good or bad, likely has something that you can take away from it. It could be a lesson or an idea, whatever the case; we should always keep all our senses peeled to realize when these moments come our way.
For example, I now deeply value being sober whenever I come across drunk driving accident statistics. I stopped drinking early in life because of these statistics and other situations I fell into.
It takes responsibility to learn lessons from every situations and facts. This habit makes an entrepreneur a person of numbers. The more lessons you draw from happenings around you, the more motivated, articulate and better you become in life and business. There is no guarantee that this will work all the time, but like they say, practice makes perfect.
4. Feed your Curiosity
Many times, we tend to glaze over stuff in the course of everyday life. A lot happens around us but our addiction to routine has left us as oblivious as can be. We just get up in the morning, go about the day as usual and retire for the day.
Thousands of inventions that we enjoy today will never have seen the light of the day if their inventors were not curious people. Take your time to notice the details around you that conventional behavior has always kept you from seeing.
Source:
Android Wear has made it trivially easy for fashion companies to ‘make’ tech products
March has been a particularly fecund time for new Android Wear watch announcements, though unlike previous years, the brands behind these devices are almost all from the fashion and luxury spheres of business. Tag Heuer, Montblanc, Hugo Boss, Tommy Hilfiger, Diesel, Emporio Armani, Michael Kors, and Movado are just some of the well known names announcing Wear 2.0 smartwatches. This wave of new products is symptomatic of a broader trend in the tech industry: one where a high degree of component and software integration has made it almost trivial to launch a new tech product, whether or not you’re actually a tech company.
Though a number of the newly unveiled watches haven’t been fully detailed and specced out yet, we already know the commonalities between them. They run the same Android Wear 2.0, embellished with a custom watchface or two. Inside, most are relying on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Wear 2100 chip — excepting Tag Heuer’s partnership with Intel on the Connected Modular 45 — which integrates all the necessary wireless radios for a smartwatch. And they all have roughly the same battery size and physical dimensions.
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I like to imagine there’s a debonair Google operative out there, visiting all the fashion brands and giving them the exact same pitch: take our software, nothing for you to do, take Qualcomm’s chip, no extra labor required, and use these reliable suppliers of memory chips and batteries. All you have to do is put a strap on it and it’s a smartwatch!
This standardization of software and hardware parts has made it possible for companies unfamiliar with the complexities of producing an integrated smart device to launch one anyway. It’s the smartwatch equivalent of a company like Adidas taking a standard quartz movement and building a three-striped watch around it. On the one hand, it feeds a consumer desire to have favorite brands covering everything we own, but on the other, it doesn’t really lead to any better watches or technology.
The crux of the problem with these internally identical Android Wear watches is that tech consumers demand substantive differences between cheap and expensive gadgets. How does Montblanc justify charging three times as much as LG for a watch that is functionally the same as LG’s? When Tag Heuer or any other famed watchmaker puts four-figure prices on its mechanical watches, there’s an implied promise that they’ll have an unmatched quality of workmanship and precision. But when those same companies outsource the brains to Google and the brawn to Qualcomm, what’s left for them to differentiate themselves with?
source:
http://www.theverge.com/2017/3/27/15047590/android-wear-smartwatch-fashion-luxury-brands-pricing
Top 8 Ways to Create Passive Income
Wouldn’t it be great if you could have a continuous stream of income deposited into your savings and/or checking account? Think about it. You wouldn’t have to worry about paying the bills on time or having money to buy groceries for your family. An extra $500, $1,000 or more in your bank account will reduce your money worries and stress.
While having multiple streams of income is ideal, you need to choose the right one for you. For example, if you want to earn money from a blog, you need to pay for web hosting, choose the right niche, design your website (or have someone design it for you), create a blogging schedule, share your posts, develop a community, guest blog, and choose the best affiliates for your blog niche. Blogging is work, but it is fun!
If you want to earn additional monthly income and start saving for retirement (or add to a fund), college, vacation, etc., check out the top eight ways to create passive income listed below. Some require more work than others. But all of them will put extra cash into your pocket.
8 Ways to Create Passive Income
1. Affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing means you sign up with a company and/or entrepreneur and sell their products. For example, if you start a tech website, you could become an affiliate of a web hosting or anti-virus software company. You can earn hundreds or even thousands of dollars each month if your website receives a decent amount of web traffic and you have thousands of email subscribers. Being an affiliate marketer takes dedication and time. You need to build traffic via your website, email marketing and social media. Is this for you? You be the judge.
2. Start a freelance business.
Have you always wanted to own your own business? You could start a side business while you work a full-time or part-time job. For example, if you’re a graphic or web designer, you could start your own graphic or web design business on the side. If you like to make jewelry, you could sell at craft fairs and online. Starting a business may be daunting, but if you believe in you and your work, you could earn a decent living, maybe even quit your day job. Search out those who are doing what you want to do and interview them. Find out the mistakes they made and ask for guidance.
3. Network marketing.
Network marketing or multi-level marketing is one of the most popular passive income streams. When you join a network marketing company, you become part of a team. The goal, for some, is to become a leader, such as a district manager of your area, because you can earn more money. The drawback to network marketing is poor leadership and the emphasis on building teams quickly. If you join a team with a weak leader, you won’t like network marketing. But if your leader knows how to build and develop people and teams, you could be successful, earning $5,000 or more per month. A word of caution: read the fine print when you sign up. Make sure you have ample time to quit if you decide the opportunity is not for you.
4. Flea markets.
Do you have stuff in your basement, attic or garage that’s collecting dust? If you do, pack up the SUV or car and kids and go to a flea market. You could make a couple of hundred, even thousands, of dollars, depending on what you’re selling. You’ll want to go to flea markets every weekend or at least every other weekend. Make an event out of it, and show your kids how easy it is to earn money selling their stuff.
5. Investments.
Stocks, bonds, 401(k)s, annuities, etc. are great ways to earn passive income. If you’re not financially savvy, you’ll want to hire a financial advisor who’ll help you choose the right investments for you. You may want to take a couple of finance classes to understand what your advisor is speaking about when he/she recommends an investment strategy. Done right, investments can pay off for years.
6. Real estate.
Do you watch real estate reality shows? Have you dreamed of fixing and flipping houses? What about being a landlord? Believe it or not, real estate is a good way to earn extra income. Real estate investing includes fixing and flipping houses. This requires capital in the form of cash and/or credit. If you can partner with someone, do it. You’ll attend housing auctions and bid on houses; you can get them for a good price. Hire a contractor to fix up the inside and outside (could cost anywhere from $10,000 and up), have the house appraised, sell it, make a profit and split the profits between you and your partner(s). Of course, you could buy properties (e.g., houses and apartment buildings), and become a landlord. Another alternative is to become a real estate agent. Speak with seasoned investors and realtors to find out if this passive income strategy is right for you.
7. Royalties.
Earn royalties from writing books, songs or developing products. You can even buy someone else’s share of a song via a writer’s auction. For example, if a songwriter dies, his/her heirs have the right to auction off a percentage of their songs during an estate sale. You bid on a song, and if it’s accepted, you own a piece of it and receive a royalty check each month, which can be deposited into your savings or checking account or a special savings account like a financial freedom account.
8. Participate in surveys and paid focus groups.
Get paid to take surveys at home by signing up with one or more survey websites. All you do is answer questions and voilà, you get paid. Another way to earn extra income is to participate in focus groups. Companies hire focus groups as a way to test out a new product before it hits the market. Why? Because they need to make sure it will make money; they want a high return on their investment. Surveys and focus groups may not make you a millionaire overnight, but you can earn hundreds of dollars each month by giving your opinion on products and services.
Passive income is a good way to get onto the road to financial freedom. Some money making avenues require more work than others, but the return on your time and minimal investment can pay off for years to come. You can have a secure financial future for you and/or you and your family.
Source:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/amandah-blackwell/top-8-ways-to-create-passive-income_b_4654371.html
Most powerful law in the Universe
If you haven’t heard about Law of Attraction before, your mind is going to get blown away in few seconds. Law of Attraction simply means that “like attracts like” and that by focusing on positive or negative thoughts, one can bring about positive or negative results. ‘Thought becomes things’. This belief is based upon the idea that people and their thoughts are both made from “pure energy”, and the belief that like energy attracts like energy. All the successful entrepreneur believes in the law of attraction and believe in the universe with all their heart.
This is most powerful law in the Universe.
There are tons of books written on Law of Attraction but I am going to sum all of them up for you. The law simply means you become what you think. You attract things by what you believe and what you hope for. Universe is very powerful and can give you whatever you want only if you really really want it and have faith in it without any doubt. The whole universe force starts working on it to get you that thing and all you have to do is believe and have complete faith in it. We are using the law every second of every day. You’ve even attracted reading this article.
This Universal Power of Attraction give you everything you want, happiness, health, wealth, love, relationship, prosperity and in whole complete abundance. The key in making Law of Attraction work for you is in Gratitude.
If you doubt in Law of Attraction it won’t work for you it is as simple as that, you get what you believe in. There are millions of people who have made Law of Attraction work for them and you can be one of them. Are you already interested to make Law of Attraction work for you? Well it can be very simple for some and very hard for some. It will depend how much faith you do have and even a tint of doubt will stop the Universe to work for you.
You want a car? You want a bill from unknown source? You want your Dream job?
You will get it all by just applying the Law of Attraction without any extra efforts. Yes it is true. All you have to do is attract those things towards you. That is why this is the most powerful law in the Universe.
Knowing Law of Attraction is not the whole point, but knowing “How it Works” and “How to Apply” is the most vital of all.
Back then I was really passionate about racing cars and always dreamt of driving one. All my teenage I was so much into cars that my wallpapers were of racing cars, I used to cut out pictures from newspaper and do all this crazy stuff. But as I did grow old I started believing that I will never have one because my financial condition was not that good. I was working on this company as an accountant and it was quit boring and low paid. I nearly gave up on my dream of having a race car until I heard about the Law of Attraction. It took a series of steps and ultimate believe to apply Law of Attraction and believe me it was worth it. I was doing nothing extra and nothing extra ordinary just believing that I will own a Race car soon and its going to sound little filmy but that’s what happened. My immense desire and hope helped me fulfil my dream. I got this call from my friend asking about my old apartment and his cousin was ready to purchase it at triple price as they had some old story with that house. Because of this I got money from nowhere to buy a race car for myself. How amazing was that? That’s the power of law of attraction.
-Anonymous
Source:
http://success-king.blogspot.com/2015/05/most-powerful-law-in-universe.html
Raising fish alongside plants? “Water farmers” dive into aquaponics
It sounds like a grow-op designed by Ikea. Paul Shumlich is describing the farm he’s planning to build. It will contain no soil and admit no sunlight. The walls will be industrial-chic concrete, the floors spotless. Plants will grow in meticulous rows under LED lights, their roots suspended in water. Fish will swim placidly in blue pools. It’s all very clean, very tasteful, very Scandinavian. It’s Deepwater Farms, an aquaponics operation, and Shumlich is betting it’s going to change the way Calgarians eat.
I’m interviewing Shumlich in his marketing manager’s downtown office. As we speak, he’s finalizing details with an investor to make the indoor farm a reality. If all goes according to plan, Deepwater Farms will be the largest, most advanced aquaponics farm in the Calgary area. (His preferred site is in the Chestermere area.) He’s convinced me that if anyone can make it happen, it’s him. Dressed all in black, he looks the part of the entrepreneur, but his youthful optimism and cherubic good looks drive home the fact that he’s only 26. “Local isn’t just a fad,” he tells me. “We need a resilient food system. That’s my drive.” He thinks the answer is aquaponics, a system of agriculture that few Calgarians have even heard of.
The unconventional farming method combines aquaculture (fish farming) and hydroponics (growing plants in water) in a single, closed system. Fish are kept in ponds or pools, and produce waste that is broken down into nitrites and then nitrates by micro-organisms. The waste water is sent to the plants, which absorb the nitrates and, in the process, clean the water, which is then sent back to the fish. Recirculation means that the system uses approximately 95 per cent less water than conventional farming methods. It’s completely organic, and it grows plants at incredible rates, many times faster than conventional methods.
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Aquaponics was arguably developed by the Mayans, who cultivated chinampas, sy stems of canals and manmade islands on which they grew vegetables. There are also historical accounts of fish being farmed in rice paddies in China and Southeast Asia, but modern aquaponics is generally attributed to the work of the New Alchemy Institute and the research of Mark McMurtry, a graduate student at North Carolina State University in the 1980s. In the late 1990s, James Rakocy, a professor of aquaculture at the University of the Virgin Islands (UVI), and his colleagues used their research on effluent treatment and raft cultures to develop a reliable and replicable commercial system. Rakocy and his colleagues taught the UVI method of aquaponics to students all over the world.
The field of aquaponics was becoming well-established and commercially viable. And that’s when Rakocy came to Alberta. In Brooks, a place more typically associated with feedlots and slaughterhouses than with permaculture, he and Nick Savidov, an Alberta Agriculture, Food and Rural Development researcher, built a replica of the UVI system at the Crop Diversification Centre South. Lethbridge College was also experimenting with aquaponics, beginning with research in 1989 that examined whether triploid grass carp could control aquatic vegetation in irrigation canals. In 2015, the college recruited Savidov, cementing its reputation as an important centre of aquaponics research.
Aquaponics producers speak of Savidov in reverential tones. He is the Yoda of the field and is sought out by anyone in Alberta who’s interested in aquaponics. “Savidov handed us a big chunk of research that he’d already done. He’s already doing all the commercial viability studies. It was basically the reason that convinced me to get involved,” says Dan Ronald, owner of Aqua Terra Farms, a small Okotoks-based business. But like most aquaponics producers, the hard science wasn’t what triggered Ronald’s interest. For him, trips to the Arctic and the Amazon in 2008 “really bummed me out. I came back and was talking to my buddy, and we started talking about the future: ‘We’re going to be living on Mars in a hundred years! The planet’s in trouble.’ ”
Shumlich’s interest began when he was a student running a window-washing business. It was paying his way through university, but it wasn’t satisfying. “I wanted to put time and money into something more meaningful. I wanted it to be about the triple bottom line: people, profit, planet,” he says. Shumlich started scouring the Internet for ideas, and discovered aquaponics. He dove in, but at the back of his mind he wondered, “Is this some sort of hippy technology?”
He drove down to Lethbridge College to meet Charlie Shultz, Savidov’s predecessor, and came back convinced that he needed to start unconventional farming. The next step was rounding up a bunch of his window-washing buddies to help him build a rudimentary aquaponics system in the backyard of his parents’ rental house. They hit an immediate roadblock when they discovered that the bacteria needed to run the system would take 18 months to mature. But Shumlich found a guy on Kijiji who was selling his home aquaponics system, and was willing to include the bacteria. “It was like a one-in-a-million chance,” he says. With a few supplies from Home Depot, and some koi off Kijiji, the first system was ready to go.
“Stuff grew crazy quick,” Shumlich says. And that’s when he had his a-ha moment. “I was in Safeway. I was buying organic produce, and I said ‘Why is everything grown in Mexico or California?’ It was really sh—y-looking produce. I’m growing this stuff in my backyard.” He’d found his new business.
The main problem with backyard aquaponics systems in Alberta is called winter. Shumlich and his friends found some greenhouse space at Mount Royal University and the University of Calgary, and spent the winter focusing on the nutrient balance and trying to integrate the fish and plants. But the winter sun wasn’t adequate for growing plants, and, what’s more, Shumlich was asked to leave the greenhouse because MRU didn’t have a fish licence. He and his crew moved to a friend’s greenhouse, which worked well until a cold snap and an unsealed door made them realize just how sensitive the system was to temperature fluctuations. It was a turning point. “I said, ‘We’re going completely indoors, and we’re using LEDs,’” Shumlich recalls.
Source:
Raising fish alongside plants? "Water farmers" dive into aquaponics
How this 27-year-old Facebook star found his calling as Ralph the Rex
Anybody can dress up in a T-Rex costume and make a funny video. But only one guy has been paid to do it by the NFL, Whole Foods, and the Toyota Grand Prix.
He’s Daniel Hale, aka Ralph the Rex.
Hale is a shy 27-year-old who had to buy a costume for an office party, so he chose a dinosaur to be completely hidden.
The LA-based former golf pro lost his job working for the PGA, leaving him with lots of time to create crazy videos.
And when he started to gain millions of followers, Hale sought business advice from his uncle, James Hetfield, the lead singer of Metallica.
Yeah, it’s a crazy story.
It all started in October 2015, when Hale’s workplace was having a party. “I hated dressing up for Halloween,” he said, “so I figured I’d put something over my face.” Hale chose a T-Rex costume online that cost about $100. Inside the costume, he came alive. “I feel more like myself when I put on the costume.”
He named his character Ralph the Rex. “The name Ralph came from my dad,” Hale said. Growing up playing golf, his father told him if he ever hit a ball out of bounds into someone’s backyard, “Tell them your name is Ralph Jones.”
It became a family joke. “‘Hey dad, what should I name this pet?’ ‘Name it Ralph.'”
Not long after the Halloween party, Hale lost his job. “I decided to start making videos since, you know, people have pages for their dogs and other animals, why not a T-Rex?”
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Hale, then 25, had no experience in film or production, but he and his sister started creating hilarious short stories of Ralph the Rex trying to survive in a human world. “First video ever was me running in my living room, and I ended up hitting the fan.”
Everything changed that Christmas, when Hale brought in his brother-in-law and a couple cousins to create a pack of dinosaurs. Together, they made a video attacking Christmas decorations, before Hale’s father chases them off with a flagpole.
Between two Facebook postings, the video gained more than 40 million views.
“We couldn’t believe it,” Hale said. “It was a shock.”
Somehow a celebrity (or two) had seen the video and began spreading it around. Next thing Hale knew, companies were approaching him to buy the rights to the videos. “We decided to see if we could make it a business.”
Hale insisted on only licensing the videos and maintaining ownership. He credits his uncle, Hetfield, for encouraging him to hold out for better terms. “You don’t want to sell your soul necessarily when someone offers you something,” Hale said.
For example, Hale was originally offered a contract with a YouTube partner to split revenues 70-30 in the partner’s favor. “I waited it out a year, and now I have a contract that’s 70-30 in my favor.”
The success of the videos was soon followed by requests for personal appearances. The first came from the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach, which wanted Ralph the Rex to judge a bikini contest. Race officials put him up at a local hotel, and Hale convinced one of the Grand Prix models to put on another T-Rex costume and have a pillow fight with him in his room for a video.
“I told her, ‘Just don’t hold back, go for it!’ And she put me in my place with the pillow fight.”
It turned out to be his most successful video ever. “That one exceeded about 60 million views.”
Source:
AN ALL NATIVE AMERICAN FASHION SHOW TO RETURN TO DENVER THIS WEEKEND
It’s no secret that the fashion world we all love has been guilty of excluding diversity when it comes to body types and ethnicity. But within recent years a movement for inclusion has begun to dismantle some of the standards that are associated with the industry. Whether it’s Vogue‘s inclusive cover or the rise of models like Ashley Graham, Winne Harlow and Madeline Stuart, it’s clear that the future of fashion is changing. And good news, Denver has been ahead of the curve on this.
Enter The Fourth Annual Native Fashion in the City, taking place on Friday evening, March 24. This event celebrates Native American fashion designers, stylists, models and photographers and we are delighted to get an exclusive look. The showcase began in 2013 as a collaborative partnership between Native Max Magazine and Rocky Mountain Indian Chamber of Commerce and grew into what we’re going to be seeing this weekend. Kelly Holmes, Native Fashion in the City’s founder sat down with us to tell us about the fashion that’ll be presented and how significant heritage and culture are as design inspiration.
303: How big of a part does Native American heritage play in what we will see?
Kelly Holmes: Pretty much all of the event you’ll see our Native American heritage shine through. The whole mission we had in mind when we set out to create Native Fashion in the City was to provide a platform to give up and coming Native American fashion designers, artisans, models, photographers, and stylists an opportunity to show their fashion talents to the world where cultural appropriation still runs rampant. We took it up a notch by planning this annual show almost parallel to a fashion week – we put the spotlight on the designers and models who are on the runway. We try to facilitate and foster partnerships with designers and attendees of our show.
Native Fashion in the City is an all-Native American produced event. All of our core team members are from different tribes all over the country. We come together every year to put on a show that’ll wow everyone. As a guest at our event, you’ll see your common fashion show with the runway and cameras flashing. But what makes our event different from the average catwalk presentation is that we have a touch of our culture infused into our show. The models are Native American, wearing designs by Native American fashion designers. The makeup looks you see on the models are all done by majority Native American hairstylists and makeup artists. The DJ playing the music is Native American and sometimes he spins music that is produced by Native American musicians. But the way we present the fashion show isn’t overwhelming or stereotypical at all. With Native Fashion in the City, we aim to break stereotypes.
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303: Tell me about Native American fashion in Denver. How far has it come? How far do we have to go?
KH: It has definitely come far in the last nine years I lived here in Denver. When I first started modeling in 2007 when I was 16 years old, I was often told I was too exotic looking or not pale enough by Denver photographers and fashion designers. Then when I tried to dabble in designing and styling, I was told prejudicial things like “what do Native Americans know what’s in fashion?” or “What do Native Americans know what’s going on today?”And when I was booked for shoots I was asked to pose with stereotypical Indian Princess costumes and jewelry. It was frustrating but I still pursued my passion for fashion.
When I first hosted Native Fashion in the City back in 2014 I opened the invitation to anybody who was interested in attending. I had a few people attend, including the founder of Colorado Fashion Week Justice Kwarteng. Then whilst planning the 2nd Native Fashion in the City in 2015 I personally invited more influential people who were a part of the local Denver art and fashion community. Due to my personal experience with the local fashion community, I was nervous about the feedback I’d get. To my surprise, a lot of the guests who did attend were authoritative people of the fashion community such as Denver Style Magazine founders Heather Okimoto and Kelsey Bigelow, and fashion blogger Lacey of My Boring Closet. And last year, we had fashion designer Stephanie O. of Project Runway: Under the Gunn attend our event. She was super excited and was blown away by the event. We also had Jessica Montour of Fashion Forward sponsor the bags for our swag bags. We’re now starting to see that the local Denver art, fashion and entrepreneurial community is becoming more accepting to us and our culture. Definitely an obvious difference than what I first experienced almost a decade ago.
Source:
http://303magazine.com/2017/03/native-american-fashion-show-denver/
How to Go Viral and Make Yourself Wildly Rich
Remember Candace Payne, the “Chewbacca Mom,” from literally three weeks ago? I know you do, because she was completely unavoidable; the four-minute clip of her laughing while wearing a roaring Chewbacca mask quickly became the most viewed Facebook Live video of all time (or at least since people actually started using it about six months ago), racking up more than 150 millions views.
Last week, it was revealed that Payne has made almost $500,000 since streaming her video, reaping rewards in the form of gifts, fees from talk-show appearances, and a handful of all-expenses paid holidays.
Of course, Chewbacca Mom is just one of many viral stars who’ve made serious, life-changing sums following their 15 minutes of fame. In the past year alone, Swedish vlogger PewDiePie earned an estimated $11.8 million via his YouTube videos, while the Sunday Times reports that British beauty vlogger Zoella earns at least $71,000 a month.
But how feasible is it for the average person to make it to that point? YouTube has more than a billion users, who collectively watch 4 billion videos every day. According to experts, 71 hours of footage is uploaded to YouTube every hour. Since the average clip lasts around 4.12 minutes, from the moment a new video is uploaded, users are competing with over 1.4 million other videos, not counting the trillions of videos already on YouTube and other similar platforms. The odds of going viral are so low that marketing and production company Curveball Media Limited has claimed users have “more chance of getting shot, dating a millionaire, or being flown by a drunken pilot than getting 10,000 views” on a video.
But if by some stroke of sheer dumb luck your video does go viral, how do you capitalize on that and cash in? I spoke to viral content studio the Viral Factory’s founder, Matt Smith, to find out.
VICE: The Chewbacca mask mom has supposedly made almost $500,000 off a single video—how is this even possible?
Matt Smith: I haven’t looked at the last view count, but the first way is obviously just monetizing the video. YouTube and Facebook will pay tiny amounts for each view, as long as you’ve gone into your account and switched on the relevant advertising deals, so effectively, whenever you look at any video with advertising around it, the user is getting paid. So [Payne] will be getting a check from Google because obviously her video’s been seen gazillions of times, and that’s a decent chunk of change.
In fairness, it sounds like a lot of that sum has been given to her in the form of various gifts, rather than in cold hard cash.
Yeah, I heard that Kohl’s sent her some money, and I imagine she will be getting appearance fees. She was on [The Late Late Show with] James Corden, and I’m guessing she made some money off of that. There will also be agencies like us who go, “My god, she’s really hot right now—what can we get her to endorse?” I don’t know specifically about her, but I know there are plenty of other fifteen-minutes-of-fame internet celebrities who have done quite well out of appearing in ads.
Like who?
Well, for instance, “Overly Attached Girlfriend,” the [girl who was a] massive meme on YouTube and Reddit with the crazy eyes—we did a video with her for Samsung that she got paid for. We had the initial idea, but she helped us with the execution and the writing, because obviously it was her character. We flew her out to London, and she’s the main aspect of the video. That’s one thing I can tell you about because we did it, but I’ve seen lots of others, like the Delta Airline inflight safety video. It’s got Charlie Bit My Finger, it’s got the hamster, it’s got the rainbow guy… it’s got the bloke from the Will It Blend? campaign—just loads and loads of internet celebs. They would have all been paid quite decent money to be in that, and there’s a whole bunch of them. It’s a thing now where those people are legitimate celebrities, so they get paid and they get featured in stuff.
Is it feasible that everyday YouTubers and Viners could make this kind of money, or do they need something to go wildly viral before anyone takes real notice?
In theory, anyone could do it. A lot of the people who have had their fifteen minutes of fame are pretty much ordinary people. The Chewbacca Mom is so obviously an ordinary person, which is one of the reasons the video is so great, because you’re totally with her. She’s so obviously just having fun and laughing her head off; there’s no agenda behind it, there’s no nothing, she’s just an average kind of Joe—or Josephine. So yes, it can happen, but you have to do something different. Although she’s a normal person, she’s done something actually pretty exceptional. That video is gold. You know, if we as an advertising agency who specialize in making viral videos tried to make that video, I think we’d fail. It’s almost impossible to conceive of it and direct it and cast it and make it as a film. The fact is it was great because it was completely spontaneous and off-the-cuff.
So it was just one moment of magic?
The odds are fairly stacked against the chances of your average person achieving that. But once it’s done, I think increasingly there are mechanisms that there weren’t ten years ago. I’ve met quite a lot of people at various conferences who had exactly that fifteen minutes of fame, but a while ago, and they found it very hard to make any money. In fact, some of them were upset by the fact they had all the downsides of fame and perhaps they didn’t necessarily want all that attention, but they made zero money from it because the structures weren’t in place. Now, they would probably be contacted by agents.
What kind of structures are you talking about?
YouTube has a representation system where they will talk to brands, and they will put forward their celebrities, so if you’re a girl who does makeup tutorials on YouTube and you’re really popular, YouTube will put you forward to makeup brands, fashion brands, etc, and help you monetize that. I know for a fact there’s a talent agency in LA that specializes in accidental YouTube celebrities. So these days, if that happens to you, even if you’re not that keen on the attention—some people obviously love it, some people hate it—but at the very least, you can make a few bucks. I mean, £350,000 [$500,000] isn’t bad, is it?
Take me through your working process—how are you able to determine what will go viral and what won’t?
As I said before, I think stuff like the Chewbacca mask is really tricky from a creative point of view. What we do is write loads and loads of ideas, and spend bloody hours thinking, and going, “Is that going to work or will it not work? How do we make it work?” We get it wrong sometimes, but more often than not, we get it right because we have the resources that the clients give us to spend on production. We can get really good people involved, we can use photo production, special effects, etc. So that’s one way. It’s not failsafe, but it’s decent.
How long after uploading something are you able to tell if it’s going to be successful or not?
Well there are algorithmic ways to predict viral content, so Facebook probably knew before more-or-less everybody else that the Chewbacca mask lady’s video was going viral, because they would have spotted it even when it was only seen by very few people and shared by very few people. I’m pretty sure it would have shown up on someone’s dashboard somewhere, saying, “This thing is going crazy—it’s on an exponential curve and it’s being shared a lot, far more than anything else we’re seeing today.” Again, YouTube has that. They can spot something that has been made and that is trending or starting to trend pretty much before everyone else does. So those are the two ways [of telling if something is going to go viral or not]; one is predicting it by just being very creative and making good stuff, and the other is, once the content is finished, if you’re the content distribution platform owner and you’ve got sophisticated algorithms, you can probably spot it.
What tips do you have for people who want to go viral and make loads of money out of it?
Think very carefully. That’s what I tell my own kids. They go, “Oh, Dad, can you help me go viral?” and I say, “Oh really? You want to go viral? Why do you want to be famous?” It’s crap being famous. It’s nowhere near as good as you might think it is. Just take a deep breath and go, “Why am I doing this again?” because you’ll have the piss ripped out of you. You’ll become a target—especially if you’re young. But if you’re someone who goes, “Well, actually, I just really want to be famous, so I’ll put up with the downsides,” I think on the internet it’s all about being human. Show your real self and then do something kind of exceptional, but as a normal human being.
Source:
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/how-to-cash-in-on-viral-fame
Alkaline water: Should you make the switch?
It doesn’t seem enough to high five ourselves for getting eight glasses of water down the hatch these days. Now it seems we ought to ensure our water has the appropriate pH so we don’t accidentally tip our body into an acidic state.
Alkaline water, aka ionized water, is getting plenty of attention in the natural health sector. Its proponents claim the fact it has a pH of around 9 could not just increase our but even prevent cancer and diabetes.
(If you forgot high-school chemistry, pH is a measure of acidity or alkalinity. On the pH scale of 1 to 14, 7 is the pH of pure water; every whole value below that is increasingly acidic, and every whole value above it is more alkaline”. A healthy human body has a pH of a little over 7.)
Alkaline water is created by running water through an “ionising” machine that contains electrodes that are said to re-align your water in a bid to remove toxins and increase the pH.
The idea of drinking alkaline water or following an alkalizing diet is that the Western diet is highly acidic, which makes for a breeding ground for infection and disease.
If we can take steps to make our bodies more alkaline, such as by drinking alkaline water, then they say we’ll be in a much healthier state.
According to Choice, drinking alkaline water won’t harm you — but it probably won’t actually make any difference to your internal pH, given our bodies are experts at keeping our pH between 7.35 and 7.45 no matter what we eat or drink.
“If the blood pH goes above this range (that is, more alkaline) the lungs help regain control by retaining carbon dioxide (you breathe more slowly) and thereby increasing the carbonic acid levels of the blood, while the kidneys increase excretion of bicarbonate in urine, making it more alkaline,” Choice writes on its website.
Kara Landau, the Travelling Dietitian, agrees that our bodies have clever systems in place to support healthy metabolic function.
“On the whole, I would recommend people first and foremost simply try to drink adequate water and fluids, to remain hydrated,” she told Coach.
“This is of vital importance for our bodies to function at their peaks, and ultimately leave us feeling energised and able to take on the day.”
Landau says that different types of water have slight variances in mineral content so some individuals might choose to prioritise alkaline water.
“As an example, alkaline water is often higher in calcium and potassium, which someone who is looking to increase bone mineral density or improve their blood pressure may be looking to obtain,” she says.
“It is worth noting however, that that there will be ample alternative food sources that are denser options of these micronutrients that could easily be incorporated into your diet.”
Naturopath Emma Tippett from Empowered Health believes our bodies function optimally when we’re not too acidic, but she says there are a lot of contributing factors towards such a state.
“I look at things that cause acidity and inflammation in the body, such as processed foods, lots of sugar and lots of refined grain products,” she says.
“That’s why we tell people to eat lots of green veggies because they help to keep the body in a more alkaline state.”
Tippett says alkaline water will never be the be-all and end-all of a healthy body, but having it can’t hurt.
“Stress, drinking and smoking are going to put the body into a more acidic state,” she points out.
Tippett has a water alkalizing machine in her clinic which adds minerals back into the water, but says that filtering water is all most people need to worry about in order to get as clean a source as possible.
“It’s definitely going to be beneficial to have more minerals in our body and it’s just another source that we can take in for [optimal] nutritional status,” she says.
“But if you’re going to alkalize your water and eat lots of sugar and no veggies, you’re probably not going to get the full benefit.”
Source:
http://coach.nine.com.au/2017/03/24/17/00/alkaline-water
