Tag: real

Categories
Health

The Actual Toll From Jail Covid Circumstances Might Be Greater Than Reported

The Real Toll From Prison Covid Cases May Be Higher Than Reported

An increase in deaths across the country in the past year, past the well-known Covid-19 toll, has led health experts to suggest that some virus cases have gone undiagnosed or have been attributed to other causes. There have also been inconsistencies and changing guidelines on which deaths should be considered coronavirus deaths.

Public health officials say the prospect of missed deaths from viruses linked to the country’s prisons, jails and immigration prisons is particularly risky. It is a challenge, say the experts, to prepare prisons for future epidemics without knowing the full toll. Currently, most of the publicly known death tolls related to incarceration have come from the facilities themselves.

“You can’t make good public policy if you don’t know what’s actually going on on the ground,” said Sharon Dolovich, director of the Covid Behind Bars Data Project at the University of California at Los Angeles, which tracks coronavirus deaths in American prisons .

Prison and prison officials defended their methods of counting inmate deaths from coronavirus, saying they followed all state and local documentation requirements. Some noted that their role was to track deaths in “custody” and suggested that including the deaths of those recently in their care but no longer in their care is both complex and complex It would be impractical and possibly even overstate the number of virus cases related to the facilities.

“It is unfair to expect prisons to somehow take responsibility for what happens to people when they are released from our custody,” said Kathy Hieatt, a spokeswoman for the Virginia Beach Sheriffs Office that held Mr. Melius. “We follow law and the Virginia Department of Corrections’s extensive standards for investigating and reporting those who die in custody. In no way is it necessary to report deaths of former inmates. ”She added,“ It is absurd to think that we could somehow keep an eye on these thousands of people and take responsibility for them. ”

Throughout the pandemic, prison systems have used different methods to publicly report Covid-19-related deaths. Nevada’s prisons say they notify state health officials of inmate deaths from Covid-19 but do not make them public. Mississippi prison authorities said no inmates had died from the coronavirus at their facilities before announcing in January that nearly two dozen prisoner deaths were related to Covid-19.

Updated

July 13, 2021 at 4:53 p.m. ET

And in Texas, a prison medical committee is re-examining any case where a coroner said Covid-19 was one of the causes of death and has sometimes overridden previous findings, according to Jeremy Desel, a spokesman for the state prison system. Shelia Bradley, a 53-year-old prisoner, was reported to have died by a coroner as of “bacterial and possibly fungal pneumonia, a complication of Covid-19”, but the committee concluded that she died of “acute bacterial bronchopneumonia”. without listing Covid-19.

Categories
Health

Political ideology is actual cause folks stay unvaccinated, says Dr. Peter Hotez

Pfizer and BioNTech begin the process of seeking full U.S. approval for their Covid vaccine

Dr. Peter Hotez argued that the real reason some Americans don’t get vaccinated is because of their political ideology.

“They unfortunately tie their political loyalty to the political right. And we see this in the bottom ten states in terms of vaccination rates,” which is half the coverage in the top ten states, said Hotez, co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital.

The ten states with the highest rate of residents receiving at least one dose of Covid-19 vaccine also voted for President Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. Polls show that more than 40% of Republicans don’t plan to be vaccinated.

Hotez told CNBC’s The News with Shepard Smith that regional summer flare-ups in states with lower vaccination rates could lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to urge Americans to wear masks again.

The CDC on Thursday relaxed mask guidelines for the US, saying that fully vaccinated people no longer need to wear a face mask or stay 6 feet away from others in most environments, whether outdoors or indoors.

The updated guidelines have received widespread criticism, but Hotez said this was because the new guidelines arrived earlier than expected.

“I was expecting it sometime in June, so it’s a couple of weeks early,” said Hoetz. “I think it will be fine. But I think the shops, the corporations and the universities need a little time to get information and have internal discussions.”

Categories
Business

Seeing the Actual Faces of Silicon Valley

Seeing the Real Faces of Silicon Valley

By Mary Beth Meehan and Fred Turner

Mary Beth Meehan is an independent photographer and writer. Fred Turner is Professor of Communication at Stanford University.

The workers of Silicon Valley seldom look like the men idealized in its lore. They are sometimes heavier, sometimes older, often feminine, often darker. Many migrated from elsewhere. And most of them earn far less than Mark Zuckerberg or Tim Cook.

This is a place of separation.

Because the valley’s tech companies have fueled the American economy since the Great Recession, the region has remained one of the most unequal in the United States.

In the depths of the pandemic, four in ten families with children in the region couldn’t be sure they would have enough to eat on any given day, according to an analysis by the Silicon Valley Institute for Regional Studies. Just months later, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who recently added “technoking” to his title, briefly became the richest man in the world. The average home price in Santa Clara County – home of Apple and Alphabet – is now $ 1.4 million, according to the California Association of Realtors.

For those not fortunate enough to make billionaire lists, medium-sized engineers, food truck workers, and long-time residents, the valley has become increasingly inhospitable, testing their resilience and determination.

Here are 12 of them that originally appeared in our book, Seeing Silicon Valley, from which this photo essay is taken.

Ravi and Gouthami have multiple degrees – in biotechnology, computer science, chemistry and statistics. After studying in India and working in Wisconsin and Texas, they landed in the Bay Area in 2013, where they now work as statistical programmers in the pharmaceutical industry.

They rent a one-bedroom apartment in the town of Foster City by the Bay and regularly visit a Hindu temple in Sunnyvale, which has been a center of the Indian community since the early 1990s.

Although the couple worked hard to get here and they’re making good money – their starting salaries were about $ 90,000 each – they feel like they are missing out on a future in Silicon Valley. For example, your apartment costs almost $ 3,000 a month. They could move to a cheaper location, but with the traffic they would spend hours commuting each day. They want to stay but are not sure whether they can save, invest or raise a family. Not sure what to do next.

Diane lives in a spacious house in Menlo Park, the city where Facebook is based. Her home is full of beautiful items from a travel life with her husband, a Chinese businessman and philanthropist who has since passed away. The couple moved to the Bay Area over 30 years ago when he retired, and they loved the area – the sunshine, the ocean, the open spaces.

Since then, Diane has watched the area change: “It’s crowded now. It used to be nice, you know – you had space, you had no traffic. It was absolutely a beautiful place here. Now it’s densely populated – buildings rise up everywhere like there’s no tomorrow.

“The money that is rolling in here is incredible,” she continued, “and it is now in the hands of very young people. You have too much money – there is no spiritual feeling, just materialism. “

Victor came to Silicon Valley from El Salvador more than 25 years ago. He lives in a little white trailer in Mountain View, a few miles from Google’s campus. He lived in an apartment nearby, but had to leave when the rent got too high.

His trailer is in a long line of trailers, some of which are inhabited by others who have lost their homes. Victor, now in his eighties, has no electricity or running water, but the guards in his old apartment often sneak in for him to bathe and wash his clothes.

Victor always has a jar of medicated ointment in his backpack, and when neighbors twist an ankle or have a stiff neck, they know they have to knock on Victor’s trailer door. He gives them a chair and massages the sore spot until the pain goes away.

Teresa works full time in a food truck. She prepares Mexican food for a Silicon Valley clientele: hand-ground corn tortillas, vegan tamales, organic chard burritos. The truck drives up and down the valley, serving employees at Tesla’s headquarters, students at Stanford, and buyers at Whole Foods in Cupertino.

Teresa lives in an apartment in Redwood City with her four daughters. In the fall of 2017, her parents visited Mexico for the first time in 22 years. “Bienvenidos Abuelos,” announced a colored pencil on the door. Welcome grandparents.

In business today

Updated

May 7, 2021 at 1:12 p.m. ET

“It’s very difficult for you,” she said. It’s really hard.

As a teacher, Konstance is one of the thousands of officials in Silicon Valley who cannot afford to live in the places they serve. For years she joined the commuting firefighters, cops, and nurses who sat in traffic for hours on the highways around San Francisco Bay, commuting from cheaper locations dozens of miles away.

In July 2017, Konstance won a place in a lottery operated by Facebook. It offered apartments to 22 teachers in the school district adjacent to the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park. The teachers would pay 30 percent of their wages for rent; Facebook would make all the difference. So Konstance and her two daughters moved within walking distance of the family’s school. Suddenly she was surrounded by something she had missed: time. Time to prepare hot meals at home instead of eating in the car, time for her daughter to join the Boy Scouts.

In 2019, Facebook announced it would provide $ 1 billion in loans, grants, and land to help create more affordable housing in the area. Of that pledge, $ 25 million would be used to build housing for educators: 120 apartments, including for Konstance and the other teachers in the original pilot, as long as they worked in nearby schools.

At the time of the announcement, Facebook said the money would be used over the next decade. The construction of the teacher’s house has not yet been completed.

One day Geraldine received a call from a friend: “They are taking our churches!” said her friend. It was 2015 when Facebook expanded in the Menlo Park neighborhood where she lived. Her father-in-law had started a tiny church here 55 years ago, and Geraldine, a church leader, couldn’t allow it to be demolished. The city council held a meeting for the community that evening. “So I went to the meeting,” she said. “You had to write your name on paper to be heard, so I did. They called my name and I bravely went up there and talked. “

Geraldine can’t remember exactly what she said, but she got up and prayed – and in the end the congregation was able to keep the church. “God really did it,” she said. “I had nothing to do with that. It was god. “

In 2016, Gee and Virginia bought a five-bedroom home in Los Gatos, an expensive town at the foot of the coast. The houses on her street at the time were worth nearly $ 2 million, and their houses were big enough for each of their two children to have a bedroom and their parents from Taiwan to visit them.

Together, the couple make about $ 350,000 a year – more than six times the national household average. Virginia works in Hewlett-Packard’s finance department in Palo Alto, and Gee was a former employee of a start-up that developed an online auction app.

They wanted to buy nice furniture for the house, but between their mortgage and childcare costs, they don’t think they can afford to buy it all at once. Some of their rooms are now empty. Gee said that salaries in Silicon Valley like hers sounded like real wealth to the rest of the country, but that it didn’t always feel like that here.

Jon lives in East Palo Alto, a traditionally low-income area separated from the rest of Silicon Valley by Highway 101.

By the time Jon was in eighth grade, he knew he wanted to go to college, and he was accepted into a strict private high school for low-income children. He discovered a suitability for computers and distinguished himself through school and professional internships. Yet as he progressed in his career, he found that everywhere he went there were very few people who looked like him.

“I got really worried,” he said. “I didn’t know who to talk to, and I saw that it wasn’t a problem for her. I just thought I have to do something about it. “

Jon, now in his thirties, has returned to East Palo Alto where he developed Maker Spaces and made technical education projects available to members of the community.

“It’s amazing to live here,” said Erfan, who moved to Mountain View when her husband got a job as an engineer with Google. “But it’s not a place where I want to spend my whole life. There are many job opportunities, but it’s about the technology, the speed for new technology, new ideas, everything new. “The couple had previously lived in Canada after emigrating from Iran.

“We never had these opportunities at home in Iran. I know – I don’t want to complain, ”she added. “When I tell people I live in the Bay Area, they say, ‘You’re so lucky – it has to be like heaven! You must be so rich ‘”

But the emotional toll can be weighty. “We are sometimes happy, but also very anxious, very stressed. You have to worry if you lose your job because the cost of living is very high and very competitive. It’s not that easy – come here, live in California, become a millionaire. It is not so easy. ”

Elizabeth graduated from Stanford and works as a security officer for a large technology company in the area. She is also homeless.

She was on a 2017 panel on the subject at San Jose State University and said, “Please remember that many homeless people – and there are many more of us than the census records – work in the same businesses as you. ”(She refused to indicate which company she worked for for fear of reprisals.)

While homeless workers sometimes serve food in cafeterias or clean buildings, they are often white-collar workers.

“Sometimes it just takes a mistake, a financial mistake, sometimes just a medical disaster. Sometimes it takes a tiny little insurance loss – it can be a number of things. However, the fact is that there are many middle-class people who have fallen into poverty lately, ”she said. “Their homelessness, which should only be a month or two to recover, or three months, extends for years. Please remember, there are many of us. “

Categories
Business

Unintentional actual property flippers are raking in shocking earnings

Unintentional real estate flippers are raking in surprising profits

An aerial view of the Rockybrook Estate in Delray Beach, Florida

Douglas Elliman

Ten days after closing the most expensive mansion sale of the year in Delray Beach, Florida for $ 19 million, luxury real estate agent Senada Adzem received an unexpected phone call.

“The buyer called me to say they were going to sell the house. In all honesty, we were surprised,” Adzem said in an interview. She related how the buyer said his plans had changed. He and his family could no longer move to Florida.

“I’ve never been in a situation where the client invested so much time and effort buying a dream home – only to turn it over and sell it less than two weeks later,” said Adzem.

The client re-listed the property known as “The Rockybrook Estate” at $ 23 million, which was $ 4 million more than he paid for it a few weeks earlier. Adzem said she expected the unintended short-term flip to pay off.

“With the glowing luxury market in South Florida and the dazzling splendor of this resort-style property, we are confident that the seller has an excellent opportunity to make significant profit on this deal,” she said.

The scenario is not an isolated one. It is playing out in several U.S. real estate markets as the rising value of stocks and other assets has helped increase the purchasing power of the rich. Because many of these buyers want to live in a limited number of markets, luxury home availability can be tight.

The amazing room at the Rockybrook Estate in Delray Beach, Florida.

Douglas Elliman

Low stocks

Delray Beach is a good example. The multimillion dollar inventory of luxury items in the city on Florida’s southeast coast is at a 10-year low, down 45% from 2020, Adzem said. In the first quarter, the average sales price for a luxury single-family home there rose by more than 53.7% compared to the previous quarter, according to the Elliman report.

“The low inventory of megamansions, especially in a booming property market like South Florida, has a positive impact on the seller,” she said.

The same day this home was sold at 14 Sandy Cove, Newport Beach, California, the buyer decided to put it up for sale.

Photo: PreviewFirst / Stavros Group

In Southern California, realtor Andy Stavros also had a buyer who turned into an accidental pinball machine. Stavros sold his client a $ 8.7 million home at 14 Sandy Cove in Newport Beach, California. On the same day it closed, Stavros said the buyer had decided to put it up for sale.

A view of the back yard at 14 Sandy Cove in Newport Beach, California.

Photo: PreviewFirst / Stavros Group

Stavros said his client’s plans changed because she saw and bought a bigger house in the area for $ 13 million. That meant she no longer needed the four-bedroom, eight-bath house she had just bought. When she asked Stavros to sell it, its price was $ 8.9 million.

The view of 14 Sandy Cove in Newport Beach, California.

Photo: PreviewFirst / Stavros Group

According to Stavros, his client didn’t want to make money, but it could happen. Potential buyers called before the listing went online.

“All at once I have several requests,” he said.

Deciding to sell a multimillion dollar property the same day you close it is usually not a profitable strategy. However, if the property is desirable and in a hot, low inventory market, an accidental house flipper can make a sizeable profit, according to Devin Kay, South Florida real estate agent.

“We are surprised daily by what things are being sold for,” said Kay.

Properties in demand

La Gorce Island is a small gated community that Cher, Ricky Martin, and Billy Joel once called home. Wyden said he intends to demolish the obsolete 4,500 square foot residence on the half-acre property and build a larger new home.

“Immediately after my contract was signed someone offered $ 400,000 for my contract,” said Wyden in an interview. He added that he declined the offer because he wasn’t a pinball machine. He and his wife planned to move to La Gorce Island permanently, and a few hundred grand profits wouldn’t change their plans.

“The intention with my wife was to build a house,” said Wyden.

However, soon after, the Wydens found they weren’t facing all the headaches of building a new house and instead made an offer for another house in South Florida. In February, they re-listed the unimproved property at 31 La Gorce Circle for $ 5.5 million – a whopping $ 1.35 million more than they paid for it.

“I thought people might say I was crazy or there might be a bidding war,” said Wyden.

Even Kay, the Wydens real estate agent, was shocked when he sold the property at full price six days after it was re-listed. “I had no faith in my head that we would get $ 5.5 million for it,” he said.

Wyden said, “I’m not in the real estate speculation business,” but just like the stock market, prices inevitably go up when demand goes up and supply goes down. La Gorce Island is only 2 km² so there is a very limited supply of houses and even fewer opportunities for demolition to develop.

“Due to a highly competitive market and the fact that there was nothing else for sale, we were able to turn it around with a profit of 33%,” said Wyden. He added, “I probably under-sold it. I could probably have got six [million dollars] for this.”

Wyden’s Flip outperformed the Miami Beach market, where luxury single-family home sales prices rose 20.2% quarter over quarter in the first quarter, according to the Elliman Report.

Not just luxury markets

And it’s not just luxury markets that see very profitable, unintended flips. Los Angeles real estate agent Spencer Daley made a surprising profit on a brief move in Idaho.

“These are prices Boise has never seen before. This is new territory,” Daley said in an interview.

Douglas Elliman real estate agent, 31, bought property in the town of Caldwell in September. It was a vacant three-acre lot overlooking the Timberstone Golf Course in an off-course subdivision about 20 minutes from Boise. Real estate records show he paid $ 120,000 for it.

“It wasn’t like I bought it and I was going to turn it over,” said Daley. “I bought the land to actually build on.”

He had the architectural plans and received a cost of about $ 380,000 to build it. Daley figured it would take a year to complete the project and then planned to bring the house to market for somewhere north of $ 600,000.

But three months after buying the property, Daley said something he never expected had happened: a buyer called with an off-market offer he couldn’t refuse. He sold the property for $ 250,000.

“It was more than twice what I paid for it,” said Daley.

Warren Johns is the local real estate agent licensed by Mountain Realty who was representing Daley. Johns said he helped another customer, also an accidental pinball machine, buy and sell a vacant lot on the same street. According to Johns, the buyer paid $ 95,000 for the lot and sold it for $ 250,000.

The accidental flip earned its client more than 163% of their original investment in less than five months.

The supply of real estate on a golf course in the Boise metropolitan area is low, said Johns. The properties in the Timberstone area also have an added benefit that also fueled demand. He said it was one of the few subdivisions in the region where raffle buyers can bring in their own contractor.

“Builders were unable to get into other developments controlled by other powerful builders,” so these builders came to the Timberstone subdivision as land buyers to develop and then sell. Both lots that Johns helped his clients turn over went to buyers who were builders, and he has a third lot in the subdivision that is now also under contract with a contractor.

Daley said a huge short-term gain made his decision obvious.

“If the win is there and the risk is less, I don’t know why you wouldn’t,” he said. “I made more money selling the property than selling a finished home.”

Categories
Business

NFL participant LeSean McCoy needs to construct an actual property empire

NFL player LeSean McCoy wants to build a real estate empire

LeSean McCoy (25) of the Buccaneers plays the ball during the regular season game between the Minnesota Vikings and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on December 13, 2020 at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida.

Cliff Welch | Icon Sportswire | Getty Images

LeSean McCoy admitted that early in his career he had no idea how to handle finances. McCoy didn’t know how to make money on his big NFL paychecks, and saving up wasn’t an option either.

“Now that I’m in my twelfth year in the league and looking at all the investments I’ve made from good to bad, I’ve learned,” McCoy told CNBC.

It’s National Financial Literacy Month, and McCoy says he’s more motivated to “generate finance not just for myself but for my family as well.”

Months after his second Super Bowl ring when McCoy was on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers roster, the 32-year-old player takes advantage of off-season downtime to complete property developments. McCoy and his brother LeRon run real estate company Vice Capital. After McCoy’s game days are almost over, he is taking advantage of the real estate investment route to continue building wealth after the NFL.

“We’re still getting started, but that’s the main goal,” said LeSean. He added that another mission is to help NFL players “learn how to make other money than just play football”.

Use the opportunity zones

Vice Capital invests in distressed real estate in low-income communities and renovates buildings to create new residential units and commercial space.

The McCoy brothers are taking advantage of opportunity zones to develop some properties. The territories were created under the Federal Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 and offer developers tax incentives for capital gains. They are designed to direct investment in underdeveloped neighborhoods and help increase neighborhood values ​​without triggering rents that would drive residents out of the rebuilt communities.

LeSean’s brother told him about the zones in 2017. However, LeSean said he was skeptical when he learned that the laws were passed under the administration of President Donald Trump. “Who is this really for?” he asked his brother.

Before it became official, the legislation received support from US Senators, including Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC). After examining the legislation and determining the tax exemptions, LeSean found it to be a “win-win” situation.

“On the flip side, as a humanitarian worker, you can influence certain communities in need of this change,” added LeRon. “These are usually inner-city areas.”

Former NBA player David Robinson also uses opportunity zones for development.

The McCoy brothers own 60 properties, some of which are operated under Vice, including buildings in their hometown of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and in Philadelphia, where he played with the Eagles for six seasons.

“We want to build this empire in real estate,” said LeSean.

LeSean McCoy and his family (Brother LeRon is right).

Source: EAG Sports Management

All about trust

LeRon played in the NFL for the 2005 season with the Arizona Cardinals. LeSean played 12 seasons, was selected for six Pro Bowls, and was a member of the Kansas City Chiefs team that won Super Bowl LIV. According to Spotrac, LeSean made $ 63 million in his career.

LeSean asked his brother to help run Vice, which he launched in 2018, while maintaining his NFL career.

“The hard part for the players is trust,” said LeSean. “My brother is a guy I trust like no other, that’s probably why it works so well with real estate. He’s always teaching me.”

During Covid-19, LeSean trusted LeRon to handle the losses it had incurred as construction ceased and residents of the units were on eviction protection. LeRon didn’t release financial data to CNBC, but said Vice’s losses were less than $ 2 million.

“We’re brothers, but he would fire me,” joked LeRon. “The biggest loss I can see is not the dollars, but the opportunity.”

Prior to the pandemic, LeRon said Vice Capital was in negotiations to buy a property near La Salle University in Philadelphia’s Germantown neighborhood. The property’s value fell, but when Covid-19 drove property prices soaring, the owner took it off the market and quoted it at twice the previous price, leaving it out of Vice’s reach.

LeRon said the pandemic “weighed on things” as materials like wood soared and construction costs soared. “But I would also say it will increase the seller’s market,” he added. “Interest rates are cheap and everyone wants to buy.”

Here LeSean trusts his brother again. LeSean advocates selling some properties at high prices in a glowing real estate market. LeRon is against the idea.

“Sometimes we agree, sometimes we don’t,” added LeSean. “But the good thing about our bond is that I can trust him with business.”

However, the McCoy brothers cannot unload the Opportunity Zone properties. Investors receive tax breaks on their capital gains if they keep their money in a selected municipality for at least 10 years.

LeSean McCoy (25) walks the field during Tampa Bay Buccaneers Training Camp on September 3, 2020 at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida.

Cliff Welch | Icon Sportswire | Getty Images

What’s next on the field?

Though LeSean relies on his brother for business advice, he still has to choose his career as the 2021 season approaches. LeSean says he wants to play but wasn’t sure about a team’s interest.

“There are some teams that I probably won’t play for,” he said. “Hopefully other teams can come to an agreement on some things. That has to make sense.”

LeSean recapitulated its 2020 season and said it was “a great experience” playing with Bucs quarterback Tom Brady.

“All the trip to see him and play with him … I played him when I was playing in Philadelphia (Brady was with New England then). He was like a drill sergeant, and then I actually did Played with him, I could see He’s so intense and smart, “LeSean said. “I’ve never played with a quarterback like that where he’s 43. It was cool to see.”

With retirement near, LeSean said he has options and real estate is the main game. When asked about stocks or investments in Bitcoin, LeSean said he had tried the investments but was no longer interested.

“My thing is real estate,” said LeSean. “That’s something I understand. I don’t have to take someone else’s word for it and the ups and downs – it’s just a lot. With real estate, I can see what’s going on; I can see my money, touch it, and feel it it.”

Categories
Entertainment

The Circle: Who Is the Actual River, aka Lee?

THE CIRCLE Lee Swift stars in season 2 of THE CIRCLE. Cr. Netflix © 2021

The first four episodes of The circle Season two is officially available for streaming on Netflix. Can you imagine which candidate has already stolen our hearts? That’s right, Lee! Originally from Dallas, Lee Swift is an outstanding and proud gay man who has been with his partner for 32 years. He deserves an award for himself. When he’s not fishing people by portraying himself as over 30 years younger (more on that later), he writes erotic novels under the female pen name Kris Cook. “I was a catfish before they used the term catfish,” he joked in his intro package. To save you time, we have already visited Lee’s professional website, which you can find here.

As if we couldn’t love Lee anymore, he announced that he had to ask his 20-year-old niece for help with “social media slang” before he got on the show. While we personally adore Lee’s bubbly personality, the 58-year-old decided to change things up a little and step in The circle Group chat as River, a 24 year old from Mertzon, TX who also happens to be Lee’s friend IRL.

As a successful writer, Lee hoped he would advance as a fictional character in the competition. “As a writer, I think that makes me a professional liar,” he quipped. “Well, I don’t think anyone has a chance.” Lee, who fishes as his friend River, writes in his Circle bio that he is a waiter and student who is “fun” and exciting, but also has a “sensitive” side. In order not to engage in flirtatious behaviors, Lee tells the group that he was recently out of a relationship and is still healing his broken heart.

As for the similarities between Lee’s fake person on the show and the real River, there aren’t any. Except for the fact that they’re good friends.

First up, River’s real name is Doak Rapp, and while his fake character on the show may be gay, he’s straight. Likewise, he’s not from a small farm in Texas, but from Dallas. While Roak is a pretty private person on social media himself, it can be seen from Lee’s Instagram that he’s a fashionable guy!

Stay up to date on all of the things Doak (@ avengers_assemble21) and Lee (@leeswiftauthor) do by following them on Instagram and make sure you get used to it The circle on Netflix, where new episodes appear every week.

Categories
Business

‘That is the actual deal’

'This is the real deal'

CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Monday approved the purchase of shares in Roblox, the online gaming company that went public earlier this month.

“You have my blessing to take a position in Roblox right here now, although I obviously want it to be at a much lower level, but that’s the real deal,” said the Mad Money host.

Roblox closed the trading session on Monday at $ 70 per share, up 8.5% since it was directly listed on the New York Stock Exchange almost two weeks ago. Founded in 2004 by Erik Cassel and David Baszucki and headquartered in San Mateo, California, the company is valued at over $ 38 billion.

“I have to tell you, I really like this business model,” said Cramer.

The platform is particularly popular with the younger generations who create, share and play video games on the website. According to Roblox, daily active users increased 85% to 32.6 million in 2020, compared to 47% in 2019. The number of paying users more than doubled to around 490,000.

Roblox grossed $ 923.9 million last year, up 82% from $ 508.4 million in 2019.

“The home-stay economy allowed them to break out, but I bet they can maintain a lot of that flywheel-like dynamic going forward,” Cramer said.

Considering his subscription service, Cramer argued that the stock should be judged on its price / booking ratio. He pointed out that Wall Street analysts are forecasting bookings of $ 2.71 billion for the next year, meaning the stock will trade about 17 times in 2022.

“Quite expensive, but still geared towards something like Snap and a lot cheaper than Unity software, perhaps the closest comparison,” he said.

Cramer cautioned the stock could experience some volatility this year as the economy reopens fully and people spend less time at home and in digital spaces.

“But if it kept going, I wouldn’t pay more than $ 83.50 for this book, which is roughly 20 times bookings for the next year, at least not until we get more insight into how they did the rest of the year see expire. ” he said.

“That said, that’s good. I think it’s worth weathering a possible storm and I recommend buying something here,” he continued. “Then you could buy more on the way down, but only if you share my beliefs.”

Categories
Health

How one can Purchase a Actual N95 Masks On-line

How to Buy a Real N95 Mask Online

A year into the coronavirus pandemic, buying a high-performance medical mask online remains downright insane.

The most sought-after mask to protect against Covid-19 was the N95, the gold standard for pandemic protection, as it sits tight and filters out 95 percent of the particles in the air. Then there is the KN95 from China, a mask for medical personnel that also offers high filtration and sits a little looser.

But these masks were anything but easy to buy on the Internet. When the pandemic hit last year, they were immediately in short supply as healthcare workers and governments rushed to get them. The demand was so great that a gray market emerged for them.

But even after the range has improved, it is often not easy to find authentic N95s and KN95s online. This is because there are only a few brand manufacturers. Hence, it can be difficult to know which of the dozen of manufacturers are reliable. And counterfeiters continue to flood the market, even on trusted websites like Amazon.

The result is often frustration when wearing a high performance mask is more important than ever. Last week, federal health officials stressed that we must all have tight-fitting masks because of the rapidly spreading coronavirus variants.

“People don’t know what is legitimate and they don’t know which suppliers are legitimate,” said Anne Miller, executive director of Project N95, a nonprofit that helps people buy coronavirus protection equipment. “We have had this problem since the pandemic began.”

I recently spent hours comparing masks online and almost bought a pack of fakes on Amazon. Fortunately, I avoided falling into the trap and ended up finding legitimate, high quality masks from a trusted online retailer.

Along the way, I learned a lot about how to spot fraudulent mask lists and how to circumvent fake reviews. Here’s how to use real medical masks that will protect you and your loved ones.

My journey began on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website. There I found diagrams of N95 and KN95 masks that the agency tested, including the make, model number, and filtration efficiency.

After some reading, I learned about the tradeoffs between the two types of masks. The N95’s usually have straps that are strapped across the back of the head, which makes them snug-fitting. It can be uncomfortable to wear for long periods of time.

The KN95, approved by the Food and Drug Administration for emergency medical personnel, have ear loops for a tight fit that is slightly more comfortable than an N95. The disadvantage is that a little more air escapes from the KN95 than from the N95.

If you are frequently in high risk areas like hospitals, N95s may be more suitable. However, if you only need a protective mask for occasional use, e.g. B. an occasional visit to the grocery store, KN95 is likely sufficient.

After doing my research, I decided that a KN95 mask from Powecom, a Chinese brand, would be best for my purposes. The mask achieved a filtration efficiency of 99 percent in the CDC tests.

From there I went to Amazon, where I buy everything from dog food to batteries during the pandemic. Then things went wrong.

When I typed “Powecom KN95” into Amazon’s search box, the masks immediately showed up with a rating of 4.5 stars. I quickly clicked “Add to Cart”.

But before checking out, I scrolled down to read the reviews. There were roughly 130 – including a handful of one-star reviews from aggrieved buyers who said the masks were most likely counterfeit. I emptied my shopping cart.

How did I almost buy a fake? Saoud Khalifah, the founder of Fakespot, a company that offers tools to detect fake offers and reviews online, said a third party was likely to have taken control of product offerings and sold fakes to make quick money.

“It’s a bit of a wild west,” he said. “The normal consumers who shop at Amazon do not know that they have just bought a counterfeit mask. This is the biggest critical problem: you think it’s real and all of a sudden you get sick. “

Mr Khalifah presented other examples of questionable masks sold on Amazon:

  • A pack of 50 masks was featured on Amazon as the # 1 new release in women’s fashion scarves this week. Obviously, masks aren’t scarves, which was a giveaway for something wrong. The listing description also replaced all the letters A with accented characters. This was a technique that was used to bypass Amazon’s fraud detection systems, Khalifah said. Amazon removed the list after calling about it.

  • Another pack of 20 masks looked attractive and was described as approved by the CDC. It even had positive reviews with an average of 4.4 stars. However, the reviews indicated that most of the customers received the masks for free, which was likely an incentive to leave positive feedback. A lukewarm review from someone who paid for the product found the masks to be “thin and very, very large.”

  • Mr. Khalifah’s software also found that another pack of 100 masks that had unanimous five-star ratings had reviewers in the past for other brands.

Amazon said in a statement that it bans the sale of counterfeit products and is investing to ensure its guidelines are followed. There were specific guidelines for N95 and KN95 masks, including a procedure for reviewing inventory and taking action for those who have sold counterfeits.

Amazon also said it looked at the questionable Powecom mask I almost bought, as well as the mask advertised as a scarf. There was no evidence that the pack of 20 masks was counterfeit and no comment on the pack of 100 masks.

Mr Khalifah warned that the fakes he spotted on Amazon might as well be found on websites of other large retailers like Walmart and eBay, where third-party sellers can ship products. In order to buy authentic masks, I should be less traditional when shopping online.

Armed with this advice, I continued my search for the Powecom mask.

I visited the manufacturer’s website for steps to verify the authenticity of a mask. To do this, a barcode on the packaging had to be scanned with a telephone camera. I then did a web search for the mask that took me to bonafidemasks.com, an online retailer that shows records that it is an authorized distributor of Powecom masks in the United States.

That was more reassuring. So I ordered a pack of 100 for $ 99. When the package arrived in the mail, I scanned the barcodes to confirm their authenticity. You were the real deal.

Another way I could have gone was to order masks directly from the manufacturer. Verified mask manufacturers like DemeTech in Miami and Prestige Ameritech in Texas sell N95 through their websites.

However, ordering directly from a manufacturer is associated with other challenges. Often times, one has to buy a large amount to reduce costs.

What if you just want to buy a few to try on? Ms. Miller’s Nonprofit Project N95 buys bulk orders of masks and disassembles them so people can buy smaller batches. “It’s a very careful process,” she said.

In earnest.

Categories
Entertainment

On Ballet TikTok, a Place for Younger Dancers to Be Actual

On Ballet TikTok, a Place for Young Dancers to Be Real

“TikTok is so carefree, why not have some fun with it?” Said Watters. “Highlighting these comments also puts a little pressure on: talking to dancers this way is not okay, and maybe you could be exposed for this type of behavior as well.”

One of the reasons Watters is comfortable with everything hanging out on TikTok is because he doesn’t have to worry about his boss rolling by. “I would have a hard time finding an art director who really knew what TikTok is,” he said. But the “mom and dad aren’t home” atmosphere may not continue.

Professional ballet is making progress. The American Ballet Theater, one of the country’s leading companies, had its dancers take a TikTok course last spring. The company has been posting exploratory videos at @americanballettheatre since August and is expected to be the first major ballet company to officially open a TikTok account. Wherever the ballet theater goes, other troops are sure to follow, a change that could transform the app’s ballet ecosystem.

Or maybe not. Current residents of the TikTok ballet may simply ignore corporate offers, especially if corporate accounts end up as a showcase for tech. “When I scroll through TikTok, I really don’t want to see Isabella Boylston do six pirouettes,” McCloskey said, referring to a lead dancer at the Ballet Theater. “She’s obviously incredibly talented, but it’s kind of boring. It’s not the creative content that I go to TikTok for. “

Akamine also noted that some of the young stars of the TikTok ballet are not feeling the urge to seek institutional approval. “In this day and age, we have as much power and value on this platform as big companies,” she said.

Connor Holloway, 26, the gender-assault member of the Corps de Ballet who runs the Ballet Theater’s TikTok account, said the company wanted to present a version of itself that feels true to the culture of the TikTok ballet. Last year, Holloway successfully campaigned for the Ballet Theater to remove gender labels from its corporate classes. Content that challenges the gender binary representation of ballet will “absolutely” be part of the TikTok presence of ballet theater, Holloway said, mentioning the possibility that the company’s account could be a crowdsourced ballet with choreography and design by young creators like ” Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical “made possible. ”

Categories
Business

The Races Are Digital, and So Are the Advertisements, however the Cash Is Actual

The Races Are Digital, and So Are the Ads, but the Money Is Real

It takes more than gas to get a racing car running.

It takes money. And money needs sponsors. And sponsors need viewers who they hope will become customers. Which became a problem for motorsport when Covid-19 closed tracks around the world early last year. The financial drought brought teams, tracks and racing series from extinction.

The industry turned to an emerging phenomenon – simulated racing. In these extremely realistic video games, cars obey the laws of physics and run on reproductions of real routes that are accurate down to the last lane.

In an experiment, NBC and Fox replaced the canceled races with sim races. Nobody knew if digital cars would attract viewers and pay off for sponsorships. Traditionally, racing cars served as high-speed billboards with consumers asking for the engine oil that proved the winning car superior. Could a sim car sell engine oil that has no engine or oil?

Ten months into the experiment, sim races seem to be paying off as the television and web audiences helped save the 2020 season. And now Sim Racing is giving the teams a new source of income, giving sponsors a more responsible form of marketing, and engaging a young audience that motorsport has had a hard time conquering. Sim Racing will soon be facing the real test: Can it bind fans and sponsors when real cars are back on real tracks and real spectators are in the stands?

Racing video games are not new. In 1977 Atari you could play Indy 500 and Street Racer. In the 1990s, more demanding Formula 1 games – albeit with blocky graphics – flourished. The graphics were further developed in successive generations of game consoles from Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo. At a glance, you may not even notice that the races are being simulated.

Desktops also run highly complex networked games such as iRacing, which has been chosen as the platform for a number of racing organizations including NASCAR, IMSA, IndyCar and the W-Series. Formula 1 chose its own commercial game from Codemasters.

Many professional racing drivers used the games privately for training. Due to the fidelity of the tracks, drivers can at least remember the layout. Some teams use special simulator software to optimize the setup of their actual cars before a race.

Sim Racing builds his driving skills to the point that some players, like William Byron, have created real cars. Mr. Byron, a NASCAR Cup series driver, now owns an eNASCAR team that won $ 100,000 in prize money in the 2020 eNASCAR Coca-Cola iRacing series.

For years, professional drivers have sneaked into online competitions unannounced. For fans, it’s like joining a pickup basketball game and finding LeBron James on the court.

Automakers see the branding value of games. Chevrolet announced news when its simulated C8.R mid-engined Corvette was added to iRacing’s IMSA range in September. Like manufacturers as diverse as Mazda and McLaren, Chevy licenses its vehicles for dozens of games, including Forza, Project CARS, and Gran Turismo Sport.

Gamers may not be the primary market for a $ 60,000 Corvette, said Kevin Kelly, a Chevrolet spokesman, “but it’s a chance to stay loyal to the brand.”

Sim racing was an afterthought until technology, social media and real racing grew together about three years ago, said Bryan Cook, who was hired by Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR to fans) to handle social media in 2009. He expanded to iRacing four years ago and started a private league where JGR professional drivers competed against “your average Joes,” he said.

A year before the pandemic, iRacing became an official part of the JGR marketing program, offering sponsors a younger audience and social media data for a fee.

“You get to the point where the drivers have to be paid,” said Mr. Cook. “There are equipment needs. We said we really have to cover our costs here. “

Sims had their big break on March 22nd, when both eNASCAR and virtual Formula 1 races were shown on television instead of canceled races. The eNASCAR race drew 910,000 spectators, less than the three million typical for NASCAR, but more than the 400,000 typical for a virtual race.

“We realized this could be a real replacement for these NASCAR races,” said Brad Zager, Fox Sports’ production and operations manager.

The first F1 replacement race, the Virtual Bahrain Grand Prix, drew a total of four million viewers on digital and television, less than the 34 million average for an actual race but ahead of the 1.8 million average for pro-digital Run.

Last year “F1 Esports offered a new level of awareness for F1 Esports”, said Julian Tan, head of the department for digital business initiatives and esports at Formula 1. “We have digital record numbers of engagement in Austria and even in our esports Content seen Our official virtual championship last winter had record numbers. “

Broadcast TV is validated, but only part of Sim Racing’s reach. Livestreams could reach 400,000 viewers via YouTube, Facebook and Twitch, said Anthony Gardner, president of iRacing.com Motorsport Simulations. The social interactions – tweets, likes, comments – during the races are more valuable.

“The social media contacts are millions of times in a race,” said Gardner. These interactions provide customer data and the ability to speak directly to consumers.

Suddenly the sim racing audience was big enough to deserve attention but too new for marketers to capitalize on. Sponsors took different approaches, but all targeted an elusive new audience. NASCAR’s fan base has declined with age since 2005. Sim Racing attracts a younger and more racially diverse audience – attractive to sponsors and leagues.

“It’s really hard to reach this 18- to 35-year-old,” said Patrick Daugherty, who manages Valvoline sponsorships. “Gaming over-indices with young DIY enthusiasts.”

The company signed with Parker Kligerman, a celebrity racing driver and eNASCAR driver, before Covid-19 hit. “The audience and engagement exceeded our expectations,” said Daugherty. “We were really lucky and will renew ourselves with these guys in 2021.”

Despite being NASCAR’s official grill, Pit Boss Grills couldn’t afford to sponsor a front-line racer that is said to cost up to $ 35 million. That has changed with eNASCAR.

“This gave us the opportunity to become a major sponsor,” said Carlos Padilla, Director of Brand Partnerships. “It made it possible for us to be on a live broadcast about a car, if you want to call it that, at a price that is feasible for a company of our size.”

It cost four numbers per race to be seen by a million TV viewers – a bargain.

Discouraging iRacing seems like a circuit’s best interests, but Richmond Raceway first sponsored a team about three years ago. It built a simulator in a disused racing car for fans to try out. This innovation prompted Daytona International Speedway to borrow the car.

Not only has this raised Richmond’s profile, but sponsors’ money has also turned it into a five-figure profit.

“Marketing was the original goal,” said Brent S. Gambill, a spokesman who previously worked for the route and now for NASCAR’s mid-Atlantic region. “When it started, we spent money to be part of something. In the second year we made money. “

The online audience gives sponsors a chance to measure responses to certain offers, taglines, and prices in ways that television doesn’t.

However, a tsunami of data is not always helpful. “It would be fantastic for us if we could say that a million people watched last week and bought 200,000 cars this week. I don’t know if we’ll ever make it, ”said Paul Doleshal, general manager, Motorsports and Assets for Toyota Motors North America. “We’re drowning in information now.”

That makes it difficult to compare Sim Racing’s sales performance with Real Racing’s. But it can be a contentious question for a couple of reasons.

On the one hand, the two worlds are intertwined – the performance on the virtual track can have real effects.

When Darrell Wallace Jr., known as Bubba, finished a virtual race in frustration in April, sponsor Blue-Emu dropped him and tweeted in part: “Bye bye Bubba. We care about drivers, not slackers. “Kyle Larson, a driver, made a racial mistake during a sim race, lost sponsors, and was banned from NASCAR and iRacing. He will return to NASCAR in October.

The second reason is that while winning helps, it is not the only reason a fan will buy a car product.

“It’s not just about the literal oil,” said Eric Schwartz, a professor of marketing at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. “It’s about being a trustworthy brand that understands this world of racing.”

After all, Sim’s simplest brand attraction is that it delivers viewers. “This is a way to get eyeballs for the brand to keep track of,” Schwartz said. “If Valvoline doesn’t sponsor a team, the competitor will.”

It will take time to know if sim race fans are turning into real racing enthusiasts and vice versa, but Fox has five sim races planned for its FS1 network this year.

“You have so many options with iRacing,” said Fox’s Zager, envisioning a field race one week and Daytona the next. “ESports became a very big buzzword when the pandemic hit,” he added. “But iRacing just went to the front of the field and no one caught up.”