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The first ever travel photographs are up for auction — and they offer a fascinating glimpse into ancient Egypt

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egypt travel photographs

One of the world's first set of travel photographs is up for auction and it's expected to fetch up to $20,000 (£15,096).

The images — which are widely considered to mark the birth of travel photography — were captured by the French writer and photographer Maxime Du Camp during a trip to Egypt in 1849.

His work offers a fascinating glimpse into ancient Egypt long before the days of commercial tourism and selfie sticks.

59 of the original 125 prints are currently up for auction on the Antiquarian Auctions website.

Du Camp travelled with his colleague Gustave Flaubert to Egypt in 1849 as part of a three-year archaeological expedition. His work was published in his book "Egypte, Nubie, Palestine et Syrie," and brought him instant fame.



125 images were printed in the book upon his return to France in 1851. A short description accompanied each image.



The prints were bought by a South African family as collectables​ and have remained in their possession for generations. They showcase Egypt's most famous landmarks long before the days of commercial tourism.



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September is the best month

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maple leaves color turning autum

It's time to put this argument to rest once and for all: September is the best month of the year. 

First, let's run down the definitive ranking of months from best to worst:

  • September
  • October
  • November
  • December
  • May
  • June
  • January
  • July 
  • August
  • April
  • February
  • March

As is clear in the ranking, autumn is the best season. 

Not only does the weather in autumn provide a sampling of each of the year's best offerings — a little heat in September, morning frost in October, a pleasantly warm day in November, a satisfyingly cold afternoon in December — but the year's best holidays also highlight the season. 

Thanksgiving is the best holiday.

Christmas is the second-best holiday, though mostly because it is broadly acceptable to take most of the time between December 24 and January 2 off from work. 

Autumn also represents the best working conditions of the year. People come back to school and work from summer breaks refreshed and ready to be productive. Many companies begin eyeing their year-end results and kick into gear for a "fall sprint" into the fourth quarter. 

And while some may argue this enhanced productivity is a result of having taken the summer to recharge — thus potentially bolstering a case for summer being the best season — most of this boost comes from pent-up energy that lies dormant during the dull summer months. Boredom is the motivating factor during the autumn push to be more productive.

On to the rest of the list: May and June provide the bit of summer you're actually looking for. By the time February and March have crushed your spirit, May and June provide more daylight, slightly warmer temperatures, new clothes and sneakers. 

May, unfortunately, means wicked allergies for many in the Northeast, however.

But a redeeming quality for May is Memorial Day, providing a much-needed three-day weekend and marking the unofficial beginning of summer. For many US states, May also marks the end of the school year.

June often provides just enough heat to get you leaving the house without a light jacket or the need for contingent clothing options, which is among the most tiring features of the February-through-April push. 

By the end of June, however, the tyranny of summer is plain to see. The worst is yet to come.

January's ranking as the seventh-best month is likely to upset some observers who parrot the standard, "There's nothing to see after Christmas routine."

But January gives us two holidays — New Year's Day and Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Every four years we get a presidential inauguration. In many years, January is the first time meaningful snowfall makes its way to the DC-Boston corridor, an event much-anticipated by residents and much-derided by non-resident Twitter users.

There's something for everyone. Winter lasting three-plus months is a cruel joke. January, however, provides the right sampling of the season's offerings. 

Which brings us to summer. 

For all of the hand-wringing you're apt to see about the end of summer being sad, the reality is that summer does not live up to the hype.

Summer is too hot. Major summer activities — taking vacation, watching baseball, eating ice cream, watching fireworks, going to air-conditioned movie theaters — are all overrated. 

Summer is fun for about two weeks after the school year ends — in June — and when the corporate world moves into a lower gear. Almost right after this period (read: your first outdoor happy hour), however, it's obvious why we work hard and go to school: There's just not much else to do with our time. 

July and August, as the prime summer months, represent the brunt of this grind. They are oppressively hot months. They are boring months. They are long months (back-to-back 31-day months). They are bad months. Plain and simple.

April, if only for the slightly-better-than-March weather and the longer days, ranks above February and March. But the latter two, the true grind-it-out days of winter, are terrible months. March features no holidays. February features just one. (Though President's Day sometimes does not represent a day off work). 

As for fake holidays, February and March have the year's two worst: Valentine's Day and St. Patrick's Day, respectively.

Valentine's Day provides the illusion of a chance for bad partners to make up for their shortcomings and think it's OK. St. Patrick's Day is a mess. 

Email me your thoughts. 

SEE ALSO: The best month of the year to buy everything

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NOW WATCH: Paul Krugman weighs in on the Apple tax debate

An architect found a brilliant way to make his family's home bigger by building a house within a house

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Bunny Lane

Architect and artist Adam Kalkin has an expansive imagination, and he wanted to extend this creativity when building his family home to make it feel bigger. 

After purchasing a historic 1880s farmhouse in 2001, Kalkin found a brilliant and unconventional way to add more space to his home: by hanging a modern airplane hangar over the entire home.

Here's what the house-within-a-house looks like.

Located in New Jersey, Kalkin's one-of-a-kind home is called "Bunny Lane."

When Kalkin first bought the 1880s farmhouse, he wanted to redesign it in a new way.

"In this case, the approach was not 'How can I modify this? How can I destroy this?'," he explained. "In my case, it was 'how do you encapsulate it?'"



The home is made of three parts: an airplane hangar, concrete-glass container, and antique farmhouse.

Kalkin added and removed pieces of the farmhouse to create the eclectic home.

"All of these together creates a conversation with each other," Kalkin said. "No one thing stands alone; it’s about the relationships and spaces between things.”



The airplane hangar encapsulates the historic farmhouse.

 

 



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This assisted living facility is designed to look like the 1940s so Alzheimer's patients feel at home

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lantern home

Though people with Alzheimer's disease and dementia may forget pieces of their recent past, they tend to remember the bulk of their earlier years.

For many, that's the 1940s — when today's 90-year-olds were in their 20s.

The Lantern of Chagrin Valley assisted living facility in Chagrin Valley, Ohio is catering to those recollections. To makes its residents feel at home, an area of the building is designed to look like it was built when most of them were forming some of its strongest memories.

That part of the facility houses primarily houses residents with Alzheimer's, and is resembles a town from the 40s. People can sit on porches, rock in rocking chairs, stroll by iron lampposts, and gaze at the sky-painted ceiling. An audio track of birds chirping plays through the speakers.

News-Herald reporter Andrew Cass says the experience of entering the area "is like walking outside."

"Every little thing you see, the wall color, the paint, actually has a therapeutic benefit, a therapeutic value," CEO and occupational therapist Jean Makesh told Cass last June.

An estimated 5.1 million Americans suffer from Alzheimer's disease, many of them over 65 years old. As it progresses, the ailment robs people of both their memories and sense of identity. Alzheimer's patients can often feel afraid in environments they'd otherwise feel totally comfortable. There is currently no cure.

Lantern of Chagrin Valley has gotten a surge of attention recently thanks to a popular Reddit post highlighting a golf course-themed carpet at the facility. The home also includes a hair salon for residents and a small waterfall.

"I really think that if the way we provide care doesn't become the standard of the industry, the industry will not be able to do anything for their clients," Makesh told the News-Herald. "We just can't provide care for them. We have to approach them the way we do the day care model."

Though the facility functions like many other assisted living homes from day to day, it's the extra attention to detail that sets it apart.

SEE ALSO: Here's what a 'cure' for Alzheimer's disease might actually look like

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: This incredible animation breaks down how Alzheimer's affects the brain over time

10 iconic buildings from the architect behind America's most stunning mid-century modern structures

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Trans World Airlines Flight Center, Jet Age, TWA

Documentary filmmaker Peter Rosen studied architecture in college, but he says he wasn't taught anything about Eero Saarinen. 

The Finnish-American architect designed some of America’s most futuristic, innovative structures during the late 1940s and 1950s, but Rosen says his work is only beginning to receive the attention and study it deserves. 

Rosen's new documentary about the architect, called "Eero Saarinen: The Architect Who Saw The Future," will be shown on PBS in December 2016, and will be part of the New York Architecture and Design Film Festival at the end of September. 

The film follows Saarinen’s son, Eric, as he visits some of his father’s most iconic works, each of which is remarkably distinct.

“Every one of these things looks like it's by a different architect," Rosen tells Business Insider of his interest in Saarinen, explaining that documentaries about most other architects would be boring since their styles repeat. "The next building never had anything to do with any innovations, discoveries or breakthroughs they made in the previous building." 

Take a look at some of Saarinen's most impressive work. 

SEE ALSO: 7 things Frank Lloyd Wright, one of the greatest American architects, got wrong about design

Gateway Arch, St. Louis, Missouri

“I think the arch in St. Louis is this really mystical thing,” Rosen says. “When Eric and I saw it, he said, ‘That can’t be real — that looks like it’s from another planet.’ That’s the sort of the feeling you get in some of the Saarinen works, that they are really from some other place."

Both Eero Saarinen and his father, Eliel, who was also a well-known architect, submitted proposals to the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial design competition. Eliel’s design didn't even make it to the final 10.

In Rosen's documentary, the footage of the arch was captured using a high-quality drone, which allowed the team to get shots from above that Rosen believes have never been captured before in the same manner.



MIT chapel, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Eric Saarinen, who is also the director of photography for the project, was estranged from his father, who left the family to marry another woman. The documentary is both a visual exploration of Eero Saarinen’s career and a glimpse into the architect’s personal life.

In the film, the team visits MIT’s nondenominational chapel, which Saarinen completed in 1955. Natural light flows from a circular skylight, sending a bright beam onto the altar. A sculpture by Harry Bertoia now hangs from that opening, creating a cascade of reflecting light.

Though the exterior of the chapel is smooth and round, the walls inside undulate in a wave-like pattern. Rather than following a specific religious tradition, the space encourages silent reflection.

 



Dulles International Airport, Dulles, Virginia

Rosen said he found one of the most striking things about Saarinen’s work to be the contrast between the scales of his various works. One of his largest designs was for Dulles Airport, where he created a massive, open terminal the length of three football fields.

“The impact would be this huge difference between one of the largest interiors I’ve ever seen and the really intimate scale of the chapel at MIT,” he says of his own takeaways from the film.



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

The last weekend of summer is here — spend it reading a novel

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kids reading

Labor Day weekend, the last weekend of the summer, is here. 

And you should spend it reading a novel. 

2011 post from the now-defunct Interloper Investing blog found its way into my Twitter feed this morning and made clear the argument for heading into fall with a novel in hand. 

Because novels are really all about one thing: empathy.

Novels, unlike the news, are true. 

Novels create their own internal logic rather than pay fealty to some assumed common idea of what is Right and what is Wrong. There is no PolitiFact pedantry for a novel. 

You can love or hate a novel for any reason at all and be completely right in your conclusion.

And while you might be inclined to say that the ability for novels to conform to our own vision is why we need the news, need nonfiction, need the hard truths that make us uncomfortable, and so on, the novel is really what unlocks the possibility of these things. 

We will have a reaction to a novel if we agree or disagree with the world we're in, the narrative being advanced, the characters (read: people) we spend time with. 

And yet it is explicitly because these are imagined people, imagined places, imagined events that we most clearly confront our own biases, our own prejudices, our own flaws. 

It is the solitary experience of an imagined truth that allows us to begin seeing what we're missing in the so-called real world, the world of facts and money and rights and wrongs. Novels are not vehicles for confirming our biases but discovering them. 

"The primary lesson of fiction is learning 'this is how people act,' when they're scared, confident, happy, determined or demoralized," the authors write.

"Not how I would act, or how I think they should act, but how the combination of different experiences and different patterns of cognition lead to aggregate outcomes. Empathy."

This post was written in the context of how to be a better investor.

But investing, while ostensibly about teasing out the financial value buried inside certain entities, is really the study of people and stories. Annual reports, in their way, are just very dry novels. 

So, why read a novel this weekend?

Because unlike a book about investing, or world history, or how to be an entrepreneur, you're guaranteed to learn something useful. 

SEE ALSO: September is the best month

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Paul Krugman weighs in on the Apple tax debate

This Facebook executive says fasting for 15 hours a day changed his life

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Fast Food Breakfast Biscuits 17

When Dan Zigmond, director of analytics at Facebook, rolls into his office at 1 Hacker Way, he grabs a bowl of oatmeal topped with Greek yogurt and dried cranberries.

Later, he gets lunch from the company's drool-worthy cafeteria. He also eats dinner there. His coworkers might never suspect Zigmond subscribes to a trending diet called intermittent fasting, which involves going without food for anywhere from 14 hours to several days.

"Lots of us are eating at work or on the run. It's kind of hard to control what you eat these days," Zigmond tells Business Insider, rattling off the extreme diets his friends have tried and abandoned. "But one thing that basically everyone can control is time."

Dan ZigmondIn 2014, Zigmond began a brief stint working at food startup Hampton Creek, where he was surrounded by food scientists, plant biologists, and chefs. They talked about their food choices constantly and shared research around healthy living.

A paper from the Salk Institute for Biological Studies eventually crossed his desk. It suggested that when you eat might matter as much as what you eat. Mice whose eating was restricted to certain hours of the day became thinner than mice who fed whenever, according to the study.

Zigmond — who counts Microsoft, Google, and YouTube among his past employers — was immediately reminded of his time living in a Buddhist temple in Thailand years ago. The monks followed a similar routine. So, he decided to give it a go.

"It took me a couple of weeks. I remember at the end of each day, I would text a friend and say how many hours I'd eaten that day," Zigmond says. "But I got pretty quickly to this nine-hour diet. I just loved it. I almost immediately felt better. And I started losing weight."

He dropped more than 20 pounds in less than a year.

Zigmond, a father and a practicing Buddhist, says he wakes up feeling refreshed and never goes to bed hungry. He can't remember the last time he felt a "food coma" coming on.

"I roughly eat from nine to six. For some people, that wouldn't be the right schedule," Zigmond says. "The worst thing you can do for your body is eating at all hours."

The science behind intermittent fasting is spotty. Most studies use rodents and fruit flies as test subjects, rather than primates and people, Scientific American reports.

wefast silicon valley fasting club 0540

Still, intermittent fasting is catching on among certain Silicon Valley tech workers who give up food in order to increase focus and productivity and promote longevity. A club of San Francisco-based biohackers called WeFast meets for breakfast every Wednesday to commiserate with one another, share hacks, and — importantly — break the fast.

Most of Zigmond's coworkers at Facebook didn't know about his fasting until he announced his book, "Buddha's Diet: The Ancient Art of Losing Weight Without Losing Your Mind," now available for pre-order. It's co-written with Tara Cottrell, a friend and one of his first converts.

He doesn't catch flak from his colleagues or think there's anything weird about the way he eats. Because that's exactly what he does — eat.

Zigmond recalls when he was hired and received his welcome-email from Facebook.

"They have this email that goes [on] about where to show up and what to wear, and it says that they want you to be your authentic self. I think that they really believe that," he says.

SEE ALSO: These Silicon Valley 'biohackers' are fasting their way to longer, better lives

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Jimmy Kimmel lost a ton of weight on this radical diet

Take a look inside the multimillion-dollar home built by the guy who started Chipotle

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chipotle ceo home 1

The house designed for Chipotle founder and CEO Steve Ells is back on the market. 

The Denver four-bedroom, four-bathroom home is priced at $3.8 million, according to a listing in LIV Sotheby's. The most interesting aspects of the house are its striking architectural features.

"He paid premium prices for everything. No corner was cut," LIV Sotheby’s International Realty listing agent Ian Wolfe told The Denver Post

Here's a look inside the house that the burrito mastermind built. 

SEE ALSO: Chipotle is giving away more free food and drinks — here's how to get some

The property was intended to serve as Ells' "private oasis," located on a one-third-acre lot overlooking the Denver Country Club golf course.



The house was constructed in 2001 and designed by Thomas Briner.



Ells owned the home until 2008, when he sold it for $3.5 million.



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

5 beautiful homes from the 'Airbnb for the rich' that will bring a serious upgrade to your business trip

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Bleecker Loft  Vacation Apartment Rental in West Village  onefinestay(4)

Take a look on Airbnb, and you'll find a free-for-all market spanning from cheap bunk beds to lifestyle magazine-ready loft apartments. On rival home-sharing service Onefinestay, you'll find that the listings are consciously curated — it may very well be, if the complimentary personal iPhone, welcome staff, and numerous amenities say anything, an Airbnb for the rich

The company was founded in 2009 and operates in London, New York, Paris, Rome, and Los Angeles. It was acquired in April by France's AccorHotels for £117 million, or about $155 million.

Recently the site started curating listings to more amenity-specific "folios." For instance, there's a "work folio" where business travelers can find places that are better equipped to get work done than your usual hotel room. The luxury properties in this particular folio are often located close to the city's main business district as well. 

We picked out some of the most beautiful listings from Onefinestay's Work Folio, where you can work as well as relax. The listings range from $353 to $2,255 a night. Take a look.

SEE ALSO: An abandoned 130-year-old skyscraper is now Manhattan's newest luxury hotel

1. This listing in Kingstown Street in London's Primrose Hill has a massive skylight that lets in plenty of natural light onto the kitchen's marble top table.



The work area sports two clean desks and plenty of bookshelves.



The bedroom space is spartan but spacious, and the windows let just enough light peek through in the morning.



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

There's now a $75 million private jet for your inner Texas oil tycoon (ERJ)

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Skyranch

There's flying, and then there's flying.

Brazilian private-jet maker Embraer prefers that its customers experience the finer side of aviation. Earlier this year, the Sao Paulo-based company dazzled with its Kyoto Airship concept interior that featured a massive skylight installed on its flagship Lineage 1000E jets.

Now, Embraer has teamed up with Eddie Sotto, a designer based in Los Angeles, to create a custom interior called Skyranch One. Instead of the Kyoto Airship's Asian theme, Skyranch is a harmonious blend of several cultures.

"Think Dallas' JR Ewing meets the daughter of a Brazilian rancher," Jay Beever, Embraer's vice president of interior design, told Business Insider in an interview.

As a result, the Skyranch offers a Southwest theme with some Spanish and Portuguese flair, Beever said.

Here's a closer look at the Skyranch One interior concept:

SEE ALSO: I drove 2 cars that show how much things have changed since 2000

The Skyranch One interior is designed for Embraer's top-of-the-line Lineage 1000E executive jet. The 1000E has room for 13 to 19 passengers, with a range of nearly 5,300 miles.



Like the Kyoto Airship, the centerpiece of the Skyranch interior is a massive (by airplane standards) vertical "picture" window. Embraer strengthened the structure in the area around the window in a manner similar to that of an emergency exit door, Beever told Business Insider.



The interior is designed to "capture the solitude and privacy, the romance of the wide open spaces," Sotto wrote in a press release. "After all, aren't the skies the last frontier of privacy?"

Source: Sotto



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

This stunning 'hotel room' in the Swiss Alps has no walls

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null stern

From a lodge sculpted from ice to one made from metal sheets, there are an infinite number of offbeat hotels that re-think the traditional B&B.

One open-air hotel, called Null Stern, eliminates walls and a roof altogether. Located in the middle of the Swiss Alps, it only features a bed with linens.

In German, the hotel's name translates to "zero stars."

"The star is not the hotel but each guest," the hotel's co-founder, Daniel Charbonnier, tells Business Insider. "We got rid of all the walls, and the only thing left is you and your experience."

Null Stern launched in July 2016, and it's already booked through the end of 2017, he says. Since demand is so high, the team is now working with tourist agencies to build more Null Stern beds in another popular region of Switzerland.

Take a look at its first "hotel."

SEE ALSO: 10 of the most incredible home libraries around the world

Located 6,463 feet above sea level, Null Stern sits in the middle of the Swiss Alps. It costs about $210 a night.



To install the bed on the mountains, a construction crew flattened the land.



The hotel has no walls, roof, or bathroom — only a queen bed with a pair of nightstands and lamps. A public bathroom is about a five-minute walk down the mountain, Charbonnier says.



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

14 ways to perform your best in high-pressure situations

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Usain Bolt 2016 olympics

Let's get this out of the way right now: Nobody performs well under pressure.

A lot of us think we do, but we don't, or, at least, we don't perform as well as we could perform.

We may feel more creative when we're under the gun, but it's a feeling, not a reality. It's true that you might be more productive, but the products you create are usually worse.

In their book, "Performing Under Pressure: The Science of Doing Your Best When It Matters Most," Hendrie Weisinger and J.P. Pawliw-Fry deliver the sad truth: The difference between regular people and ultra-successful people is not that the latter group thrives under pressure. It's that they're better able to mitigate its negative effects.

Or maybe that's good news, because, as the authors lay out in the book, handling pressure is a skill, and you can learn it. In the book, they offer 22 tactics for doing your best when the heat is on. Here are 14 of our favorites:

SEE ALSO: 15 surprising negotiating tricks to boost your salary

Think of high-pressure moments as a (fun) challenge, not a life-or-death threat

Most people see "pressure situations" as threatening, and that makes them perform even less well. "Seeing pressure as a threat undermines your self-confidence; elicits fear of failure; impairs your short-term memory, attention, and judgment; and spurs impulsive behavior," Weisinger and Pawliw-Fry write. "It also saps your energy."

In short, interpreting pressure as threat is generally very bad. Instead, try shifting your thoughts: Instead of seeing a danger situation, see a challenge

"When you see the pressure as a challenge, you are stimulated to give the attention and energy needed to make your best effort," they write. To practice, build "challenge thinking" into your daily life: It's not just a project; it's an opportunity to see if you can make it your best project ever. 



Remember that second chances happen

"The fact is we each get multiple chances over and over again in life. Keep this in mind, and you will find your life less pressured," Weisinger and Pawliw-Fry write.

The authors explain that, so often, we tell ourselves (or others tell us) that this is our big chance, and we'll never get another opportunitiy like it. This kind of thinking is destructive.

"Statements like these communicate the singularity of the event. We call it 'chance-of-a-lifetime' thinking. And it inevitably intensifies the pressure the listener feels in the moment because it multiplies the stakes and puts self-esteem on the line," they explain.

Thinking about a high-pressure moment as your one and only shot only exacerbates feelings of risk and loss, which have powerful neurochemical effects on us that influence our decisions and actions.

Weisinger and Pawliw-Fry point to studies that show that, since we're so risk-averse, we prefer to make bad but seemingly safer decisions to avoid a feeling of loss. We "play not to lose" rather than "play to win."

Reminding yourself that there is almost always another chance to excell, whether it's before an interview or presentation, depressurizes the moment and can help you perform better in the moment, they say.



Focus on the task, not the outcome

This might be the easiest tactic of all, according to Weisinger and Pawliw-Fry: Instead of worrying about the outcome, worry about the task at hand.

That means developing tunnel vision, they explain. When you keep your eye on the task at hand (and only the task at hand), all you can see is the concrete steps necessary to excel.

For a student writing a paper, that means concentrating on doing stellar research — not obsessing about the ultimate grade, what will happen if you don't get it, and whether you should have majored in economics after all.



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Meet the man behind the on-demand helicopter startup that the 1% use to get to the Hamptons

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Rob Wiesenthal Blade 1786

As the cofounder and CEO of on-demand helicopter startup Blade, Rob Wiesenthal is a pretty busy guy. 

A former Sony and Warner Music Group exec, Wiesenthal comes from a long line of entertainment industry professionals and has a sincere appreciation for aviation and its heritage. With Blade, he's built a system where well-heeled travelers can book helicopter and seaplane rides from New York City to the Hamptons, Nantucket, Jersey Shore, and Miami simply by using an app. There's also the option to take Blade Bounce, a quick, five-minute ride to any of the New York area airports.

We recently caught up with Wiesenthal, 50, at one of his favorite hangout spots in New York City, and learned a ton about Blade, his early business inspirations, and what it takes to run a company around the clock. 

SEE ALSO: We flew to the Hamptons like the 1% with Blade, an 'Uber-for-helicopters' startup — and it was as fabulous as it sounds

We met for a late lunch at David Burke Kitchen, located in the James Hotel in Lower Manhattan.



The restaurant is sleek and full of stylish people. They look like they could be Blade customers.

"Our flyer is spending a not insignificant amount of money to turn a 3-hour drive into a 30 minute flight. So they're buying time — something you can't typically buy, and more so, they're buying the Blade experience," he said. "So you end up with a rather … unique individual that holds [Blade] to a customer service standard that is extremely high."

Tickets range from $494 to $695 for a trip from Manhattan to the Hamptons, Blade's most popular destination. A one-way ticket on Blade One, the company's private jet service to Miami, costs about $2,200.

Socialites, celebrities, and elite businesspeople are catching on — Laura Prepon, Jon Hamm, and Olivia Palermo are just a few of the big names that have been spotted in one of Blade's three luxury lounges in Manhattan. The company's investors include Kenneth Lerer, Discovery Communications' David Zaslav, Google's Eric Schmidt, IAC's Barry Diller, and iHeart Media's Bob Pittman.



It's a nice day, so we head upstairs to the restaurant's Treehouse Bar.



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

An architect figured out how to build houses from plastic waste

17 expensive products that cost way more than they should

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EpiPen

Mylan Pharmaceuticals recently raised the price of a two-pack of EpiPens.

The crazy price hike, due to largely to the fact there's little generic competition, is outrageous but also not unique to the EpiPen.

Consumers often pay way more for products than what it costs to make them. The reasons for high mark-up prices depend on the product. It could be that the item is in high demand or is difficult to make. 

Here are 17 popular products with incredibly high mark-up prices.

Note: For this story, we looked at individual US brands, but price mark-ups are often similar for competing brands.

SEE ALSO: The 6 best items on Chipotle's secret menu

Regal Cinemas and AMC Theaters' popcorn

Wholesale price for a small popcorn:About $0.35

Price you pay:$6.50

Movie theater chains, like AMC and Regal, charge a lot for popcorn (and other snacks), but according to a 2009 Stanford study, the mark-ups allow them to sell movie tickets at a much lower price.



HDMI cables at Best Buy

Wholesale price for a six-foot cable:$2.67

Price you pay:$20

Electronics stores often don’t make much profit off TVs and video game consoles. So to balance out the big items, most retailers mark up smaller items that many people use, like HDMI cables (which allow you to stream content from your laptop to a TV).



Apple iPhones

Cost to make an iPhone 6s Plus: $236

Price you pay: $749

As CNBC notesthe decreasing cost of many iPhone components and smartphone market dominance helps Apple's profitability from iPhones.



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

The absolute best thing to wear if you travel often for work

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Travel is fun. Business travel is not.

But it can be made somewhat less miserable with the right outfit. By being prepared for the ordeals you already know you're likely to endure, you can lessen any pain you might encounter.

Here are some ways you can lessen the stress of business travel:

BI_Graphics_AirportAttire

  • A blazer that is both comfortable and practical. Get one made from cotton or a synthetic blend, like this one from Uniqlo, that won't wrinkle, but will still provide a comfortable place to stash your passport. This addition will also enable you to slip right into a meeting when you land.
  • A shirt that is both lightweight and breathable, and won't wrinkle too badly. We recommend a lightweight cotton, as synthetic fibers and non-iron shirts likely won't breathe and cause you to sweat while you're rushing to your flight.
  • A pair of shoes that can be easily slipped on and off during TSA security screenings, like a pair of penny loafers.
  • A pair of socks you don't mind hitting the airport floor. (But you must wear socks).
  • If you're flying to another time zone, a watch that can tell you the time both where you're going and where you're coming from is invaluable. One solution is a watch like the Tag Heuer twin time, which can juggle two time zones, or Seiko's Astronwatches that set the time via GPS signal.
  • Sunglasses are not only a stylish accessory while traveling, but an indispensable way to keep harmful rays away from your eyes and annoyingly talkative fellow travelers at bay. Sunglasses can also double as an eye mask on a long flight.

SEE ALSO: The appropriate men's attire for every occasion

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Scientists figured out how the month you are born in is linked to your health

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Nurses prepare influenza vaccine injections during a flu shot clinic at Dorchester House, a health care clinic, in Boston, Massachusetts January 12, 2013.  REUTERS/Brian Snyder

Being born in certain months could make you more or less likely to experience certain illnesses.

Crazy as that might sound, there are reasonable explanations for these differences. Kids born in some seasons are exposed to different risk factors than children born in other seasons. There might be an abundance of dust mites and other allergens in certain months. People are more likely to be experience vitamin D deficiency in the winter, and if this is the case at the beginning of life, it could persist throughout life.

Of course, some (or even all) of the associations could also be statistical noise — the kind of coincidental correlations that can pop up when you're looking at so many different variables.

For a 2015 study, researchers at Columbia analyzed 1.75 million electronic medical records for people treated at Columbia University Medical Center between 1985 and 2013, and found 55 diseases with seasonal links (out of 1,688 diseases they looked at), including asthma, ADHD, reproductive issues, cardiovascular illnesses, and neurological problems. (This means the vast majority of diseases do not have a seasonal link.)

Being born in some months had a stronger overall effect than others: Being born in September, October, or November was associated with a higher disease risk, while people born in February, March, April, May and July were less likely to develop illnesses. Being born in May, June, August, January, and December didn't provide an "overall advantage or disadvantage," according to the study.

In the graphic below, you can see the number of diseases that people born in certain months are more or less likely to experience. So, for example, people born in October were more likely to experience several respiratory illnesses, but less likely to develop several cardiovascular diseases. 

Birth Month&Diseases

Keep in mind that these are probabilities. A November birthday doesn't mean you'll definitely develop a reproductive illness — not even close.

It should be noted that just because there are certain diseases people are more likely to experience in their lives, that doesn't mean there's a big effect based on birth month.

"The risk is not that great that you should worry about when your baby is going to be born or when you might have been born," says Nicholas Tatonetti, the principal investigator who explains the work in a YouTube video. "There's lots of other variables that account for disease incidence."

Diet, exercise, and stress level are all more important factors — by a long shot.

Also, this study is based on patients treated in a New York City medical center, which means that these particular charts and associations might be particular to New York residents.

Because researchers think that environmental factors like sunlight (because of vitamin D) are responsible for most of the variation in risk, these risk profiles would look different in places with different environmental conditions. Conditions related to vitamin D, for example, might have a mostly reversed profile below the Equator.

Even if these specific associations have a regional focus, the researchers say this work should help them identify environmental factors that increase or decrease disease risk everywhere.

SEE ALSO: There’s even more evidence that one activity could help slow the aging process

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The price of pot is tumbling in Colorado

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marijuana dispensary

Colorado's weed is getting much cheaper.

In October, the cost of a wholesale pound of cannabis was around $2,400 to $2,600. That price has almost been cut in half to between $1,400 and $1,600 last month, according to data from Tradiv, an online marijuana-distribution platform.

"In less than a year, we've seen wholesale prices drop to nearly half of their previous totals," John Manlove, director of sales at Tradiv, told Business Insider in an email. "We've never seen prices like this."

The reason prices are dropping so rapidly is because the market's getting flooded. As growers ramp up production, the huge amount of marijuana hitting the market in Colorado is causing a "steady decline" in wholesale prices regardless of demand, says Manlove. 

The story's similar for Washington, where the price of legal marijuana has dropped precipitously since the first recreational dispensaries opened, according to The Cannabist. Wherever there's a legal market for marijuana, prices have been dropping. 

Manlove says that this has to do with the way cities in Colorado, like Denver, regulate the recreational-marijuana market.

In May, Denver's municipal government extended a moratorium on granting licenses to new retail dispensaries as well as marijuana-cultivation facilities.

Weed dispensary counter

This has allowed a "minority of large cannabis business owners" to buy and consolidate the remaining licenses, says Manlove.

And without strict "canopy limits" — the amount of plants one facility can grow — the influx of marijuana into the Colorado market will continue to cause prices to drop, says Manlove.

So, Colorado growers, with few limits and access to a huge market, are able to build an economy of scale, reducing prices across the board.

Though low prices are good news for consumers, cultivators will have to cope with lower profit margins on raw marijuana flowers.

According to Headset, a cannabis-intelligence platform, the highest-margin products for dispensaries are those that make marijuana easier to consume, like edibles, beverages, and pre-rolled joints.

If these trends continue, then raw marijuana will continue to get only cheaper. And it's likely that the retail market will adapt by pushing further into such higher-margin products.

SEE ALSO: The DEA made a big decision on marijuana, but it wasn't the one everyone was hoping for

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25 classic British foods that foreigners find gross

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Periwinkles

Many countries have special delicacies that anyone who isn't a local might find disgusting.

The UK is no exception, with a number of national dishes that are unappealing to the rest of the world.

We've compiled a list of iconic British foods — made out of everything from sheep innards to sea snails — that most people outside of the UK would probably find gross.

Here are 25 classically British meals that many people would avoid:

Haggis — Scotland's national dish — is made by mixing sheep's pluck (heart, liver, and lungs) with oatmeal, onion, and seasoning. Though haggis has traditionally been cooked in the animal's stomach, it's usually made in sausage casing today.



Jellied eels are a favourite of cockney Londoners, but the dish is far less popular outside of the UK.



Stargazy pie is a Cornish meal made with baked pilchards, eggs, and potatoes, and finished with a pastry top. It was named for the way the fish poke their heads out of the crust.



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A man who's been traveling for 10 years explains how to take luxury vacations on a shoestring budget

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Nomadic Matt Kepnes Paris

After quitting his job during a trip to Thailand in 2005 and continuing on to travel the world for over 10 years, Matt Kepnes — better known as Nomadic Matt — has learned how to travel on a budget while still taking advantage of the unique places he visits.

For Kepnes, making the most of a small budget comes down to a simple mantra: be frugal, not cheap.

"Pick and choose your battles," Kepnes told Farnoosh Torabi on an episode of her "So Money" podcast. "You’re probably not coming back to Australia anytime soon, so if you really have always wanted to dive the Great Barrier Reef, dive the Great Barrier Reef."

The key is prioritization. You're not going to be able to afford every fancy dinner or extravagant activity, but you can afford a few, so splurge on those and cut back elsewhere. Stay in a hostel, dial back on drinks, cook a few extra meals at home.

Kepnes, who chronicles his travels on his blog "Nomadic Matt" and in his best-selling book, "How to Travel the World on $50 a Day," also starts making room in his budget well before he's set foot in the airport.

"When I coach people on this, I always say, 'Cut everything. Live like a monk or a nun or a hermit because when you’re over in Brazil and you’re sailing down the Amazon, you will not care that you spent two weeks inside your house cooking pasta and watching Netflix,'" he explains.

Bottom line: Pick a few luxuries and splurge on what's most important to you — the tradeoff is worth it.

SEE ALSO: A man who's been traveling for 10 years shares his best trick to find cheap plane tickets

DON'T MISS: A man who's been traveling for 10 years says this is the biggest budgeting mistake people make when planning a vacation

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