The American middle class just got a little richer.

On Thursday, the U.S. Census Bureau released its 2016 American Community Survey, an annual survey that measures various economic, social, and housing data among US residents.

According to the survey, the national median household income rose to $59,039 — an increase of 3.2% from the previous year, and the American middle class' highest-income level to date, beating the previous record of $58,655 in 1999 (all numbers are adjusted for inflation).

In spite of slightly higher incomes, the American middle class has been shrinking for decades. But a majority of people consider themselves to be a part of it — even if they technically aren't.

Defined by Pew as those earning between 67-200% of the median income — $39,560 to $118,080 in 2016 — only about half of Americans can call themselves middle class. Lower-income households account for 29%, while upper-income households make up the rest, according to Pew.

But that is simply a mid-point for the country as a whole.

The household income required to be considered middle class is different in every US state. For instance, a person earning $41,754 in Mississippi falls squarely in the middle class in that state, while someone earning that same amount in New York just misses the middle income threshold.

Scroll through the map to find out how much money you need to earn to be a part of the middle class in every US state, based on the latest Census figures.

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NOW WATCH: There has been no income growth for the bottom half of Americans

Amazon has sparked a bidding war, and it's only just beginning.

The e-commerce giant said on Thursday that it was soliciting bids from cities across North America for a place to build its second headquarters — its first outside of the Seattle area.

Amazon said it would invest $5 billion in the construction of its new headquarters, and it hopes to eventually house 50,000 Amazon staff members there, gradually building up its workforce.

"We expect HQ2 to be a full equal to our Seattle headquarters," CEO Jeff Bezos said in a statement. "Amazon HQ2 will bring billions of dollars in up-front and ongoing investments, and tens of thousands of high-paying jobs. We're excited to find a second home."

Unsurprisingly, cities across the United States and Canada are jumping on the opportunity to lure Amazon to their neck of the woods. Many officials have already said they're planning to submit a formal proposal to the company.

Amazon has some requirements, however. Its new home would ideally be in a city with at least 1 million people, an international airport, and a "stable and business-friendly environment."

Of course, that means cities will need to offer incentives to the company for it to move there.

"Incentives offered by the state/province and local communities to offset initial capital outlay and ongoing operational costs will be significant factors in the decision-making process," the company said.

We've found nearly 50 cities whose officials have said they are looking into or preparing to submit a proposal to Amazon. Bids are due October 19.

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Chicago, Illinois

According to the Chicago Tribune, Mayor Rahm Emanuel has already spoken to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos about the possibility of opening a headquarters in the city. Several other corporations — including McDonald's, Kraft Heinz, and Conagra Brands — have recently planned to move their base from the suburbs to this Midwestern hub.

Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota

Gov. Mark Dayton said in a statement that city and regional nonprofits and development agencies were working on a proposal for an Amazon headquarters in the Twin Cities.

Toronto, Ontario

Mayor John Tory called the race for the Amazon headquarters "the Olympics of bidding."

"We should be bidding for this and be very, very competitive, and I'm in the midst of talking to the other governments to make sure that's what we do," he said Thursday, according to The Toronto Star.

When it comes to the dimensions of a city’s attractiveness, like quality of life, economic climate, and demographics, Boulder, Colorado, wins out among the competition, according to the American Institute for Economic Research.

The top-ranked college town has about 200,000 residents in its metro area population, and earned the top spot thanks to its accessibility — more than 20% of commuters take public transportation or cycle around Boulder Creek Corridor — and diverse and educated population. Boulder also has an active bar-and-restaurant scene, with plenty of coffee shops and microbreweries.

AIER compiled its list using nine economic, demographic, and quality-of-life factors. It defines college towns as having fewer than 250,000 residents.

Read on below to see the 20 best college towns.

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Olive Garden's never-ending pasta pass is back. And this year, 50 pasta lovers will have the chance to buy an eight-day trip to Italy in addition to eight weeks of unlimited pasta. 

For $100, the pasta passes provide eight weeks of unlimited pasta, soup or salad, and breadsticks. That's one week longer than last year's seven-week endless pasta extravaganza. 

Plus, this year, 50 customers will also have the chance to buy a "Pasta Passport to Italy." For $200, the recipients of the pasta passport will receive an eight-day, seven-night, all-inclusive trip to Italy for two — plus their eight-week pasta pass.

"We wanted to do something crazy this year to capitalize on our guests' love for the Never Ending Pasta Bowl and pasta pass," Mary Kate Rosack, Olive Garden's director of marketing, told Business Insider. 

The Italian vacation will feature stops in cities including Siena, Florence, Assisi, and Rome. Airfare, ground transportation, hotels, meals, and excursions will all be included in the $200 cost. 

The 22,000 pasta passes and 50 pasta passports both go on sale at PastaPass.com on Thursday, September 14, at 2 p.m. ET.

Passes will only be available for 30 minutes, and they will likely sell out even more quickly. Last year, all 21,000 pasta passes sold out in one second, according to Olive Garden. So, the chance to purchase the 50 pasta passports will be won by whoever is lucky enough to hit refresh on PastaPass.com at exactly the right moment. 

The pasta passes will give recipients access to the "Never Ending Pasta Bowl" from September 25 to November 19. 

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There are lots of things that determine a couple's long-term compatibility — their values, their goals, their idea of fun, their commitment to work.

Add to that list "how they respond to expectations." It's a rather nebulous and highly unsexy term that turns out to be a big predictor of who you'll be attracted to.

That's according to Gretchen Rubin, the bestselling author of multiple books including, most recently, "The Four Tendencies."

"How do you respond to expectations?" is the question Rubin uses to divide people into four tendencies, or personality types. (You can take Rubin's quiz to figure out which tendency you fall into.) There are obligers — the biggest category — plus upholders, questioners, and rebels.

Upholders generally meet both inner and outer expectations, meaning they don't let others or themselves down. Questioners meet inner expectations; they'll only do something if they think it makes sense.

Obligers meet outer expectations but don't always meet inner ones; they usually need some form of external accountability. Rebels resist both inner and outer expectations; if you ask a rebel to do something, they'll likely resist.

Based on the anecdotal evidence she gathered from talking to different couples, Rubin noticed a curious pattern: Rebels tend to pair up with obligers.

When she visited the Business Insider office in September, Rubin said that's largely because obligers can stomach rebels' constant resistance — and even enjoy it — whereas questioners and upholders would go nuts.

Ultimately, rebels and obligers have something in common. Rubin said: "There's a deep affinity between obligers and rebels. Both have this resistance to inner expectation and this gives them this feeling that the world is pushing on them and they want to push back."

Pushing back is harder for obligers than for rebels, Rubin said — which means the rebel partner can help the obliger partner do what they'd really like to.

Here's an example, from Rubin, of how this dynamic might play out. The obliger will tell the rebel about her demanding family. The rebel will respond, "Oh my gosh, you do so much for them! Let's just go off for the weekend and they can figure things out for themselves." That's somewhat freeing and reassuring for the obliger.

Rubin admitted that a rebel-obliger relationship can seem a little "exploitative," because the obliger is taking care of all the housework and boring stuff, while the rebel is off having fun. But she said: "If this works for you — if in your relationship, both people feel like they're getting a great deal — then that's fine."

Yes, your tendency isn't the only factor that determines the success of your relationship. But it's probably an under-appreciated one.

We tend not to think enough about how our day-to-day with our partner will unfold: who'll do the laundry and who'll say "no" to another PTA meeting. Rubin's framework is an easy way to take that into account.

Watch the full interview:

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Nestlé is dropping up to $500 million to take a majority stake in the hip coffee brand Blue Bottle Coffee.

The Swiss company is taking a 68% stake in Blue Bottle, the Financial Times reported Thursday. The deal values the coffee chain and roastery at more than $700 million.

Blue Bottle, which now has more than 50 locations, has spent the past 15 years winning over coffee snobs since being founded in Oakland, California, in the early 2000s. The chain is known for its freshly roasted beans and coffee shops, which have become a Silicon Valley favorite.

The deal lends Nestlé Blue Bottle's hip, coffee-snob-approved reputation. And, it gives the small chain access to huge amounts of cash from the largest food company in the world.

"My goal as CEO has been to secure a sustainable future for Blue Bottle Coffee that would enable it to flourish for many years to come," Blue Bottle Coffee CEO Bryan Meehan said in a statement. "I'm excited to work with Nestlé to take a long-term approach to becoming a global leader in specialty coffee."

Blue Bottle said in a joint statement with Nestlé that it planned to open 55 stores by the end of this year, compared with just 29 at the end of 2016. There are Blue Bottle stores in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, New York City, Tokyo, and Washington, DC.

Blue Bottle has raised $120 million over the past 15 years from investors including Morgan Stanley, Fidelity Management and Research, and True Ventures as well as celebrities including Bono, Jared Leto, and Tony Hawk.

Starbucks executives have said independent, trendy coffee shops are the biggest threat to their business. With Blue Bottle backed by a company with billions of dollars in annual revenue, the trendy chain has the potential to become a major threat to the coffee giant.

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• The 20 highest-paid models, including Kendall Jenner and Gigi Hadid, earned a collective $154 million last year.
• Models in New York earn $48,130 on average, and are sometimes only paid in clothes.
• For some models, the cost to develop a career leads to debt that can take years to pay off.

Another New York Fashion Week came to a close on Wednesday, with a star-studded show for Marc Jacobs' Spring 2018 collection that included Gigi Hadid and Kendall Jenner, among others.

Models like Hadid and Jenner who become household names command high rates for their work. The 20 highest-paid models made a collective $154 million last year, according to Forbes. Last year, 36-year-old Gisele Bündchen took the top spot on the list, earning $30.5 million. Jenner, who has over 83 million Instagram followers, made $10 million, and Hadid was close behind with $9 million.

For the rest of the industry, which the Council of Fashion Designers of America has said is "in transition," the financial story is much different. While many models have closets filled with expensive clothes — often received as payment for their work— most do not have bank accounts to match.

In New York, models earn $48,130 on average, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's only a third of the average annual Manhattanite salary of $144,716.

"Models—many of whom are minors—have low bargaining power and are frequently not paid all of their earned wages, are paid wages late, are paid only after complaining about non-payment, are paid in 'trade' instead of money, or are simply not paid at all," former model and founder and executive director of the Models Alliance, Sara Ziff, told The Daily Beast's Miranda Frum last year.

Kelly Mittendorf, 23, who retired from modeling in 2015 after spending five years in the industry, recently spoke to the New York Times about her experience. Here's Mittendorf:

"I never made good money as a model. I went into debt with every single one of my agencies at one point or another. An agency has for each girl an account, and if they need to have the girl come from Arizona to New York in order to build her portfolio, the agency will front the expenses for her plane ticket, for paying the photographers, for printing the photos, for the physical portfolio itself, for the comp cards that need to be developed, for the retouching, for new clothes to go on castings with, for a model apartment for her to stay in."

While there's no guarantee that a model's career earnings will justify the upfront costs, one way or another she is required to repay the agency. In Mittendorf's case, that amounted to five figures of debt.

"I was lucky to kind of be able to climb out of that," she told the New York Times. "It took years."

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Nestlé announced Thursday that it had acquired a majority stake in high-end coffee retailer Blue Bottle Coffee, long a favorite of the tech community. 

According to the Financial Times, Nestlé will be paying up to $500 million for a 68% stake in the chain, which plans to have 55 locations by the end of the year. There are currently Blue Bottle stores in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, New York City, Washington, DC, and Tokyo.

Blue Bottle has received a total of $12o million in funding from many big-name investors over the years, including Morgan Stanley, Fidelity Management and Research, and True Ventures, as well as celebrities like Bono, Jared Leto, Tony Hawk, and the founders of Twitter and Instagram. 

The company has become hugely popular with hipsters and techies from coast to coast. Vintage brewing machines and artisanal coffee are some of its major selling points, and lines are known to get long. 

We paid a visit to the spacious Blue Bottle cafe in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to see what the hype is all about. 

SEE ALSO: Nestlé is spending up to $500 million to buy a majority stake in trendy coffee chain Blue Bottle

We visited Blue Bottle's Brooklyn shop, located on a pretty nondescript street in Williamsburg. The cafe is housed in an early 20th-century brick building that, according to Blue Bottle's site, was at different times used by glass blowers, metal smiths, and barrel makers.

We got our first glance of their famous Blue Bottle logo right at the entrance. The logo on a to-go cup is part of the company's cachet and a sure sign the drinker is "in the know" about what's cool in the world of coffee.

Guests were sipping coffee and reading the newspaper at the counter when we visited in the late morning.

Blue Bottle is one of the hottest coffee chains in Silicon Valley.

Now it's making moves to take on Starbucks outside the tech world.

The venture-backed coffee chain and roastery has landed a $500 million investment from Nestlé, which values the company at more than $700 million. The deal, which gives Nestlé a majority stake in Blue Bottle, gives the small chain access to huge amounts of cash from the largest food company in the world.

Given its roots in the Bay Area, it should come as no surprise that Blue Bottle founder James Freeman and CEO Bryan Meehan know the best gadgets for brewing the perfect pour-over coffee at home. We asked the pair in October 2016 what their favorite accessories are.

Meehan's pick was the Chemex, a simple, elegant machine for making pour-over coffee for a crowd. It retails for about $40.

Invented in 1941, the Chemex is about as low-tech as coffee-makers get. It's a hourglass-shaped vessel made of heat-resistant glass that holds coffee grounds. The user pours water over the opening and lets it filter, creating three to six cups of perfection.

"I find it's a very sociable way of making delicious coffee," Meehan told Business Insider. "It doesn't have a plug. It doesn't have a leash, which I like about it, too."

Its stunning designed earned the Chemex a spot in New York's Museum of Modern Art. It was also named one of the 100 best designed products of modern times by the Illinois Institute of Technology. You can also find the Chemex in most Blue Bottle cafés.

Freeman, who launched Blue Bottle out of a San Francisco garage in the early 2000s, said a gram scale will help drinkers nail the coffee-to-water ratio every time.

In Blue Bottle cafés, coffee grinds and water are carefully measured using a scale to ensure each individually poured cup is as robust as the last. Some devices, like the Blue Bottle-approved Acaica Pearl Scale ($130) and the Hario Scale ($60), have built-in timers so you know exactly how long your brew should sit.

Freeman said the idea of weighing ingredients sounds like too much work for some people. But the result is so worth it. He guesses most people use too few grounds in their brew.

"More butter is almost always better than less butter, and to a certain extent, coffee can be that way," Freeman said.

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NOW WATCH: This may be the perfect coffee to-go cup

Tempe, Arizona is home to the most innovative college in America, according to a ranking by U.S. News & World Report.

Arizona State University ranked first for the third year in a row, as judged by college presidents, provosts, and admissions deans at peer institutions.

Survey respondents were asked to nominate up to 10 colleges or universities that are making the most innovative improvements in terms of curriculum, faculty, students, campus life, technology, or facilities.

Read on below to see the 10 colleges who are making cutting-edge changes to their campuses.

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10. Portland State University

The public research university in Portland, Oregon has a business accelerator that's home to over 30 startup companies in technology, bioscience, and cleantech. The companies have raised more raised more venture capital than any other location in Oregon in the past three years, according to its website.

10. Duke University

Located in what's known as the "research triangle" due to its close proximity to UNC and NC State, Duke recently completed a fundraising campaign raising $3.85 billion that will be used to "advance ideas and solve complex global challenges."

9. Harvard University

The Ivy League school boasts more Nobel laureates than any other university.

Olive Garden's never-ending pasta passes have already sold out — less than one second after they went on sale. 

22,000 pasta passes went on sale at 2 p.m. ET on Thursday. According to Olive Garden, all passes had been claimed by guests in less than one second.

For $100, the pasta passes provide eight weeks of unlimited pasta, soup or salad, and breadsticks. That's one week longer than last year's seven-week endless pasta extravaganza.

The chain's 50 "Pasta Passport to Italy" also sold out almost immediately. For $200, the recipients of the pasta passport will receive an eight-day, seven-night, all-inclusive trip to Italy for two — plus their eight-week pasta pass.

People who were lucky enough to refresh PastaPass.com at the exact right moment are already sharing their success on Twitter.

Other people had only sob stories to share: 

The pasta passes will give recipients access to the "Never Ending Pasta Bowl" from September 25 to November 19. 

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Everybody has their favorite splurge.

Mine happens to be travel.

But as a financial planner who enjoys finding a good deal, I'm not willing to pay a premium for the trips I take. I'd rather visit an under-the-radar destination during the off-season than fight the summer crowds in Europe.

It's a travel philosophy that has served me well over time. One October, I spent 17 days in the Galapagos for $1,800, including airfare. Traveling to Antarctica via Argentina in March cost me just over $5,000. Another month-long trip to Australia, New Zealand, and Dubai (thanks to a well-planned layover) in November set me back less than $4,000. Although not cheap, the trips are a steal relative to what most people pay to visit those destinations.

The key to finding such great deals requires two things: research and flexibility.

I tend to approach travel-planning knowing vaguely when I'd like to travel (usually winter in New York City, so January through March), and with a general sense of places I've never been but would like to visit at some point.

Then, I search for airfare to see where ticket prices are lowest during my desired time frame. I try not to pay more than $1,000 for round-trip airfare if I can help it. Even the most exotic destinations have price fluctuations, so if you stay open-minded, you can find something good.

Scouring the web for this year's cheapest destinations is fun for me. But most of my friends don't have the patience to research travel prices for hours. And that's how long it usually takes me — hours. I realize it's not a budget travel tip that will work for everybody.

If you're enticed by the idea of saving money on your next trip, but turned off by the amount of work my approach requires, I've got good news. Travel app Hopper recently launched a new feature, called Flex Watch, that automates this process for you.

Hopper already offers useful flight price reports, which track and analyze airfare to various destinations to help you figure out "when to fly and buy" for the lowest cost. But to use the reports, you have to know where you want to go. That may help you find a good deal to a specific destination, but you could be missing out on even better deal to somewhere just as good.

That's where Hopper's free Flex Watch feature comes in. Rather than searching for a destination, it will suggest locations that have the cheapest prices available right now. It's perfect for the budget-conscious traveler, as well as the indecisive traveler who desperately needs to get away but doesn't want to overpay.

All you have to know is where you are traveling from (your home airport, most likely) and when you want to go (this could be a span of a few months or specific dates). Once you put in that information, Hopper will return potential destinations that have the best deals during that time frame.

Here's why this is a great service. Let's say you really want to go to Thailand, and find round-trip tickets for $1,500. If you book it, you'll have less money in your overall travel budget for fun activities, food, and accommodation. But, if Hopper happens to find tickets to Cape Town for $850 during the exact same week, you can adjust your travel plans accordingly, and visit Thailand another time.

It's really a win-win. I should know, because that's a real life example of another one of my trips. I found the deal on my own, after my usual hours of searching. Flex Watch should make this easy and fast.

You can find good travel deals in many ways — travel rewards credit cards come in handy, as do no-frills services like ITA Airfare (which is also one of my favorites). Hopper's Flex Watch is another good resource to add to your travel toolbox, sort of like an AI-driven travel agent that knows which sales will entice you to buy.

If you're planning a vacation anyway, you might as well get the best deal available. Who knows, maybe you'll have so much left in your travel budget that you'll be able to take your next trip sooner than expected.

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It may soon be time to update the old adage about eating when you're hungry and stopping when you're full.

A growing body of research suggests that when we cut the amount of the food we would eat on a typical day by as much as a third or half, we enjoy benefits including more energy, less illness, and potentially longer lives.

Most of the comprehensive research on this strategy, called calorie restriction, has been done in animals, so its conclusions must be taken with a grain of salt. But some humans have gone full-steam ahead with their own research — on themselves.

In Silicon Valley, trendy calorie-restricting clans meet regularly for meals to break 14-36 hour periods of fasting. Followers of the fad say it helps them focus, increases their productivity, and speeds weight loss.  

Many intermittent fasters simply give up one meal each day, an easy way of cutting roughly 30% of their daily calories.

The latest study on calorie restriction, published this month in the journal Nature, was conducted on mice and primates. Its results suggest that eating less could help slow the spinning gears of our biological clocks by interfering with an important genetic process called methylation, which is likely linked with aging. Researchers compared the cells of mice and primates who were either fed normal diets or calorie-restricted ones, and found that the restricted eaters had significantly fewer markers of the methylation process. In other words, their cells appeared "younger."

The measuring tool the researchers used for their study — methylation — is far from a perfect means of determining age. There's still a lot we don't know about the process, such as whether it effects all types of cells equally and if it can be used as a metric across different kinds of animals. Nevertheless, the study authors came away with some hopeful findings.

Rhesus monkeys in the study whose diets had been restricted by 30% for two-thirds of their lives (beginning in middle age) had cells that appeared, on average, seven years younger than their actual age. Mice in the study whose diets had been restricted by 40% for nearly their entire lives had cells that appeared two years younger. Taking into account the differences in the animals' average lifespan (rhesus monkeys live for about 25 years while mice live anywhere from 2-3 years), the results for the mice were more pronounced than those for the monkeys.

"Calorie restriction, which prolongs lifespan in mice and monkeys ... resulted in a significantly younger 'methylation age'," the researchers wrote in their paper.

That finding builds on several years of research in other animals on the potential benefits of calorie restriction. Researchers studying fruit flies, mice, rats, and worms have found that slashing calories (usually by about 30%) can double or even triple lifespan.

Still, a fly is not a human.

With that in mind, some scientists have moved onto tests in animals that are more like us, such as primates. In these animals, the research on calorie restriction and life extension has still been promising, although researchers haven't succeeded in going as far as tripling any monkey's lifespan. Several recent studies, including one important paper published in January in the journal Nature, have shown that dieting rhesus monkeys not only live longer than their non-dieting counterparts, but are also healthier and less prone to disease.

So how might these results translate to people? We don't know yet. In the meantime, biohackers, techies, and other trendy eaters will continue their intermittent fasting. Whether the benefits of the habit can be chalked up to real biological changes — or are simply the product of the placebo effect — remains to be seen.

SEE ALSO: Fasting could prevent aging and transform your body, but it goes against everything we think of as healthy

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When you're a startup founder or a CEO, life is busy. It can be hard – if not impossible — to turn off your "work brain," even when you know you should be getting some rest.

I recently asked a series of New York City-based executives about their bedtime routines. One CEO said he mentally recounts the things he's grateful for; another said he watches the evening news.

But the wind-down ritual I heard about most often was reading.

"I usually fall asleep with a book in my hand," Alexi Nazem, the cofounder and CEO of Nomad Health, told me.

Some execs try not to read anything that reminds them of work.

"I don't read business books at night," said Elliot Weissbluth, the founder and CEO of HighTower. "I usually read things that have no practical significance, but I find interesting and curious at the moment."

Scott Britton, the cofounder of Troops, said, "I like to read something that's more of a story." He opts for either fiction or biography.

Other execs read industry-relevant content or news pieces.

Dan Reich, the cofounder and CEO of Troops, reads news articles that he's saved throughout the day or that people in his network have shared.

Nat Turner, the cofounder and CEO of Flatiron Health, saves articles to the Pocket app throughout the day and reads them in bed for an hour.

All these execs are in good company. Many highly successful people say they read before bed— including Bill Gates, who has said he reads for an hour almost every night, and Arianna Huffington, who only reads physical books (not digital ones) before falling asleep.

If you're aiming to adopt the same reading habit, you'd do better to pick up a "real" book instead of browsing on your phone or computer. Research suggests staring at the blue light emitted from digital devices can make it harder to fall and stay asleep.

You can also switch on an audiobook and not feel bad about it — as University of Virginia psychologist Daniel Willingham told the Science of Us, in contrast to common opinion it's not "cheating," in the sense that you're not absorbing as much of the story. Listening to your book counts, too.

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Felicity Dahl, the widow of the English children's book author Roald Dahl, said in a recent BBC Radio interview that the protagonist of her husband's book "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," published in 1964, was originally supposed to be black.

"His first Charlie that he wrote about was a little black boy," Felicity Dahl said.

Roald Dahl's biographer, Donald Sturrock, also spoke in the interview. He said Dahl was dissuaded from the idea by his agent at the time.

"It was his agent who thought it was a bad idea, when the book was first published, to have a black hero," Sturrock said. "She said, 'People would ask why.'"

Felicity Dahl added that it was a "great pity" her husband made Charlie Bucket a white child, which is how the character would go on to appear in the book's two screen adaptations, "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" (1971) and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" (2005).

She suggested that a new adaptation featuring a black protagonist, as her husband intended it, would be "wonderful."

Watch a segment of the interview below:

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In June 2013, heavy rains led to a flood in the Canadian province of Alberta, causing an estimated 6 billion Canadian dollars ($4.3 billion) in property damage.

One of the hardest-hit areas was the town of High River, a suburb of Calgary.

In Beachwood Estates, a High River neighborhood full of million-dollar homes, floodwaters rose so high that residents had to abandon their properties, according to The Calgary Herald.

The photographer Seph Lawless documented the homes before they were sold or demolished earlier in 2017. He captured them, abandoned and eerie, awaiting their fate.

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Beachwood Estates was once a thriving community full of pricey homes tucked among more modest ones.

Now the homes are empty and abandoned, virtually untouched for four years.

As part of a relocation platform, the Alberta government bought the homes, according to The Calgary Herald.

Source: The Calgary Herald

Alinea in Chicago is well known for its innovative recipes and top notch dining experience, and it's been ranked as the best restaurant in America in our recent list. We spoke with chef and co-owner of the restaurant, Grant Achatz, about how he gets inspired to create his unique dishes. 

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Following is a transcript of the video:

I'm Grant Achatz and I'm the chef and co-owner of the Alinea here in Chicago.

Some people call it molecular gastronomy. We like to say "progressive American." We don't grow food in Petri dishes and test tubes. 

We have a series of about anywhere from 17 to 19 course tasting menu that people are able to experience here at the restaurant, utilizing a lot of theatrical elements, really in trying to engage the senses and trying to resonate emotionally with with the guests.

Alinea is a word that basically means the beginning of a new paragraph or a new train of thought.

We're very fortunate to have 70 people working at Alinea that all drink the same Kool-Aid. They're all super passionate about about what we produce, the guest experience.

My whole world is pushed through a kaleidoscope of food. And it can go from listening to a song in my car on the way to work to walking down the street and listening to the leaves rustle in the trees, and watching them fall on the ground. You're just constantly bombarded with ideas, and it's up to us to figure out a way to translate them to the guests.

If I'm listening to Rage Against the Machine and I hear these really peaks and valleys of tempos, what I'm processing is how is that keeping me interested? And how does that translate to the dining experience? Can we craft a tasting menu that has that same arc of up and down and extremes, and we intentionally craft the menu progression so that it has these very very steep climaxes and then dips intentionally to very very low points in the menu. It breaks the monotony of the dining experience.

Well, the idea of flavor bouncing is simply taking a central, thematic ingredient — a focal ingredient — and playing a game of basically connect the dots, or bouncing satellite ingredients off that central ingredient. And the only rule of this whole creative method is that whatever the central ingredient is has to go with all the satellite ingredients. And all the satellite ingredients have to go in some way to at least one of the other ingredients.

It's a safety net, if you will, to make sure that you're composing a dish that doesn't have a clashing ingredient.

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Many people dream about hitting at least one epic party in their lifetime, whether it's Oktoberfest in Germany or Mardi Gras in New Orleans.

To help get your bucket list started, we've found 37 of the biggest and wildest parties around the globe. 

From dancing in a whirlwind of colors at India's Holi festival to throwing tomatoes during La Tomatina, Spain's massive food fight, these are the parties that are worth traveling around the world for. 

Talia Avakian contributed reporting to an earlier version of this article.

SEE ALSO: These are 8 of the top trending destinations right now, according to travel experts

Originally a student protest for democracy in Novi Sad, Serbia, EXIT was dubbed the "Best Major European Festival" at the EU Festival Awards in 2014. The festival takes place in the stunning Petrovaradin Fortress on the banks of the Danube, with parties that go late into the night.

Click here to learn more about EXIT »

The streets of Amsterdam are filled with orange during Koningsdag, also known as King's Day, when over a million people gather in the closed-off city center to party all day and night.

Click here to learn more about Koninginnedag »

Poland's largest annual music event, Open'er Festival, is set on an old military airfield in Gdynia. Visitors can enjoy everything from fashion shows and discos held in bunkers to dance parties and performances from well-known music acts.

Click here to learn more about the Open'er Festival »

• Generation Z is the youngest American generation.
• In many ways, it reflects and amplifies the millennial generation that came before it.
• It's the most diverse and inclusive generation yet.

Millennials are old news.

Generation Z is up next.

Gen Z was born between 1998 and 2016, meaning the oldest members are just 19.

That means they're the teenagers entering college, soon to join the workforce and spark their own round of why-young-people-are-the-worst think pieces on the internet.

But who are they, really? What can we expect from them? A new report from boutique research firm 747 insights, in partnership with consumer research platform Collaborata, sheds some light on the up-and-coming generation.

The study, called "Generation Nation," surveyed over 4,000 Americans from their late teens to their early 70s to find out how they feel about everything from work to friendships to brands, and analyzed their responses.

Michael Wood, a principal at 747 Insights, told Business Insider he's heard Gen Z called "millennials on steroids" because the generation tends to exhibit similar opinions and beliefs to the one before it — just more.

"In many ways, generational change is like the seasons," he said. "The changes are very gradual, and if we’re looking at society as a whole, it's this millennial mindset that has influenced Gen X and the older generations, but also definitely has had a strong influence on Gen Z."

One of the standout findings of this report, he said, was the lack of patriotism among Gen Z.  "I think it has strong implications for how supportive they're going to be with government moving forward," he said. "They may be even interested in going a different route altogether, one that does a better job of embracing their acceptance and their belief in being inclusive."

Wood also thinks the findings have strong implications for marketing. Gen Z "may not be as willing to accept those pro-America brands as perhaps previous generations did," he said. "Or think about something like the military — maybe they won't necessarily respond to the same messages in terms of recruiting. I think this is a generation we're going to see really demand things being done differently."

Scroll down to learn more about what we can expect from tomorrow's generation:

SEE ALSO: Millennials are turning out better than anyone expected — and it may be thanks to their parents

Technology has shaped their daily lives, and their worldview.

According to the research, there are three primary factors that influence a generation: age, societal norms, and technology.

Gen Z doesn't know a time without the internet, and it shows. They favor streaming content in snack-sized bites, like that offered through Youtube, and consume it mostly on their phones and computers. They largely eschew TV shows and movies, and are unused to live programming with advertising. 

747 Insights also points out that because Gen Z has little experience consuming traditional broadcast news, it may be more susceptible to "fake news" than the generations that precede it.

But they use social media differently than the millennials who popularized it.

Only 49% of Gen Zers agree with the statement "Social media is an important part of my life" — a truth 61% of millennials admit to.

However, nearly 60% of both generations are concerned that social media is too public and that their posts could come back to haunt them. For Gen Z, this concern has changed its behavior: Members favor Snapchat in part because of the strict control over who can see their posts.

Gen Z eclipses all other generations when it comes to embracing diversity.

When presented with the statement "I have one or more friends who are of a different race than me," here are the percentages of respondents who agreed, by generation:

• 81% Gen Z
• 69% Millennials
• 67% Gen X
• 71% Baby Boomers

As far as dating people of a different race, 35% of Gen Zers (who are age 19 at most) said they have; that's more than any other generation than millennials, 43% of whom said they have.

This may be because Gen Z is the most racially diverse generation in America. The Census Bureau found that 48% of Gen Z is non-Caucasian. The next most-diverse generation is the millennials, 44% of whom are non-Caucasian.

Members of Gen Z are also the most likely to say they have friends of a different sexual orientation (59%, versus 53% of millennials and smaller percentages of the older generations). 

A 900-person school in Chicago, Illinois is the best public high school in America.

Niche, a company that researches and compiles information on schools, released its 2018 rankings of the best public high schools in the US, and gave Walter Payton Prep the top billing.

The ranking analyzed 17,867 public high schools and rated schools in areas like academics, teachers, student culture and diversity, and resources and facilities. You can read more about the methodology here.

Here are the top 15 public high schools in America:

SEE ALSO: The 25 best public high schools in America

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