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Could Zillow buy the neighborhood?

Anything can be done online. Some tech companies, like Zillow and Redfin, think they can even buy and sell houses online, and are dreaming of becoming the Amazon of what has come to be known as ‘‘iBuying.” But they’re finding out that buying and selling assets worth hundreds of thousands of dollars is a bit harder as an online industry than buying and selling books.
Last week, Zillow made a startling <a href="https://investors.zillowgroup.com/investors/news-and-events/news/news-details/2021/At-Operational-Capacity-Zillow-Offers-to-Focus-on-Signed-Customer-Contracts-and-Current-Inventory-Suspends-Signing-of-New-Contracts-Through-2021/default.aspx">announcement</a> that it would stop buying homes for the rest of the year, self-reportedly due to a “backlog of renovations and operational capacity constraints” that it blamed on the supply chain issues plaguing the economy.
This news made a splash in the world of iBuying, a relatively new industry in which companies like Zillow, Redfin, OfferUp, and Opendoor allow homeowners to avoid the tedious process of listing and staging homes by selling directly (and quickly) to them. But it also caught traction on TikTok where Sean Gotcher, a Las Vegas real estate agent, posted a video with Zillow’s news laughing at the company’s troubles.
Gotcher had already achieved the sort of brief internet fame one can most easily get on TikTok when he posted a video in September that has now received more than 3 million views. In it, he insinuates that iBuyer companies are manipulating the market by intentionally overpaying for some homes in order to sell others that they’ve already bought in nearby areas for a higher price.
While some of Gotcher’s claims are far-fetched and verge on conspiracy theories (and since real estate agents directly compete with iBuyers, you should take claims either entity makes about the other with a grain of salt), the video went viral because it struck at the heart of a growing fear that housing is becoming less like shelter and more like a risky financial asset traded on Wall Street. This anxiety is not new but has become electrified over the course of the pandemic as a hot housing market and a historic undersupply of housing have locked out young and first-time homebuyers. Earlier this year, <a href="https://www.vox.com/22524829/wall-street-housing-market-blackrock-bubble">fears that BlackRock and other institutional investors were responsible</a> for current market conditions were rampant despite a lack of evidence for the claim.
iBuyer companies make up a very small share of the market — <a href="https://www.zillow.com/research/zillow-ibuyer-report-q2-2021-30011/">roughly 1 percent of home sales in the second quarter of 2021, at what is their peak so far</a> — but it’s important to take concerns about their growth seriously. While iBuyers contend that they are offering a clear solution to reducing the stress of the home-selling process, US policy has predicated financial security on homeownership, and the introduction of large firms into the space raises fears of potential anti-competitive and predatory behavior.
The process of selling a house is stressful, to say the least. On top of the general concern —about getting the best price for the most expensive thing you have ever owned and in which you have likely already invested tens of thousands of dollars and countless hours — is all the logistical stuff. As a part of staging the house, sellers may have to do front yard work, repaint the interior and exterior, replace the carpets, hire a professional photographer for the listing, keep the interior clean in preparation for showings, figure out where to take the home’s dogs and children when there are showings, hire a real estate agent, the list goes on.
This doesn’t even include trying to time your home sale to coincide with the move-in date of your new home or city. Often, people will need to have sold their home in order to buy a new one, which means there can be additional transaction costs there too if you have to put all your things in storage and live at a family member’s place or a rental while you look for your new home.
This is the problem iBuyer companies say they are looking to solve. Instead of having to go through the hassle of this entire process and potentially incur some costs, homeowners can take an iBuyer’s offer — and then the company does the work of staging, listing, and selling the house to someone else.
There are are a couple of ways these companies can turn a profit: first, the difference between what they purchased the home for and what they are able to sell it for (minus any costs for renovations, upkeep, and selling), and second, the fees they charge homeowners to sell the property.
Whether any of them are actually turning a profit is a whole other matter.
iBuyers are growing quickly. According to University of Colorado Boulder’s scholar-in-residence Michael DelPrete, in 2018 iBuyer companies made up roughly 0.2 percent of the market; in 2019, his numbers show that iBuyers accounted for roughly 31,000 purchases or 0.5 percent of the U.S. market. <a href="https://www.zillow.com/research/zillow-ibuyer-report-q2-2021-30011/">According to research</a> by Zillow, in Q2 of this year iBuyers’ market share reached 1 percent for the first time.
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<figcaption>Employees of Zillow Offers evaluate a home for possible purchase by Zillow in Lauderhill, Florida, in August 2019.</figcaption>
<cite>Joe Raedle/Getty Images</cite></figure>
But according to research by DelPrete, the profit margins in this industry are narrow. Looking at this past quarter, Opendoor and Zillow were posting net losses (-$144 million and -$59 million, respectively). While Offerpad did post a profitable quarter ($9 million), DelPrete <a href="https://www.mikedp.com/articles/2021/9/7/ibuyer-profits-at-risk-with-falling-home-price-appreciation">notes</a> that “the overwhelming majority of profits are coming from record home price appreciation, which is temporary, and appears to be falling.”
Though these numbers are small in the context of the national housing market, iBuyers have historically been relatively concentrated in specific regions like the Sun Belt where there’s more new single-family construction, since it’s easier to accurately price new, relatively similar homes. In 2019, DelPrete’s research showed that in the largest iBuyer market, Phoenix, they’d reached a 5.5 percent market share. However, <a href="https://www.zillow.com/research/zillow-ibuyer-report-q2-2021-30011/">Zillow data</a> from Q2 of this year indicates that that number hasn’t shifted much with market share at 5.7 percent in Phoenix. Other cities with a relatively high share include Atlanta (5.3 percent), Charlotte (5.3 percent), and Raleigh (5.0 percent).
Redfin, despite expanding its iBuying business, is still heavily committed to its traditional real estate model. In a statement, Jason Aleem, vice president of RedfinNow (the iBuying arm of Redfin) said: “Part of what makes RedfinNow different is our ability to educate sellers on all of their options in a single conversation. ... Many are drawn to the certainty of our competitive cash offers, but those who still want to list on the open market for the lowest fee can do that with a local Redfin agent.”
But are these companies big enough to manipulate the market?
Despite Gotcher’s TikTok video claims, I’m very skeptical that iBuyers could manipulate the market to systematically undercut homeowners on the initial price of their homes and then set higher prices when they return to the market.
Take the first part of that plan — to systematically buy homes for less than they’re worth. There’s simply too much competition to be able to do that reliably. For one, there are other iBuyer companies that compete against one another. They find themselves in bidding wars with the other companies not infrequently, and some research indicates that the price they’re willing to pay is going up <a href="https://www.mikedp.com/articles/2021/8/9/ibuyers-paying-above-market-and-reselling-for-more-upside">faster than the rest of market</a>. And it’s not just iBuyers competing against one another — there are also thousands of real estate agents who would be happy to sell your home for you.
These companies simply don’t have the power to consistently drive up prices on homes they sell. Let’s break down exactly what would have to happen for an iBuyer to be able to do something like that. First, they would need to buy a significant number of homes within a given market. What a market is is up for debate, but you’d need to get enough market share to shift prices — courts have defined monopoly power <a href="https://www.justice.gov/atr/competition-and-monopoly-single-firm-conduct-under-section-2-sherman-act-chapter-2#">as greater than 50 percent</a>. To emphasize how far away iBuyers are from this, in the markets where they are most active that have achieved roughly 5 percent of sales, not even all the homes, just the ones that are selling. And that’s all iBuyers, not one specific company.
But that’s not even the hard part. The hard part would be that they’d need to hold onto the homes until they’d achieved a high enough market share. iBuyers are usually putting houses back on the market in a matter of a few months. They’d need instead to pay upkeep costs, property taxes, and take on the huge risk that all the homes that they are holding onto within a given area don’t tank in value because of something unrelated like an economic downturn or changing living preferences or a hurricane.
This strategy quite evidently has some major downside risks. There’s only so much that even a regionally monopolistic firm would be able to charge before people would choose to live elsewhere.
It would also require that these companies can accurately price homes. Failing to accurately build an algorithm is very costly — Bloomberg <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-26/zillow-s-zeal-to-outbid-for-homes-backfires-in-flipping-fumble">reported</a> that when Zillow “tweaked the algorithms that power its home-flipping operation to make higher offers ... it had to stop making new offers” after winning too many bids. The market is appreciating more slowly than earlier this year, which means when you take into account the renovation costs and selling costs, Zillow could end up selling those homes at a loss.
It seems as though iBuyers are not resting their business model on selling homes. Instead, as the Wall Street Journal <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/for-ibuyers-the-price-is-right-11632843944">reports</a>, they’ve “been clear that their businesses are built to mostly make money off of ancillary services like mortgage, title insurance and escrow.”
But not all the worries about these firms’ power can be brushed away easily.
To start an iBuying company, you need to be able to raise a lot of money. That means it’s hard for new competitors to join the market. It costs hundreds of millions of dollars in order to be a serious competitor — you have to be able to buy a lot of homes, hire contractors to do the necessary renovations, and also have all of the employees and independent agents to sell the homes as well. That doesn’t even include all the work needed to accurately build an algorithm that prices the homes accurately.
It’s possible that iBuyers could have downstream effects not just on homebuyers, but renters too: They’re not just putting the homes on the market for regular people to buy; they are often selling directly to institutional investors (like private equity firms) instead. <a href="https://www.banking.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Fields%20Testimony%2010-21-21.pdf">According to Desiree Fields</a>, assistant professor at UC Berkeley, there is a “growing role for iBuyers” observed in institutional investor activity in the market. She cites <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/real-estate-investors-buying-homes-mynd-ibuyers-single-family-rental-2021-7">reporting</a> from Business Insider that one CEO expects that up to 20 percent of homes his firm is buying for an institutional investor will come from iBuyers.
While the impact of institutional investors is <a href="https://www.vox.com/22524829/wall-street-housing-market-blackrock-bubble">contested</a>, Fields <a href="https://www.banking.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Fields%20Testimony%2010-21-21.pdf">says that</a> these firms are more likely to pursue eviction than smaller landlords and some even practice predatory “serial eviction filings,” a tactic that disempowers tenants from “reporting problems to their landlords and fosters housing insecurity by adding late fees, attorney fees, and other costs to rent arrears.”
The bottom line: iBuyers are providing a service. It’s not clear they’ve really figured out how to make money. Understanding it as a fledgling industry in need of oversight rather than a behemoth manipulating the housing market is important to understand where the power really lies: in the hands of regulators.
Whether iBuyers end up being an option for homeowners or usher in an institutional investor frenzy that harms renters too is a regulatory question.
First, the underlying reason that home prices have skyrocketed is because of historic undersupply. Experts are clear that issue is largely the result of exclusionary zoning laws that have made it impossible to build sufficient homes to meet demand, and in particular demand for starter homes for first-time homebuyers and lower-income homebuyers. Because there is artificially constrained supply, investors hungry for quickly appreciating assets have turned to the housing market.
Second, lack of protections for low-income tenants was an emergency long before iBuyers or institutional investors ever became a presence in the American housing market. While this past year has pushed governments to be more willing to enact tenant protection measures like eviction moratoria and rent relief, tenants often lack basic protections from landlords who <a href="https://www.vox.com/22547660/section-8-housing-vouchers-landlords-realtors-lawsuit-century-21-keller-williams-realty">openly flout even the few laws</a> that are enacted, due to lack of consistent enforcement.
People aren’t irrational to fear what increased investor activity in housing could mean. But it’s important to accurately diagnose what’s going on here and the actual range of potential harms. If not, the policy solutions designed by the government could fail to protect the people who need it the most.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/22743258/home-buying-zillow-redfin-ibuyers-real-estate">https://www.vox.com/22743258/home-buying-zillow-redfin-ibuyers-real-estate</a>

vox Could Zillow buy the neighborhood?

Anything can be done online. Some tech companies, like Zillow and Redfin, think they can even buy and sell houses online, and are dreaming o...

The uncertain future of free community college

<div><img class="ff-og-image-inserted" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/SohGBJ7bdkdT0Y1k8mO1_mAouMQ=/0x500:4000x2594/fit-in/1200x630/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22959976/GettyImages_1234979685.jpg" /></div>
President Joe Biden’s promise to offer tuition-free community college to students across the country — a plan he said would boost the middle class and help the United States compete with other countries — fell through late last month as his administration scaled back its sweeping $3.5 trillion social safety net bill <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/10/28/22748554/biden-budget-build-back-better-democrats-child-care-taxes">to $1.75 trillion</a>.
The plan would have spent $45.5 billion for states to offer two years of free community college tuition to every student for the next five years.
College tuition has <a href="https://www.clevelandfed.org/en/newsroom-and-events/publications/economic-commentary/2017-economic-commentaries/ec-201705-trends-in-revenues-at-us-colleges-and-universities-1987-2013.aspx">risen dramatically</a> in the past few decades. The average student receiving the Pell Grant, a need-based federal program for low-income students, <a href="https://www.ncan.org/page/affordability">could only afford</a> 41 percent of two-year public colleges, and just 23 percent of four-year public colleges, in the 2018-19 school year.
And that’s before the <a href="https://www.ihep.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/uploads_docs_pubs_limited_means_limited_options_report_final.pdf">fees, books, and room and board expenses</a> students must cover, or the struggles that community college students face to <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/research/community-college-completion-rates-structural-and-motivational-barriers/">stay in school</a> as they <a href="https://www.aacu.org/aacu-news/newsletter/more-half-college-students-facing-housing-or-food-insecurity-during-pandemic">battle housing and food insecurity</a>, among other challenges.
Despite evidence that free tuition for community college can <a href="https://www.ihep.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/uploads_docs_pubs_limited_means_limited_options_report_final.pdf">combat the affordability gap</a> and <a href="https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/reports/effect-tuition-free-community-college/working_paper_347.pdf">lead to higher college enrollment</a> and, ultimately, <a href="https://edsource.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Economic-Benefits-and-Costs-of-Tuition-Free-College-in-Illinois.pdf">higher wages</a> for low-income students and students of color, the plan had few champions in the face of other Democratic priorities. The bill will likely still include tuition assistance through expanded need-based financial aid, funding for historically Black colleges and universities, and money for workforce development programs, according to experts who spoke to Vox.
But the result illustrated a big problem for free college in America: Among most Democrats, the idea might be popular, but it’s just not a top priority when up against the likes of child care initiatives like universal preschool and the child tax credit.
Biden maintains that free college is one of his administration’s top agenda items. “I promise you — I guarantee it — we’re going to get free community college in the next several years, across the board,” Biden said at a CNN town hall last week, after the first reports that the plan was axed.
For now, free-tuition community college will just have to wait. But some advocates remain optimistic.
“It’s only the beginning of this movement, and so far it’s been robust,” said Michelle Miller-Adams, a political science professor at Grand Valley State University, researcher at the Upjohn Institute, and author of the book The Path to Free College: In Pursuit of Access, Equity, and Prosperity.
About one-third of all college students in America attend community colleges, which, since their creation in the early 20th century, have come to mostly serve working-class students — as well as students of color who are underserved by traditional four-year colleges.
In 2018, 55 percent of all Hispanic undergraduates, 44 percent of Black undergraduates, 45 percent of Asian undergraduates and 41 percent of white undergraduates <a href="https://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/Community-College-FAQs.html">were enrolled</a> at community colleges. From 2015 to 2016, about <a href="https://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/Community-College-FAQs.html">37 percent of students</a> at two-year community colleges came from families earning less than $20,000 a year.
The affordability gap is only widening. A <a href="https://www.ihep.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/uploads_docs_pubs_limited_means_limited_options_report_final.pdf">report</a> from 2017 by the Institute for Higher Education Policy found that students from households that earned less than $69,000 a year could hardly afford to attend 1 to 5 percent of colleges in a pool of more than 2,000, even taking financial aid into account. Students from households making more than $160,000 a year could afford about 90 percent of the schools in the pool.
For 15 years, <a href="https://www.michiganradio.org/education/2019-04-30/kalamazoo-promise-reaches-a-milestone-and-faces-a-challenge">states and localities</a> have led a grassroots effort to experiment with free tuition college programs, viewed as one solution to alleviate the burden of rising costs; at the same time, there’s been a national discussion about college affordability. In 2015, former President Barack Obama <a href="https://www.vox.com/2015/1/8/7518579/obama-free-community-college">called for legislation</a> to make two years of college free; Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has <a href="https://www.vox.com/2015/5/18/8621759/free-college-bernie-sanders">called to make all public colleges and universities free</a>.
Nearly 20 states, from Tennessee to Michigan to California, already have some version of a free tuition college program, all developed within the last decade.
Tennessee was the first state to create one, Tennessee Promise, in 2015. After the program was created, community college enrollment <a href="https://www.tn.gov/content/dam/tn/thec/bureau/research/promise/2017_TN_Promise_Report.pdf">increased</a>, and the percentage of Black and Hispanic students at the state’s community colleges also increased.
These results have mostly held up, according to a <a href="https://comptroller.tn.gov/content/dam/cot/orea/advanced-search/2021/TNPromiseUpdate.pdf">recent report</a> from the Tennessee comptroller’s office. The college-going rate increased from 58.6 percent to 64.4 percent between 2014 and 2015, in the first year of the program. In the three following years, the college-going rate decreased to 61.8 percent. The number of students who attended college in Tennessee from 2014 to 2017 increased by 15.3 percent, or about 5,400 students.
But between 2017 and 2019, the number of students who attended college decreased by 2.3 percent. Researchers concluded that the rise in the college-going rate is a result of the Promise program, meaning the initiative has a positive impact on enrollment — though not as significant as in its inaugural year. The same trend exists for retention at community colleges in Tennessee as a result of the program.
“It really was the sort of shock to the system that we needed in Tennessee and we discovered that the most vulnerable populations — low-income students, students of color, students who thought that college was never an option for them — are benefiting,” said Krissy DeAlejandro, executive director of TNAchieves, a scholarship and mentoring organization that brings high school students into the Tennessee Promise pipeline. “Going to college became the culture in Tennessee and we were talking about going to college with students in a way that we had never done before, and that is the magic.”
Other research shows that the <a href="https://edsource.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Economic-Benefits-and-Costs-of-Tuition-Free-College-in-Illinois.pdf">benefits of free community college tuition outweigh the costs</a> across the board: The programs contribute to higher completion rates for students and <a href="https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/reports/effect-tuition-free-community-college/working_paper_347.pdf">lower student loan default rates</a>.
One <a href="https://edworkingpapers.com/sites/default/files/ai21-393.pdf">randomized trial</a> in Milwaukee that tracked students’ high school, college, and life outcomes for eight years found that free college enticed students who wouldn’t have otherwise gone to college and increased graduation rates. The researchers also conducted a cost-benefit analysis of multiple free college programs including in Kalamazoo, Michigan; Knox County, Tennessee; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Nebraska’s statewide program and <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2021/05/10/is-free-college-a-good-idea-increasingly-evidence-says-yes/">concluded</a> that the positive effect on college outcomes and future earnings is “much larger than the cost to society as a whole.”
Biden’s plan would have tried to entice more states into offering tuition-free college.
“Right now, whether you get to go to community college or a four-year college tuition-free depends on where you live,” Miller-Adams said.
States would have had to opt into the partnership. For the first year of the program the federal government would fund 100 percent of the grant, with funding decreasing by 5 percent each year. By the final year of the program, the federal government would cover 80 percent of the bill and states would pick up the remaining 20 percent. Each state would be given the same amount of funding regardless of how much they currently charge for tuition.
“The federal program would have at least offered the opportunity of a tuition-free path to community college to everyone in the nation. It would have been tremendously equalizing,” Miller-Adams said.
What states without free tuition programs are missing, DeAlejandro said, is the culture shift that emphasizes “college matters and that every student is college material.”
But ultimately, as the bill was put together, there were other priorities that were higher, like universal pre-kindergarten. Biden needs the votes of all 50 Democrats in the Senate. Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) have slowed the progress of negotiations. Manchin <a href="https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-business-campaigns-race-and-ethnicity-election-2020-b08d231fff88f60a2e31fd2c521c7ff4">said he supports means-tested programs</a> and has said he wouldn’t back free tuition community college for all students.
In the short term, what free tuition advocates have to look forward to are concessions like an increase in the maximum Pell grants, which help low-income students attend college, and funding for HBCUs, Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs), Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs), and Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs) — measures that matter, but don’t send the same kind of clear, impactful message as “free college.” The administration will invest in community college workforce programs, industry training, and apprenticeships, according to the latest framework, though specific funding commitments are yet to be announced. On the broader education front, lawmakers also plan to expand preschool access for six years for 6 million children.
DeAlejandro welcomes the increase in Pell grants. Students need more support to address housing insecurity and food insecurity, and to buy their books. Rural students in Tennessee can drive 30-40 minutes one way to get to class, so the doubling of Pell grants also helps out with gas money, she said.
With the rise in online learning, students have even tried to take classes using their phones, an obstacle that could be addressed with more Pell grant money, among others.
“I hope this doubling of Pell also comes with a message from states and local communities that we will work to ensure that every student has access to completing the FAFSA, because it’s intimidating and not always easy to complete,” DeAlejandro said.
Experts also hope that national leaders can recognize the importance of messaging for the next stage of the free college fight.
“What we’ve learned from Tennessee is that a very clear and simple message that college is affordable, and even tuition-free, brings a lot of people into the pipeline, rather than saying, ‘Oh, hey, you might be eligible for Pell grants,’” Miller-Adams said.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/11/1/22747728/free-tuition-community-college-biden">https://www.vox.com/2021/11/1/22747728/free-tuition-community-college-biden</a>

vox The uncertain future of free community college

President Joe Biden’s promise to offer tuition-free community college to students across the country — a plan he said would boost the middl...

The tricks that make slasher films look real

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Horror films — and specifically slashers — are known for abundant on-screen violence. Making that fake violence look real often comes down to props. Prop masters and special effects workers prepare knives, blood, and explosions to slash people ... without actually slashing them.
To pull this off they might use rubber, plastic, retractable, or even digital knives. Blood recipes have been improving over the decades to flow more realistically, and better soak into clothing. And explosions, both with air and squibs, push out blood to make scenes feel more realistic.
With movies, it’s often what you don’t see that makes the difference. After prop masters, makeup artists, and special effects artists complete their work, they pass the baton off to other members of the crew. Actors sell it, camera operators get the right angles to highlight the action while hiding the tubes and wires, and editors cut the different takes together. When pulled off well, it’ll make you feel like what you’re witnessing is real — even though it’s just movie magic.
You can find this video and all of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLXo7UDZvByw2ixzpQCufnA">Vox’s videos on YouTube</a>.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/videos/2021/11/1/22757157/horror-slasher-thriller-film-movie-props">https://www.vox.com/videos/2021/11/1/22757157/horror-slasher-thriller-film-movie-props</a>

vox The tricks that make slasher films look real

Horror films — and specifically slashers — are known for abundant on-screen violence. Making that fake violence look real often comes down ...

Why McDonald’s looks sleek and boring now

If you’ve ever had a hankering for a Big Mac in Orlando, Florida, there’s a good chance that you wandered into a very special McDonald’s. With its hideous red-and-yellow checkerboard exterior and its neon-lit french fry monolith, the so-called “<a href="https://twitter.com/nonstandardmcd/status/1353838633992777731/">World’s Largest Entertainment McDonald’s</a>” (now known as Epic McDonald’s) bears down on innocent customers like a monument to bad taste.
But while that McDonald’s might not win any awards for its architectural prowess, it at least lingers in the imagination. The muted colors, large glass windows, and overall boxy appearance of a modern McDonald’s are forgettable, and a far cry from the garish red-and-yellow buildings that many recall from their childhood. Slowly but surely, fast food restaurants are giving up their once brand-defining facades to follow in the path of “fast casual” eateries like Chipotle, which have become much more popular over the years.
<figure class="e-image"><picture class="c-picture" data-cid="site/picture_element-1635782471_6191_743194" data-cdata='{"asset_id":22942239,"ratio":"*"}'><source srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/-50Ck1rWmAyxFd1mOoTO4VF9mBU=/0x0:3800x2533/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:3800x2533):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22942239/GettyImages_929122206.jpg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/H2eKMn_5PmqU1Mg8zS0YFQmc784=/0x0:3800x2533/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:3800x2533):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22942239/GettyImages_929122206.jpg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/y2fz_O9r3AsZVPEvftHOo23M8pI=/0x0:3800x2533/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:3800x2533):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22942239/GettyImages_929122206.jpg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/FbPIZ_SMxklbDFV3T8nOOea8Z9g=/0x0:3800x2533/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:3800x2533):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22942239/GettyImages_929122206.jpg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/GF-HCi3qKMum644XXQ1oDTlxIZk=/0x0:3800x2533/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:3800x2533):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22942239/GettyImages_929122206.jpg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/US1jCw5VhfLQPKprRWKG38wh-_0=/0x0:3800x2533/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:3800x2533):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22942239/GettyImages_929122206.jpg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/HJYXMUh0e13BL12_P0p0LXdkuMs=/0x0:3800x2533/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:3800x2533):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22942239/GettyImages_929122206.jpg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/XoWFJmT2RZR4m_fEQCp8GHQHO80=/0x0:3800x2533/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:3800x2533):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22942239/GettyImages_929122206.jpg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/xOe82u4d0lYSOJPRMR0Gow40cwE=/0x0:3800x2533/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:3800x2533):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22942239/GettyImages_929122206.jpg 1920w" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" type="image/webp" /> <img alt="" data-upload-width="3800" sizes="(min-width: 1221px) 846px, (min-width: 880px) calc(100vw - 334px), 100vw" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/NC0Ij_QHvdCepGsLBrk3rAV_iAg=/0x0:3800x2533/1200x0/filters:focal(0x0:3800x2533):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22942239/GettyImages_929122206.jpg" srcset="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/sZpJe9u_2Q_2b8CDV7m0JflL0T8=/0x0:3800x2533/320x0/filters:focal(0x0:3800x2533):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22942239/GettyImages_929122206.jpg 320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/iEcinWYhm5GpdkG9o42L6ZqBPSA=/0x0:3800x2533/520x0/filters:focal(0x0:3800x2533):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22942239/GettyImages_929122206.jpg 520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/0KZWVjCMlviHh8jAuMCF6lwhg7A=/0x0:3800x2533/720x0/filters:focal(0x0:3800x2533):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22942239/GettyImages_929122206.jpg 720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/nJb7f_XGfsguNXdoFWKf6mZo6xE=/0x0:3800x2533/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:3800x2533):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22942239/GettyImages_929122206.jpg 920w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/yWgbbPJUjdCa2XzEb8PoRvXAigw=/0x0:3800x2533/1120x0/filters:focal(0x0:3800x2533):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22942239/GettyImages_929122206.jpg 1120w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Lsxg2E3XqJK3aCDg2HLzjGB0LOk=/0x0:3800x2533/1320x0/filters:focal(0x0:3800x2533):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22942239/GettyImages_929122206.jpg 1320w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ImnMc0rgK6PxBy_WaUenowlaQdY=/0x0:3800x2533/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:3800x2533):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22942239/GettyImages_929122206.jpg 1520w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/-HjXTz9DBBOkiwKIB6oUydE1nFQ=/0x0:3800x2533/1720x0/filters:focal(0x0:3800x2533):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22942239/GettyImages_929122206.jpg 1720w, https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/bgt-R59ZWzMGe4JyYl1s6JcTfoM=/0x0:3800x2533/1920x0/filters:focal(0x0:3800x2533):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22942239/GettyImages_929122206.jpg 1920w" /></picture>
<figcaption>The “Epic McDonald’s” in Orlando.</figcaption>
<cite>Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</cite></figure>
While this standardization might make good business sense for a style of dining that is sometimes seen as out of fashion or simply outmoded, some in the industry wonder if the company has lost something in the process of turning its back on its McDonaldland origins. As enthusiasts like Max Krieger attest, characters such as Ronald McDonald and Grimace might seem dated now, but they at least provided an identity for the brand that was original and appealing — even if only to its target audience of children and parents.
Krieger is a game developer from Pittsburgh who runs <a href="https://twitter.com/nonstandardmcd">a popular Twitter account</a> that documents unusual or downright tasteless McDonald’s restaurants from across the world. The “Nonstandard McDonald’s” account has managed to garner more than 150,000 followers in just a year. But while he takes a certain amount of glee in documenting these strange buildings, he doesn’t call himself a McDonald’s fan — the account’s Twitter bio jokingly refers to its mission as “preserving the only architectural heritage of the western world.”
“One of the things I really try to be clear about is, ‘Hey, we don’t stan a massive corporation,’” Krieger says with a laugh. “I was just surprised at how hard it was to find photo evidence of these weird McDonald’s that I had been to a couple of times, including the so-called <a href="https://twitter.com/nonstandardmcd/status/1411727774650454026">Mayor McCheese mansion</a> in Independence, Ohio. ... One thing you figure out very quickly is that most of these places are no longer operating. They’re defunct.”
Many of these offbeat McDonald’s were pilot restaurants for culinary concepts that were eventually abandoned by the corporate mothership, <a href="https://twitter.com/nonstandardmcd/status/1391806292168257538?lang=en">such as “McDiners”</a> that served classic greasy spoon fare. Others were the result of creative franchisees who wanted to make their restaurants stand out from the crowd, such as the aforementioned World’s Largest Entertainment McDonald’s in Orlando, which featured a truly disturbing hand-drawn mural of Ronald McDonald’s electric-yellow hands <a href="https://twitter.com/nonstandardmcd/status/1353834570697871360/photo/2">gripping the world</a>. (“It’s like something out of Judge Dredd,” Krieger observes.)
Today, the revamped Orlando location has shorn its checkerboard exterior for a more standard appearance, though it still boasts its signature neon lighting. Viewed side by side, the two images are a testament to how much the company’s franchisees have modernized their restaurants in the past decade in response to prevailing trends. Krieger in particular points to the negative PR fostered by the book Fast Food Nation and the documentary film Super Size Me as damaging the family-friendly reputation of McDonald’s, which forced the company to change its image in order to appeal to an older clientele.
Chef and restaurant consultant Mark Moeller fondly recalls family outings to Mickey D’s with his five siblings when he was growing up in the ’80s. These days, though, he says fast-casual eateries largely serve the same purpose as quick-service restaurants (or QSRs, an industry term synonymous with fast food). Customers are looking for healthier options than your classic calorie-rich burger and fries. The gimmicks that had once brought droves of kids swarming in are now a liability, making the restaurant seem dated and cheap in comparison.
“The original thought with restaurants like McDonald’s was to aim at a family audience, so you could get customers for life,” Moeller says. “That’s what drove the playgrounds and the toys, all very kid-friendly stuff. Over the past few years, they’ve decided to become more adult, with clean lines and colors that will appeal to you while you’re eating. No more of those hard chairs that are designed to get people up and out for the sake of throughput. They try to make it comfortable so older adults from 30 to 60 can go in and feel comfortable enjoying the fast food they grew up on but in a more welcoming environment.”
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<aside><q>“Over the past few years, they’ve decided to become more adult, with clean lines and colors that will appeal to you while you’re eating”</q></aside>
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From an industry perspective, Moeller feels that fast food restaurants are somewhat confused about what audience to attract. As many fast-casual restaurants continue to use the assembly line model popularized by Chipotle to deliver the convenience factor that undergirds all “fast” restaurants, it’s unclear exactly what older brands like McDonald’s can do to compete — other than following in their footsteps. In Moeller’s opinion, the company has removed so much of its legacy branding that it seems almost generic. During a recent move, he happened to find some of the old McDonald’s figurines he collected as a kid, and it reminded him of pleasant afternoons spent eating at the restaurant with his family.
“There’s a lot of nostalgia there for me, but I definitely think it’s missing in its current form,” he says. “It’s hard for me to imagine a kid going to a modern McDonald’s and forming memories like that today. They’ve lost sight of what makes their brand unique.”
Like Moeller, restaurant architect Glen Coben also has a certain amount of nostalgia for old-school McDonald’s. For Coben, McDonald’s is synonymous with the automobile society produced by 20th-century American capitalism, with the golden arches serving as a miniature roadside attraction that could catch motorists’ eye when they’re flying by at 55 mph. (Similar roadside attractions include the world’s largest yarn ball and “Lucy,” the elephant statue in Atlantic City.) When it comes to modern fast food, however, Coben agrees that the visually arresting quality of those early restaurants has fallen by the wayside, and they’ve lost their identity as a result.
As Coben attests, this visual homogenization — or Chipotle-fication, if you will — is marked by exposed lighting, comfortable seating, and antiseptic steel surfaces. (Perhaps the most telling detail: The double-sloped mansard roof that was long associated with McDonald’s has largely become a thing of the past, much like <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/FormerPizzaHuts/">the red roof of Pizza Hut</a>.) This shift is hardly unique to the yellow arches. For example, <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/20/taco-bell-unveils-new-design-with-more-drive-thrus-as-pandemic-permanently-shifts-how-we-order.html">Taco Bell has recently moved away</a> from its sloped roof and colorful logo to embrace the boxy-building concept as well.
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“One thing that I’ve learned in the industry is that fast food restaurants are essentially just designed in a lab to produce the biggest returns possible,” Coben says. “When I look at fast food restaurants today, that’s exactly what they look like. They’re soulless. ... As an architect, it just seems unfortunate that these buildings don’t look interesting or reflect the concept of what the restaurant is about. Their idea of a concept is, ‘Oh, we want it to look clean.’ Well, a well-lit, antiseptic environment is not a concept. It’s just nonexistent.”
Coben compares the current boxy, sleek designs of fast food restaurants to cavernous sports stadiums that were built in the latter part of the 20th century, such as Philadelphia’s Veterans Stadium, which was demolished in 2004. In his mind, entrepreneurs are aware that customers prefer a more focused concept even in their casual dining, and that’s why so many fast-casual restaurants have sprouted up in recent years to compete. However, that doesn’t mean that all of those concepts will be successful. “When you start seeing Edison lightbulbs and reclaimed wood in the big chains, that’s when you know that trend is pretty much done,” he says. “There’s a big lag that happens there.”
Jessica Farrell is an archivist who worked for years at the Golden Archives, which is McDonald’s official corporate library and history center. To Farrell, the uncanny appeal of the “nonstandard” Mickey D’s is a symptom of the tension that runs throughout the company’s corporate history: diversification versus uniformity. She points out that the concept of a nonstandard McDonald’s is in itself a contradiction — enthusiasts like Krieger visit particular locations because of their unique attributes, but the only reason those specificities stand out is because the rest of the restaurant is exactly what you expect, including the food. She also questions if the apparent wave of homogenization is actually a modern trend — in her mind, McDonald’s were always uniform, it’s just that the older design is considered more aesthetically pleasing by those who notice these changes.
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<aside><q>“I think it’s just another era of homogenization; it’s not newly homogenized”</q></aside>
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“In my view, I think it’s just another era of homogenization, it’s not newly homogenized,” she says. “Since [then-McDonald’s CEO] Ray Kroc decided on the mansard roof design back in 1968, the company has always wanted owners and operators to use their standard design. If they push people to update their restaurants to what they view as a modern standard, that’s a pretty normal business practice. I think a lot of people who don’t necessarily know how things work behind the scenes might view that as something sinister, but if I was running McDonald’s, I would do the same thing.”
When reached for comment on whether the company encouraged nonstandard McDonald’s to change their restaurants for the sake of their corporate image, McDonald’s Corporation provided the following statement:
<blockquote>
We have so much love for these unique and creative McDonald’s locations around the world and the sense of nostalgia they bring. At the same time, we’re constantly modernizing and innovating across our restaurants through new menu items, tech and digital innovations to give our fans the best possible experience, whenever and wherever they visit. And as we have for the past 66 years, we’ll continue to work closely with designers to create environments which are on brand and uniquely McDonald’s for our fans worldwide.
</blockquote>
Given existing trends in the industry, it seems unlikely that your local McDonald’s will bust out the yellow and red paint anytime soon. That said, even if you aren’t an abiding fan of the Big Mac — or any of the chain’s healthier fare — it’s hard to deny the company’s potent legacy as the firm that arguably created fast food in the first place. The unique and strange locations that Krieger and his fans document might soon fade into the past, but it’s likely that McDonald’s and other QSR brands will need to imagine a more sustainable future for their brands beyond copying the Chipotles and Starbucks of the world. Perhaps they could learn a thing or two from the goofy franchisees that garner thousands of likes and retweets — the overall appreciation might be ironic, but there’s a sincere curiosity underlying the laughs.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/22736636/mcdonalds-design-aesthetic-look-buildings">https://www.vox.com/22736636/mcdonalds-design-aesthetic-look-buildings</a>

vox Why McDonald’s looks sleek and boring now

If you’ve ever had a hankering for a Big Mac in Orlando, Florida, there’s a good chance that you wandered into a very special McDonald’s. Wi...

Instant enlightenment — just add tech?

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It was a Monday morning, which was reason enough to meditate. I was anxious about the day ahead, and so, as I’ve done countless times over the past few years, I settled in on my couch for a short meditation session. But something was different this morning.
Gently squeezing my forehead was a high-tech meditation headset, outfitted with sensors that would read my brain waves to tell me when I was calm and when I was, well, me. Beside me, my phone was running an app that paired over Bluetooth with the headset. It would give me audio feedback on my brain’s performance in real time, then score me with points and awards.
This was the <a href="https://choosemuse.com/muse-s/">Muse headband</a>, an innovation in mindfulness that picks up on Silicon Valley’s penchant for <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/6/25/18682583/biohacking-transhumanism-human-augmentation-genetic-engineering-crispr">quantifying every aspect of ourselves</a> through wearable tech — the idea being that the more data you have on your brain waves, heart rate, sleep, and other bodily functions, the more you can optimize the machine that is you. But a thought nagged at me: Isn’t there something self-defeating and contradictory about trying to optimize meditation by making it all about achieving success in a gamified app?
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The underlying technology is definitely intriguing. Muse is an application of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/therapists-are-using-neurofeedback-to-treat-adhd-ptsd-and-other-conditions/2015/01/16/b38e6cee-5ec3-11e4-91f7-5d89b5e8c251_story.html">neurofeedback</a>, a tool for training yourself to regulate your brain waves. Neurofeedback began gaining popularity years ago in clinical contexts, as <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/therapists-are-using-neurofeedback-to-treat-adhd-ptsd-and-other-conditions/2015/01/16/b38e6cee-5ec3-11e4-91f7-5d89b5e8c251_story.html">research showed</a> it had the potential to help people struggling with conditions like ADHD and PTSD.
Muse is one of <a href="https://focuscalm.com/">several</a> <a href="https://sens.ai/">companies</a> <a href="https://www.mendi.io/">now selling</a> neurofeedback devices with a different aim: making you a more enlightened version of yourself. At $245 a pop, its headbands are already accessible to consumers at stores like Walmart or Best Buy.
In fact, neurofeedback is just one of the newer technologies being touted as a way to catapult us into higher, more enlightened states of consciousness. Other technoboosts include brain stimulation, which uses electric currents or other means to directly target certain brain areas and change their behavior, and synthetic psychedelics, which are lab-created versions of drugs such as ayahuasca. Collectively, they form a genre that Kate Stockly and Wesley Wildman, researchers at Boston University’s Center for Mind and Culture, call “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Spirit-Tech-Consciousness-Enlightenment-Engineering/dp/1250274931/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1633716828&sr=8-1" has-subtag="true" data-cdata='{"rewritten_url":"https://www.amazon.com/Spirit-Tech-Consciousness-Enlightenment-Engineering/dp/1250274931/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8\u0026qid=1633716828\u0026sr=8-1\u0026ascsubtag=[]vx[p]22491150[m]m-placeholder[s]s-placeholder[t]w[c]c-placeholder[r]r-placeholder[d]d-placeholder","subtag_max_length":99,"subtag_delim_length":2,"subtag_key":"ascsubtag","subtag_data":{"_encoding":"UTF8","qid":"1633716828","sr":"8-1","ascsubtag":"[]vx[p]22491150[m]m-placeholder[s]s-placeholder[t]w[c]c-placeholder[r]r-placeholder[d]d-placeholder"},"encode_subtag":false}'>spirit tech</a>.”
Like me, the researchers started out skeptical of these technologies. But they grew fascinated as they began exploring big questions: Can we use tech to provoke experiences that will make people lastingly more compassionate and altruistic? Is an experience of enlightenment that’s induced by technology “authentic” (and does that matter)? If we democratize spiritual insights so they become accessible faster to lots more people — not just those of us who can afford to spend decades meditating in a cave somewhere — can that help our species evolve?
These questions, and the shifting answers to them, hint at the strange new terrain we are wandering onto, as neuroscience, self-optimization tech, and mindfulness collide.
The different varieties of spirit tech — neurofeedback, brain stimulation, and synthetic psychedelics most prominently — all have the same general objective of abetting a person’s search for a higher state of consciousness. But they all have their distinct ways of getting you there.
Neurofeedback devices for meditation aim to help you get into a state of calm, focused attention by tracking your brain activity and producing guiding sounds to let you know when your mind is wandering.
There are a few different ways this can work, but I’ll stick to Muse for illustration’s sake. You start by placing a headband on your forehead. Its built-in EEG sensors read your brain waves as you meditate. Some brain waves <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/47428548_Lost_in_thoughts_Neural_markers_of_low_alertness_during_mind_wandering">are associated</a> with focused attention and others are associated with mind-wandering and stress; <a href="https://choosemuse.com/blog/a-deep-dive-into-brainwaves-brainwave-frequencies-explained-2/">Muse’s algorithm picks them apart</a> in real time and offers up a different cue on the phone app depending on what your mind is doing.
When your thoughts are racing, you hear loud rainstorms. “That’s your cue to go, like, ‘Oh shit! I’m thinking about the grocery list again! Back to meditation!’” Ariel Garten, the co-founder of Muse, told me.
When your thoughts are calmer, you hear quieter weather. And when you manage to sustain a deep calm for a while, you hear the rewarding sound of birds chirping.
It’s a classic “Pavlovian-type reinforcement,” according to Garten, meant to encourage your brain to remember the feel of this tranquil mental state and return to it over and over. It’s also (for better or worse) an ego boost. When the Muse app shows you your stats at the end of a session, you might find yourself thinking: “I’m crushing this. I got five birds!”
Some scientific <a href="https://bmcpsychology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40359-016-0168-6">research indicates</a> that neurofeedback can modestly improve attention and subjective well-being. But it’s important to note that this kind of tech can, at most, help people get to an “entry-level” state of meditation — what you might call, simply, concentration. Researchers do not claim to have figured out how to lead people into more advanced meditative states yet.
Stockly, who tried neurofeedback herself as part of her research for Spirit Tech, the book she co-wrote with Wildman, told me the technology holds promise as a way to shorten people’s meditation learning curve. “I could tell when my brain was doing the right thing because I would hear the sound that was supposed to be the positive feedback,” she said. She also told me neurofeedback is just the tip of the iceberg. “It could be understood as a starter technology on your way to something a little bit more invasive, like brain stimulation.”
If neurofeedback devices like Muse only aim to “read” what’s happening in your brain and give you cues that reflect it, then another technique, brain stimulation, aims to “write” to the brain — that is, to directly change what your neurons are up to.
Here’s the basic idea: Different states of consciousness manifest in your brain as different patterns of electrical activity, or neurological signatures. Researchers have already figured out what some of them look like. Now, they’re figuring out how to technologically stimulate your brain into those states. They’re experimenting with a few types of stimulation — electric, magnetic, light, and ultrasound — to target particular brain areas.
Shooting electricity into your skull might sound painful, but it can be very gentle. There are already a few neurostimulation devices on the market, like <a href="https://zendomeditation.com/">Zendo</a>, which come in the form of small pads or patches that you apply to your forehead; they create a tingly sensation as they send low levels of electricity into your brain. They claim to make meditation easier and reduce stress.
The scientific evidence on <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-02928-3">their efficacy</a> is <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25701175/">mixed</a>. Safety-wise, they’re not required to have FDA approval since they’re not marketed as medical devices, but they’re generally considered low-risk for short-term use given that a number of stimulation methods are already approved for clinical use in treating conditions like depression. However, we lack data on the long-term effects of using neurostimulation devices continually.
Meanwhile, some researchers are pursuing a much more ambitious goal than mere stress reduction. They’re exploring brain stimulation’s potential to act as a shortcut to enlightenment.
Evan Thompson, a University of British Columbia professor who specializes in Asian philosophical traditions, notes that it’s inaccurate to talk about “enlightenment” as if it’s one monolithic thing. Instead, we have to talk about specific enlightened states. “Enlightenment means different things to different teachers, schools, and historical periods,” he said. It can mean the elimination of all craving and attachment, for example, or the dissolution of the sense of a separate self.
The latter is particularly relevant to Shinzen Young and Jay Sanguinetti, co-directors of the <a href="https://semalab.arizona.edu/">Sonication Enhanced Mindful Awareness (SEMA) lab at the University of Arizona</a>. They’ve found that beaming ultrasound pulses at a certain brain area, the basal ganglia, leads to a quieting of the ego — a less self-focused state of mind.
Young, a monk who’s been meditating for 50 years, let his neuroscientist colleague Sanguinetti administer the ultrasound pulses on him. Afterward, he said it accelerated and deepened his ability to enter a state of equanimity and selflessness. In fact, he said it triggered one of the most significant meditations he’s ever had. Twelve other advanced meditators later reported similar effects.
Of course, that’s not enough to get a sense of whether it’s truly safe and effective, especially for long-term use. There’s still a lot more safety and efficacy research to be done before brain stimulation using ultrasound will be available outside of specialized labs.
“It’s not a consumer device package in Best Buy,” Garten said. “It’s far, far, far from being that. Probably 20 or 30 more years.”
In the meantime, other researchers are exploring psychedelics, which are undergoing a renaissance these days as their <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/10/9/21506664/psychedelics-mental-health-depression-ptsd-psilocybin-mdma">therapeutic potential for treating conditions like depression</a> becomes increasingly recognized.
Many psychedelics, such as magic mushrooms and mescaline, are naturally occurring. But scientists are now busy creating synthetic versions of drugs, like pharmahuasca (synthetic ayahuasca), so the chemical components can be precisely predicted and customized. These drugs don’t just “read” what’s happening in the brain; like neurostimulation, they “write” to it directly.
Scientists have <a href="https://link.vox.com/click/24439431.4223/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubmNiaS5ubG0ubmloLmdvdi9wbWMvYXJ0aWNsZXMvUE1DMzUzNzE3MS8/608adc2491954c3cef02e6bfBe0eb446c">found that psychedelics can produce</a> mystical experiences that lead to lasting changes in tolerance and openness. One <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25637267/">study</a> found that regular users of ayahuasca, for example, score higher than nonusers on measures of self-transcendence. Pharmahuasca has produced very similar effects, though <a href="https://akjournals.com/view/journals/2054/3/3/article-p288.xml#:~:text=Results,an%20emphasis%20on%20cognitive%20processes.">research suggests</a> some of the emotional benefits of traditional ayahuasca rituals may be lost when the drug is consumed outside its ceremonial context, perhaps because the intentions of the users are different.
Although some mental health professionals <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22716491/psychedelics-ketamine-mental-health-research-fda">already use synthetic psychedelics</a> in their clinical practices to treat patients, don’t expect to see such substances becoming legally available for self-directed use as spirit tech in the US anytime soon. Currently, Americans who want to legally try a drug like ayahuasca (natural or synthetic) have to be members of specific religious communities such as the Native American Church, or else travel to South America. That said, Wildman and Stockly report that there is an active underground market for synthetic psychedelics like pharmahuasca.
When people first hear about technoboosts for enlightenment, there’s a tendency to think that using technology to induce spiritual experiences is a totally new phenomenon — and that therefore a tech-induced experience is not “authentic” spirituality.
Thompson says both those premises are wrong. For one thing, people have been using tech to induce altered states of consciousness for millennia. We may not be used to thinking of tools like prayer wheels, mandalas, rosaries, or rhythmic drumming in shamanic dances as spiritual technologies, but that’s exactly what they are.
Plus, Thompson told me, “I think authenticity is a very misleading concept.”
Historically, there’s no consensus, even within a single religious tradition, about how to tell a genuine spiritual epiphany from a counterfeit.
Some believe a spiritual experience must be spontaneous to be authentic. Others believe just the opposite — that an authentic experience comes about only after someone spends lots of time and effort developing a practice.
As Stockly and Wildman write in Spirit Tech, “Some people sense that it just can’t be right that spiritual wisdom and experiences that are incredibly hard-won are just suddenly conferred on any old doofus without the exertion of effort, discipline, and commitment.”
Likewise, some groups say a spiritual experience is trustworthy if it supports their preexisting, canonical beliefs, and untrustworthy if it produces heterodox beliefs. But others say an experience is authentic precisely if it transcends convention — just think of how Jesus taught something new and different from the Judaism of his time.
Stockly, Wildman, and Thompson all told me they think it makes less sense to look at the causes or content of an experience than to look at its consequences. Another way to put this is: Don’t ask whether an experience is authentic; ask whether it’s beneficial. Does it make you more cruel, haughty, and self-centered? Or more compassionate, humble, and other-focused?
A related concern about some technoboosts is that perhaps they only lead to temporary changes — altered states, but not altered traits. If their consequences fade away within hours or days, how much good does that really do?
“It is possible just to have experiences that are something like transitory highs,” Wildman told me. But they can incentivize you to develop a continuous practice. “These incredibly powerful experiences can completely change your willingness to take on something like that.”
Stockly noted that technoboosts like neurofeedback and brain stimulation are not meant to be one-and-done. Instead, we should think of them as training wheels for the brain. “The idea is that it really is targeting the desired part of the brain in such a way that with repeated use, it will actually change the brain,” she said. “It will help to create those new neural pathways.”
Thompson, for his part, worries that such technoboosts might be counterproductive rather than beneficial — if, for example, the way the technology mediates the experience of meditation reinforces the ego tendencies that meditation is meant to alleviate. This is his concern about all the gamification the Muse app displays, from telling you when you’ve achieved a streak of consecutive days to rewarding you with bird chirps when you’ve stayed calm long enough.
“It builds up a sense of a performative, successful self,” he said. “Like, ‘Oh look, I’ve meditated a hundred days in a row now!’ It’s not only distraction, it actually reinforces precisely the thing that you’re trying to get beyond.”
Garten told me that this was a design question she “struggled with a lot.” But ultimately, she thinks you need some gamification to motivate the user to keep coming back, at least at first. And even though the birds may be distracting and ego-inflating initially, she thinks they can gradually teach the user an important lesson: equanimity. Get too excited about the appearance of a bird, and it vanishes immediately, because your excited brain state means you’ve lost the calm that hastened its arrival. In this way, you learn not to get overly invested in any outcome.
That hasn’t been my experience with Muse yet. So far, for me, the birds feel like they’re harming rather than helping my practice. But I’ve been meditating for about five years. Conceivably, for a beginner, the motivational benefits of gamification, together with Muse’s ability to show the novice meditator when they’re “doing it right,” could outweigh the costs.
There’s a less obvious risk we need to bear in mind. Instead of only asking, “What if the tech doesn’t work as advertised?” we also need to ask, “What if it does?”
On the one hand, that would be exciting. In 2005, the Dalai Lama was asked what he thinks about the possibility of tech leading to spiritual awakenings. He said: “If it was possible to become free of negative emotions by a riskless implementation of an electrode — without impairing intelligence and the critical mind — I would be the first patient.”
But most of us do not have the Dalai Lama’s training. Sudden, intense epiphanies that powerful new technology like brain stimulation aims to provoke may not have the positive effects you might expect. Normally, people build up to those epiphanies over years of practice or on long meditation retreats; the gradualness of the learning curve and the presence of mentors can help a person integrate an epiphany into their self-understanding. Spirit tech wants to offer a shortcut — to gin up epiphanies on-demand and à la carte — and the effects could be jarring.
As Sanguinetti says in Spirit Tech, “If you’re a father and you have two children, what does it mean to change you [with brain stimulation]? Because you still need to be able to take care of your children and be motivated to do that. So we don’t want to make you happy-detached, we want to make you happy-embodied and a happy, better human being in your society and the specific sociocultural context that you’re in.”
In traditional spiritual communities, the spirit tech isn’t just the meditation you do or the mushroom you ingest. There are mentors and traditions that shape how you make meaning out of a peak experience and integrate it into your humdrum life — these are technology, too. Similarly, we may need a cadre of trained people who can guide us through the process of implementing powerful new tools like brain stimulation.
Absent such a framework, Thompson remains unconvinced of the potential of such technologies.
“It strikes me as more consumerist, capitalist appropriation of meditation as a kind of narcissistic personal experience,” he said. “It’s about my enlightenment attained through techno-enhancement. Call that enlightenment if you want, but enlightenment in a richer sense is about a profound transformation not of yourself just as an isolated individual but of your relationship to other human beings in the world. It’s social.”
Reporting for this article was supported by <a href="http://www.shin-ibs.edu/luce/">Public Theologies of Technology and Presence</a>, a journalism and research initiative based at the Institute of Buddhist Studies and funded by the Henry Luce Foundation.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22727109/enlightenment-technology-neurofeedback-brain-stimulation-psychedelics">https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22727109/enlightenment-technology-neurofeedback-brain-stimulation-psychedelics</a>

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It was a Monday morning, which was reason enough to meditate. I was anxious about the day ahead, and so, as I’ve done countless times over ...

Texas-India Vaccine Diplomacy Announces Covid Vaccine For $1.5 Per Dose

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The COVID-19 vaccine will be released for emergency use in India soon: Top US scientist
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Houston:
The Texas-India vaccine diplomacy, a collaboration for shared global health between Indian pharmaceutical company Biological E and the Texas Children''s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine, has led to the development of a cost-efficient vaccine against COVID-19 for USD 1.50 per dose, according to a top American scientist.
Addressing the annual 2021 gala of the Indo-American Chamber of Commerce of Greater Houston (IACCGH) on Saturday, Dr Peter Hotez, Dean National School of Tropical Medicine; professor of pediatrics, molecular virology and molecular biology, at Baylor College of Medicine, said the collaboration has led to the development of the low-cost people''s vaccine in record times.
It will help vaccinate the world's low-income countries in the coming months to fill the 9 billion gap, Hotez said.
"The COVID-19 vaccine, which will be released for emergency use in India soon, will produce 100 million doses per month. It has been tough, but the most fulfilling activity I've ever been involved with," he said.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) respects the Biological E, he said.
"It mentioned, once a vaccine is released in India, we will most likely move pretty close to do emergency assistance for global usage, so the world can benefit from it as well," Hotez said.
"Our shared goal is to make this vaccine available not only for India, but all of the world's low- and middle-income countries as a means to end the pandemic," Hotez said during his keynote address.
"We are being contacted by various middle-income countries in Asia and Africa, and working to transfer our production cell bank to them or have them work directly through Bio-E," he said.
Hotez said that this adventure would never have happened without the brilliance of Indian scientists and various Texas philanthropists, including Texas Children Hospital and M D Anderson Foundation, who raised USD 7 million for vaccine development.
Appreciating Indian vaccine producers amidst thunderous applause from over 600 attendees at the 22nd IACCGH gala, Hotez said, "India's vaccine producers are actually "India's gift to the world".
For decades, producers like the Serum Institute of India, Biological E and Bharat Biotech have established the unique ecosystem needed to provide vaccines for measles, whooping cough, and tetanus to the world's low- and middle-income countries, he said.
"Since our vaccine uses an older yeast fermentation technology, we needed a manufacturing partner who could do this under a quality umbrella and without failure. It wasn't easy to find one, but the answer was only India after we were connected to Biological E, through mutual colleagues, who work with the Gates Foundation," he said.
Without the need of patents, the production cell bank was transferred to Biological E and then began exchanging reagents and knowledge, speaking several times a week via Zoom or phone, Hotez said.
"We worked together to co-develop the vaccine, which in clinical trials looked great, potentially offering protection as good as mRNA vaccines but for a fraction of the price USD 1.50 per dose, and simple refrigeration and easy to administer," he said.
"There are over 1 billion people in Sub-Saharan Africa, 650 million in Latin America, another 1 billion people in smaller, low-income Asian countries, who need to be vaccinated badly.
"Altogether, we needed 9 billion doses of vaccines, a daunting task in a short period of time. The mRNA and adenovirus vectored vaccines were always going to be made in sufficient amounts for North America and Europe but not the rest of the world due to its cost," Hotez said.
He also warned that there are dark forces at work seeking to undermine vaccines.
"At least 100,000 lost their lives to Delta and "anti-science aggression" from the political right, but we need to uncouple anti-science from far-right extremism. Ultimately science will save mankind," he said.
India's Ambassador to the US Taranjit Singh Sandhu, who was the chief guest at the gala, highlighted the deepening of the strategic relationship between India and the US.
This relationship is a meeting of minds and hearts, he said.
"US global strategic partnership continues to grow from strength to strength, the landmark visit of the Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) for the India-US bilateral summit and the first in-person Quad Leaders'' Summit recently is a testament to the enduring ties between the two countries," Mr Sandhu said.
"As India enters the 75th year of independence, we continue to make rapid strides in building a prosperous and secure country. I am confident that the Indian American community here will further contribute to these efforts and further deepen the India-US partnership," he said.
Since this was Mr Sandhu's first visit to Houston, he visited NASA, BAPS Temple, University of Houston, a post office named after Sikh police officer Sandeep Singh Dhaliwal and held meetings with elected officials, healthcare professionals, business leaders from a range of fields.
"These engagements provided political momentum to move the relationship forward. From health sector cooperation to combating climate change to partnership in critical and emerging technology to strategic cooperation in the Indo Pacific, there is no sphere of human activity that is untouched by India-US relationship," Sandhu told PTI.
Ambassador Mr Sandhu said that during discussion with President Joe Biden, Prime Minister Narendra Modi identified five Ts that would define the partnership, tradition, talent, trade, technology and trusteeship.
All the five aspects are underscored by a defining element of trust between the two countries. The Prime Minister's visit was a demonstration of that trust and of the enduring strength in our partnership, he said.
"Broadly, our relations are focused on five key areas: strategic and defence relations, cooperation in the healthcare sector (may like to mention - DFC - Biological E finalisation of financing last week), cooperation in the areas of climate change and energy, technological and innovation cooperation and lastly the knowledge partnership," Sandhu added.
The gala was attended by Houston''s top industry leaders, elected federal and local officials, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, Congressmen and their representatives, Consul General of India in Houston Aseem R Mahajan, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, Harris county Judge Lina Hidalgo, Fort Bend Indian American Judge K P George.
IACCGH founder and executive director Jagdip Ahluwalia spoke of the chamber''s efforts in dealing with the fallout of the pandemic and promoting entrepreneurship during these challenging times and extending help both locally and by sending medical equipment to India to combat Covid crisis early this year.
Tarush Anand, President IACCGH, said: "We were able to host webinars addressing new employment law issues created by the pandemic, doing business globally in these trying times, providing real solutions in a virtual world".
The honorees at this year''s gala included Lifetime Achievement Award for Dr David Leebron, President Rice University, for outstanding leadership that has made Rice University a globally recognised, top notch educational and research institute.
IACCGH woman of the year was awarded to Sultana Mangalji for her contribution to the early development of Westmont hospitality group and her role of fulfilling the group''s social corporate responsibility.
Corporate Citizen of the year award was given to LyondellBasell-for lead role in co-founding the Alliance to end plastic waste (AEPW) and recycling of plastics. Special Award was given to US SBA and Wallis Bank for public-private partnership.
Sewa International was honoured with the Community Service Award for its selfless service and frontline efforts to help those impacted by the pandemic.
 
 
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news world Texas-India Vaccine Diplomacy Announces Covid Vaccine For $1.5 Per Dose

The COVID-19 vaccine will be released for emergency use in India soon: Top US scientist Houston: The Texas-India vaccine diplomacy, a c...