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Elon Musk has ruffled plenty of feathers since stepping more prominently into the political arena. Now, it seems hes also a bad neighbor. In 2022, Musk purchased a six-bedroom, $6 million mansion in the upscale Austin suburb of West Lake Hills, Texas. At the time, he didnt knock on doors or introduce himself to his new neighborsbut word spread quickly, especially when visibly armed security personnel and their vehicles began appearing on the quiet suburban street. Since moving in, Musk has erected an unauthorized 16-foot chain-link fence, installed a metal gate, and mounted outward-facing camerasactions that have irritated local residents, according to a recent report by The New York Times. I call that place Fort Knox, said Paul Hemmer, a Tesla owner and retired real estate agent who lives across the street. Hemmer is also president of the neighborhood homeowners association. When Musk later attempted to retroactively gain permission for the additionswhich violate six city ordinancesthe West Lake Hills Zoning and Planning Commission voted unanimously against granting variances. Wed incentivize people to break the rules, one commissioner told the Times. The matter is now set to go before the West Lake Hills City Council in a session scheduled for May 14. Unless the Council overrules the commissions decision, the fence and gate may need to be removed or modified to comply with town regulations. The mansion is one of three Musk has purchased in the area over the past three years, with plans to create a compound for his children and their mothers. Musician Claire Boucher, better known by her stage name Grimes, previously lived there with the three children she shares with Musk. Shivon Zilis, a brain technology executive and mother to four of Musks children, lives just a 10-minute walk away. In recent months, the house has been quieter, as Musk has spent more time in Washington advising President Donald Trump. But neighbors say they are bracing for his return. Hemmer, who now flies drones over Musks property to check for city code violations, also has round-the-clock video surveillance in place, he told the Times. Musks security team has taken noticereporting Hemmer to police for allegedly standing naked in the street (he was on his property, wearing underwear). On another occasion, Hemmer was caught urinating by Musks cameras. The cameras got me, he said. Its scary they have guys sitting and watching me pee.
Category:
E-Commerce
Ashlee Piper is a former political strategist turned eco-lifestyle journalist. She has been a Professor of Sustainability Marketing at Loyola University Chicago and eco instructor for LinkedIn Learning. Well-known companies, such as Airbnb, LUSH, and Nissan, have sought her counsel on sustainability practices. Piper has spoken at the United Nations, SXSW, and has a popular TED Talk. Whats the big idea? A life of overconsumption can feel almost inescapable in our hyper-personalized advertising ecosystem. Billions of dollars go into getting people hooked on shopping. Fortunately, a way out of this addictive cycle is the No New Things challenge, which guides anyone fed up with buyers remorse toward a healthier, happier, more sustainable lifestyle. Below, Ashlee shares five key insights from her new book, No New Things: A Radically Simple 30-Day Guide to Saving Money, the Planet, and Your Sanity. Listen to the audio versionread by Ashlee herselfin the Next Big Idea App. 1. Its not you, its us. If you wrestle with overconsumption or just buy way more stuff than youd like to, then youre not alone. Fifty-four percent of Americans report feeling stressed by their stuff, 60 percent say they dont have enough time in the day, and 80 percent are in some form of consumer debt. Overconsumption distracts us from whats important and steals time, energy, money, and peace of mindnot to mention harms the planet. Its safe to say that if youre uncomfortable with your relationship to shopping, youre probably experiencing one or more of these side effects. 2. Its not your fault. Our drive to buy more, buy better, and seek out stuff to meet or fulfill every need and emotion we experience is the result of decades of deft marketing programming. Starting at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, Americans fundamentally shifted their consumption habits, and World War II turned consumerism into a patriotic act. From 1941 to 1945, advertising expenditures grew from $2.2 billion to $2.9 billion, and the 1950s were seen as the advertisers dream decade (think Mad Men). Today, companies collectively spend nearly $515 billion annually on marketing in the US, much of which is devoted to consumer insights, data, and research. Our drive to buy more, buy better, and seek out stuff to meet or fulfill every need and emotion we experience is the result of decades of deft marketing programming. I dont want to sound like Im wearing a tinfoil hat, but there are entire departments that track how you buy, when you buy, and what you buy, as well as your demographics like income, gender identification, marital status, and more. Its no wonder we are constantly exposed to advertisements that show us exactly what we need or what they can convince us we need. 3. This is your brain on shopping. This conditioning isnt just historical; its omnipotent and happening to you right now. It has morphed over the years to create an uncomfortable, unsustainable pattern that keeps industry overproducing, marketing playing on our emotions, and advertising driving us to buy because we dont feel good enough. The act of browsing merchandise initiates the release of dopamine, so what you sometimes conflate with a feeling of pleasure is really you being flooded by desire. Lets say youre a little stressed or excited when going out on a shopping trip. In that scenario, adrenaline enters the equation, heightening your senses and making you more impulsive. Youre essentially high, teetering between feeling in control and out of control, which ratchets up the dopamine release even more. The emotional high isnt meaningfully sustained. The interesting part about dopamine is that its released in anticipation of getting the thing you want. Before you even receive the item youre coveting, dopamine begins to Irish Goodbye, leaving you feeling . . . sort of empty. Thats why many shoppers regret buying many of their impulse purchases. The emotional high isnt meaningfully sustained. If you repeat this process regularly (aka: you shop at the same places around the same time), dopamine interacts with the part of the brain responsible for habit formation, recognizes your behavior as a pattern, and eventually automates it into a habit. In that way, impulsive shopping gets coded in your brain. This is biochemically similar to what happens when someone is addicted to drugs or alcohol. When you feel powerless over your shopping impulses, remember that youre wired to chase your next fix. 4. The No New Things solution. Help is on the way in the form of my 30-day No New Things Challenge, designed to help you build strong neural pathways that move you away from knee-jerk shopping and toward more sustainable, economical, circular ways of getting your needs met. Each day is designed with an action item and reflection that is relatively easy to do, but incredibly powerful for building a new relationship with shopping. You dont need any supplies or fancy connections to get started. Moreover, these action items help you extend the longevity of the things you already own, tap into gratitude for the abundance you already have, declutter your space and schedule, save loads of money, focus on your goals and dreams, and nurture the things that actually matter and make your life better. You dont need any supplies or fancy connections to get started. No New Things is as easy as turning off of the shopping tap and learning to redirect shopping impulses to healthier-for-you activities. 5. Make it stick. The rest of the book covers how to keep the No New Things mindset going as an enjoyable lifestyle. Youll hear from some of the people who have done the Challenge with remarkable results, from the family that saved enough money and got organized so they could adopt a little girl to the woman who saved a whopping $36,581 just from items she wanted to buy, tracked, and didnt. And yes, I consider that savings because she saved herself from spending that amount. No New Things gives you the tools, guidance, and support to shift your mindsets and habits, and in turn, live betterwhile also being better to others and the planet. Thousands have participated in No New Things before it was a book, so imagine the community doing the Challenge alongside you. Imagine the broader, powerful impact it can make. Getting closer to a more peaceful, prosperous, satisfying life while also upending epidemic overconsumption? Thats a win-win. This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.
Category:
E-Commerce
In the crypto world, meme coins are mostly just jokes with no intrinsic value. But the Trump family is parlaying the presidents meme coin into two valuable commodities: serious cash and access to the president. Since the coin was launched earlier this year, it has generated more than $320 million in fees for its creators, according to the blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis. And on Monday, Trump promoted a dinner hes set to attend on May 22 thats open to almost anyone who buys enough of the coins. According to the contests rules, the top 220 holders of the meme coin will get to go to the dinner at Trumps Washington-area golf club. The top 25 holders will also get to attend a reception where they can rub shoulders with Trump beforehand. Let the President know how many $TRUMP coins YOU own! the meme coin said on its website promoting the dinner. Trading activity in the meme coin jumped after the dinner was first announced and the price rose as well. But the Trumps dont need to sell any coins to make money. How Trump makes money off the meme coin Decentralization is foundational to cryptocurrency. Bitcoin, the worlds most popular crypto, was born in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis as a digital currency meant to be uncontrolled by banks or governments. Trump meme coins can be traded on a decentralized exchange, which is essentially a place where traders can swap goods without a middleman. Instead of matching buyers and sellers one by one, decentralized exchanges use something called a liquidity pool to ensure trades can happen easily and instantly. Liquidity pools are essentially an automated pot of funds that pair meme coins like $TRUMP with more popular types of crypto that can be easily traded. When the Trump meme coin was first launched, its creators initially released 20% of the planned 1 billion total coins. Half of that 20% was put up for public sale while the other half was put into a liquidity pool. CIC Digital, an affiliate of the Trump Organization, and another company receive trading revenue derived from trading activities of the Trump meme coins, according to its website. Through the liquidity pool, the creators of Trumps meme coins make money by charging tiny fees on each trade. You dont really care about what happens to the price. You only care that there is continuous volume, said Nicolai Sndergaard, a research analyst at the blockchain analytics firm Nansen. Because the more volume there is, that means more trades and therefore more fees for you. Since cryptocurrency blockchains are public, its possible to track how much in trading fees has been paid. Chainalysis said Trump meme coin creators made more than $1.3 million in trading fees in the week after the dinner was first announced. The value of the meme coin jumped from about $9 to around $14 just after the announcement. It was trading around $11 on Monday afternoon. Trump downplays profits Launched just before he took office, Trumps meme coin has become one of the most high-profile ways the norm-breaking president has mixed politics and his personal finances. The remaining 80% of Trumps meme coins, which are still under a lock-up, have been allocated to CIC Digital and another company. An ethics agreement prohibits Trump from day-to-day decision making at the Trump Organization when hes president and limits the financial information about the business that can be shared with him. During an interview with NBCs Meet the Press over the weekend, Trump said he didnt follow the price swings of his meme coin and dismissed the idea that he was profiting from the presidency. He also rejected a suggestion that he would forgo any profits made from his crypto endeavors. Should I contribute all of my real estate that Ive owned for many years if it goes up a little bit because Im president and doing a good job? I dont think so, Trump said. Heavy promotion The team behind Trumps meme coins has been aggressively trying to promote the chance to eat with the president. Good News! President Trump is allowing one more person to attend Dinner with Trump, the meme coins official account on X said last week, encouraging people to reply with memes featuring Trump. Our favorite $TRUMP memes will be shown to President Trump and we will pick 1 person who gets to come to the dinner on May 22nd! The creators have also tried to up the ante by offering $100,000 Trump-themed watches to the top four holders of Trumps meme coins. Unknown guests On Monday night, Trump hosted a closed-door Crypto & AI Innovators Dinner fundraiser sponsored by his MAGA Inc. super PAC at his golf club outside Washington. An invitation to the event that circulated online instructs those invited to pay $1.5 million per person to attend. The White House did not provide a list of attendees, though the super PAC eventually will be required to list donors in its regular public disclosures. Whether the public will ever know who bought their way into the meme coin dinner with the president is unclear, though. Unlike political donations that must be publicly reported, theres no disclosure requirement for meme coin buyers. Critics of Trumps foray into meme coins, which includes several Democrats, say the pseudonymous nature of cryptocurrency gives bad actors the opportunity to try and unduly influence the president through purchasing his digital assets. The Trump meme coin website assures those who register for the contest that their full legal name and contact information will never be publicly shown. Instead, registrants pick a username thats displayed on the websites leaderboard. The ranking is dependent not just on how many Trump meme coins someone holds, but also on how long. After No. 220, the board has a note of encouragement for those just below the cut to buy more of the meme coins. Youre so close. FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT for your $TRUMP dinner. Alan Suderman, AP business writer Associated Press reporter Will Weissert contributed.
Category:
E-Commerce
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