Saturday, April 4

SHOPPING

Sustainability Crisis In The Fashion Industry May Be Solved By The Boom In Secondhand Clothing Sales
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FASHION STYLE & BEAUTY

Sustainability Crisis In The Fashion Industry May Be Solved By The Boom In Secondhand Clothing Sales

A massive force is reshaping the fashion industry: secondhand clothing. According to a new report, the U.S. secondhand clothing market is projected to more than triple in value in the next 10 years – from US$28 billion in 2019 to US$80 billion in 2029 – in a U.S. market currently worth $379 billion. In 2019, secondhand clothing expanded 21 times faster than conventional apparel retail did. Even more transformative is secondhand clothing’s potential to dramatically alter the prominence of fast fashion – a business model characterized by cheap and disposable clothing that emerged in the early 2000s, epitomized by brands like H&M and Zara. Fast fashion grew exponentially over the next two decades, significantly altering the fashion landscape by producing more clothing, distributing it fa...
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Reasons Why You Should Read Romance Novels
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BOOKS

Reasons Why You Should Read Romance Novels

Aw yeah, a good romance novel on a Friday night. Favorite drink,maybe some chips and here we go. Here are more reasons why you should be reading romance novels. They Taper Into Different Types of Loves Romance novels are great at diversifying love relationships. We can indulge in stories about billionaires, witches, shape-shifters, old people, young people, teenagers, secretaries, men, women, royals, commoners, clergymen, colleagues, and everyone else falling in love. There are so many sub-genres to choose from. You will have plenty of interesting options, and you will never get bored. Your Expectations Are Played With You will never know what you might get hit with when it comes to a good romance novel. The twists are unexpected. People who show an aversion to romance novels think t...
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Chess is taking over the online video game world – and both are changing from this unlikely pairing
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VIDEO GAMES

Chess is taking over the online video game world – and both are changing from this unlikely pairing

As a global pandemic continues to determine a new normal, tens of thousands of viewers have been tuning in to watch people play chess on a livestreaming website called Twitch.tv. An American chess grandmaster, Hikaru Nakamura, along with a number of celebrities of the video game world, is leading a renaissance in the ancient game. While viewers eagerly await Nakamura’s streams to begin, they are treated to a slideshow of memes involving Nakamura’s face superimposed into scenes from pop culture. First a reference to a well-known Japanese animation, next a famous upside-down kiss with Spiderman and finally, Nakamura’s characteristic grin is edited onto the Mona Lisa herself. From Aug. 21 to Sept. 6, Twitch and Chess.com are hosting a tournament, called Pogchamps, where some of the most pop...
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4 weird things that happen when you videoconference
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TECH

4 weird things that happen when you videoconference

As the COVID-19 pandemic forces many U.S. colleges and universities to move their courses online, connecting online via video is now having its moment. Family, friends, neighbors and even TV talk-show hosts are now meeting and broadcasting from home. Meanwhile, Microsoft, Google and Zoom are struggling to meet the demand for their videoconferencing services. People have long noticed, however, that some peculiar things happen in videoconferencing. A magazine mentioned its “bizarre intimacy.” Jaron Lanier, who is considered the “father of virtual reality,” once remarked that it “seems precisely configured to confound” nonverbal communication. As an educational technology researcher, I have explored these and other subtle but strange elements of videoconferencing. I do this through phenome...
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Glittery Hair Trends
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FASHION STYLE & BEAUTY

Glittery Hair Trends

Glittery hair treatments are gaining interest. Carol Conti, an artist residing near Asheville, North Carolina, visited Florida in December and noticed sparkling strands in her friends’ hair. She learned it was called fairy hair, or hair tinsel, colorful iridescent strands that attach to strands of actual hair. “Once applied, the strands can last anywhere from two weeks to two months, as they fall out when your actual hair does. It can even keep up with your daily activity — heat, water, sweat, you name it,” confirmed purewow.com in a December 2018 report on fairy hair. “Being more conservative, I wasn’t so sure,” said Conti, 65, “but they [friends] convinced me to at least get a few strands. I felt festive for the holidays and received a lot of compliments, and here it is March and I s...
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A People’s History of Board Games
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GAMES

A People’s History of Board Games

If games are a reflection of our values as a society, and can influence how we think and act, can we game our way to a better world? We are living in the golden age of board games. Thousands of new board games are released every year, played by millions of people around the world. Board games, filled with strategy and exciting tension, have made a decisive comeback even in the era of video games. By 2023, the board game industry is expected to be worth $12 billion. And in 2018, tabletop games outperformed video games on the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter: Tabletop games raised a total of $165 million, while video games raised a total of $15.8 million. Like all forms of art and entertainment, games are often a reflection of our values as a society, and they can also inf...
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How to secure your home surveillance cameras
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TECH

How to secure your home surveillance cameras

The easiest way for a hacker to gain access to something is to guess the username and password of the device’s administrative account Hackers are breaking into home security cameras, and the process isn’t always as difficult as you may think. In December, there were reports of hackers gaining access to Ring security cameras in Tennessee, Mississippi, Florida and Texas. And cybersecurity experts say incidents like these aren’t very complex to execute because people often use passwords that are easily guessed. “The easiest way for a hacker to gain access to something is to guess the username and password of the device’s administrative account,” said Brian Vecci, chief technology officer at the data protection company Varonis. “That’s the most common way to get hacked.” He said bad acto...
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All Out Talent War Set Off By Video Gaming YouTuber
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VIDEO GAMES

All Out Talent War Set Off By Video Gaming YouTuber

Tyler Blevins switched from video site Twitch to Mixer and by doing so shocked the $152bn video-game industry. On Aug. 1, a rail-thin 28-year-old with hair dyed red, white and blue altered the course of video gaming with three words: “The next chapter.” That tweet introduced a video in which Tyler Blevins, known to his fans as Ninja, announced he was moving from Twitch, a video site owned by Amazon.com Inc., to Mixer, a rival site owned by Microsoft Corp. “This is a really good chance to get back in touch with my roots,” Blevins said in the video, a mock press conference in which he answered questions from a talking bush and a cooler filled with the energy drink Red Bull. Blevins’s defection shocked the $152 billion video-game industry. Twitch is the most popu...
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Fortnite’s black hole teases the future of entertainment
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VIDEO GAMES

Fortnite’s black hole teases the future of entertainment

As audiences have embraced on-demand video services, algorithmic feeds, and an ever-growing number of digital “things to do,” our collective attentions have become hyper-fragmented. Yet we know that audiences actually love shared live experiences. Jeopardy is more fun watched with others. Movies are funnier in a packed theater. It’s hard to enjoy sporting events that happened hours earlier The durability of this appeal spans generations: Boomers watched the moon landing together, Generation X witnessed the end of M*A*S*H, and millennials recently collectively viewed (and complained about) the ending to Game of Thrones. Each generation might prefer different content, but we all love to watch it together and live. There’s no better proof of these two points than the recent #FortniteBlackout...
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What you should know if your smart TV makes you feel dumb
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TECH

What you should know if your smart TV makes you feel dumb

If it seems as though televisions have gotten very complicated very fast, it’s not just you. Sometimes smart technology can make us feel, well, dumb. You must contend with a number of abbreviations — LCD, OLED, HDR, HDMI and more — and widely varying price points. What does it all mean, and why can’t we just go buy a TV? To break it down, we talked to technology experts, a deals guru and an interior design expert — because you shouldn’t need a degree in TV to binge-watch “Stranger Things.” LCD vs. OLED Despite the letters that swim before your eyes at the big-box stores, there are basically only two options for TVs: LCD (liquid crystal display) and OLED (organic light-emitting diode). LCDs (sometimes called “QLED” or “LED LCD”), which illuminate pixels using a central lamp, are generall...
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