#commercialization

#commercialization

Though its origins are religious, you probably know the advent calendar as a humble grocery-store product that features chocolates hidden behind 24 perforated cardboard doors. That sugary countdown to Christmas dates back to the 1950s when the first chocolate versions came on the scene. Cadbury started mass marketing them in 1971 as tools to engage children with the Christian tradition of Advent, says Canadian marketing expert Robert Warren, who closely follows Christmas trends.

The United States was chosen, the columnist George Vecsey wrote in the New York Times in 1994, because of all the money to be made here, not because of any soccer prowess. Our country has been rented as a giant stadium and hotel and television studio. Nobody could seriously doubt that. The USA had played in only two World Cups since the second world war and hadn't had a national professional league for a decade.

Flying often first requires crawling, in a car, in slow or stopped traffic that eventually treats you to a view of airplanes soaring away from your ground-anchored vehicular misery. After decades of hype about flying cars, the past 10 years have seen a pivot to something of a car-plane hybrid: an electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft that provides taxi-like service.

Yoga's introduction to the West began in the late 1800s, but it wasn't until the early 1990s that yoga began to gain in pop culture popularity. Suddenly, yoga was everywhere. Celebrities including Sting (featured on a YJ cover in December 1995), Madonna, and Oprah touted the benefits of the practice; magazines began to feature the practice, noting its benefits in health and fitness columns; and it started to show up in movies and sitcoms.

Did you rush off to the gym to lift weights then to a pilates class to keep you healthy for ever? Did you remember your MHT (menopause hormone therapy the now widely accepted term for HRT) pill, patch, gel, pessary, suppository or cream, trusting your GP or private clinic to be prescribing for you and only you, grateful that finally medication has made a difference for you?

This is the market laid bare, with all of its champagne, ludicrous outfits and obscene excess on brazen display for anyone willing to fork out a wodge on a ticket. That's what reviews of Frieze generally complain about, all the greedy capitalistic knives being stabbed into the heart of their beloved, pure art. But Frieze, and the more refined Frieze Masters, isn't really about art.

In the UK, a graphene-enhanced, low-carbon concrete was laid at a Northumbrian Water site in July, developed by the Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre (GEIC) at the University of Manchester and Cemex UK. The material when it came out of academia was hyped to death but the challenge is going from lab to fab, says Ben Jensen, the chief executive of 2D Photonics, a startup spun out from the University of Cambridge that makes graphene-based photonic technology for datacentres.

I had high hopes for this album, because Swift was finally returning to the producers she used for 1989 and Reputation. I've listened to her music since we were both in high school, and my body remembers the anticipation it felt before some of her better albums, and the ecstasy of having that anticipation rewarded with an LP full of bangers.

The recent stomp clap discourse sparked a lot of conversations about how the divisive 2010s subgenre grew out of 2000s indie-folk, and the evolution (and "gentrification") of the latter is actually something that Stereogum managing editor Chris DeVille tackles in his upcoming book Such Great Heights: The Complete Cultural History of the Indie Rock Explosion, which comes out this Tuesday (8/26) via St. Martin's Press.

Commercializing inventions requires not only capital but also an emotional investment by the inventors. Visionaries pay for that ambition with insomnia, time away from family, and job insecurity.

This partnership unlocks new avenues to further destigmatize weed - at a pivotal moment in the industry's evolution, said DJ Saul, CEO of Khalifa Kush.

Parks are open to everyone, except during festivals, and they're essential for building community through egalitarian access. Events companies often exploit these spaces, causing long-term damage.