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This summer’s best evening light show is taking place tonight, so don’t forget to go outside and look up. Although the Perseid meteor shower doesn’t peak until next month, tonight is forecast to be the best time to view stars shoot across the night sky. Here’s why, and what to know about the upcoming meteor showers. What is a meteor shower? Meteor showers, or shooting stars, occur as Earth passes through the trail of dusty debris left by a comet, according to NASA. Meteor showers are usually named after a star or constellation close to where the meteors first appear. What’s happening tonight? Late each summer, the Perseids, and the lesser-known Delta Aquariids, meteor showers appear. This year, they’re forecast to run steadily from late July through early August. The first of the showers, the Southern Delta Aquariid and the Alpha Capricornids, are set to peak tonight, Tuesday, July 29, into tomorrow morning, Wednesday, July 30, according to the Associated Press. Visibility should be good because the moon is only about a quarter full, and sky-watchers could see some 20 to 30 meteors per hour, astronomer Nick Moskovitz of the Lowell Observatory in Arizona told National Public Radio. Perseid meteor shower set to peak in early August Meanwhile, the Perseid meteor shower is forecast to peak on Tuesday, August 12, into Wednesday, August 13, right after a full moon, meaning bright moonlight will likely obscure the view at its peak. NASA viewing tips for meteor showers Our friends at NASA offer these general tips for watching meteor showers: Find a viewing spot away from city or street lights. Lie flat on your back with your feet facing east. You may want to bring a blanket or a lounge chair. Look up, taking in as much of the sky as possible. After about 30 minutes in the dark, your eyes will adapt and you will begin to see meteors. Be patient. The show could last awhile, so you have plenty of time to catch a glimpse.
Category:
E-Commerce
Ancestry has acquired the home-movies-and-photos digitizer service iMemories, a bet by the genealogy company that subscribers who spend their money on DNA kits and pour their time into building family trees will be further enticed by visual storytelling that weaves all those details together. The transaction will combine Ancestry, which has more than 3.7 million subscribers and generates over $1 billion in subscription revenue annually, with iMemories, the Netflix of old family memories that has more than 100,000 paying subscribers and has digitized over 100 million memories from VHS videotapes, photo prints, DVDs, and other video formats. IMemories was also featured on the 2023 list of Fast Companys Most Innovative Companies. The goal is to bring all family storytelling together into one spot, says Howard Hochhauser, Ancestrys president and CEO, in an interview with Fast Company. Terms of the transaction werent disclosed, although Hochhauser says it is Ancestrys largest acquisition in terms of revenue. Blending records with memories By integrating iMemories’ content into Ancestrys platform, the combined company will build on a strategy spearheaded by Hochhauser to connect 10,000 terabytes of Ancestry data detailing birth records, marriages, deaths, military service, and immigration with archival family photos and videos. Over time, Ancestry says it will utilize artificial intelligence to weave together visuals from iMemories and Ancestrys own bank of user-uploaded content, as well as AI-created images, to produce short films that can tell family lore stories. When a consumer sees a photo versus say, a U.S. census, they retain better, higher engagement, higher retention, says Hochhauser, who first joined Ancestry in 2009 as chief financial officer and has served as an executive at the company for an initial public offering in 2009, a going-private transaction in 2012, and the 2020 sale to asset manager Blackstone. Turning dusty records into audio This week, and separate from the iMemories transaction, Ancestry is launching a beta AI-enabled pilot to around 500 users that can create audio files from the documents found on Ancestry. Hochhauser says these assets can be especially compelling for younger consumers. He shares an anecdote of how his own 18-year-old son showed little interest in an ancestors written tale of fighting in World War II. But when the text was converted into audio, Hochhauser says his son was on the edge of his seat when learning about a great uncles experience in battle, including throwing grenades and eventually earning a Purple Heart. Thats pretty powerful, Hochhauser says. And so thats the direction we are taking the company. Hochhauser says prior to the iMemories deal, Ancestry conducted research that found that 40% of its users said they wanted to have a digitization and storage service offered by the company. It also polled non-Ancestry users and found that a third of them shared the same sentiment. AI is speeding up history Ancestry is also leaning on AI to speed up the process of digitizing census data. Thirteen years ago, in 2012, when the U.S. Census Bureau released records for every living person in the country for the year 1940, it took the company nine months and millions of dollars to digitize all of that information. But when the 1950 files were released in 2022, technology had advanced to the point where Ancestry could use computer vision and AI to transcribe the files within nine days, without any manual labor. The company is using AI in a similar manner to comb through records from France, Belgium, and other foreign markets. Privacy concerns loom large The Ancestry-iMemories transaction does come at a heightened moment of consumer anxiety concerning the data protection of personal DNA information held by genomics companies. The 2023 data breach of rival 23andMe, which later fell into bankruptcy, inflamed fears about who would gain control of genetic information when one of these genealogy companies falters. People’s confidence has been shaken, in Big Tech overall, and also in consumer genomics, says Dr. Brandon Colby, the founder and CEO of Sequencing.com, a biotech company that performs whole genome sequencing. The need to be extra obvious about transparency is really important. There’s no room for people to go and assume that we’re trying to do something shady. Sequencing stresses the companys Privacy Forever commitment to consumers, which details that it sells no data to pharmaceutical companies, government agencies, or other outside parties, which is how some genomics companies generate revenue. Colby says Sequencing generates revenue from monthly subscriptions and by selling reports it produces based on genome sequencing that can show consumers details about their reaction to medications or offer tips on better sleep or nutrition strategies. Hochhauser echoes a similar refrain at Ancestry. Users control their own biological samples and DNA data, and have the freedom to delete that information from the service if theyd like. The same approach will be taken with the AI-related content that may be generated from iMemories data. It is up to users how they want to share it, he says. We are a family history company, Hochhauser says. Consumers own their data, control their data, and we have multifactor authentication, as an example, and lots of different security protocols in place to protect and preserve data.
Category:
E-Commerce
Seated across a table from me at a rented loft near Wall Street in late July, Beyond Meat CEO Ethan Brown is digging into a bowl of Beyond Ground, his companys latest product, which debuts July 29, goes on sale via the company’s website in August, and promises more protein per serving than beef. But this isnt just any product demo; its a company overhaul. With this launch, Beyond Meat is becoming merely Beyond and turning its focus away from mimicking animal proteins to letting plant-based proteins speak for themselves. The radical move is cultural, agricultural, and financial, and Brown wasnt shy in discussing how Beyond now lets the company compete across the grocery store, teasing what products hes developing, explaining how Silicon Valley money helped shape the public’s ambivalence toward alt meat, and sharing how studying Roman gladiators has influenced Beyonds new direction. Brown, who started the company in 2009 and took it public in a celebrated 2019 IPO, is so committed to Beyonds rebrand and its new product that he has been consuming Beyond Grounds main ingredientfava beansas his primary source of daily calories. I gotta let my body be my argument, he says, riffing on a famous quote by physician-philosopher Albert Schweitzer that greets Beyond employees who open the company manual. In an era when protein is suddenly being stuffed into everythingfrom chips to waffles to sodasBrown says he began to wonder: If youre the best in the world at making plant proteins, why confine yourself to the center of the plate? Without pressure to mimic the exact flavors and textures of beef, chicken, or pork, and without being limited to the center of the plate, or to the dinner table at all, he realized Beyond could get fanatical about the plant proteins themselves. And that will be why people reach for the Beyond brand, he predicts. Not for a facsimile, but something authentically us. The company won’t be sunsetting its existing products anytime soon. And last summer it debuted a line of Sun Sausages that was already a step in the veggie-forward direction. But now, for the first time in Beyonds history, it is offering a product that is stripped down to four clean ingredients: the fava beans, potato starch, water, and psyllium huskfiber from a desert herb prized for its ability to help control cholesterol, blood sugar, and, most crucially, protein absorption. A 1/4-pound serving of Beyond Ground contains 140 calories, 4 grams of fiber, 1.5 grams of fat, zero cholesterol and saturated fat, and no added oils. It has 27 grams of protein, more than a serving of beef. From Beyond Meat to ‘Beyond’ Beyond Meat launched a new industry in 2009 in order to leverage the magic of science to serve plant proteins that would not only taste like burgers and chicken nuggets, but actually surpass them in health and sustainability. Two years later, Impossible Burger surfaced and became its chief rival, initiating a race to offer vegans and everyone else hoping to eat less meat the most satisfying alternative at cookouts across the country. Their burgers bled, whereas companies before them (Quorn, Gardein, MorningStar Farms) sold vegetable patties that had corn kernels poking out or looked like Spam. For a decade, the burgers, chicken, ground beef, meatballs, and sausages from these two companies filled grocery meat aisles and restaurant chain menusfirst in America, then slowly overseas. But lately sales have fallen, causing a different new period for the category generally and Beyond in particular, as the sole publicly traded player. Worth almost $12 billion following its 2019 IPO, Beyonds valuation has hovered at or below $500 million since 2023. Impossible Burger has raised close to $2 billion to date; CEO Peter McGuiness told the Wall Street Journal last month that the company is not yet profitable. Several factors have contributed to the broader sectors declineproduct fatigue, taste expectations going unmet, questions about processed ingredients. Impossible Foodss McGuinness, whos taken flak from vegans since warning a month ago that, to drum up more business, I may do a hybrid burger thats 50% beef, believes that the alt-meat industry has done a lousy job with outreach, describing their messagings premise as equating to If you ate meat, you were a Neanderthal and adding: We were insulting meat eaters. But one theory he shares with Brown, and one I previously wrote extensively about for Fast Company, is that two of Americas most powerful industriesmeatpackers and the pharmaceutical giantsfelt so threatened by the categorys quick rise that they stoked fears about plant-based burgers posing health risks, and it kind of worked. (Big Pharmas interests boil down to the fact that farm animals receive well over half of all human antibiotics produced.) Attack ads blasting vegan meat products as ultra-processed imitations, asking if they differed from dog food, and arguing they contained chemicals that doubled as laxatives went viral as Instagram and TikTok memes. But Brown also points one finger backwards, partway at least. After grabbing Silicon Valleys attention, he says the plant-based meat category morphed into “something that was different from its origins. He says hes grateful, because we received a lot of funding, but Beyonds raison dtre quickly evolved into more of a lab thing and a technology thing. To develop Beyond Meats inaugural productdubbed Chicken-Free StripsBrown worked closely with the leading agriculture departments at the University of Missouri and the University of Maryland, two big land-grant universities. He also built rapports with farmers in the Midwest and Saskatchewan. But once the fake chicken started fooling Mark Bittman, investors from Bill Gates to Ev Williams and Biz Stone started doling out money to scale the disruptive technology. Ultimately, Brown says, it diverted consumers focus from [the realization that Beyonds plant-based meat] is closer to the field than the factory-farmed ingredients they’re used to eating. The irony is that, despite so much doubt being cast on alt-meat ingredients, the way people eat toay is, if anything, more prepackaged and tech-addled than ever. And thats why Brown believes this moment is just right for Beyonds redemption arc. He says his epiphany ranks among the most profound discoveries hes made in life, driving him to invoke Albert Schweitzer yet again, this time the passage Schweitzer wrote in Africa following a freak hippopotamus encounter that led to an “iron door” of understanding opening that showed him the path forward. The younger crowd might just call it a surge of galaxy-brain clarity. I thought, What were great at is making protein, he tells me. So, instead of thinking about a simple replacement for animal protein, what if you just thought about your daily protein consumption, and I started to try to replace as much of that as I can with plant protein, any form that I could? Enter the gladiators Fava beans, Brown says, are just the start. If you want something thats a ground product, here you have it, Brown says. (Beyond says three flavors will join the original variety in August: chipotle pineapple, Korean barbecue, and Tuscan tomato. The main product by itself is very neutral, reports Chris Petrellese, who runs Sweet Simple Vegan with his wife, Jasmine Briones and tested an early sample; he made it the star of a casserole and could imagine it being dehydrated into jerky or even blended it into smoothies.) Going forward, Brown says, the company can serve an occasion versus trying to mimic an animal. Youll see us come out with things like, maybe, lentil sausage. Or chickpea hot dogs. Brown hints at a specific new product that hes labored to develop for a while now but wont reveal: a packaged good totally unlike Beyonds previous offerings, destined for grocery store center aisles instead of the meat case. It boasts 30 grams of protein per serving and no fat, and Brown devours the product constantly (calling it cr-r-r-razy good). Beyond is all but certain to pursue a post-workout product, something Brown seems to tease as we worked through our Beyond Ground tasting. He stresses how much reading hes done lately on Roman gladiators. And then, while rattling off the agronomic virtues of fava beanshow theyre good nitrogen fixers, dont require fertilizer, and regenerative by defaulthe lets slide that they also have this amazing and romantic [link to] gladiators! It turns out that bone analysis has revealed that Romes elite athletes ate a mostly vegetarian dietof fava beans, red lentils, and barley. That a decadent, ill-fated society cheered as these powerful warriors fell in the amphitheater surely widens their underdog appeal. As Brown requests an extra bowl of Beyond Ground to consume by itself during the tasting, I note that he himself fits the part as someone whos 6-foot-5 and fit. He once told Mens Health he enjoys bench press because theres an element of not being sure you can do it. The rise in recent years of fitness culture, wellness marketing, and protein-forward products has propelled a pivot from three square meals a day toward what are often called intentional eating occasionspost-workout recovery snacks, meal-replacement shakes, even intentionally not eating (for 18:6, the Warrior Diet, etc.). A whole generation is learning to pick foods based on their function and ratio of macros, meaning the strategic tally of fat to carbs to seemingly exponentially more protein, playing to what the New York Times recently called retails protein arms race. For Brown, this represents an opportunity to claim new territory. He argues that the crowd craving red meat, collagen keto snacks, and extra-protein milkmaybe with a side of tradwifeis chasing a false nostalgia for a natural America that has been undone by industrial agriculture. In his view, it was a Big Meat/Big Pharma industrial complex that killed the same agrarian ideal people believe they’re tapping into when they purchase a bag of bison liver chips. Theres a longing for animal protein because we associate it with simpler times, Brown says. But how its being delivered to us is not [simple]. He is positioning Beyond as far as possible from an agricultural system that has shown itself willing to decimate the land, reengineer the livestock, and market the outcome as something pure and authentic. Magic beans As Beyond repositions itself to be an anytime protein source, its poised to compete directly against a new generation of recovery snack brands. Market research firm Mintel has said from 2013 to 2024, the number of food and beverage products carrying a high protein label quadrupled. A new survey released by Bain, titled Peak Protein? Not Even Close, found that 44% of Americans want to increase their protein intake even furthera 10-point jump from 2024. Recently valued at $725 million, Davidco-created by RXBars founder and relentlessly plugged by podcaster Andrew Hubermanhas released a new product that is nothing but raw, frozen cod, sold in $50 four-packs, perhaps as a dramatic way of proving how well its popular bars stack up in terms of protein content. The presumed stunt shows how companies are scrambling for consumer attention. Brown is unfazed. Right now, the protein industry largely consists of one product category created for the clean-eating protein purists who reject fake food and carefully scour labels, and a second category for the protein-maxxers who, in a single day, might devour Kodiak Frozen Power Waffles (12 grams of protein), Wilde chicken-breast chips (13 grams), a Bucked Up protein soda (25 grams), and a Fairlife Core Power shake (26 grams). The fewest number of ingredients that any of these products contains is 10and thats the soda. The highest number is 28. Among them are gums, gels, and substances such as bovine collagen hydrolysate and acesulfame potassium. Yet a third group is emerging that wants clean, thoughtful high-protein ingredients of the sort Beyond just relaunched to focus on. The companys fava beans actually come from one family farm in Munich, North Dakota. Five generations of Zimmers have worked this land. Just last week, Brown stood with them amid their fava rows. He called up a photo for me to see. That field used to have cattle, he says, gesturing to the tableau of green now sprouting up in all directions. Then he segues into the wolves, bison, and elk that were wiped from these plains, casualties of an extractive farming style farming that in turn helped trigger the Dust Bowl. Later, Brown puts it more directly in an email. We can restore nature, he writes. But first we have to give it a chance to live again.
Category:
E-Commerce
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