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He told me his real name when he walked up to my tent for the first time, but I never remembered it. He wanted everyone to call him by his carny name: Mr. Blockhead. His head did look like a block. Something had happened to it. I didn’t ask, and he didn’t say.

Which was strange because he was happy to talk about his other quirks. Like his teeth, which were little chips. They barely poked out of his gums. “I wore them down eating glass and lightbulbs,” he said in a high-pitched nasal voice. He also told me why he walked with a limp: “Broke my spine when the beam from a Ferris wheel I was puttin’ together broke loose and swung into me.” Mr. Blockhead looked about 40 years old, and his hair grew out in patchy tufts. He had deep wrinkles on his face from years of working in the sun.

I was 17 years old. My friend’s grandfather, who everyone called Pop, owned the carnival, which traveled around agricultural towns in Colorado and Wyoming. Pop hired Mr. Blockhead on the spot because he needed somebody to run the dime toss. The other dime toss operator was an alcoholic and rarely showed up for work. Pop offered Mr. Blockhead the same pay everyone else got: one-third of the money you collected, minus the cost of the prizes people won. I often cleared over $100 on a busy weekend night. That was good money in 1978.

Pop and everyone else in the carnival treated Mr. Blockhead like dirt, even though he never complained and was always cheerful. Pop’s wife would yell at him to fetch stuff from the trailer and yell at him some more when he didn’t limp fast enough. I felt sorry for him. 

The coin toss tent was about twenty feet away from my basketball toss tent. I’d hear his whiny voice as he tried to lure people to his tent. He used all sorts of carny jargon when he talked to the other carnival employees. 

Mr. Blockhead disappeared while we were in Leadville, Colorado for a week. He just stopped showing up for work. A couple of days later, I saw a hand-written note posted in a biker bar window on Harrison Avenue: “MR BLOCKHEAD. FIRE AND GLASS EATING.” I went into the bar and asked the bartender about it. Before she had the chance to tell me, a skinny guy with long hair, wireframe glasses, and a droopy mustache sitting on a stool at the bar, drinking a bottle of beer at 10 in the morning, told me that Mr. Blockhead had performed in the bar a few nights earlier, and the crowd had turned on him. They’d stripped him naked and threw him into the street. Mr. Blockhead ran down Harrison Avenue, covering his crotch with his hands.

The biker pointed to a stuffed moose head mounted on the wall. It had a pair of underwear hanging from its antlers. “Those are his,” he said. He laughed, showing long yellow teeth. “He was one strange motherfucker.”

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When Desmond Collins was in his 20s, he cycled between low-paying jobs at places like McDonald’s and Taco Bell, grasping for any opportunity, he said, to “make enough money where you’re not pulling your hair out.”  

Everything changed when Collins bumped into a family friend who introduced him to carpentry. 

The first few years weren’t easy: The physical labor was taxing, and Collins had to prove himself among more experienced workers. As a Black man, he faced discrimination when applying to jobs.

Nevertheless, after a four-year apprenticeship, Collins, who is now 57, embarked on a successful career that has seen him work for a union, nonunion companies, and finally as his own boss. His annual salary has reached up to $75k — enough to buy a house in a suburb between San Diego and Los Angeles, vacation in Mexico, and save money. 

“It’s opened up so much of the world and so many possibilities for me that it totally changed my life,” Collins said. 

Talk to a lot of carpenters, and they’ll express similarly warm feelings about their job. It’s the rare profession that doesn’t require an expensive education, yet offers decent pay. It’s largely unaffected by automation or globalization. And aside from occasional downturns, carpenters are in steady demand.  

Yet in America, there aren’t many people following the career trajectory of Collins.

Collins on the job in San Diego (courtesy of Desmond Collins)

Even among the other construction trades, which have long faced retention and recruitment problems and for which there were ~400k unfilled jobs in March, carpentry stands out for its shortages. Builders have more trouble finding carpenters than roofers, electricians, or just about anything else, and by a wide margin.  

At the same time, carpentry also stands out for its importance. 

“They’re indispensable for really any kind of residential construction project,” Paul Emrath, VP of surveys and housing policy research for the National Association of Home Builders, told The Hustle.

As people reckon with expensive real estate amid a national housing shortage and endure long wait times for repairs and remodeling, the question is more important than ever: Why doesn’t America have enough carpenters?

Reeling from the Great Recession

 

You don’t have to look hard to find Americans trying and failing to hire carpenters during almost any era. Shortages popped up on a regional basis as far back as the 1940s and became entrenched nationally in the ’90s.  

Since then, one of the only reprieves from the shortage was when the financial crisis hit in 2008. There was no longer a scarcity of carpenters because hardly anybody was building. As soon as construction slightly bounced back, in 2011, builders began worrying about a shortage of carpenters again. 

Many of the carpenters who lost their jobs in the financial crisis left the industry for good. And now that home construction is approaching pre-Great Recession levels, the shortages have reached new highs.

In 2018, a survey by the National Association of Home Builders revealed 90% of single-family builders reported a shortage of rough carpenter subcontractors.

Those numbers were even higher in the NAHB’s most recent poll from last November. Builders were finding it harder to hire the 3 types of carpenters than any other building trade.

Zachary Crockett / The Hustle

“Wherever we are in terms of shortages of labor, the shortages are always the most acute and widespread for the categories of carpenters,” Emrath said.

The carpenter shortage could be worse were it not for pandemic-rooted supply issues, Emrath added. Homebuilders would need even more carpenters if it didn’t take them several months to procure enough lumber to start a new house.  

But the shortage of carpenters has still led to construction delays and higher expenses for builders.

As Ed Brady, president of the Home Builders Institute, told the website Bankrate, he used to pay carpenters $2.50 per square foot to frame a house and now pays nearly 3x as much — a cost that is passed on to consumers.

Yet even with rising wages, carpenters find they’re not making enough money.

Why carpenters make far less than plumbers

If you compare the median wage of a carpenter to a fast-food worker, a bus driver, or a real estate agent, carpentry wins. But if you compare carpenter pay to almost any other building trade, the other trade comes out on top. 

A recent analysis of US Bureau of Labor Statistics data by the NAHB indicated carpenters, with median annual earnings at $48k, ranked last in median pay out of 19 of the most common trades. 

Zachary Crockett / The Hustle

The lower wages of carpenters have been consistent for generations, although the difference between them and other popular trades was previously not as drastic.

In the mid-1920s, for instance, an average carpenter made ~5% less than an average electrician. The difference now is ~14%. The pay gap has also grown between carpenters and plumbers. 

Zachary Crockett / The Hustle

“You have to look at it as underpaid in relation to almost any other sector… in terms of what you’re putting in and what you’re getting out financially,” said Ethan James, a carpenter who runs the YouTube account “The Honest Carpenter.”

James used to operate his own business in the Raleigh, North Carolina, area, allowing him to make more than union carpenters and carpenters who work for construction companies.

He typically signed on for projects that paid him ~$60 an hour. But his rates still lagged behind what independent plumbers ($80-$130 per hour), electricians ($75-$120 per hour), and HVAC technicians ($120-$180 per hour) commanded in the same region, according to James.

He sees a few reasons for why carpenters make less money than their peers in the trades: 

• Extensive nature of the job: Carpenter projects, both remodels and new builds, often take weeks or months, whereas plumbers and electricians can finish jobs in a matter of hours. James says it’s hard to charge for higher amounts over longer periods of time. 
• Lower barrier to entry: Carpenters do not have to go through an extensive licensing process in most states, as electricians and plumbers do. In Raleigh, James says anybody can buy a tool belt and call themselves a carpenter. 

Ethan James muses about the construction industry and shares carpentry tips for 603k followers on YouTube. (Courtesy of Ethan James) 

But despite that lower barrier to entry, carpenters still have to pick up skills that are as difficult to master as those required in higher-paying trades, while risking injury. Knee pain led to James stopping his carpenter business to focus on his popular YouTube channel. (Collins also recently stopped working because of injuries.)

“Why is anybody going to do [carpentry] anymore if they can make money doing something else, especially better money even doing another trade?” James asked.

Coupled with the Great Recession-spurred exit of carpenters from the workforce, the salary gap counts as an economic reason for America’s carpenter shortage. But there are also cultural reasons for why carpenter numbers have been low for so long.

Disenfranchising women and Black workers

Nickeia Hunter was inspired by construction at a young age, dreaming of turning raw materials into something communities can use forever. But her father warned that she would never make it.

“My dad kept it prevalent in my mind that it wasn’t a space I’d be brought into,” Hunter told The Hustle. “And he was right.” 

Most young carpenters face hazing when they start out, but Hunter, like many Black and female carpenters, dealt with racial animosity and isolation. One time, she says, 2 carpenters pulled back a two-by-four piece of lumber and let it slap her in the face. 

Between the verbal and physical abuse and the failure of the experienced carpenters to provide instruction, it took her 7 years to finish an apprenticeship that was supposed to take 4 years.

To get the other workers to train her and eventually rise to the level of foreman, Hunter says she “had to conform to be an asshole” and laugh at the racist and sexist jokes she regularly heard. 

Nickeia Hunter says she’s seen “plenty of people leave” carpentry after dealing with abuse and discrimination as apprentices. (Courtesy of Nickeia Hunter)

Collins, who wrote The Black Carpenter’s Guide, experienced similar racism in the San Diego area.

He recalls instances where leaders at union job sites would tell him no work was available, only to hear from a co-worker that the leadership was bringing on everyone except Black carpenters. When he did get jobs, he would often be excluded from higher-paying positions like foreman. 

“They just want you to show up and be happy and keep your mouth shut,” Collins said. “That’s pretty much it in a nutshell.”  

Carpentry is not the only trade plagued by systemic racism and sexism. But the few diversity statistics available indicate its problem may be worse than other trades, preventing carpentry from attracting a wide enough pool of prospective workers. 

• According to HBI, a nonprofit partner of the National Association of Home Builders, 30% of carpenters are foreign-born. The share of painters, roofers, drywall installers, and cement masons is 39% or higher.  
• BLS data shows that only 3% of carpenters are women. Women make up 47% of America’s workforce overall, but just 11% of construction professions.
• ~6% of carpenters are Black, according to the BLS, which is in line with the rest of the construction industry and below the share of Black employees represented in the entire economy (~12%). 

Collins building a home (courtesy of Desmond Collins)

Last December, Hunter left her union carpenter job. She now works for the Oregon Tradeswomen as a culture change liaison in its RISE Up program. 

The organization’s mission is to train construction leaders on diversity and inclusion, so they’ll be better prepared to mentor trades workers in less hostile environments. 

“Construction will not make it if they cannot diversity their front,” Hunter said.

Can carpentry be saved?

People who work in or study the trades find a reason for the carpenter shortage that stands above nearly everything else: exposure.

For generations, young people have been encouraged to place college above work in the trades (and to see college as a binary choice separate from the trades), stigmatizing the work and decimating the programs that once introduced teenagers to carpentry and other skills. 

As a result, hardly anyone picks up a saw at a young age. Most people never even watch somebody engage in carpentry or have any idea what it takes to become a carpenter.  

“There isn’t much of an obvious pathway at all,” said Sarah Smith, co-founder of Sawhorse Revolution, a Seattle-based nonprofit that provides community and education for young carpenters.

And many former paths have closed. In Seattle, Smith notes, 17 public high schools once had wood shop classes, a number that shrunk to 3. Because of recent budget cuts, the future of Seattle Central College’s Wood Technology Center is in limbo.

Ever so slightly, though, Smith sees heightened opportunities around carpentry from other sources. 

• One of the Seattle high schools that dropped wood shop, for instance, resuscitated the program, bringing the number of schools with wood shop to 4. 
• Several states have increased funding for career and technical education in recent years. 
• Nationwide enrollment in construction programs at the high school level has rebounded to 2007 levels after being on the decline for several years. 

Zachary Crockett / The Hustle

There’s also the TikTok and Instagram factor. 

For the last 20 years, the US has been awash in reality TV programming centered on houses. But those television shows have usually glorified designers and realtors rather than the people who actually build and renovate homes. 

Social media has added a new dimension. Instead of sticking to quick before-and-after characterizations like on TV, carpenter influencers reveal the nuances of their trade, showing viewers the actual work it takes to create something.

“That’s the part that I find some solace in,” said Mischa Fisher, chief economist at Angi, “knowing that there are now people on Instagram that have a million followers, and they’re in the trades. That’s amazing.”   

But it will still take immense work for the cultural and macroeconomic trends that have created America’s carpenter shortage to be reversed. 

And if they’re not, James, who is “The Honest Carpenter” on YouTube, warns that average people struggling with high prices and a record low number of houses on the market should prepare for more of the same in the future. 

“A lot of it’s going to land on homeowners and consumers,” he said. “They’re just not going to be able to get anything done, and they’re just going to pay exorbitant rates.”

It’s hard to argue with the fact that baseball is boring.

In 2020, the average MLB game lasted over 3 hours, but saw fewer hits than almost any season since 1909. Representative of this struggle was a recent Oakland A’s game that saw just 2,488 fans (the stadium can fit ~57k).

So, perhaps it’s not surprising that one minor league team, with the singular goal of doing the opposite of whatever is normal in baseball, has sold out every game since its founding in 2016…

… starting with making it fun

You can think of the Savannah Bananas as baseball’s Harlem Globetrotters. Games include:

• Pitchers pitching on stilts, batters batting while doing a “banana split,” and a coach doing ballet.
• Grandma cheerleaders known as the “Banana Nanas.”
• No ads — the team removed corporate ads from the stadium, and 97% of revenue now comes from fans.
• Free food — every ticket is general admission and includes food. Food!

The team views its stadium as an entertainment venue, with “stages” being the parking lot, entrance, concourse, seats, and field. The Bananas’ TikTok has exploded and now has ~3x as many followers (2.7m) as the most popular MLB team.

They’re also led by a business strategist

In his podcast, Bananas founder Jesse Cole explains the team’s mindset for constant innovation. It includes themes like:

• Creativity: The team hosts monthly “Ideapalooza” brainstorms and Cole visits places like Disney for inspiration.
• Entrepreneurship: Cole embraces a practice from 3M, the $83B company behind Post-it Notes, in which every new product line is expected to generate 25% of revenue within 5 years. For the Bananas, they’ve tested stuff like a banana cream soda.
• Community: Staff make 300k calls a year to thank fans, merchandisers, and other partners.

The Bananas now have a 15k-person waitlist for tickets. The organization has also been named a top employer in sports.

Want more? Check out ESPN’s feature on the Bananas.

After trying your first smart device, you quickly discover the extra convenience, comfort, and even fun—using a simple voice command and having your lights instantly shut off is a unique thrill. But those sorts of remote-control-like interactions are just scratching the surface of what your smart-home devices can do. Most smart devices allow you to set them up to function so that they trigger automatically via a wonky-sounding technology called geofencing. That simply means enabling your smart devices to automatically activate when you leave home or return—an event that is (usually) determined by the location of your smartphone. For example, you can configure your smart home to automatically lock your front door and turn off the AC when you leave and turn on your lights when you pull into the driveway at night.

Simple Baked Barbecue Chicken Recipe Keeps You Out of the Heat  30Seconds.com

Heading to the shore and planning to drive on sand? You're gonna want a vehicle that moves all of its wheels. That vehicle should also be really, really cool.

Here is my third attempt to convince readers that charcoal grilling is much easier than they think.

In my previous blogs, “Lamb Kebabs and Smoked Mac “N” Cheese Made Easy on the Spark Grill” and “Smoke Roasted Berry Crisp On Spark Precision Charcoal Grill,” I highlighted the benefits and features of the new Spark Precision Grill. Here, I will present one of the best features of the Spark Grill… grilled pizza in minutes!

Using the Spark Grill

Spark has created a revolutionary new grill that’s a game-changer. It combines the convenience of a gas grill’s turn-the-dial temperature control with the flavor of charcoal… letting you focus more on the culinary play, rather than the time-consuming and messy start-up process.

Spark designed a charcoal “briq” that fuels the grill. Yes, one charcoal briq gets the job done. The charcoal briq is placed in a front-loading drawer, and with a turn-of-the-dial, the briq is “sparked” up. Spark makes a variety of briqs to pair with your cooking so you can grill, smoke, and even make pizza.

Once the charcoal briq is ignited, turn the dial to your desired cooking temperature. Spark recommends leaving the lid open for 5 to 10 minutes to allow the plant-based accelerant to burn off. On average, it takes 10 minutes for the Spark to come up to temperature. So, you get the benefits of charcoal with the convenience of a gas grill.

The Spark comes with wide cast-iron grates for superior caramelization and the grill marks Steven prizes. The Spark is well-constructed using double-walled porcelainized enamel and insulated steel. The Spark even has an app that allows you to monitor the grill and your food via Bluetooth technology.

Spark’s variety of briqs include the quick, the everyday, the high heat, and the “low and slow” briq. You select a briq based on the expected duration of your cook and the temperature you need. The Spark grill can reach 900 degrees with the high heat briq—perfect for grilling pizza.

Spark is offering Barbecue Bible readers an exclusive discount of $150 off any of their grill packages through July 5th. Use code BBQ150 on their site for the deal.

To get started, I removed the cast-iron grates and inserted the ceramic pizza stone. Next, I placed the high heat briq in the front-loading charcoal drawer and turned the temperature control to ignite. I set the temperature for 850 degrees. From previous cooks on the Spark grill, I knew it would be ready in 10 minutes. It was time to prepare my pizza.

Making the Pizza

If you really want an authentic-tasting pizza, I recommend making your own dough for the pizza. But, picking up dough at your local pizza place works as well and matches the convenience and speed at which the Spark grill cooks your pizza.

I followed Steven’s Honey Beer Pizza Dough recipe for my dough. I shaped the dough with my hands on a floured cutting board. My plan was to make a Margherita pizza, one of my wife’s favorites.

I first spread a thin layer of my homemade tomato sauce on the dough. I topped it with grated mozzarella cheese. I prefer to grate my cheese rather than adding larger pieces of cheese since I can cover more of the pizza with cheese. I also added freshly cracked black pepper. I decided to wait to add my basil to the pizza until the end of the cooking process so it would not burn while on the grill.

I recommend flouring the pizza peel or dusting it with cornmeal to prevent the pizza from sticking to the peel when you slide the pizza onto the pizza stone. The Spark Grill Chef’s package comes with the pizza stone and peel included.

The pizza slid on the stone with ease and I could hear the dough starting to cook immediately due to the heat created by the high heat charcoal briq. I kept the lid of the grill closed for two minutes to maintain the heat. After just two minutes, I could see the edges of the dough crisping up and the cheese melting. I closed the lid for another 30 seconds and then added my basil. Total cooking time was only 3 minutes. I recommend going light with your toppings so everything cooks evenly and quick.

I still recommend making your own dough, but if you picked up dough on your way home from work, you could be eating a delicious (almost all homemade) pizza in less than 15 minutes.

I drizzled olive oil over the top of the pizza and sliced it with a pizza wheel cutter. One of the factors I consider when evaluating a pizza is the crust. The high heat of the pizza stone created a light and crispy crust. It was spot on! The cheese was melted and creamy and the sauce had a subtle sweetness. The basil and black pepper provide a freshness and cut the heaviness from the cheese. The ultimate result is achieved when you get the crispy crust, the gooey cheese, the flavorful sauce, and the fresh basil all in one bite.

The Spark grill fitted with the pizza stone would make for a great summer pizza party. All Spark grills come with a cutting board that fits on the side table. You could cook a variety of pizzas quickly, slice the pizzas on the cutting board, and serve your guests right from the grill. You could even put out all the topping and let people create their own pizzas. Pizza toppings are only limited by your imagination.

Are you convinced yet? If not, I’ll be back with future blogs to highlight the ease of charcoal grilling on the Spark Precision Grill.

Do you love pizza on the grill as much as we do? Let us know on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, or Instagram!

The post Grilled Pizza in Less Than 5 Minutes! appeared first on Barbecuebible.com.

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Who needs a Land Cruiser? Nick Hanlon turned a beat-up Porsche into the ultimate off-road adventure car

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While we all love stuff, we firmly believe that people and businesses can do more with less in their day-to-day lives.

Attaboy in New York takes the top spot.

Tales of the treasured South American-born, Southern-bred vegetable (yes, vegetable)

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Nobody crafts knives quite like Quintin Middleton. Probably because his story is one of a kind.

In the waning days of the defamation trial between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, Dr. Shannon Curry was called to the stand.

Curry, a California-based psychologist, had been hired by Depp’s legal team to offer her opinion on Heard’s alleged personality disorders.

But during cross-examination, Heard’s attorney, Elaine Bredehoft, had a different line of questioning for the doctor:

“You are being paid by Mr. Depp’s legal team to be here, correct?”
“Correct.”
“How much have you charged so far?
“I actually don’t know.”
“Over $100k?
“I don’t do my own books.”
“Over $200k?”
“I don’t know.”
“Over $300k?”

The exchange was lost to the more salacious details of the trial — but it provided a rare glimpse into the economic underbelly of the expert witness industry.

Expert witnesses are used, to some degree, in ~8 out of 10 trials in the US. Over the past 50 years, they’ve become increasingly more prevalent in the courts, and often hold great sway over judges and jurors.

But little is known to the general public about how they’re sourced and how much they’re compensated for their contributions.

To find answers to those questions and more, The Hustle spoke to expert witnesses, legal consulting firms, and attorneys.

A primer on witnesses

In general, there are three types of witnesses:

1. Lay witness: Someone who witnessed certain events firsthand and can speak to what they saw.
2. Character witness: Someone who knows the victim or defendant and can speak to their personality traits.
3. Expert witness: Someone who is educated on a certain subject (forensics, psychology, surgery, etc.) who offers their professional opinion as it relates to the facts of a case.

Lay and character witnesses are typically not compensated much, if anything, for their time.

For federal cases, they receive $40 per day + $0.57 per mile for travel to the courthouse. For state-level cases, these daily fees range anywhere from $0 (Kentucky) to $95 (New Mexico).

Zachary Crockett / The Hustle

Outside of these small mandated fees, it’s illegal to pay most witnesses for their testimony — an effort to keep the court free of bias.

“It’s kind of like being paid for jury duty,” John Lewis, a California attorney, told The Hustle. “There aren’t big bucks in being a subpoenaed witness.”

Expert witnesses, however, are a different story.

The lucrative business of being an expert witness

With virtually no fee caps, experts are paid what the market demands for their services — and the market for their services is very robust.

In a high-profile case with millions of dollars at stake, it’s not uncommon to have 6-10+ expert witnesses between opposing sides.

The Depp-Heard trial featured nearly a dozen expert witnesses — psychologists, surgeons, entertainment and intellectual property lawyers, forensic accountants — that Lewis estimates collectively charged $1m+.

But experts can rack up enormous fees in less glitzy cases, too.

A 2017 murder trial involving a police officer cost public defenders and prosecutors in the small town of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho $600k in expert testimony — $210k of which was paid to a single psychologist.

Expert witnesses usually charge hourly rates for trial preparation, depositions, and testimony, which can add up quickly in complex cases.

In a 2021 survey of ~1.1k expert witnesses, the average hourly rates for these three services worked out to some pretty princely sums:

• Case prep: $422/hr
• Deposition: $524/hr
• Trial testimony: $550/hr

In a typical case, the average witness took home $13k for ~25 hours of work. But in one case, a forensic architect — who investigates the causes and origins of construction failures — reported getting paid $2.4m.

Zachary Crockett / The Hustle

Of course, these hourly fees vary widely according to area of expertise.

Medical professionals dominate the highest-paid gigs. Hand surgeons, who are hired to testify in medical negligence cases, average as much as $1.4k/hr — ~10x higher than the national hourly average for their day job.

Horse experts, on the other hand, who might be called upon for equine appraisal in estate disputes, charge an average of just $225/hr.

Keith Diaz, an assistant professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia University, says his work as an expert witness is “just a little extra pocket change.”

In 2015, Diaz was cold-contacted by a Connecticut prosecutor working on a murder case involving a FitBit.

He was asked to testify that the device was accurate — and for $350/hr, he eventually helped the prosecution win the case. Since then, he’s worked on 3 other cases.

“The amount of work, and what you’re paid, depends on the case,” he says. “Sometimes, you have to conduct simulations in the lab, process a bunch of data, or do forensic analysis. Other times, it might just be 20 hours of research and two days in court.”

Zachary Crockett / The Hustle

When it comes to setting fees, expert witnesses can, as one attorney puts it, “pretty much go buck wild” — with one exception.

Let’s say an expert psychologist is hired by the prosecution for $700/hr. If the defense team wants to depose her, it must pay her for the privilege. Under the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, she must charge the opposing side a “reasonable fee.”

“Reasonable” is up to interpretation, and has been contested in court many times:

• Cartrette v. T & J Transport, Inc. (2011): A treating physician’s demand for $1.5k/hr was reduced to $400/hr.
• Maxwell v. Stryker Corp. (2012): An orthopedic surgeon’s demand for $2k/hr was knocked down to $750/hr.
• American Medical Systems, Inc. Pelvic Repair Systems Products Liability Litigation (2019): A pelvic surgeon’s request for $18k/day per day was reduced to $750/hr.

But this one restriction doesn’t seem to harm experts’ earnings much.

The expert witness training business

When attorneys need to find an expert witness in a pinch, they turn to a $300m+ cottage industry of directories, referral services, and journals that compile and dispense professionals in hundreds of trades.

On SEAK’s expert witness directory, a lawyer can select a specialty and browse through the backgrounds of more than 2.3k experts in all sorts of hyper-niche fields:

• Street sweepers
• Cryptocurrency scholars
• Wine and spirits distributors
• Ski accident reconstructionists

“It’s like the Yellow Pages for expert witnesses,” says James Mangraviti, an ex-attorney and SEAK principal.

The company lists experts for free, but makes money by allowing experts to buy promotional placements in the search results.

A search for ‘psychology’ on SEAK’s expert witness database returned 125 witnesses for hire (SEAK)

SEAK also runs a lucrative business selling training courses to experts.

Its most popular Zoom seminar, “How to Start, Build, and Run a Successful Expert Witness Practice” ($1,295) claims that experts can “easily double their income by devoting one day a week to expert witnessing.”

“An expert has to walk into a courtroom — a very intimating place — and get cross-examined by an aggressive person who’s getting paid a lot of money to make you look like a fool,” Mangraviti says. “So of course, they need to be prepared for that.”

Being a successful expert witness extends beyond expertise and knowledge.

When selecting an expert, lawyers often look for traits beyond scientific rigor, like confidence, attractiveness, and poise.

“[A] fool with a small flair for acting and mathematics might be a more successful witness than, say, Einstein,” wrote one scholar. “They’re not chosen for their knowledge but for their ability to persuade.”

There’s a reason for this: Witnesses who are self-assured, make eye contact, and speak calmly are perceived by jurors to be more knowledgeable and trustworthy.

Zachary Crockett / The Hustle

Other services, like The TASA Group and Round Table Group, field requests from lawyers and hand pick experts that fit the occasion. 

ForensisGroup, founded in 1991, boasts a rolodex of experts in 10k+ specialties and brings in $10m+ in revenue in referral fees.

While the majority of expert witnesses on these platforms are gainfully employed and only do witness work as a side gig, several large firms (FTI, BRG) retain full-time economic consultants who often earn $500k+/yr testifying in court. 

“We’ve given economists the chance to earn investment bankers’ incomes,” David Teece, the founder of BRG, told The Wall Street Journal in 2007.

But these lucrative incentives come with a moral trade-off.

The ethical quandary of the paid witness 

Diaz, the FitBit expert, says competing interests can make it challenging at times to “stick to the science” at trial.

“You get on a call with a lawyer who wants you to be a witness, and they give you all these reasons why the defendant is a lowlife and a terrible person,” he says. “They try to convince you. It’s tricky to not let that influence your opinions about what the data show.”

In court, witnesses like Diaz often feel they’re pressured into forming definitive opinions that stretch beyond sound science.

“If a heart rate is elevated at a certain time, a prosecutor wants me to say ‘It’s because she was dying.’ I can explain how the device works, but I can’t tell you exactly what that means,” he told The Hustle. “You have to be really careful and stay out of muddled areas.”

Keith Diaz, a professor and expert witness in cases involving fitness trackers (Columbia University)

Diaz’s concern cuts to the heart of one of the legal world’s biggest internal debates: Can expert witnesses who are paid exorbitant sums by one side of the courtroom maintain scientific truthfulness?

The harshest critics of expert witnesses call them “well-paid prostitutes who sell their services to the highest bidder.”

In her 1997 book, “Whores of the Court: The Fraud of Psychiatric Testimony and the Rape of American Justice,” Dr. Margaret A. Hagen argues that the legal system has been “bamboozled” by scientific sellouts.

“Experts who help lawyers win cases are often rewarded with more work and more money,” says Lewis, the California attorney. “They have a strong financial incentive to please the person paying their checks.”

There may be some truth to these claims:

• A 1994 study of 131 cases across Baltimore, Seattle, and Tucson found that 77% of expert witnesses thought lawyers manipulated them to weaken unfavorable testimony and strengthen favorable testimony.
• Two separate surveys of judges conducted by the Federal Judicial Center concluded that “experts abandon objectivity and become advocates for the side that hires them.”

But others say the notion that money distorts objectivity is a red herring used by opposing lawyers to tear down experts’ credibility.

“Everybody’s getting paid in a courtroom,” says Mangraviti. “Real experts have solid, truthful opinions that don’t waver under pressure.”

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Red salsa is the ultimate consensus builder, whether it’s the squeeze bottle at your favorite taqueria that brightens the al pastor or the free vat served up at a Tex-Mex dive where you and your friends gossip and sip on oversized margaritas. Because of its culinary importance, I wanted to see which red salsa at the…

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Millions of Americans will fire up their grills and smokers on Father’s Day (June 19), one of the most popular grilling holidays of the year. In all likelihood, it will be Dad himself who mans the grill. There’s an irony here: Mom gets breakfast in bed on her big day, but Dad has to cook dinner for the family. (BTW, check out our Father’s Day Gift Guide if you don’t yet have a gift for your father. It features some of our favorite picks!

One of my favorite things to cook on the grill is steak. But what kind of steak is best? There are a variety of steaks, and they are all at different price points. Luckily, you don’t have to break the bank to make a delicious steak. The first time I cooked for my dad on Father’s Day I cooked steaks.

So, you’ve heard of wine flights. And whiskey flights. But did you know steak flights are a thing? Holy Grail Steak is offering people across Planet Barbecue three awesome steak packages. I received a sample of steaks from their Barbecue Bible Butcher’s Cut Flight to cook on my grill. The flight consists of five Santa Carota Prestige Finished steaks. It includes filet mignon tips, zabuton, also known as “Denver” steak, top sirloin, chuck-eye, and hibachi strip steak.

Here’s how I cooked a carnivorous feast recently. I don’t recommend cooking all the steaks at once like I did, but I had help eating the steaks. See my recipes below!

Grilling Steaks for Father’s Day

I was looking forward to trying each steak. I’ve never made steak tips with filet mignon, but surmised they would be super tender. I was also looking forward to the zabuton, or “little pillow,” as it is known in Japan, due to the extravagant marbling in the steak. Fat equals flavor! I expected the hibachi steak would be crisp on the outside and tender on the inside. I was anticipating a nice beef flavor from the top sirloin. Would the flight meet or beat my expectations?

I started by making an Asian-inspired orange-soy marinade and let the tenderloin tips marinate overnight. I prepared a tarragon-parsley-lemon butter to serve over the grilled sirloin. I cut the hibachi steak into one-inch pieces to maximize the sear on all sides of the steak. The zabuton and sirloin were seasoned simply with kosher salt and coarsely ground black pepper.

To cook the steaks, I set-up my Big Green Egg XL (BGE) for direct grilling and inserted the cast iron grill grate on one side and the plancha insert on the other. Once the grate and the plancha were hot, I placed the tenderloin tips and the sirloin on the cast-iron grate. The hibachi and the zabuton steak were placed on the plancha.

I chose the plancha for the hibachi steak to replicate the hot and flat surface of the teppanyaki grill used in hibachi-style restaurants. The long and thin shape of zabuton would only require cooking a few minutes a side so the plancha was a match. If you don’t have a plancha, use a cast-iron skillet or griddle.

I enjoy the char you get on steak tips when they are cooked over charcoal. I felt the cast-iron grate would produce great grill marks and char on the steak tips and the sirloin.

It was a challenge to manage all the steak at once due to the different cuts, sizes, and cooking times. (I have newfound respect for teppanyaki and steakhouse chefs…) The cubed hibachi steak seared up quicky on the plancha in about 4 minutes. The steak tips cooked in about 5 to 6 minutes. I boiled and reduced the tenderloin tip marinade and used it to baste the tips at the end. The plancha seared the zabuton steak in 6 to 7 minutes. The sirloin required close to 10 minutes to finish. Due to the thickness of the sirloin, I would consider the reverse-sear method in the future. I was shooting for medium doneness (135 degrees) with each cut of steak. You might prefer rarer meat.

I was excited to try each cut of steak since it has been a while since I’ve made sirloin, steak tips (and never from beef tenderloin), or been to a Japanese steak house. And I’ve never cooked a zabuton steak.

The Results

So here are the results: The sirloin had a crusty exterior and nice beefy flavor. The herb butter added richness to the steak. The sirloin was almost filet-tender on the inside. I liked the contrast in texture created by the crusty exterior and the tender inside.

The zabuton steak was luscious on the inside due to its marbling. The outside of the steak was crispy and peppery from the seasoning. I can’t wait to make this cut of steak again.

The tenderloin tips were super-tender on the outside. The tips had an enjoyable sweet and smoky flavor from the marinade and cooking over charcoal. The cast-iron grate created the char I like on tips.

The hibachi steak was tender and flavorful. The plancha seared the cubed hibachi steak on all sides and kept the inside juicy. To take the hibachi steak over the top, I served it over plancha- fried rice and veggies. The tender steak, crunchy veggies, and fried rice created a balance of textures and flavors. My wife told me to put this dish on the repeat list.

The Butcher’s Cut Flight of steaks were all delicious and each had unique characteristics I enjoyed. These steaks exceeded my high expectations. If you’re looking for steaks for your Father’s Day celebration, check out one of the Barbecue Bible Steak Flights at Holy Grail Steak (link?). I’m looking forward to trying Holy Grail Steak’s Combo and Ultimate Flight of steaks. Be sure to check back to read my tasty feedback. Thank you to Holy Grail Steak!

Holy Grail Steaks Offer!

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Butcher’s Cut Flight of Steaks Recipes

• Filet Mignon Tips
• Top Sirloin
• Hibachi Steak with Plancha Fried Rice
• Zabuton Steak “Denver Steak”

What is your favorite type of steak? Let us know on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, or Instagram!

The post 4 Awesome Steaks for Father’s Day Grilling appeared first on Barbecuebible.com.

Although no sunscreen has been proven totally safe for aquatic wildlife — wearing a rash guard or other protective clothing while you snorkel is the best choice for coral as well as for your skin — some formulas are friendlier to coral reefs than others.

After researching the issue and evaluating 30 sunscreens that claim to be “reef safe,” we’ve found that Thrive Bodyshield SPF 50 has ingredients that scientists recommend in a reef-safe sunscreen, plus it feels nicer and costs less than competitors. If you don’t like the look, feel, or scent of Thrive Bodyshield, we recommend Badger Adventure Mineral Sunscreen Cream SPF 50.

A barbecue is more than just the quintessential warm-weather meal. It’s also an event that enables us to gather with our loved ones, chow down, and make a toast to the summer and to one another.

Even though all you really need is a gas or charcoal grill and some fresh ingredients, there’s a lot more that goes into hosting or attending a great barbecue. This gear, all recommended by Wirecutter’s experts, will make your next BBQ the envy of the neighborhood.

You deserve to greet the sun in shades that are cool, comfortable, and protective—even if you don’t want to spend a lot. Whether your definition of “cheap sunglasses” means the $14 pair floating around the bottom of a tote bag or $50 sunnies that might be mistaken for designer ones, we’ve got you covered.

Since 2019, we’ve researched 180 pairs of sunglasses and worn 95. We also recruited 27 testers—with a wide range of head sizes, face shapes, aesthetic preferences, and spending habits—to share their feedback.

Ultimately, we found seven standout pairs. All of them provide full UV protection and free polarized lenses (if you want them). None of our recommendations cost more than $60, and most cost far less.

Our picks include: a durable, wearable pair that’s usually around $15; an upscale round pair that comes in two sizes; a flattering round pair with flair; sporty, Wayfarer-style sunnies with a no-slip grip coating; sophisticated square frames; oversize cat-eye shades that serve up major drama; and big, beachy aviators.

Pharmaceutical companies run exhaustive trials before they can release a drug onto the market. This is a matter of common sense. No one wants a repeat of the thalidomide scandal of the 1950s and ’60s when some women took thalidomide for morning sickness. The result of the “biggest man-made medical scandal ever” was 10,000 children […]

The post 10 Medicines That Work But We Don’t Know Why appeared first on Listverse.

In 1857, newspapers from Texas to Maine resounded with breaking news from the Mountain West: the Rocky Mountains boasted “immense quantities…[of] gold, silver, and precious stones,” read the New York Herald. There was gold and silver to be won, and prospectors with dreams of striking it rich headed west. Dozens of ”boom-towns” sprang forth almost overnight to accommodate the Gold Rush of 1858 and the Silver Boom of 1879. These mining towns developed their own distinct culture, with rules (often broken), customs (sometimes violent), and an aesthetic still visible in much of the state’s historic architecture.

Between Western movies and regional iconography, the Old West looms large in U.S. culture, but between all the hammer-swinging, gun-toting, and hooch-swilling, one has to wonder: what did these miners eat? As it turns out, the confluence of indigenous and immigrant food cultures that converged on these mining towns not only sustained the burgeoning industry but went on to transform the region’s food culture in ways that are still evident—and edible—today.

Dr. Michael Welsh, a professor of history at the University of Northern Colorado, says utility was at the core of Colorado’s 19th century mining cuisine. “You needed a high starch, high protein diet for generating energy.” Between the demanding nature of the work, often unwelcoming mountain temperatures, and sheer altitude—which many were experiencing for the first time—”the calories burned mighty fast,” says Dr. Welsh. It was a tall order that wasn’t immediately met.

Few would call the early years of Colorado miner dining “glamorous.” Hunting and foraging was, for a time, not an option. “These people just weren't familiar with the landscape, flora, and fauna,” says Dr. Welsh, “and certainly [didn’t know] how to convert it to a diet.” Even if they could, gender roles of the day meant most men didn’t know how to cook anyway. Foreseeing this conundrum, one 1859 guidebook for westbound miners recommended they leave with “100 pounds of flour…a few pounds of sugar, a half bushel of beans, and, perhaps most stunningly, “80–100 pounds of bacon." Early miners subsisted on this diet of glorified camping food until a class of savvy hunters arrived.

For a fee, these sharp-shooters would bag local game—which included elk, sheep, grouse, and bison—to sell to miners. “Professional hunters cost money,” says Dr. Welsh, “but they could deliver.” The hunters proved integral, and in time, increased their fees. Gold wasn’t the only way to make money in the mountains, after all: “Another way to make a fortune in Colorado was to mine the miners,” says Dr. Welsh.

In time, miners sought to flavorize and accessorize this newly accessible meat. Luckily, immigrant communities seeking work in these expanding boom-towns would soon introduce a range of much-needed ingredients and techniques. Previously unseasoned cuts of meat met Mexican salsas, rich with spicy green chilies; Some Chinese folks found work as mining camp cooks, introducing not only ginger, preserved fruits, and relishes, but also a variation of egg foo young that, some historians opine, would later become the Denver Omelet; Formerly enslaved and free Black people also served as cooks, incorporating their own particular brand of culinary know-how in the form of dishes like Son of a Gun Stew, which utilized just about every part of the cow.

According to Welsh, miners also began to follow Indigenous practices, becoming more reliant on what the land could provide. They incorporated foods like chokecherry (used both as a food and a medicine), pemmican (a mixture of fat, dried meat, and berries), and ground plum (a flowering plant) into their blossoming diet. They learned to fish for Rocky Mountain Trout as well, according to Dr. Welsh. The frigid waters of Colorado’s rivers made it a “softer, sweeter fish,” he says.

Pulling from a multicultural bench of dishes and ingredients, Colorado miners were eventually eating flavorful, nourishing meals—food that deserved a good drink to go with it. While miners drank beer and whiskey for the same buzz that some seek today, it was also a key part of their diet. According to Dr. Welsh, beer—then safer to drink than water—provided carbs to sate hunger and power miners through an intensive workday. “German brewers started coming [to Colorado] because they had recipes for hearty beer that didn't have to be refrigerated.” In 1858, there wasn’t a single dedicated brewery in the Denver area; By 1892, there were 23 breweries peppered throughout the Denver area, one of which being a Rocky Mountain export you may recognize—Coors.

At the end of the workday, miners soothed their aching muscles back at camp with cheaply made whiskey. In fact, saloons were some of the first businesses established in early mining camps (even if they were, as Dr. Welsh explains, just a “tent at the end of the row where somebody set up a little bar”).

As miners found their footing—and their wealth—they began to splurge on meals and drinks downtown. “Up in the mining camps, it was survival of the fittest,” says Dr. Welsh, but in boarding houses and restaurants, “you could get a well-prepared meal.” Moneyed miners with a newfound taste for the high life could find delicacies like sheep’s feet with picante sauce at Hotel de Paris, a French inn located in Georgetown with an English-style interior (now a history museum). Freshly shucked oysters were served at The People’s Restaurant in Denver, opened in 1863 by Barney L. Ford, a formerly enslaved man. Some may have even dropped in for a bison steak at Buckhorn Exchange, established in 1893 and currently Denver’s oldest restaurant, still in operation today.

Many other historic eateries still stand today, though some more modern restaurants reach into the past to evoke the region’s unique food history. Holly Arnold Kinney is the owner and culinary director at The Fort, a frontier-themed restaurant housed in a replica of an 1830s-era adobe fort. “The cuisine we serve [here] celebrates the fusion of cuisines in 19th century Colorado,” she writes by email. She and her father, an amateur historian, pulled from first-source diaries to build the menu, which includes Roasted Bison Marrow Bones (called “prairie butter” by early settlers), Gonzalez Steak (stuffed with New Mexican green hatch chilies), and an Idaho Red Ruby Trout (served with rosemary and sage). “Those journals included…cuisines shared between the Mexican, American Indian, European and Black peoples who utilized this fort,” she writes.

From the influences of the many cultures that converged on Colorado’s mining camps, to the beer and trout enhanced by the cold Colorado waters, a diet for miners evolved into a diet for all. The history of the American West is fraught, to say the least, but within those rough edges, “there were also people that learned a lot [from] each other,” says Dr. Welsh. So the next time you order a Denver omelet or crack open a cold Coors, know that you’re living the legacy of an unlikely culinary alliance forged in the gold-rich mountains of Colorado.

This article is adapted from the June 4, 2022, edition of Gastro Obscura's Favorite Things newsletter. You can sign up here.

In 1951, Konstantin Frank arrived in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. An immigrant from the Soviet Union, he took a job at a local state agricultural station.

Once there, he tried to convince his colleagues to grow grapes from Europe—Riesling, Chardonnay, Cabernet—and make fine wine. He was ignored. Everyone who’d ever tried making European-style wines had lost their grapes to the Finger Lakes’ long, brutal winters.

So Frank went to herculean lengths to prove them wrong. He drew on techniques he’d developed while producing and researching wine under Stalin in frigid Ukraine—like burying the vines each winter. And he drove across New England and Canada in search of eccentrics—like a priest whose monastery vineyard survived only one year out of every three.

Frank’s case is both exceptional and typical. (He eventually succeeded in bottling tasty Chardonnays and Rieslings, inspiring wineries to set up shop in Virginia, New York, and New Jersey.) Around the world, winemakers have killed themselves to grow grapes in places they really don’t want to grow.

Why is this? If wine is simply fermented fruit juice, why didn’t Frank turn to the blueberries that grow easily in the Finger Lakes? Why do Egyptians struggle with grapevines in the desert rather than sell date-palm wine?

Wine made with other produce does exist: You can buy cherry wine and blueberry wine. But the market for them is tiny. They’re seen as a novelty and not taken seriously within the industry.

So what’s so special about grapes?

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How Grape Wine Conquered the World

Grapes have some biological advantages when it comes to fermenting well, which is why almost every winemaker still reaches for them in an age of abundant options.

But the history of (grape) wine’s ubiquity looks a lot like how Greco-Roman constellations are now almost universally known: We have Plato and Caesar to thank.

In BC times, most humans got tipsy from beer and other grain-based beverages. Almost everyone grew grain, whereas grapes came from a limited number of grape-growing areas, such as Georgia. Which is why wine has been fancy for millennia: Rulers often had it imported at great expense.

Per Tom Standage in A History of the World in 6 Glasses, ancient Greece was the first place where wine-drinking became universal. The vines took well to the Mediterranean climate, producing enough wine for drinkers of all social classes, who often opted for watered-down wine to sterilize pathogens in the water and to stay sober enough for symposiums of (allegedly) high-brow thought and debate.

When Rome established its empire, it admired and adopted much of Greek culture. And as a land that lionized farmers and grew its own grapevines, that very much included wine. Along with aqueducts and togas, grape-based wine spread with Roman conquest and trade, forever associating it with power, taste, and the good life.

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Escape the Grape

Grapes dominate the wine industry, but their hegemony is not complete. To learn why grapes are the go-to fruit for winemakers, and why he bottles vintages made from blueberries and cranberries, I spoke with Keith Bodine of Sweetgrass Farm Winery in Union, Maine.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

How did you get into making wine with fruits other than grapes?

Well my wife is from Maine, and grapes don’t grow very well here, especially the traditional varieties we all know and love.

What grows here in Maine—where we wanted to live and raise our family—is fruits other than grapes. So I had to become interested in them.

I was never against fruit wines, per se. I was always open to the idea. Here in Maine there are cold, hardy grapes that are grown, and those are fine. But fruits were more interesting and I felt they had a better, more interesting flavor profile.

If you want to, you can make fruit wines that taste a lot like grape wine. Although that’s not necessarily the goal.

Why is it that wine made from fruit other than grapes is so rare?

In terms of history, we can see that, for whatever reason, grapes were available. Over time, we’ve selected and propagated [grapes] for characteristics that make better wine, or wine as we know it. That’s mainly higher sugars.

That’s the biggest factor. Higher sugar leads to a higher alcohol content, which helps preserve it. Grapes also have high acid and low pH. In combination with alcohol, no human pathogens can grow in wine. That’s a big thing.

Most fruits have half the sugar, or less. [This is why producers typically add sugar to make non-grape wine. Grapes are one of the lone fruits with the sugar levels for wine’s high ABV and a safe, shelf-stable product.] Fruits also have lots of different acids, and some are just not very pleasant when made into wine. And while grapes don’t grow everywhere, they do grow more widely than most fruits.

What fruit after grapes do you think makes the best wine?

I think apples work the best after grapes. There are lots of varieties, so lots of interesting possible flavors. I’ve made wine from Gravenstein apples that taste like beautiful grape white wine.

Most citrus fruits don’t work. The acids are just too weird.

Blueberries work well. I’m somewhat partial, being in blueberry country. In the field, you can see lots of wild varieties interplanted, which makes for interesting [flavors].

We don’t buy Chardonnay or Riesling grapes at the grocery store to eat. Are you using different cranberries or blueberries than the kinds I know?

Not really different, like with grapes. But we do work very closely with our growers to optimize what we look for. The average fruit in the store is picked slightly unripe. We work with growers to get the ripest possible fruit for flavor and the maximal amount of sugar.

What sort of breeding programs or education or whatever would need to happen to have a big wine industry based on another fruit?

All the grapes in the world would have to die.

There is some resurgence in fruit wine. We see younger people moving away from traditional wine. Young people seem more open to fruit wine and interested in local wine.

We hope we’ll be less impacted by climate change. Hotter weather and less of the nightly temperature swings that grapes need is a challenge for wineries. Maybe we’ll come to dominate the wine industry that way.

What’s the biggest misunderstanding about fruit wines?

That it’s gotta be sweet. No matter what our tasting menu says, no matter what I say, people always comment, “Oh, it’s not sweet.” And I think, “Well no, I wasn’t lying to you.”

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How to Try It

Interested in trying wine made from blueberries, cherries, or pumpkin? Here are a few options.

1) Sweetgrass Farm Winery, Maine

Keith Bodine makes wine from blueberries, apples, and cranberries, and sells products such as apple sangria. The farm in Union offers tipples, while a tasting room in Portland is another option. Sweetgrass also ships across much of the United States.

2) Morad Winery, Israel

The world’s most famous non-grape winery has experimented with everything: passionfruit, grapefruit, even parsley. If you’re not in a position to visit, you can try your hand at non-grape winemaking with help from the founder’s book, Beyond Grapes.

3) Balic Winery, New Jersey

This New Jersey winery (don’t laugh, a selection of New Jersey whites and reds almost beat French wines in a blind taste test!) offers tipples made from fruits as diverse as huckleberry and pumpkin.

4) Chateau Grand Traverse, Michigan

One state that’s not letting its local fruit go to waste: the cherry-producing powerhouse of Michigan. You can visit or order from Chateau Grand Traverse, or any number of Michigan wineries that offer cherry wine.

5) Domaine de la Vallée du Bras and Omerto Boutique, Quebec

Try tomato wine at this Canadian winery, whose unique product is often mistaken for a traditional white. You can buy via an online store, too.

Approaching five figures means in-house movements, exotic complications, and some of horology’s heaviest hitters.

A CPL filter, or circular polarizer filter, is a popular and powerful filter that can reduce or eliminate glare and reflections from surfaces in your photographs. In this article, we will introduce this filter type and analyze its use and effects.

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The Italian shipyard Rossinavi’s shows a refreshing willingness to think outside conventual design boundaries as they unveil their latest concept.