The World That's Coming

In addition to heavy promotion and marketing for the first issues, Marvel is rolling out the red carpet for the second installments of these highly anticipated titles. Along with added publicity, web advertising and web skins – each new All-New, All-Different Marvel first issue will conclude with a full page advertisement for issue #2. Prompting fans who’ve just finished these exciting first issues to come back for round two! If you thought issue #1 was packed with high-octane action and can’t-miss moments, just wait till you read issue #2!

Many newer outlets offer fifty cents per word or more—sites like The Verge might pay a dollar per word—as do established publications, including New York‘s blog network and The Guardian. “You can expect that two hundred and fifty dollars is an ultimate baseline for anything that you do,” Kyle Chayka, a New York-based freelancer, told me. “No one is paying less than that. My own perception is that fifty cents per word is a fair going rate for an experienced freelance writer who’s writing something primarily for the web that’s been reported.” But still: Figure twelve hundred or fifteen hundred words per piece, and you’re talking closer to twenty cents per word. “That’s depressing math when you’re doing your budget,” Erik Malinowski, a freelancer writer, said.

The number counted as living rough in the city in 2015 is 6,686, up 3% on the last count in 2013.

At the same time, the median house price in San Francisco has risen 103% since 2012 to $1.35m in July 2015, affordable for only the top 10% of households in the city, according to the latest figures from the California Association of Realtors.

And household income for the 95th percentile is the highest in the US at $423,000, although the city’s income inequality is the second worst after Atlanta, says a Brookings Institution report.

Last year, the US Travel Association found that 28% of workers did not take vacation so that they could prove their dedication and not be seen as slackers. Another 40% were afraid of the work they’d have to do when they got back from vacation.

A government-controlled industry group targeted popular food bloggers, major publications and a celebrity chef as part of its sweeping effort to combat a perceived threat from an egg-replacement startup backed by some of Silicon Valley’s biggest names, the Guardian can reveal.

The lobbyists’ media counterattack, in possible violation of US department of agriculture rules, was coordinated by a marketing arm of the egg industry called the American Egg Board (AEB). It arose after AEB chief executive Joanne Ivy identified the fledgling technology startup Hampton Creek as a “crisis and major threat to the future” of the $5.5bn-a-year egg market.

Sometimes, everybody needs a break from everybody. Enter Avoid Humans—a web-based app that combs data from Foursquare and Instagram check-ins, giving you the nearest places in your area with the least amount of humans. The app is divided into four categories-nightlife, food, coffee and refuge—and each location is color coded to indicate the current level of human presence.

YouTube also has the episode about Farmer Jonathan Bell.  Bell, the modern industrialised farmer – who is portrayed throughout the episode as a perfectly nice, pleasant man – discovers that the local villagers are buying fewer of his eggs.  Investigations reveal that they are buying instead from Windy Miller’s free range operation, because free range eggs are nicer.  Windy points out that he cannot scale up his operation to truly compete and that Bell can still sell all his eggs to the major distribution chains, so they  can both happily coexist.

This discussion of free range farming and industrialised economies of scale complete, the narrator concludes the episode with this address to Bell: “Hello, Farmer Bell!  Are you selling all your eggs now?  I expect you’re sorry that the people in Camberwick Green think that your eggs aren’t as nice as Windy’s.  Never mind!  You are giving more eggs to more people more cheaply than he can.  And that’s a great thing.  And you are the most modern farmer in Camberwick Green.  Goodbye, Farmer Bell!”  I’m fairly sure it didn’t seem so passive aggressive when I was three.