Polo Lifestyles June 2023: Tina Turner, Queen of Rock & Roll

SOUTH AFRICA POLO · DEAUVILLE POLO MONACO GRAND PRIX

Ambassador Claude-Alix Bertrand Publisher

Joshua Jakobitz Editor-in-Chief

William Smith Copy Editor & Philanthropy Contributor

Claire Barrett Head of Photography

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Amritlal Singh

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Cezar Kusik Wine Contributor

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Michael J. Snell Lifestyles & Luxury Automobile Contributor

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Paat Kelly

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Cover photo of Tina Turner

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Multi-generational blood transfusions, page 99

Preserving provenance at Villa d'Este, page 76

TINA TURNER

THE QUEEN OF ROCK & ROLL

108

Flying motorcycles are here, page 72

Versace cranks up the heat for Cruise 24, page 124 PAGE

WE WERE WATCHING THE NEW SEASON OF THE AGENCY THE OTHER NIGHT (SOMETIMES YOU NEED TO TAKE A BREAK FROM EDITING AND WRITING) WHEN ONE OF THE BROTHERS FLEW FROM PARIS TO CANNES TO MEET A PROSPECTIVE CLIENT AT THE FAMED WATERFRONT. AS THE CAMERA PANNED BACK, WE CAUGHT A TWO-SECOND GLIMPSE OF THE BELOVED CAFÉ SÉNÉQUIER. “THAT’S WHERE I MET TINA TURNER!” EXCLAIMED OUR PUBLISHER.

Having never met her myself, I inquired of the experience. “She was so warm and genuine, gracious and full of good energy; wearing the shortest skirt you’d ever seen,” Ambassador Bertrand told me. This month, it’s fitting that the Queen of Rock & Roll is on our cover. We made a last-minute decision to bump our planned June cover for Tina when we learned of her passing last week. She was a force, strong and courageous, a spitfire and comeback legend. In fact, the more I read about her, the more saddened I was for the world’s loss of such a woman of strength and character.

More headlines and stories catching our attention this past month are heavily science-related. Artificial intelligence has dominated the news cycle, so this month we explore the uncomfortably invasive side of A.I. that’s being tested in universities and laboratories around the world. Additionally, in the world of science, the DNA of three people was successfully used in IVF to create a healthy baby in the U.K., opening floodgates for limitless possibilities of designer babies, as we’ve reported previously.

Our wine writer is fired up this month, having lost a healthy inventory of vintages to the collapse of Underground Cellar. His investigation into the matter probably won’t get his wine back, if it even existed in the first place. How did Underground Cellar get away with this total fraud? And, what’s next for their unfortunate (former) clientele?

Spiritual contributor Amritlal Singh dove into the topic of shedding generational trauma and I personally ate up every single word – a definite must-read. From Manhattan, Dana Romita reports on a robust luxury market and Michael Snell just returned from Villa d’Este where the Concorso d’Eleganza just wrapped up.

Best,

Josh Jakobitz josh@pololifestyles.com

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MONACO GRAND PRIX

MONACO GRAND PRIX

MAX VERSTAPPEN CLIPPED THE BARRIER SEVERAL TIMES AND HAD TO HOLD ON TO THE LEAD IN WET CONDITIONS, BUT HE DID ENOUGH TO SECURE VICTORY AT THE MONACO GRAND PRIX.

While the weather caused chaos late in the race, the top three on the grid all retained their positions to finish on the podium, with Fernando Alonso second and Alpine’s Esteban Ocon completing the top three.

There was bumping on the opening lap as Nico Hulkenberg, Logan Sargeant and Lance Stroll all made contact, resulting in damage for the latter, while Hulkenberg was given a 5-second time penalty.

Sergio Perez came in at the end of the opening lap to switch onto the hard tyre, hoping a different strategy would

help him make amends after crashing in qualifying, leaving him at the back of the grid for today’s race.

Carlos Sainz tried to force his way ahead of Ocon to move up into the podium places, but the mistimed move saw him damage his front wing.

Midway through the race, the drivers started to be warned that rain could hit the circuit before the end of the race, resulting in some staying out longer than expected in case they needed to switch onto wet tyres.

Further down the field, Perez tried to find a way past Stroll, and attempted the follow his teammate past the Canadian when Verstappen lapped the Aston Martin, but the two touched and Perez went through the chicane.

A couple of laps later, Perez ran into the back of Kevin Magnussen, allowing Stroll to retake the place, while the Red Bull driver had to come into the pits for

a new front wing.

Stroll also hit the back of the Haas as he tried to make a move past Magnussen, but didn’t need to come in.

With just over 15 laps remaining, the rain hit the circuit, leaving those on well worn tires struggling to find grip.

Valtteri Bottas and Stroll were the first to switch onto the intermediate tire, with others soon following.

Alonso was the first of the front runners to come in, but despite his teammate having already switched onto the inters, the two-time champion chose to switch onto a new set of slicks.

The rain continued to get heavier, forcing Alonso to come into the pits again and switch onto inters, but he had enough of an advantage that he was able to hold on to second.

Stroll’s day came to an end when he ran out of grip, twice hitting the wall

and breaking his front wing, while Magnussen broke his front wing running wide on his way to the pits.

George Russell also had to use the run off area, but rejoined the track in front of Perez, earning the Mercedes driver a

five-second time penalty for rejoining unsafely, as well as a tap from the Red Bull.

Hulkenberg picked up a second penalty, this time for 10 seconds, having been found not to have served his five-second

penalty correctly when coming in for intermediate tires.

Magnussen was the second retiree of the race, coming into the pits late on after sustaining too much damage to continue.

MONACO GRAND PRIX

MONACO GRAND PRIX

MONACO GRAND PRIX

GET AIRBORNE ON A FLYING BIKE

Hover through the air on this ground-breaking bike

WOULD YOU TAKE A RIDE ON THE WORLD’S FIRST FLYING BIKE? THANKS TO AERWINS TECHNOLOGIES, THIS DREAM COULD BE A REALITY IN 2023 WITH THE XTURISMO BIKE.

The XTURISMO hoverbike is developed by Japanese startup AERWINS Technologies. According to the website, it was inspired by Star Wars and is “a manifestation of the dream of air mobility.”

The bike operates with two large central rotors powered

by a 228-hp gas-powered Kawasaki motor, an engine designed for motorcycle competition. Four smaller fans on the vehicle’s outer edges are powered by electric motors to provide stability. The 12-foot-long bike can fly for 40 minutes and reach speeds of up to 62 miles per hour.

AERWINS’ ultimate goal is to have street-legal, all-electric hoverbikes mass-produced for urban use. The company also notes that the bike could be used for practical applications like disaster relief, search and rescue missions, and infrastructure inspection. The world’s first flying bike is already on sale in Japan—

the first delivery was officially made on December 16, 2022. However, XTURISMO is currently restricted to flying solely over designated racetracks in Japan.

The bike made its United States debut in September 2022 at the Detroit Auto Show where some attendees took the bike for a test drive, such as the co-chair of the auto show, Thad Szott. As Szott excitedly told Euronews, “I mean, it’s awesome! Of course, you have a little apprehension, but I was just so amped. I literally had goosebumps and feel like a little kid.”

XTRUSIMO will be on sale in the US in 2023

for $777,000. According to Shuhei Komatsu, the company’s CEO, AERWINS hopes to lower the cost to $50,000 for a smaller electric model by 2025.

To further add to AERWINS Technologies’ global expan sion, the company officially merged with Pono Capital Corp., a special purpose acquisition company, in February 2023. The company subsequently began trading on the Nasdaq. In a state ment, executives of both companies expressed their gratitude for the merger and excitement for the Nasdaq listing.

XTRUSIMO will be on sale in the US in 2023 for $777,000. According to Shuhei Komatsu, the company’s CEO, AERWINS hopes to lower the cost to $50,000 for a smaller electric model by 2025.

HIGH SOCIETY

PRESERVING PROVENANCE CONCORSO D’ELEGANZA

VILLA D’ESTE, ITALY

BY MICHAEL J. SNELL

CONCORSO D’ELEGANZA

THE VILLA D’ESTE CONCORSO D’ELEGANZA IS AN ESTEEMED ANNUAL EVENT THAT BRINGS TOGETHER AUTOMOTIVE ENTHUSIASTS, COLLECTORS, AND INDUSTRY PROFESSIONALS FROM AROUND THE WORLD.

Held at the picturesque Villa d’Este on the shores of Lake Como in Italy, this prestigious gathering celebrates the beauty, innovation, and heritage of classic and vintage automobiles. Again for this 2023 season, the Concorso d’Eleganza once again captivated attendees with its stunning array of vehicle entries

and prototypes, showcasing only the very best in automotive design and craftsmanship.

Curated by The BMW Group, this spectacle spans across three days, offering visitors, enthusiasts and press an immersive experience into the world of automotive elegance. With festivities commencing on the opening day in a grand arrival ceremony, owners of the participating cars drive their prized possessions onto the manicured lawns of the villa. This captivating display sets the tone for the weekend, showcasing a blend of timeless classics and cutting-edge concept cars.

This year, the public audience was finally able once again to experience all the joys

of the festivities on the shores of Lake Como. Since the Public Day at Villa d’Este was a sell-out long before the beginning of the festive weekend, the committee extended the event space to the parkland of Villa Erba, an adjoining property that offered fans and guests an additional event on the Saturday that is part of the scene in Munich in the form of Wheels & Weisswürscht – or: Amici & Automobili. With the members of numerous BMW Clubs present, together they celebrated automobility in many dimensions with more than 160 vehicles and 6,000 visitors.

In addition, a little over nine thousand attendees meandered through the weekend programming at the main

Villa, while guests had the opportunity to marvel at each meticulously restored vintage vehicle as well as admire the artistic beauty of newer, more contemporary automobiles on display. With showcasing to include renowned automotive designers and collectors, these experts from from various fields engage in passionate discussions, sharing insights and anecdotes about the historical significance, provenances and design nuances specific to the manufacturers and their coachbuilders. This year’s edition of the prestigious beauty contest for classic cars was also defined by numerous celebratory moments. Two award classes were dedicated to impressive anniversaries of automobile culture with, “Porsche at 75: Delving into the Stuttgart legend ́s iconic and

eccentric back catalogue,” and, “A century of the 24 hours of Le Mans: Heroes of the most famous race in the world.”

The main highlight of the weekend is the prestigious Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este competition. This highly respected competition brings together a carefully selected group of classic cars, each vying for the coveted titles awarded to the winners within their entry categories. With each auto being meticulously judged by a panel of experts, the competition assesses the vehicles based on their historical accuracy, originality, condition, and overall aesthetic appeal.

For this year, the Duesenberg SJ Speedster styled in the coachwork design by Gurney Nutting from 1935

won the overall contest. William Lyon was presented with the prestigious winner’s prize Trofeo BMW Group –Best of Show – by Helmut Käs, Head of BMW Group Classic und President of the Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este, and Wilhelm Schmid, CEO of A. Lange und Söhne. Alongside the dazzling trophy, the winner selected by the Jury also received a unique model of the 1815 Chronograph in white gold. The exquisite watch was created by A. Lange und Söhne exclusively for the winner of the Best of Show.

With over 250 Vehicles on display, this year once again proved to be a captivating celebration of automotive excellence and timeless classics.

CONCORSO D’ELEGANZA

GHOSTED?

DON'T SEND ANOTHER TEXT 'TIL YOU'VE READ THIS

IN MY LATE 20S, I WAS GHOSTED BY ONE OF MY CLOSEST FRIENDS.

We met in college and began drifting apart after graduation. He moved to the Midwest for grad school; I stayed in New York, but we visited when our circumstances and budgets allowed, and emailed — frequently at first, then less often. I have tried not to dwell too much

on the time when our relationship ended, but I recently dug up my last email to him from 12 years ago: “I’m putting this out there as a final attempt to be in touch,” I wrote in a note that makes me feel a combination of heartache and embarrassment, even now. “I hope we can reconnect.”

He never responded, and I never tried again. It felt an awful lot like being dumped.

Ghosting — when someone unilaterally cuts off communication without warning or explanation — has become a seemingly inescapable part of the modern dating scene, but we pay far less attention to it as a phenomenon between friends.

Yet research suggests that experiences like mine are pretty common. In one study from 2018, 39 percent of the participants said they’d been ghosted by a friend. And a study published earlier this

It’s not just a dating thing, and it can hurt. A lot. Here are ways to cope — and move forward.

WHAT TO DO IF A FRIEND GHOSTS YOU

year found that people often feel just as hurt after being ghosted by a friend as they do after being ghosted by a romantic partner.

“With ghosting, we know that there are four fundamental needs that get threatened,” explained Gili Freedman, an assistant professor of psychology at St. Mary’s College of Maryland who was an author of the 2018 study: “Your sense of belonging, your sense of meaningful existence — that you have a place in the world, and that place is meaningful — your sense of control and your self-esteem.”

Dr. Freedman cautioned that there isn’t any research on the best strategies to help you cope with being abruptly dropped by a friend — and stressed that the bulk of research on ghosting has focused on dating and romantic situations. But she and other experts who study friendship and ghosting offered several approaches that may help.

VALIDATE YOUR EXPERIENCE — AND YOUR PAIN

There is “a certain shame” to being ghosted by a friend, said Irene S. Levine, a psychologist and author of “Best Friends Forever: Surviving a Breakup with Your Best Friend.” She believes much of it stems from the mythology that you’re supposed to keep your friends for all eternity, when, in fact, research in the Netherlands suggests people may lose about half of the friends in their social network every seven years. Simply reminding yourself that fluidity is a hallmark of friendship and that platonic ghosting is relatively widespread can offer some comfort, Dr. Levine said, because it helps normalize the experience.

“Try to step back and remember that not all friendships, even very good ones, last forever,” Dr. Levine said.

It may also help to recognize that being ghosted is a form of “ambiguous loss,” a psychology term that describes a loss without information or closure. Marisa Franco, a psychologist who studies friendship, said it is normal to feel sad, angry or embarrassed, and it is normal to ruminate.

Research suggests simply naming feelings without trying to change them or push them away — a technique known as “affect labeling” — can offer solace.

“Anything that helps you express emotion will ease grief,” Dr. Franco said. That might include journaling, crying or talking to friends who won’t minimize your feelings. Try to validate your suffering in a compassionate way, she urged, by acknowledging that your feelings connect you to others who have struggled with similar issues — an idea called “common humanity.” (I, for one, have found it cathartic to write this story and realize I’m not the only one who has been through an experience like this.)

RECLAIM SOME CONTROL AND A SENSE OF CONNECTION

Because ghosting is characterized by uncertainty, it can help to “fortify your need for control,” Dr. Freedman said. Focus your time and attention on areas of your life where you feel a sense of agency, she said. Is that at work? Through certain hobbies? Pour your energy into those pursuits.

Christina Leckfor, a doctoral student in social psychology at the University of Georgia, added: “If you think you’re being ghosted, try to fill that void in your life with social connection from other people. If you can try and spend time with close friends or family members, you might still feel hurt by the experience, but hopefully you won’t feel as lonely.”

At the same time, although being ghost-

ed feels deeply personal, it may help to “remind yourself that getting dumped may have nothing to do with you,” said Dr. Levine. She noted, for instance, that your friend might be grappling with mental health issues, an illness or family problems, and they “may not be ready to share — even with a very good friend.”

CONSIDER REACHING OUT ONCE MORE

Sometimes it’s obvious a friend is done with you, as was the case for me. But often, friendships simply peter out. For instance, an often-cited 1984 study among young adults found that physical separation was the most common reason friendships end.

So, consider the possibility that your friend isn’t deliberately ghosting you; life simply got in the way. “Typically, friends don’t go: ‘I will be moving across the state to start a job, and at that time I’m not going to keep in touch as much,’” said Jeffrey Hall, a professor of communication studies at the University of Kansas, who noted that friendship does not have the same kind of clear expectations for behavior that romantic relationships tend to have.

It’s possible that if you get in touch, they might thank you for your persistence, Dr. Hall said.

Even if you never hear back, it can at least help interrupt the cycle of rumination, Dr. Franco said. Taking initiative can offer more closure that the friendship really is over, she said, rather than leaving you wondering.

“You might just say, ‘Hey friend, I haven’t heard from you in a while. At this point, I’m not sure if you continue to be interested in a friendship with me,’” Dr. Franco said. “Try to welcome them to just be honest with you. I think ghosters often think honesty is worse than ghosting.”

INVASIVE OR INTELLIGENT?

A.I. KNOWS WHAT YOU'RE THINKING

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) CAN READ YOUR MIND… IF YOU ARE HOOKED UP TO AN FMRI MACHINE AND IT IS TRAINED ON HOW YOU PROCESS VISUAL INFORMATION.

Researchers at Osaka University in Japan have found that AI can be trained to reconstruct high resolution images from human brain activity, gathered from MRI scans, which bear a striking resemblance to the source image being shown to the participants.

A preprint of the study by Yu

Takagi and Shinji Nishimoto describes how the researchers used the deep learning model Stable Diffusion to translate the images in people's heads into AI reconstructions, using data from the fMRI.

“The study uses functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to map brain activity,

looking at tiny changes in blood flow that indicate when certain parts of the brain are working,” Joseph Early, a doctoral student in AI at the Alan Turing Institute, who was not involved in the study, told Newsweek.

“By showing people pictures while they’re undergoing fMRI scans, the parts of

THE NEXT HORIZON IN A.I.

the brain that ‘light up’ in response to different images can be identified,” Early said. “These different responses are mapped to a format that is familiar to the existing generative image models, and can then be used to generate new images.”

To train the AI, each participant was shown 10,000 images while inside an fMRI scanner. This was repeated three times and the resulting MRI data was fed to a computer so that it could learn how each participant’s brain processed the images.

Interestingly, the AI was better at “reading” some people’s brain activity than others.

Despite these differences, in most cases there are clear similarities between the objects, color schemes and compositions of each image shown to the participants and the resulting reconstruction by the AI.

Takagi, an assistant professor at Osaka University and co-author of the paper, said that the researchers were very surprised by the results of their study.

“The most interesting part of our research is that the diffusion model—so called im-

age-generating AI which [...] was not created to understand the brain—predicts brain activity well and can be used to reconstruct visual experiences from the brain,» he told Newsweek.

In the study, the AI was able to see what the participants were seeing by analyzing their brain activity. But Takagi said that this technique could theoretically be used to assemble images straight from a person’s imagination.

“When we see things, visual information captured by the retina is processed in a brain region called the visual cortex located in the occipital lobe,” he said. “When we imagine an image, similar brain regions are activated. It is [therefore] possible to apply our technique to brain activity during imagination, but it is currently unclear how accurately we can decode such activity.”

Tagaki said that this technology could potentially be used in the development of brain-machine interfaces in clinical and creative contexts.

“What is unique about this tool is that it does not require physical manipulation of a device,” Laura

Herman, a doctoral student at the University of Oxford’s Internet Institute, told Newsweek. “Therefore, there are exciting possibilities for creatives with physical disabilities who have historically been excluded from using creative tools that may require certain motor abilities.

“That said, the dangers of this tool are enormous—and any risk is exacerbated for vulnerable communities, such as those with disabilities. It is difficult to overstate the privacy and security risks that come with allowing access to one’s fMRI data.

“As we’re seeing here, this data can be used to literally reconstruct internal, private thoughts; in the hands of the wrong actors, this data would enable an unprecedented level of surveillance by monitoring the very thoughts in one’s brain. Though the technological outputs may be enticing, it is difficult to imagine that they would be worth sharing your intimate fMRI data.”

AI doctoral student Early said that deploying such a technology outside of a lab environment would be very difficult, so we can hold off worrying about AI-powered mind readers for now.

“Firstly, fMRI scans are needed to measure the brain activity that is used to generate images, and the machines that perform these scans often cost over $1 million,” he said.

“Secondly, in its current state, the method needs to learn to map an individual’s brain activity: everyone will have different responses when shown the same image, so the method needs to be personalized to each user,” Early added.

At present, generating images from a person’s brain activity is both costly and time-intensive. At this point in time, work in this area is still heavily research focused, but Tagaki said that the study was an interesting demonstration of the similarities and differences between how an AI and the human brain interpret the world.

“We believe that our work demonstrates the potential of the integration of AI and neuroscience research communities, and provides some implications for how the two fields might interact in the future,” he said.

"In the study, the AI was able to see what the participants were seeing by analyzing their brain activity. But Takagi said that this technique could theoretically be used to assemble images straight from a person’s imagination."

RESEARCHERS HAVE DEVELOPED A NEW ENERGY-SAVING PAINT THAT REPELS HEAT, COMES IN ANY COLOR, AND SHOULD LAST CENTURIES. IT’S ALSO THE LIGHTEST PAINT CREATED TO DATE.

Inspired by butterfly wings, this paint isn’t made from pigment. Instead, color is created structurally through the arrangement of nanoparticles. The team is calling it ‘plasmonic paint’.

Based on their calculations, it would only take 1.4 kilograms (3 pounds) of plasmonic paint to cover a Boeing 747 – you›d need at least 454 kilograms (1,000 pounds) of conventional commercial paint to do the same.

That means it could significantly reduce the amount of greenhouse gases required for flight. To be clear, this paint has only been created in the lab, so we’re a long way away from producing it en masse.

But the researchers have already made the paint in various colors using techniques that can easily be scaled up, and that’s what they’ll be working on next.

One big motivator for taking this paint to market is that it can also help to keep structures cooler: Plasmonic paint’s structure reflects the entire infrared spectrum, so less heat is absorbed.

The researchers say that surfaces underneath the new paint stay 13 to 16 degrees Celsius (25 to 30 degrees Fahrenheit) cooler than they would if they were covered with regular commercial paint.

“Over 10 percent of total electricity in the US goes toward air conditioner usage,” says nanoscientist Debashis Chanda from the University of Central Florida, who led the team that created the paint.

“The temperature difference plasmonic paint promises would lead to significant energy savings. Using less

USING THE WORLD'S LIGHTEST PAINT

electricity for cooling would also cut down carbon dioxide emissions, lessening global warming.”

Currently, pigment-based paints require specific molecules to build color, and usually, in modern paints, those pigments are artificially synthesized.

The electronic properties of each molecule control how much light is absorbed and, therefore, which color the paint appears. That means there needs to be a new pigment for every new paint color.

Instead, plasmonic paint uses the nanoparticles of two colorless materials – aluminum and aluminum oxide. By arranging them in different ways on top of an oxide-coated aluminum mirror, it’s possible to control how light is scattered, reflected, or absorbed.

A similar process is responsible for the rich color of butterfly wings.

“The range of colors and hues in the natural world [is] astonishing – from colorful

flowers, birds, and butterflies to underwater creatures like fish and cephalopods,” says Chanda.

“Structural color serves as the primary color-generating mechanism in several extremely vivid species where geometrical arrangement of typically two colorless materials produces all colors. On the other hand, with [human-made] pigment, new molecules are needed for every color present.”

The structural color is what makes the paint so lightweight – at a thickness of just 150 nanometers, the paint reaches full coloration, making it the lightest paint on record.

In this research, the team created the structural paint using an electron beam evaporator which heats a substance at a highly controlled rate.

This controlled evaporation allows small clusters of aluminum nanoparticles to self-assemble – the aluminum atoms are more attracted to each other than the oxide substrate they’re grown on, so they naturally clump.

By tweaking the pressure and temperature of the electron beam evaporator, the team can create structures that reflect different colors.

“Crucially, this pressure- and temperature-controlled process ensures high reproducibility over broad areas in a single step, lowering the cost of production and enabling large-scale fabrication,” the team writes in their paper.

The researchers also combined their structural color flakes with a commercial binder, which means the paint will last for hundreds of years – at least, in theory.

“Normal color fades because pigment loses its ability to absorb photons,” says Chanda.

“Here, we’re not limited by that phenomenon. Once we paint something with structural color, it should stay for centuries.”

This isn’t the first new kind of paint to promise some incredible properties. For example, Vantablack, one of the blackest paints in the world, is capable of absorbing

99.96 percent of light. Similar to plasmonic paint, this super blackness is the result of tiny carbon nanotubes, and even blacker paints have been created based on the same method since.

There’s also ultra-white paint, which reflects 98.1 percent of all light and promises to significantly reduce air conditioning needs. But unlike plasmonic paint, the ultra-white paint relies on pigments to reflect light, and Vantablack currently only comes in one color.

Still, there’s a long way to go before we’re all customizing our own plasmonic paint colors and using just one tiny can to paint an entire house.

“The conventional pigment paint is made in big facilities where they can make hundreds of gallons of paint,” says Chanda.

“At this moment, unless we go through the scale-up process, it is still expensive to produce at an academic lab.”

SCIENTISTS DISCOVER NEW MOLECULE THAT KILLS HARD-TO-TREAT CANCERS

SCIENTISTS HAVE SYNTHESIZED A NEW MOLECULE THAT COULD KILL A BROAD SPECTRUM OF HARDTO-TREAT CANCERS, INCLUDING TRIPLE-NEGATIVE BREAST CANCER, BY EXPLOITING A WEAKNESS IN CELLS NOT PREVIOUSLY TARGETED BY OTHER DRUGS.

A researcher at the University of Texas at Dallas, US, has synthesized a new molecule that could kill a broad spectrum of hard-to-treat cancers, including triple-negative breast cancer, by exploiting a weakness in cells not previously targeted by other drugs. The study, which was recently published in Nature Cancer, describes that the research was carried out in isolated cells, in human cancer tissue and in human cancers grown in mice.

The team tested a novel compound he synthesized called ERX-41 for its effects against breast cancer cells, both those that contain estrogen receptors (ERs) and those that do not. While

there are effective treatments available for patients with ER-positive breast cancer, there are few treatment options for patients with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), which lacks receptors for estrogen, progesterone, and human epidermal growth factor 2. TNBC generally affects women under 40 and has poorer outcomes than other types of breast cancer.

“The ERX-41 compound did not kill healthy cells, but it wiped out tumor cells regardless of whether the cancer cells had estrogen receptors,” said Dr Jungo-Mo Ahn, a co-corresponding author of the study.  “In fact, it killed the triple-negative breast cancer cells better than it killed the ER-positive cells. This was puzzling to us at the time. We knew it must be targeting something other than estrogen receptors in the TNBC cells, but we did not know what that was.”

The researchers discovered that ERX41 binds to a cellular protein called lysosomal acid lipase A (LIPA). LIPA is found in a cell structure called the endoplasmic reticulum, an organelle that

processes and folds proteins.

“For a tumor cell to grow quickly, it has to produce a lot of proteins, and this creates stress on the endoplasmic reticulum,” Ahn said. “Cancer cells significantly overproduce LIPA, much more so than healthy cells. By binding to LIPA, ERX-41 jams the protein processing in the endoplasmic reticulum, which becomes bloated, leading to cell death.”

The research team also tested the compound in healthy mice and observed no adverse effects.

The researchers fed the compound to mice with human forms of cancerous tumors, and the tumors got smaller. The molecule also proved effective at killing cancer cells in human tissue gathered from patients who had their tumors removed.

They also found that ERX-41 is effective against other cancer types with elevated endoplasmic reticulum stress, including hard-to-treat pancreatic and ovarian cancers and glioblastoma, the most aggressive and lethal primary brain cancer.

THE BLOODY FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH

A U.S. tech mogul is using his 17-year-old son’s blood in an effort to stay young

ATECHNOLOGY EXECUTIVE WHO SPENDS $2 MILLION (£1.6MILLION) A YEAR TO STAY YOUNG IS USING BLOOD INFUSIONS FROM HIS 17-YEAR-OLD SON AS PART OF THE PROCESS.

Bryan

making his organs function like those of a teenager and has employed a team of 30 doctors and experts to help with what he calls Operation Blueprint.

He has also now recruited his 17-year-old son, Talmage, and his 70-year-old father, Richard, into the youth-re-

storing project.

Bryan announced on social media this week that the trio have taken part in what he claims is the “world’s first multi-generational plasma exchange,” which took place at a medical spa near Dallas last month, according to Bloomberg.

Talmage went first in

the three-generational blood-exchange, having a liter of his blood extracted and converted by a machine. The sample is then distilled into liquid plasma, red and white blood cells, and platelets.

Bryan underwent the same process and then had his son’s plasma infused back into his veins. The process was then repeated for

Johnson, 45, a Silicon Valley mogul, hopes to reverse biology by

Richard, 70, who had Bryan’s plasma infused after having his own blood drained to make room for the fluids.

Talmage, described by Bloomberg as a “model of health”, had the least to gain. He had about one-fifth of his blood drained off but did not receive anyone else’s fluids in return.

His father boasts that his own plasma is “pristine”, since its golden color resembles that of his teenage son’s. Richard’s is described by Bloomberg as a “reddish, murky plasma”. The multi-generational infusion is a first, but Bryan, who

is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, is no stranger to plasma infusions and says he regularly receives it from a young, anonymous donor who is screened for their personal health and has an ideal body mass index.

The trend is popular among wellness gurus for its apparent anti-aging benefits, which are purported to include staving off cognitive decline. Bryan measures his blood and organ performance in minute detail so that he will be able to quantify any change.

The practice gained trac-

tion following studies on mice. However, there is little evidence to suggest it has the same anti-aging benefits for humans.

In a video documenting the process on YouTube, Bryan acknowledged it was an “experimental, invasive therapy” with “some level of risk”. However, he said, it was possible that infusing his plasma into his elderly father “will help him in a variety of ways”.

Bryan has previously detailed his rigorous regimen for Bloomberg. It includes putting on goggles to block

out blue light for two hours before bed, which is at the same time every night. He then wakes up at 5am and conducts an hour-long workout with 25 exercises, takes dozens of supplements including creatine, and rinses his teeth with tea tree oil. Following a strict vegan diet, he eats 1,977 calories per day, including almond milk, walnuts, flaxseed, berries and lots of blended vegetables. It all appears to be working according to his medical team, who say he now has the fitness level and lung capacity of an 18-year-old, and the skin of a man aged 28.

THE

QUEEN

WHO INSPIRED DISNEY'S UNDER-THE-SEA VILLAIN

How an outrageous drag queen found mainstream fame in Disney's ‘The Little Mermaid’

ILLUSTRATOR AND DIRECTOR ROB MINKOFF RECOUNTS HOW THE LEGENDARY DRAG QUEEN AND TRASH CINEMA ICON DIVINE CAME TO BE IMMORTALIZED AS A DISNEY SUPERVILLAIN.

More than three decades after Ursula, the buxom sea witch of Atlantica, first slithered her way onto the big screen, the underwater mistress of mayhem is back to tempt the seas in the new live-action version of Disney’s “The Little Mermaid.” In celebration of her return, everyone from comedian Melissa McCarthy, who’s playing the conniving nemesis of King Triton, to film historians, are taking the opportunity to pay tribute to the legendary drag queen who inspired Ursula’s unwholesome ways: Divine.

There’s plenty of mythology surrounding how the animated villain of 1989’s “The Little Mermaid,” written and directed by Ron Clements and John Musker, came to be. In some accounts, the animators working on the film were having a particularly tough time finding the right look for their antagonist, who

was originally modeled after a certain sharp-tongued “Dynasty” matron. But all of the accounts include the flashin-the-pan moment when a young illustrator, Rob Minkoff, came up with a vampy, mascaraed matron.

“The way the character was described in the script was as a Joan Collinsesque character. So most of the designs that people were doing were of a very slender woman with a high forehead, broad cheekbones and very dark hair,” Minkoff told NBC News. “And then, I suggested this alternative approach based on Divine from John Waters’ films.” Minkoff, who went on to co-direct 1994’s “The Lion King” and other Disney films, said he incorporated Divine into at least one drawing that ended up being displayed on a storyboard. And when Howard Ashman — the brilliant lyricist widely credited with a “Disney Renaissance” that started in the late ‘80s — looked through the designs, that’s the one that caught his eye.

“Howard looked through all the designs and focused on that one,” Minkoff recalled Musker telling him at the time. “So John came back to me and said, ‘Howard liked your drawing, and that’s the way we want to go with it.’”

Ashman, along with his creative partner, the composer Alan Menken, had been recruited by Disney after the success of their off-Broadway play “Little Shop of Horrors,” in the hopes that they could deliver the studio a much-needed hit.

Once Ashman arrived in Los Angeles — as detailed in Don Hanh’s documentary “Howard” — he gravitated toward the animation arm of the studio, seeing an opportunity to marry his musical theater background with the more offbeat, experimental approach of the illustrators. And that’s just what he did with “The Little Mermaid,” which became the first in a string of animated hits for Disney.

Looking back at that era of the studio, Minkoff said people had forgotten that Walt Disney, the man, was an “innovator who had broken all the rules throughout his career.”

“There’s a lot of really edgy stuff in the early animated films that people had forgotten about, not the least of which was killing Bambi’s mother, but Disney had gotten very safe with the kinds of stories and films that it was making at that time,” Minkoff said of the com-

pany before Ashman’s arrival. “I think all of the people in animation during that period in the ‘80s were big fans of the earlier Disney classics and wanted to make the modern films reach those same heights — and the only way to do it, we all knew, was to push the boundaries of what seemed acceptable.”

Minkoff’s idea to model Ursula — a take on the sea witch in Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid” — on a drag queen that embraced the bizarre and grotesque certainly pushed boundaries.

During his illustrious career, Divine, born Harris Glenn Milstead, was the muse of avant-garde director John Waters, who lovingly referred to the drag queen as “the most beautiful woman in the world, almost.” As Waters’ favorite leading lady, Divine helped the director pioneer the “trash cinema” genre: low-budget productions that exaggerated and satirized exploitation films.

The pair’s lifelong friendship and storied collaboration began when the Baltimore natives met as teenagers in the mid1960s. Their first film together, 1966’s “Roman Candles,” an homage to Andy Warhol’s “The Chelsea Girls,” featured a dialed-back version of Divine. But as they continued to work together, the drag queen, with the help of Waters, morphed into an infamous over-the-top persona: a shapely queen with homicidal tendencies, a shaved-back hairline and extreme, arched brows.

It seems that Ashman, a Baltimore native who spotted Minkoff’s inspiration immediately, agreed that what the film needed was a supervillain of monstrous proportions. The idea for a Divineinspired Ursula was eventually greenlit, and Ashman, along with the directors and a small group of animators, began working with live-action reference models to bring the characters to life, using a process that the studio had depended on since its first feature-length animated film, 1937’s “Snow White and the Seven

Dwarfs.”

Minkoff said he suggested his former CalArts roommate, Max Kirby, be hired as the live-action reference for Ursula.

Ashman and the directors took his suggestion and, as Minkoff tells it, Kirby did a rendition of Ursula’s signature number, “Poor Unfortunate Souls,” for the group — fittingly, “dressed basically in drag.”

Ultimately, it took years and many illustrators before the unforgettable villain of “The Little Mermaid,” voiced by Pat Carroll, appeared on movie-theater screens around the country.

The final product was a queer-coded antihero that harkened back to the complex evil queens and witches in Disney films like “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” and 1959’s “Sleeping Beauty,” whose over-the-top style, performative body language and all-around immorality works to highlight the purity of the film’s heteronormative heroine and hero.

TINA TURNER

1939-2023

BY THE TIME TINA TURNER RELEASED HER HIT SONG “WHAT’S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT” IN 1984, SHE HAD ALREADY SEEN HER CAREER RISE AND FALL.

The song had been written by two British guys, Terry Britten and Graham Lyle, who offered it to Cliff Richard, the Brit rock and roller, who turned it down. A few more singers, including Donna Summer, reportedly considered it for a while. Maybe they found the lyrics a little hard to put across:

“What’s love got to do, got to do with it?” seems to ask, “Am I feeling love—or something dangerous? Will I just get hurt again? What does love actually do for anyone, anyway?”

As it’s so piercingly phrased, and left to hang in our minds: “Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?”

By this time Tina Turner was 44 years old. She had been playing gigs on what used to be known as a “nostalgia circuit,” where she sang old hits in casinos and county fairs.

What you hear in her voice in “What’s Love Got to Do With It” is the hard rock of what she’d lived through: growing up in the cotton fields of Nutbush, Tennessee, singing in a church choir — and later in nightclubs — and working as a nurse’s aide. She got a job singing backup for Ike Turner, then became his costar, married him in Tijuana; and, after years of abuse, escaped him in Dallas, bruised and bloodied, with just 36 cents and a gas card in her pocket.

“It scares me to feel this way,” she sings, in a voice that’s rugged, raw, and raspy, as if being pulled, phrase

QUEEN OF ROCK & ROLL

by phrase and still warm, straight from her heart. You hear her hurt and wariness, as she asks, “What’s love, but a secondhand emotion?”

“What’s Love Got to Do With It” won three Grammys, and marked one of the great comebacks of music history.

By the time she died, at the age of 83, Tina Turner had a happy second marriage, to a German music executive named Erwin Bach, and lived in France and Switzerland. She received a Kennedy Center honor, and was inducted into the Rock and

Roll Hall of Fame — twice.

Tina Turner once told an interviewer, “People think my life has been tough, but I think it’s been a wonderful journey. The older you get, the more you realize it’s not what happened, it’s how you deal with it.”

Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken, again and again? Tina Turner moved us to raise our hands, and open our hearts, even when it hurts.

QUEEN OF ROCK & ROLL

QUEEN OF ROCK & ROLL

QUEEN OF ROCK & ROLL

Tributes poured in from around the world for music legend Tina Tuner after the singer died at the age of 83 after a long illness.

Turner, who had hits including “Proud Mary” and “The Best”, died “peacefully” at her home in Kusnacht near Zurich, her publicist announced.

In a career spanning more than 60 years, the American-Swiss singer won eight competitive Grammy Awards and has a star on both the Hollywood Walk of Fame and the St Louis Walk of Fame.

After Turner’s death was announced on Wednesday evening, tributes from fellow musicians, actors, and other high-profile celebrities have begun pouring in for the singer, widely referred to as the Queen of Rock and Roll.

Leading condolences was The Rolling Stones frontman Sir Mick Jagger, who duetted with Turner during Live Aid in 1985. He expressed his sadness at the news of her passing on Instagram, writing: “I’m so saddened by the passing of my wonderful friend Tina Turner.

“She was truly an enormously talented performer and singer,” he shared. “She was inspiring, warm, funny and generous. She helped me so much when I was young and I will never forget her.”

Singing icon Diana Ross said she was “shocked” and “saddened” by the news of Turner’s death.

“Sending condolences to Tina Turner’s family and loved ones,” the “I’m Coming Out” artist wrote on Twitter, sharing a picture of the pair together.

Beyoncé dedicated a special message to Turner.

“My beloved queen, I love you endlessly,” she wrote in a message on her official website. “I’m so grateful for your inspiration, and all the ways you have paved the way.

“You are strength and resilience. You are the epitome of power and passion. We are all so fortunate to have witnessed your kindness and beautiful spirit that will forever remain.”

FASHION & STYLE

VERSACE SHOWCASES CRUISEWEAR IN CANNES

VIVA DIOR EN MEXICO

LOUIS VUITTON GOES AQUATIC

VERSACE CRUISES INTO CANNES

VERSACE

IT WAS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME: AFTER HALF A DECADE OF FASHION FRIENDSHIP, DONATELLA VERSACE AND DUA LIPA HAVE TAKEN IT TO ITS LOGICAL CONCLUSION WITH A CO-DESIGNED COLLECTION.

After exploding onto the scene in 2017, Dua Lipa quickly settled into Versace as her brand of choice. Donatella Versace is the singer’s go-to designer for red carpet appearances and tour outfits; she’s also closed runway shows and fronted ad campaigns.

Staged at Cannes in the midst of the Cannes Film Festival, the pomp and circumstance around the “La Vacanza” runway premiere thoroughly embodied the two patterns we are currently seeing in fashion media: the rise of Cannes as a bona-fide fashion event of its own, and the trend of Resort collections being

international spectacles on a larger scale than main-collection shows. While celebrity arrivals and the front-row roster rival at these major shows rival the collection itself for the main event, Versace here took it a step further via brief pre-show interviews hosted by actor and model (including for Versace) Iván de Pineda and A-list arrivals including Dwayne Wade, Rina Sawayama, Simone Ashley, and Hyunjin (for whom the YouTube livestream chat was going wild).

This spectacle runs the risk of overshadowing the collection itself, but the collaborators showed up for a strong, albeit somewhat safe, vision of the ideal vacation that merged Italian glam and 80s Miami into a wardrobe worthy of a pop superstar.

Right out of the gate, Donatella and Dua demonstrate that Gianni Versace’s revolutionary vision for tailoring is just as striking today: a skirt suit or blazers that

emphasize the shoulders and waist were executed in a bright pink that might have felt like a play to the Barbiecore trend had it not been the case that Versace was doing it 40 years ago. Soon, men’s tailoring enters the fray, emphasizing the masculine form and embodying the Versace belief that men deserve to be sex objects too.

Picking up on this theme as well as that of poolside ease, the blazers were worn over bikinis or Donatella’s favorite corset, for women, or a tactical-inspired yet sexily reworked cargo vest for men. The kink-suggestive straps of this piece also graced a few form-fitting dresses.

In addition to the tailoring and big hair, the 80s references playfully threaded its way through the runway format itself; models stopped to strike a sassy pose not just one, but two (!) times as they traversed the runway that stretched over a swimming pool. An even farther throwback came as host de Pineda

VERSACE CRUISES INTO CANNES

returned to the mic for about eight looks in the middle of the show, speaking to the garments in the manner of the announcers that were ever-present in the fashion shows of the 40s and 50s, when ready-to-wear as an idea was first taking shape. Iconic yet undersung Versace codes, like the super light chainmail created by Gianni Versace or the playful polka

STYLE

dots, were reworked with butterfly motifs – one of Lipa’s signature emblems. These polka dots danced across printed silks and swimwear, which when paired with white denim sets got a bit of an elevated edge á la Scarface, while cowboy boots (butterfly-embellished, of course) push the Hollywood sensibility.

French terry sets in the

collection’s signature pink and blue painted a pair of male models as hunky pool boys, with the two ladies who walked together just after them as the vacationers who might lust after them – or be lusted after. The closing black dresses seem to say that, while poolside looks are fun, it’s at the cocktail hour that this vacation really gets going.

Perhaps because the show does so well at presenting the ideal form of a Versace resort collection, it’s difficult to identify how exactly – apart from the butterflies – the collaborative presence of Dua Lipa has set this collection apart. But that could certainly be said to be a testament to how well the two collaborators work together, rather than a detraction.

VERSACE CRUISES INTO CANNES

STYLE

VIVA DIOR

DIOR SHOWS CRUISE 2024 IN MEXICO

ON THE GLOBAL WHIRLIGIG THAT IS THE 2024 RESORT SEASON, NEXT STOP: MEXICO CITY.

We are here to see Maria Grazia Chiuri of Dior’s ode to Mexico, which is full of airy shirting casually tucked into long pleated or tiered skirts swishing the floor, traditional huipil tops unexpectedly and youthfully worn with denim cut with a healthy amount of slouchy attitude, and the nipped-waist, house-classic Bar jacket, only NOW faced with velvet, or scrolled with embroideries. All of this was given a little glint and gleam courtesy of gold strand necklaces or hefty silver belt buckles with butterfly motifs (the butterfly was a constant visual refrain here) and with plenty of substantial leather cowboy boots in the local vernacular, swirled with stitching and, in some cases, flecked with tiny coral beads.

Mexico is a country that Chiuri has loved for many years, and one she has wanted to show in for only marginally less time. Though as is her wont with her cruise excursions, she

STYLE

goes into exhaustive detail researching each and every destination; this one was no exception, with her discovering that the house of Dior first visited way back in 1954. You only need to know a little about Chiuri to understand why she is so drawn to the

place. There’s the country’s centuries-old belief in the power of nature. Its impressive group of uncompromising female artists who have often centered women’s voices and experiences at the heart of what they do. (Standing over this collec-

tion like guardian angels: Leonora Carrington, Tina Modotti, and of course, Frida Kahlo, whose alma mater, the Colegio de San Ildefonso, provided the show venue.) The finely wrought handwork and textiles which can be found across the country,

bringing craft, heritage, and community together. And last but certainly not least, magical realism, with its potent symbolism and inexplicable otherworldliness.

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VIVA DIOR

STYLE

LOUIS VUITTON

GOES AQUATIC

RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF CANNES FILM FESTIVAL, LOUIS VUITTON LURED THE WORLD’S BIGGEST STARS AND EDITORS TO ITALY FOR AN AQUATIC ADVENTURE OF A CRUISE 2024 COLLECTION.

STYLE

Whetting our appetite for the new live action remake of The Little Mermaid, Louis Vuitton’s Creative Director Nicolas Ghesquière looked to water itself as inspiration for his latest Cruise offerings.

Leaning heavily into Mermaidcore, Ghesquière presented an aquatic-themed collection, reflecting not only

the lake surrounding the setting, but the weather that almost stymied the day. Featuring plenty of practical neoprene, fantastical headdresses and mystical palette skirts, the show note explained Ghesquière hoped to: ‘give rise to contemporary tales, populated by drifting creatures that abandon aquatic dwellings for the discovery of terrestrial wonders.’

LOUIS VUITTON

STYLE

LOUIS VUITTON

MAY 2023 SET RECORD FOR LUXURY CONTRACTS

The Manhattan Luxury Market Today

DANA ROMITA  REAL ESTATE CONTRIBUTOR  @danaromita

READY FOR SOME GOOD NEWS? THE MOST ACTIVE PRICE RANGE IN NEW YORK CITY IS $700,000 TO $1.6M. THAT INDICATES THAT DETERMINED BUYERS AT ALL LEVELS HAVE NOT BEEN HELD BACK BY MORTGAGE RATES.

Further, the numbers reveal substantial competition in this market segment, but not near the levels happening in the luxury market.

Across all market segments, well-priced quality inventory will spark multiple interested buyers. Some pundits describe this as a buyers’ market, but for appropriately priced high-quality inventory, it’s very much a sellers’ market. I know that sounds inconclusive on the surface, but hear me out. This is a solid market for strong deals, especially if you’re aiming to sell and own a well-renovated, well-located property. And if you’re

looking to buy, you should get in this market now so you don’t miss out on the property that’s right for you. Wellpriced inventory in the luxury and other markets in Manhattan is selling -- and often as the result of a bidding war.

Luxury residential real estate operates a bit differently than the regular market. Although overall sales have been impacted by climbing mortgage rates and persistent inflation, top-tier real estate remains a must for NYC power players. “There are still bidding wars where there’s a scarcity of that type of property,” said Pamela Liebman, President and

CEO of the Corcoran Group. She finds that no bargains are being made among her clients when it comes to chasing their dream New York apartment.

Jeremy Stein of Sotheby’s International Realty believes the luxury market in 2023 is entering neutral territory, unlike in 2021 and early 2022, the market is favoring neither buyers nor sellers. “It’s safe to say, whichever way the market heads,” Stein said. “It won’t be nearly as dramatic as it has been.”

MARKET ACTIVITY AND WHERE IT IS HOTTEST:

Year to date, 2023 spring sale levels in the Manhattan luxury market have been the highest since the 2008 financial crisis, excluding 2021-2022. For example, the first week of May 2023 delivered the most luxury contracts signed since the first week of May 2022. In the NYC luxury market, condo transactions remain the dominant force, but co-ops and townhouses are making strong showings as well, with cash buyers still leading the charge.

Chelsea, Tribeca and Noho currently rank as three of Manhattan’s most desirable and hottest areas, with Tribeca and Noho holding the title of the most-expensive neighborhoods. Based on the median listing price, some of the priciest

New York City residential real estate can be found in downtown Manhattan’s 10013 zip code, a neighborhood known for its many spectacular warehouse conversions – and ample square footage. Noho in lower Manhattan, with a median sales price of $3.27 million, rates as one of the top-two, most-expensive neighborhoods in NYC. Noho’s prime location in the heart of downtown makes it a popular destination with buyers. The area also benefits from a classic combination of high demand and low inventory. Most apartments for sale in Noho feature lots of character, including high ceilings that are often beamed, and exposed brick. Bond Street is lined with luxury buildings, and amongst the neighborhood’s other hot new development properties is 40 Bleecker Street. 40 Bleecker was designed to look modern and feature the quality and distinction of buildings made a century ago. Its curated, first-class amenities include a swimming pool, state-of-the-art exercise room and stretching studio, 24-hour concierge, and a courtyard with waterfalls and reflecting pools, as well as below-ground private parking.

In Tribeca, historic lofts with unique floor plans and “Tribeca character” remain desirable, but luxury new development condos are in high demand. Condos for sale in these buildings are

expected to shatter price records for lower Manhattan. Properties include new high-rise towers such as 450 Washington and 108 Leonard. The latter also melds historic and modern architecture and design, and offers such amenities as rooftop gardens, an indoor pool, a fitness center, and a playroom. Other notable condo buildings include 111 Murray Street. It brought together the talents of Kohn Pedersen Fox, David Mann, David Rockwell, and Edmund Hollander, and features curved crystalline façade unique to city’s skyline. The Noble Black team is currently representing 111 Murray Street PH2 a magnificent, full-floor residence that boasts five bedrooms and 12-foot ceilings.

Up and coming hot neighborhoods such as the Lower East Side are leading the charge with properties like One Essex Crossing and 199 Chrystie Street. One Essex Crossing features 83 residences (studios to three bedrooms and penthouses), and a façade that weaves together panels of warm brick and Italian terracotta. 199 Chrystie Street is comprised of 14 interlocking villas brought to vivid life by internationally renowned designer, Thomas Juul-Hansen. The villas span from 1-, 2-, and 3-bedroom

units to a pair of 6-bedroom penthouses with large terraces, one of which features a private roof terrace that includes a fire pit, outdoor kitchen, and plunge pool.

INTERNATIONAL BUYERS:

International buyers comprise a substantial portion of the market’s cash transaction – as pieds-a-terre, investments, and often as homes for their children who attend New York City schools. The parents purchasing for children favor new development projects, with buyers seeking a studio or a 2-bedroom (if their child will have

a roommate), or sometimes a larger 4- to 5-bedroom unit for when the family visits. According to Nikki Field, with The Field Team at Sotheby’s International, all signs point to a long-awaited tide of international buyers once again driving momentum behind Manhattan’s flourishing residential market. The broker says that a stream of foreign buyers bolstered her business in the second half of 2022 and into the first few months of this year, as mortgage rates slowed market segments of domestic activity in the city. “The big, huge, massive advantage to Manhattan real

estate in the third and fourth quarter is that international buyers started coming back,” Field said. “We know through all of our market crises in the past, historically, the international buyer is our savior.”

OFFICE TO LUXURY CONVERSIONS:

Narratives regarding commercial to residential conversions have been peppering the news lately and piquing people’s curiosity. That’s completely understandable, as it seems like this is a tidy and convenient solution to two problems that plague Manhattan: excessive office space and a housing short-

age. High-density cities like Manhattan have areas with concentrated numbers of office buildings, “Many of which have outdated infrastructure and technology -- located at the very heart,” Mark Johanson of BBC noted last year. Anyone thinking that this will have a significant impact on the housing shortage may be disappointed, as this will mostly benefit Manhattan luxury buyers. According to CBRE, conversions will represent just “2% of the overall office market” and they are a “niche trend” limited to precise markets, the NYC luxury market being one of these.

Successful luxury conversions thus far have been One Wall Street. The landmarked Art Deco jewel in the financial district has seen an absolute rebirth as this Ralph Walkerdesigned exceptional property has re-emerged as a unique luxury residential property with 566 units. That’s typical of office conversions in the Financial District, where there are no affordability requirements, which makes it more profitable for building owners to take on expensive conversions. And 25 Water St. promises to be the next successful downtown office to luxury conversion.

“More than 1,300 apart-

ments will fill an empty office building in Lower Manhattan, making it the biggest residential conversion project in the country,” the owners of 25 Water Street say. The owners are applying decades-old rules that ease residential conversions in the Financial District to carve out courtyards, and add 10 floors to the 22-story structure. The residential plan has not yet been submitted for final approval from the city’s Department of Buildings, but city signoff is a formality in Lower Manhattan office conversions as long as the new design meets zoning and construction rules.

It’s worth noting that the Manhattan luxury market has lost much of its traditional seasonality. This is mostly due to the broad range of inventory and the fact that the studios and 1-bedrooms are typically not part of the school-year buying rush. Nevertheless, this current market feels like spring. We still have low enough inventory levels that the expected flurry of spring buyers has caused a transaction surge. The influx of domestic (both out-of-towner and local Manhattanites) and international buyers, combined with an anticipated though not abundant spring inventory

flow, is fueling the surge and presenting opportunities for buyers and sellers alike.

That said, the demand for high-quality properties, and especially new development inventory, exceeds supply. Supply will most likely remain a five-year matter, so prices in this market segment are not going down. It’s important to keep that in mind. Also, the overload of inflammatory discussion about real estate in the world right now is giving some people pause. Don’t let it. The waiting game will backfire on you in this market. If you want to buy in Manhattan now, then buy… now!

SPECIAL WINE FEATURE

HOW UNDERGROUND CELLAR DISAPPEARED WITH MILLIONS

ONE OF THE FASTEST-GROWING WINE CLUBS WITH AN INNOVATIVE MODEL OF HOLDING THE PURCHASES OF ITS CUSTOMERS IN A “CLOUD CELLAR” UNTIL THE CUSTOMER REQUESTS THAT IT BE SHIPPED HAS FILED FOR CHAPTER 7 BANKRUPTCY.

On April 24, Underground Cellar’s parent company, Phoeno Wine Company, Inc., filed for bankruptcy in the state of Delaware. The posting on Underground Cellar’s website, which, as of press time, has been shut down, cited “Recent market headwinds, and an inability to secure follow-on-financing or an acquisition” resulting in the company’s decision to “wind down its operations.”

Rather than a “wind down,” which suggests a more methodical process for ceasing operations, the abrupt shuttering, without notice, has created ripples across the entire wine industry, including among the thousands of customers of the online wine retailer whose wines were in the Cloud Cellar. All that is clear at present is that it is not being shipped.

The revolutionary model of Underground Cellar looked, from the outside at least, like a winner. Yet, according to the bankruptcy filing, nearly $25 million USD is owed. Reporting by Entrepreneur said that amount includes $2.7 million worth of wine that

was ordered, but never made it to the seller’s warehouse. Additionally, reporting by the San Francisco Chronicle on the filing says the company owes $328,000 in invoices – likely to many winemakers – and lists actual assets of less than $35,000.

That’s a tough pill to swallow for a company that reported $20 million in revenue last year. And while there is reportedly $11 million in wine inventory… somewhere – that is less than half of what is reportedly owed by the failed enterprise.

In March, customers with wine in the Cloud Cellar were alerted that an “audit” on their overall inventory had been done and some wines that had been purchased were no longer available. Yours truly received such a message that seemed odd given that I assumed that a literal bottle was set aside in their climate-controlled warehouse in Napa with my name on it. I paid for it, after all. Not so. And though the e-mail also made clear that a replacement bottle had been put into the “cellar,” it raised red flags.

Other customers apparently had issues even earlier having wines they had purchased actually shipped. And since the

filing, additional issues have come to light, including significant payments to executive staff when issues had become clear internally that the business model was failing.

What will come of the millions of dollars in wine that was supposedly stored in customer’s Cloud Cellars remains unclear. It even remains a matter of speculation if the wine is indeed actually stored somewhere and exists. Regardless, it is highly unlikely that customers will ever see any of what they bought, though there are class action lawsuits being filed against the company.

The entire affair summons back memories of the 2016 collapse of the fraudulent wine retailer, Premier Cru, where oenophiles ended up being owed upward of $45 million. Premier Cru sold advance allocations of high-end, collectible European wines at steep, and in hindsight, impossibly low, bargain prices. As customers came forward to decry follow-through on shipments of wine that had been paid for, the Ponzi-like scheme eventually came catastrophically undone.

In the meantime, Underground Cellar customers who failed to record the contents of their Cloud Cellar are now out of luck in determining its contents given the disappearance of the website. It might also be worth noting, as a closing word, that the message one gets from trying to access the website is: Payment Required.

That might be a colossal understatement.

MANSION OF THE MONTH

11900 RIVER ROAD

THE FORMER ESTATE OF THE KING OF JORDAN

$49,000,000

POTOMAC, MARYLAND USA

MANSION OF THE MONTH A ROYAL RETREAT

11900 RIVER RD POTOMAC, MARYLAND 20854

Situated at the top of a gentle knoll on the banks of the Potomac River sits an elegant chateau clad in French limestone. This mansion was the formal estate of Jordan’s King Hussein and Queen Noor.

The main parcel and structure were acquired from the King & Queen in 2000. Subsequently, the owner thoughtfully acquired six adjacent parcels furthering to beautify and expand this

grand and private 15-acre riverfront parcel.

The estate is a collaboration between renowned architect, John Ike, designer, Geoffrey Bradfield, and Horizon Builders. The three worked together to create this impressive four-story mansion constructed with Frenchmilled limestone and a slate Mansard roof punctuated with limestone dormers.

The entry to the property is through gates set into the limestone columns of the front wall and flanked by gas lanterns. The gates open to a verdant half-mile drive. The cobblestone-lined drive provides access to the guard house, manager’s house, guest house and garage, and main residence. The drive terminates into the impressive granite cobblestone motor court of the chateau.

The entry to the main residence is through custom, wrought-iron doors and into a vestibule. The vestibule opens to a two-story reception hall with coffered ceilings and a 24-foot limestone fireplace. The main level is expansive and features the striking formal and public entertaining spaces. The living room at the heart of the house flows and connects to the dining room and library.

PRICE $49,000,000

BEDROOMS 5 | BATHROOMS 6 FULL AND 4 PARTIAL | INTERIOR 30,000 SQ FT.

The southeast wing of the residence houses the family room, a true commercial-grade chef’s kitchen and breakfast solarium. The northwest wing contains the gym, spa lounge and office. The second level features four private bedroom suites, each with en-suite baths. The third level is completely encompassed by the generous primary suite. The primary bedroom features floor-to-

ceiling windows leading to a private terrace with a commanding bird’s-eye view of the Potomac. Attached to the primary suite is a separate sitting room, dressing room, and two full spa-inspired baths. Completing this floor is a large office with built-in bookcases and an imposing marble fireplace.

The lower level of the residence walks out to the rear yard and offers a large ma-

hogany-paneled club room, wine cellar and cinema-quality theater installed in 2017. In addition to the family and entertaining space on the lower level, there is back-of-house space for staff operations and building mechanicals.

The guest house and garage are connected to the main house by a poolside loggia and the mid-level granite-cobbled motor court. There are additional garage

bays in the main residence and on the lower level of the guest house. An elegant spiral staircase leads to the top floor of the guest house.

The guest house is private and well-appointed with two suites, a separate kitchen, and generous living and dining rooms. There are two additional structures on the property, a gate house at the entrance and a manager’s/ staff house. The manager and

MANSION OF THE MONTH

THE FORMER ESTATE OF THE KING OF JORDAN

staff residence are located on the north end of the property providing exceptional privacy. The house includes a formal reception room, dining room, kitchen, two offices, and a spacious conference

room. Located in the same building through a private and discrete entrance are two staff bedrooms.

The gate house is just behind the main gates to the estate and provides excellent

communication and security. The design of the grounds is landscaped in an 18th-century style known as jardin d’Anglaise or English garden. This style lends itself well to the property considering its

sitting adjacent to protected parkland on each side of the Potomac Rivers banks. The 15 acres provide privacy and space that is unrivaled and unavailable elsewhere in the Washington region.

MANSION OF THE MONTH

THE FORMER ESTATE OF THE KING OF JORDAN

NANTES

PAYS DE LA LOIRE

44000 FRANCE

PRICE $29,967,206 USD

BEDROOMS 8 / BATHROOMS 2 FULL INTERIOR 10,7639 SQ FT. / EXTERIOR 317.29 ACRES

NANTES, PAYS DE LA LOIRE, 44000 FRANCE

HUS STUD FARM

This exceptional estate comprises not only a historic chateau but also one of France’s biggest equestrian facilities with

the capacity to house approximately 400 horses. The castle has been restored and offers 1000 sq. meters of perfectly renovated living space including an indoor pool, a steam room and a gym. The spacious grounds comprise 128 hectares including private access to the River

Erdre, a 30-meter mooring, extensive equestrian training facilities including show jumping and dressage with 200 hectares extra rental. Restored outbuildings, helicopter pad and only 35 kilometers from the international airport. The sale includes 300 horses.

CASTILLO CARIBE CARIBBEAN LUXURY IN THE CAYMAN ISLANDS

PRICE UPON REQUEST

NOW YOU CAN HAVE IT ALL: LIFESTYLE, LUXURY, LOCATION AND LIMITED TAX LIABILITY. WITHOUT DOUBT CASTILLO CARIBE IS ONE OF THE FINEST BEACH-FRONT ESTATE HOMES IN THE WORLD OFFERING EVERY LUXURY FOR MODERN DAY LIFE WITH ALL THE LIFESTYLE OPTIONS ONE WOULD EXPECT FROM THE CAYMAN ISLANDS AND THE CARIBBEAN.

Although the Cayman Islands enjoy year-round sunshine and a temperate climate, this benefit is eclipsed in most people’s eyes by the Islands’ offshore status. The Cayman Islands are well known as a financial center on the world’s stage and provide the highest quality of lifestyle available in a tax

neutral environment, making it very appealing to people of high net worth to seek residency here - a position that is actively encouraged by the local government and, as a British Overseas Territory, is a very stable option.

There are a number of destinations in the world that are able to offer offshore status to a greater or lesser degree, but the Cayman Islands have no local taxes whatsoever: no property tax, no income tax, no capital gains tax and no inheritance tax. Castillo Caribe offers a rare opportunity to combine this with privacy, security, luxury and lifestyle all on a pristine white sandy beach overlooking the crystal-clear waters of the Caribbean Sea.

The space afforded here is too limited to provide adequate description of all the properties features and amenities, please request a detailed package by emailing: heather.carrigan@sothebysrealty.com.

In Search of Solace A Royal Celebration

WINE FIT FOR A KING AND QUEEN

WILLIAM SMITH @willismith_2000 COPY EDITOR & CONTRIBUTOR

AST MONTH, THE WORLD WITNESSED THE CORONATION OF A BRITISH MONARCH.

Something that had not occurred in nearly three quarters of a century – in 1953 to be exact, with the ascendancy of the youthful Elizabeth II following the death of her father, King George VI.

It was a spectacle, albeit a somewhat understated one, as the royals accommodated themselves to the current temperament of the democratic age.

LBut amidst the pomp and circumstance, this oenophile wondered: what wines would be served given the magnificence of the occasion?

Information has been scant, but British sparkling wines were sure to take center stage at various events. King Charles III served Sussex-based Ridgeview’s 2016 Blanc de Blancs at his first official state dinner. Indeed, many UK winemakers rushed to create “commemorative bottlings” to mark the occasion, the vast majority of these being sparkling as this

segment of the industry is exploding in England.

One wine, however, stood out from the pack and that was the announcement that a Croatian wine made from the Traminac grape and from Ilocki Podrumi Domain (https://www. ilocki-podrumi.hr/) would be served. I needed to know more.

In what is now present-day Croatia, as it turns out – and is true in most of Central and Southern Europe – the cultivation of grapes for wine is an ancient tradition. When the Greeks arrived in the 5th century BCE, they were likely to have built upon wine production started by the Illyrians several centuries earlier.

Wine production continued to flourish under the Greeks and the Roman Empire and historical evidence from these early time periods testifies to a significant cultural impact of grape cultivation and wine production.

Wine making continued into the following centuries in the parts of Croatia that remained independent from the rule of the expansive Ottoman Empire, which, under Muslim law, forbade alcohol consumption. Then in the 18th century, as the ascendancy of the Hapsburg Empire displaced the Ottomans, wine production flourished anew. That is, until the twin plagues of phylloxera and Soviet-style communism first devastated production and then collectivism’s focus on quantity over quality yielded inferior product.

With the emergence of an independent and democratic Croatian state in the mid 1990s, wine production in small, privately owned vine-

yards is again flourishing. That alone might be sufficient such that the House of Windsor might take notice. However, it turns out that Croatian wine wasn’t just fit for a King. It was also fit for a Queen.

Ilocki Podrumi’s Traminac was also served at the coronation of Charles’ mother. For that event, 11,000 bottles of the Domaine’s 1947 vintage were delivered and, in part to honor his late mother, the same wine in the 2019 vintage was chosen by the King to celebrate his ascension to the throne, and that of his wife, Queen Camilla.

Traminac is a white grape, also known in other parts of the world as Gewürztraminer and can be made in both dry and sweet styles. Ilocki Podrumi’s 2019 Principovac Traminac is a semi-sweet style wine.

Chosen from select parcels of their vineyard, grapes sourced for this wine are allowed to mature on the vines an additional 8 to 10 days after the regular harvest. This ensures grapes with a high sugar con-

tent. Golden yellow in color, the winemaker describes it as have an “intensely developed varietal aroma” with a “full, harmonious and sweet taste dominated by the intense aroma of honey.” The vineyard recommends the wine be served well-chilled and with recommended food pairings such as white meat dishes and fine cheeses.

A wonderful history of Ilocki can be found on their website at https://www.ilocki-podrumi.hr/povijest/ (and unless you’re fluent in Croatian, put your Translate function to work). Too much to expand upon here; it took me down a wonderful rabbit hole of learning.

As is often the case with wine, there is a long and interesting history behind what one finds in their glass. And in this case, it intersects with the rarity and grandeur of a monarch’s ascension in the present age.

Long live the King and as always, Salud!

BREAK FREE FROM THE PAST TO

ALIGN WITH YOUR REVEAL YOUR HIGHER SELF

them,

kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation;

AMRITLAL SINGH SPIRITUALITY CONTRIBUTOR @monarch_visionary

IMAGINE A TRUTH

FELT WITHIN THE DEPTHS OF YOUR BONES, A FEELING SUPPRESSED BY AN OPPRESSED SOCIETY THROUGH A DESIGN OF CONTROL.

Rebirthed through the liberation of our sense for freedom, envision a transformed and seamless world, cleared of the distortions that source chaos, as we evolve into a coherent being of quantum consciousness, maximizing the efficiency of our most blessed spiritual energy. The dream of endless generations shall

be realized by a world of people who behold no difference between the exterior skins of our one emanation. For when love, truth and justice become our weapon of choice, sharpening our sword inside through union with the divine, we will realize the invincibility of our unified mind.

To truly live is to be free to pursue our god-seeded dream, allowing the primordial forces whom we serve to evolve our senses into a reality created from our heart’s yet-realized beauty. It is the drive for truth that ignites the magic to guide our eyes, and our alignment with spirit that informs the expression of our flesh and the activation of our higher minds. For our outer expression is the manifestation of our personal god-realization, and our impact upon this Earth is a testament of our devotion to the essence that fuels our existence.

The gravitational cosmic influences from the dawning of a new astrological cycle is rattling humanity’s energetic system, clearing the miasma of modern civilized society for humanity to remember our star-seeded origins encoded within our genetic blueprint. Beings designed immaculate in nature, remembering our soul’s purpose, the repolarized magnetic resonance of our organs, as we embody peace upon the Earth, restores equilibrium to our nervous system to expand our heart’s energetic potential, activating the genetic codes to hold our cosmic soul. To heal is to realize one’s fullest potential.

The abundance of peace that we can create is infinite. The transformation that we undergo in pursuit of our most magnificent dream prepares us for living as one multi-faceted, diamond-bonded, rainbow-bodied, starlit, universal organ-

“And Jesus knew their thoughts, and said unto

Every

and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand.”

- Matthew 12:25

YOUR PURPOSE

IN SYNC WITH YOUR VIBE

ism. From the chrysalis of our collective pain, we shall emerge, victorious.

GRANDMOTHER’S CRY FOR EQUALITY

“We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.”

Martin

Coupled with the debates over the Vietnam War, which created divide even amongst the freedom fighters of the time, an unhealed scar rose to be cleared from our collective psyche.

The resistance to cosmic peace amongst the Earth’s children is naturally dissolving, leading us to question, has the plight of our peace seekers ever truly been answered for spiritual equality? Are we due for a radical transformation in how we live as an interconnected, galactic society?

Every female fetus develops the totality of her lifespan’s eggs while still a fetus inside of her own mother, thus the stressors of the socio-spiritual environment of our mothers’ lineages are being healed within every individual through the organic process of spiritual liberation sweeping across the planetary energetic system.

heart, parts the path to the Promised Land. United, as one, we rise in our star-born mission to create below as from above.

LESSONS FROM THE RECENT AND ANCIENT PAST

Luther

King,

Jr. “Letter from Birmingham Jail” 1963

The Civil Rights movement, which initiated the 1950s struggle for justice and equality for AfricanAmericans and sparked the women’s rights movement through the 1970s, was an emotionally charged era for American society. The nation united in crying out together, through righteous actions of non-violence and peaceful protests, for the right to embody divine sovereignty.

Now, in the 21st century, the divide between races and sexes is being further examined as the rise of the divine feminine, the resurrection of the inner Christ, which inspires divine expression, is enlightening our consciousness for the traumas of the past to be remembered as they are released from our flesh. The history of our ancestors is never forgotten; rather it is relived until forgiven, for we are one - past, present and future. We are the star children of every nation healing ourselves across all dimensions. To heal is to evolve in consciousness.

Our grandmother’s pain is our pain. We are the answer to our grandmother’s prayers, for we are the seeds that absorbed her tears from within her own wounded womb. Whether man, woman or non-binary – our duty is to embody the spiritual laws within our lives – that is the path to heal our lineages, releasing those souls trapped on the other side through our celestial embodiment, as our flesh heals from the emotional outcries of our past incarnations.

As we become the bridge to god’s kingdom, allowing our ancestors who remain trapped within the lower realms of the afterlife to ascend through our healed memories, the guiding light of source, that burns eternally within our evolving

BY AMRITLAL SINGH WITH ADAM SMITH

“Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself, and that is what has happened to the American Negro. Something within has reminded him of his birthright of freedom, and something without has reminded him that it can be gained … Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world? Perhaps, I must turn my faith to the inner spiritual church, the church within the church, as the true ecclesia and the hope of the world.” Martin

Luther King, Jr. “Letter from Birmingham Jail” 1963

Imagine a world without fear, a world free of false threats, a world concerted to the realization of the kingdom that we each hold within, through which we transform reality by the very

attempt of establishing inner harmony. Fear, as the demonic spell-bound hounds of the Dark Lords that feed off mankind’s cosmic vibration, holds no power when the one absolute truth seeded within each of our hearts unites us in focus and devotion. As we remember, we heal; for to go against one’s true nature is to welcome disease within one’s own holy temple.

Lessons from Mother Africa demonstrate the efforts of ancient Egyptian Pharaoh, King Akhenaten, to unite his kingdom under a monotheistic rule to the life-nourishing disc of the Sun to eliminate the spiritual discord of polytheism. Inheriting the throne at a time of immense wealth, peace and prosperity, he sought to further enlighten the empire through unity of the reflection of God from the many to the one aspect of the multi-dimensional self.

Renowned as a revolutionary and heralded by many as a great idealist, during his 15-year reign, he transformed ancient Egypt’s religion, capital, art and culture and instilled universal values upon the people while curbing the power of the priesthood. Though Egypt returned to its polytheistic traditions upon his death, his reign challenged the status quo

REVEAL YOUR HIGHER SELF

and set a precedent for future monotheistic religions.

What role does Egypt have to play as humanity is called to restore the true kingdom within? What tools have our ancestors left us to restore our divine selves?

ACTIVATION OF EARTH’S INTERGALACTIC GRID

As we look to our ancient past for clues to our holy grail of truth in regard to the resurrection of the embodied soul, the pyramids are clearly here to elevate our consciousness in bridging the higher selves that we each house.

According to Adam Smith, founder of Arising Phoenix Academy: “It becomes increasingly clear upon studying the pyramids that whoever built them utilized an extremely advanced knowledge of this planet’s energetic system and our relationship to our local star and the rest of the solar system.

This theme is consistent with pyramids that have been found in many sites around the world such as Bosnia, Indonesia, China, Peru, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, El Salvador, the Canary Islands, Egypt and Sudan. Personally, after visiting several sites

in Egypt and Mexico, I can clearly share that each experience with pyramids has been very significant spiritually and has shifted my perception and general worldview.

Each visit to a pyramid has been a deeper initiation into heart coherence, being released from the chaotic web of never-ending thoughts into a vast realm of heart-intelligence. The mystical experience corresponds with recent medical findings that humans have a three-brain system, the second and third being the heart and the gut, respectively. This breakthrough in understanding the deeper complexities of our own biology and how our consciousness is in all three centers, and very similar to the ancient Chinese system of Dantian, meaning “field of elixir”, which has been practiced for thousands of years by martial artists and health practitioners to align the gates of immortality within the human body.

Researchers have found neurons in both the heart and gut, and they are starting to map how the human body regulates and talks to itself through these three brain systems. Scientists are beginning to realize what the ancients have long-known: that we are vessels of the god within and disturbances within our

behavioral patterns interrupt our internal broadcasting system. To support the alignment and healing of our bio-electrical field, the pyramids emit certain pulses of electromagnetic energy that communicates with the gut-heart-brain system in humans.

In addition to being ancient data storage devices that contain vast amounts of data, pyramids also activate and shift human consciousness to the next level of multi-sentience capacity. The next step in human evolution, and perhaps the saving grace from the wars and suffering affecting a large part of humanity on a daily basis, can be found and mapped through learning to see the world with the eyes of awakened love.

When we learn to transition from a broken and separate worldview of the mind, into a deeper gnosis through the heart, we can elevate our consciousness to finding novel and creative solutions to the many ills that afflict humanity, starting with ourselves, our relations and extending out to touch society and the whole global human experience.”

Rollin McCraty Ph.D., one of the original founders of Heartmath and co-authors of “Heart Intelligence”, states

that “the biggest hidden source of stress on the planet is the disorganization of heart/mind, causing lack of resonance. Lack of alignment eats the life force and happiness out of humanity.”

As consciousness gateway portals to the stars, these ancient technologies which, as gifts from advanced extra-terrestrial spiritual civilizations, are strategically placed along Mother Earth’s ley lines, which, similar to the nadis and meridians within the human body, are energetic currents within the Earth’s structure, to stream cosmic consciousness, supporting humanity’s rapid ascension, as we remember who we are.

THE VIBRATION OF REGENERATION

Nobel prize winner, Dr. Alexis Carrel is famously quoted for saying, “The cell is immortal; it is merely the fluid in which it floats that degenerates. Renew this fluid at intervals, give the cells what they require for nutrition, and as far as I know, the pulsation of life will go on forever.”

The scientist conducted a 28-year experiment that kept the cells from a chicken heart alive by placing the cells in a saline solution that was the perfect temperature, pH and nutrient-mineral balance, and was replaced daily to release the toxic, acidic waste from the cellular struc-

ture. As the duration of this culture greatly exceeded the normal chicken life span, the cells were deemed immortal.

Within the human body, cerebral spinal fluid is a nutrient-rich fluid that bathes the central nervous system and serves in the removal of waste, cushioning of the brain and intra-cranial neurovascular structures, neutral buoyancy, and electrolytic homeostasis. The central nervous system is the most intriguing system in our body as it controls all body, mind and spiritual functions.

As we are maturing in our mother’s womb, some of the amniotic fluid that we are nurtured in becomes trapped inside a neural tube, becom-

BY AMRITLAL SINGH WITH ADAM SMITH

ing the cerebrospinal fluid that bathes our body’s central processing unit. We are the product of our mother’s tears as her nourishing womb’s sacrament lies at the core of our backbone. By creating peace within our bodies, by purifying this fluid through our spiritual embodiment, we realize our higher selves, as the key to our salvation and the answer to Earth’s cry for harmony with the reward of self-realization. Such is the pursuit of every lineage.

The Ancient Egyptians mastered the integration of anatomy and mythology into artistic symbols and figures, and depicted the Eye of Horus to symbolize healing, protection, rejuvenation, rebirth, resurrection and

wholeness. The Eye of Horus depicts a part of the brain that holds the potential for each human to attain enlightenment, namely the pineal gland, which is known by the works of Rene Descartes as the “seat of the soul’, secretes the spirit molecule DMT into the cerebral spinal fluid, which serves as a conveyor of this energy throughout the body organ system to deliver the ‘I AM’ presence, which is the spirit of God individualized for each one.

The ancients knew that the secret to immortality was found in realizing the kingdom within by embodying peace as a deliverer of the most holy sacrament, the spirit that flows through our being activating the expression of our flesh through our efforts to unite with our higher self. In the process of becoming who we are meant to be, reality collectively evolves for our species, for our thoughts are shared instantaneously. By healing the world to ease our mother’s pain, we become the child of peace that we were born to be. The realization of the cosmic Christ is the unification of humanity as one interconnected universal being, aligned in service of the hope that animates our flesh to guide our sight from the inside.

To know thyself is to realize thy magnificence.

HUMAN POTENTIAL FOR QUANTUM CONSCIOUSNESS

“In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self-purification;

and direct action.” Martin Luther King, Jr. “Letter from Birmingham Jail” 1963

Our collective awareness is the force of the Sun’s radiance directed by our species’ evolved intelligence, known by many as the Holy Spirit. We are the sacred fire of creation, the light of our maker, and as the dawning cosmic cycles activates the Earth’s mantle with the consciousness of the star constellations, all lower vibratory methods of spiritual enslavement shall be cleared as we remember our power and learn to churn our inner gold to nourish our soul’s mission upon this Earth.

Just as our pineal gland, ‘third-eye’, contains calcite microcrystals to tap into cosmic consciousness, the Earth’s pyramid network similarly channels in star consciousness from the not-so-distant constellations. Known by many as the cosmic web, these electric currents of star codes, when integrated, support the evolution of the universal man. By ascending the vibration of our consciousness, through the spiritual purification and alignment of our lives and the detoxification of our bodies from heavy metals and other toxins and pesticides, we can further leverage the cosmic resonance of the pyramids’ broadcast system to support our efforts in self-realization and planetary liberation.

We are far from alone, and as we are led to realize all the tools within and before us, the adventure through the cosmos is a journey upon which we shall all embark. Collaborating with Adam Smith to harness the ener-

getics of the pyramids as a portal to accelerated potential, has revealed to us both even greater dynamics of the universal constructs that were just beyond our mental scope prior to our bridged intentions.

What lies in store for mankind, as we bridge together to realize our one mind? How will quantum consciousness transform our reality as our embodied souls unravel our genetic code? Ancient beings, unraveling from the constructs of modernized living, as we serve the ancient ways, the vibration of the cosmic rays activates our inner knowing, illuminating our senses organically, as we ascend into service of the universal dream of realized peace.

Within the heart’s electromagnetic field, known as the anahata in Sanskrit, lies the origins of the merkaba, Egyptian for “light spirit body”. This star tetrahedron, which represents the Star of David, is a three-dimensional eight-pointed star made from two equally sized interlocked tetrahedra. By expanding the merkaba from within the heart’s core, through deep meditation, intuitive visualization and breathwork, the field of cosmic consciousness that vibrates from within serves to help us realize our highest path by alchemizing our ancestral trauma into compassion and forgiveness through the self-healing and realization process.

In the book, “The Deepest Well”, Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, California’s first surgeon general and expert on the long-term health effects of trauma, promotes

the screening for “adverse childhood experiences,” or signs of early trauma. A powerful advocate for children’s mental and physical health, she recognized that unhealed trauma within the body served as a source of disease initiated in childhood and carried through adulthood. By raising awareness of the trauma stored within our organs, and working to clear the toxic imprint from the body and the subconscious, patients are able to work through their healing, forgiveness and acceptance process. The body remembers all, and our ancestral traumas, our collective separation from our harmonious co-existence, is a plague within us all that is being risen into our consciousness to be resolved through the embodiment of oneness as we create heaven on Earth by realizing the kingdom within ourselves. The path to immortality requires a purging of all that does not serve us from within our bodies and the purification of our ways as a society.

The greatest threat to mankind is ignorance of who we truly are and the lack of will or imagination to utilize the infinite power within us to become the masters of our own minds. The greatest gift we can bestow upon one another, to heal our tribes and lineages of the ancestral warfare plagued upon each other, is to accept each other unconditionally with utmost appreciation and honor in this divine unfoldment as we work to restore harmony within ourselves, our families and our communities by focusing our attention on becoming the future of society.

THE WORLD'S FIRST 3 PARENT BABY

THE FIRST UK BABY CREATED WITH DNA FROM THREE PEOPLE HAS BEEN BORN AFTER DOCTORS PERFORMED A GROUNDBREAKING IVF PROCEDURE THAT AIMS TO PREVENT CHILDREN FROM INHERITING INCURABLE DISEASES.

The technique, known as mitochondrial donation treatment (MDT), uses tissue from the eggs of healthy female donors to create IVF embryos that are free from harmful mutations their mothers carry and are likely to pass on to their children.

Because the embryos combine sperm and egg from the biological parents with tiny battery-like structures called mitochondria from the donor’s egg, the resulting baby has DNA from the mother and father as usual, plus a small amount of genetic material – about 37 genes –from the donor.

The process has led to the phrase “three-parent babies”, though more than 99.8% of the DNA in the babies

comes from the mother and father.

Research on MDT, which is also known as mitochondrial replacement therapy (MRT), was pioneered in the UK by doctors at the Newcastle Fertility Centre. The work aimed to help women with mutated mitochondria to have babies without the risk of passing on genetic disorders. People inherit all their mitochondria from their mother, so harmful mutations in the “batteries” can affect all of the children a woman has.

For affected women, natural conception is often a gamble. Some babies might be born healthy because they inherit only a tiny proportion of the mutated mitochondria. But others may inherit far more and develop severe, progressive and often fatal diseases. About one in 6,000 babies are affected by mitochondrial disorders.

Most of a human’s 20,000 genes are coiled up in the nucleus of nearly every cell in the body. But dotted around each nucleus are thousands of mitochondria with their own genes. When functioning properly,

the mitochondria provide vital energy for the cells that make up our organs. Mutations that damage the mitochondria tend to affect energy-hungry tissues most: the brain, heart, muscles, and liver. These can deteriorate relentlessly as an affected child grows.

Progress with MDT led parliament to change the law in 2015 to permit the procedure. Two years later, the Newcastle clinic became the first and only national center licensed to perform it, with the first cases approved in 2018. Approval is given on a case-by-case basis by the UK’s Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority (HFEA), which has given the green light for at least 30 cases.

Doctors at the Newcastle clinic have not released details of births from its MDT program, amid concerns that specific information could compromise patient confidentiality. But in response to a freedom of information request by the Guardian, the HFEA confirmed that a small number of babies have now been born in the UK after MDT.

The regulator said the number of births was “less than five” rather than giving the precise figure, because doing so “could lead to the identification of a person to whom the HFEA owes a duty of confidentiality”. The number was accurate as of late April 2023, it said. No further details of the births were provided.

The treatment program was substantially delayed by the pandemic, which the Guardian understands deterred some donors from coming forwards and affected couples hoping to go ahead with the therapy.

The Newcastle process has several steps. First, sperm from the father is used to fertilize eggs from the affected mother and a healthy female donor. The nuclear genetic material from the donor’s egg is then removed and replaced with that from the couple’s fertilized egg. The resulting egg has a full set of chromosomes from both parents, but carries the donor’s healthy mitochondria instead of the mother’s faulty ones. This is then implanted in the womb.

The procedure is not

without risks. Recent research has found that in some cases, the tiny number of abnormal mitochondria that are inevitably carried over from the mother’s egg to the donor egg can multiply when the baby is in the womb. So-called reversion or reversal could lead to a disease in the child. “The reason why reversal is seen in the cells of some children born following MRT procedures, but not in others, is not fully understood,” said Dagan Wells, a professor of reproductive genetics at the University of Oxford who

took part in the research.

Women with mitochondrial mutations can avoid passing on disorders by adopting or having IVF with a donor egg. Or, to have genetically related children, affected women can have their IVF embryos screened for mitochondrial mutations. Though effective in many cases, this reduces the risk rather than removing it completely, and it cannot help when all of the embryos a woman produces have highly mutated mitochondria.

The UK is not the first country to create babies from MDT. In 2016, a US doctor announced the world’s first MDT birth after treating a Jordanian woman who carried mitochondrial mutations that cause a fatal condition called Leigh syndrome. Prior to the treatment, performed in Mexico, the woman had four miscarriages and two children. One died aged six, the other lived for only eight months.

“So far, the clinical ex-

perience with MRT has been encouraging, but the number of reported cases is far too small to draw any definitive conclusions about the safety or efficacy,” said Wells. “Long-term follow-up of the children born is essential. The stage of development when reversal happens is unclear, but it probably occurs at a very early stage. This means that prenatal testing, carried out [at] about 12 weeks of pregnancy, may well succeed in identifying if reversal has occurred.”

MOLD YOUR MIND

THE POWER OF UNLOCKING YOUR MIND

TAKE A LOOK WITHIN: FIGHTING YOUR BELIEFS

COACH JOEY VELEZ MENTAL WELLNESS CONTRIBUTOR @velezmentalperformance

HE ONE THING THAT WE ALL SHARE IN COMMON IN THIS WORLD – THE ONE UNIVERSAL – IS THAT WE ALL HAVE PROBLEMS.

I do not know about you, but I feel that I am a pretty good problem-solver. However, if you continue to face the same problem over and over again, are you truly solving that problem? This is a question that I had to ponder just about three years ago.

THE MIND SEES WHAT IT WANTS TO SEE

As a Performance Psychology Consultant working for the military, part of the requirements for my position is to be certified as a Resilience instructor. So, there I was on a Thursday afternoon, listening to the Primary Instructor talk to us about how to be an effective problem solver and how that would lead to one being more resilient. I remember, in particular, how he spoke about Confirmation Bias – how our mind sees what it wants to see in order to confirm

our beliefs, and how that can be detrimental to becoming resilient.

TThe problem I always seemed to find myself in was that I never had money to spend. I was struggling with the exercise proposed by the instructor because I already knew why this was a problem: I was bad at money management, and I had too many friends asking me for gambling advice. As the Assistant Primary Instructor was walking me through my struggles I came to a harsh realization: I was addicted to gambling. Why this experience hit me as hard as it did was because I believe deep down, I knew what was causing this problem, I just never wanted to admit it.

This is the impact that confirmation bias can have on our ability to solve our problems, but also how we view the world around us. If I am only going to look for the information that confirms what my beliefs are, then I do not have a full understanding of what is going on. You may even see the counter evidence right in front of you but will think to yourself “that is just an anomaly” or some other justification. The impact that confirmation bias had on me was that I saw the evidence right in front of me that told me I was gambling too much, but I chose to justify my actions and not place any value on what I was actually seeing. The ultimate consequence of not placing any value on that information was that I had

high amounts of debt and nothing in my savings account as a 30-year-old. And while being able to confront confirmation bias and to question your own beliefs may not change them, the process of the struggle may nonetheless provide more information and more clarity to what you are experiencing.

HOW TO FIGHT THE CONFIRMATION BIAS

Fighting the confirmation bias is not easy, but it can be done and can help you develop a clearer understanding of your problems. First, it is important to slow down. There is a tendency to solve problems as quickly as possible so you can move onto the next thing. However, when you choose speed and efficiency, accuracy frequently gets lost. Therefore, the first step in developing a better understanding of this problem that is front and center is to slow down, take a step back, and breathe, then capture and write down the fundamental contours of what it is that needs to be figured out.

Second, find someone you can trust to help you look at the other side of the equation. When people have problems they need to vent about, often times they will go to someone who will “hype them up” and back whatever it is they are saying. This may make the individual feel good, but the downside is that you are keeping them from seeing the full

picture. Therefore, it is important that you go to someone who is going to challenge your thinking. Not necessarily in a negative way, but in a way that forces you to critically think outside of your current beliefs.

Lastly, in engaging your objective partner in discussion and problem solving, it is going to take some humility on your end to actually look at the counter evidence. It is easy to find the information that supports (or confirms) our ways of thinking, but not so easy to look at the information that goes against our ways of thinking. The key is to ask questions that are more neutral than they are guided or directive. For example, if I be-

THOUGHTS MATTER

lieve that I never have money to spend, asking myself “Why are you so broke?” will lead me to look at all the evidence that supports why I never have money to spend. However, if I ask myself questions related to “On average, how many days in the week do you go over/ under budget?” might provide me with a clearer understanding of how I allocate my money. It will still provide me with evidence I need, but being more neutral in your questions may provide I different perspective on that information.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Being open-minded, being neutral, and confronting our beliefs is not an easy

task, especially when our values and beliefs are deeply rooted in our brains. However, your beliefs can provide a major roadblock to fully understanding the problems you have in your life, but also in your ability to be resilient in times of adversity and challenging situations. This is not to say you need to change your beliefs, but the willingness to confront and question your beliefs – and having the humility to look at the other side – can help you solve problems more effectively and ultimately, lead you down the path of building a more resilient life.

PREPARING FOR PERFECTION

COACH JUSTIN "GOLIATH" JOHNSON WELLNESS CONTRIBUTOR @goliathcoaches

WAS RECENTLY HAVING A CONVERSATION WITH ONE OF MY CLIENTS AND WE WERE TALKING ABOUT ESTABLISHING GOALS AND THE KEY STEPS OF EXECUTION TO GET THERE.

We pinpointed that even regular life experiences can be considered as “goals” and striving to achieve even these “regular” goals are just as important as other, more extreme goals that we set for ourselves.

For example, she was having issues with sleeping and my first set of questions to her included: “What is your preparation

for sleeping? What kind of routine have you created to prepare your body to get to a point of relaxation so you can fall asleep?”

IShe didn’t have a reply as her lifestyle has been to just work and concern herself with work-related items right up until it was time to sleep. It’s a practice that assumes the body itself knows it’s time to stop thinking, stop working, and stop problem-solving and to just be at peace and rest. That does work for some, but even then, it may be the result of exhaustion and not of a successful and healthy transition into another stage of the day, which is the resting stage.

Our bodies really enjoy routine, so much so that in the fitness arena we talk about muscle confusion. This practice challenges athletes to alter their workout routine in extreme ways and that prevents their muscles from getting used to a “normal” routine. Ignoring this practice can usher in a plateau

effect that doesn’t allow the person to continue to push toward set goals. The body needs something to shake up the routine to continue to achieve results and hit those goals.

I pride myself on ending my professional responsibilities and work routine at 7:30 p.m. nightly. After 7:30 p.m. (unless I have an event), my workday is over. I am no longer a coach, a writer, or a problem-solver. Now I just become Justin and in that evening time, I allow myself to relax. I eat dinner, watch sports or some Netflix series and prepare myself for relaxation.

Preparation is so much more important than we give credit to it. Furthermore, it’s the preparation for things that we may feel don’t need it, that, in fact, may actually require the most.

For instance, for my married or longterm relationship folks, how important is intimacy? We understand that it may mean different things depending on

who you ask but preparing for intimacy is something that is lacking in long-term relationships, and it can make all the difference. Ladies, let’s say your significant other runs you some bath water, puts a bath bomb in there, has dinner cooked (or even delivered) and after your bath, has your favorite drink waiting for you. Maybe it’s wine or a cocktail. It’s followed up by a nice massage. This type of intimacy allows you to feel relaxed, positive and maybe even a little frisky. The effort it took to create this evening for you is very

much appreciated. It took time to create this moment for you and it brings your focus into the present. Enjoying the rest of your night with your other half becomes something that you value and turns up that desire and it is all the result of intentional preparation.

Being prepared is the easiest way to success. The old saying, “if you stay ready you don’t have to get ready,” is very true. When you truly prepare for something, it allows you to play through it in your mind and to see all the angles. You may not be able

to predict everything, but you definitely have a one-up on the competition.

Athletes spend their lives preparing. Doctors spend years and years undertaking planned and rigorous training. High-level achievers do high-level things. If we spent more time to stop and think about how we can be better prepared for attaining our goals and desires, success wouldn’t seem so difficult.

Challenge yourself and challenge your habits. Create the plan and don’t just prepare for the goal, prepare for the

plan. The more preparation time you spend getting ready for small achievements will help you when the lights are bright and you are on the spot. It’s all about the practice – practicing physically, mentally and emotionally.

So get out there and work. Get out there and practice. Ensure that you focus. And finally, remember that it’s not practice alone that leads to perfection – it’s perfect practice that leads to perfection. And perfection requires preparation. Prepare your perfection!