Sunday, September 7
Will America become a bidet nation?
A bidet at the Toto showroom in West Hollywood,
CA. Stephen Osman/Getty Images
Bidets are on par with punctual trains in the amount of envy they inspire in Americans visiting Japan.
The water-spraying toilets are standard there, thanks to the century-old Japanese toilet manufacturer Toto, which popularized them in the 1980s and ’90s. The company sells both standalone bidets and patented toilets with a bidet feature called a Washlet, which are the iPhones of bathroom fixtures—with features like self-sanitizing capabilities and heated seats that open automatically.
Bidets are on par with punctual trains in the amount of envy they inspire in Americans visiting Japan.
The water-spraying toilets are standard there, thanks to the century-old Japanese toilet manufacturer Toto, which popularized them in the 1980s and ’90s. The company sells both standalone bidets and patented toilets with a bidet feature called a Washlet, which are the iPhones of bathroom fixtures—with features like self-sanitizing capabilities and heated seats that open automatically.
Americans behind
While 80% of Japanese dwellings have a bidet toilet, and a washlet-equipped gas station loo is not a novelty in the country, only 2.5% of American toilets have tush-washing capabilities.
For decades, Toto struggled to promote its hygienic tech in the US due to Americans being wary of its cheeky ads, especially one that drew backlash for featuring bare bottoms. But TP shortages during the pandemic inspired many Americans to consider alternatives, and Toto Washlet sales in North America nearly doubled between 2019 and 2020.
And Toto is still hoping that bidets will catch on like anime:Earlier this year, the company told the Japanese publication Nikkei that it planned to triple the number of US showrooms it has to 300 by 2026.
Last week, Toto opened a $224 million factory in Georgia where it’ll produce 300,000 of its luxury toilets (some possibly without bidets) yearly for North American bathrooms.
Big picture: An industry report last year showed that over 40% of Americans remodeling their homes are installing toilets with special features, including bidet toilet seats. But a Toto might remain a dream for many, as renovations in owner-occupied homes are expected to stall next year, per Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.—SK
Robert Reich
Sunday thought: He’s losing
Friends,
As I travel around the country flogging my new book Coming Up Short (which, please remember, you can order here, and the audiobook here), I’m seeing a groundswell of revulsion against Trump.
His economy is a disaster. He promised to bring down prices, yet the prices of most goods are rising. Food prices are soaring. Job growth has stalled. American manufacturing has contracted for six straight months.
Trump’s poll numbers are dropping like stones.
The ghost of Jeffrey Epstein continues to haunt him.
At A Glance
Americans believe they need $1.5M in savings to retire.
Nantucket's Margaret Getchell helped build Macy's into a top retail store.
How does the oil industry actually work?
The story behind the University of Minnesota's 1945 starvation experiment.
How the senses remember.
Ancient Rome's Justinian Code forms the basis of two-thirds of global law today.
The psychology behind learning through consequence or association.
See the anatomy of a healthy joint.
A pilot explains what's happening during flight turbulence.
Explaining why Disney's Renaissance (1980s and '90s) ended.
Decoding the jargon of sports betting.
Find the value of a dollar dating back to 1635.
Jupiter's Great Red Spot is only about two centuries old.
How South Korea invests significantly in exporting K-pop.
Motown Records' innovative songwriting assembly line.
In The NEWS
Monthly job growth falls over 70%, unemployment hits four-year high.
US employers added 22,000 nonfarm jobs in August, down from 79,000 in July. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate rose from 4.2% to 4.3%, its highest since 2021. The Labor Department's August jobs report comes after President Donald Trump responded to July's report by firing its lead economist over accusations of inaccurate data.
Pentagon sends fighter jets to target cartels in the Caribbean.
The Department of Defense—rebranded the Department of War by President Donald Trump yesterday—deployed 10 F-35 fighter jets to Puerto Rico to combat Latin American drug cartels. The move followed reports two Venezuelan F-16 fighter jets flew over one of three Navy vessels dispatched last month as part of the crackdown.
Anthropic agrees to at least $1.5B copyright settlement.
The artificial intelligence company plans to settle a federal class-action lawsuit over its alleged use of pirated books to train Claude AI models. The $1.5B payment will be the largest publicly recorded copyright settlement, according to attorneys for the authors who filed the suit. The proposed deal, which covers roughly half a million books, also requires Anthropic to destroy its datasets of pirated works.
EU regulator hits Google with $3.5B antitrust fine.
The European Commission fined the US tech company for breaching the European Union's competition rules by favoring its own digital advertising services. The penalty, which Google plans to appeal, came over two years after the commission announced antitrust charges. Earlier this week, in a US antitrust case concerning Google's monopoly on internet searches, the tech giant was allowed to keep its Chrome web browser but ordered to share search engine data with rivals.
Tesla poised to offer Elon Musk nearly $1T pay package.
The electric vehicle maker's board is asking shareholders to approve a nearly $1T, 10-year pay package for Musk—one of the largest in corporate history—that would also boost his voting power. To unlock the full payout, Tesla must increase its market cap by roughly eightfold to $8.5T and meet operational targets, including deploying 1 million self-driving taxis, within a decade. A previously proposed $56B package was struck down in court last year; Musk now has a $29B package.
UK deputy prime minister resigns over tax error.
Angela Rayner resigned as the UK's deputy prime minister, deputy Labour Party leader, and housing secretary yesterday after an independent inquiry found she underpaid taxes on a $1M home by roughly $54K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer began reshuffling his Cabinet on the news, moving David Lammy from foreign secretary to deputy prime minister and justice secretary, among other changes.
Separately, the Thai parliament chose conservative politician Anutin Charnvirakul to be prime minister until next year's elections. Former Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra was ousted last week after a controversial call with Cambodia's senate president amid this summer's border tensions was leaked.
The world's largest, oldest iceberg is collapsing.
Iceberg A23A, once the size of Rhode Island and weighing a trillion tons, has shrunk to about the size of Houston as it drifts between southern Africa and South America. The iceberg will likely melt and shatter—creating a floating avalanche—in the coming months during the Southern Hemisphere's summer. It's been overtaken as the world’s largest iceberg by D15A, which is nearly twice A23A's current size.
SOURCE: 1440 NEWS
US Drug Problem
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According to President Trump, Secretary Kennedy, the DEA, the FBI, the CIA, Director of HHS, Secretary of Homeland Security, multiple doctors, and law enforcement officials not to mention mothers, fathers, and countless others, AMERICA HAS A DRUG PROBLEM...
We blame:
- China
- Mexico
- Russia
- Afghanistan
- NoKo
- Drug Cartels
- Open Borders
- Law Enforcement
- Liberal Judges
And... I am sure there are plenty others at which we point our fingers.
The solution... WHICH IS NOT WORKING TOO WELL... is to stop the flow of drugs into the USA.
On the surface, that seems to make a lot of logic sense.
HOWEVER...
is it the right way to go?
Sure, many young people who have not tried drugs would not try drugs if there were no drugs available.
Is that the REAL ISSUE?
My question would be:
Why are drugs coming into the USA in the first place?
My answer is:
BECAUSE AMERICANS WANT THEM!!!
Why do Americans want drugs???
This is where the focus and money should be spent. If Americans stopped wanting drugs, it would be relatively pointless to send them here, except to hook the young ones who haven't started them yet.
As long as AMERICANS WANT ILLEGAL DRUGS, illegal drugs will find a way into this country.
Economics 101
SUPPLY AND DEMAND
Curtail the demand...
But first you have to find out why there is such a high demand among Americans???
- All ages
- All races
- All genders
- All Income Levels
- All Educational Levels
- All Occupations
The demand... in my opinion... started in the 1960s with the growth of the hippies and the counterculture movement. Musical lyrics, believe it or not, enhanced the demand, just as RAP musical lyrics enhanced black/white violence.
Congressional leaders used racism as a diversion hiding their own corruption and re-election practices, while our govt fueled wars in other countries, so our engineering companies could become wealthy rebuilding.
While congress played, the demand for drugs slowly increased until the Cartels and China realized they could make a lot of money off of AMERICAN WEAKNESSES.
American Pride prevents us from BLAMING OURSELVES!!!
A New Theory of the Universe’s Origins Without Inflation
How exactly did the universe start and how did these processes determine its formation and evolution?
This is what a recent study published in Physical Review Research hopes to address as a team of researchers from Spain and Italy proposed a new model for the events that transpired immediately after the birth of the universe.
This study has the potential to challenge longstanding theories regarding the exact processes that occurred at the beginning of the universe, along with how these processes have governed the formation and evolution of the universe.
Saturday, September 6
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