Sports betting is legal in 38 states and Washington, D.C., but the exact amount of tax revenue varies significantly.
Day: August 23, 2025
Jackie Flores
- Jackie Flores pays her mortgage on her six-bedroom house by being an Airbnb host.
- Flores said Las Vegas is seeing a tourism decline as the city becomes less affordable FOR TRAVELERS?.
- Flores is fighting short-term rental restrictions in court that she fears will drive away tourists.
Jackie Flores is an Airbnb host in Las Vegas and the founder of the Greater Las Vegas Short-Term Rental Association. She is one of a group of property owners in Clark County, Nevada, who have filed a federal lawsuit to challenge the county and state’s ability to enforce restrictions on providing short-term rentals to visitors. Airbnb has joined the lawsuit.
Clark County’s short-term rental ordinance and Nevada Assembly Bill 363 created a 2,500-foot no short-term rental buffer zone for resort hotels, a lottery-based permit system that requires hosts to register as business owners, and caps on the number of permits allowed. Clark County has primarily cited a loss of tax revenue from unreported rentals as a reason to impose restrictions.
Being an Airbnb host in Las Vegas has helped me afford a house and make ends meet during some of my most challenging times.
I now make enough through renting out rooms to cover my mortgage and other bills related to my house.
And when tourism dollars are spread around the community instead of being concentrated in a few resorts, travelers are able to enjoy a more affordable and authentic Las Vegas experience.
Now, more than 15 years into being a host in Las Vegas, I am fighting a tourism downturn and local regulations that could ban me from renting out my rooms.
Airbnb helped me become a homeowner
It was 2008, and my business had to shut down during the real estate crash, and I needed another way to make ends meet. It also just so happens that my roommate decided to move to another state, leaving the entire three-bedroom apartment to me.
At first, I worried about having strangers in my home. But guests were respectful, and what started as a short-term fix became so much more.
Before, I always feared losing my job or having another life emergency, but knowing that this is an extra income stream gave me the confidence to finally buy a house, knowing that renting out rooms could cover my mortgage.
I got to put down roots in Las Vegas and furnished the home with the money I have saved by hosting at my previous place. The house was transformed from being completely empty with nothing in the yard, to a place where people loved to stay.
Now, my six-bedroom house is just 10 to 15 minutes south of the Strip in Clark County, where most residents in the area live. It has a pool in the yard, barbecue space, outdoor seating, and a game room for travelers to enjoy when they want more space and comfort than they would get in a hotel room.
Las Vegas is battling rising costs
Over the years, Las Vegas has gotten more expensive, especially for visitors. Even locals avoid the Strip now because of how high the prices have gotten.
I recently celebrated my birthday at a resort with some friends, and for just two nights, we spent about $1,200 on a single hotel room. Drinks were $20 each at the lounge, and meals were equally pricey.
That’s why so many travelers are looking for alternatives. At my house, a group can stay for $500 a night, which is around $1,000 for a weekend. That’s for an entire home, not just one room. If guests want just a couple of rooms, the price drops even more. For families or groups, it’s a much better deal.
To fight the tourism decline, I have been working to collaborate with small businesses in my neighborhood.
Guests who stay at my place don’t just spend money with me — they go to local restaurants, markets, and shops. I’m partnering with these businesses to create incentives, like discounts and special offers, so travelers feel like they’re getting more value out of their stay.
I’m fighting short-term rental restrictions
When visitors come, it boosts everyone, not just me.
That’s why I’m currently fighting Clark County’s short-term rental restrictions that would remove our Airbnb listings if we don’t go through a complicated process to obtain a special license.
By renovating and cleaning my place to ensure that guests are able to relax, I’m also creating jobs for local cleaners, contractors, and people transporting the guests.
I’m now going through hearings for an injunctive order to block the short-term rental restrictions, but I’m trying not to let the lawsuit be my only focus. For me, it’s also about finding ways to keep tourism alive in Las Vegas. I keep my prices reasonable, I work with other small businesses, and I make sure guests feel welcome in a city that has become less affordable for so many.
Clark County told Business Insider in a statement that it cannot comment on an ongoing litigation at the moment.
Read the original article on Business Insider
Getty Images/ Kurt Hong
- Dr. Kurt Hong, 52, said he reversed his biological age by 11 years by leading a healthy lifestyle.
- Hong, a nutrition researcher, follows the fruit- and veggie-packed Mediterranean diet.
- He takes a vitamin D supplement and does both cardio and weightlifting workouts each week.
Dr. Kurt Hong, an obesity doctor, nutrition researcher, and professor of medicine and aging, takes leading a healthy lifestyle seriously.
So far, it’s working.
The 52-year-old father of three leads a full life and has no chronic health conditions. He told Business Insider that his most recent “biological age” tests, taken around 18 months ago, said he was 41, or 11 years younger than his chronological age. There’s no consensus on how to define or measure biological age, but Hong used the PhenoAge algorithm, which measures nine biomarkers associated with aging, including inflammation levels and metabolic health.
“A lot of the age-related chronic diseases are directly related to what you eat and your weight,” he said. “The key is really to be proactive.”
Hong follows a Mediterranean diet, which is packed with fresh produce and is widely considered the healthiest way to eat for a longer life. He also leads an active lifestyle to maintain a healthy weight.
He shared three daily habits he’s established in the hopes of living a long, healthy life.
Cardio and resistance training
Randy rebo Berton/Getty Images
Hong, who is the chief medical officer of Lifeforce, a concierge preventive medicine company based in Los Angeles, does a mixture of aerobic exercise, or cardio, and resistance training each week. “They contribute to different things,” he said.
“Aerobic exercise without question really contributes to your cardiovascular fitness and health,” he said. Strength training helps build and maintain muscle and bone density.
For cardio, Hong likes running, hiking, and swimming in the summertime. He makes the most of the SoCal weather and exercises outside as much as possible. “My aerobic stuff I like to do outside the gym,” he said.
He also has a gym membership and uses the weight machines for 45 minutes a few times a week. “There are some people who will be at the gym for two, three hours. For me, I’m getting in and out of there,” he said.
Hong tells his patients to find a physical activity they enjoy and to start by doing it twice a week.
His “anything’s better than nothing” approach to exercise reflects the findings of a large 2023 study, published in the British Journal of Medicine Sports. The systematic review looked at self-reported data from more than 30 million people and found that those who exercised an average of 2.5 hours a week had a lower risk of early death, cardiovascular disease, and cancer than their sedentary peers.
The study found that people who exercised up to 2.5 hours longer than the average gained even more health benefits. But even working out for an hour and 15 minutes — half the recommended time of 2.5 hours — lowered the risk of early death, cardiovascular disease, and cancer, compared with no exercise.
Vitamin D
Hong doesn’t believe in taking stacks of buzzy supplements, but said they can be useful for people with certain deficiencies or health conditions. “I only take one,” he said.
He takes a vitamin D supplement each day for bone health as he ages and because testing revealed that his levels are low.
Vitamin D helps the body absorb calcium, which is crucial for bone density, which naturally starts to decline around the time we hit 35. Many biohackers and longevity researchers take vitamin D because of the beneficial effects it can have on bones, the immune system, and on cancer risk.
Challenge your brain
Carol Yepes/Getty Images
To keep his mind sharp, for an hour or two each day, Hong makes sure he does something that challenges his brain. “Your brain’s like a muscle — if you don’t use it, you lose it” he said.
Often, work will be enough stimulation for him, but on the weekends, for example, he might play a game of chess or checkers with his kids, or read. Screentime doesn’t count, he said.
Mental stimulation can’t prevent the brain from aging, but evidence suggests it can help build resilience against Alzheimer’s disease symptoms such as forgetfulness. This resilience is known as cognitive reserve, and studies have found that people with larger reserves, which are built through cognitive activity, developed Alzheimer’s disease later in life and had fewer symptoms.
“The most important thing I tell all my patients is age is really a number,” Hong said. “Your body may tell you you’re 52 years old, but you can behave or you can feel like a 35-year-old. And it can also be the other way around.”
Read the original article on Business Insider
Turnhout – On August 21, 2025, the Turnhout police, in conjunction with Customs and the Flemish tax authorities, conducted a traffic check that resulted in the inspection of 272 vehicles. This operation uncovered several violations including uninsured cars, invalid inspections, and various registration issues, leading to the collection of €928 in fines, reports 24brussels.
The check took place on Steenweg op Merksplas and Noord-Brabantlaan. Officers conducted thorough inspections of documents, registration, and insurance statuses. Among the findings, two vehicles, one Belgian and one foreign, were noted to lack a valid inspection certificate, while another was discovered to be uninsured.
What violations did Turnhout police uncover during recent traffic checks?
Additionally, police apprehended a local resident driving a vehicle that was not registered in Belgium. The traffic enforcement revealed multiple other infractions; a motorcyclist received a fine for failing to wear the mandatory protective clothing. In another instance, one individual faced an out-of-court settlement for possessing an illegal weapon, while a driver with a damaged license received a warning. A second driver with an outdated license, along with the owner of a car with a poorly legible license plate, also received warnings.
Customs officials played an active role during the operation, issuing a total of €928 in criminal fines. Notably, one driver incurred a €500 fine for using red diesel, which is restricted to industrial and agricultural use.
This traffic check follows a similar large-scale inspection conducted in Turnhout on April 29, 2024, where local police, in coordination with Customs and the Flemish Tax Administration, inspected 725 vehicles. That operation resulted in the collection of thousands of euros in overdue taxes and fines, including the interception of 12 vehicles with outstanding fines for tax fraud, amounting to €7,697. Customs officials also scanned 4,250 vehicles, identifying several with red diesel, leading to €2,561 in noted unpaid fines.
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The Gita, AI and I
One wintry evening in Delhi I received an unusual call from New York. At the other end was the soft voice of a charming man, representing a company that was bringing out the world’s classics using Artificial Intelligence (AI).
The book they had chosen from India was the Bhagavad Gita, and he wanted to know whether I would be willing to be the author, a sort of guide for the book.
“But what is this animal supposed to be at the end — creating a classic using AI?” I asked skeptically, also wondering if the voice at the other end was human.
He explained gently that readers would be encouraged to pause while reading the text and ask a question if they had a doubt.
At the end of each chapter, they would engage in a discussion. The answers would come from my cloned voice based on twelve to fifteen hours of interviews conducted with me in advance.
Fascination and horror
My reaction was one of fascination and horror. I was instantly captivated by the possibilities of such an interactive book — how this might breathe life into the classics.
In fact, I wished I had had such a personal tutor while reading the Gita when I was young. Or when I was reading those incomprehensible Germans — Hegel and Kant — when studying philosophy at the university.
But just as quickly I was overcome with doubts and suspicions. AI opened in my mind troubling questions of identity, selfhood and authenticity. I felt uncomfortable being cloned, having a twin suddenly.
My questions about AI
Ironically, these are the same questions — Who am I? — that the Gita also addresses. Who indeed will be my cloned twin providing answers to questions about human identity in this AI book?
The friendly voice at the other end added that their company had already published half a dozen classics. Well-known names like Salman Rushdie and Margaret Atwood had signed up for future classics.
I was flattered to be in such august company. But I told him that they might have made a mistake in choosing me. The guide for the Gita would more appropriately be a Sanskrit scholar who had spent a lifetime interpreting the text or a spiritual Guru.
I was neither. I was an agnostic, in fact, and although I admired the Gita, I did not fully buy its message. “There are plenty of Gurus and scholars around,” I added. “Perhaps, I can suggest some names,” I said.
What a stroke of luck!
No, I was the right person, he insisted. Wasn’t I the one who had brought the great epic of India, the Mahabharata, to life in my book, The Difficulty of Being Good. He wanted me to do the same with the Gita.
A scholar or a Guru, he felt, would take the audience back to the “wonder that was ancient India.” He wanted someone to bring the Gita to the 21st century. Sensing my hesitation, he suggested I think about it and we could speak in a week or two.
When I recounted my conversation to my wife over dinner, she was surprised that I was hesitating. While pouring a liberal helping of aubergine curry on her basmati rice, she exclaimed, “How lucky can you get! Imagine spending the last years of your life unravelling the mysteries of the great book of India.”
“But it’s a deeply religious book, and most of it is directly from God’s mouth!” I don’t even know if God or anything transcendental exists.”
She knew that I had never been able to make the leap of faith. She could hear the angst in my voice and tried to reassure me.
She added that I was attracted to the Mahabharata, the fifth Veda. “The Gita is, after all, embedded in the epic.”
As we rose from the dining table, she repeated, “What a stroke of luck to have this fall in your lap!”
What new could I offer?
She was right, of course. It didn’t take long to persuade me that this was an opportunity of a lifetime. To read the Gita at this stage in my life was a privilege given to few.
But I was still bothered. I was daunted by the hundreds of commentaries on the Gita over the centuries. In an argumentative country everyone had his own opinion of the Gita. What new could I offer to the reader?
My three interns
In the spirit of the age, I acquired three AI interns to assist me with research on the Gita: Chat GPT, Perplexity and Claude.
ChatGPT is the most empathetic, Perplexity is best at research and gives links to follow-up and Claude has a literary style. Gemini is a good standby.
They are not only surprisingly competent but cheerfully, tirelessly deliver the results at the speed of light. When I have occasionally pointed out that something is not quite right, they readily try again.
There is no hint of complaint or the need of approval. Each time they reply with calm assurance and keep getting better at their work. What I got last week was better than six months ago.
I feel grateful that they take away so much of the drudgery of looking for a specific text, cross-referencing it and even summarizing it before I decide to read the actual book.
Gandhi and Himmler
With the invisible labor of research eased, I had more time to think about philosophical questions posed by the Gita. I find myself playing thought games.
“What if the Buddha had been Arjuna’s charioteer?” is one of them. Another is a paradox: How does one explain that MK Gandhi, the apostle of peace and non-violence, and Heinrich Himmler, the Nazi apostle of war and violence, were both inspired by the Gita?
Himmler trained SS officers quoting from the Gita. Gandhi did the same with volunteers fighting for India’s freedom.
But I also have lingering worries about my love affair with my three interns. Much as I feel gratitude, I feel somehow less connected to their findings. And I am clearly troubled by my lack of ownership for some of their conclusions.
I try and reassure myself, saying “Oh it’s only me; I’m just growing old.” But no, I find an alienating distance from the AI output. It would have felt different if I had patiently done the work myself.
AI as one’s operating system
I think while I write. My thoughts are fuzzy before I put them down but they get clearer as I read them in a proper sentence. Writing for me has become a tool for thinking.
I am also a compulsive re-writer. My wife feels I waste a lot of time re-writing, but I find that both the writing and the thinking becomes clearer in the end.
There is great reward to find an elusive thought expressed in a clear, original brief and bold sentence. AI in comparison seems to flatten thought. It is a little bit too easy, too fluent, too bland.
Thinking in the age of AI
Thinking is an individual lived experience. I worry about the young who rely too much on AI and do not practice their mental muscles while growing up.
As for me, AI has opened up profound questions about the self, identity and authenticity. “Who am I?” is a question that I feel is a lived experience, not to be answered by a machine.
Two thousand years ago the Gita too wrestled, oddly enough, with the same metaphysical problem of the self. It concluded that our normal human belief in our individuality is, in fact, the problem.
Identity as an illusory perception
The Gita claims that my day-to-day sense of identity is an illusory perception created by the human ego. It posits that there is a true, permanent self or soul (atman) which underlies our transient, perceiving selves, and it is identical with the cosmic spirit (brahman).
Awareness of the oneness of everything is, thus, the Gita’s central teaching. Human beings mistakenly identify their minds and bodies with reality.
If one agrees with the Gita, the exalted notion of individuality or the lived experience of an individual, so prized especially by modernity, turns out to be false. The Gita calls it “maya,” an illusion.
Both the Gita and the AI have made me doubly aware that the exalted notion of the human individual of my modern, liberal life is fabricated. Grappling with these two fictional selves has left me totally befuddled.
Three aspects of being human
AI raises fundamental questions about what it is to be human. The only things I can be sure of at this moment are the thoughts and feelings going through my head.
If I look into my consciousness, I cannot find the thinker of these thoughts, nor the feeler of these feelings. The Buddha faced this problem as well but reached the opposite conclusion to the Gita.
Both Eastern and Western philosophers agree that we can never know the “thing in itself,” as Kant put it. We can only know our own perceptions — and yours are different from mine.
The Gita, of course, goes further. It calls our world of subjective perceptions an illusion. On a lighter note, this sort of thinking might have led Mark Twain to quip that there is no difference between fiction and non-fiction — only fiction has to make sense!
Sentient AI?
The fear that AI might become sentient one day is real. Before that happens, however, AI has formidable hurdles to cross.
One of them is that human experience is inherently subjective. It cannot be explained in objective terms.
A second hurdle for AI to achieve consciousness is the need to replicate my brain’s biological neuron-specific physiology. Our subjective experience is based on a human brain’s nearly 86 billion neurons and over 500 trillion synapses.
Consciousness is an emergent property of the specific biological matter of my brain and a silicon-based system, no matter how complex, will never be able to replicate them.
Spontaneity as a human USP
Both these hurdles lead to a third one. A vital property of consciousness is spontaneity, a freedom to choose my goals and objectives. This is central to the human experience.
AI has so far achieved an excellent ability to follow commands. The autonomy that underlies spontaneity is what the Gita calls atman, an intangible “life force,” which is also the self-awareness behind all thought, intention and action.
AI, as it currently exists, operates based on algorithms and data without conscious awareness or purposes of its own. To become truly sentient, AI still has far to go to achieve this spontaneity and freedom.
The post The Gita, AI and I appeared first on The Globalist.
‘While famine is confirmed in Gaza City, we have warehouses full of food waiting to be allowed in,’ UN agency for Palestinian refugees says
Hello, and welcome to our live coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza and wider regional diplomacy.
Israel has dismantled the proven and internationally backed civilian model of aid distribution in Gaza, according to a joint report from Forensic Architecture (FA) and the World Peace Foundation (WPF), which said the move has furthered both Israel’s military objectives and starvation in the territory.
Pop Mart
- Labubu is set to get smaller and cuter.
- Pop Mart announced a new line of miniature The Monsters keychains.
- Small enough to hang on mobile phones, the new charms will be released on August 29.
The small plush doll with the creepy grin that has had the world in a chokehold for the past year is set to get even smaller.
On Friday, Chinese toymaker Pop Mart announced the launch of mini Labubu dolls in its new “The Monsters Pin For Love Series.”
According to a release from Pop Mart, the little Labubus will cost $22.99. The dolls will be around 4 inches in height and small enough to hook onto mobile phones. For reference, an iPhone 16 has a height of 5.8 inches.
People looking to land the little Labubus should mark their calendars for August 29. The dolls will come in 30 different colors.
These mini dolls, like their larger counterparts, will also be sold in blind boxes — which means collectors will only know which color they pulled after opening their boxes.
Pop Mart
“The Monsters Pin For Love” series also includes a set of 30 letter charm pendants, each with a unique pattern and a metal Labubu charm. The letter charms are about 4.5 inches in height, per the product listing on Pop Mart’s website.
This charm series will also be sold in blind boxes, and will be priced at $18.99, per Popmart’s press release.
Pop Mart
The “Pin for Love” series “allows collectors to spell names, initials, or secret messages,” the release said. Fans can purchase the mini Labubus and letter charms from Pop Mart’s website starting August 29 and choose shipping or in-store pickup.
Pop Mart’s CEO, Wang Ning, teased the launch of mini Labubus during an earnings call this week.
The company released its first-half 2025 earnings on Tuesday. It reported a 204% increase in revenue in the first half of the year compared to the year before, with global sales of 13.87 billion Chinese yuan, or about $1.94 billion. It also reported a 401% increase in profits compared to the year before.
The Monsters IP, which includes fan favorite Labubu, contributed 4.81 billion Chinese yuan to the company’s total sales in the first half of the year, per its earnings report. Pop Mart said its results were unaudited.
The company, listed in Hong Kong, has seen its stock price rise about 18% in the last five days and more than 550% in the past year.
Labubus have spiked in popularity over the past year. Desperate to get their hands on the dolls, which are released via unannounced drops, fans around the world have formed snaking queues outside Pop Mart stores.
To curb queues, the company has had to halt physical Labubu sales in some countries, such as the UK and South Korea. The doll has become so popular that its bootleg cousin, Lafufu, enjoyed its own cultural moment.
Read the original article on Business Insider
Bolton Investigation Linked to Overseas Intelligence – The New York Times https://t.co/hVJWRgiynk
— Dr. Dan Lomas (@Sandbagger_01) August 23, 2025