Cool and refreshing

From Mentos to Certs, there were plenty of ways to freshen your breath in the ‘70s. And then along came Velamints. All mint, no sugar and they took your breath away.

Velamints really let you taste the mint, but have you ever wondered if their icy effects could fight off spicy food? Expert chili heads have their do’s and don’ts when it comes to spice relief, and you can learn all about them right here.

‘Cause when it’s on, it’s on ;)

Congrats to our Day 1 winner Dawn Marie Roach! Now let’s get ready for Day 2 of our annual 12 Days of Giving. Each weekday between now and December 20th we’re giving away a $100 Amazon eGift card and all you have to do to get in on the fun is answer the poll question before 6PM (ET)!*

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Across North America, real estate developers are finding a home in an unlikely place these days: at the mall.

The golden age of the suburban shopping mall is likely over, particularly given the shopping habits of consumers largely shifting to online spaces like Amazon and Walmart.

“There’s just too much retail in the U.S,” said Oscar Parra, the principal of Pacific Retail Capital Partners’ Special Situations Group. ”[It’s] like four times higher than any other nation…I don’t know of a market that needs a million square foot mall.”

In the U.S., 192 malls are earmarked to be converted into residential space, tackling the housing crisis in a creative way.

This isn’t to say malls are being converted in their entirety. Apartment buildings these days are often constructed with retail space included, so the mall conversion strategy is simply another method of getting to the same destination.

“The mall is becoming cool again,” said Jacob Knudsen, the vice president of development for Macerich, which is currently redeveloping the FlatIron Crossing Mall in Broomfield, Colorado to add housing. “So being able to live by it, work by it, play by it, go to restaurants by it, we’re definitely seeing this as a trend.” 

Stake reported on the potential demise of Camembert cheese—along with its cousin, Brie—earlier this year, due to the “genetic degradation of moulds populating Camembert's rind.”

If these cheeses could talk, perhaps they’d borrow from Mark Twain, saying, “reports of my death were greatly exaggerated.”

The global supply of the mould, known as Penicillium camemberti var camemberti, is derived from a single organism today; they’re all clones, meaning the species can’t evolve and could be wiped out fairly quickly, biologically speaking.

However, according to Jeanne Ropars, one of the authors who penned the study warning of this very problem, "I must emphasise that there is no production problem, in the short term, for cheeses," she said. "Even for Camembert."

"There are so many producers, and so many parent strains, that no one, at the end of the day, is worried about the end of Camembert," said Arnaud Sperat-Czar, president of the Fondation pour la Biodiversité Fromagère.

Climate issues will continue to threaten agriculture in general for the foreseeable future, including the production of cheese. But when it comes to the supposed degradation of mould diversity, according to cheesemaker Pierre Coulon, "it's really just the buzz effect, as usual,"

Death, taxes, and the Brits need their Guinness around the holidays.

According to the Guinness maker Diageo, limitations have been imposed on wholesale orders due to demand for the stout outpacing the brewery’s capacity to produce it.

Sometimes, marketing efforts go so well, the marketer can’t keep up with the demand such efforts generate, and that’s exactly what’s happened here.

“Over the past month we have seen exceptional consumer demand for Guinness in Great Britain,” said a Diageo spokesman. “We have maximized supply and we are working proactively with our customers to manage the distribution to trade as efficiently as possible."

It’s unclear how Diageo intends to put this genie back in the bottle, and there are certainly worse problems to have.

For context, beer-drinking in general declined in the U.K. overall between July and October. However, Guinness consumption was up nearly 20%.

That’s right, this new camper from Grounded RVs chalks up to a tiny box towed by an electric tricycle, but it’s getting all the hype you could hope for and more from the camper-enthused community.

The trike was made by Civilized Cycles, which spawned from Michigan Central Station’s Newlab incubator in Detroit. It’s pedal-assisted with a 15 kWh battery that gets about 150 miles of juice, travelling at a max of 15 mph while towing up to 1,460 pounds. It’s unclear how useful the pedals would be without the motor, but its 1-ton axel suggests it wouldn’t be a hopeless endeavor.

The camper itself may look plain, but Grounded’s engineers built it to have nearly infinite possibilities when it comes to the convertible interior design. The dinette converts into a bed for two, for example, and the other end contains a sink, cooker, and fridge all in an extremely tight space. It may as well be a Manhattan bachelor apartment.

On top of the main features, it also offers 500 watts of roof solar, an HVAC system, Starlink internet, and a shore power hookup.

Altogether, the camper is four feet wide, ten feet long, and 6.7 feet high. Could you live in this thing on a roadie?

Simply put, you were lying to yourself if you thought KISS retiring from touring meant the God of Thunder would stay off the road.

It may not be much, but Gene Simmons announced five tour dates for his solo act beginning at the end of April next year in Tallahassee, and closing out in Houston at the end of May.

On Steve-O’s Wild Ride podcast earlier this year, Simmons talked about how the shows are stripped down and scaled back, but that he actually ends up with more money in his pockets per show than he did during KISS’ final run.

"I just show up with my guitar pick. That's it. There's no manager, no roadies, no trucks, no equipment," he explained. "Everything is provided by the promoter: the flights, the hotels, the amplifiers, the drums, everything is rented locally. That's the promoter's cost and whatever six figure or more amount there is, I pocket.”

KISS retired from touring just over a year ago with one final show at Madison Square Garden on Dec. 2. The band is currently working on an AI-driven avatar show set to launch sometime in 2027.

Can you believe that Frosty the Snowman premiered on TV 55 years ago tomorrow?! If you’re a fan of that jolly, happy soul you’ll love today’s trivia ;)

(P.S. If you joined us for Stake Trivia Wednesdays earlier this week, you’ve already got a leg up 😎)

Have a great weekend Staker!

Trivia courtesy of funtrivia.com. Today’s issue written by Michael Cowan, Joey Cowan, and Maureen Norman.


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