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Cutting the nails of a baby is not an easy job. Unlike grown-ups, babies tend to have faster growth of the nails. A baby nail scissor/clipper is a hand tool that helps trim the nails and maintain the hygiene of the baby. Trimming nails is an important task as the babies can hurt themselves unknowingly. Due to faster growth, the nails should be trimmed frequently. While buying, one must look for a durable and high-quality <keyword id="9538724" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="nail-cutter" source="Orion">nail cutter</keyword>. To help you choose, we have filtered out some of the best <keyword id="13440990" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="nail-scissors" source="Orion">nail scissors</keyword> and clippers from Amazon.<br /><br /><bulletContentEmbed name="B08JCZNYP6" columns="1"><bulletContentHeading name="B08JCZNYP6_head"><div type="image" title="Short Blades" msid="90911195" hostid="261"></div></columnHeadThumb>B08JCZNYP6</columnHeadTitle></columnHead></bulletContentHeading><bulleteContentBody name="B08JCZNYP6_body"><bulletContentRow name="B08JCZNYP6_6020846814050157"><bulletContentRowHeading><bulletContentRowHead col="1">LuvLap <keyword id="13440996" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="baby-scissors" source="Orion">Baby Scissors</keyword> for Cutting Nails</bulletContentRowHead></bulletContentRowHeading><bulletContentRowBody><bulletContentRowCell col="1">Ergonomically designed, these baby scissors from LuvLap are used to trim the nails of the babies. It comes with short blades with round tips and curved edges to ensure safety. The protective plastic cover prevents dust and is also used to keep the baby safe from hurting itself.</bulletContentRowCell></bulletContentRowBody></bulletContentRow><bulletContentRow name="B08JCZNYP6_3078677672791848"><bulletContentRowHeading><bulletContentRowHead col="1"></bulletContentRowHead></bulletContentRowHeading><bulletContentRowBody><bulletContentRowCell col="1">The anti-slip design ensures a firm grip.</bulletContentRowCell></bulletContentRowBody></bulletContentRow></bulleteContentBody></bulletContentEmbed><br /><br /><bulletContentEmbed name="B00XVN9WY8" columns="1"><bulletContentHeading name="B00XVN9WY8_head"><div type="image" title="Circular Head" height="900" width="1200" msid="90384654" hostid="261"></div></columnHeadThumb>B00XVN9WY8</columnHeadTitle></columnHead></bulletContentHeading><bulleteContentBody name="B00XVN9WY8_body"><bulletContentRow name="B00XVN9WY8_4369821753480540"><bulletContentRowHeading><bulletContentRowHead col="1">Rikang Baby Safety Scissors</bulletContentRowHead></bulletContentRowHeading><bulletContentRowBody><bulletContentRowCell col="1">Designed to provide you with the convenience of trimming the nails, these baby scissors from Rikang can be a suitable option to use. The small design allows you to cut the nails with accuracy. Its circular cutter head makes it easy to use and safe for the baby. Blades are made of stainless steel and handle ABS plastic.</bulletContentRowCell></bulletContentRowBody></bulletContentRow><bulletContentRow name="B00XVN9WY8_5818638180164656"><bulletContentRowHeading><bulletContentRowHead col="1"></bulletContentRowHead></bulletContentRowHeading><bulletContentRowBody><bulletContentRowCell col="1">The material used should make these scissors long-lasting and durable.</bulletContentRowCell></bulletContentRowBody></bulletContentRow></bulleteContentBody></bulletContentEmbed><br /><br /><bulletContentEmbed name="B07LCN16R8" columns="1"><bulletContentHeading name="B07LCN16R8_head"><div type="image" title="Firm Grip" height="900" width="1200" msid="90384662" hostid="261"></div></columnHeadThumb>B07LCN16R8</columnHeadTitle></columnHead></bulletContentHeading><bulleteContentBody name="B07LCN16R8_body"><bulletContentRow name="B07LCN16R8_9129937503544356"><bulletContentRowHeading><bulletContentRowHead col="1">GOCART WITH G LOGO New Born Baby Safety Nail Scissors</bulletContentRowHead></bulletContentRowHeading><bulletContentRowBody><bulletContentRowCell col="1">Designed according to the size of the baby's hand, these nail scissors from Go Cart can be considered a perfect option to use. Compactly designed, the scissors come with a protective cover to ensure safety. The scissors provide a firm grip that makes holding and using convenient. Also, it comes with a rounded tip.</bulletContentRowCell></bulletContentRowBody></bulletContentRow><bulletContentRow name="B07LCN16R8_6191595139470278"><bulletContentRowHeading><bulletContentRowHead col="1"></bulletContentRowHead></bulletContentRowHeading><bulletContentRowBody><bulletContentRowCell col="1">The compact design makes it a suitable option for easy carrying.</bulletContentRowCell></bulletContentRowBody></bulletContentRow></bulleteContentBody></bulletContentEmbed><br /><br /><bulletContentEmbed name="B00I9UJ6P8" columns="1"><bulletContentHeading name="B00I9UJ6P8_head"><div type="image" title="Durable Design" height="900" width="1200" msid="90384684" hostid="261"></div></columnHeadThumb>B00I9UJ6P8</columnHeadTitle></columnHead></bulletContentHeading><bulleteContentBody name="B00I9UJ6P8_body"><bulletContentRow name="B00I9UJ6P8_4780059478168628"><bulletContentRowHeading><bulletContentRowHead col="1">Chicco Baby Nail Scissors</bulletContentRowHead></bulletContentRowHeading><bulletContentRowBody><bulletContentRowCell col="1">If you are looking for baby scissors for cutting nails, this one from Chicco can be an ideal choice for you. It comes with an easy to hold design with a firm grip. Available in blue shade, it gives a cute and compact look. Designed with rounded blades, it ensures safe cutting. Also, to provide durability, the blades are made of stainless steel.</bulletContentRowCell></bulletContentRowBody></bulletContentRow><bulletContentRow name="B00I9UJ6P8_2820732533598075"><bulletContentRowHeading><bulletContentRowHead col="1"></bulletContentRowHead></bulletContentRowHeading><bulletContentRowBody><bulletContentRowCell col="1">It features blades with round ends.</bulletContentRowCell></bulletContentRowBody></bulletContentRow></bulleteContentBody></bulletContentEmbed><br /><br /><bulletContentEmbed name="B06XQKZLQV" columns="1"><bulletContentHeading name="B06XQKZLQV_head"><div type="image" title="Smooth Edges" height="900" width="1200" msid="90384703" hostid="261"></div></columnHeadThumb>B06XQKZLQV</columnHeadTitle></columnHead></bulletContentHeading><bulleteContentBody name="B06XQKZLQV_body"><bulletContentRow name="B06XQKZLQV_9026558377806669"><bulletContentRowHeading><bulletContentRowHead col="1">Mee Mee Protective Baby Nail Clipper Cutter</bulletContentRowHead></bulletContentRowHeading><bulletContentRowBody><bulletContentRowCell col="1">Designed with a floral print, this <keyword id="13440995" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="baby-clipper" source="Orion">baby clipper</keyword> from Mee Mee comes with a skin guard. Blade made of stainless steel material, it provides durability and prevents rusting. To ensure safety and accurate clipping of the nails, it comes with a detachable safeguard. Smooth edges with slight sharpness, this clipper can be considered a suitable option to use.</bulletContentRowCell></bulletContentRowBody></bulletContentRow><bulletContentRow name="B06XQKZLQV_6646103321522728"><bulletContentRowHeading><bulletContentRowHead col="1"></bulletContentRowHead></bulletContentRowHeading><bulletContentRowBody><bulletContentRowCell col="1">The nail clipper is easy to use and clean.</bulletContentRowCell></bulletContentRowBody></bulletContentRow></bulleteContentBody></bulletContentEmbed><br /><br /><bulletContentEmbed name="B06XTLXTYS" columns="1"><bulletContentHeading name="B06XTLXTYS_head"><div type="image" title="Magnifier View" height="900" width="1200" msid="90384725" hostid="261"></div></columnHeadThumb>B06XTLXTYS</columnHeadTitle></columnHead></bulletContentHeading><bulleteContentBody name="B06XTLXTYS_body"><bulletContentRow name="B06XTLXTYS_8687832641479033"><bulletContentRowHeading><bulletContentRowHead col="1">Me N Moms Gentle Nail Clipper</bulletContentRowHead></bulletContentRowHeading><bulletContentRowBody><bulletContentRowCell col="1">Uniquely designed, this nail clipper from Me N Moms comes with a magnifying glass. It comes with an easy to hold handle that provides a comfortable grip. To prevent rusting and provide durability, the scissors have blades made of stainless steel material. Also, the magnifier glass makes it easy to cut the nails precisely and prevent hurting.</bulletContentRowCell></bulletContentRowBody></bulletContentRow><bulletContentRow name="B06XTLXTYS_4833533561803848"><bulletContentRowHeading><bulletContentRowHead col="1"></bulletContentRowHead></bulletContentRowHeading><bulletContentRowBody><bulletContentRowCell col="1">It is easy to use and ensures precise cutting.</bulletContentRowCell></bulletContentRowBody></bulletContentRow></bulleteContentBody></bulletContentEmbed><br />

Check out these nail trimmers and cutters for babies

<p><em>The<span> </span><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/insiderpicks" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Insider Picks</a><span> </span>team writes about stuff we think you'll like. Business <keyword id="79969" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="insider">Insider</keyword> has affiliate partnerships, so we get a share of the revenue from your purchase.</em></p><p><a href="https://amzn.to/2M4uj6x" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><em><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Harperton</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></em></a></p><ul class="summary-list"><li><strong>All nail clippers are not created equal. Sometimes it's worth spending a little more to get that perfect blend of sharpness, comfort, and durability.</strong></li><li><strong>The <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000FQS9AC/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=biipgf_122118_best-nail-clippers-20&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;creativeASIN=B000FQS9AC&amp;linkId=b0b06928fe21397f0149411f8dae731e" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Green Bell G-1008 Nail Clippers</a> are made of stainless steel to expertly shape even the hardest, thickest nails.</strong></li></ul><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">I don't think I've ever intentionally gone shopping</span> <span style="font-weight: 400;">for nail clippers, I've always simply </span><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">acquired</span></em><span style="font-weight: 400;"> them. It's like they've kept appearing in my bathroom cabinets by sheer chance. And, to be quite honest, before I started researching the best ones money can buy, I never thought there was much notable difference between nail clipper models. I didn't even know there </span><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">were </span></em><span style="font-weight: 400;">"models!"</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">But it turns out that all nail clippers are not created equal. If you're tired of hacking your fingernails off so that they grow back at weird angles, it might be time for an upgrade. The good news? Even the most refined, elegant nail clippers won't totally break the bank. In fact, you can pick up a great pair of clippers for only a few dollars more than their inferior brethren. </span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">When browsing, pay attention to the material (stainless steel is usually a solid bet), the shapes of the blade and the handle, and any additional features you might find useful, like a nail file or a compartment for catching clippings so they don't end up all over your bathroom floor, where you will forget about them until they embed themselves in your heel like a gross splinter.</span></p><h2>Here are the best nail clippers you can buy:</h2><ul class="summary-list"><li><strong>Best nail clippers overall: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000FQS9AC/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=biipgf_122118_best-nail-clippers-20&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;creativeASIN=B000FQS9AC&amp;linkId=b0b06928fe21397f0149411f8dae731e" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Green Bell G-1008 Nail Clippers</a></strong></li><li><strong><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Green-Bell-G-1008-Clipper-Takumi/dp/B000FQS9AC"></a>Best nail clippers for travelers: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07282RRFQ/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=biipgf_122118_best-nail-clippers-20&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;creativeASIN=B07282RRFQ&amp;linkId=2c343a8658b15364dabb35673b9bb829" target="_blank" rel="noopener">FIXBODY Nail Clipper Set</a></strong></li><li><strong><a href="https://www.amazon.com/FIXBODY-Nail-Clipper-Set-Fingernails/dp/B07282RRFQ"></a>Best child-friendly nail clippers: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001579YRM/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=biipgf_122118_best-nail-clippers-20&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;creativeASIN=B001579YRM&amp;linkId=358f3e684465d84d6ef5f687cca51a5d" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Safety 1st Sleepy Baby Nail Clippers</a></strong></li><li><strong><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Safety-1st-Sleepy-Clipper-Colors/dp/B001579YRM"></a>Best multi-use nail clippers: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GQ0GD4A/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=biipgf_122118_best-nail-clippers-20&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;creativeASIN=B00GQ0GD4A&amp;linkId=a8cabbb9197556cb17434071d2802cfd" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Nail Clippers for Fingernails by Clyppi</a></strong></li><li><strong>Best ergonomic nail clippers: <a href="https://amzn.to/2M4uj6x" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Seki Edge SS-101 Deluxe Fingernail Clippers</a></strong></li></ul><h3>Read on in the slides below to check out our top picks.</h3><p class="tagline"><a href="http://e.businessinsider.com/join/ci/insider-picks">Subscribe to our newsletter.</a><br><br>Find all the best offers at our <a href="https://coupons.businessinsider.com/">Coupons page</a>.<br><br>Disclosure: This post is brought to you by the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/insiderpicks">Insider Picks</a> team. We highlight products and services you might find interesting. If you buy them, we get a small share of the revenue from the sale from our commerce partners. We frequently receive products free of charge from manufacturers to test. This does not drive our decision as to whether or not a product is featured or recommended. We operate independently from our advertising sales team. We welcome your feedback. Email us at insiderpicks@businessinsider.com.</br></br></br></br></p>

The best nail clippers you can buy

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</div></div>New Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer introduced himself to fans in an introductory pep rally at the Staples Center on Monday, and he did not disappoint.<br><br><p>Ballmer, the former Microsoft CEO who's known for <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/video-steve-ballmer-weeping-roaring-and-jumping-his-way-through-his-final-speech-to-the-entire-staff-of-microsoft-2013-9">his emotional speeches</a>, was beyond excited.</p>
<p>He started chants, professed his love for Los Angeles, gave the crowd his email address (sballmer@clippers.com), and attempted to usher in a new era of Clippers basketball with overwhelming enthusiasm.</p>
<p>It was a fantastic, passionate speech delivered at a near-scream for 13 minutes.</p>
<p>The best part came at the nine-minute mark, when he told the crowd:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">"We're going to be hardcore. HARD-core. HARDCORE! We're going to get better everyday. We're going to be tenacious. Something knocks us down and we're going to get back and keep coming and coming and coming and coming. Did you watch these guys? That was hardcore! Hardcore baby! Nothing gets in our way, BOOM! Keep coming. HARD-core. The HARDCORE Clippers, that's us."</p>
<p>Here's the entire thing:</p>
<div><div>
 
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<p>The Clippers players were excited/utterly baffled:</p>
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<p class="source"><span>Clippers.com</span></p>
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<p>Ballmer!</p>
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New Clippers Owner Steve Ballmer Goes Bonkers In Epic Introduction Speech

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/minka6/7665199050/in/photolist-cFm9Cj-M3xa-qBAyfn-7s8FVW-qbr3Dn-85grY9-qx1RD-a9dLqg-kmTfo9-3hkBNh-4UymmW-8gVt2a-ft7qwJ-kniyQS-8oVQiF-84XUJn-7Yc7vp-7YcgY2-7YcqUc-7YfCFL-7Yco4a-7YfEqo-7YfqiE-7Ycqmg-7Yc6qH-7YfHU7-7Ycs9k-7YfnKf-7Yfq7W-7YcqGk-7YcrTZ-7YfFXE-7Yfwjb-7Ycfn4-7Yfvdu-7YfwrQ-7Yc58x-7YfmXA-7Ychvr-7YfBxm-7Ycdx2-7Yc8cp-7YctkH-7YfDe5-7Yfnsw-7Yc5oe-7YfiPs-7YfzSJ-7YcbJR-7YfsPE">Flickr / Monika Clarke</a></span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Expecting parents have plenty to worry about and very little time to spend worrying about it. Nine months can go by fast when there's so much to do and buy before your baby arrives.</p><p>So <a href="http://thenightlight.com/about/">Joel Johnson and his sister Rachel Fracassa, who is a mother and Dula</a>, created the <a href="http://thenightlight.com/">NightLight</a>, a website dedicated to extensively reviewing all the products parents need for their new babies, from nail clippers to car seats. </p><p>The team does extensive research and talks to experts to help them decide which products to recommend to new parents.</p><p>As new products come on the market, the team goes back and re-reviews products they've already spent hours researching and testing to make sure they're suggesting the best possible product, Matt Lee, an editor and writer for the site, explains to TI. </p><p>Here are some of their recommendations that all new parents should have:</p>

17 brilliant products baby experts say all new parents should buy

<ul class="summary-list"><li>I visited Art Basel Miami Beach as it turned 21 this year.</li><li>The world-famous fair is as much about being seen as it is seeing the art.</li></ul><p>The traffic is a nightmare.</p><p>I'm sitting in the back of an Uber on my way to dinner in Wynwood, anxiously refreshing Google Maps to monitor the traffic ahead.</p><p>But it's Thursday night during Miami Art Week, so what should be a 20-minute drive from South Beach takes close to two hours.</p><p>I'm in town for my first Art Basel, even though at this point I haven't yet seen a piece of art besides a print in my hotel lobby. I learn quickly that the chaos isn't confined to the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.insider.com/miami-beach-travel-guide-hotels-activities-restaurants-and-more-2021-10"><u>Miami Beach</u></a> Convention Center, where the world-famous annual festival is being held from December 8-10. The whole city is in party mode.</p><p>Leading up to the fair, invites to events around Miami pour into my inbox: brunches; cocktail hours; celebrity apparel pop-ups at hotels; art installations at design houses like Fendi. It's not clear if these functions are all related to the actual art festival, but that doesn't seem to matter.</p><p>My first event is the opening party for The Art of Hip-Hop's permanent space at Wynwood's Museum of Graffiti, kicking off with its first exhibit, "From the Bronx to the Beach."</p><p>We're greeted by a wall of boomboxes — an instant photo op. Then, there's the exhibit itself, an ode to hip-hop through album art, photography, and fashion. Guests in sequin boots, cutout dresses, and sheer looks meander through the displays, pausing to admire portraits of artists from Drake to Pitbull, or Henry Chalfant's photos of graffiti-covered subway trains in 1970s New York City.</p><div type="image" title="A split image shows a woman wearing a denim jacket in front of a wall of boomboxes (left) and a butterfly mural at Miami's Museum of Graffiti (right)." height="1080" width="1440" msid="106046778" hostid="261" sizebytes="216790"></div><p>Later on, LA Clippers point guard John Wall and rapper Fat Joe appear, the latter of whom performs out back where guests dance in front of a butterfly mural.</p><p>Next, I go to Gramp's, a Wynwood bar known for its drag shows. As I sip on a Rosemary's Baby cocktail, the Miami-famous drag queen Karla Croqueta declares that tonight's show is dedicated to Art Basel. "Thank you, Art Basel," Croqueta says, with more than a hint of sarcasm, before introducing the next act who lights up the stage performing Nicki Minaj's "Moment for Life" in a purple and Barbie-pink catsuit.</p><p>I realize I'm watching some of the best performance art in town.</p><h2><strong>At 21, Art Basel lives to party</strong></h2><p>This year's art fair marks its 21st year in Miami Beach. The prestigious festival originated in Basel, Switzerland, in 1970, where it continues to be held each spring, and eventually expanded into the US market with Miami in 2002. The fair is also held annually in Hong Kong and Paris.</p><p>But what started as Miami's edition of the art fair — meant to bring together the art world's major players — has since become a week-long, citywide party.</p><div type="image" title="Sculptures and paintings in a gallery." height="1500" width="2000" msid="106046780" hostid="261" sizebytes="277254"></div><p>I worry I've come too late, arriving in the middle of the week, but am assured by a Miami resident that all the good parties are on Thursday and Friday. When I tell Miami locals I want to go to the convention center, they're confused — go once if you want to, they say, but it's not really the point anymore.</p><p>They seem to be right. As I brush shoulders with influencers, publicists, and business moguls at functions filled with cocktails and canapes, I wonder where the artists are.</p><h2><strong>The actual fair means business</strong></h2><p>When I finally get to the convention center, I'm swept up in its grandness.</p><p>Inside the cavernous hall, people funnel through several entrances to the festival floor and linger around the various shops and attractions in the lobby. Before I enter, a display of Louis Vuitton purses designed with the architect Frank Gehry, catches my eye. A retail associate tells me casually the items range from $11,400 to $36,500. Welcome to Art Basel.</p><p>On the main floor, I'm surprised to see something I recognize almost immediately: a large flower sculpture covered in oversized dots — Yayoi Kusama's 2018 piece, "Flowers That Speak All About My Heart Given to the Sky." A couple poses for a photo in front of the piece with their toddler, who is fascinated by the sculpture. I spot a number of fairgoers with their kids, which I didn't expect, but there's certainly enough to keep them entertained with 277 galleries bursting with often colorful art.</p><p>I know it'll be impossible to see everything, so I plan to zigzag through the galleries like I would aisles at the grocery store, but that doesn't quite work. Inevitably, something catches my eye and I turn a corner and find myself lost in the maze that is Art Basel. Consulting my floor map, I circle the key galleries I'd read about, determined to at least see what the art world is talking about.</p><p>One piece stays with me: Seung-taek Lee's "Earth Play," an imposing, partially deflated balloon painted to look like the world. The structure is impossible to miss and makes a statement about the fragility of our planet as it sits on the floor, patched with small bits of tape covering up punctures and dents.</p><p>The piece isn't perfect — and that's the point. I read on nearby placards that the Korean artist has spent years toting the piece, from the 1990s, around the world for <a target="_blank" href="https://www.canalprojects.org/programs/the-earth-performance-reenactment"><u>performances</u></a>.</p><p>In some of the art, I search for meaning but soon give up. A beating drum hanging upside-down from the ceiling. An ASMR video of two women clapping their hands on their cheeks. A handbag with long legs. And the most perplexing: a pile of Amazon boxes on the floor. If this is art, it turns out I've been a collector all this time.</p><div type="image" title="Split image shows pieces from an art show: a yellow purse with legs (left) and a giant flower (right)." height="1080" width="1440" msid="106046781" hostid="261" sizebytes="143860"></div><p>I don't see many new political pieces, besides Julie Buffalohead's "Our Bodies Our Choice," an almost 20-foot-wide painting that seems to respond to the<a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/supreme-court-abortion-decision-final-ruling-scotus-roe-v-wade-2022-6"> <u>abortion bans</u></a> that have popped up across the country.</p><p>And while I don't come across any art acknowledging the Israel-Hamas war, the conflict looms over the festival, which cancels an outdoor art walk due to a protest.</p><div type="image" title="A giant inflatable balloon painted to resemble the Earth sits on a gallery floor surrounded by people and other art." height="1334" width="2000" msid="106046782" hostid="261" sizebytes="224832"></div><h2>The festival isn't just about art</h2><p>In most cases, the attendees of Art Basel are just as interesting as the art.</p><p>There's a fairgoer in a pastel fur-style coat who matches the colors of a portrait she's admiring. A Gen Z group poses for a selfie in a reflective sculptural piece. And a gallery staffer consults a couple about a piece of art that I struggle to understand.</p><div type="image" title="A woman wearing a pastel fur-style coat and sequin minidress poses for a photo in front of a painting." height="1500" width="2000" msid="106046783" hostid="261" sizebytes="321558"></div><p>I leave the convention center overwhelmed. Days later, I think back to a certain piece and wonder if there's something I missed. I'm aware that my Art Basel experience as a journalist, some outside observer, isn't the same as others who attended the festival to do very different work.</p><p>At the airport heading home, a woman on the phone tells someone that Art Basel was a success. I assume she's a collector, but find out she's an interior designer who picked up a few millions' worth of pieces for her clients. (That's a lot of money, but it's just a fraction of the cost of<a target="_blank" href="https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-sold-art-basel-miami-beach-2023"> <u>the fair's top-selling piece</u></a>:<a target="_blank" href="https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6076405"> <u>Philip Guston's "Painter at Night,"</u></a> which went for a reported $20 million.)</p><p>I'm reminded that while Miami throws a big party when Art Basel comes to town, it's also a business meeting and an expensive market. There just happens to be an art fair going on at the same time.</p>

Art Basel gives Miami another excuse to party

<ul class="summary-list"><li><keyword id="32789" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="hugs">Hugs</keyword> are the hot new trend of the <keyword id="6361805" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="NBA">NBA</keyword> Playoffs.</li><li>Coaches and owners this week have physically embraced their star players after stellar performances in heartwarming scenes.</li><li>Despite the effort of COVID-19 to stop them, hugs are back baby.</li></ul><p>Sixteen months ago, the world at large shut down in response to the coronavirus pandemic.</p><p>The NBA played no small part in the escalation of precaution that took place in the United States. After <a href="https://www.insider.com/rudy-gobert-coronavirus-jazz-thunder-cancelled-2020-3" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive</a> for COVID-19, the NBA suddenly suspended its season, with leagues across the world soon to follow.</p><p>As we all isolated ourselves for the protection of our fellow man through the pandemic, we wondered how the world would be changed once things were finally allowed to "return to normal," whatever that could mean after such a staggering loss.</p><p>The everyday magic of personal touch - a handshake with a new acquaintance, a first kiss on a date that was going pretty well, a hug with a trusted friend, family member, or even stranger, whether in a moment of tragedy or triumph - was lost for more than a full calendar year.</p><p>While the pandemic is still not over, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/majority-of-all-americans-have-received-at-least-one-vaccine-dose" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Americans are getting vaccinated more and more each day</a>, and over the past few weeks, we've begun to discover how that new normal looks. Families are being reunited in person for the first time, employees are returning to their offices, and <a href="https://www.insider.com/covid-is-over-sports-fans-back-2021-5" target="_blank" rel="noopener">fans are packing arenas for the NBA playoffs</a>.</p><p>The NBA is doing its part in helping us return to that new normality.</p><p>In the NBA, hugs are back.</p><p>That's Nets head coach Steve Nash embracing superstar Kevin Durant after he put up one of the most impressive performances in NBA Playoff history on Tuesday night.</p><p>Tied 2-2 in their series with the Bucks, and with Kyrie Irving benched due to injury and James Harden a shell of himself for the same reason, the burden fell on Durant to have the game of his life.</p><p>He did.</p><p>Durant played all 48 minutes and finished with 49 points, 17 rebounds, 10 assists, two blocks, and three steals, leading the Nets to a comeback victory after trailing by 16 at halftime.</p><p>When the final buzzer sounded, there were no words Nash could say to express what Durant had just done. He didn't need them. He only needed a hug.</p><p>A similar scene played out on Wednesday night between Los Angeles Clippers star Paul George and team owner Steve Ballmer.</p><p>With George's tandem partner Kawhi Leonard out due to injury, Playoff Paul needed to step up for the Clippers to have a shot against the Suns.</p><p>By the end of the night, the Clippers had the win, and George had quite a stat line, along with one big hug from Ballmer.</p><p>We all dealt with the painful isolation of quarantine in our own way, and we are all working our way back at our own pace. Some of us aren't ready to dive back into the world of packed <keyword id="6356028" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="sports">sports</keyword> bars or sweaty summer concerts and the amount of physical contact that they entail.</p><p>But whenever you're ready, hugs are back.</p><p>Embrace it.</p>

The pandemic tried to put hugs on hold. The NBA is bringing them back.

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Dejan via Flickr</span></p></div><p></p></div></div>Evernote laid off 13 percent of its global employees and shuttered three offices as its new CEO moves towards a "smaller, more focused team."</p><p>Chris O'Neill, who took over as CEO from founder Phil Libin in July, <a href="https://blog.evernote.com/blog/2015/09/29/a-note-from-chris-oneill/">wrote in a blog post</a> that the changes are for the health of the company as it focuses more on becoming a business tool and shifts away from the consumer.</p><p>The company is starting to turn off some small features that haven't worked well, like the recipe clipper Evernote Food, <a href="https://blog.evernote.com/blog/2015/08/26/evernote-to-end-support-for-evernote-food-apps/">which turns off tomorrow.</a></p><p>"Here are two things that you can expect from us over the next several months: we will launch major foundational product improvements around the core features that you care about most, and we will pull back on initiatives that fail to support our mission," O'Neill <a href="https://blog.evernote.com/blog/2015/09/29/a-note-from-chris-oneill/">wrote in the announcement</a>.</p><p>The three offices that closed were in Taiwan, Singapore, and Moscow, according to a company spokeswoman. While the Moscow office was more development focused, the other two were concentrated on sales and marketing. All of its Asian operations will be relocated to Seoul, South Korea, although it will maintain an office in China.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/elephant-india-helped-out-of-well-baby-2015-8">Watch as this baby elephant is helped out of a well by local villagers</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="VwczU3dzoCBvBsc24EhhBqJAM5GsYw2a" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

Evernote cuts 47 employees and shuts down 3 offices as it 'pulls back'

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Tony Dejak/AP</span></p><p class="caption">LeBron James has not been afraid to speak up on controversial topics.</p></div><p></p></div></div>LeBron James hasn't shied away from using his platform to speak out on controversial political issues, and he's using it again to speak about gun control.</p><p>Following Thursday's mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, James addressed the topic at the Cleveland Cavaliers' training camp on Friday, saying, "There's no room for guns."</p><p>James <a href="https://twitter.com/KingJames/status/649708803722772480">originally reacted</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/KingJames/status/649709545246355456">on Twitter on Thursday</a>, following a <a href="http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/10/baby_shot_on_clevelands_east_s.html#incart_river_home">report that a baby had been fatally shot in Cleveland</a> on Thursday night.</p><p>On Friday, James spoke more broadly on the issue, saying (<a href="http://www.cleveland.com/cavs/index.ssf/2015/10/lebron_james_gun_control.html">via Joe Vardon of the Northeast Ohio Media Group</a>):</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">"Obviously you're not going to be able to take every gun out, I don't know how you can do that. There's so many around now, today. But if there's some stipulations behind it or some penalties, some big time penalties or rules or regulations about carrying firearms, legal or illegal, people will second-guess themselves."</p><p>James said the news of the child's shooting hit him on Thursday when he looked at his kids. He added that he believes his foundation, LeBron James Family Foundation, which monitors children from grade school to graduation and keeps them in school, is helping keep kids away from guns and violence.</p><p>Again, this is not the first time James has spoken up on hot-button issues.</p><p>Last winter, James and his teammates wore shirts that read "I can't breathe" in pregame warm-ups against the Brooklyn Nets in tribute to the death of Eric Garner. James also spoke up about the ruling on Michael Brown's case and spoke up about the racist comments from ex-Clippers owner Donald Sterling.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/real-nfl-agents-review-hbos-ballers-esquire-2015-8">Here's what real NFL agents think about HBO's 'Ballers'</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="xtOGl5djpncv_J89_mLv8YIYOa5FSqyF" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

LeBron James calls for more gun control after mass shooting at Oregon community college

<p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>The 33-year partnership between Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and his 30th employee, Steve Ballmer, has&#xa0;not fared well since Ballmer left the CEO job almost three years ago.<p>Gates and Ballmer have "drifted apart," Ballmer told <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-04/steve-ballmer-says-smartphones-broke-his-relationship-with-bill-gates">Bloomberg TV's Emily Chang.</a></p><p>"He has his life. I have mine. Microsoft was the thing that bound us. We started off as friends but really got quite enmeshed around Microsoft. Since I've gone, we really have drifted a little bit."</p><p>He says for most of their time together, Microsoft was like "my baby and Bill's baby. We were growing it and nurturing it. He was kind of like the senior partner, I was the junior partner. If it was raising of children, I would say it was like mom gets to decide more than dad."</p><p>Things didn't shift even after Gates stepped down from the CEO role in 2000 to become chief software architect, and Ballmer took over.</p><p>"When I became CEO, we had a very miserable year. Bill didn't know how to work for anybody and I didn't know how to manage Bill. I'm not sure I ever learned," Ballmer&#xa0;said.</p><p>And&#xa0;Ballmer's choice to leave Microsoft in 2013, "was not a simple thing for either one of us."&#xa0;</p><p>"He and I have always had a brotherly relationship, the good parts and the bad parts and in the end that was a bit more difficult than not, particularly with the strategic direction change," he said.</p><p>"The stock price wasn't going anywhere, so the rest of the board felt pressure, despite the fact that profits were going up. So I think you had a combustible situation," he added.</p><h2>Disagreement over hardware</h2><p>The two men also had a "fundamental disagreement" about how important it was to be in the hardware business. While Microsoft had always dabbled in hardware like everything from keyboards to Xbox, it had never built PCs. And it wasn't making its own phones.</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>Ballmer chose to do both of those things, launching the Surface and buying Nokia. When Surface launched, Gates was <a href="http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/07/03/bill_gates_there_is_a_strong_possibility_apple_needs_a_surface_like_device">a vocal and public supporter of it.&#xa0;</a><p>But Ballmer said he had to push the board into accepting the idea of Surface and "things came to a climax about what to do around the phone business."</p><p>Looking back, Ballmer said he wishes he had pushed into the hardware business sooner.</p><p>Ballmer also said that he did his best work after&#xa0;Gates left his full-time job at Microsoft as chief software architect in 2008, including launching&#xa0;Bing. While one could argue that the Bing search engine never became much of a threat to Google, it did cause Microsoft to build data centers worldwide and learn the fundamentals of cloud computing.&#xa0;</p><p>And with that experience, under Ballmer, Microsoft was able to move into cloud Office 365 and Azure.&#xa0;</p><p>All three of those things: cloud computing software, cloud computing hosting surfaces, and more exciting hardware - including multiple versions of Surface and new devices like HoloLens - are the core of current CEO Satya Nadella's strategy.</p><p>Today, as owner of the LA Clippers, Ballmer is no longer directly involved with Microsoft except as one of its biggest shareholders. He left the CEO job in 2014 and stepped from the board a few months later. There's new excitement around Microsoft and the share prices are up, so Ballmer says he's happy with the company. He's also happy about his achievements there.</p><p>"I started a company that had 2.5 million in revenue and 30 people and I left a company that had 22 billion in profit and I feel that net, net, was a pretty good success," he said.</p><p>&#xa0;<div></div></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/extra-shoelace-hole-sneakers-running-lace-heel-lock-2016-10">We finally learned the purpose of that extra shoelace hole on your sneakers</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="8wZG90NjE64jsqifkoGHALquDqs-rkJh" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates have 'drifted apart' since Ballmer left Microsoft

<p><em>Hello, everyone! Welcome to the new edition of <keyword id="9095853" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="insider-today">Insider Today</keyword>. Please </em><a href="https://www.insider.com/insider-today"><em>sign up here</em></a><em>.</em></p><h2><strong>QUOTE OF THE DAY</strong></h2><p><strong>"For now, and for my beloved children, it will be less drama, more mama." — </strong><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/kellyanne-conway-white-house/2020/08/23/6c26e18a-e5a7-11ea-bc79-834454439a44_story.html">Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway</a>, announcing that she's leaving the White House at the end of August. Her husband, prominent Trump critic George Conway, will similarly take a break from his anti-Trump group the Lincoln Project and drop off Twitter. </p><h2><strong>WHAT'S HAPPENING</strong></h2><p><strong></strong></p><p><strong>The Republican convention begins tonight, and Trump will speak every day. </strong>The GOP will not adopt a party platform, but instead <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/gop-platform-at-rnc-pledge-trump-support-2020-8?_ga=2.107044993.2007978451.1598268064-163033034.1594207157">will pledge to "enthusiastically" support the president's agenda</a>, whatever it is. Convention speakers include lots of Trump children and several conservative culture war figures.</p><p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/08/24/world/asia/24reuters-health-coronavirus-hongkong-reinfection.html"><strong>Scientists have documented the first confirmed reinfection with COVID. </strong></a>A young man tested positive twice, more than four months apart. Rigorous analysis confirms it was a different infection the second time. This confirms expectations there would be some cases of early reinfection, and complicates the quest for a vaccine. Meanwhile, Trump is trying to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-experimental-oxford-coronavirus-vaccine-before-us-election-2020-8">fast-track a lightly tested British vaccine</a> before Election Day, which deeply worries scientists. </p><p><a href="https://www.insider.com/marco-laura-hurricanes-possible-hit-gulf-coast-2020-8"><strong>Twin hurricanes could hit the Gulf Coast this week. </strong></a>Marco could hit Louisiana on Monday, while tropical storm Laura is on track to landfall in the area on Thursday. </p><p><a href="https://www.insider.com/picture-details-jacob-blake-black-man-shot-by-police-kenosha-2020-8"><strong>Jacob Blake, a Black man shot by the police seven times in Kenosha, Wisconsin, is in intensive care after surgery. </strong></a>A viral video of the shooting has led to protests and outrage. </p><p><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/kushner-sourced-covid-ventilators-from-russia-that-didnt-work-report-2020-8"><strong>Jared Kushner brokered a deal to get 45 ventilators from Russia. </strong></a>And every single one of them was faulty. </p><h2><strong>VIEWS OF THE DAY</strong></h2><p><strong><div type="image" title="Trump rushmore" height="1000" width="2000" msid="77728699" hostid="261"></div></strong></p><p><strong>RNC 2020: We believe in nothing except Trump</strong></p><p>President Trump <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/gop-crusade-against-aca-obamacare-during-pandemic-is-terrible-2020-6">was asked in June</a> by his super-duper number one Fox News fan Sean Hannity what he hoped to do as Leader of the Free World during a second term. </p><p>Trump, in response, rambled about "the word experience" and that he had been to the nation's capital many times but had "never slept over in Washington." He never articulated a single policy ambition or even a vague, grand vision for the country.</p><p>With the Republican National Convention (RNC) set to kick off its four-day run in Charlotte tonight, the entity once known as the <keyword id="107894" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="Republican-Party">Republican Party</keyword> has taken the lead of its Dear Leader: It stands for nothing at all, other than Trump. </p><p>It's not a Grand Old Party anymore, it's just a host for a Trump personality cult. </p><p>One of the requisite features of a party convention is a committee of delegates negotiating and agreeing to a party platform. Such platforms are non-binding and ceremonial, but they do provide a window into the party's id every four years.</p><p>But given the limitations presented by the coronavirus pandemic, <a href="https://prod-cdn-static.gop.com/media/documents/RESOLUTION_REGARDING_THE_REPUBLICAN_PARTY_PLATFORM.pdf?_ga=2.109560193.504857691.1598219603-2087748323.1598219603">the RNC said in a statement</a> that it "did not want a small contingent of delegates formulating a new platform without the breadth of perspectives within the ever-growing Republican movement" and would instead simply "continue to enthusiastically support the President's America-first agenda."</p><p>That might be a plausible excuse had the Democrats not had an almost-entirely virtual convention last week and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/19/us/politics/democratic-party-platform.html">somehow come up with a 2020 platform</a>. </p><p>The lack of a fresh RNC platform for 2020 matters little in the scheme of things. Voters don't refer to them, politicians don't necessarily adhere to them, and no one remembers them any more than a few days after they're introduced. </p><p>But punting on a platform this year shows that the GOP as presently constituted stands for nothing besides fealty to its Trump.</p><p>As <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/08/24/republicanmeltdown-trump-convention-400039">Politico's Tim Alberta</a> puts it: "The supposed canons of GOP orthodoxy — limited government, free enterprise, institutional conservation, moral rectitude, fiscal restraint, global leadership — have in recent years gone from elastic to expendable."</p><p>What's replaced the Republicans' nominal principles is a reactionary populism that defines itself by its enemies: the media, immigrants, and "the libs." </p><p>This was a winning strategy in 2016, thanks in no small part to the electoral college and <a href="https://theoutline.com/post/1422/shattered-hillary-clinton-campaign?zd=1&amp;zi=y26xgxangxan">Hillary Clinton's historically inept campaign</a>. It could very well win in 2020. But either way, the GOP has obliterated whatever it claimed to stand for. There's no going back. "Republican" is just the brand name for Trumpism. </p><p>"Twilight of Democracy" author <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/anne-applebaum-twilight-of-democracy-harpers-letter-authoritarianism-poland-hungary-2020-8">Anne Applebaum recently told me</a> that the Republican Party  "needs to lose, and lose badly, if it's going to recover and become the broad, multiracial, center-right party that America needs once again."</p><p>Should Trump win, or should enough congressional Republicans win in November, a party reckoning is unlikely. </p><p>What we'll see instead is <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-laura-loomer-marjorie-greene-qanon-gop-party-conspiracy-theory-2020-8">more unhinged QAnon candidates on Republican tickets</a>, mainstream Republicans bending to their will to keep their caucus together, and the next Trumpist in line (Don Jr.? <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tucker-carlsons-2024-presidential-campaign-seen-in-monologues-ratings-surge-2020-7">Tucker Carlson</a>?) ready to fill the role of demagogue-in-waiting. <em>— <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/author/anthony-l-fisher">Anthony Fisher</a></em></p><p><strong>Everything is <keyword id="6358883" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="politics">politics</keyword> and it's exhausting.</strong></p><p>Another week of conventions, which is another reminder that in 2020 America, everything is politics. </p><p>Are your kids going back to school in person? That depends on how blue or red your state is, not on the local infection rate. Is your conference going to play college football? If you're in a conservative part of the country, it probably is! Must you wear a mask in the store? On the street? Is <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/22/politics/melania-trump-rose-garden-restoration/index.html">Melania's redesign of the White House Rose Garden </a>beautiful or hideous? </p><p>Why is everything politics? </p><p>Why does any fight about anything — aesthetics, sports, science, art — now have exactly the same two sides? Why is everyone always on the same team? It's boring. It's exhausting. And it's dehumanizing. When you're always up against the same people, you become less and less human to each other. </p><p>Wouldn't it be nice to have an argument about, well, anything, that didn't ultimately revert to "Trump"? Wouldn't it be nice to squabble with your best friend about something mildly important? Or make common cause with a nemesis about a trivial matter? <em>— DP</em></p><p><em><div type="image" title="Trump, McConell" height="1000" width="2000" msid="77728702" hostid="261"></div></em></p><p><strong>Of course Trump's coronavirus relief executive order didn't help</strong></p><p>Shocking no one, the executive orders (EOs) Trump signed attempting to force the states to dole out more coronavirus aid didn't work. Only one state (Arizona) has implemented Trump's measure to add $300 a week to unemployment aid. The rest of these states are confused, and recognize that a piecemeal solution to this problem is no solution at all. They need the federal government to get back to work and pass a law.</p><p>But Trump's EOs basically blew up already-fraught negotiations between the White House and House Democrats. Now Congress is on vacation. Meanwhile Goldman Sachs estimates that the end of one benefit from the previous aid bill — a $600 per week federal supplement to unemployment checks — will drain $70 billion worth of Americans personal income this month alone.</p><p>This seems intentional. Sen. <keyword id="192852" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Mitch-McConnell">Mitch McConnell</keyword> had a terrible time getting the bill through his caucus. Despite the fact that coronavirus cases are still surging around the country, the libertarian wing of the GOP didn't want to keep signing checks. As a result, the bill that came out of the Senate was so far from what would be acceptable to House Democrats that it was going to take weeks of negotiation to get something passable to the floor.</p><p>So, Trump basically just said "screw it." He burst into negotiations like the Kool-Aid Man and now we've got nothing.</p><p>Trump's EOs gave him the opportunity to look like he was doing something on TV, which is always enough to satisfy this White House. The Senate got to avoid working on a bill that it hates. If you're incredibly cynical (and these people are) you could see this as a win, even though the biggest losers here are Americans in desperate need.</p><p>Back in April I wrote that even after lockdown, Americans would live<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/us-world-economy-will-shrink-after-coronavirus-covid-19-pandemic-2020-4"> in a shrunken world</a> — shrunken by the fact that human interaction would have to be limited until there's a vaccine. Economic transactions are mostly human interactions, so you see where this is going. A coronavirus world is one of naturally depressed demand even in the best case scenario, where the government is doing all it can. We don't live in that scenario, 170,000 people are dead and all Trump can say is "it is what it is."</p><p>Now we have<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/08/20/us-has-two-economies-how-much-longer-will-losing-side-stand-that/"> two economies</a>, as Catherine Rampell put it over at WaPo. One belongs to the mostly white-collar workers who can work from home, own stocks, and can keep saving money. They were fine before and they're fine now. Their comfort is being reflected in the stock market, where valuations seem to be leaping over this crisis entirely. That's because the people who own and trade stocks have no problem thinking about a post-coronavirus future. Unlike the rest of America, they're not trying to figure out how to survive day by day.</p><p>That brings us to the other economy in which more Americans live. In that economy of mostly blue-collar workers, jobs have barely recovered and many businesses have not reopened. Home mortgage payment delinquencies are at their<a href="https://www.mba.org/2020-press-releases/august/mortgage-delinquencies-spike-in-the-second-quarter-of-2020"> highest rate</a> since the financial crisis.<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/more-americans-go-hungry-amid-coronavirus-pandemic-census-shows-11597570200"> People are going hungry.</a> Wall Street is starting to call this a "K-shaped recovery." Some people are going up, even more people are going down.</p><p>The middle class was evaporating before, but now it's being sucked dry. None of the president's dog and pony show circus antics are changing that. We need Congress to do its job so Americans can go back to their jobs one day, hopefully soon. <em>— <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/author/linette-lopez">Linette Lopez</a></em></p><div type="image" title="giant panda national zoo panda cub birth" height="1500" width="3000" msid="77728705" hostid="261"></div><p><strong>Another Giant Panda baby at the Zoo, another win for China. </strong></p><p>The Giant Panda Mei Xiang gave birth to a cub Friday night at Washington's National Zoo, and the local and national media are predictably gaga. It's a "<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/zoo-panda-gives-birth/2020/08/21/c5b1f7b2-df30-11ea-809e-b8be57ba616e_story.html">miracle</a>" cub because Mei Xiang's the oldest American panda to give birth in captivity, and because the zookeepers managed the pregnancy through the pandemic. If the cub lives, <a href="https://nationalzoo.si.edu/animals/brief-history-giant-pandas-zoo">it will be her fourth.</a></p><p>China's Giant Panda lend-lease program is one of the cleverest examples of public diplomacy in the modern world. Exploiting the world's crush on the black-and-white semi-bears, China rents pandas out to zoos for huge fees — $1 million a year <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/panda-most-overrated-animal-ever-2018-5#:~:text=The%20Chinese%20government%20owns%20nearly,one%2Dtime%20%24400%2C000%20baby%20tax.">has been reported</a>. The zoos then pay monstrous amounts to feed and care for the animals, $500,000 a year per bear, and undertake captive breeding programs. China owns all cubs, which are repatriated to China at age four and enrolled in <a href="https://www.pandasinternational.org/panda-reserves/">China's elaborate breeding, research, and re-wilding program</a>. (Mei Xiang's first three offspring were all repatriated to China.)  </p><p>Americans have addicted themselves to pandas. They're the main <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2019/11/18/bei-bei-showered-with-attention-national-zoo-prepares-send-him-china-tuesday/">draw for the National Zoo</a>, and also have attracted huge crowds in other cities where they've been loaned out, including San Diego and Atlanta. </p><p>But why are we duped by them? Pandas are gorgeous, but — as with too-beautiful humans — pandas exploit their beauty to cover up their deep character flaws. Pandas are lazy and ill-tempered. They barely move! (The hours I wasted as a DC schoolkid waiting for one of the pandas to do something, anything — just to lift a paw!)  Pandas don't seem to be interested in their own survival: It takes heroic, hideously expensive efforts to get them to breed. They're largely indifferent parents. (Don't get me started about the DC panda that<a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/08/150824-pandas-national-zoo-twins-animals-science/"> crushed its own newborn</a>.) </p><p>Americans are forking over enormous sums of money to China so they can gawp at dumb, brutish supermodel animals. We should be spending those millions on American-made products. How about bison? Or black-footed ferrets? Or manatees? Or pumas? Pumas are plenty gorgeous! </p><p>The Trump administration is frantic that TikTok and Huawei are infiltrating the US and hooking Americans on Chinese products. Maybe they should worry about Giant Pandas instead. <em>— DP</em></p><h2><strong>BUSINESS &amp; ECONOMY</strong></h2><p><strong><div type="image" title="Zoom" height="1421" width="2843" msid="77728712" hostid="261"></div></strong></p><p><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/zoom-down-users-unable-to-start-or-join-zoom-meetings-2020-8"><strong>Major Zoom outages have disrupted the start of the work week, and some school reopenings. </strong></a>Users began reporting problems at 8 am ET on Monday. The company says it is investigating. </p><p><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tiktok-lawsuit-us-government-trump-ban-due-process-national-security-2020-8"><strong>TikTok is suing to stop Trump from trying to ban it. </strong></a>In a lawsuit that it's filing today, the company says Trump's executive order violates its due process. </p><h2><strong>LIFE</strong></h2><p><strong><div type="image" title="luka doncic.JPG" height="666" width="1333" msid="77728715" hostid="261"></div></strong></p><p><a href="https://www.insider.com/video-luka-doncic-buzzer-beater-mike-breen-double-bang-2020-8"><strong>NBA fans are pretty excited about Luka Doncic.</strong></a> The young Dallas Mavericks' star hit a looooong OT buzzer-beater to defeat the Clippers. He also had 43 points, 17 rebounds, and 13 assists, one of the best playoff stat lines ever.</p><p><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/meet-founder-behind-rich-kids-of-instagram-account-2020-8"><strong>Rich Kids of the Internet, yuck</strong></a><strong>: </strong>The popular account showing the children of zillionaires with on their yachts and in their Bugattis, and they actually pay to be featured. </p><h2><strong>THE BIG 3*</strong></h2><p><strong><div type="image" title="Vietnamese tourists wearing wedding clothes put on face masks in Paris on March 15, 2020 amid the COVID-19 outbreak, caused by the novel coronavirus. - France on March 14, 2020 drastically stepped up its measures against the spread of the coronavirus, announcing the closure of all non-essential public places including restaurants and cafes." height="1000" width="2000" msid="77728717" hostid="261"></div></strong></p><p><strong><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/a-wedding-reception-spread-coronavirus-to-53-people-killing-one-2020-8">A Maine wedding has been linked to 53 COVID cases, including one death. </a></strong>The Aug. 7 wedding was mostly indoors, and had more than the 50-person max allowed by the state. </p><p><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-asteroid-headed-toward-earth-before-november-election-2020-8"><strong>An asteroid is headed toward earth the day before Election Day. </strong></a>Because, of course. The fridge-size rock will probably miss earth but will likely burn up if it does enter the atmosphere. </p><p><a href="https://www.insider.com/tiktok-trend-shows-people-pretending-to-be-holocaust-victims-heaven-2020-8"><strong>TikTok creators are pretending to be Holocaust victims in heaven.</strong></a> They make themselves up with burns and bruises, wear yellow stars, and explain how they were killed by Nazis. They mean well, but the Holocaust Museum says it dishonors victims. </p><p><em>*The most popular stories on Insider today.</em></p>

The GOP's platform is… Donald Trump

<p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>In late 2012 Nike launched <a href="http://www.wk.com/campaign/kd_is_not_nice">an advertising campaign</a> for Kevin Durant called, "KD Is Not Nice."<p>The conceit of the campaign was simple: Durant, the 24-year-old leader of the upstart Oklahoma City Thunder, is not the baby-faced young player he appears to be. He's a killer.</p><p>Two years later, it's almost as if Durant internalized that branding, because he has been maddest guy in the NBA this season.</p><p>In <a href="http://www.gq.com/sports/201503/kevin-durant-nba-allstar?currentPage=1">an interview with GQ's Zach Baron</a>, Durant said he hates everyone he plays against when he gets on the court.</p><p>"I'm a total a******. I'm a d***," he said. "I don't talk to the other team.&#xa0;If I fall on somebody, I throw them to the ground, I'm not helping them up."</p><p>He says he can't stomach watching other NBA games on his own time because he wants everyone on the court to fail (<a href="http://www.gq.com/sports/201503/kevin-durant-nba-allstar?currentPage=1">via GQ</a>):</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;">"I just don't like other teams or other players. I can't sit there. I feel like I'm supporting them by watching it.&#xa0;<em>I hope you have a bad game.</em>&#xa0;Because I'm such a hater! I thought it was a bad trait I had. I was like,&#xa0;<em>Man, am I jealous? Why do I hate this guy?</em>&#xa0;But I hope both of the teams lose! That's how I feel."</p><p>In an age of congeniality between the NBA's top players, with LeBron James as the most notable example, this is a page straight out of Kobe Bryant's book.</p><p>Kobe has also <a href="http://deadspin.com/kobe-bryant-is-a-robot-sage-hellbent-on-winning-everyth-1626015784">gleefully called himself an "a******"</a> in interviews, and <a href="http://espn.go.com/boston/nba/story/_/id/8924289/kobe-bryant-feels-pain-rajon-rondo-boston-celtics">lamented the younger generation's aversion to trash talk</a>.</p><p>While Durant isn't exactly Kobe 2.0, he has been pretty angry recently.</p><p>He got into it with Chris Paul during a recent Thunder-Clippers game. Paul tried to stare him down, and Durant was seen yelling back at him, "You're down 20 now, homie."</p><div><div></div></div><p class="embed-spacer"></p><p>Earlier in the season he <a href="http://www.cbssports.com/nba/eye-on-basketball/24817136/kevin-durant-to-dwight-howard-reportedly-youre-a-p----">reportedly called Dwight Howard a "p****"</a> during a game.</p><p>In a game against the Nuggets he threw Kenneth Faried to the ground and then hurled a ball at him, drawing a technical:</p><div><div></div></div><p class="embed-spacer"></p><p>Before All-Star Weekend, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/kevin-durant-1-on-1-all-star-spot-2015-2">Durant had some choice words</a> for any NBA player who thought they deserved his All-Star spot. Durant made the team despite missing more than half of OKC's games due to injury. A lot of people criticized the decision, but KD responded by saying, "Whoever want my spot can play me one-on-one for it."</p><p>At All-Star weekend Durant <a href="http://newsok.com/increasingly-outspoken-kevin-durant-growing-tired-of-the-media/article/5393674">set his sights on the media</a>.</p><p>"You guys really don't know s***," he told the Oklahoman. "To be honest, man, I'm only here talking to y'all because I have to. So I really don't care. Y'all not my friends. You're going to write what you want to write. You're going to love us one day and hate us the next. That's a part of it. So I just learn how to deal with y'all."</p><p>When an former ESPN writer tweeted something disparaging about Durant's teammate Nick Collison, Durant taunted him for getting fired:</p><div><div></div></div><p class="embed-spacer">The context here is key. The Thunder and Durant are having a tumultuous season. He's been hurt. The roster is unsettled. Every day brings him closer to his free agency in 2016, when the entire Washington, D.C. metro area will clamor for him to pull a LeBron and sign with his hometown Wizards.</p><p class="embed-spacer">Maybe he's just venting. Maybe, like Kobe, he pines for the good old days when NBA players all hated each other. Either way, this is a far cry from where KD was in 2012.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/cristiano-ronaldo-real-madrid-surprise-football-2015-1">Cristiano Ronaldo, wearing a wig and glasses, surprised a young fan on the streets of Madrid</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="E3cjYzczqe0Rzg9KVcI-qFu0fTW029ZA" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

Kevin Durant's new philosophy on other NBA players is straight out of Kobe Bryant's book

<p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><p>In November 1969, astronauts Charles "Pete" Conrad and Alan Bean&#xa0;rode a lunar lander down to the moon's Ocean of Storms while module pilot Dick Gordon&#xa0;orbited overhead.</p><p>Conrad and Bean&#xa0;were on their way toward becoming the third and fourth men to walk on the moon, respectively. But their mission, just four months after Neil and Buzz's Apollo 11, lacked either the moment of a first landing or the high drama of Apollo 13's near-disaster. Maybe that's why the&#xa0;details of Apollo 12&#xa0;have passed from popular memory.</p><p>That's too bad, because Apollo 12 was downright <em>zany</em>. This was the mission that was nearly scrapped before it left the atmosphere, where a bad swing of the arm&#xa0;destroyed precious equipment.&#xa0;</p><p>And then, of course, there was the porn.</p><h2>Apollo 12 got struck by lightning in flight and the mission was almost aborted</h2><p>Probably the most famous event of the Apollo 12 mission came within its first minutes. Reading the <a href="http://history.nasa.gov/ap12fj/01launch_to_earth_orbit.htm">mission transcript</a>, the whole launch&#xa0;plays out like a scene from a movie.</p><p>Setting: &#xa0;Cape Canaveral, Florida.</p><p>A gathered crowd - including President Nixon, the first sitting commander in chief to watch space launch - endured a rain storm as a Saturn V topped with the command&#xa0;capsule&#xa0;<em>Yankee Clipper&#xa0;</em>erupted from the launch pad.&#xa0;It was 11:22 AM.</p><p>Twelve seconds after&#xa0;liftoff, Gordon&#xa0;announced the spacecraft, which was nearly 60 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty, had&#xa0;cleared its launch tower.</p><p>"<span>Roger. Clear the tower. I got a pitch and a roll program, and this baby's really going," Conrad replied. Eight seconds later he added, "<span>It's a lovely lift-off. It's not bad at all.&#xa0;<span>Everything's looking great. Sky's getting lighter."</span></span></span></p><p><span><span><span>But just 13 seconds later his tone changed:</span></span></span></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="color: #800000;"><strong>000:00:37 Gordon (onboard):</strong> What the hell was that?</span></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="color: #800000;"><strong>000:00:38 Conrad (onboard):</strong> Huh?</span></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="color: #800000;"><strong>000:00:39 Gordon (onboard):</strong> I lost a whole bunch of stuff; I don't know ...</span></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="color: #800000;"><strong>000:00:40 Conrad (onboard):</strong> Turn off the buses.</span></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="color: #008000;"><strong>Public Affairs Office</strong> - "40 seconds."</span></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><strong>000:00:42 Carr:</strong> Mark.</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><strong>000:00:43 Carr:</strong> One Bravo.</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="color: #800000;"><strong>000:00:43 Conrad (onboard):</strong> Roger. We had a whole bunch of buses drop out.</span></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><strong>000:00:44 Conrad:</strong> Roger. We [garble] on that. [Long pause.]</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="color: #800000;"><strong>000:00:45 Bean (onboard):</strong> There's nothing - it's nothing ...</span></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="color: #800000;"><strong>000:00:47 Gordon (onboard):</strong> A circuit ...</span></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="color: #800000;"><strong>000:00:48 Conrad (onboard):</strong> Where are we going?</span></p><p><span>What no one on board&#xa0;<em>Yankee Clipper</em> or at Mission Control knew was that lightning had struck Apollo 12, scrambling the rocket's instruments. A second strike twenty seconds later knocked many of them out entirely. The astronaut's only sign that their module was even still connected to the rocket was the massive g-forces still acting on their bodies.</span></p><p><span><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div></span></p><p><span> The Saturn V's internal guidance was unaffected and it was still on course, but NASA had no way to know what the problem was or whether&#xa0;the mission could safely continue. And they had to decide fast whether to call for a mission abort. Moments after the second strike Apollo 12 accelerated beyond the speed of sound. Within minutes three astronauts would arrive in space - possibly on a doomed craft.</span></p><p><span>For 28 seconds, Gerald Carr, the man at mission control charged with communicating with the astronauts, said nothing into his radio while specialists tried to make heads or tails of the nonsense data streaming back from Apollo. Then:</span></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><strong>000:01:36 Carr:</strong> Apollo 12, Houston. Try SCE to auxiliary. Over.</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><strong>000:01:39 Conrad:</strong> Try FCE to Auxiliary. What the hell is that?</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><strong>000:01:41 Conrad:</strong> NCE to auxiliary...</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="color: #800000;"><strong>000:01:42 Gordon (onboard):</strong> Fuel cell...</span></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><strong>000:01:43 Carr:</strong> SCE, SCE to auxiliary. [Long pause.]</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="color: #800000;"><strong>000:01:45 Conrad (onboard):</strong> Try the buses. Get the buses back on the line.</span></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="color: #800000;"><strong>000:01:48 Bean (onboard):</strong> It looks - Everything looks good.</span></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="color: #800000;"><strong>000:01:50 Conrad (onboard):</strong> SCE to Aux.</span></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="color: #800000;"><strong>000:01:52 Gordon (onboard):</strong> The GDC is good.</span></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="color: #800000;"><strong>000:01:54 Conrad (onboard):</strong> Stand by for the - I've lost the event timer; I've lost the...</span></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="color: #008000;"><strong>Public Affairs Office</strong> - "Comm reports the reading is back."</span></p><p><span style="color: #000000;">A 24-year-old NASA officer named John Aaron had recognized the strange telemetry pattern from an earlier test. The power supply to the SCE, the device that converted raw instrument signals to coherent data, had malfunctioned, producing the same problem as the unseen lightning strikes. Bean following Aaron's instruction&#xa0;to switch to auxiliary power - an option Conrad didn't even know existed on their massive instrument panel - reset the SCE and returned everything to normal. After some careful check-ups in space, the&#xa0;mission was able to continue.</span></p><h2><span style="color: #000000;">The first thing Conrad did on the moon was win a $500 bet</span></h2><p><span style="color: #000000;"><span>"Whoopee!" Conrad exclaimed as he put his foot down on the moon for the first time, becoming the third person to ever do so.&#xa0;"Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me."</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000;"><span>Conrad was five feet, six inches tall, a full head shorter than the 5' 11" Neil Armstrong. Still, the greatest moment of a person's life is a weird time for a self-deprecating short joke.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000;"><div></div></span></p><p>But Kathy Sawyer's <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/daily/july99/conrad10.htm">1999 Washington Post</a> profile of the astronaut reveals the&#xa0;story behind this strange quote.</p><p>Conrad, Sawyer reveals, was a prankster who once goaded Neil Armstrong into driving a Corvette so fast on the way back from a Texas burger joint that they got arrested. He was convinced he got barred from the Mercury program for "making a sport" of the psychological tests; when interviewers showed him a blank card, he told them it was upside-down.</p><p>And he dreamed up his first words on the moon sitting poolside with his first wife, Jane Conrad, and the journalist Oriana Fallaci before his mission. NASA, Fallaci told Conrad, must have scripted Armstrong's statement from the lunar surface. Conrad insisted in return that he'd be able to say anything he wanted, and predicted his "Whoopie!" line then and there. He and Fallaci&#xa0;ended up making a $500 bet on the first-step phrase, but he was never able to collect it.</p><h2>Most of the moonwalks happened without a working TV camera</h2><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><p>America's&#xa0;moon missions were propaganda victories in the Cold War as much as they were scientific expeditions. So NASA made a point of broadcasting live from the lunar surface. For Apollo 12, the engineers decided to step up the production value from Apollo 11, and sent a color TV camera along.</p><p>But 42 minutes into broadcasting the first moonwalk of the mission, the feed cut out. Despite their best efforts, Conrad and Bean couldn't get it going again.</p><p>NASA had them bring the camera back with them for inspection. <a href="http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/ApolloTV-Acrobat7.pdf">Later NASA reported</a>&#xa0;that Bean had pointed the lens directly into the sun while carrying it over to the tripod, frying its internal machinery. The space agency developed protocols to prevent a similar incident in the future - like packing a lens cap.</p><h2>All three astronauts had Playboy on their wrists</h2><p>For all the expense and effort of their moon mission, Conrad and Bean had just hours at their destination to get through their assigned tasks. So NASA scheduled their time there down to the minute, with instructions written out on checklists strapped to their wrists.</p><p>Dave Scott, the backup commander for Apollo 12 who would have stepped in if Conrad were unable to go, saw to it that some other material made its way into those little wire-bound flip books.</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><p>"It was about two and a half hours into the extravehicular activity," Bean <a href="http://media.aphelis.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Playboy_1994_Playmates_On_The_Moon.pdf">told Playboy's D.C. Angle</a> 25 years later in 1994. "I flipped the page over and there she was. I hopped over to where Pete was and showed him mine, and he showed me his."</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>They didn't say anything out loud, Bean said, for fear that taxpayers wouldn't thrill to the idea of Playboy hitching a ride on an Apollo mission. But, he added, "We giggled and laughed so much that people accused us of being drunk or having 'space rapture.'"<p>Scott had picked up several issues of Playboy from a newsstand, copied them, then printed them on NASA's fireproof, plastic-coated paper. Once finished, he squirreled them away in the checklists without telling the astronauts.</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>Captions like "Seen any &#xa0;interesting hills and valleys?" and "preferred tether partner" accompanied the images - as did a series of cartoons by Ernie Reyes, chief of pre-flight operations.<p>Conrad struck the images from the flight's public records, though one did make it into the photo at the top of this article, which was distributed without anyone noticing. Today, NASA includes the images in its <a href="http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a12/cuff12.html">historical&#xa0;archives</a>, with straightforward titles like "Playmate No. 1," "Playmate No. 2," and so on.</p><p>It's hard to know what&#xa0;to think about Playboy's trip to the moon from our vantage point in 2016. On the one hand,&#xa0;it was a bit of a victimless joke - a way for astronauts&#xa0;to rib one another even on the lunar surface.</p><p>But this is pretty clearly an artifact NASA's boy's club era. Even as <a href="http://www.wired.com/2015/10/margaret-hamilton-nasa-apollo/">Margaret Hamilton's code</a> made the moon missions possible, not a single public face of the Apollo era was female.</p><p>The Russians sent&#xa0;<span>Valentina Tereshkova into orbit for 71 hours as early as&#xa0;1963 - single-handedly outlasting every US astronaut combined until that point. But fourteen years passed between&#xa0;Apollo 12 and&#xa0;Sally Ride's history-making 1983 journey on the space shuttle <em>Challenger </em>that&#xa0;made her the first US woman in space<em>.&#xa0;</em><span style="text-decoration: underline;"></span>And even then she had to deal with sexist questions, like <a href="http://www.teenvogue.com/story/gloria-steinem-sally-ride-interview">whether she cried during malfunctions</a>&#xa0;or wore a bra into orbit.</span></p><p><span>So the playmates-in-space incident is a bit funny, while also a bit of a sad reminder of how recently NASA planned entire missions without even wondering what female staff and astronauts might think.</span>&#xa0;</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-just-released-hundreds-stunning-new-images-mars-2016-10">NASA just released hundreds of stunning new images of Mars - here are some of the best</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="1vcWJqNjE6AqzekhLNfP2oMMMOaPyFJ2" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

Just months after Apollo 11, NASA sent men to the moon with porn strapped to their wrists

<p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><p>In November 1969, astronauts Charles "Pete" Conrad and Alan Bean&#xa0;rode a lunar lander down to the moon's Ocean of Storms while module pilot Dick Gordon&#xa0;orbited overhead.</p><p>Conrad and Bean&#xa0;were on their way toward becoming the third and fourth men to walk on the moon, respectively. But their mission, just four months after Neil and Buzz's Apollo 11, lacked either the moment of a first landing or the high drama of Apollo 13's near-disaster. Maybe that's why the&#xa0;details of Apollo 12&#xa0;have passed from popular memory.</p><p>That's too bad, because Apollo 12 was downright <em>zany</em>. This was the mission that was nearly scrapped before it left the atmosphere, where a bad swing of the arm&#xa0;destroyed precious equipment.&#xa0;</p><p>And then, of course, there was the porn.</p><h2>Apollo 12 got struck by lightning in flight and the mission was almost aborted</h2><p>Probably the most famous event of the Apollo 12 mission came within its first minutes. Reading the <a href="http://history.nasa.gov/ap12fj/01launch_to_earth_orbit.htm">mission transcript</a>, the whole launch&#xa0;plays out like a scene from a movie.</p><p>Setting: &#xa0;Cape Canaveral, Florida.</p><p>A gathered crowd - including President Nixon, the first sitting commander in chief to watch space launch - endured a rain storm as a Saturn V topped with the command&#xa0;capsule&#xa0;<em>Yankee Clipper&#xa0;</em>erupted from the launch pad.&#xa0;It was 11:22 AM.</p><p>Twelve seconds after&#xa0;liftoff, Gordon&#xa0;announced the spacecraft, which was nearly 60 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty, had&#xa0;cleared its launch tower.</p><p>"<span>Roger. Clear the tower. I got a pitch and a roll program, and this baby's really going," Conrad replied. Eight seconds later he added, "<span>It's a lovely lift-off. It's not bad at all.&#xa0;<span>Everything's looking great. Sky's getting lighter."</span></span></span></p><p><span><span><span>But just 13 seconds later his tone changed:</span></span></span></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="color: #800000;"><strong>000:00:37 Gordon (onboard):</strong> What the hell was that?</span></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="color: #800000;"><strong>000:00:38 Conrad (onboard):</strong> Huh?</span></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="color: #800000;"><strong>000:00:39 Gordon (onboard):</strong> I lost a whole bunch of stuff; I don't know ...</span></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="color: #800000;"><strong>000:00:40 Conrad (onboard):</strong> Turn off the buses.</span></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="color: #008000;"><strong>Public Affairs Office</strong> - "40 seconds."</span></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><strong>000:00:42 Carr:</strong> Mark.</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><strong>000:00:43 Carr:</strong> One Bravo.</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="color: #800000;"><strong>000:00:43 Conrad (onboard):</strong> Roger. We had a whole bunch of buses drop out.</span></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><strong>000:00:44 Conrad:</strong> Roger. We [garble] on that. [Long pause.]</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="color: #800000;"><strong>000:00:45 Bean (onboard):</strong> There's nothing - it's nothing ...</span></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="color: #800000;"><strong>000:00:47 Gordon (onboard):</strong> A circuit ...</span></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="color: #800000;"><strong>000:00:48 Conrad (onboard):</strong> Where are we going?</span></p><p><span>What no one on board&#xa0;<em>Yankee Clipper</em> or at Mission Control knew was that lightning had struck Apollo 12, scrambling the rocket's instruments. A second strike twenty seconds later knocked many of them out entirely. The astronaut's only sign that their module was even still connected to the rocket was the massive g-forces still acting on their bodies.</span></p><p><span><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div></span></p><p><span> The Saturn V's internal guidance was unaffected and it was still on course, but NASA had no way to know what the problem was or whether&#xa0;the mission could safely continue. And they had to decide fast whether to call for a mission abort. Moments after the second strike Apollo 12 accelerated beyond the speed of sound. Within minutes three astronauts would arrive in space - possibly on a doomed craft.</span></p><p><span>For 28 seconds, Gerald Carr, the man at mission control charged with communicating with the astronauts, said nothing into his radio while specialists tried to make heads or tails of the nonsense data streaming back from Apollo. Then:</span></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><strong>000:01:36 Carr:</strong> Apollo 12, Houston. Try SCE to auxiliary. Over.</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><strong>000:01:39 Conrad:</strong> Try FCE to Auxiliary. What the hell is that?</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><strong>000:01:41 Conrad:</strong> NCE to auxiliary...</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="color: #800000;"><strong>000:01:42 Gordon (onboard):</strong> Fuel cell...</span></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><strong>000:01:43 Carr:</strong> SCE, SCE to auxiliary. [Long pause.]</p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="color: #800000;"><strong>000:01:45 Conrad (onboard):</strong> Try the buses. Get the buses back on the line.</span></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="color: #800000;"><strong>000:01:48 Bean (onboard):</strong> It looks - Everything looks good.</span></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="color: #800000;"><strong>000:01:50 Conrad (onboard):</strong> SCE to Aux.</span></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="color: #800000;"><strong>000:01:52 Gordon (onboard):</strong> The GDC is good.</span></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="color: #800000;"><strong>000:01:54 Conrad (onboard):</strong> Stand by for the - I've lost the event timer; I've lost the...</span></p><p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="color: #008000;"><strong>Public Affairs Office</strong> - "Comm reports the reading is back."</span></p><p><span style="color: #000000;">A 24-year-old NASA officer named John Aaron had recognized the strange telemetry pattern from an earlier test. The power supply to the SCE, the device that converted raw instrument signals to coherent data, had malfunctioned, producing the same problem as the unseen lightning strikes. Bean following Aaron's instruction&#xa0;to switch to auxillary power - an option Conrad didn't even know existed on their massive instrument panel - reset the SCE and returned everything to normal. After some careful check-ups in space, the&#xa0;mission was able to continue.</span></p><h2><span style="color: #000000;">The first thing Conrad did on the moon was win a $500 bet</span></h2><p><span style="color: #000000;"><span>"Whoopee!" Conrad exclaimed as he put his foot down on the moon for the first time, becoming the third person to ever do so.&#xa0;"Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me."</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000;"><span>Conrad was five feet, six inches tall, a full head shorter than the 5' 11" Neil Armstrong. Still, the greatest moment of a person's life is a weird time for a self-deprecating short joke.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000;"><div></div></span></p><p>But Kathy Sawyer's <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/daily/july99/conrad10.htm">1999 Washington Post</a> profile of the astronaut reveals the&#xa0;story behind this strange quote.</p><p>Conrad, Sawyer reveals, was a prankster who once goaded Neil Armstrong into driving a Corvette so fast on the way back from a Texas burger joint that they got arrested. He was convinced he got barred from the Mercury program for "making a sport" of the psychological tests; when interviewers showed him a blank card, he told them it was upside-down.</p><p>And he dreamed up his first words on the moon sitting poolside with his first wife, Jane Conrad, and the journalist Oriana Fallaci before his mission. NASA, Fallaci told Conrad, must have scripted Armstrong's statement from the lunar surface. Conrad insisted in return that he'd be able to say anything he wanted, and predicted his "Whoopie!" line then and there. He and Fallaci&#xa0;ended up making a $500 bet on the first-step phrase, but he was never able to collect it.</p><h2>Most of the moonwalks happened without a working TV camera</h2><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><p>America's&#xa0;moon missions were propaganda victories in the Cold War as much as they were scientific expeditions. So NASA made a point of broadcasting live from the lunar surface. For Apollo 12, the engineers decided to step up the production value from Apollo 11, and sent a color TV camera along.</p><p>But 42 minutes into broadcasting the first moonwalk of the mission, the feed cut out. Despite their best efforts, Conrad and Bean couldn't get it going again.</p><p>NASA had them bring the camera back with them for inspection. <a href="http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/ApolloTV-Acrobat7.pdf">Later NASA reported</a>&#xa0;that Bean had pointed the lens directly into the sun while carrying it over to the tripod, frying its internal machinery. The space agency developed protocols to prevent a similar incident in the future.</p><h2>All three astronauts had Playboy on their wrists</h2><p>For all the expense and effort of their moon mission, Conrad and Bean had just hours at their destination to get through their assigned tasks. So NASA scheduled their time there down to the minute, with instructions written out on checklists strapped to their wrists.</p><p>Dave Scott, the backup commander for Apollo 12 who would have stepped in if Conrad were unable to go, saw to it that some other material made its way into those little wire-bound flip books.</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><p>"It was about two and a half hours into the extravehicular activity," Bean <a href="http://media.aphelis.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Playboy_1994_Playmates_On_The_Moon.pdf">told Playboy's D.C. Angle</a> 25 years later in 1994. "I flipped the page over and there she was. I hopped over to where Pete was and showed him mine, and he showed me his."</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>They didn't say anything out loud, Bean said, for fear that taxpayers wouldn't thrill to the idea of Playboy hitching a ride on an Apollo mission. But, he added, "We giggled and laughed so much that people accused us of being drunk or having 'space rapture.'"<p>Scott had picked up several issues of Playboy from a newsstand, copied them, then printed them on NASA's fireproof, plastic-coated paper. Once finished, he squirreled them away in the checklists without telling the astronauts.</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>Captions like "Seen any &#xa0;interesting hills and valleys?" and "preferred tether partner" accompanied the images - as did a series of cartoons by Ernie Reyes, chief of pre-flight operations.<p>Conrad struck the images from the flight's public records, though one did make it into the photo at the top of this article, which was distributed without anyone noticing. Today, NASA includes the images in its <a href="http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a12/cuff12.html">historical&#xa0;archives</a>, with straightforward titles like "Playmate No. 1," "Playmate No. 2," and so on.</p><p>It's hard to know what&#xa0;to think about Playboy's trip to the moon from our vantage point in 2016. On the one hand,&#xa0;it was a bit of a victimless joke - a way for astronauts&#xa0;to rib one another even on the lunar surface.</p><p>But this is pretty clearly an artifact NASA's boy's club era. Even as <a href="http://www.wired.com/2015/10/margaret-hamilton-nasa-apollo/">Margaret Hamilton's brilliant code</a> made the moon missions possible, not a single public face of the Apollo era was female.</p><p>Though the Russians had sent&#xa0;<span>Valentina Tereshkova into orbit for 71 hours as early as&#xa0;1963 - single-handedly outlasting every US astronaut combined until that point - fourteen years passed after Apollo 12 before Sally Ride made history in 1983 on the space shuttle <em>Challenger</em>&#xa0;as the first US woman in space<em>.&#xa0;</em><span style="text-decoration: underline;"></span>And even then she had to deal with sexist questions, like <a href="http://www.teenvogue.com/story/gloria-steinem-sally-ride-interview">whether she cried during malfunctions</a>&#xa0;or wore a bra into orbit.</span></p><p><span>So the playmates-in-space incident is a bit funny, while also a bit of a sad reminder of how recently NASA planned entire missions without even wondering what female staff and astronauts might think.</span>&#xa0;</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/black-hole-milky-way-galaxy-earth-2016-6">There's a black hole in our galaxy, and it's not far from Earth</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="NwNDc2NDE6gT7L8k0NXeKF7iQ-uHelK8" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

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