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I have to admit that Im a natural born sucker (in more than one sense, some would argue, and they will be right). I have an irresistible inclination to put things in my mouth to see how they taste, which is why today Im glad I dont have a Nintendo Switch. Apparently, Nintendo has coated the Switchs thumb-size game cartridges with a demonic, bitter compound known as denatonium benzoate since it launched its handheld console in 2017. And it has done it again with the Switch 2s new $70 cartridges. The human body has a natural aversion to bitter tastes. Its a survival mechanism product of millions of years of evolution. Many poisonous substances in nature are bitter, so animals developed a sense of disgust for the flavor. Some humans were able to overcome this to willingly intoxicate themselves with gin and tonics, yes, but bitterness turns out to be a great way to deter kids from ingesting harmful substances and potential choking hazards. Which is why Nintendo decided to dip its games in this inert, nontoxic chemical. Marketed under the brand name Bitrex, denatonium benzoate is the worlds most bitter compound, 1,000 times more intense than quininethe compound that gives tonic water its bite. While quinine becomes detectable at 0.77 parts per million, Bitrex registers at just 0.05 parts per million. This means that a single 1-milligram drop of this substance can make an entire liter of water absolutely inedible. Nintendo uses concentrations of 1050 ppm, ensuring immediate, overwhelming disgust. What does Bitrex taste like? Bitrex has a long track record. Its origin story traces back to 1958, when Edinburgh-based pharmaceutical firm T. & H. Smith stumbled upon it while researching local anesthetics derived from lidocaine. The compounds name blends bitter and the Latin rex (king), cementing its status as the undisputed monarch of aversion. Initially used to denature industrial alcohol, its applications exploded by the 1970s as a safety additive in household cleaners, automotive fluids like antifreeze and windshield washer (which apparently taste sweet without this additive), pesticides, and even cables, where it gets applied to avoid rodents from chewing on them. Today, it is still widely used in those products and others like marker pens, liquid laundry packets, and cosmetics like nail polish. The sensory experience is a sharp, lingering bitterness devoid of any other flavor, designed to trigger instant rejection. The bitterness of coffee, pure chocolate, or medications like antibiotics taste like candy compared to a Switch cartridge. I licked an original Switch game once. Never again, Switch 2 producer Kouichi Kawamoto told Gamespot. We dont want anybody to be at risk of unwanted consumption, Switch 2 director Takuhiro Dohta told the gaming outlet. But while the Japanese company has doubled down on this compound for the Switch 2s cartridges, most toy manufacturers dont rely on taste aversion to avoid choking hazards. Instead, brands adhere to size regulations, which establish that parts must be over 1.25 inches in toys targeted at kids 3 years old and younger. Companies like Lego took a structural approach to avoid the effect of potential ingestion with its minifigure heads. From 1978 to 1992, the iconic minifigs featured solid studs on the top of their heads but the company redesigned them with hollow, three-armed lattices to create air passagesa move that mirrored BICs pen cap safety holes. The logic was simple: If a child swallowed a head, airflow might prevent suffocation. By 2010, however, Lego abandoned the design, claiming that the tiny holes were ineffective for breathing, which is suspicious to say the least (some people say online it was all a matter of cutting down costs, as the design was more expensive to make than the regular heads). But I digress. Having learned all this, Im surprised that there are not more toys that use denatonium benzoate. Why do I know this? I told you, Im a natural born sucker and none of the toys Ive ever had or my kid was bitter. While adults might instinctively avoid mouthing cartridges, toddlers are always at risk. The potential for choking for little kids lurks around many homes, as there could be older siblings with toys that have smaller parts even if the toddlers toys are too big to be ingested. Frankly, as a parent, Im surprised they dont sell 5-gallon Bitrex sprays at Walmart to coat the entire bloody house with it.
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E-Commerce
Founders and CEOs typically use social media to etch a human face onto their brand, forge a personal connection with potential customers, and put some pizzazz into product launches. With the thundercloud of steep global tariffs looming overhead, though, many business owners have lately turned to TikTok, Instagram, and Reddit to explain the economic havoc those tariffs are poised to wreak on their brandsand in some cases, to search for a path forward. @antiplasticlady Replying to @Melanie not sure how any retailer is going to stay in business after this #trumptariffs #smallbusinessowner original sound – Beatrice the Anti-Plastic Lady I wanted to make a video about tariffs and how it impacted my small business because I have continued to see incomplete information being shared onlineand in legacy print media, too, says Beatrice Barba, the Bay area-based owner of Tabor Place, which sells nontoxic cups and lunch boxes for kids. On her personal TikTok account, where shes built a healthy following under the handle Antiplastic Lady, Barba addressed customers and fans directly last Friday about the new financial reality. Without mincing words, she detailed how Trumps then-54%, now-104% tariff on Chinese imports stands to completely wipe out her profit margin. As the owner mentions in her TikTok, Tabor Place manufactures sippy cups and the like out of borosilicate glass, the same durable, nontoxic material used in Pyrex. She sources it from China, not for the regions low pricing or out of convenience, but because she simply cannot find borosilicate glass in the U.S., having searched some 80 domestic manufacturers since starting the business in 2018, with none of them panning out. Barbas video quickly amassed over 600k views on TikTok, where she says the response has been mostly positivewith thousands of commenters surprised to learn the harsh math of the tariffs impact from a nontheoretical example. Elsewhere on the platform, Heather Pavone took a different tact. @haley_pavone I wish this was even remotely exaggerated. Small business owners are so. Freakin. Tired. #entreprenuer #smallbusiness #tradewar #founder #businessnews #usa #government original sound – Haley Pavone Last Friday, the Pashion Footwear founder posted a video playfully using the familiar visual vocabulary of a certain flavor of viral TikTok: the single-performer two-hander. In it, she poses as a supplicant trying to coax some relief from an authority figurealso played by the CEOseated on the other side of an office desk. Pavone comes across like a worker asking her boss for a raise, only the worker is revealed in a caption to represent all small business owners, while the boss represents the U.S. government. Without anything resembling a Trump impression, Pavone as government avatar smugly steers her adversary toward domestic manufacturing, rather than imports. Each time, Pavone, speaking for her fellow owners, rebuts the suggestion. (We actually dont have scaled footwear manufacturingor, really, apparel manufacturing of any kindin the U.S., she clarifies at one point.) Throughout the video, she makes clear how difficult it would be to ever rebuild sufficient manufacturing infrastructure in the U.S. starting from scratch, not to mention the impossibility of somehow doing so fast enough to survive sky-high import costs from the tariffs. At no point does the character representing the U.S. government seem moved in the slightest. The five-and-a-half minute TikTok quickly earned a whopping 3.5 million views. Pavone isnt the only owner of an apparel company to make such a video this week, though. Over on Instagram, the CEO of denim company 3sixteen posted a comprehensive Reel last Friday about how the tariffs will affect small fashion brands.
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E-Commerce
The Netherlands expanded a government-run initiative on Monday allowing legal cannabis sales. While growing cannabis is still illegal, cannabis shopsknown as coffeeshopsin 10 municipalities will be allowed to sell marijuana from 10 licensed producers. Weed was sold here legally for 50 years, but the production was never legal. So its finally time to end that crazy, unexplainable situation and make it a legal professional sector, Rick Bakker, commercial director at Hollandse Hoogtes, one of the regulated producers, told the Associated Press. Some 80 coffeeshops are taking part in the experiment which advocates hope this will ultimately end a long-standing legal anomalyyou can buy and sell small amounts of weed without fear of prosecution in the Netherlands, but growing it commercially remains illegal. Bakker’s company in Bemmel, near the German border, is indistinguishable from the surrounding greenhouses producing tomatoes and peppers. But it makes 200 kilograms (440 pounds) of weed per week and is one of the largest producers in the experiment. A trailblazer in decriminalizing pot since the 1970s, the Netherlands has grown more conservative. Amsterdam, long a magnet for marijuana smokers, has been closing coffeeshops in recent years and has banned smoking weed on some of the cobbled streets that make up its historic center. Advocates have been pushing for a legal growing for years, citing the safety of the product as well as concerns about crime. Benjamin Selma, the head grower at Hollandse Hoogtes who worked in cannabis production in California for more than a decade, said the quality control for the cannabis is extremely high. We do a full test, microbial, cannabinoid, terpene, as well as yeast and anaerobic bacteria, heavy metals as well. So its very, very controlled, he told the AP. The company, which does not use pesticides and tightly regulates growing conditions, has an eye to the environment. The production facility gets its energy from solar panels and uses biodegradable packaging. It is also a great opportunity to see how cooperation within the closed chain between legal growers, coffeeshop owners and all other authorities involved works, Breda Mayor Paul Depla told the AP when the first phase was launched in 2023. The experiment “is really a political compromise, according to Derrick Bergman, chairman of the Union for the Abolition of Cannabis Prohibition. The plan dates to 2017, when Christian political parties and pro-legalization parties agreed to a test run after a bill to decriminalize production failed. The government will evaluate the experiment after four years. A research team, advised by an independent guidance and evaluation committee, is examining the effects of a controlled cannabis supply chain on crime, safety and public health, the government said in a statement. Selma said he is happy to be working without concerns about prosecution. Ive seen some bad moments, he said, and I dont know if I ever believed I would be so free. The coffeeshops taking part in the initiative are located in Almere, Arnhem, Breda, Groningen, Heerlen, Hellevoetsluis, Maastricht, Nijmegen, Tilburg, and Zaanstad. Molly Quell, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
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