Master chef and restaurateur Paul Liebrandt rates 11 fine-dining scenes in movies and television, such as "The Bear," for realism.
Liebrandt breaks down the reality of running a fine-dining restaurant for three episodes of "The Bear," starring Jeremy Allen White and Ayo Edebiri, such as kitchen jargon used in the kitchen, the creation and execution of dishes, and the high-stress environment in the kitchen often depicted in popular culture. He further explains fine-dining culture — from food critics to the impact of social media — as seen in the food critic scene in both "Ratatouille" and "Chef," with Jon Favreau; the pursuit to receive three Michelin stars in "Burnt," starring Bradley Cooper; and how social media has shaped the fine dining experience in "The Menu," with Anya Taylor-Joy and Ralph Fiennes. He also explains cooking and plating techniques, along with the evolution of French cuisine, via the molecular gastronomy scene in "The Hundred-Foot Journey," with Helen Mirren; the use of foie gras in "Cook Up a Storm"; the cooking competition scene "Food Wars!: Shokugeki no Soma," and the omelet-making scene at Le Cordon Bleu in "Julie & Julia," starring Meryl Streep as Julia Child.
Liebrandt has been a chef for over 25 years and owned the two-Michelin-starred restaurant Corton in New York City. He also previously worked at the New York restaurants Atlas, Gilt, and Papillon. His book "To the Bone" is part cookbook and part memoir of his culinary experiences.
Key prosecution witness Michael Cohen showed zero concern when told of the gag lift.
"Good," he told Business Insider, his tone defiant.
"For the past 6 years, Donald and acolytes have been making constant negative statements about me. Donald's failed strategy of discrediting me so that he can avoid accountability didn't work then and won't work now."
Under a five-page order by New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, the former president remains barred indefinitely from revealing juror identities.
Merchan also kept in place Trump's gag on statements attacking court staff and family members, but that will be lifted after Trump's July 11 sentencing.
Trump has fought the gag unsuccessfully, on Constitutional free-speech grounds, since it was imposed in March, two weeks before the start of a trial that resulted in the first criminal conviction of a former president.
After the May 30 conviction, Trump's lawyers added a second strategy, challenging the gag as not only unconstitutional but also moot.
Prosecutors did not oppose lifting Trump's gag on trash-talking witnesses, but fought allowing him to attack jurors, or court and prosecution staffers and their families.
Lawyers for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg noted that so long as sentencing is still pending, proceedings have not yet concluded.
However, "the trial portion of these proceedings ended when the verdict was rendered, and the jury discharged," Merchan wrote.
"While it would be this court's strong preference to extend those protections, the court cannot do so," when it comes to the jury, Merchan wrote.
"Nonetheless, there is ample evidence to justify continued concern for the jurors," he added, saying that his March 7 protective order barring the release of juror identities remains in effect "until further order of this Court."
That order prohibits disclosure of the names and addresses of any prospective or sworn juror.
Trump's jurors have remained anonymous, and have been identified in public only by a three-digit number. Only he, his lawyers, prosecutors, and court staff know who they are.
But Josh York, the 40-year-old CEO of in-home personal training company Gymguyz, takes it further and starts his mornings at 3:29 a.m., he told Fortune.
After having a cold rinse in the shower, he launches into an hour-and-a-half workout followed by a three-minute ice bath.
"It's what makes me superhuman," he told the outlet.
2. Bob Iger prefers to work out in a dark room with the TV on mute
Disney CEO Bob Iger describes his workouts as his "most creative time in many ways".
It's meant to have benefits like promoting heart health and benefiting cells. Experts warn against taking more than one tablespoon daily to avoid consuming too much vitamin A.
4. Or, if you're Elon Musk, your morning routine includes eating a doughnut
Another popular diet with successful CEOs is only eating within specific time windows — intermittent fasting.
6. Taking an afternoon nap in the office
Robin Zeng, whose role as leader of the world's largest EV battery manufacturing firm CATL makes him known as China's "Battery King," takes a daily nap at noon in the office, according to an interview with the FT.
Jack Dorsey, who runs financial services company Block, adhered to a strict wellness schedule that allowed him "just to stay above water," when he was also CEO of Twitter. Each day involved walking five miles, meditating for two hours, and only eating one meal.
She advocates "eyes-open" meditation, which involves being mindful at any moment in everyday life.
"Once you learn how to do eyes-open meditation — something you can literally incorporate at any time — you can be engaged with the world but still very connected to yourself," said previously told Business Insider. "I rely on it to feel more whole."
9. When faced with a tough problem, Jeff Bezos engages in some mind-wandering
Jeff Bezos, former CEO of Amazon, says "real" lateral thinking involves letting your mind wander.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
The former Amazon CEO would hold meetings that lasted an undetermined amount of time. He used this time to let his mind wander in order to come up with creative ideas.
"When I sit down at a meeting, I don't know how long the meeting is going to take," Bezos told the Lex Fridman Podcast in December, "the reality is we may have to wander for a long time.
"Real invention, real lateral thinking that requires wandering," he said.
Letting your mind wander may seem like an inefficient use of time, but some psychologists believe it helps increase creativity and improve working memory.
10. A massage just before midnight
If reading a book and meditating aren't relaxing enough, Steven Barlett, a former CEO and founder famed for his Diary of a CEO podcast, recommends an 11 p.m. massage.
"I often get massages in the evening — it sounds crazy, but usually my masseuse comes over at 11 p.m," he told The Telegraph.
11. A more unusual habit among CEOs, Tobias Lutke says he never works later than 5:30 p.m.
"The only times I worked more than 40 hours in a week was when I had the burning desire to do so. I need 8ish hours of sleep a night," he said in a thread on Twitter, now X.
12. Bernard Arnault spends his weekends visiting LVMH-owned stores
Bernard Arnault is one of the richest people in the world.
ERIC PIERMONT/AFP/Getty Images
The 75-year-old CEO and chairman of retail empire LVMH doesn't sleep in on Saturday mornings.
Instead, Arnault and his entourage take the time to visit the stores of any one of the several brands that LVMH owns. He's not there to shop but to point out any issues that might depart from his vision for the company, according to Bloomberg.
Celine, Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior, and Tiffany & Co. are just a few of the luxury brands under LVMH's umbrella. His sons told Bloomberg that Arnault's notes can be extremely detailed.
"He made a bunch of comments that were very, very detail-oriented," Alexandre Arnault said. "Things that you wouldn't typically notice, but once you've seen tens of thousands of stores over the years, I think it's what comes to your mind immediately."
Ami Vora worked as a director at Instagram and VP at Facebook and WhatsApp. But first, she was a Facebook temp in the PR department.
Faire
Ex-Meta VP of Product Ami Vora explained how she landed a temp job at Facebook.
Vora offered to buy fancy coffee for a Facebook employee if they introduced her to the office.
She said she was offered a temporary PR position and worked her way up to full-time.
Before Ami Vora became a Meta VP, she worked as a temporary employee in Facebook's PR department and slept on couches.
Vora spoke about how she got her first job at Facebook on an episode of "Lenny's Podcast" published Sunday. The ex-Meta exec ended up becoming VP of product at Facebook, and VP of product and design at WhatsApp.
But when she first started, she just wanted a seat at the table — and that meant doing a bit of creative networking.
"I knew that what I wanted to do was like be involved in all the wild stuff happening in Silicon Valley in the mid 2000's," Vora said.
Vora said she quit her job and traveled around the world before moving to New York and living an "extremely blissful lifestyle." Vora worked at Microsoft for three years as a product manager before leaving, according to her LinkedIn.
While her time unemployed was some of the best of her life, she said eventually she needed a job — and she wanted it to be at Facebook.
Vora said that in 2007, people considered Facebook as more important than their car. She described it as a "magical product" and said it was the way many people connected to the world.
Vora wrote in a post on Lean In that none of the jobs on the Facebook career page made sense for her at the time. While she said she looked at other companies and sent some applications, she "couldn't get Facebook's mission and energy" out of her mind.
So she didn't give up. The ex-Meta executive said she knew some people at Facebook and decided to fly out to its Palo Alto headquarters. Vora managed to work out an arrangement with one of the employees she knew: she would buy them "fancy coffee" at a downtown Palo Alto café if they took her around the office and introduced her to people.
"So everyone I met I said, 'Hey I'm Ami I really want to work here. I'll do whatever you need,'" Vora said in the podcast.
The ex-Meta executive admitted in her post on Lean In that she was nervous once she arrived and "paced around outside the Facebook building." She spent the day trying to initiate a conversation with anyone who would speak with her, she wrote in the post.
Vora said she only received one call from the head of PR after the day she spent at Facebook and they gave her several reasons why they couldn't hire her, including her lack of experience and current headcount. But they happened to need someone to review press releases so they offered her a temporary job in the department.
"This wasn't exactly what I'd been hoping for," Vora wrote in her post. "But I knew that I was passionate about the work and the company, so once again I flew from New York to San Francisco."
Vora said she took the offer and moved out to California and slept on couches. She said in her post on Lean In that she was offered a full time job a few months later.
"Eventually, they hired me full time and I didn't look back," Vora said in the interview.
Vora would later become a director at Instagram, VP of product at Facebook, and VP of product and design at Whatsapp, according to her LinkedIn. She left in 2022 after spending over 15 years at the company and became the chief product officer at Faire, an online wholesale marketplace.
The key here is the tense: The WSJ said the two companies had talked, which is pretty noteworthy, given that they've been fighting for years. But the paper didn't give any sense of whether those talks were ongoing or headed anywhere.
Not only that, but people at Tim Cook's company wanted to be clear about their stance re: Mark Zuckerberg's operation, telling Bloomberg (anonymously) that Apple won't work with Meta "in part because it doesn't see that company's privacy practices as stringent enough." Zing!
Apple reps haven't responded to a request for comment, and Meta declined to comment. But Yann LeCun, Meta's chief AI scientist, reposted the Bloomberg story to Threads Tuesday and quipped, "Their loss."
So that's the what-does-it-all mean angle satisfied: There's probably not a lot there.
But if you're a person who gets a kick out of feuds (raises hand), then this story has some bonus pettiness: Not only do we get to watch Apple people (anonymously) dump on Meta people, we get to watch the normally civil tech press dump on each other's reporting. Fun!
Almost all ASX investors who buy ASX dividend shares do so in order to receive a reliable stream of passive income.
After all, dividends can give us a source of secondary income, which we can use to reinvest into even more ASX shares, or else just use to pay bills.
If I were after a reliable ASX dividend share in June 2024, one option springs to mind: Coles Group Ltd (ASX: COL) shares.
Coles is a company we’d all be fairly familiar with. The company owns the second-largest grocery and supermarket chain in the country, as well as several other bottleshop businesses, including Liquorland and Vintage Cellars.
Why is Coles a solid ASX dividend share?
Coles has most of the characteristics I look for in a solid, long-term passive income investment.
For one, it is a stable, mature business. This means that Coles has to spend very little, relatively speaking, on expanding its business, instead relying on past investments to collect its cash flows. Because of this, Coles can afford to allocate a significant chunk of its annual profits towards funding dividend payments rather than new stores, new employees or back-of-house infrastructure.
But Coles is also a consumer staples stock, meaning it can usually afford to pay out its dividends with remarkable consistency, regardless of the economic weather.
Many ASX dividend shares have to continually adjust their payouts depending on the health of the overall economy.
When there’s a period of high inflation or a recession in the works, cyclical shares tend to have to deal with customers who are no longer willing to open their wallets as widely as they might have done when times were good.
Coles doesn’t really have this problem. This company supplies life essentials like food, drinks and household goods. As such, its customers tend to keep walking through the door in good times and bad.
This means that Coles’ earnings are relatively defensive and stable. That in turn makes the Coles dividend reliable.
We can see this in action if we look back at this company’s past payouts. Since Coles was listed on the ASX in its own right back in 2018, it has always either maintained or increased its fully franked annual dividend.
Guaranteed passive income?
To illustrate, the company forked out an annual total of 35.5 cents per share in dividends back in 2019. The following year, investors were treated to 57.5 cents per share, rising to 61 cents per share in 2021. Bear in mind that this is over the worst years of the pandemic.
2022 saw Coles up its game again, forking out 63 cents per share in passive income. 2023 had the company increase this yet again to 66 cents per share.
Coles’ last two dividend payments, worth 30 cents and 36 cents respectively, give the company a trailing dividend yield of 3.84% today. No ASX share can ever be relied upon for guaranteed dividend income. But I think Coles’ track record makes it more reliable than most.
As such, I am confident that if one buys 2,000 Coles shares today, one could reasonably expect to receive at least $1,350 (a 3.84% yield) in annual passive income from this investment.
Should you invest $1,000 in Coles Group Limited right now?
Before you buy Coles Group Limited shares, consider this:
Motley Fool investing expert Scott Phillips just revealed what he believes are the 5 best stocks for investors to buy right now… and Coles Group Limited wasn’t one of them.
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Motley Fool contributor Sebastian Bowen has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool Australia’s parent company Motley Fool Holdings Inc. has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool Australia has positions in and has recommended Coles Group. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. This article contains general investment advice only (under AFSL 400691). Authorised by Scott Phillips.
If you’re in the process building a retirement portfolio, then you may be on the lookout for some ASX 200 shares to buy for it.
But you shouldn’t just buy any old share. Rather than investing in risky growth shares, retirees ought to look for shares with strong business models, positive long term outlooks, and reliable dividends.
With that in mind, which shares could be in the buy zone in July? Let’s take a look at what analysts are saying about these ASX 200 retirement shares:
The first ASX 200 retirement share that could be worth considering is Telstra. It is of course Australia’s largest telecommunications company.
As well as offering defensive qualities, which are important for a retirement portfolio, it offers low risk earnings and dividend growth thanks largely to its mobile business.
It is for this reason that Goldman Sachs is positive on the company. It said:
We believe the low risk earnings (and dividend) growth that Telstra is delivering across FY22-25, underpinned through its mobile business, is attractive. We also believe that Telstra has a meaningful medium term opportunity to crystallise value through commencing the process to monetize its InfraCo Fixed assets – which we estimate could be worth between A$22-33bn.
Speaking of dividend growth, Goldman Sachs is expecting fully franked dividend yields of 5% in FY 2024 and 5.1% in FY 2025.
Goldman has a buy rating and $4.25 price target on its shares.
Another ASX 200 retirement share that could be a good option for investors is Woolworths. It is Australia’s largest Woolworths supermarket chain. In addition, it the owner of Big W and a growing pet care business.
Goldman Sachs is also feeling very positive about the company. So much so, it has Woolies on its conviction list. This is due to its dominant market position and belief that more market share gains are coming thanks to its loyalty program. The broker said:
We are Buy rated (on Conviction List) on the stock as we believe the business has among the highest consumer stickiness and loyalty among peers, and hence has strong ability to drive market share gains via its omni-channel advantage, as well as pass through any cost inflation to protect its margins, beyond market expectations.
Goldman currently has a conviction buy rating and $39.40 price target on the company’s shares. Its analysts are also forecasting fully franked dividend yields in the region of ~3% through to FY 2026.
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Motley Fool contributor James Mickleboro has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool Australia’s parent company Motley Fool Holdings Inc. has positions in and has recommended Goldman Sachs Group. The Motley Fool Australia has positions in and has recommended Telstra Group. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. This article contains general investment advice only (under AFSL 400691). Authorised by Scott Phillips.
Celine Dion performs at Cotai Strip Cotai Arena on June 29, 2018 in Macau, China.
Visual China Group via Getty Images
Celine Dion opens up about her struggle with Stiff Person Syndrome in her new Amazon Prime documentary.
Dion says she tried to perform through pain by increasing her medication dosages, especially Valium.
"I don't want dramatic, but I could've died," Dion reveals. "Too many pills. The show must go on."
Celine Dion breaks down in tears in her new Amazon Prime documentary, "I Am: Celine Dion," while reflecting on her final concerts before she was diagnosed with Stiff Person Syndrome.
Dion recounts one particular moment at a concert, just as she was about to take the stage, when she felt the effects of her medication wear off.
"From my dressing room, getting backstage, saying good luck to everybody, the crowd insane, my adrenaline, my heartbeat, my pressure, I'm like, 'The dream is about to come true again for me tonight. I love it so much,'" she recalls. "But then I feel a spasm, and my voice goes up. The medicine was burned out. It was gone."
At one point on tour, she says she was taking up to 80 or 90 milligrams of Valium every day.
"That's just one medicine," she says. "I don't want dramatic, but I could've died."
"I was taking those medicines because I needed to walk, I needed to be able to swallow. I needed medicine to function," Dion continues. "One more pill, two more pills, five more pills. Too many pills. The show must go on."
"The show must go on," Celine Dion says in her documentary.
Amazon Prime
Dion completed a 22-show greatest hits tour in 2018 before launching The Courage World Tour in 2019. She postponed the first four shows in Montreal, telling fans she had a throat virus. Later concerts were rescheduled due to a "common cold" before the entire tour was shut down due to COVID-19.
After the tour resumed in 2022, Dion continued canceling and rescheduling shows. When she announced her diagnosis, she decided to cancel all remaining dates.
"I can't lie anymore," Dion says in the doc. "From a sinus infection to an ear infection to whatever. Sometimes I would point my microphone toward the audience, and I would make them sing it. There's moments where I cheated and I tapped on the microphone like it was the microphone's fault."
The documentary also shows more recent footage of Dion in the recording studio, fighting to project her voice and reach her famous falsetto.
While the producers in the studio with Dion say they're pleased with her vocal progress, Dion says she's not satisfied — especially because she doesn't want to disappoint her fans.
"I'm not quite sure if I'm going to be capable of singing. But I can't live in doubt," Dion explains to the camera. "Maybe I can sing another kind of repertoire. But then it's going to be their choice to still like me or not."
