How KickFire Classics Toys Awakens Your Inner Child

Remember when “fun” was more than pixels, apps, and WiFi? When you were limited only by your imagination, and not by the number of gigabytes on your device? At KickFire Classics, we believe there is nothing quite like classic toys to awaken the inner child in all of us!

Webster’s Dictionary defines “classic” as: an item judged over time to be of the highest quality and outstanding of its kind. Since video games and electronic devices don’t fit in that definition, we are committed to finding toys from our childhoods that are challenging and exciting enough to capture the attention of today’s youth.

As parents ourselves, we encourage our kids to experience good ‘ole fashioned fun. Playing outside, and being active are some of our favorite things! On any given day you can find Janelle out biking, longboarding, or in search of a new adventure. Cory is a true outdoorsman and can’t stand being cooped up inside for long periods of time, and Ty is busy entertaining his kids with his ninja-like juggling skills. We don’t have the attention spans to sit through endless hours of TV, video games and movies–we want to be out moving, and want our kids to do the same! So, our passion for fun classic toys from our childhoods was born.

Recapture the joy of childhood, and fire up your kids passion for activities by introducing them to our line of classic toys! Finally, a line of toys your kids will love and you will understand!

‘Despacito’ Is Now the Most Viewed Video in YouTube History

August 04, 2017

Only 204 days after first being uploaded to YouTube, Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s breakout hit “Despacito” has officially become the most viewed video in YouTube history. And with 3,000,730,629 views and counting, the video today also became the first to reach the once unfathomable 3 billion marker on the platform.

“Breaking the record for most viewed video of all time on YouTube is truly incredible, not only for me but for Latin music and our culture.” Fonsi explained in a statement. “Working with a platform like YouTube has allowed our song to reach audiences all over the world, something that just a decade ago was nearly impossible.”

The new record comes less than a month after Wiz Khalifa’s “See You Again” took over YouTube’s top spot from PSY, who held the crown for over four and half years with his ubiquitous clip for “Gangnam Style.” And while the previous record holders and other YouTube heavyweights like Justin Bieber – “Sorry,” Mark Ronson – “Uptown Funk” and Major Lazer – “Lean On” have displayed impressive trajectories, nothing quite compares to the unprecedented growth of “Despacito.” Averaging 14.5 million views per day since upload, the video already owned the record for fastest video to 1.5, 2 and 2.5 billion views, reaching each of those milestones in less than 1/2 of the time of the previous record holders. See how other top viewed music videos on YouTube compare to Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s collaborative effort here.

Today’s numbers are just the latest in a growing list of accomplishments for the international chart topper, which last month became the most liked video on YouTube. The clip is currently the most viewed video of the year in over 40 countries, earning massive numbers in every corner of the world — 385 million views in Mexico, 224 million in Brazil, 146 million in Italy, 85 million in France, 41 million in Indonesia, 33 million in India, 18 million in Israel, 10 million in Egypt, and millions more throughout the globe.

But Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee are not the only Latin artists currently experiencing a massive growth spurt, with acts like Nicky Jam, Maluma, J Balvin, and Ozuna each already earning over 1 billion views across YouTube in 2017. Around the world, monthly view counts for top Latin acts have skyrocketed since this time last year, growing 940 percent in Indonesia, 821 percent in the Philippine, 463 percent in India, 284 percent in South Africa, 260 percent in Israel, 270 percent in New Zealand, 237 percent in Turkey, 178 percent in the U.K. and 110 percent in Canada. And as further proof of the explosion, Latin artists make up a full 1/3 of the slots on this week’s YouTube Global Tracks Chart.

Kevin Meenan, YouTube Music Trends Manager

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• Despacito

10

Labor Camps

North Korea currently operates about 16 labor camps—massive compounds scattered across the mountainous terrain and enclosed by electrified barbed wire fences. It’s estimated that somewhere around 200,000 prisoners are held in these camps at any given time.

9

Three Generations Of Punishment

North Korean law dictates a “three generations of punishment” policy: If you commit a crime, your children and grandchildren will carry the stains of your sin and be punished accordingly. That means that if your grandfather committed a crime, you get to bear the full brunt of his punishment. As mentioned above, this usually leads to entire lives spent inside prison camps. One of the worst offenses that a North Korean can commit is attempting to leave North Korea, which can justify either immediate execution or an extended sentence in one of their labor camps.

Criticizing the government, no matter how slightly, is also considered a treasonous offense. Simply learning about other cultures warrants a death sentence. Recent smuggling between the border of North Korea and China has allowed some people to get DVDs of Western movies—which are illegal. The North Korean National Security Agency has begun raiding villages in the north of the country by shutting off the electricity to a whole village then storming into houses and checking which DVDs are stuck in the DVD player.

8

Insurance Fraud

The North Korean economy is, in all measurable aspects, completely failing. Exports are virtually nonexistent due to their reluctance to interact with foreign markets, as well as the fact that they struggle to feed everyone living within their own borders. The current population of North Korea is about 25 million, and the average GDP per person is about $500 (for comparison, in the US it hovers around $50,000).

7

Arms Dealing

Insurance fraud aside, the United Nations has also accused North Korea of selling illegal weapons and nuclear technology to the highest bidder, which usually means countries in Africa and the Middle East. For example, in 2012, the UN seized a North Korean shipment heading to Syria which contained nearly 450 graphite cylinders meant for use in ballistic missiles. In 2009, shipments to both Iran and the Republic of Congo were caught in transit—one had 35 tons of missile components, and the other contained Soviet-era tanks.

6

Electricity

The capital city of North Korea, Pyongyang, is something of a self-styled utopia reserved for the population’s elite. Armed guards patrol the borders to keep the lower classes from entering, and most of the residents of Pyongyang live in something approaching luxury—with a given value of “luxury” (maybe they don’t get enough food, but they at least get more than everyone else in the country). Yet even the three million upper-class citizens aren’t given electricity for more than an hour or two a day.

5

Three-Caste System

In 1957, when Kim Il Sung was struggling to retain control over North Korea, he launched a massive investigation into the populace of the country. The end result of that investigation was a completely changed social system that separated everybody into three classes: “hostiles,” “wavering,” and “core.” The designations were based not on the person, but on their family history.

4

Human Feces Fertilizer

North Korea’s geography is mountainous and arid, with long, frigid winters and short, monsoon-filled summers. About 80 percent of the country is located either on the side of a mountain or at the top of one, which means most of the land is terrible for farming. Historically, North Korea has always relied on foreign aid to get the fertilizers it needs: The Soviet Union gave them fertilizer before it collapsed, and until recently, South Korea was sending them 500,000 tons of fertilizer each year to help boost food production.

3

South Korean Citizenship

To put it simply, there are so many people fleeing North Korea that there’s nowhere for all of them to go. China’s official policy is to send them back across the border. There they are either executed or consigned to a labor camp for decades of brutal work that usually turns out to be just as effective as any death penalty. Only South Korea maintains a policy of near-absolute clemency: All North Korean defectors (who aren’t criminals) are immediately provided with citizenship, job training, and for those who need it, psychological counseling. They’re also given a place to live and $800 a month. As an incentive for businesses, the South Korean government offers a bonus of $1,800 to anyone who will hire a refugee.

2

Cannibalism

A crippling famine struck North Korea between 1994 and 1998. Widespread flooding left most of the farm land unusable. When that was combined with an ever-increasing debt to the Soviet Union that prevented any importing of food, entire cities drifted into a twilight of death. It’s estimated that close to 3.5 million people died of starvation during that time—more than 10 percent of the population.

1

Torture Prisons

To date, very few people have escaped from North Korea’s labor camps and lived to tell the tale. And of these refugees, only one known person has escaped from the dreaded Camp 14, widely considered to be the most brutal labor camp in the country and reserved for only the most serious political criminals. That person was Shin Dong-hyuk, whose story is told in the incredible book Escape From Camp 14.

Turn on the volume. This is not sped up. Eastern tiger swallowtail enjoying its tulip tree.

Papilio glaucus, the eastern tiger swallowtail, is a species of swallowtail butterfly native to eastern North America. It is one of the most familiar butterflies in the eastern United States,^[3] where it is common in many different habitats. It has also been found in Olüdeniz, Turkey. It flies from spring to fall, during which it produces two to three broods. Adults feed on the nectar of many species of flowers, mostly from those of the Apocynaceae, Asteraceae, and Fabaceae families. P. glaucus has a wingspan measuring 7.9 to 14 cm (3.1 to 5.5 in). The male is yellow with four black “tiger stripes” on each forewing. Females may be either yellow or black, making them dimorphic. The yellow morph is similar to the male, but with a conspicuous band of blue spots along the hindwing, while the dark morph is almost completely black.

The green eggs are laid singly on plants of the Magnoliaceae and Rosaceae families. Young caterpillars are brown and white; older ones are green with two black, yellow, and blue eyespots on the thorax. The caterpillar will turn brown prior to pupating. It will reach a length of 5.5 centimetres (2.2 in). The chrysalis varies from a whitish color to dark brown. Hibernation occurs in this stage in locations with cold winter months.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papilio_glaucus

Google might have a complete list of almost everything you’ve ever looked at.

The list can be quite helpful. All of the information is completely searchable, so if you remember just one part of a website’s name or only the day you visited it, for instance, you can find it back out again.

Google collects the information in part so that it can be useful to you – jogging your memory, helping you find past websites, and learning more about you so that it can recommend more relevant things. But it is mostly so that Google can use that information for its ads, learning what you’re into and what marketing is most likely to appeal.

So if that makes you worry, it’s easy to turn the collection off. (You’ll still get ads, they’ll just be more generic.) That’s done by heading to the Activity Controls page, and turning off the data collection.

The page is similar to Google’s audio history page, which collects the recordings that your phone makes of you. Like the search results, the recordings are supposed to be useful – but you can easily stop them being stored from the same page.

Google also keeps information on where its users have been. That too can be viewed on a handy timeline at the location history page, where it can also be turned off and deleted.