by crissly | Sep 9, 2023 | Uncategorized
I’ll scream it from the mountaintops as many times as I have to: Your bedroom should have a bottle of lube! Ideally more than one. Whether you’re flying solo or with a copilot(s), too much friction is a bad time for everyone. Even if it doesn’t seem like you need a lubricant, you’d be better off using a little just to protect yourself from chafing and micro-tears on sensitive tissues.
We’ve tested a handful of different kinds of lube, and below you’ll find our top recommendations. Be sure to check out our Best Sex Toys and Best Vibrators guides for more picks.
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by crissly | Aug 19, 2023 | Uncategorized
While mass production of the HyperSport will happen at a dedicated factory near Damon’s headquarters outside Vancouver, British Columbia, initial production will begin at Damon’s San Rafael, California, engineering facility. The recently acquired space is currently full of placards and carts to visualize the various stages of the assembly process; polished concrete floors and pristine work surfaces wait for parts.
The assembly portion of the shop is on the other side of the wall from where Damon’s engineers churn out 3D-printed prototypes, machine the alloy components going through final development, and crimp together early wiring harnesses.
Industrial-scale stamping, machining, and casting will ultimately replace the hand-built nature of the preproduction bike you see pictured here, but it’ll still carry the bespoke components designed by and for Damon. “Every part on this [bike] is ours. We’ve developed it from scratch,” Dorresteyn claims. That’s not strictly true—industry-standard components such as wheels, brakes, and suspension are the exceptions.
The prototype Damon HyperSport we visited in the workshop isn’t yet road-legal, lacking niceties such as turn signals and functional headlights. With early production scheduled to ramp up in 2024, much of the team at Damon Motors is focused on finalizing all the various hardware prototypes so that proper manufacturing can begin on the HyperSport, which is still set to hit those initial targets of 200 horsepower, 200 mph, and 200 miles of range.
New Bike, New Bikers
The targets for the executive team are a little different during WIRED’s visit. Giraud says the company is in the middle of yet another funding round, this time a $50 million raise to carry Damon through to production.
That’s a significant hurdle to overcome before the company can finally start appeasing the thousands of preorders, many of which came from interested parties who don’t fit into usual motorcycle demographics.
Indeed, some 75 percent of all Damon preorders have come via the company’s Instagram, with an average age of 37. Of the 3,700 paid deposits, a quarter are from people who don’t even own a motorcycle—expanding the market, certainly, but potentially to inexperienced riders that could well require CoPilot’s intervention sooner than they’d like.
Giraud is aiming high with the HyperSport, but he has plans to produce future models (some via partnerships) that are affordable for riders everywhere, including Indonesia, where most bikes cost around $2,000.
“Motorcycling is the largest form of motorized transportation in the world: 1.5 billion people daily. If we’re going to make motorcycling safer, a million a year sounds like maybe putting a dent in it,” Giraud says. “And, from an electrification point of view, it’s not even a drop in the bucket.”
Giraud admits it will take Damon at least a decade to hit that level of production, a timeline that seems optimistic for a company that has yet to deliver a single motorcycle to consumers. But, when you’ve faced death and lived to tell the tale, maybe everything else seems easy.
Finally, the Ride
As Damon’s prototype HyperSport isn’t legal, WIRED’s test ride can’t take place on the road. Instead, Damon loaded up the bike and trucked it out to Thunderhill Raceway Park, another two hours north of San Francisco.
Before heading out onto the track on the only functional Damon prototype motorcycle in the world, I did a few warm-up laps on something a bit more familiar. More familiar, but no less crazy: a BMW S 1000 RR. This is among the fastest sportbikes on the planet, making a tick over 200 horsepower and weighing just 440 pounds. That it’ll do over 100 mph in first gear and sprint to 60 in fewer than three seconds means that this “warm-up” was pretty hot despite a cold track on a chilly, Northern California spring day.
by crissly | Aug 17, 2023 | Uncategorized
There are a few mattresses we tested that don’t stand out as much but are worth mentioning, in case you’re thinking about them.
DreamCloud Luxury Hybrid Mattress for $1332: This is another luxury mattress with a thick pillow top that’s very comfortable like the Helix Midnight Luxe and Allswell Supreme.
Awara Hybrid Mattress ($1,399): This is another solid organic pick, also made from organic latex, organic wool, and individually-wrapped springs. WIRED reviewer Louryn Strampe found it springy and comfortable, especially for a single sleeper, though it’s a floppier mattress that would benefit from a little more support.
Keetsa All-Foam Tea Leaf Supreme for $1,890: WIRED reviewer Matt Jancer tested the Keetsa for several months. He’s a side sleeper, and though he was never blown away by the mattress’s comfort, he slept fine from start to finish. He didn’t think he would since the mattress is on the soft side. It has three layers of foam and a thin top layer that’s made from recycled materials.
The Purple Mattress for $1,399: Van Camp had many good nights of sleep on the airy, Jell-O-ey, cool feel of Purple’s square grid (it’s like lying on a bunch of waffles made of soft, stretchy silicone). But it just isn’t quite as comfortable as hybrid (coil-and-foam) mattresses. There is a hybrid Purple, but it’s pricey. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but just know that Purple mattresses are also kind of heavy.
Casper Standard Foam Mattress for $1,295: The original Casper mattress popularized the idea of a bed in a box years ago, and it’s still a comfortable all-foam choice at a good price. But the hybrid version with coils is better.
Molecule Hybrid Mattress for $1,899: WIRED reviewer Medea Giordano likes this comfy mattress and has had no problems sleeping on it for months. However, while edge support is fine on three sides, it’s nearly “non-existent” at the bottom of the bed. She nearly fell off while putting on her shoes. You can also feel the coils at the edges of the mattress, though this isn’t a huge issue because it’s undetectable when actually sleeping.
Leesa Original Mattress for $1,299: The standard Leesa is a lot like the Casper, but it feels a dash comfier.
by crissly | Aug 9, 2023 | Uncategorized
But it’s how they think about watches that reflects the modern shift—and huge growth—in the pre-owned market, a growth exemplified by Richemont buying UK-based Watchfinder, founded in 2002, for an undisclosed sum in 2018 (though a figure of £250 million, or $317.6 million, was widely shared within the industry at the time), the same year Subdial was founded. Even Rolex now has an official pre-owned scheme, launched last year in Europe and now active in the US.
“They think in terms of the collection rather than in terms of an individual watch,” Crane says. “Ownership is at the core. It’s not just holding an asset until you offload it, but very actively and assiduously building a collection, and getting a lot of fun out of that, while investing your money where it keeps its value.”
The thing about the collector mindset is that there’s always one more thing to add—and, accordingly, something to get rid of to fund the purchase. “That’s the sweet spot for us,” says Crane. “You hit both sides at the same time.”
Nevertheless, one look at the index and the picture doesn’t necessarily look so healthy: The direction of prices has been relentlessly downward over the past 18 months in the wake of a bubble that blew up in late 2021 and early 2022, collapsing thereafter more or less in tandem with the crash in cryptocurrencies and NFTs. For instance, according to the Subdial Index, the Rolex Submariner Kermit, a green bezel version of the brand’s famous dive watch, is down 14.6 percent in the past year, and has dropped from a high of just over $20,000 in April last year to $15,667 today.
Now that the pure speculators have left the stage, though, market commentators are firmly of the belief that things have settled, and that the prospects for the pre-owned market remain singularly rosy. In a report earlier this year, the watch industry advisory LuxeConsult predicted the secondary market surging from $27 billion now to $85 billion by 2033, sailing past the primary market in the process.
A report by Deloitte late last year was less bullish, but had the secondary market reaching just shy of $40 billion by 2030 nevertheless.
“It’s growing much faster than the primary market, not least because a few primary brands are not capable or wanting to deliver the quantity that the market is asking for,” says LuxeConstult principal Oliver Muller. “There are huge numbers of watches out there in the world sitting around, and there’s been a shift in the demographics of watch buyers toward millennials and Gen Z, who don’t have a problem selling and trading.”
Subdial, which is backed by funding from Active Partners, a VC firm focused on consumer tech startups, is far from the only young platform looking to take advantage of this. Tech-first businesses like Singapore-based Wristcheck, auction disruptor Loupe This, and data specialist WatchCharts are among those entering the fray, while the world’s most famous footballer, Cristiano Ronaldo, made headlines in July by taking a stake in by far the largest online global marketplace for watches, Chrono24.
by crissly | Aug 8, 2023 | Uncategorized
There are a few mattresses we tested that don’t stand out as much but are worth mentioning, in case you’re thinking about them.
DreamCloud Luxury Hybrid Mattress for $1332: This is another luxury mattress with a thick pillow top that’s very comfortable like the Helix Midnight Luxe and Allswell Supreme.
Awara Hybrid Mattress ($1,399): This is another solid organic pick, also made from organic latex, organic wool, and individually-wrapped springs. WIRED reviewer Louryn Strampe found it springy and comfortable, especially for a single sleeper, though it’s a floppier mattress that would benefit from a little more support.
Keetsa All-Foam Tea Leaf Supreme for $1,890: WIRED reviewer Matt Jancer tested the Keetsa for several months. He’s a side sleeper, and though he was never blown away by the mattress’s comfort, he slept fine from start to finish. He didn’t think he would since the mattress is on the soft side. It has three layers of foam and a thin top layer that’s made from recycled materials.
The Purple Mattress for $1,399: Van Camp had many good nights of sleep on the airy, Jell-O-ey, cool feel of Purple’s square grid (it’s like lying on a bunch of waffles made of soft, stretchy silicone). But it just isn’t quite as comfortable as hybrid (coil-and-foam) mattresses. There is a hybrid Purple, but it’s pricey. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but just know that Purple mattresses are also kind of heavy.
Casper Standard Foam Mattress for $1,295: The original Casper mattress popularized the idea of a bed in a box years ago, and it’s still a comfortable all-foam choice at a good price. But the hybrid version with coils is better.
Molecule Hybrid Mattress for $1,899: WIRED reviewer Medea Giordano likes this comfy mattress and has had no problems sleeping on it for months. However, while edge support is fine on three sides, it’s nearly “non-existent” at the bottom of the bed. She nearly fell off while putting on her shoes. You can also feel the coils at the edges of the mattress, though this isn’t a huge issue because it’s undetectable when actually sleeping.
Leesa Original Mattress for $1,299: The standard Leesa is a lot like the Casper, but it feels a dash comfier.
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