Live Long or Live Strong?

Live to 80, 100, or even 110 years?

The Pyramid of Luxuries

The Bespoke - $1,000 Grocery Gift Card

The Ultra High End - $100 Uber Gift Card

The Superpremium - Modern Love

The Premium Core - Oreo Thins Lemon

The Accessible Core - Live Long or Live Strong?

The Affordable Luxury - Dreams

The Everyday Luxury - Best Prompt Gets a Prize

The Bespoke

NOTICE: This is the last week to submit for October’s Bespoke Photo Contest!

Click on the banner to enter The Bespoke Photo Contest. Click here for the Official Contest Rules.

• Prize: $1,000 Grocery Gift Card [ARV $1,000]

• Odds: For every 130 Ducky Tran premium member by the time of judging, I will give out one (1) Grocery gift card

• Contest Period: October 2, 2024 at 10 AM CST to October 29, 2024 at 10 PM CST

The Ultra High End

Previous Contest Winner

The winner of Issue 48 Ultra High End Contest is GIANINA from DALLAS, TEXAS! Here’s her submission for “something that would take too long to count”:

Congratulations to GIANINA, while it'll take too long to count the straws in that haystack, Mountain Warehouse prices are much easier to count on, especially with an additional $100 eGift Card! Let’s take a look at the other submissions:

There weren't many submissions this last week so these are just reminders:

1. There are many more Premium members than the number of submissions, so your chances are much higher than you would expect

2. Even if you don't like the prize, you can always choose the cash prize

3. Lastly, make sure it's a photo and it follow the rules if the contest or be disqualified

This Week’s Contest

Click on the banner to enter The Ultra High End Photo Contest. Click here for the Official Contest Rules.

• Prize: $100 Uber Gift Card [ARV $100]

• Odds: For every 70 Ducky Tran premium members that submit a valid entry, I will give out one (1) gift card prize

• Contest Period: October 23, 2024 at 10 AM CST to October 29, 2024 at 10 PM CST

Back due to popular demand, the Uber Gift Card. Either save time driving, picking up food, or getting groceries, Uber is the current solution is saving time on these tasks. However, most of the time convenience comes with a price, so let me help you with an additional $100.

Normally, I use it to get the BOGO deals that last about a week long each month. Submit now for a chance to win $100 Uber Gift Card!

The Superpremium

This week’s Superpremium topic is Modern Love. This is a restaurant I had a date night with my wife while in Omaha, Nebraska. From the pictures above you would think this place must be a fancy chophouse, taqueria or steakhouse, but it's not. It is a 100% vegan restaurant.

Those that know me are probably shocked I even walked into this establishment as I'm a huge meat-eater. The closest thing to vegetables I eat is the dried-up stuff that comes with instant ramen packs.

I went because I wanted to show my wife sometime new, highly reviewed, and recommended by local friends. I was expecting salads everywhere and to be disappointed but I was pleasantly surprised. This place was very good! I can't say amazing because I have a mental bias against non-meat meals, but it would be amazing to anyone that can eat any veggies.

As you know from previous issues, I don't like the idea of plants imitating meats because it defeats the purpose of purposefully eating healthy. However, this restaurant doesn't hide its veggie-loving nature, it uses the vegetables in familiar ways but has its own unique and flavorful taste. Other than them visually looking like every day restaurant foods, they don't shy away from showcasing the veggies and protein substitutes. You can see the beans and beets in their burger, you can see the cauliflower in their nuggets, and their nachos isn't just visually appealing it's also tasty and healthy.

The experience definitely made me have a different outlook on alternative protein sources. I was surprised how tasty everything was, despite being grossed out by their beet burger that bled (beet juices). The funny thing is I would be okay with it if it were beef! The best thing is I didn't feel greasy or bloated after the meal, instead I felt full and content.

I have tried a few vegan restaurants but this one so far has been the best-in-class, in taste and appearance. I hope to see vegan food go this route rather than the lab-grown meat alternatives that are mimicking the appearance of meat through highly processed lab abominations.

The Premium Core

I don't have a sweet tooth but everyone has a few snacks they like. One of my favorite sweet snacks happen to be Oreo Thins Lemon. I actually dislike normal Oreo cookies but there’s something about their Thins that I like a lot, especially the Lemon.

It isn't loaded in cream which I'm not super fond of, the lemon tang is refreshing, the thinner cookie keeps it from getting stuck in my teeth, and they make a better one-bite snack than the original size. For those that also enjoy the Lemon Thins or haven't gotten to try it yet, I have a deal for you.

Deal #1: This week you can get a pack of Oreo Thins Lemon $1, normally about $5! Go to shop.duckytran.com and get some refreshing Lemon Thins. There will be 10 available.

The Accessible Core

Live Long or Live Strong?

Bryan Johnson, have you heard of him? He's the multi-millionaire spending millions each year trying to get his biological clock to 18-years-old. In short, trying to feel/be younger than his actual age. This isn’t anything new, over human history there has been many people that try to achieve longer and/or healthier lives or even immortality. Regardless, he’s been getting polar remarks made of him, but I think he’s just doing what anyone would if they could and making it public knowledge.

Regardless what your beliefs are about longevity, what is the biggest external force opposing human longevity? I believe it is us, humans. Many of my ideas are better explored in this article, but allow me to summarize it all up in a few points:

1. Illness brings more money than wellness. When people are sick, they buy medicine, go to the doctor, and spend more money to get better. When they are well, they don’t spend as much to be better than normal, unless they are financially wealthy.

2. Most financers of health are the rich, so they get to control where the funds go. Many of financers benefit to focus on single-subject research rather than the ambiguous “live-longer” research. Therefore, there is less funding and researchers for longevity study rather than cancer, diabetes, or disease-specific studies.

3. We’ve seen humans spend millions and billions of dollars on research for cures of diseases but there’s still food scarcity, water scarcity, and even homelessness. Where’s the money for food and water availability or homes for the homeless coming from? Fortunately and unfortunately from the same people that can afford to fund the research of the disease-specific cures.

4. In politics, laws and lawmakers are made to benefit the elites and companies that the elites run. Therefore, even our own laws are not made to benefit longevity in core, but only as an affect effect.

5. Longevity is too broad of a topic, the required funding and resources is too immense for a few people to be involved; however, humans currently don’t have the urge to work together on something that can cost billions/trillions with little to gain from.

This is not to say we should work towards living longer, but that it will not likely happen intentionally but due to after effects of other research and projects. As for Bryan Johnson, he is trying to make money from his research but he’s also making it assessable to the majority of the world. This will change health and wellness landscape once he’s solved a few problems of longevity. I look forward to the curiosity of humankind and what we will bring forth through science.

The Affordable Luxury

Issue 48 Community Poll Results

Here’s results from last week’s poll:

1. It was 50/50 between those that believe we should and shouldn’t seek to live longer than 150 years old.

2. It was 50/50 between those that want to live to 100 normally, and those that want to feel like they’re 20 until 60. For the person that asked: the question assumes you know you’ll die at 60 for the second choice.

3. This was the TRIVIA question: Which of these animals has the longest lifespan? The answer was Greenland Shark and only one person got it correct, everyone else picked the Giant Tortoise. The Greenland Shark has been recorded to live over 100 years past the oldest Giant Tortoise.

This Week’s Community Poll

Here are this week’s poll questions:

The Everyday Luxury

I’m running out of fun prompt ideas for the contests, so here’s a small contest with a special treat as a surprise!

Submit to [email protected] up to 10 unique contest prompts that I can use for Ducky Tran newsletter and I will pick one (1) as the winner. It’ll also be used as the next contest prompt. The winner will one of my favorite snacks as a prize, I’ll it a secret as it’ll be on the next issue. Only 1 winner!

(The referral program is only viewable on the email version of the newsletter.)

Visit shop.duckytran.com with the weekly password: modern