title: Serge Gainsbourg

text: Serge Gainsbourg (; born Lucien Ginsburg; 2 April 1928 – 2 March 1991) was a French musician, singer-songwriter, actor, author and filmmaker. Regarded as one of the most important figures in French pop, he was renowned for often provocative and scandalous releases which caused uproar in France, dividing public opinion. His artistic output ranged from his early work in jazz, chanson, and yé-yé to later efforts in rock, zouk, funk, reggae, and electronica. Gainsbourg's varied musical style and individuality make him difficult to categorise, although his legacy has been firmly established and he is often regarded as one of the world's most influential popular musicians.


title: Serge Gainsbourg

text: His lyrical works incorporated wordplay, with humorous, bizarre, provocative, sexual, satirical or subversive overtones. Gainsbourg wrote over 550 songs, which have been covered more than 1,000 times by diverse artists.


title: Serge Gainsbourg

text: Since his death from a second heart attack in 1991, Gainsbourg's music has reached legendary stature in France, and he has become one of the country's best-loved public figures. He has also gained a cult following all over the world with chart success in the United Kingdom and Belgium with "Je t'aime... moi non plus" and "Bonnie and Clyde", respectively.


title: Serge Gainsbourg

text: Lucien Ginsburg was born in Paris on 2 April 1928. He was the son of Ukrainian-Jewish migrants, Joseph Ginsburg (27 March 1896, in Feodosia, Russian Empire (now Ukraine) — 22 April 1971, in Paris) and Olga (née Besman; 15 January 1894, in Odessa, Russian Empire (now Ukraine) – 16 March 1985, in Paris), who fled to Paris via Istanbul after the 1917 Russian Revolution. Joseph Ginsburg was a classically trained musician whose profession was playing the piano in cabarets and casinos; he taught his children—Gainsbourg and his twin sister Liliane—to play the piano. Gainsbourg's childhood was profoundly affected by the occupation of France by Germany during World War II. The identifying yellow star that Jews were required to wear haunted Gainsbourg; in later years he was able to transmute this memory into creative inspiration. During the occupation, the Jewish Ginsburg family was able to make their way from Paris to Limoges, travelling under false papers. Limoges was in the Zone libre under the administration of the collaborationist Vichy government and still a perilous refuge for Jews, and it became even more dangerous after Germany occupied it in 1942. Gainsburg attended the Lycée Condorcet high school in Paris but dropped out before completing his "Baccalauréat".


title: Serge Gainsbourg

text: In 1945, Gainsbourg's (Ginsburg's) father enrolled him into Beaux-Arts de Paris, a prestigious art school, before he switched to the Académie de Montmartre, where his professors included the likes of André Lhote and Fernand Léger. There, Gainsbourg would meet his first wife Elisabeth "Lize" Levitsky, daughter of Russian aristocrats who was also a part-time model. They married on 3 November 1951 and were divorced by 1957. In 1948, he was conscripted by the military for twelve months of service in Courbevoie. He never saw action and spent the time playing dirty songs on his guitar, visiting prostitutes and drinking, later admitting that the service made him an alcoholic. Gainsbourg obtained work teaching music and drawing in a school outside of Paris, in Le Mesnil-le-Roi. The school was set up under the auspices of local rabbis, for the orphaned children of murdered deportees. Here, Gainsbourg heard the accounts of Nazi persecution and genocide, stories that resonated for Gainsbourg far into the future.


title: Serge Gainsbourg

text: Gainsbourg was disillusioned as a painter, as he lacked talent. He was able to earn a living working odd jobs and as a piano player in bars, usually as a stand-in for his father. He soon became the venue pianist at the drag cabaret club Madame Arthur. Whilst filling in a form to join the songwriting society SACEM, Gainsbourg decided to change his first name to Serge, feeling that this was representative of his Jewish background and because, as his future partner Jane Birkin relates: "Lucien reminded him of a hairdresser's assistant". He chose Gainsbourg as his last name, in homage to the English painter Thomas Gainsborough, whom he admired. Gainsbourg had a revelation when he saw Boris Vian at the Milord l'Arsouille club, whose provocative and humorous songs would influence his own compositions. At the Milord l'Arsouille, Gainsbourg accompanied singer and club star Michèle Arnaud on the guitar. In 1957, Arnaud and the club's director Francis Claude discovered, with amazement, the compositions of Gainsbourg while visiting his house to see his paintings. The next day, Claude pushed Gainsbourg on stage. Despite suffering from stage fright, he performed his own repertoire, including "Le Poinçonneur des Lilas", which describes the day in the life of a Paris Métro ticket man, whose job is to stamp holes in passengers' tickets. Gainsbourg describes this chore as so monotonous, that the man eventually thinks of putting a hole into his own head and being buried in another hole. He was given his own show by Claude and was eventually spotted by Jacques Canetti, who helped propel his career with a spot at the Théâtre des Trois Baudets and on his tours. In 1958, Arnaud began recording several interpretations of Gainsbourg's songs.


title: Serge Gainsbourg

text: His debut album, "Du chant à la une !..." (1958), was recorded in the summer of 1958, backed by arranger Alain Goraguer and his orchestra, beginning a fruitful collaboration. It was released in September, becoming a commercial and critical failure, despite winning the grand prize at L'Academie Charles Cross and the praise of Boris Vian, who compared him to Cole Porter. His next album, "N° 2" (1959), suffered a similar fate. He made his film debut in 1959 with a supporting role in the French-Italian co-production "Come Dance with Me", starring his future lover Brigitte Bardot. In the following year, he featured as a Roman officer in the Italian sword-and-sandals epic-film "The Revolt of the Slaves". He would continue playing "nasty characters" in similar productions, including "Samson" (1961) and "The Fury of Hercules" (1962). Gainsbourg's first commercial success came in 1960 with his single "L'Eau à la bouche", the title song from the film of the same name, for which he had composed the score. "L'Étonnant Serge Gainsbourg" (1961), his third LP, included what would become one his best known songs from this period, "La Chanson de Prévert", which lifted lyrics from the Jacques Prévert poem "Les feuilles mortes". After a night of drinking champagne and dancing with singer Juliette Gréco, Gainsbourg went home and wrote "La Javanaise" for her. They would both release versions of the song in 1962, but it is Gainsbourg's rendition that has endured. His fourth album, "Serge Gainsbourg N° 4" was released in 1962, incorporating Latin and rock and roll influences whilst his next, "Gainsbourg Confidentiel" (1963), featured a more minimalistic jazz approach, accompanied only by a double bass and electric guitar.


title: Serge Gainsbourg

text: Despite initially mocking yé-yé, a style of French pop typically sung by young female singers, Gainsbourg would soon become one of its most important figures after writing a string of hits for artists like Brigitte Bardot, Petula Clark and France Gall. He had met Gall after being introduced by a friend as they were Philips Records labelmates, thus beginning a successful collaboration that would produce hits like "N'écoute pas les idoles", the frequently covered "Laisse tomber les filles", and "Poupée de cire, poupée de son", the latter of which was the Luxembourgian winning entry at the Eurovision Song Contest 1965. Inspired by the 4th movement (Prestissimo in F minor) from Beethoven's "Piano Sonata No. 1", the song featured double entendres and wordplay, a staple of Gainsbourg's lyrics. The controversially risqué "Les sucettes" ("Lollipops"), featured references to oral sex, unbeknownst to the 18-year-old Gall, who thought the song was about lollipops. Gall later expressed displeasure at Gainsbourg's antics, stating she felt "betrayed by the adults around me" in 2001.


title: Serge Gainsbourg

text: Gainsbourg married a second time on 7 January 1964, to Françoise-Antoinette "Béatrice" Pancrazzi, with whom he had two children: a daughter named Natacha (b. 8 August 1964) and a son, Paul (born in spring 1968). He divorced Béatrice in February 1966.


title: Serge Gainsbourg

text: His next album, "Gainsbourg Percussions" (1964), was inspired by the rhythms and melodies of African musicians Miriam Makeba and Babatunde Olatunji. Olatunji later sued Gainsbourg for lifting three tracks from his 1960 album "Drums of Passion". Nevertheless, the album has been hailed as being ahead of its time for its incorporation of world music and lyrical content depicting interracial love. Between 1965 and 1966, Gainsbourg composed the music and sung the words of science fiction writer André Ruellan for several songs made for a series of animated "Marie-Mathematics" shorts created by Jean-Claude Forest. He would reunite with Michèle Arnaud for the duet "Les Papillons noirs" from her 1966 comeback record.


title: Serge Gainsbourg

text: In 1967, Gainsbourg wrote the script and provided the soundtrack for the musical comedy television film "Anna" starring Anna Karina in the titular role. Another Gainsbourg song, "Boum-Badaboum" by Minouche Barelli, was entered by Monaco in the Eurovision Song Contest 1967, coming in fifth place. In that year, Gainsbourg would have a brief but ardent love affair with Brigitte Bardot. One day she asked him to write the most beautiful love song he could imagine and, that night, he wrote the duets "Je t'aime... moi non plus" and "Bonnie and Clyde" for her. The erotic yet cynical "Je t'aime", describing the hopelessness of physical love, was recorded by the pair in a small glass booth in Paris. But after Bardot's husband, German businessman Gunter Sachs, became aware of the recording, he demanded it be withdrawn. Bardot pleaded with Gainsbourg not to release it, and he complied.


title: Serge Gainsbourg

text: Bardot's LP "Brigitte Bardot Show 67" contained four songs penned by Gainsbourg, including duets such as the playful "Comic Strip" and the string-laden "Bonnie and Clyde", which tells the story of the American criminal couple and was based on a poem written by Bonnie Parker herself. His own "Initials B.B." (1968) included these duets and was his first album in nearly four years. It blended orchestral pop with the style of rock characteristic of London in the swinging sixties, where the album was largely recorded. Gainsbourg borrowed heavily from Antonín Dvořák's "New World Symphony" for the title track, named after and dedicated to Bardot. Phillips subsidiary Fontana Records also issued the compilation LP "Bonnie and Clyde" (1968) comprising their duets and other previously recorded material.


title: Serge Gainsbourg

text: His percussion-heavy 1968 single "Requiem pour un con" was performed onscreen by Gainsbourg in the crime film "Le Pacha", for which he was the composer. Shortly after being left by Bardot, Gainsbourg was asked by Françoise Hardy to write a French version of the song "It Hurts to Say Goodbye". The result was "Comment te dire adieu", which is notable for its uncommon rhymes and has become one of Hardy's signature songs.


title: Serge Gainsbourg

text: In mid-1968 Gainsbourg fell in love with the younger English singer and actress Jane Birkin, whom he met during the shooting of the film "Slogan" (1969). In the film, Gainsbourg starred as a commercial director who has an affair on his pregnant wife with a younger woman, played by Birkin. Gainsbourg also provided the soundtrack and dueted with Birkin on the title theme "La Chanson de Slogan". The relationship would last for over a decade. In July 1971 they had a daughter, Charlotte, who would become an actress and singer. Although many sources state that they were married, according to Charlotte this was not the case. After filming "Slogan", Gainsbourg asked Birkin to re-record "Je t'aime..." with him. Her vocals were an octave higher than Bardot's, contained suggestive heavy breathing and culminated in simulated orgasm sounds. Released in February 1969, the song topped the UK Singles Chart after being temporarily banned due to its overtly sexual content. It was banned from the radio in several other countries, including Spain, Sweden, Italy and France before 11pm. The song was even publicly denounced by The Vatican. It was included on the joint album "Jane Birkin/Serge Gainsbourg", which also contained "Élisa" and new recordings of songs written by other artists including "Les sucettes", "L'anamour" and "Sous le soleil exactement". In 2017, "Pitchfork" named it the 44th best album of the 1960s. He and Birkin would share the screen in another Gainsbourg-scored film, "Cannabis" (1970), in which he played an American gangster who falls in love with a girl from a wealthy family.


title: Serge Gainsbourg

text: Following the success of "Je t'aime... moi non plus", his record company had expected Gainsbourg to produce another hit. But after having already made a fortune, he was uninterested, deciding to "move onto something serious". The result was his 1971 concept album "Histoire de Melody Nelson", which tells the story of an illicit relationship between the narrator and the teenage Melody Nelson after running her over in his Rolls Royce Silver Ghost. The album heavily features Gainsbourg's distinctive half-spoken, half-sung vocal delivery, loose drums, guitar, and bass evoking funk music, and lush string and choral arrangements by Jean-Claude Vannier. Despite only selling around 15,000 copies upon release, it has become highly influential and is often considered his "magnum opus". An accompanying television special starring Gainsbourg and Birkin was also broadcast.


title: Serge Gainsbourg

text: He suffered a heart attack in May 1973, but refused to cut back on his smoking and drinking. Gainsbourg's next record "Vu de l'extérieur" (1973) was not strictly a concept album like its predecessor and follow-ups, despite its focus on scatology throughout. It largely failed to connect with critics and listeners. In that year, Gainsbourg also wrote all of the tracks on Birkin's debut solo album "Di doo dah" and he would continue to write for her until his death. In 1975, Gainsbourg released the darkly comic album "Rock Around the Bunker", performed in an upbeat 1950s rock and roll style and written on the subject of Nazi Germany and the Second World War, drawing from his experiences as a Jewish child in occupied France. The next year saw the release of yet another concept album, "L'Homme à tête de chou" ("The Cabbage Head Man"), a nickname used by Gainsbourg himself in reference to his large ears. It included his first foray into the Jamaican genre reggae, a style that Gainsbourg would record his next two albums in.


title: Serge Gainsbourg

text: In 1976, Gainsbourg also made his directorial debut with "Je t'aime moi non plus", an offbeat drama named after his song of the same name. It starred Birkin in the lead role, with American actor Joe Dallesandro playing the gay man she falls in love with. The film received positive critical notices from the French press and acclaimed director François Truffaut. Having previously turned down the offer to score the popular softcore pornography film "Emmanuelle" (1974), he agreed to do so for one of its sequels "Goodbye Emmanuelle" in 1977.


title: Serge Gainsbourg

text: In 1978, Gainsbourg dropped plans to record another concept album and contacted several Jamaican musicians including rhythm section players Sly and Robbie with the intention of recording a reggae album. He set off for Kingston, Jamaica in September to begin recording "Aux armes et cætera" (1979) with the likes of Sly and Robbie and the female backing singers The I-Threes of Bob Marley and the Wailers; thus making him the first white musician to record such an album in Jamaica. The album was immensely popular, achieving platinum status for selling over one million copies. But it was not without controversy, as the title track—a reggae version of the French national anthem "La Marseillaise"—received harsh criticism in the newspaper "Le Figaro" from Michel Droit, who condenmed the song and opined that it may cause a rise in anti-semitism. Gainsbourg also received death threats from right-wing veteran soldiers of the Algerian War of Independence, who were opposed to their national anthem being arranged in reggae style. In 1979, a show had to be cancelled, because an angry mob of French Army parachutists came to demonstrate in the audience. Alone onstage, Gainsbourg raised his fist and answered: "The true meaning of our national anthem is revolutionary" and sang it "a capella" with the audience.


title: Serge Gainsbourg

text: Birkin left Gainsbourg in 1980, but the two remained close, with Gainsbourg becoming the godfather of Birkin and Jacques Doillon's daughter Lou and writing her next three albums. His first live album "Enregistrement public au Théâtre Le Palace" (1980), exhibited his reggae-influenced style at the time. Also in 1980, Gainsbourg dueted with actress Catherine Deneuve on the hit song "" from the film "Je vous aime" and published a novella entitled "Evguénie Sokolov", the tale of an avant-garde painter who exploits his flatulence by creating a style known as "gasograms". His final reggae recording, "Mauvaises nouvelles des étoiles" (1981), was recorded at Compass Point Studios in The Bahamas with the same personnel as its predecessor. Bob Marley, husband to The I Threes singer Rita Marley, was reportedly furious when he discovered that Gainsbourg had made his wife Rita sing erotic lyrics. New posthumous dub mixes of "Aux armes et cætera" and "Mauvaises Nouvelles des Étoiles" were released in 2003. During this period, Gainsbourg also had success writing material for other artists, mostly notably "" for Alain Chamfort, a tribute to French sailor Alain Colas and the titular trimaran he disappeared at sea with.


title: Serge Gainsbourg

text: In 1982, Gainsbourg contributed his songwriting to French rockstar Alain Bashung's album "Play blessures", which was a left turn creatively for Bashung and is often considered a cult classic despite negative contemporary reviews. His second film as a director, "Équateur" (1983), was adapted from the 1933 novel "Tropic Moon" by Belgian writer Georges Simenon and is set in colonialist French Equatorial Africa.


title: Serge Gainsbourg

text: "Love on the Beat" (1984) saw Gainsbourg move on from reggae and onto a more electronic, new wave inspired sound. The album is known for addressing taboo sexual subject matters, with Gainsbourg dressed in drag on the cover and the highly controversial duet with his daughter Charlotte, "Lemon Incest", which seemed to ambiguously refer to the impossible physical love between an adult and his child. The music video for the song featured a half-naked Gainsbourg lying on a bed with Charlotte, leading to further controversy. Nevertheless, it was Gainsbourg's highest-charting song in France. In March 1984, he illegally burned three-quarters of a 500-French-franc bill on television to protest against taxes rising up to 74% of income. In April 1986, on Michel Drucker's live Saturday evening television show "Champs-Élysées", with the American singer Whitney Houston, he objected to Drucker's translating his comments to Houston and, in English, stated: "I said, I want to fuck her"—Drucker, utterly embarrassed, insisted that this meant "He says you are great..." That same year, in another talk show interview, he appeared alongside Les Rita Mitsouko singer Catherine Ringer. Gainsbourg spat out at her, "You're nothing but a filthy whore" to which Ringer replied, "look at you, you're just a bitter old alcoholic...you've become a disgusting old parasite."


title: Serge Gainsbourg

text: Gainsbourg's final partner until his death was the model Caroline Paulus, better known by her stage name Bambou. They had a son, Lucien (b. 5 January 1986), who now goes by the name Lulu and is a musician. His 1986 film "Charlotte for Ever" further expanded on the themes found in "Lemon Incest". He starred in the film alongside Charlotte as a widowed, alcoholic father living with his daughter. An album of the same name by Charlotte was also written by Gainsbourg.


title: Serge Gainsbourg

text: His sixteenth and final studio album, "You're Under Arrest" (1987), largely retained the funky new wave sound of "Love on the Beat", but also introduced hip hop elements. A return to concept albums for Gainsbourg, it tells the story of an unnamed narrator and his drug-addicted girlfriend in New York City. The album's anti-drug message was exemplified by the single "Aux enfants de la chance".


title: Serge Gainsbourg

text: In December 1988, while a judge at a film festival in Val d'Isère, he was extremely intoxicated at a local theatre where he was to do a presentation. While on stage he began to tell an obscene story about Brigitte Bardot and a champagne bottle, only to stagger offstage and collapse in a nearby seat. Subsequent years saw his health deteriorate, undergoing liver surgery in April 1989. In his ill health, he retired to a private apartment in Vézelay in July 1990, where he would spend six months. He continued to write for other artists, including the lyrics to "White and Black Blues" by Joëlle Ursull, the French entry in the Eurovision Song Contest 1990, coming in second place. He similarly wrote all of the lyrics for popular singer Vanessa Paradis's album "Variations sur le même t'aime" (1990), declaring "Paradis is hell" after its release. His final film, "Stan the Flasher", starred Claude Berri as an English teacher who engages in exhibitionism. Gainsbourg's last album of original material was Birkin's "Amours des feintes" in 1990.


title: Serge Gainsbourg

text: Gainsbourg, who smoked five packs of unfiltered Gitane cigarettes a day, died from a heart attack at his home on 2 March 1991, a month shy of his 63rd birthday. He was buried in the Jewish section of the Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris. French President François Mitterrand paid tribute by saying, "He was our Baudelaire, our Apollinaire ... He elevated the song to the level of art."


title: Serge Gainsbourg

text: Since his death, Gainsbourg's music has reached legendary stature in France. In his native country, artists like the bands Air, Stereolab and BB Brunes (who named themselves after Gainsbourg's song "Initials B.B."), singers Benjamin Biolay, Vincent Delerm, Thomas Fersen and Arthur H have cited him as an influence. He has also gained a following in the English-speaking world from artists like Jarvis Cocker of Pulp, Beck, Michael Stipe of R.E.M., Alex Turner of Arctic Monkeys, Portishead, Massive Attack, Mike Patton of Faith No More and Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds guitarist Mick Harvey has recorded four cover albums sung in English. Gainsbourg's music has been sampled by several hip hop artists, including songs by Nas, Wu-Tang Clan, Busta Rhymes and MC Solaar.


title: Serge Gainsbourg

text: The Parisian house in which Gainsbourg lived from 1969 until 1991, at 5 bis Rue de Verneuil, remains a celebrated shrine, with his ashtrays and collections of various items, such as police badges and bullets, intact. The outside of the house is covered in graffiti dedicated to Gainsbourg, as well as with photographs of significant figures in his life, including Bardot and Birkin. In 2008, Paris' Cité de la Musique held the "Gainsbourg 2008" exhibition, curated by sound artist Frédéric Sanchez.


title: Serge Gainsbourg

text: Comic artist Joann Sfar wrote and directed the biographical film of his life "Gainsbourg (Vie héroïque)" (2010). Gainsbourg is portrayed by Eric Elmosnino as an adult and Kacey Mottet Klein as a child. The film won three César Awards, including Best Actor for Elmosnino, and was nominated for an additional eight.


title: Serge Gainsbourg

text: Hong Kong indie-pop band My Little Airport made reference to him in a song on their 2012 album "Lonely Friday" (寂寞的星期五) called "how can you fall in love with a guy who doesn’t know Gainsbourg?"


title: NordVPN

text: NordVPN is a VPN service provided by company Nordsec Ltd with applications for Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, and Android TV. Manual setup is available for wireless routers, NAS devices, and other platforms.


title: NordVPN

text: NordVPN is developed by Nord Security (Nordsec Ltd), a company that creates cybersecurity software and was initially supported by the Lithuanian startup accelerator and business incubator Tesonet. NordVPN operates under the jurisdiction of Panama, as the country has no mandatory data retention laws and does not participate in the Five Eyes or Fourteen Eyes intelligence sharing alliances. Its offices are located in Lithuania, the United Kingdom, Panama and the Netherlands.


title: NordVPN

text: NordVPN was established in 2012 by a group of childhood friends which included Tomas Okmanas. Late in May 2016, it presented an Android app, followed by an iOS app in June the same year. In October 2017, it launched a browser extension for Google Chrome. In June 2018, the service launched an application for Android TV. As of June 2021, NordVPN was operating 5,600 servers in 59 countries.


title: NordVPN

text: In March 2019, it was reported that NordVPN received a directive from Russian authorities to join a state-sponsored registry of banned websites, which would prevent Russian NordVPN users from circumventing state censorship. NordVPN was reportedly given one month to comply, or face blocking by Russian authorities. The provider declined to comply with the request and shut down its Russian servers on April 1. As a result, NordVPN still operates in Russia, but its Russian users have no access to local servers.


title: NordVPN

text: In September 2019, NordVPN announced NordVPN Teams, a VPN solution aimed at small and medium businesses, remote teams and freelancers, who need secure access to work resources. Two years later, NordVPN Teams rebranded as NordLayer and moved towards SASE business solutions. The press sources quoted the market rise in SASE technology as one of the key factors in the rebrand.


title: NordVPN

text: On October 29, 2019, NordVPN announced additional audits and a public bug bounty program. The bug bounty was launched in December 2019, offering researchers monetary rewards for reporting critical flaws in the service.


title: NordVPN

text: In December 2019, NordVPN became one of the five founding members of the newly formed 'VPN Trust Initiative', promising to promote online security as well as more self-regulation and transparency in the industry. In 2020, the initiative announced 5 key areas of focus: security, privacy, advertising practices, disclosure and transparency, and social responsibility.


title: NordVPN

text: In August 2020, Troy Hunt, an Australian web security expert and founder of Have I Been Pwned?, announced a partnership with NordVPN as a strategic advisor. On his blog, Hunt described this role as "work with NordVPN on their tools and messaging with a view to helping them make a great product even better."


title: NordVPN

text: In 2022, NordVPN closed its physical servers in India in response to the CERT-In's order for VPN companies to store consumers’ personal data for a period of five years.


title: NordVPN

text: In April 2022, NordVPN's parent company Nord Security raised $100 million in a round of funding led by Novator. The company's valuation reached $1.6 billion.


title: NordVPN

text: NordVPN routes all users' internet traffic through a remote server run by the service, thereby hiding their IP address and encrypting all incoming and outgoing data. For encryption, NordVPN has been using the OpenVPN and Internet Key Exchange v2/IPsec technologies in its applications and also introduced its proprietary NordLynx technology in 2019. NordLynx is a VPN tool based on the WireGuard protocol, which aims for better performance than the IPsec and OpenVPN tunneling protocols. According to tests performed by Wired UK, NordLynx produces "speed boosts of hundreds of MB/s under some conditions."


title: NordVPN

text: In April 2020, NordVPN announced a gradual roll-out of the WireGuard-based NordLynx protocol on all its platforms. The wider implementation was preceded by a total of 256,886 tests, which included 47 virtual machines on nine different providers, in 19 cities, and eight countries. The tests showed higher average download and upload speeds than both OpenVPN and IKEv2.


title: NordVPN

text: At one time NordVPN also used L2TP/IPSec and Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) connections for routers, but these were later removed, as they were largely outdated and insecure.


title: NordVPN

text: NordVPN has desktop applications for Windows, macOS, and Linux, as well as mobile apps for Android and iOS and Android TV app. Subscribers also get access to encrypted proxy extensions for Chrome and Firefox browsers. Subscribers can connect up to six devices simultaneously.


title: NordVPN

text: In November 2018, NordVPN claimed that its no-log policy was verified through an audit by PricewaterhouseCoopers AG.


title: NordVPN

text: In 2020, NordVPN underwent a second security audit by PricewaterhouseCoopers AG. The testing focused on NordVPN’s Standard VPN, Double VPN, Obfuscated (XOR) VPN, P2P servers, and the product’s central infrastructure. The audit confirmed that the company’s privacy policy was upheld and the no-logging policy was true again.


title: NordVPN

text: In 2021, NordVPN completed an application security audit, carried out by a security research group VerSprite. VerSprite performed penetration testing and, according to the company, found no critical vulnerabilities. One flaw and a few bugs that were found in the audit have since been patched.


title: NordVPN

text: In October 2020, NordVPN started rolling out its first colocated servers in Finland to secure the hardware perimeter. The RAM-based servers are fully owned and operated by NordVPN in an attempt to keep full control.


title: NordVPN

text: In December 2020, NordVPN started a network-wide rollout of 10 Gbit/s servers, upgrading from the earlier 1 Gbit/s standard. The company's servers in Amsterdam and Tokyo were the first to support 10 Gbit/s, and by December 21, 2020, over 20% of the company's network had been upgraded.


title: NordVPN

text: In January 2022, NordVPN released an open-source VPN speed testing tool, available for download from GitHub.


title: NordVPN

text: Besides general-use VPN servers, the provider offers servers for specific purposes, including P2P sharing, double encryption, and connection to the Tor anonymity network. NordVPN offers three subscription plans: monthly, yearly and bi-yearly.


title: NordVPN

text: NordVPN also develops CyberSec for Windows, macOS, and Linux platforms, a security feature that works as an ad-blocker and also automatically blocks websites known for hosting malware.


title: NordVPN

text: In November 2020, NordVPN launched a feature that scans the dark web to determine if a user's personal credentials have been exposed. When the Dark Web Monitor feature finds any leaked credentials, it sends a real-time alert, prompting the user to change the affected passwords.


title: NordVPN

text: In February 2022, NordVPN introduced an antivirus functionality available as part of the regular VPN license. The opt-in Threat Protection feature blocks web trackers, warns users about malicious websites, and blocks downloaded files that contain malware. As of March 2022, the feature is available on the Windows and macOS apps and works without connecting to a VPN server.


title: NordVPN

text: In June 2022, NordVPN launched the Meshnet feature that allows users to create their own private network by linking up to 60 devices. Some of the promoted use cases include file sharing between different devices, multiplayer gaming, and virtual routing.


title: NordVPN

text: In 2021, NordVPN conducted a study on digital literacy, surveying 48,063 respondents from 192 countries on their digital habits and rating their knowledge on the scale from 1 to 100. Germany topped the list, followed by the Netherlands and Switzerland. The overall global score was 65.2/100.


title: NordVPN

text: In July 2021, NordVPN released a report outlining the proliferation of smart devices and consumer sentiment regarding their security. The poll of 7000 people revealed that while 95% of people in the UK had some kind of an IoT device in their household, almost a fifth took no measures to protect them. Similar responses were found in respondents from other countries as well. The same year, NordVPN released a report about device sharing in workplace. The study found that managers are five times more likely to share their work devices than their employees.


title: NordVPN

text: NordVPN also conducted a study on the time people spend online. In a survey of 2,000 adults in the UK, NordVPN found that, on average, British people spend 59 hours online per week, which amounts to 22 years per lifetime.


title: NordVPN

text: NordVPN has supported various social causes, including cybercrime prevention, education, internet freedom, and digital rights. NordVPN offers emergency VPN services for activists and journalists in regimes that censor internet freedom. In 2020, NordVPN reported having donated over 470 emergency VPN accounts to citizens and NGOs from Hong Kong and given out additional 1,150 VPN licenses to various organizations.


title: NordVPN

text: In 2020, NordVPN supported the Internet Freedom Festival, a project promoting digital human rights and internet freedom. NordVPN also sponsors the Cybercrime Support Network, a non-profit organization that assists people and companies affected by cybercrime. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, NordVPN’s parent company Nord Security offered free online security tools (NordVPN, NordPass, and NordLocker) to affected nonprofit organizations, content creators, and educators.


title: NordVPN

text: In 2021, NordVPN proposed the "International VPN Day", a day to bring attention to people's right to digital privacy, security, and freedom. It is proposed to be annually observed on August 19. Its primary goal is to raise awareness about cybersecurity best practices and educate internet users about the importance of online privacy tools and cybersecurity in general.


title: NordVPN

text: In a positive review published by "Tom's Guide" in October 2019, the reviewer concluded that "NordVPN is affordable and offers all the features that even the hardcore VPN elitists will find suitable". The reviewer also noted that its terms of service mention no country of jurisdiction, writing that the company could be more transparent about its ownership.


title: NordVPN

text: In a February 2019 review by "PC Magazine", NordVPN was praised for its strong security features and an "enormous network of servers", although its price tag was noted as expensive. In a later review by the same magazine, NordVPN was again praised extra features, rarely found in other VPNs, its WireGuard protocol, large selection of servers, and strong security practices. Despite winning the outlet’s Editor’s Choice award, NordVPN was still noted as expensive.


title: NordVPN

text: CNET's September 2021 review favorably noted NordVPN's SmartPlay feature, obfuscated servers, and security efforts. While CNET praised NordVPN’s user-friendly interface, it noted that the map’s design could be improved.


title: NordVPN

text: "TechRadar" recommended NordVPN for its security and recent enhancements. It also noted that NordVPN worked well in countries with Internet censorship, including the Great Firewall in China.


title: NordVPN

text: In 2021, a favorable review by "Wired" noted that NordVPN’s price has become more affordable and concluded that “NordVPN is the fastest jack-of-all-trades VPN provider right now.” However, the article also noted that there are still cheaper VPN options available.


title: NordVPN

text: In September 2021, NordVPN won CNET’s ‘Best VPN for reliability and security’ award in its annual ‘Best VPN service’ awards.


title: NordVPN

text: On October 21, 2019, a security researcher disclosed on Twitter a server breach of NordVPN involving a leaked private key. The cyberattack granted the attackers root access, which was used to generate an HTTPS certificate that enabled the attackers to perform man-in-the-middle attacks to intercept the communications of NordVPN users. In response, NordVPN confirmed that one of its servers based in Finland was breached in March 2018, but there was no evidence of an actual man-in-the-middle attack ever taking place. The exploit was the result of a vulnerability in a contracted data center's remote administration system that affected the Finland server between January 31 and March 20, 2018. According to NordVPN, the data center disclosed the breach to NordVPN on April 13, 2019, and NordVPN ended its relationship with the data center. Security researchers and media outlets criticized NordVPN for failing to promptly disclose the breach after the company became aware of it. NordVPN stated that the company initially planned to disclose the breach after it completed the audit of its 5,000 servers for any similar risks.


title: NordVPN

text: On November 1, 2019, in a separate incident, it was reported that approximately 2,000 usernames and passwords of NordVPN accounts were exposed through credential stuffing.


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: Heaven's Gate is a 1980 American epic Western film written and directed by Michael Cimino, starring Kris Kristofferson, Christopher Walken, John Hurt, Sam Waterston, Brad Dourif, Isabelle Huppert, Jeff Bridges, and Joseph Cotten. Loosely based on the Johnson County War, it revolves around a dispute between land barons and European immigrants in Wyoming in the 1890s.


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: Cimino's follow-up to his critically acclaimed film "The Deer Hunter" (1978), the film's production faced numerous setbacks, including cost overruns, significant retakes, bad press (including allegations of animal abuse on set), and rumors about Cimino's allegedly authoritarian directorial style. Cimino had an expensive and ambitious vision for the film, pushing the film nearly four times over its planned budget.


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: After its premiere in November 1980, the film received significant critical backlash, prompting United Artists to pull it from theaters. In April 1981, a truncated re-cut version of the film was released, though it remained a financial failure, earning only $3.5 million against its $44 million budget, and was subsequently condemned as one of the worst films ever made. According to some film historians, such as Peter Biskind, the film's financial failure resulted in the demise of director-driven film production in the American film industry, steering back toward greater studio control of films.


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: In the decades since the release, however, general assessment of "Heaven's Gate" has become more favorable. The 1981 re-edit has been characterized as "one of the greatest injustices of cinematic history", while later re-edits have received critical acclaim. In 2015, BBC Culture ranked "Heaven's Gate" 98th on its list of the 100 greatest American films of all time.


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: In 1870, two young men, Jim Averill and Billy Irvine graduate from Harvard College. The Reverend Doctor speaks to the graduates on the association of "the cultivated mind with the uncultivated" and the importance of education. Irvine, the class orator, follows this with his opposing, irreverent views. A celebration is then held, after which the male students serenade the women present, including Averill's girlfriend.


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: Twenty years later, Averill is passing through the booming town of Casper, Wyoming, on his way north to Johnson County, where he is now a marshal. Poor European immigrants new to the region are in conflict with wealthy, established cattle barons organized as the Wyoming Stock Growers Association; the newcomers sometimes steal their cattle for food. Nate Championa friend of Averill and an enforcer for the stockmenkills a settler for suspected rustling and dissuades another from stealing a cow.


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: At a board meeting, the head of the Association, Frank Canton, tells members, including a drunk Irvine, of plans to kill 125 named settlers, as thieves and anarchists. Irvine leaves the meeting, encounters Averill, and tells him of the Association's plans. As Averill leaves, he exchanges bitter words with Canton. Canton and Averill quarrel and Canton is knocked to the floor. That night, Canton recruits men to kill the named settlers.


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: Ella Watson, a Johnson County bordello madam from Quebec, who accepts stolen cattle as payment for use of her prostitutes, is infatuated with both Averill and Champion. Averill and Watson skate in a crowd, then dance alone, in an enormous roller skating rink called "Heaven's Gate," which has been built by local entrepreneur John L. Bridges. Averill receives a copy of the Association's death list from a baseball-playing U.S. Army captain and later reads the names aloud to the settlers, who are thrown into terrified turmoil. Cully, a station master and friend of Averill's, sees the train with Canton's posse heading north and rides off to warn the settlers but is murdered "en route". Later, a group of men come to Watson's bordello and rape her. Averill shoots and kills all but one of them. Champion, realizing that his landowner bosses seek to eliminate Watson, goes to Canton's camp and shoots the remaining rapist, then refuses to participate in the slaughter.


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: Canton and his men encounter one of Champion's friends leaving a cabin with Champion and his friend Nick inside, and a gunfight ensues. Attempting to save Champion, Watson arrives in her wagon and shoots one of the hired guns before escaping on horseback. Nick is killed before Canton's men push a burning cart towards the cabin, setting it on fire. Champion writes a last letter to Ella. Champion emerges from the burning cabin shooting at Canton's men but is killed by a hail of bullets. Watson warns the settlers of Canton's approach at another huge, chaotic gathering at "Heaven's Gate." The agitated settlers decide to counterattack; Bridges leads the attack on Canton's gang. With the hired invaders now surrounded, both sides suffer casualties (including a drunken, poetic Irvine) as Canton leaves to bring help. Watson and Averill return to Champion's charred and smoking cabin, and discover his corpse, along with a handwritten letter documenting his last minutes alive.


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: The next day, Averill reluctantly joins the immigrant settlers, with their cobbled-together siege machines and explosive charges, in an attack against Canton's men and their makeshift fortifications. Again, there are heavy casualties on both sides, before the U.S. Army, with Canton in the lead, arrives to stop the fighting and save the remaining besieged mercenaries.


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: Later, at Watson's cabin, Bridges, Watson, and Averill prepare to leave for good, but they are ambushed by Canton and two others. Averill and Bridges shoot and kill Canton and one of his men but both Bridges and Watson are killed. A grief-stricken Averill holds Watson's body in his arms.


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: In 1903, about a decade later, a well-dressed, beardless, but older-looking Averill walks the deck of his yacht off Newport, Rhode Island. He goes below, where an attractive middle-aged woman is sleeping in a luxurious boudoir. The woman, Averill's old Harvard girlfriend (perhaps now his wife), awakens and asks him for a cigarette. Silently he complies, lighting the cigarette and returning to the deck.


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: In addition, musician Ronnie Hawkins appears in the first of his few acting roles, as Major Wolcott; the film's composer David Mansfield appears onscreen as John DeCory, the leader of the Heaven's Gate Band and an employee of Ella; Rosie Vela (credited as Roseanne Vela) appears as the "Beautiful Girl" whom Averill falls for at Harvard; future Golden Globe winner and Academy Award nominee Mickey Rourke appears in his second-ever screen role as Nick Ray; and future multi-Academy Award nominee Willem Dafoe makes his first, uncredited, screen appearance as Willy.


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: The basic plot elements of the film were inspired by Wyoming's 1892 Johnson County War, the archetypal cattlemen-homesteaders conflict, which also served as the background for "Shane" and "The Virginian".


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: Most of the film's principal characters bear the names of actual key figures in the war, but the events portrayed in "Heaven's Gate" bear little resemblance to actual historical events.


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: While homesteaders did begin to settle northern Wyoming in the 1890s, claiming land under the newly enacted Homestead Acts, there were no hordes of starving European immigrants, killing rich men's cattle to feed their families, as depicted in the film. Nate Champion, who is portrayed as a murderer and "enforcer" for the stockmen, was actually a popular small rancher in Johnson County, nicknamed "king of the rustlers" by the stockmen because he resisted their tactic of claiming all unbranded young cattle as their own.


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: Jim Averell was another homesteader who lived about southwest of Johnson County. Two years before the invasion began, he and his common-law wife Ella Watson were murdered by stockmen, who falsely accused Watson of exchanging sexual favors for stolen cattle. There is no evidence that Watson was a bordello madam, as portrayed in the film, nor that Watson or Averell ever knew Nate Champion.


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: In 1971, film director Michael Cimino submitted an original script for "Heaven's Gate" (then called "The Johnson County War") but the project was shelved when it failed to attract big-name talent. His directorial debut, "Thunderbolt and Lightfoot" (1974), was a hit. In 1979, on the eve of winning two Academy Awards (Best Director and Best Picture) for 1978's "The Deer Hunter," Cimino convinced United Artists to resurrect the "Heaven's Gate" project with Kris Kristofferson, Isabelle Huppert, and Christopher Walken as the main characters. He was given an initial budget of $11.6 million, but was also provided with "carte blanche".


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: Principal photography began on April 16, 1979, in Glacier National Park, east of Kalispell, Montana, with the majority of the town scenes filmed in the Two Medicine area, north of the village of East Glacier Park. Shooting also included the town of Wallace, Idaho. Harvard University refused to allow the film to be shot there, reportedly because of Cimino's excessive demands for the film set, and the film's prologue was instead shot at the University of Oxford. The project had a December 14 projected release date and $11.6 million budget, and promptly fell behind schedule.


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: According to legend, by the sixth day of filming the project was already five days behind schedule. As an example of Cimino's fanatical attention to detail, a street built to his precise specifications had to be torn down and rebuilt because it reportedly "didn't look right." The street in question needed to be six feet wider; the set construction boss said it would be cheaper to tear down one side and move it back six feet, but Cimino insisted that both sides be dismantled and moved back three feet, then reassembled. An entire tree was cut down, moved in pieces, and relocated to the courtyard in Oxford, England where the Harvard 1870 graduation scene was shot. Cimino had an irrigation system built under the land where the major battlefield scene would unfold so that it would remain vividly green, to contrast with the red color.


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: Cimino shot more than 1.3 million feet (400,000 metres; nearly 220 hours) of footage, costing the studio approximately $200,000 per day in salary (equivalent to $720,000 in 2022), locations and acting fees. Privately, it was joked that Cimino wished to surpass Francis Ford Coppola's mark of shooting one million feet of footage for "Apocalypse Now" (1979).


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: Cimino's obsessive behavior soon earned him the nickname "The Ayatollah". Production fell behind schedule as rumors spread of Cimino's demanding up to 50 takes of individual scenes and delaying filming until a cloud that he liked rolled into the frame. As a result of the delays, several musicians originally brought to Montana to work on the film for only three weeks ended up stranded, waiting to be called for shoots to materialize. The experience, as the Associated Press put it, "was both stunningly boring and a raucous good time, full of jam sessions, strange adventures and curiously little actual shooting." The jam sessions served as the beginning of numerous musical collaborations between Bridges and Kristofferson.


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: As production staggered forward, United Artists seriously considered firing Cimino and replacing him with another director, implied in the book "Final Cut" to be Norman Jewison.


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: Actor John Hurt reportedly spent so long waiting around on the production for something to do that he went off and made "The Elephant Man" (1980) for David Lynch in the interim, and then came back to shoot more scenes on "Heaven's Gate".


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: "Heaven's Gate" finished shooting in March 1980, having cost nearly $30 million. Reportedly, during post-production Cimino changed the lock to the studio's editing room, prohibiting executives from seeing the film until he completed his cut, although Cimino disputed this story. Working with Oscar-winning editor William H. Reynolds, Cimino worked doggedly over his project.


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: On June 26, 1980, Cimino previewed a workprint for executives at United Artists that reportedly ran five hours and twenty-five minutes (325 minutes), which Cimino said was "about 15 minutes longer than the final cut would be."


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: The executives flatly refused to release the film at that length and once again contemplated firing Cimino. However, Cimino promised them he could re-edit the film and spent the entire summer and fall of 1980 doing so, finally paring it down to its original premiere length of 3 hours and 39 minutes (219 minutes). The original wide-release opening on Christmas of 1979 had come and gone, so UA and Cimino finally set up a release date of November 1980.


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: Following a brief theatrical release in November 1980, during which the film was poorly received by critics, United Artists decided to pull the film from theaters, re-releasing it in April 1981 in a truncated cut. Despite the efforts to capitalize on the film with a re-release, it was a significant financial failure, earning $3.5 million domestically against its $44 million budget. The film is considered one of the biggest box office bombs of all time.


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: During an intermission at the film's November 19, 1980 premiere at the New York Cinema 1 theater, the audience was so subdued that Cimino was said to have asked why no one was drinking the champagne. He was reportedly told by his publicist, "Because they hate the movie, Michael."


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: The initial critical reception to the film was almost universally negative. "The New York Times" critic Vincent Canby panned the film, calling it "something quite rare in movies these days - an unqualified disaster," comparing it to "a forced four-hour walking tour of one's own living room." Canby went even further by stating that "[i]t fails so completely that you might suspect Mr. Cimino sold his soul to the devil to obtain the success of "The Deer Hunter" and the Devil has just come around to collect."


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: After a sparsely attended one-week run, Cimino and United Artists quickly pulled the film from any further releases, completely postponing a full worldwide release.


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: On April 24, 1981, the film opened in 810 theatres in a "director's cut", a two-hour-and-twenty-nine minute (149 minute) version that Cimino had recut for a third time. Reviewing the shorter cut in the "Chicago Sun-Times", Roger Ebert criticized the film's formal choices and its narrative inconsistencies and incredulities, concluding that the film was "[t]he most scandalous cinematic waste I have ever seen, and remember, I've seen "Paint Your Wagon"." He also called the film one of the ugliest he'd ever seen. Kevin Thomas of the "Los Angeles Times" issued a dissenting opinion when he reviewed the shortened film, becoming one of its few American champions and calling it "a true screen epic" while stating that in two decades as a critic, he had never felt "so totally alone." Thomas' paper actually had its former lead film critic and editor come out of retirement to write a thoroughly negative front-page review of the movie for its Arts section, and moved Thomas' positive review to an interior page of that section.


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: The film grossed $1.3 million in its opening weekend and closed after the second week, having grossed only $3.5 million against its $44 million budget.


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: Writing in "The Guardian" in 2008, Joe Queenan declared "Heaven’s Gate" the worst film made up to that time. “This is a movie that destroyed the director's career,” he wrote. “This is a movie that lost so much money it literally drove a major American studio out of business. This is a movie about Harvard-educated gunslingers who face off against eastern European sodbusters in an epic struggle for the soul of America. This is a movie that stars Isabelle Huppert as a shotgun-toting cowgirl. This is a movie in which Jeff Bridges pukes while mounted on roller skates. This is a movie that has five minutes of uninterrupted fiddle-playing by a fiddler who is also mounted on roller skates. This is a movie that defies belief.”


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: "The Verge" said that "Based on 30 years of critical assessment, Heaven's Gate stands as one of the worst movies ever made. That's not an exaggeration".


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: In subsequent years, some critics have come to the film's defense, beginning with European critics who praised it after the film played at the Cannes Film Festival. Robin Wood was an early champion of "Heaven's Gate" and its reassessment, calling it "one of the few authentically innovative Hollywood films ... It seems to me, in its original version, among the supreme achievements of the Hollywood cinema." David Thomson calls the film "a wounded monster" and argues that it takes part in "a rich American tradition (Melville, James, Ives, Pollock, Parker) that seeks a mighty dispersal of what has gone before. In America, there are great innovations in art that suddenly create fields of apparent emptiness. They may seem like omissions or mistakes at first. Yet in time we come to see them as meant for our exploration." Martin Scorsese has said that the film has many overlooked virtues. Some of these critics have attempted to impugn the motives of the earliest reviewers. Robin Wood noted, in his initial review of the film, reviewers tended to pile on the film, attempting to "outdo [one an]other with sarcasm and contempt." Several members of the cast and crew have complained that the initial reviews of the film were tainted by its production history and that daily critics were reviewing it as a business story as much as a motion picture. In April 2011, the staff of "Time Out London" selected "Heaven's Gate" as the 12th greatest Western of all time. While Peter Biskind covered the many excesses and problems with the movie in his book "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls", he also noted that "Heaven's Gate" was not dissimilar to other big-budget, troubled projects of the late 1970s and early 1980s (such as Steven Spielberg's "1941" and Warren Beatty's "Reds"), and that the backlash against "Heaven's Gate" could have easily been directed elsewhere. Biskind speculated that Michael Cimino's personal unpopularity was the main reason this film became so widely reviled. Philip French praised the film in his original review.


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: In the fall of 2012, the film was re-released to "soak up acclaim" as a 216-minute "director's cut" at the 69th Venice Film Festival. on August 30 in the presence of Cimino, followed one month later by screening at the New York Film Festival in the "Masterwork" lineup, along with Laurence Olivier's "Richard III" and Frank Oz's director's cut of "Little Shop of Horrors". It was then shown at the Festival Lumière in France, where Venice Festival director Alberto Barbera described the film as an "absolute masterpiece" that had disappeared, and whose 1980 cutting was characterized as a "massacre" by nervous producers and had been "one of the greatest injustices of cinematic history" that had destroyed careers (Cimino and Kristofferson) following "annihilat[ing]" critical reviews.


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: In March 2013, the new director's cut was again featured back in New York City in a week-long run screening at the Film Forum. Writing in the "New York Times", critic Manohla Dargis said of the restoration that it "looks good projected, if surprisingly bright", and "it also appears to be an act of directorial revisionism." Of the film itself she writes, "The film’s scope, natural backdrops, massive sets, complex choreography and cinematography are seductive, at times stunning, and if you like watching swirling people and cameras, you may love it."


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: An article by Nicholas Barber on the BBC website in December 2015 traced the history of the critical reception of "Heaven's Gate" and concludes: "so much of "Heaven's Gate" is patently splendid that it is mind-boggling that anyone could pronounce it an 'unqualified disaster'. And the scenes which were slammed in 1980 as being symptomatic of waste and excess – the Harvard waltz, the massed rollerskating – are the scenes which take your breath away." Reflecting on the depicted negative attitudes to immigrants, he writes: "However unwelcome "Heaven's Gate" may have been in 1980, there hasn't been a more urgently topical film in 2015." The film holds a 59% score on Rotten Tomatoes based on 46 reviews with an average rating of 6.7/10. The website's critical consensus reads, ""Heaven's Gate" contains too many ideas and striking spectacle to be a disaster, but this western buckles under the weight of its own sprawl." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 57 out of 100, based on 15 critics, indicating "average or mixed reviews".


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: The film's $44 million cost ($ million in dollars) and poor performance at the box office ($3.5 million gross in the United States) generated more negative publicity than actual financial damage, causing Transamerica Corporation, United Artists' corporate owner, to become anxious over its own public image and to abandon film production altogether. In 1981, Transamerica sold United Artists to Kirk Kerkorian, who also owned Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), which effectively ended United Artists' existence as an independent studio. United Artists has since been a subsidiary of MGM. While the money lost due to "Heaven's Gate" was considerable, United Artists was still a thriving studio with a steady income provided by the James Bond, Pink Panther and Rocky franchises. On the other hand, UA was already struggling after the executive walkout in 1978 and several other major box office flops in 1980, including "Cruising", "Foxes" and "Roadie".


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: The fracas had a wider effect on the American Western film industry. During the 1970s, relatively young directors such as Coppola, Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich, George Lucas, William Friedkin, and Steven Spielberg had been given large budgets with very little studio control (see New Hollywood). However, the directors' power lessened considerably as a result of disappointing box-office performers such as Friedkin's "Sorcerer" (1977) and "Cruising" (1980), Coppola's "One from the Heart" and Cimino's "Heaven's Gate". The studios ultimately shifted focus from director-driven films and adopted high-concept features, epitomized by "Jaws" and "Star Wars" (both of which came before "Heaven's Gate"). As the new high-concept paradigm of filmmaking became more entrenched, studio control of budgets and productions became tighter, ending the free-wheeling excesses that had begotten "Heaven's Gate".


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: The film was marred by accusations of cruelty to animals during production. The American Humane Association (AHA), barred from monitoring the animals on set, issued press releases detailing the abuses and organized boycott picket lines. The outcry prompted the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) to contractually authorize the AHA to monitor the use of all animals in all filmed media afterward.


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: One assertion was that steers were bled from the neck without giving them pain killers so that their blood could be collected and smeared upon the actors in a scene. The AHA asserted that four horses were killed and many more injured during a battle scene. It was claimed that one of the horses was blown up with dynamite. This footage is claimed to have been included in the final film.


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: According to the AHA, the owner of an abused horse filed a lawsuit against the producers, director, Partisan Productions, and the horse wrangler. The owner cited wrongful injury and breach of contract for willfully depriving her Arabian gelding of proper care. The suit cited "the severe physical and behavioral trauma and disfigurement" of the horse. The case was settled out of court.


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: There were accusations of actual cockfights, decapitated chickens, and a group of cows disemboweled to provide "fake intestines" for the actors.


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: The film is listed on AHA's list of unacceptable films. The AHA protested the film by distributing an international press release detailing the assertions of animal cruelty and asking people to boycott it. AHA organized picket lines outside movie theaters in Hollywood while local humane societies did the same across the USA. Though "Heaven's Gate" was not the first film to have animals killed during its production, it is believed that the film was largely responsible for sparking the now-common use of the "No animals were harmed ..." disclaimer and more rigorous supervision of animal acts by the AHA, which had been inspecting film production since the 1940s. This is also one of the films to not have the end credit disclaimer.


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: The UK Blu-ray release from Second Sight Films removes about a minute of footage relating to cockfights and animal cruelty. Prior video releases removed about a minute and fourteen seconds of the cruelty.


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: Notwithstanding the 325-minute "workprint" cut shown to executives in June 1980, Cimino had rushed through post-production and editing in order to meet his contractual requirements to United Artists, and to qualify for the 1980 Academy Awards. The version screened at the November 1980 premiere ran three hours and 39 minutes. Bridges joked that Cimino had worked on the film so close to the premiere that the print screened was still wet from the lab.


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: After the aborted one-week premiere run in New York, Cimino and United Artists pulled the film; Cimino wrote an open letter to the studio that was printed in several trade papers blaming unrealistic deadline pressures for the film's failure. United Artists reportedly also hired its own editor to try to edit Cimino's footage into a releasable film with no real success.


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: Ultimately, Cimino's second edited version, a 149-minute version, premiered in April 1981 and was the only cut of the film screened in wide release. The original negative for the longer version no longer exists because it was directly edited for the 149-minute version (YCM separation masters of the longer version were used as the source for the Criterion Collection release). This cut of the film is not just shorter but differs radically in the placement of scenes and selection of takes. This version, after leaving theaters, was not released on home video of any kind in the United States but was later released on DVD in France ("la Porte du Paradis"). This version has also aired on the MGM HD cable channel and was available free-with-ads on US streaming provider Tubi from March to November 2017.


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: In 1982, Z Channel aired the 219-minute 1980 premiere version of the film on cable television – the first time that the longer version was widely exhibited – and which Z Channel dubbed the "director's cut." As critic F.X. Feeney noted in the documentary "", Z Channel's broadcast of "Heaven's Gate" first popularized the concept of a "director's cut."


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: When MGM (which acquired the rights to United Artists's catalog after its demise) released the film on VHS and videodisc in the 1980s, it released Cimino's 219-minute cut with the tagline "Heaven's Gate... The Legendary Uncut Version." Subsequent releases on LaserDisc and DVD have contained only the 219-minute cut.


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: Due to the wide availability of the 219-minute 1980 premiere version of "Heaven's Gate" and its frequent labeling as either "uncut" or the "director's cut," Cimino insisted that the so-called "original version" did not fully correspond to his intentions and that he was under pressure to bring it out for the predetermined date and did not consider the film ready, making even the 219-minute version essentially an "unfinished" film.


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: The 216-minute version shown in Venice is quite similar to the 219-minute version, but with no intermission. Some shots in the second part are slightly shorter and a shot with a single line has been cut (just after John Hurt is beaten by Sam Waterston).


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: In 2005, MGM released the film in selected cinemas in the United States and Europe. The 219-minute cut was reassembled by MGM archivist John Kirk, who reported that large portions of the original negative had been discarded, making this an all-new radical version using whatever alternative available scenes that could be found. The restored print was screened in Paris and presented to a sold-out audience at New York's Museum of Modern Art with a live introduction by Isabelle Huppert. Because the project was commissioned by then-MGM executive Bingham Ray, who was ousted shortly thereafter, the budget for the project was cut and a planned wider release and DVD never materialized, and unlikely.


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: In 2012, MGM released yet another version, digitally restored and 216 minutes long. It premiered at the 2012 Venice Film Festival as part of the Venice Classics series.


title: Heaven's Gate (film)

text: The Criterion Collection released the restored 216-minute version on Blu-ray Disc and DVD on November 20, 2012. This "Director's Cut" was personally supervised by Michael Cimino and Joann Carelli. Cimino explains in the special features portion of the DVD that this is his preferred version of the film, and he feels it is the complete version he intended to make.


title: Potash

text: Potash () includes various mined and manufactured salts that contain potassium in water-soluble form. The name derives from "pot ash", plant ashes or wood ash soaked in water in a pot, the primary means of manufacturing potash before the Industrial Era. The word "potassium" is derived from "potash".


title: Potash

text: Potash is produced worldwide in amounts exceeding 90 million tonnes (40 million tonnes KO equivalent) per year, with Canada being the largest producer, mostly for use in fertilizer. Various kinds of fertilizer-potash constitute the single greatest industrial use of the element potassium in the world. Potassium was first derived in 1807 by electrolysis of caustic potash (potassium hydroxide).


title: Potash

text: Potash refers to potassium compounds and potassium-bearing materials, most commonly potassium carbonate. The word "potash" originates from the Middle Dutch ""potaschen"", denoting "pot ashes" in 1477.


title: Potash

text: The old method of making potassium carbonate () was by collecting or producing wood ash (the occupation of ash burners), leaching the ashes, and then evaporating the resulting solution in large iron pots, which left a white residue denominated "pot ash". Approximately 10% by weight of common wood ash can be recovered as potash. Later, "potash" became widely applied to naturally occurring potassium salts and the commercial product derived from them, although it most probably derived its name (where it was used) from the anion of the acid that replaced the carbonate moiety, a common equivocative use of "potash" for "potassium".


title: Potash

text: The following table lists a number of potassium compounds that have "potash" in their traditional names:


title: Potash

text: All commercial potash deposits come originally from evaporite deposits and are often buried deep below the earth's surface. Potash ores are typically rich in potassium chloride (KCl), sodium chloride (NaCl) and other salts and clays, and are typically obtained by conventional shaft mining with the extracted ore ground into a powder. Other methods include dissolution mining and evaporation methods from brines.


title: Potash

text: In the evaporation method, hot water is injected into the potash, which is dissolved and then pumped to the surface where it is concentrated by solar induced evaporation. Amine reagents are then added to either the mined or evaporated solutions. The amine coats the KCl but not NaCl. Air bubbles cling to the amine + KCl and float it to the surface while the NaCl and clay sink to the bottom. The surface is skimmed for the amine + KCl, which is then dried and packaged for use as a K rich fertilizer—KCl dissolves readily in water and is available quickly for plant nutrition.


title: Potash

text: Potash deposits are located throughout the world. , deposits are being mined in Canada, Russia, China, Belarus, Israel, Germany, Chile, the United States, Jordan, Spain, the United Kingdom, Uzbekistan and Brazil, with the most significant deposits present in Saskatchewan, Canada.


title: Potash

text: Excessive respiratory disease due to environmental hazards, such as radon and asbestos, has been a concern for potash miners throughout history. Potash miners are liable to develop silicosis. Based on a study conducted between 1977 and 1987 of cardiovascular disease among potash workers, the overall mortality rates were low, but a noticeable difference in above-ground workers was documented.


title: Potash

text: Potash (especially potassium carbonate) has been used in bleaching textiles, making glass, ceramic, and making soap, since the Bronze Age. Potash was principally obtained by leaching the ashes of land and sea plants.


title: Potash

text: Beginning in the 14th century potash was mined in Ethiopia. One of the world's largest deposits, 140 to 150 million tons, is located in the Dallol area of the Afar Region.


title: Potash

text: Potash was one of the most important industrial chemicals. It was refined from the ashes of broadleaved trees and produced primarily in the forested areas of Europe, Russia, and North America. Although methods for producing artificial alkalis were invented in the late eighteenth century, these did not become economical until the late nineteenth century and so the dependence on organic sources of potash remained.


title: Potash

text: Potash became an important international trade commodity in Europe from at least the early fourteenth century. It is estimated that European imports of potash required 6 or more million cubic metres each year from the early seventeenth century.


title: Potash

text: Between 1420 and 1620, the primary exporting cities for wood-derived potash were Gdańsk, Königsberg and Riga. From the 1640s, geopolitical disruptions (i.e. Russo-Polish War (1654–1667)) meant that the centres of export moved from the Baltic to Archangel, Russia. In 1700, Russian ash was dominant though Gdańsk remained notable for the quality of its potash. In the late fifteenth century, London was the lead importer due to its position as the centre of soft soap making while the Dutch dominated as suppliers and consumers in the sixteenth century.


title: Potash

text: The first U.S. patent of any kind was issued in 1790 to Samuel Hopkins for an improvement "in the making of Pot ash and Pearl ash by a new Apparatus and Process". "Pearl ash" was a purer quality made by calcination of potash in a reverberatory furnace or kiln. Potash pits were once used in England to produce potash that was used in making soap for the preparation of wool for yarn production.


title: Potash

text: By the eighteenth century, higher quality American potash was increasingly imported to Britain. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, potash production provided settlers in North America a way to obtain badly needed cash and credit as they cleared wooded land for crops. To make full use of their land, settlers needed to dispose of excess wood. The easiest way to accomplish this was to burn any wood not needed for fuel or construction. Ashes from hardwood trees could then be used to make lye, which could either be used to make soap or boiled down to produce valuable potash. Hardwood could generate ashes at the rate of 60 to 100 bushels per acre (500 to 900 m³/km). In 1790, ashes could be sold for $3.25 to $6.25 per acre ($800 to $1,500/km) in rural New York State – nearly the same rate as hiring a laborer to clear the same area. Potash making became a major industry in British North America. Great Britain was always the most important market. The American potash industry followed the woodsman's ax across the country. After about 1820, New York replaced New England as the most important source; by 1840 the center was in Ohio. Potash production was always a by-product industry, following from the need to clear land for agriculture.


title: Potash

text: On the Orkney islands as early as 1719 for a century, kelp ash provided potash and soda ash, "substances eagerly sought after by the glass and soap industries of the time."


title: Potash

text: From 1767, potash from wood ashes was exported from Canada. By 1811, 70% of the total 19.6 million lbs of potash imports to Britain came from Canada. Exports of potash and pearl ash reached 43,958 barrels in 1865. There were 519 asheries in operation in 1871.


title: Potash

text: The wood-ash industry declined in the late 19th century when large-scale production of salts was established in Germany. In 1943, potash was discovered in Saskatchewan, Canada, in the process of drilling for oil. Active exploration began in 1951. In 1958, the Potash Company of America became the first potash producer in Canada with the commissioning of an underground potash mine at Patience Lake; due to water seepage in its shaft, however, production stopped late in 1959 but following extensive grouting and repairs, resumed in 1965. The underground mine was flooded in 1987 and was reactivated for commercial production as a solution mine in 1989.


title: Potash

text: In 1964 a Canadian company known as Kalium Chemicals established the first potash mine that took advantage of the solution process. The discovery was made during oil reserve exploration. The mine was developed near Regina, Saskatchewan. The mine reached depths greater than 1500 meters. Mosaic's, Belle Plaine had later gone to undertake the operation of the mine.


title: Potash

text: Most of the world reserves of potassium (K) were deposited as sea water in ancient inland oceans. After the water evaporated, the potassium salts crystallized into beds of potash ore. These are the locations where potash is being mined today. The deposits are a naturally occurring mixture of potassium chloride (KCl) and sodium chloride (NaCl), more commonly known as table salt. Over time, as the surface of the earth changed, these deposits were covered by thousands of feet of earth.


title: Potash

text: Most potash mines today are deep shaft mines as much as 4,400 feet (1,400 m) underground. Others are mined as strip mines, having been laid down in horizontal layers as sedimentary rock. In above-ground processing plants, the KCl is separated from the mixture to produce a high-analysis potassium fertilizer. Other potassium salts can be separated by various procedures, resulting in potassium sulfate and potassium-magnesium sulfate.


title: Potash

text: Today some of the world's largest known potash deposits are spread all over the world from Saskatchewan, Canada, to Brazil, Belarus, Germany, and the Permian Basin. The Permian basin deposit includes the major mines outside of Carlsbad, New Mexico, to the world's purest potash deposit in Lea County, New Mexico (not far from the Carlsbad deposits), which is believed to be roughly 80% pure. (Osceola County, Michigan has deposits 90+% pure; the only mine there was converted to salt production, however.) Canada is the largest producer, followed by Russia and Belarus. The most significant reserve of Canada's potash is located in the province of Saskatchewan and is mined by The Mosaic Company, Nutrien and K+S.


title: Potash

text: In China, most potash deposits are concentrated in the deserts and salt flats of the endorheic basins of its western provinces, particularly Qinghai. Geological expeditions discovered the reserves in the 1950s but commercial exploitation lagged until Deng Xiaoping's Reform and Opening Up Policy in the 1980s. The 1989 opening of the Qinghai Potash Fertilizer Factory in the remote Qarhan Playa increased China's production of potassium chloride sixfold, from less than a year at Haixi and Tanggu to just under a year.


title: Potash

text: In the beginning of the 20th century, potash deposits were found in the Dallol Depression in Musely and Crescent localities near the Ethiopean-Eritrean border. The estimated reserves are 173 and 12 million tonnes for the Musely and Crescent, respectively. The latter is particularly suitable for surface mining; it was explored in the 1960s but the works stopped due to the flood in 1967. Attempts to continue mining in the 1990s were halted by the Eritrean–Ethiopian War and have not resumed as of 2009.


title: Potash

text: Recovery of potassium fertilizer salts from sea water has been studied in India. During extraction of salt from seawater by evaporation, potassium salts get concentrated in bittern, an effluent from the salt industry.


title: Potash

text: In 2013, almost 70% of potash production was controlled by Canpotex, an exporting and marketing firm, and the Belarusian Potash Company. The latter was a joint venture between Belaruskali and Uralkali, but on July 30, 2013, Uralkali announced that it had ended the venture.


title: Potash

text: Potassium is the third major plant and crop nutrient after nitrogen and phosphorus. It has been used since antiquity as a soil fertilizer (about 90% of current use). Elemental potassium does not occur in nature because it reacts violently with water. As part of various compounds, potassium makes up about 2.6% of the Earth's crust by mass and is the seventh most abundant element, similar in abundance to sodium at approximately 1.8% of the crust. Potash is important for agriculture because it improves water retention, yield, nutrient value, taste, color, texture and disease resistance of food crops. It has wide application to fruit and vegetables, rice, wheat and other grains, sugar, corn, soybeans, palm oil and cotton, all of which benefit from the nutrient's quality-enhancing properties.


title: Potash

text: Demand for food and animal feed has been on the rise since 2000. The United States Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service (ERS) attributes the trend to average annual population increases of 75 million people around the world. Geographically, economic growth in Asia and Latin America greatly contributed to the increased use of potash-based fertilizer. Rising incomes in developing countries also were a factor in the growing potash and fertilizer use. With more money in the household budget, consumers added more meat and dairy products to their diets. This shift in eating patterns required more acres to be planted, more fertilizer to be applied and more animals to be fed—all requiring more potash.


title: Potash

text: After years of trending upward, fertilizer use slowed in 2008. The worldwide economic downturn is the primary reason for the declining fertilizer use, dropping prices, and mounting inventories.


title: Potash

text: The world's largest consumers of potash are China, the United States, Brazil, and India. Brazil imports 90% of the potash it needs. Potash consumption for fertilizers is expected to increase to about 37.8 million tonnes by 2022.


title: Potash

text: Potash imports and exports are often reported in KO "equivalent", although fertilizer never contains potassium oxide, per se, because potassium oxide is caustic and hygroscopic.


title: Potash

text: At the beginning of 2008, potash prices started a meteoric climb from less than US$200 a tonne to a high of US$875 in February 2009. These subsequently dropped dramatically to an April 2010 low of US$310 level, before recovering in 2011–12, and relapsing again in 2013. For reference, prices in November 2011 were about US$470 per tonne, but as of May 2013 were stable at US$393. After the surprise breakup of the world's largest potash cartel at the end of July 2013, potash prices were poised to drop some 20 percent. At the end of Dec 2015, potash traded for US$295 a tonne. In April 2016 its price was US$269. In May 2017, prices had stabilised at around US$216 a tonne down 18% from the previous year. By January 2018, prices have been recovering to around US$225 a tonne. World potash demand tends to be price inelastic in the short-run and even in the long run.


title: Potash

text: In addition to its use as a fertilizer, potassium chloride is important in many industrialized economies, where it is used in aluminium recycling, by the chloralkali industry to produce potassium hydroxide, in metal electroplating, oil-well drilling fluid, snow and ice melting, steel heat-treating, in medicine as a treatment for hypokalemia, and water softening. Potassium hydroxide is used for industrial water treatment and is the precursor of potassium carbonate, several forms of potassium phosphate, many other potassic chemicals, and soap manufacturing. Potassium carbonate is used to produce animal feed supplements, cement, fire extinguishers, food products, photographic chemicals, and textiles. It is also used in brewing beer, pharmaceutical preparations, and as a catalyst for synthetic rubber manufacturing. Also combined with silica sand to produce potassium silicate, sometimes known as waterglass, for use in paints and arc welding electrodes. These non-fertilizer uses have accounted for about 15% of annual potash consumption in the United States.


title: Potash

text: No substitutes exist for potassium as an essential plant nutrient and as an essential nutritional requirement for animals and humans. Manure and glauconite (greensand) are low-potassium-content sources that can be profitably transported only short distances to crop fields.


title: Big Mac Index

text: The Big Mac Index is a price index published since 1986 by "The Economist" as an informal way of measuring the purchasing power parity (PPP) between two currencies and providing a test of the extent to which market exchange rates result in goods costing the same in different countries. It "seeks to make exchange-rate theory a bit more digestible." The index compares the relative price worldwide to purchase the Big Mac, a hamburger sold at McDonald's restaurants.


title: Big Mac Index

text: The Big Mac index was introduced in "The Economist" in September 1986 by Pam Woodall as a semi-humorous illustration of PPP and has been published by that paper annually since then. Although the Big Mac Index was not intended to be a legitimate tool for exchange rate evaluation, it is now globally recognised and featured in many academic textbooks and reports. The index also gave rise to the word "burgernomics."


title: Big Mac Index

text: The theory underpinning the Big Mac index stems from the concept of PPP, which states that the exchange rate between two currencies should equalize the prices charged for an identical basket of goods. However, in reality, sourcing an identical basket of goods in every country provides a complex challenge. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), over "3,000 consumer goods and services, 30 occupations in government, 200 types of equipment goods and about 15 construction projects" are included in the current PPP calculations. In effort to simplify this important economic concept, The Economist proposed that a single McDonald’s Big Mac could be used instead of a basket of goods. A McDonald’s Big Mac was chosen because of the prevalence of the fast food chain worldwide, and because the sandwich remains largely the same across all countries. Although a single sandwich may seem overly simplistic for PPP theory, the price of a Big Mac is derived from the culmination of "many local economic factors, such as the price of the ingredients, local wages, or how much it costs to put up billboards and buy TV ads". As a result, the Big Mac index provides a "reasonable measure of real-world purchasing power".


title: Big Mac Index

text: The purpose of the Big Mac index is to calculate an implied exchange rate between two currencies. In order to calculate the Big Mac index, the price of a Big Mac in a foreign country (in the foreign country’s currency) is divided by the price of Big Mac in a base country (in the base country’s currency). Typically, the base country used is the United States.


title: Big Mac Index

text: Consistent with PPP economic theory, the Big Mac index also provides a method to analyse a currency’s level of under/over-valuation against a base currency. In order to calculate whether a currency is under/over-valued, the implied exchange rate (as defined by the Big Mac index) must be compared to the actual exchange rate. If the implied exchange rate is greater than the actual exchange rate, then the analysed currency is overvalued against the base currency. If the implied exchange rate is less than the actual exchange rate, then the analysed currency is undervalued against the base currency.


title: Big Mac Index

text: "The Economist" sometimes produces variants on the theme. For example, in January 2004, it showed a "Tall Latte index" with the Big Mac replaced by a cup of Starbucks coffee.


title: Big Mac Index

text: In 2007, an Australian bank tried a variation the Big Mac index, being an "iPod index": since the iPod is manufactured at a single place, the value of iPods should be more consistent globally. However, this theory can be criticised for ignoring shipping costs, which will vary depending on how far the product is delivered from its "single place" of manufacture in China.


title: Big Mac Index

text: Bloomberg L.P. introduced the Billy index where they convert local prices of IKEA's Billy bookshelf into US dollars and compare the prices.


title: Big Mac Index

text: Gold-Mac-Index: The value of the purchasing power for 1 g of gold (Gold.de: calculation of the gold price average of the corresponding year), how many burgers one got for 1 g gold.


title: Big Mac Index

text: A Swiss bank has expanded the idea of the Big Mac index to include the amount of time that an average local worker in a given country must work to earn enough to buy a Big Mac.


title: Big Mac Index

text: In 2017, the comparison platform Versus did a version called The Chai Latte Global Index, comparing Starbucks Chai Latte prices worldwide, by first converting the local prices into USD.


title: Big Mac Index

text: Global personal finance comparison website, Finder.com, released a more comprehensive Starbucks Index in 2019, which analyzed coffee prices for a tall latte in 76 countries and autonomous regions around the world. The report included a Latte Line, which measured the correlation between the price of coffee and a country's GDP.


title: Big Mac Index

text: In 2022, Trusaic, a provider of equal pay compliance software, unveiled a new online tool called The Big Mac Pay Gap Index, which shows how much more a Big Mac would cost you, after adjusting the menu price of a Big Mac to reflect whatever pay gap you may face.


title: Big Mac Index

text: While economists widely cite the Big Mac index as a reasonable real-world measurement of purchasing power parity, the burger methodology has some limitations.


title: Big Mac Index

text: The Big Mac Index is limited by geographical coverage, due to the presence of the McDonald's franchise. For example, in Africa McDonald's is only present in Morocco, Egypt and South Africa (there has been a similar index created solely for Africa called the "KFC Index": as the name suggests, instead of using a Big Mac, this index uses KFC's Original 15 pc. bucket to compile its data).


title: Big Mac Index

text: In many countries, eating at international fast-food chain restaurants such as McDonald's is relatively expensive in comparison to eating at a local restaurant, and the demand for Big Macs is not as large in countries such as India as in the United States. Social status of eating at fast food restaurants such as McDonald's in a local market, what proportion of sales might be to expatriates, local taxes, levels of competition, and import duties on selected items may not be representative of the country's economy as a whole.


title: Big Mac Index

text: In addition, there is no theoretical reason why non-tradable goods and services such as property costs should be equal in different countries: this is the theoretical reason for PPPs being different from market exchange rates over time. The relative cost of high-margin products, such as essential pharmaceutical products, or cellular telephony might compare local capacity and willingness to pay, as much as relative currency values.


title: Big Mac Index

text: Nevertheless, McDonald's is also using different commercial strategies which can result in huge differences for a product. Overall, the price of a Big Mac will be a reflection of its local production and delivery cost, the cost of advertising (considerable in some areas), and most importantly what the local market will bear – quite different from country to country, and not all a reflection of relative currency values.


title: Big Mac Index

text: In some markets, a high-volume and low-margin approach makes most sense to maximize profit, while in others a higher margin will generate more profit. Thus the relative prices reflect more than currency values. For example, a hamburger costs only in France, and in Belgium, but overall, McDonald's restaurants in both countries cost roughly the same. Prices of Big Macs can also vary greatly between different areas within a country. For example, a Big Mac sold in New York City will be more expensive than one sold at a McDonald's located in a rural area.


title: Big Mac Index

text: One other example is that Russia had one of the cheapest Big Macs at its time in 2019, despite the fact that Moscow was then the most expensive city in the world. Standard food ingredients are cheap in Russia, while restaurants suitable for business dinners with English speaking staff are expensive.


title: Big Mac Index

text: Critics of the presidency of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in Argentina and many economists believe that the government has for years falsified consumer price data to understate the country's true inflation rate. "The Economist" stated in January 2011 that Big Mac index "does support claims that Argentina's government is cooking the books. The gap between its average annual rate of burger inflation (19%) and its official rate (10%) is far bigger than in any other country." That year the press began reporting on unusual behavior by the more than 200 Argentinean McDonald's restaurants. They no longer prominently advertised Big Macs for sale and the sandwich, both individually and as part of value meals, was being sold for an unusually low price compared to other items. Guillermo Moreno, Secretary of Commerce in the Kirchner government, reportedly forced McDonald's to sell the Big Mac at an artificially low price to manipulate the country's performance on the Big Mac index. In June 2012, the price of the Big Mac value meal suddenly rose by 26%, closer to that of other meals, after "The Economist", "The New York Times", and other media reported on the unusual pricing. A Buenos Aires newspaper stated "Moreno loses the battle".


title: Big Mac Index

text: The Big Mac (and virtually all sandwiches) vary from country to country with differing nutritional values, weights and even nominal size differences.


title: Big Mac Index

text: Not all Big Mac burgers offered by the chain are exclusively beef. In India – which is a predominantly Hindu country – beef burgers are not available at any McDonald's outlets. The Chicken Maharaja Mac serves as a substitute for the Big Mac.


title: Big Mac Index

text: There is a lot of variance with the exclusively beef "Big Mac": the Australian version of the Big Mac has 22% fewer calories than the Canadian version, and is 8% lighter than the version sold in Mexico.


title: Big Mac Index

text: On 1 November 2009, all three of the McDonald's in Iceland closed, primarily due to the chain's high cost of importing most of the chain's meat and vegetables, by McDonald's demands and standards, from the Eurozone. At the time, a Big Mac in Iceland cost 650 krona ($5.29), and the 20% price increase that would have been needed to stay in business would have increased that cost to 780 krona ($6.36). Fish and lamb are produced in Iceland, while beef is often imported (but also exported).


title: Big Mac Index

text: Six most expensive (12 January 2021) This statistic shows the most expensive places to buy a Big Mac.


title: Big Mac Index

text: Six fastest earned (July 2015) This statistic shows the average working time required to buy one Big Mac in selected cities around the world in 2015.


title: Big Mac Index

text: Six slowest earned (July 2015) This statistic shows the average working time required to buy one Big Mac in selected cities around the world in 2015.


title: Under Armour

text: Under Armour, Inc. is an American sports equipment company that manufactures footwear, sports and casual apparel. Under Armour's global headquarters are located in Baltimore, Maryland, with additional offices located in Amsterdam (European headquarters), Austin, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Houston, Jakarta, London, Mexico City, Munich, New York City, Panama City (international headquarters), Paris, Pittsburgh, Portland, San Francisco, São Paulo, Santiago, Seoul, Shanghai (Greater Chinese headquarters), and Toronto.


title: Under Armour

text: Under Armour was founded on September 25, 1996 by Kevin Plank, a then 24-year-old former special teams captain of the University of Maryland football team. Plank initially began the business from his grandmother's basement in Washington, D.C. He spent his time traveling along the East Coast with nothing but apparel in the trunk of his car. His first team sale came at the end of 1996 with a $17,000 sale. From his grandmother's basement, Plank moved to Baltimore. After a few moves in the city he moved to his current headquarters in Tide Point.


title: Under Armour

text: As a fullback at the University of Maryland, Plank got tired of having to change out of the sweat-soaked T-shirts worn under his jersey; however, he noticed that his compression shorts worn during practice stayed dry. This inspired him to make a T-shirt using moisture-wicking synthetic fabric. After graduating from the University of Maryland, Plank developed his first prototype of the shirt, which he gave to his Maryland teammates and friends who had gone on to play in the NFL. Plank soon perfected the design creating a new T-shirt built from microfibers that wicked moisture and kept athletes cool, dry, and light. Major competing brands including Nike, Adidas and Reebok would soon follow in Plank's footsteps with their own moisture-wicking apparel. Plank opted to use the British spelling "armour" in the company name because the toll-free vanity number was still available for that version.


title: Under Armour

text: People began to take notice of the brand when a front-page photo of "USA Today" featured Oakland Raiders quarterback Jeff George wearing an Under Armour mock turtleneck. Following that front page, Under Armour's first major sale came, when an equipment manager from Georgia Tech requested 10 shirts from Plank. This deal opened the door to contracts with NC State, Arizona State, and other Division I football teams. With positive reviews from players, word began to spread and orders began to increase. That same year, Under Armour launched with several new apparel lines including ColdGear, TurfGear, AllseasonGear, and StreetGear. By the end of 1996, Under Armour had sold 500 Under Armour HeatGear shirts, generating $17,000 for the company. In 1997, Plank had $100,000 in orders to fill and found a factory in Ohio to make the shirts.