Classic car shows are a summer tradition. But if you want the most exotic, rare, and the most expensive cars in the world, then you need to head to the Monterey Peninsula, Calif. The 67^th annual Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance caps off a week of intensive, obsessive car love.

The Concours this year features 204 of the highest-caliber cars that have ever been made. Essentially, the international car world descends on the region. Fifteen countries and 31 states enter the elite car show held on the famed 18^th hole of the Pebble Beach golf course.

That’s just the end of a week of car madness, when cars take over the coastal towns of Monterey, Pebble Beach and Carmel by the Sea. The Monterey airport hosts an event of cars and airplanes. There’s the Tour d’Elegance, where show cars cruise the streets, a wild exotic car show on Cannery Row (Steinbeck fans wouldn’t recognize it), and, most importantly, plenty of public and private auctions. Take a look at the top 20 most expensive cars ever sold (publicly) and more than half were sold in or around car week on the Monterey peninsula.

To get an idea of the caliber of cars shown around town, Ferrari chose the show to celebrate its upcoming 70^th anniversary with a concours of its own. This year, Jeff Mosing, a serious car collector from Austin, Texas brought his Ferrari F40. For him, cars are way more than a form of transportation or even rolling art They are more like pets: “There’s a gut feeling just like if you meet somebody and you’ve never met them before that you know that there’s something there. … definitely had a connection with this car.”

Mosing’s Ferrari goes for between $1.3 and 1.5 million dollars. His car wasn’t for sale, and it wasn’t entered in the big show. His car, a mere 27 years old, wouldn’t make the cut at Pebble. The Concours is about painstaking restoration.

Thomas Shaughnessy from Oceanside brought his 1958 Ferrari Ghia to show on the 18^th hole. As he prepped his vehicle, Shaugnessy unrolled $25,000 dollars’ worth of tools. These look like ordinary wrenches and hammers, but when you’re restoring a classic car, it’s about the right tool for the right car.

For the privilege of strolling on the greens of the course, an estimated 15,000 attendees paid $350. Men and women parade the fairway dressed to the nines, with hats and parasols. The show also draws its share of car loving celebrities, Jay Leno (naturally), former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, and ABC’s Michael Strahan were just a few of the bold name celebrities.

As wealthy and star-studded as the show was, it’s hard not to be affected. Deep and profound love is shown these classic cars. Morris Lum was detailing a 1958 Dual Ghia, owned by Tom and Gwen Price of Belvedere, Calif. Lum uses a toothpick to get into the crevices. The Dual Ghia is an example of an extremely rare car, only 115 were completed and only 36 are known to have survived.

Paula Blair’s love of the automobile reached its maturity at Pebble Beach, she says: “I started off as somebody who really wasn’t interested in a car.” Blair and her husband Peter first came to the show 11 years ago for a anniversary and now she considers herself “becoming what I call a minor car person somebody, who just likes the look of them versus other people who love them so much they start collecting.”

Sandra Button has worked at Pebble Beach for 32 years. She started coordinating events at the course and began over the years to focus year round. Button has become one of the most prominent women in this male-dominated world. “They’ll call my husband instead of me ’cause it’s like a guy talk thing,” Button says with a laugh about the men who can’t believe she’s really the boss, when it comes to cars and Pebble Beach.

“And I don’t really care because as long as a great car gets to Pebble Beach, if they want to talk to my husband instead of me, that’s fine. But ultimately, he’ll even say, ‘You know you got to talk to the boss.’ “

With self-driving and electric cars in the future, it’s not hard to see this antique car show as, well, antiquated. Button says she was reluctant to accept electric cars, but now she’s been converted. “They’re fun. They’re torque-y and you feel the power under you.” Button says as the world goes more electric, an issue for antique car lovers may be access to gasoline.

But even when cars drive themselves, she believes the Concours will prevail: “If you go all the way back to the days of the horse and carriage,” Button said while strolling onto the 18^th hole, “People don’t need horses in the same way we used to. I mean everybody used to really need their horse… (but now) there’s still horse shows and there are still places to race them.”

She says that may turn out to be what happens with cars. “We’re going to have great places to enjoy our cars” she says, “but not in the everyday way.”

That’s because, the future will come to Pebble Beach, eventually.

NPR’s Emily Bogle edited the photos for this story. Maquita Peters edited and produced it for the Web.

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On Friday, three well-known charities — the American Red Cross, the Salvation Army and Susan G. Komen — announced they are canceling plans for fundraising events at President Trump’s Palm Beach country club, Mar-a-Lago.

The three joined a growing list of nonprofits that have severed ties with the exclusive, Trump-owned resort. Others include the Cleveland Clinic and the American Cancer Society.

The cancellations come in the wake of Trump’s controversial comments made earlier this week when he said that “both sides were to blame” for last weekend’s deadly violence involving white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va.

Trump has been under heavy criticism all week for his remarks, which prompted many corporate leaders to bail out of White House advisory boards. So many CEOs resigned that the president responded by disbanding three committees — one focused on shaping business strategy, another on boosting manufacturing and third on improving infrastructure.

After the CEOs started refusing to work with the president, pressure increased on charities to give up their annual trips to Mar-a-Lago for galas.

For example, Cleveland Clinic CEO Toby Cosgrove had served on one of the disbanded business councils. And a day after that dismantling happened, the hospital announced that “after careful consideration,” Cleveland Clinic would not hold its 2018 event at Mar-a-Lago.

Earlier this year, despite a petition drive by doctors and medical students, the hospital had refused to cancel its fundraiser there. When medical students and other groups renewed the push recently, Cleveland Clinic remained firm, saying Mar-a-Lago met its needs.

Now, it does not.

The American Red Cross said in its statement that it must provide “assistance without discrimination to all people in need, regardless of nationality, race, religious beliefs, or political opinions.”

The charity’s connection with the president’s club “has increasingly become a source of controversy and pain for many of our volunteers, employees and supporters,” it said.

The Salvation Army issued a similar statement, saying its event at Mar-a-Lago helped raise money for disaster victims and the homeless. “Because the conversation has shifted away from the purpose of this event,” the group says, “we will not host it at Mar-a-Lago.”

Susan G. Komen, a charity that invests in breast cancer research, confirmed it is also withdrawing from Mar-a-Lago and is seeking a new venue for its fundraising event.

The rash of high-profile cancellations has created something of a scramble in Palm Beach as charities look for other suitable venues. The Palm Beach Post says other nearby hotels and the Palm Beach County Convention Center are hearing from interested groups.

For Trump, the cancellations will mean a significant loss of income, unless the staff at Mar-a-Lago finds new customers who want to book a 20,000-square-foot ballroom embellished with 24-karat gold leafing, modeled, as Trump told Florida Design magazine, after Versailles.

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At the intersection where protections against unreasonable search and seizure meet the rights to free speech and association, there’s now a web hosting company called DreamHost.

The California-based company is resisting a Department of Justice warrant that demands it hand over all files related to DisruptJ20.org, a website created by one of its customers to plan and announce actions intended to disrupt President Trump’s inauguration.

After Inauguration Day protests in Washington, D.C. turned violent, 230 people were arrested and charged with felony rioting.

In gathering evidence for the nearly 200 still-open cases in D.C. court, the Justice Department issued a warrant that DreamHost says is so broad it would require handing over the logs of 1.3 million visits to the website.

The company called the warrant “a highly untargeted demand that chills free association and the right of free speech afforded by the Constitution. … This is, in our opinion, a strong example of investigatory overreach and a clear abuse of government authority.”

A week after the inauguration, DreamHost says the Justice Department asked it for records relating to the person who had registered the site – such as the person’s physical and email addresses – and it complied.

But in July, the government issued a new warrant that asked for additional materials: “all files, databases, and database records” related to DisruptJ20’s website, as prosecutors moved to seize all information “involving the individuals who participated, planed [sic], organized, or incited the January 20 riot.”

DreamHost resisted providing the newly-requested information, citing concerns that the warrant was “overbroad” and may result in “overseizure.”

But the Justice Department said DreamHost must provide the information regardless.

“DreamHost’s opinion of the breadth of the warrant does not provide it with a basis for refusing to comply with the Court’s search warrant and begin an immediate production,” U.S. Attorney Channing Phillips wrote in a motion to the D.C. Superior Court, which will soon hold a hearing regarding the matter.

In its filing with the court, DreamHost says the warrant requires the company “to turn over every piece of information it has about every visitor to a website expressing political views concerning the current administration”:

“This information includes the IP address for the visitor, the website pages viewed by the visitor, even a detailed description of software running in the visitor’s computer. In essence, the Search Warrant not only aims to identify the political dissidents of the current administration, but attempts to identify and understand what content each of these dissidents viewed on the website. The Search Warrant also includes a demand that DreamHost disclose the content of all e-mail inquiries and comments submitted from numerous private e-mail accounts and prompted by the website, all through a single sweeping warrant.”

The Justice Department told NPR it won’t comment on the case aside from the court filings.

Is the government really asking for all those visitor logs?

“Yes, they definitely are,” says Electronic Frontier Foundation senior staff attorney Mark Rumold. EFF advocates for internet privacy and free speech, and has advised DreamHost in its case.

Rumold tells NPR that when DreamHost first approached EFF about responding to the warrant, he guessed “that DOJ would realize how broad the warrant was, and say, oh you know, in fact we’re not actually looking for IP logs for everyone who’s ever visited the site,” and would narrow its request accordingly.

But instead, the government insisted on DreamHost’s compliance with the warrant as written.

“It always raises red flags when the government is trying to pry into the organization or the association of its political opponents,” Rumold says. “That said, the DOJ has apparently demonstrated to a judge that there is probable cause to believe that something on this site is evidence of a crime.” But, he says, the logs of everyone who ever visited the site, along with when and where they viewed it — “there’s no way that that’s all evidence of a crime.”

“It’s always troubling when the government seizes far more information than it could ever use,” he says. “That’s just generally a problem regardless of the investigation. I think what’s particularly unique about this case is that the crime and the topic that is being investigated is a group of people who are politically opposed to the president.”

For administrators of websites that involve political dissent or discussion, Rumold says best practices would dictate not keeping logs of visitor data.

And Legba Carrefour, who was one of the organizers for DisruptJ20, says the site’s administrators didn’t keep this data for DisruptJ20.org—DreamHost did.

“We would not keep records on who visits our website,” Carrefour told NPR. “We don’t want to know, and we don’t care. But also I’m sure like half of those are probably cops,” checking to see what the group had planned for the inauguration.

Carrefour said DisruptJ20 used what’s called “the open organizing model”: Instead of making plans in secret, they posted everything they intended to do right on their website. They held biweekly meetings to audiences of 200 or 300 people at a time, in places like church basements, which he assumes police attended. “We feel like open organizing is a better way to recruit people, and also sort of a more honest, forthright, and successful way of organizing mass mobilizations.”

Carrefour said he was “surprised and impressed” that DreamHost is “going to the lengths they are to resist” the government’s request.

DreamHost says its stance isn’t a political one.

“This has become a political issue for many – but our interest in this case truly isn’t that specific,” DreamHost spokesman Brett Dunst wrote in an email to NPR. “We’re completely content-agnostic in this. For DreamHost this is simply an over-broad request for records, and we feel obligated to contest it.”

He said DreamHost keeps server logs in order to manage the sites of its 400,000-plus customers and identify issues like Distributed Denial of Service attacks.

“We only retain those logs for a very brief time,” Dunst wrote. “The DOJ served us with a preservation notice immediately after the inauguration, which is why we still have access to that data in this case.”

The Justice Department’s demand for the logs has troubling implications, says Georgetown University law professor Paul Ohm, who formerly worked as an attorney in the Department of Justice’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section.

“It’s disturbing to me,” Ohm tells NPR, “that with a single warrant, signed by a single judge — especially given the speech implications of this particular website — it’s disturbing to me that that could be the single key that unlocks the political and speech habits of I-don’t-know-how-many-people.”

He estimated that 1.3 million visitor logs could represent thousands of people, or hundreds of thousands. And he said that the framers of the U.S. Constitution specifically wanted to avoid practices like British general warrants, which gave sweeping access to search any location with a single piece of paper.

“This smells like a general warrant,” says Ohm. “I think the framers would recognize a single request to get the reading habits of tens of thousands of people to essentially be the closest thing we have in modern times to a general warrant.”

Ohm says courts have often considered how rights against illegal search and seizure begin to overlap with free speech rights – and “this case is tailor-made to sit at that intersection.”

“This site is about speech. It’s about listening, which is also kind of a First Amendment right,” he says. “It’s about assembly. It’s about petitioning the government. And so I think it’s not going to be hard for the lawyers in this case to say this isn’t just about policing and the limits of policing. This is about disruption of speech. And so for all those reasons, it really raises the stakes on this particular litigation and it means it’s going to get a close look from the courts.”

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Updated at 10:35 p.m. ET

President Trump on Monday authorized his top trade official to look into whether China is guilty of intellectual property theft, a move that could eventually lead to trade sanctions.

Trump called his action “a very big move” against practices that cost our nation “millions of jobs and billions and billions of dollars each and every year.”

He cited not just the theft of intellectual property such as computer software, but also Beijing’s requirement that U.S. companies turn over proprietary technology as a condition of entering China’s markets.

“We will safeguard the copyrights, patents, trademarks, trade secrets and other intellectual property that is so vital to our security and to our prosperity,” Trump said at the White House. He was flanked by U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and members of his economic team.

Monday’s steps were very preliminary, and analysts say that it could be a long time, if ever, before significant trade sanctions are imposed on China.

Eventually, it could lead the administration to initiate what’s called a Section 301 investigation, a sanctions mechanism that’s part of the Trade Act of 1974.

Section 301 was widely used in the 1980s under the Reagan administration. More recently US presidents have complied with a requirement to obtain World Trade Organization authorization before using Section 301.

But Trump has implied he may use Section 301 without WTO authorization. Bypassing the WTO would be quicker.

“It saves time,” says Matt Gold, a former deputy assistant US trade representative. A WTO case “would take a few years for us to bring it to a WTO panel, get a decision, then it will get appealed to the WTO appellate body. Then we get another decision. Then we have to go through another WTO process to get authorization for specific types of trade barriers. … So it can take a few years to get the WTO authorization.”

But Gold says using Section 301 without WTO authorization would leave the US government in conflict with its obligations under international law.

The White House move was applauded by technology groups, which have long complained about intellectual property theft. The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation issued a statement saying “for too long China has flouted the spirit, if not always the letter of its commitments under the WTO and other agreements.”

Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, said launching the investigation sends a strong signal to China that it will be held accountable if it doesn’t work with the United States to level the playing field. But he said the Trump administration needs to go further to address dumping of products such as steel. “We need to follow through with meaningful action and that means the president needs to get serious about trade enforcement, especially on steel,” Brown said.

But there are risks to the White House approach. Caroline Freund, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, says U.S. companies that try to do business with China could get hurt in several ways. “China is likely to retaliate with tariffs on their own of U.S. goods, and then U.S. companies will be further hurt in China,” she said. “It won’t lead to anything positive.”

In an editorial on Monday, the state-run newspaper China Daily said the investigation will “poison” relations.

But Freund also points out that for all of Trump’s rhetoric about China while on the campaign trail, the White House so far has been slow to take action against unfair trade practices. Trump backed off of labeling China a currency manipulator for instance, and a long promised report on steel dumping has been delayed.

She says that’s because it’s one thing to talk about steel tariffs, but imposing them hurts other U.S. manufacturers, such as automakers and appliance companies.

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Earlier this summer, a modest little startup in Barcelona, Spain, unveiled its newest product — a biodegradable, Internet-connected funeral urn that turns the ashes of departed loved ones into an indoor tree. Just mix the cremains with soil and seedlings, and the digital-age urn will automatically water and care for your memorial sapling, sending constant updates to an app on your smartphone.

At first glance, the concept seems gimmicky — evidently, we’re running out of ideas for smart appliances. But the Bios Incube system can also be seen as the latest example of a gradual transformation in modern culture.

Technology is fundamentally changing how we deal with death and its attendant issues of funerals, memorials and human remains. Much of this change is for the good. Some developments are a little spooky. But one thing is for sure: You can do a lot of cool things with ashes these days.

The Bios Incube system, which went on sale in June after a successful crowdfunding campaign, is the latest iteration of a much older idea in which ashes are essentially used as compost for a memorial tree or plant. But the Incube system adds some high-tech twists. The biodegradable urn is placed within a 5-gallon planter with an elegant, off-white, minimalist design vibe — call it the iUrn.

Actually, that’s the Incube. Fill it with water and an internal irrigation system kicks in while separate sensors monitor the progress of your plant, taking constant readings on temperature, humidity and soil conditions. This information is wirelessly beamed to the included smartphone app, allowing the bereaved user to better care for and nurture the seedling as it grows into a tree.

Roger Moliné, co-founder of Bios Urn, says the company offers two versions of its system. One provides the basic biodegradable urn and planter at $145. The more expensive version — if you want all the high-tech bells, whistles, atmosphere sensors and smartphone apps — tops out at $695.

“Interestingly enough, we have found so far that most have opted voluntarily for the high-tech option,” Moliné says.

He has a theory on that.

“Most of us are connected to the digital world, and we have become used to it,” he says. “Perhaps by tying together this process with technology, there can be a sense of comfort that comes from using a familiar process with a new experience. We hope that it will push people in a new direction and perhaps make this process easier for those experiencing loss.”

The Bios Urn concept is indeed part of a larger transformation in which technology is changing how we think about death and dying, says Candi Cann, author of the book Virtual Afterlives: Grieving the Dead in the Twenty-first Century.

“Their approach implies a different sort of afterlife than the religious one — an afterlife that theoretically we can partake in,” says Cann, who teaches religion and world culture at Baylor University.

“Recent theories on mourning reveal that having continued bonds with the deceased allow us to navigate everyday life while renegotiating our relationships with loved ones who are no longer present,” she says. “So in this way, the Bios Urn might actually foster a healthy type of mourning that allows us to look after the dead in an active, daily way.”

Caring for the dead via a smartphone app may seem strange, Cann says, but it makes perfect sense for those of us living in a perpetually connected world: “The generation today has grown up with online spaces and smartphones, so this is their medium.”

Cann has done extensive research on modern mourning rituals around the planet, and the various ways that technology is impacting how we deal with death and dying. The Internet has certainly changed the way we do things. Obituaries are posted online, funeral arrangements are sent by email or text, and social media platforms like Facebook now offer a range of memorial pages and legacy contact options.

In general, this is all good healthy progress, Cann says. “Smartphones and social media spaces have forced a decline in the importance of a controlled obituary narrative, as more people can contribute to the communal memory of a person and the meaning of their life,” she says.

A recurring theme in Cann’s work concerns an odd and abiding reticence in mainstream Western attitudes toward death: In short, we just don’t like to talk about it. Our aversion leads to a lot of unhealthy sublimation in the culture. “I would argue that the reason we see so much death in the media and in video games is precisely because we are not having real conversations about death,” Cann says.

Technology is helping in that arena, too. Cann points to online communities like Death Cafe, which use Internet forums to arrange local meetups for the recently bereaved.

Then there is the issue of what to do with the remains. We humans have been navigating this dilemma since the dawn of civilization, but recent technological advances have opened up some options. You can have ashes incorporated into jewelry, blended into oil paintings, mixed into tattoo ink, submerged into coral reefs or even pressed into vinyl records. And don’t forget about the festive fireworks option.

While developing the Bios Urn system, Moliné explored how other cultures are processing cremains, like Tokyo’s unique Ruriden columbarium, which utilizes LED Buddha statues and digital smart cards.

“I’ve seen some interesting things in China and Japan,” he says. “Both have run of out burial space in larger cities and have created interesting ways of commemorating those who have passed.”

Cann says that these new modern rituals, facilitated by various technologies, can help us get a little friendlier with death.

“In Brazil, I went to a public crematorium that cremates a body every 15 minutes, and is an actively used public park and picnic space,” he says. “Families were playing and picnicking among the ashes. If we see deathscapes as friendly places, rather than where the dead are banished, we might be able to utilize them in healthier and more creative ways.”

Looking to the future, however, Cann addresses more worrisome technologies.

“One of the areas I’m thinking more about is the use of artificial intelligence and digital avatars,” Cann said. “These are people intending to upload themselves, via AI, into digital avatars.”

Proponents of this idea contend that uploading the mind into a computer is entirely plausible. But science fiction has some cautionary tales in this area — any technology that promises to defy death is usually nothing but trouble. Ask Dr. Frankenstein. Even speculating on this sci-fi scenario can get a bit dodgy, Cann says.

“Whenever people focus more on extending life rather than examining its quality, death loses its importance,” Cann says. “If we are spending more time trying to deny death or prolong dying, then I think we are not living well.”

In this light, the Bios Urn seems like a fairly gentle step forward. Technology can’t yet provide us with digital immortality, but it can help us grow a memorial tree in our living room. What’s not to like?

Glenn McDonaldis a freelance writer, editor and game designer based in Chapel Hill, N.C. You can follow him@glennmcdonald1.

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President Trump is planning to ask his staff to consider investigating Chinese trade practices, senior White House officials said Saturday. The Trump administration is insisting the move isn’t tied to heightening tensions with North Korea, but it is inherently connected to complications in the region.

“I don’t think we’re heading toward a period of greater conflict (with China),” said one White House official. “This is simply business.”

The executive memo Trump is expected to sign on Monday will direct U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to look into whether his office should open an investigation into China’s trade policies and whether they abide by the U.S. Trade Act of 1974.

It’s impossible, however, to see the move as somehow disconnected from the back-and-forth rhetoric between the U.S. and North Korea over the past week. Trump has previously expressed frustration that China hasn’t done more to economically punish North Korea.

“I am very disappointed in China,” he said on July 29 on Twitter. “Our foolish past leaders have allowed them to make hundreds of billions of dollars a year in trade, yet … they do NOTHING for us with North Korea, just talk.

“We will no longer allow this to continue.”

And then on Thursday, when speaking with reporters, Trump said in relation to North Korea, “if China helps us, I feel a lot differently toward trade.”

The title of the so-called “301 investigation” that Trump is expected to call for Lighthizer to consider, refers to Section 301 of the U.S. Trade Act of 1974, which authorizes the president to work to remove or retaliate against a practice by a foreign government that is “unjustifiable and burdens or restricts United States commerce.”

In a background briefing with reporters on Saturday, White House officials pointed to frustration from U.S. businesses that they have to share intellectual property with China as a condition for doing business in the country.

“Americans are among the most innovative,” said one official. “They should not be forced to turn over the fruits of their labor.”

Despite Trump’s previous comments, officials at the briefing repeatedly rebuffed any attempt by reporters to connect the possible investigation to the North Korea situation.

It’s unclear whether any actual repercussions for China, like sanctions or tariffs, would come from an investigation like this, and officials said there is no timeline for how long an investigation would take.

Both Reuters and CNN reported this week that Trump was planning to call for the investigation to be considered earlier this month but that the president waited until after a United Nations Security Council vote to impose new sanctions on North Korea. The vote passed with unanimous support from all 15 member nations, including Russia and China.

CNN also reported that Trump told Chinese President Xi Jinping about the expected executive action in a phone call on Friday. A White House communications staffer declined to confirm or deny the report on Saturday, instead pointing to a statement released by the White House on Friday describing the phone call. That statement didn’t mention the executive action, but said the leaders discussed North Korea policy and Trump’s visit to China later this year.

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Global stock markets ended their worst week in months amid rising tensions between the U.S. and North Korea, though U.S. stock indexes steadied on Friday to close up slightly.

Nervous investors drove shares lower earlier in the week, after President Trump declared Tuesday that the U.S. would react with “fire and fury” to further nuclear provocations from North Korea. North Korea responded with threats to launch missiles into the Pacific Ocean near Guam, a U.S. territory.

Amid the hot rhetoric, U.S. stocks sold off sharply on Thursday, with the S&P 500 falling more than 1 percent. By the end of the day nearly $1 trillion in equity had been lost globally. Asian and European stocks continued the sharp decline Friday.

But U.S. stocks regained some lost ground, despite Trump’s comments Friday that U.S. weapons are “locked and loaded,” ready to respond if North Korea acts “unwisely.”

The Dow Jones industrial average closed up 14 points, a gain of 0.07 percent, the Nasdaq composite rose nearly 40 points or 0.64 percent and the S&P 500 gained 3 points or 0.13 percent. But for the week the S&P 500 lost 1.3 percent, its worst weekly showing since March.

The North Korea situation isn’t the only thing weighing on stocks. Major U.S. indices had posted record highs in recent weeks. Those highs were supported by strong corporate earnings, but lofty market valuations and a prolonged period without a significant market pullback had some analysts predicting a sell-off.

While stocks have declined this week, the sell-off has not been dramatic. BNY Mellon FX strategist Neil Mellor told Reuters that in recent years, “the market hasn’t really reacted to things on the Korean Peninsula” because in the past “it [has been] largely North Korean sabre-rattling.” But Mellor notes the rhetoric has reached a “different level.”

The Wells Fargo Investment Institute describes the market response, so far, as “tepid.” In a note to investors, Paul Christopher, head global market strategist, and Tracie McMillion, head of global asset allocation, suggest, “the threat of a nuclear weapon is certainly more serious than previous threats, but that threat also may increase the probability of a diplomatic solution.” They suggest the U.S. and China, a North Korean ally, could work together to de-escalate the situation.

So far the measured decline in global stocks suggests investors buy that scenario.

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We may be in the middle of a seltzer bubble.

Americans are drinking nearly 170 million gallons of the fizzy stuff each year, and sales have gone up 42 percent over the past five years with no signs of slowing down. There’s even a restaurant in Boston offering a $40 flight of limited-edition seltzers.

“We’re now at a point in American history where seltzer is more popular than it’s ever been,” Barry Joseph, author of Seltzertopia, tells All Things Considered. He says today’s obsession with seltzer has its roots in 1971, when Perrier launched in the U.S.

“A new drink comes over from Europe in 1971 called Perrier, and suddenly people aren’t only interested in flat water anymore,” Joseph says. “Now, they like maybe a mineral water. They like the idea of sparkling water, and people rediscover this thing we’ve had around for a while: seltzer.”

Joseph says today people are turning to seltzer as a healthier option than soda. One brand in particular is having a moment among millennials: LaCroix.

Rapper Big Dipper’s YouTube hit “LaCroix Boi” is an ode to the sensual possibilities of seltzer.

It’s somewhat mysterious how a brand that was cool with Midwestern soccer dads in the 1980s has caught on with today’s 20-somethings. But it’s not just LaCroix that is gaining new popularity.

Seltzer brand Polar has carved out a space in a crowded fizzy water market with seasonal, limited-run flavors.

Hard seltzer has also recently taken off, with popular brands White Claw and Truly. Sweet Cheeks, a barbecue joint in Boston, offers a $40 seltzer flight. Diners get four cans of Polar with four nips of vodka.

Owner Tiffani Faison points out that $10 vodka sodas aren’t rare in the city. And she says it’s supposed to be fun. The flight comes as a kit packed in ice that includes four cups with crazy straws.

“I mean, the whole thing is ridiculous,” Faison says.

The seltzer flavors are pretty silly, too, with names like Dragon Whispers, Mermaid Songs, Yeti Mischief and Unicorn Kisses.

And if you’re wondering what Yeti Mischief could possibly taste like, Faison says it’s like lemon-lime with a handful of Skittles thrown in.

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