(AB) commodification (AC) foliage (AD) amassed (AE) exemplifies (BC) barred (BD) satirizing (BE) radiates (CD) imbued (CE) entrenching (DE) emulates (ABC) hued (ABD) cardigan　

       Autumn didn’t officially begin until Sept. 23, but for TikToker Chasitey Pounds, it started in June. Pounds, 26, is one of many content creators who cultivate followings with comforting autumn visuals like pumpkin-spice lattes, candles, and chunky sweaters. The online niche has __16__ major traction, with hashtags like #autumnaesthetic and #fallaesthetic collectively gaining over 7 billion views on TikTok. “I want to create stuff that __17__ the feeling of coziness and brings people some comfort in everyday life,” she says.

       Fall has been Pounds’ favorite season since she was a child. Now, sharing seasonal videos has enabled her to leave her day job. The internet and its fall enthusiasts have played a big role in the __18__ of the season: NielsenIQ data shows all things pumpkin-spice-market produced more than $8oo million from July 2022 to July 2023. If Christmas stores can do business yearround, the North Carolina-based creator sees no reason to limit autumn to the three-month bracket of a calendar. She’s realized that the internet is interested in cozy content in any season.

      The internet’s love of __19__ content started long before the emergence of TikTok, in the early days of Pinterest and Tumblr, and on platforms like Instagram, where influencers used “fall presets” and filter apps like VSCO, whose colors __20__ their images with the feeling of fall year-round. Lifestyle YouTuber Bethany Mota became the face of the video platform thanks to her seasonal content, in particular a 2013 video with 17 million views in which she shares a fall morning routine: making tea, applying plum-__21__ makeup, heading to Starbucks for a Pumpkin Spice Frappuccino.

       One TikTok user recently referred to it as the “fall vibes big bang theory.” Today, no one __22__ the internet’s love for the season more than Caitlin Covington, a blogger who became the subject of the “Christian Girl Autumn” meme after her annual Vermont photo shoot went viral in 2019. Covington, 33, has embraced the meme, even if it’s sometimes couched in a derisive tone, __23__ a certain type of perfectly coiffed white woman in a wide-brimmed hat and riding boots. It has no doubt brought attention, which in turn helps monetize her content, including recipes and outhit photos with affiliate links. Covington says that around 2013 or 2014, she noticed her autumn content was a star performer. “There was a very clear distinction in engagement when I was standing next to a beautiful fall tree, or there were fall leaves on the ground,” she says.

       For Pounds and Covington, the appeal of fall boils down to the sense of inherent comfort that __24__ through the phone screen. “I deal with a lot of anxiety, and life is stressful and so busy,” says Covington. “Fall is all about embracing moments of comfort, whether a hot coffee, a really soft __25__, or a new book. Everybody can relate to that.” She adds, “The world does this crazy thing where all the leaves turn from green to these beautiful vibrant colors. I think everyone can appreciate the beauty in that.” Even on a sweltering day in June.

(AB) The consumption of chocolate has declined significantly due to health concerns in many regions. (AC) Since chocolate makers tend to hedge cocoa purchases months in advance, analysts have said the disastrous crops in West Africa will only really hit consumers later this year.

(AD) Ghana today has some 1.38 million hectares (3.41 million acres) of land under cocoa cultivation (AE) Cocoa production in South America has been declining steadily over the last decade.

(BC) We wouldn’t get the lowest crop for 20 years in Ghana and the lowest for eight years in Ivory Coast if we hadn’t reached a tipping point.

(BD) They have hit new record highs almost daily in an unprecedented trend that shows little sign of abating.

(BE) It is a shift that will also be felt in wealthy consumer markets, possibly for years to come.

       Long the world’s undisputed cocoa powerhouses, accounting for more than 60 percent of global supply, Ghana and its West African neighbor Ivory Coast are both facing catastrophic harvests this season. Expectations of shortages of cocoa beans – the raw material for chocolate – have seen New York cocoa futures more than double this year alone. __26__ More than 20 farmers, experts, and industry insiders told the Reuters news agency that a perfect storm of rampant illegal gold mining, climate change, sector mismanagement and rapidly spreading disease is to blame. In its most sobering assessment to date, according to data compiled since 2018 and obtained by Reuters, Ghana’s cocoa marketing board Cocobod estimates that 590,000 hectares (1.45 million acres) of plantations have been infected with swollen shoot, a virus that will ultimately kill them. __27__, a figure Cocobod said includes infected trees that are still producing cocoa. “Production is in long-term decline,” said Steve Wateridge, a cocoa expert with Tropical Research Services. “__28__” It is an imbroglio with no easy fixes that have shocked markets and could spell the beginning of the end of West Africa’s cocoa supremacy, the experts told Reuters. That may open the door for ascendant producers, particularly in Latin America. Millions of cocoa farmers in West Africa are facing a painful watershed moment. __29__ Shoppers buying Easter confections in the United States are discovering that chocolate on store shelves is more than 10 percent more expensive than a year ago, according to data from research firm NielsenIQ. __30__

       When earthquakes occur, ruptures in geological faults produce two different types of deformations—static and dynamic. Static deformations are caused by the fault transitioning from a relaxed position to a stressed one, due to plate tectonic motion, before returning back to a relaxed state, resulting in permanent changes to the geography of the terrain. Dynamic deformations, on the other hand, emanate from the rupture, moving swiftly through the earth’s rock. The bulk of the energy generated by an earthquake goes into the static deformation, with the remainder of it dissipating through dynamic deformation in the form of seismic waves. These seismic waves can be categorized into four types, two of which move below the surface—known as body waves.

       It is the surface waves that are ultimately responsible for virtually the entirety of the destruction inflicted by earthquakes despite possessing a lower frequency than body waves and moving at considerably slower speeds. The two types of surface waves are Love waves and Rayleigh waves, both of which are named for the men who provided vital mathematical calculations pertaining to them—A.E.H. Love and Lord Rayleigh. Love waves are the faster of the two, and they generate only horizontal motion. As a result, individuals experiencing a Love wave will feel the earth swaying from side to side. Rayleigh waves, on the other hand, roll across the surface of the earth much in the way ripples move across the surface of a pond, resulting in both vertical and horizontal motion. Because of this, they are by far the more destructive of the two types of surface waves.

       Body waves, high-frequency, fast-moving waves that travel beneath the surface of the earth, can be divided into primary waves, also called P waves, and secondary waves, often referred to as S waves. As their name implies, primary waves are the first to reach any given point after an earthquake occurs, as they are the fastest of all seismic waves. They are able to pass through solids, liquids and gases, and do so with a pushing forward and pulling backward motion, which closely resembles the manner in which sound waves move through the air and is the reason why they are sometimes called compression waves. The precise speed of P waves depends on the depth. They move at about 6 kilometers per second near the surface and as fast as 11 kilometers when they are closer to the earth’s core. S waves, also known as shear waves, can cause the ground to move alternately from one side to the other, as well as in an up-and-down motion. Their average speeds are slightly more than half those of P waves, and they are only capable of moving through solids.

       Despite their destructive properties, seismic waves do provide scientists with valuable data. By detecting P waves and S waves with seismographs, scientists are able to determine the epicenter of an earthquake. Although there are naturally variations in wave speeds due to geologic conditions, the ratio between the average speeds of the two types of waves remains fairly constant. This allows seismologists to time the gap between the arrival of the P wave and that of the S wave, a measurement that produces a fairly accurate calculation of the distance of the earthquake from the observation station. What’s more, the inability of S waves to move through fluids furnished geologists with the first clues that the earth has a liquid outer core, which has since been established as an important scientific fact.