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Welcome to Motherboard Luxury Week

We hope you're in the mood to feel fancy.

Personal submarines. The best doctors. Pet tigers.

And touring real estate in virtual reality, so you can buy a mansion without ever visiting it.

These are but a few of the stories you can look forward to over the next few days as part of Luxury Week, Motherboard's close examination of what luxury means in a world when more than two-thirds of Americans walk around with a supercomputer in their pocket. Having access to nice things is all well and good, but being able to take greater control of your fleeting free time and privacy, or being able to afford unique experiences that mere mortals could only dream about is, to us at least, what luxury is all about.

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And we've got plenty of examples. In our first slate of stories, which we've published today, Martin J. Smith takes a look at Canada's tiered healthcare system in which the almighty dollar buys access to faster medical care; Sarah Emerson explores why the well-heeled feel the need to have exotic pets as animals instead of a dog or cat like the rest of us; and Andrada Fiscutean looks at the hidden world of Romanian hackers who are all too happy to steal your data and money, and then buy high-end German cars to attract the next generation of hackers.

Of course, we'll have even more in the coming days. What's it like to outsource the tedious task of making dinner every single day to a trained professional chef? Motherboard Associate Editor Ankita Rao will have the answer. How did the golden age of science fiction literature imagine what luxury space travel would look like? (Yes, such a thing was once imagined.) Motherboard contributor Becky Ferreira has the answer. And what's it like to use a toilet literally made of gold? And why is that even a thing? Jason Koebler, one of Motherboard's intrepid staff writers, intends to find out—and live on Facebook if all the stars align.

So again, welcome to Luxury Week. Please feel free to send feedback on the usual social channels, like Twitter and Facebook, or reach out to us by way of a letter to the editor.

Enjoy!

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