How Can You Escape Binary Thinking? - Freakonomics - "DUCKWORTH: I don’t think Annette has ever bought anything for $9.99. I’m not exaggerating. Like, on eBay, if she can’t get a dress for $4.99, she won’t get the dress. So, I want to talk about this. Do you know anything about transactional utility?...
DUBNER: Transactional utility is meant to describe the pleasure you get from the perceived value of what you paid, versus what you expected to pay. I can see that making someone very happy. On the other hand, it could also make you suspicious in a different setting. Right? Like, what’s wrong with this thing? I get utility from knowing that I paid less than someone asked for it, but is there something wrong with it? For instance, you know, not “does this dress make me look fat,” but “does this dress make me look cheap?” That would be, theoretically, the downside.
DUCKWORTH: Or, like, a rube, right? Did I overpay for this dress?
DUBNER: Exactly. But I will say this: there’s a fair amount of evidence from Thaler — and many other economists who’ve done experimental research — that this thing that we called transactional utility is real and that it’s fairly large. So, I’ll give you one example. In 2012, the department store chain J.C. Penney announced a new policy. I’m reading here from a TIME magazine article from 2012. “Fake prices inflated big time to make markdowns seem more tempting would disappear from J.C. Penney.” So, basically, J.C. Penney is saying to their customers, “Hey, listen. We do this charade, and you seem to enjoy it enough that you’re supporting our store. We’re successful, but, you know, why do we have a posted list price and then constantly saying, ‘mark down, 40 percent off, da-da-da.’ So, you know what? Let’s just do away with that, ” to be replaced with what they were calling a “fair and square” structure in which original prices started at least 40 percent lower to begin with. So, what do you think happened?
DUCKWORTH: Well, if I expand upon my sister’s experience, they would sell less with the “fair and square” pricing, even though it was more transparent. And maybe in some ways, you could argue it should be more attractive because people will not have this feeling of being deceived. But I’m guessing that, if people are anything like Annette Lee, that they would have bought fewer things at J.C. Penney.
DUBNER: You are exactly right. J.C. Penney’s sales plummeted — the stock price plummeted. So, the charade, it turns out, is very attractive. Customers weren’t attracted to J.C. Penney simply because of low prices; they were attracted to bargains that they got through markdowns and coupons. And then, if you go looking at the research on coupon use, for instance — I’m looking at something from a market research firm called eMarketer. This is from just a few years ago, 2018, and they were trying to find out how important coupons and discounts are for different age groups. And these are digital purchases. They found that for the age group 18 to 29, around 82 percent of the respondents said that it was very important or important to use a coupon or discount. And that number gradually falls as you get older. People who are 60 and older, only 65 percent say it’s very important."
Meme - "Sorry but we can't accept cash because our employees can't do math
Sincerely, Prattville Axe"
Tunisia’s President, Kais Saied, Proposes New Constitution - The New York Times - "Tunisia’s president has taken another major step toward dismantling the country’s young democracy in a newly released draft constitution, giving himself broad powers while diluting those of Parliament and the judiciary. President Kais Saied published the draft late on Thursday, weeks before it goes to a national referendum set for July 25. If approved, critics said it would push Tunisia — the only democracy to emerge from the 2011 Arab Spring protests still standing — further toward autocracy."
There goes the last shadow of the Arab Spring
Ten years on from the uprising in Tahrir Square, Egyptians’ hopes of reform are in tatters - "Mubarak’s opposition all despised him, but could agree on little else. The powerful armed forces, which remained the country’s most resilient and conservative institution, manipulated social and political divisions to retain its clout, ultimately crushing Egyptians’ democratic aspirations. The country’s ruler for the last eight years, former army officer and intelligence chief Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi, has turned the country into a police state more repressive than it ever was under either Mubarak or Anwar Sadat, who ruled Egypt during the 1970s... Even famously fun-loving Egyptians celebrating their sexuality on social media are punished for violating Sisi’s staid sense of morality. “To me the worst part of Sisi’s rule is that the balance between coercion and consent is different even from Mubarak or Sadat – it’s much more coercion,” says Michelle Dunne, a former American diplomat who served in Egypt and is now a researcher at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace... Along with Sisi’s brutality is a megalomaniacal vision for Egypt that is light on improving the lives of ordinary Egyptians but heavy on expensive, big-ticket projects that appear to be opportunities for Sisi and his allies to raid the public treasury. They include the multibillion-dollar expansion of the Suez Canal and the construction of a “New Cairo” in the desert to the capital’s east. Next up is a $32m “Cairo Eye”, which is being pitched as Africa’s largest ferris wheel in an attempt to draw tourists to see the smog-choked capital. Sisi’s projects are pricey, environmentally questionable, and arguably unnecessary in a country where many poor people lack access to clean water and proper sanitation, and even the middle classes complain of decrepit health and education services... Perhaps the biggest lesson of 25 January 2011 is that those seeking to topple a dictatorship should sketch out what they want and how they would work together before they hit the streets"
Meme - "Clearance *Fauci and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dolls*"
Ruth Bader Ginsburg still rules the world of political kitsch, but who's next? - "From Boston to Austin, from Portland, Oregon, to Portland, Maine, Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been the undisputed queen of the tote bag for left-leaning Americans looking to show their support for women's empowerment or opposition to former President Donald Trump. But Trump is now out of office and as independent bookstores, boutiques and cafes are reopening to serve up lattes and a little impulse buying after a year full of pandemic and politics, plus the death of Ginsburg, retailers are looking for who will be next to adorn kitsch. Many up-and-coming politicos probably covet the unique spot Ginsburg holds in liberal hearts and tchotchkes. But according to the people who make and sell political books and baubles, it's unclear who will take her place — or if liberals even want to keep broadcasting their politics on their air fresheners and keychains after so many years of all-consuming political consumption... Leah Kenyon, the sidelines buyer for Politics and Prose, the famed Washington bookseller owned by Hillary Clinton’s former speechwriter and her husband, said there's "nobody who's at the level of RBG, though "people are definitely buying a lot of Kamala [Harris]." On the right, there’s no question about who moves the most merch: Trump... On the left, President Joe Biden does well, but is hardly dominant. Dr. Anthony Fauci had a moment, but he’s no longer the scientific and emotional counterweight to Trump’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. Familiar figures like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Barack and Michelle Obama still do OK. But most have their eyes on a cadre of women of color: Vice President Harris; Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.; former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams; and Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who wrote an autobiographical children’s picture book in 2018... Draper and others think there may not be a new RBG because people want a break from politics after four years of Trump and the pandemic."
So much for that prediction. It is hard to deradicalise people
Meme - "WHY DO YOU IDOLIZE A MURDEROUS, AUTHORITARIAN REGIME FROM THE SECOND WORLD WAR?"
"I... DON'T. WHY DO YOU?" *US Flag*
Communist: "DO WHAT?"
Meme - ">Ok, ok, so, burger king, that name is so bloody complicated, it took me like 3 months of non-stop thought to figure this out. Well, you look at it and you can say pretty confidently, king, that's actually an instantiation of a patriarchal motive being, isn't it? It's like that's the typification of a fatherly figure that exists at the top of all possible dominance hierarchies. I guess that'd be a good way to describe it, and, but, it's not a king per se, when you go to burger king, it's the instantiation of an individual as necessarily being the embodiment of the transcendent ideal of a king. It's a king as such. The typified aspect of kingship as such is inexorably tied up with the word. And what does a typified father figure do? Well he provides, doesn't he? He provides food, and shelter, and burgers. Well yeah, that's bloody well right, he's a king who provides burgers, exactly! You know, you know, when Alexander Solzhenitzyn was in the gulags, he thought about food a lot" - Jordan Peterson
Meme - "If you suspect a stroke, think F.A.S.T
F-Facebook announcement with your suspicions.
A-Ask for thoughts prayers
S-Search google for your symptoms
T-Try lavender oils."
Meme - "Closed for sex. Ba Back In 30 mins. Thank You"
This sign at a restaurant here in Mumbai, India
Post No Signs. : funny - "No
Meme - NOT ALLOWED TO PREGNANT *Thai*"
Meme - *Seagull on No Seagull sign*
Meme - "Dear person who left stuffed animal in the dryer, Your animal fell out of the dryer very fast & I thought it was alive. I stabbed it with my army knife. I see now it was not alive. Sorry about your stuffed animals. P.S. I am on shrooms. Sorry again."
Meme - "Attention. Feed the rats. Rats are very sweet so you should love them and feed them and be their friend. Name the rats: ___. To tell the mayor you love rats call: 3-1-1
City of Santa Barbara, California may declare Chick-fil-A a "public nuisance" - "In Santa Barbara, the city is close to dubbing its sole Chick-fil-A a "public nuisance" due to long drive-thru lines that often has cars filled with hungry customers backed into the street for hours at a time."
Meme - David French @DavidAFrench: "I'd say that the right's about-face on free speech is surprising, but nothing shocks me anymore. I guess it's still wrong for San Antonio to target Chick-fil-A? But it's right for DeSantis to target Disney? Re-upping, becau..."OccupyDemocratsLogic: "San Antonio: we don't like your views, we will not allow you to do business at this location.
Meme - "When you paid for an hour and you still have 58 minutes
Why Americans Don't Use Electric Kettles - "Americans mostly use stove-top kettles. The kettle is filled with water and then heated on a gas or electric stove... The reason for this appears to be related to the voltage in America, which is lower than the voltage in the UK... The lower voltage in the US means that electric kettles would not heat water as quickly as they do in the UK... One British person living in the US cited the voltage explanation but also wrote that "the culture for it isn't there," perhaps meaning that Americans drink less tea and aren't as fussed about how fast water gets boiled."
Escape The Echo Chamber - Posts | Facebook - Rashida Tlaib: "Fascist SCOTUS guts the EPA's ability to regulate carbon emissions, fight climate change. The federal government will be restricted from regulating anything of significance in the absence of a clear Congressional directive to do so."
Sorry
No talking to cashier. No smoking. No fighting. No credit. No outside food. No sitting long. No talking loud. No spitting. No bargaining. No water to outsiders. No change. No telephone. No match sticks/lighter. No discussing ganbling. No newspaper. No combing hair. No beef. No leg on chair. No hard liquor allowed. No address enquiry. No photography"
No
No
No"
We need your help to welcome the rats to the neighborhood
Start feeding the rats!
Put ALL garbage on the ground
Leave food that is tasty & healthy
PROTECT RATS FROM YOUR FAMILY AND PETS
RATS are sweet and are often kept as pets, If you are mean to pets you are a jerk
Give the RATS a free meal & say hello
IF RATS CAN'T FEED, THEN RATS CAN'T BREED. SO FEED THE RATS A LOT!"
Florida: we will no longer give Disney advantages we don't give universal/ Busch Gardens/Seaworld
David French: can't you see that this is exactly the same!?!"
*Man balanced on woman's legs* "Weee""
"“Fascism” has become a synonym for “something I don’t like”. A court affirming that the president can’t order a business to change its business model without prior authorization from Congress is about as far removed from 20th century fascism as you can get."
Meme - "According to the US constitutional design the states are supposed to be living laboratories and experiments of different ideas and cultures, no matter how insane. Thus the liberal states test out and implement the craziest ideas from the world, which they then export back to the world, but the conservative states are immune to their insanity and defend their autonomy jealously. However the rest of the world have no such immunity to their craziness and implement it wholesale. This is why America simultaneously is the sanest and best Western country but the whole world is the worse for her."
Helsinki poster congratulates visitors for being ‘badass’ and braving Finnish winter - "‘Nobody in their right mind would come to Helsinki in November. Except you, you badass. Welcome.' And why do you have to be a ‘badass’ for visiting Helsinki in November? Well, the temperature is hovers around 1 degree Celsius and you can only enjoy about seven hours of daylight... During the winter temperatures in Helsinki can plummet to -15 degrees Celsius with the coldest day ever recorded in the capital a biting -34.3 degrees Celsius in 1987. Locals acknowledge the challenging and chilly conditions but have appealed to thrill-seekers with the amusing sign. According to VisitFinland's website: 'Even if the thermometer reads -20 degrees Celsius, it doesn’t feel as cold as you might think. 'The dry continental climate here doesn’t feel as cold as the damp cold of central Europe. 'Finns are also used to this kind of weather, so everything runs smoothly and punctually.'... The banner was designed to welcome delegates to a tech conference, Slush"
Meme - "SILICA GEL DO NOT EAT"
"THOSE SILICA GEL INDUSTRY BIG SHOTS CAN'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO"
"CONGRATULATIONS: YOU'VE ESCAPED THE SIMULATION."
Americans and oppositional defiance disorder
Meme - "NO Alcohol
NO Profanity
NO Smoking
NO Nudity
NO Penguins"
Meme - depths of wikipedia @depthsofwiki: "based on its wikipedia photos, the european herring gull is out of control
Stealing food from a man's hand
Perching on spikes designed to discourage perching birds"
Student CRUCIFIES a rat on a cross after catching it 'eating his pet turtle' - "A Chinese university student got revenge on a rat that had apparently eaten his pet turtle by crucifying it on a cross. Pictures showing the rodent being tied to the wooden cross with its front legs either side of its carcass and displayed on the university's campus have emerged online. The incident has caused widespread anger on the Chinese social media platform with users expressing their outrage over the cruel treatment towards the animal. The incident happened at Guangxi Arts Institute in Nanning, capital of China's southern Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region on January 6"
Wait till they learn about pest control
6 Words That Will End Picky Eating - "I make a meal and set it in front of him (Satter advises parents to let kids serve themselves from serving dishes, but we don’t do serving dishes here—it’s straight from pan to plate), and he can eat what he likes with no comment from me. He can have seconds on anything, if there’s enough. There are no other options for dinner, and two years into this program he knows better than to ask... “You don’t have to eat it.” Our new system doesn’t mean that he never expresses dislike or says “yuck” or claims that he’s not going to eat anything. In fact, the other day he looked at his plate and said irritably, “Hey, I wanted a good dinner,” which, after an hour at the stove, made me want to sweep the whole table of food to the floor in an elaborate, screaming, Melissa McCarthy-esque breakdown. But every time he says yuck or I don’t want that, I say calmly, “You don’t have to eat it,” and tuck into my own meal. But the biggest revelation was that it gave me permission to stop hounding my son to eat—to even, really, stop monitoring what he eats. Because the meals I make are reasonably healthy and somewhat varied, I can enjoy my meal and let him eat, or not eat, without any Sturm und Drang. I don’t keep a (very limited) list in my head of “what my kid will eat.” It’s also stopped the short-order-cook thing in its tracks. I cook whatever I want to eat, and if my son doesn’t want to try, say, squash and sausage casserole one night, that’s up to him—there’s garlic bread on the side, and carrots from the salad, and I’ve probably put a few apple slices on everyone’s plate. He may try a bite maybe the 20th time I serve it, but in the meantime I’m enjoying the casserole, my younger son is picking out the sausage and eating the squash, and it won’t go to waste. This system totally eliminates the power struggle that goes along with “getting kids to eat.” It also allows kids to pay attention to their body’s satiety cues—it turns out that my son doesn’t eat much dinner at all, ever, no matter what I serve. He’s just not hungry in the evening. So I try to make the earlier meals as nutritious as possible and don’t worry about dinner."
Supposedly this doesn't work for non-neurotypical kids
Addendum: I keep losing track of this article. And it turns out I quoted it in 2017 too
Keywords: You don't have to eat that, six words that change mealtime, "have to eat that" words change, feeding, mealtimes, meals
Calling home: Rogers brings remaining customer service jobs back to Canada - "It is much easier, Agius said, to train employees when they are not on the other side of the globe. Better-trained employees are better for customers; happier customers are better for bottom lines. “It’s better business,”"
I saw someone claiming the marketing about 100% Canada customer service was racist. Grievance mongers are going to grievance monger
Meme - Claire M McLemore: "Fuck you cunt. You can either remove you laughing reaction from my post or I will get racist on your ass"
Meme - Johan: "Laugh reacting posts by admins is the fast track to getting banned lol."
"Christian is blocked from this group."
Lufe Lima: "every time I see someone laughing at serious stuff, I block without mercy. It keeps my newsfeed clean of a-holes."
Johan: "Tell me about it! We've blocked 10,000+ trolls from this group. Most of them over malicious laugh reacts. The trolls have no life but neither do I lol!!"
I Stand With Amber Heard is a blast
Meme - "REMEMBER LEARNING a MUSICAL INSTRUMENT DOES WONDERFUL THINGS FOR YOUR CHILD'S BRAIN
YOU, ON THE OTHER HAND- ARE FUCKED"
Meme - "We are sold out of: 32-ct. Tums Ultra cherry antacids
Please substitute: 10-ct. Trojan bare skin condoms"
Richard Ker on Twitter - "I didn’t want a 9 to 5 job. So I started my own company. Now I work 24/7. 😂"
Donimo's Pizza: Pyongyang, Best Korea - Posts | Facebook - "True Korea has only bigest melons, enjoys and thank"
A CONVERSATION RUNS THROUGH IT - TIME - "You shouldn't speak until you know what you're talking about. That's why I get uncomfortable with interviews. Reporters ask me what I feel China should do about Tibet. Who cares what I think China should do? I'm a f______ actor! They hand me a script. I act. I'm here for entertainment, basically, when you whittle everything away. I'm a grown man who puts on makeup"
Brad Pitt on his opinion on Tibet. Too bad more celebrities don't follow these wise words. Oddly enough this real quote also appeared in Weekly World News together with lots of fake quotes from other celebrities
The Haunting Effects Of Going Days Without Sleep - "Decades ago, Randy Gardner stayed awake for 11 days. He broke a record in the process, but the teenage stunt has come back to haunt him... Randy's sleep project owned him and his friends first place in the 10th Annual Greater San Diego Science Fair... The Guinness Book of World Records has done away with the category of going without sleep because of the health dangers of severe sleep loss...
GARDNER: About 10 years ago, I stopped sleeping. I could not sleep.
VEDANTAM: He was convinced his teenage stunt was to blame.
GARDNER: That's why I keep calling this some karmic payback for, you know, my body going, OK, buddy. Yeah, OK, 11 days without sleep when you know damn well you need sleep? Well, let's try this out for size.
VEDANTAM: Randy says going without sleep changed him.
GARDNER: I was awful to be around. Everything upset me. It was like a continuation of what I did 50 years ago.
VEDANTAM: Finally after years of unbearable insomnia, Randy made an uneasy peace with sleep. He's regained the ability to drift off, but only for about six hours a night."
Who Gives the Worst Advice? - Freakonomics - "And then there are the inevitable cases where one guest’s advice contradicts another. Here’s Harvard economist Claudia Goldin:
GOLDIN: I would always say to follow your passions. I mean, that’s what I have done.
JENNINGS: I get annoyed when I hear people who have succeeded improbably in a field tell you to follow your dreams... Channing Tatum thinks that you can strip and act your way to success because he’s like the one in one-hundred thousand person who did that. It does not follow that just because I was able to pay for a house on game show winnings, that every Jeopardy! fan should quit their job and train for Jeopardy!"
A Rockstar Chemist and Her Cancer-Attacking “Lawn Mower” - Freakonomics - "BERTOZZI: Mice can have their cancers cured. Mice have been having their cancers cured for decades now. And that doesn’t necessarily mean your medicine will cure human patients, of course. And there’s only one way to find out which is to do the human clinical trials."
You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Experiment - Freakonomics - "ANGRIST: There is a way to turn that draft-lottery, draft-eligibility effect, which is essentially the difference between a 35percent probability of service among those with low numbers. And a 20-percent probability of service among those with high numbers. So, there’s a way to turn that differential into the actual effects of military service. So, since the difference of the probability of service is 0.15, I take the effect of draft eligibility on earnings, which is maybe $400 later in life. It’s a negative $400.
LEVITT: So, the people who had low numbers, they earned, on average, later in life, $400 less per year.
ANGRIST: Right. Ten years after the Vietnam conscription ended, they earned $400 less. But why do they earn $400 less? Well, there’s really only one reason for that: They were more likely to serve. And therefore, that $400 is driven entirely by the 15 percentage point gaps in the probability of service. And so, to get back to the actual effect of service, I simply divide by 0.15, in other words, I multiply the 400 by about 6. And that gets me to, a fairly substantial earnings gap.
LEVITT: $2,400, so almost 10, 15 percent of annual earnings."
Conscription has a huge effect on conscripts, hurting earnings
If Everyone Hates Meetings, Why Do We Have So Many of Them? - Freakonomics - "DUBNER: The sweet spot for meeting attendance, in terms of size — I do know, and you probably know too, Jeff Bezos’s famous two-pizza rule and the secret to Amazon’s success. So, he had a rule that every internal team — I’m reading from a piece from The Guardian by Alex Hern — “Every internal team should be small enough that it can be fed with two pizzas.” Now, if you have some very hungry people, that might only be three or four people in the meeting. But then, here’s a piece I’m looking at from the Harvard Business Review. This is by the H.B.R. editors. It’s called “How To Know If There Are Too Many People in Your Meeting.” And they come up with a rule called the 8-18-1,800 rule... Their argument is, if the meeting’s goal is to actually solve a problem or make a decision, you don’t invite more than eight people. That’s the eight. If the goal is to brainstorm, then you can go up to 18. And if the goal is simply to, as they put it, “rally the troops,” you can go for 1,800 or more. So, that’s the 8-18-1,800 rule... “Why do we pay to have extra people in meetings who aren’t going to participate?”"
Why Do We Root for Underdogs? - Freakonomics - "DUBNER: ‘Nothing produced a more positive response from poll respondents than hearing that a political candidate was a small business owner. It offered a bigger lift than any political position or demographic feature, and it was popular across Black, Latino, and white respondents.’” Christen goes on to say, “I have been working in the tech industry for a long time, and a few companies I’ve worked for loved helping small businesses. I work for a Fortune 100 company now, and they, too, love helping small businesses. I love small businesses,” she writes. “Everyone I know loves small businesses. We all want to support small businesses and really appreciate them. So, here’s my question. Why does everybody love small businesses and small business owners? Is there something psychological to that? Is the love of small business universal and not just American?”
Subway can be sued over its tuna, U.S. judge rules | Toronto Sun - "A federal judge said Subway can be sued for allegedly deceiving customers about its tuna products, including a claim it uses other fish species, chicken, pork and cattle instead of the advertised “100% tuna.”... The judge also said the plaintiff Nilima Amin, an Alameda County resident who claimed to order Subway tuna products more than 100 times from 2013 to 2019, could try to prove that the salads, sandwiches and wraps “wholly lack” tuna... Amin’s lawsuit relied on findings from a marine biologist who tested 20 tuna samples from Subways in southern California. Testing at UCLA’s Barber Lab found that 19 samples contained “no detectable tuna DNA sequences,” while all 20 had chicken DNA, 11 had pork DNA and 7 had cattle DNA"
Abandoned subway station is Hollywood's go-to film location - "Prior to the showing, the station had been used by the NYPD for an anti-terrorism drill in the wake of the 2015 Paris terror attacks. But since Jones began pitching it to location scouts such as Hutchins, the abandoned platform in the Bowery Station has become an underground studio of sorts for film crews looking to re-create an authentic New York City subway scene... “Bowery offers an exclusivity to the production. They don’t have to worry about impacting customers or paparazzi photos being leaked. It’s like being on a closed set as far as they are concerned,” said Jones, adding that it’s also safer and easier to get big stars like Tom Hanks in and out while maintaining the authenticity of a working station. Plus, productions can make over the space to fit their aesthetic or a specific era."
