Results for “"markets in everything"” 1682 found
Scrabble markets in everything, okie-dokie edition
For the first time in 75 years, Mattel is making a major change to the iconic board game Scrabble — and touting a “No More Scoring” gameplay option.
The new launch is a double-sided version of the famous board game — one side with the original game for those who want to stick to the long-time traditional version, and one side with a “less competitive” version to appeal to Gen Z gamers.
The flip side of the classic game, called Scrabble Together, will include helper cards, use a simpler scoring system, be quicker to play and allow people to play in teams.
“The makers of Scrabble found that younger people, Gen Z people, don’t quite like the competitive nature of Scrabble,” Gyles Brandreth, who co-hosts the language podcast Something Rhymes With Purple, told BBC Radio 4 Today. “They want a game where you can simply enjoy language, words, being together and having fun creating words.”
And:
So what’s new exactly? In addition to a dual-sided board, there are helper cards, which provide assistance, prompts and clues and can be selected to match the player’s challenge level of their choice.
In the new version, scoring is a thing of the past — now all one has to do is finish a goal and collect the goal card.
Goal cards include challenges such as: “Play a horizontal word,” “play a three-letter word” or “play a word that touches the edge of the board.”
Here is the full story. I have read that 33 out of the world’s top 100 Scrabble players are Nigerian — I wonder what they think of this?
The $20 bill gets picked up, body parts markets in everything
At the 1815 Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon Bonaparte’s final battle, more than 10,000 men and as many horses were killed in a single day. Yet today, archaeologists often struggle to find physical evidence of the dead from that bloody time period. Plowing and construction are usually the culprits behind missing historical remains, but they can’t explain the loss here. How did so many bones up and vanish?
In a new book, an international team of historians and archaeologists argues the bones were depleted by industrial-scale grave robbing. The introduction of phosphates for fertilizer and bone char as an ingredient in beet sugar processing at the beginning of the 19th century transformed bones into a hot commodity. Skyrocketing prices prompted raids on mass graves across Europe—and beyond.
Here is the full article, via William Meller. And, as Alex has stressed in the past, never underestimate the elasticity of supply!
Markets in everything, Korean opening bid edition
“We will continue to do what we can as a company to solve the low birth issue,” Lee Joong-keun, the chairman of Booyoung Group, a Seoul-based construction company, said last week after awarding a total $5.25 million to his employees for 70 babies born since 2021.
Both male and female employees at Booyoung are eligible for a $75,000 payout each time they have a baby — no strings attached.
Here is the full story.
University betting markets in everything
Gray and Kornbluth, individually. Via Kalshi. Here is Manifold.
Wisconsin DEI markets in everything
In a deal months in the making, the University of Wisconsin System has agreed to “reimagine” its diversity efforts, restructuring dozens of staff into positions serving all students and freezing the total number of diversity positions for the next three years.
In exchange, universities would receive $800 million for employee pay raises and some building projects, including a new engineering building for UW-Madison.
“This is an evolution, and this is a change moving forward,” UW System President Jay Rothman told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “But it does not in any way deviate from our core values of diversity (and) inclusion.”
Here is the full story, via HB, it is rare that the real world is actually so Coasean.
Markets in everything those new service sector jobs
The video, posted by the 39-year-old Tampa resident under her stage name Roxie Rae, is one of dozens on Clips4Sale, an adult-video-sharing website where content creators cater to all types of sexual fetishes, including one that is rarely discussed outside of niche kink circles: political humiliation. There are people who get turned on by the idea of having their political views mocked, usually (but not always) by members of the opposing political group. Liberals desire being dominated by conservatives and called pejoratives that imply they are weak and unintelligent, while conservatives want to be mocked for supporting former president Donald Trump, among other perceived transgressions, according to those who participate in this subculture.
Here is the full Washington Post article by Hallie Lieberman.
Expensive markets in everything
…testimony in the trial revealed that Google spent a total of $26.3 billion in 2021 to be the default search engine in multiple browsers, phones, and platforms.
That number, the sum total of all of Google’s search distribution deals, came out during the Justice Department’s cross-examination of Google’s search head, Prabhakar Raghavan.
$18 billion of that goes to Apple. Here is the full story.
Rome markets in everything
Just down the Via di Ripetta, in the heart of Rome, the freshly unveiled Bulgari Hotel Roma, with hallways showcasing jewels, has a premier one-bedroom suite overlooking the Mausoleum of Augustus. It costs 38,000 euros, or about $41,000, a night.
At least at the upper end, is Rome making a comeback?:
Rome’s mayor, Roberto Gualtieri, says the hoteliers are perfectly sane, and know a future good thing when they see it. He points to better restaurants, restored museums, new ones in the works. Post-pandemic tourists have made Rome a prime destination, though he allows that the spritz-thirsty hordes settling in Airbnbs are a threat to the city’s soul.
Here is more from the NYT.
Markets in everything, hockey romance edition
Posters gravitate to players who remind them of their favorite book boyfriends, and one popular choice is Seattle Kraken center Alex Wennberg. His team initially courted BookTok with posts and hashtags in the same style, and flew out a popular creator for a playoff game…
Within the subcategory of sports romance, hockey dominates. Right now, all 10 of the top sports romances on Amazon involve hockey.
Here is the full story.
Sort of Middlebury markets in everything
Middlebury lacks sufficient housing for all the students planning to attend this fall. After exhausting other options, the college plans to pay 30 students $10,000 each to stay away.
Clever idea, but I’m sure you all noticed the “After exhausting other options” clause in there. Here is from the rest of the story:
But the nonresidential buildings could not be renovated in time to add necessary safety features, and the college decided not to house students at Bread Loaf due to the logistics of running a satellite operation, as well as negative feedback from students who had lived there earlier in the pandemic and said they’d felt isolated from the main campus.
I say Granny Flats and beans! It is not for long, so let the learning continue. The article does not discuss the stance of the town of Middlebury, but as it is an exclusive village of about 9,000 I can take a wild guess…
Markets in everything those new service sector jobs body doubling edition
Consultant Micha Goebig scrolled through her phone to find receipts and bill clients while on her home computer on Friday afternoon. Nine strangers quietly watched her on a video link while also doing their own solo work.
The small group was gathered online by Flow Club, a subscription service that says it can help home-based workers stay on task and be productive by quietly working in tandem. The online session was built around body doubling, a productivity strategy gaining traction among remote and hybrid employees who say they get more done if others are looking on.
Body doubling, initially adopted by and coined by ADHD therapists, is one of several ways that workers are trying to regain focus and accountability when they aren’t working under the watchful eyes of bosses and colleagues in the office. A number of companies have sprung up to offer what they say is positive peer pressure that can boost productivity.
Here is the full WSJ piece, interesting throughout. Via the excellent Samir Varma.
Markets in everything those new (Japanese) service sector jobs
Certain tech bosses are notoriously temperamental – so much so that conflict-averse folks have been known to put in their notice while the execs are on leave. But some Japanese employees have taken this a step further – actually employing an agent to quit their job for them.
The idea is to extricate themselves from delicate scenarios where they feel bullied to stay on board or are otherwise unwilling to leave for fear of being accused of “betraying” the corporation.
In a country renowned for its ultra conservative culture and hierarchical structure, those in the workforce who jump between jobs can be perceived as quitters, with all the shameful connotations attached to that branding.
Step forward the taishoku daiko – or “job-leaving agents” – that emerged in recent times to aid those who simply cannot tell their boss they’re off to pastures new.
Here is the full article, via the excellent Samir Varma.
Markets in everything Alaska regulatory arbitrage edition, tribal qualifier added
The shrinking village of Karluk, on the western shore of Kodiak Island, is trying to keep its school viable. So it’s willing to pay a couple of families with three or four children apiece to move there of a year, so that it can draw down state education funds.
Public schools in Alaska need to maintain an enrollment of 10 students to get state funding. Karluk, which had a population of 37 during the 2010 U.S. Census, is now down to about 21 people. The demographics are Native American: 82.14%; two or more races: 17.86%; White: 0%; Black or African American: 0%.
Karluk Tribal Council’s ad says that it will pay a couple of families with enough kids — three or four — to move to the village, all expenses paid, for a year, and will even provide jobs. That money, without question, is passed through from the U.S. and State taxpayer, to pay families so that the village can draw down more government money and open its school.
If this were any other kind of enterprise other than a tribe, these definitions for acceptable applicants would be considered a federal equal opportunity violation. But this is a tribe.
Here is the full story, including means for contacting the village. Via Martin Kennedy.
Tiny markets in everything
A minuscule handbag measuring just 657 by 222 by 700 microns (or less than 0.03 inches wide) sold for over $63,000 at an online auction Wednesday.
Barely visible to the human eye, the fluorescent yellowish-green bag is based on a popular Louis Vuitton design — though it is the work of a New York art collective, not the luxury label itself.
Dubbing its diminutive creation “Microscopic Handbag,” the Brooklyn-based group MSCHF claims the bag is narrow enough to pass through the eye of a needle and is smaller than a grain of sea salt (though that may depend on how coarse you like your salt).
The object was made using two-photon polymerization, a manufacturing technology used to 3D-print micro-scale plastic parts. It was sold alongside a microscope equipped with a digital display through which the bag can be viewed.
There is a (blown-up) photo at the link. Via Anecdotal.
Korean markets in everything
One restaurant in Seoul rose to notoriety after “politely declining” people over 49 (on the basis men of that age might harass female staff), while in 2021, a camping ground in Jeju sparked heated debate with a notice saying it did not accept reservations from people aged 40 or above. Citing a desire to keep noise and alcohol use to a minimum, it stated a preference for women in their 20s and 30s.
Other zones are even more niche.
Among those to have caused a stir on social media are a cafe in Seoul that in 2018 declared itself a “no-rapper zone,” a “no-YouTuber zone” and even a “no-professor zone”.
Here is the full story, via Arpit Gupta.