Results for “"markets in everything"” 1682 found
Colombia markets in everything those new service sector jobs
Ex-guerrillas offer birdwatching, hiking and hearty campfire cuisine as part of Tierra Grata Ecotours in La Paz, a town near the border with Venezuela. Over a two-day hike along boggy mountain paths, Jhonni Giraldo, a former farc footsoldier, leads hardy tourists to Marquetalia, a hamlet. In 1964 the military bombed an armed commune founded by refugees here into oblivion; the survivors headed to the hills and the farc insurgency was born. There is not much to see other than the rusted remains of a downed helicopter. Mr Giraldo is mulling over reconstructing the house of Manuel Marulanda, the founder of the farc.
Here is more from The Economist, via Yana.
Markets in everything those new service sector jobs
A woman who took about 150 theory and practical tests for other drivers has been jailed for eight months.
Police said she was taking tests for people who had difficulty with English.
…Det Ch Insp Steven Maloney said Kaur’s crimes were motivated by greed.
Here is the full story, via Michael B.
Illegal markets in everything
The operator of a Colorado funeral home who was accused of stealing body parts and selling them to medical and scientific buyers, making hundreds of thousands of dollars in what the authorities called an “illegal body part scheme,” pleaded guilty to mail fraud on Tuesday, the Justice Department said.
The woman, Megan Hess, 45, the principal figure in the scheme, was assisted by her mother, Shirley Koch, who is in her late 60s, prosecutors said. As part of a plea agreement, eight other criminal charges against Ms. Hess were dropped. She could face up to 20 years in prison.
“I exceeded the scope of the consent and I’m trying to make an effort to make it right,” Ms. Hess said in United States District Court in Grand Junction, Colo., on Tuesday, according to The Daily Sentinel. “I’m taking responsibility.”
Here is more from the NYT. And this service “retrieves your dead loved ones’ tattoos and preserves them as framed mementos.” Not illegal.
Barter markets in everything
The men’s grisly work gives a stark insight into the wartime repatriation of the dead, often conducted on an exchange basis: a corpse for a corpse...
Lawyer will not say where the truck is heading, but The Sunday Times understands that two exchanges of bodies have taken place in the past week, overseen by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which acts as a neutral intermediary. Ukrainian officials said the first was made on a basis of “160 for 160”, the second “50 for 50”.
Here is more from the London Times ($), grisly throughout.
Insurance markets in everything
In many golf circles, it was (and still is) customary for the lucky golfer to buy drinks for everyone in the clubhouse after landing a hole-in-one. This often resulted in prohibitively expensive bar tabs.
And an industry sprouted up to protect these golfers.
A newspaper archive analysis by The Hustle revealed that hole-in-one insurance firms sprouted up as early as 1933.
Under this model, golfers could pay a fee — say, $1.50 (about $35 today) — to cover a $25 (~$550) bar tab. And as one paper noted in 1937: “The way some of the boys have been bagging the dodos, it might not be a bad idea.”
Though the concept largely faded away in the US, it became a big business in Japan, where golfers who landed a hole-in-one were expected to throw parties “comparable to a small wedding,” including live music, food, drinks, and commemorative tree plantings.
By the 1990s, the hole-in-one insurance industry had a total market value of $220m. An estimated 30% of all Japanese golfers shelled out $50-$70/year to insure themselves against up to $3.5k in expenses.
Here is the full story, via Mathan.
Markets in everything those new service sector jobs
You have heard my scream in Free Guy, Paranormal Activity and Scream (2022). My work often comes in at the post-production stage (after filming has taken place). I pick up additional screams and voice acting for the on-camera actors. Sometimes they don’t have the time to achieve the sound the director wants, or I can offer a different vocal quality to the performance.
As a scream artist you have to know the subtle differences between screams and determine whether they should peak at certain points, or remain steady for a very long time. I have to think: ‘OK, the character is scared here, but are they scared because their life is in danger or are they just startled?’ Those screams will sound very different. Ghost stories, for example, will often use a shrill, harsh scream because we need the audience to also experience fear.
Here is more from Ashley Peldon, via the excellent The Browser, do subscribe.
NFT markets in everything
Ukraine plans to become the first developed country to issue its own collection of non-fungible tokens, as it looks to capitalise on a flood of crypto donations to back its war against Russia.
Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s vice-prime minister, announced the plan in a tweet on Thursday and said Kyiv would reveal details of its NFTs soon.
The move is the latest sign of the Ukrainian government embracing digital assets as a way to fund its armed forces in their battle, and comes after it raised more than $270mn in “war bonds”.
One for each Russian tank destroyed? Here is the full FT story, via Natasha.
(Small) markets in everything
Ralph Nader spent a career bashing corporate executives. Now he’s written a book praising some. It’s not going down too well.
Tentatively called “Twelve CEOs I Have Known and Admired,” the book is more than a little off-brand for the man who upended the world of auto safety with the blockbuster “Unsafe at Any Speed” and then attacked corporate behavior in a number of other industries.
Based on a string of rejection letters from publishers, Mr. Nader said he fears he’s been typecast, making any accolades he might have for corporate tycoons a hard sell. His literary agent, Ronald Goldfarb, advised him to change course and go negative, he says.
“He wanted chapters on bad CEOs,” Mr. Nader said of Mr. Goldfarb.
“I didn’t tell him what to write,” Mr. Goldfarb retorts. “I told him what I could sell.” The two parted ways after working on the manuscript for three months.
Mood affiliation strikes again. Nader fans don’t want to positively affiliate with CEOs, and “love letter” types do not always wish to affiliate with Nader. (By the way, here is my 2014 chat with Nader.) Here is the rest of the Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg WSJ article.
Covid markets in everything, foreign intelligence edition
A government-approved Covid testing firm is being investigated by the UK’s data privacy watchdog after it emerged that it plans to sell customers’ DNA to third parties.
Cignpost Diagnostics, which trades as ExpressTest and offers £35 tests for holidaymakers, said it holds the right to analyse samples from seals to “learn more about human health” – and sell information on to third parties.
Individuals are required to give informed consent for their sensitive medical data to be used – but customers’ consent for their DNA to be sold now as buried in Cignpost’s online documents.
When buying tests, customers were asked to tick a box agreeing to a 4,876 privacy policy which links to a separate document outlining the research programme, The Sunday Times reported…
Cignpost was founded last year and is believed to have sold as many as three million tests. It supplies pre-departure and arrival tests for travellers, with walk-in centres at sites including Gatwick and Heathrow.
Here is the full story, via Michael J.
Crow markets in everything the labor supply-boosting culture that is Sweden
The crows turn in their collected cigarette butts for food:
Over in the Swedish city of Södertälje, about 30 km southwest of Stockholm, a pilot program is being explored which will enlist crows to clean up discarded cigarette butts. Butts account for over 60% of litter in Sweden, and the per-butt cleanup cost falls between 0.8 and 2 Swedish kronor each. The company behind the project, Corvid Cleaning, estimates the cost will be around 0.2 kronor. If the birds picked up all the butts, that would be a substantial savings, but in reality, the current manual cleaning will still be needed. Total savings to the city will depend on the ratio of bird-collected vs. people-collected butts.
Here is the link, via Chris Harges.
Markets in everything those new service sector jobs
Brainstorming a wedding hashtag? Good luck finding one that hasn’t #beendone.
More than a decade of wedding hashtags have flooded social-media sites to help couples curate guests’ photos on their special day. But soon-to-be-newlyweds are finding it harder to identify a clever, distinctive phrase…
Wedding hashtags have historically often combined a couple’s names and wedding year or date, says Marielle Wakim, Ms. Wakim, founder of hashtag-writing service Happily Ever #Hashtagged.
“It’s so beyond #JimandPamWedding2016 at this point,” she says.
Ms. Wakim launched her Los Angeles-based business in 2016 as the wedding-hashtag trend was booming. Her prices range from one hashtag for $50 to five for $125. Some couples prefer having options or multiple hashtags for different events, such as a bachelorette party and wedding ceremony.
Clients want personalized, tailored, creative hashtags, she says. Some have had specific requests, like Disney -themed hashtags or ones that incorporate specific Chance the Rapper lyrics.
Here is the full WSJ story, via Daniel Lippman.
Samsung markets in everything
What would Marshall McLuhan say?:
Staring at your non-fungible tokens on a smartphone or laptop screen is fine and all, but why not remind everyone who visits your home of the money you spent on digital art NFTs by showcasing them on your TV screen? Somehow we’re in a world where that’s about to become reality: Samsung says it’s planning extensive support for NFTs beginning with its 2022 TV lineup.
Here is the full story, via the excellent Samir Varma.
Markets in everything
A Louisiana widow is left horrified at the news that her deceased husband was dissected in front of a live, paying audience after she donated his body to scientific research.
Elsie Saunders had carried out the wishes of her late husband, David Saunders, who wanted his body donated to help advance medical science, according to The Advocate. David Saunders, a World War II and Korean War veteran, died of COVID-19 on August 24 at the age of 98. Donating his body was his last act of patriotism, Elsie Saunders said.
But instead of being delivered to a research facility, David Saunders’ body ended up in a Marriott Hotel ballroom in Portland, Oregon, where DeathScience.org held an “Oddities and Curiosities Expo.” At the October 17 event, members of the public sat ringside from 9 am to 4 pm—with a break for lunch—to watch David Saunders’ body be carefully dissected. Tickets for the dissection sold for up to $500 per person…
Elsie Saunders learned of the dissection from a Seattle-based reporter at KING 5, who was investigating the event and tracked her down. A photojournalist who attended undercover for KING 5 had noted that the body had a bracelet with the typed name “David Saunders.”
“As far as I’m concerned, it’s horrible, unethical, and I just don’t have the words to describe it,” Elsie Saunders told The Advocate. “I have all this paperwork that says his body would be used for science—nothing about this commercialization of his death.”
Are medical students allowed to pay tuition? Is “science” allowed to balance the books? Here is the full story, via the excellent Samir Varma.
Addendum: Under other circumstances, it has been common to use donated bodies for crash test dummies.
Markets in everything
In the latest phase of the quest to turn everything into an NFT, crypto traders are now bidding to digitally own a 1,784-lb. cube of tungsten in Willowbrook, Illinois. According to the terms of the sale, which will have the receipt posted to the blockchain for posterity, the “owner” can have one supervised visit to the cube per year to touch or photograph it.
Over the past two weeks, a joke fired off by Coin Center’s Neeraj Agrawal about a nonexistent tungsten shortage thanks to crypto traders buying cubes of tungsten due to a meme actually caused one for Midwest Tungsten Service. The Illinois manufacturer actually creates small cubes of tungsten, and the tweet caused a 300 percent increase in sales that depleted the company’s stock on Amazon, Coindesk reported.
Last week, The Block reported that the company entered a partnership with crypto payment processor OpenNode to accept Bitcoin payments. One explanation as to why this is happening, which doesn’t really explain why this is happening, was offered to The Block by CMS Holdings’ Dan Matuszewski, who said “crypto just has a propensity for the density.” Tungsten is a very dense metal, comparable to uranium or gold, and its surprising weight is, apparently, pleasurable.
Midwest Tungsten told Coindesk that it primarily makes these cubes for industrial firms, and Sean Murray, the company’s director of e-commerce, suggested to Coindesk there would be a 14-inch cube next. The company offers cubes ranging from an 18-gram, 1-centimeter cube that costs $19.99 to a 41-pound, 4-inch cube that costs $2,999.99.
Well, the 14-inch cube is finally here. It weighs 1,784 poinds and is now listed on OpenSea as an NFT. Seemingly, it’s the biggest cube that Midwest Tungsten can create.
“Since we began selling the cube we have constantly asked ourselves, ‘What is the right size?’, and ‘Would anyone buy a bigger cube?’ Only recently has anyone asked us, or have we asked ourselves, ‘What is the biggest cube we can make?’
Here is the full story, via the excellent Samir Varma. You know, circa 2010 I thought MR was about to run out of startling “Markets in Everything” examples — how wrong I was!
Now-defunct publicity markets in everything
The official Wizard of New Zealand, perhaps the only state-appointed wizard in the world, has been cast from the public payroll, spelling the end to a 23-year legacy.
The Wizard, whose real name is Ian Brackenbury Channell, 88, had been contracted to Christchurch city council for the past two decades to promote the city through “acts of wizardry and other wizard-like services”, at a cost of $16,000 a year. He has been paid a total of $368,000.
Here is the full story, and for the pointer I thank P. And speaking of marketing, here is vaccine markets in everything.