Results for “markets in everything”
1801 found

Those new service sector jobs China markets in everything

At 40 years old, Zheng says she’s tired of searching for the perfect man. So she’s decided to hire one instead.

Whenever she feels like some male company, the divorcée heads to a café in central Shanghai named The Promised Land. There, she spends hours being pampered by a handsome young server, who fetches her drinks, watches movies with her, and listens attentively to her anecdotes.

The sessions cost over 400 yuan ($60) each time, but Zheng says they’re worth every cent.

“The butlers respect me and care about my feelings,” she tells Sixth Tone. “Even if you have a boyfriend, he might not be this sweet, right?”

…The outlets have found success by tapping into the frustrations of Chinese women, many of whom feel society remains far too patriarchal…

Wang Qian, a 24-year-old student, is a regular visitor to the café. She tells Sixth Tone she enjoys the feeling of empowerment she gets from spending time there.

According to Wang, many of the men she meets in normal life are pu xin nan — a term popularized by the female comedian Yang Li that roughly translates as “men who are so average, yet so confident.” The butlers, however, are considerate and never mansplain anything to her, she says…

The butler feels he has to be flawless to progress at The Promised Land. The café imposes a rigid hierarchy. Butlers are divided into three levels: entry, advanced, and celebrity — with each priced differently. To spur competition, the managers hang a board on the wall displaying the number of tips each server has received.

Here is the full story, interesting throughout.

Covid markets in everything, certified air ambulance regulatory arbitrage edition

“We weren’t sure what was going to happen … if they were going to separate us or put us in a hospital,” said McElroy. “I didn’t know if I was going to need a respirator.”

None of that happened. Within 72 hours, the couple was on a Learjet back to Arizona.

Before they left, Underwood purchased memberships with Covac Global, a medical evacuation company launched by the crisis response firm HRI in the spring of 2020. It meant the couple didn’t pay a dime for their repatriation, said McElroy.

Commercial airlines and private jets can’t fly travelers with Covid-19 home, but certified air ambulances staffed with medical teams can.

While some companies evacuate travelers who require hospitalization, Covac Global retrieves travelers who test positive for Covid-19 and have one self-reported symptom. About 85% of evacuees are returned home, while the rest need hospital attention, said CEO Ross Thompson.

When CNBC first spoke with the company in March, it was performing about two to three medical evacuations every month. Now, that number has climbed to about 12 to 20.

Here is the full story, via Shaffin Shariff.

Chess grandmaster markets in everything

But for some players, securing a prestigious title meant more than just playing well. It is an open secret in chess that many players cut side deals with tournament organizers and other top competitors that help them achieve norms they might have struggled to get legitimately.

This culture touched the Momot club. Many of its members acquired their grandmaster credentials in Crimea, at tournaments in places like Sudak and Alushta that were known as “norm factories” — where, for as little as $1,000, organizers would make sure players accumulated enough points for a norm.

But there were other, more subtle, ways to succeed, too. Far from prying eyes, secret agreements and cash exchanges to arrange results were not uncommon, according to interviews with chess players and FIDE officials. In a sport so wholly obsessed with status, title and rank, even selling a game could be accomplished for the right price.

Mikhail Zaitsev, who achieved the rank of International Master and is now a chess coach, estimated that of the world’s roughly 1,900 living grandmasters, at least 10 percent have cheated one way or another to acquire the title. Shohreh Bayat, one of the leading arbiters in chess, describes such arrangements in the plainest terms. “Match fixing,” she said, “is cheating.” Some hopefuls didn’t even have to play a game of chess to get the points they needed: Some tournaments, she said, took place only on paper.

Here is more from Ivan Nechepurenko and at the NYT.

Roger Scruton Hungarian coffee shop markets in everything

When the philosopher Sir Roger Scruton died last year Boris Johnson called him “the greatest modern conservative thinker”.

It seems that he had an even greater admirer in Viktor Orban, the right-wing prime minister of Hungary, whose allies have poured £1.5 million into a chain of coffee shops in Scruton’s memory. The first opened in November in Budapest and is filled with Scruton memorabilia donated by his widow, Sophie.

More cafés will follow, says John O’Sullivan, a former speechwriter for Margaret Thatcher who now chairs a Hungarian think tank. The £1.5 million investment comes from the state-sponsored Batthyany foundation, which also paid for the historian Norman Stone to write a history of Hungary that praised Orban’s leadership.

Here is the full link from the London Times (gated).  For the pointer I thank Jason D.

Markets in everything Japanese melon pan mask edition

Melon pan is not only delicious, but one Japanese company also thinks it can make a good mask.

Osaka-based experimental think tank Goku no Kimochi The Labo has created “Mask Pan” or “Mask Bread” after college students from Fukuoka and Okinawa decided they want to sniff the smell of bread all the time. What better way to do that than wearing melon pan on your face?

FNN reports that Goku no Kimochi The Labo roped in famed melon pan specialty shop Melon de Melon to bake the bread. For each Mask Pan, the middle is carved out, making space for the wearer’s mouth and nose. As silly as this might seem (and goodness does it ever), the melon pan’s signature crunchy outside supposedly has a degree of effectiveness.

Here is the full story, via Shaffin Shariff.

Cheating markets in everything

  • This phone shaker device can achieve your weekly fitness goal without efforts, unlocking rewards at distances in Pokemon Go.
  • The phone walker is ideal for those people who are doing corporate steps challenges to get rewards with freebies for getting fit.
  • The step counter device features three kinds of working modes, running mode(fast speed), jogging mode(medium speed) and walking mode(low speed).
  • It can earn 9,500 steps(running mode) in an hour equivalent to 4 miles approx, cheating your way to 10,000 steps in a short time.
  • It is compatible with any IOS and Android’s smart phones whose width is less than 3.6”. If you have any questions, just feel free to click the contact seller button

Here is the Amazon listing, via Ben M.

NFT virtual horse markets in everything

Is it simply that we have made gambling too much fun and too intriguing?  Or should we upgrade our view of the welfare consequences of gambling?:

On Zed Run, a digital horse racing platform, several such events take place every hour, seven days a week. Owners pay modest entry fees — usually between $2 and $15 — to run their steeds against others for prize money.

The horses in these online races are NFTs, or “nonfungible tokens,” meaning they exist only as digital assets….

“A breathing NFT is one that has its own unique DNA,” said Roman Tirone, the head of partnerships at Virtually Human, the Australian studio that created Zed Run. “It can breed, has a bloodline, has a life of its own. It races, it has genes it passes on, and it lives on an algorithm so no two horses are the same.” (Yes, owners can breed their NFT horses in Zed Run’s “stud farm.”)

People — most of them crypto enthusiasts — are rushing to snap up the digital horses, which arrive on Zed Run’s site as limited-edition drops; some of them have fetched higher sums than living steeds. One player sold a stable full of digital racehorses for $252,000. Another got $125,000 for a single racehorse. So far, more than 11,000 digital horses have been sold on the platform.

Alex Taub, a tech start-up founder in Miami, has purchased 48 of them. “Most NFTs, you buy them and sell them, and that’s how you make money,” Mr. Taub, 33, said. “With Zed, you can earn money on your NFT by racing or breeding.”

One implication here is that automation is never going to destroy all of the jobs.  Here is the full NYT story.

Markets in everything those new service sector jobs work from a distance

Soon, she said, money began flowing into her account. “Please take all of my money for your trip, I don’t deserve it,” wrote Betaboy10, who gave $500, according to screen shots she provided to The New York Times. Another, named SubMike00, sent $250. A user who goes by Peter Zapp sent $400, along with the message: “I’d do anything to be owned by you.”

Welcome to the lucrative world of financial domination, a form of B.D.S.M. that has flourished during the pandemic, when many sex workers and their customers have migrated online because of social distancing precautions. The concept is simple, even if the allure is not immediately self-evident: “finsubs” (short for “financial submissives”) send monetary “tributes” to a financial dominatrix, who could be any gender, in exchange for being humiliated and degraded.

“It’s controlling someone through their wallet,” said Mistress Marley. (The Times agreed to identify her only by her professional name to prevent stalkers from finding her.) “I love waking up every day realizing that submissive men pay all my bills and I don’t spend a dime.”

…Giving away your hard-earned money may seem counterintuitive or unpleasant, like paying off credit cards and student loans. But for finsubs, who are also known as “pay pigs,” it is liberating and titillating.

And:

Financial domination is helping Charlie, 29, a sales manager in Ohio, identify as a transgender woman, even as she presents as a man in her “vanilla” life, she said. King Kourt, her findomme, has full access to one of her bank accounts, she said, and as part of a “consensual blackmail” arrangement, King Kourt threatens to expose Charlie as a woman in exchange for money.

The idea, both said, is to encourage Charlie to live as she wants in public as well as private.

Giving up financial control may also help some finsubs become more empathetic. William M., 31, a technology manager for a school system, said that he spends $300 a month on Queen Astro, 31, a findomme from Los Angeles. Every time he sends money, she publicly belittles him on Twitter or degrades him on Skype.

“I used to be much more self-centered,” William said.

And here is paragraph that is totally wrong:

In that sense, financial domination is not so different from some marriages. “We don’t call it findom,” Dr. Kort said. “We see it as romantic, as one partner telling another, ‘I’m going to take care of you.’ In findom, it becomes erotic, but it’s the same dynamic.”

Here is much more from The New York Times.  Seems to me like a pandemic-driven shift in the terms of trade to the suppliers!  Work backwards and infer the underlying elasticity of demand.

Maine marijuana markets in everything those new service sector jobs

In Maine it is legal to use and possess marijuana (within limits), but illegal to sell it or give it away.  And so how might a transfer be consummated?:

Cannabis Delivery Services are illegal in Maine.  Gifting Cannabis is illegal in Maine.  Don’t worry though! It is still legal for an Adult age 21/+ to carry 2.5oz of Cannabis Flower and up to 5 grams of concentrates!

So under your scenario you are in Maine vacationing, living, etc… and you lost your weed.  OH NO!  Who do you call? The INCREDIBLES.ME Psychic Service!  We have Psychics roaming all over Portland communicating with their deity, their spirit guides, and having religious moments of clarity. We can guarantee to find your LOST WEED!! (For a small, but very worth while fee!).

Just login to this site, and select the cannabis or cannabis products you lost, and give us your address.  We will find YOUR weed and get it back to you ASAP.  Fees vary based on the time it takes us to find your weed, the quantity of weed we have to locate, and the distance in which we have to travel to get YOUR LOST weed back to you.

Here is more, via Jacob F.

India collateralized smart phone markets in everything

…the easiest way for retailers and online stores to get high-end devices into working-class people’s pockets has been through a new method of lending: collateralizing smartphones. Vendors are selling smartphones to first-time borrowers on high-interest payment plans financed by loan companies, but only after users install an undeletable app at the point of sale. The apps can then monitor repayment behavior throughout the duration of the loan. One late payment leads to instant blocking of the phone, rendering it useless. For loan providers and smartphone sellers, this form of lending opens their products to a new class of consumers

Datacultr uses a laundry list of techniques to force borrowers into paying. The app starts by sending audiovisual prompts in regional languages as reminders. If the user misses their first repayment, it forcefully changes the wallpaper on their cellphones. If Datacultr’s data scrape reveals a user to be a prolific selfie-taker, for instance, the app will send notifications every time the camera function is opened. If the user continues to default on the loan, frequently used messaging and social apps like Facebook or Instagram are progressively blocked, severely restricting the use of the device and ultimately shutting down all of the phone’s functionalities.

Be careful if you buy a used phone!  Here is the full story, via the excellent Samir Varma.

Zero price markets in everything

Had enough Zoom meetings? Can’t bear another soul-numbing day of sitting on video calls, the only distraction your rapidly aging face, pinned in one corner of the screen like a dying bug? Well, if so, then boy do we have the app for you. Meet Zoom Escaper: a free web widget that lets you add an array of fake audio effects to your next Zoom Call, gifting you with numerous reasons to end the meeting and escape, while you still can.

You can choose from barking dogs, construction noises, crying babies, or even subtler effects like choppy audio and unwanted echoes. Created by artist Sam Lavigne, Zoom Escaper is fantastically simple to use. All you need do is download a free bit of audio software called VB-Audio that routes your audio through the website, then change your audio input in Zoom from your microphone to VB-Audio, and play with the effects.

Here is much more, via Schaffin and also Michael Rosenwald.