Results for “markets in everything” 1895 found
Meta-markets in everything, single phone number edition
What if you could text a number and get anything you want?
That’s the ambitious goal of a new startup called Magic, a text-messaging-based concierge service that promises to pull strings, place orders, and schedule deliveries all so you don’t have to.
Magic doesn’t have a dedicated app. It instead exists as a phone number nestled inside your contact list, acting as your go-to “guy” for anything (legal) you may need.
It’s only available in the US for now, and you can sign up by texting 408-217-1721.
The Sacred Introvert Retreat Tour markets in everything
The first Sacred Introvert Retreat Tour will take place this coming May, led by founder Lisa Avebury. Over ten days, participants will visit Glastonbury and other sites in south east England. Travellers will each have their own room and every other day will be a ‘local’ day, when visitors can rest and recharge in the peaceful surroundings of Glastonbury Abbey Retreat. The tour includes visits to mystical, historical sights such as the stone circle and the Chalice Well — where the Holy Grail is supposedly hidden. There are relaxed day trips to medieval churches and roman baths, optional yoga sessions and evening activities such as torchlit walks and bonfires.
Lisa Avebury, a self-proclaimed introvert, founded the retreat company to give quieter individuals a group travel option which catered to their needs, where silences are comfortable and socializing is optional, not mandatory. The trips costs USD 3,795 excluding flights and Avebury hopes it will be the first of many.
There is more here, and for the pointer I thank Michael Rosenwald.
China patriotic markets in everything fact of the day
As families around China prepare for Lunar New Year celebrations next week, shoppers in one southeastern city can add another delicacy to their shopping list: “patriotic fish.”
Photos of shoppers in Fuzhou, the capital of Fujian Province, thronging around cases of frozen fish and sea urchins circulated in China on Wednesday. This was no ordinary seafood, however. It was from Mischief Reef, which has been controlled by China since 1994 but is part of the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea also claimed by the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam.
“You can steam it, make soup, braise, slice or fry it — it’s all possible!” Lin Zailiang, 82, a former government official who heads the fish-farming program, told the gathered shoppers. Behind him, a blue billboard advertised the products as “South China Sea ‘Patriotic Fish’ — the Third Season.” The entire 8,300 pounds of seafood sold out in two hours, according to the state-run China News Service.
But Mr. Lin, white-haired and wearing a garland of orchids around his neck, also made it clear that the program was about more than just providing delicacies for the table.
Cultivating fish at Mischief Reef, called Meiji Reef by the Chinese, is equivalent to “safeguarding national sovereignty,” Mr. Lin was quoted as saying. “Because once there are residents there — us — it becomes our territory, according to international ocean law.”
There is more here.
Markets in everything
Better-known and more mainstream European politicians are also cozying up to Putin: French ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy, who was recently re-elected head of the powerful UMP, came out this week in support of the EU formally ceding Crimea to Russia, and had some kind words for the Kremlin. Another UMP figure, the mayor of Nice, has come out in even stronger support of Putin.
There is more here, background information here. As we already are seeing, the European response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine will not be overwhelmingly strong.
Televised Korea markets in everything
I have seen this future in the eighth-floor apartment of Lee Chang-hyun in Seoul (pictured at work, above). At around midnight, he goes online with a couple of friends and performs his meal, spicy raw squid one day, crab the next. “Perform” is the right word. He is extravagant in his gestures, flaunting the food to his computer camera to tantalise the viewers. He eats noisily and that’s part of the show. He’s invested in a good microphone to capture the full crunch and slurp.
This is not a private affair. Some 10,000 people watch him eating per day, he says. They send a constant stream of messages to his computer and he responds verbally (by talking) and orally (by eating, very visibly and noisily).
If the audience like the performance, they allocate him what are called “star balloons” and each of these means a payment to him and to the internet television channel on which he performs. He is coy about how much he earns but the BBC has estimated, by noting the number of star balloons on his screen, that it would run into several hundred dollars for a two-hour stint.
The full story is here, and for the pointer I thank Claire Hill.
Airbnb markets in everything
Massachusetts man rents out igloo on Airbnb for $10 a night
Pierre, who says he learned to build igloos in Siberia, is offering the digs outside his Cambridge home, which ‘comfortably fits 1, or 2 if curled up.’
The full article is here, point from NinjaEconomics. Sleeping bags are not included. And here is an FT feature on living quarters in Japan:
Instead of the traditional 70 square metres, some of Glorio Eifukucho’s three-bed apartments are 60 sq m, a trend mirrored at new developments across the Tokyo suburbs, according to analysts and developers. Since bedrooms need beds, kitchens need stoves and bathrooms need showers, the living room gets squeezed.
Pink explosion markets in everything
When their new $70,000 princess-themed playroom is finished in March, Stella, 4 years old, and Presley, 2½, will have a faux gem-encrusted performance stage, a treehouse loft, and a mini-French cafe. A $20,000 custom carpet with colorful pathways will lead the girls to the various play areas.
“It’s going to be a pink explosion, with hearts and bows and crowns and tassels,” says their mother, Lindsay Dickhout, chief executive of a company that makes tanning products. The playroom will occupy about 1,500 square feet on the ground floor of the family’s 7,000-square foot home in Newport Beach, Calif.
Upstairs are the girls’ royal bedrooms, in which Stella sleeps in a $6,000 custom-made castle bed, and Presley’s pink-and-white striped wallpaper is illuminated by a crown-shaped chandelier.
Princesses have long enchanted little girls. But cultural flash points in recent years, such as Disney ’s blockbuster “Frozen” and Prince William’s royal wedding, have fueled demand for increasingly elaborate—and expensive—fantasy rooms.
Enjoying the spoils are interior designers who specialize in decorating kids’ ultimate bedrooms. Specialty furniture companies deal in lavish royal-boudoir accouterments, from $3,000 Cinderella lamps to $35,000 carriage-shaped beds. As the style becomes more popular, more mass-market companies have rolled out crown-shaped cornices, tulle canopies, and Rococo children’s furniture.
The full Katy McLaughlin WSJ article is here, the photos are superb. For the pointer I thank Samir Varma.
Geoengineering markets in everything
Oliver’s Travels, a luxury travel and rental service, has begun offering the service for prospective brides and grooms who are interested in a sunny destination wedding at certain venues in France (the company is planning on expanding availability to the UK and Italy if the concept “takes off”).
For a fee starting at £100,000 (~$150K), the company will give a team of pilots and meteorologists 3 weeks to plan and affect the weather on your big day. The technology is called “cloud bursting” (or “cloud seeding“) or using a chemical called silver iodide to “seed” the clouds and cause them to rain.
By inducing rain and cloud dissipation for 24 hours before the wedding day, the team can guarantee a relatively cloud free and sunny environment on the day of.
There is more here, and for the pointer I thank Michael Rosenwald.
Monopoly markets in everything, French edition
Monopoly games filled with real money, in this case euros, from France:
In honor of the game’s 80th anniversary this year, its French manufacturers have replaced its traditional fake bills with real money in 80 boxes now on sale.
As if Monopoly needed higher stakes.
Agence France-Presse reported that 69 of the prize sets will include five 10-euro notes and five 20-euro notes, while another 10 will include five real 20-euro notes, two 50-euro notes and one 100-euro note.
For the final box, the entire “bank” has been replaced with real bills, making the game — which costs about 26 euros before shipping and handling — worth 20,580 euros, or about $23,000.
The notes were replaced during a covert operation last month in the small forest town of Creutzwald in northeastern France.
The monopoly boxes are selling for the normal price, although of course without notice as to which boxes have the real money inside. Hasbro’s U.S. wing, by the way, is planning a ““vintage style board” to complement the 27 other variations currently available.”
The article is here, hat tip goes to NinjaEconomics.
Super Bowl art museum landscape betting lending markets in everything
Seattle Art Museum and New England’s Clark Art Institute are wagering temporary loans of major paintings based on the outcome of Super Bowl XLIX between the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots. The masterpieces that have been anted up showcase the beautiful landscapes of the Northwest and the Northeast respectively.
The robot culture that is Japanese markets in everything
A hotel with robot staff and face recognition instead of room keys will open this summer in Huis Ten Bosch in Nagasaki Prefecture, the operator of the theme park said Tuesday.
The two-story Henn na Hotel is scheduled to open July 17. It will be promoted with the slogan “A Commitment for Evolution,” Huis Ten Bosch Co. said.
The name reflects how the hotel will “change with cutting-edge technology,” a company official said. This is a play on words: “Henn” is also part of the Japanese word for change.
Robots will provide porter service, room cleaning, front desk and other services to reduce costs and to ensure comfort.
There will be facial recognition technology so guests can enter their rooms without a key.
At least for now, the facial recognition bit means you cannot send your robot to stay there…
The story is here, alas I have forgotten whom I should thank for this pointer.
How to read fast, I mean really fast markets in everything
As part of a publicity stunt, author James Patterson is giving away 1,000 self-destructing digital advance copies of his latest novel, Private Vegas. If you score one, you have 24 hours to finish the entire book before the text vanishes forever. And if that’s just not risky enough, Patterson is selling a real self-destructing copy (for a whopping $294,038) that includes a dedicated bomb squad, among other creature comforts. There are likely much better ways to spend six digits in record time, but it’ll probably be the most exciting reading experience you ever have — no matter how good the story might be.
There is more here, via Kurt Busboom. Much better than my advice, it would seem.
Equine markets in everything
Circa the late nineteenth century, in urban America:
Even the wastes of horses were commodified. The collection of urban manure had old, even ancient roots. Again, the process is most easily documented in New York City. Before 1878, individuals roamed the street and picked up manure. In that year the Common Council supposedly sold an exclusive license to a William Hitchcock, who sold the street sweepings to farmers for fertilizer. Street sweepings varied in quality and were worth more if from an asphalt street than if from a gravel street or a dirty alley. They were always worth less than stable manure, a purer product. The older pattern of individuals collecting street manure for urban gardens never fully went away, and as late as the first half of the twentieth century neighborhood children in the Italian American neighborhood of East Harlem did a thriving business collecting horse manure from the streets for backyard gardens in the area.
That is from Clay McShane and Joel A. Tarr, The Horse in the City: Living Machines in the Nineteenth Century, an excellent book from 2007. I am sorry it took me so long to discover this work. It has wonderful sentences such as:
Stables rarely make it into the histories of the built environment, although they constituted a substantial part of that environment.
How can you go wrong with that? There is good economics on every page of this book.
Poker markets in everything
All-In Kitchen, which will be opening in Haggerston, London, will see diners’ success at the poker table determine how much they pay for their meal.
Markets in everything: the ugly mirror
Tucked between their 4K televisions and their induction cooktop stove, Panasonic’s booth at the Consumer Electronic Show is also home to a futuristic magic mirror way more terrifying than that disembodied mask from Snow White.
The Japanese heavy-hitter’s smart mirror has digital displays, including a secondary projection of your own reflection. The projection can be virtually altered to display different makeup looks, hairdos, and even facial hair styles.
But here’s where it gets really fun: it can also pinpoint all your flaws, from tiny wrinkles to barely-perceptible pores, and then “recommend” a series of beauty products and treatments in order to improve your look. Because apparently we weren’t picking apart our reflections enough as it is.
It also keeps track of your horrible, hideous flaws, so you can see if all the money you spent is working, or if you ought to spend more money.
“Once you start using products, you can track whether or not they’ve been working,” sales rep Joey Liao explained cheerfully, gesturing to another volunteer who sat pouting at a vanity. “So if she buys a very expensive new night cream and a month later has made no progress, goodbye night cream! You don’t need to invest in that anymore. You can use a different product.”
That story was sent to me by the excellent Mark Thorson, who also points us to the Norwegian Caribbean cruise that has a special snow room.