Results for “markets in everything” 1878 found
Markets in everything: cafes that charge by the minute
Ever felt you’ve overstayed your welcome in a cafe, by reading, working or surfing the web while hugging the latte you bought two hours ago? Pay-per-minute cafes could be the answer. Ziferblat, the first UK branch of a Russian chain, has just opened in London (388 Old Street), where “everything is free inside except the time you spend there”. The fee: 3p a minute.
Ziferblat means clock face in Russian and German (Zifferblatt). The idea is guests take an alarm clock from the cupboard on arrival and note the time, then keep it with them, before, quite literally, clocking out at the end.
The link is here, hat tip goes to Tim Harford and also Ian Leslie.
China/Hong Kong markets in everything
Rich mainland parents are paying thousands of Hong Kong dollars to private investigators to spy on their children studying in Hong Kong, including PhD students and kindergarteners.
Four detective agencies said they handled on average “a few” to “a dozen” week-long investigations for mainland parents every month.
“The number has more than doubled compared to a few years ago,” said Kar Liu, a private eye at Wan King On Investigations.
Philic Man Hin-nam, founder and director of Global Investigation and Security Consultancy, an all-woman detective agency, said that mainland student cases accounted for about 40 per cent of the more than 100 requests made by parents last summer for information on their children.
The majority of family cases were instigated by Hong Kong parents who had reason to fear their children were involved with drugs or being led astray.
“Many mainland students studying in Hong Kong are single children from rich families,” Liu of Wan King On Investigations said. “Those parents attach great importance to their children’s behaviour.”
…Typically, a team of three agents monitor a student, taking photos and reporting back to parents daily.
There is more here, via Mark Thorson.
The increasing velocity of goods is a deflationary pressure (rental markets in everything Average is Over)
Anouk Gillis often sports a pair of organic-cotton jeans she ordered online. But she doesn’t actually own them.
Rather than buying the pants, which retail for around €100 ($135), Ms. Gillis signed a 12-month lease with their designer, the small Dutch fashion label Mud Jeans. The terms: a €20 deposit and monthly installments of €5.
After a year, Ms. Gillis, who is also Dutch, can decide to buy the jeans, return them, or exchange them for a new pair.
“The idea was to make high-quality jeans available to everybody,” said Bert van Son, chief executive of Mud Jeans, which promises to recycle the used jeans into new pairs or sell them secondhand at the end of a lease.
The deal shows how companies are trying to reconnect with Europe’s cash-strapped consumers, who increasingly rely on renting, sharing or even bartering for products and services ranging from clothing to vacations to lawn mowing.
There is more here. For the pointer I thank the man who delivered my morning Wall Street Journal.
Markets in everything
Reverse shoplifting edition, the link is from Japan by the way. As it is explained to me in an email:
Value_Added #240950
(Del Monte whole kernel corn no salt added)2012-Canned corn and receipts
Dimensions variableThe artist takes one canned good to multiple supermarkets and re-buys it. This single can of corn has been re-bought from 105 supermarkets for a total of $113.07. ( as of June1, 2013 )This procedure is possible because the stores have no way to identify individual items: the barcode printed on my can’s label, #240950, refers to its contents, and not to that particular can.
Testicle car markets in everything
Many of us testicle owner/operators have often claimed that we’d happily donate our (usually left) testicle for something, usually some kind of car. So it shouldn’t be so shocking to hear that some loon is actually doing just that. One nut for $35,000. Which he’s using to buy a Nissan 370Z.
As much as I’d like to picture the scene where this ashen-faced man stumbles into a Nissan dealership, plonks a jar with a floating, solitary testicle on the counter, and points to a red 370Z before collapsing, the reality is much more orderly.
The man, Mark Parisi, is donating his nut to a medical research organization for a sum of $35,000.
There is more here, noting that the deal may not survive this publicity. Here is more on Mark:
There are other advantages to being a human Guinea pig: He gets free checkups, which can save him around $700.
Parisi estimates he’s saved more than $150,000 over the past two years by participating in other medical studies, including an Ebola virus study that paid $5,000 a week, the Province Journal reported.
For the pointer I thank Skeptical Scalpel and @hswapnil.
Markets in everything
The words on the website say it all:
Monetize without ads
Let your visitors help you mine Bitcoins
The pointer is from the excellent Ashok Rao.
Markets in everything: paid friends
This account may to some degree be speculative, but here goes:
According to one avid PF [paid friend] employer, ‘Once you’ve had paid friends who don’t argue with you, it’s actually quite hard to go back to real friends.’
The ex-wife of a PF hoarder said ‘many really successful men don’t actually have time for real friends,’ because normal friends ‘are either resentful or bitter or ask for money,’ and that some ‘are often competitive.’
She said that as a result, ‘very rich men have paid friends as an expensive filter, because they can control them.’
If her ex-husband were not wealthy, ‘he’d be sitting all alone in his apartment with a container of Haagan-Dazs and a bottle of vodka,’ she said.
I say why opt for “paid friends” when you can have a $6,000 Vertu smart phone?
The full story is here, hat tip goes to @ArikSharon.
Amazon markets in everything
The cash-short United States Postal Service, which has failed to win congressional approval to stop delivering mail on Saturdays to save money, has struck a deal with the online retailer Amazon.com to deliver the company’s packages on Sundays — a first for both, with obvious advantages for each.
There is more here. And here is an example of the trouble Amazon can get you into.
Amazon markets in everything
- Financial Analyst
- Specialties: Data management, Financial Reporting; Financial Modeling; Cash flow valuation, Scenario/sensitivity analysis, and ROI, NPV, and IRR analyses; Advanced proficiency with Microsoft Office 2011, ability to quickly adapt to new database software.
The link is here, with review, a bargain I say, hire her! And see if they will throw in free shipping…
Japan markets in everything
While you’re probably aware of Tokyo’s cat cafes that let visitors cuddle up with a kitty while sipping some coffee, you’re unlikely to have heard of owl cafes, the latest craze to take hold in the Japanese capitol. Known locally as a “fukurou cafe,” some of the establishments offer owl-themed food and drink, and some even let you pet the owls in residence.
Some of the stores that garnered online attention late last year include Fukurou no Mise (“Owl Shop”) and Tori no Iru Cafe (“The Cafe with Birds”). Since then, more of the owl cafes have opened around Tokyo and Osaka including Fukurou Sabou (“Owl Teahouse”), Owl Family, and Crew.
There are photos at the link, hat tip goes to Ian Leslie.
What is the rate of return on killing black rhinos? (auction markets in everything)
The Dallas Safari Club said Friday it aims to raise up to a million dollars for endangered black rhinoceroses by auctioning off a permit to kill one in Namibia. The move has raised the ire of wildlife preservation organizations, who question the move’s ethics.
Ben Carter, executive director of the Dallas Safari Club, told Agence France Presse the Namibian government “selected” his hunting club to auction a black rhino hunting permit for use in one of its national parks. Namibia has an annual quota to kill up to five black rhinos out of the southern African nation’s herd population of 1,795 animals.
“First and foremost, this is about saving the black rhino,” Carter said.
The permit is expected “to sell for at least $250,000, possibly up to $1 million,” and will be auctioned off at the Club’s annual convention from Jan. 9-12 next year. The Conservation Trust Fund for Namibia’s Black Rhino will receive 100 percent of the sale price, the Club said.
There is more here, courtesy of the excellent Mark Thorson.
The Living Wallet (markets in everything, the culture that is Japan)
A Japanese company has finally found a possible answer to out of control spending. A so-called “Living Wallet” is equipped with runaway skills, the ability to call out for help, and dodge your ready-to-reach-out hands rolled into one. It’d be no surprise if Rebecca Bloomwood would swear by it to keep her shopaholic tendencies.
The folded wallet has wheels that make it move away once it detects your hands reaching out for it. But if you happen to get a hold of the wallet, cries of “Don’t touch me!” and “Help me!” can be heard. If you’re persistent enough, it activates its last resort to save your bills from being spent and your cards from being swiped. It automatically sends an email to your mom that you might just find you pleading to a robotic wallet, “Don’t tell my mother!”
The Living Wallet is also connected to a mobile app that checks one’s spending, all to make sure that one stays away from unnecessary shopping or any impulsive buying. That’s what you can expect once you put your Living Wallet in “Save Mode.” If you put it in “Consume Mode,” you can expect something else yet, still a little crazy.
Once you let it know that you have enough money for spending, it puts on Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, 4th Movement.
There is a bit more here, with photos and a short video, via the excellent Mark Thorson.
New Zealand vending machine markets in everything
Oxford farmers Geoff and Sandra Rountree will start selling the controversial beverage through a refrigerated vending machine at their farm gate this week. The Rountrees are franchisees of raw milk company Village Milk, which has developed a network of six vending machines around New Zealand in just over a year. Managing director Richard Houston said his franchisees were the only certified raw milk suppliers in the country.
Seattle markets in everything?
To understand homelessness, you could work at a social service agency. Or volunteer. Or read.
Or, if you believe a website called “Real View Tours,” you can also pay $2,000 to live undercover as a homeless person in Seattle with a tour guide for three days.
“You will gain a new respect for the folks that find themselves in this predicament,” Real View Tours says of its “Course in Applied Homelessness.”
“You will see the seedier side of Seattle in a new light and have an experience that you will never forget. Embrace the Experience!”
There is more here, and I thank Mark Thorson for the pointer.
Is there a rural British rebellion against markets in everything?
Cats, foxes, badgers, mice or dogs, killed and mangled by tires and left to rot by the side of the road. Most people simply drive past and feel disgust with perhaps a tinge of sorrow. But Arthur Boyt scrapes them up and has them for dinner.
Roadkill eaters devour whatever they find. Boyt, 74, a retired researcher, collects the furry accident victims and takes them to his remote house in the beautiful county of Cornwall in southwestern England, the AFP reports.
Then he gets to work skinning, gutting and, of course, cooking them. Proper preparation is especially important because some of the animals he finds have been dead for a few weeks. You can just pick off the maggots and worms, he says, and still enjoy the meat.
“I’ve eaten stuff which is dark green and stinks — it does appear that if you cook it well, its rottenness does not hinder one’s enjoyment of the animal,” Boyt told the AFP. “It’s not in the taste of the food; it’s in the head. It’s a threshold you have to step over if you’re going to eat this kind of stuff. You say ‘OK, this is just meat.'”
“I have never been ill from eating roadkill,” Boyt notes. “People have been here for a meal and been sick when they got home — but I’m sure that was something else.”
Not from The Onion, rather here is the article from the English-language Der Spiegel. And I wonder if his marriage counts as an instance of assortative mating or not:
Boyt’s wife, on the other hand, is a vegetarian. So he only cooks roadkill when she goes out. “She goes to see her mother once a week,” he says. “So if she stays the night, it’s a grand opportunity for a big feast.”