Results for “markets in everything” 1899 found
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.
Neanderthal bone markets in everything?
Did Neanderthal produce a bone industry? The recent discovery of a large bone tool assemblage at the Neanderthal site of Chagyrskaya (Altai, Siberia, Russia) and the increasing discoveries of isolated finds of bone tools in various Mousterian sites across Eurasia stimulate the debate. Assuming that the isolate finds may be the tip of the iceberg and that the Siberian occurrence did not result from a local adaptation of easternmost Neanderthals, we looked for evidence of a similar industry in the Western side of their spread area. We assessed the bone tool potential of the Quina bone-bed level currently under excavation at chez Pinaud site (Jonzac, Charente-Maritime, France) and found as many bone tools as flint ones: not only the well-known retouchers but also beveled tools, retouched artifacts and a smooth-ended rib. Their diversity opens a window on a range of activities not expected in a butchering site and not documented by the flint tools, all involved in the carcass processing. The re-use of 20% of the bone blanks, which are mainly from large ungulates among faunal remains largely dominated by reindeer, raises the question of blank procurement and management. From the Altai to the Atlantic shore, through a multitude of sites where only a few objects have been reported so far, evidence of a Neanderthal bone industry is emerging which provides new insights on Middle Paleolithic subsistence strategies.
That is from a new paper by Malvina Baumann, et.al. Via the excellent Kevin Lewis.
Future markets in everything?
Here is one series of takes on AI in cinema/TV, and where it is going:
4. Viewers getting digitally scanned themselves, and paying extra to have themselves inserted in these custom films. 7/
— Justine Bateman (@JustineBateman) May 13, 2023
Via Anecdotal.
Smile markets in everything, Japanese demasking edition
Thirty-seven people, including the elderly, took a smiling lesson to prepare for taking off their masks in public following three years of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The instruction was held in the Akabane district in Tokyo’s Kita Ward on May 7, the day before the reclassification of COVID-19 to a less-severe category that includes the seasonal flu.
“With mask wearing having become the norm, people have had fewer opportunities to smile, and more and more people have developed a complex about it,” said Keiko Kawano, 49, the smile trainer who served as the instructor for the lesson.
“Moving and relaxing the facial muscles is the key to making a good smile,” she said.
Participants used hand mirrors to check their smiles.
Here is the full story, via John McLennan. Note that the Japanese mask requirement was dropped only in March.
The polity that is Russian markets in everything
In Russian prisons, they said they were deprived of effective treatments for their H.I.V. On the battlefield in Ukraine, they were offered hope, with the promise of anti-viral medications if they agreed to fight.
It was a recruiting pitch that worked for many Russian prisoners.
About 20 percent of recruits in Russian prisoner units are H.I.V. positive, Ukrainian authorities estimate based on infection rates in captured soldiers. Serving on the front lines seemed less risky than staying in prison, the detainees said in interviews with The New York Times.
Here is the full NYT story. And here is how it unfolded:
Timur had no military experience and was provided two weeks of training before deployment to the front, he said. He was issued a Kalashnikov rifle, 120 bullets, an armored vest and a helmet for the assault. Before sending the soldiers forward, he said, commanders “repeated many times, ‘if you try to leave this field, we will shoot you.’”
Soldiers in his platoon, he said, were sent on a risky assault, waves of soldiers with little chance of survival sent into battle on the outskirts of the eastern city of Bakhmut. Most were killed on their first day of combat. Timur was captured.
Roughly ten percent of Russia’s incarcerated population has signed up to fight in Ukraine.
“Almost space” markets in everything
The space race just got a new entrant. France’s Zephalto is offering passengers the chance to travel to the stratosphere in a balloon, starting at €120,000 ($132,000) per person in 2025.
“I partnered with the French space agency, and we worked on the concept of the balloon together,” says Zephalto founder and aerospace engineer Vincent Farret d’Astiès.
He tells Bloomberg that he’s planning on 60 flights a year, with just six passengers on board each flight. The company aims to provide an experience that brings the best bits of French hospitality—fine food, wine and design—to the edges of space for those who can afford the six-figure ticket.
Balloons filled with helium or hydrogen will depart from France with two pilots on board and rise 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) into the stratosphere for 1 1/2 hours. Once at peak altitude, which is about three times higher than for a commercial airliner, the balloon will stay for three hours, giving guests a chance to take in views previously seen only by astronauts. The descent will take a further hour and a half, for a six-hour round trip.
Here is more from Sarah Rappaport at Bloomberg. Via Daniel Lippman.