Centives

Andrew Tarantola wrote about Zume, a pizza maker with several innovative ideas:

• Zume’s pizzas start on a production line with machines preparing the dough and saucing the pizza. The system allows them to make over 400 pizzas an hour.
• Delivery orders are loaded onto oven equipped vehicles that use GPS and predictive algorithms to automatically fire up the oven four minutes before arrival, delivering a perfectly warmed pizza.
• The pies are presented in a sugar cane fiber box that help ensure the crust stays crunchy.
• Big data analysis helps the company predict peak delivery periods – such as particular time of days or cultural events like the Game of Thrones finale.
• If demand is particularly high the delivery trucks turn into stationary forward operating bases that quickly make pizzas. Additional delivery scooters are then deployed to the makeshift pizzeria to transport the pizzas.

Read more on Engadget.

Eli Keel wrote about evolution in theater:

• Directors bring in fight choreographers for battle scenes, and singing coaches for musical numbers. Now some are hiring specialists for intimate moments.
• Intimacy directors will help coach actors through everything from a simple hug or a kiss to full on simulated sex scenes in the nude.
• Fight choreographers make sure that the victim is in control of the attacks they face. Similarly, intimacy directors will ensure that the party with the least power in the scene has the most control.
• They also use frameworks such as the Four Pillars of Intimacy Direction: consent, communication, choreography, and context.

Read more on Leo Weekly.

Via: Marginal Revolution

Christoph Rauwald wrote about super cars:

• The Bugatti Veyron had a limited production run of 450 cars. Each one started at $1.85 million.
• Yet somehow the company is estimated to have lost over $5 million for each car sold.
• Executives at parent company Volkswagen point to the research and development costs of building one of the world’s fastest cars as a prime reason for the Veyron’s poor financial performance.
• They also argue that Bugatti’s reputation helps sell other Volkswagen luxury brands like Porsche and Audi.
• And management points out that the amount lost on the Bugatti brand is peanuts compared to what other car makers invest in projects like Formula 1 Racing.
• Prices could increase. Buyers can afford it – the average Bugatti owner has 84 other cars, 3 jets, and a yacht.
• The carmaker is experimenting with addons like a built-in caviar tray created by a 250-year-old porcelain maker, to further extend its luxury appeal.

Read more on Bloomberg.

Who you gonna call? You have a menu of options if you’re in France wrote The Economist:

• The Catholic Church has 100 licensed exorcist priests in France but most are inactive.
• Independent contractors have sprung up to fill the supply gap. One general exorcist charges $180 an hour to rid properties of demons.
• Others are specialists. One that focuses on exorcising farms charges about $600 per exorcism.
• The business can be lucrative. One practitioner reports working 15 hours a day and earning $14,000 a month.
• Demand tends to rise after terrorist attacks.
• American TV shows such as Fox’s The Exorcist also drive inquiries.

Read more on The Economist.

Jiayang Fan wrote about mistress dispellers in China:

• Mistress dispellers are hired by wives to help their errant husbands forget about their affairs.
• The dispeller may pay off the mistress. Or they could tell the mistress rumors about their lover – say about potential STDs.
• In a more community oriented culture the dispeller could simply threaten to tell the mistress’s family about what was going on.
• Well-connected ones might work with the mistress’s boss to get her moved to another city.
• Adventurous ones may cut out the middle man, as it were, and seduce the mistress.
• The dispellers typically charge $15,000 for an initial consultation and $45,000 for a dispelling. If the husband has a child with the mistress the service can cost as much as $75,000.
• One company in the industry has 300 employees, has been operating for 16 years, and is housed in a skyscraper.

Read more about the business, its history, and the stories of some of its clients on The New Yorker. You can find past Centives coverage on mistresses in China here and here.

The New York Post and the Verge wrote about the world championship for Microsoft Office:

• People who take Microsoft Office certification tests and score highly in their region are automatically offered a chance to participate in the national championship. Winners go on to the international stage.
• 2017 was the first year that an American won the competition for Excel. Typically, it’s participants from more math focused countries that take the spreadsheet cup.
• The competition is limited to those between 13 and 22.
• First place gets you $7,000 and a free Xbox. Second and third place get you $3,500, and $1,500.

Read more on The Verge and the New York Post.

Silicon Valley owes its fortunes to the Technology industry. For Detroit it was the automobile industry. There may soon be a town focused on the marijuana industry:

• American Green, a company, just paid $5 million in cash for a small gold rush town in California.
• The company intends to turn the town into a haven for pot enthusiasts.
• The aim is for it to be a hub for marijuana focused businesses where talent and supply networks can be concentrated.
• There will also be activities for tourists. One idea is to have bus tours that take guests to try different weed infused food.

Read more on Vice.

Nuclear war with North Korea may be imminent. But the stock market seems relatively stable. Alex Tabarrok had some thoughts on why:

• If investors think IBM’s stock will fall they can sell, and then buy one of the multitude of other more promising stocks.
• In a nuclear war though all stocks will crash, so there’s not much point in buying shares in other companies. Or even in holding onto cash.
• Rational investors may still choose to sell out of the market and blow their cash on drugs and sex workers if they think the end of the world is near.
• But perhaps that’s just a bad caricature of humanity. Many would prefer to go for a walk in the woods or spend more time with their family.
• And anyway, marginal benefit falls. The first line of Armageddon fueled coke may be pleasurable. The second a little less so. After a while there’s only so much fun people can have with their money.
• All this means that the markets are probably poor predictors of nuclear war.

Read the entire fascinating argument on Marginal Revolution here.

Fashion designers rely on fashion forecasters to guide their thinking:

• In the 1960s agencies in Paris began releasing “trend books” with fabric and design ideas summarizing where fashion seemed to be headed.
• Today this is an entire business. Fashion forecasters observe fashion shows and clubs and then combine that with economic, political, and other data.
• Hemlines, for example, are expected to rise with stock prices, and lipstick becomes more popular during recessions.
• Forecasters claim accuracy rates as high as 80%, although this is a self-fulfilling effect – the entire industry reads their books, guiding their thinking, and leading to fashions in line with forecasted predictions.
• Fashion designers, for their part, appreciate the books as a form of insurance. As long as their ideas incorporate forecasts, their designs won’t be too different from the rest of the industry.
• Threats are on the horizon. Some challengers use computer analytics and big data to provide instantaneous short-term predictions.
• So far accuracy rates are just 50%. But that will improve. Google already makes its own predictions based on search data. In 2016 it predicted that mom jeans were in while boyfriend jeans were out.

Read more on The Economist.

Derek Thompson looked at the remarkable rise of the restaurant workforce:

• In 2017 jobs in restaurants have grown faster than those in healthcare, construction or manufacturing.
• This growth has been distributed across the nation, and is accelerating.
• Americans used to spend 25% of their food budget on restaurants in the 1950s. Today they spend 50%.
• Manufacturers used to employ three times as many people as restaurants in 1990. On current trends this will reverse by 2020.
• The charge is led by fine dining establishments that typically have a high number of staff at hand.
• Bars on the other hand serve a lot of people but employ relatively few.
• It’s not clear how great this is for the economy. The average private job pays $22.50 an hour, but for restaurants the corresponding figure is just $12.50.
• And the restaurant market may already be too saturated. Several chains are struggling to compete against all the competition.

Read more on The Atlantic.