Thanksgiving is coming up. Anna Lipin used the opportunity to examine turkey prices:

• Feeding turkeys can make up as much as 70% of a turkey’s production costs.
• This is especially true for pasture turkeys that are free to frolic about. Their increased activity means that they need twice as many calories as their factory farmed brethren.
• Turkey farms also have to pay for freezers. Your turkey may say that it is fresh and was never frozen, but according to industry standards as long as it wasn’t chilled below 10 degrees it wasn’t frozen.
• Despite all this though turkeys are a loss leader for a supermarket – you pay less than what it cost the store to buy it.
• This is because supermarkets know that you’ll also buy items like potatoes, cranberries, stuffing, and butter – and they jack up those prices to increase margins.

Read more here.

Source: Lucky Peach

Josie Rubio delved into the history of the waterbed:

• Waterbeds have been around for 3,000 years. They enjoyed a surge of popularity for a while in the late 1800s.
• However, being unable to regulate the temperature of the water meant that they soon lost appeal.
• In 1968 a university student created a water bed that suddenly became a symbol of sex appeal, with couples engaging in playful romps on the fluid filled mattresses.
• So strong was the link to sexual activity that dealers who sold the mattresses were described as “seedy” and sold them along with things like “orgy butter”.
• In New York City a Bloomingdale’s public water bed display became a meeting place for singles.
• Which is odd because landlords were increasingly banning water mattresses in NYC. They were difficult to get through the door and when moving out tenants had a tendency to leave the water bed rather than go through the trouble of draining and disposing of it.
• Some landlords even required that waterbed insurance be purchased in case the family cat Mr. Scruffles decided to scratch it open.
• Water beds eventually lost their sex appeal as they were soon marketed to the sick and elderly as therapeutic devices.

Read about the urban myths that flew around about water beds, the role they’ve played in popular culture, how Hugh Hefner liked his water bed, and other details here.

Source: Van Winkle’s

Faiz Siddiqui wrote about experiments in surge pricing for parking spots:

• In D.C. its estimated that 25% of downtown traffic congestion is merely due to drivers circling the block looking for parking – a classic case of demand outstripping supply.
• Demand based dynamic pricing, which could prices to go up to $8 an hour or more in the future, is expected to help reduce traffic.
• Critics say that this is a revenue raising measure which will increasingly price poor people out of certain areas of the city.
• However, when a similar program was run in San Francisco it was found that while in 31% of cases parking prices increased, on average they declined by 4% as prices plummeted during periods of low demand.
• In Los Angeles congestion decreased by 10% and average parking prices were lower at 60% of parking spots.
• Parking spots in the D.C. pilot are being fitted with sensors so that in the future it may be possible to track your car through an app.
• The aim is to have at least one open space on every block, although the cost of that last spot could be eye-watering.

Read more about the experiment, its supporters, and its critics here.

Source: The Washington Post

Via: Marginal Revolution

Never let it be said that Centives doesn’t look out for its readers. For all you billionaires looking for a backup in case the end of the world looms, Micah Singleton had a suggestion:

• Vivos Europa One is a living facility built into a Soviet era cold war bunker in Germany.
• It can survive nuclear blasts, airline crashes, earthquakes, electro-magnetic pulses, and chemical attacks.
• It is aimed at the ultra-wealthy and includes swimming pools, movie theaters, and gyms.
• Only 34 families will be invited to purchase real estate within the bunkers.
• In the event of an Armageddon type event, the company behind the project will dispatch helicopters to bring inhabitants to their underground survival villas.

Read more about it here.

Source: The Verge

Diners are known for their seemingly endless menus, quality food, and wonderful atmosphere. They’re going out of business, writes Aaron Elstein, at least in New York anyway:

• The number of NY diners has decreased from 1,000 to 398 in a generation.
• The biggest problem is rent. The extensive inventories require extensive storage space and rent can be as high as $25,000 a month.
• Employees have to be skilled enough to make 400 different dishes and master 60 different types of salads.
• Food prices change all the time but updating a diner’s voluminous menu to reflect new prices requires thousands of dollars for new printing.
• Landlords, for their part, prefer renting space to national chains like Applebee’s because they know they can go to the corporate parent if an individual restaurant owner fails to pay rent.
• On the other end of the spectrum food trucks are putting pressure on margins by offering short, focused menus which lead to low-priced food.

The full article looks at the Greek origins of diners and interviews owners of some of New York’s best diners. Read it here.

Source: Crain’s

Via: Marginal Revolution

Pre-election polls were wrong about who would win in the United Kingdom, Israel, and Bihar. Jill Lepore took a look at the history of polling and the current challenges that it faces:

• In the 1980s pollsters could expect that 60% of those they called to poll would be willing to share their opinion on politics. These days less than 10% do.
• And polling companies have traditionally only called those with landlines. With the younger increasing opting only for mobile phones this biases samples
• Yet polls have become more important than ever. The big TV networks have used polls to determine the main debaters for the Republican Presidential debates, and even what order they’re presented on the stage.
• Critics of polling point out that most democracies are republics, not direct democracies. This is to prevent decisions from being taken by mass opinion and the hysterias that it is prone to, thus, in theory, protecting things like minority rights.
• Moreover, pollsters often don’t reveal the way they arrived at their conclusions so that they can keep their algorithms secret and maybe sell them in the future.
• Others note that polls actually help ensure that everybody’s voice is heard since each data point is treated equally.
• Some are trying to turn polls against politicians. One startup allows users to see the candidates that stand unopposed and then pledge money to anybody who’ll stand in an election against them.
• As soon as the candidate with the right policy positions enters the race the pledges become instant donations that are given to the candidate.
• Potential candidates for office then can see how much money they’d start off with the moment they entered a race.

The full article is much longer and goes into a much deeper level of analysis of the history of polls. You should read it, and what this means for Donald Trump, over here.

Source: The New Yorker

There are services like Tinder that help you get into a relationship. Only fair that there be services that help you get out of one. Emanuel Maiberg reviewed one of them:

• The Breakup Shop offers a multitude of services in order to help you break up with your partner.
• An email or text costs $10. A letter costs up to $30. And if you want to add the personal touch to your subcontracted breakup you can pay for a $29 breakup phone call.
• The Breakup Shop also has a gift store where you can buy your soon to be ex a Netflix subscription as a consolation.
• The shop offers merchandise for those initiating the breakup to feel better about themselves too – like Call of Duty.
• Maiberg tried the service and found that it’s probably not suitable for ending long-term relationships but may work as an alternative to “ghosting” out of a short-term one.

Read about the service and hear what a breakup phone call sounds like over here.

Source: Motherboard

Professionals at The University of Chicago Booth School of Business discussed the considerations that go into food truck locations:

• If there are two identical food trucks selling food on a beach, then customers will go to whichever food truck is closest.
• Therefore, to maximize sales, the trucks should locate next to each other. The one on the right will get all the customers on the right, and the one on the left will get all the customers on the left. This helps explain why food trucks seem to cluster together.
• Another reason is supply induced demand. As with food courts, being in close proximity to other eateries increases competition, but the variety of options is a big draw for consumers and increases demand.
• The aim, then, is to be one of many food trucks in a group, but to be the only food truck selling a specific type of food.
• Food trucks don’t want to be destinations themselves. They want to be part of people’s everyday experiences. Expect to see them clustered at subway stations where multiple subway lines meet and foot traffic is high.
• On weekends they may go to the parks in the morning since those with dogs have to get up to walk them, and yoga enthusiasts will be milling about too.
• Regulations play a big role in determining location. Chicago, for example, bans food trucks within 200 feet of most restaurants and food stores. Within such limitations there are only a few profitable locations left.

Read other food truck considerations over here.

Source: The University of Chicago Booth School of Business

Via: Marginal Revolution

In the United States its Veteran’s Day today. America is a fairly patriotic country but Barry Petchesky wrote that at times this patriotism can be a little artificial:

• Sporting events sometimes have giant American flags, the singing of the national anthem, or even the depiction of military personnel on stadium screens for a round of applause.
• It turns out that the Department of Defense actually pays for these activities.
• They reason that it’s an effective advertisement that drums up military recruitment.
• The Atlanta Falcons made close to a million dollars by agreeing to run these promos.
• There’s been a backlash to the stealth advertizing and the defense establishment intends to stay away from them going forwards.
• The NFL, for its part, says that it intends to return all of the money it made from the patriotic displays.

Read more here.

Source: Deadspin

Not all is as it would seem at auctions wrote Judith H. Dobrzynski:

• Most of the audience members you see at big name auctions aren’t actually bidders. Those applauding are spectators. The real bidders are on the phone or in overflow rooms.
• Some of the bidders may actually be hired by the artists themselves to drive up prices and protect their reputations.
• The auction houses will set up the offerings so that the item that is likely to sell for double or triple its expected price goes first, setting the tone for the rest of the auction.
• In general, it makes sense to start the bidding low. People will think they might just be able to afford it at the lower price…and will slowly nudge themselves higher as they try to hang in.
• Art owners are increasingly expecting guarantees on the price they’ll receive. In order to do so auction houses will contact potential buyers in advance, meaning that the auction is, at times, a mere formality.
• Potential buyers will be wined and dined, and an auction house may even take a piece of art to their home for a couple days so that the buyer can see what it would look like in their gallery.

Read our previous coverage on why auctioneers speak so fast here.

And read the rest of the article which contains many more details, including ways that headline prices at auctions are driven up here.

Source: The New York Times

Via: Marginal Revolution