We’ve previously covered Seeking Arrangement, a website that allows college students to find “sugar daddies” that’ll give them money in exchange for companionship and sex. Ivana Hrynkiw wrote about the website’s latest figures:

• 1.2 million students registered for the service in 2016.
• Temple University and New York University – in pricey Philadelphia and Manhattan respectively – saw the greatest growth in student signups.
• The website argues that it helps students graduate without taking on student debt.
• Those who have a .edu email address can sign up for free.
• The average “sugar baby” earns $2,440 a month.
• 39% of the money is spent on tuition. 30% on housing. 21% on textbooks.

Read more on Al.

Via: Marginal Revolution

The Economist wrote about startups aiming to be the Uber for kids:

• Uber for kids sounds like a great idea. It’ll save parents from having to drive their offspring to school and after-school activities.
• Startups are finding creative ways to make the service child friendly. One gives children and drivers a code word – a child is only to get into the vehicle if the words match.
• Parents can track the ride, including the driver’s speed.
• There are problems. Demand is concentrated during certain times of the day, meaning that drivers can’t really make a living from the service.
• And parents may never be comfortable teaching their kids to get into a stranger’s car.
• Startups must also deal with the fact that Uber may decide that it wants to be the company that builds the Uber for kids.

Read more at The Economist.

Jeffrey Lee Puckett wrote about Yolanda Baker:

• Omega National Products is responsible for pretty much every famous disco ball you know. Madonna and Kid Rock ordered their products, and it was responsible for the iconic ball in Saturday Night Fever.
• Those at the company say that a proper disco ball is made by hand and with mirrors.
• Yolanda Baker, now 70, has been making them at Omega for 50 years now, and she’s thought to be the last one left in America.
• At her peak she was able to churn out 30 a day.
• Demand for the product has died down as disco-fever has waned.
• Despite having made thousands of them over the course of half a century, Baker says she’s never owned a disco ball herself.

Read more on Courier Journal.

Via: Marginal Revolution

Noah Davis and Michael Lopez did a statistical analysis of referee calls in American football:

• An study of NFL games found that referees call more penalties against the defensive team, when they’re standing on the offensive team’s sideline, and vice versa.
• The effect is most prominent when the referee is standing in the area of the sideline that substitute players and coaches normally sit.
• The effect is large – at times it can increase the amount of penalties called against a side by as much as 50%.
• Referees must make calls in real-time without replays. Evidence shows that they’re affected by crowd cheers and boos. It’s unsurprising that having an angry coach yell into their ear also affects decisions.

See some fascinating visualizations of the effect on FiveThirtyEight

Timothy J. Jorgensen delved into the weird history of energy drinks:

• Today’s energy drinks provide energy through chemical stimulants like caffeine.
• In the past though they provided actual energy. RadiThor was radium (a radioactive element which releases radiation) dissolved in water sold in the 1920s.
• This energy is, despite what The Hulk would have you believe, entirely useless at providing an energy boost to human beings.
• The dangers of radium were well known at the time. On the other hand a study had shown that Radithor increased “the sexual passion of water newts”. It was a successful product.
• Fortunately, radium is expensive, limiting the number of people who could afford it, and thus the number of people who suffered radiation sickness.
• Its chief celebrity endorser developed a psychological addiction to the drink, and died from radiation related complications.
• His radioactive skeleton is buried in a lead-lined coffin.

Read more on Live Science.

Via: Reddit

The disastrous “restoration” of the Ecce Homo, shown above, went viral in 2012. Kaushik wrote about the surprisingly positive aftermath:

• The 1930 painting was thought to be of “little artistic importance” which is probably why an 83-year-old amateur was allowed to fix it when it started flaking.
• The global reaction to the effort sent the artist into depression.
• Since then however the town that hosts it has become a tourist hotspot. Travelers from around the world stop to look at, and take photos with, the mess of a portrait.
• A comic opera about the painting’s story is in the works.
• Sales of “ironic” merchandise such as mugs, wines, and posters depicting the botched repair job, have saved a town that was dealing with an economic crisis before the notoriety.
• Having risen from the depths of depression, the artist that made the fateful decision to restore the painting is owed 49% of the money from souvenir sales.

Read more on Amusing Planet.

Today Donald Trump is sworn in as 45^th President of the United States. In separate articles John Wagner, Karen Tumulty, and, Leada Gore looked at the economics of the event:

• Trump’s original plan was to make the swearing-in ceremony one of the more flashier ones in recent memory, with the real estate magnate beginning the parade in Manhattan and then flying to Washington D.C.
• Things have since been scaled back substantially. There will be a parade limited to D.C. and it should last 90 minutes – in the past they’ve lasted more than four hours.
• The costs of the swearing in ceremony are paid for by the US government, and should run to about $1 million.
• Post ceremony concerts, balls, and gatherings are paid for the Presidential Inauguration Committee, which raises money from companies and individuals.
• This year it has raised $100 million – almost double the $55 million that Obama’s committee raised in 2009.
• Companies are capped to donating $1 million, while individuals face no such limit.
• Any funds that remain unspent are expected to be donated to charity.

Read more on The Washington Post, and AL

The Japan Times wrote about a new thing for the tech obsessed to worry about:

• Cameras today are good enough to capture individual ridges on a person’s fingers.
• This can then be used to re-create their finger prints.
• In the future we may see cameras that automatically distort individual prints, to protect user privacy.

Read more on the Japan Times.

Merchants are using our smartphones to track our movement within stores, wrote The Economist.

• If a retailer see’s that shoppers often go from drinks to frozen foods, then they might want to push the sections closer together – or further apart, to expose customers to more products.
• If you’re in a Westfield shopping mall and you search for a rival, you can expect to see a discount offered to you on the spot.
• Once the systems become precise enough they could also be used to help guide customers to the exact spot where they’ll find their desired product.
• Apple and Google are looking to build systems that will allow for this kind of tracking. Those who use public Wi-Fi shouldn’t expect privacy anyway – Wi-Fi agreements often confer the right on the provider to track location.

Read more on The Economist.

Amy Hawkins wrote about experimental restaurant technology in Beijing:

• KFC has setup a system where it predicts a customer’s order based on their face and mood.
• Some of the recommendations seem uncomfortably gendered. A young male customer is expected to be recommended a fried chicken hamburger with coke. An older female will be recommended porridge.
• If you don’t like your recommendation, the machine will show you other things you might want.
• Once you identify your meal, you merely let the machine know, pay for it, and the food preparers will have it for you in a few minutes.
• Ultimately it is hoped that the machine will remember your face and your preference – and learn so that the next time it sees you it does a better job of making recommendations.

Read more on The Guardian.