Centives

When the zombie apocalypse comes, Russian zombies will use Wi-Fi to co-ordinate:

• The city of Moscow is making Wi-Fi available at its most historic cemeteries.
• Officials hope this will encourage youth to congregate at graveyards where they can “unwind” and perhaps learn a little about the country’s history.
• It may also encourage visitors to look up the histories of some of the more famous people, such as Stalin, buried there.
• Two of the graveyards already have GPS systems that make it easier to locate notable resting places.

Read more at the source links below.

Source: Mental Floss, The Week

Alex Mayyasi wrote about the history of the creation of the quintessential Thai dish: Pad Thai.

• Phibun was a dictator who became Prime Minister of what was then called Siam in 1938. While his country was independent all his neighbours were ruled by European colonizers.
• Europeans justified their colonization by claiming that they were spreading culture to backwards natives. Given Siam’s multiple ethnicities he feared that his country was vulnerable.
• In order to prevent this he wanted to convince the world that his was a cultured country. He did this by encouraging the emergency of a national identity.
• Phibun listed 12 mandates. Many such as the requirement to wear hats, or the optimal length of time people should sleep, or even how frequently people should call their relatives have faded from history.
• A couple stood the test of time. The first was was the decision to rename the country “Thailand”. The second was the creation of a national dish.
• Legend has it that Phibun settled upon Pad Thai after hosting a competition to select the national dish.
• The government encouraged adoption of the meal by banning other foods, and distributing recipes and food carts to promulgate the food.
• Pad Thai had the added bonus of being more nutritious than the plain rice that was most frequently eaten then.
• The rest is history. Pad Thai has gone onto become closely associated with Thailand even though it’s a relatively modern invention.
• This shouldn’t be too surprising though. Italian food is closely associated with tomatoes even though for most of Europe’s history tomatoes were not native to the continent.
• And Irish cuisine is known for potatoes though the root vegetables were declared as being fit only for animals in the country for most of its history.
• All in all it seems to take little more than about 50 years to create a “national cuisine” that becomes attached to, and propagates a national identity.

The full article has many more details including the foreign influences on Pad Thai, the similarities between Phibun and Atatürk, and many other details here. It is well worth a read.

Source: Priceonomics

Via: Marginal Revolution

Brothels in Nevada have been all over the news recently. Nicole Schreiber looked into what the fuss was about:

• Like in any job, previous experience is a plus. Having had clients before is something that brothels look for when going over resumes.
• There is then a telephone interview and then a one-week training period where both the brothel and the courtesan evaluate each other.
• If you make it, then you’ll often pay a fixed daily fee to rent out a room, and then negotiate your own prices with clients.
• Different rooms are set up to indulge various fantasies. An office type room allows a client to be the boss with a sexy secretary. A locker room allows men to be the successful football player with the sexy cheerleader accidentally entering the shower.
• There is also, of course, a classroom. And there’s a room with video games and a giant television for those who simply want to have a girlfriend to “Netflix n Chill” with.
• Sex is actually a fairly small part of a courtesan’s responsibilities. Most clients are lonely and in a given hour, only ten minutes will be sex. The rest will be casually hanging out.
• The brothel that Schreiber went to had a gift shop with branded t-shirts and shot glasses. You can even buy gift certificates for friends.
• The brothel also had a sports bar. The food was so good that upstanding locals from all over the area came to the brothel for the burgers alone. Seriously.

Read more about the types of people who are drawn to working at brothels and other details here.

Source: Thrillist

It is the holiday season and department stores across the United States are filled with Christmas cheer. Jessica Leigh Hester wrote about the temps that Santa brings on to work as elves:

• A large number of the elves you see at department stores are actors in between jobs.
• Many of them have improv skills that serve them well when interacting with children.
• As elves one of their primary responsibilities is to serendipitously learn the children’s names and to covertly inform Santa so that he can surprise the star-struck children when he greets them.
• When parents get upset – over the length of the line to see Santa, or the way that Santa is dressed – it is also the job of the elves to be the face that they yell at, sparing Santa embarrassment.

Read more about the life of a department store elf over here.

Source: The Atlantic

It’s been a year or so since Malaysia saw MH370 vanish without a trace. The country now has the opposite problem:

• Three Boeing 747s have been left abandoned at Kuala Lumpur International Airport.
• Authorities have placed an ad in the local newspaper asking the owners of the planes to claim and collect the jumbo jets, as well as to pay accumulated parking charges.
• The owners of the aircraft might have left the planes behind because they had run out of money and had to shut down operations.
• This isn’t the first time this has happened in Malaysia – in the 90s an abandoned aircraft was turned into a restaurant.
• The planes are expected to be auctioned off if they are not claimed by December 21^st.

The full article includes the registration numbers of the planes, in case you think it might belong to you. Read the article here.

Read about the economics of searching for MH370 here.

Source: AFP, Yahoo News

Nick Statt wrote about an interesting Indiegogo campaign:

• ShiftWear envisions shoes with flexible e-paper displays that are controlled through a smartphone app.
• These displays can show animated designs or even just static images that change the look of a shoe every day, month, or season.
• Users could create their own designs, or install those from an online marketplace that ShiftWear is planning to set up.
• It’s unclear if the technology to build the shoes is available yet, but the campaigners believe that breakthroughs are on the horizon.
• Preorders cost anywhere between $150 and $350.
• The company set a goal of raising $25,000. As of today it has raised $220,000, almost ten times as much.

Read more about the shoes here. See the Indiegogo page here.

Source: The Verge

Reality TV show survivor first aired when Bill Clinton was still in office. More than a decade later the show still draws large audiences. David Shultz tried to understand why:

• A psychologist found that those who enjoy reality TV are motivated by status and vengeance.
• In the case of Survivor, the status part comes from watching ordinary people suddenly become elevated.
• Survivor also requires people to work with and against one another for an ultimate victor to emerge. This is where vengeance comes in.
• The popularity of this social strategy game is driven in part by Survivor seeming more authentic than most other “reality” TV.
• Anecdotal evidence indicates that those who watch Survivor are those who think they would win the game.
• Given that 9 million people still watch it – making it consistently the #1 show in its time slot – there are a lot of social strategists out there.

Read more here.

Source: Nautilus

The 2015 Rockefeller Center Christmas tree was lit yesterday. David Caplan provided some details about it, and we looked into our own archives to get a sense of its cost:

• 45,000 multi-coloured energy efficient lights adorn the tree. These cost around $13,500. A computer program that took three months to build powers the software that adds the beautiful shimmering glow to the tree.
• Solar panels power the lights helping offset upkeep costs.
• A Swarovski star with 25,000 crystals tops the tree and is estimated to be worth $35,000.
• The tree itself is 78 feet tall. Such trees usually cost around $25,000 but the Rockefeller Center always gets it as a free donation.
• This year it was donated by a family that has taken care of it for 80 years but recently decided it was getting too big for their property.
• The family that donates the tree gets front row VIP tickets to the tree lighting and other ceremonies.
• After the tree gets taken down it is turned into wood that is used to build houses for low income people.
• The wooden planks from the tree will be stamped with the words “2015 Rockefeller Center Tree”

Read more secrets about the tree here. And see our past coverage here.

Source: AM New York

Derek Blasberg wrote about Jessica Alba and why she’s in the same league as those who created Facebook and Uber:

• After Alba’s first child broke out in hives the actress looked into the ingredients that go into children’s products and learned that multiple toxins are sometimes labelled as “fragrances”.
• She decided to launch a company, now called Honest, which sold baby products that parents could trust.
• One tech investor showed little interest in the idea, until he had a child, and his wife started desperately searching on the internet for information about safe children’s products.
• The company launched in 2012 and saw sales of $10 million in its first year.
• This year sales are over $150 million and the company is valued at $1.7 billion.
• This makes it a “unicorn” – the term for a startup that is valued at over a billion dollars within five years of its launch. Jessica Alba managed to do it in three.
• Part of the secret seems to be redefining people’s relationship with celebrity. Instead of representing the unattainable Alba’s products are about connecting with every day consumers.

Read more about Alba’s success, how her acting career helped build an entrepreneurial character, and her hands on approach to things over here.

Source: Vanity Fair