Centives

On Reddit’s “Explain Like I’m Five” sub-reddit, user romanapplesauce asked how a reward for providing the authorities with information that leads to somebody’s capture works. Highlights of the responses include:

• The rewards are on a first come first serve basis. If ten people give the same information then the first person to come forward with it will get the money.
• An “up to” amount is specified so that if a couple people come in with different pieces of useful information the reward is split between them.
• The amount of the reward might be weighted by the usefulness of the information so that the most helpful tip is awarded the most cash.
• If the person who is captured is then acquitted by a court of law, the person who provided the information is still eligible for the award.
• The money is taxable income and must be declared to the IRS.

The information is unsourced so if you’re planning to do something based on this, maybe talk to a lawyer first, just in case? The full discussion is wide ranging and covers many other topics including the why governments offer a bounty in the first place and much more. Read it here.

Source: Reddit

Douglas Lavanture, David Ingold, and Adam Pearce looked into how much money is bet on March Madness, an American college basketball event, each year.

• Betting on March Madness is illegal in every state except Nevada.
• In Nevada about $245 million is estimated to have been legally bet on the event in 2014.
• But the real allure of college basketball is the billions bet in illegal office pools across America.
• According to one estimate, for a domestic event like March Madness, for every $1 bet in Nevada, about $50 is bet in the rest of the country.
• This would mean that about $12.5 billion is wagered on the college basketball championship every year.
• Approximately $2 billion is on brackets alone. The rest is thought to be from Vegas style bets.
• The NCAA, the organization behind March Madness, ostensibly opposes gambling on the event.
• In reality though about 80% their revenues come from viewership of the event, and a big draw for watchers is to see how their betting brackets are doing.

Read other details about how the numbers were calculated, the most common types of bets, other estimates for how much is wagered, and more over here.

Source: Bloomberg

Milk may well be the manna that turned human civilization into what it is today writes The Economist:

• Only about a third of people can digest milk well into adulthood.
• Data indicates that places where humans had the ability to digest milk, such as Western Europe, went onto become more developed countries.
• Milk is good because it’s a source of on demand liquid energy.
• Its nutrients help provide for a balanced diet in all seasons.
• It also increased the returns from agriculture since not only did it allow for animals to provide wool, fertilizer, and ploughing power, but also food.
• This increased population density which made it easier to create infrastructure, laws, and overall society.

Read about the theory, the role that war plays in it, and more over here.

Source: The Economist

[Season 1 spoilers] In Game of Thrones protagonist Ned Stark decides to go visit the southern parts of the fictional continent of Westeros, which is widely thought to be inspired by Europe. This ultimately ends with him having his head cut off. Weirdly this is encouraging people across the (real) world to take in the same sights.

Even more weirdly Europe’s future could depend on it. Jason Karaian wrote:

• The place where Ned loses his head was filmed in Croatia. Tourists inspired by Game of Thrones to travel to the city are estimated to be responsible for about half the explosive growth in tourism to the country over the past few years.
• This is particularly important to Croatia since almost 20% of its economy is dependent on tourism.
• Given that the country is among the weakest performing members of the Eurozone, and has been in recession for over half a decade, Game of Thrones is providing a welcome boost to GDP.
• This year part of the show was filmed in Spain, which currently has an unemployment rate of 24%.
• Producers are doing their part to combat unemployment by hiring local extras.
• And while this year’s season hasn’t debuted yet, tourism numbers are already up because of the considerable amount of staff that have had to go there to film the season.
• Iceland and Northern Ireland are two other economically weak European countries that have benefitted from an influx of tourists.

Read about the lengths that Croatia has gone to, to accommodate the show; how New Zealand has provided the model Europe is now following, and more over here.

Source: Quartz

First there was Jon Stewart and The Daily Show. Now there is Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore, and other upcoming shows in the pipeline. Nicole Dieker looked at the media clipping technology that made the shows work:

• SnapStream is a company that creates technology that allows for people to either continuously record an entire channel, or to record individual shows.
• It saves the closed captioning for the shows thus creating a searchable database of terms used.
• For example, a search for “Obama” will reveal each of the times that the President’s name was used, and the context it was used in.
• Users of the program can then click on the link and directly go to the segment where the mention was made.
• The program has social capabilities to create real time gifs and memes.
• Right now only enterprise customers use it, but in the future it might be made available to a wider audience on the web.
• Netflix or Hulu might compete with the service by offering their own text searchable database of shows.
• A search engine could potentially acquire the company and then make money by referring people to places where they can purchase clips that they search for.

Read about the technology, its search engine like interface, why it was created, and more over here.

Source: SplitSider

Found that dream job that you’re perfectly qualified for, yet after submitting your resume you never hear back…ever? Michael S. Derby outlined some research that helped explain why:

• According to a study ~75% of people who switched into a new job weren’t actively looking for one when they switched.
• Instead referrals or direct contacts were used to identify candidates.
• This indicates that it’s the power of your networking, not necessarily your diligence in applying, that determines whether or not you get a job.
• In fact you may not even ever have a chance to apply. Other research indicates that 42% of new hires are at companies that didn’t bother to report a vacancy.

Read other details about the research, what this means about labour market economics, and more over here.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Via: Quartz

In a conflict that may well make both parties yearn for the days of the guillotine, the Queen of England’s castle staff are threatening to strike writes Gordon Rayner:

• Castle staff say that they start out making salaries as low as £14,400 per year – below living wage.
• Yet they have to perform unpaid duties such as guiding tour groups and working as interpreters.
• The castle attracts over a million visitors a year, generating revenues of £17 million.
• Officials respond that the wages paid are above the market median, and that perks such as free lunches and pension contributions are given to employees.
• Over on Slate Beth Ethier speculates that the timing of the action may have something to do with putting pressure on a Tory government, that is usually seen as pro-Monarchy, and which has just entered into a re-election campaign.

The full article goes into more detail and explains the “work to rule” strike that staff are threatening, the distinction between the tourist facing staff, and the Royal Family’s personal staff, and it gives a glimpse of what it’s like to work in a castle, the history of the dispute and more. Read it here.

Source: The Telegraph, Slate

Anne D’Innocenzio writes that jeans are fading against the yoga pant juggernaut:

• Last year sales of jeans declined by 6% while sales of yoga pants, leggings, sweatpants, and other active wear rose by 7%.
• This is in part because these clothes offer greater comfort but don’t require a compromise on style.
• There has also been little innovation in jeans over the past few years, making them seem dated.
• Jean makers are responding to the threat. Levi’s is working on jeans that are stretchier, making them more like yoga pants.
• But it’s possible that this is the end of the era of jeans. They were popular in part because they used to be anti-establishment. Now that they’re the norm they seem less daring.

Read more about other periods of perceived jeans crises, other designs that fashion labels are trying, and more over here.

Source: Associated Press

The world is built upon sand, writes Vince Beiser:

• Sand is in glass, detergents, cosmetics, toothpaste, solar panels, silicon chips, and buildings – which are really just sand stuck together with concrete.
• Deserts seem like a limitless source of sand, but that sand is usually unusable because it is shaped by wind, making it too smooth for most purposes.
• 40 billion tons of sand is used annually and with economic growth driving up demand in places like China and India riverbeds and beaches have had their sand stripped away.
• Over 20 Indonesian islands have disappeared; their sands converted into land reclamation projects for the small island country of Singapore.
• But exporting sand is destructive – so much so that Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam have banned the export of sand to some areas.
• Such bans only fuel illegal mining which further damages the environment. Around 50% of the sand used in Morocco is thought to have been mined illegally.
• India is dealing with “sand mafias” that work with corrupt police and government officials to kill opponents who would seek to end lucrative mining operations.

Read more about the importance of sand, how the sand mafias operate, how they might be eliminated, and other details here.

Source: Wired

Josh Zumbrun wrote about how a company’s treatment of its employees affects its market performance:

• Ratings from Glassdoor, a website where people can anonymously rate their employers, similar to Yelp for restaurants, can be used to figure out how satisfied people are with their workplaces.
• Research indicates that companies that are rated well have outperformed stock market indices.
• A strategy where investors buy stock in companies that make the grade of best companies to work for, and sell them in places that are bad to work for, will have returned 219% since 2008, compared to the S&P 500’s 121%.
• This might be because a company that does well has more money to spend on employee perks.
• High employee satisfaction may also make it easier for a company to retain its best workers.
• Or perhaps automated investment algorithms pick up on any good news about a company from sites such as Glassdoor, and buy stock in it, driving up its price.

Read why this relationship may not last for long, what academic research indicates, and more over here.

Source: The Wall Street Journal