The Price of Wine
blog.priceonomics.com/post/4661…
While not quite as bad as diamonds, a lot of what goes into wine pricing seems to be largely bullshit as well:
Numerous experiments have shown that people will enjoy a table wine and a fine wine equally if they believe that they are both fine wine. Knowing that a wine is supposed to be good does literally make it taste better. The drinkers could be lying about enjoying the “bad” wine due to social pressure. However, an experiment involving a Stanford wine tasting group, a group of identical wines presented under fake price tags from $5 to $90, and a fMRI machine measuring activity in areas of the brain correlated with pleasure suggests otherwise. Drinking the same wine with a higher price tag did increase pleasure.
Also, this is a great quote:
As of 2003, Bronco processed 300,000 tons of grapes to make 20 million cases of wine, of which a quarter are Charles Shaw wines. Asked how he sells wine for the same price as a bottle of water, Franzia responded, ““They’re overcharging for the water. Don’t you get it?”
Fascinating.
Even Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein called for “some redistribution” to create a stable and just society. But despite the growing consensus in Washington, Wall Street and academia, there hasn’t yet been concrete action and the situation is only taking a turn for the worse.
The US has the highest level of income gap of any of the advanced countries, with the top 1% capturing over 90% of the income growth.
Some politics to do for your Mr. Obama.
In the US everyone’s talking about income inequality, but nobody’s really doing anything about it
Even Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein called for “some redistribution” to create a stable and just society. But despite the growing consensus in Washington, Wall Street and academia, there hasn’t yet been concrete action and the situation is only taking a turn for the worse.
The US has the highest level of income gap of any of the advanced countries, with the top 1% capturing over 90% of the income growth.
Some politics to do for your Mr. Obama.
In the US everyone’s talking about income inequality, but nobody’s really doing anything about it
Where famous artists create. Respectively John Lennon, Mark Rothko and Marc Chagall.
Buzzfeed has more.
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Where famous artists create. Respectively John Lennon, Mark Rothko and Marc Chagall.
Buzzfeed has more.
Why you should move that button 3px to the left
Why you should move that button 3px to the left
Great insights by Braden Kowitz on Medium about the difference between good design and great design. One would be functional, the other would be delightful.
Obsessing over the details would allow for more trust from customers and a better overall usability (good examples as well).
When we’re happy, using an interface feels like play. The world looks like a puzzle, not a battle. So when we get confused, we’re more likely to explore and find other paths to success. There’s a whole book on this topic: Emotional Design by Don Norman. But here’s the important bit: Getting design details right can create positive emotional states that actually make products easier to use.
Getting the details right would thus create a beneficial loop and make the product easier to use.
Why you should move that button 3px to the left
Great insights by Braden Kowitz on Medium about the difference between good design and great design. One would be functional, the other would be delightful.
Obsessing over the details would allow for more trust from customers and a better overall usability (good examples as well).
When we’re happy, using an interface feels like play. The world looks like a puzzle, not a battle. So when we get confused, we’re more likely to explore and find other paths to success. There’s a whole book on this topic: Emotional Design by Don Norman. But here’s the important bit: Getting design details right can create positive emotional states that actually make products easier to use.
Getting the details right would thus create a beneficial loop and make the product easier to use.
We’re bigger than Twitter today,” he said at the Dive into Mobile conference. “More than 200 million active users monthly.
How many users per engineer? Must be crazy.
With over 200M monthly users, WhatsApp CEO boasts, “We’re bigger than Twitter”
We’re bigger than Twitter today,” he said at the Dive into Mobile conference. “More than 200 million active users monthly.
How many users per engineer? Must be crazy.
With over 200M monthly users, WhatsApp CEO boasts, “We’re bigger than Twitter”
The Writer’s Technique in Thirteen Theses – Walter Benjamin’s timeless advice on writing, 1928.
Interesting.
[gallery]
The Writer’s Technique in Thirteen Theses – Walter Benjamin’s timeless advice on writing, 1928.
Interesting.
How fast the US got fat.
[gallery]
How fast the US got fat.
What people download in North Korea.
Monitoring tools, How I Met Your Mother and OS X Mountain Lion (along with porn and Life of Pi, follow the source link for more information).
[gallery]
What people download in North Korea.
Monitoring tools, How I Met Your Mother and OS X Mountain Lion (along with porn and Life of Pi, follow the source link for more information).
The Impending Rise Of Solar Power
The Impending Rise Of Solar Power
Christopher Mims for Quartz:
All this will encourage yet more homeowners, businesses and communities to buy solar panels as power from the grid gets more expensive. You can see where this is going: The EEI says it could become a feedback loop that eventually wrecks the whole US utility industry, or at least greatly diminishes it.
Eventually, people will only be using the grid as a backup, combining ever-cheaper solar panels with ever more affordable batteries to store the power for when the sun isn’t shining. That’s called an energy transition.
The gist is that as solar panels continue to get cheaper, more people will install and use them. This, in turn, will cause the traditional electric companies to jack up rates to offset the decreased usage (they have pay off long-term plant investments). And that, in turn, will cause more people to buy solar panels.
Yes but electric power companies could restructure and offer solar energy services.
The Impending Rise Of Solar Power
Christopher Mims for Quartz:
All this will encourage yet more homeowners, businesses and communities to buy solar panels as power from the grid gets more expensive. You can see where this is going: The EEI says it could become a feedback loop that eventually wrecks the whole US utility industry, or at least greatly diminishes it.
Eventually, people will only be using the grid as a backup, combining ever-cheaper solar panels with ever more affordable batteries to store the power for when the sun isn’t shining. That’s called an energy transition.
The gist is that as solar panels continue to get cheaper, more people will install and use them. This, in turn, will cause the traditional electric companies to jack up rates to offset the decreased usage (they have pay off long-term plant investments). And that, in turn, will cause more people to buy solar panels.
Yes but electric power companies could restructure and offer solar energy services.
But, over all, the trends were clear. The more people believed in free-market ideology, the less they believed in climate science; the more they accepted science in general, the more they accepted the conclusions of climate science; and the more likely they were to be conspiracy theorists, the less likely they were to believe in climate science.
These results fit in with a longer literature on what has come to be known as “motivated reasoning.” Other things being equal, people tend to believe what they want to believe, and to disbelieve new information that might challenge them. The classic study for this came in the nineteen-sixties, shortly after the first Surgeon General’s report on smoking and lung cancer, which suggested that smoking appeared to cause lung cancer.
Fascinating conclusion of new research on conspiracy theorists. Again, this follows the idea that facts do not rectify what people think about something but rather strengthen them in their own opinion. This is sometimes called the backfire effect and you should read about it here.
New Research: The Psychology of Conspiracy Theorists and Climate Change Deniers
But, over all, the trends were clear. The more people believed in free-market ideology, the less they believed in climate science; the more they accepted science in general, the more they accepted the conclusions of climate science; and the more likely they were to be conspiracy theorists, the less likely they were to believe in climate science.
These results fit in with a longer literature on what has come to be known as “motivated reasoning.” Other things being equal, people tend to believe what they want to believe, and to disbelieve new information that might challenge them. The classic study for this came in the nineteen-sixties, shortly after the first Surgeon General’s report on smoking and lung cancer, which suggested that smoking appeared to cause lung cancer.
Fascinating conclusion of new research on conspiracy theorists. Again, this follows the idea that facts do not rectify what people think about something but rather strengthen them in their own opinion. This is sometimes called the backfire effect and you should read about it here.
New Research: The Psychology of Conspiracy Theorists and Climate Change Deniers
Coyle tells the story of Simon Clifford, a gym teacher from Leeds, England, who traveled to Brazil in 1997 to better understand why the Brazilians were so good at soccer.
While conventional wisdom had held that the main factors were poverty, soccer as a dominant national sport and a good climate, Clifford found that until the late 1950s, the Brazilians were not a soccer powerhouse. But during that decade, Brazil became obsessed with a type of indoor soccer called futsal. The game is played with a smaller, heavier ball in a much tighter indoor space. Because the ball is heavy and small, it can’t be kicked in the air easily. As a result, precision in passing is key.
In one minute of futsal, the average player passes six times as much as in a minute of regular soccer. And in soccer, passing precision is key in separating great from good. So inadvertently, the Brazilians were acquiring the right soccer skills through futsal in a much more deliberate way than if they had been training on large, outdoor fields. In 1958, Brazil won the World Cup, beginning a dynasty of soccer domination.
Asking whether 10000 hours of practice can help achieve entrepreneurial excellence, Jon Auerbach of Charles River Ventures tell us this story. The upshot is that sometimes, practice isn’t deliberate; so perhaps you have been practicing for something but you are not aware of it yet.