Tiffany R. Jansen wrote:

• Those who live in nursing homes often feel cutoff from the rest of the world.
• Meanwhile students are having to take on increasing amounts of debt to go to college.
• Some nursing homes are putting two and two together, and are offering students free accommodation in nursing homes, if they spend time interacting with the home’s senior citizens.
• Just the students’ general presence seems to brighten up the lives of the elderly. Instead of talking about their aches and pains, they instead gossip about the love lives of their young housemates.
• This type of sustained contact is far more helpful for the elderly, than the one-off interactions that college communities sometimes organize.

Read more on City Lab.

Via: Reddit

Scott Tobias wrote about the difficulty of making horror movies today:

• Technology used to be great for horror movies. In an age before caller ID, mysterious strangers could taunt people, perhaps from inside the house – before lines were abruptly cut.
• Now though films must lamely note that cell service is down, or else help would be an Uber away.
• For a brief moment “found footage” films – like the Blair Witch Project – offered hope for movies recorded using handheld devices. But their novelty has dulled.
• The widespread use of drones could make the problem even worse. Being able to fly high above a haunted mansion or forest will provide too much tension sapping perspective.

Read more on The Guardian.

The Economist wrote about the life of Steve Boggs:

• Boggs enjoyed making reproductions of currencies, spending up to ten hours on each note, with subtle modifications that made clear that they weren’t real notes.
• He paid for goods with the currency. If a seller objected, he’d argue that the amount of time he spent on the reproduction justified the face value of the bill.
• Usually the currency was rejected anyway. But when it wasn’t he’d ask for a receipt, the change that he was owed, and write on the blank back of the bill the time and place of the transaction.
• He would give it 24 hours, call one of the collectors of his work, and sell them the receipt and the change for five times the face value of the original bill.
• The collectors would then try to track down the reproduction and pay thousands of dollars for the art.
• He paid for more than $1 million worth of goods this way.
• The Swiss were particularly willing to accept his art in lieu of real money.

Read more about his troubles with the legal system, including the judges who tried to figure out if his bills should be treated like pornography on The Economist.

Lady Gaga performed the half-time show at America’s Super Bowl LI. Keith Caulfield wrote about what this did for her bank account:

• On February 5^th, the day of the Super Bowl, people bought 150,00 of Lady Gaga’s songs and albums in the United States.
• This was a 1,000% increase over the previous day, when she sold 15,000 songs and albums.
• The most popular purchase was “Million Reasons” a relatively new song that isn’t among her biggest hits, but was featured prominently during the show.
• Bad Romance, Born This Way, and Poker Face sales, were up 1,525%, 2,202%, and 1,217% respectively.

Read all the stats on Billboard.

Trump has given television shows an advertising boost wrote Daniel Lippman and Anna Palmer:

• President Trump is known to watch shows such as “Morning Joe” and “The O’Reilly Factor” on a frequent basis.
• Companies are trying to buy ad-time on those shows to influence the President’s thinking.
• The President is known to tweet about the messages and statistics he sees on the air. Those tweets then generate at least a day’s worth of media coverage.
• This has caused the price of ads on certain shows to more than double.
• It is, in essence, a lobbying strategy tailored to the current occupant of The White House.

Read more on Politico.

We’ve previously reported that the rise of the ATM didn’t decrease the number of bank tellers – it increased them. It’s possible that driverless cars will similarly mean an increase in the number of paid driver positions. Alex Davies wrote:

• For all the hoopla about self-driving cars, it’s unlikely they’ll be able to navigate through unusual circumstances – such as when construction requires driving on the wrong side of the road.
• Nissan believes the solution is to have “drivers” who can remotely transmit instructions to cars, when the car isn’t sure what to do.
• The driver won’t take over active control of the vehicle. Issues with latency could make this dangerous. Instead the human will evaluate the situation and transmit a sequence of maneuvers the car will execute.
• In this Nissan is drawing upon the same technology that NASA uses to send navigation instructions to Mars rovers.
• NASA likens it to lifts. You don’t need a lift operator, but you need a help button in the rare instances that something goes wrong.
• Such a system could smooth the adoption of self-driving cars, as consumers and regulators will take comfort in knowing there’s a human on hand if required.

The full article on Wired is a fascinating insight into one potential future of self-driving cars.

Via: Marginal Revolution

Cigarette companies were in retreat as society turned against smoking. But they’re back, writes The Economist, and look set to grow:

• While a lower proportion of people smoke, overall population growth means that the number of smokers in the world – 1.1 billion – hasn’t really changed.
• But prices are rising, driving a boom in revenues.
• Only big companies can deal with all the regulatory hurdles imposed on cigarette makers – meaning that industry giants don’t have to worry about upstart companies coming in and stealing market share with low prices.
• Regulations also place limits on the advertising of cigarettes – making it even more difficult for low-cost cigarette makers to gain recognition, and slashing the amount of money existing titans have to spend on marketing.
• And the companies are merging with one another – giving them even greater pricing power.
• The rise of e-cigarettes is another opportunity. They’re more expensive which will increase revenues.
• They’re arguably more healthy than regular cigarettes, which could drive an uptick in demand.

The article closes by noting that tobacco remains responsible for one in nine of all adult deaths. Read it on The Economist.

From stories about currency to breast implants, Venezuela’s imploding economy has provided plenty of fodder for economists to pour over. Robbie Gramer wrote about the poor state of Venezuela’s oil export infrastructure:

• A fleet of Venezuelan tankers carrying 4 million barrels of oil are stranded in the Carribean.
• In order to traverse the ocean they need to undergo safety inspections and hull cleanings.
• But Venezuela is mired in debt and is struggling to afford the services required to make the tankers seaworthy.
• Ships have had to wait in the open seas for as long as two months – posing an environmental hazard – before they can sail their cargo.

Read more on Foreign Policy.

You can enjoy your cup of coffee with an avian companion at this café:

• Customers pay Fukuro no Mise a $19.50 cover charge for a drink and an hour with its numerous owls.
• The café doesn’t have food so you don’t have to worry about the birds pecking at your dish.
• You can have the owl climb up on your shoulder or head – or just slowly pet it as you sip your coffee.
• The place gets packed quickly and reservations are required in advance.

Read more on Business Insider.

Joanna Stern wrote about the plight of those named Alexa:

• Microsoft named its virtual assistant Cortana. Apple named its version Siri.
• Amazon wanted its own product to seem more human. In doing so it called it Alexa – the 39^th most popular girl’s name in America.
• When one father asked his daughter, Alexa, to get him a glass of water, Amazon’s product offered to buy a bottle of premium bottled water.
• Amazon allows users to change the key word to “Echo”, “Amazon”, or “computer” – but few know this.
• In the future Amazon is hoping that it can use biometrics to figure out which Alexa an individual is referring to, based on tone of voice.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

Via: Marginal Revolution