In a wider article about the weird evolution of video games, Cracked had an entry on Grand Theft Auto V:

• “Onto The Land” is a documentary filmed entirely in the world of Grand Theft Auto. It focuses on the in-game world’s wildlife.
• The documentary is only 15 minutes long but took half a year to make – including time for research on the behaviour of in-game animals.
• Another documentary looks at marine life under the oceans of GTA – something that was likely coded as an after-thought by the game’s creators, since most of the action takes place on the land.
• Other documentarians look at the social structures within the game. There’s one particularly close-knit bike gang that players have set up (complete with a real-life, full-time PR rep), and one team created a documentary on the inner workings of the gang.

Read more and find links to the documentaries at the Cracked article.

Venezuela isn’t the only country struggling to pay off debts. Cubans are getting creative too according to the BBC:

• Cuba and The Czech Republic used to be Communist chums during the Cold War. Back then Cuba took out some loans from the Czechs.
• Almost $300 million is now due, and rather than expend precious cash, Cuba offered to pay it back in rum and pharmaceutical drugs.
• The Czech Republic is now a member of the European Union, and Cuba’s medicines aren’t certified in the EU, making them effectively worthless.
• But the rum may cause Czech negotiators to pause for thought. If the entire debt were paid off this way, it’d be enough to supply the country for more than a century.

Read more at the BBC.

In one of its Christmas Specials, The Economist looked at prisoner tattoo correlations:

• Three quarters of prisoners in the data set The Economist used have at least one tattoo.
• White prisoners are more likely to have tattoos related to racial supremacy, such as those of Nazi swastikas.
• Hispanics, who are often Catholic, are more likely to have tattoos of Christian imagery such as crosses or the Virgin Mary.
• Women frequently have tattoos of butterflies, hearts, and motivational quotes (“this too shall pass”).
• Men like tattoos related to incarceration – bars, handcuffs, and the like.
• Sex offenders – especially pedophiles – are least likely to have tattoos.
• And those who reject tattoos are more likely to be murderers than those who have them.
• But upon being freed, those who sport ink are likely to return to prison after just 2.4 years. Those without tattoos will last 5.4 years before being sentenced back to prison.
• Inmates who opt for Christian tattoos are less likely to be in prison due to murder.
• But the reverse isn’t true: satanic tattoos are not a predictor of homicide.

Read more of the fascinating analysis at The Economist.

Stephen Brown, Yan Lu, Sugata Ray, and Melvyn Teo published a paper on what you can learn from the kind of car a financial advisor drives:

• Those who drive sports cars are more likely to take risks with investments.
• However, this risk doesn’t result in higher returns.
• Those who like to go fast and furious are also more likely to engage in fraudulent behaviour, and to terminate their investment funds.
• The results indicate that those who like to drive sports cars are thrill-seekers, and this personality trait extends into their professional lives.

Read the entire study here.

Source: SSRN

Help, we need some loggers, cry some confused environmentalists:

• At the turn of the 20^th century Californian forests had 50 trees per acre. Today they have 300.
• This contributes to more intense forest fires that now consume even the oldest trees.
• More trees also means that more groundwater is sucked up, preventing it from entering resevoirs.
• The increased density of leaves means that rain and snow is caught and then evaporated away, contributing to California’s water crisis.
• But thinning forests out is expensive. It can cost $650,000 for loggers to bring down a square mile of trees.
• Fortunately, there’s a party that directly benefits. In 2010 Denver Water paid the Forest Service $16.5 million to clear trees, reasoning that it would recoup the investment from the increase in water supply.

Read more at The Economist, where you’ll also find the perspective of those who think that the forests should be left alone.

Professional ham slicing is a thing, wrote Oddity Central:

• Florencio Sanchidrián is considered to be the world’s best ham slicer and charges $4,000 to slice a leg of ham.
• Ham connoisseurs know that slicing machines ruin a good piece of meat. The friction that it generates melts fat and basically makes ham inedible.
• Professionals like Sanchidrián spend over an hour on the task, and cut slices so thin that it’s possible to see through them.
• Despite being a celebrity in the English-speaking world, Sanchidrián refuses to learn English. He believes that, on principle, ham cutters should not be able to speak English.

Read more at Oddity Central

Via: Marginal Revolution

Nicola Harley wrote that the oldest manufacturing firm in Britain is shutting down shop:

• The Whitechapel Bell Foundry, based in London, built the bell that tolls in Big Ben, and is behind other famous bells such as Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell.
• The company was founded in 1570, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, and managed to survive almost 500 years.
• Quality is paramount to the company. It takes about 11 years between an inquiry being made and the final product being delivered. In one instance an order took an entire century.
• The foundry priced its big-scale bells in the £250,000 (US$320,000) range.
• But a lot of its business had turned into making small table bells, popularized by Downton Abbey, where it is used to ring for tea.

Read more about the company on The Telegraph.

Redditors discussed the economics behind perfume marketing campaigns:

• Unless you resort to crass “scratch ‘n’ sniffs” it’s hard to transmit an actual smell over most traditional forms of marketing media.
• Instead perfume makers try to sell a lifestyle that draws their target market. Axe targets young men so its commercials are about getting dates with attractive women.
• Meanwhile women are the ones that buy cologne for their significant others, so in Polo’s commercials the men are suave, sophisticated, and devoted to their partners.
• Smell is linked to memory. Ads will present situations that evoke a certain feeling associated with their scent.

Read the entire discussion on Reddit.

Donald Trump’s signature catch-phrase on The Apprentice was “you’re fired”. In a 2013 article about the Obama administration, Scott Wilson wrote about why Presidents typically have a hard time firing people:

• Firing someone implies that the President made a mistake in appointing them, and this can be shaky ground politically.
• Presidential appointees are typically extremely loyal to the President, and the personal relationship that builds can make firing difficult.
• There is a middle ground. After the furor dies down, instead of firing someone, the President can merely present them with a cushy ambassadorship in a friendly country.

Read more on The Washington Post

Fabiola Zerpa and Andrew Rosati showed us what Venezuelan hyper-inflation looks like:

• Inflation in Venezuela is running somewhere between 200% to 1,500% a year.
• For vendors still willing to accept Venezuelan currency, it’s not worth taking the time to count it. Instead many will just weight it to approximate its value.
• The government has been stubborn about releasing notes worth more than 100 bolivars.
• Today that’s worth just US$0.10. But the government has promised to print bills as big as 20,000 bolivars – in time for Christmas bonuses.
• Until then Venezuelans will lug around massive piles of cash. ATMs used to be restocked every few days, but now have to be restocked several times a day.

Read more about life in a country dealing with hyper-inflation on Bloomberg.

Via: Marginal Revolution