Joshua Gans wrote about an oddly popular product:

• In 2015, three of the best-selling books of the year were colouring books targeted at adults.
• Fans say that they are calming and help them return to a simpler time.
• They might be popular with retailers because they have zero resale value. Once they are coloured in, they can’t be re-gifted to someone else.
• Brick and mortar stores might be trying to push them because they’re the rare type of book that don’t work well as e-books.
• And gift-givers might just like giving these away because they’re safe and are unlikely to offend anyone.

Read more musings about the popularity of colouring books and what this says about economists at Digitopoly.

Via: Marginal Revolution

Hayley Glatter looked into what the start of a school year means for children in the United States, where uniforms are not the norm:

• The average American household spends $674 on back to school shopping.
• More than a third of that is spent on clothing – including the clothes that the student will wear on the first day back.
• The trend for splurging on back to school merchandise seems to have started in the 1960s, as post-war consumerism began to take off.
• Spending has surged since then. In an era of social media and Facebook likes, image seems more important than ever, and students are responding by putting ever more thought into their dress.

Read more at The Atlantic

The era of bar soap might be coming to an end wrote AJ Willingham:

• Bar soap sales fell 5% between 2010 and 2015.
• The reason seems to be young people. 60% of those aged 18-24 say they hate the idea of someone else’s germs on their bar soap.
• They much prefer liquid soaps which are perceived to be more hygienic – even though soap is…soap. It cleans itself.
• Bar soap is also thought to be inconvenient – it’s slippery and many a shower singer has had to interrupt their tune to bend down and grab their soap.

Read more on CNN.

Miquel Ros wrote about the market for personalized luxury jumbo jets:

• Airbus and Boeing have special departments that focus on selling personalized versions of their commercial jets to the world’s elites and super-rich.
• There are 300 of them around the world. Many of them are like the United States’ Air Force One, used to ferry around world leaders.
• While the market is small, it is profitable. You don’t have to offer bulk order discounts to individual buyers.
• Buyers of airplanes typically focus on factors such as fuel economy. This is not a concern for the ultra-wealthy who prefer, instead, to focus on speed and range – to ensure that they can get to their destination quickly, and without making unnecessary stops.
• The planes cost hundreds of millions of dollars and often the cost of customizing the interior of the plane is more than the cost of the plane itself.
• Only a handful of companies have the skillset necessary to ensure that the inside of an airplane looks like decadent luxury – but still meets all safety requirements.
• The rich like their gold, and the typical private jumbo jet has 300 kilograms of it in fittings and decorations.
• The jets might also be customized to include things like special on-board garages for luxury cars.
• You don’t want to be too ostentatious though. After all, you have to consider re-sell value, and the next owner will want their own customized interior.
• The one private jet you can’t get is a personalized version of the double decker A380. Airbus is too busy meeting airline demands for the jet to work on one off customized versions.

Read more and see incredible photos on CNN

The Economist writes that we might soon return to an age of wooden buildings:

• Wood buildings are about a quarter of the weight of concrete buildings.
• While wood is more expensive than concrete as a building material, once you factor in the lower cost of transporting the lighter material, it comes out to be about even.
• Wood is better than concrete for the environment – wood traps carbon. In fact, a wooden structure could reduce a building’s carbon footprint by up to 70%.
• Advances in materials engineering help ensure that a wooden building could stand up to modern fire safety codes.
• Skyscrapers are typically built in densely populated urban centers. Wooden buildings would allow for a much quieter construction site.
• Lumber can more easily be carved and shaped, giving architects a broader horizon for creative expression.
• There is currently a proposal for an 80 storey, 300-meter wooden skyscraper in London (pictured).

Read more about the future of wood as a building material at The Economist.

Kelsey McKinney wrote about the pizza saver – an invaluable gizmo that has saved hundreds of millions of people from cardboard infused pizza:

• The pizza saver was a patent filed by a 46-year-old city councilwoman in 1983.
• Each saver costs less than a penny to make. But the equipment to produce them on any realistic scale costs about a million dollars.
• Back of the envelope math indicates that the pizza saver industry brings in $8 million of revenue every year.
• It’s unclear if the patent owner – who saw the patent lapse in 1993, and passed away in 2005 – ever saw any payments from her invention.

Read more about the pizza saver and what its next iteration might look like at Eater.

There was outrage on Reddit after an itemized hospital bill showed a $40 charge for “skin to skin” contact with a newborn. Jennifer Conti spoke out in defense of the charge:

• Skin to skin contact is standard practice after a vaginal birth. But until recently it wasn’t what happened after a C-section.
• As the medical community has woken to the benefits of skin to skin contact, there has been a push to make sure it happens after a C-section as well.
• However it’s a lot more difficult to do after a surgical birth. The mother still has open incisions in her and is drugged.
• To make sure that there are no issues then, the hospital has a nurse oversee the skin to skin contact. The bill just encompasses the cost of the nurse’s time.

Read the entire argument on Slate.

Ana Swanson looked into why so many sushi places are owned by Chinese people:

• The average Chinese restaurant meal costs $33. The average Japanese meal costs almost twice as much: $63.
• Cooking the two isn’t all that different. It’s a mixture of rice and protein. So aspiring Chinese entrepreneurs have opted for the higher margins on Japanese food.
• According to one estimate only a tenth of Japanese restaurants in the United States are run by people of Japanese descent.
• Part of the reason why Japanese food is so much more expensive is because salaries in Japan are higher than those in China. So Japanese chefs cost more, and Japanese patrons can afford to pay more.
• However as China becomes richer and starts exporting more wealthy, expect the rise of higher class, more expensive Chinese restaurant fare.

Read more at The Washington Post

Via: Marginal Revolution

It seems Gandalf was onto something when he had a gardener join Frodo on his stealth mission to strike deep into enemy territory. Jennifer Mcdermott wrote:

• The Navy is looking into growing fresh vegetables onboard submarines hydroponically.
• Currently sailors run out of fresh produce a week into multi-month missions and then have to subside on canned and frozen fare.
• While space on submarines is at a premium, it is thought that the morale boost of having fresh food might be worth the space cost of having a farm.
• The vegetables would be planted several months before the mission, so the crewmembers would simply have to harvest the food while they were onboard.
• With over a hundred crew members, the farm probably wouldn’t be able to produce enough fresh produce for hand-picked vegetables to make an appearance at every single meal. Instead it’ll likely be the odd treat to keep spirits up.

Read more at Military.

Jamin Warren writes that Ikea’s success is, in part, due to the lessons it has learnt from video games:

• Ikea stores look like they allow you a lot of freedom to explore, but really there’s just a singular path through the store that everybody ultimately ends up on.
• This is similar to games like Grand Theft Auto – they are ostensibly open world games, but there’s a central narrative that players are meant to follow that ties everything together.
• That feeling of freedom and sense of accomplishment when you “find” your own way to the end of the store puts shoppers in a happy mood. 60% of Ikea purchases are made unintentionally.
• In keeping with good video game level design, Ikea ensures that the path curves every 15 meters, because long open walkways are boring. Bends are interesting.
• Ikea also forces you to build your own furniture. It’s challenging – like video games can be – but there’s a clear and tangible reward at the end that makes you feel good about the product.
• Having you make your own furniture has the further advantage of giving it a more artisanal feel and making you appreciate its build. Just like how the most delicious meals are often those you make for yourself from scratch.
• And Ikea has its strange Nordic naming convention – which is essentially its own language, but one that people are able to understand anyway. Video games too, often have their own in-world language that helps deepen immersion.

Read more at Kill Screen.