According to Charles Pulliam-Moore gyms are hotbeds for all kinds of workouts:

• According to a survey 25% of people have considered having sex at their gym.
• 70% of women have thought about having sex with their personal trainers.
• 66% of people say that part of the reason they go to the gym is in the hopes of having sex there.
• 10% of the gym bags you see have condoms in them…just in case.
• This might be because workouts cause your serotonin and dopamine to spike, putting you in the mood.

Read more over here.

Source: Fusion

Ellen Barry wrote about a shadowy city with ethereal sleep merchants:

• New Delhi’s shelters can accommodate 18,000 people. Yet the homeless likely number more than 100,000.
• Enter sleep merchants. These people chalk out parts of the sidewalks and offer safe spaces for people to bunk.
• They pay off the police and street sweepers so that the sleepers aren’t disturbed. Pick pockets are also paid so that the only robberies abound are dreamt.
• Some are compassionate, offer blankets, and play a Bollywood movie so that clients can slowly drift into slumber.
• Others are more calculating and will more than quadruple nightly prices – to 50 Rupees ($0.73) – when a chill begins to settle in the dark.

Source: The New York Times

According to Noah Rothbaum the best cocktail cherry garnish comes from a company called Luxardo. He looked into the company’s history:

• Luxardo’s cherries actually date back to a farm in Croatia in the 1880s.
• They were used in cocktails then too, but in the 1900s olives replaced cherries as the cocktail garnish of choice.
• But Luxardo continued to churn out its cherries until World War II. Allied forces bombed the farm in 1943 and legend has it that the family scion escaped with nothing but a cook book and a cherry sapling.
• He went to a part of Italy with acidic volcanic soil and planted the sapling there.
• Not only was it good soil for cherries but it was far from cities ensuring that in any future wars the farm wouldn’t be bombed.
• Fast forward to 2004 when Luxardo sent four jars of its candied cherries to a master New York bar tender.
• The rest is history. Luxardo cherries became the iconic cocktail garnish, inspiring bars across New York to adopt them.

Read more over here.

Source: The Daily Beast

Turns out its possible to get your own personal Alfred. Pádraig Belton wrote:

• Super-elite butlers can earn $157,000 a year, and if they go to the Middle East the salaries are tax-free – and often include an additional bonus.
• Many of them are English and either have military experience, due to cut backs in the armed forces, or have acted in the past.
• Such butlers will often oversee multiple properties, and will do things like ensuring that family visas are up to date.
• In order to become an elite butler, you need pristine references – preferably at least one from the Royal Family.
• You’ll also benefit from going through a diploma course that offers training in fire control, first aid, wine tasting, and social etiquette.
• It’s not just for men. According to one academy 40% of elite butlers are female – they’ll often wait on wealthy females in the Middle East where gender segregation is common.

Read more about the world of elite butlers here.

Source: BBC

Via: Marginal Revolution

The Parting looked at cremations:

• Cremations in the United States are on the rise. They are expected to make up half of all funerals in 2018. They were just a quarter 20 years before.
• This seems to be because those unaffiliated with a religion prefer cremations – and the number of those people are on the rise.
• Cremations allow grieving families to have more control over how their loved ones are mourned. The end product is ashes that can be placed next to a tree, hill, or waterfall without purchasing a plot.
• They can also be cheaper than burials which can require expensive coffins.
• Crematoriums are thus a thriving business. One publicly traded company has thousands of locations across the US and is worth over $5 billion.
• It costs about $1,000 for a facility to cremate a body.
• Sometimes customers will be charged less because the real margins are in add-on products/services such as caskets, flowers, and embalming.
• Others can cost a lot more. The FTC allows funeral parlours to keep their pricing secret in most cases, making it difficult for grieving family members to find the most affordable option.

Read more about the business, and find a deeper analysis of industry pricing over here.

Source: The Parting

What3words is a fascinating idea:

• Reliable building addresses, while taken for granted in the west, are a luxury in many countries around the world.
• What3words is a service that has broken up the planet into 57 trillion squares measuring 3 meters (10 feet) by 3 meters.
• It then uses an algorithm to generate three words that can serve as that square’s address.
• As the words are simple and memorable they are easier to use than formal strings of latitude and longitude numbers.
• Offensive words have been removed, and the algorithm assigns longer words to places that few people are likely to inhabit like the middle of the ocean.
• The algorithm also makes sure that similar words are on different continents. “Table.Chair.Lamps” is in the United States while “Table.Chair.Lamp.” is in Australia.
• The system is available in 9 languages and will soon spread to more.

Read about it here.

Source: What3words

Via: Marginal Revolution

It’s been about 16 years since the Spice Girls rocked the world. But their legacy lives on writes Nazanin Shahnavaz:

• Spice Girl tribute groups have popped up where women use wigs and make up to dress up as the Spice Girls.
• They do live performances where fans get really into it and sing along as if it were a performance by the real group.
• Some requests are unconventional. A group once performed at the funeral of a super-fan.
• One company that puts them together – Pink Productions – has an ensemble of characters ready to play any of the Spice Girls in case one should become sick or find another career.
• The company also has Taylor Swift and One Direction tribute performers.

Read interviews with the tribute performers in the full article here.

Source: Broadly

In 2015 and 2016 humanity’s star dimmed a little. We stopped believing in our aspirations and decided that it was ok to settle for mediocrity. We accepted that the wheeled monstrosity depicted above could be called a “hover board”. Besides being a depressing reminder of our mortality, The Economist looked at other lessons from the hover board industry:

• Marketing is everything. The products that generate the most buzz today are those that seem to combine fantasy and reality. In this context calling them “hover boards” was key to their success.
• Product placement matters too. A-List celebrities like Justin Bieber started using it.
• This inspired B-listers to jump on the hot trend. Kendall Jenner released a video of herself on it.
• And this set the tone for everybody else who wanted a bit of attention. A Filipino priest sang to his flock while riding on one.
• The industry showed the strength of global supply chains. In just a few short weeks there were hundreds of brands selling hover boards.
• But they also show their weakness. When the hover boards started catching on fire it wasn’t clear who was responsible since no one was fully sure where each of the components came from and who put them together.
• Despite their danger they quickly spread on the market though, demonstrating another recent trend in business: products and services are sold before their legal ramifications are fully thought through.
• The hope is that if the product is popular enough the legal environment will adjust itself to allow the product – as some have argued is happening with Uber being able to ignore regulations aimed at taxis.

Read other lessons from the hover board industry and what their fate could mean for some of America’s hottest tech startups over here.

Source: The Economist

Alex Mayyasi pulled the curtain of off Judge Judy:

• Judge Judy’s show is the highest rated on daytime television, with more viewers than Oprah.
• For this she earns $47 million a year, making her television’s highest paid woman.
• While she was once a judge she isn’t one any longer. The set is made to look like a courtroom.
• But the judgments are real. Judge Judy is an arbiter at a binding arbitration – the system is a legitimate alternative to the courts.
• Extras are paid to mill about so that the bailiff has someone to say “come to order” at.
• TV producers hunt across America for real cases. Those who agree to have Judy as their arbiter are given a free trip to the set in LA where all meals and hotels are paid for.
• They are also given an appearance fee of up to $500.
• And while Judge Judy might rule that one party owes another party money, it’s actually the television producers that pay the settlement.
• Those who know they are likely to win the case agree to appear on the show for the money and the quick settlement.
• Those who know they will lose agree to Judge Judy’s arbitration because they know they will have the settlement paid on their behalf.
• Experts help prepare the parties involved in the case by giving them tips on how they can best communicate their position.
• They may also be taken to a hairdresser or be given a set of clean clothes if they are particularly destitute.
• Once this prep work is done however the action is mostly real. There is no pre-established script and there are no re-shots to get a better take of a line.

The full article contains many more fascinating details, including an account of Judge Judy’s rise at the age of 50, and the competitors that have arisen. You should read it here.

Source: Priceonomics

Rumors strongly indicate that the next iPhone will not have the typical 3.5mm headphone connector. Owners of the device will instead have to use Bluetooth headphones, or headphones specifically designed to use the Lightning port that is also used to charge the device. Vlad Savov took a look at some of the implications:

• It’s been reported that Apple is removing the 3.5mm jack in order to slim down the device – but that probably won’t have much of an effect since the lightning port is about as big.
• Instead the real benefit might be to boost sales of devices that use Apple’s proprietary lightning port.
• Headphone makers are excited by the prospect of selling users a new class of headphones since the old ones they use will suddenly become obsolete.
• Since Bluetooth and lightning port headsets can be priced at a premium this should also mean higher margins for manufacturers.
• Ultra-elite audiophile headphone makers may not want to create wireless products since those don’t always have the best audio quality. However people who buy those sorts of headphones probably don’t want to use something as pedestrian as a phone to listen to their music anyway.

Read more over here.

Source: The Verge