Centives

Mark Strassmann wrote about senior year portraits:

• Graduating high schoolers are looking to capture their personalities in their year book portraits.
• To that end they’re going to professional photographers at expensive studios to frame scenes.
• The photos (an example from Shirk Photography above) can cost up to $4,000.
• The waiting list for the best photographers can be up to two years long.

Read more, and see other examples, on CBS News.

Last week Sylvie Goulard was appointed defense minister of France by Emmanuel Macron and his Prime Minister, Édouard Philippe. Aamna Mohdin wrote that this is in line with a wider trend of women commanding defense:

• Sri Lanka and India first broke the mold with female heads of states (and de facto defense ministers) in the 1970s.
• But progress was slow. Around the turn of the millennium Finland was the only western country with a female defense minister.
• Since 2002 though 18 EU countries have had female defense ministers.
• With the change of leadership in France, the majority of G7 countries now have a female defense minister.
• There is still a ways to go: a woman has never held the top military spot in countries with the largest defense budgets: The United States, Russia, and China.

Read more on Quartz.

Alaina Leary delved into the “Important Haircut” trope:

• In movies and television, a female character cutting her hair is typically a response to severe trauma and the point where the character is “reborn”.
• It’s an easy trope as it allows the viewer to visualize internal trauma.
• It also has some basis in truth. Psychologists say that survivors of trauma often find a haircut helps with healing. It is an aspect of one’s life that one has complete control over, and there are no detrimental effects.
• There are downsides to the trope. People may think that only major external signs like a haircut are an indication that their friend may need help or support.
• A character cutting her own hair is often shown to be in hysterics – possibly creating a stigma against what can be a healthy act.
• And then there are women who just like to have short hair, and would rather people don’t think they have cancer or are traumatized.

Read more on Racked.

Anindya Ghose wrote about crowds and marketing:

• A study found that those on subway trains are five times more likely to buy things after seeing mobile ads.
• If the subway is crowded then the purchase rate goes up another 45%.
• People dislike having their personal space violated. On trains, they respond to it by turning increasingly inward and focusing on their phones.
• As the real world is tuned out people take in more of their mobile screen – including the ads.

Read more on Recode.

Adrianne Jeffries wrote about E-sports:

• League of Legends is the most popular E-sports game, and the servers that power it are located in Chicago.
• This means that it takes computers in Hawaii – 6,700 km away – 120 milliseconds longer for their actions to register.
• This has hamstrung Hawaii’s e-sporting professionals who have struggled to make the big leagues.
• The physicality of the internet helps explain why tournaments are hosted in big stadiums – keeping everyone on the same network in the same location evens the playing field.

Read more on The Outline.

Chloe Lim analyzed two major fact checkers:

• Lim found that there was only a 10% overlap in the statements that two fact checkers evaluated.
• When there was overlap the two did not strongly agree – and sometimes flatly contradicted each other – in their assessment of a statements’ accuracy.
• This may help explain why facts don’t seem to have had much of an effect in America’s primary and Presidential elections.
• In the fact checkers’ defense – assessing the truth of political claims is hard. Politicians rarely offer much detail and usually ignore follow up requests for clarification.

Read the entire paper here.

Via: Marginal Revolution

British politics is about more than just Brexit wrote Jenny Gross:

• The United Kingdom parliament has recorded its acts on parchment made of sheep or goat skin since medieval times.
• Today this costs $45 a sheet – compared to $0.21 for archival paper.
• The annual cost of using parchment is estimated to be $103,000.
• Parchment does happen to be more durable than paper. But if paper is carefully stored then it should last a few centuries at least.
• Switching to digital records entirely is out of the question – a solar flare could knock out the world’s computers.
• The debate about costs is particularly sensitive as the UK is transferring 19,000 pieces of EU law into UK law (Editor’s note: Ok, maybe British politics is all Brexit after all)
• Many are upset as one tradition after another disappears. Clerks in the House of Commons stopped wearing wigs this year. And the House Speaker had the audacity to show up in a suit and tie.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal.

Cecilia D’Anastasio explored the market for female gaming companions:

• Women looking to make a little extra cash doing what they already enjoy can charge up to $15 per session to play with internet strangers.
• Some provide emotional support, in addition to the gaming kind – they’ll cheer when you do well and comfort you when you lose.
• They’ll often be asked to play supporting characters – like healers – allowing the paying customer to focus on being the hero.
• Which is a shame – they’re typically excellent gamers themselves and can provide useful coaching.

Read more on Kotaku.

The WannaCry bug encrypts users’ files and demands a Bitcoin ransom in return for the unlock key. Only those that have disabled security updates are vulnerable to it. Rhett Jones looked into the earnings of the perpetrators:

• One expert used publicly available Bitcoin data to estimate that WannaCry’s creators had made just $26,000.
• There is evidence that some users may even have negotiated down the original asking ransom price of $300.
• The bug threatens to double prices if users don’t immediately pay the ransom so it’s possible earnings will jump.
• Analysis done in 2012 indicated that approximately 3% of people pay up when hit with ransomware attacks.

Read more on Gizmodo.

Move aside James Bond. The next action blockbuster could realistically center around a nanny as the protagonist. Ben Stansall wrote:

• Norland College, in southwest England, has been training some of the world’s most renowned nannies for 125 years.
• In addition to self-defense classes, the college recently added counter-terrorism courses like evasive driving and cyber security to its curriculum.
• The lessons are taught by ex-intelligence officers.
• Alumni of the school go on to care for the most elite clients. Britain’s Prince George is tended to by a graduate of the school.

Read more on MSN.