Random thoughts and questions

Interesting point, Ely. In any case, an hour and a half of watching the roommate play Amnesia has left both of us shaking, so it's time to counter that with Blazing Saddles.

I'm prone to motion sickness as well, and I find that it's WAY worse when watching someone else play than when I'm playing myself. When I play, my brain knows which way I'm going to zig and zag. Still, I reach my limit pretty fast.

Watching some nbc morning program and the production values are about the same as what I've seen on the classier youtube videos. Which is nice because I keep yammering on about convergence between amateurs and professionals in content generation thats to the improvement in device quality. Which is good because distribution of digital assets has already converged thanks to p2p tech. You may have noticed what with the death of all the old business models based on dominating expensive distribution (print dailies, record companies, tv) mechanisms rather than dominating quality.

It's such an exciting time. If only the Fed would stop beating off in a corner so that the transition could be less painful for everyone, and gov't would work harder to support the losers from the transition.

Ugh. Now they're talking about Black Friday helping small business. Black Friday is a perfect prisoner's dilemma that illustrates Hotelling's law: businesses got increased market share by pushing silly sales, which eventually resulted in convergence and net zero market share gain with surplus to consumers. Yay for us, lol at business which has to deal with increased sales volume on one day and decreased sales volume in the prior months.

And then there's the silly idea that we should shop preferentially at small business. Bullshit, and the average consumer as interviewed ("we only care about price") knows it. Small businesses and urban density are directly proportional to one another. Dense urban areas reduce average distance traveled and increase the number of people per shop due to the whole vertical housing thing (shops occupy bottom floor, areas above are occupied by potential shoppers). And the increased difficulty of travel reduces the gains from shopping at a distant big box store. Which means convenient small businesses do relatively better. Putting it in simple english, living in an urban area increases the shoe leather cost per unit traveled.

But planning restrictions reduce the average permissible density of a unit of potential living area (or, alternatively, raise the cost per square foot of housing), which reduces the small shop carrying capacity, which reduces employment (small shops are relatively less capital intensive per unit of good sold than walmart, meaning relatively more labor), which reduces the potential employment multiplier of the sort of high wage service sector professions that tend to exist in urban environments.

There are other factors involved, and that's a hugely reductive explanation. But it shows how an arcane rule about height can have an actual impact on growth and employment and why monetary policy (despite being handy for short run demand management) isn't able to effect growth in the long run.

And now I go to carry boxes marked balls.

Oh great, someone slipped some ecstasy into Aeon's egg nog.

Holy crap, it's cold outside!

The reason that this "silly idea" is being promoted so much is to shift the demand curve and increase customers' willingness to pay. It is rather effective actually in areas that have both big box stores and many small places in my experience (Sacramento, Carson City, "rural" Bay Area) and is further proof that economists who assume that price is the only input to the calculus of buy-side utility are doing it wrong.

Enjoy your boxes of balls.

I had to resist lamenting - at length, because I'm doing it here - Seattle's terrible height restrictions after Aeon's post. They obviously aren't affecting employment, wages, or any of that stuff, but they are completely unnecessary, only exist due to an entire group of NIMBYs being kowtowed to, and they obviously are having a massive impact on the viability of Seattle proper to become a true "city". Go big or go home, guys.

And here I thought it was just another avenue to get people to not shop at Wal-Mart.

I'm only half-joking here. Don't feel the need to seriously respond to me. :)

THERE IS NO NOG, ONLY DROOL!

As income declines the relative importance of price increases. Advertising the moral element of small business purchasing (nil in reality but whatevskies) only impacts consumers with surplus income such that they are willing to pay more per good to purchase that luxury feeling of moral superiority. Given small businesses are dying despite the advertising, we can conclude there are generally cheaper options for purchasing a feeling of moral superiority (charity donations, being a douche about the refreshments at parties, buying free trade shit and driving a hybrid) there must still room for the price delta to fall to reach the market place. Some reduction in the rate of death may have occurred, but to find that we'd need to measure against a control group that simply does not exist.

Given that small businesses are being positioned as a luxury product rather than an actual relevant going concern, we must needs assume that the carrying capacity of an environment must be a function of the number of potential high income customers, travel costs, urban density, the regulatory cost differential between urban SME vs suburb big box, and returns to capital intensive economies of scale. Also labor cost differential. Plus some other stuff.

So if we can go at it from that direction we can figure out the carrying capacity, and if there are some number of stores above and beyond our estimated carrying capacity we can probably assume that those additional stores represent the return to advertising.

tl;dr utility is a flexible concept, micro has a massive toolkit for this stuff and reductive bullshit like "economics is only about price" makes literally no fucking sense. It's shorthand, not rhe sum total of analytical possibility. It'd be like me saying finance is basically dartboard decision making with a hefty slathering of bullshit and bad math! I mean, that'd totally miss out the regulatory minmaxing and gladhanding necessary for generating excess returns to capital!

I have zero motivation to work on my LP today... I'm no good at writing action scenes. Plus, Rune Factory 2 needs playing.

Yes, but remember too that the "buy local" phenomenon isn't being limited to disposable income purchases. As a "general promotion" to shift the demand curve into a higher willingness to pay, it also covers buying needful items with more relative inelasticity. For instance, I can buy wonder bread at Walmart or I can "buy local" and get the same needful thing with a slight premium as long as I am willing to pay from a local so-called artisan bread maker. Very few needful items are conglomerate-sold only (gasoline is a big one)

tl;dr, I agree but think it is even wider than you discussed.

Why do you keep pressing the issue? I got sick playing Medal of Honor and haven't played a FPS since.

Because they're fun games, and because I'll try anything once. :)

Wellington has a "Hobbiton Market" in the lead up to the film's release. They had craftsmen who made props selling their normal wares, food and stuff being shown off. They did a full makeup but with a stunt guy for an Orc. My wife nabbed a photo op!



And some other shots.





Wheeler Knives had beautiful small blades as well as swords. They spent two years making thousands of blades - no working day less than 10 hours and many weekends put in as well. Super stuff! I have a dream of spending a weekend working in a forge learning something of the craft.

The weavers were there too selling beautiful cloaks and scarves. Also spotted leather workers and model makers, including a local wargame/fantasy model maker, which was surprising. I think their lead modeler also makes stuff for Weta.

Thought you all might be interested.

And this is the scene stuck in over the cinema the film premiers in.

5:30am: dinner eaten, games played, friends gone, house tidied, good times.

In between courses a political discussion started, one friend started getting heated with his debate and a third person tactfully changed the conversation. It was like a grown-ups dinner party.

That's very cool, Calistas, thanks for posting those pictures.

That spounds like the beginnings of a migraine. I've only had one natural migraine in my life, and a splitting headache plus nausea are both symptoms of migraines.

I used to get it with FPS games that I guess didn't have a good graphics resolution or something...I'm not sure what, but it was definitely graphics-related. With newer games I don't have this issue at all. I also recall the first Toy Story movie gave me a terrible headache, but more recent 3D animated films don't. So maybe it has to do with the rendering or something.

Anyway, sorry for bringing up a topic that was already discussed.

Dear eBags,

Stop sending me emails about your sales this weekend. We both know I'm addicted to buying bags. You want to take advantage of my weakness, but I am strong and will not give in. well, okay, really I'm broke and CAN'T give in. So stop tormenting me with 25% off flyers. Bastards.

Heading out shortly for my first appointment prior to becoming an ovum donor. If they're all at stupid o'clock in the morning, I may have to rethink this...

Working at a place with mostly international (or at least all around the country) guests is interesting.
Yesterday, I was working and there was a line of women and girls. Just as their turn was about to come up, this Middle Eastern small child came up and gave me his order. I let him know that he had to wait in line before he could get anything.
His father approached and asked why I wasn't serving his son. I repeated what I'd told his son and this man was dumbfounded at the concept of waiting in line.

Because there were nothing but women in the line.
Where he's from, women are last to all males, even if they're children.
It was fun trying to slowly explain to him that, in America, that's not how things work. As a woman. I could see his skepticism, but he ended up just walking away. Didn't think I would ever have to explain how the concept isn't "backwards", just different to a guest...

Which also helped me realize how much I apologize at my job. I mean, I naturally apologize for everything, but at work, I will apologize at least 20 times every couple of minutes. Eugh.

For a moment there I thought "eBags" was a cutesy nickname for extarbags and I was wondering when he became part of some holiday marketing scheme.

I think that's the universe trying to tell you something.

Plus New Zealand is approximately five thousand billion percent less hostile to human life.

Um, so, fellow grownup ladies on the internet: after an internal ultrasound, are you supposed to feel like you've been punched in the kidneys repeatedly?

Friend of mine just went with the wife. First Australia and then New Zealand - Australia was great and after about a week in New Zealand, they felt they've seen all and if they never saw sheep again, it would be too soon.
For what it's worth. I'd love to go and was surprised at the reaction, people usually love the place.
But when that is said, Australia is bloody awesome. I spent two months there and feel like I really need to go back - it's the one country in the world, I'd immigrate to in a heartbeat, if there was work to be had for the likes of me.

On behalf of my wife: yes.

New Zealand seems like a country that you have to travel around a lot to get the most out of it. Go see the mountain ranges, the forests, the deserts, and all the rest. If you stay in one place (especially since cities are usually built in more "normal" locales), I suppose you might be let down by the experience.

Thank you. <disappears from the internet to take ALL of the excedrin>

My new title is Armchair Designer. I find this amusing, Is there a list of all the titles somewhere?

My mother swears by Amla as a hair and face treatment, so I picked up a box last time I went to India to visit my grandparents. I tried it out today and discovered that it has no noticeable effect on hair. Not sure if this is because I already have healthy hair or not. It does, however, taste absolutely horrendous if you accidentally get it in your mouth when washing it out.

There were no instructions on how to use it on your face (do I leave it for a bit? Do I wash it right away?) so I'm not risking it. I don't want to stain my face.

Tomorrow, I try to dye my hair with mehndi (more commonly known as henna). Apparently it's not possible to do by yourself, and so my mother insists on helping me so I don't stain my hands and clothes with it. We'll, uh, see how that goes. I'm starting to feel less confident in her advice. "I used to do this all the time!" isn't so convincing when you realize 'all the time' was 30 years ago.

My wife used henna by herself for a long time with no problem. Just take the proper precautions (like not doing after getting dressed in your best shirt).
She only stopped, when training for a marathon and people would stop their cars and ask if she was hurt, because the sweat made it run...

Where the fuck did you go, wedding ring? DO WE HAVE GHOSTS? HOW CAN YOU JUST VANISH?

As is symptomatic of our general mindset, I feel the urge to defend our fabled isles while also disparaging them at length. In other words we are easy going and charmingly self-deprecating and how dare anyone not think NZ is awesome in every respect!

Frankly much of NZ is boring as shit. If you just travel, meaning driving up or down one of the islands, you'll encounter a stultifying procession of near-identical small towns. These will all follow the same pattern: a high street with a bunch of only slightly interesting second-hand and speciality shops, takeaways, and a pub. The architecture will mostly be of an abysmal rural colonial style put to shame by any European town. The countryside will be reasonably attractive, I suppose, but you'll have seen 90% of it in the first 15 minutes. There will be sheep. The people will be nice and friendly and so on unless they're not, or are in the Mongrel Mob or Black Power, but those people officially don't exist as far as tourism is concerned so don't worry.

The cities will not be exciting if you're used to proper cities like London and Copenhagen and New York. Of course not everyone likes exciting, so they might be somewhat pleasant. I think Wellington is quite pleasant, and I live here so I'm impartial, but 'pleasant' is not the same as 'boundlessly interesting'. The bounds are very much bounding. Binding. I can walk from one end of Wellington city to the other in about 45 minutes, and that's from an outlying suburb, and only part of that is actual stuff you might want to see, much less do. Auckland is ludicrously massive and spread out, but the actual city is very hit and miss in my opinion, with quite trashy areas mixed in with nice spots. Christchurch had an earthquake and no longer exists.

In conclusion we are better than Australia which is only good for surfing and getting eaten by a shark in that order.

Did you toss it out with the compost?

I've just realised something horrible. I like cakes again. I never went near them for years, but in the past month I've had cake or cupcakes four or five times. I had a cupcake earlier with a cup of tea. I'm now sitting here thinking, "I'd quite like some cake." This isn't good. This means I'm going to end up eating cake.

U.S. Millie, I fail to see how this is a problem.

It's that a whole new food group has opened up for me to gorge myself on. Previously I could go into a cafe for a coffee and not eat anything. Now I imagine every time I go into a cafe and at the very least I'll want a cake. It never would have bothered me before, now it will. It's manageable, like going into a pub and getting a coffee or soft drink, but like going into a pub and getting a coffee it won't be easy.