Issue 2143
Hey Everybody!
I hope you had a great weekend! I feel like I had quite the productive weekend. We got lucky with some sun both days, so I spent a lot of time outdoors and yesterday I did a giant walk (my favorite form of exercise) which was super fun. I also made some progress on my website and figuring out what to do business wise and all the admin that goes with it. That part was great but there was another part of it that gave me quite a brainache (this is what I call the sensation I get when I am overwhelmed with information and questions and no answers. It's not the same physical pain as a headache but there is a slight physical discomfort) which was figuring out the logistics and legal stuff surrounding a business. I got stuck when a website had a cool Paypal integration. I don't have a Paypal account so I started the process of opening one but the site only gave me the option of signing up as a business and it seemed to want very official business information which I do not have. It's something I will do in the future but it costs money to set up as an LLC and my ethos around this is that I want to minimize the money I spend before I actually make money. So I'll put a pin in that for now. Anyway, here are some random thoughts.
I learned the phrase 'persuasion architechture' recently and it is basically a method of getting a customer to make a purchase. There are lots of ways of doing this and I find the whole concept very interesting when it's done ethically. The example I can think of is the impulse section that exist in stores. In a coffee shop, near the register there might be things like mints, gum, biscotti, etc. Things one might actually want and this provides a reminder and I have no problem with this. In a grocery store, near the register will be piles of candy about 2-3 feet high, the height of a small child and this persuasion architechture creates a situation in which a child will see it, create a fuss and then the parents will buy it purely to shut them up. This is something I do have a problem with because it's essentially forcing a purchase. It's interesting to see how different businesses use persuasion architecture and unfortunately they often go down the unethical road. Howerver, I am really excited that I learned this phrase!
I like to listen to a daily podcast called Snacks Daily which is an easily digestable daily summary of interesting stock market/finance news. Last week, they brought up a very interesting news story. Conventional wisdom in economics has held that raising minimum wage would yield job losses and it has been bandied about as some sort of golden law. Well, it turns out a group of economists were able to prove that this is not the case using natural experiments (aka studying retroactive data) and won a Nobel prize for this groudbreaking work.
A little fun with emojis! Here are a couple of more random French emojis that pop up when I'm typing in English.
When I start typing the work 'pick', this ⛏ comes up because pic in French is pickaxe.
Pain 🍞 (pain = bread).
That's all I have for now! I hope you have a great week!
Sincerely,
Mandy