Spaced Out: The Energy Department’s Technology in Space
You New Yorkers will probably love this:
Via Brian Heater:
Filmmaker Geoff Tompkinson tours through some of New York City’s most celebrated spots in “New York Noir,” a short that utilizes the hyper-lapse film technique, a combination of time-lapse and camera movements. The piece is primarily monochrome, though Tompkinson has added select color back like the yellow of taxis back in. You can see a number of videos featuring other metropolitan areas like Venice and Istanbul over on Tompkinson’s Vimeo page.
Contra Sheryl Sandberg, Alice Dreger leaned out of her career, which she estimates has cost her family $750,000. What she gained:
I have a fantastic relationship with the guy who has let me cost us $750,000, and I have an ability to support his work as a medical educator and physician. I have a libido. I have a strong relationship with my extended family. I have friends and neighbors who call me when they need me and help me when I call them. I have two triathlon “completion” medals and serious plans to do an Olympic-length triathlon this year. I have a contractor who enjoys muddling with me over lunch with a new plan for hours. I live in a neighborhood full of rainbow flags I helped put up, in a house now known as “the flower house” in town, because I’ve worked the garden so long with the mate. I have a friendship with a squirrel named Fred, and the other day, I had a northern flicker at my suet feeder, because I keep the feeders stocked every day, the birdbath cleaned and watered every day. Best of all, I’ve got a kid who feels like he can tell me, as he did last year, “Maybe don’t go away so much?” to whom I can listen. …
I also have a dream that some day men will think, agonize, write, read, and talk about the work-life balance as much as we women do. But I’m not going to struggle to live their vision of “success” while I wait for them to try and understand mine.
Previous Dish on the Lean In phenomenon here and here.
Shane Parrish challenges the notion of idleness as a moral failing, quoting from Andrew Smart’s Autopilot: The Art And Science Of Doing Nothing:
Our brain, much like an airplane, has an autopilot, which we enter when resting and “relinquishing manual control.”
The autopilot knows where you really want to go, and what you really want to do. But the only way to find out what your autopilot knows is to stop flying the plane, and let your autopilot guide you. Just as pilots become dangerously fatigued while flying airplanes manually, all of us need to take a break and let our autopilots fly our planes more of the time.
Yet we hate idleness don’t we? Isn’t that just a waste?
Our contradictory fear of being idle, together with our preference for sloth, may be a vestige from our evolutionary history. For most of our evolution, conserving energy was our number one priority because simply getting enough to eat was a monumental physical challenge. Today, survival does not require much (if any) physical exertion, so we have invented all kinds of futile busyness. Given the slightest or even a specious reason to do something, people will become busy. People with too much time on their hands tend to become unhappy or bored.
Yet, Smart agues, boredom is the key to self-knowledge.
What comes into your consciousness when you are idle can often be reports from the depths of your unconscious self— and this information may not always be pleasant. Nonetheless, your brain is likely bringing it to your attention for a good reason. Through idleness, great ideas buried in your unconsciousness have the chance to enter your awareness.
Meanwhile, researchers recently found that “procrastination and impulsiveness are both at least moderately heritable.”
ADVANCE PROMOTION IS DEAD
Your anticipatory hype is forgotten in the endless tsunami of new data. It makes no sense to build anticipation, it just dissipates. Now you pounce when the story is hot. Radiohead started it, Beyonce improved upon it and now Michael Lewis is taking it to the book business. The new watchword of marketing is SURPRISE!
PEOPLE LOOK FOR AN EDGE
It’s no different from Sony selling Mariah Carey singles for 49 cents to go number one. Everybody’s trying to rig the system. But when this is so, it’s he who is honest and has credibility who gains people’s ears. That’s what today’s musical artists don’t understand. That by chasing the buck, whoring themselves out to anybody who’ll pay, they’re losing their identity, they’re becoming no different from their compatriots. Want a tribe? Go your own way, have integrity, speak from the heart, people will follow.
QUALITY TRIUMPHS
Unlike in the music business, Michael Lewis is building a long term career. Sure, he started with a hit, “Liar’s Poker,” but many of the greats do. Then he wandered in the wilderness until he truly found his groove. “The Blind Side” made him a star years after the book came out, and “Moneyball” enhanced his reputation. You think you’ve made it but the truth is most people have never heard of you. Now people have heard of Michael Lewis, to the point where he can hype his book on “60 Minutes.” That’s almost equivalent to playing the Super Bowl. Only unlike Bruno Mars, Michael Lewis has something to say.
MOST PEOPLE CAN’T READ
“60 Minutes” did a good job of explaining the story. But the truth is most people will not read “Flash Boys” because they can’t. Inured to television, they can’t hold multiple concepts in their brains at one time, when the reading gets tough, they give up. “Flash Boys” is even harder to read than “The Big Short,” it’s the hardest book I’ve read in years. But wading through gives you passage into the club, and the truth is all winners want to be in the club, but most just say they’re there, without truly being inside. Success is not only money and status, it’s wisdom and knowledge. You gain that through experience, and hard work, like reading “Flash Boys.”
QUALITY COUNTS
Despite “Flash Boys” being a difficult read, Michael Lewis is a great writer. He’s evidence of the blockbuster syndrome. We only have time for great. I’ll read anything Lewis writes because he’s trying to get it right, he’s not dumbing it down for mass consumption, and his style is to explain without emotion, he lets the carefully laid out facts sway you.
JUST BECAUSE SOMEONE’S RICH, THAT DOES NOT MEAN THEY KNOW ANYTHING
Nobody on Wall Street could explain flash trading, except for those perpetrating it, who were tight-lipped. Imagine a world wherein a label head has no idea how the records are made, how they get on the radio, that’s what’s been going on on Wall Street.
SPEAK THE TRUTH AND BLOWBACK WILL BEGIN
They’re not gonna let Michael Lewis edge in on their turf. As soon as the book came out, insiders pooh-poohed it. They always do. America is a game of who has the biggest dick, and those at the top whip theirs out on a regular basis and the little people succumb to this intimidation. You get ahead not by kissing butt, but by standing up to power, that’s what a great artist does. Michael Lewis is a great artist. Nobody on the “Billboard” chart is.
CURIOSITY RULES THE WORLD
Brad Katsuyama couldn’t understand why trading had changed. He searched for answers. It was a long torturous path. He found them. If you’re not busy questioning, you’re busy dying.
SUCCESS IS A TRIAL BY FIRE
In other words, they’ve got no time for you until they do, after you prove yourself. Brad Katsuyama worked at the also-ran Royal Bank of Canada, the big boys laughed at him, but when he enlightened them and proved he could make them money… You want access? In business it’s all about money. Doors open when you can make people a profit.
MONEY ISN’T EVERYTHING
Coders quit jobs they find unfulfilling. There’s more money on the Street than there is in music, but many leave aside the riches because there’s no fulfillment. In other words, when you’ve got access to money, you realize money is not the only thing.
RISK
Change doesn’t happen without it. Brad Katsuyama quit a $2 million a year job to open a new exchange. There was no guarantee it would be successful. It still may not be.
GREED
We don’t get good music because those at the top are all about the money. And those at the bottom don’t understand the game. What we need are people who rise above who stand up to the b.s. That was what made Kurt Cobain a hero. He was insanely talented and yet refused to play the game, he needed to stay punk. It killed him. Hopefully it won’t kill you.
MAKING A DIFFERENCE
We all need a purpose. Being famous is not one. That’s just an end. But in today’s culture we’re inundated with the scorecard of fame and money, because they’re easy to quantify. Work takes up an insane amount of time, it needs to be fun.
INFINITE AVAILABILITY
In the old brick and mortar book days, W.W. Norton would either be caught short or overprinting. It’s hard to guess the amount of physical inventory necessary. But in the digital sphere, where you can buy a book wirelessly in a foreign country, a runaway success can continue to run.
TECHNOLOGY RULES
If you’re unfamiliar with technology, you’re going to have a hard time being a success. That does not mean you’ve got to code, but you’ve got to know what coding is, and fiber optic cable, and have a familiarity with tablets and smartphones and not only usage patterns, but where the game is going. If you want to bring back the past, you’re doomed to live in it. It’s hard to see 0′s and 1′s. Some people believe they need to be able to touch something to experience it. But the truth is so much is virtual these days. And this frees you up to play. But in a world of cacophony, you must execute at the top level and deliver that which intrigues if you want attention.
ART IS FOREVER, TECHNOLOGY IS NOT
The fiber optic cable laid from Chicago to New York is being superseded by microwave transmission. A great record is forever, nobody wants yesterday’s flip phone.
IGNORANCE IS NOT BLISS
It just ensures you continue to be the tail wagged by the dog. Inform yourself. Care. It’s not only stimulating, it’s profitable.
THE WORLD RUNS ON MONEY, SO WHAT HAPPENS WITH IT COUNTS
The cash the flash traders were extricating from the system reduced productivity, the same way so many of the best and the brightest are wasting their time in finance as opposed to making a difference creating something.
LINKEDIN IS A TREASURE TROVE OF INFORMATION
That’s where IEX found so many of its talented employees.
INTERVIEWS WILL TELL YOU ALL
In Wall Street if they want to know what’s up with a competitor’s business, they make like they’re trying to poach you, or fill a gig, and you’ll spill your guts.
THOSE AT THE TOP USUALLY HAVE NO CLUE WHAT IS HAPPENING AT THE BOTTOM, AND WHAT’S HAPPENING AT THE BOTTOM USUALLY BECOMES THE NEW TOP
It’s like record execs who didn’t use e-mail. But still, most execs don’t have the time to check out social networks and WhatsApp, believing they’re beholden to radio and retail. The truth is all these new systems will eclipse radio and retail, and if those in power let young ‘uns in, they would. And they will eventually.
YOU DON’T NEED A PEDIGREE TO SUCCEED
Brad Katsuyama went to the local university in Canada. Sure, Yale and Harvard will open doors, but they won’t make you a success. Furthermore, they may not make you think. Read this editorial re the job opportunities of the Ivy League prospect: http://huff.to/1jBprS3
THE PUBLIC HAS A VERY SHORT ATTENTION SPAN
Those in power on Wall Street know that this brouhaha about flash trading will fade. Power is often about distracting the masses. If someone can easily become famous on reality TV, they’ll put all their energy there as opposed to doing the hard work to climb the ladder and crash your established party.
THE GOVERNMENT CAN’T BE COUNTED ON
Because of the revolving door between the companies being regulated and the regulators themselves. Furthermore, the best and the brightest rarely work for the government. And those who are rich get the best justice, it wasn’t only O.J.
MAKING A LOT OF MONEY MAKES YOU NEITHER HAPPY NOR LIKABLE
“Flash Boys” is littered with put-downs of the blowhards who think they rule, but are oftentimes clueless.
WE CAN’T ERADICATE EVIL BUT WE CAN INSPIRE GOOD
That’s the ultimate message of “Flash Boys,” that one person can make a difference. Then again, Brad Katsuyama built a team around him. Which he found through relationships and interviews and LinkedIn surfing.
GOOGLE WILL TELL YOU EVERYTHING
He who knows how to sift out information wins in the end. Almost everything is lying in plain sight, assuming you know how to enter the right search terms and know what you’re looking for. This is the education that is sorely lacking in our schools. How do you theorize and reconstruct the obvious to end up with new insights? That’s your challenge.
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Down at the flagship Starbucks store in Pike Place Market this afternoon, 15 Now supporters set up a table full of flyers and T-shirts and started chatting up people about Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz's recent statements that Starbucks could likely afford to pay a $15 minimum wage, but small and midsize businesses can't. 'Cause Schultz's main concern is the health of local small business, right?
Customers streamed in and out of the store, a barista came out to give protesters free samples of iced tea, and across the street a lone campaigner from the anti-$15-minimum-wage group Sustainable Wages Seattle, who turned out to be this guy, passed out his own flyers. Also nearby: a nice man handing out flyers about Jesus's blood, who told me that Jesus shed his blood for me and "he's the only way." Thanks, sir!
A few protest photos, if you care. Then I'm running out the door to go PLAY IN THE SUN OHMYGOD YOU GUYS, THE SUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
A clinical psychologist writes:
I work primarily with children and families and I am routinely asked to do ADHD evaluations. Typically big crowds show up in October, after those first parent-teacher conferences, and again in April, as the year winds down and parents panic about their kids’ grades. I have three major points to make:
I. ADHD is absolutely over-diagnosed. There are two populations where this happens:
(1) Non-upper-class boys (and a few girls) who display disruptive or aggressive behavior, whose schools go diagnosis-shopping so the kid can be chemically restrained with stimulant drugs. In most cases, the behavior is totally operant: The kid has learned that if he curses, threatens, hits, dances on the furniture, etc., he will be sent out of the classroom and/or out of the school. Mission accomplished! And then people have the balls to tell me that “discipline doesn’t work.” Well, no shit. If you consistently reward a behavior, you get more of it.
2) Upper-class children whose parents go diagnosis-shopping so their kids can get extra services, supports, and stimulant medication to help them study.
II. ADHD is absolutely under-diagnosed. There are two populations where this happens:
1) Girls (and a few boys) who are merely distractible, not hyperactive or impulsive, so they’re not behavior problems. Your daydreamers. Your space cadets. Your absent-minded professors. These kids get called lazy. Unmotivated. Disorganized. Won’t do her homework. Makes simple mistakes; she should know better! She knows what to do, she just doesn’t do it! These kids develop a very negative self-image because they get a lot of negative feedback from their environment. They wind up depressed. I have seen one kid become suicidal because he truly believed he was stupid and would never achieve anything meaningful in life. (The under-diagnosis is more likely when the kid is intelligent and does well on standardized tests. Jimmy is so intelligent, but…)
2) Adults who are older than about 30 and were missed as kids. They (we) grew up before the great over-diagnosis wave, or grew up outside of the urban areas where it was more common. These people tend not to have achieved everything they could have. They tend to have problems in their working life because they forget things, miss details, make simple errors that most people just wouldn’t make. Quite a few develop hobbies or great big life projects that never quite coalesce. Most develop some neat tricks to compensate for their problems with attention, memory, and task completion. Some really believe, after a lifetime of negative feedback from their environment, they are stupid and underachieving. Depression and low self-esteem is fairly common in this group. A few develop anxiety problems because they’re terrified of the constant mistakes they make at work.
III. Your reader who’s a counseling psychology student is full of shit. ADHD and other learning disabilities show up when they show up, when the kid’s compensatory abilities intersect with an environment that’s too demanding for them. That can happen in childhood or it can happen later. The big points where it shows up, in my experience, are in about fourth grade, in the transition to middle or high school, or once in a while in college or beyond.
Another adds, “The fact that a third-year graduate student in psychology can say this is terrifying”:
While I agree that medicating kids who don’t have ADD is a problem, under-diagnosis is as well. I’m a 34-year-old man with ADD (the inattentive form). I was only diagnosed with it 18 months ago, and the first day I took medication was a revelation. I felt more alert and less foggy than I ever had before; the continual slush and confusion that sapped my brain on a daily basis was gone.
Why did it take until 32 for me to be diagnosed? Three of the big warning signs for ADD – bad grades in school, trouble holding down a job, and more car accidents – never showed up. The inattentive variety wasn’t well known – Driven to Distraction didn’t even come out until my freshman year in high school. ADD people thrive on structure, so if you’re someone who enjoys school and works hard, it’s possible for you to do well despite ADD. I was a creative person, too (still am) so the ADD behaviors I did have just got written off as spaciness.
Unfortunately, as my struggles with my creative work increased, my combined ADD and depression drove me to suicidal thinking, which so alarmed my therapist that she sent me to a talented and sympathetic psychiatrist who, after digging into my life, diagnosed me. (A key “tell” for him: while I like to read, I can’t get through two pages of a book without my brain veering off into some related fantasy.) I am not exaggerating when I say that without this diagnosis and treatment for the disorder, I could be dead.
Another identifies himself as “one of those ‘privileged’ students your psychological doctoral student scoffed at”:
I was diagnosed with ADHD after failing to get my master’s degree for six years. My entire life has been hampered by this problem that no one thought I had because I didn’t fit the typical hyperactive behavior profile. I think back to the times when I was playing outfield, trying desperately to pay attention through an inning and failing. About how I couldn’t excel at a simple manual labor job because I’d “zone out” and slow down. And how I got good (but not great) grades, but it took me about twice as long to finish my assignments as other people.
After my diagnosis and a prescription of amphetamine, my life fell into place. I started taking and excelling in advanced mathematics courses I’d been dreaming about for half a decade. Jesus, it even helped my fucking social issues. It was probably the most content I had ever been in my life.
But then my doctor left, and a new one took over. He decided I was not ADHD, but was in fact one of those people “gaming the system,” as your psychology student described it. Thus my diagnosis was rescinded. I have never been more furious in my life than when I was sitting in his office, realizing that he didn’t give a shit what I said; he’d already decided I was a fraud, and the appointment amounted to Kabuki theatre.
The fallout was pretty epic. I could barely keep up with my next semester’s workload, and to this day (over a year later) I’m not functioning at the level I was before stimulants. I lost my research position due to inability to work. Now I have no funding, even without taking courses or working I cannot make inroads with my thesis, and I’m realizing that without stimulants I will never excel in my chosen career of engineering. Since this is the United States, I can’t afford to see doctors independent of the university system, so I live in a state of perpetual impasse: my choice is to either be effectively owned by the psychiatric system for the rest of my life, or walk away from the career I’ve been building for most of my life. I have no money, no job, no future, and no hope.
Previous Dish on ADHD here, here, and here.
Christopher Ingraham parses a study finding that more attractive people are perceived as more intelligent:
The researchers found a strong relationship between how attractive a person was rated, and reviewers’ assumptions about how intelligent they were. This relationship was especially strong among women. But when it came to actual intelligence, there was a significant gender gap: reviewers were able to accurately gauge the real intelligence of men, but not of women. They’re not exactly sure why this would be, but one possible explanation is that women are simply judged more pervasively on their looks than men are: “The strong halo effect of attractiveness may thus prevent an accurate assessment of the intelligence of women.”
From Leslie Lamport:
Every time code is patched, it becomes a little uglier, harder to understand, harder to maintain, bugs get introduced.
If you don’t start with a spec, every piece of code you write is a patch.
Which means the program starts out from Day One being ugly, hard to understand, and hard to maintain.
Leonid Bershidsky highlights new research showing that people who work later in life tend to be happier:
In a recent paper, [Brookings fellow Carol] Graham explored the relationship between well-being and late-life work. She found that there are “well-being benefits to voluntary part-time employment as well as to remaining in the workforce beyond retirement age.” These results are especially pronounced in countries where part-time work is the norm and people work past retirement age out of choice rather than necessity. … In the end, older people are happier, and feel healthier, when they are active and feel needed.
Graham, who provides the above chart, considers the ideal work arrangement:
Of course, not everyone has the luxury of choosing to work part-time, and many of those workers who choose to work beyond the retirement age do so precisely because they like their work.
Still, our findings provide some food for thought. Perhaps we can imagine a future where over-burdened middle- aged workers with children have more flexibility to work part-time, with late-life workers taking up some of the slack. The latter would help ease the burdens posed by fiscally unsustainable pension systems.
Looking at Graham’s country-by-country findings, Christopher Ingraham focuses on the study’s major outlier – Russia:
In most countries, the happiness curve bottoms out somewhere around middle age — 47 in the United States and 41 in Britain, for instance. This usually happens long before the average person is expected to die, with one major exception: Russia. In Russia the curve doesn’t bottom out until age 91. Essentially, life under Putin is one continuous downward spiral into despair.
Graham explains it bluntly: “What’s going on in Russia is deep unhappiness.” In the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Better Life Index, for instance, Russians rated their general life satisfaction a 3.0 out of 10. Three-quarters of Russians are “struggling” or “suffering,” with only 25 percent “thriving,” according to their responses to a 2012 Gallup survey. Contrast these figures with the United States, where life satisfaction is a robust 7.6 and nearly 60 percent are thriving.
Women around the blogosphere are throwing their two cents into the debate over pay equity. Elizabeth Nolan Brown opposes chalking the wage gap up to mere sexism:
As The Washington Post‘s Nia-Malika Henderson points out, ”It’s hard to find a study that finds no pay disparity in what men and women make,”—several studies place it closer to 84 cents on the dollar. But the gap is neither as wide nor as easily reduced as many would make it out to be. Though there are surely some occupations and companies where women get paid less out of plain old sexism, the wage gap overall seems a product of large but less nefarious structural and cultural forces.
These forces are certainly worth talking about. Why do women still flock to lower paying fields and positions? How can women, men, and companies make having children less detrimental to women’s careers? Why does the wage gap widen for older women even when they don’t have children? Etcetera. But trotting out misleading statistics about women’s wages not only fails to address these issues adequately, it actively works against addressing them. It makes things too simplistic, and thus given to simplistic solutions.
McArdle sees both sides of the argument:
Childless women who work the same hours as men make very close to what men do. Does that mean there is no discrimination against women? No.
The residual gap that’s left after you control for age, experience, work hours, choice of profession and so forth, is small. But it’s not zero. That residual most likely represents sexism. As a woman, I kind of take exception to that.
Most of the gap, however, seems to be driven by the fact that women work less, and that in many high-paying professions, how much you get paid is a function of how much you work … but not a linear function. There are outsized rewards to working the kinds of hours that make it very hard to care for a family.
And, in a sign of progress, Zara Kessler points out that millennial women like herself experience less of a pay gap than their elders:
It seems that a pay gap basically doesn’t exist for millennial women, of which I am one. Pew Research Center analysis of census data, published in December, “shows that today’s young women are the first in modern history to start their work lives at near parity with men.”
The White House uses the disputed data point that, according to U.S. Census statistics, full-time working women earn on average only 77 cents to their male counterpart’s dollar. Pew’s analysis looks at median hourly earnings of full- and part-time workers (men tend to work more hours, and women are more likely to work part-time) to find that in 2012 women ages 16 and older made 84 percent of the earnings of their male counterparts. According to Pew, women’s median hourly earnings for those ages 25-34 — which, yes, doesn’t encompass all millennials and includes some Gen Xers (according to Pew’s definition of millennials being born after 1980) — were 93 percent of men’s in 2012.
Opposites attract. That’s how the cliché goes, and people really believe they are attracted to those different from them: 86 percent say they want a partner who “complements them” rather than one who “resembles them.”
There’s only one problem with this idea: It’s false. I studied 1 million matches made by the online dating website eHarmony’s algorithm, which aims to pair people who will be attracted to one another and compatible over the long term; if the people agree, they can message each other to set up a meeting in real life. eHarmony’s data on its users contains 102 traits for each person — everything from how passionate and ambitious they claim to be to how much they say they drink, smoke and earn.
The data reveals a clear pattern: People are interested in people like themselves. Women on eHarmony favor men who are similar not just in obvious ways — age, attractiveness, education, income — but also in less apparent ones, such as creativity. Even when eHarmony includes a quirky data point — like how many pictures are included in a user’s profile — women are more likely to message men similar to themselves. In fact, of the 102 traits in the data set, there was not one for which women were more likely to contact men with opposite traits.97
Men were a little more open-minded. For 80 percent of traits, they were more willing to message those different from them. They still preferred mates who were similar in terms of height or attractiveness98, but they cared less about these traits — and they didn’t care much at all about other things women cared about, like similarity in education level or number of photos taken.99 They cared less about whether their match shared their ethnicity.100
Women prefer similarity in subtler ways as well: A woman shows a small but highly statistically significant preference for a man who uses similar adjectives to describe himself, with “physically fit,” “intelligent,” “creative” and “funny” having the strongest effects. Men showed no such preference.
There are some nuances here. Messaging may not be an honest reflection of attraction if the people doing the messaging fear rejection (although economists have found that such “strategic behavior” is minimal in online dating). For another thing, the matches people message depend on the options eHarmony’s algorithm gives them, and that sample is skewed toward similar people. Jonny Beber, an eHarmony scientist, explained to me that the algorithm tries to optimize immediate attraction and long-term compatibility, and that because the company believes that “opposites attract … and then attack,” this usually means pairing similar people. Since eHarmony publicizes this fact, the site may well attract online daters who are sympathetic to its philosophy.
The eHarmony data I used is incomplete: It includes no gay couples, because eHarmony does not make same-sex matches on its main site. But Beber has studied data from the company’s same-sex dating site, Compatible Partners, and said similarity predicts long-term relationship satisfaction in gay couples, just as it does in straight couples. He also noted that there were differences in what traits matter to gay people, something the online dating site OkCupid has also found: Gay men and women differ from straight people in their racial preferences, for example.
eHarmony’s data set does show us that in addition to preferring similarity across traits, women seem to know that their preferences are stronger. Before feeding their choices into its algorithm, eHarmony asks users to rate how strongly they feel about nine traits — among them age, ethnicity and religion — and women express stronger preferences for every one.
This got me wondering, how self-aware are people in general? Does what they claim they care about align with their messaging behavior? It often does. People with high incomes and high degrees of education claim that income and education matter to them more, and they display an especially large messaging preference for potential mates with high incomes and educations. Members who say religion matters more to them show stronger preferences about their match’s religion.
But for other traits people appear to be confused, or lying. People of every age claim that age matters to them about the same amount — they rate it about 4.5 on a scale where 1 is “not at all important” and 7 is “very important” — but older men show much stronger age preferences in whom they message. Everyone claims that ethnicity matters to them about the same amount (4.2), but some ethnicities show much stronger preferences. Men are more likely to message women who drink more even if they claim to want women who don’t drink at all. (This remained true even when I controlled for attractiveness, age and whether the woman messaged the man, and even when I looked only at men who rated their drinking preference as important.)
So we can break down the general idea of “birds of a feather flock together” even further, into two patterns:
Height illustrates both these patterns. Men follow the first: Short men prefer short women, and tall men prefer tall women. Women follow the second: All women prefer taller men, but tall women display a stronger preference for tall men. For intelligence, women follow the first pattern: Those who describe themselves as intelligent prefer men who describe themselves as intelligent, and women who don’t prefer men who don’t. Men follow the second pattern: All men prefer women who describe themselves as intelligent, but men who describe themselves as intelligent display a stronger preference.
In general, widely considered positive traits,101 like attractiveness or physical fitness, tend to follow the second pattern: Everyone prefers hotter, fitter people, but hot, fit people show a stronger preference for people like them. If we compute “eHarmony status” — how often a user is asked out by their matches — we find it also follows this pattern: Everyone prefers high-status users, but high-status users show a stronger preference for other high-status users. (It’s possible that they don’t really feel a stronger preference, but merely feel more confident in their ability to win a fellow high-status mate.)
On the other hand, traits whose optimal value is more arguable — like whether you have children or what religion you follow — tend to follow the first pattern. Those with children preferred those with children; those without preferred those without. And people generally prefer those of their own religion.
In a final effort to find opposites who attracted on eHarmony, I decided to look for the cliché example: sugar daddies. But even here, the data failed me. Of course, in a dataset of a million couples, you’ll find some who fit the sugar daddy stereotype: a younger and more attractive woman matched with an older, wealthier man. And it is true that more attractive women are more influenced by the man’s income when deciding whether to message him: Unattractive women aren’t much affected by a man’s income, but very attractive women are much more likely to message men with higher incomes. But this is true for men as well, and it isn’t necessarily a sugar daddy phenomenon — maybe more attractive people can just afford to be pickier. The sugar daddy stereotype fails in other ways as well. Women who message significantly older men were calculated to be less attractive than those men, and I could find no evidence that they cared more about income, or less about attractiveness, than women paired with men their own age. If you’re an aspiring sugar daddy, eHarmony may not be for you.
I also looked for opposites attracting in other online dating data. I spoke to Christian Rudder, founder of OkCupid, which has a rich and idiosyncratic data set. To find potential matches, users submit and answer hundreds of questions ranging from, “In a certain light, wouldn’t nuclear war be exciting?” to, “Would you consider sleeping with someone on the first date?” He believes there are obvious questions where opposites would attract, and when I joined OkCupid to explore this (my boyfriend was displeased) I found several questions, or traits, for which it seemed like this must be true: You can’t both be on top, for example.
Perhaps the most striking confirmation of the idea that birds of a feather flock together comes from the data of 23andMe, the genetics company where I work. We make genetic discoveries by combining DNA from saliva samples with thousands of survey questions, some of which you might find on a dating site — “Have you ever cheated on a long-term relationship partner or spouse?” — but many you wouldn’t — “Has a doctor ever diagnosed you with Parkinson’s disease?” We can use our genetic data to find men and women who have had a child together102, which lets us see whether similar people tend to pair up using a very different data set. These couples have actually met (and mated, though we don’t know if they’re still together), they’re sometimes answering questions about matters of life and death, and they have much less incentive to lie.
Here, too, my 23andMe colleague Aaron Kleinman and I found that birds of a feather flock together: For 97 percent of the traits we examined, couples were positively correlated. Former smokers tended to pair with former smokers, the apologetic with the apologetic, the punctual with the punctual. It is worth noting that causality may go in both directions: Perhaps you’re attracted to your partner because he, like you, was on time for your first date; it’s also possible that he was initially incorrigibly late, but after you fell in love you trained him. (We also found some examples where opposites attracted: Morning people tended to pair with night owls, and people with a good sense of direction with those who lacked one.)
There are at least three reasons we so often message and eventually mate with the similar. Before we even meet, myriad forces guide us away from people who are different from us — work, schooling, eHarmony’s algorithm. When we are exposed to matches, we tend to pursue people who are similar. And after we start dating, we may grow to be even more alike. In the face of these forces, it’s perhaps small wonder that the dimensions along which opposites attract hide in the statistical shadows.
But even believers in algorithmic approaches to love acknowledge these shadows exist. Dan Ariely, an economist who studies online dating, compares people to wine — you may like them for reasons you can’t quantify. The scientists I spoke to at eHarmony and OkCupid agreed. As rich as their data sets are, the uncertainty of that first meeting remains.
Correction (April 10 6:35 p.m.): An earlier version of this article misidentified eHarmony’s website for same-sex dating; it is Compatible Partners, not Compatible Couples.
Packard Seattle once called the corner home
A Starbucks premium reserve offering
By fall, the entire line of Starbucks premium reserve coffees will be roasted right here on Capitol Hill when the $57.4 billion global coffee giant opens up a new roastery and restaurant complex.
Last month, CHS broke the news that Starbucks was bringing in a Seattle restaurant heavy hitter to help create its planned news Capitol Hill complex at Melrose and Pike.
The rotating line of 15 reserve coffees are currently available in 500 retail locations across 10 international markets. By the end of 2014 Starbucks officials say then want to double the number of locations with the dedicated Capitol Hill facility. The reserve line, currently roasted in Kent, will be familiar to customers at Roy St. Coffee and Tea where coffees like Sumatra Blue Batak and Sun-Dried Ethiopia Yirgacheffe are displayed behind the counter.
Friday, CHS sat down with Starbucks chief creative officer Arthur Rubinfeld at Roy St., the company’s first “inspired”venture on Capitol Hill, to talk about the new roastery. Joining him was restauranteur Tom Douglas, who will open his third Serious Pie pizzeria inside the complex, marking his company’s Capitol Hill debut. Both were ready to fill in the details on the big story CHS has been piecing together since last year.
“It just feels right,” Rubinfeld said of joining forces with Douglas.
The duo promised to deliver a wholly unique coffee experience in the city, where customers can gain a deeper understanding of coffee through exposure to the small batch roasting operation.
Rubinfeld said there was no way of telling how much coffee would get roasted at the new facility as the reserve coffees rotate frequently and are sourced from small growers. The 15,000 square-foot Capitol Hill roastery will be the company’s fifth roasting facility in the U.S, although quite a bit smaller than its massive plant in Kent. There is no word, yet, on the number of new jobs it will create on the Hill. Rubinfeld said vans, not semi-trucks, will be used to move coffee in and out of the neighborhood. A Puget Sound Clean Air Agency review of the project must first approve the new facility. You can thank Capitol Hill’s history of auto row businesses and light industry for zoning friendly to creating a small production facility like this one.
In selecting Capitol Hill for its new roasting complex, Starbucks joins a Pike street and neighborhood already busy with coffee bean preparation. Last year, CHS talked to Victrola about its roasting operations and the addition of a Starbucks facility just down the block.
The 1920-built building played a significant role in Capitol Hill’s auto row history as a home to a series of dealerships through the decades.
As for Serious Pie, Douglas said he expects the menu to be slightly different than the two other locations, but to keep a similar aesthetic. The pizza restaurant and coffee roastery is expected to a be a popular destination for visitors attending evens at the Convention Center nearby.
Douglas’s arrival on Capitol Hill comes relatively late in the game for one of the captains of the Seattle restaurant industry. He already has more than a dozen locations in motion around the city but, despite its food and drink business boom economy, Serious Pie Melrose will be the chef’s first project on the Hill. As an employer of hundreds in the city’s food industry, Douglas has been an outspoken critic of the push for an all-out $15 minimum wage in Seattle:
In my opinion, $15NOW with no acknowledgement of total compensation is a hollow slogan meant for headlines and shout downs rather than thoughtful, meaningful conversation, and equitable solutions. It makes no sense for Seattle to have a carved out exemption when the IRS and the State of Washington both concur that tips are earned income. That is what needs to be said.
Both Douglas and Starbucks have signed long term leases with the building owners. While Starbucks and Tom Douglas don’t have any other partnerships in the works, Rubinfeld left open the possibility of future collaborations.
Beyond Serious Pie, Rubinfeld said there were no plans to add any additional businesses into the new venture and mimic Capitol Hill’s growing trend of indoor markets. However, Douglas said Serious Pie will be a separate, though artfully incorporated, entity within the space.
In September CHS first wrote about Starbucks’ plans for the former art supply story and Volvo dealership. Aside from some repairs, Rubinfeld said Starbucks is planning on preserving the building inside and out.
The Starbucks building permit application indicates that work is ready to start in earnest at the site that neighbors the popular Melrose Market and will soon have this eight-story preservation and development project under construction rising above the longtime home of the original Bauhaus cafe. The base budget listed for the construction project is $775,000.
The following quote from British comedian Tom Cowell’s pros and cons of Americans is a great complement to this mega-popular Dish post from last year:
Americans are so wonderfully, sincerely down-to-earth, we have trouble believing it. To the cynical British mind, any genuine pleasure in meeting a new person is a sign of potential mental illness. But Americans actually want to make new friends. They want to get along with you, stranger. It makes one’s like infinitely more interesting to have an American around, because you meet EVERYONE. It’s like permanently going through life with a puppy, or the latest iPhone.
DavidwdunkinSounds promising
This Loveless restaurant mural will soon be safely hidden away (Image: CHS)
A relaxed but quality-obsessed player is set to join the trio of north Broadway restaurants that has managed to chisel out a small $$$$ upscale dining scene on Capitol Hill. Restaurant Marron is slated to replace outgoing Olivar in the Loveless Building by the end of spring.
“I grew up in Hawaii. I love my shorts. I love my slippers. And I love my t-shirts,” chef and new owner Eric Sakai tells CHS about his approach to modern American cuisine. He also loves the finest possible ingredients and total concentration on perfect preparation.
“I want to take away the frills and pare it down. While we may not be technically the most affordable dining experience for an every day thing,” Sakai said, “given the format, we’re going to be able to offer people their money’s worth.”
Sakai will operate the restaurant with wife and front of house manager Zarina Sakai. The couple met at The Culinary Institute of America at Hyde Park before careers and opportunities took them to Hawaii, a little restaurant you might have heard about in Yountville, and, yes, Jackson Hole, Wyoming. After searching America for the right city to build their dream restaurant in, Sakai said Seattle won them over about year and a half ago. They’ve been searching for a home for the restaurant since.
Marron replaces Olivar which along with Altura and Poppy formed north Broadway’s “fine dining” triumvirate. In January, CHS reported that chef and owner Philippe Thomelin was putting his restaurant up for sale after nearly six years in the neighborhood. Thomelin recently confirmed the change. “The decision to close the business is simple: we have different plans ahead of us, and selling the restaurant was the first logical phase in order to move into new ventures,” he wrote in a message sent to customers.
The restaurant space is also getting an overhaul. Sakai’s plan is to transform the venue into a new, more modern look and feel.
“What we really want is a clean space that is void of distractions – off white and charcoal, working with reclaimed table tops, mirrors, trophy wines on display, black chairs,” he said.
Those familiar with the room know such a dramatic facelift can only mean one thing — those murals are goners.
CHS paid a visit to the Loveless in 2009 and detailed the history of the space’s artful decoration:
The building was originally known as the Studio Building, as it was a place for Seattle artists to live and work. Notable artists who rented the building include the photographers Ella E. McBride and Myra Albert Wiggins, as well as Arthur Loveless himself.[2] In subsequent years the artist’s studios were turned into apartments, and you can currently get a hold of a 1-bedroom (with working fireplace) for about $1500 a month[3]. Another of the buildings original tenants was the Russian Samovar, which commissioned the brilliant muralist Vladimir Shkurkin (who had previously painted the inside of the Seattle Civic Auditorium) to decorate the walls. Shkurkin’s murals depict a story of a swan-turned-princess, by Alexander Pushkin, and can still be viewed at Philippe Thomelin’s Olivar. In 1961 the Loveless building received recognition from the American Institute of Architects as an outstanding structure.
With wear, accidental chair scrapes and bangs and sun damage over the years, the works have seen better days. Sakai said that his contractor is working with the building’s owner to cover the murals and protect them from any further damage. Those faces will still be there — but behind a safe layer of wood and insulation.
Like Altura, Marron will feature a set menu format. Sakai plans twin tasting menus priced around $60 and a 16 to 18-course, small-bite “carte blanche” menu to round out the nightly offerings. Expect deceptively simple fare that emphasizes proper techniques and creative flavors. One possible small bite Sakai described could also be called a “crouton” — but expected the black bread crisped in rendered fat to be pretty damn delicious. The accompanying caramelized buttermilk probably won’t hurt.
“We’ve spent most of our time in fine dining and love the detail but hate the formality of it,” Sakai said. “Ultimately, we wanted to create a space that was casual.”
The laid back approach will present an alternative take on the fixed menu compared to Altura’s intensity. Sakai said that he actually worked previously with Altura’s chef/owner Nathan Lockwood when they both were in the kitchen at Acquerello The Ruins.
Like Altura’s chef-inspired serious nature, Sakai hopes his nearby Marron’s mood flows from the people working there. “We want [customers] to see the personality in everybody that’s in there,” Sakai said.
It’s a mood that plays out in the restaurant’s name — French for the humble chestnut. “Look how much work it takes to get the actual edible part,” Sakai said. “So much work, so much intensity. But once you’re there, it’s one of the greatest things you can possibly eat.”
Olivar has announced its final night of service will be April 30th. Restaurant Marron is slated to open by June.
UPDATE: The Seattle Met is out with their take on the new restaurant — we were both asked to wait on coverage until Olivar’s final plans were set. The magazine has a bit more foodie analysis of the venture:
Here’s something I found mildly shocking: The entire table doesn’t have to order the same menu; you can go the four-course route and have your dinner companion do the carte blanche…as long as you don’t mind a little down time.
A reader writes:
As World War I got underway, Romain Rolland and Hermann Hesse, two Swiss writers, appealed to their war-frenzied friends in France and Germany citing the lede to the choral movement of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony: O Freunde, nicht diese Töne! sondern laßt uns angenehmere anstimmen! (Friends, not these sounds! Let us rather make more pleasant, more joyous notes). And last Saturday, in Odessa, a Russian-speaking city of Ukraine, one of the cultural treasure-houses of Europe, the city that gave us Anna Akhmatova and Issak Babel, Sviatoslav Richter, David Oistrakh, Nathan Milshtein and Emil Gilels, performers from the Philharmonic flash mobbed a performance of the last bars of the symphony at the Odessa fish market. A decidedly political musical statement. Amazing.
It takes off around 4:00. We must not abandon Ukraine.
Yesterday, Starbucks announced that patrons would finally be able to tip their baristas digitally. Which seems like a good thing but is in fact really kind of awful.
Beginning March 19, customers using Starbucks App for iPhone in the U.S., U.K. and Canada will experience a streamlined design and easy access to their account and My Starbucks Rewards information. In addition, customers using the app will have the option to leave a tip at more than 7,000 company-operated Starbucks® stores in the U.S.
Customers can show their appreciation to store partners by tipping through the Starbucks App for iPhone. Customers are given the option to provide a tip in the following denominations: $0.50, $1.00, $2.00.
Note: The tips will not be based on percentage. They'll just be a flat rate. If you're, say, picking up the office coffee order and it comes to, like, $40, the highest tip you can leave is $2.00, or about a 5% tip. Starbucks doesn't mention if you can give more than one tip, but I doubt it—so that's the first bullshit thing.
The second bullshit thing is that this is most likely a way for Starbucks to dodge paying their employees more.
As Dominic pointed out yesterday in this piece you should read about the proposed $15/hr minimum wage, one tactic employers are trying to use to cut their own labor cost in the instance of an increase is "total compensation," or rolling tips in with wages. This is a way to offset labor costs, while essentially placing the burden of paying service workers on to customers.
Previously, the only way for customers to show their appreciation/help baristas reach anything close to a living wage was to tip in cash. Cash tips are sort of a double-edged sword; while people carry actual bills a lot less frequently, resulting in fewer tips, cash tips aren't documented. The IRS does require baristas to declare tips as part of their income, but those who work at places without digital or credit card tipping rarely do, because a.) there is no record, and b.) there are rarely enough of them to make them worth declaring.
Additionally—and this is perhaps the most salient part of all this—Starbucks can't point to those tips as part of the baristas' wages.
As a result, tips have been sort of a see-no-evil aspect to Starbucks's (and similar companies') business model. Digital tipping allows them start accounting for those tips and, potentially, get away with including them in barista wages.
To be fair, when I was working as a Tully's barista, I would have loved digital tips because it would have meant more much-needed money in my pocket. And in the immediate future, digital tips will absolutely be beneficial to low-wage workers, because it will just be more money.
But in the long-term, especially when the fight to increase the minimum wage is happening right in Starbucks's front yard, the timing of this decision is definitely suspect.
Oh, and the $2.00 limit thing is pretty shitty, too.
Whoah! Have you seen this sucker yet? Go look. Go through a couple pages.
I bet you'll laugh. No wait, maybe you won't... Uh, let's have a poll!
Workers were inspecting the Pike and Melrose building on Friday (Photo: CHS)
The aroma of a Starbucks coffee roaster may one day waft over Capitol Hill, but the global coffee giant will first have to ensure a new operation won’t sour the air. With Starbucks moving forward with its plans for a giant speciality roasting facility at Pike and Melrose, the Seattle-based company has applied for an air quality permit for the operation, up for public discussion Thursday.
Joanne Todd, a spokesperson for the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency, told CHS that all coffee roasting facilities in the region must obtain an air quality permit from the agency.
“Coffee roasting emits a range of chemicals and odor into the surrounding atmosphere. We’re interested in regulating many kinds of pollutants, and those from coffee roasting fall into that group,” Todd said in an email. “We’ve permitted many of them throughout our jurisdiction.”
According to the permit application (PDF), Starbucks is exploring installing two gas-fired roasters inside the auto row building at 1124 Pike — the longtime home of the Bob Byers Volvo dealership and Utrecht Art Supplies – that neighbors the bustling Melrose Market complex.
In case you missed the small sign posted across the street from the building, the PSCAA will host the informational meeting Thursday at First Hill’s Seattle First Baptist Church, 1111 Harvard Ave, from 7-9 PM. The meeting will be an opportunity for neighbors to hear about the permit application and voice their concerns — or caffeinated support for the project. A Starbucks spokesperson told CHS that the PSCAA actually requested Starbucks not attend the meeting, so don’t expect any new details on project to emerge.
Art-splashed fences went up around the site last week as Starbucks takes stock of the space and the building’s structural integrity, a company representative said. The rep said it’s the first step to determine how Starbucks could use the space. She said the company wants to keep the character of the building intact. On the air permit, a city official noted that Starbucks had indicated they wanted to save the building:
If the structure were to be removed, this might be seen as a potentially significant environmental impact. However, it is our understanding that the proponents are working with our Landmarks experts in the Department of Neighborhoods in order to take appropriate steps to preserve the building. This is sufficient to address our concerns in this area.
The 15,000-square-foot building is not a designated landmark but it may be eligible given it was built in 1909. The upcoming Capitol Hill roaster could be a new direction for Starbucks. The company representative said Starbucks typically creates its beans at gigantic roasting facilities and has no roasters squeezed into a neighborhood as they are planning on Capitol Hill.
CHS previously reported on the global coffee giant’s plans for a cafe and speciality roasting operation at Pike and Melrose. “The project is still in its early stages, but our vision is a mixed-use manufacturing and retail site that will include a specialty coffee roasting operation,” a Starbucks rep said in a statement sent to CHS about the company’s lease and building plans at the time. For the coffee giant, the Pike roaster would be the first neighborhood facility of its kind. Currently, Starbucks roasts its beans at a few, large facilities across the country — the closest one to Seattle is in Kent. Starbucks now intends to join nearby Victrola as well as Vita and Stumptown 12th Ave in utilizing the neighborhood’s light manufacturing zoning to operate coffee bean roasting facilities.
The PSCAA has always accepted comments for air quality permit applications, but the agency does not usually hold public meetings. Todd said the meeting is part of a new effort by the agency to increase awareness of the public input component of air quality permits. She told CHS that the Starbucks permit was essentially chosen at random.
Starbucks has kept its newly install fences decorative (Image: Shannon M. via Flickr)
J.D. Tuccille considers the effects of having too much work outside the classroom:
A study, published last year in the Journal of Experimental Education, takes a dim view of the heavy workloads under which high school kids in “10 high-performing high schools in upper-middle-class communities” stagger. Results indicated that students in these schools average more than three hours of homework per night. Students who did more hours of homework experienced greater behavioral engagement in school but also more academic stress, physical health problems, and lack of balance in their lives. Which is to say, even if you think that homework can be a good thing, there’s a limit. More is not better, say researchers from Stanford University, Lewis and Clark College, and Villanova University.
Granted, those “upper-middle-class communities” may not be the most broadly representative; the average American high schooler spends about an hour and a half on homework per day. But as Misty Adoniou points out, even modest amounts of homework may widen achievement gaps:
Research finds that homework doesn’t improve learning outcomes in primary school, and has a weak link to improved outcomes in junior high school. Those improvements are connected to parental involvement – but parents who are keen supporters of homework may be disappointed to hear that their positive contribution is largely just ensuring their children hand in their homework. …
There are many parents, dedicated and desperately interested in their children’s education, who cannot involve themselves in their children’s homework. They may not have had schooling opportunities themselves, they may speak English as an additional language, they may work long hours or shifts, or they may just be like most of us, and simply can’t remember what a quadratic equation is. Those with spare cash buy the homework support, in the form of after hours tutoring. In high school, where homework tasks contribute substantially to the course grade, homework is the great unequalizer.
Davidwdunkintest of sharing
Watch this video about my online class on coursera, A Beginner’s Guide to Irrational Behavior. (And if you haven’t checked out the other short videos, they should also be pretty entertaining.)
If you haven’t signed up yet, do it now!
