Recent Reading

Black Friday edition.

"If you don't have to put it on sale and people are still going to buy it, why put it on sale?"

What's the data say? Black Friday prices aren't the lowest.

Damn, that flash sale site might not be a better deal, either.

Recent Reading

In praise of "lower grade" maple syrup.

12 pasta myths debunked. (Mixes well with my notes on pasta cooking.)


There's a website for everything.

And then there's this, from the annals of totally f*#%ked up:

What does it take to be a Victoria’s Angel?:

She sees a nutritionist, who has measured her body’s muscle mass, fat ratio and levels of water retention. He prescribes protein shakes, vitamins and supplements to keep Lima’s energy levels up during this training period. Lima drinks a gallon of water a day. For nine days before the show, she will drink only protein shakes – “no solids”. The concoctions include powdered egg. Two days before the show, she will abstain from the daily gallon of water, and “just drink normally”. Then, 12 hours before the show, she will stop drinking entirely. “No liquids at all so you dry out, sometimes you can lose up to eight pounds just from that,” she says.

Other Merchants...Etsy, darling

I just bought something from an Etsy seller in Hong Kong — which is one of the amazing things about Etsy — and this was the note they included. Obviously English isn't their first language. But there's no way they looked up a translation and got "Darling" unless they wanted to say something that bizarrely intimate, which I think is kind of great.

I also like some of the cards from this seller in Indonesia.

A lot of people bash on Etsy, some of it for good reason. But the way it's created a personal way to sell things internationally is fascinating.