Category: Various and Sundry

Various and Sundry

The Surprising Profit Center for Airlines

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

Continuing my trend of learning more about how certain industries actually work (see the McDonald’s article or film distribution video from previous weeks), I stumbled across this ‘explainer’ video about how airlines have changed their profit priority: it’s no longer focused on flying planes. Now, I’m sure some people already knew this, just as many people know that, historically, movie theaters make more money on concessions than on the movie tickets themselves. But I’m just…

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Various and Sundry

Hacking Your Personality in the Pursuit of Happiness

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

So, a couple weeks ago, I posted a link to some deep thoughts: guideposts for how to live your life. It was all part of a series of posts I’ve been doing this January exploring the whole notion of New Year’s resolutions writ large. So why not continue? The article that piqued my interest in this case was an article by Christian Jarrett for the BBC. A TL;DR summary of the article might be “everyone…

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Various and Sundry

Moon Knight: For when you might have to get a little bit crazy…

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

The comic collecting of my youth was dominated by some of the less popular titles (e.g. Rom), including some that came and went in various volumes of subsequent comic book series (e.g. Alien Legion) — what nowadays we might call “reboots” One of my favorite examples of this was Moon Knight, because every new comic series of the character seemed to focus on different aspects of the mercenary-turned-“Fist of Khonshu.” However, one of the most…

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Rants Various and Sundry

Da Vinci: Code for “Meh”

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

I had another post slated for today, but, I figured I’d be a bit more timely, considering the video above came out this past Sunday. John Oliver can lambaste and rant with the best of them, and his snark regarding the pop culture phenomenon of The Da Vinci Code speaks to me. Why? Because I was convinced by a number of very energetic people to go forth and read now –right now– The Da Vinci…

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Various and Sundry

Resolve to Reframe Your Worldview

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

Last Monday, I posted about lots of little things to add some joy or satisfaction to your day-to-day life. So from the micro to the macro, here’s a few overarching goals you might want to take on for this new year… or for the rest of your life in general. Bear in mind, this list from Maria Popova for The Marginalian gets pretty heavy, but if you’re in the headspace where you’re thinking about how…

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Various and Sundry

A Cold War that’ll Give You an Ice Cream Headache

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

Running contrary to the New Year’s notion of doing better for several years running is the McDonald’s Ice Cream machine, a notoriously finicky piece of equipment that has its own online dashboard of failure. And if the efficiency experts in your life don’t gnash their teeth at that, they likely will when they read Andy Greenberg’s article in Wired. It’s really infuriating to see miserable experiences be standardized, but to see the lengths to which…

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Various and Sundry

Nudge Your Way to a Happier New Year

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

You can pretty much bet I’ll be thinking about planning and goals for the new year all this month. I was particularly struck by a friend who had a very productive 2021, but decided an overall goal for 2022 was to be happier. With that in mind, I liked this very British list from The Guardian overall, though –besides the very British parts needing some translation to one’s own country– there are some that I…

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Various and Sundry

WTF NFT?

By Bjorn Munson | by Bjorn Munson

Non-fungible tokens or NFTs have been a bit a media rage this past year, as a trend, a new investment opportunity, and possibly a silver bullet that contains your daily recommended dose of antioxidants. I keep thinking, they can’t be as stupid as they sound, can they? You can find out the answer to this and many other questions about NFTs in this excellent article by Vicky Osterweil which, spoiler alert, is called “Money for…

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