FASCINATING.
Prices go up. Occasionally, prices go down. But for 70 years, the price of a bottle of Coca-Cola didn’t change. From 1886 until the late 1950s, a bottle of Coke cost a nickel.
On today’s show, we find out why. The answer includes a half a million vending machines, a 7.5 cent coin, and a company president who just wanted to get a couple lawyers out of his office.
I got in a conversation about urinal design today, and got to talking (and then googling) about urinal flies.
First, in case you don’t know:
More information about them can be found in this 2009 NPR story, There’s a fly in my urinal, which contains this gem where the originator of the fly-in-the-urinal idea explains why a fly:
”..guys want to directly aim at an animal they can immobilize. The ability to use one’s natural gifts and achieve victory over the foe while standing is the key, he explained. Guys, he felt, can always beat flies. That’s why flies are so satisfying.”
Amazing.
I have a hard time saying no. I still do it, but often times depending on the request, the lead-up to giving an answer is filled with inner turmoil.
First, I must seek out my true feelings on the matter: Do I really want to? What is my hesitation?
Then I do a brief to lengthy internal debate about the pros and cons of saying yes and saying no, and whether I should listen to my internal feelings, or set them aside this time.
“Will I be my best self if I say yes? Am I feeling compelled to say yes just so I don’t disappoint the asker? Have I said no enough times to this person so that if by saying no again they may feel compelled to never extend an invite in the future? Do I want that? Am I overthinking this entirely, and by just saying yes, I might do something that may be slightly uncomfortable in the short-term, but highly beneficial in the long-term? Would saying yes provide a more interesting story?”
This is my brain.
After reaching a conclusion internally, then it comes the matter of telling the person. How can I decline without sounding rude, and without sounding like I’m making too many excuses?
Well, found one.
There are other good ones here along with actual good advice on how to graciously turn someone down.
Along the same lines as my last post, some amazing human saved K-Mart store music tapes between 1989 and 1993, and recently put them on the internet. Put this in your ears, and remember the time when K-Mart was peaking.
Mark Davis, the aforementioned amazing human, writes:
I worked for Kmart behind the service desk and the store played specific pre-recorded cassettes issued by corporate. This was background music, or perhaps you could call it elevator music. Anyways, I saved these tapes from the trash during this period and this video shows you my extensive, odd collection.
Until around 1992, the cassettes were rotated monthly. Then, they were replaced weekly. Finally sometime around 1993, satellite programming was intoduced which eliminated the need for these tapes altogether.
BUT NOW WE HAVE THEM, INTERNET
There are some gems in here. The one I linked above, even. If you wait long enough, you’ll hear an in-store ad, which might be my favorite part of the deal. ATTENTION, KMART SHOPPERS!
A pretty fascinating slideshow of scenes from the mall in 1989.
I remember my local mall around that time, and parts looked a lot from these photos. What was different, though, is that instead of it feeling like this bizarre other-world as it does when looking at those photos, it felt like magic.
This is what it’s like getting premature feedback on a thing you’re designing or developing.
Right, I haven’t even gotten to the doors yet.
We have. There will be doors.
Right, yeah, wheels. This car will have wheels.
RIGHT. First we build the car, then we paint the car.
Driving east this morning and shiiiiit, that is a bright star.
The three stages of driving east around dawn:
Stage 1: It’s so early! But so quiet and peaceful, I could fall right back asleep. Why am I doing this to myself? Did I really need to leave this early?
Stage 2: Oh, the sunrise! This is great. How often do I watch the sunrise? I should do this more often. Damn, that’s beautiful. Look at those colors. This world is amazing.
Stage 3: MY EYES! THIS IS THE WORST! FUCK THE SUNRISE.
One of my favorite comedians, and favorite comedy bits. Totally ON POINT, and hilarious.
(Youtube likes to flag this for copyright violations, so if this video doesn’t exist whenever you’re watching this, here it is on Netflix, as part of the comedy special “Bare”. Start at 26:17 for this video.)
Can’t say I’m a big fan of guns, or bullshit arguments. And neither is Jim.
Check out part of a radio interview with him, where the gun-owning host is challenging some of his points.
This guy is awesome. I love his attitude toward creativity, and making things.
The way he says “People assumed that I was just having fun, playing football with myself. But actually, I was making a drink”. 😂😂 So funny.
So what, let’s do the ridiculous. And by doing the ridiculous, something else might come of it. I’ve always had this feeling that times running out. That you only get so much time on the earth, and you’ve got to contribute something.
I hear that.
This is a fantastic episode of On Being on Mindfulness and Mindlessness. This shit is everything, and parts of this idea are very reminiscent to me of what David Foster Wallace talked about in This Is Water about default modes. Our default mode is to be mindless, running our lives in autopilot. Most times, our default modes aren’t great. Which is why being mindful is important.
Ellen Langer is a social psychologist who some have dubbed “the mother of mindfulness.” But she defines mindfulness with counterintuitive simplicity: the simple act of actively noticing things — with a result of increased health, competence, and happiness. Her take on mindfulness has never involved contemplation or meditation or yoga. It comes straight out of her provocative, unconventional studies, which have been suggesting for decades what neuroscience is pointing at now: our experience of everything is formed by the words and ideas we attach to them. What makes a vacation a vacation is not only a change of scenery — but the fact that we let go of the mindless everyday illusion that we are in control. Ellen Langer has shown it’s possible to become physiologically younger through a changed frame of mind; to find joy in what was experienced as drudgery by renaming it as play; and to induce weight loss by substituting the label “exercise” for labor.
Grit your teeth through the parts where the host talks over the guest, trying to fit in some lesser point that feels like all she really wants us all to know that she knows things, too, because Ellen Langer has some pretty great truthbombs about brains and life.