Amarsir

I have a Slide Belt - not a Mission Belt, because this. (Short summary: the Mission Belt guy copied the idea from a family member already making them.) The claim seems pretty well sourced, but I was really convinced after the "Behind the Tank" where we saw the guy commissioning paintings of himself as Moses and trying to sell his own business advice book.

But you have heard of it, I'm guessing. I'm in the same boat - aware of it, never experienced or met someone it happened to. I'm sure it's a valid concern, but not something I'd buy an expensive bag strictly to combat. Correct. In fact there's a name for it: keystone markup. Take your manufacture price, double that price sells to the store, and double that to the customer. It's nice to get more and sometimes you have to take less, but that's a pretty good rule of thumb. And after overhead, inventory carrying costs, etc, not as much profit gets to the bottom line as you might think.

It also probably didn't hurt that those two did an AMA at Reddit. Being there personally answering questions couldn't have hurt their support. The one thing I've learned about reality shows is that you don't need to hire actors. It's a big world. If you have a character type in mind you can cast for it. Also I'd like to think if anyone was writing this they'd be more clever than to use the same event twice. Were I scripting they would destroy all the money, start adorning their bodies with tribal warpaint, and begin to worship the pagan gods of the island. Alas, with only 1 episode left I don't quite think there's time for that to happen naturally.

Remember around Camp 4, when they were all getting food and sharing the pot, and we thought the rivalry between the two sides was incredibly bitter? Remember Camp 7-8 when the fighting was practical: MaCody taking the pot to make AlGina flare; AlGina destroying money to make MaCody buy food? Now the lack of a flare case and phone has really made the fight moot. They can't order food, and since "flaring out" now requires a 5 foot tall bonfire (from people who may not even have access to the firestarter) that's all but impossible too. They really have nothing to fight over, and yet it's worse than ever. Kudos to MTV on their social experiment. Another month and they might have murdered each other.

The game was designed to let people be as kind or as harsh to each other as they choose. While I get how that can be unpleasant to watch, they're about as good as they can be in that direction. (Without it becoming The Hunger Games.) I don't think you can add minor rules without either seeming arbitrary or massively changing the whole game. For example, what does "trying to starve someone out" mean in terms of a rule? Does it mean the pot or the firestarter must be shared? Those weren't starting equipment, so what if the group didn't buy them at all? How is it "starving out" to not get a pot in one circumstance but not "starving out" to not get a pot in another? I'm not denying that's what they were trying to do to each other in their minds, but you can't make rules against thought crimes. There has to be a definition of what behavior is forbidden / required and know that whatever the rule is, that line will be pushed. And if you simply want to say "buys must be shared", that's a heck of a tough thing with Alonzo's socks, let alone a sandwich or a tent. The basic ground rules they went with are "majority decides the group buy", "possession is the law", and "no physical confrontation", which includes taking an item in someone else's possession. I don't see an easy way to add to that in a minor yet consistent way. (That said, there's a rumor allegedly started by Cody that they were forced to share the firestarter but that wasn't shown on camera. If so, I am annoyed that they do have rules which weren't stated.) I'm the same way. I think I binged the first 3 episodes and at that point I released myself from the burden of having to root for anyone. That made this all more entertaining.

Your meeting times remind me of this: https://heatst.com/culture-wars/marxist-vegan-restaurant-closes-after-customers-no-longer-willing-to-wait-40-minutes-for-a-sandwich/

The best chance for a happy ending is this: Alex and Gina get sick and leave. Cody and Makani are evicted for unsportsmanlike conduct. MTV keeps the money. I think this is where the isolation part of "Stranded" really takes effect. For pretty much a month now all they've known is this rivalry. It's been 3 weeks since Chris left and almost 2 since Elish and Alonzo. The only human interaction they get is "the ally" who backs them on everything and "the enemy" who must be stopped. The lack of other people not only means there's no one neutral to run their ideas past, but they've even lost the baseline for what normalcy is. They might even be perfectly nice and reasonable people back in society. (Although I'd say Cody has combativeness issues.) But I think the situation is such that it's easy for any of them to just completely separate game behavior from real life.

Well, buzz and anecdotes play better on TV. But he did have a complete lesson so I believe his comprehension is full enough that it would provide value if the other pieces were in place. But what I think you and I are sensing is that those other pieces aren't in place. At the risk of generalizing, this is the issue with youth, with hippies, and with Jimmy - lovely theory that's perhaps turning out incongruous with the real world. For example, look at the guy who was a catalyst for this week's goat story. He's a hunter so he was comfortable with the idea of getting a goat to slaughter. So they got a goat. But he didn't set a schedule for it. Didn't have food for it nor know what kind of food it should have. Didn't step up to say "today's the day, we do it". And wanted the hide but hadn't researched how to treat them. His answer for this was "nobody told me". That may be the resounding theme for all of this. Lofty abstract goals from people who lack the experience to know what hurdles they'll face and the proactiveness to figure it out ahead of time.

I think it's clear enough from this episode that Jimmy believes his own spin. He's knowledgeable on town development and happy enough to be there that I think the 2 weeks at the Hatch conference were an exception not the standard. (And that sort of publicity would be his job anyway.) What he's not he's not apparently is a great details guy OR someone who's willing to change himself to someone else's point of view. He's the boss because his father was the boss and non-boss roles don't come easily to him. So I'm still wondering why they don't have better shelters, what the plan is for developing them, and why his city planning doesn't seem to have more directed use of space. His anecdote about standardization of Charleston porches doesn't seem all that applicable here. So the feeling I'm starting to get is that he wants a town where everything "works" but for everyone else to figure out what the "works" is. That's why he calls it townbuilding, because he is recruiting for more than just physical labor. But that results in a lot of it not being figured out by anyone.

I found it amusing that the punishment for leaving the flare case behind was making it harder for someone to quit. It seems clear the producers have no fucks to give and are willing to just let the competitors be awful to each other. Which they consistently are.

Nobody's leaving! They're adding a 6th chair. :) http://www.torontosun.com/2017/04/11/arlene-dickinson-returning-as-panellist-on-dragons-den

It still did before. I'm not sure it still will after. If I saw the Iron Chef name on something and then tuned in to watch Sarah Grueneberg eating a hamburger in Texas, I wouldn't be setting my DVR to record more of it. FN threw the name all over ("Iron Chef Eats"???) without doing any of the stuff that built the brand in the first place. I understand that firing up Kitchen Stadium must be vastly more expensive than other shows, but as a "test" this feels a bit like setting my car on fire to see if there's gas in the tank.

Gotcha. I don't really know what any of their thinking is. The show's not doing a great job of relating that, and I don't know if it's slow-rolling until the end of the season, or there are too many people to go deep, or Vice doesn't want to say, or they're just sloppy. The "interns" for example. Several of them said "this isn't what I expected". OK, well what did they expect? A fully-functioning utopia in which we learn that the concepts of durability and efficiency are just capitalist fictions? They knew the place wasn't built yet, but they seem to want the functions as if it was? The conversation was "I wanna grow food. I came to grow potatoes." Well that's maintenance, not growth. Do they not get that or is it clipped that way? It's also not quite clear what Jimmy's plan is. My guess is that he couldn't do what he wants traditionally, so instead he used investor money to buy the land and tuition money to pay locals to build homes, which he can then sell for return. (And if the interns produce more work than they require - which is questionable- that's a bonus.) But to whom is he selling? Was growing your own crops always part of the story for this town he's building? Or did he invent it as an angle to get millennial hippies to pay money to visit? Are these structures they're living in meant to be the salable homes? Because they don't look it. The instructors seem the most interesting because they're the most into the Kool Aid. They're in a stasis where it isn't clearly short-term and they're also gaining personally. Josue (the bearded "Farm Manager") clearly loves being out there in nature. Esteban (the director) is definitely the guy keeping it together. Every month there is $80,000 in salary, over 45 employees. $20,000 on food and $10,000 on projects. (And that's not per course. It's split, weighted by the # of people in each course.) And then $15,000 for utilities, supplies, cars, maintenance, "wild" (not sure what that means, it was on the board). So thats $125k in budget per month. Over 3 months (which rounds in their favor) that means $375k spent of $400k taken in, for an overall profit of only $25k.

I think it does. 80 people x $5000 / 10 weeks = $40,000 / week = $160,000 per month. Revenue obviously, not profit. I'll try to pay closer attention to the money when rewatching episode 3. According to their website, the courses at the moment are: Sustainable Agriculture, Biology, Business & Entrepreneurship, Culinary Arts, Public Education & Community Development, Public Health & Wellness, Outdoor Recreation, Design Thinking, Media Arts, Hospitality, Engineering, Political Science, and Construction Arts. It's very possible they weren't all in place when this was filmed. Let me just say that the term "Design Thinking" bugs me. It sounds like they just took two broad terms and stuck them together to sound important. And yes I know the term isn't unique to these guys. And yes I'm probably a hypocrite because if it was called "Principles of results-oriented design" I likely wouldn't be complaining. But to me it sounds wishy-washy AND smacks of "ivory tower". (For example, they might say "Design Thinking involves both analysis and synthesis." Which sounds very lovely but doesn't help me sit down to build a better mousetrap. If you're advocating use of the scientific method, teach that.) Just a pet peeve and not really about the show. But it keeps coming up on the chyrons so I felt the need to say something.

Simply put this just doesn't feel like Iron Chef to me. The closest it came was when they actually gave categorized, numerical scores at the end. But that's less about Iron Chef and more about how vague the standard is for judging on other shows.

Destroying money is not entirely without validity as a strategy, if handled smartly. It is a power you have as an individual, even without the numbers. I don't blame anyone for considering it. The problem is that they didn't really understand it. At the start of the episode there was $408k. They earned $85k and had 2 more drops. If MaCody intends the "don't spend money" plan (except temptations, apparently) that's a total of $663k to split. If this was AlGina's last effort before flaring, they'd have to destroy at least $332k for the move to be a punishment. (And that's assuming MaCody acted rationally - which it's a safe bet they wouldn't.) Destroying $60k and leaving is a net win for the other side, and they knew it. So in order for a small destruction to work, you'd have to impress on them that you aren't flaring either way. In which case the pettiness of the move is right on the surface. "I don't need peanut butter I just want it." You can't play the victim at that point. And of course if you destroy $400k and then quit, you're also being petty and not the good guy. So Alex needed to understand that he was the bad guy. Which he clearly didn't, because even now doing media after the show he still doesn't get it. That's something we have to say for Cody. He started out as the villain, but he knew it.

Nobody looks at the back of receipts either. (Or the front in many cases.) Doesn't stop that from being a common advertising spot. As someone who occasionally has to buy ads, I'm shocked at how much money they go for at times. It wouldn't be hard to convince me that advertisers are overpaying. However, if Visa is spending $1 per print like these guys said, then that's their problem. I'd happily take their money.

I'm sure actually watching tonight will clear it up, but at this point it's not clear how Alton Brown "is the sole decision maker on the most and least successful chef" if they also have judges. It also bugs me a bit that there are more Iron Chefs judging than there are cooking, but I understand the gauntlet concept.

I predict that within 2 years Shutterfly will start putting ads on the back of their photos. It won't have to carry their business. It will just be added revenue because why not? And since they're already so big and don't have to cover the cost, they can price it cheaply enough to get all the advertisers they could want. "Flag" (apparently that's their name, I had to rewind 4 times) was a terrible business but might have found a valuable idea. I felt like Validate wants to copy iBotta but from a narrower angle. iBotta is basically a rebate service, offering cash back by shopping at a place or for a thing. They're successful enough that they got me to download and use it (although I kinda stopped once I got $30 out). Geographically targeting to say "If you're parking here, shop at these places" isn't the dumbest thing. And iBotta doesn't seem to mind being "the bank" as Cuban put it. The difference is A) they can target manufacturers OR retailers. B) It's much more flexible, where I can get a quarter one day and $4 plus a $5 bonus the next. C) Validate also needs to sign up parking lots, which is a whole other layer. It's so many moving pieces they'd have bombard the world with sales reps. As limited as Uber is (Mark's right), at least it's only one party. On the Llama device, Mark: "It's not a good product because it's going to get you sued." Lori: "I disagree with Mark. This is a great product and you're great people. But you're going to get sued, so I'm out." The bike did sound like a good product. Mark had a ton of contingencies, but made them a good offer. I'd like to follow up on that and see if they closed.

OK week 2 had relevant text. They didn't show the group buy screen and Alonzo only read the part about agreeing via majority rules. However, the temptation screen said this: So that kind of hinted at what came after. "Up for grabs" is the rule but not during a temptation. (Curiously, the very first tablet in episode one also contained a typo: "collecitvely". It might be possible we are overestimating the amount of care the producers put into this after all.)

I suspect what you heard was "the group must agree on all purchases", which is what they say every time just before "majority rules". (Which sounds like a contradiction because they're using some loose form of the word "agree".) But maybe you're right. I think I can probably pull up the episodes and jump to the tablet section without too much work. If I do I'll transcribe them all here.

Gina gives me the impression that she would quit, but firing a flare is too much work.

I think this format is the best at what it set out to be. The game didn't put them on teams, diminish the pot, or send anyone home. They did that to themselves. It has rules, but not structure. I'm not sure we need to see that for another season, but as a one-time thing it was very interesting. (I do believe with other casting they could have had a much more pleasant outing, but reality shows always cast for drama. I'd go so far as to say "shared by all" isn't a rule at all, let alone and enforced one. Possession is the law. In another run we might have seen people sprinting for the drop in order to grab food before anyone else does. You can say "shared by all" in theory, but I'm not sure how that works for something like a pair of socks. It just isn't how this is set up. Now one possibility for more harmonious existence is to scrap the "majority" rule and say every buy needs to be unanimous. Clearly this swings the result toward "spend nothing". But that still creates drama, as it might have turned into everyone against Cody. Or a "we won't vote for a backpack unless you vote for tents" standoff. Yet another even gentler possibility is to split all the money when awarded and then basically play individual games side-by-side. If 10 people arrive, they each get $10,000. 5 each get $20k. (You could even have challenges for the money to manufacture excitement and force them to come together.) If you want to buy something it comes from your share. When you leave you take what you earned so far. It would remove the most essential conflict as there would be no need to fight over "spend vs no spend". However, you might get some interesting peer pressure as the wet people look at the tent and go "I wish I'd bought that", or the eaters look at the someone else's cash stack and go "I'm not sure I spent wisely." But that's a vastly different game. It might be gentle to the point of being bland.

Not the forum, but Meals on Wheels has not been abolished. Nor has there been a vote to abolish it. Nor has abolishing it been proposed. The only thing connecting that program and politicians right now is whether or not the federal government will continue to provide a minority of funding to it. Don't misinterpret my statement as an endorsement or indictment of that proposed budget. I just don't want misinformation spread.

You're definitely not, and like I said MTV would be justified in disqualifying him because of it. I'm pretty sure they do have a rule against actual fights and I kinda hope they step in here for the same reason. Ruining the reward and making each other miserable is fine by me as a social experiment because it's all voluntary and zero-loss. If you last 40 days and go home with $300 that's really no worse than the person who flared out after 3 days and went home with nothing. But it does stop being fun when deliberate and potentially permanent injury is occurring. That said: Alex: This trail's actually pretty easy. Gina: Yeah it is. . . Whoa! [falls] Hilarious. These editors know their stuff.