I lived in London for six months and discovered the wonderfulness of pasties. I admit that I would eat pasties whenever I didn't feel like cooking (which was often).
Why a pasty craze never took off here in the U.S., I will never know. Delicious meat in an easy-to-eat package? I'm sold.
I'm trying to introduce meat pies and sausage rolls to the US, but it's not working. The one place in the SF Bay Area that you could get 'em (The New Zealander in Alameda) closed down recently.
Luckily I'm on the east coast next week and I hear there's a pie shop in New York City.
The upper peninsula ("U.P.") of Michigan is the place to get pasties in the United States. It's almost the only region of the United States that includes people who know how to pronounce "pasty."
I've had a pasty in the U.P., and I'd be glad for pasties to become more generally available in the United States. As it is, my wife (who is Taiwanese) makes homemade meat pies, to surprisingly good effect from someone who didn't grow up eating them.
I'm trying to figure out the American resistance to meat pies. I mean, we have corn dogs here.
I don't get it. Is it the prejudice against British food? (I love some good fish and chips every once in a while.)Satisfaction with burgers and fries? Lack of imagination? Not enough exposure?
You heard right. It's called Tuck Shop and has 3 locations downtown. 1 in chelsea market, 1 on st. marks (8th st) and 1 on 1st st and 1st ave. Really great meat pies.
Most people are decent human beings. But you have to watch out for the minority who are not - they can destroy your business.
I would say that one scenario where you should consult a lawyer at the begfinning of a startup is if the startup engages in a sticky legal area. You know, sharing files, privacy issues, etc. (I'm just thinking off the top of my head here, there's a lot more gray legal areas out there.) How terrible would it be if you found out that your business model is basically illegal conduct?
Be aware of the changing regulatory landscape of the internet - especially in the U.S.
(I don't want to be all doom and gloom, but it's more about figuring out if the startup is worth the risk.)
Wow, these women are the height of irresponsibility.
Here's my theory about why people think that women are more responsible for birth control.
1. They are more directly affected by pregnancy. They are the ones who would have to bear the child or to have an abortion. Abortions are not fun. Vacuuming your uterus is probably not a pleasant experience. Of course, I'm being somewhat flippant. I do think that women who have foresight and intelligence are responsible human beings who try to have children only when they want to. Of course, there are cultural and socioeconomic issues at play here. I"m not trying to suggest that men are not affected by children, but they don't need to bear the physical consequences. So birth control is more of an abstract conception for men. Although they bear the financial consequences...sometimes.
2. The idea that women are more responsible in general. Of course, this is a terrible and misguided stereotype. I know many irresponsible women (One similar to your story - she has two kids now.)If women seem more responsible, it's probably because society teaches women to be responsible and risk-averse from birth.
The height of irresponsibility here is women who claim to be on the pill because they actually want kids, but to afford that they have to "oops" some guy who doesn't. This, and paternity fraud, are what make male birth control important.
Sometimes, when my life isn't going well, I like to revert back to my favorite books. Re-reading particular books that gives me a specific feeling - usually happiness, wonderment, etc. - can be relaxing.
It takes effort and focus to get into a new book. Maybe you can bypass that by just re-reading a old favorite?
Absolutely. I'm like edge17 in that the new books I have piled up call out to me like sirens, but I have a series of books that are absolutely "comfort reading" and help me out in times that aren't so great. I know their twists, turns and surprises, but that just makes them old friends.
I like the idea, but it's hard for me to get past the opportunity cost aspect of it - meaning, reading something new vs. reading something old. My list of 'stuff to read' is so long, it's tough to justify spending time on things where I know all the cliffhangers and how they resolve.
I actually respect Zuck more because of this. He seems like less of a narcissistic adolescent and more like a man who cares about the quality of his food and the connection between himself and what he consumes.
And, remember that killing your food is a sign of aristocracy. Native Americans were not called "noble savages" because they seemed neat or something, but because they hunted and adorned themselves with pelts, which is something that only European aristocrats did.
Personally, I prefer butchering my meat myself because of the low-quality of butchering in many mass-production facilities.
Agreed 100% and I would just add this one point. Social networks are a winner-take-all game. You're either dominant or nothing. Nobody wants to use a social network with only 400 other people on it. That would defeat the whole purpose. Of course, there are specific niches such as Twitter, but Twitter dominates its niche.
In a way, social communication and network sites are anti-competitive.
I think its rather early days to reach this conclusion. A social network is just a network of people. In the real world small networks of like minded people have often had a disproportionately large amount of utility. The one thing for large social networks right now is that they provide a global namespace of people which helps discoverability. But perhaps in the coming years we shall see social networks emerge for vertical talents where likeminded people can work productively (Mendeley etc come to mind). You could arguably make the point that within each of these verticals a single player will dominate.
Yes, I see where you're coming from. Let me refine my point. Niches will probably get smaller and smaller. Facebook may lose market-power to smaller, more focused networks. I'm just not sure if that will weaken Facebook to the point that Facebook stops being "the" social network. Facebook is still the ultimate place for global connectivity. Perhaps Facebook will remain Facebook, but people will stop using it as their main social outlet.
Like you said, this could result in dominant players within a vertical space. But, how large will these vertical spaces be? I don't know. If i knew, I'd be a millionaire. (I'm not.)
I wonder if Facebook could actually become too big.
If everything i write into Facebook will be read by friends, bosses, grandma, and father-in-law, i will probably write nothing or only simple jokes.
So there might be a point, where everybody has a Facebook account, but nobody uses it anymore.
This might be counter by introducing more controls, but that complicates the interface.
That's exactly the same argument that was made about content, back in the days of PlayNet, AOL, Prodigy, and the like. Yet, somehow, open websites won; you could also make the same argument about email.
Why isn't it possible that social networks will be like the web, and that all these proprietary services will wither away in the face of an open protocol? I'm not saying that's inevitable; I just wonder why everyone believes that the converse is inevitable.
You know, your question got me thinking. I've been trying to imagine a open platform for social networking and I just...can't...conceive of one. Maybe my mind is too limited and uncreative, but I just feel like a open platform would defeat the purpose of social networking sites.
For example, LinkedIn - a social network for professionals. If LinkedIn became "open," its utility disappears. You would not be able to trust your "connections" because the network wouldn't be full of professionals. Closed platforms are a bit more trustworthy (and only a bit!). Facebook is probably as open as it gets.
Huh? LinkedIn has absolutely no restrictions on who can be a member or who can be connected. They only data they curate is the global search index, but that can be replaced by anything else on the Internet, like email or XMPP.
I'll disagree with the notion that "Social networks are a winner-take-all game". I, and i'm sure many others do too, use different social networks for different group of friends.
I.e. I use Facebook primarily to keep in contact with my family and friends who i don't see on a regular basis. I use LinkedIn to keep in touch with people I met on a professional basis. I use Whatsapp to keep in touch with people who are really close to me.
I know Whatsapp is not exactly a social network but I believe that it is a first step towards fulfilling a niche that is ripe to be disrupted: A social network for your INNER circle of friends; close friends/family that you interact with on a regular basis. I don't believe any "social network" has fulfilled this niche yet.
So in short, social networks is NOT a winner-takes-all-game and there are opportunities to disrupt. I myself is attempting this by taking the Whatsapp model and expanding on that.
I looked at the cited page (http://www.humorwriters.org/startlingstats.html) which is a weird writing workshop article that gets its information from a site that "helps writers get published." I smell something fishy here.
I also searched the publishing site and found nada. Of course, I didn't do an exhaustive search, but still...
Just as an aside, I wouldn't be surprised if some college grads never read a "proper book" after college. I don't think that means the end of literacy - we do read a lot on the internet...
Also, we sit in many more contexts: driving, work, watching TV, eating dinner, etc.
That being said, I'm a bit overwhelmed nowadays with all of the health scares. Sometimtes I feel like whatever I do, I'm killing myself. So I just give up and live my life. I'm going to die one way or another, right? (Not exactly good philosophy.)
Admittedly, I'm a cynic, but I'm a bit suspicious of the investors' motivations behind their alleged concern.
Sure, it may loosen the founders' ties to the company, but it also loosens the founders' ties to the investors. Investors cannot influence founders with more liquidity (by say, diluting the founders' shares if possible).
It's really much more about losing alignment between employees, management, founders and boards.
The consequences are quite negative, and if I could name the companies I know of dealing with this, I would. Unfortunately, I'm friends with the founders involves and can't out them here. Needless to say, they have some very unhappy employees who have been on board for years and who resent the founders for cashing out while they keep slaving away, especially in the face of overly generous offers to buy the company.
Concerned about the whole slew of companies that are in this bucket - Groupon, livingsocial, fb, twitter, zynga, automattic, digg, etc... which had known public founder cash out.
To offer a contrasting opinion: this is very similar to the kind of whining I used to hear from middle-management about employees who hopped from one job to another during the boom days.
Yeah, I can see how that kind of behavior would result in resentment. You're right that a founder cash-out can have a lot of negative consequences, but one should make it clear that alignment is a big part of investors' concerns as well.
Why a pasty craze never took off here in the U.S., I will never know. Delicious meat in an easy-to-eat package? I'm sold.