, July 8, 2014
Daily Bafflements
Ruins on the Scottish island of Jura. / Photo by Patrick Mackle.
• George Orwell reportedly “could thrive only in comparative adversity.” That may be why he moved to a distant, desolate, and weather-beaten Scottish island to finish Nineteen Eighty-Four. Islanders say he kept to himself and went by his given name, Eric Blair. (Via Roads and Kingdoms and Arts & Letters Daily.)
• We’ve shaken our heads at MonkeyParking, the app that lets San Franciscoans “sell” their parking spaces to other drivers before they vacate them; now from Mathew Ingram comes news of another app, ReservationHop, that lets people squat on fake restaurant reservations and then sell those to the highest bidder. As Ingram writes, the assumption here “is that if something can be monetized, then it should be. It’s as though capitalism, or tech-startup life, was a game in which founders try to spot loopholes in the laws or social contracts that govern our behavior, and then figure out ways to get someone to pay to exploit them.”
• According to a recent study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, the thirteen states that increased their minimum wages on January 1 have had stronger employment growth than the thirty-seven states that didn’t. So, take that, every Forbes columnist ever.
• For the Real Life Imitates Arrested Development file: a story about the “human props” who live in luxury homes for a steal while they’re on the market. They have to keep the houses meticulously clean and vacate immediately when a prospective buyer comes by. The Tampa Bay Times asks, “Is it worth sleeping in a mansion if it means living as a ghost?”