Snot
It’s been a long, long time since I generated a puzzle.
All you have to do is figure out what’s going on in this excerpted column of numbers. Any bean counters out there? This is a great way to spend your free time.
Don’t bother searching for help. Even the almighty Google is powerless to help you here.
Let’s roll!
293964673 843711893 934911548 657511668 675385661 629282665 428252383 827272787 137477727 111774723 111167338 111185574 111166766 111156824 111122114 111177114 111126116 111199116 625268916 628863136 634362136 832337832 433338138 533333933 433333633 433333133 433333833 611179566 211159619 911187516 111111316 111111114 111111117 111111115 111111113 111111111
How They’re Gaming Yelp
Never underestimate the human desire to game systems. Why expend actual effort when you can “win” by cheating? Because, to the victor go the spoils. Today I’d like to explain one way that business owners go about gaming their reviews.
So there’s this thing called Yelp. They claim to be generally positive system but the dictionary definition of the word “yelp” is: “a short sharp cry, esp. of pain or alarm.” Yeah, baby. Those are my kind of reviews. Let’s go negative and keep it that way. Don’t believe me? Look it up in your own dictionary.
I went to the trendy meat cafe and they served me an elk burger that was oozing blood. That’s how I earned “connoisseur of raw elk meat” on my Twitter profile! And, oh yeah, you better believe I yelped it as soon as I got home.
My understanding is that Yelp frowns on business owners asking for reviews. That’s bad form in a reputation system that’s supposedly driven from a wellspring of organic experiences from normal people like you and me. Normal! Yeah, right.
Here’s how the gaming works:
You place an order on a website. A few days or weeks later you receive a survey request. “How did we do on your recent order?” and what not.
You’ll likely be given the ability to enter some comments and provide a rating. If you give them a good rating, they’ll say thanks and provide a clickable link to the Yelp website where you can enter a review. If you give a bad rating, they only say thanks. No linky for you.
Voila! It’s as simple as that. The system just got gamed. The preliminary survey is nothing more than a sieve to sort the good eggs from the bad. The good eggs are passed along to Yelp and the bad eggs go down the chute. You might think that businesses appreciate negative feedback most of all because that’s vital information to help them improve. You’d be wrong. Why waste time on that shit when you can be gaming the system instead?
This is just one small example of gaming. People in the world of business spend more time thinking about stuff like this than they do on actual products and services. And they’re really good at it. That’s ingenuity.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to nosh on some raw elk. RAWR!
Like A Boss: The negotiations never took place
Ha ha ha! I’m the boss of you!
I recently completed my first year of working at home as a contractor. Although not as good as my dream of doing nothing, the year was still pretty good and … I had no complaints.
What’s good about working from home? No phones. No walk-in customers leaping in your office. No floor sales. No public toilet across the hall. No attending awkward pizza-only lunches on every employee’s birthday. You don’t spend your day using company-owned equipment. (A previous boss liked to joke he was logging my keystrokes. That was a real damper on my twitter activity.) You get your very own chair. No boogers from other employees on your stuff. There’s an ottoman where two cats sleep and the view out the window is squirrels playing.
When my one-year contract expired, of course I wanted more. It was a no-brainer.
These are the actual and verbatim excerpts of the official transcripts of the negotiation process. I’m sharing them because I don’t mind being humiliated in public.
From: Shouts
Subject: ContractI am ready to keep things simple and renew the same deal, no changes needed on my end, with all the same terms (another 12 months) excepting a modest increase of only $x.xx to the hourly rate for COLA. That’s $xx.xx/hour up from $xx.xx. Other than that I can’t think of anything else.
It’s official. You all know my salary now. I literally make $X amount. Note my colorful use of marketing terms like “modest” and “only.” Ha ha ha! Player at work! Also, thinking I was being clever, I provided dollar amounts and not percentages. This was a deliberate attempt to confuse and astound. -Ed
Make the jump to read additional communiques from the “negotiation” process and the surprising twist at the end.
Continue reading →
Outside The Box
We’ve all been told at some point in our lives to “think outside the box” by some weasel-face jackass, right?
The problem is when your mind is limited, it’s really hard to be aware of how it’s limited. Because, you know, you’re not even aware. True original thought is so contrary to our ingrained pre-programmed mental pathways that if we actually had one it would bite us in the ass.
Perhaps heart attacks and strokes are merely the symptoms of people who’ve experienced an original thought. Hey, I’ll bet that’s an original thought right there. Ugh. What’s this tingling in my fingers? Oh, pretty rainbow colors. My head hurts.
Thunk!
Oops. Sorry about that. I’m back. Turns out it wasn’t an original thought after all. Just the same old thing that always when I happen to stand up too fast. I’ll try to be more careful so we can get this damn post over and done with.
Continue reading →
Stark Market
This is my home office. That’s my stunt double.
If you came here expecting to learn about Winterfell please hold still while my dire wolves rip out your throat. For the rest of us, it’s time to explore the heady world of the stock market and high finance. BYOC. (Bring Your Own Cocaine.)
After yesterday’s false cheer I feel so dirty. It’s time to come clean. I’m gonna tell you how the shit works. All of it.
Disclaimer: I’m not big on introspection. I have never taken stock. I’m just a humble social scientist. These are my findings.
https://twitter.com/shoutabyss/status/408274996364967936
Allow me to introduce GUNT. That stands for Grand Unified Negativity Theory. GUNT is my life’s work. It’s a model that attempts to explain the sum total of human behavior.
Shouts from the Abyss 
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