Apparently Wendy's was maybe going to implement surge pricing, and the fast food industry freaked out, and so now Wendy's is definitely not going to implement surge pricing.

This bit from this article made me laugh:

Surge pricing refers to dynamic pricing, which is a way for businesses to charge more (or less) based on how many people want their products at any given time.

"Whoever called it surge pricing made the worst marketing mistake you can think of," said Juan Castillo, assistant professor of economics at the University of Pennsylvania. "Surge pricing sent the message to everybody that this is mostly about increasing prices. That created a very negative reaction from the public."

Look at this duck, quacking like a duck. What shall we call it. (Let's call him Serge.)

I guess so? I loathe him so much. I loathe the fact that he enacted so much destruction, and yet will probably go down on the history books as a "moderate" because he was not in thrall to Trump.

Lw writes: A couple of past immolations less famous than Thich Quan Duc's (he was a teacher of Thich Nhat Hahn's, his book Anger has a short discussion):

Jan Palach in Prague in 1969, the English wikipedia page has a good background, but doesn't include the sections covering the response of communist news and officials at the time, this is google translate's version:

After Palach's death, misinformation about his act and motivation for it appeared. As early as January 1969, the Hungarian newspaper Népszabadság came up with the theory of a "cold flame" (a chemical with a low calorific value and a fire that does not burn). [39] In the Czechoslovakia, the high-ranking communist functionary Vilém Nový uttered false theories about Palach . At the same time, he defended himself by citing the January documents of the UK. [40] According to Nové, Palach was drawn first from the "Five of Death" student group. He did not want to kill himself, but only to douse himself with a chemical causing a "cold flame" and with this protest destabilize the situation in society. However, the other members of the group mixed too little of the chemicals into the combustible, which is why he suffered fatal burns. [41] Luděk Pachman , Vladimír Škutina , Pavel Kohout , Emil Zátopek and Lubomír Holeček were to lead the students to this form of protest . [41] They filed a lawsuit against Nové for the protection of personality (Zátopek later withdrew it). Another lawsuit was filed by Palach's mother Libuše Palachová, represented by lawyer Dagmar Burešová . Judge Jarmila Ortová rejected both lawsuits on the grounds that Nový had not only the right, but even the duty to criticize Palach's act. [42] The "cold flame" version was also official in 1979. [43]

Also Norman Morrison, protesting US military involvement in Vietnam in 1965. Apparently McNamara spoke about him in a documentary:

"Burned himself to death below my office ... his wife issued a very moving statement - 'human beings must stop killing other human beings' - and that's a belief that I shared, I shared it then, I believe it even more strongly today". McNamara then posits, "How much evil must we do in order to do good? We have certain ideals, certain responsibilities. Recognize that at times you will have to engage in evil, but minimize it."

Heebie's take: Ooof. I don't have a take, but I'm interested in reading the discussion.

1. At what age would you let your kid get a nose ring? My ten year old wants one, and I'm just thinking it through. I'm not exactly opposed - I think it would look cute on them - but it's a little outside the norm for 5th graders here.

2. What car would you get your 16 year old? Or more accurately, your 15 year old to practice on with their learner's permit? We definitely want Hawaii to have a car so that we are doing less kid transportation. I'm a little scared of her having a small car though, because of all the big cars.

(Yes I feel bad about our environmental footprint. I can't save Texas from itself, at least not right now.)

Mossy sends over this link without comment, thereby entrusting my wise eye to extract the meatiest details.

I guess Indonesia is building a whole new city from scratch to house their capitol, because Jakarta is caving in on itself? There are before-and-after satellite photos.

It's kind of wild to just up and build a whole giant city from scratch. I'm curious as to who was displaced and if anyone's living in it yet. Does it get unveiled all at once, like a giant theme park?