December 26, 2016

2016.12.26
For grins I finally got around to putting up a tag system here on the site. Right now the most useful addition is as a guide to my Malaysia photos.


I should be grateful I don't get periods...I don't even know what that stuff would come out of, frankly.
Me, Dec 10.

Americans now spend more money on casino gambling than on music purchases and going to movies and sports events combined
The Atlantic.
That blurb was from the print version only maybe, but the article was good. I admit, I don't really "get it" - and this isn't meant to be judge-y at all, but when I'm play slots, anxiety about the slow drain of money (along with echoes of a puritanical 'doing a bad thing' concern, my church growing up was zero gambling) overcomes any boosts I get from winning. But it's not just me - there's that tenet of "loss aversion" in psychology, right? You can frame things so that people clearly are more at pains to avoid loss than to go out for potential gains - but something in the casino experience masks that. Is it just the pile of all the little tricks? All the near misses (the article says the lizard brains reads those as practically wins), or all the tiny semi-wins that might not even make your money back, but still feel like something?