Feb. 14, 2022: I found this in my old physical news articles. However, they are still relevant and helpful.
Feb. 8, 2014 "PlentyofFish in the online dating sea": Today I found this article by Paul Luke in the Edmonton Journal:
PressReader.com - Digital Newspaper & Magazine Subscriptions
Nov. 4, 2021 "Online Dating Is Changing the Nature of Society": Today I found this article when I opened my Mozilla homepage. This is from the MIT Technology Review. This is more about interracial dating:
Not so long ago, nobody met a partner online. Then, in the 1990s, came the first dating websites.
Match.com went live in 1995. A new wave of dating websites, such as OKCupid, emerged in the early 2000s. And the 2012 arrival of Tinder changed dating even further. Today, more than one-third of marriages start online.
Clearly, these sites have had a huge impact on dating behavior. But evidence is emerging that their effect is much more profound.
For more than 50 years, researchers have studied the nature of the networks that link people to each other. These social networks turn out to have a peculiar property.
One obvious type of network links each node with its nearest neighbors, in a pattern like a chess board or chicken wire. Another obvious kind of network links nodes at random. But real social networks are not like either of these. Instead, people are strongly connected to a relatively small group of neighbors and loosely connected to much more distant people.
These loose connections turn out to be extremely important. “Those weak ties serve as bridges between our group of close friends and other clustered groups, allowing us to connect to the global community,” say Josue Ortega at the University of Essex in the U.K. and Philipp Hergovich at the University of Vienna in Austria.
Loose ties have traditionally played a key role in meeting partners. While most people were unlikely to date one of their best friends, they were highly likely to date people who were linked with their group of friends; a friend of a friend, for example. In the language of network theory, dating partners were embedded in each other’s networks.
Indeed, this has long been reflected in surveys of the way people meet their partners: through mutual friends, in bars, at work, in educational institutions, at church, through their families, and so on.
Online dating has changed that. Today, online dating is the second most common way for heterosexual couples to meet. For homosexual couples, it is far and away the most popular.
That has significant implications. “People who meet online tend to be complete strangers,” say Ortega and Hergovich. And when people meet in this way, it sets up social links that were previously nonexistent.
The question that Ortega and Hergovich investigate is how this changes the racial diversity of society. “Understanding the evolution of interracial marriage is an important problem, for intermarriage is widely considered a measure of social distance in our societies,” they say.
The researchers start by simulating what happens when extra links are introduced into a social network. Their network consists of men and women from different races who are randomly distributed. In this model, everyone wants to marry a person of the opposite sex but can only marry someone with whom a connection exists. This leads to a society with a relatively low level of interracial marriage.
But if the researchers add random links between people from different ethnic groups, the level of interracial marriage changes dramatically. “Our model predicts nearly complete racial integration upon the emergence of online dating, even if the number of partners that individuals meet from newly formed ties is small,” say Ortega and Hergovich.
And there is another surprising effect. The team measure the strength of marriages by measuring the average distance between partners before and after the introduction of online dating. “Our model also predicts that marriages created in a society with online dating tend to be stronger,” they say.
Next, the researchers compare the results of their models to the observed rates of interracial marriage in the U.S. This has been on the increase for some time, but the rates are still low, not least because interracial marriage was banned in some parts of the country until 1967.
But the rate of increase changed at about the time that online dating become popular. “It is intriguing that shortly after the introduction of the first dating websites in 1995, like Match.com, the percentage of new marriages created by interracial couples increased rapidly,” say the researchers.
The increase became steeper in the 2000s, when online dating became even more popular. Then, in 2014, the proportion of interracial marriages jumped again. “It is interesting that this increase occurs shortly after the creation of Tinder, considered the most popular online dating app,” they say.
Tinder has some 50 million users and produces more than 12 million matches a day.
Of course, this data doesn’t prove that online dating caused the rise in interracial marriages. But it is consistent with the hypothesis that it does.
Meanwhile, research into the strength of marriage has found some evidence that married couples who meet online have lower rates of marital breakup than those who meet traditionally. That has the potential to significantly benefit society. And it’s exactly what Ortega and Hergovich’s model predicts.
Of course, there are other factors that could contribute to the increase in interracial marriage. One is that the trend is the result of a reduction in the percentage of Americans who are white. If marriages were random, this should increase the number of interracial marriages, but not by the observed amount. “The change in the population composition in the U.S. cannot explain the huge increase in intermarriage that we observe,” say Ortega and Hergovich.
That leaves online dating as the main driver of this change. And if that’s the case, the model implies that this change is ongoing.
That’s a profound revelation. These changes are set to continue, and to benefit society as result.
Copyright © 2017. All rights reserved MIT Technology Review;
www.technologyreview.com.
"Easy ways to make your dating profile more attractive"/ "Travel pictures worth 1000 swipes"
"Picking pictures of yourself for online dating sites"/ "Success is in the profile details"
In a comparison of 17 everyday items, a CBC Marketplace investigation has found prices at Dollar Tree were the same or higher in a price-per-unit analysis than at Dollarama or even Walmart, meaning Canadians may not always be getting the deal they think they are when shopping at popular dollar store chains.
"As the name says, everything here seems to be a dollar more or less. Right? Even though it's not," said Markus Giesler, a professor at the Schulich School of Business at York University.
What they spent
The test aimed to compare identical items, but the stores often sold products in different sizes. In that case, the price was broken down per unit.
Froot Loops at Dollar Tree cost $1.25 versus $4 at Walmart and $2 at Dollarama. However, the package at Dollar Tree was only 87 grams compared to 345 grams at Walmart and 230 grams at Dollarama; converting to price per unit means the Dollar Tree product ends up costing more per 100 grams.
Need to compare prices
Giesler said shoppers need to know their size comparisons.
A common tactic at dollar stores, he noted, is carrying just one type of product — one brand of toothpaste, for example — making in-store comparison shopping difficult.
Dollar stores don't typically sell anything for $1 anymore and many of those stores are based in lower-income neighbourhoods with more newcomers to Canada, he said.
"Often we're talking about vulnerable consumers, lower-income families and families who actually need every penny and need every dollar," he said.
"They signal, 'We make affordability and the Canadian dream happen.'"
Dr. Dara Maker, a family physician at Women's College Hospital, says she recommends dollar store pregnancy tests for her own patients who are trying to conceive.
"If you get a positive dollar store pregnancy test result, you are pregnant," Maker said. "It is very rare to get a false positive."
Are you really getting a deal at your favourite dollar store? | CBC News
Apr. 7, 2022 "Liquidation store 'treasure hunt' grows in popularity, helps online stores like Amazon": Today I found this article by Robyn Miller on CBC news:
Andy Buchanan sifts through bins and bins of products at a new store in Ottawa where he and dozens of other treasure hunters are searching for deals.
"It's like finding a diamond in the rough … you never know what you're going to find, that's the big thing," he said.
Buchanan, who is retired, came to the Quick Pick store in the village of Richmond on the outskirts of Ottawa on a Wednesday, when every item is priced at $2.99.
On Fridays everything is priced at $25.99, and that falls throughout the week all the way to Thursday, when customers can score items for just 99 cents.
There are two Quick Pick locations that recently opened in the Ottawa area. The liquidation store, which also has a Bank Street location, sells overstock and returned items from giant online retailers, such as Amazon, and offers set pricing for items that drops each day.
Anything left over is then donated or thrown out, according to the store manager, and the bins are restocked with fresh items.
Similar business models have been operating in the United States for years, and a chain called Krazy Binz opened its first Canadian location in Hamilton, Ont., in February 2021.
Liquidation store 'treasure hunt' grows in popularity, helps online stores like Amazon | CBC News
But be very careful if you actually think you are saving money.My opinion: I would like to check out the Krazy Bins store at least once.Pros: 1. This is good for the environment to buy used stuff.2. This helps people to save money.3. This helps Amazon save time, effort, and money from processing returns.Cons:1. Be careful and ask: Why are you buying this? If this wasn't on sale, would you still buy this?Do you need this?
Apr. 11, 2022 "Here's why thousands of Etsy sellers are boycotting the platform": Today I found this article by Nojoud Al Mallees on CBC news:
Now, Robinson is one of thousands of sellers who have said they plan to boycott the site from April 11 to 18 after the site announced it would be hiking its transaction fees from five to 6.5 per cent.
With over five million sellers on the site and 90 million customers, Clough says raising transaction fees is a new way for the company to boost its bottom line.
"As they've expanded their user base, it becomes harder to grow revenue by adding more users. So this makes them look for other sources of revenue."
Here's why thousands of Etsy sellers are boycotting the platform | CBC News
My opinion: I don't go to Etsy. The artists should be making money, and not have this corporation make so much off them from these fees.
Apr. 15, 2022 Winter: Today there's snow. I wrote about how I don't put away my winter jacket until after April.
My life: I was working this week. Today is Good Friday so it's my day off. I will be watching my TV shows.
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