The tricky economics of all-you-can-eat buffets

They put the cheap, filling stuff first. They charge for extras. They save money on personnel, of course.

One thing I would not have guessed: Preparing foods in bulk, as you do for a buffet, is far less expensive than one meal at a time. Much less food waste. And you can re-use stuff. Today’s fresh vegetable side-dish is tomorrow’s vegetable soup.

thehustle.co/the-econo…

I’ve never cared for buffet dining. If I’m eating out, I want somebody to bring me my food.

My work takes me to a lot of professional conferences, where I eat a lot of buffet hot lunches. Two tips:

Skip the leafy salad. It had nearly zero nutritional value. It isn’t even filling, and it just takes up room on your plate. You may not have a chance to go back for seconds.

Also, there’s usually some kind of roasted green veggie. Fill at least half your plate with that.

The making of “2001: A Space Odyssey”

www.imaginaryworldspodcast.org/2001–a-f…

Stanley Kubrick didn’t know what he wanted, but he knew what he didn’t want. Which means his production staff had to give him a lot of choices, and he shot a lot of scenes that were never used – expensive!

In a sense, Kubrick’s process matched Arthur C. Clarke’s vision of the evolution of humanity. Clarke’s vision was it was that we didn’t just invent tools. Instead, we invented tools and then the tools changed us, and we changed the tools to match our new needs, in a continuous feedback loop and cycle.

Kubrick was originally going to have a score for the movie, but ended up dumping it at the last minute and just using the classical music that he had left on the soundtrack as a placeholder.

Kubrick’s perfectionism continued throughout his career. In “The Shining,” he did 127 takes of a single scene, which made the Guinness Book of World Records and drove actress Shelley Duvall mad.

2001 originally had a voice-over, which, like the original soundtrack, was scrapped. The movie is designed to be enigmatic, to ask questions that don’t necessarily have answers. That’s a contrast to science fiction movies and TV today, where every detail needs to be explained and contradictions are considered by fans to be deep flaws.