Posts Tagged ‘Halloween’
“No one prospers without rendering benefit to others”*…
Revisiting a topic we last considered about six years ago: the modern zipper was invented (or, at least, first patented) in 1913. But, as Michael Knispel explains, story of the zipper-as-we-know-it began in Japan in 1934…
Here’s a test you can do right now. Look down at your jacket. Your jeans. Your bag. Find a zipper—any zipper—and check the pull tab. Three letters. YKK.
Try another. Your backpack. Your hoodie. Your tent, if you’ve got one nearby. YKK.
It’s everywhere. And once you start noticing, you can’t stop. It’s like discovering a secret language written into the fabric of modern life.
Those three letters stand for Yoshida Kōgyō Kabushikigaisha—Yoshida Manufacturing Corporation. And they represent one of the most successful, least-known companies in the world.
YKK produces roughly half of all zippers made globally. Seven billion zippers a year. In some markets—Japan, for instance—their share approaches 90%. If you’ve ever zipped anything, there’s a better-than-even chance it was theirs.
But here’s what fascinates me: they didn’t get there through aggressive expansion or undercutting competitors. They got there by being better. By obsessing over a component most people never think about. By treating the humble zipper not as a commodity, but as a craft.
And after ninety years of that obsession, they’re not resting. They’re constantly evolving—pushing the zipper into territory it’s never been before.
Let me tell you the story…
[And tell it, he does: the company’s remarkable history, turning the to a survey of recent innovations…]
… For most of YKK’s history, innovation meant incremental improvement. Better corrosion resistance. Smoother sliders. More durable coils.
But in the past few years, something’s shifted.
YKK isn’t just refining the zipper anymore. They’re rethinking it entirely.
After ninety years of mastering the fundamentals, they’re finally asking: what else could a zipper be?..
[Knispel recouns recent developments– the “AiryString” (tapeless) zipper, the self-propelled zipper– concluding with “The Revived Collection”…]
… Here’s the most important innovation—and it’s not a single product. It’s a philosophy.
The YKK Revived Collection is a series of repair-focused components designed to keep zippers functional and maximize a product’s lifecycle. The goal is simple but radical: the zipper should never be the reason a product is thrown away.
YKK has developed three main components in the Revived series, each targeting a specific failure mode. Together, they represent a fundamental shift in how YKK thinks about their products—not just as components to be manufactured and sold, but as systems to be maintained and repaired.
Traditional center-front zippers—the kind you find on jackets and hoodies—have a problem. When the slider breaks or the pull tab snaps off, you’re stuck. The standard repair requires cutting off the top stop, that metal or plastic piece that keeps the slider from flying off the end, and replacing the entire slider. It’s destructive, time-consuming, and often requires specialized tools.
The Revived Top Stop changes that. It looks like a standard top stop, but with a zigzag groove pattern cut through it. That channel allows you to orient the slider through the stop and derail it, removing it without cutting anything…
[Knispel explains the ingenious fixes for regular zippers, pocket and accessory zippers, and bag zippers. Then he draws the wisdom they embody…]
… Here’s what ties the Revived Collection together: YKK is building repair infrastructure.
They’re not just selling replacement parts. They’re designing zippers to be repairable from the start, and they’re working with brands, warranty centers, third-party repair shops, and even consumers to make those repairs accessible.
“We’re targeting this for warranty and quality centers, third-party repair centers, potentially in-store retail repairs, and eventually consumer repairs,” says John Holiday, YKK’s Senior Product Development Manager. “We want to make sure the fastener or the zipper is not the reason a product is no longer in use or why it needs to be warrantied.”
That’s a shift. Traditionally, YKK sells zippers to manufacturers in bulk—cut zippers or chain-and-slider assemblies. The Revived components are sold as standalone parts, which means YKK is rethinking its distribution model to make replacement parts available outside traditional manufacturing channels.
I started this piece with a test: look at your zippers. Three letters. YKK.
Now you know why they’re there. Not because of aggressive marketing or locking out competitors. Because a man in 1934 Tokyo decided that if you make something genuinely better—more reliable, more consistent, more thoughtful—success follows naturally.
Ninety years later, YKK still operates on that philosophy. They’re still privately held. Still vertically integrated. Still obsessing over a component most people never think about.
And it looks like they’re not done. They’re constantly evolving…
“The Company That Zips the World | YKK’s Ninety-Year Obsession,” from @carryology.bsky.social.
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As we zip it, we might that on this date– Halloween– in 2005, Gary Estrada, met his goal to visit at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom Haunted Mansion 999 times. Estrada had begun riding in January of that year and finished on Halloween in just ten months. Why 999 times? Because that is how many “happy haunts” are said to live there.
“Every day is Halloween, isn’t it? For some of us.”*…
Tomorrow’s the big day– by some counts, the second biggest holiday of the year. The National Retail Federation’s annual Halloween survey of more than 7,900 consumers found 72% plan to celebrate the holiday with 67% of those planning to hand out candy. We’ll an average of $103.63 (about $4.62 less than last year’s record of $108.24), the survey found. In total, Halloween spending is expected to reach $11.6 billion, with candy sales at an estimated $3.5 billion.
Axios on how those sugary purchases are allocated…
Chocolate is America’s favorite Halloween candy, with Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups once again the top choice in an overwhelming majority of states, according to data from Instacart.
The big picture: The chocolate peanut butter candy was the top-selling candy in 40 states based on Instacart grocery sales last year. Chocolate was a key ingredient in eight of the top 10 candies.
After Reese’s, regular M&M’s were the next most popular candy andthe favorite in northwestern and midwestern states like Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota. Peanut M&M’s were the most purchased Halloween candy in Hawaii, Idaho and Utah, Instacart found.
… Reese’s is also the reigning king of Easter candy, with its eggs ranked as the top purchased candy and cups the No. 3 candy, based on 2023 Instacart data.
Candy corn was the most-searched candy in 34 states between Sept. 3 and Oct. 3, according to Google Trends. Candy corn accounts for 84% of all searches around Halloween candy, according to Captify search data shared with Axios…
– source
The estimable Ernie Smith weighs in on the mawkish mock maize as part of a meditation on Butterfingers…
… In the process of my research into the fragility of Butterfinger bars, I ran across an interesting fact about trying to recreate Butterfingers in your own kitchen that I didn’t think fit into the above narrative, but is worth diving into separately. Simply put, one of the most popular ways to make homemade Butterfingers involves using candy corn. It apparently does a good job of recreating the flavor of a Butterfinger, if not the exact texture.
The nice thing about candy corn, in the context of this recipe, is that it includes most of the main ingredients of the toffee part of butterfingers. That makes it possible to greatly simplify the recipe for people who want to make Butterfingers at home. (Plus, the orange-and-yellow parts of candy corn make for a decent food-coloring match to the innards of Nestlé-era Butterfingers, even if the cornflakes, key to the texture, aren’t part of the recipe.)
Now, finding out that candy corn can be used as a key ingredient in a Butterfinger recipe is sort of like finding out that your favorite dessert is made of candle wax. (Fun fact: Despite its generic-seeming nature, it’s mostly sold by a single manufacturer, Brach’s.)
But there’s a method to the madness.
See, when broken down, candy corn is made of fondant and confectioner’s glaze. Another way of putting it: A piece of candy corn is essentially the candy form of the chalky icing used on wedding cakes, which is then covered in waxy insect secretions. Awesome.
Find that last part kind of gross? Well, you should stop eating Milk Duds, Whoppers, Raisinets, and jelly beans, because they all use it. You’ve been eating food-grade shellac all your life and didn’t even know it.
So, let’s spend a minute talking about shellac: The fact that so many candies use this is actually a significant problem for the globalization of candy. In India, for example, it’s likely to leave out entire classes of consumers, as shellac isn’t considered vegetarian. Periodically, as noted in this 2009 Scientific American piece, we’ve looked for alternatives to confectioner’s glaze, but given that it remains a surprisingly large industry to this day—a recent Business Insider video put the sector’s value at $167 million. (Ironically, shellac was discovered in India, and remains the largest manufacturer of the material.)
If you’re OK with all that, making your own Butterfingers at home is apparently way easier if you use melted candy corns as a base. Just note that shellac isn’t usually part of the ingredient list..
– source
Apposite: “Stephen Follows on the horror movie boom.”
* Tim Burton
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As we dish out the delights, we might recall that it was on this date in 2003 that a thousand Halloween costumes were inspired– Wicked premiered on Broadway. A musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and a book by Winnie Holzman, it is a loose adaptation of the 1995 Gregory Maguire novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, which in turn is based on L. Frank Baum‘s 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and its 1939 film adaptation.
The show was nominated for ten Tony Awards in 2004, including Best Musical, Book, Orchestrations, Original Score, Choreography, Costume Design, Lighting Design, Scenic Design, with two nominations for Best Actress – for Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth. Menzel won the Best Actress award, and the show also won the Award for Best Scenic Design and Best Costume Design (notably losing Best Book, Original Score and ultimately Best Musical to Avenue Q). The same year, the show also won 6 Drama Desk Awards out of 11 nominations, including Outstanding Musical, Book, Director, and Costume Design.
“To be what you want to be: isn’t this the essence of being human?”*…
… Ah, but what does one– should one– want to be? Jules Evans, with a history of the transhumanist-rationalist-extropian movement that has ensorcelled many of technology’s leaders, one that celebrates an elite few and promises an end to death and taxes…
Once upon a time there was an obscure mailing list. It only had about 100 people on it, yet in this digital village was arguably the greatest concentration of brain power since fifth-century Athens. There was Hans Moravec, pioneer in robotics; Eric Drexler, pioneer of nanotechnology; Eliezer Yudkowsky, father of the Rationalist movement; Max More, father of modern transhumanism; Nick Bostrom, founder of Long-Termism and the study of Existential Risks; Hal Finney, Nick Szabo and Wei Dai, the inventors of cryptocurrency; and Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks. Together they developed a transhumanist worldview — self-transformation, genetic modification, nootropic drugs, AI, crypto-libertarianism and space exploration. It’s a worldview that has become the ruling philosophy of the obscenely rich of California.
It all started in Bristol, England. There, a young man called Max O’Connor grew up, and went to study philosophy at Oxford. But Max wanted more, more excitement, more life, more everything. He changed his name to Max More, and moved to California, where the future is invented. His dreams took root in the soil prepared by Californian transhumanists of the 1970s. Many of them were members of an organization called L5, dedicated to the colonization of space by a genetic elite — its members included Timothy Leary, Marvin Minsky, Isaac Asimov and Freeman Dyson, and its magazine was named Ad Astra — which was what Elon Musk named his school for SpaceX kids in 2014.
Max was also inspired by Robert Ettinger, an American engineer who argued that humans would soon become immortal superbeings, and we should freeze ourselves when we die so we can be resurrected in the perfect future. While doing a PhD at the University of Southern California, Max got a job at the Alcor Foundation for cryonic preservation, and in 1989 he started a magazine with his fellow philosophy grad, Tom Morrow, called Extropy: Journal of Transhumanist Thought. ‘Do you want to be an ubermensch?’ the first issue asked.
‘Ubermensch’ (overman or superman) is the German word used by Friedrich Nietzsche to describe the individual (male or female) who has overcome all obstacles to the perfection of him or herself…
A history and an explanation: “How did transhumanism become the religion of the super-rich?” from @JulesEvans11.
* David Zindell
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As we ponder the (presumptuous) preference for perfection, we might recall that it was (tradition holds) on this date in 1517– All Hallows (All Saints) Eve– that Martin Luther, a priest and scholar in Wittenberg, Germany, upset by what he saw as the excesses and corruption of the Roman Catholic Church (especially the papal practice of taking payments– “indulgences”– for the forgiveness of sins), posted his 95 Theses on the door of Castle Church. Thus began the Protestant Reformation.
Martin Luther (source)
Today, of course, All Hallows (All Saints) Eve, is celebrated as Halloween, which is (if it is, as many scholars believe, directly descended from the ancient Welsh harvest festival Samhain) the longest-running holiday with a set date… and (usually, anyway) the second-biggest (after Christmas) commercial holiday in the United States.
“Here we are now, entertain us”*…
It’s that time of year again…
Tom BetGeorge, professional light show artist, is showing his amazing haunted light show in real life, using his house as the backdrop.
This year’s spooky display includes a Halloween take on Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” (above). Using tens of thousands of lights, he offers a 2-hour viewing on the weekends for locals to take it all in. Luckily he lets us outsiders watch some of it from afar, and it’s spectacular, even online.
BetGeorge has been uploading his light show videos to his YouTube channel (where you can get the address to his IRL extravaganza) for seven years, and they’re not only Halloween displays. He donates proceeds to McHenry House, a shelter for homeless families.
“This at-home haunted light show gives a whole new meaning to Nirvana’s ‘Smells like Teen Spirit’,” from @Carla_Sinclair @BoingBoing via @LaughingSquid
* Nirvana, “Smells Like Teen Spirit”
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As we hum along (and contemplate what we’ll be offering trick-or-treaters), we might recall that today is National Chocolate Covered Insect Day.
“There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact”*…
Distortions and outright lies by politicians and pundits have become so common that major news outlets like the Associated Press, CNN, BBC, Fox News,and Washington Post routinely assign journalists and fact-checkers to verify claims made during stump speeches and press briefings. The motivation to uncover falsehoods and misleading statements taken out of context is laudable. But when it comes to real-world complexities, the trouble is that people often see different things when looking at the same event, a phenomenon repeatedly documented by psychologists.
Laboratory studies reveal that, when shown a video of a group of protesters, people see either a peaceful protest or an unruly mob blocking pedestrian access, depending on their sociopolitical beliefs. The world outside the lab shows similar biased perception: For example, 68 percent of Republicans consider the videotaped demonstrations in Portland, Ore., Kenosha, Wisc., and New York City to be riots, versus only 30 percent of Democrats, according to a Fox News poll released in September. Journalists and fact-checkers are human beings subject to the same psychological biases as everyone else—and their analyses of what constitute “facts” is affected by their own political and ideological values, resulting in what psychologists term selective perception.
Fact-checkers’ decisions have significant consequences for debates about fake news that cannot be overstated. Researchers have studied the cascading cognitive effects of misinformation, and their findings are relevant to current concerns about fake news and to the limitations of fact-checking. Misinformation can be insidious; it can seep into the unconscious mind and influence beliefs and behaviors long after we have forgotten its source or the evidence invoked to support it. Under laboratory conditions, a selection of objective facts and complete fabrications can be presented, and researchers can then examine the spread of misinformation about these facts and whether and how this spread results in false beliefs.
Unlike a pristine laboratory setting, however, the world of politics is messy, and there can be deep disagreements about the facts themselves, as the above contradictory claims illustrate. When it comes to partisan fact-checking about complex issues—which describes much of the fact-checking that takes place in the context of political news—the truth as stated is often the subjective opinion of people with shared political views.
One path to a solution is “adversarial fact-checking.” Fact-checking is often done by teams of two or more journalists rather than by a single person. We propose that political claims continue to be aggressively fact-checked, but by teams of individuals with diverse sociopolitical views; for example, by pairing fact-checkers from major liberal and conservative news sources. This would add little, if any, cost. The media should abandon fact-checkers’ pretext of objectivity and political disinterest and instead acknowledge their sociopolitical leanings in much the way that NPR tries to pit pro and con points of view in political coverage…
Having each side’s fact-checkers checked by the other side’s fact-checkers could lead to an infinite regress toward an uncertain truth. But this is preferable to belief in a truth that may not exist. Adversarial fact-checkers would debate the same “evidence” and ensure a balanced presentation of the facts. This may not guarantee that fact-checkers will agree or even that readers will discern the truth. But it will reveal the sometimes-tenuous nature of fact-checkers’ claims and the psychological context in which human cognition unfolds—and this would be a meaningful barrier to the spread of fake news and the creation of false beliefs among voters.
One notes that the Hegelian suggestion above assumes that fact-checkers from each side would be actively seeking to overcome their personal biases, to determine an “objective” truth… that only unconscious– not conscious, weaponized– biases are the issue.
Still, it’s certainly true that at least some fact-checkers aim to get closer to the truth, even as their biases can shroud the very truth they seek: “The Psychology of Fact-Checking.”
* Sherlock Holmes, in Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Boscombe Valley Mystery”
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As we clean our lenses, we might recall that it was on this date in 1517– All Hallows (All Saints) Eve– that Martin Luther, a priest and scholar in Wittenberg, Germany, upset by what he saw as the excesses and corruption of the Roman Catholic Church (especially the papal practice of taking payments– “indulgences”– for the forgiveness of sins), posted his 95 Theses on the door of Castle Church. Thus began the Protestant Reformation.
Martin Luther (source)
Lest in this this pandemic-attenuated moment we forget: today, All Hallows (All Saints) Eve, is celebrated as Halloween, which is (if it is, as many scholars believe, directly descended from the ancient Welsh harvest festival Samhain) the longest-running holiday with a set date… and (usually, anyway) the second-biggest (after Christmas) commercial holiday in the United States.
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