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“The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

jmspae.se

311–320 of 374 posts

Re: “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

#312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is generally to recover cents on the dollar from money you can't otherwise use. Imagine you have a network of people moving illegal drugs. They collect money from their customers, and they need to pay it to you, the supplier. Arrange for them to eat a lot of food at your restaurant. Maybe they shout their friends. The money goes into the restaurant, and is mingled with other money. That money is used to pay…

> If you gamble tens of thousands in those machines, and you don't care about the losses, you get a reasonable expectation value back out as laundered winnings. Where does the laundering come into it? If the machine pays out in cash and you just walk away with it, you've gone from having a big pile of dirty money to having a slightly smaller pile of dirty money. You could declare that the smaller pile is all gambling…

If you play long enough, you always lose all of your money.

Re: “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

#313
post #86

Hi there, "OP" here. First off, it's been fun to see this post spread across the interwebs since I first wrote it one caffeine-fueled day just over a week ago (first Menéame, now here) and for the heck of it, I thought I would clarify a few things; This post was (sortof) a meme. Sure, I "understood the assignment" and performed the quick "study" ("analysis" might be more fitting) for the sake of the original post ove…

I just want to tell you that it's very well written, well done!

> With a mighty Pearson's correlation of 0.091, the data indicates that this could be true!

I almost choked on this bit, as I was eating a sandwich (not a kebab sadly)

Re: “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

#314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would need to further filter for the largest railway stations, perhaps by number of platforms ≥ 6 or 8, otherwise you will include many urban and suburban stations that serve essentially the same purpose as metro stations.

There are not a lot of stations that a Parisian dweller would consider to be a "railway station" AND "inside Paris". I'd say mostly Montparnasse, Gare de Lyon, Gare de l'Est, Gare du Nord, and Austerlitz. RER, Transilien, Metro and Tramway stations would not count as "train stations" in the eyes of a Parisian/French person, and places outside of the Périphérique (the ring road that follows the old defensive "Thier wa…

For those wondering the original image was speaking of "Gare" which are well-defined: https://www.sncf-connect.com/gares/paris

Re: “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

#315
post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the IRS somewhat encourage dirty money to be taxed? I'm guessing they would prefer to have it highly taxed but perhaps getting some tax is second best. In New Zealand "Income that is earned from illegal activities needs to have tax paid on it." however they do try to deter money laundering, tax evasion and tax fraud. In New Zealand it is getting harder to launder money because cash is not used as much as it used…

Well yes, in the sense that Al Capone famously got nailed on not filing income taxes. But of course, if Al Capone had told the IRS that he got his money through extortion and illegal liquor, gambling and drugs or whatever it was he did then the IRS would gladly give that information to whoever was investigating him, so I don't think the IRS would profit much from it either way. And I imagine card payments do make it…

Just to be clear, it has been the law of the land that IRS is not allowed to share this information with criminal investigation. They realized how badly they screwed their revenue collection by “getting” Al Capone. To be clear, Tony Soprano files his taxes. It’s generally the smaller henchmen who don’t.

Re: “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

#316
post #273
post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did you include metro stations in your study? The original quote only included train stations. The metro originally largely replaced a tram network, so the metro station density in Paris is higher than for other underground systems. I think it is very hard to find kebap shops in Paris that are not within 500 m of a metro station. This kind of dilutes the significance of your study, because I never really noticed…

I thought to include metro stations mostly because of the nature of the original French subreddit ( https://www.reddit.com/r/MetroFrance/comments/1hcifh1/pas_vu... ). It perhaps doesn't make much sense in hindsight, but I also filtered out metro stations later on in the post and it didn't change much. I'm starting work on a follow-up which will sample more cities, though I still plan to use walking distances w networ…

Hey, Not sure what you were left with once you removed metro stations but in the context of the original image the "gare" would be: https://www.sncf-connect.com/gares/paris .

And people would probably often forget Paris Bercy ^^.

Re: “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

#318
post #70

On a slightly related note, what’s with the terrible quality kebabs in the UK? You go to Germany and it’s almost a completely different food.

At least where I live in the UK, kebabs are treated as drunk food, not lunch food. This is completely different to the US where a gyro is treated as a lunch food and always seemed higher quality.

Re: “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

#319

Here in Berlin there are an enormous amount of kebab places (thousands). Basically, most places are embedded in neighborhoods and have a crowd of locals that go there. The quality varies wildly as a lot of these places are obviously aimed at the money laundering business (cash only) rather than serving food. Poor hygiene, indifferent service, etc. Many of these places are completely pointless from a business point of…

Pardon my ignorance, but I always wonder how these money laundering kebab places work. We have some in my city too and they always leave me puzzled. If nobody eats there, how do they launder money? I'm probably daft/naieve but can't figure out the mechanics of money laundering when the business doesn't actually move any product.

As an example of something similar happening, my family and I once went to a little village in the middle of Bulgaria to visit a family fried, and booked a hotel room for the week. This was a huge hotel, next door to another huge hotel, serving a village with a population of a few hundred people.

At one point our friend told us it was well known that both were owned by the local mafia. If you were to check the books you'd find the place was fully booked every day of the year and doing a roaring trade, while if you actually went and visited you'd find 3 slightly bemused looking English people and maybe a wedding party.

Re: “The closer to the train station, the worse the kebab” – a “study”

#320
post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is generally to recover cents on the dollar from money you can't otherwise use. Imagine you have a network of people moving illegal drugs. They collect money from their customers, and they need to pay it to you, the supplier. Arrange for them to eat a lot of food at your restaurant. Maybe they shout their friends. The money goes into the restaurant, and is mingled with other money. That money is used to pay…

You don’t need them to eat kebab. Just put on your books that you sold a lot of kebab. Do it in cash. Buy some meat and throw it out if you want, and you’re fine.

Yeah that's how it's done. The other comments are overcomplicating it.
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