Gists II

Morsels.

Misc

• Robot is from the Czech word robata (“slave”)
• Equanimity. The most sublime Buddhist emotion — abundant, exalted, immeasurable, and without hostility.
• Balk’s Third Law: “If you think The Internet is terrible now, just wait a while.”
• From 1932, the US Public Health Service Syphilis Study studied 600 Black men with the disease without informing or helping them

Skin

• Largest organ (15% total weight) in the body, with three distinct layers
• Thickness varies, with the thinnest half the width of a penny
• Outer layer (epidermis) effectively dead, renews every 30 days or so, and sheds a million cells per day — filling your home with dust
• Tattoos last due to macrophages cells passing the ink to replacement cells!
• Hosts over a thousand types of (mostly friendly) bacteria, microbes, viruses and pathogens forming “tiny ecosystems” at about a 1:1 ratio with skin cells

Soap

• Commonly sold in the US in the nineteenth century as a way to monetize unused animal fat (by adding potash). Beforehand people used perfume or dress shields (cotton or rubber pads placed in the armpits); and blocking sweat was considered unhealthy.
• First deodorant (called Mum) was trademarked in 1888. The first antiperspirant (called Everdry) launched in 1903.
• In 1919, controversial advertisement by a former bible salesman, James Young, in the Ladies Home Journal “insulted every woman in America” by implying they were unfit if they didn’t use antiperspirant. “B.O.” also a marketing term.
• In 1931, “soap operas” originated from radio dramas originally sponsored by soap manufacturers.
• In 1957, Dove soap mixed with moisturizer that reduced its cleaning power
• William Wrigley, Jr. gave away crewing gum as promotion for his soap — but the gum was in higher demand!
• Most “soaps” are actually detergents, with only eleven banned or restricted chemicals in US personal-care products (compared with 1,500 in Europe!)
• An argument soap washes away natural oils and essential microorganisms, creating problems with the immune system

Pets

• Cats and dogs’ fur doesn’t absorb sunlight, so they get vitamin D from a secreted oil that converts to vitamin D when exposed to sunlight…and then licking themselves!

Odd-Sized Feet

Link.

• America has odd-sized feet! The first was established in 1893, the second “international foot” is 1/100th shorter and dates from 1959. The old foot will be obsolete as of Jan. 1, 2023.
• Most states mandate old foot, a few states mandate the new foot, and a handful do not specify. Some surveying computer software will not recognize the existence of two feet and even hand calculators usually default to the international foot. Occasionally, surveyors must use one foot for horizontal measurements and the other for elevations!
• The National Geodetic Survey — in a video about how not to mix up the two feet — mixed them up! The mistake went unnoticed for years!
• American colonizers used the English ell for cloth but also the far shorter Dutch ell, the Rhineland rod and the British chain and the Spanish vara for measuring land, the English flitch of bacon and hattock of grain, plus the German quentchen for gold.
• By the time of Independence, 100,000 units of measurement were in use!
• The first message to Congress by President George Washington noted the importance of establishing a standard system of weights and measurements — adopting parts of the British imperial system. In 1815, a brass yard arrived from London and became the standard.
• Imperial measurements, while standard, were arbitrary. The yard evolved from the idea that “foure graines of barley make a finger, foure fingers a hande, foure handes a foote” during the reign of Elizabeth I. Those 16 fingers per foot became 12 inches and were tripled.
• Metric was developed during the Fresh Revolution based on science. The meter was originally one ten-millionth the distance from geographic north pole to the equator; it is now derived from the speed of light. Volume and mass are based on the meter. Offers greater precision, easier conversion and better replicability.
• By 1866, Congress legalized metric units — setting the meter at 39.37 inches. In 1875, America was among the original 17 signatories of the Treaty of the Metre, which aimed to establish metric standards across the world. America officially adopted metric in 1893.

Portsmouth Sinfonia

• An English orchestra founded by a group of students at the Portsmouth School of Art in 1970 as tongue-in-cheek performance art, but became a cultural phenomenon over the following 10 years — with concerts (London’s Royal Festival Hall, Royal Albert Hall), record albums (produced by Brian Eno), a film and a hit single (Classic Muddly)!
• Open to anyone regardless of talent, ability or experience. The only rules were were mandatory rehearsals and not to intentionally play badly.
• Ceased performing in 1979
• Subject of a 2011 documentary in the series In Living Memory

Badges

Gamification (re: fun) within the workplace. Badge dashboards (description, rarity), marketplace, and alchemy (i.e. combining badges to form new ones)? The more interesting and obscure pop-culture references the better! Let people create their own?

• Citizen: volunteer, patent, donating, publishing, countries visited, open source contribution, voting, activism
• Company: N interviews, event participation, guild/group member, N years at company, project contributor, promotion, received award, hierarchy (roles, degrees from CEO, number of bosses/reporters), mentor, days employed (N days, 70% newer), referrals
• Personal: total/average/percentiles/max (day), pull requests, using products/services (e.g. Linux, emacs), PR description (contains certain words — automagically, emojis, ASCII art, contains a-z, % Shakespeare words, size), ratio of lines added/changed/removed, offices visited, language proficiency, speed (quick PR/fix), submit code first day on job, write/maintain documentation, rollbacks (rollback chains), TODOs, refactoring, alumni (university, born, citizenships), number of badges, LOC, PRs, PR sizes, PR reviews, PR reviewers (i.e. number of people reviewed your code or vice-versa, years of cumulative experience), typo fixer, consecutive days submitting code, deleting code, force submitting code, spelling green/yellow/red with number of added/modified/removed lines in a push, recursive link, created bugs, number of bug comments, ELO rating (like sport), Proof of Work (code submit hashes → number of leading zeroes)
• Games: hot potato, memes, PR metadata to “unlock” levels (e.g. applied to a game — 102% DCK), typing speed, contest winners (trivia, scavenger hunt)
• Arbitrary: fun with numbers (prime, prime factors, l33tspeak, Graham’s Number, phi, pi, e, square root of 2, Fibonacci, palindrome, perfect binary tree, perfect square, perfect cube, 2 power of, Yahtzee, contains 007), code submission (leap day), usernames (anagram, shared with others, scrabble score), times (PR submitted at midnight, submitted code in 24 distinct hours, outstanding bug for over a year, Star Wars day, leap day), company/world event (e.g. employed during coronavirus)

Emoji

• Originating on Japanese mobile phones in 1997 from the Japanese Japanese e (絵, “picture”) + moji (文字, “character”); the resemblance to the English words emotion and emoticon is purely coincidental
• Standard set of 3,304 icons
• In 2015, Oxford Dictionaries named the 😂 the Word of the Year
• Until 2016, most professionals were male. Until 2018, no redheads. Until 2019, no transgender. No Australian Aboriginal or Kurdish flags.
• Every possible mixed-race combination would add 7,230 emoji

Milk Farming

Link.

“It’s not really even farming anymore. It’s mining. We’re extracting resources and shipping them away.”

• Farm with 2,500 cows produces as much waste as a city of 400,000!
• 65% dairy cow sites elevated nitrates (linked to birth defects and colon cancer)
• Aldo Leopold, father of wildlife ecology and author of The Outlook for Farm Wildlife — warned of the dangers of industrialized agriculture on soil, animals, and rural communities. Saw two possibilities: “place to live” or “food factory.”
• New Deal policies encourages soil conservation
• After WWII, Nitrogen (used in TNT) used to make fertilizers vastly improving yields leading to the Green Revolution for the developing world, reducing hunger but also depleting soil, increasing emissions, contaminating water, and reducing biodiversity.
• Nixon’s agriculture secretary urged farmers to “get big or get out” after the 1972 Soviet crop failure saw “food as a (negotiating) weapon.” USDA “cheap food policy” pursues higher yields to keep prices down at the expense of farmers and environment — leading to monoculture (endless fields of corn and soybeans).
• Soviet grain embargo and NAFTA encourages consolidation and offshoring (200,000 small farms in the US closed)

Pepsi in space

Pepsi

• The first capitalist product in the USSR (and cola monopoly from 1972 to 1985) after being introduced during a National Exhibition — and during the Kitchen Debate between Nixon and Khrushchev
• In the 1970s, Russian traded Stolichnaya vodka for soda (as rubles were not allowed abroad)
• In 1990, a $3 billion dollar agreement with the Soviet Union for 17 submarines, cruiser, frigate and destroyer — briefly (sold to a Swedish company for scrap) making it the 6th largest military in the world!
• In 1996, paid the Russian government to film footage (inside and outside on a spacewalk) of a giant aluminum and nylon Pepsi can on the Mir Space Station! The first commercial filmed in space never aired because Pepsi changed the design of the can!

Surveillance Capitalism

Link.

It takes a heroic effort to maintain the belief that the world is flat.

We are living through a golden age of both readily available facts and denial of those facts. Terrible ideas that have lingered on the fringes for decades or even centuries have gone mainstream seemingly overnight.

• When an obscure idea gains currency, there are only two things that can explain its ascendance: better arguments and undeniable evidence. The more we’re burning and drowning, the easier it will be for the Greta Thunbergs of the world to convince us.
• Something must be afoot with flat Earthers, anti-vaxxers, climate change deniers, Holocaust deniers, Covid-19 skeptics, eugenics believers and QAnon
• Enabled by technology and social media bubbles?

What if the trauma of living through real conspiracies all around us — conspiracies among wealthy people, their lobbyists, and lawmakers to bury inconvenient facts and evidence of wrongdoing (these conspiracies are commonly known as “corruption”) — is making people vulnerable to conspiracy theories? [More of a trust issue]

• As technology improves, surveillance will be able to extract personal data and apply intelligence to create a system of persuasion (what to eat, what to watch, what to buy) so specifically targeted it will be far superior to people’s own choices they will give up their own autonomy for convenience — “rogue capitalism”

As to why things are so screwed up? Capitalism. Specifically, the monopolism that creates inequality and the inequality that creates monopolism. It’s a form of capitalism that rewards sociopaths who destroy the real economy to inflate the bottom line, and they get away with it for the same reason companies get away with spying: because our governments are in thrall to both the ideology that says monopolies are actually just fine and in thrall to the ideology that says that in a monopolistic world, you’d better not piss off the monopolists.

A Short History of Capitalism

Link.

“A society of wolves would be extremely foolish to believe that the supply of sheep would keep on growing indefinitely.”

• Credit enabled us to build the present at the expense of the future. In the past people seldom wanted to extend credit because they didn’t trust that the future would be better than the present.
• Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations argues is that greed is good, and that by becoming richer I benefit everybody, not just myself. Egoism is altruism.
• Capitalism began as a theory about how the economy functions (how money works, reinvesting profits leads to fast growth), but is now an ethic or dogma. The principal tenet is that economic growth is the supreme good, or at least a proxy for the supreme good, because justice, freedom and even happiness all depend on economic growth.
• The feedback loop of imperial capitalism drove expansion: credit financed (armies, fleets) new discoveries; discoveries led to colonies; colonies provided profits; profits built trust; and trust translated into more credit. Nobody wants to pay taxes, but everyone is happy to invest in war for the spoils.
• At the end of the Middle Ages, slavery was almost unknown in Christian Europe. During the early modern period, the rise of European capitalism went hand in hand with the rise of the Atlantic slave trade. The slave trade was not controlled by any state or government. It was a purely economic enterprise, organized and financed by the free market according to the laws of supply and demand. The catalyst? Sugar.
• Judicial systems (such as the Dutch) that gave protective rights — as opposed to a monarchy — attracted more investment. Dutch created the stock exchange by selling “shares” of their company to finance exploits.
• Capitalism induces wars (e.g. First Opium War after China banned drug trafficking by the British — where many MPs and Cabinet ministers in fact held stock in the drug companies)

“Credit solved the chicken and the egg problem.”

• Belief in the free market is as naïve as belief in Santa Claus. There simply is no such thing as a market free of all political bias. Markets by themselves offer no protection against fraud, theft and violence. It is the job of political systems to ensure trust by legislating rules and enforcing the law. Free-market capitalism cannot ensure that profits are gained in a fair way, or distributed in a fair manner.
• The modern capitalist economy must constantly increase production if it is to survive, but somebody must also buy the products. Enter consumerism. Invest and buy are two sides of the same coin. Unlike religion (compassion, tolerance, restraint), capitalist-consumerist ideology system is in line with peoples present desires.
• The human economy has nevertheless managed to grow exponentially throughout the modern era, thanks to innovation (new lands, electricity, internal combustion engine, internet, etc.) that creates entire new industries. Economic growth also requires energy and raw materials, and these are finite. When and if they run out, the entire system will collapse.
• The alternative? Communism? Socialism?

Bus Ticket Theory of Genius

Link.

“You don’t need to push yourself as hard when curiosity is pulling you.”

• Bust ticket collectors are obsessive, but on a topic that doesn’t really matter. Geniuses possess natural ability and determination — plus an obsession with something that turns out (may not be at the time) to be important. Allowing them to follow paths that someone who was merely ambitious would have ignored.
• Creating (rather than consuming) and difficulty (especially if more difficult for others) lead to more promising breakthroughs. Also may need to waste a lot of time (e.g. Newton on alchemy, Tolkien on elvish languages).
• Less likely to do great work after children because, for most people, is an extremely powerful new interest. It’s harder to find time for work after you have kids, but that’s the easy part. The real change is that you don’t want to.
• Interest is much more unevenly distributed than ability. If interest is a critical ingredient in genius we may be able, by cultivating interest, to cultivate genius (e.g. by following the path of least resistance and getting obsessive on the interests of children — leaving broad, shallow learning to schools).

Voting

Link.

• Should provide integrity (one vote per person, counted properly), secrecy, audibility (recount) and usability (easy to use).

Electoral College

• Conceived by James Madison in 1787 with the “hurrying influence produced by fatigue and impatience.” Over 800 amendments introduced by Congress between 1800 to 2016; the last successful one in 1804.
• During antebellum, assured slave power shaped elections with a three-fifths compromise — 60% of slaves counted as votes!
• In 1969, national popular vote endorsed by Nixon but defeated by a filibuster backed by segregationist southerners.
• Today, minority votes diluted because they live in predominately populous states. Workaround called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact for pledge votes based on majority.
• Undermines one person, one vote — but gives power to low-population states and upholds the role federalism in the American experiment (although the Senate advantages small states).
• Nation Vote Plan refutes over 130 “myths.”
• In 2020, supported by 2/3 of Republicans; but if they had an incentive to compete for votes in California and New York might be less tempted by white nationalism.

Secret Ballots

• The secret ballot was used in ancient Greece and Rome (139BC), France (1795), Australia (1856), New Zealand (1870), UK (1872) and the US (1890, popularly called “Australian ballots”). It aims to eliminate voter intimidation, blackmailing and vote buying — while achieving political privacy. The largest obstacle to digital voting (i.e. if voting was open results would be posted online and individuals could verify).

Suppression

• In 1877, after the Civil War the old Confederacy installed laws known as Jim Crow making it near-impossible for black people to vote.
• Election on a workday (Tuesday)? Harder for the poor to take time off. Long lines.
• Ex-felons, who are disproportionately of color from systemic racism, are prevented from voting for life in certain states. Done their time?

“Firmly believe that early voting is bad for Republican Party candidates. It’s done for one reason and one reason only…because early voting is bad for us.” — James Greer (former Republican chairman)

• Systematic effort by Republicans under the marketing ploy of “voter fraud” (no evidence) to counter a shrinking supporter base (older, white). Young, educated, non-white voters built for the future. Restricted early voting days, and tightened rules for third-party groups to register voters.

“It’s only a matter of time before demographics catch up with them [Republicans].”

• In 2013, Supreme Court invalidated Voting Rights Act provisions making it harder to enforce discriminatory voting laws.
• In 2016, Trump claimed (without evidence) millions of people had voted illegally. Formed a commission to investigate, which was disbanded eight months later after finding no evidence.

Mail

• US mail-in votes are validated with social security numbers and signature checks. A digital portal to check if ballots have been received, and the ability to cast a provisional (i.e. backup) ballot if concerned.
• Large-scale voter fraud would require a mole within the electorate or postal system, intercepting mail with voter social security and signatures, hacking electoral systems, or intimidation (e.g. having voters video record their votes as proof; this could happen with in-person voting). Rate-limiting audits apply statistical analysis from a random, representative sample to check confidence in the results. No states used it during the 2016 election.

Digital

• Cryptography-based digital voting using homomorphic encryption (i.e. computation on ciphertext is the same as on unencrypted values), which allows encrypted ballots to be combined (i.e. addition) with the result decrypted to show the final tally without exposing individual voted. Secret while mathematically guaranteed.
• In 1981, Untraceable Electronic Mail the first voting whitepaper, which incorporated mix networks (accepts encrypted messages, re-encrypts and shuffles, then outputs with a zero-knowledge proof ensuring messages are the same). Ballots are decrypted safely and tallied. Never used.
• In the early 2000s, the Pentagon evaluated online voting but cancelled the program in 2004.
• In 2006, Simple Verifiable Elections published by a Microsoft researcher and incorporated into various projects (e.g. Helios, STAR-Vote). Voters receive a hash of their vote then can be compared with a public record to ensure the vote matches.
• Blockchain-based projects such as Voatz, but requires ordinary people can be issued a private key (i.e. authenticated) and keep it safe

Conspiracy Nuts

“They think the Earth is flat, who cares? Enjoy the crazy, folks.”

• People radicalized over the past few years are very difficult to un-radicalize. The time for prevention was years ago.

Animals

• Group of porcupines is called a prickle, baby called a porcupette
• Chicken coops should have translucent roofing and let out during the day (so they don’t peck each other to death). Cooped up!

Indoors

• Americans and Europeans spend around 90% of their time indoors (a third sleeping)
• Over the next 40 years, UN estimates indoor square footage will double worldwide

Miss America

“Fetishizing individual opportunity at the expense of the common good. Miss America gets money for college. Everyone else gets lessons in sexism, racism, and capitalism that take a lifetime to unlearn. There’s no scholarship for that.”

• Started 1921 in Atlantic City, with King Neptune played by Hudson Maxim (inventor of smokeless gunpowder, lost his left hand in a lab accident). After the ceremony contestants were escorted to a float by black residents in slave costumes!
• Bathers’ Revue (i.e. swimsuit) forbade women from baring their knees. First winner just sixteen years old.
• One Native American (1926), one Latina, and one Jewish winner (1945).
• In the 1940s, Rule Seven stipulated contestants be “in good health and of the white race!” Theme song lyrics “she is fairest of the fair.”
• In 1970, first black contestant. In 1983, first black winner. In 2019, black women held the titles of Miss America, Miss USA, Miss Teen USA, Miss Universe and Miss World.
• In 1988, Michelle Anderson went undercover and unfurled a banner reading “PAGEANTS HURT ALL WOMEN.”
• Rebranded as Miss America 2.0 forgoing the swimsuit competition and no longer judged on “outward physical appearance.”

Board Games

• Monopoly conceived in 1903 as a left-wing protest against privatization of property…but lost on players in favor of acquiring wealth!

Cannonball Loop

Action Park (1978 to 1996)

Burning Man x Waterworld.

• Amusement and water park located in Vernon, New Jersey, with a reputation for poorly-designed rides (designed in-house, used employees as test dummies), irresponsible teenage staff, no rules, and intoxicated guests! A poor safety record with at least six people are known to have died! Nicknamed “Traction Park”, “Accident Park” and “Class Action Park.”
• Featured Alpine Center, Motorworld, and Waterworld — one of the first modern US water parks. Advertised as the world’s largest water park, it entertained over one million visitors per year during the 1980s.
• Creator Eugene Mulvihill “insured” the park with a phony company he created! Also laundered money through the company leading to a 110-count inditement; where pleaded guilty, was ordered to give up the park — but was able to hold out and piss off the state until they sold him back the park to “get him off their backs!”
• Eugene was friends with Trump, who considered investing.
• Rides included the Cannonball Loop (slide with a loop!, first few test subjects had lacerations and teeth knocked out!), Gladiator Challenge (based on American Gladiator), Alpine Slide (2,700-foot, concrete slide, 14 fractures and 26 head injuries, fingers chopped off, 50–100 daily injuries), Man in the Ball (first human test run collapsed sending an employee down a mountain and over the I94 highway into a swamp!), a slide where riders would take flight (cancelled due to injury), Super Speed Slide (initial freefall!), Aqua Skoot (bee nest), Tarzan Swing (ice-cold water stream with trout), Snapple Snap-Up Whipper Snapper Ride (70-foot bungee jump), Colorado River Ride (rapids, test subjects came out unconscious!, bumping caused fights), FestTent (actual German brewery shipped over, Oktoberfest parties), motor cars (60mph, next to the beer tent, drunk drivers, staff took onto I94 freeway!), power boats (flipped, snakes!), Battle Tanks (homemade, shoot tennis balls), Kayak Experience (electrocution death from an underwater fan), Wave Pool (“Grave Pool,” drowning), and Aerodium (skydiving simulator).
• Annual “C’mon I Wanna Lay Ya” staff party financed by money found in the park throughout the year. Drinking, weed, sex. Lifeguards would give visitors wristbands with “CFS” (Can’t Fucking Swim) and send the back out. “Code Brown” when someone shit in the pool.
• Closed due to the number of personal injury lawsuits (never settled, always went to trial, then refused to pay) — so much the park purchased two ambulances.
• In 1993, MTV’s Headbanger’s Ball taped an episode at the park with Alice in Chains. In 1998, overhauled and reopened as Mountain Creek Waterpark. Inspired the Johnny Knoxville film Action Point. Subject of documentaries The Most Dangerous Theme Park In America and Class Action Park.

Candy

• An ingredient in Kit Kat bars is…other Kit
• Nestlé (1875) invented milk chocolate by using milk (created by Henri Nestlé as an instant formula)
• Cadbury (1897)
• Hershey’s (1900)
• Toblerone (1908) the first bar to debut with a filling (the same hear Hershey’s introduced a bar with almonds)
• Baby Ruth (1921) morbidly claimed it was named after President Grover Cleveland’s daughter Ruth (who had died 17 years earlier at the age of 12) to avoid having to compensate Babe Ruth!
• Chicken Dinner (1923 to 1960s) was the first chocolate bar to be marketed as nutritious — forerunner to the “healthy” power bars of today
• Milky Way (1923) is named after a milkshake, not the galaxy
• Snickers (1930) was the first to produce a fun-size
• KitKat (1935) was originally Rowntree’s Chocolate Crisp (renamed 1937, Kit Kat was an 18th century term for mutton pies serviced at the Kit-Cat Club in London). Since 1957 has used the slogan “”Have a break… have a Kit Kat.” Has been produced in over 200 flavors (soy sauce, sake), partnered with Google for an Android operating system (Googleplex statue, 500 specially-produced Android KitKats), and was named the most influential candy bar of all time by TIME Magazine. The chocolate between wafers is actually made from…other Kit Kats!
• Crunch (1937) the first to use a cheap filling (puffed rice) to bring prices down
• After the 1971 film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a promotional stunt by Quaker Oats was the first fictional candy bar to be produced
• Scharffen Berger was the first (1997) widely-distributed artisanal chocolate bar

NSA Headquarters

• NSA (nicknamed “No Such Agency”) and Cyber Command headquarters
• Cyber Command logo includes MD5 has of the mission statement
• In the late 2000s, developed a worm with the CIA and Israel called Stuxnet — used to disable Iranian nuclear equipment
• In 2013, Edward Snowden took 1.5 million documents

Information Theory

“We may have knowledge of the past but can’t control it; we may control the future but have no knowledge of it.” — Claude Shannon

• Launched in 1948 by Claude Shannon’s Bell Labs paper, who went on to become an MIT professor
• Shannon limit the theoretical limit for reliable transmission (i.e. error correction) over a communications channel
• Robert Gallager was mentored by Shannon’s successor and came close to reaching the Shannon limit with LDPC (Low-Density Parity Check codes), but was too complex at the time
• In 1995, Wen Tong joined Nortel and became head of research — holding 470 patents — and contributed to 4G “turbo codes.” In 2009, he left to join Huawei.
• In 2005, Turkish engineer Erdal Arikan invented polar codes, which creates a near-perfect error-free channel from ordinary ones by recursively transferring noise into a second channel. Refined and released in 2008; he didn’t bother to get a patent.
• Huawei and 5G is the first time in a thousand years China is competing with the rest of the world with technology