I’ll stay out of politics when politics stays out of Me.
— God (@TheTweetOfGod) December 23, 2019
• • • the playlist i’m srtreaming • • •
• • • some of the things I read while eating breakfast • • •
On the island of Top Knoll, off Florida, local customs treat Santa Claus as a deity who demands ritual sacrifices—some of which may have been murders.
— Fake Atlas Obscura (@notatlasobscura) December 24, 2018
Watch This Yule Log Burn in the Name of Science
Courtesy of the U.S. Forest Service’s Fire Sciences Laboratory.
IN A METAL-WALLED LAB IN Missoula, Montana, scientists play with fire. At the Fire Sciences Laboratory of the U.S. Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station, flames skitter through a wind tunnel, crawl uphill, and swirl into a blazing orange twist that seems to stand on end. Each pyrotechnic experiment is in service of a better understanding of how wildfires behave in the world beyond the lab—and how firefighters might be able to deal with them safely and effectively. Learning about fire behavior is a year-round project, but as winter dawns and we look for ways to get warm and homey, Atlas Obscura realized that the team’s experiments are often mesmerizing. The scientific work inspired the 2019 Atlas Obscura Yule Log, which you can enjoy in the knowledge that these flames flicker in the name of science.
These researchers set the blazes in order to understand specific aspects of how and why fires spread. “It’s not just because we’re fire geeks,” says Jason Forthofer, who works on modeling projects. And there’s still a lot to unpack. “I don’t think people fully understand that we don’t understand fully how wildfire spreads,” says Sara McAllister, whose work focuses on how fuel beds ignite and burn. “We have glimpses of things, but don’t understand the nuts and bolts of it.” The physics are complicated and subtle, adds Torben Grumstrup, who studies heat transfer.
Scientists know that burning fuel releases energy, which heats up unburned fuel to ignition temperature—“almost like dominoes,” Grumstrup says. But it’s the nuances, he adds, “that we can’t describe very well.” And nuance can be everything.
To puzzle out these finer points, scientists are investigating specific, big-stakes questions, such as why trees or grasses can spark when they’re full of water, how much the density of a forest affects fire behavior, or exactly how long various fuel beds can smolder. …
Ed/ More video goodness at the link.
The last remaining stronghold of the villainous Arcola Corporation lies directly beneath this unassuming London dog park.
— Fake Atlas Obscura (@notatlasobscura) December 5, 2018
Robert Reich: How Trump has betrayed the working class
Trump’s corporate giveaways and failure to improve the lives of ordinary working Americans are becoming clearer by the day.
Trump is remaking the Republican party into … what?
For a century the GOP has been bankrolled by big business and Wall Street. Trump wants to keep the money rolling in. His signature tax cut, two years old last Sunday, has helped US corporations score record profits and the stock market reach all-time highs.
To spur even more corporate generosity for the 2020 election, Trump is suggesting more giveaways. Acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney recently told an assemblage of CEOs that Trump wants to “go beyond” his 2017 tax cut.
Trump also wants to expand his working-class base. In rallies and countless tweets he claims to be restoring the American working class by holding back immigration and trade.
Most incumbent Republicans and GOP candidates are mimicking Trump’s economic nationalism. As Trump consigliere Stephen Bannon boasted recently: “We’ve turned the Republican party into a working-class party.”
Keeping the GOP the Party of Big Money while making it over into the Party of the Working Class is a tricky maneuver, especially at a time when capital and labor are engaged in the most intense economic contest in more than a century because so much wealth and power are going to the top. …
The Left-Right Divide Isn’t the One That Matters
Buttigieg is ideologically moderate, but his lofty perch atop the meritocracy could prove deeply divisive.
Locked in a close race for first place in both Iowa and New Hampshire with only weeks to go before Democratic presidential-primary voting begins, Pete Buttigieg, along with his advisers, is talking about bringing people together. In a recent New Yorker profile, Benjamin Wallace-Wells quoted Buttigieg as welcoming “future former Republicans” into “our movement” and pledging to “unify the American people” once Donald Trump is gone. One Buttigieg strategist explained that the South Bend, Indiana, mayor wants to tap into America’s “yearning for reconciliation.” Another adviser, Lis Smith, recently contrasted her boss, whom she credited with the ability to “heal our divides,” with Elizabeth Warren, who is supposedly contributing to the “divisiveness that is tearing this country apart.”
Buttigieg’s depiction of himself as a more unifying figure than his chief rivals has a superficial plausibility. He’s more ideologically centrist than Warren and Bernie Sanders. He’s from a red state. He’s unfailingly polite. He hasn’t been in politics long enough to make many enemies. And he’s a white man, which may—in and of itself—make him less threatening to those Trump supporters inclined to see another female presidential nominee as evidence of the anti-male bias purportedly warping American life.
Viewed through another lens, however, Buttigieg may be the most polarizing candidate in the top tier of the Democratic field. The reason is that America is not only divided ideologically; it’s also divided culturally. And that cultural divide revolves, in large measure, around education and the status markers it produces. A Warren or Sanders presidency may further divide America horizontally, between left and right. But a Buttigieg presidency could further divide America vertically, between people near the top of America’s ostensibly meritocratic system, and those who feel looked down upon by an elite they view as insular and corrupt.
To grasp what that might look like, compare Buttigieg with another young centrist who rocketed from obscurity into his country’s presidency: France’s Emmanuel Macron. Macron, like Buttigieg, is the child of professors. And Macron, like Buttigieg, spent his early adulthood whizzing through his country’s elite academic, business, and political institutions. Buttigieg studied at Harvard and Oxford, Macron at Sciences Po. Buttigieg worked as a management consultant at McKinsey, Macron as an investment banker at Rothschild & Co. Buttigieg, in his 20s, advised John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign and a consulting firm established by former U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen. Macron, in his 20s, worked for the mayor of Paris and the French finance ministry. Both men are overtly and self-consciously brainy. The Atlantic’s Rachel Donadio has detailed Macron’s “impressive, even tedious, grip on policy details.” Buttigieg famously speaks eight languages. …
4 Viral Stories With The Weirdest Plot Twists
The life cycle of a viral news story is very short: They are born, they burn through social media, and they die in the shadow of obscurity within about a week. Sometimes days. Which is a shame, because if you follow them for a little while beyond their time in the spotlight, things can get pretty crazy. We’re talking about how …
4. The Guy Who Tore Up a Bagel Shop is Now a Professional Asshole
In July 2019, a bagel store in Long Island temporarily became the most exciting place on the planet when patron Chris Morgan lost his goddamn mind at the employees over a perceived slight. Over the course of several minutes, Morgan tore into them over his nonexistent dating life, how dating apps discriminate against short people, and how women are just, like, the absolute worst.
so in bagel boss this morning, the misogynistic douchebag seen in the video was degrading almost all of the female staff as well as other patrons. fuck this guy. pic.twitter.com/LZh1Uk4UXZ
— olivia shea
(@oliviabradley88) July 10, 2019
(@oliviabradley88)
In a subsequent interview with The Daily Mail, Morgan said that he was “glad” his rant went viral, and that he’s now like “MLK for short people,” adding “I have a mission … I’m not stopping and the world is going to hear me. I want equality for everybody.” His first step on the road to that shining city? He signed up for a celebrity boxing match. You know, just like MLK.
Days before the match, however, his opponent (Lenny Dykstra) pulled out and was replaced by Dustin Diamond, whereupon Morgan announced on Twitter that he was no-showing, saying: “I ain’t coming to the fight! After all, what’s the best way to really not get hit? Don’t be there!” In all fairness, though, Morgan isn’t a fighter, he’s a bully, which is why he pissed his pants at the thought of going toe-to-toe with someone who could do him real damage.
Morgan also found another way to capitalize on his fame: the app Cameo. With it, people with too much money can pay $50 to receive a personalized 30-second video of him insulting them and pretending to beat up a tree. Get it? It’s hilarious that he’s a violent asshole who gets his kicks abusing random people. Like, for instance, the random passersby whom he attacked with a baseball bat only a month after the bagel shop incident, which led to him being arrested and taken away for psychiatric evaluation. Quality humor! …
Three Theories for Why You Have No Time
Better technology means higher expectations, and higher expectations create more work.
One of the truisms of modern life is that nobody has any time. Everybody is busy, burned out, swamped, overwhelmed. So let’s try a simple thought experiment. Imagine that you came into possession of a magical new set of technologies that could automate or expedite every single part of your job.
What would you do with the extra time? Maybe you’d pick up a hobby, or have more children, or learn to luxuriate in the additional leisure. But what if I told you that you wouldn’t do any of those things: You would just work the exact same amount of time as before.
I can’t prove this, because I don’t know you. What I do know is that something remarkably similar to my hypothetical happened in the U.S. economy in the 20th century—not in factories, or in modern offices. But inside American homes.
The household economy of cooking, cleaning, mending, washing, and grocery shopping has arguably changed more in the past 100 years than the American factory or the modern office. And its evolution tells an illuminating story about why, no matter what work we do, we never seem to have enough time. In the 20th century, labor-saving household technology improved dramatically, but no labor appears to have been saved. …
6 Soul-Crushing Ways Companies Tried To Boost Productivity
Capitalism demands profit. An infinitely increasing, all-devouring profit that will one day eat the stars themselves, and maybe also make a few bucks for the shareholders. Companies now desperately work their employees to the bone, constantly instituting productivity schemes that slowly turn our reality into an episode of Black Mirror. And not even a good episode, but one of those middle ones you skip after reading the synopsis. We’re talking about how …
6. Amazon Is Turning Warehouse Jobs Into Competitive Video Games
For big businesses, increasing productivity is a tightrope act. The trick is to keep productivity as high as possible while keeping your suicide net budget as low as possible. Which is why places like Amazon love the idea of gamification, whereby they turn menial jobs into games. Unfortunately, they mean The Hunger Games.
Gamification is used in everything from education to marketing to trick people into doing what they hate with the promise of a gold star, a victorious “ding,” and a position on the leaderboard. Inside businesses, gamification has only one purpose: maximizing productivity. And Amazon, not content with forcing their shelf-stackers to merely pretend they’re playing the suckiest game of Tetris, has now started making actual video games to help their warehouse workers stomp on the shells of tedium.
In five of the company’s experimental warehouses (think Fallout Vaults, but with more dystopian gloom), the work panels now show colorful games complementing various tasks, each with names pulled straight out of the hokiest freemium apps. So in “MissionRacer,” every box an employee grabs with the robo-arm speeds along a race car, while “CastleCrafter” lets the ones putting away said boxes build a digital fortress for their glorious god-king Jeff Bezos. They’re like medieval serfs, except serfs were allowed pee breaks.
According to the Bezos-owned The Washington Post, “The games simultaneously register the completion of the task, which is tracked by scanning devices, and can pit individuals, teams or entire floors against one another.” So not only are you competing against your co-workers all of a sudden, but like an impatient older brother, Amazon is always ready to yank the controller out your hands if you don’t git gud (at late capitalism). …
Inside Tech’s Fever Dream
Drawn into the tech world, a 20-something wonders why she—and the rest of us—didn’t wise up to the grandiose myopia sooner.
PERHAPS THE MOST repeated phrase in Uncanny Valley, Anna Wiener’s memoir of life as a tech-industry worker, is “I did not know.” When the book opens, Wiener’s world feels like one with limited horizons. It’s 2013, and she’s a 20-something college graduate who has been working in the sclerotic New York publishing industry, stringing together a meager income as a freelance editor and an assistant at a boutique literary agency. “There was no room to grow, and after three years the voyeuristic thrill of answering someone else’s phone had worn thin,” she remembers in typically sardonic fashion. She’s not exactly poor, only “privileged and downwardly mobile.”
A new, more dynamic economy was taking shape on the other side of the country—“not that I was paying any attention,” Wiener writes. An unnamed “online superstore” known for its ruthless efficiency had elbowed its way into publishing and well beyond. “The social network everyone hated” was changing what it meant to be social. Venture capitalists were supporting these companies by shoveling billions of dollars at very young men who promised that their particular app would be the one to usher in a kinder, more connected world—while making its investors millionaires.
Though tech had insinuated itself into many facets of Wiener’s life—her waking hours were spent tethered to her computer, working, using the social network everyone hated, writing blog posts, and scrolling her way through images—she hadn’t stopped to think about the people, structures, and forces that had enabled that entwining. Then she got a tech job in San Francisco and discovered that the screens she had been staring at weren’t as transparent as they seemed. Yet she remained, by her own account, remarkably clueless about the larger implications of the industry she’d wandered into. …
Video Goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
VICE’s Elle Reeve heads to China to investigate the rise of facial recognition technology — and what that means for all of us.
THANKS to HBO and VICE News for making this program available on YouTube.
A troubling new consumer alert from the FBI says that hackers now have the ability to manipulate your viewing content and cyberstalk your home.
THANKS to Comedy Central and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah for making this program available on YouTube.
With so many presidential candidates to choose from, Trevor identifies a way for voters to let their DNA assist them in the decision-making process.
Words: Find the Others by Timothy Leary.
Ed. If we’re to find the others, just exactly what are the others for anyway? Something new to ponder into another Easter Egg. Be sure to check out that last link; it was a lot of fun.
Parents in rural German villages still tell horrifying tales of “Baba Strudelmas”, the sadistic and decidedly un-jolly precursor to Santa Claus
— Fake Atlas Obscura (@notatlasobscura) December 24, 2017
FINALLY . . .
Gavle Goat
If there is one thing you don’t want to be in Sweden during Christmas, it’s a Yule Goat.
2009 Yule Goat
THE SMALL SWEDISH TOWN of Gavle harbors a history of repeated sustained vandalism, unexpected in the polite mild-mannered Nordic country.
Making of Yule Goats, straw goat figures are an ancient Christmas tradition in Nordic countries, dating back probably even to pre-Christian times and pagan celebrations of winter solstice. In 1966 an advertising consultant, Stig Gavlén, came up with the idea of making a giant version a Yule Goat and placing it in the town square. Ironically the “chief engineer” on this project was his brother Jesper Gavlén, also the towns fire department chief.
At the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve, the goat went up in flames. Thus the tragic history of Gavle Goat began.
In following years the goat has been burned a total of 23 times, in a few instances in mere hours after being assembled, sometimes even before being actually being built. In addition to that, it has been smashed to pieces several times, and once even run over by a car.
Vandalizing of the Yule goat has become something of a dark tradition for the town. …
Before there was the Energizer Bunny, there was the Indefatigable Ifrit
— Fake Atlas Obscura (@notatlasobscura) December 22, 2017
Ed. More tomorrow? Possibly. Probably. Maybe. Not? I have absolutely no idea. Actually… I do: The Authorities have scheduled me to open and close tomorrow. After everyone is gone, I’ll then tear down the Point of Sale server in the office and clean out all the dust and other crap out of everywhere inside it. Perhaps it’s not a good idea to put the backbone of your network on it’s on the floor in a very messy and over-heated office. It overheats and shuts itself down because it wasn’t designed to vacuum floors.
Ed. Ed. I already know why I never have enough time. My secret: never say “no” when The Authorities ask you to anything more. This could be the start of a new Easter Egg to leave in these premises from time to time. Be sure to click that last link; it was a lot of fun.