• • • an aural noise • • •
• • • some of the things I read in antisocial isolation • • •
Sushi Carousels and the Future of Contact-Free Dining
Inside the creative world of conveyor-belt restaurants.
A massive sushi carousel in North Kent, England. Embiggenable.
ON A RECENT VISIT TO San Francisco, I stopped for lunch in Japantown. Online reviews had called the place I picked a “sushi train” restaurant, but when I entered, there were no tiny locomotives towing nigiri in sight. Perhaps, I thought, as I ordered off a touchscreen, because of the pandemic.
Then a whirring sound made me jump, and a sleek, tiny bullet train swept by at eye-level, carrying a plate of sushi to the customers seated to my right.
These automated systems are a feature of what are usually called conveyor-belt restaurants. Often associated with Japan, they arose as both a way for restaurateurs to save on labor costs and for busy city workers to order quickly without too much human interaction. But the idea of replacing waiters with tiny transportation systems has a long history, and has spread around the world.
This week, we visit China, Japan, and the USA to explore each nation’s dominant genre of “food that moves,” as well as why the concept is so appealing to restaurant owners. Here’s a hint: You might be seeing a lot more of these restaurants, especially as COVID concerns and hiring shortages linger. …
Ed. I suggested, after seating them, we instruct our customers to use DoorDash to order their meal… and have it delivered to the table in take-away containers.
Ed., etc. Effectively eliminates the need for wait and bussing staff.
PODCAST: The Mammoth Site of Hot Springs
Join us for a daily celebration of the world’s most wondrous, unexpected, even strange places.
IN THIS EPISODE OF THE ATLAS OBSCURA PODCAST, we sift through the dirt to solve a mystery involving a massive mammoth grave site. …
Why Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg may be in hot water with the SEC
The Wall Street Journal recently revealed that Facebook treats users’ posts differently depending on their wealth, privilege and status.
That and other findings based on internal Facebook documents may be troubling enough, but the social network’s bigger problem could be the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The documents suggest Facebook presented different, contradictory versions of these policies in public and private. From a securities regulation standpoint, any big lie could potentially defraud investors and invite an investigation – especially when the company involved is Facebook.
I’m a legal scholar who spent five years as an enforcement attorney at the SEC, the agency that protects investors and regulates securities. Let me explain securities fraud, what counts as a violation and why the WSJ documents, if genuine, may implicate Facebook and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. …
DEGREE OF DIFFICULTY: A “Whitelisting” algorithm allows VIP users to get around Faceook’s normal enforcement procedures.
RELATED: Leaked Facebook Docs Depict Kids as ‘Untapped’ Wealth
Kids between 10 and 12 are a ‘valuable but untapped audience,’ company research says.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies during a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Thursday, March 25, 2021. Random extraterrestrial being.
The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday published the latest in its investigative series “The Facebook Files,” diving even deeper into the ubiquitous platform’s efforts to target and recruit young children.
Internal documents obtained by the Journal now reveal that Facebook formed a special team to study children and ponder ways in which they could be monetized. One such document is said to refer to children between the ages of 10 and 12 (“tweens”) as a “valuable but untapped audience.” Another suggests “leveraging playdates” as means to drive Facebook’s “growth.”
Another document cited by the paper, dated March 2021, notes that Facebook is struggling with “global teen penetration” and warns that “acquisition” of teen users “appears to be slowing down.” Internally, Facebook expects its teenaged audience to plummet by an additional 45% by 2023, according to the Journal.
Facebook’s lucrative ad-driven business derives nearly all of its profit from the pervasive tracking of its users; data which it, in turn, uses to create exhaustive behavior profiles used to “micro-target” ads and measure their effectiveness. While federal law prohibits the harvesting of data belonging to children under the age of 13, Facebook has spent years searching for a way to convince children to adopt its services as soon as they’re old enough to be tracked. …
Man Driving While Making YouTube Video To Explain How PC Culture Destroying America https://t.co/9fpiDv4Us1 pic.twitter.com/Jer9whgjy9
— The Onion (@TheOnion) September 28, 2021
RELATED: The Maddening Story Of The Kansas House Blamed For Everything
Embiggenable. Explore at home.
Your IP address uniquely identifies your connection to the internet. It can also identify your physical location … kind of. Companies, like one Massachusetts firm named MaxMind, offer a service that pinpoints exact real-world addresses based on IPs you send them. Sometimes, though, MaxMind has no info on an IP address. For years, when a client asked them about one of these addresses, MaxMind gave them a default location, one smack in the middle of the United States.
That location was a farm in Kansas. The 360-acre property is part of the town of Potwin, but the nearest other person lives a mile away. In 2011, James and Theresa Arnold moved there. The farm was fairly close to a nursing home where Theresa’s mother stayed, but like we said, it was otherwise very isolated. They didn’t expect many visitors.
They received hundreds of visitors, mostly law enforcement. Sometimes it’d be about stolen vehicles supposedly traced to the farm. Sometimes, they’d accuse the farm as being the headquarters of a computer fraud operation. Other officers would bang at the door at night, having received reports that someone inside was attempting suicide.
Some visitors weren’t police, and these were worse. Random vigilantes tried to break in, hearing that James and Theresa were imprisoning children. Activists online shared the couple’s name and location, encouraging others to come by. One time, a toilet appeared in the driveway, dropped off as some kind of message—they never figured out what the deal was with that, but it was scary. …
UNRELATED: The Geographic Center of the U.S. Isn’t In Kansas
In this week’s Maphead column, Ken Jennings explains why the so-called ‘geographic center of the United States’ is incorrect—and reveals the proper location.
U.S. Route 281 is the country’s longest triple-digit highway, and the only one that will take you all the way from the Canadian border down to Mexico. About halfway through your drive, just after crossing the Nebraska border, the road will take you through the small town of Lebanon, Kansas, where signs lure thousands of visitors every year to the area’s biggest attraction: the “Geographic Center of the United States.” It’s marked with a brick monument and a plaque and everything! But before you get out your camera, you should know there are at least four problems with that plaque.
The center was calculated with a big piece of cardboard.
The math required to find the geographic center of a huge landmass is tricky. In 1918, without digital computers, the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey grappled with the calculations…and then gave up entirely. Instead, they cut a map of the United States out of cardboard. The spot where the cardboard balanced on the head of a pin? That was declared the official center. …
Ed. Trespass at home.
FBI Data Show Unprecedented Spike In Murders Nationwide In 2020 https://t.co/tWASzeXRvI #WhatDoYouThink? pic.twitter.com/bbDHMLALtI
— The Onion (@TheOnion) September 29, 2021
RELATED: A Dive Into The 16th Century’s Version Of Facebook
In the 16th century, the need to stay in touch with friends and high-status connections existed, though not in the form of the internet (which wouldn’t be invented for at least like dozens of years). Instead, something more tangible known as alba amicorum, Latin for “book of friends,” is what was used to keep records of your friends, their interests, and their “it’s complicated” statuses — pretty much the earliest version of Facebook.
Not quite a Burn Book from Mean Girls yet capable of dropping people you no longer wanted associations with, a simple X drawn across a person’s entry is speculated to have been equivalent of deleting someone. The higher the status, the closer the person would get to having their entry appear at the beginning of these books that were passed around to friends, and sometimes even plebeians who knew a guy and could have royalty sign their book of friendship. Instructors, noblemen, and churchmen were usually asked to sign these books by their students, with many having been kept as a part of various universities’ history.
The book was a blend of an autograph book and diary, occurring mainly amongst young German and Dutch people. As a token of friendship, the trend was especially in with students. As the Guardian puts it, “Renaissance millennials” would get signatures of sometimes famous people of their time; for example, the British Library hosts a friendship book bearing the autograph of King Charles I, “equivalent to a Lady Gaga today.” Sketches found in these have been compared to selfies, as interpretive drawings of friends were often found in these journals.
…
RELATED:
Report: Nothing Stopping You From Deleting Your Facebook Account Right Now https://t.co/KogWefzRCF pic.twitter.com/Z1QfR7FuiE
— The Onion (@TheOnion) September 29, 2021
RELATED: They Changed the Definition of “Racism” on Dictionary.com
Really? What gives?
Some time over the last few years I’ve been observing a troubling assault on the word “racism” that appears to undermine its conciseness and clarity. As a fan of science-based methods, I have found that it is important to strictly define certain words so that we can have conversations that are actually productive.
For instance, the word “domestication” or “domesticated animal” has little, if any, value in a discussion about an animal’s suitability as a pet or in a captive setting (I am always told I should only keep “domesticated” animals)— in fact very few have any clue what domestication actually is. This includes scientists who, just like the general public, change the definition at will based on cultural opinions and perceptions. So what does this have to do with the word “racism”?
Every time I have any discussion online about social issues and race, I often refer to the dictionary to refresh my mind on what “racism” actually is. People are frequently accused of being a “racist”, so I have in the past opted to post the definition to show people that what has occurred does not logically match up.
The definition I remember and have referred to is the following:
a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human racial groups determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one’s own race is superior and has the right to dominate others or that a particular racial group is inferior to the others.
As of recent, however, I noticed what I believed to be a new addition to the definition of “racism”:
Also called in·sti·tu·tion·al rac·ism [in-sti-too-shuh-nl rey-siz-uhm, -tyoo-], struc·tur·al rac·ism [struhk-cher-uhl rey-siz-uhm], sys·tem·ic rac·ism [si-stem-ik rey-siz-uhm] . a policy, system of government, etc., that is associated with or originated in such a doctrine, and that favors members of the dominant racial or ethnic group, or has a neutral effect on their life experiences, while discriminating against or harming members of other groups, ultimately serving to preserve the social status, economic advantage, or political power of the dominant group.
…what? …
RELATED: NETWORK OF RIGHT-WING HEALTH CARE PROVIDERS IS MAKING MILLIONS OFF HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE AND IVERMECTIN, HACKED DATA REVEALS
The data also reveals that 72,000 people paid at least $6.7 million for Covid-19 consultations promoted by America’s Frontline Doctors and vaccine conspiracist Simone Gold.
A NETWORK OF health care providers pocketed millions of dollars selling hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, and online consultations, according to hacked data provided to The Intercept. The data show that vast sums of money are being extracted from people concerned about or suffering from Covid-19 but resistant to vaccinations or other recommendations of public health authorities.
America’s Frontline Doctors, a right-wing group founded last year to promote pro-Trump doctors during the coronavirus pandemic, is working in tandem with a small network of health care companies to sow distrust in the Covid-19 vaccine, dupe tens of thousands of people into seeking ineffective treatments for the disease, and then sell consultations and millions of dollars’ worth of those medications. The data indicate patients spent at least $15 million — and potentially much more — on consultations and medications combined.
The Intercept has obtained hundreds of thousands of records from two companies, CadenceHealth.us and Ravkoo, revealing just how the lucrative operation works. America’s Frontline Doctors, or AFLDS, has been spreading highly politicized misinformation about Covid-19 since the summer of 2020 and refers its many followers to its telemedicine partner SpeakWithAnMD.com, which uses Cadence Health as a platform. People who sign up then pay $90 for a phone consultation with “AFLDS-trained physicians” who prescribe treatments such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin to prevent and treat Covid-19. The drugs are delivered by Ravkoo, a service that works with local pharmacies to ship drugs to patients’ doors. Of course, that’s if patients ever get the consultation; many customers told Time they never received the call after paying.
The data from the Cadence Health and Ravkoo sites was provided to The Intercept by an anonymous hacker who said the sites were “hilariously easy” to hack, despite promises of patient privacy. It was corroborated by comparing it to publicly available information. The Intercept is not publishing any individual patient data and has taken steps to secure the data. After The Intercept reached out, Cadence Health’s Roque Espinal-Valdez said he shut the platform down, not wanting any part in profiting off of Covid-19 “quackery.” …
Video Goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
China takes extreme measures to crack down on everything technology from crypto and TikTok to celebrity fandoms. Dulcé Sloan reports on the ground.
THANKS to Comedy Central and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah and Dulcé Sloan for making this program available on YouTube.
小さな通気性抜群ボックス、通称EBB Jr. 。Small Excellent Breathable Box.
Ed.Small breathable box, commonly known as EBB Jr.
FINALLY . . .
RELATED: We Need a Mind Vaccine
How to address the other pandemic
Embiggenable. Trespass at home.
WE FACE TWO DEADLY PANDEMICS, NOT ONE. Covid’s delta variant is laying siege to our bodies and infectious ideas are laying siege to our minds. We’ll treat the first with vaccines and eventually achieve herd immunity. We’ll treat the other with mind vaccines: lessons that will someday give us herd immunity to divisive ideologies, conspiracy thinking, and disinformation.
I mean all of this literally. Bad ideas can be thought of as mind parasites. Minds host them. They replicate. An infectious idea can induce a mind to spew it online, just as a flu virus can induce an infection-spreading sneeze. And ideas can actually commandeer minds. Witness the viral spread of QAnon — the idea that a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles runs our nation. It’s a stunning example of human susceptibility to mind viruses.
For most of us, QAnon belief is easy to identify as parasitic. But far sneakier mind-bugs are loose in the meme pool. The election was stolen. Vaccines cause autism. Climate change is a hoax. Experts talk openly of “infodemics,” and such language is more than metaphorical. Epidemics of unreason are real and dangerous.
It’s tempting to think that the cure lies in a renewed commitment to facts and evidence. But this prescription falls short, for infected minds can become fact-resistant. More importantly, our values, too, must be tethered to reality. …
♪♫ You gotta bleach that stupid right outta your brain! ♫♪
Ed. More tomorrow? Possibly. Probably. Maybe. Likely, if I find nothing more barely uninteresting at all to do.
Ed., etc. I didn’t have time to do this today.
ONE MORE THING:
