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[alexszatmary]

Leonard Cohen:

Most of us from the middle-class, we have a kind of old, 19th century idea of what democracy is, which is, more or less, to over-simplify it, that the masses are going to love Shakespeare and Beethoven. That's more or less our idea of what democracy is. But that ain't it. It's going to come up in unexpected ways from the stuff that we think are junk: the people we think are junk, the ideas we think are junk, the television we think is junk.

I think this is relevant to our current situation.

[alexszatmary]

Paez shoes are my favorite brand of [alpargatas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espadrille); Tom's are more popular, but I think the Paez are better built. They were unavailable in the US for the past year or two, but a new [online store](http://www.mypaez.com/) opened recently. Paez had been made in Argentina, but are now being manufactured in China, I think. I just ordered a pair!

[alexszatmary]

Larry Rifkin, one of the people at Connecticut Public Television who converted Barney & Friends from a series of direct-to-video specials into the television series, liked Barney because he "wasn’t as neurotic as Big Bird". >On Super Bowl Sunday in 1991, I went to a Blockbuster Video across the street with my daughter, Leora, who was 3 or 4 at the time, and she picked up this video, “Barney and the Backyard Gang.” And she watched it incessantly. I thought, “What is this?” I could see it had elements—for one, a lead character that wasn’t as neurotic as Big Bird—that I thought could be developed, though it wasn’t as well-produced as it might have been. To clarify, "Barney and the Backyard Gang" was a direct-to-video series that was converted into the PBS show, "Barney & Friends".

[maxistentialist-deactivated2020]

Placebo Button

A placebo button is a push-button that appears to do something, but actually has no effect, like a placebo. They exist to give the user an illusion of control.[1]

Many walk buttons at pedestrian crossings in New York City were once functional, but now serve as placebo buttons.[2] Many door close buttons in elevators are placebo buttons.[1][3] Office thermostats may also function similarly.[4]

[maxistentialist-deactivated2020]

- Wikipedia

[alexszatmary]

TL;DR is a podcast about internet culture with episodes lasting less than 10 minutes. My favorite episodes so far: * [JOKES.TXT](http://www.onthemedia.org/story/3-jokestxt/), in which a person's dad died, and the person found a file on his dad's computer, JOKES.TXT, which only had punchlines and not the setups. In this [Ask Metafilter](http://ask.metafilter.com/237740/Last-time-you-didnt-have-holes-in-your-feet) thread, MeFites helped him figure out what the jokes were. * [RIP Vile Rat](http://www.onthemedia.org/story/11-rip-vile-rat/), about Sean Smith, the State Department IT administrator who died in Benghazi, who was also an influential diplomat in Eve Online. * [Internet Time](http://www.onthemedia.org/story/15-internet-time/) about how in the 90's, Swatch tried to develop a new time standard, ".beat time". * [The Pace Picante Salsa Robot Has Gone Haywire](http://www.onthemedia.org/story/pace-picante-salsa-robot-has-gone-haywire/) is funny.

[alexszatmary]

Two questions regarding surveillance

Has NSA surveillance of US citizens prevented terrorist attacks? What harm has come from leaks about the NSA, from Edward Snowden and others?

I'm inclined to answer those questions with "No" and "None", but I'm looking for more information.

Here are the answers to those questions, given by former NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander on the PBS Newshour:

Judy Woodruff: Can you give us an example of a terrorist incident that was prevented because of this kind of work?

Gen. Keith Alexander: Absolutely, 2009, Najibullah Zazi.

Is this so? I have a couple of sources that say that it was mostly FBI and UK intelligence that led to Zazi being found. Is there information that I'm missing about how NSA programs such as PRISM contributed information that was essential to identifying Zazi?

And regarding leakers:

Judy Woodruff: Let me ask you about Edward Snowden. You have argued time and again that he’s done great damage to U.S. national security. How do you quantify that?

Gen. Keith Alexander: Well, it goes back to that terrorist numbers that I gave you.

Here’s what I see. Terrorists and others are adjusting how they operate. We have been very good because we have great tools, great people in the military and the intelligence community helping to defend this country and in law enforcement.

When you take those tools away, it’s analogous to the “Wheel of Fortune,” when you can guess vowels and stuff. And, all of a sudden, they say, well, you can’t guess A and O anymore. You can’t guess some of these, but you have to figure out the puzzle.

And what we’re doing is, we’re taking away some of the tools that our intelligence analysts use to stop terrorist attacks. And I believe, given the fact that terrorist attacks are increasing and that our tools are being publicly revealed, that we put our nation and our allies in greater harm, and I believe that’s why we have said people are going to pay for this with their lives.

This is a screwy answer: Snowden didn't take any tools away. Knowledge of what the NSA is doing only helps the terrorists if they use that information to, say, switch from Yahoo mail to an email service that the NSA isn't shuffling through.

Expanding on my two questions:

Are there cases, other than Najibullah Zazi, of NSA surveillance of US citizens preventing a terrorist attack?

Is there a clear demonstration that, without the NSA, Zazi would not have been identified?

Have leaks by Snowden and others done any harm other than indicating what intelligence capabilities the NSA has?

[ryannorth]

FACEBOOK: Hi, I’m Facebook. ME: Nice to meet you, I’m Ryan. FACEBOOK: What’s your last name? Where do you live? When were you born? What’s your phone number? Is that work or mobile? Can I have your work number too? ME: Facebook, I just met you. FACEBOOK: This is what friendship is to me.

[alexszatmary]

He was very frightened of the diagnosis of bipolar condition, which is the classic productive literary personality. He was very uncomfortable with it. He much preferred having a diagnosis of atypical depression. I think that may suggest that he didn’t want to identify with those people. If you think about the people he identified with—Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo—I don’t think there’s even a whiff of such a condition in those people. He identified with these straight arrows who produced every day.

People with bipolar disorder, in manic episodes, are prone to writing with a wild sense of flow. (See also, Touched with Fire by Kay Redfield Jamison.) Something like a quarter of working poets have bipolar disorder. DFW's writing in some ways reads like it was written in manic episodes, but he recognized that good work can't come from racing thoughts alone: it needs to be organized and edited and all of that is real work that requires consistent diligence.

[alexszatmary]

>During the time immediately after the [9/11] attacks, many television and radio stations altered normal programming in response to the events, and the rumor spread that Clear Channel and its subsidiaries had established a list of songs with lyrics Clear Channel deemed "questionable". The list was not a demand not to play the songs listed, but rather a suggestion that they "might not want to play these songs." ...The list contains 165 songs, including all songs by Rage Against the Machine as well as certain songs recorded by multiple artists (for example "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" by Bob Dylan and the same song by Guns N' Roses). "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" by The Beatles or "Falling for the First Time" by the Barenaked Ladies may have been tough to hear, given the context; America, by Neil Diamond, would have been painfully ironic (Ironic, by Alanis Morissette, was also on the list). I can't make sense of why some other songs are on the list: Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World" and Simon & Garfunkel's "Bridge over Troubled Water" would have been in the "helpful songs" category.

[alexszatmary]

From [The Annals of Improbable Research](http://www.improbable.com/), Tastes Like Chicken? >The field of culinary evolution faces one great dilemma: why do most cooked, exotic meats taste like cooked Gallus gallus, the domestic chicken? > >It is curious that so many animals have a similar taste. Did each species evolve this trait independently or did they all inherit it from a common ancestor? That is the burning question. A [phylogenetic tree](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phylogenetic_tree) about why so much stuff [tastes like chicken](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tastes_like_chicken).

[maxistentialist-deactivated2020]

Adult transport is among the more striking ant behaviors.

A worker curls up into fetal pupal position, allowing a nestmate to pick her up by the mandibles and carry her about. Many species are known to engage in adult transport (see here and here), and as the behavior is frequently observed during nest relocation the reason is thought to be related to communication- it’s easier for an ant that knows where a colony needs to move to simply pick up another ant and carry it rather than try to lead it or communicate the directions. A second function may be ergonomic. One ant carrying another expends less energy than two ants walking on their own.

[alexszatmary]

Here's a reference:

Möglich, M. & Hölldobler, B., 1974. Social carrying behavior and division of labor during nest moving of ants. Psyche, 81(2), pp.219–236.

Abstract:

Social carrying behavior is one of the most remarkable social activities in ant societies. Not only eggs, larvae and pupae, but also adult workers, queens and males are frequently carried by worker ants to various target areas. Although carrying behavior has been observed in many ant species (see review in E. O. Wilson 1971), only a few analytical investigations have dealt with the biological significance of social carrying behavior in ants. Kneitz (1964) reports that in Formica polyctena special "storage workers" are passively moved between the summer nest and winter nest. Arnoldi (1932) observed that during the slave raids Rossomyrmex proformicarum uses the carrying technique to recruit sister workers to the nest of the slave ants. In Camponotus herculeanus social carrying behavior serves as a "social timer" during the nuptial flight activities: males that tend to take off too early or too late during the daily flight periods are carried back into the nest by their worker nestmates (Holldobler and Maschwitz 1964). Most frequently, however, carrying behavior is employed during emigration from one nest site to another. If a nest becomes too small and cannot be extended, or if the microclimatic conditions change, the colony searches for a better site. Although the communication signals used by different ant species to organize nest movings vary considerably, adult transport seems to be the basic recruitment technique of most.

[alexszatmary]

I was reading Infinite Jest in the Kindle app, and came to this use of the word, "qua". When I looked it up in the dictionary, the example was the sentence that I had just read in the book. I still don't really know what the word means.

[alexszatmary]

>A study by a team of researchers at the University of Idaho, Washington State University, and the US Department of Agriculture's Nutrient Data Laboratory calculated the percentage of alcohol remaining in a dish based on various cooking methods ([PDF](http://www.ars.usda.gov/SP2UserFiles/Place/12354500/Data/retn/retn06.pdf)). The results are as follows: >* alcohol added to boiling liquid and removed from heat: 85% alcohol retained >* alcohol flamed: 75% alcohol retained >* no heat, stored overnight: 70% alcohol retained >* baked, 25 minutes, alcohol not stirred into mixture: 45% alcohol retained >* baked/simmered, alcohol stirred into mixture: [5%-40%, decreasing with cooking time] From the [USDA report](http://www.ars.usda.gov/SP2UserFiles/Place/12354500/Data/retn/retn06.pdf), flambé-ing only cooks out 25% of the alcohol.

[alexszatmary]

>Mongolian barbecue is a stir fried dish that was developed in Taiwanese restaurants in the 1970s... Despite its name, the cuisine is not Mongolian, and is only very loosely related to barbecue.

[alexszatmary]

I suspected this: >The originator of the teppanyaki-style steakhouse is the Japanese restaurant chain Misono, which introduced the concept of cooking Western-influenced food on a teppan in Japan in 1945. They soon found the cuisine was less popular with the Japanese than it was with foreigners, who enjoyed both watching the skilled maneuvers of the chefs preparing the food as well as the cuisine itself, which is somewhat more familiar than more traditional Japanese dishes. Also, > Teppanyaki grills are commonly confused with the hibachi barbecue grill, which has a charcoal or gas flame and is made with an open grate design.

[alexszatmary]

>Despite much published research on its deficiencies, the rainbow color map is prevalent in the visualization community. The authors present survey results showing that the rainbow color map continues to appear in more than half of the relevant papers in IEEE Visualization Conference proceedings. Its use is encouraged by its selection as the default color map used in most visualization toolkits that the authors inspected. The visualization community must do better. In this article, the authors reiterate the characteristics that make the rainbow color map a poor choice, provide examples that clearly illustrate these deficiencies even on simple data sets, and recommend better color maps for several categories of display. [PDF](http://people.renci.org/~borland/pdfs/RainbowColorMap_VisViewpoints.pdf)

[alexszatmary]

> A B-52 bomber broke up in the sky over North Carolina, and one of the two [nuclear] bombs on board was in the “armed” setting by the time it hit the ground near Goldsboro, N.C., according to a newly declassified report published Monday by the National Security Archive. If the switch had not been damaged by the impact of the crash, the weapon could have detonated, the report said.