Field notes

olliepalmer.com notebook

[olliepalmer]

There was only one problem: the tradition depicted in the movie was completely made up. There are many traditions across Mexico that are associated with Day of the Dead, but a parade through downtown Mexico City has never been one of them.

New-old traditions: Mexico City depicted holding fictional parade in James Bond film; scrambles to hold real parade that lives up to its celluloid origin

[olliepalmer]

During the Cold War, the CIA paid magician John Mulholland $3,000 to write a manual on misdirection, concealment and deceit.

We Make Money Not Art

[olliepalmer]

'I thought the toilet was the last place I had a right to privacy, but they are watching me in there too,' wrote one use on Sina Weibo, a Chinese version of Twitter.

Face-tracking to ration toilet paper allocation in Chinese toilets in the Guardian

[olliepalmer]

She’s fond of cricket, but her favorite player is Geoffrey Boycott, one of the most boring batsmen in England’s history.

Theresa May profiled in American Vogue

[olliepalmer]

Being a hypocrite is always my highest ideal, as it means I’ve set higher standards for myself to strive for than I’m achieving at any one moment.

What a claim! From Mark Boyle in The Guardian

[olliepalmer]

It’s true relaxation for the ultra-wealthy,” he said. “They can come out here, they know there are armed guards outside. The kids can run around.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-for-the-super-rich

[olliepalmer]

Once the idea of rational discourse has been undermined, spectacle is all that remains. The side that tells better stories, and does so more aggressively – unencumbered by scrupulousness about their verifiability – will edge out someone trying to methodically “prove” a fact.

Inside the Kremlin’s hall of mirrors | Peter Pomerantsev | News | The Guardian

[olliepalmer]

A man with a cow slurry fetish has been jailed for five years after threatening to kill a family who tried to stop him targeting their farm.

http://j.mp/slurryfetish

[olliepalmer]

They like carrots but this is a very curious incident.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.express.co.uk/news/uk/722483/pensioner-cow-stampede-farm-carrots-Michinhampton-Common-Gloucestershire/amp?client=safari

[olliepalmer]

Procaine was first synthesized in 1905, shortly after amylocaine. It was created by the German chemist Alfred Einhorn who gave the chemical the trade name Novocaine, from the Latin nov- (meaning new) and -caine, a common ending for alkaloids used as anesthetics. It was introduced into medical use by surgeon Heinrich Braun. Prior to the discovery of Stovaine and Novocaine, cocaine was the most commonly used local anesthetic.. Einhorn wished his new discovery to be used for amputations, but surgeons preferred local anesthetic. However dentists found it very useful, which unfortunately, Einhorn was most displeased by and spent many years touring dental schools to advise them not to use it.

Novocaine | World Heritage Encyclopaedia | Project Gutenberg

[olliepalmer]

Chess is indeed a war, but an institutionalized, regulated, coded war, with a front, a rear, battles.

Guttari, F., and G. Deleuze. A Thousand Plateaus. The Athlone Press, 1988. p. 389

[olliepalmer]

It suddenly occurred to me that the hottest tech start-ups are solving all the problems of being twenty years old, with cash on hand, because that’s who thinks them up.

Change the World - The New Yorker

[olliepalmer]

The working inhabitants of a modern city are people who live inside a machine to be batted around by its wheels. They spend their days in activities which largely boil down to counting and measuring, living in a world of rationalized abstraction which has little relation to or harmony with the great biological rhythms and processes. As a matter of fact, mental activities of this kind can now be done far more efficiently by machines than by men — so much so that in a not too distant future the human brain may be an obsolete mechanism for logical calculation. Already the human computer is widely displaced by mechanical and electrical computers of far greater speed and efficiency. If, then, man’s principal asset and value is his brain and his ability to calculate, he will become an unsaleable commodity in an era when the mechanical operation of reasoning can be done more effectively by machines.

Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity (1951)

Via Brain Pickings 

[olliepalmer]

"If I jump on Goomba, then it certainly dies."

Researchers in Germany have created an adaptive learning programme so that Mario can learn about his world. When he is hungry, he searches for food; if he is curious, he merely explores and learns about his world. 

by Stephan Ehrenfeld, Fabian Schrodt, & Prof. Dr. Martin V. Butz at Cognitive Modeling, Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Science, University of Tübingen, Germany

"Somehow I feel less happy."

[algopop]

App store ranking manipulation employee

A photo, tweeted on Weibo, of a woman sitting in front of an array iPhone 5Cs, with the caption app store ranking manipulation employee offers a glimpse of the workforce behind online Chinese services, that for a high price, can get you into the top ten rankings of the iTunes app store. The woman’s job would be to download, install, and uninstall specific apps over and over again to boost App Store rankings. Some IOS developers are also known to fraudulently use bots to do this. 

[olliepalmer]

[...] In comparison, Google has over 800 employees worldwide. [...] Google also said it recently opened an east coast engineering office in New York City, clearly signaling the company's aggressive plans for growth. The Google press release even referred to its listing of current job openings.

http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/NewsBreaks/Google-Buys-Applied-Semantics-16713.asp

[olliepalmer]

Karim said the inspiration for YouTube first came from Janet Jackson's role in the 2004 Super Bowl incident, when her breast was exposed during her performance, and later from the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Karim could not easily find video clips of either event online, which led to the idea of a video sharing site.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube#Company_history