Clarifications and corrections | Daily Mail Online - "On 10th December we published an article with the headline ‘Is global warming WORSE than we thought?’ which included the results of a study published in the journal Nature that concluded the oceans have absorbed 60% more energy over the last 25 years than had been thought. The authors of this study have acknowledged that they cannot necessarily make that claim after errors in the data were found which means there is a much larger margin of error in the findings. The article has been removed, and we are happy to set the record straight."
This Daily Mail hater claimed that the BBC was the go to for reliability, and when I pointed out that the BBC had retracted many articles in the past, claimed that it showed that the fact that they took down wrong articles showed they were trustworthy. Of course, the Daily Mail taking down wrong articles, on the other hand, shows how unreliable it is. And of course he brought out Media Bias/Fact Check, despite its problems
BBC retracts vaccination illness story
Here Lies BBC: Your BBC is not infallible, dear Media Sepoys
BBC retracts 'cannibal' story on Nigeria
Here's what to expect from fact-checking in 2019 - "Media Bias/Fact Check is a widely cited source for news stories and even studies about misinformation, despite the fact that its method is in no way scientific."
Not to mention the previously quoted CJR article pointing out that "their subjective assessments leave room for human biases"
Scottish Prison Service 'spends £3.2m on mobile phones for prisoners' - "The Scottish Prison Service has spent a total of £3.2m on mobile phones for prisoners, according to new figures. A scheme enabling inmates to access mobile phones was introduced at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in response to the suspension of visits. However, figures published by Audit Scotland indicate the scheme has cost taxpayers around £500,000 more than had been anticipated. There have previously been calls for the devices to be withdrawn permanently after it emerged that the supposedly ‘un-hackable’ devices were being used to buy drugs and to organise other crimes."
Mobile phone used inside prison to plot petrol bomb attacks result of SNP policy, says MSP - "Greenock thug Robert Warnock used mobile phones to orchestrate a series of petrol bomb attacks from prison, sourcing a banned SIM card for a device handed out by the Scottish Prison Service... The Scots thug orchestrated the murder plot from behind bars as revenge for his brother being stabbed while he was in HMP Shotts serving an 11-year jail term for attempting to murder a woman and assaulting her partner. The three fire bombings took place in Greenock in 2020... “The SNP Government has spent millions of taxpayer cash on handing out mobile phones to prisoners and this is the latest example of the disastrous consequences of that decision. “Almost as soon as the phones were handed out, prisoners were using illicit SIM cards to conduct trade deals from behind bars and now they appear to have been used in an attempted assassination."
The 'unhackable' phones given to prisoners by Scottish Government - which were hacked to buy drugs - "During lockdown when prison visits were restricted, 7,600 inmates in Scotland were issued with their own mobile phone by the Scottish government. But these supposedly tamper-proof phones were almost immediately hacked by inmates, and, according to the Scottish Prison Service, 728 have been found since August 2020 to operate with illegal SIM cards, used for drug deals and other criminal activity... The drugs bought with these phones are often simply thrown over the prison walls, but inmates are finding ever more complex and covert methods to smuggle in drugs, including legal letters soaked in drugs that the prisoner then dissolves in water and drinks."
Mussel myth an open and shut case - "Look at the influential cookery books of the 1960s, such as Larousse Gastronomique in 1965 and Italian Food by Elizabeth David in 1966. These books made absolutely no mention of discarding unopened mussels. The myth seems to have been started by the English food writer, Jane Grigson in her 1973 publication, Fish Book. The exact quote is: "Throw away any mussels that refuse to open."... By the 1990s, there was almost universal agreement among the cookbook writers — none of whom were fisheries biologists... 11.5 per cent of mussels remained closed after a so-called "normal" cooking time. When he forced them open with a knife, every single one was both adequately cooked and safe to eat... The best way to check the safety of mussels is to check them before you cook them. Mussels have such a small mass that if they are invaded by a pathogen or germ, they will be overwhelmed almost immediately, and will smell bad. If we use the experimental evidence, and stop throwing out cooked mussels that stubbornly refuse to open, we can stop wasting each year some 370 tonnes of perfectly good seafood worth around $3 million."
The effects of being in a "new relationship" on levels of testosterone in men - "In light of previous research showing that different types of relationships affect levels of testosterone in men, this study examined whether categorizing relationship types according to relationship length can shed further light on variations in levels of testosterone. Salivary testosterone samples were obtained from a sample of men and details about their relationship status, sociosexual orientation, extra-pair sexual interest, and their perceptions of their relationships were recorded. Using a median split analysis, participants who indicated that they had been in their relationship for less than 12 months were categorized as being in "new relationships" and those in longer relationships being categorized as in long-term relationships. Results showed that levels of testosterone of single men and men in new relationships did not differ, but both had significantly greater levels of testosterone than men in long-term relationships. Differences in levels of testosterone were unrelated to sociosexual orientation and extra-pair sexual interest. These findings support the evolutionary explanation of levels of testosterone in men varying in accordance with their internal motivation to seek new potential mates.
Why are food blog recipes so long? - "If you’ve ever used an online recipe, you probably know this scenario: you click on a food blog and scroll down. And down. And just a bit further. And for a second, you wonder if this promised recipe even exists... Food bloggers use long-form content because it improves their search engine optimization (SEO)... Search engines also reward original content (and penalize what experts call duplicate content). As many have pointed out, recipes tend to be copied and shared. That recipe for zucchini bread might be almost exactly the same across ten different blogs. But the addition of original long-form narrative content—called headnotes—boosts its SEO. A number of other practical concerns affect the way blogs are structured. For example, search engines cannot always recognize the unique structure of recipes (often a combination of steps and lists). And some search engine metrics are based on how long a user spends on a page. Longer content also creates space for ads, and ad revenue is a central source of income for food bloggers. Because of these problems, food bloggers can’t post standalone recipes without risking the viability of their blog. And posting the recipe before the narrative content doesn’t seem to work either. Though no one has tried to reproduce this experiment, one blogger tried putting her recipes above her narrative blog content and found that her pages decreased in the search results"
Man proves innocence and freed from prison after 35 years thanks to an episode of Mythbusters - "show-makers were attempting to disprove whether or not a lit cigarette could ignite a pool of gasoline - the very thing John Galvan was behind bars for."
Missile That Likely Killed Al-Qaeda Leader Is Specially Designed To Limit Civilian Casualties - "Al-Zawahiri was the only casualty from the mission, according to US officials, despite him being in a house in Kabul, Afghanistan. The BBC and Reuters say that's because the US likely used a type of missile that is specifically designed to prevent civilian casualties... the R9X Hellfire is different because it doesn't contain an explosive warhead. Instead of causing an explosion that can kill people in close proximity, it has six blades that are attached around the fuselage and are meant to slice the target into pieces. The blades deploy seconds before impact so as to not affect its flight"
Proof that the US is a terrorist state which slaughters civilians
Driver plunges smart car 35ft down lift shaft after mistaking it for a parking spot - "The unnamed woman, 38, had been looking for a space in an underground car park in Stuttgart, Germany, on Saturday morning when she rammed the closed door of the elevator."
Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts - "Science alone of all the subjects contains within itself the lesson of the danger of belief in the infallibility of the greatest teachers in the preceding generation (…) When someone says, “Science teaches such and such,” he is using the word incorrectly. Science doesn’t teach anything; experience teaches it. If they say to you, “Science has shown such and such,” you might ask, “How does science show it? How did the scientists find out? How? What? Where?” It should not be “science has shown” but “this experiment, this effect, has shown.” And you have as much right as anyone else, upon hearing about the experiments–but be patient and listen to all the evidence–to judge whether a sensible conclusion has been arrived at. (…) The experts who are leading you may be wrong. (…) I think we live in an unscientific age in which almost all the buffeting of communications and television-words, books, and so on-are unscientific. As a result, there is a considerable amount of intellectual tyranny in the name of science...
Back in 1955, experts and textbooks told you that human beings have 24 pairs of chromosomes, even though there were always 23 pairs... Before the 1960s, plate tectonics was often ridiculed. Fewer than 20% of geologists accepted the idea of continental drift in the early 1960... In 1998, the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences recipient Paul Krugman predicted that the Internet would have a small effect... Heinrich Hertz claimed that radio waves were of no use whatsoever. Orville Wright who literally invented the aeroplane said in 1908 that “No airship will ever fly from New York to Paris""
Clearly Richard Feynman was ignorant and a dangerous science denier who needs to be wiped from history
Meme - *Video game character* "I'VE FOUGHT ROBOTS, ALIENS, DEMONS AND ENTIRE ARMIES.. BUT I CANNOT SEE ANY WAY PAST THIS WAIST-HIGH RUBBLE."
Meme - "Dork's Conspiracy Thread: if you've been here since the beginning, you've likely encountered a certain infamous Dork master troll by the name of Caitlin Blacktopp. However, the person you interacted with was not the real, living 5head. You see, the real Caitlin committed suicide in some time in early 2013 (possibly mid February). Since her trolling habits had become a part of the original Kevin page's memetic culture (she was a well-know comment section troll), Kevin felt it wasn't appropriate to let her... 'die', so to speak. Thus, the Caitlin we all know was created."
A philosophy essay on Mario. : copypasta - "Everyone knows Mario is cool as fuck. But knows what he’s thinking? Who knows why he crushes turtles? And why do we think about him as fondly as we think of the mythical (nonexistent?) Dr Pepper? Perchance I believe it was Kant who said “Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.” Mario exhibits experience by crushing turts all day, but he exhibits theory by stating “Let’s-a go!” Keep it up, baby! When Mario leaves his place of safety to stomp a turty, he knows that he may Die. And yet, for a man who can purchase lives with money, a life becomes a mere store of value. A tax that can be paid for, much as a rich man feels any law with a fine is a price. We think of Mario as a hero, but he is simply a one percenter of a more privileged variety. The lifekind. Perchance."
Also posted as a "marked" "philosophy essay", "Mario, the Idea vs Mario, the Man"
Meme - ">Be me
>Be catholic my entire life
>Night before uni finals prayed to Odin for wisdom since I was fucked for the test and had never had God help me immediately
>Get to test
>Pass it easily
>Try again asking for strength, knowledge and fertility from various Norse Gods and Goddesses
>They deliver
What the fuck do I do? Why does God never answer yet Odin unironically does. I don't want to stem from my faith and shouldn't ask things of other gods but they seem more than happy to help me when God remains silent."
Christian paradigm: if praying to the Christian god works, that shows how good he is. If praying to other gods works, that shows how evil the devil is
Meme - "Your Future doctor is cheating in their online classes right now so you better start eating healthy"
Meme - "Hey girl are you the British economy because I've got a plan to give you a weak pound"
despa?! on Twitter - "my science teacher just asked "what's the opposite of based?" and i answered "cringe" the answer was acidic im going to kill myself"
Meme - "Insect thermometer
105 - All insects are quiet
102 - Bees are idle
83 - Cicadas sing
78 - Katydid says KATY-DID-IT
72 - Katydid says KATY-DID
65 - Katydid says KAY-TEE
58 - Katydid says KATE
46 - Grasshoppers cannot fly
40 - All insects mute
32 - All insects dormant
To find temperature in Fahrenheit, count a cricket's chirps for 14 seconds and add 40, Other insects indicate readings as shown above"
Mini-brains: Clumps of human brain cells in a dish can learn to play Pong faster than an AI | New Scientist - "Hundreds of thousands of brain cells in a dish are being taught to play Pong by responding to pulses of electricity – and can improve their performance more quickly than an AI can"
Monkeys' cosy alliance with wolves looks like domestication | New Scientist - " In the alpine grasslands of eastern Africa, Ethiopian wolves and gelada monkeys are giving peace a chance. The geladas – a type of baboon – tolerate wolves wandering right through the middle of their herds, while the wolves ignore potential meals of baby geladas in favour of rodents, which they can catch more easily when the monkeys are present. The unusual pact echoes the way dogs began to be domesticated by humans"
Twin Sisters Who Married Twin Brothers Announce Pregnancies - "In addition to being cousins, the children will also be genetic siblings... Identical twins Brittany and Briana Salyers — who married identical twins Josh and Jeremy Salyers — announced Friday that they are both expecting... They were married by identical twin ministers in the ceremony themed “Twice Upon a Time.” At the time, Brittany, who is married to Josh, told PEOPLE that they were excited to all live in the same house and raise their children together... The sisters have long been immersed in twin subculture, dressing alike, double dating and considering themselves “two halves of a whole,” so there wasn’t much trouble when they set out to plan their joint wedding"
Vietnamese Housewife Becomes Appam Hawker After ‘Accidental’ Indian Stall Bid At Maxwell Food Centre - "Along a row of Indian and halal food stalls at Maxwell Food Centre lies quite the unusual scene – a brightly-dressed, heavily-made up Vietnamese hawker busily making fresh appam, a traditional South Indian fermented rice pancake, for a handful of Chinese and Indian customers. The stall is Mr Appam, opened last December by Vietnamese-born Singaporean PR Nguyen Thi Kieu Hanh, 45. In the span of four months, she went from being a homemaker who has never tried appam to a stall owner hawking the snack at the popular food haven. Kieu Hanh helms the stall alone and offers classic flavours such as ‘princess appam’ (with egg and cheese) as well as less common, fancier options like pandan-infused appam with grated coconut and plain appam topped with coconut ice cream... In order to make ends meet, Kieu Hanh – who worked as a cook at casual Vietnamese chain Nam Nam several years ago – initially planned to sell Vietnamese dishes like pho and spring rolls. Due to her unfamiliarity with the hawker stall tendering process, she ended up winning a bid for an Indian food stall at Maxwell Food Centre. Kieu Hanh was unable to change the stall type after realising the mistake, nor did she wish to forfeit the stall. “[I realised] the stall cannot sell Vietnamese or Chinese food, only Indian food. I didn’t know what to sell. My Indian friend Francis asked me to try selling appam. I thought it was a good idea as many people are already selling curry and rice dishes here [at Maxwell Food Centre],” she explains... When conceptualising the menu, the hawker turned to min jiang kueh stalls that offer inventive flavours for inspiration. “I want more people to try my food, so I came up with new flavours,” she explains. These include toppings like chocolate sauce, sliced banana and coconut ice cream."
Parrots were removed from a UK safari park after teaching each other to swear - "A group of African Grey parrots were quarantined together at a UK animal safari park when they taught each other how to swear. When the birds realised staff were laughing at their swearing, they started laughing too. The birds were temporarily removed to an off-site enclosure where staff hope that other parrots will teach them better language... It's not uncommon for parrots to learn swear words and be encouraged to continue it when they see people enjoy their vulgar comedy... By the time the park reopened to the public, the birds had gotten in the habit of calling visitors names"
$1.2 Billion Metaverse Horrified by Report It Only Had 38 Active Users - "Metaverse project Decentraland, a sandbox environment that allows users to buy and sell virtual real estate, isn't exactly teeming with people. Despite billions of dollars in valuations, companies betting on a metaverse future simply haven't made much headway. In fact, according to data aggregator DappRadar, the Ethereum-based world Decentraland only had 38 "active users" over a period of 24 hours — a confoundingly low number, especially considering the company has a market cap of a whopping $1.2 billion. Decentraland pushed back, though, saying that "active users" are defined as unique blockchain wallet addresses that interact with its system... even 8,000 users on a given day is dismal for something that's supposed to be the future of online communities. And if blockchain is the underlying economic mechanism of the endeavor, it's outright embarrassing if only a few dozen transactions are happening per day. In short, it's a perfect example of the kind of massive disparity between market value and actual users that has been plaguing the Web3 world for years, and could also be indicative of a serious slowdown in appetite for virtual real estate and other blockchain-related assets, including cryptocurrencies and NFTs."
Musical Key Characteristics - "The association of musical keys with specific emotional or qualitative characteristic was fairly common prior to the 20th century. It was part of the shared cultural experience of those who made, performed and listened to music. When Mozart or Beethoven or Schubert wrote a piece in a Ab major, for example, they were well aware of this was the 'key of the grave' and knew that many in their audiences were as well. We lose a part of the meaning of their music if we are ignorant of their affective choices. Although these characteristics were, of course, subjective, it was possible to conceive of each key as unique because each key actually sounded distinct within unequal temperaments. When equal temperament became the dominant tuning after 1917, the aural quality of every key became the same, and therefore these affective characteristics are mostly lost to us. (See Piano's Ivory Cage) One of the most influential descriptions of characteristics shared in German-speaking cultures in the late 18th and early 19th century was from from Christian Schubart's Ideen zu einer Aesthetik der Tonkunst (1806):
C Major: Completely Pure. Its character is: innocence, simplicity, naïvety, children's talk.
C Minor: Declaration of love and at the same time the lament of unhappy love. All languishing, longing, sighing of the love-sick soul lies in this key.
D♭ Major: A leering key, degenerating into grief and rapture. It cannot laugh, but it can smile; it cannot howl, but it can at least grimace its crying.--Consequently only unusual characters and feelings can be brought out in this key.
C# Minor: Penitential lamentation, intimate conversation with God, the friend and help-meet of life; sighs of disappointed friendship and love lie in its radius.
D Major: The key of triumph, of Hallejuahs, of war-cries, of victory-rejoicing. Thus, the inviting symphonies, the marches, holiday songs and heaven-rejoicing choruses are set in this key.
D Minor: Melancholy womanliness, the spleen and humours brood.
E♭ Major: The key of love, of devotion, of intimate conversation with God.
D# Minor: Feelings of the anxiety of the soul's deepest distress, of brooding despair, of blackest depresssion, of the most gloomy condition of the soul. Every fear, every hesitation of the shuddering heart, breathes out of horrible D# minor. If ghosts could speak, their speech would approximate this key.
E Major: Noisy shouts of joy, laughing pleasure and not yet complete, full delight lies in E Major.
E minor: Naïve, womanly innocent declaration of love, lament without grumbling; sighs accompanied by few tears; this key speaks of the imminent hope of resolving in the pure happiness of C major.
F Major: Complaisance & Calm.
F Minor: Deep depression, funereal lament, groans of misery and longing for the grave.
F# Major: Triumph over difficulty, free sigh of relief utered when hurdles are surmounted; echo of a soul which has fiercely struggled and finally conquered lies in all uses of this key.
F# Minor: A gloomy key: it tugs at passion as a dog biting a dress. Resentment and discontent are its language.
G Major: Everything rustic, idyllic and lyrical, every calm and satisfied passion, every tender gratitude for true friendship and faithful love,--in a word every gentle and peaceful emotion of the heart is correctly expressed by this key.
G Minor: Discontent, uneasiness, worry about a failed scheme; bad-tempered gnashing of teeth; in a word: resentment and dislike.
A♭ Major: Key of the grave. Death, grave, putrefaction, judgment, eternity lie in its radius.
A♭ Minor: Grumbler, heart squeezed until it suffocates; wailing lament, difficult struggle; in a word, the color of this key is everything struggling with difficulty.
A Major: This key includes declarations of innocent love, satisfaction with one's state of affairs; hope of seeing one's beloved again when parting; youthful cheerfulness and trust in God.
A minor: Pious womanliness and tenderness of character.
B♭ Major: Cheerful love, clear conscience, hope aspiration for a better world.
B♭ minor: A quaint creature, often dressed in the garment of night. It is somewhat surly and very seldom takes on a pleasant countenance. Mocking God and the world; discontented with itself and with everything; preparation for suicide sounds in this key.
B Major: Strongly coloured, announcing wild passions, composed from the most glaring coulors. Anger, rage, jealousy, fury, despair and every burden of the heart lies in its sphere.
B Minor: This is as it were the key of patience, of calm awaiting ones's fate and of submission to divine dispensation."
Characteristics of Musical Keys - "Key or mode descriptions from Charpentier's Regles de Composition ca. 1682
C major: gay and warlike
C minor: obscure and sad
D major: joyous and very warlike
D minor: serious and pious
Eb major: cruel and hard
E major: quarrelsome and boisterous
E minor: effeminate, amorous, plaintive
F major: furious and quick-tempered subjects
F minor: obscure and plaintive
G major: serious and magnificent
G minor: serious and magnificent
A major: joyful and pastoral
A minor: tender and plaintive
B major: harsh and plaintive
B minor: solitary and melancholic
Bb major: magnificent and joyful
Bb minor: obscure and terrible"
From taxi driver to software engineer in 9 months: 53-year-old man now making 3 times what he did while driving - "Mr Gazali Ahmad tried his hand at a series of jobs in sectors including education and finance before settling behind the wheel of a taxi for six years at age 45. Feeling unsatisfied and stuck in his career, he decided in March 2021 to enrol in a programme that promised to train him for a software engineer's role in nine months... Mr Gazali, who has a diploma in mechanical engineering, joined the bootcamp-style course comprising three months of intensive lessons, followed by a six-month apprenticeship."
Is it true that “not everyone can be a programmer”? - "All teachers of programming find that their results display a 'double hump'. It is as if there are two populations: those who can [program], and those who cannot [program], each with its own independent bell curve. Almost all research into programming teaching and learning have concentrated on teaching: change the language, change the application area, use an IDE and work on motivation. None of it works, and the double hump persists. We have a test which picks out the population that can program, before the course begins"
Someone seriously asked me for evidence not everyone can be a programmer
TikTok profits from livestreams of families begging - "Displaced families in Syrian camps are begging for donations on TikTok while the company takes up to 70% of the proceeds... In the camps in north-west Syria, the BBC found that the trend was being facilitated by so-called "TikTok middlemen", who provided families with the phones and equipment to go live. The middlemen said they worked with agencies affiliated to TikTok in China and the Middle East, who gave the families access to TikTok accounts. These agencies are part of TikTok's global strategy to recruit livestreamers and encourage users to spend more time on the app. Since the TikTok algorithm suggests content based on the geographic origin of a user's phone number, the middlemen said they prefer to use British SIM cards. They say people from the UK are the most generous gifters... Agencies like these, known as "livestreaming guilds" and based all around the world, are contracted by TikTok to help content creators produce more appealing livestreams... when the BBC used the in-app system to report 30 accounts featuring children begging, TikTok said there had been no violation of its policies in any of the cases. After the BBC contacted TikTok directly for comment, the company banned all of the accounts."
Lessons learned — and lost — from a Vietnam-era addiction study - "Sociologist Lee N. Robins, who was hired to lead the research project, selected and interviewed a random sample of 470 soldiers from the nearly 14,000 headed home in September 1971, as well as a sample of 495 who had tested positive for opioids. Almost half of all enlisted men in the Army serving in Vietnam had tried one of two opioids — heroin or opium — and 20% had become addicted while there. All had been in the country for one year, so their exposure to the drug-rich environment was essentially the same... Eight to 12 months after the soldiers returned to the U.S., Robins and her team conducted confidential interviews and requested urine samples for drug testing. Surprisingly, they learned that heroin use was uncommon, even among those who had become addicted in Vietnam. In the first year back home, only 5% had relapsed to addiction. Some critics of the study argued that more veterans would relapse after a longer period of time. So two years later, Robins and her team re-interviewed the soldiers and again asked them to provide urine specimens for analysis. The researchers discovered that only 12% had relapsed after three years. The rest had recovered spontaneously without any treatment. The research results were so different from what people expected that the scientific community was skeptical, and the press assumed the study was a Department of Defense whitewash. Robins wrote that she “found little to justify the view of heroin as an especially dangerous drug.” Instead, some people appear to be more vulnerable to drug abuse in general. Those who became addicted to heroin in Vietnam were more likely to have had social problems before they arrived in the country and used marijuana, alcohol, amphetamines, and other substances while there... The evidence from this 50-year-old study is consistent with what we know about substance use disorders today, such as that polysubstance use remains widespread. Surveys and drug testing show that people who use opioids tend to use other drugs as well, often at the same time. Similarly, many people recover on their own from drug addictions. Compared to the roughly 20 million people in the United States with active substance use disorders, more than 20 million are in long-term recovery. Most of them did not receive formal treatment. And finally, exposure to opioids doesn’t inevitably lead to a substance use disorder. Some people can use opioids occasionally without becoming addicted. In fact, a recent analysis found that only about 3% of the tens of millions of people prescribed opioids become addicted."
The claim that many, most or all addicts become trapped in abuse and then failures in life is not supported by the evidence, but virtue signalling about being tough on drugs and pretending that social problems are (relatively) easy to solve is more attractive
Military generals are worried that American youth are too fat, addicted, and lawless to defend the country - "a group of former U.S. military leaders is warning that the majority of our youth are unfit to serve in the armed forces due to a drastic increase in obesity, drug use, falling educational standards, and juvenile crime. The group, known as Mission Readiness, says that 71% of our young people are ineligible to serve due to these factors... these factors don't take into account the coddling of our young minds over the last few decades that has created shrieking, unhinged adults who are incapable of discipline or disagreement."
Social media apps are 'deliberately' addictive to users - ""It's as if they're taking behavioural cocaine and just sprinkling it all over your interface and that's the thing that keeps you like coming back and back and back", said former Mozilla and Jawbone employee Aza Raskin... "In order to get the next round of funding, in order to get your stock price up, the amount of time that people spend on your app has to go up," he said. "So, when you put that much pressure on that one number, you're going to start trying to invent new ways of getting people to stay hooked.""
The statistical laws of popularity: universal properties of the box-office dynamics of motion pictures - "Are there general principles governing the process by which certain products or ideas become popular relative to other (often qualitatively similar) competitors? To investigate this question in detail, we have focused on the popularity of movies as measured by their box-office income. We observe that the log-normal distribution describes well the tail (corresponding to the most successful movies) of the empirical distributions for the total income, the income on the opening week, as well as the weekly income per theater. This observation suggests that popularity may be the outcome of a linear multiplicative stochastic process. In addition, the distributions of the total income and the opening income show a bimodal form, with the majority of movies either performing very well or very poorly in theaters. We also observe that the gross income per theater for a movie at any point during its lifetime is, on average, inversely proportional to the period that has elapsed after its release. We argue that (i) the log-normal nature of the tail, (ii) the bimodal form of the overall gross income distribution and (iii) the decay of gross income per theater with time as a power law, constitute the fundamental set of stylized facts (i.e. empirical 'laws') that can be used to explain other observations about movie popularity. We show that, in conjunction with an assumption of a fixed lower cut-off for income per theater below which a movie is withdrawn from a cinema, these laws can be used to derive a Weibull distribution for the survival probability of movies that agrees with empirical data. The connection to extreme-value distributions suggests that popularity can be viewed as a process where a product becomes popular by avoiding 'failure' (i.e. being pulled out from circulation) for many successive time periods. We suggest that these results may apply beyond the particular case of movies to popularity in general."
Could the Fishmongers’ Hall attack have been prevented? - "The inquest into the Fishmongers’ Hall attack was a reminder of just how dangerous Islamist terrorists are. At a rehabilitative conference in London Bridge in November 2019, Usman Khan murdered two of the very people – Saskia Jones and Jack Merritt – who had been trying to help him. Worryingly, the inquest also demonstrated that a series of state agencies – the police, prison service, MI5 and probation service – failed in their first duty, which is to protect the public. Others outside government, such as the Learning Together programme established by academics at Cambridge University to bring together prisoners and students, and even the venue itself, were criticised for their naivete... some saw exactly what Usman Khan was doing. Consider prison psychologist Ieva Cechaviciute, who had interviewed Khan for over six hours, and reached the professional assessment that he would pose a greater threat upon leaving prison than he did when he went in. A bulging prison-intelligence file detailed Khan’s involvement in extremist activities in prison, bullying other inmates and trying to convert them to Islam, often with jihadists from the same Al-Muhajiroun milieu he had been involved with prior to his initial conviction. Bizarrely, he had even written a play as part of a prison creative-writing course, in which the protagonist is released and goes on to commit knife attacks... In an era where it is common to see public clamour and social-media pile-ons for people in high office to resign for merely causing offence, it is remarkable not a single person has seemingly resigned, or been moved from their post, for their role in the Khan debacle. In this case at least, the buck seems to stop nowhere. Society, on the whole, does not want to ‘throw away the key’ when it comes to all serious offenders. But we need to know that there is a key, and that the authorities are competent to use it. Worryingly, in the case of Usman Khan, they were not."
Saskia Jones: Family say event organisers should stand down - "The organisers of the Fishmongers' Hall event where two people were killed by a convicted terrorist should step down, one of the victim's families have said. Saskia Jones' uncles say they would be "insulted" if the leaders of Cambridge University Learning Together programme stayed in their roles. Saskia and Jack Merritt were stabbed to death by Usman Khan at the event, held in central London, in November 2019. An inquest concluded key authorities had lost sight of the risk Khan posed. Khan - who had gone to prison for plotting to set up a terrorist training camp - was a guest at the prisoner education event, held by Learning Together. However, Saskia, who had been a volunteer for the programme, wasn't told about his background before she sat down at his table and started chatting with him... the jury in the Fishmongers' Hall inquest concluded that the agencies responsible for managing him had been "blinded" by his "poster boy image". The Cambridge University Learning Together programme teaches university students and student prisoners side-by-side and Khan became one of their students in prison. Learning Together, among others, saw him as a success story. They put him on their promo leaflets and gave him a computer... Khan had been monitored in the community by the probation service, the police and MI5. They allowed him to go to Fishmongers' Hall that day without a police escort"