NESTED! Chicken hypnotism, bell pigeons, fuck the bread, disposable code

Hello, hello. Hope everyone's doing well! Summer is here. Here's some things to look at while we collectively resist urges to come back to a normal social world:

Wikipedia is the best website

• A timeline of the far future. (“180 million years from now: due to the gradual slowing down of Earth's rotation, a day on Earth will be one hour longer than it is today”, which would be a very welcome change. Too bad the article also says humanity has a 95% chance of being extinct in 10,000 years.)
• Chicken hypnotism, need I say anything more than the title?
• Lactucarium is the sap coming from some species of lettuce, and is also known as “lettuce opium” — it can be made into a solid and smoked to cause slight drowsiness.
  • Unrelated but Pycnandra acuminata has a lush blue sap because it absorbs nickel.
• Kuai Kuai culture is a phenomenon in Taiwan where workers put packets of the snack Kuai Kuai on top of machines to ensure they will run smoothly and without errors. Sysadmins, for example, would put these in server rooms to bless the machines.
• A full article on the history of the myth that we only use 10% of our brains.
• Ennigaldi-Nanna could be the first museum to have ever existed, in the Neo-Babylonian empire, dating from circa 530 BCE. Some contents were found, complete with (clay) labels describing the artifacts in three languages.
• Some people are writing a Middle English version of Wikipedia.
• Creme Puff is the oldest cat ever recorded, dying at 38 years old. Its owner also owned another cat that lived to be 34. His secret? Every two days, Creme Puff received "an eyedropper full of red wine", which Perry said "[circulated] the arteries."

The Tory party rn

Mundanely interesting

• Fuck the bread. The bread is over.
• In the 1970s, Bhutan produced tiny playable records that doubled as postage stamps.
• When an adult learns a new language, it's one brain, two systems; but babies who hear and learn both languages from the start when organising complex thoughts.
• The legendary bell at the beginning of Metallica's For Whom The Bell Tolls wasn't actually a bell, but an anvil being hit with a hammer. (Which somehow sounds more metal.) AC/DC did it a different way: “A one-ton cast bronze bell, made by John Taylor Bellfounders in Loughborough, Leicestershire, was used on the track Hell's Bells. It is a replica of the 4-ton Denison Bell in the Carillon Tower at the Loughborough War Museum. The band first attempted to record the actual Denison Bell, but that proved problematic due to disruptions by pigeons nesting in the tower.”
• The Zeigarnik effect is an effect in psychology which explains why we're more engaged in things that are incomplete, than things who are complete. This is the effect that explains why cliffhangers work so well in TV shows.
• The mystery of John Titor, a time traveler who visited us in the early 2000s.
• Amazing story: The real Lord of the Flies: what happened when six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months.
• I hate this article out of principle, but I haven't tried it yet: apparently, you can start pasta in cold water, and not be a monster. Scusa, italians.

Everything is depressing

• A very detailed longread about QAnon and conspiracy theories in America, and how we're only seeing the beginning of them.
  • Even hospitals around the world are being targeted by conspiracy theorists.
• Wear masks. A new study claims that if 80% of people would wear masks, infections would plummet.
• Carbon dioxide emissions have only reduced by 6% since the world went on lockdown. It's a lot, if you consider that this is the biggest drop in almost a century, but it may be surprising why it hasn't changed more, given that nobody's really been flying or driving. But it's not really surprising if you remember that most carbon emissions come from other structural things like the energy industry, manufacturing, food production and so on.
  • It certainly doesn't mean that it's pointless to stop driving or flying — these are key, and contribute to other elements of pollution that aren't just CO2 — but it's a powerful reminder that the constant pressure on individual action against climate change really isn't much against the political change needed to transform other industries.
• A great recap of what we know with coronavirus risks: know them and avoid them.

In my ears

• Owen Pallett - A Bloody Morning (chamber pop / canada / 2020)
• Los Bitchos - Pista (Great Start) (psych surf cumbia / uk / 2019)
• Yelle - Je t'aime encore (pop / france / 2020)
• Yaeji - Passionfruit (house / US-korea / 2017)
• Charli XCX & Kim Petras - Better Off Alone x Unlock It (DJ Victor Borge mashup) (future pop / US / 2020)
• Caribou - Never Come Back (Four Tet Remix) (house / uk / 2020)
• Cub Sport - Drive (pop / australia / 2020)

Work! Design! Tech!

• Write disposable code, not reusable code.
  • Complexity has to live somewhere.
• The issue with recording legal names in a system, and what your responsibilities are as a system designer.
• A nice collection of tips for great written communication when working remotely (and why it matters).
• How to write accomplishments on your CV.

It's a shorter one than usual, but I've had a busy month. And it's oh so warm outside.

Take care and wear masks,

Victor