111 - Going up (and down)! ↕️🏢↕️
Hey there, !
It’s nearly the end of lockdown down here in Melbourne - woohoo! There’s no greater feeling than being able to get outta the house again and crave going home again as soon as possible <3.
Anyway - hope you’re doing well. I found this link a while ago, and recently on a re-visit of my loooong link list, I decided to dive into it, because why not?
Fair warning, it’s a wikipedia about Elevators. I have thought so little about elevators my whole life I didn’t even know you could write 844 different wiki articles on it. I remember once thinking about the optimal algorithm for an elevator to bring people up and down a building, and then I promptly stopped caring because let’s face it, who would?
Instead, it’s time to find out some fun things about elevators!
Did you know…
-
Naming Conventions: The ‘North American’ scheme of elevator naming conventions is to start with ‘1’ as the ground floor, whereas the ‘European’ scheme is to have the first floor be ‘1’ (logical), and the ground floor be either ‘0’, ‘G’, ‘☆‘ or ‘E’ (in Germany). In some places, floors below ground are denoted with ‘-‘ (minus) symbols, while others have varying levels of ‘LB’ (lower basement), ‘UB’ (upper basement), ‘SG’ (sub-basement), ‘LG’ (lower ground floor) and ‘UG’ (upper ground floor).
-
Unlucky Floor numbers: These are mainly enforced in Asian countries. China and Hong Kong omit any numbers which include the number ‘4‘ everywhere they can in a building (including 40 - 49) - because ‘4’ is a homophone for ‘death’. In Japan, a number of places who use Mitsubishi elevators omit ‘9’, which sounds like ‘cry’ (apparaently). The number ‘13‘ is omitted in a number of Western countries around the world - either being replaced by ‘12A’, ‘12B’ or ‘14’. In Latin countries (mainly the Spanish colonised ones), the number ‘17‘ is omitted as it is the “number of disgrace” (I couldn’t find out why - can anyone help me with this?).
-
Pet mode: In Japan, Fujitec elevators have a button called ‘pet mode’ which will indicate ‘PET ON BOARD’ to people who are waiting on other floors for that elevator, and then allow the occupants of the lift to go straight to their destination. Surely this is taken advantage of at every opportunity?! I’d probably get a pet just to use the elevator more smoothly…
-
Sabbath service: In areas / countries with higher Jewish populations, some elevators have been outfitted with ‘Sabbath mode’ - the floor buttons either do not exist, or are all disabled and will not function on the Sabbath to prevent violations of prohibitions relating to operating devices / doing ‘work’ on the Sabbath. This mode makes it so that the elevator will stop on every single floor - Jewish people thus do not have to press any buttons to get to their destination. Bonus fact: There is a set of glass elevators in Apple Store Ginza, Tokyo which is considered a Sabbath Elevator because it doesn’t have floor buttons and stops at all floors automatically.
-
Earthquake emergency return: Parks the elevator at the closest floor and stays open to facilitate emergency evacuation. This was first introduced by Hitachi in Japanese elevators on Jan 25, 2007! I would have thought these would have been implemented way earlier…
-
Spiral escalators: The exclusive provider of spiral escalators in the world is Mitsubishi, who created their first spiral escalator in 1985. They are still the only manufacturer of spiral escalators in the world. I have literally never noticed one before but now I really want to check one out once we can travel again (most of them are in Japan (duh) but also China!).
Aaaand back to not caring about elevators for a really long time.
Chat soon :)
Let me know if you have any feedback for the newsletter!
✔️Real Life Recommendations
-
How do you live? - by Genzaburo Yoshino (in 1937!), translated to English by Bruno Navasky, and gifted to me by a dear friend for my birthday. It’s one of those thought-provoking mindful reads that help you think about life and stuff, which I usually get bored by quickly (usually because it’s got contrived dialogue to make the insights more interesting) but this one was very pleasant to read and not overly preachy. Interspersed between the narrative of a young boy (Copper) trying to get through life at school after his father’s death, his uncle writes in a diary for him to read based on the conversations and life challenges that Copper is going through (okay, so this is kind of a contrived part but it’s fine - it was written in the 1930’s!). I really enjoyed the simple plot and succinct, thoughtful ideas wrapped up in this story. Definitely one to seek out - Studio Ghibli is making a movie based on it too!
-
Tian38 - a new age fusion Asian restaurant. Before lockdown, I went to this place a few times and it was pretty good each time I was there. They definitely took some liberties with Asian food and fused it with…other stuff. Like, mushroom truffle fried rice, or Angus beef hor fun, or Singapore Chilli Crab jaffles. Really interesting flavours and I think it’s worth going at least once. The only thing I’ll say is that the cost/quantity ratio isn’t super great - you might have to order a few more dishes to feel full but that just means more flavours :D
🚌 Adventures on the Information Super-Highway
-
When algorithms surprise us - smart computers game the system, one finding out how Kirk solved the Kobayashi Maru test…
Another algorithm was supposed to minimize the difference between its own answers and the correct answers. It found where the answers were stored and deleted them, so it would get a perfect score.
And my favourite one - how to sort a list:
…[T]here was an algorithm that was supposed to sort a list of numbers. Instead, it learned to delete the list, so that it was no longer technically unsorted.
-
Documenting the Last Pay Phones in America - things stop being used, but the physical remains stay behind. What happens to them? Do people still use them? Also in this piece - what do you collect? What do you obsess over? What do you know about in the world that no-one else does?
-
The mind-bending math behind Spot It!, the beloved family card game - how do you generate a 55 card deck, with 8 symbols per card, that only share ONE symbol with each each and every other card? How many symbols do you need? Wonderfully quaint article about how maths leads to everyday things.