Hello! Welcome to the 64th edition of Kat’s Kable. Wow, it’s nearly been a year since this all started. I can start writing Kat’s Kable estd. 2016 in a while. Done with the vanity for now, here goes this week’s list.
- My déjà vu is so extreme I can’t tell what’s real any more - Great Mosaic piece (everything they put out is so good!) about a brain tumour casualty who now has persistent déjà vu. Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? It must be terrible to live with.
- Inside the Mansion–and Mind–of the Net’s Most Wanted Man - Fun and entertaining profile of Kim Dotcom, the balloon-sized person who a lot of people think is a goon. Look at his house!
- Albania’s Bunker Problem - While we’re on the topic of mansions, let’s talk of the communist-era bunkers in Albania. They thought themselves important enough to be considered for invasion but that never happened. How there are at least 1,50,000 bunkers in the country and clearly, this is a problem. (They could’ve perhaps shot Star Wars here)
- Why We Lie: The Science Behind Our Deceptive Ways - Another very nice National Geographic feature on why we lie.
- How He Used Facebook to Win - Say what you will about Donald Trump’s election being powered by Russian funds and hackers. One point that should stand uncontested is that his marketing and publicity team made amazing use of the perfectly legal marketing tools offered by Facebook to offer personalised advertisements and persuasions to a large number of voters whose opinions could be swayed. Also, much more entertaining - Trump, Our A.I. President.
- The Audacious Pilot who Landed in Red Square - A teenager in 1987 hired a plane from his local flying club in Germany and proceeded to fly through Finland into Russia, all the way to Moscow. This is a story of great bravery and also audacity. He just wanted some peace. You can get a piece of it if you read this story.
- The Journalist-Engineer - A very nice read on why journalists will find that it serves them well to know how to code. A lot of the good pieces of journalism one finds online currently have visualisations of data that you can obtain only if you code. I can’t include any of the wonderful examples in the article because they’re all animated and glorious. And if any of you have never visited www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful, do it. You’re welcome for a wonderful Sunday.
- Who Names Diseases? - Disease naming usually happens in the initial stages of the outbreak, which means that it is not given much thought. WHO came up with some conventions (who, you ask) on how to name diseases so they are accurate and reflective of the symptoms, and also not scary.
The WHO wanted place information removed from disease names on the grounds that it was often misleading, and always unhelpful. ‘No country controls where a disease emerges,’ a WHO spokesperson told me. ‘Shaming does no good whatsoever.’ This might be true in a globalised industry increasingly dominated by large, multinational corporations. But geographical labels still contain useful information, and replacing them with biomedical ones relieves all countries of taking responsibility for a problem they helped to create. It probably isn’t a coincidence that both H5N1 bird flu and the human disease severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) emerged in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong at a time when its farming sector was undergoing major changes, including the intensification of poultry farming. - One More Thing; Inside Apple’s Insanely Great (or Just Insane) Mothership - I’m just leaving a picture here.
- The Rise and Fall of Toronto’s Classiest Con Man - James Regan swindled a countless number of people and may finally be brought to a grinding halt. He is termed “sociopathically fearless”. Scary.
He would go to car dealerships and enter into purchase agreements, then ask for a service car while the paperwork went through. That dodge could get Regan a free ride for a week. There’s no evidence that his consultancy and mediation firm is anything more than a business card. The only legitimate sources of income I can confirm are the Basic Needs social assistance allowance Regan receives from the City of Toronto, and his federal pension, which together add up to $434.90 per month. He once wrote to Service Canada saying that his pension cheque had been lost in the mail. When it sent him a replacement cheque, he cashed both. But he had low-key scams, too, such as fishing letters addressed to Hudson’s Bay customers out of mailboxes; if they qualified for a discount, he’d scratch out their name, and write his in.
Done! See you Wednesday; as usual, if you have anything to say, anything you think I’ll enjoy reading, or anything else, just reply to this email. :)