Tech Brew Ride Home - Introducing the Kottke Ride Home

Episode Date: August 23, 2020

Subscribe in Apple Podcasts Subscribe in Google Podcasts Subscribe On Spotify Or search Kottke Ride Home on your podcast app of choice Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. everybody, Brian here. This is not a weekend bonus episode so much as this is a feed drop. Allow me to introduce you to the latest ride home podcast, the Kotki Ride Home. Let me explain, because this one has a bit of a backstory. Remember at the beginning of the lockdown when actually

about a week before lockdowns actually started, we launched the coronavirus morning report? Yeah, that was just us trying to give people a resource to stay on top of. of an exploding news story that seemed to change by the hour. And we figured that's what we're good at, right? Staying online all day and reading all the things to catch you up on what happened. Well, it actually worked out. We literally had tens of thousands of listeners 48 hours after launch, and we did nothing. We just turned it on.

At first, I was involved in writing and recording and producing that show. At the same time that I was producing the TechMeme Right Home, I would do the coronavirus podcast in the morning and the TechMeme podcast in the afternoon. I was working 20-hour days, and I was able to keep that up for about two months, but it was exhausting. Jackson Bird helped me write that show because right before a coronavirus hit, we had hired Jack to launch a new podcast for us. But with COVID suddenly being the only thing on anyone's mind, we put his podcast on the back burner, and he helped us get the coronavirus show out the door every day. When I threw up my hands and said, I can't do this anymore,

He agreed to take over hosting duties, so far so good. But the thing was, the show was gradually bleeding about a thousand listeners a week, which I understand. I mean, how long can anyone listen to a daily podcast about COVID? Also, to be quite honest, we were burning out on the topic as well. It's hard to do a show about depressing news every day, if I'm being 100% honest. So we eventually decided, F it. Let's just do the show we wanted to do with Jack in the first place. We were going to do. going to call it something like the cool stuff right home or the good news right home. And it was just going to be that. It was going to be a daily podcast about cool stuff, science stuff, stuff, stuff about breakthroughs and progress, not stories about puppies and unicorns, but stories about good ideas, like the cool stuff that pops up on hacker news every now and then, or the more erudite corners of Reddit or a particularly intelligent Instagram account, I guess. So what does a podcast like that remind you of. It reminds me of old-school link blogging, right? And just by coincidence, I had also been talking with my friend, the godfather of the link blog himself, Jason Kotke. If you're

familiar with Kotke.org at all, you know that for more than 20 years, Jason Kotke has been bringing you the coolest little nuggets from around the internet on a daily basis. So, yada, yada yada. All of this is to tell you we have joined forces with Jason Kotke. The coronavirus show is no more. It is now the newest ride home podcast, Kotki Ride Home. As I said, it's dedicated to the somewhat crazy notion in this day and age that even in this time of chaos and doom scrolling and every time you check the headlines, you want to tear your hair out, even in this time, the world is still turning. Breakthroughs are still happening. Cool things are happening. And and science and art and movies and technology and education. And this is a podcast dedicated to those things. Again, not fluffy things, not feel good things, just the latest cutting edge cool ideas that you might hear about first on this podcast every single day. So I'd love you to try it out. Again, it's called Kotkeye Ride Home. Search your podcast app and give it a subscribe. But also right now, I'm going to play you three episodes from the Kotkeye Ride Home just from like

week so you can get a real sense of what we're trying to do with this. Please enjoy a sample of the Kotki Ride Home, and if you like what you hear, why not subscribe and pair it with the TechMeme Ride Home in your daily routine. Welcome to the Kotkeye Ride Home for Friday, August 21st, 2020. I'm Jackson Bird. The 3D printed sushi restaurant that takes a DNA sample with your reservation. Why we might not remember much of our day-to-day lives. during the pandemic, the return of mouse-sized elephants, and the emerging trend of drive-thru haunted houses. Here are some of the cool things from the news today. A restaurant in Tokyo is planning to 3D print sushi, but that is not all. The 3D printed sushi is going to be

biometrically tailored to your nutritional needs. The restaurant is called sushi singularity, and it's run by a company called Open Meals who are really into strange, techy food endeavors, more on that in a minute. But the way that this particular one works is that when you make a reservation at sushi singularity, you will be given a health kit through which to submit biological samples.

On the website, it describes these as DNA, urine, and intestinal tests, but I don't think they're actually making you do all of that for, say, one visit to the restaurant. The website is laying this out as a model for the future of food, in which all people would already have established health IDs consisting of that information. The mock-up they have of the health kit looks more like it's probably just a saliva test. Quoting, My Modern Met, Biometric and DNA data gathered from these custom kits will inform a personalized nutrition infusion.

The encoded sushi, customized to each guest's nutrient needs, is then artfully produced by 3D printers and laser technology, end quote. And like I said, open meals is aiming high. wanting this to eventually be something fairly standard. Quoting again, the food fabrication machines, food operation system, and health identification employed by the cutting-edge restaurant will eventually be smaller and available to general consumers. This culinary digitization will require immense collaborative and technological efforts.

According to open meals, food must first be encoded with complex algorithms that account for texture, taste, heat, smell, etc. Then these encoded dishes must be made available online through a platform called Foodbase. Lastly, anyone wishing to create a downloadable dish must have the correct ingredients in 3D printing format. End quote. And the 3D printed sushi itself is really artfully designed.

I mean, that alone would bring a bunch of people to a restaurant, let alone the gimmick of being customized for your unique nutritional needs. Though as weird as it does sound in this moment, I don't know that I'd be super mad if this were in some way the direction we go for food. You know, there are a ton of advances being made in 3D bioprinting right now. I've talked on previous episodes about some of the initiatives to 3D bioprint meat alternatives to lessen the meat industry's impact on the environment.

And just as someone with some annoying dietary restrictions, I would be pretty excited about going into a restaurant and knowing that whatever I'm being served is guaranteed not to make me sick in any way. That would rock. But like I said, Open Meals has some other weird projects. One is called Cyberwagashi. And it uses weather data so that you can taste the weather. Watch out, Skittles.

And a few years ago at South by Southwest, they debuted a prototype of their sushi teleportation device, which basically had a chef in Tokyo making sushi that was then scanned and remade exactly by a robot arm in Austin. And both of these projects used their custom 3D3. bioprinter and their method of digitizing and categorizing elements of food. So keep an eye out on the company Open Meals. They're trying to start what they call a fifth food revolution.

And you know, parts of it just might play out. All right, so I know that it is the middle of August. But every now and then, I have brief moments where I genuinely think that it's March. Like, I forget that we've done spring and most of summer already. July 4th happened. so did Easter my birthday. Like, I know time has passed, and I have some memories of it, but not any huge standout memories. I keep thinking that those flagship events haven't happened yet this year. Some of my clearest memories of 2020 are of the quick series of trips that I took

right before lockdown began. And I know I'm not alone in this sort of off-kilter, spatial and memory confusion, but it's nevertheless reassuring to get some validation. Tim Harford recently wrote about his own experiences with this sensation in the Financial Times, how for him he especially keeps remembering the hotel rooms he stayed in on trips in the past. And he proposes that part of the reason many of our memories are blending together or not standing out right now is because many of us haven't been going anywhere. I mean, sure, we're experiencing a lot of new and hugely significant things, but we're largely staying in one place, maybe even in the exact same room. Quoting the Financial Times, the psychologist Barbara Tversky, author of Mind in

Motion, argues that our minds are built on a foundation of cognition about place, space, and movement, that creeps into our language with phrases such as built on a foundation and creeps into. Our brains started by helping us process our surroundings and the threats and opportunities they presented. Abstract thinking is an adaptation of those basic spatial capacities. This This may be why not all novelty is created alike. Our brains seem to record a new place with a particular vividness, end quote. So in Harford's case, even though he didn't do anything exciting in those hotel rooms he keeps remembering, he was in a new place for the first time, and his brain started taking it all in and committing it to memory.

Our brains use physical places to help imprint our memories. I've realized that I definitely do this. When I think back on an important conversation or realization that I once had, I often remember where I was before I recall any other details. Quoting again, No wonder champion nemonists often use the method of loci or memory palace technique, memorizing long lists of abstract information by picturing vivid images in well-defined spaces, such as the rooms of a childhood home.

This may be why when we ask people to recall pivotal moments in history, such as the fall of the Berlin Wall or the 9-11 terror attacks in Manhattan, we ask, where were you when you heard? COVID-19 may be as significant an episode as any, but it will not trigger the same sharp memories. Where were you during the pandemic? At home, for months, and without a physical change of seeing,

even new experiences all start to seem the same, end quote. I'd say this tracks. I mean, sure, we may be having big, significant conversations right now about illness, death, major life, and cultural changes, but if you're having all of those conversations via video call from the exact same place in your house, it may become more difficult to recall them. They might all blend together, which I suppose is perhaps if you care about remembering a good reason to take up journaling during this time

or take photos, document it in some way. You may be surprised by what you did or thought or said if you look back even just a couple months from now. We usually think of elephants as 10-foot-tall mammals that we're not. weigh several tons, but there is a type of elephant called the elephant shrew that weighs only a couple of pounds and could fit in the palm of your hand. While originally named after elephants just because of a long snout kind of resembling an elephant's trunk, it was later discovered that the elephant shrew actually is more closely related to elephants than to its other namesake, the mole-like shrew. And one type of elephant shrew, the Somali Senai, which is about the size of a mouse,

can race up to speeds of 20 miles an hour and uses its trunk-like nose to suck up ants, has not been seen by scientists since 1968, but was just recently rediscovered. Quoting the Guardian, in 2019 scientists set out to search for the animal following tips from the region, but not in Somalia, from where the only past reports had come, but in neighboring Djibouti. The team tapped into local knowledge and the fact that the Senghis need shepherds'all. from birds of prey to set traps in likely locations, baiting them with a concoction of peanut butter, oatmeal, and yeast. They caught a Somali sangai in the very first trap set in the dry, rocky landscape, identifying it by the tuft of fur on its tail that distinguishes it

from the other sangai species, end quote. They were able to find 12 sanguies in total and were pleased to discover that the sangays are residing in a habitat unsuitable for human development or agriculture, meaning the sanguies don't appear to be in any sort of threat of extinction, something fairly common for species that researchers lose track of. Quoting again, DNA analysis showed that the Somali sangis are most closely related to other sangis that live as far away as Morocco and South Africa. This meant they have now been placed in a new genus, Galagisca. It also meant that an animal with a territory smaller than an average-sized backyard has somehow dispersed across great distances.

over time, leaving biologists with a new Sengai evolutionary mystery to solve, end quote. The global wildlife conservation has a site dedicated to so-called lost species, ones which were previously discovered but have gone unaccounted for for years. And it's pretty cool to click through and learn about their top 25 most wanted, could make a good homeschool activity for any parents listening today. And of course, there has been other good elephant news this month with the baby boom in Kenya. MSLA National Park in Kenya saw 170 new elephant calves born this year, compared to the most recent count from 2018 of 113.

For these past two years, which is roughly the length of an elephant gestation, and why there isn't a count from 2019, the baby boom is mostly credited to the heavy rains. More rain means more vegetation to graze and less elephant deaths from dehydration. The elephant population has been on the rise for decades, however, as Kenya has been succeeding at their anti-poaching initiatives. The National Wildlife Service says Kenya has gone from 16,000 elephants in 1989 to 34,800 by the end of 2019.

Now that said, while it's very good news for elephants in Kenya, overall, the African elephant population decreased by a full third from 2007 to 2014. So this latest baby boom is definitely a step in the right direction, but it might be more of a Senai-sized step. than a full-sized elephant one. As lockdown measures continue throughout the world, I feel like each season brings a fresh wave of realizations of things we won't be able to do. I personally am still trying to figure out if there's any way for my annual sleepy hollow trip to play out safely.

But one highlight of that trip is going to a haunted house. And somehow, I just can't see an activity in a tight indoor space with lots of screaming being something that any town or company is going to want to put on this year. A few places, however, have anticipated this and have started working on drive-through haunted houses, which hopefully are not as uncomfortable seeming as the drive-through strip clubs in Portland that my friends told me about yesterday. The alleged first drive-thru haunted house on the market came from Koagara Satai, a Japanese horror events company. Quoting CNN, the Haunted House Drive-in, located in a covered parking garage in a nondescript building in downtown Tokyo, gives visitors a 360-degree front row experience that simulates being stuck in a car during a zombie outbreak.

Visitors turn off the engine and the garage shutter closes plunging the vehicle into total darkness. Drivers receive a set of Bluetooth speakers and the spooky tale begins. For the next 17 minutes, blood-soaked ghouls and zombies press up against the windows and rock the car, end quote. And the cars do get super bloody. But don't worry, the ghouls clean it up, afterwards. In fact, most of the photos online show the costumed actors cleaning the cars. And you also don't have to have a car to do it. There is a car rental package for just a bit more. And for those cars, they are lined with plastic and cleaned in between each use. This company is very serious about cleanliness and other hygiene guidelines to protect both customers and actors.

Kawagara Satai is ahead of the game on the drive-through haunted house trend globally, because while here in America we indulge in haunted houses primarily around Halloween, in Japan, it's a popular summertime activity, a way to kind of cool down on hot summer nights. But if you are not, as I imagine almost all of you listening, are not anywhere near Tokyo, there is a cool drive-thru haunted house coming up soon in Los Angeles. Netflix just announced they're doing a Stranger Things themed drive-thru haunted house starting next week on August 26th. And unlike the one in Tokyo, where you just stay in the car unmoving in a garage,

Netflix is calling this one a drive-into experience because you'll actually be driving through multiple levels of the StarCourt Mall, the secret Russian lab, and the upside down. Live scenes featuring characters from the show, although not the original actors, I don't believe, will play out at each stop along the tour. No word yet on if this will expand to other cities in the U.S. or around the world, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Netflix tends to just pick one city for these pop-up kind of events and stick to that. The good news, though, is that the Duffer Brothers said this week that Stranger Things, which halted filming during the pandemic, will not end with the upcoming season, season four. That's not actually an official confirmation, but it is a pretty good reassurance. And as for other non-stranger Things-themed drive-through haunted houses, I have seen some announced in California, Florida, Texas, and New Mexico so far. I'm sure there are plenty more already out there and even more to come.

I would keep an eye out for your favorite local haunted house because most of that are able to this year probably will be shifting to drive-thrus. And hopefully if it turns out well enough, maybe this will be something that sticks around. I kind of like the idea that I wouldn't have to worry about anyone popping up or grabbing me. You know, like you can be scared and creeped out, but still safe behind some glass. I'm into that. Before I go today, I just want to send a big thank you to all of our new listeners who came from Kotke.org. I've been super stoked about this new partnership, and I hope you have all been enjoying the show so far. And of course, thank you to everyone who has been listening for the many months before this as well.

It's been great having an outlet to share all of the interesting things that I come across every day with like-minded, curious people. So thank you for sticking around. And with that, I am off to go send my DNA to my local sushi restaurant and see if they'll make me some personalized sashimi. I hope that you have a good weekend whatever you're doing, and I will talk to you on Monday. Welcome to the cocky ride home for Wednesday, August 19th, 2020. I'm Jackson Bird. Did you know that we have two different measurements for feet in the U.S.? Like the 12 inches on a ruler? There are two different versions, but not for long. Some good news regarding the prospects for a COVID-19 vaccine, a new Girl Scout cookie,

and why the cookies seem to vary from state to state. And a Swiss town that got a very delicious surprise snowstorm last week. Here are some of the cool things from the news today. All right, so we all know that the imperial system is a mess compared to the metric. And technically, here in the U.S. we use U.S. customary units, which are similar to the British imperial system and that both have things like yards, pounds, and gallons, but at least historically, the size of each of those measurements was slightly different in the two systems.

In the 1960s, the UK and the U.S. agreed to make their yards and pounds the same by scaling them against the meter and kilogram. This change didn't make too much of a difference for the U.K., but the U.S. customary units varied enough that we were left with two distinct systems for linear measurement within the U.S. customary unit system. the international system and the U.S. Surveyor's System. Now, practically, this hasn't meant much for most people. I mean, you might not even be aware that there are technically two different measurements for feet, like a foot, you know, 12 inches. We have two different standards here in the U.S., and they differ by about one hundredth of a foot,

or 0.1262 inches, per mile. So it's not all that much, but over long lengths, it does add up. Over a million feet, there would be a difference of two whole feet. And one group of people who really have to be concerned with this? Surveyers. Quoting the New York Times, most states mandate the use of the old U.S. survey foot for their state coordinate systems, which allow surveyors to take into account Earth's curvature in their measurements.

A few states mandate the use of the new international foot. A handful do not specify which of the two feet should be used. Arizona, for example, is an international foot state, but when employees with the Federal Aviation Administration or the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers or the Park Service measure there, they use the U.S. survey foot. Other problems crop up when surveyors measure from one state to the next, unaware that the two states use different feats. In some cases, large projects employ international surveying firms whose employees are unaware that America has two feet. Some surveying computer software will not recognize the existence of two feet and even hand calculators usually default to the international.

foot." End quote. Michael L. Dennis, an Arizona-based surveyor and geodesist with the National Geodetic Survey, has had to put up with this confusion and errors for years. Recently, he decided to suggest retiring the U.S. survey foot and going to a one-foot-only system. He and his colleagues at the National Geodetic Survey were already working on recalibrating the coordinates of the National Spatial Reference System, so the timing seemed right to make a small but radical proposal. Despite a little bit of grumbling about patriotism and history, it was ultimately well received, and as of January 1st, 2003, the U.S. survey foot will be no longer. According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, we will only have the international foot.

Or really, since there will only be one, just the foot. This story was a quick link on cocky.org today that I wanted to dive into a little bit deeper, and it is good news for the prospect of an effective COVID-19 vaccine. The TLDR is that scientists studying the immune response to SARS-CoV-2 have been unsurprised by their findings. It's all been fairly predictable, which bodes well for how effective and long-lasting a vaccine might be. Quoting nature.com, long-term immunity can vary by type and also by degree of response. Vaccine developers often hope to elicit what's known as sterilized, sterilizing immunity, a response typically mediated by antibodies that can rapidly prevent a

returning virus from gaining ground in the body. But not all vaccines or infections elicit the neutralizing antibodies required for sterilizing immunity. HIV, for example, rarely induces neutralizing antibodies, a fact that has complicated efforts to develop vaccines against it. The signs so far for SARS-CoV-2 are encouraging. Several teams of researchers were quick to isolate neutralizing antibodies from people infected with the virus. Most could mount such an antibody response within days of testing positive, and several vaccine candidates against SARS-CoV-2 provoke a strong antibody response, a positive sign that the vaccines might generate immunity, end quote.

But one caveat is that antibody responses are usually the highest in people with the severest and most long-term infections. And since most people with COVID-19 had or have more mild cases, they may be producing smaller amounts of the neutralizing antibody. Quoting again, this pattern is often seen with viruses. The longer, more severe infections are more likely to produce strong, durable responses. This is one reason that common cold coronaviruses sometimes don't yield long-lasting immunity,

says Shane Crotty, a virologist at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology in California, end quote. As for how long immunity may last, you probably heard a lot of the headlines about it, only lasting for about three months. This was because one study showed that the number of antibodies peaked a few days after the onset of symptoms and were barely there after three months. But immunologists say the media response kind of blew it down a proportion in a negative way. Quote, the data showed a perfectly normal response to a viral infection, says Luis Barrero at the University of Chicago in Illinois, who studies the evolution of immune responses

to pathogens. When a virus attacks, it spurs the proliferation of B cells that produce antibody, capable of recognizing pieces of the virus. But once the infection is gone, antibody levels typically wane. There's a lot of fear out there, says Miles Carroll, an infectious disease specialist

with Public Health England and Portn Down UK. But I think on the whole that it's a fairly robust immune response, end quote. And even if the antibodies do dwindle to super low levels, there are other possibilities. One is memory B cells,

which stay in the bone marrow and then become antibody producing plasma cells when the virus returns. And whether this is applicable for COVID-19 is still being studied. The other possibility is T-cells, recognizing and destroying virally infected cells. Studies so far show strong T-cell responses in people recovering from COVID-19. And an interesting finding along those lines, quote, one team recently reported that some of these T-cells react not only to SARS-CoV-2,

but also to some common cold coronaviruses. The results suggest that there may be some lasting cross-immunity between these cold coronavirus, viruses and SARS-CoV-2, leading to speculation that this could be responsible in part for the wild differences in severity of COVID-19 symptoms between individuals, end quote. Overall, a lot remains to be seen, but the straightforward, unsurprising results, at least when it comes to studying immune response so far, are definitely a cause for cautious optimism. And even if a sterilization vaccine can't be achieved, one which would lessen the symptoms and drastically reduce mortality would be a game changer.

And now for some very good news, there's a new Girl Scout cookie coming out. It's called the Toast Ye. So you can't not be excited by something with Yay in the title. The Toast Yeh, a French toast-inspired cookie. It's a bread-shaped cookie, lightly cinnamon-flavored with the Girl Scout logo on one side and dipped in icing on the other. It won't be debuting until cookie season officially kicks off. in January, however, and depending where you live, cookie season might be at a slightly different time.

Girl Scout cookies, well, universally beloved, it turns out carry quite a bit of mystery to them, especially when it comes to timing and just what to expect in the cookies. If you live in the United States and you've ever moved across state lines, or, well, these days I suppose even just encountered people from different regions on the internet, you may have discovered that Girl Scout cookies aren't called the same things everywhere. Sure, thin mints are always thin mints, but in some places a caramel delight is a Samoa, and a peanut butter patty is a tag-along. Many of the cookies don't just have different names. They also have slightly different taste and appearances, too. That's because the Girl Scouts of the USA actually have two different suppliers of Girl Scout cookies, ABC bakers and Little Brown bakers.

The thing is, though, it's not like ABC supplies the cookies for all of the West and Little Brown for all of the East. It's totally mixed up. Several states even have a different supplier depending where in the state you are. And this is because it varies by Girl Scout Council, not any definitive supply lines. For example, I grew up in Texas eating caramel delights and shortbread cookies, and then I moved to New York and everyone was talking to me about Samoas and trefoils. At first, I thought that the names had changed since I was a kid, but when I discovered the two different suppliers thing,

I naturally assumed it was in East versus West or North versus South, regional kind of divide, but it turns out the divide was much closer to home than I ever realized. I grew up in a town called Great Vine, Texas, and if you have ever had a layover at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, you've been to my hometown. Because that's just it. My hometown is right in between Dallas and Fort Worth, so it plays host to the airport, along with three other cities that are neither Dallas nor Fort Worth. Well, I found this awesome map that the LA Times put together several years ago, and which used to be interactive but has sadly broken down, and I discovered that the region surrounding Fort Worth, Texas is served by ABC Bakers, while a little pocket around

Dallas is served by Little Brown. And my hometown apparently just made the cut for ABC. If I had ever gone one town over to buy from a different troop, I would have been eating completely different cookies. Because like I said, it's not just the names. A few of the cookies really are quite different. ABC thinments are more decorative, mintier, and crunchier, while little brown ones have a lot more chocolate and a plain non-decorative coating. Peanut butter sandwiches from ABC are more crisp than crunchy, while their equivalent docy doze from Little Brown are crunchier and more buttery. Buttery richer tastes and darker chocolate seems to be a theme from Little Brown. Now the differences get really stark on some of the newer cookies, though. ABC's Smoors cookies are

actually coated in chocolate, while Little Brown's s'mores are a sandwich cookie. And meanwhile, lemonade from ABC are a big shortbread cookie, while the little brown ones are this little sugar-coated half-moon. As for the new Toast Yeas cookie that was announced today, so far, toast yeas are only being released by ABC Bakers. Now, I don't think this means they won't ever be coming out from Little Brown. Maybe they just can't release the info on that yet, but right now it is select markets only. The Girl Scouts do seem to favor ABC. When you look at their cookie lineup and nutritional info on their official website, it all links solely to the ABC version of each cookie. But the good news is that even if the toast yeas don't get a little brown equivalent and

therefore aren't on offer from your local troop, the Girl Scouts have opened up cookie ordering to online orders. So presumably you'd be able to order some online no matter where you live, and as of this past cookie season, you are also able to order cookies to donate to first responders, volunteers, and local causes. If I told you that a town was being pelted with chocolate snow in 2020, your jaded and skeptical mind would probably think that I meant a more nightmarish gross version of yellow snow. But no, 2020 has finally done something right. The Swiss town of Olten woke up Friday morning to winds carrying a fine dust of chocolate all over town.

The chocolate came from nibs or fragments of crushed cocoa beans that had been released through a, quote, minor defect in the cooling ventilation at the Lind and Sprungley Chocolate Company. The factory in Olten, which is between Zurich and Basel, says the ventilation system has now been repaired and they've offered to pay for any cleaning services to cars that became dusted with the chocolate powder. Australian reporter Jason Ome on Twitter said, quote, 2020 is just plain weird, but on the upside, it's snowing chocolate and not frogs, end quote. And I got to agree. I know it's going to be a little messy to clean up, but this is something straight out of a fairy tale.

That is all for today. This show was produced by Ride Home Media and cocky.org. I am going to go dig some leftover Girl Scout cookies out of the back in my freezer. I hope you all have a good rest of your day, and I'll talk to you to my mom. tomorrow. Welcome to the Kotke Ride Home for Tuesday, August 18th, 2020. I'm Jackson Bird. Yes, we are the Kotke Ride Home Now. If you want more info on the name change, you can listen to yesterday's episode. But for today, we are debunking some misconceptions about women's suffrage on the 100th anniversary of American women gaining the right to vote, and also busting the myth of the lost colony.

Facebook and NYU are trying to make MRIs better for patients using artificial intelligence, and a website that will replicate the white noise of your office. Here are some of the cool things from the news today. While medical discoveries and technologies are always evolving, those innovations don't always trickle down to the experience of the patient. One example, MRIs. While the technology has advanced over the years for a patient, undergoing an MRI, you still have to stay perfectly still in an intimidating tube for 20 minutes to over an hour.

Well, scientists are trying to change that by using artificial intelligence to speed up the process. Quoting the Verge, the work is a collaborative project called Fast MRI between Facebook's AI research team or Fair and radiologists at NYU Langone Health. Together, the scientists trained a machine learning model on pairs of low resolution and and high-resolution MRI scans, using this model to predict what final MRI scans look like just from a quarter of the usual input data. That means scans can be done faster, meaning less hassle for patients, and quicker diagnoses. The reason artificial intelligence can be used to produce the same scans from less data is that the neural network has essentially learned an abstract idea of what a medical

scan looks like by examining the training data. It then uses this to make a prediction about the final output. Think of it like an architect who's designed lots of banks over the years. They have an abstract idea of what a bank looks like and so they can create a final blueprint faster, end quote. The technology has been in development for years, but the fast MRI team is now publishing the results of an initial study in which they found that radiologists made the exact same assessments using traditional MRI scans and AI scans, which is of course crucial for proving

the reliability of this model. And the best news? they think it can be incorporated into hospitals fairly quickly because the training data and model are open access and don't require any new hardware to incorporate into existing scanners. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Corinne Schmuli, who heads the MRI research team at University College London and is not a part of the fast MRI team, told the verge that we are going to be seeing a lot more AI in medical imaging in the future. Today marks 100 years since the ratification of the 19th Amendment of the United States Constitution granting women the right to vote. At least some women, in theory. To mark this anniversary, I thought that it would be appropriate to dive into some of the myths surrounding women's

suffrage here in the U.S. beginning with the idea that the 19th Amendment really did give all women access to voting. So because the original Constitution doesn't actually mean mention voting, and the 19th Amendment, as well as the 15th, just say what states can't do with regards to voting. That is, not deny or abridge the right to vote to citizens on the basis of sex, that's the 19th Amendment, or race, color, or previous servitude, the 15th. That meant that states got creative in how they could prevent people, namely women and people of color, from voting. Methods that didn't explicitly prohibit them on the basis of sex or were race, but sure as heck made it harder for people from those populations. These methods included

literacy tests, poll taxes, and quoting time. Violence and intimidation, especially lynchings, also kept people away from the polls. Some registrars even flat out refused to process the papers or handed black women a blank sheet of paper. The same methods of disenfranchisement also held back Latinas from voting in the South, and at the time laws like the Chinese Exclusion Act of 18, and the Immigration Acts of 1917 and 1924 blocked Asian immigrants from citizenship and therefore from voting. And even though Native American voting rights activist Gertrude Simmons-Bahn, also known as Zitkala Sa, lobbied for the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, which allowed more Native Americans to vote, some Western states didn't grant Native Americans the right to vote until 1948, Arizona and New Mexico, and 1957, Utah. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 would eliminate many of the obstacles women of color faced voting,

but the Supreme Court in 2013 invalidated part of the law's federal oversight of state obstacles to voting rights. Voting rights activists and policymakers continue to call for updates to strengthen it, end quote. But the thing is, while there were so many women who still couldn't vote after the amendment was ratified in 1920, there were actually plenty who could vote before 1920. 18 U.S. states allowed women, white and black, to vote in all elections before 1920, and another 22 states allowed women to vote in some elections, but not all. The Wyoming Territory was the first to pass women's suffrage all the way back in 1869. This decision actually threatened their chances of statehood,

but Wyoming Territory officials told the U.S. Congress, quote, We will remain out of the union 100 years rather than come in without the women. quote. You know, despite many of our whitewashed machismo tales of the West, it was actually an incredibly diverse and progressive place in many ways. Plenty of black people, immigrants, and queer people found solace and relative freedom in the open lands and lack of dense urban social pressures. So it's not entirely surprising that several states and territories in the West fought for and achieved women's suffrage 50 years before the nation as a whole. And women in the West weren't just voting, they were running for office.

Before 1920, over 3,500 women had run for political office, many of them from Western states and territories. Over 750 women were elected to public office before 1912 in Kansas alone. It is also important to note that women often voted as active members of their communities in the colonies prior to. to the American Revolution. And of course, indigenous women had political power in their nations for centuries. Sally Roche Wagner, historian and editor of the 2019 anthology, the Women's Suffrage Movement, told time, quote, women's rights is not a new concept on this land. It's a very, very old one.

And the clan mothers of the six nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, the Hadnasani women, have had political voice for a thousand years, end quote. Indigenous women, black women, and other women of color played key roles in the suffragette movement even if they aren't celebrated or acknowledged in many of our mainstream histories. Quoting Time, As historian Martha S. Jones told Time recently,

Black suffragists and other women of color were not always at or even invited to white suffragists' events. So finding their stories requires researching the events they held instead. Many of them were not even cataloged as relating to the suffrage movement. Many suffragists of color were left out of what's long been considered the definitive history of the 19th century movement, the six-volume series called History of Woman Suffrage. Published between 1881 and 1922 and spanning more than 5,700 pages, it features profiles of women who paid for their portraits to be in the book. End quote. Yeah, suffragists like Susan B. Anthony literally paid to be included in the text we've mainly relied on for the last.

century. So if you want to learn more about the crucial roles played by women of color in the suffragette movement, the New York Times has a great visual history of the movement on their site today, and the staff writers behind that piece also put together an illustrated book out today called Finish the Fight, the Brave and Revolutionary Women who fought for the right to vote. And there's actually a theatrical adaptation of that book premiering on the New York Times' YouTube channel at 7 p.m. Eastern Tonight. It features Zitkalasa, as well as Mabel Ping Hua Li, a Chinese suffragist, Kovita Idar, a journalist and activist who fought on behalf of Mexican Americans and women,

and Francis Ellen Watkins Harper, an African American abolitionist who helped to establish the National Association of Colored Women. And the last point, I will add, is that women's suffrage was not just about gaining the right to vote, that rather, quoting the New York Times, a fundamental reimagining of the roles of women in American society, not as dependence of men, but as full citizens, end quote. On some related issues that they fought for included dress reform, control over one's body, rights and protections for people of their race and background,

and for many temperance, because abuse of alcohol was seen as a primary cause of domestic violence. So we have a lot to thank them for, quoting the New York Times, 100 years after millions of American women cast their first ballots, 26 women are serving in the Senate, another 101 are representatives in the House, women are governors of nine states as well as the territories of Puerto Rico and Guam, four serve as congressional delegates for American Samoa, the Virgin Islands, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. There is still progress to be made, but all of this would be unimaginable if women had not won the vote.

End quote. You may be familiar with the legend of the Lost Colony, the hundred-some-odd English colonists left in Roanoke in 1587, and who seemingly disappeared, with the only trace of evidence being the word Croatouin carved into one of their abandoned structures. Well, researcher Scott Dawson believes that he has solved the mystery, and that the whole thing was blown out of proportion from the beginning.

Using the original writings of the Lost Colonies governor, John White, who returned to England for more supplies, just days after arriving in Roanoke and then returned three years later to find the colonists, including his own family, gone. As well as the addition of thousands of artifacts uncovered on Croatohan Island, now called Hatteras Island, Dawson has written a new book called The Lost Colony and Hatteras Island, in which he outlines his stance that, quote, they were never lost, it was made up, the mystery is over, end quote. Dawson points out that the colonists literally left White a sign, as they had previously discussed together. Before he left, they decided that if the

colonists needed to relocate, they should leave a record somewhere of where they went, and if they went under duress, they should leave a cross under the name of the location. In two places, the colonists wrote Croatowen, the name of the neighboring Native American nation, and neither of them included a cross. So why was there ever a mystery in the first place? Well, John White wasn't actually able to ever verify that they did indeed relocate to Hatteras Island with the Croatowans, or that they survived there if they did. When he returned to Roanoke three years later and saw the signs that they had left, he wasn't able to make it over to Croatone Island. A snapped anchor cable, bad weather, and a slew of other issues prevented him from sailing to the

island to investigate before having to return to England. But Dawson and the archaeological teams he's worked with over the years believe they've found mounting evidence that the colonists and the Crootoans lived amicably side by side for years. Quoting the Virginia pilot, the evidence shows the colony left Roanoke Island with the friendly Croatowans to settle on Hatteras Island. They thrived, ate well, had mixed families, and endured for generations. More than a century later, explorer John Lawson found natives with blue eyes who recounted they had ancestors who could speak out of a book, Lawson wrote. The two cultures adapted English earrings into fishhooks and gun barrels into sharp-ended tubes to tap tar from trees.

The archaeologists also found round post holes where Indians built their longhouses 25 feet to 60 feet long, and they uncovered square post holes made by English during the same period. They were in the Indian village surrounded by longhouses, Dawson said. Bones of turtle, wild fowl, and deer bones indicate good eating. Pigs' teeth turn up for generations. They never had to eat the last pig, Dawson said, end quote. The Croatowans and the colonists did seem to have a good relationship, bound by a distrust of another tribe, the Secatans, who had previously enslaved the Croatollins and also killed one of the colonists. Although, to be fair, in classic colonizer behavior, the English had killed the Secautan chief and burned a Seqatan village.

Still, the Croatowans helped them with those acts, and it seems wanted to keep the colonists safe from the Seqatans when the Governor White left, which may be why they allowed them to live in their village. on the island with them. In explaining his theory, Dawson says, quote, you're robbing an entire nation of people of their history by pretending Croatowan is a mystery on a tree. These were a people that mattered a lot. End quote. If you used to work in an office and are still working remotely, you've probably identified various pros and cons for you personally. You know, maybe you enjoy the freedom, but miss seeing people other than those you live with every day. Maybe you miss some of the office amenities that your house lacks, like free printing. Or maybe you just missed the general vibe of the office. If that last one resonates with you in any way, you may be interested in

the website Sound of Colleagues, which replicates the background noise of an office, complete with keyboards clacking, phones ringing, the coffee pot gurgling, and more. Each sound can be turned up or down or off entirely, like maybe you don't want an open window or an office dog, but maybe you really do want to hear the room tone. It sounds a little ridiculous, but trust me, when you turn it on, it is strangely calming, not a bit wistful. Sound of Colleagues is a product of sound designers' Red Pipe Studio and Design and Communications Company, Familigen, which is Swedish.

You can also listen as a 10-track album they produced on Spotify, which themes songs by era, like the 90s or the 60s, by type of office. like small office next to a lush garden, and by experience, like, annoying colleague and a surprised reaction. But the recorded Spotify version does lack the ability to customize each isolated sound. So while it's pretty interesting, it's not as effective as background noise. It's a bit more overbearing versus the comparatively gentle website. And going along with the joke of using this site to recreate an authentic office experience,

Reddit user diff calculus offered to send people emails throughout the day with quick question in the subject line and a deep, difficult conflict in the email body. The offer made me laugh, but sadly that is one part of the office experience that is still around and has maybe even gotten worse. But if you are getting too many quick question emails or just need to chill out and focus for any other reason, check out soundofcolleagues.com. That is all for today. This show was produced by Ride Home Media and cocky.org. I am Jackson Bird. I hope you all have a good rest of your day, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.