LET’S BE FWENDS ISSUE #55:
IT’S EITHER THIS, OR THAT. OR SOMETHING ELSE.
“Reality continues to ruin my life.”
~ Bill Watterson
Anonymous Datasets aren’t
Ok, this will sound abstract, but it is super important: A lot of people think that it is possible to create datasets of people that are totally anonymous. They could for example contain where you are living, how old you are, and your cancer status. These sets of data are very important to scientific projects, and being able to openly publish and share them (because they don’t contain personally identifiable information) would create a number of benefits for research. These types of dataset are also very interesting for marketeers around the world.
This is a very important finding because “anonymous” datasets containing a lot of demographic attributes are abundant, and considering these findings it is highly questionable if these databases satisfy the strict privacy laws of the GDPR.
What do these countries have in common?
My guess was: Beer vs. Wine. Was I right? Click the image to find out (Spoiler: Of course I wasn’t).
Forever21 lost it. Big Time.
Delicious, yet totally unsolicited low-carb Atkins bars. Source: https://www.atkins.com/products/bars
There is a fine line between creating a great customer experience and being condescending, shame-inducing assholes.
Just kidding. Of course there isn’t. But for whatever reason Forever21 decided it would be a good idea to give a “free sample” of a low-calorie snackbar to customers who bought “plus size” clothing from them.
This is so wrong on so many levels, but for brevity I will focus on just the obvious contradiction on behalf of brand and product: If you think that people ordering “plus size” clothing are too fat, then why do make “plus size” clothing in the first place?
Why you need to touch your keys to believe they are here
Maybe you’ve seen someone doing something (or done it yourself) called the “three pat pocket check”.
Quickly checking if your three most valued possessions (wallet, phone, keys) are with you by patting the pockets you usually carry them in. I think this is very common among men, don’t know if this is true. I know I do it, even though I’m more of a visual person. And if I’m carrying something in a bag, and I’m seeing that my wallet is in it, I still reach in and touch my wallet just to make sure it is there.
Do you share this? Why do we say “seeing is believing” when in fact it appears to be touching that conveys trust?
“An important aspect of touch is often missed: touching is more psychologically reassuring than seeing. Touch does not always make us experience things better, but it certainly makes us feel better about what we experience. Even when we can see that the keys are in our bags, we are much more certain that they are once we’ve touched them.”
A machine-learned database of the current status of scientific papers
If you follow a particular field of science enough to actually read scientific papers from time to time, but not enough to keep familiar with the complete body of research on the topic, you encounter a number of pitfalls.
One is that you never know if there might be other papers that contradict the research results you found.
I imagine this might also be a real problem for scientists, simply because of the huge amount of papers published.
Abstract Aerial Art
If you look long enough (or crop hard enough, for that matter), you can find graphic geometry everywhere, even in the chaos that makes our world.
Abstract Aerial Art publish amazing drone-shot images of the earth. And if you like that kind of pictures, check out the Daily Overviewas well.
When you’re reading this it’s been a while since I wrote it, because I am on holiday. Or rather, I will be on holiday, according to my perspective, while I’m writing this. But when you read it, I will actually be on holiday right now. If I didn’t make a scheduling mistake. High-fives to temporal confusion! ⏰
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