Back in 2011 Jenny Davis wrote about some of the more troubling aspects of automated mobile assistants such as Apple’s Siri, and Microsoft’s Cortana:

• Both voice assistants, despite being digital, are very clearly set up to be female.
• Since they’ve been personified they’ve also been sexualized. Both systems come with pre-programmed responses to the sexual questions that programmers knew would inevitably be asked of them.
• The systems are designed to play subservient roles. They’re meant to be there when you need them, and to disappear when you don’t, and they’re expected to anticipate and fulfil your desires.
• The sexism and misogyny this implies is concerning.

Read more here.

Source: Cyborgology

History is riddled with mistakes and wrong turns. This can sometimes lead to war, famine, and a tribal regression to hedonistic apathy. Other times it leads to bad taco emojis according to L.A. Taco:

• There has long been a campaign to get a taco emoji on smartphone keyboards.
• Supporters of the movement point out that there are five different types of sushi emoji, yet the popular Mexican dish is nowhere to be found.
• Last year the campaign got a big boost when Taco Bell, with its fat wallet, got behind the campaign to officially recognize the taco.
• The campaign was successful and what resulted from it (pictured) makes sense. The yellow shell, green lettuce, orange cheese, and red tomato is recognizable even when the taco is shrunk down to emoji-size.
• However, while this might be what a Taco Bell taco looks like, it’s nothing like an authentic taco. A proper Mexican taco has a whitish tortilla, and contains meat, onion and cilantro. It is not meant to have a florescent orange shell, and it’s certainly not meant to include cheddar, tomato or lettuce.
• More than anything the emoji that was recognized is an incredible win for Taco Bell. Now anytime a taco emoji is used, people will immediately associate it with the Bell’s own products.
• Given that emojis seem to be the new way that people communicate this would be as if Taco Bell was able to convince Webster’s dictionary to show its products when somebody looked up Mexican food.

See what an alternate, more authentic design would look like, and read about the need for an enchilada emoji here.

Source: First We Feast

Sarah Laskow wrote about trees that have achieved some degree of fame:

• The most famous trees have specific heritages and families, and live in posh districts such as Central Park or Riverdale in New York.
• Trees might become famous if they’re really big, have a really long history, commemorate a soldier or battlefield, be planted by someone special such as a head of state, or even if they are shaped weird.
• But most famous trees aren’t just idle celebrities coasting of off their fame. Since they’re usually large and old they have different types of branches and riddled barks that provide a multitude of habitats for ecosystems to thrive.
• They’re often hard to find. Those who compile lists of the most famous trees don’t always put exact locations in order to protect them against over-zealous fans.

Read more about these trees and see some incredible photos here.

Source: Atlas Obscura

The Economist took a look at the rise of “sugar babies”:

• Today three quarters of all American graduates leave college in debt.
• This is up from the roughly half of all graduates that left with debt in 1995 – and the amount of debt carried these days is a lot higher than before.
• In contrast two thirds of those who sign up to be sugar babies – typically women who trade companionship and sex for money – leave college without debt.
• The monthly “rate” for a sugar baby is around $3,000, although some of the wealthier men pay much more.
• Websites such as SeekingArragement help facilitate the transaction. They got a big boost during the most recent recession, and have continued to grow rapidly, with one almost doubling in membership size in the past two years.
• In fact SeekingArrangement has done so well that it no longer needs to advertize, though back in the day its adverts would pop up if anybody searched for terms such as “student loan”.
• Those in the industry argue that this is not prostitution. Since the participants establish a relationship that usually lasts for at least a few weeks, it is labelled as “compensation for companionship”.
• Any attempts to ban this could inadvertently ban marriage.

Read more here.

Source: The Economist

From seat bels to crumple zones, cars have included an increasing number of safety features over time. But the arc of history is never a single, unbroken line, and Aaron Brown decided to take a look at some safety ideas that didn’t go anywhere:

• Pedestrian airbags (pictured). The idea was that a driver could hit a passerby and then go their merry way without losing too much sleep.
• Rocket brakes. These were jet rockets built into the hood of the car. If a vehicle had to brake in an emergency the rockets could be activated to generate reverse thrust.
• Headlight wipers. While popular in Europe they never caught on in the United States.
• Heartbeat sensor. This feature, announced by Volvo in 2007, would let a driver know before they got into the car, if somebody was already in there. The idea seemed to be that it would be a check against hidden axe murderers.
• Safety windshields. These were for those who weren’t wearing seatbelts and could possibly be ejected from the car. Instead of shattering the front windshield was designed to pop out.

The full list of ten is fascinating, and includes pictures and Youtube links so you can judge the abandoned safety features for yourself. Find it here.

Source: Jalopnik

Matt Slater took a look at the steps that the NFL is taking to reduce head injuries in American football:

• Kick-offs have been moved further up the field and helmet-first tackles have been banned.
• These and other measures have reduced the rate of concussions by 36%, but there are still multiple concerns about brain injuries resulting from play.
• One idea is to ban helmets which give a false sense of security to players.
• While paradoxical, the hope is that by doing so players would be more careful in the kinds of risks they took.
• It would, for example, require the end of the three-point stance where the player’s feet and a hand are on the ground, with the crown of their head pointed towards the opposition.
• Players would instead likely stand upright, and there would be fewer crunches that are trademarks of the game.

Read more about what the NFL is doing, and how helmets came about in the first place over here.

Source: BBC

The historians of Reddit discussed why French fries became such a common pairing with burgers:

• White Castle was the first fast food chain to serve french fries next to burgers in 1921.
• They may have gotten idea from WW1 soldiers returning from Europe who had gotten a taste for fried potatoes in Belgium.
• Fries had the advantage of being cheap to make, were not frequently made at home (since few deep fried), and had a taste that was neutral and complimented meat.
• Moreover they were both fast and cheap to make, and didn’t require cutlery to eat.
• By the time the MacDonalds brothers opened their first restaurant, getting a side of fries with a burger was expected by patrons.

Read more about the history of fast food and French fries over here.

Source: Reddit

Nikita Redkar wrote about the struggle to be a male model:

• Budding models are flown to New York where they’re given money to pay for expenses such as rent, food, and clothing.
• This money is offered to them as a loan and they are expected to pay it back. With interest.
• However most modelling jobs don’t pay anything – even high end ones such as being photographed on the cover of Vogue.
• The few times models are paid it may not be in cash, instead it maybe something like clothing.
• The debts that models enter into thus build up quickly and can be up to $20,000 after just a few months.
• Since the shelf life of most models is just a few years, they don’t have a lot of time to pay that debt down.
• A model’s success will depend, in part, on the trends of the day.
• These days models with a “relatable, boyfriend-handsome” look are popular as it is thought that they can appeal to both males and females.

You can read more about what it’s like to be in an industry and find a documentary about the subject here.

Source: Fusion

Jurassic World has done rather well at the box office. Jacob Bacharach provided his inputs into how the park was managed (spoilers):

• Park attendants chose not to kill the Indominus Rex because of the amount of money spent on it. Yet the $26 million it cost pales in comparison to the possible tort damages the park would be liable for.
• While the park staff claim they’ve hired the best structural engineers, it seems that the enclosures are easily damaged with typical day to day wear and tear.
• Jurassic World was a resort with hotels. Yet when guests were asked to take cover most stayed outside.
• Letting kids drive their own bubble cars around live dinosaurs seems inadvisable.
• Designing those bubble cars to withstand the force of a bullet rather than, say, the crushing jaws of a dinosaur, or even an inadvertent stomping by a dinosaur, seems ill-advised.
• The signals on the radio would often break up indicating a lack of repeater stations.
• There seemed to be no trash cans.

The full article has much more and is a very entertaining read. You should get to it here.

Source: Jacob Bacharach

Via: Marginal Revolution

Shawn Achor looked at the argument for taking more vacation:

• Americans are taking less vacation than ever before.
• This is a pity since research indicates that those who take all of their vacation are 7% more likely to get promoted than those who chose not to take 11 or more days of it.
• The type of vacation matters. Those that are badly planned and stressful don’t refresh employees as much.
• The ideal vacation is planned a month in advance, discussed with co-workers, and takes place far away from your home city.
• Your managers will thank you for it – most associate personal happiness with productivity, and 31% want employees to take vacation to be more happy.

You can read more about the research and what it shows here.

Source: Harvard Business Review