Maggie's Farm

Internet wags make jokes about the NSA spying on everyone. There's a hint of whistling past the graveyard in the humor. If you sense a dreadful thing nearby, but can't quite see it, your mind runs a bit wild, and you resort to nervous laughter to break the spell. The average computer programmer is a mental patient about online tracking, for instance. They're constantly touting the privacy benefits of Linux, whenever they can get their computers to work enough to type a sentence. Microsoft is sending telemetry! I don't know what telemetry is, but it sounds bad! Then they load forty apps on a homing beacon, AKA a smartphone, and pay for everything with it. They follow it up with a demand to be anonymous on their Twitter account.

Everyone's mistaken, or lying, on the internet, sometimes both. There's only one real fear here. People are whistling past the graveyard of obscurity, not Warhollian panopticontroversy. The nameless dread they hold is the fear that the NSA, and every other two-bit news or data aggregator for that matter, doesn't care if they're alive or dead, never mind what they're doing online at 2 AM. Their life is like a children's game from the fifties: Look at me, look at me, look at me, DON'T LOOK AT ME! One, two, three, GREEN LIGHT!

Don't get me wrong. Someone, or more accurately, many someones are tracking your movements, purchases, and daily interests, no matter how trivial, ephemeral and chaotic they are. It goes into huge hadoop hoppers and gets sifted and sold hither and yon to anyone who will pay. It shouldn't happen, but no one ever asks me what should happen, so place the blame somewhere else. Yell your dissatisfaction with tracking into your Amazon Echo, or your Nest thermostat, or your doorbell, or I don't know, maybe your refrigerator.

And what good is all that info? Not much. I know absolutely everything about myself, for instance, but I have no idea what I'm going to do tomorrow. What chance does Acxiom have at figuring it out?

The photo at the top of this post is real, and the subject of the photo really wrote that on the margin, as nearly as I can tell. It's from a fairly notable book of photographs from a fellow named Jim Goldberg. You can find out all sorts of things about Jim Goldberg on the internet, and I think you can still buy this book of photos and captions, even though it was originally published 35 years ago. Look up Countess Viviana de Blonville. All you'll find is see Jim Goldberg.

Is dying alone, unmourned, and unloved made better if it's posted to Facebook? I am beset by doubts. On to today's news!

How a Literary Prank Convinced Germany That 'Hansel and Gretel' Was Real

According to Die Wahrheit über Hänsel und Gretel (The Truth About Hansel and Gretel), the two siblings were, in fact, adult brother and sister bakers, living in Germany during the mid-17th century. They murdered the witch, an ingenious confectioner in her own right, to steal her secret recipe for lebkuchen, a gingerbread-like traditional treat. The book published a facsimile of the recipe in question, as well as sensational photos of archeological evidence.

People believe hoaxes because hoaxes are more interesting than real life. It's voluntary behavior, really. Just a smidgen of reality mixed in with the bosh is all you need to dupe most folks. I've seen fistfights over the last donut in the break room, so killing a crone for a gingerbread recipe wouldn't strike me as far fetched, either.

Breach at Hy-Vee Supermarket Chain Tied to Sale of 5M+ Stolen Credit, Debit Cards

On Tuesday of this week, one of the more popular underground stores peddling credit and debit card data stolen from hacked merchants announced a blockbuster new sale: More than 5.3 million new accounts belonging to cardholders from 35 U.S. states. Multiple sources now tell KrebsOnSecurity that the card data came from compromised gas pumps, coffee shops and restaurants operated by Hy-Vee, an Iowa-based company that operates a chain of more than 245 supermarkets throughout the Midwestern United States.

If you collect and store sensitive info, you should be required to protect it. Make companies that hoard data take out bonds and insurance to cover all potential liabilities. You need to post bonds to undertake real world construction projects in many cases. Want to build a database instead of a strip mall? What's the difference? Can't wait to see what the number at the bottom of the policy would be for creepy stalkers like Facebook.

Patrick Byrne, Overstock C.E.O., Resigns After Disclosing Romance With Russian Agent

Mr. Byrne said in a separate interview that he had met Ms. Butina at a libertarian convention in Las Vegas in 2015. Over the course of their relationship, he said, Ms. Butina spoke increasingly about meeting or seeking to meet people involved in the campaigns of Hillary Clinton, President Trump and others. That, he said, had made him wary. He eventually began communicating with the F.B.I. about his interactions with her.

Remember when CEOs wore short-sleeve dress shirts under their polyester suits and did boring things like turning a profit? Now they're all android people on booster seats in congressional hearings, new-age gurus, and old short-bus James Bond here.

All Hail the Bullitt Car Chase Scene

I think male human beings are required by both law and custom to watch the Bullitt car chase at least once in each calendar year, or risk revocation of their man card. Of course you don’t have to watch the whole movie. I can’t even remember what the movie’s about. For all I know, the guys in the Mopar jalopy are Jehovah’s Witnesses, trying to catch up to Bullitt to give him a pamphlet.

" Jalopy" is an entirely underused word. I'm going to go out of my way to say "jalopy" today. Go forth, brethren, and spread the word of jalopy! And watch Bullitt.

“Old age” is made up—and this concept is hurting everyone

In every example, product designers thought they understood the demands of the older market, but underestimated how older consumers would flee any product giving off a whiff of “oldness.” After all, there can be no doubt that personal emergency response pendants are for “old people,” and as Pew has reported, only 35% of people 75 or older consider themselves “old.”

You're only as old as the women you feel.

A Chunk of Trinitite Reminds Us of the Sheer, Devastating Power of the Atomic Bomb

I bought a piece once as a birthday gift for a friend, the actor Paul Newman. Paul had been a 20-year-old rear gunner on a two-man Navy torpedo bomber, training for the invasion of Japan, when the second and third atomic bombs after Trinity exploded over Japan and did their part to end a war that killed more than 60 million human beings. “I was one of those who said thank god for the atomic bomb,” Paul told me ruefully.

Now that's some weapons-grade name dropping. BTW, Fat Man and Little Boy is a good movie, in the parts Paul Newman is in. The parts he isn't in are still technically a movie, I guess. Leslie Groves was the genius in that bunch. Except for Von Neumann, the rest were just really smart plumbers. And Von Neumann isn't in the movie.

Vegan parents avoid jail over malnourished daughter

An eastern suburbs couple have avoided jail after feeding their toddler a vegan diet that caused her to become so malnourished she didn't have any teeth. NSW District Court judge Sarah Huggett sentenced both of the parents, who also didn't vaccinate the now-three-year-old, to 18-month intensive corrections orders, saying full-time custody would deprive their three children of an "important bond".

It's Australia. That baby should eat a dingo.

Some of the most-shared images of the Amazon rainforest fires are old or are not of the Amazon

The top image is from a 2018 wildfire in Sweden; the bottom is of a wildfire in Montana on August 6, 2000. The most heartbreaking photos being shared are the charred remains of animals, or animals attempting to escape wildfires. Blogger Nathalie Muñoz posted a series of photos about the Amazon rainforest fires. The photo of the monkey crying, holding a smaller monkey, isn't in the Amazon. It was taken in Jabalpur, India, by Avinash Lodhi sometime in April 2016. And the photo of the burned rabbit is from the 2018 wildfire in Malibu, California.

I expect a photo of the charred remains of Hansel and Gretel's victim to show up soon.

When your gut bacteria talk, your brain listens and replies

The jury’s still out on how the brain really works. But Sarkis Mazmanian, a medical microbiologist at Caltech, thinks the answers to many of the questions we still have about the brain may actually lie further south — in the gut, where trillions of bacteria live. There, these “good” bacteria live peacefully, helping us to break down fiber and absorb nutrients. They are referred to collectively as the gut microbiome. Despite the presence of the blood-brain-barrier (BBB), a tightly regulated border between the brain and circulating blood, the gut and the brain are in constant communication, either through incoming and outgoing nerves, or through small molecules that can pass through the BBB.

When my gut bacteria talks, my wife listens and leaves the room.

Apple Warns Not to Keep Its Credit Card by Leather. Or Denim. Or Loose Change.

Apple updated its support webpage this week to warn customers that some fabrics, such as leather and denim, could cause permanent discoloration to the Apple Card. That damage won’t wash off. Apple also advises against placing the card in a wallet slot that already has a different credit card, so it doesn’t get scratched. And the company says customers should not store their Apple Card in a pocket or bag with loose change, keys or “other potentially abrasive objects.”

Starbucks, monetary superpower

Starbucks has around $1.6 billion in stored value card liabilities outstanding. This represents the sum of all physical gift cards held in customer's wallets as well as the digital value of electronic balances held in the Starbucks Mobile App.* It amounts to ~6% of all of the company's liabilities. This is a pretty incredible number. Stored value card liabilities are the money that you, oh loyal Starbucks customer, use to buy coffee. What you might not realize is that these balances  simultaneously function as a loan to Starbucks. Starbucks doesn't pay any interest on balances held in the Starbucks app or gift cards. You, the loyal customer, are providing the company with free debt.

Hansel and Gretel committed a murder over a coffee and crumble. They were pikers compared to Starbucks