Eeny. Teeny. Peeny. Shrimp. LOL.

Human/computer partnerships are potent

Tim Wu writes for the New Yorker about how Netflix uses a ~70/30 combination of data and human judgment to determine their recommendations and what shows/movies to make.

Over the years, however, I’ve started to wonder whether Netflix’s big decisions are truly as data driven as they are purported to be. The company does have more audience data than nearly anyone else (with the possible exception of YouTube), so it has a reason to emphasize its comparative advantage. But, when I was reporting a story, a couple of years ago, about Netflix’s embrace of fandom over mass culture, I began to sense that their biggest bets always seemed ultimately driven by faith in a particular cult creator, like David Fincher (“House of Cards”), Jenji Leslie Kohan (“Orange is the New Black”), Ricky Gervais (“Derek”), John Fusco (“Marco Polo”), or Mitchell Hurwitz (“Arrested Development”). And, while Netflix does not release its viewership numbers, some of the company’s programming, like “Marco Polo,” hasn’t seemed to generate the same audience excitement as, say, “House of Cards.” In short, I do think that there is a sophisticated algorithm at work here — but I think his name is Ted Sarandos.

I presented Sarandos with this theory at a Sundance panel called “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Trust the Algorithm,” moderated by Jason Hirschhorn, formerly of MySpace. Sarandos, very agreeably, wobbled a bit. “It is important to know which data to ignore,” he conceded, before saying, at the end, “In practice, its probably a seventy-thirty mix.” But which is the seventy and which is the thirty? “Seventy is the data, and thirty is judgment,” he told me later. Then he paused, and said, “But the thirty needs to be on top, if that makes sense.”

This reminds me of the situation in chess, where cyborg human/computer teams can beat computer- or human-only players in chess, although perhaps for not much longer.

Some of you will know that Average is Over contains an extensive discussion of “freestyle chess,” where humans can use any and all tools available — most of all computers and computer programs — to play the best chess game possible. The book also notes that “man plus computer” is a stronger player than “computer alone,” at least provided the human knows what he is doing. You will find a similar claim from Brynjolfsson and McAfee.

Computer chess expert Kenneth W. Regan has compiled extensive data on this question, and you will see that a striking percentage of the best or most accurate chess games of all time have been played by man-machine pairs. Ken’s explanations are a bit dense for those who don’t already know chess, computer chess, Freestyle and its lingo, but yes that is what he finds, click on the links in his link for confirmation. In this list for instance the Freestyle teams do very very well.

I wonder what the human/cyborg split is at Buzzfeed or Facebook? Or at food companies like McDonald’s or Kraft? Or at Goldman Sachs?

• chess
• games
• movies
• Netflix
• Tim Wu

Tim Carmody on what it’s like to watch football after a traumatic brain injury

AHHHH! Lemur spider! Lemur spider!!!

Wonderful owl portraits

From the newly launched site for the National Audubon Society, some gorgeous photos of owls from Brad Wilson.

It’s not easy to get owls to mug for the camera. Even in captivity the birds remain aloof, unruffled by the flash and unmoved by attempts to bribe them. Photographer Brad Wilson learned that lesson firsthand after trying to win over owls from the World Bird Sanctuary in St. Louis and The Wildlife Center near Espanola, New Mexico. He spent hours with each bird, trying to capture its direct gaze. “It’s hard to get animals to look at you like humans do,” he says. “That shot became my holy grail.”

I’ve featured Wilson’s animal photography on the site before. Tons more on his site.

• Brad Wilson
• photography

NYC in 1981, a most violent year

The producers of A Most Violent Year, one of the year’s most acclaimed movies, are doing something interesting to promote their film. They’re running a blog that posts all sorts of media and information about NYC in 1981, the year the film is set. Today, they released a short documentary that features interviews with some people who were scraping together lives in NYC circa 1981. It’s worth watching:

Featuring Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa, performance artist and former Warhol Factory fixture Penny Arcade, actress Johnnie Mae, Harlem street-style legend Dapper Dan, auto body shop owner Nick Rosello, and trucking union rep Wayne Walsh.

The trailer for A Most Violent Year is here…I’ve heard good things about this one and hope to catch it soon.

• A Most Violent Year
• crime
• movies
• NYC
• video

Thanks to Astrologicalendar for sponsoring the site. Get yr beautiful signs-of-the-Zodiac wall calendar here:

Beans do not belong in chili. Yes. Finally. THANK YOU.

Supply, demand, and equilibrium

From Marginal Revolution University, three short videos on the economic concepts of supply, demand, and equilibrium using oil as an example good.

• economics
• video

Trailer for Game of Thrones season 5, recorded off of IMAX screen

Infrared Planet Earth

This is an ultra-HD time lapse of planet Earth in infrared. Infrared light is absorbed by clouds and water vapor, so the result is a sphere of roiling storms and trade winds.

Here’s a video with both hemispheres at once and another offering a closer view. If you’ve got a 4K display, this will look pretty incredible on it. James Tyrwhitt-Drake has done a bunch of other HD videos of the Earth and Sun, including Planet Earth in 4K and the Sun in 4K.

• astronomy
• Earth
• James Tyrwhitt-Drake
• time lapse
• video

The latest anti-vaxxer craziness

Administrators at Palm Desert High School in California have banned 66 students who never got measles vaccinations.

“I think some parents see it as a personal choice, like homeschooling. But when you choose not to vaccinate, you’re putting other children at risk.” From WaPo: Why this baby’s mom is so angry at the anti-vaxxers.

“I respect people’s choices about what to do with their kids, but if someone’s kid gets sick and gets my kid sick, too, that’s a problem.” A Marin County father has demanded that his district keep unvaccinated kids out of school.

Vox: How an Amish missionary caused 2014’s massive measles outbreak.

Bonus tweet: “If my kid can’t bring peanut butter to school, yours shouldn’t be able to bring preventable diseases.”

• medicine
• science
• vaccines

What if NYC seceded from New York State to become the 51st state?

Charming video about a 102-year-old woman who still golfs & holds the holes-in-one record at her local club (11!)

Michelle Obama Doesn’t Owe Anyone a Head Scarf (and neither does any other woman visiting the Middle East)

The HD Aquarium

In the tradition of the 80-minute video of the South China Sea shot from the bow of a container ship, here’s six high-definition hours of 8000 fish and other aquatic animals swimming in the massive Ocean Voyager tank at the Georgia Aquarium.

Are you relaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaxed? (via @riondotnu)

• video

Study: tackle football before age 12 leads to increased brain problems

What happened to the Milky Way? In the US, there’s light pollution nearly everywhere.

A Murmuration of Starlings

A flock of starlings is called a murmuration, an apt word because the flocks move like a rumor pulsing through a crowded room. This is a particularly beautiful murmuration observed in Utrecht, The Netherlands.

• birds
• video

Handwriting robots

Clive Thompson writes about the newest innovation in junk mail marketing: handwriting robots. That’s right, robots can write letters in longhand with real ballpoint pens and you can’t really tell unless you know what to look for. Here’s a demonstration:

But it turns out that marketers are working diligently to develop forms of mass-generated mail that appear to have been patiently and lovingly hand-written by actual humans. They’re using handwriting robots that wield real pens on paper. These machines cost up to five figures, but produce letters that seem far more “human”. (You can see one of the robots in action in the video adjacent.) This type of robot is likely what penned the address on the junk-mail envelope that fooled me. I saw ink on paper, subconsciously intuited that it had come from a human (because hey, no laser-printing!) and opened it.

Handwriting, it seems, is the next Turing Test.

There is also a company that provided handwritten letters for sale professionals and I don’t know if that or the robot letters are more unusual.

• Clive Thompson
• robots
• video

Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown

I’ve caught a couple of episodes of CNN’s Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown and I’ve been impressed with the show so far. In it, chef/author Anthony Bourdain travels to places off the beaten path and explores the local culture. But it’s not just about food and culture as with his previous shows. In Parts Unknown, Bourdain also delves into local politics and social issues. In Iran, he spoke with journalists about their tenuous relationship with the government (and two of the journalists he spoke with were subsequently arrested). Episodes in the Congo, Myanmar, and Libya are produced with a focus on their oppressive governments, past and present. Even in the Massachusetts episode, he talks about his former heroin addiction and the current addiction of poor whites in the US. Many of the places he visits, we only hear about the leadership and bad things that happen on the news, but Bourdain meets with the locals and finds more similarities amongst cultures than differences. I’d never considered going to visit someplace like Iran, but Parts Unknown has me considering it…what a great people.

Season four recently wrapped up and they’re shooting season five now. The first three seasons are currently available on Netflix and all four seasons are on Amazon. (FYI to the web team at CNN: “Unknown” is misspelled in the