A declassified World War II-era government guide to “simple sabotage” is currently one of the most popular open source books on the internet. The book, called “Simple Sabotage Field Manual,” was declassified in 2008 by the CIA and “describes ways to train normal people to be purposefully annoying telephone operators, dysfunctional train conductors, befuddling middle managers, blundering factory workers, unruly movie theater patrons, and so on. In other words, teaching people to do their jobs badly.”
Over the last week, the guide has surged to become the 5th-most-accessed book on Project Gutenberg, an open source repository of free and public domain ebooks. It is also the fifth most popular ebook on the site over the last 30 days, having been accessed nearly 60,000 times over the last month (just behind Romeo and Juliet).
@copperbadge this feels relevant to your skillset.
I’m not going to lie, Hodag and I have a joint spreadsheet to track my visits to Milwaukee so they know when I’m arriving and where we’re staying. And when I visit Texas, my mother always makes a menu spreadsheet for meal planning.
You do have to have compatible attitudes towards how the data is input, though. Like my mother puts data into columns that I would instinctively put into rows and vice versa – I’d put days of the week across the top of a sheet and breakfast/lunch/dinner down the left, but she puts the days down the side and meals across the top. There’s no rationale to either method, like I don’t think one is particularly better than the other, but she struggles to understand data the way I present it, and I always have to rewire my brain a little to follow hers. Fortunately, Hodag and I are wired the same over data.
A professor gave us an extra credit option: take a picture of yourself outside, doing something that you would not usually do. We were told not to take it too seriously. Here is my entry:
I maintain that sticking my head in the mailbox is not something I do on a regular basis.
Love that some of you are reblogging this. You looked at a picture of a guy with his head in a mailbox and went “yeah”
Can’t wait to see if everyone did something like this or if they had a normal reaction. I will keep you posted.
[ID: a photo of a pale person wearing a black t-shirt and jeans with his head in a mailbox /END ID]
Hello to everyone asking for an update!
The professor has said that he will put all submitted pictures into a powerpoint to be shown in class tomorrow (Tuesday, March 9th). I am very much looking forward to seeing the reaction from him and from the rest of the class. I promise to keep you informed.
Update: the professor saved my picture for last. I was told that I had “truly embodied the spirit of the assignment” and that I had gone “above and beyond.”
Also, to everyone who is worrying about whether or not I got my head out, I was gifted with a very small head, and while I got out just fine I would NOT recommend this if you have a large head or even a normal sized head.
I forget if I showed the beautiful Tyrian purple that they made in the synthesis chemistry lab that I collaborated with at the art museum. They’ve been synthesizing mostly blue pigments and dyes from throughout history. This was my first time seeing Tyrian purple in person and I was so excited!
Historically it was made from murex snails and was hugely expensive and used by royalty, but chemically it’s similar to indigo so the class was able to create it in the lab without snails.
