168: Removing the roof

Tu mereces fruitartos favoritos por menos. Ja sel na Big Mac, McNuggets, or a sausage, egg and cheese, McCriddles, pie tuento hocomo un meo ya hora.
Oof, nava comodarto un gustaso por tam poco.

Los extra value meals están de regreso. Gana por la mañana con el extra value meal, sausage, mc, muffin with egg, hash browns, yun cafe aliene pequeño por solos se dolares.
Bara ba ba ba.

Preses y participación pueden varía. Los prees de la promosión pueden en sermenores que los de las comidas.
In what non-medical location might you see vomits, nosebleeds, and spots?

The answer to that at the end of the show. My name's Tom Scott, and this is lateral.

On today's show, we have three players from the continent of Australia, a land of big skies, big barbecues, and even bigger opinions. But that's enough bigging up of the guests.

Let's get on and meet them. We start returning from Lab Muffin Beauty Science.
Michelle Wong, welcome back to the show. Thank you for having me.

Last time you got some really good solves in on your first show. How are you feeling? Well, now I'm intimidated, but I went confident three seconds ago.
Thanks, Scott. Oh,

did I call you Scott? I called you Scott because I'm looking at your name.

That's all. You deserve that.
You deserve that.

Thank you very much for coming back on the show.

What's going on with the channel? What are you working on at the minute? The usual terrible long video editing life.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. The curse of the video essayist.

Yeah, I am turning into a video essayist now. Yeah, it's become video essays about beauty, which apparently there is an audience for.
Yes.

There's an audience for a lot of things that are far more niche than making sure you look good. And on that note.

Also, from Australia and here since the first episode, Danny Seller from Escape This Podcast. Welcome back.
As niche as they come, I feel. Thank you so much.

What is the nichest escape room you've had on the podcast?

I'm probably going to say, I mentioned it last time we were on that I recently, for National Science Week, wrote a room that was all centered around the idea of goat genetics, where you have to interpret some goat family trees and find out some genetic fraud that has gone on in the species.

I realized a moment later that you said centered as in like with an R in the level. Revolving around.
Yes, not centered.

A goat-centered room.

Goat genetic-centered room. That's even worse.

Also joining us, the other half of Escape This Podcast. Bill Sunderland, welcome back to the show.
I'm excited to be back.

When you started talking about all the big things in Australia, I thought you were going to talk about the fact that we have a whole cultural landscape of big things in Australia as you drive around.

The big merino and the big prawn, the big banana and the big pineapple. It's just, it's just what we do.
I've seen the big pineapple. It's a big pineapple.
I've seen the big penguin.

Have you seen the big poo? No. Don't worry.
Do you want to? Not really.

Is it in your house?

The prawn, though. The big prawn is pretty good.
At some point, could you do a big escape room? Like an escape room themed around the big thing. We probably should.

Easily, definitely accepted. I'm writing it down.
The benefit of the audio escape room medium is we can say, all right, right, you're in a really big space.

It's like a hundred kilometers wide, and it's just as true as it would be if we said they were in a small room. Well, best of luck to all three players today.

And before we get into an argument about whether penguin biscuits or Tim Tams are better, we'll start the cultural exchange that is question one.

Thank you to Ghostbear for this question. In the Netherlands, Beatrix is choosing between a goat saying chow and a sheep saying hola.
Below each one are up to five black circles.

What do the circles mean? I'll say that again. In the Netherlands, Beatrix is choosing between a goat saying chow and a sheep saying hola.
Below each one are up to five black circles.

What do the circles mean?

All right.

Michelle, how are your farm animals? Pretty good. I actually went to an agricultural high school.

Oh,

yeah, off the recording. I asked what high school you went to.
I didn't get an answer, but I know the answer now. There's only one.
there's actually four no

um yeah so well i know we had sheep but we didn't have goats because they smelled too much but i mean you just did a goat genetics escape room so i know everything about the goat smells sorry it's taken me this long as the brit to go i'm sorry agricultural high school Oh, yeah.

Yeah, it's a it's a very strange Australian thing where one of the biggest nerdy high schools, you like traditionally it was agricultural. And so all these nerds, including me,

little, little 12-year-old nerds just go to this high school and they've just done maths and then they see a sheep and the teachers take great joy in making us touch the sheep.

Someone has to put a hand up a cow's butt.

Really? That's so cool. Well, it's also year seven.
So everyone's trying to, everyone's like nervous at this new school.

So the nerdiest kids all like really want to be the person to put the hand in there

and touch the cow and make sure its head is in the right spot and stuff.

It's really bizarre. But we did learn a lot about sheep.
That's so cool. You have to stand in a row and you shake your hands, and then they that's hurting sheep.
They run away from you.

See, when you don't have a sheep dog, you just do this in a row, and you all have to be very short, I guess. I'm not sure that makes a difference.

Well, I don't know a huge amount about dealing with sheep and goats. Black circles, on the other hand, surely we can

deal with that. Oh, absolutely.
Initially, I heard the name Beatrix, and I was going, oh, I don't care if that's a common name.

I'm assuming that this is about Beatrix Potter because we're talking about animals. So I'm thinking paper.
So I'm thinking black circles on paper. Oh, there's Morse code going on here.

That can probably go up to five dots. Beyond that,

appropriately enough, I have dot, dot, dot in my head. I don't know what's happening next.

Again, there's clearly like language stuff going on, right? We have both the fact that this is happening in the Netherlands, where they'll be speaking Dutch or Flemish. Dutch.

No, that's Belgium.

They're speaking Dutch. They love to hear that.
Let's offend as many European countries as possible.

I don't think, but also, I don't think they

explicitly don't like hearing it. I don't know if that's a long-standing feud.
Flemish! I think it's just me being dumb.

So they're speaking Dutch.

Then we have two animals. So we could have the words for those animals or the sound they make in, because every

language has its own sounds that animals make. Cats say meep in some language somewhere.

And then the animals themselves are speaking Spanish or Italian.

Italian and Spanish. Chow and hola.
Chow and hola. So maybe it's about not the word, but like

the Dutch word for goat is the same as their word for Italy.

Ah! Goatland?

You don't really think of goats when you think of Italy, do you? Not really.

Maybe you do, because like sheep, Spain, wasn't there like the golden fleece or something? I might be mixing five. Golden fleece was Greece.
We're jumping all over Europe together. Yeah.

So

surely there's a language element to it, right?

It'd be strange for a Dutch goat to say chow.

Yeah, hello and bonjour are also available.

Initially, I was hoping that there'd be as many dots as letters, and there's some like highlight which ones are, but there's five dots, four letters for Hola. It set up to five dots, didn't it?

Oh, that's interesting. It's almost like a score.
It is.

Score is not the right word, but

yes, that's more towards it. Rate this goat one

out of five. My pet.

Yes, a rating, I think, would be a thing here. Maybe not like, maybe not like how good it is, but certainly how something it is.

How

correct it is. How loud it is.
The cow is also common here.

Very common. Probably the most common.
The most common.

Is it cheese related?

Yes, it is, Danny. Interesting.

Where did that come from?

I really like cheese, and you have listed most of the animals whose cheese I have eaten. Yes.
So goat cheese comes from Italy.

and yes sheep cheese comes from spain this particular one does where might we be seeing these animals and circles are they like in a supermarket labeling the cheeses or a deli yes

these are on the labels for the cheeses and is it is it a rating of firmness of cheese or like how aged they are or age of cheese that's it that's the last thing it's the strength of the cheese this is the dutch supermarket picnic who put labels on their cheese.

The animal indicates the type of cheese. The language indicates the country of origin.
And the dots are the strength or the age of the cheese. You are absolutely right.
That came from nowhere.

Well done.

I love that you get a little bit of language education as you scarf it down.

Yeah, the label is just an outline of a cow with a speech bubble that says bonjour

and one dot underneath because it's mild.

We'll go to our players for a question and we'll start today with Michelle whenever you're ready. This question has been sent in by Sharon Moya Zest.

A scarf's knitting pattern uses 20% red, 60% white and 20% black. A few extra colours might be used before the red.
However, the design can't be appreciated while the scarf is worn. Why?

I'll say that again. A scarce knitting pattern uses 20% red, 60% white, and 20% black.
A few extra colours might be used before the red.

However, the design can't be appreciated while the scarf is worn. Why? Because if it's too worn, the colours will have faded away.
Hey!

That's it. That's we're done.
Next question.

Just trying to draw it, which is not easy when you only have a lead pencil. Yeah, I've got one colour of pen here.

But we know the percentages that are in there. We don't know the pattern at all.
No. Which presumably will be very relevant.

What, it was 20% red, 60% white, and then another 20% white. And then 20% black.

Then it said that a couple of other colours might be used before the red, which does sound like we've got sort of an ordering to it.

Which is curious. What is this imitating?

This has to be a pattern of a thing that appears somewhere else in the world.

My first thought of something that you wouldn't be able to notice as easily if the scarf was being worn, because you would wrap it around yourself to wear it.

But if you splayed it out, what if it was, well, I was going to say something stupid, like, what if it was a 1-1 from Mario?

Like, people very often reference the first level of Super Mario Brothers, Super Mario 1-1.

And so you could do that whole thing as one long horizontal strip of the full level. What if it's the Bayou tapestry? And you can't quite...

If you extend it, you're like, look, there's, he's being shot in the eye with an arrow.

But if you wrap it up, it's like, it's just a mixture of colours. You can't quite tell.

Orientation seems to matter. That's a good guess, but I feel like there's more colours in the bayou tapestry.
Wow.

Yeah, the colours here are red, white, and black. So what's black and white and red all over?

It's a newspaper. Like, the red is the tabloid red title at the top, and the rest is newsprint somehow.

And the other colours are maybe if they had a photo on the front page. Yeah.
Yeah.

I do like going into this mosaic vibe of you've got to lay it out and then walk really far back to be able to appreciate it. It's one of those magic eye puzzles.
Oh, no, I can't do those.

Yeah.

Surely there's something, some image that we know collectively as a trio. You definitely know it.
It's red and white.

Or black, white, and red. The bit with the order of colours was a good place to go down.

Well, yeah, as soon as we started listing colours in an order, I was thinking of flags, but the ratios are unusual for flags, as is the, and maybe there's some other colours.

Flag designers usually don't appreciate that. Usually, you know the colours in a flag.

Red like a sunset. White like the white sands of the Arakama Desert.
And black

like...

something.

There are football scarves as well, which have team logos or something like that. So you have to hold it up to get the message out.
But I don't see that as like white, black, and red.

Like there are definitely teams with those colours, but

60% white. Well, if it was about a sports team colours, then I would hope that Michelle would have enough tact to say, you might know this and not you do know this image.

I've been assuming that these are,

I mean, I don't know how to describe it as horizontal, like they could be

latitudinal. Like, as you move down the long part of the scarf.

Oh, like it's red for a while, and then it's white for even longer, and then eventually it's black at the end.

Well, that was how I drew it. Yeah, but you could flip that 90 degrees.

As you draw the scarf out horizontally, it could be red at the top, then white, then black at the bottom. Yeah, I think I was picturing the latter.
Which would be...

That would be a white centre with red on one side, black on the other side. But that, like, that would be just as noticeable worn as it would be not worn, right? No one's like, oh,

red, white, and black. Oh, oh, my gosh, it is.
You took it off, and now I know that it is. Like, it can't just be three blocks of colour.
That's just as interpretable when you're wearing a scarf, yes.

Worn or not. There's got to be some.
Like, if you.

Are we going fame? Is it a mosaic of some sort of a famous artwork? That's all I've got in my head right now. And I can't think of what famous artwork is primarily red, black, and white.

It is actually blocks, like Bill said. Oh, okay.
Oh, okay. So it's a Mondrian painting.
Gotcha. So it's in, like, for a while, it's just red, and then for a while, it's just white.
Yeah.

So think about

if you're not wearing the scarf, how might you

arrange the scarf?

You could fold, they actually have it like folded, like a mad magazine folding effect is happening, rather than circled around a neck. Or just hanging up from its center.
Keep going.

Okay, so you've got it hanging on the washing line or hanging or like hung up half it is so it's white

down both sides.

Then one of the ends is black. The other end is red, maybe with a bit more stuff at the bottom.
Another way of storing it could be if you hyper roll it up so that it's

like a snail that's red in the center and then white and then black.

Oh, which would make it look like a target? Which would make it look like a target?

Are targets red in the middle and then aren't they usually red and

red then green?

Okay, so you roll it up, red in the middle, then this ring of white and then a thinner ring of black.

Alright, red.

That's a target.

Sometimes the red is a little bit pinker,

if that helps.

It doesn't... It could be lots of different colours, plus the extra colours, but you're getting extremely close.

It's like, yeah, it's like a black ring with a white center and then a red thing in the middle of that that might have other colours in it, which makes it an eye.

It looks like an eye, like a red eye, to promote the movie Red Eye, starring

whoever's in that, starring

Rachel McAdam. Rachel McAdams.
So a popular choice of colour for one of the other colours might be green.

Black ring around the outside. Big white.
Yep, so 20%.

Yeah. 60% white.
A little bit of red in the middle.

Maybe green.

Green, like the eyes of Killian Murphy, who I've remembered is the person who starts.

Coincidentally, I'm holding one. What?

I actually have one. Is this a flag?

It's not a flag because it's circular, but

what else do you associate with specific countries? yeah a coat of arms a

a map a

go away from symbols things that you enjoy from different countries and every country has one of these or multiple of these

food it looks like a food of some sort

that's a disappointing pizza it's a sushi roll

yeah

Oh

yes. Oh, wow.
You really do have that. I'm holding one, which I

made a really skinny one because I was just trying to get the design right.

But yeah, it's like once you roll it up, you've got like the reddish salmon in the middle, then you've got like a bit of avocado, lettuce, and then all the rice.

My one doesn't have much rice, and then the seaweed on the outside. Because the seaweed is 20% when you pull it out, but it's the widest part.
It's the circumference.

So the 20% on the outside looks tiny, the 20% on the inside big that's infuriating how do i have one consider that did that question just get sent to you and you're like oh i have one yeah i was like yeah actually i i designed one a while back

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All right, here we go. In 1270, roof sections of the Episcopal Palace in Viterbo, Italy were removed.
The roof didn't need repair and the material wasn't valuable.

Why did the locals feel compelled to do this? I'll say that again. In 1270, roof sections of the Episcopal Palace in Viterbo, Italy were removed.

The roof didn't need repair and the material wasn't valuable. Why did the locals feel compelled to do this? Now, as a

famously lazy person,

If I had, say, a flood on the floor of a place that I lived and I didn't know what to do about it and didn't really want to remove the water, I might just open up the roof and let the sun do the work for me.

Just saying, the roof was fine. Maybe the floor wasn't.

I think the power of God compelled them.

You could kind of argue that very, very loosely. But you're right to pick up on Episcopal Palace.

This is religious. This is religious.
Who lives in an epis...

I can't say that word, palace. Is it like the priest or the king?

I think I'm confusing it with a different word, with like ecumenical, which is in reference to bishops, but uh

maybe bishops uh episcopalians live in an episcopal palace um

was his hat too tall yeah oh brutal hat kept hitting on the roof and he just hinted to the townsfolk who's like oh my hat just keep getting knocked off by this darn roof if only someone would remove it for me no no please it's all right don't worry about it I'll just straighten my hat and keep giving a service.

Keep thinking you're done.

The character work goes on. I don't want to mock Bill for it.
It's good character work.

There is a Simpsons episode. He does character work.
I do Simpsons.

Where they wanted to bring God in as a witness to a court case. So they opened up a roof panel to let the sunbeam in, and the sunbeam was God.

Is that what happened?

No,

I'm staying quiet because there are several things you've said that are sort of related to the answer. Big hats, certainly related.

What? Was the person doing...

Were they doing

masses in this building? And he just went real hard on the incense. He was swinging the sensor over.
And they were like, we've got to let this out. And so they took the roof off.

And the roof was the only way. They didn't think of opening.
You can't open a window. They're stained glass.
But the roof... Destroying the roof is fine.
Pull the roof off.

It's not valuable, apparently. Insurance scam.

That's usually the answer. Yeah, what compelled them? The townsfolk had done done a few other things in frustration.
Was there a bird stuck in there?

There's a dove in this church. How could big hats be related? Oh, wait, was big hats a good thing? Big hats was actually pretty good, yeah.
Oh, no.

There wasn't a bird stuck in there.

Yeah, did they need to remove the roof to get the organ in or out a famously large thing in a religious building that you probably can't get through a door you think an organ's the size of a door is it the pipe organ because the pipes were too tall

like hats

did they have to get something out of or into the church that they couldn't normally uh they definitely wanted to get something out of the church yes the palace i suppose was was it the people were they stuck in the church now we're getting close There's also a Simpsons episode where that happens.

There's also a Lyle Lovett song where that happens.

Oh, my.

That's just for me. And however, and the small amount of Lyle Lovett fans who listen to Tom Scott's lateral.
I know you're out there and you know what I'm talking about.

I forget, did we know geographically where we were in this question? I remember temporally, but not geographically. Viturbo.

And I've forgotten temporally. When are we? 1270.

Oh, all right. Lyle Lovett wasn't even born yet.

I don't know what the weather gets like in Viturbo, so I don't know if we're dealing with a did snow freeze this place shut

up enough that there's a possible level of superstition that might be more like they were just like oh there's a there's a ghost in here and it's we gotta open the we gotta get the spirits out the very tall spirits out yeah you block it up you open the roof and then you fill it with holy water and it'll get it out yeah but the people had done yeah the people had done stuff in frustration which made me think stuck yeah stuck and big hats and wanting to get something out yes.

They wanted to get

the people.

And yeah, it wasn't people out, right? It wasn't like just escaping, or was it?

It was people. Okay, so people needed to get out through the roof because they were being kept in.
No, actually, if anything, the opposite problem. They couldn't get in.

The priest had barred the door and he said. Is it like a quasimodo situation? Like, was someone like in there seeking sanctuary and then

they needed them out for a court case. A witch? It's not seeking sanctuary, but I think you're right.

They wouldn't leave.

I'll give you that. They wouldn't leave.
The local priest refused to leave, but he was a real bad priest, and they were like, get out of here.

And he ate so much that he couldn't get out the door. He couldn't fit through the door.

That's a great, that's a great form of money. Talk about indulgence.
Hey.

I don't know. There's a joke there about the church in the 1270s.
Yeah, yeah, it's a solid 13th century medieval religion joke there. Yeah, we're all enjoying it.
This is absolutely my will.

Anyone who doesn't like Lal Lovett at least likes church history. All right.
Let me run through what you've got so far because it's been a bit scattershot. There are people in this church.

People in the church. The locals would like them to leave.
You've got that. Get out of my church.
That is why they're removing the roof.

What might be going on here? Why have they got to this point?

What is taking so long inside that church?

What do people do in churches? A really big wedding or funeral?

I don't know what 1270 is like. And I'm going to remind you of the final thing you picked up, which was big hats.

Had they not chosen a pope? Come on.

Oh, it's a palace. Of course it's not a church.
It's a palace. That was the other clue.
Yes, this is an Episcopal palace in Viturbo.

There was political instability in Rome, so the election took place 50 miles north in an Episcopal Palace.

How long do you think they've been in there? Oh, no. How long does it take to choose a pope? This is noteworthy.
Let's start small. They were in there for a week.
You know what?

I'm going to steal a joke from another show I do here and do Prices Right Rules, closest without going over.

Bill, are you sticking with a week or you're going to? No, I'm going to jump up to eight months. Eight months, Michelle?

Two and a half years. Two and a half years? Danny? I hate this.
Now I have to go huge. Just go for a day.
Get it up.

But I don't think that's true. I'm going.

Yeah, but I'll cheap out. I'll go with exactly.
Nope. Squatter's rules.
I'm going seven years. Michelle, two years, ten months of deliberations in total.

Yes.

Two factions reached deadlock. They had been in there.

Since 1268, it was now 1270.

In frustration, the mayor closed the city gates, locked the palace, rationed their food, boarded up the windows, and eventually removed segments of the roof to force them to make a decision.

Pope Gregory X was elected after two years and ten months of deliberations. What was one of the things he introduced? Gregory, the calendar.
The calendar. Yeah, calendars.

Indulgences.

Very relevant to this question and very relevant to the news not that long ago as we recorded this.

Just official conclaving? Oh yeah. Conclaving.
Yes.

He introduced the formal process of a conclave which has happened ever since.

Bill, it is your question. This question was sent in by Owen T.

Thank you Owen.

A medical team gave photos of moles and skin cancers to an AI model. to improve detection rates.

Initially, the results were promising, however, a 2021 report showed that the model was actually quite dumb. Why?

And I'll give that to you again. A medical team gave photos of moles and skin cancers to an AI model to improve detection rates.
Initially, the results were promising.

However, a 2021 report showed that the model was actually quite dumb. Why? We've got two Australians on this question, one of whom's an expert in skin science and beauty.
Oh, yeah.

I feel like I should know this. I know a lot of people doing research in this area, so I shouldn't have said that.
Now it's extra embarrassing.

I feel like I should know this because it's my wheelhouse, this like tech stuff. So my assumption is the model is picking up on something else.

So you're thinking that it's more a false positive thing than a false negative thing? I think that's fair. Or there's a leak in the data somewhere.
Like

they're picking up something else. Like

the files are tagged as mole one and benign one.

And actually the model can just read that

and it's just going, well, the files given me to me with the word mole in them, those are clearly, those are clearly moles. Can't argue with that.

Tom, you were fairly close, but I will say, I don't believe it was given access to the metadata of these things. It had the visuals to work from.
Okay.

I was wondering, remember that thing that went around of the viral picture that everyone was saying, here is a close-up of a planet, and then it turned out to be a piece of salami that just happened to look very planety?

Was something similar going on there? It identified chocolate drops as cancerous moles. Something like that.
You're getting further away.

Okay, okay. What on the body looks like a mole that they could be misinterpreting?

Depending on.

There's not much that looks like a mole. It's basically intended to tell the difference between benign mole and cancerous mole, presumably.
Like,

they're sending pictures of blemishes to it. All right, so we can say what some of the things that are meant to distinguish a scary mole.

I think we're all of an age where we've had to be paranoid about these things, especially in Australia. So colour and shape and change tend to be the things that they ask you to look for.

So what could it be doing wrong there? I remember a story from years ago where

possibly apocryphal, where a model had been trained by sending it alternate images of A and B and A and B.

So it just learned that every other image was to be classified one way.

That sent benign, not benign, benign, not benign. And like, oh, okay, so the even-numbered ones are the bad ones.
But again, that feels like metadata. That feels like...

Yeah, look, it has a very similar feel to the correct answer, but that is not it. Danny, you are on to something talking about how we talk about moles, what we care about when we're looking at them.

I'd also like to point out that on this lateral thinking podcast, not a single one of you questioned whether we were talking about all blemishes. Maybe it was skin cancers and little rodents.

You're assuming that just because we didn't say it, we weren't all blemishes. Yeah,

I was thinking it. I'm still going to admonish.
Okay, what if the photos of bad stuff

have like a ruler in the picture or something like that or there's something else or a circle like a marker circle? Yeah, something about scalars being really messed up. Tom

Thomas Scott.

Anytime it saw a ruler in a picture, it went, well, that must have cancer. Oh, that's cancer.
They're measuring it.

Yes, that is 100% right.

It was Danny saying size. Yes, yes, exactly.
It was all size.

Because if you're just getting like the first test done, like, oh, take a photo of it, fine. Like, at the point where they're doing more deep sampling.
Oh, yeah, get the ruler on.

Yes, as soon as you suspect the thing of being, or a blemish of being

cancerous. you would usually have a photo of it taken with a ruler in the photo to show, oh, here's the current size of it.
This is why we're worried. Look at this.
That's part of that process.

And so that you could take another one later and measure against it. Exactly.

So it learned that if if there is a ruler in the picture, it is more likely that it is a cancerous growth rather than something benign. It was being distracted, and all it was looking for were rulers.

Thanks to Connell Knight for this next question. Dima, a user interface designer, hung seven colorful paper rolls of varying length on a wall.

The longest, which continued onto the floor, was labeled 17,161 and 86.

What did this mean, and what was this public installation's two-word title? I'll say that again. Dima, a user interface designer, hung seven colourful paper rolls of varying length on a wall.

The longest, which continued onto the floor, was labeled 17,161 and 86.

What did this mean, and what was this public installation's two-word title? Okay, I was busy drawing seven

pieces of

fake paper roll.

Beautiful. What was the number? 17,000.
17,160. You don't need the exact numbers, but it's a lot.
And was the 86 on the same long one, or was it on the shorter one? Was it like ampersand 86?

Those numbers were both for the long one. Yeah.
So if they are some, if they're some form of measurement, that's a pretty wild difference. Not impossible, but a pretty intense difference.

It could be really narrow, 86 somethings wide and 17,000 somethings long. Not impossible.

And this is like an art installation.

This is my understanding. Yeah.
So it's like, it's trying to make a point. Like,

this is how much

paper you use every time you send a text. Oh, I don't like you.
It reminds me, you know what that reminds me of? It doesn't work with seven, I don't feel, though. Maybe you could.

abbreviate this an XKCD comic that is trying to come up with an illustration of climate change to show exactly where we are in relation to history of the global mean temperature and how much we have increased the temperature or how much it's decreased over time.

And you can just see tiny changes for millennia upon millennia and then for the last hundred years, suddenly a massive rightward shift.

So that's definitely something, if you abbreviated that, yeah, small changes for the first six and then one massively long rolling one to show current climate crisis change. Something like...

17,000 climates!

Exactly. Thank you.
Or 86 degrees Fahrenheit.

And importantly, climate change is two words. I think we've cracked it.

Yeah.

These seven roles, are they in like an or do they get bigger every time or are they sort of spread out? Do we think? Like, what's

thinking like seven things that are seven? I'm like rainbow colours. Yes.
Continents, maybe. I don't know.
That could be completely wrong.

These are related to his job. User interface designer.
Oh, that's right. They're a user interface designer.

So

something to do with

user interface.

Those are the sorts of words that when they're put together, they make my brain panic in that way of, oh no, I am unqualified for this. And I know that you've got to push past that feeling, but

that's the brain panic. Hey, if if you have this many options on your website, this is how long your drop-down menu will be.

Now, not that, Bill, but closer than you might think.

Okay, all right.

Options or drop-downs.

Yes. I've got seven things.
One of them's really big. Don't do it that way.
That's bad user interface. Actually, they're all pretty big.
They're all pretty big. Okay.

And I wouldn't focus too much on the seven. It's the amount of energy it takes to run a chat GPT query.

It's a lot

compared to a Bing search, compared to a Google search. I think people would be surprised by the length of the paper.
Yeah.

It is the amount of code needed to be written to make a small widget appear on a website. Now, again, not that, but you've picked up on something there.
The roles were not blank.

I could picture that instead of being an art installation by a UI designer.

like the idea of like a coding demonstration of like, I'm going to create the same effect and I'm going to demonstrate the efficiency of good code writing.

If I did it all in just nested if statements, it's this long, that's insane. But look, this one's better and this one's better.

And then the final one is something I don't understand about programming. Like I could picture that being a lesson that you would give and everyone go, oh my gosh.

It's not really public art installation. No, no one, no one walking through is going to be like, all right, cool, man.
I guess I won't nest my if statements.

Like,

what?

So is there something fun that it could be that more people would just find light and amusing and an interesting thing to see? Shocking and horrifying.

Here is the code to make your computer play happy birthday. Again, I don't think it's code.
We didn't feel like we'd hit on something there, but. Shocking and horrifying, maybe.

Perhaps a bit strong, but something like that. I don't know.
I was thinking the if statements were good. Like, this is how much it takes to code, I I don't know,

flappy bird if you tried to code it. If you move away from code

to something that people are more used to seeing, then yes.

Is it just certain websites that scroll down really far? Something along those lines. Length of Wikipedia pages.

Now we're getting close. Now we're getting close.

Normally, you would just be scrolling down this. Oh,

is it to do? Do you spend on

Instagram or TikTok? Yeah, there's like a feed as you scroll through. Oh, Twitter.
Or a Facebook page. Facebook.
Not quite, but you've now got what those colours are.

They're the corporate identities for Twitter and Instagram and Facebook and Snapchat. How long everybody spends on them every day?

How long is correct? And you've got the companies. And it's something that everyone here will have dealt with.
Let's go. Let's do the answer two words at a time.
I'll start. How long?

a person

take it away, Michelle. Oh, no, spends on.

Okay.

How long a person spends on,

maybe would spend on, if any of us actually did do this. Oh,

how long?

This is something all of us have just scrolled by. Is it the ads in some fashion? I scroll past those.
Maybe you didn't even click on it. Is it how much you

watch without actually selecting to watch anything? How much is autoplayed at you? The fact that no one's thought of this yet, that is exactly the point of this exhibition. Interesting.

Where might you find long, long, long sections of text? Is it the terms and conditions? Yes, it is. Terms and conditions that you'd never read.

Oh,

that's exciting. That's too long in terms of condition.
That should be illegal. What are the numbers on the floor? What's 17,161? The word count? Yeah, that's the word count.
What's 86?

How many hours would it take you to read it? How many minutes? Yes.

That is an 86-minute reading. You don't know how slow I read.

So, last question.

What was this public installation's two-word title? I accept.

I agree. Yes.
Scraped on there, Danny. Well done.

This was I agree by Dima Yaronovsky, a UX designer visual communication student to visualize the power of large corporations.

TIY or Let Us Install.

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Danny, your question whenever you're ready. Absolutely.
This one has been sent in by Vasily Popov. Thank you so much.

According to Khrushchev's memoirs, Turkey once complained that Armenia's Soviet emblem contained Mount Ararat, which was no longer in Armenian territory.

What was the USSR's witty and compelling counter-argument? I'll read it one more time.

According to Khrushchev's memoirs, Turkey once complained that Armenia's Soviet emblem contained Mount Ararat, which was no longer in Armenian territory.

What was the USSR's witty and compelling counter-argument? I have a thought. Is it witty and compelling? I mean, maybe.
Depends what your standards are. It's definitely compelling.

Which is them agreeing to fix the error by redrawing the borders of...

Oh.

Right? Oh, you're right. That is an oversight.
We're going to take Ararat back. Oh, no.
That's pretty compelling to stop complaining about it. No, it's fine.
Don't worry about it.

We can keep it simple. Oh, you're going to complain? We'll start a war.
Yeah.

To the best of my knowledge, Mount Ararat is still a turkey thing, right?

Because they stopped complaining. All right.

I've been trying to think of puns, and it has only just occurred to me that these will not be in English. Whatever this is,

it's going to be

translated. So it can't just be like a pun on what it sounds like.
That's reasonable as a thought. Just to be clear, like Turkey was complaining that it's on Armenia's emblem.

Yeah, saying, Armenia, I kind of have a problem with your emblem. You've got our mountain on it.
What's up with that? Armenia? Hardly newer. No, that doesn't work.
Sorry.

What do we know about Mount Ararat, Turkey, and Armenia? Is Mount Ararat like the ark one? Yeah, it's where Noah's Ark was purported to have landed. Oh, really?

You can tell that it's clearly relevant to the answer based on my response. Yeah, what would you say?

Tom, pretend pretend

you're the Soviet Union. Okay, hold on, hold on, let me get me the character as

this old chestnut. To be fair, we're looking for the Soviets' response, not Khrushchev's response here, right?

You're just a general Soviet Union. Yeah, Khrushchev's memoirs just happened to be where we got this from.
The Soviet Union. Yes, go ahead.
I'm not going to do the accent.

I'll be Turkey. Okay.

And I will do the accent. Yeah.
Michelle, congratulations.

You're Armenia. Oh, you can be Armenia.
Yeah. Here we go.
I'll do do it here's

the accent.

Here's the story.

All right. So

I'm trying to, I'm looking at my route here, right? And I'm thinking,

that's in Turkey, right? But here's Armenia. Look at them over there.
They're all like, oh, we got our route now on our quest. And I find that personally to be a bit disrespectful.
So

what do you have to say for Armenia? Do the accent.

I was, I knew you weren't going to go for the accent, but I was like,

what route are we going down here? All right, yeah, we're going Cockney-wide, boy, fine.

What if I had a perfect, like, like pitch-perfect, absolutely spot-on, like, Turkish, like, oh, that's someone from Ankara? How would I know? Wouldn't it be cool? Oh, it'd be great.

So, yeah, how did that go?

You've teed me up to give the answer here. And unfortunately, I'm imagining myself as a Soviet diplomat.
And the first thing,

as this formal request comes in over the wire or by post, something to go, oh now I've got to deal with this

and don't forget you are the most witty and compelling diplomat that there could ever be that sounds like you're giving me an AI prompt

please respond to Turkey's complaints about Mount Ararat certainly you are a witty diplomat

like because presumably

like what did it compel them to do just stop complaining about Mount Ararat I think that's fair I don't think that you should look at compelling inso much as making them, like compelling them to do something, but just making them go,

yeah, right, fair enough.

Was it a response?

Mate, every mountain looks exactly the same. That's just a different mountain.
Or, oh, it's got a peak. Yeah, it's a mountain, dummy.
Was that it? That witty and compelling? It's not that.

I think you can go, like, if I'm typing into my chat prompt,

one step wittier.

Is it like, thanks for putting our nice mountain on there?

It's a good mountain. Glad you like it.
It's definitely more retorty. At least they didn't try and steal the real thing.

What do we know about Turkey?

It's... They said, well, you don't have a picture of a bird on your flag, idiots.
Like that? About Turkey? It's across two continents.

Annoyingly, Tom, yours is great geographical information, but Bill is closer to the correct answer. Okay.

Oh, Turkey has...

Does Turkey have a crescent moon on its flag? Yes.

And they said, hey, Turkey, you've got a moon on your flag. That's not in Turkey.
You are correct.

They said,

you've got the moon on yours. Do you own the moon, Turkey?

And yep, fair enough. What were they going to do about that?

Yeah, this is an anecdote that's apparently been around for going on nearly 100 years from now. The truth of it,

who can say, but I hope so. Because fair enough.

Which means there's just one order of business left. Thank you to Ben for sending in this question from the start of the show.

In which non-medical location might you see vomits, nosebleeds, and spots? Anyone taking a shot at that? Again, Michelle, this isn't beauty exactly, but it feels closer to your things than us.

I was thinking manga.

You're not wrong. There's a lot of nosebleeds in manga.
I was thinking it could be like in a

concert hall theater, like the nosebleed section. Oh, the nosebleed section.
The vomit

section. Oh, God.
Yes, it is.

It's the nosebleed section. I've listened to Hilltop Hoods.

Yep, the nosebleed section is the highest seats in the auditorium where patents are set to get nosebleeds for having to lean forward and look down at the stage. So, what is a spot?

Lights. Spotlights are known as spots.
Vomit or vomits is a little bit more obscure. Anyone want to take a guess?

It's the exit, like in a vomitorium.

Yes, it is. It's the passageways or openings that lead to the seating areas because they are designed to allow people to disperse quickly.

And ejection has the same sort of route as we use vomit for now. That is the vomitorium.

Now, I will say, the nosebleed section is something that has caused some contention because some people have learned it as the highest up, far away seats.

Others have learned it as the super close in section. Oh.
And

that definitely ends up being a divisive argument. I don't know, like, I don't know who ended up being correct.
The far off one sounds like it's got more of an origin, but I don't know.

Maybe mosh pits are very nosebleedy, and that's where that one came from. Yes, vomits, nosebleeds, spots are all theater terms.
Thank you very much to our players. What's going on in your lives?

Where can people find you? We'll start today with Bill.

I've often talked about Escape This Podcast, but we also have a show called Solve This Murder, where we solve murder mysteries, one of us taking the lead as the detective.

And if you haven't given that a listen, go and check it out. It's a lot of fun.
We write original murder mysteries, try and solve them, and we don't do it brilliantly, but we don't do it poorly.

Danny, where can people find you?

You can find us at consume this media.com. You can just search Escape This Podcast, Solve This Murder.
We've got good SEO on our side. And Michelle, where can people find you and what do you do there?

I'm at LabMuff and Beauty Science. I'm on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.
And I talk about the science behind beauty products.

I debunk misinformation and I talk a bit about how to work out what is and isn't true.

And if you want to know more about this show, you can do that at lateralcast.com, where you can also send in your own ideas for questions.

We are at lateralcast basically everywhere, and there are full video episodes every week on Spotify. Thank you very much to Michelle Wong.
Thank you. Danny Silla.
Thank you so much.

And Bill Sunderland. Thank you.
It was wonderful. I've been Tom Scott, and that's been Lateral.