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Afternoon Links: Google Using Car Ownership to Predict Demographics, Sean Spicer to be Deposed, and on Eating Turkeys

By Jim Swift

White people love Subarus. Google’s spy cars have documented the “street view” of much of the United States (and the rest of the world). But what are some applications of all of this data scientists could use? Google’s folks decided to analyze the types of cars parked on the street to see if they could predict a neighborhood’s racial demographics. Surprise, they were!

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That yielded a number of reliable correlations. The five vehicle types most closely associated with white neighborhoods, for instance, were SUVs, cars made by Jeep and Subaru, expensive cars, and cars classified as “wagons.” In black neighborhoods, on the other hand, Cadillacs, Buicks, Mercurys, Chryslers and sedan-type vehicles were more prevalent. You can do similar exercises for other demographic characteristics, like educational attainment. People with graduate degrees were more likely to drive Audi hatchbacks with high city MPG. Those with less than a high school education, on the other hand, were more likely to drive cars made by U.S. manufacturers in the 1990s. One important thing to note is that these are just correlations. Saying that white people are more likely to drive Subaru wagons isn’t the same as saying all white people drive Subaru wagons, or that all Subaru wagons are driven by white people. But the data set showed that white people were more likely than black or Asian people to drive those cars.

Just remember that Google is handing the robots all the data they will need to quickly become our overlords. Rather, we are.

Mark Hemingway on Michael in the Morning! If you’re looking for a podcast to add to your lineup of favorites, look no further than Michael Graham’s AM podcast over at Ricochet. Today, senior writer Mark Hemingway joined the show to discuss some of the crazy responses to the growing list of famous sexual predators.

Sean Spicer can’t listen. The DNC has been granted the right to depose the former RNC press secretary after he publicly admitted to being on the fifth floor of Trump Tower on election night. They’ve also won the ability to perform a targeted search of his emails. Why?

It all hinges over whether Spicer “violated a 35-year-old consent decree barring the RNC from engaging in ballot security or voter suppression efforts.” Trump campaign officials were allowed to run such operations, but not the RNC. The good news is that Spicer’s sloppiness, it seems, won’t likely result in the DNC getting the judge to extended the consent decree, which expires Friday:

“As far as what’s before this court, you’ve presented me with no evidence of actual voter suppression efforts on the day of the election, much less tying it to the RNC,” [Judge] Vazquez told DNC attorneys.”

Where turkeys go to retire. Presidents have (stupidly) pardoned turkeys each and every Thanksgiving since pretty much ever, rather than eat them. Atlas Obscura has a look at Kidwell Farm in Virginia, where the turkeys go to live out their final days:

In recent years most of the turkeys have ended up in an outdoor pen on Kidwell Farm, the government’s demonstration exhibit of agricultural technology from the Great Depression. And despite the President’s 2017 prediction of a “very, very bright future”, most of the Turkeys of the United States don’t make it through their first winter. “We usually just find ‘em and they’re dead,” Kidwell Farmer Marlo Acock told ABC News. The slaughter isn’t a byproduct of shoddy veterinary care, but a reality of modern agribusiness. In order to attain their unnaturally plump gait, most Thanksgiving turkeys are fed a gluttonous diet of corn and soybeans. By the age of 18 months or so, the Presidential turkeys are simply too fat and unhealthy to survive for more than a few months outdoors.

It may seem cruel to want the president to kill and eat the Thanksgiving turkey, but I hope you’ll agree that if it’s a ceremony we must do, it’s far more humane.

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