Or as a Brit I heard on TV call them, “titbits”.

Today, I’ll start off with this interesting article on what it’s like to work at Amazon.com.

And we are not talking about the Silicon Valley nerds who run the webservers and program the site. We are talking about the thousands of people who work in Amazon’s vast (as in twelve blocks!) warehouses and who “pick” your order. What is their life like?

Basically, the answer is “very very boring”. It pays well ($11/hour) and the conditions are spare but decent, and it even comes with benefits.

But the work is extremely tedious, and because of the sheer number of workers needed, simply showing up to work can be a nerve-grinding hassle. First you have to wait to park, then you have to wait to actually get in the building, then you have to wait to get through security. And all to get to a job that consists of counting boxes for ten hours in a row.

Luckily, they only require you to process 125 orders an hour, which is plenty of time for a competent worker to get things done and still have time to relax.

Overall, I am not sure I could take the unrelenting boredom. Counting things all day sounds like a good way to end up in the loony bin, not to mention the eye strain from all that peering at boxes.

Still, it seems like a decent job, especially for unskilled labour.

I’d give it a shot.

Next, a big beautiful black lady tells a hilarious story on Conan.

That just might be my favorite comedy use of adding “bitch” to the end of something.

You just can’t beat a good “fuck your assumptions” story for making you laugh and feel good about the world at the same time.

I have to wonder what people assume about me. Probably that I am a homeless person, or possibly some kind of mental patient.

Or they could assume I am a big fat hairy nerd, and they would be more or less right. I am, of course, far more than that, but it does describe the general category into which I fit.

They have my species right, even if they are clueless as to my variant.

But if you really want to take the “fuck you” to a whole new level, you write a whole song about it.

British tabloid and force of unmitigated and relentless awfulness the Daily Mail reviewed an Amanda Palmer performance at the mega-huge Glastonbury music festive but apparently their reporter got his mind so completely blown by the sight of an unexpected live boob (Amanda’s bra slipped. It happens.) that they could write about nothing else.

She replied with the above song and I think it’s bloody brilliant. What a way to make your feelings clear about the sort of journalism that would have to tunnel a mile upward to even find the gutter.

Seriously, UK. What is the deal with your tabloids? They are so very awful!

Next, we have something I would normally save for Friday Science but it is such an extraordinary conjunction of my interests that I just can’t wait.

Brain science AND ethics? The brain science of ethics? Holy Penfield, Batman, I think we have a winner.

And not only ethics, but ethics with an extremely brutal moral question attached. I love those! And this “trolley problem” split is fascinating.

I love the distinction between “cold ethics” and “hot ethics” because I have had thoughts along those lines myself but have never really expressed them.

But for a long time, I have been contemplating the difference between what our logical and analytical minds tell us is right and what feels right.

Unless you truly are a psychopath, both trolley scenarios are going to feel wrong because you are choosing to kill someone. That seriously violates our natural, inborn ethics.

But in the “flip the swich” version, because we are not doing the killing ourselves (gravity is), it is easier for our rational minds to overcome this feeling of wrongness and do the right thing.

In the “kill the fat person” version, though, we have to take on the full moral burden of murder, and that is breaking the most profound taboo human beings have ever known.

You will do the pushing. You will see the fat person’s face as they fall. You will see them die. These things are all nightmares for our hot ethics circuit, and I doubt a lot of (sane) people would be able to do it, at least not in time to save the people on the runaway trolley.

I know I wouldn’t. Even if later, I figured out that I could have saved those people by murdering the fat person, I would feel no guilt, because honestly, some things are just too much to ask of a person.

Nobody could blame me for not committing murder on a split-second decision. Not even the families of the deceased, I would imagine.

As for the rather sensationalistic “Would you kill baby Hitler” question, the answer is no, because there would be so many more humane and ethical ways to keep him from becoming the Hitler we know.

But if that was the only way… and it would take a lot of convincing to make me think so… then yes, I would do it. I would do it in the most humane, painless way possible, but I would do it.

And then hate myself for a while.

I am also intrigued by the notion of the social usefulness of psychopaths. It is definitely true that there are jobs and situations where a lack of moral squeamishness would be a benefit. When we think of psychopaths, we tend to only think of the wild untamed ones, the psychopathic killers and criminals who hurt innocent people and are thus terrible villains.

But a less impulsive and deranged psychopath might go undetected and actually be a benefit to society because they have figured out that blending in benefits them greatly and that, while they have no functioning hot ethics circuit, they have a cold and clinical belief in right and wrong and that works quite well for them.

Sure, they might not “really care” as most people would understand it, but they might nevertheless be solid citizens and a benefit to society.

Finally, we have today’s vid.

It presents my big brain’s big theory that emotions are primarily a form of communication, and that by suppressing them with no outlet, we doom ourselves.