We are all idiots at something

We all have our interests, and it’s impossible to be knowledgeable in everything in the world. For example, I’ve never been good at basic auto mechanics. One time I tried to change my oil I ended up draining the transmission fluid and then adding five more quarts of oil. When it wouldn’t go into gear, I couldn’t understand why and had to ask for help…

I remember getting picked on for that, and looking back it was a dumb mistake, but I had no one guiding me. I unscrewed the first thing I saw, which happened to be the transmission fluid.

Over the past few days, Strava has been in the news because they released a public “heat map” of all the workout locations from billions of data points all over the globe.

Apparently, you can use this data to pinpoint military bases throughout the world and what has previously been blacked out is now easily findable. To me, this is much like my auto mechanic story and a stupid mistake on the part of the leaders of our military. I mean how can you think it’s a good idea to use a social media app with the whole goal of tracking you with GPS on a base that should be blacked out?

One interesting piece of information on the story is Area 51 was indeed blacked out. I have assumed the other bases aren’t on some global list and if I’m being guessing even if Strava would have asked the military they wouldn’t have given them any information on what to block out.

But what this story reminds me of is that we are all idiots in our ways. Just as in my example I am an idiot. You are an idiot. However, if we work together, we can bring our IQ up collectively​ since there is a significant probability we are both dumb in different areas.