Five308’s Knew Podcaste Flag Ain’t DAT Smaht

Nate Silver and Co. over at FiveThirtyEight — the intelligence branch of the Disney-ABC-ESPN(-George Lucas?) family — launched a new startup this week: 538Elections.* As was most assuredly expected, the podcast — which targets those looking for a more analytical discussion about the 2016 Election Roadshow — has climbed to the top of the charts, taking third behind Serial (1) and Modern Love (2). And presumably, there’s going to be some questions about the show’s logo.

Before the conspiracy theories start racing, know this: FiveThirtyEight, I’m sure, is comprised of highly intelligent people who would probably smoke the average person on an IQ test or in a debate. And that is because the “Nate Silver” hashtagbrand is that of being able to explain the collective public perception and opinion of the day in a condensed, quantifiable way. Silver also has a thing for symbology, as he explained in March 2014. Describing the meaning behind the data journalism organization’s logo (a fox avatar), Silver writes:

Our logo depicts a fox (we call him Fox No. 92) as an allusion to a phrase originally attributed to the Greek poet Archilochus: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” We take a pluralistic approach and we hope to contribute to your understanding of the news in a variety of ways.

SPOILER: # The “one big thing” the hedgehog knows that the fox doesn’t is that both of them are fcked. The hedgehog is trapped and it knows it, while the fox, busy trying to figure out what the fck it’s looking at “…up there…” , doesn’t realize it’s trapped in a box.

HINT: That # may have been something a person could’ve figured out with a little can-do create TIV-atAy thinkin’. But once the noise (the headline, the author, the brand, the fear factor) kicks in, what some may very wall call common sense starts to zoom back and forth, in and out of focus.

The FiveThirtyEight Elections logo — like the fox and the hedgehog thing — is a riddle, hidden in plain site, the (genuinely) ubahsmart FiveThirtyEight staff had to intentionally or unintentionally crack in order to piece together a bit of art. There are many ways to hack the riddle, but those would take time to explain and would inevitably end up sounding more confusing if I were to try to explain like a sane-sounding person. So, I’ll explain it to you like a person with a diagnosed learning disability, which personally I like to call (when I need an ego boost… like now… per# usual), Will Hunting Disorder (WHD).

WHD isn’t recognized by any medical association as an actual thing. But, as those those who’ve seen Matt Damon’s best movie know, it’s a thing. And comprising the WHD spectrum are a few “learning disabilities”, including Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD); Dyslexia; and trouble makin’. Unfortunately for Will Hunting, who came from a broken home and an abusive foster family from Southie, he was never taught that his weird-ass brain problems were actually cool as fck and marketable skills in the work-in-sweatpants industry. So he hung out with Ben, Casey and the Ranga dude from a bunch of other shit, working construction, watchin’ Little League up’ Foley Field, drinkin’, fightin’, other badboy# shit. (SPOILER: The Genie, thankfully, gets Will to see reason and accept his superpowers as things best applied outside the world of swangin’ hammahs with Chucky at the yahd, ked.)

Whatever. Here’goes.

…BUT FIRST!!! Another look at the Five30Ate* Elections logo:

Again, that flag isn’t a political statement — though maybe, it could be? No, what it is, is a really cool way to show-off one’s creative brainpower by publishing something that looks odd; is still synonymous with a company brand; and seemingly indecipherable-enough to interest people like me who want to prove we’re just as smart as those FiveThirtyEight fckers.

WARNING: I have no idea how 530Eight* came up with their logo, but I can explain the riddle it’s presenting us with in just a couple of pictures.

WHERE MY DOMINOS AT?

Five: