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Comment by ironbound

1 day ago

Pizza orders are also an indicator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_pizza_theory

The irony that operational national security would be greatly improved if only they maintained a well staffed and resourced government kitchen for the Pentagon, but won't for many silly reasons. Oh no, lots of people would have to sit on idle standby many times, or gov't employees would get free meals.

  • The Pentagon has a ton of restaurants inside. There's literally an official mall-style map of all of them right here, I count almost 30: https://www.whs.mil/Services-and-Information/DoDCC/

    The pizza index is specifically about late-night pizza orders, when presumably most of those restaurants are closed (though some do appear to be open 24/7).

    • If the pizza-indicator is still observable, then there is insufficient internal capacity (or perhaps it would be more correct to say insufficient at the right times) to mask the signal

  • There are several restaurants there. The Domino's thing is back from the first Gulf War and wasn't even really true then

I believe that orders probably do go up. I don't believe the sites/accounts using Google's 'how busy' have any relevance at all. As I understand it, these just use GPS/location data of phones.

It only takes one person to pick up 40 pizzas, after all. Perhaps they could look at time estimates for a new order as a better indicator, if such an API exists prior to ordering.