12 Trivia Tidbits for Tuesday, June 11, 2024
China’s Top-Rated Natural Waterfall Got a Sneaky Assist From Hydraulic Engineering
A hiker scrambled to the top of Yuntai Mountain Waterfall, a prestigious “quadruple-A” rated tourist attraction and China’s tallest waterfall, and found that it was partially fed by a big fat pipe dumping water on top of the natural outlet.
Oklahoma Says We Have Burj Khalifa at Home
The Oklahoma City Council has removed long-standing height restrictions on buildings, paving the way for the audacious Legends Tower. If constructed, it’ll clock in as the sixth-tallest building in the world.
Is Kyrie Irving the Head of a Forced Labor Ring? Congress Seems to Think So
Irving signed a five-year deal with Chinese sports equipment company Anta, which Congress believes has some uncomfortable connections with forced labor camps. He basically just wears their dumb-shit shoes, but he’s also technically the company’s Chief Creative Officer.
Kia Is Coming for Tesla’s Dumbest Recall Crown
After selling about 463,000 of them, Kia found out that the front seats of their popular Telluride SUV can straight-up spontaneously combust. They’re asking people not to park them in garages or near flammable items, just in case.
Is Nike Selling Cocaine?
Probably not, but someone is selling Nike cocaine. Divers in Florida found 66 pounds of coke, worth about $1 million, stamped with a Nike skateboarding logo.
The Most Lucrative Catchphrase on Etsy
A study of Etsy products with inane movie quotes slapped on overpriced trinkets found that “Bond. James Bond” is your best bet to rake in cash. It found over 4,000 such items, selling for over $80 a pop on average.
The U.S. Only Has Two of the Top 50 Restaurants in the World
A big award ceremony in Las Vegas honored the 50 best restaurants in the world, and only New York’s Atomix and California’s Single Thread made the cut. Better luck next year, fake Burger King in Pittsburgh.
Meta’s A.I. Policy Turned Into a Humongous Boost for a Competitor
As visual artists came to realize that Meta is scraping Instagram art to train its A.I., a huge wave of users left the app for good. Cara, a competing app that hates A.I., ballooned from 40,000 users to 650,000 in a week.
American Journalism Is Being Propped Up by U.K. Journalists
Because American journalism is currently a barely functioning zombie-like husk of its former self, it’s struggling to figure out how to survive with next to no funding and a tiny workforce. Those are the conditions that U.K. journalism has thrived in for years, which is why print and cable news outlets are increasingly run by British news vets. Everything seems to be going great!
Elon Musk May Be the Most Prolific Pornographer in Human History
After deciding to quit his crusade against Twitter porn bots, news came out that a remote Amazon tribe, which had been gifted Starlink internet nine months ago, are already struggling with scams, misinformation and social media/porn addiction.
Why Are Aluminum Cans Shaped Like That?
The bottom of a can of beer or soda is packed with precision engineering. The surface is concave to help the otherwise flimsy and weak material withstand the pressure of a carbonated beverage, up to 90 pounds per inch. And the beveled ring at the bottom is designed specifically to rest on the ring at the top, to allow for LEGO-like stacking for transportation and storage.
The Pope’s A-List Comedy Party
The Pope is throwing a 100-comedian party at the Vatican, including guests like Conan O’Brien and Whoopi Goldberg, to “establish a link” between the church and the modern state of comedy. Keep an eye out for the Pope wheeze-laughing at celebrity anecdotes and hucking NFTs. Or late-night hosts absolving serial predators.