12 Fresh Trivia Tidbits for Tuesday, September 17, 2024

Tesla paid $2.4 million for just part of Elon Musk’s personal security last year, Apple paid $820,000 for Tim Cook, Amazon spent $1.6 million on Jeff Bezos and Meta put up $23.4 million protecting Mark Zuckerberg.

His last words were “Acta est fabula, plaudite,” which translates to “Have I played the part well? Then applaud as I exit.”

Succession was, at least in part, based on the saga of the Murdoch family. Rupert Murdoch ultimately chose to split his company basically evenly among four of his kids — until now. He’s changed his mind, and a legal proceeding has begun to put the company solely in the hands of his oldest and most conservative pieces of shit son Lachlan.

An old Scandinavian belief that the liver was the source of courage has led to the phrase “Å snakke rett fra leveren”: show some stones and speak directly from the liver.

Most people are pretty excited about Kendrick Lamar performing at the halftime show in New Orleans next year. But Lil Wayne, who’s from New Orleans, was expecting to get the nod. He says getting passed over “broke” him, and he’s “just trying to put myself back together.”

An unmarked grave in Scotland is thought to be that of King Arthur’s wizard, Merlin. Researchers believe this is evidence that Merlin was a local tale that became embellished, rather than a global phenomenon. They say it’s likely he was “a rather pitiful fellow prone to uttering nonsensical riddles and bewildering prophecies, and kept prisoner by an obscure petty tyrant of a forgotten kingdom, before dying a gruesome death, the victim of royal intrigue.”

Archaeologists have found an “entire ecosystem” of fossils under a high school in Los Angeles, including a megalodon and a sabre-toothed salmon.

Since 2023, goliath groupers have been seen swimming in circles until they die. Scientists have finally narrowed down the cause to ingestion of toxic algae.

The FDA just approved official hearing aid designation for a software update to AirPods Pro 2.

The Ig Nobel prize is the inverse of the Nobel, awarded for research that makes you go: Okay, now what? This year’s winners did groundbreaking research that proved some mammals, like mice, rats and pigs, can absorb oxygen through the anus.

James C. Liao published a paper called “Neuromuscular Control of Trout Swimming in a Vortex Street” that explored to what degree some dead fish are able to continue “swimming.”

While Nobel Prize winners get about $1 million, the (unaffiliated) Ig Nobel committee awards the winner with a Zimbabwean $10 trillion bill. In circulation, that’s worth next to nothing. On eBay, it fetches about $22.