12 Farm-Fresh Trivia Tidbits for Wednesday, December 18, 2024

King hates his movie Maximum Overdrive, where electronic devices come to life and murder humans. But a similar phenomenon has been observed in modern farming equipment: because they're piloted using GPS, solar storms can make them act erratically. One farmer said during a solar storm this year that "Our tractors acted like they were demon-possessed."

A study of 5,327 people found a connection between frequent use (or even overuse) of emojis and a more robust dating/sex life.

The iceberg A23a was once stuck to the seafloor, but it broke free and began pirouetting in place, and has now left its home entirely and is migrating into the Antarctic Ocean.

Governor Kathy Hochul is holding a virtual meeting with dozens of CEOs and security experts to float ideas to make New York City continue to feel like a safe space for some of the richest people in the world. One idea she’s already pitched is making a hotline for CEOs to call when they get scared of the proletariat.

Denver Airport packed over 100 kids onto a plane, took them for a spin in the air and then told them to close their window shades. When they landed (at a different terminal in the same airport), they were greeted by Santa, Mrs. Claus and a bunch of elves, and they all got gifts and ice cream.

The amount of people who have convinced themselves that America is waging a war on Christmas dropped from 39 percent in 2022 to just 23 percent this year, according to a YouGov poll. Among Republicans, it dropped from 59 to 36 percent.

Some lizards are able to shed and regrow their tails if they’re attacked by a predator, and technically, they could do it ad infinitum. The tail tends to break at the weakest vertebra, meaning it could regrow as many times as it has tail vertebra left. But these tails grow back in weird ways, sometimes forking off into a second tail, giving it extra potential breaks.

Scientists thought that Psilocybe cubensis (i.e., magic mushrooms) came to North America about 500,000 years ago, but the detection of an extremely similar species actually dates back to 1.5 million years ago, likely forming on ancient bison poop.

Tokyo is instituting a four-day workweek in the hopes that more free time will bring a 16-year streak of population decline to a halt.

Scientists have found a connection between intermittent fasting and slowed hair regrowth, due to overactivation of adrenal glands.

Stanley is recalling over two million of its cups because hot water is loosening the seal between the lid and the cup, causing it to explode out of the product like a pressure cooker, sometimes directly into people’s faces.

Research indicates there’s one specific compound in red wine grape skins, called quercetin, that may give you a worse hangover. The liver rushes to get quercetin out of your system by turning it into another compound called glucuronide. But the increased glucuronide messes with your body’s ability to process alcohol, causing all the other bad stuff to hang out longer and do more damage.