12 Trivia Tidbits for Monday, April 29, 2024

Artist David Bowen has made some completely pointless, yet oddly practical art installations, including a houseplant whose electrical signals are tapped to wield a machete, and contraptions that detect the random movements of flies to tweet, pilot a blimp and handle a gun.

The amount of births in the United States fell by 2 percent in 2023, to 3.59 million, the lowest in over 40 years. One has to wonder if state-supported gun violence and rollbacks in bodily autonomy don’t make a great backdrop for baby making.

It’s wearing a grocery store’s sneaker to buy groceries. Grocery store chains Aldi and Lidl have both dropped signature shoes in recent years, that feature their colorways and logos. Despite being extremely reasonably priced at around $15, they’ve gone viral and are, frankly, kind of rad as hell. (Also we were just kidding before, wear a band’s shirt to their show, gatekeepers can eat shit.)

G/O Media, the company that ruined popular websites like Gizmodo and Kotaku, blessedly sold The Onion to a group that aims to save the site from the hell that is modern ad-supported web publishing. The group recently started the tongue-in-cheek shell company Global Tetrahedron, which has been The Onion’s go-to fake corporation name for decades.

Netflix’s wildly popular new show, Baby Reindeer, is a based-on-a-true-story about a comedian who dealt with a stalker and an abuser. Fans are doing some Swiftie-level overanalysis, and have been trying to track down creator Richard Gadd’s real-life abusers, despite his begging them to knock it off. A friend and colleague of Gadd’s has been a particular target, because he has a beard, like one of the characters in the show. 

Chicago’s famed rat hole, a rat-shaped impression in a slab of sidewalk that turned into a shrine to the anonymous rat (or maybe squirrel?) who left it, has been carted away by the city. It was determined that that particular slab was damaged, and could become a potential safety hazard. It’s currently in storage, and the mayor has yet to decide what to do with it.

In a narrow vote, the FCC reversed its prior decision to burn the concept of net neutrality to the ground, and is finally, officially, recognizing the internet as a public utility. In the seven years since net neutrality was stonewalled, broadband companies have been suspected of holding traffic hostage, on sites ranging from Netflix to a California county’s fire department during a wildfire.

A new study of 2,000 travelers found that one in five vacationing Americans are daydreaming about... their next vacation. 

Neuroscientists were able to transplant rat stem cells into the brains of mice, where they actually formed functioning neural networks. According to one scientist, this is “remarkable” progress toward treating human ailments that involve loss of neural function, and we’re taking their word for it.

An attempt to pass a law banning ice cream after midnight failed in 2013, but it’s making a comeback. And this time, they’re coming for your pizza, too.

Fossilized raptor footprints found in China have led researchers to believe they’ve stumbled upon a heretofore unknown species of megaraptor, which they approximate to be six feet tall and 16 feet tip to tail. That’s much larger than previously known raptors, and even the slightly exaggerated ones from Jurassic Park. Although this does all stem from a somewhat unscientific-sounding “rule of thumb that you multiply the length of the footprint by four to get the height of a dinosaur at the hip.” Bones or it didn’t happen.

Uber’s Lost and Found Index lists the most frequently left items of the last 12 months, which is boring and predictable, but also the weirdest stuff people left behind. Entries include the engine to a Jeep Liberty, a fart sensor and “my girlfriend’s pregnant pills.”