12 Trivia Tidbits for Thursday, July 25, 2024
Ancient Lunchables and Amazon’s $25 billion miscalculation.
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Why Do Dogs Pee Like That?
Squatting to pee deposits all that wonderful stink directly into the ground. But if they want their message to stick around longer, or if they want to appear bigger, they’ll lift a leg and shoot it up as high on a vertical surface as they can.
The Best Places to Raise a Family in the Country
Based on factors like healthcare, education, affordability and resources for seniors, Fortune has found that Silver Spring, Maryland, Upper Merion, Pennsylvania and Chantilly, Virginia are the best places to put down roots.
Elon Rescinded His Monthly Pledge to the Trump Campaign
After promising to spend $45 million per month to get Trump elected, and reaping lots of in-rally praise from the big man himself, Elon suddenly reversed course. He said he doesn’t “subscribe to a cult of personality,” despite subscriptions and personality being his two biggest white whales.
A Six-Story Building Has Been Orbiting the Earth for 25 Years
NASA’s Chandra observatory just celebrated 25 years of orbiting the Earth, taking X-ray images of deep space. The telescope swings around the planet in an elliptical pattern, allowing it to dive outside of the Van Allen radiation belt and take even clearer pictures for 55 hours at a time.
Surveillance Pricing: The New Dynamic Pricing
Dynamic pricing is the business term for surge pricing, making services like Uber more expensive when they’re in higher demand. The FTC, however, is investigating some major companies for surveillance pricing, which might lead to your favorite brands charging you more because they know, based on your digital footprint, just how much you like them.
The WNBA Quadrupled Last Year’s All-Star Game Viewership
The WNBA All-Star game brought in 3.44 million viewers this year. That absolutely dwarfs last year’s numbers, but is actually only the league’s third-highest rated telecast.
Amazon’s Surprising $25 Billion Failure
Amazon’s CEO says the company has lost $25 billion since 2017 on its smart devices (like its poster child, Alexa). The devices themselves are popular (and stupid expensive), but they overestimated how much people would use them to buy even more products they don’t really need.
Your Stress Is Contagious to Dogs
Research has shown that dogs can smell stress on you, and that your stress can impact how they feel and act, even if they don’t know you.
GM’s Mourning Period Is Over
General Motors suspended development of its driverless taxis last year, after one of their vehicles plowed into a pedestrian. Now, though, they’re ramping operations back up, this time with human “supervisors” in the cars.
A Guy Is Pedaling Across Scotland in a Canoe
A 36-year-old man is raising money for a charity that provides prosthetic limbs for children, by piloting his handmade bicycle-canoe across the country and back.
Best Buy Pulled a 180 From the Geek Squad
The Geek Squad was developed as a team of superhero nerds, real people who would fix all your tech problems. But the company just went through a rebrand, updating their color palette to be more soullessly A.I.-looking, and introducing an A.I. “spokeshologram.”
Ancient Lunchables
Archaeologists have uncovered 4,000-year-old tablets that detail the lunches packed by travelers in modern-day Türkiye, including a spicy preserved meat and a type of cheese no one had ever heard of before.
