12 Farm-Fresh Trivia Tidbits for Thursday, October 10, 2024
The guys who invented A.I. won the Nobel Prize, and even they’re like, “You sure about that?”
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An Elephant Never Forgets (That You Stink)
A study found that elephants can recognize a former zookeeper by scent alone after over a decade apart.
Everyone Is Dunking on an NBA Star’s Super-Expensive Luxury Watch
Jayson Tatum wore a $200,000 watch (that looks like a LiveStrong bracelet) to a press conference, and a clip of a reporter telling him it looks like a “kids watch” went viral.
Pickleball Is Consuming Tennis’ Resources
While the U.S. Tennis Association estimates there are 24.5 million tennis players in the country, and projects 35 million by 2035, they also say pickleball courts have already taken over 10 percent of all existing tennis courts.
Glasses That Turn Conversations Into Reading
For just $599, you can own the Even Realities G1 specs that display speech-to-text translations right in front of your eyes in real time.
Bob Woodward Withheld Crucial Evidence of Treason to Sell Books
The man who cracked Watergate just published a book in which he reports evidence that Donald Trump secretly sent crucial COVID testing equipment to Vladimir Putin during the height of the pandemic. Sounds like something the public should have read in a newspaper, for free, a long time ago.
The English Language Just Grew by 200 Words
Merriam-Webster has added 200 new words to the dictionary, including “touch grass,” “nepo baby” and “snog.”
Home Depot Is Making Management Work the Floor
Home Depot has ordered all corporate employees, right up to senior management, to spend one eight-hour shift in a store, to “truly understand the challenges and opportunities our store associates face every day.”
The Most Popular Halloween Costume of Every Year Since 1950
Reader's Digest has compiled a list of the most popular costume of every year from 1950 to 2005, including Cowboy in 1950, Elvis Presley in 1970 and Britney Spears in 2000.
Someone Finally Beat ‘Tetris’
The world Tetris record is periodically beaten, to great fanfare, but that normally involves a sprint to get as far as possible before the game crashes. American teenage streamer dogplayingtetris appears to be the first person to ever achieve “rebirth,” beating all 255 levels and resetting back to level 0.
Las Vegas Uses Building Demolitions to Put on One Last Show
The controlled demolition of the Tropicana casino included a drone show and fireworks. That’s a tradition that started in 1993, when the owner of a pirate ship-shaped casino used pyrotechnics to make it appear that his building was blowing up the Dunes casino.
Tiny Wasps Are Saving an Endangered Bird Species
Conservationists have released swarms of small, parasitic wasps onto the South Atlantic’s Nightingale Island, which are preying upon insects that spread deadly mold to the fragile Wilkins’ finch.
Very Reluctant Nobel Prize Winners
Geoffrey Hinton and John Hopfield received the Nobel prize for their work pioneering machine learning, but both have expressed skepticism of A.I. and regret for their role in it. Hopfield has compared A.I. to viruses and nuclear power, while Hinton is worried that “systems more intelligent than us that eventually take control.”
