12 Farm-Fresh Trivia Tidbits for Tuesday, October 15, 2024
I’m starting to think that money actually can buy happiness.
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Taco Bell Lets You Decide How Much You Want to Spend
Taco Bell’s mobile app now includes a name-your-own-price tool: Tell them how much you’re willing to spend, and it’ll whip up a random order that fits your budget. If it sounds gross, you can refresh until you see something that hits the spot.
Austin’s Hottest New Restaurant Doesn’t Exist
Ethos, a venue that claims to be “Austin’s #1 restaurant,” has racked up more than 72,000 followers on Instagram. Somehow, people are just starting to recognize that all of their insane food is A.I. generated, and there is no such restaurant in Austin.
A Woman’s Stunt Driver Application Was Returned After Almost 50 Years
Professional daredevil Tizi Hodson applied for her dream job as a motorcycle stunt person in 1976, but never heard back. At age 70, she received the application back in her mailbox with a note indicating the post office had lost it behind a drawer for all those years.
Science Says Museums Do Something Weird to Your Brain
A neurological study has shown that viewing a piece of art in a museum stimulates your brain 10 times harder than viewing the same piece on a postcard or textbook.
The Insane Diet of Two Insane Lions
The “man-eaters of Tsavo” were two lions who were responsible for the deaths of 35 railway construction workers in Kenya in the 1800s. Scientists have picked through the gunk in their teeth, and determined that they also got into giraffe, oryx, waterbuck, wildebeest and zebra.
Pumpkin Beer Was the 17th Century Pizza Bagel
A satirical folk song from 1643 about why New England sucks includes the line, “We have pumpkin at morning and pumpkin at noon, If it was not for pumpkins we should be undone,” reflecting the widespread popularity of pumpkin beer at the time. Buffalo Bill’s Brewery, the first brewpub in the United States, is credited with resurrecting pumpkin beer in 1986.
‘Inception’ IRL, Maybe
Sleep researchers claim to have been able to make two people communicate in their dreams. Using equipment and a process that sound very fake, one participant was given a code word while lucid dreaming, and was able to essentially leave it in a lucid dreaming voicemail for another participant. The researchers who pulled this off want to combine it with A.I. to revolutionize the way society operates, so it’s safe to assume it’s some combination of evil and stupid.
Was Christopher Columbus Even Spanish at All?
A “documentary thriller” produced by Spain’s national broadcaster seems to be trying to pass off responsibility for one of history’s biggest monsters. Almost tournament-style, the documentary eliminated theories for Columbus’ background until they had one left: He was a Sephardic Jew.
Racists Are Hacking Vacuums
Hackers have figured out how to hack into a Roomba-like device called the Ecovacs Deebot X2, then broadcast recordings of racial slurs into the homes of unsuspecting victims.
Can You Buy Your Way to an MLB Championship?
According to the numbers, yup, payroll does correlate with a postseason appearance. Of the four teams still in the playoffs, three of them have the top payrolls in the league: the Los Angeles Dodgers at $266 million, the New York Yankees at $311 million and the New York Mets at $332 million.
The Pentagon Can’t Figure Out Who’s Been Buzzing a Military Base
Virginia’s Langley Air Force Base was visited by mysterious drones for two and a half weeks, and the Pentagon has said it doesn’t know who’s been doing it or if any sensitive information has been captured.
Sometimes Evolution Actually Is Visible
Scientists recently wrapped up a 30-year experiment to see if they could speed up evolution to a visible rate: They introduced a species of “crab” ecotype sea snail to an area where they had recently been wiped out, and watched them evolve into near-carbon copies of the “Wave” ecotype that had continued to thrive there.
