12 Farm-Fresh Trivia Tidbits for Friday, November 15, 2024
Things are going great over on X, the everything app.
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The Largest X-Odus Since Musk Took Over
115,000 U.S. Twitter users deleted their accounts the day after the election, fueling a marked increase in Bluesky sign-ups. The competitor just broke 15 million users.
Advertisers May Come Back to Twitter, Despite the Shrinking User Base
The Financial Times predicts that some advertisers may dip a toe back in the Nazi waters. Not, obviously, because the product is improving, but because they want to curry favor with the man who ruined it. We’ve somehow invented an even worse version of capitalism previously thought too stupid to exist.
What’s the Drunkest City in Your State?
Based on adults who reported heavy or binge drinking in a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation study, a media company put together a map of the nation’s drunkest cities. There are some expected winners, like college towns in farm states, but a few surprises. like Glens Falls bumping off the Big Apple in New York.
Disney Has Finally Started Evening Out the Gender Gap (By Court Order)
Disney settled a class-action lawsuit with 9,000 female employees who argued they were paid less than their male colleagues. We don’t know what they settled for, but the lawsuit was seeking $300 million.
Spotify Is Looking to Take On YouTube in the Video Podcast Realm
They’re incentivizing creators with bonuses for hitting certain view numbers. It’s unclear if they aim to be the home to the “Liberal Joe Rogan” that everyone says will fix American politics, or if they just want a larger slice of the fascist manosphere dork audience.
Tomatoes Are About to Have an Apple-Like Renaissance
There’s nothing produce companies love more than inventing a new kind of apple. Researchers have now pinpointed the gene responsible for the sweetness of tomatoes, meaning they can dial the sugar content up and down, dragging the size of the tomato with it. Mamma mia.
Reversing the Trend of Robots Taking Human Jobs
A retail chain in China has swapped out mannequins and instead hired humans to wear their clothes and walk on storefront treadmills.
An 80-Million-Year-Old Bird Brain
An extremely well-preserved fossil from the dinosaur days has allowed scientists to reconstruct a prehistoric bird’s brain, and begin filling in lots of gaps as to the evolution of bird intelligence.
A Sea Turtle Accidentally Traveled From the Gulf of Mexico to the Netherlands
An endangered Kemp’s ridley sea turtle was discovered in a fishing net off the coast of the Netherlands, and taken to the Rotterdam Zoo. They nursed it to back to health before transferring it to the Houston Zoo, who released it back into the gulf.
Grubhub Was a $7 Billion Bust
The Dutch company that bought Grubhub for $7.3 billion in 2021 just sold it off for $650 million. That’s like buying a brand new car and selling the tires four years later.
Scientists Thought Human Childhoods Became Longer Because of Our Brain Size. But They’re Not So Sure Anymore
The conventional wisdom was that humans don’t reach adulthood as fast as other animals because our brains grew too large for the birth canal, and they needed more time to cook outside of the womb. But a study of juvenile teeth in our prehistoric ancestors found that, even when we had monkey brains, we still remained helpless little brats for way longer than the rest of the animal kingdom.
How Long Is Too Long on the Toilet?
Doctors say that sitting around on the toilet for more than 10 minutes is linked to hemorrhoids and pelvic floor issues.
