12 Farm-Fresh Trivia Tidbits for Tuesday, December 3, 2024

Have you ever noticed how Cheerios sometimes spontaneously sail across a bowl of milk? Scientists have, and they named it the Marangoni effect. Harvard scientists built Cheerio-like pucks and filled them with alcohol to reproduce the effect, finding that higher concentrations of alcohol create more locomotion.

Researchers have developed a brand new source of light by incubating 2,400-year-old honey fungus on small blocks of wood. It took them three months to get things really cooking, but they’re hoping to bring down the incubation period to make a more sustainable source of light.

Black Friday spending has broken the record set just last year, with $13.2 billion being handed over to Jeff Bezos and his ilk in a single weekend. 

Oxford Dictionary announced their word of the year is brain rot: “Supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as a result of overconsumption of ... online content.” We’re glad the brain is getting one last shout-out before they’re all pickled by A.I. slop.

The first known instance of the phrase comes from Thoreau’s Walden: “While England endeavors to cure the potato-rot, will not any endeavor to cure the brain-rot, which prevails so much more widely and fatally?” Amen, sister.

Researchers have designated a group of fossilized remains as a whole new species of human ancestor, which they’re calling Homo juluensis. These guys lived in Asia 50,000 to 300,000 years ago, and passed the time by making stone tools and hunting animals.

Amazon’s cybersecurity chief says that A.I. is currently responsible for over one billion hacking attempts per day.

Scientists studying fossilized prehistoric poop have concluded that an especially flexible diet is what allowed the dinosaurs to thrive through climate fluctuations and dominate the planet during the Triassic period.

Food truck owner William Rosenberg noticed that his blue-collar clientele were mostly buying doughnuts and coffee from his lunch cart. When he could afford to, he opened a brick-and-mortar called Open Kettle, going hard on breakfast advertising with the phrase “We call it Dunkin’ the Donut.” It quickly caught on, and he named his business after the tagline.

Sex work was decriminalized in Belgium in 2022, and a new law gives workers a familiar slate of rights — from maternity leave to a pension.

The EU has proposed legislation forcing importers to prove that their coffee beans aren’t grown on deforested land. That, along with climate change in Brazil and Vietnam, have caused bean prices to skyrocket to their highest price in almost 50 years.

Orcas are known to come up with goofy, seemingly pointless trends out of nowhere (see: attacking boats). Scientists have witnessed wild orcas donning a “dead salmon hat” for the first time in almost 40 years, suggesting that they may have cultural trends that get recycled just like humans.