12 Farm-Fresh Trivia Tidbits for Friday, January 31, 2025
Sam Altman wants A.I. to be able to “rewrite the social contract,” meanwhile a bank’s A.I. chatbot is yelling at customers for saying the bank’s name.
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Andrew Carnegie’s Everlasting Beef
Carnegie had a falling out with one-time business partner Henry Clay Frick, and the two remained enemies for the rest of their lives and beyond. Carnegie requested from his deathbed to speak to Frick one last time, to which the latter replied, “Tell him I’ll see him in hell.”
The Most Welcoming Cities in the World
Booking.com ranked its top 10 most welcoming cities based on user reviews, with Urubici, Brazil, Cazorla, Spain and Sigiriya, Sri Lanka taking the top three spots. The only U.S. city to make the cut was St. Augustine, Florida.
Baby Names That Are Going Extinct
BabyCenter.com keeps tabs on the most popular baby names every year, and there’s troubling data for the Livs and Billys of the world. Names that evoke royalty (Catherine, Phillip) and boy names that end in “-aden” are all falling out of favor, but names that were once nicknames are taking a stunning nosedive. “Billy” dropped 167 spots last year, and while “Liv” was the number one girl name the past four years, it suddenly dropped 257 spots.
This Democratic Senator Went Full MAGA in an Effort to Avoid Prison for Taking Bribes
New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez was famously caught hoarding gold bars that he’d accepted as bribes from overseas lobbyists. Upon being sentenced to 11 years in prison, he tried to catch Trump’s ear: “President Trump is right, this process is political, and it’s corrupted to the core. I hope President Trump cleans up the cesspool and restores the integrity to the system.”
A Louisiana Shark Just Pulled a Virgin Mary
Louisiana’s Shreveport Aquarium was astounded to find a fertilized shark egg in a tank full of only female swell sharks. It was either impregnated by shark Jesus, experienced the rare phenomena of asexual reproduction or delayed fertilization or one aquarium employee is about to be in a whole lot of trouble.
A Digital Virgin Is Scolding Bank Customers
The A.I. customer chatbot for the U.K. bank Virgin Money gets angry when customers use the word “virgin.” When one person asked, “I have two ISAs with Virgin Money, how do I merge them?,” the chatbot responded, “Please don’t use words like that. I won’t be able to continue our chat if you use this language.”
Can You Put on Muscle Like You Put on a Band-Aid? Kinda!
Scientists have developed “muscle patches,” strips of muscle tissue grown from stem cells. It won’t help you beef up your biceps, but it can help those suffering heart failure survive until a transplant organ is available.
Sleeping Pills May Be Clogging Up Your Brain
A study has found that some sleeping pills may disrupt the brain’s process for clearing out cellular waste, which it accomplishes by sending pulses of pressure through your cerebrospinal fluid. In a sense, it’s causing your brain’s sanitation workers to go on strike.
The World’s Tallest Building Is Stuck
The Jeddah Tower in Saudi Arabia is supposed to be the world’s first one-kilometer-tall building, but construction stalled out in 2018, and it’s sat at 63 stories high ever since. The developer just announced that construction will recommence, and this time they swear it’ll be completed by 2028.
The World’s Largest Wooden City
In an attempt to rely less on steel, concrete and other materials with massive carbon footprints, Sweden is looking to build an entire city out of lumber. The inventively named “Stockholm Wood City” is expected to open with 2,000 brand new homes by 2027.
Other Major Wood Projects Around the World
Wood City will be the biggest when it’s completed, but there’s already ambitious low-carbon, all-wood infrastructure currently in use. Sydney is working on a huge retail and office complex, Seattle made an eight-story block of affordable housing and Singapore has a 468,000 square-foot wooden college campus.
Eggs Too Expensive? Bacteria and Algae Might Help
Scientists and tech bros around the world are working on turning microbes into edible substitutes for foods like meat, eggs and milk. Prepare to see big strides in the development of “single-cell proteins” and “edible microorganisms.”
