12 Farm-Fresh Trivia Tidbits for Sunday, February 9, 2025
Here’s a conundrum: You get to become best buds with Robin Williams, but you have to lose your dream job in public and humiliating fashion. Are you taking that deal?
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An $18 Million Guitar Racket, Thwarted
U.S. Customs seized a shipment of 3,000 knockoff Gibson guitars, which would have been sold for about $18 million.
KFC’s Tamagotchi
KFC released a Tamagotchi knockoff called Eduardochi, a little chicken thigh that eats, walks and poops like a real Tamagotchi. It was sold for $5, but it’s currently reselling for as high as $80 on eBay.
The Mask May Be Coming Off of Shen Yun
The dance show that’s innocently advertised in every major city in America is, in all likelihood, a religious cult hiding in plain sight. There are lawsuits and allegations claiming that leaders trafficked children, withheld passports and forced college kids to perform for under minimum wage. The feds have finally launched a criminal investigation.
A Renewed Push to Save Older Wild Animals
“Longevity conservation” focuses on protecting the elders in any given group of animals, as they retain and pass on crucial generational knowledge. Often the females of the pack, older elephants are best at recognizing warning signs of an approaching lion, while older whales know the best hunting spots.
Humans and Whales Follow the Same Law
Zipf’s law is an empirical law that, when applied to linguistics, says that the most common word in a language is twice as frequent as the second-most common, three times as frequent as the third-most, etc. This pattern is present in every human language, and, as researchers have just noticed, in whale songs as well.
Shoehei Ohtani’s Interpreter Has Been Sentenced
After being found guilty of stealing $17 million from Ohtani to pay back his gambling debts, his one-time interpreter was just sentenced to 57 months in prison.
Scientists Say They Know the Perfect Way to Boil an Egg, But You’re Not Going to Like It
After studying how heat transfers inside an egg and how that affects the liquid or solid state of the contents, scientists tested out hundreds of methods for boiling an egg. The one they say works the best involves 32 minutes of swapping an egg from boiling to lukewarm water.
TED Is Going Wonka Mode
The curator of TED is looking for a replacement, and the only requirements are that you have a plan to utilize A.I., you keep it nonpartisan and that you’re richer than god: “The willingness to commit significant capital for the long term will be an important deciding factor.”
An Entire Town in California Is Slowly Creeping Toward the Ocean
NASA satellite data has shown that a gigantic landslide on the Palos Verdes Peninsula is causing the whole area to move about four inches per week.
There’s About to Be a Run on Puka Shell Necklaces
The owner of Billabong, Quicksilver and Volcom has filed for bankruptcy, meaning all of those stores will likely shut down in the near future.
10 Percent of People Choose the Exact Same Four-Digit Passcode
An analysis of 29 million leaked passcodes found that, when prompted to select a numerical password that’s four digits long, one human in 10 will choose “1-2-3-4.” There are 10,000 possible combinations.
Robin Williams’ Kind, Weird Gesture After Conan O’Brien Was Fired
After Conan lost his gig hosting The Tonight Show, Williams called him up and informed him that he’d rented him a bike at a nearby bike shop: “Just head on down there. Ride around, you’ll feel better.” Williams had the bike painted in “crazy Irish colors,” according to Conan: “I get down there and it’s the ugliest — I mean, it was just greens and shamrocks and everything.”
