Curious Mind Blowing Facts - 32

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Oct 07, 2024

My Estonian buddy Jaan puts out this excellent newsletter all about only Electric Vehicles: https://evuniverse.io

EV Battery fires are always in the news. That’s because some people don’t like them. “They are so dangerous”, they say. But are they? Data from the National Transportation Safety Board, the US’s independent federal investigation agency, shows that the risks of electric vehicle battery fires are low. In fact, very low. An analysis of that data by one insurance company suggested that more than 1,500 gas cars catch on fire per 100,000 sales, compared to just 25 electric vehicles. Hmm.

Not stock advice! Your mobile phone runs on Qualcomm’s intellectual property. Every time a mobile phone is sold on any part of this large planet, Qualcomm collects a few bucks. (Almost 20% of their income comes from these Licensing Fees).

The etymology of the word Robot is from 1920s: from Czech, from robota ‘forced labor’. The term was coined in K. Čapek's play R.U.R. ‘Rossum's Universal Robots’ (1920).

The vinegar in hot sauce keeps it preserved for six months, per the USDA—only creamy condiments need to be refrigerated. Ketchup is OK unrefrigerated too.

David Bowie played acoustic guitar on Lou Reed’s ”Walk on the Wild Side”.

In 1963 Bo Diddley did a UK Tour with Little Richard. The band who opened for them was The Rolling Stones.

Vitamin D is an important vitamin. It is also a hormone.

Consumers expect coconut milk to be cruelty-free since it doesn’t come from animals, but Thailand uses about 3,000 monkeys to pick the fruit, and PETA wants that to stop. There is contoversy about how the monkeys are trained. Arjen Schroevers, whose wife, Somjai Saekhow, owns the First Monkey School, in southern Thailand, wrote in an email that calls PETA “a militant vegan organization,” and said the monkeys are happy to be trained. “They like the attention, and they enjoy working. There is absolutely no violence or coercion involved. The many monkey owners we know all work very quietly with their monkeys. No shouting, no hitting.”

You’ve heard of “free divers?” They are people who dive and swim for a long time usually for a long distance. They take pictures, investigate things, and record themselves. In 2021 Croatian freediver Budimir Sobat, spent just over 24 and a half minutes underwater. That put him in the Guinness Book of Records as the man who voluntarily held his breath below the surface for the longest amount of time. Sobat was aged 56 when he did it!

From: Underwaterphotographeroftheyear dot com

In Doctor Peter Attia’s new book “Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity”, he makes the claim that for every minute of exercise - you will earn five more minutes of life. That means if you train for one hour, three days a week, at the end of 8 weeks, you've added a full day to your life.

Singles have been drawn to branches of the Spanish supermarket chain, the Mercadona, where it is claimed they can find romance if they visit between 7pm and 8pm and put a pineapple upside down in their shopping cart. It’s a TikTok trend that is popular there right now.
“People are then encouraged to go to the wine aisle to find others with the same fruit in the same position. If they like someone, they bump their trolley (buggies) against theirs, indicating they are interested in chatting to them. If the feeling is mutual, they can bump back, or just start talking”.

In Switzerland, 1 in 7 adults is a millionaire.

You can see France from Canada. From Newfoundland’s wind-scoured Burin Peninsula. You can’t see Paris, which is 2,700 miles to the east, but you can see the eight small islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon, which are the last remnant of France’s once-vast colonial empire in North America, barely 16 miles off the Canadian coastline.

The Distance between St. John’s, Newfoundland and London, England is 3700 km. The distance between St. John’s and Vancouver, Canada is 5000 km.

‘Sonny the Cuckoo Bird’ is the cartoon mascot for Cocoa Puffs, a General Mills-produced cereal. He often appears in their television commercials. Do you know anyone that you would call “Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs?”

During nine Apollo missions, 24 astronauts (all Americans) went to the Moon, and 12 of them walked on it.

The Northwest Territories has eleven official languages. Chipewyan, Cree, English, French, Gwich’in, Inuinnaqtun, Inuktitut, Inuvialuktun, North Slavey, South Slavey, and Tłı̨chǫ.

Sam Panopoulos, a Greek-born Canadian, created the first Hawaiian pizza at the Satellite Restaurant in Chatham-Kent, Ontario, Canada, in 1962. My brother David, lives in Chatham, Ontario.

A dog’s sense of smell is 40 times more acute than a human’s. And they have 10–20 times greater motion perception than people. These stimulations make if hard for a dog to not stick their head out of a moving car window.

In 2004, the entire 23-member Sri Lankan handball team vanished without a trace during a trip to Germany. The team had been invited to participate in a friendly tournament in Bavaria, despite Sri Lanka having little history with the sport. After arriving in Germany and playing a few exhibition matches, the team mysteriously disappeared from their hotel. It was clear that the players had never been professional athletes. They used the event as a way to flee Sri Lanka in hopes of seeking asylum in Europe. Despite widespread media coverage and investigations, none of the players were ever found.

Pretty good wording to thank a bid for the undervalued offer to purchase. “We are open to engaging in sincere discussions should you put forth a proposal that fully recognizes our standalone intrinsic value and addresses our concerns regarding certainty of closing in the current regulatory environment.” ~ 7-11 owners reply to a recent offer to purchase the confectionary chain.

Are You Ready for Some Hot Dogs?! NFL beer and hot dog prices for the 2024 season will cost fans an average of $15.02, according to data experts at Sportscasting.

A Guy has been arrested for creating fake bands with AI, then making $10 Million by listening to their songs using Bots. https://futurism.com/man-arrested-fake-bands-streams-ai

There’s a free and useful extension for the Chrome browser that I use regularly called “TinEye”. It is a reverse image search and shows how many instances of a picture are on the internet, and where. TinEye invented reverse image search in 2008. You just use your right click dropdown and select the TinEye extension. It will open a new tab with the instances of the picture in question. Here’s what TinEye does:

1. Image Source Verification: TinEye helps identify the original source of an image, ensuring you know where and when it was first published.

2. Copyright Infringement Detection: Artists, photographers, and content creators can use TinEye to find unauthorized uses of their work.

3. Find Higher-Resolution Versions: TinEye can help locate higher-quality or higher-resolution versions of an image.

4. Tracking Image Usage: By performing reverse image searches, you can track how an image is being used across the web, helping to assess its reach or misuse.

5. Detect Image Manipulation: TinEye can reveal altered or manipulated versions of an image by showing similar images, making it useful for identifying fake or doctored photos.

6. Locating Image License Information: TinEye can help find where to purchase licenses for images used online, ensuring legal usage in publications or websites.

7. Online Reputation Management: Brands or individuals can monitor how their logo or personal images are being used across the internet, safeguarding their brand reputation.

8. Identifying Products: TinEye is useful for identifying products from images, such as finding where to buy items shown in pictures.

9. Research & Investigations: Investigators, journalists, or researchers can use TinEye to track down context, provenance, or additional information about images relevant to their work.

10. Ad Verification: TinEye can verify whether certain ads or images used in campaigns appear as expected, allowing marketers to track their content’s use on different platforms.

Available here - https://tineye.com/extensions

Celebrity 6 identity has been found 10+ years after buying fabric with the illustration (right image below) on it.

A Redditor named TontsaH claimed that they had owned curtains made of fabric featuring the silhouettes of various celebrities, and they wanted to identify all of them.

“I have had curtains made of this fabric over 10 years (maybe from 2008) but I still haven’t recognized all movie stars. Hopefully you can help me to recognize them and find the corresponding photo of the celebrity.”

Most of the celebrities were quickly identified, and included Adriana Lima, Jessica Alba, Orlando Bloom, and a handful of others. All were identified but one: Celebrity Six.”

“The search for Celebrity Number Six spawned its own subreddit, called r/CelebrityNumberSix, which now has 142,000 subscribers.”

The Redditors have tried a lot of ways to identify Celebrity 6. “We have done the following:

Contacted the sellers/designers
Reverse images searched both free and paid sites. (Like TinEye - above).
Asked AI.
Remade The image by hand and digitally and “cleaned up” the image.
Remade the image with AI and reverse searched with those images.
Asked around popular forums, message boards, sites and communities if they know who Six is.
WayBackMachine searched all the sellers of the fabric for new info.
Made a Pinterest filled with similar images of Six to try brute force similar suggestions.
Searched all photos taken by the other photographers on gettyimages between 1900-2008.
Asking various content creators to produce videos and get more eyes on the mystery.”

“But then on Sunday, a user named IndigoRoom made a post called “Celebrity Number Six has been found.” The post features a photo (the left image below) that is an exact match of the silhouette, and which other Redditors have not been able to find anywhere else on the internet. According to IndigoRoom, Celebrity Number Six is the Spanish model Leticia Sardá.

IndigoRoom says they found Sardá not by using AI or attempting to recreate the image, but because another Redditor had mentioned her name, as well as the fact that she appeared on the cover of a supplement to the Spanish magazine Tendencias Mujer (Women’s Fashion) issue #162. IndigoRoom found the photographer of that cover image, Leandre Escorsell, and emailed him asking if he was aware of the Celebrity Number Six saga. Escorsell responded, said he recognized the silhouette, had the original image, and sent it to IndigoRoom.” https://www.404media.co/celebrity-number-six-internet-mystery-leticia-sarda-is-solved/

Women’s blue jean pockets are 48% shorter and 6.5% narrower than men’s pockets. Just 40% of women's pockets can fit an iPhone X, but 100% of men's pockets can. https://pudding.cool/2018/08/pockets/

In an age when you can get just about anything online, it's probably no surprise that you can buy a diamond-making machine for $200,000 on Chinese eCommerce site Alibaba. If, like me, you haven't been paying attention to the diamond industry, it turns out that the availability of these machines reflects an ongoing trend toward democratizing diamond production - a process that began decades ago and continues to evolve.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/09/you-can-buy-a-diamond-making-machine-for-200000-on-alibaba/
https://worksinprogress.co/issue/lab-grown-diamonds/

K cups can’t really be recycled. Keurig Dr. Pepper will pay a civil penalty to settle U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charges over claims made by the beverage company that its singleserve pods, or K-Cups, could be “effectively” recycled.
The statements were misleading, the SEC said. Keurig Dr. Pepper neither denied nor admitted the regulator’s findings in the $1.5 million settlement agreement. Do all companies lie? https://www.wsj.com/articles/keurig-dr-pepper-said-its-k-cups-could-be-recycled-not-so-says-sec-3766e992

If you are 50 years of age or older, the virus that causes shingles is likely already inside of you. In fact, nearly all – 99% – of adults carry the virus that causes shingles, yet research has showed that only 7% of adults over 50 believed they were at an increased risk of developing the disease.

Four of the top five costliest natural disasters in Canadian history occurred in Alberta. The 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire tops the list at $4.5 billion. Two other Alberta-related events on the list include the 2013 southern Alberta floods at $2 billion and the 2020 Alberta hailstorm at $1.3 billion.

In recent years, Iran has hired dangerous groups to carry out deadly attacks and kidnappings. These groups include the Hells Angels biker gang, a Russian mob known as "Thieves in Law," a heroin smuggling ring run by an Iranian drug lord, and violent criminal organizations from Scandinavia to South America. https://archive.ph/TPQVg

Google has been giving less than perfect results for search terms lately. You can try verbatim mode to get a better result. Here’s how to use this: From the search page > enter the term you want to search and press enter > Tools (under the results to the right side) > All Results > Choose Verbatim from the dropdown menu.
The Verbatim feature under Tools is the key to searching for the words you actually typed in.

https://layoffs.fyi/

According to U.S. Census and State Department data, 24 million passports were issued in 2023.
The total number of valid U.S. passports in circulation in 2023 is 160.7 million. Nearly half of all Americans.
In 1990, only 5 percent of Americans had one.

Biggest single-day market cap gains up to July 31/24:

Chinese researchers say they can detect enemy stealth fighter jets by using radiation from SpaceX’s Starlink satellites. Their idea is that when a plane flies between a satellite and an antenna on the ground, it scatters the satellite’s signals. Ground-based radar can then pick up these scattered signals and use them to find the target.

Mother Teresa’s real name is Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu

The odds of you being alive are 1: 400,000,000,000,000

As of 2022, 117 billion humans have ever lived on the earth. 8 billion are alive.

The US Board on Geographic Names—currently made up of 60 experts—has decided what to call over 2 million places over the last 130 years, from mountains to mines.

Pandamonium
Zoogoers in China have been left outraged after discovering that the so-called “pandas” they were cooing over were just painted dogs.

The duped visitors claimed they only realized the scam at the Shanwei zoo when one of the apparent pandas started panting and barking, according to local media.

I wonder, what other animals can we make out of other animals with just some paint and such? Or fake hair on a mouse and get a tiny little kitty cat?