Curious Mind Blowing Facts - 41
not literally...
Chicago Gangs Used To Have Business Cards
Brandon Johnson’s book, “Thee Almighty & Insane,” explores the vintage business cards Chicago’s gang members carried during the 1960s, ’70s, ’80s and ’90s… the cards were used to assert their pride, recruit new members and serve as general tokens of affiliation.
The following link goes to a webpage that shows you hundreds of words you can spell with a calculator, when you turn it upside down after typing the numbers and letters: https://paperlined.org/apps/wikipedia/offsite_content/Calculator_spelling.txt
Early Leet speak?
Wow! This newsletter is as useful as …
a screen door on a battleship, a handbrake on a canoe, a button on a sock, an ashtray on a motorcycle, Helen Keller’s drum kit, a concrete parachute, a chocolate teapot, an Inflatable dartboard, a snooze button on a smoke alarm…
Americans lost $5.6 billion in cryptocurrency fraud scams in 2023.
This Playboy Car Came Before the Magazine
While the Playboy A48 didn’t make a dent in the American automotive industry, it did have a lasting cultural impact. Someone told Hugh Hefner the name of the defunct car company would be good for the magazine he was creating, and he agreed.
https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/buying-maintenance/a23403327/playboy-car-for-sale/
Elvis was born with blonde hair. And Marilyn Monroe was born with red hair. (Double-take emoji)
Hummingbird Facts
They are the smallest bird.
So they lay the tiniest eggs of all birds.
Hummingbirds really do hum. Hmmm.
They can fly faster than a car, going up to 45 mph.
They eat every 10 minutes.
A flock of hummingbirds is called a charm.
They have spectacular vision.
They have a third set of eyelids.
They can hover.
Their nests stretch.
They have big brains.
The have a 3 to 5 year lifespan:)
They only live in the Americas.
There are no bridges over the Amazon River because of the river's natural hazards:
Flooding:
The Amazon River floods annually, and its width can change from a few miles to over 30 miles in a matter of weeks.
Seasonal variations:
The Amazon's width varies between the dry and wet seasons. During the dry season, the river is between 2 and 6 miles wide, but during the wet season, it can be as wide as 30 miles.
Riverbanks:
The river's strong flow constantly erodes the riverbanks.
Floating vegetation:
Islands of floating vegetable matter up to 10 acres in size can float down the river.
Environment:
The Amazon's environment is considered one of the most difficult in the world.
Construction challenges:
Building a bridge across the Amazon would be a considerable process. Floating structures, like pontoons, wouldn't work in most parts of the Amazon. And there are no roads, nor vehicle traffic to where a bridge might cross on either side.
So, to cross the Amazon River, people use ferries or boats. The Amazon River runs over 4,300 miles from the Andes to the Atlantic Ocean, and it divides the entire continent of South America.
The Beatles released all of their studio recordings between March 1963 and May 1970, and none of the band members were 30 years old as of the release of their last record “Let it Be“. They were:
Paul McCartney: 26 years old
John Lennon: 28 years old
Ringo Starr: 28 years old
George Harrison: 25 years old
Did people used to look older in pictures - to you?
Chat GPT will not answer questions or write the name David Mayer. Nobody knows why…(answer below).
“Users couldn’t get the chatbot to spit out his name, no matter how hard they tried. Instead, it either froze mid-sentence, claimed “something went wrong,” or flat-out refused to respond. This sent the internet into a spiral of speculation: Who is David Mayer, and why is ChatGPT ghosting him? The mystery grew. Theories ranged from mundane to absolutely wild. Some thought Mayer might be an average Joe who exercised his “right to be forgotten,” a law in the UK and EU that lets people erase their personal data online. Others leaned into conspiracy theories, wondering if he was someone powerful, perhaps even from the famous Mayer de Rothschild family. But David Mayer de Rothschild quickly shot that down, calling it nonsense and distancing himself from the whole saga.”
Google images has a ton of pictures and info about “David Mayer.”
UPDATE: OpenAI, ChatGPT’s developer, has cleared the air, explaining that the issue isn’t about GDPR or personal requests but is simply a “glitch” caused by an internal tool mistakenly flagging Mayer’s name.” https://www.neowin.net/news/openai-finally-reveals-why-chatgpt-wont-say-david-meyer/
A couple other names, “Jonathan Zittrain,” or “Jonathan Turley” appear to get ChatGPT to behave the same way that the name David Mayer did.
Domestic dogs are the most widespread carnivore in the world: with an estimated population of around one billion individuals, they are present in nearly all areas where humans occur. Here is a complex answer to the question “Why do dogs wag their tails” https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsbl.2023.0407
54% of all long-form posts on LinkedIn are likely AI-Generated. https://originality.ai/blog/ai-content-published-linkedin
Friendships made between the ages of 16 and 28 are more likely to be long-lasting.
Do famous people ever date non-famous people?
Sure they do! Some celebs don’t date non-celebs, while others do date and marry normal people. Some examples: From Ariana Grande, Christina Aguilera, Ed Sheeran, Jennifer Lawrence, Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Lana Del Rey, Brad Pitt, Keanu Reeves, Jon Stewart, Jerry Seinfeld, Vince Vaughn, George Clooney, and Jon Bon Jovi, Jennifer Garner, and Paul Rudd are a few.
When walking down stairs, don't put your hands in your pockets. And don’t walk backwards. I may or may not have had a bad experience with walking this way. (Imagine Steven Tyler singing that…)
James re-touches photos as people request. Here is a good example of his work:
Forwarding a spam text to 7726 is free in Canada and works for most cellular providers. It alerts your carrier to investigate the message and block similar messages in the future.
To forward a spam text message to 7726, you can do the following:
-Open the message
-Press and hold the message
-Select Forward or the arrow icon
-Enter 7726 in the To: field
-Press Send
Also works in the U.S. as far as I know.
According to Google Search trends, the top bucket list experience overall is to visit Bali, an island in Indonesia known for its tropical climate and pristine beaches. The second and third top bucket list experiences are to go on a wildlife safari and visit the Greek Island of Santorini. I’ve visited each of the top three nary-a-time.
The Oxford University Word of the Year - 2024.
“Following a public vote in which more than 37,000 people had their say, we’re pleased to announce that the Oxford Word of the Year for 2024 is ‘brain rot’.
Our language experts created a shortlist of six words to reflect the moods and conversations that have helped shape the past year. After two weeks of public voting and widespread conversation, our experts came together to consider the public’s input, voting results, and our language data, before declaring ‘brain rot’ as the definitive Word of the Year for 2024.”
‘Brain rot’ is defined as “the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging. Also: something characterized as likely to lead to such deterioration”. Often used when describing the effect that websites like TikTok and Instagram have on people.
Walmart paid $2.3 billion to buy Vizio TV brand. They will use the TVs to blast you with ads. The sale came with its SmartCast OS along with 19 million accounts it will advertise to.
Vizio's SmartCast OS features its WatchFree+ app that lets users watch content for free by watching ads.
Walmart just had this Visio TV deal: The 75-inch Vizio 4K HDR smart TV with a price of U.S. $478.
BlackRock is eating the world. Since its IPO in Oct 1999, the share has returned an average of 20.7% per year, outperforming the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100, which have returned 8.2% and 9.7% per year respectively. BlackRock even outperformed Amazon and Microsoft, with only Apple and Nvidia doing better.
About a third of all S&P 500 stock trades are now executed in the final 10 minutes of the daily session, according to data compiled by BestEx Research, a developer of trading algorithms.
Hope you liked todays factoids. I appreciate your comments. And the other things you can do with the newsletter!
Those Beatles ages are really astounding! I knew (or remembered) that they started awfully young, but, with beards, "mature" music, and so much total music squished into half-a-decade, it's hard to believe they were ka-put without any having reached 30!
Plus, I loved the "Walken" Christmas carol. I like doing my middlin' Walken impersonation!
I knew you could spell more than BOOBS!