Things I Learned (and found interesting) in the Last Week of December 2023
From kottke’s 52 Interesting Things I Learned in 2023:
- 2. “If our planet was 50% larger in diameter, we would not be able to venture into space, at least using rockets for transport.”
- 3. Purple Heart medals that were made for the planned (and then cancelled) invasion of Japan in 1945 are still being given out to wounded US military personnel.
- 14. Hurricanes don’t cross the equator.
- 22. Multicellular life developed on Earth more than 25 separate times.
- 26. Colorado is not a rectangle — it actually has 697 sides.
- 27. Horseshoe crabs are older than Saturn’s rings.
- 29. Humans have pumped so much groundwater out of the ground that it’s changed the tilt of the Earth’s axis 31.5 inches to the east.
- 37. I cannot believe this is the first I’ve heard of this: in the original Super Mario Bros., you can continue where you left off in the last game by holding A down when you press Start.
(a personal note: I found this infuriating that I’m only finding out about this in my 40’s) - 44. The rarest single-game event in baseball is not the perfect game but hitting two grand slams in one inning, which has only been done once in more than 235,000 games.
- 45. Crab-like bodies have evolved at least five separate times in the past 250 million years.
(a personal note: I think we were maybe intended to evolve to be intelligent crabs)
Also linked from kottke: Tom Whitehall’s 52 Things I Learned in 2023:
- 4. A ‘payola’ guitar is an electric guitar with four pickups and four output sockets, so that 1950s session players could get paid four times while playing one solo. [Allen St John]
- 5. Job satisfaction in the US is at a 35-year-high. In 2010, less than 45% of people said they were satisfied with their jobs. In 2022, over 62% said they were, and you need to go back to the 80s to find satisfaction as high as today. Big gains come from work/life balance and the performance review process. [Emily Peck]
(a personal note: I’m still trying to wrap my head around this given the industry I work in (non-profit) and coming off the 2021-22 Great Recession.) - 7. 1 in 5 people currently have a disability. 100% of people will have some form of disability in their lifetime. [Jim Nielsen]
(a personal note: this is one of my biggest fears in life and getting older in age and discovering new pains, stiffness, tiredness, etc. isn’t helping my anxiety about this…) - 16. In the 19th Century, champagne was sweetened depending on local tastes. Russians had 300 grams of sugar added, the British just 50 grams. In 1842 Perrier-Jouët introduced unsweetened champagne. It failed and people called it ‘Brut’, but that’s how all champagne tastes today. [Chris Mercer & Karen MacNeil]
- 31. Washboard sales went up 57% during the pandemic, inspired by “fears of societal collapse and limited laundry service”, although 40% are sold as percussion instruments. [Kris Maher]
- 32. Only 28 books sold more than 500,000 copies in the US in 2022. Eight of them were by romance novelist Colleen Hoover. [Jason Colvato]
(a personal note: half a million seems like a low threshold to clear–are we not buying and reading books anymore?) - 43. 2,529 individuals were offered a free online subscription to their local newspaper worth $45. Only 44 subscribed. [Daniel J. Hopkins]
(a personal note: are we, as a society, not reading any more?)
Also linked from kottke: NY Times: 20 Things That Happened for the First Time in 2023:
- 2. Cells from two male mice produce live offspring.
- 5. Scientists successfully extract rocks from Earth’s mantle.
- 15. Microplastics are found in the clouds.
Also linked from kottke: Kent Hendricks: 52 things I learned in 2023:
- 1. Every iron object made before 1200 BC came from meteorites. (“Bronze Age iron: Meteorite or not? A chemical strategy”)
- 2. Santa’s reindeer are all female. Male reindeer don’t start growing antlers until February, so any reindeer with antlers hauling goods on Christmas Eve wouldn’t be male. (FDA)
- 5. One reason the United States didn’t adopt the metric system was because the ship crossing the Atlantic from France carrying a standard kilogram—yes, a real physical object—requested by Thomas Jefferson in 1793 was blown off course into the Caribbean and captured by pirates. (“How Pirates Of The Caribbean Hijacked America’s Metric System”)
- 17. There have been 80,000 recorded UFO sightings since 1906. Four-fifths of extraterrestrials have chosen to visit the United States and likely speak English. (source)
- 22. When a Walmart Supercenter opens in a town, average grocery prices drop 3%, but competitor revenue drops 16% and average income declines 10% in five years. (“Walmart Supercenters and Monopsony Power: How a Large, Low-Wage Employer Impacts Local Labor Markets”)
- 23. The maximum size of a PDF is 381km × 381km, roughly half the size of Germany. (Hacker News)
- 27. Food deserts are caused by lack of demand, not lack of supply. There’s a common assumption that food deserts don’t exist because grocery stores avoid certain neighborhoods. But that’s not actually true: food deserts exist because certain neighborhoods don’t want them. (“Food Deserts and the Causes of Nutritional Inequality”)
(a personal note: I’m still trying to wrap my head around this. Probably because I’ve been told/have read the opposite for so long.) - 29. Tic Tacs are labeled as sugar free even though they are 94% sugar. As long as there’s less than half a gram of sugar, the FDA permits products to be labeled sugar free. Each Tic Tac has 0.49 grams of sugar. (“The Sneaky Reason Why Tic Tacs Can Say ‘Sugar Free’ (When They Really Aren’t)”)
(a personal note: I’ve read this before, but it still bothers me. Each Tic Tac has 5g of sugar.) - 39. Birds are evolving smaller eyes to adapt to the brightness of cities at night. For two species, the Northern Cardinal and Carolina Wren, the eyes of birds in San Antonio are 5% smaller than their rural counterparts. (“Urban Light Pollution Linked to Smaller Eyes in Birds”)
- 45. In areas where people are more likely to divorce, birds are more likely to split up, too! There’s a strong geographic correlation between several human and animal behaviors, including distances traveled, population density, male parental involvement, age of first reproduction, food hoarding, and even divorce. (“Local convergence of behavior across species”)
Also from kottke, The Atlantic: 81 Things That Blew Our Minds in 2023:
- 1. Mars has seasons, and in the winter, it snows.
- 10. You have two noses, and you can control them separately via your armpits.
- 28. The same molecule that makes cat urine smell like cat urine is, in lower concentrations, commonly used in air fresheners and household cleaners.
- 35. A Dutch man and his family have a perplexing brain condition called “color agnosia”: They can see colors, but they cannot name them.
- 42. One of Saturn’s moons likely has a habitable ocean.
- 46. During the original run of Seinfeld, the show’s costumers had a hard time sourcing the clothing for Kramer’s wardrobe because his quirky style had become so popular with the general public that they were buying up all of the vintage clothing that made up his look.
- 56. Reports of pediatric melatonin overdoses have increased by 530 percent over the past decade.