In a recent experiment, “a group of domesticated birds were taught to call one another on tablets and smartphones.” They enjoyed it and made new friendships.

A group of Carmelite monks in Wyoming are building themselves a gothic monastery using 3D design software and stone-carving robots:

There’s been a colony of 15,000 wild scorpions living in the walls of Sheerness Dockyard, Kent, for over 200 years.

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.

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.

The US Defence Department earns $100m/year operating slot machines used by soldiers on their bases.

1 in 5 people currently have a disability. 100% of people will have some form of disability in their lifetime.

A specialness spiral is when you wait for the perfect time to use something, then end up never using it at all. “An item that started out very ordinary, through repeated lack of use eventually becomes … seen more as a treasure”

Psychedelic cryptography is a way of concealing messages (normally in videos) so that only people who’ve taken LSD can receive the messages.

When Italy banned Chat-GPT, productivity of coders in the country fell by 50% before recovering.

Canadian researchers gave homeless people $7,500 in a bank account that they could spend on anything they wanted. They spent it on food, clothes, and rent. Many moved into stable housing and saved enough to give them some stability.

“Bertie Sheldrake was a South London pickle manufacturer who converted to Islam and became king of a far-flung Islamic republic before returning to London and settling back into obscurity.”

Humans are now roughly as tall as we were 12,000 years ago. 4,000 years ago, the average man was 5’4”.

Some corrupt Mexican police are now using card terminals to make collecting bribes at traffic stops more convenient.

The number of supercentenarians in an area tends to fall dramatically about 100 years after accurate birth records are introduced.

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.

Fashion models in China are cutting prices to compete with AI: “If designers using AI charge 800 yuan, I’ll do 600. If they charge 600, I’ll get down to 500. There’s no other way out. I’ll fight till the end.”

A “nonattitude” is a weakly held belief, entirely invented in response to a question in an opinion poll.

Three-quarters of the murders in Chicago are caused by arguments, altercations that have gone too far.

A tank museum in Dorset made £2m last year from online activities, including YouTube and TikTok channels. A £2,000/year subscription buys you ‘Field Marshall’ status, which includes Executive Producer credit on every video.

The UK government recently changed the law to ban company names containing computer code, after Michael Tandy of Hatfield registered a company called “; DROP TABLE “COMPANIES”; — LTD,” which could theoretically erase the companies house database.

Hookworm infestation might be a cure for hay fever.

In August, two Chinese influencers with elderly audiences, Xiucai and Yixiaoqingcheng, held a ‘livestream battle’ where they competed for tips. The three-hour show had 20m viewers. One 60 year-old female fan claims to have given Xuicai her entire pension worth 520,000 yuan (£58,000). Unfortunately, his account has now been closed after a tax investigation.

Researchers have created a detailed live 3D model of all the people in a room by analysing Wifi signals using consumer-grade antennas.

The top 10% of US motorists use more petrol than the bottom 60%.

New research shows that placebos are effective in reducing feelings of guilt, but they work less well on shame.

People in historically rice-farming areas are less happy and compare themselves socially more than people in wheat-farming areas.

French Champagne is too cheap.

Guardian Centers is a privately owned disaster preparedness training campus, which includes 1.7 km of four lane highway and two city blocks of “dynamic collapsed structures.”

Fake belly buttons are temporary tattoo-style stickers. Placed a few inches above your navel, they give the illusion of longer legs. One Chinese reviewer described them as “the most successful invention of 2023.”

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.

Only 28 books sold more than 500,000 copies in the US in 2022. Eight of them were by romance novelist Colleen Hoover.

The average US fridge uses 3–5 times more electricity than an entire human being consumes in Nigeria.

31% of all children attending University of Chicago Burn Center for scalding injuries were hurt by instant noodles.

Scotland’s forest cover is nearly back to where it was 1,000 years ago, while England has risen to levels last seen in 1350.

For millennia, the population of North and Central Switzerland suffered mysterious health problems: large neck swellings and congenital abnormalities. In 1914, GP and poet Heinrich Hunziker realised the problem was iodine deficiency. A vast ice sheet had scraped away the topsoil, surface rock and natural iodine 25,000 years earlier. Tiny quantities of iodine were added to table salt and the mysterious symptoms went away.

A Locate Rodeo is where people who work for utilities like electricity, water and gas come together to competitively locate underground hazards. Competitors have 12 minutes to locate hard-to-find infrastructure.

Two street food stalls, in Bangkok and Singapore, have Michelin stars. The third, a Singaporean noodle stall, lost its star in 2021 after expanding into a chain.

For both stone-age people and modern enthusiasts, making flint tools is surprisingly dangerous.

40% of people shown a photoshopped image of themselves riding in a viking ship as a child claimed to remember the (fictional) incident. This replicates a similar experiment from 2002 involving a fictional balloon ride.

In 2004, it took one year to install 1 gigaWatt of solar power. In 2023, installed 1 gigaWatt of solar power every day.

Ukrainian defenders print out giant 1:1 life-size aerial photographs of damaged airfields. Once the site is repaired, they hang the images over the sites so they look damaged and not worth attacking again.

2,529 individuals were offered a free online subscription to their local newspaper worth $45. Only 44 subscribed.

Windows are the enemy of the art dealer.

In Oklo, Gabon, a natural uranium deposit underground achieved criticality, generating heat as a natural nuclear reactor. Fortunately, this happened 1.5 billion years ago.

Scientists in Singapore have developed a tiny flexible battery, powered by the salt in human tears, designed for smart contact lenses.

Since 1986, Nepal’s timezone has been 5 hours and 45 minutes ahead of GMT.

Ligniloc is a compressed wooden nail that can be fired from a nailgun

In 1909, George Cove was New York’s biggest solar power and battery innovator. Then he was kidnapped, his business mysteriously failed and he was almost erased from history.

In 1992 there was a bank robbery every 45 minutes in Los Angeles.

Steering a bike is much, much more complicated than it seems.

Infant mortality in Rajasthan fell by 30% between 2016 and 2021 — so over 100,000 more babies in the state celebrate their first birthday each year. Causes included breastfeeding promotion and a Rs2000 (£20) cash transfer for women who attend four antenatal clinics.