Today I Learned

TIL that you can get much lower online prices if you use a local library computer. Another reason to hate retailers.

Lora Kelley took a trip to the New York Public Library for us and compared prices against a personal iPhone. The results? A box of Apple Cinnamon Cheerios and a pack of toilet paper were nearly 20% cheaper on the library desktop.

https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/nothing-personal/surveillance-dynamic-pricing-legal-groceries-tickets/

Old link, but I hadn't realized the caveat until today. Basically, most of the waste that's accumulated in the GPGP is from industrial scale fishing (US, China, etc). I've long known that it isn't a big island (you can't even photograph it; it's just slightly murky water for miles and miles), but for some reason I thought this implied that most oceanic waste is fishing related. That's not right, see the wikipedia page.

Started using Startpage a few months ago at the recommendation of a co-worker. It uses Google instead of Bing for search results, which is why I started using it, but I learned that it describes itself as:

"an Industry-leading omnichannel digital marketing platform, powered by Machine Learning and AI, that monetizes internet traffic by putting the right ads in front of the right people at the right time."

https://system1.com/what-we-do#privacy>

TIL World’s biggest beer, wine and spirits producers have collectively lost $830 billion in market value over just four years. Changing drinking habits and rising health concerns have hit earnings across the sector. Millennials and Gen Z are also not much interested in alcohol.

TIL there's actually a difference between coffin and casket. Coffins are tapered to the body (6 or 8 sides), usually with a separate lid, typically far cheaper. A casket is a rectangle with a hinged lid, typically with rails attached for carrying and usually far more ornate & expensive.

TIL In 1980 the Supreme Court awarded the Sioux nations $122 million for the Black Hills, a settlement the tribes have refused on the grounds that acceptance would extinguish their claim to the land, leaving the award to accrue interest in a federal account now worth over $1 billion.

The Lindy effect (also known as Lindy's law[1]) is a theorized phenomenon by which the future life expectancy of some non-perishable thing, like a technology or an idea, is proportional to its current age. Thus, the Lindy effect proposes the longer a period something has survived to exist or be used in the present, the longer its remaining life expectancy. Longevity implies a resistance to change, obsolescence, or competition, and greater odds of continued existence into the future.[2] Where the Lindy effect applies, mortality rate decreases with time. Mathematically, the Lindy effect corresponds to lifetimes following a Pareto probability distribution.

TIL that the USA only has one plant that produces gun barrels for the M1 Abrams tank, M777 howitzers, and Paladin self propelled howitzers. The Watervliet Arsenal in Troy, NY is the nation's oldest arsenal dating back to 1813. The manufacturing plant has tripled its production over the last 3 years.

TIL the 500-year-old tradition of Turkish coffee reading (kahve falı) started in the Ottoman harem not just as magic, but as a clever social loophole. Women used the "fortunes" in the cups as a safe excuse to gossip, vent, and talk about taboo subjects without getting in trouble.

Turns out if you hold shift and press backspace it will forward delete (text to the right of the cursor)

Maybe not news to some but i can't believe it has taken me this long to find that personally extremely useful feature out.

Almost as shocked as when i found that holding space and dragging around will move the cursor around making it easier to put the cursor where you need it.