Friday 4/1/22
Celebrate April Fool's, Fossil Fools, Hospital Admitting Clerks, International Edible Book Festival, Fun at Work, International Tatting, One Cent, Sourdough Bread, Jump in Muddy Puddles, Love for our Children, Trombone Players, Walk to Work, Poetry and the Creative Mind, Reading is Funny, Student Government, US Air Force Academy, Sorry Charlie, and St. Stupid Day.
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In an informal study by a writer/blogger (Jamie Todd Rubin), we now know which keyboard key get the most, uh, love from our fingers. Care to guess? It’s the backspace key. In the study, the backspace key made up 8.8 percent of all keystrokes, or about 9 presses for every 100 keystrokes made.
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A new report found Americans are already buying more candy than ever. The National Confectioners Association just put out its annual "State of Treating" report, and candy sales are at an all-time high.
Chocolate candy sales are up 9% in the past year, non-chocolate candy is up almost 15%, and even sales of gum and mints are up 4%. That's after sales were already up in 2020 and 2021.
Here are a few more quick stats on America's candy consumption
1. Most of our candy is bought at the grocery store now that checkout line can get ya. But convenience stores saw the biggest jump in candy sales over the past year.
2. 78% of adults say treating yourself to candy every now and then is perfectly fine.
3. 72% say physical health and "emotional well-being" are interconnected.
4. Two in five Americans follow at least one candy brand or store on social media.
5. 83% of us usually or "always" eat candy when we're on a road trip.
6. 88% of us share our candy with other people at least half the time we buy it.
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A new poll found that when someone asks how you've been, our go-to answer is "fine" even when things have been terrible.
70% of people usually say "I'm fine" on autopilot without thinking. Mainly because it's easier than explaining why you're not fine.
We also do it because we think the person's just being polite, not really asking how we've been and because we don't want to come across as being negative.
We do it a lot though. The average person says they're "fine" four times a day, or 28 times a week, according to the survey and we're lying 38% of the time.
Two-thirds said they wouldn't even answer honestly if their closest friend asked.
When we are honest and say things have been rough, people aren't quite sure how to handle it. Almost 40% said an answer like that makes them feel awkward, or like they need to help somehow.
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Coffee that tastes a bit off might taste a bit better if you pour it into a mug of a different color. A barista noticed customers complaining about the bitterness of coffee when drinking out of a white mug. However, when the customers drank the same coffee out of a clear cup they did not complain. This gave the barista an idea for a new study. Researchers experimented with clear, white, and blue containers and the same type of coffee. They asked participants to analyze the taste of the coffee, and the results were pretty conclusive: The brain definitely associates color with flavor. The study found that drinking from a white container tastes “significantly more intense” or less sweet than drinking from a blue or clear container.
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A lot of people were upset when they found out that Sammy Hagar was replacing David Lee Roth in Van Halen. But I wonder how much worse the reaction would have been if one of their asks said yes.
Daryl Hall, of Hall and Oats claims Eddie Van Halen asked him to replace Dave.
Not long after Dave left, Eddie and his then-wife Valerie Bertinelli came to a Hall & Oates show, and after the show, Eddie allegedly popped the question.
Daryl says, quote, "Eddie said, 'Do you wanna join Van Halen, man?' He was half joking, but I think he was serious. I really do believe he was serious.
"And I took it seriously. I went, 'Meh, I think not. I think I've got my own [stuff] going on.'"
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Ever since pedometers were incorporated into our watches and phones, lots of us have been striving to reach 10,000 steps per day.
Or at least we were until the pandemic, when everyone was stuck at home and our new goal was more like 500 steps.
Well, new research from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst found that 10,000 steps is a myth, but there IS an ideal number of steps to aim for. And it's actually less. It's getting between 6,000 and 8,000 steps each day.
The study concluded that striving for that range reduces the risk of early death for people who are 60 or older by 54% but walking more than 8,000 steps doesn't actually add any benefits it just leveled off. There was also no definitive association with walking speed.
For what it's worth, this was comprehensive research, involving over 15 studies on walking and mortality, covering almost 50,000 people across four continents. And it does recommend a goal of 8,000 to 10,000 steps for people under 60.
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Today's Useless Fact of the Day - The average car spends 95% of its life parked.
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