Friday 4/22/22
Celebrate:
"In God We Trust" Day
April Showers Day
Chemists Celebrate the Earth Day
Day of Silence
Earth Day
Girl Scout Leader Day
International Mother Earth Day
National Jelly Bean Day
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New movies this weekend:
The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent - With Nick Cage, Pedro Pascal and Baby Yoda...(no, no baby yoda)
Dreamworks animated The Bad Guys
The Northman - Anya Taylor-Joy, Willem Dafoe, Ethan Hawke, Nicole Kidman, Alexander Skarsgård, Björk
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There's a parasite cats can pass on to their owners that causes something called toxoplasmosis. (tox-oh-plaz-MO-sis) A third of people worldwide supposedly have it, including one in ten Americans. It's usually passed through kitty litter.
People in the study who tested positive for it were seen as a third more attractive for some reason. Their faces tended to be more symmetrical, their body mass index was lower, ad they were viewed as healthier in general.
(my cat Shadow)
Women with it were also more likely to have a high opinion of their own attractiveness and had hooked up with 63% more people than women who didn't have it.
It's not clear why the parasite would make us more attractive. But other studies have found having it might mess with decision making, and cause us to take more risks.
They think it's possible that the parasite has evolved to make us more attractive to increase the chances of it being passed on to new hosts.
It's possible it boosts testosterone in men, and lowers it in women. And it might cause people to burn more calories. But more research needs to be done.
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A 71-year-old woman in Oregon named Nancy Brophy who wrote and essay in 2011 called "How to Murder Your Husband" went on trial for allegedly..say it with me... murdering her husband four years ago.
She also wrote a romance novel called "The Wrong Husband". But the judge ruled that those facts can't be entered into evidence, so the jury won't know.
We first heard about Nancy's arrest in 2018, but at the time there weren't many details, other than that her husband had been shot and killed at work, and there weren't any witnesses.
Nancy wasn't a successful writer. And if she did it, she wasn't a successful murderer either, because a lot of things are pointing to her, like a life insurance policy, an order for a "ghost gun" that you assemble yourself, an order for a replacement gun barrel, and surveillance footage placing her nearby.
The defense claims the gun stuff was her "researching" material for a book and everything else is circumstantial.
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It's Library week and a new study found they're thriving, even in the digital age. 174 million Americans have a library card, which is around 54% of the population. And when you count digital collections, we're borrowing more books than ever.
Thanks Jenny and Doris Jean from The Steele in Downtown Elmira!
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Are we just dumb anymore? Don't parents teach their kids anything? Do kids learn nothing in school???
A town in England just removed a thousand daffodils from a park to make sure little kids don't eat them.
Most people don't know, but daffodils are toxic to humans, and to pets. It's rare for anyone to die from daffodil poisoning, but they can cause severe vomiting, diarrhea, and stomach pain.
The bulbs are the most toxic part. A few years ago, three full-grown adults ended up in the E.R. after they thought some daffodil bulbs were onions and ate them. And obviously those symptoms could be worse if it's a little kid.
The town council in England decided to play it safe and get rid of all the daffodils in the park, but now some residents are angry about it, and say it's ridiculous.
They say the park has always had them, and there's never been an issue. One person even said that when they were in elementary school, there was an assignment where kids were given a daffodil bulb, and had to grow it into a flower.
Another person mocked the whole thing and asked what they'd do next make sure kids never get stung by killing all the bees?
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Today's Useless Fact of the Day - Bubble wrap was invented to be a 3-D wallpaper. That idea never took off . . . but the guys who created it realized it COULD be good as packing material.
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