Tuesday 4/26/22
Celebrate:
Alien Day
Audubon Day
Get Organized Day
Hug A Friend Day
Hug an Australian Day
National Dissertation Day
National Help a Horse Day
National Kids and Pets Day
National Pretzel Day
National Richter Scale Day
National Static Cling Day
School Bus Drivers' Day
World Intellectual Property Day
--
Twitter said Monday it has agreed to sell itself to Elon Musk in a roughly $44 billion deal that has the potential to expand the billionaire's business empire and put the world's richest man in charge of one of the world's most influential social networks.
Musk is both a high-profile Twitter user and a controversial one. He has more than 83 million followers on the platform, which he has used over the years for everything from sharing memes and discussing his companies to insulting politicians, spreading misleading claims about Covid-19 and making offensive remarks about the transgender community.
Musk has repeatedly stressed in recent days that his goal is to bolster free speech on the platform and work to "unlock" Twitter's "extraordinary potential."
A whistleblower holding an envelope.
Do you have information to share about this story? We offer several ways to reach our journalists securely.
In his statement Monday, Musk said he wants to "make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans." Separately, he said in a tweet Monday that he hopes "even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means."
--
We've all pulled leftovers out of the fridge, given it a sniff, and made a judgment call on whether it was still safe to eat. But it turns out it's not that simple.
According to food scientists, there's an important difference between food safety and food quality. And there's no way to tell if a food is safe based on smell. You can tell the quality has gone downhill . . . but that doesn't translate to it being safe or not.
One example is milk. If your milk smells sour, you probably don't want to drink it, but it won't necessarily give you a foodborne illness.
On the other hand, lettuce is to blame for lots of foodborne illnesses. And lettuce leaves might be green and crisp and smell perfectly fine, but could have bacteria lurking that will make you sick.
There CAN be some crossover between quality and safety. Fresh fruits and vegetables, refrigerated foods, poultry, and deli meats have a higher risk for foodborne pathogens . . . so if these foods smell or taste odd, it's probably safest to just toss 'em.
But as a general rule, the sniff test is only useful for telling you whether a food's quality has declined, not its safety.
--
A doctor in South Korea is catching heat after he tweeted that anyone who hasn't caught covid yet clearly has no friends. Or as he put it, you've got "interpersonal problems."
He's not just a doctor, he's also the vice-president of the Korean Vaccine Society. So people thought it was weird he'd make fun instead of giving the vaccines credit. Plus, most people who've avoided friends the last two years did it because they HAD to, not because they wanted to.
He claims people just took it the wrong way, and all he meant was it's hard to avoid the virus if you enjoy being around people.
--
There's a thread online where people are talking about sayings from the '90s that people 22 and younger might not recognize. For everyone else, it's a fun trip down memory lane, so here are a few highlights:
1. "Have you tried blowing in the Nintendo cartridge? Sometimes that works."
2. "Get off the phone, I need to use the internet."
3. "Be kind, rewind."
4. "Can you pass me the phone book please?"
5. "If you'd like to make a call, please hang up and try again. If you need help, hang up and then dial your operator."
6. "Don't touch that dial, we'll be right back."
7. "You've got mail."
8. "Okay, I got the phone. Hang up!"
9. Typing "5318008" into a calculator.
10. "Shut up, I need to record this song so that it can be my ringtone."
--
Scientists in England think mushrooms can talk to each other using different electrical signals. They think they might have up to 50 "words" in their vocabulary.
I think the scientists are on mushrooms!
--
Today's Useless Fact of the Day - The U.S.-Canada border is the longest international border in the world, and Alaska's portion alone is about 38%
--
Comments