Wednesday 6/19/24
Celebrate:
Garfield the Cat Day
National Eat an Oreo Day
National Martini Day
National Pets in Film Day
National Watch Day
World Albatross Day
World Sauntering Day
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Juneteenth is today. It became a Federal Holiday three years ago.
January 1, 1863, enslaved and free African Americans gathered in churches and private homes all across the country awaiting news that the Emancipation Proclamation had taken effect. At the stroke of midnight, prayers were answered as all enslaved people in Confederate States were declared legally free.
Union soldiers, many of whom were black, marched onto plantations and across cities in the south reading small copies of the Emancipation Proclamation spreading the news of freedom in Confederate States.
Freedom finally came on June 19, 1865, when some 2,000 Union troops arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas. The army announced that the more than 250,000 enslaved black people in the state, were free by executive decree. This day came to be known as "Juneteenth," by the newly freed people in Texas.
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From USAToday -
Headline - Weather forecast: Yuck from every angle.
The weather this week: All over the place. Crazy. Bonkers. A hot mess. In some places, a cold mess.
Hello, Mother Nature? Are you OK?
From a baking heat wave in the Midwest and Northeast to an unseasonable chilly start in the Pacific Northwest. Throw in some snow in the Rocky Mountains because why not?
And I would add tropical depression.
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A new study found sitting on your butt all day might kill you. But maybe not if you do one thing you already enjoy doing.
It tracked people for 13 years, and found the ones who sat around drinking coffee were 24% less likely to die young. That's compared to sedentary people who didn't drink coffee.
They found sitting for more than six hours a day isn't good no matter what, which isn't too shocking. But for some reason, coffee might mitigate the effects.
Ideally, you want to be sitting less than that AND drinking coffee. Non-coffee drinkers who sat for six-plus hours a day were 58% more likely to die young than coffee drinkers who sat for LESS than six hours.
But if your job requires you to sit in front of a computer all day, drinking coffee while you do it might at least help. And drinking a LOT of it might be even better.
The ones who drank more than two cups a day were the least likely to croak.
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What better way to celebrate 20 years of "Napoleon Dynamite" than with some tater tots? Jon Heder teamed up with the frozen potato brand Ore-Ida to release tot-protecting pants.
The pants resemble Napoleon's joggers but with a red tot-protecting pocket. As of last night, the pants are sold-out online, but Ore-Ida says they'll restock.
Jon also says when he was shooting the ads for Ore-Ida, a "magical thing" happened. There was a llama hanging out by a tree in the background.
Quote, “He's directly behind me in the shot for almost the entire day we were shooting. Nobody [from the crew] put it there. It felt like, 'Oh my gosh, this is perfect.'"
See the commercial here.
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A new poll found more people than ever are actively avoiding the news because it's too stressful. Not just here, but other countries too.
39% of people worldwide said they "sometimes" or "often" avoid reading or watching the news. That's up from 29% when they did the same survey in 2017.
Experts think all the sad news we've seen out of Ukraine and the Middle East lately are a big factor. And we got burnt out by constant updates on the pandemic.
Only 46% of people say they're "very" or "extremely" interested in the news now, down from 63%.
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A young woman named Madison who does stunts for social media set out to become the first person to complete a full marathon INSIDE a Taco Bell. She didn't RUN it . . . she used a walking treadmill.
She got there at 11:00 A.M. . . . filled her cup with Baja Blast . . . and even ate Cantina Chicken Bowls and Nacho Fries while she did it. It's unclear if she took any breaks . . . bathroom or otherwise.
It took 10 hours and three minutes . . . and about 58,000 steps . . . but she finished 26.3 miles that night at 9:00 P.M. Some friends, employees, and even customers were there to congratulate her.
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A study out of Stanford Medicine found that staying up past 1:00 A.M. is a bad choice for your mental health . . . even if you're a night owl.
The study included 75,000 people, and it looked at the participants' "preferred sleep timing," and how it related to their actual sleep behavior.
They found that early birds AND night owls both had higher rates of mental and behavioral disorders if they regularly stayed up past 1:00 A.M.
That's counter to their expectation, which assumed that it was more about the QUALITY and DURATION of sleep . . . not WHEN you chose to get it.
And this is interesting: When they tested different types of people . . . going to sleep at varying bedtimes . . . they actually found that the night people who went to bed late were the WORST.
The idea is that morning people who are up late KNOW they aren't in the right mind to make any good decisions . . . meanwhile, the night person who is up late thinks, "I'm feeling great. This is a great decision I'm making at 3:00 A.M."
Some people are skeptical though.
One doctor who reviewed the study said that there are some weak spots, like: Most of the participants were older, white folks . . . that people just self-identified as early birds or night owls . . . the mental health stats were reported data, not observed . . . and it didn't account for people who work overnight.
The negative results also tended to be based on "making choices" . . . not common wind-down behavior like cleaning, reading, or watching TV.
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I saw this story on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.
The French are famed for their penchant for protesting and are reportedly planning to poop in the Seine River.
That’s right: Parisians are reportedly organizing a ‘shit flashmob’ on 23 June, in response to President Emmanuel Macron’s $1.4 billion state-backed plan to clean up the Seine ahead of the Olympics.
This is supposedly going to happen on June 23rd, that's the day that Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo and French President Emmanuel Macron have both promised to prove the water is safe by swimming in the Seine before the Games this summer.
(it's not by the way)
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Today's Useless Fact of the Day - Commercial airline pilots are not allowed to have beards, and some airlines require pilots to be clean-shaven. It has to do with safety. They need to ensure that crew members' oxygen masks maintain a good seal in the event of an emergency . . . and facial hair can get in the way of that.
--efing
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