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6/2/23 - Words, Expensive Plant, and Bookstore Poops!

Friday 6/2/23


Celebrate:

American Indian Citizenship Day

Hug and Atheist Day

I Love My Dentist Day

National Bubba Day

National Doughnut Day

National Gun Violence Awareness Day

National Leave the Office Early Day

National Rocky Road Day

National Rotisserie Chicken Day

Yell "Fudge" at the Cobras in North America Day - Apparently, we want them to go south and leave the country, so you turn to the south at noon and yell it.


New at the Box Office

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse another animated Spidy film


The Boogeyman - Rob Savage directs this horror suspense film. It's based on a short story by Stephen King which you can find in the collection, Night Shift.


The Scripps National Spelling Bee finals were last night. There were fairly easy "winning words" from every final since 1925. And it turns out they've gotten a lot harder since then. Most of us couldn't spell any from the past 30 years. But some of the older ones are gettable, if you're a decent speller.

Here are the ten EASIEST final words in Scripps National Spelling Bee history. See how many you can get..

1. Fracas (1930) "My roommate spoiled the last episode of 'Succession', and it caused a major fracas." (F-R-A-C-A-S)


2. Knack (1932) "I've never been a good speller. I just don't have a knack for it." (K-N-A-C-K)


3. Interning (1936) "After all that money my parents dropped on tuition . . . I'm interning at a RADIO STATION this summer." (I-N-T-E-R-N-I-N-G)


4. Therapy (1940) "I told my dad I'm interning at a radio station, and now he's in therapy." (T-H-E-R-A-P-Y)


5. Initials (1941) "I bet you can't tell me what J.R.R. Tolkien's initials stand for." (I-N-I-T-I-A-L-S) His full name was John Ronald Reuel Tolkien.


6. Condominium (1956) "If I just work in radio another 30 or 40 years, I'll finally be able to afford that condominium." (C-O-N-D-O-M-I-N-I-U-M)


7. Chihuahua (1967) "Way back when, people used to think chihuahuas were related to chipmunks." That's actually true. (C-H-I-H-U-A-H-U-A)


8. Croissant (1970) "I've eaten a donut and a bagel out of the trash before, but never a croissant." (C-R-O-I-S-S-A-N-T)


9. Luge (1984) "One sport you couldn't pay me to try is . . . luge." (L-U-G-E)


10. Kamikaze (1993) "She drank four kamikazes at the bar and puked on her Uber driver." (K-A-M-I-K-A-Z-E)

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At some point in the mid-‘80s, the story goes, a Japanese woman named Mariko Aoki wrote a letter to a magazine confessing that she sometimes urgently felt the need to poop whenever she entered a bookstore.

Aoki, it turned out, wasn't alone: In the weeks that followed, many other people wrote in, explaining that they, too, felt the same urge in bookstores and libraries.

And thus...the Mariko Aoki phenomenon has been named. (also known as book bowels.)

It hasn't been medically or scientifically proven, but a gastroenterologist gave some ideas.

Actually, the urgency that people feel with bowel movements can also be found in other areas like parks and museums. The intensity of the information that you encounter in museums and libraries—or the sudden quiet of a garden—can trigger an autonomic response in your gut.

In a library or bookstore specifically, what's likely happening is the effect arises from feelings of nervous tension in the face of all the information represented on the bookshelves.

Too many of us also read in the bathroom, which, in and of itself, causes lots of bowel issues, and over time, your colon and body will associate reading on the toilet with using the restroom. That subconscious connection will give you the urge to poop when you are around a bathroom.

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A houseplant with just nine leaves has sold for a record-breaking $19,297 on a New Zealand auction site.

Bids for the “very rare white variegated Rhaphidophora Tetrasperma” closed Sunday night, rising in the last four minutes as bidder “foliage_patch” battled the eventual winner, tagged “meridianlamb.”

rade Me spokesperson Millie Silvester told CNN that the plant was “the most expensive houseplant ever sold” on the auction site.

“Houseplants have become the ‘it’ item over the last couple of years, we’ve seen prices creep up and up as more Kiwis jump on this new trend,” she said.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/13/asia/new-zealand-houseplant-trademe-auction-trnd/index.html

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Water recycling is a good thing, but......really???

Epic OneWater Brew, from Epic Cleantec and Devil’s Canyon Brewing Company, is made from greywater recycled from showers, laundry and bathroom sinks in a 40-story San Francisco apartment building, where Epic has onsite equipment to capture, treat and reuse water for non-drinking purposes.

You won’t find the beer for sale anytime soon. Epic has been open about the fact that it’s a “demonstration product”: the company’s goal is to get people talking about the possibilities of water recycling, and current commercial regulations on recycled drinking water are strict.

The author of the article for the guardian.com says, "There were no notes of shower or laundry. If this were served at a bar, I’d never guess where it came from."

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2023/may/02/recycled-wastewater-beer-epic-cleantec-san-francisco-drought-california

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Toilets take on a lifesaving role in a 1981 patent that proposed the water trap within a basin could give a person trapped in a burning room access to fresh air. The patent claims that if a room is filled with toxic gases, the inhabitants just might survive by inserting a tube through the water and out the other side, sucking on their toilet snorkel until help arrives.

Toilet basins that are constantly filled with some liquid have a water trap that effectively prevents the hole in your toilet from being an open gateway to the sewer. As you can imagine, this has benefits for stopping unpleasant smells from getting through.

There is usually an airvent pipe that extends out to fresh air.

https://www.iflscience.com/fire-breathe-into-the-toilet-snorkel-theres-no-time-to-explain-68673

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There's a company that helps with eating disorder recoveries called Within Health . . . and they did a study on how music impacts body image.

Part of it features lists of the Top Five music acts in various genres that they say make people feel the most CONFIDENT.

Their results are based on searches and playlists on Spotify, which supposedly reflect positive body image. Here's what they came up with:

Rock

1. Queen

2. Guns N' Roses

3. Led Zeppelin

4. The Beatles

5. Pink Floyd


Pop

1. Lizzo

2. Taylor Swift

3. Adele

4. Beyoncé

5. Lady Gaga


Metal

1. Metallica

2. Tool

3. Nirvana

4. Five Finger Death Punch

5. Avenged Sevenfold


Hip Hop / Rap

1. Megan Thee Stallion

2. Drake

3. Nicki Minaj

4. Cardi B

5. Eminem


EDM

1. Alesso

2. Avicii

3. Daft Punk

4. Seven Lions

5. Tiesto


Country

1. Carrie Underwood

2. Shania Twain

3. Luke Combs

4. Miranda Lambert

5. Toby Keith


Other results from the study include: Rock is the most listened-to genre by fans with positive body image, at 64%. Also, 28% of people think music videos have a NEGATIVE impact on body image.

The top three songs found on body-positive playlists are: "Confident" by Demi Lovato . . . "Flowers" by Miley Cyrus . . . and "Kill Bill" by SZA.

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Do you remember how Michael Jackson had that pet chimpanzee back in the '80s named Bubbles? Well, he just celebrated his 40th birthday.

Bubbles is living at a "retirement home" in Florida called the Center for Great Apes. And they just threw a massive birthday party for him.

There was a cake that was frosted with mashed bananas, and they wrote his name in blueberries. The theme was . . . well . . . BUBBLES. They had an actual bubble bath, and paper bubbles as decorations.

Bubbles even got PRESENTS, like a blanket with his photos on it. The staff entertained him with DVDs of Michael, which may seem triggering . . . but they say he loves watching them, and remembers him.

Michael bought Bubbles as an infant in 1983 from a Texas research facility, but within six years, he became too big to keep as a pet, and was moved to a ranch in California. He's been at the retirement home since 2005.


Today's Useless Fact of the Day - At least 350 different languages are spoken in the U.S., including 150 different Native American languages, and everything from Samoan to Pennsylvania Dutch.

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