8/18/25 - #2 Pencil, Digital Bragging Rights, and Dog
- bribriny
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
Monday 8/18/25
Celebrate:
Helium Discovery Day
Mail Order Catalog Day
National Bad Poetry Day
National Fajita Day
National Ice Cream Pie Day
Never Give Up Day
Pinot Noir Day
Serendipity Day
Stay Home with Your Kids Day
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Weekend Box Office
1. Weapons had a great second week making another $25.0M
2. Freakier Friday $14.5M
3. Nobody 2 $9.3M
4. The Fantastic Four: First Steps $8.8M
5. The Bad Guys 2 $7.5M
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It’s the ultimate digital bragging rights battle — which generation witnessed the most tech changes in their lifetime?
A viral Threads post from @iblamekaixin lit the fuse on July 31, racking up over 353,000 views and nearly 30,000 likes: “THERE’S A GENERATION THAT WITNESSED THE WORLD GO FROM NO INTERNET, TO BUYING THEIR FIRST COMPUTERS, TO USING FLIP PHONES, TO ADOPTING THE IPHONE, AND NOW, EXPERIENCING THE RISE OF AI. THAT’S CRAZY.”
Cue the generational cage match.
“It’s called GenX,” snarked one user.
But Gen Z wasn’t letting that slide. “…it’s Gen Z. majority of Gen Z too. gen z wasn’t born yesterday like older people think,” fired back another.
Boomers had their receipts — and their reasons to be cranky. “And we have had to reassemble our music collections half a dozen times. No wonder us Baby Boomers get so cranky these days,” an older person fired back.
Others turned nostalgic. “We watched the world go from analog to digital in real-time,” an additional commenter wrote. “From burning CDs to streaming everything on demand. From landlines to smartphones that replaced 10 different devices.”
Some are even rewinding. “And I am now reversing it all. Going back to flip phone, CDs in the car, getting rid of social media and entertainment apps, and regulating my nervous system,” declared someone else.
Experts say millennials might have the strongest case for the crown.
Christina Muller, an elder millennial and licensed workplace mental health strategist, says, “We’re the only generation to have straddled both an analogue and advanced technology world.” Unlike Gen Z, she said, there was no digital map — only constant pivoting.
Millennials, Muller noted, “know the thrill of laughing with friends more often than typing ‘haha’ on our devices.”
And as one commenter reminded everyone: “The peak irony is that it’s the same generation that grew up with all apocalyptic sci-fi movies where humanity gets controlled by artificial intelligence and robot.”
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Yesterday was National #2 Pencil Day.

What does the “2” on a No. 2 pencil actually mean?
There's also H's and B's involved, and it all has to do with the HB graphite grading scale used to classify the pencil’s graphite core.
The hardness of the graphite core is often marked on the pencil — look for a number (such as “2” “2-1/2” or “3”) — and the higher the number, the harder the writing core and the lighter the mark left on the paper.
Historically, pencil makers also use combinations of letters — a pencil marked “HB” is hard and black; a pencil marked “HH” is very hard, and a pencil marked “HHBBB” is very hard and really, really black!
But again, why the #2?
It offers a good balance of lead hardness and darkness, making it ideal for writing and erasing without smudging or tearing the paper. This balance makes it suitable for use with optical scanners, which were used in early standardized tests, and also preferred by teachers for everyday writing and erasing.
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Today’s Useless Fact of the Day - No one is sure where the word "dog" came from.
A linguist says "dog" only became the standard term within the past 500 years or so. During the Middle English period from 1100 to 1450, "dog" was often used as an insult directed at people.
Centuries ago, "hound" was the more common term for a domestic canine, and we know THAT word came from the Old English word "hund."
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