Dhing I was recently reminded of a phrase I hadn’t heard in a while: To have one’s cake and eat it too.
I’ve never understood that term. What else would you do with a cake you have? Wear it? Rent it bowling shoes? And while we’re at it, why do we still use “selling like hotcakes?” Were they once as socially hot as, say, the Furby?
Less questions. More answers:
90% of Chinese teenagers and young adults suffer from myopia (short-sightedness).
The highest race horse speed ever recorded was 43.97 mph.
3 out of 4 teenage girls feel depressed after looking at a fashion magazine for only 3 minutes, according to a Cambridge study.
75% of all suicide attempts are by self-poisoning with drugs, and 97% of those cases survive.
The average person pees six times a day.
Intel employs a “futurist” whose job is to determine what life will be like 10-15 years in the future.
More than $80 of every $100 of wealth created in 2017 went to the richest 1%.
According to the Washington Post, Trump made 4,299 false or misleading claims in his first 558 days.
I recently stumbled upon the above graph, done by some folks at Adobe, the company that wants more updates from me than my mother.
Normally I am poll-dubious. And not just for 2016’s bungled projection. I quit putting my faith in them when I learned that almost every major poll service — Gallup, Pew, the major networks — conduct surveys over landline telephones.
Who under 40 owns a landline? How do not contaminate poll results by ignoring entire demographics?
As we learned 20 months ago, you can’t.
But this one was done by nerdlingers well versed in the world wide intertubes. So that’s gotta be right. Right?
Yet I find I’m dubious once more. Consider what respondents considered annoying:
Notice that every “annoyance” contains nary a rude word in it. Most simply confirm the receipt of information. Some include said information, possibly for a second time, just to be sure. One actually begins with the word “Please.” Another “Sorry.” What a new Iron(y) Age we inhabit.
The lesson here: dorks are no better at gauging public sentiment than wonks.
And you know the data is questionable: Not one aggravating email contained the words “horny,” Nigerian prince,” “MILFs” or “IMF Foreign Payment (which came today. Apparently, my Master Card will be credited $10.5 million after a small transaction fee. So long, suckers.)
And, in less dubious news, fellow bitches, just the Factslaps:
In the 1800s, ducks were called ‘arsefeet’ because their feet are so close to their bottoms.
The world’s billionaires made enough money in 2017 to end extreme poverty seven times over.
A male cheetah can make a female ovulate by barking at her.
In 1568, the Catholic Church condemned the entire population of The Netherlands to death for heresy.
Only 41% of items on to-do lists are ever actually done.
In 1932, Winston Churchill went to a hotel in Munich two days in a row to have tea with Hitler. Hitler stood him up both times and the two men never met.
A bird caused the Large Hadron Collider to be turned off in 2009 after it dropped a piece of baguette into it.
There are enough nuclear shelters in Switzerland to house the entire population.
