Read on Twitter
23. People who get a trigger warning actually experience *more* anxiety for a given stimulus compared to people who do not get a trigger warning. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/2167702620921341
24. Despite the numerous benefits, being bilingual does not, in fact, make you smarter.
https://owenlab.uwo.ca/pdf/2020%20-%20Nichols%20-%20Assoc%20for%20psych%20science.pdf [PDF]
https://owenlab.uwo.ca/pdf/2020%20-%20Nichols%20-%20Assoc%20for%20psych%20science.pdf [PDF]
25. The crawling-through-air-vents-to-another-part-of-a-building trope in film first appeared in 1963 in Dr. No. https://twitter.com/TheCromulentMan/status/1255671668795555841
26. Swearing helps people cope with pain. People who yell the F-word can bear a 33% increase in pain tolerance compared to people who yell similar-sounding non-swear words, like “fouch”. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00723/full
27. On Tinder, men swipe right (i.e., like) on 60% of women’s profiles, while women swipe right on only 4% of men’s profiles. https://twitter.com/robkhenderson/status/1294628071174213635
28. You need silence to be productive.
A 10-decibal increase in background noise causes productivity to drop by about 5%.
https://joshuatdean.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/NoiseCognitiveFunctionandWorkerProductivity.pdf [PDF]
A 10-decibal increase in background noise causes productivity to drop by about 5%.
https://joshuatdean.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/NoiseCognitiveFunctionandWorkerProductivity.pdf [PDF]
29. 62% of people who brush their teeth rinse their mouth out with water, which actually makes tooth decay more likely.
The water removes much of the fluoride that would have lingered after brushing. https://www.dentalhealth.org/news/spit-dont-rinse-for-better-oral-health
The water removes much of the fluoride that would have lingered after brushing. https://www.dentalhealth.org/news/spit-dont-rinse-for-better-oral-health
30. In India in the 1970s, young men would carry around boomboxes and play loud music in public.
The trend became less popular after the government began giving away free boomboxes to anyone who got a vasectomy.
*Codes of the Underworld* https://amzn.to/3poAxjS
The trend became less popular after the government began giving away free boomboxes to anyone who got a vasectomy.
*Codes of the Underworld* https://amzn.to/3poAxjS
31. Blockbuster made so much money on late fees that when they removed them in 2007 to compete with Netflix, they lost half of their profits.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1085734/000119312507239499/dex991.htm
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1085734/000119312507239499/dex991.htm
32. When given the choice between keeping $5 or giving someone else $10, people usually opt to give someone else the $10.
But when the choice is between keeping $8 or giving $10, people keep the $8. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-476-05353-4_25
But when the choice is between keeping $8 or giving $10, people keep the $8. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-476-05353-4_25
33. Streetlights reduce nighttime crime by 36% and reduce “serious offending” by 4%.
This is roughly the same reduction in crime you would expect from a 10% increase in policing. https://www.nber.org/papers/w25798
This is roughly the same reduction in crime you would expect from a 10% increase in policing. https://www.nber.org/papers/w25798
34. The relationship between the Road Runner and the Coyote was governed by a strict set of 9 rules, such as “No outside force can harm the Coyote—only his own ineptitude or the failure of Acme products.” https://twitter.com/lebas_janney/status/1269776188517556225
35. If the lawyer and the judge went to the same school, the lawyer is 4.6 times more likely to win the case. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0001839220922133
36. The more time a city spent on the frontier of the American west, the more likely (slightly) the residents of that city today vote Republican, pay lower property taxes, and give their children unique names.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3065808
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3065808
37. When speed dating, women pick men who are on average 25cm taller, while men pick women who are 7cm shorter. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0003347213001590
38. Children born to first-cousin marriages have roughly the same increased risk of genetic abnormality as children born to women who are 41 years old instead of 30 years old. https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/go-ahead-kiss-your-cousin
39. People can’t keep secrets at predictable rates. Knowing how many people need to be in on a hoax means you can predict how long it take for a hoax to fail. E.g. the failure time for a moon landing hoax is 3.68 years. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0147905
40. People get in car accidents roughly once every 0.5 million miles, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, compared to once every 4.34 million miles for Teslas driven on autopilot.
https://ir.tesla.com/static-files/47313d21-3cac-4f69-9497-d161bce15da4 [PDF]
https://ir.tesla.com/static-files/47313d21-3cac-4f69-9497-d161bce15da4 [PDF]
41. Technically, planets don’t orbit the sun. Instead, all mass orbits the barycenter.
Though the sun contains 99.8% of the solar system’s mass, Jupiter contains most of the other 0.2%, and it’s enough to bump the sun out of the barycenter. https://twitter.com/physicsJ/status/1279082929566572545
Though the sun contains 99.8% of the solar system’s mass, Jupiter contains most of the other 0.2%, and it’s enough to bump the sun out of the barycenter. https://twitter.com/physicsJ/status/1279082929566572545
42. During COVID-19, white-crowned sparrows in San Francisco changed their song to optimize for variety instead of volume, since they no longer must compete with the normal background noise of urban environments. https://www.wired.com/story/how-the-pandemic-transformed-this-songbirds-call/
43. The homicide rate is lower among societies who believe in an afterlife that includes both heaven and hell. But for societies that believe in heaven only (not hell), the homicide rate is higher. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3377603/
44. Sorting email into folders wastes an average of 67 hours per year.
https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/1978942.1979457
https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/1978942.1979457
45. As of 2018, legalized marijuana in the United States has led to a 17% decline in gun-related homicides in Mexico, compared to the years 1996–2017.
https://www.colorado.edu/economics/sites/default/files/attached-files/20-06_-_swanson.pdf [PDF]
https://www.colorado.edu/economics/sites/default/files/attached-files/20-06_-_swanson.pdf [PDF]
46. As of 2014, communities located more than 100 kilometers away from former Mountie forts have 45% more homicides per capita than communities located less than 100 kilometers away. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/287330578_The_Mounties_and_the_Origins_of_Peace_in_the_Canadian_Prairies
47. 92% of top ten Billboard songs refer to sex, with an average of 10.49 reproductive phrases per song.
90% of them are made by males at their peak years of reproductive activity.
*Music: A Subversive History* https://amzn.to/2KYbTHU
90% of them are made by males at their peak years of reproductive activity.
*Music: A Subversive History* https://amzn.to/2KYbTHU
49. In work settings, people think you’re less competent when you use emojis. 
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1948550617720269
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1948550617720269
50. In the city blocks surrounding the United Nations headquarters in New York City, most of the parking tickets issued to diplomats go to diplomats from countries with high rates of corruption.
https://www0.gsb.columbia.edu/mygsb/faculty/research/pubfiles/4140/fisman_corruption.pdf [PDF]
https://www0.gsb.columbia.edu/mygsb/faculty/research/pubfiles/4140/fisman_corruption.pdf [PDF]
51. Trees evolved 360 million years ago, but the fungi that decompose them didn’t evolve until 300 million years ago—leaving a 60-million-year gap for dead plant matter to pile up.
Today, we mine this ancient carbon matter as coal.
*Symphony in C* https://amzn.to/2KDQILw
Today, we mine this ancient carbon matter as coal.
*Symphony in C* https://amzn.to/2KDQILw
52. The wisdom of the crowd—the idea that the average opinion from an uninformed group of people is more likely to be correct than the opinion from a single expert—works even when the crowd is drunk.
https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F1089-2699.12.3.179
https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F1089-2699.12.3.179
Get more like this delivered to your inbox ~12 times per year: http://eepurl.com/dkYiuz
