Every December Tom Whitwell publishes a list of interesting things he learned that year. He just published his list for 2022. Here are a few of my favorites:
- A 'zhènlóuqì' is an electrical floor shaker sold on Taobao, used to get revenge on noisy neighbours. [Wang Xinyi]
- Someone is writing 16-digit numbers across walls all over Walthamstow [Reuben Binns]
- China is building 450 gigawatts of solar and wind power generation in the Gobi desert. That's six times the total power generation capacity of the UK. [Muyu Xu]
- A deep learning model trained on 85,000 eyes can tell male from female eyeballs with 87% accuracy but no one knows why. [Edward Korot & co]
- Egg yolk colour preferences are regional: Northern Europeans like paler yolks, Mediterraneans a deeper orange. In South Africa, white corn makes egg yolks super pale. Farmers use the DSM Yolk Fan to pick the perfect colour (and feed additive). [Ari LeVaux]