Research suggests bears, much like elephants and great apes, are more intelligent than previously assumed. The selfie bear is a unique reminder of a type of animal cognition scientists are just starting to understand.

“Bears are probably more naturally curious about how things work than some other species,” says Jennifer Vonk, a psychology professor at Oakland University.

Viv and I watched this story on Australian Story last night and it was a really good one – very heartwarming 🙂 If you don’t know, Kylie Moore-Gilbert is an Australian academic specialising in the Middle East who was imprisoned in Iran on trumped-up espionage charges for over two years, and Sami Shah is a comedian and former presenter of the ABC’s breakfast radio show, originally from Pakistan. I find it interesting that the article includes some details that weren’t in the televised story and vice versa. In particular, Viv’s favourite joke from the televised story (and Pakistanis and Indian-South Africans have very similar cultures, so he really identified with Sami’s humour 😆) didn’t make it into the article – that being Sami’s reluctance to consider IVF, saying, “Have you seen the population of Pakistan? You think we achieved that having anything wrong with our swimmers?”¹ I’m glad that the “The trick to not getting divorced a third time is you just don’t get married” joke stayed in, though!

An interesting article all about cats’ meows, and studies into them over time 🙂

All 125 mammal species studied are fluorescent under UV light to some degree 😱

The lack of variation across different cat species proves they are already at the top of their game 🐱💪

Interesting article about a singer who never “made it” in his home country of the US, and therefore continued as a member of the working poor, completely unaware of his immense popularity in Australia and South Africa. The article kind of skips over it, but it sounds like the record company ran off with all the proceeds from those Australian and South African sales to him, too?? What shady motherfuckers.

I’ve long thought something like this would be a great idea – a system by which the same hour has the same name regardless of what actual time zone you’re in, and whether that hour is daylight, nighttime or whatever. In this case, the hours get cute nature-related names (e.g. Comet, Owl). The graphic here also shows you these hours in relation to your timezone, to UTC, and to your daylight hours where you live. Cool stuff!

I read this article a few weeks ago and forgot to save the link, but it’s a wonderfully enlightening piece as to why today’s top 40 music charts are so useless (e.g. with every single song from a new album by Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, or the like appearing in the top 15). Basically, because the majority of listening occurs via streaming now, the charts’ methodology has changed to mostly measure streams, not sales. Not only this, but the article says:

ARIA converts streams to what it deems as an equivalent number of sales. That conversion rate changes regularly, but at the moment ARIA says a sale is worth the same as about 170 streams on a paid service or 420 streams on a free ad-supported service.

So, you would need to listen to a new single by your favourite artist one hundred and seventy times (or four hundred and twenty if you’re a free tier user) to count as a single purchase by the standards of Australia’s music charts. I don’t think I’ve listened to any songs 170 times in a decade.¹ Certainly not within a week of release, which is what the non-big-name artists would need (a lot of people to do) to stand a chance of breaking into the charts. Combine that with the pitiful royalties artists actually get paid per stream , and it’s enough to make me want to dust off the ol’ iTunes Store account…

And I mean, there’s the “justice for less well-known artists” angle, and then there’s the “I don’t even know what music is popular any more” angle. Not only do the big names’ new-release albums monopolise spots on the charts these days with non-single tracks, but older music can stay on the charts for a looooong time. I don’t think there’s a problem with an older song bursting onto the charts when something happens to bring it to the attention of a new generation, or to resurface it in the popular imagination generally – like when Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” had its resurgence last year, or Sinead O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” getting a bunch of listens following her recent death – but the article mentions the Killers’ “Mr. Brightside” ranking on the charts 48 out of the 52 weeks of 2022, which is just ridiculous. I feel like the charts should reflect music that is new to the listeners, not millennials listening to “Mr. Brightside” for the 956528968th time.

So basically: the charts are broken. This is probably why I never hear anyone talking about them any more (except in this article).

The social media platforms Weibo and Xiaohongshu have been inundated with photos and reviews of cold sandwiches, raw carrots and canned tuna. Many are from Chinese international students surprised by the simple lunches eaten by their peers overseas.

lmao, I am definitely white but I can completely relate to the Chinese people here. I HATED my school lunches – cold white bread sandwiches every day – and as a substitute teacher I saw ideas of appropriate school lunches have changed… but are still usually joyless. Now in addition to the sandwich, kids can have teeny-tiny containers full of plain, pre-chopped carrots and celery 🥴 There’s no way chopping all those veggies is less labour than actually making something nice… surely. The lunches I respected most were the insulated containers full of noodles or pasta or something. Those parents knew what was up.