Theoretically, the chances that heads or tails will come up when we toss a coin should be equal. That is, if we were to toss a coin 100 times, the outcomes for either heads or tails should be 50/50. However, scientists are now disputing that commonly held belief.

A study from the University of Amsterdam shows that coin tosses aren't immune to biases. PhD candidate František Bartoš, along with a team of researchers, have built upon the initial research done by Stanford University statistics professor Persi Diaconis and his team, which hypothesized that flipped coins generally fall on the same side they started. They coined a term (no pun intended) for this phenomenon, "same-side bias".

It is a vexing proposition but when Bartoš' team conducted a trial flipping coins from 46 different currencies for a total of 350,757 times, they found that the coins came up on the same side they started around 51% of the time. It's not a big difference, but it's not 50%.

Some factors lend further credence to the theory such as the coin flipper themselves. Depending on the way the coin is tossed, the chances that same-side bias will affect the outcome is higher. "Vigorously tossing" the coin is how the team described the manner the coins were tossed.

Perhaps, to remove all the biases, we should simply twirl the coin on its side. Of course, it's more difficult than simply flicking your thumb and catching the coin. Or, maybe tossing the coin sideways?

(Image credit: Andy Henderson/Unsplash)

On December 1, 1958, "The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late)" was released. It sold millions of copies and went to #1 that Christmas season, and proved to be popular every year since then. The success of the song was a triumph for Ross Bagdasarian, who not only write and produced the song, but sang all the parts, too. What's more, he owned the song, the publishing rights, and the master tapes, which was rare for musicians at the time. "The Chipmunk Song" led to more songs, and a TV series starring Bagdasarian as Dave Seville, the guardian of three talking chipmunks and their licensing rights. Bagdasarian also had three children, who inherited all that when Bagdasarian died in 1972 at only 53 years of age.

Ross Bagdasarian, Jr. also inherited his father's media instincts. He continued the legacy of the Chipmunks, and bought out his brother and sister in the 1990s. The senior Bagdasarian had relinquished the rights to the master recording of the Christmas song to his record company, but the family retained publishing and product licensing rights. Simon, Theodore, and Alvin have appeared in numerous TV series, comic books, and four live-action movies, not to mention the toys and other branded products. The Chipmunks have sold millions of records, and "The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late)" was streamed 10.4 million times in December of 2022 alone. This is all very lucrative for Ross Jr. and his wife Janice Karman, who run Bagdasarian Productions. But what does Ross think when he hears that song every Christmas?

Honestly, I am so thrilled every time, because it brings back my dad. I get to hear his voice.

Read about the empire that one Christmas song started at Billboard. -via Metafilter
 

Tattoos have been around for thousands of years, and are more popular today than ever. Tattoos done under standard sanitary conditions don't seem all that dangerous. But have you ever once thought about how your body reacts to the trauma of high speed needles and tattoo ink invading your dermis? Your immune system immediately rushes in to protect you from such foreign substances, but while the system works pretty well against biological invasions such as bacteria and viruses, it's a bit stumped by ink, which can't be killed because it was never alive. The macrophages that normally kill bacteria do the best they can, which ends up actually stabilizing the tattoo! Of course, nothing lasts forever, and that includes macrophages and tattoo ink, which will eventually succumb to your body's ever-renewing systems. But that takes so long that you should still consider a tattoo as permanent. This video from Kurzgesagt is only 7:20; the rest is an ad.

Just a couple of months ago, astronaut Frank Rubio returned from the International Space Station after setting an American record of 371 consecutive days in orbit. Now we find out that Rubio's time on the ISS was not without controversy. There was the case of the missing tomato.

The ISS has been growing a vegetable garden to see if space travelers could grow their own food. Rubio ceremoniously plucked the first dwarf tomato from the garden and used it to demonstrate the agricultural experiment to school children. Then the tomato went missing. On the ISS, it's difficult to keep track of things that aren't tied down (usually with Velcro) and it's also important to know where everything is, lest random objects interfere with equipment. Rubio spent between eight and 20 hours of his own free time searching for it. He mainly wanted to prove that he didn't eat the historic tomato. But it was not to be found.

Until now! Eight months after the incident, astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli notified NASA that something that might have once been a small tomato has been found on the space station. Rubio has been exonerated for the sin of eating a space tomato. -via Boing Boing

(Image credit:Koichi Wakata/Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency/NASA)

I thought it would be funny to write a song about how we all hate/love @MariahCarey's amazing 'All I Want For Christmas' but in the style of The Pogues 'Fairytale of New York'.
It ended up being way more of a tear jerker than expected.
You can get it here:… pic.twitter.com/xuacn7xfXX

— Brittlestar (@brittlestar) December 11, 2023

As Christmas approached in 1994, people around the world discovered Mariah Carey's now-iconic song "All I Want for Christmas Is You." It has since become one of the most popular Christmas songs of all time. For 29 years, people have heard it on radios and over the loudspeakers at stores.

I like it. The song has, alas, been banned from my own household's Christmas soundtrack, so I have to use headphones when it comes on. Some people who shall go unmentioned loathe the song.

Brittlestar, a Canadian internet comedian, understands the love/hate relationship that Christmas celebrants have with "All I Want for Christmas Is You." In this song, he expresses how the song has become an inevitable part of the season.

The Hollywood sign is an iconic landmark. It was first erected and officially dedicated on July 13, 1923. Originally, it didn't just say "Hollywood" but "Hollywoodland", as a means of selling property in that area of Los Angeles.

A century later, it is still standing on Hollywood Hills, although it has seen many makeovers and facelifts, and it even got auctioned off to stars like Alice Cooper and Gene Autry. After decades, they will be lighting up parts of the Hollywood sign to celebrate its centenary.

Originally, the Hollywood sign was a wooden sign but after several years, many of the letters had already deteriorated and vandals had sullied the letter H. When the locals asked that the sign be torn down, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce stepped in and offered to get it renovated.

In 1949, the new sign read "HOLLYWOOD". However, even that didn't last long, and in the 1970s, some of the letters had once again fallen in disrepair, particularly the first O transforming into a lower case "u", with its accompanying O completely falling over. So, Alice Cooper launched a public campaign to have the sign restored.

He donated $28,000 to sponsor the restoration of the sign along with eight other stars including Gene Autry, Hugh Hefner, and Andy Williams. Each one of them sponsored one letter on the sign with Cooper getting the first O, Autry, the second L, Hefner, the Y, and Williams, the W.

The Hollywood Sign Trust recently had the sign repainted in celebration of its 100th anniversary. For a gallery of the Hollywood sign's 100-year history, check out this article from Deadline.

(Image credit: Wikimedia Commons)

About 12 years ago, this catchy song came out and if I remember correctly, for a time the song and the artist became somewhat of a meme. That song was Friday, by Rebecca Black. She also released a music video for it featuring her and some of her friends, presumably.

Now, there was one particular scene in that video which showed Rebecca Black's friends driving a convertible, at which point, the lyrics say, "Kickin' in the front seat, sittin' in the back seat, gotta make my mind up, which seat can I take?"

My friends were having a discussion about this, saying how ridiculous the lyrics were, because there was obviously just one place for her to sit. Of course, there were other silly lyrics in the song, such as, "Yesterday was Thursday, Today is Friday... Tomorrow is Saturday, and Sunday comes afterwards".

In the same spirit, Reddit user TimeyxWimey asked redditors on the subreddit Pop Culture Chat what some funny or awful lyrics from songs are. He started the ball rolling with Hilary Duff's So Yesterday, which had the lyrics "If the light is off, then it isn't on".

Another redditor Ok-Land7757 shared this image of Jennifer Lopez with the lyrics from her song Emotions saying "I feel good 'cause I don't feel bad".

But perhaps, my favorite submission was this image from thrash_particle who had commented it after wonderful9235 had shared Lil Yachty's lyric on his song Peek a Boo. The explanation is hilarious.

(Image credit: wolf137946825/DeviantArt; TimeyxWimey, Ok-Land7757, wonderful9235/Reddit)

It has been said that Qin Shi Huang, China's self-proclaimed first emperor, was driven mad by an unquenchable thirst for power. He is considered a tyrannical ruler, who unified the seven warring kingdoms of ancient China and founded the Qin dynasty.

Born Ying Zheng, Shi Huang had taken over the kingdom of Qin after his father died. At the time, he was only 13 years old, but brazen and aggressive, he conquered the other six kingdoms and created a strong centralized government which was responsible for connecting the various fragmented state walls into the Great Wall of China as well as the construction of the Terra Cotta Army.

Researchers found documents which stated that Shi Huang believed that his reign will last 10,000 generations. And so, to see his vision come to life, he had his administrators look for the elixir of life said to give immortality to any who would drink it.

Unfortunately, none of them were able to find the elixir, and had to send awkward replies about their failed quests. Furthermore, his Confucian scholars denounced the quest as charlatanry. However, what these documents do show is how efficient his government was and how it attests to the strength of Shi Huang's leadership.

His quest to immortality actually inspired the creation of the Terra Cotta Army as he believed that the stone guards will guide him through the afterlife.

(Image credit: Public Domain/Wikimedia Commons)

When I watched some true crime documentaries, I was quite surprised how many of those occurred in small, quiet towns or the suburbs. Maybe it's because people are less suspicious of others or being a part of a relatively smaller community gives them a sense of security and reassurance since everybody knows everybody else.

However, there are many small towns in the US where violent crime rates can go as high as 33.1 per 1,000 residents like in Bessemer, Alabama for example, with a population of 26,000. So, based on FBI and Census Bureau data compiled by NeighborhoodScout, Visual Capitalist created a map that showed which US cities were the safest.

Take note that the dataset only included cities with a population of 25,000 or higher, and violent crimes referred to arson, burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, murder, rape, armed robbery, and aggravated assault.

The results showed that almost 40% of the safest cities were in Massachusetts, mostly around Boston. The safest city is Ridgefield, Connecticut with a total crime rate of 1.9 per 1,000 residents. The chances of someone being a victim was 1 in 510. Meanwhile, Carmel in Indiana was the only city in the top 100 to have a population of over 100,000.

The team also found that many of the safest cities were near some of the most dangerous ones. One such example was Detroit, ranked among the top ten most dangerous cities in the US, whose neighboring towns like White Lake have very low crime rates. -via Reddit

(Image credit: Visual Capitalist)

In the last moments of RMS Titanic, as depicted in the 1997 film, we saw an elderly couple lying in bed, holding each other in an embrace, slowly awaiting their death.

Jack and Rose may have been fictional characters, but that elderly couple was actually based on Isidor and Ida Straus, and the film was able to depict the gist of their true-to-life story. Granted, they were not holding each other in bed, but they did decide to not get on the lifeboats and sink with the ship instead.

Isidor and Ida were both Jewish immigrants from Germany, married in 1871, and had seven children. Isidor's father had a pottery business which later became part of Macy's, and through Isidor's hard work, he eventually became a co-owner of Macy's.

Originally, the couple had no intention of traveling on the RMS Titanic, and they weren't even supposed to be in Europe at the time. However, the untimely death of Isidor's business partner, A. Abraham, caused them to take a vacation in Europe instead of southern California.

At the time, the couple had brought their newly-hired English maid, Ellen Bird, with them. As fate would have it, the ship they were supposed to board had to give its coal to the Titanic, and so they went with the luxury liner.

When the Titanic had begun to sink and the lifeboats were being filled, Ida Straus was urged by Col. Archibald Gracie, who had struck up a friendship with Isidor along the voyage, to get on one of the lifeboats. But Ida was adamant, telling Isidor, "We have lived together for many years. Where you go, I go."

We see the generosity of the couple as they made sure that their new maid was able to get on a lifeboat, and Ida even gave her long mink fur coat so that Ms. Bird could keep herself warm. Later on, Isidor's body was found, but neither Ida's nor their valet's was ever recovered.

Afterward, Ellen Bird got in touch with the couple's daughter, Sara Straus Hess, to give back Ida's coat. Sara thanked her but refused to take the coat back as she believed her mother would have wanted Ms. Bird to keep it.

In honor of the couple, a bronze statue in Straus Park (also named after the couple) in Manhattan has been dedicated to them.

(Image credit: 20th Century Fox; Public Domain/Wikimedia Commons)

Over 80 years have passed since US Army Air Forces (USAAF) second lieutenant Warren Singer went missing along with the Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighter plane he had been maneuvering as he and 165 others crossed the sea toward Italy to conduct air raids on Manfredonia and Foggia.

Out of the 166 P-38s that had left, only 137 successfully completed their task. The rest had to turn back as they encountered mechanical issues. According to some of Singer's comrades' eyewitness accounts, they had seen Singer signaling that he was struggling to drop his fuel tanks, so he had to turn back.

However, on his way back, something must have happened, because nobody had seen him or his aircraft again. A year and a day after he went missing, he was officially declared deceased on August 26, 1944.

Now, the wreckage of the P-38 has been found by Italian divers about four miles off the coast of Manfredonia. Dr. Fabio Bisciotti, one of the divers who located and identified the wreck, said that Singer must have ditched the plane but possibly struggled and drowned, as Singer's remains were not in the wreckage.

Still, this provides much-needed closure for the family that Singer had left behind. He was only 22 years old when he went MIA, about five months after he had married his wife, Margaret, and was expecting a baby daughter, Peggy, who was born in January 1944.

Despite his unexpectedly short life, Warren has 12 descendants, along with his grandson Dave Clark who spoke with the media after the discovery of his late grandfather's aircraft.

(Image credit: US Air Force/Wikimedia Commons)

Eleven years ago yesterday, a monkey in a fluffy winter coat was seen walking around alone in an IKEA parking lot in Toronto, after he escaped from his cage and opened the door of the car it was in. The six-month-old Japanese macaque, named Darwin, instantly became one of the biggest memes of 2012. Keeping a macaque as a pet was illegal, though, and Darwin was taken from his owner.  

You will be happy to learn that Darwin is alive and well and thriving at Story Book Farm Primate Sanctuary in Ontario. The macaques and lemurs who live there enjoy relative freedom and privacy compared to the homes, zoos, and research facilities they were taken from. It's not as good as being free in their native habitats, but for monkeys who did not grow up learning to live in the wild, it's the best life they could ask for. Japanese macaques normally live in a cold climate, so Darwin is not out of his element in Ontario. This species can live to be around 30 years old.  -via Boing Boing

Pantone Color of the Year 2024: PANTONE 13-1023 Peach Fuzz.

A velvety gentle peach whose all-embracing spirit enriches mind, body, and heart.

Learn more about PANTONE 13-1023 Peach Fuzz:https://t.co/323jbOLiTA#pantone #pantonecoloroftheyear #pantone2024 #peachfuzz pic.twitter.com/9cjGBY9bsY

— PANTONE (@pantone) December 7, 2023

The Pantone Color Institute has announced that their Color of the Year for 2024 is PANTONE 13-1023, also called Peach Fuzz. They describe it as "a velvety gentle peach whose all-embracing spirit enriches heart, mind, and body." While it is "enriching and nurturing," the color is also "quietly sophisticated and contemporary." The color is soft and gentle, unobtrusive enough to be considered a neutral color, yet more interesting than most true neutrals. It's too pink to be orange, and too orange to be pink, and much more pastel than either color.

Some companies are already offering products in conjunction with Pantone like wallpaper, fabric, and rugs. This is a color I could get behind, but I'd rather taste it than use it to paint the walls. This is the institute's 25th Color of the Year, which they have presented as a forecast for the coming year since 1999. You can see many of them in our previous posts. I guess that makes them the grandaddy of "influencers." Smithsonian has a roundup of reactions from various sources.

One of the concerns people have about electric vehicles is charging the battery. In some places, charging stations are still few and far between. The ability to plug in a car at your home is not yet universal. And even if there were plenty of charging stations everywhere, it takes some time to get a car fully charged. Wouldn't it be quicker and more convenient to just swap out a low battery for a charged one? That technology already exists, in China and a few places in Europe. From the license plate and text on the walls, it appears that Tom Scott is in the Netherlands, checking out a battery-swap from the Chinese automaker Nio. What's even more amazing is that the swap station is completely automated! Nio cars will self-park, and the station itself lines up the car precisely so that a robot can take out the old battery and install a new one. Neat, huh? Only time will tell if this infrastructure will ever be cost-efficient enough to equip that vast United States with Nio charging stations.  

Today, I ran across the above image on Twitter. It made me laugh because it reflects the historical reality of the industrial disparity between the United States and Japan during World War II. The Japanese Empire was doomed because it gravely misunderstood both American culture and the importance of industrial capacity in a war waged in the 1940s.

To my knowledge, the United States did not have a ship dedicated to producing birthday cakes. But it did have a vessel devoted entirely to the mass production of ice cream for sailors. This was a BRL (Barge, Refrigerated, Large) of the US Navy that could manufacture 1,500 gallons of ice cream every day.

Yes, my sources are unclear about whether it's 1,500 gallons per day or or per hour. But at that point of ice cream production, it no longer matters which is correct.

-via The Last Great Arrakian Dynasty