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Boggle and Little Debbie

Boggle and Little Debbie

Payton Mitchell & Hank Green
July 19, 2024

Hello!

How we feelin’ out there tonight!? I am not feeling good.

It is truly remarkable how far in the past the assassination attempt of Donald Trump feels to me. Like, I started writing a video immediately after it happened and then, by the time the video came out, it felt a little bit like old news?? I make a video every week!! It was such a consequential event, and people were so, so wrong about it that it almost feels worth saying what people were saying.

People were saying a lot of “they” did this language, which presumed that it was specifically left-wing rhetoric that inspired the shooting. (This appears to be untrue.) People were saying that we’re in a new era of political violence, which, I dunno, might be true. It also very much might not be true! This feels like a situation that, if you re-ran the scenario, could have been stopped at a number of different moments. And people were saying, “Well, that cinches it, Donald Trump will be president,” but it doesn’t seem to have had much impact on the polls. I also heard a bit of, “This will distract from the conversation about whether Joe Biden should step down,” but that seems to have been very temporary.

I wanted to consume all of those takes as it was happening because I was trying to figure out what world I was living in, but it turns out they didn’t actually help me because all of those takes were wrong (or at least not definitively right).

I think America is a lot stronger than we think it is. I think that we and our neighbors are much more chill than the /discourse/ would have us believe. Of course, people will look back at this as a particularly tumultuous election season, but they will be looking back from a world where they have their own BS to deal with, and they will think that their BS is obviously and entirely much more important and impactful than what happened in 2024. I’m trying to remember that…and maybe I am trying to go swimming in the river this weekend. It is hot, and I need to be swallowed by nature.

Hank

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This Week in Stuff

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There’s a park in Tennessee full of Little Debbie snack sculptures.

why did nobody tell me about the little debbie park
— I.G.Y. azalea (@HaitianDvorce)
7:06 PM • Jul 12, 2024

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6 in 10 people in the world regularly use the Internet

Hannah Ritchie

The Internet is one of the world’s fastest-growing technologies.

In 2010, just 30% of the global population was online. Within a decade, this figure had doubled to 60% in 2020. And it’s still growing rapidly, as the chart shows.

There are, however, large inequalities. In North America and Europe, more than 80% are online, compared to just 30% in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The quality of this access is also very different: this indicator is based on someone having used the Internet at least once in the last three months. The experience of someone having non-stop connections on their smartphone will be very different from someone logging on in a public space once a month.

But the dominant trend globally — and across all regions — is that more people are coming online every year. It’s a technology that’s moving incredibly fast.

Our World in Data is a UK-based non-profit organization that publishes research and data to make progress against the world’s largest problems. You can find more of their data insights here.

This Week at Complexly

Eons has teamed up with Creative Beast Studios to create unparalleled 1/18th scale, hand-painted mammoth action figures! Toy manufacturers don't think that people are interested in scientific accuracy, but Eons and Creative Beast Studios know otherwise! Our audiences share our passion for the fascinating reality of deep history. Our Backerkit campaign launches soon-- follow our campaign page now to get updates and sneak previews of the creation process!

Get Ready for Prehistoric Elephants

From Complexly and Creative Beasts Studios - Get Ready for Prehistoric Elephants

complexly.info/PrehistoricElephants10

All 50 episodes of Crash Course Biology and Biología are now available on YouTube! We ended the series with a beeeeep (that's the sound of our answering machine -- remember those?!) as our hosts took calls from a quirky cast of characters and answered questions about how the science of life applies to our everyday lives.

Study Hall College Journeys is back with a new interview featuring 4x WNBA champion and 5x Olympic gold medalist Sue Bird! In this episode, Hank Green and Sue Bird (an unexpected but delightful combo) delve into her remarkable journey, from receiving college recruitment letters as early as 6th grade to joining the WNBA shortly after its inauguration in 1997.

Whether you're a basketball enthusiast or not, Sue Bird's story is one of perseverance, activism, and personal growth. As one of the greatest athletes of all time and a proud queer icon, her journey offers inspiration and insights for everyone.

The word you can't spell in Boggle

Dan Lewis

Yes, it's the f-word. But that wasn't always the case. If you're not familiar with Boggle, it's Boggle the game where you shake a chamber of sixteen lettered cubes and then find words composed of connected letters. There are sixteen letter cubes in Boggle and pre-1987, the game had two Ks and two Fs spread across four different dice: BIFORX and EEFHIY contained the Fs, while DKNOUT and EGKLUY contained the Ks. As a result, you could spell words like “FORK" or “KNIFE" (as seen above from an old set my brother found in his house!), provided that the cubes fell in a manner that made those words available. But in 1987, Parker Brothers redid the dice. And now, the only Fs and Ks available in the revised version of the game are on the same cube — AFFKPS. It is impossible, therefore, to spell any word that requires both an F and a K, such as fork, knife, or…yeah, that one. Was that intentional? That's gone unreported.

Dan Lewis writes Now I Know, the free newsletter that shares a fun fact and a story behind it (like this one!) each weekday. Want to join more than 50,000 other readers and learn something new every day? Subscribe here.

This was taken this weekend at Ross Lake in Yoho National Park in British Columbia, Canada. I wore Awesome Socks eight of the nine days I was hiking in BC in hopes someone would comment on them. No luck on that front, but I felt comfortable & stylish the whole time.

Lindi

You can sign up for the Awesome Socks Club here! (Now available in kids sizes!)

Some Games to Play!

Scrabble Tetris (by carykh)

SpellCheck.xyc (by Answer in Progress.)

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Your first “like”

Last week, we ended the newsletter with instructions on how to find your oldest Instagram “like.” Thanks for including us on your walk down memory lane!