52 things I learned in 2023

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Previously: 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019

1 | Babies have five times as much surface area per volume as adults, so they get dehydrated much faster when it’s hot and sunny. [Emily Oster]

2 | Studies consistently show that eating ice cream is associated with better health (even more than "healthy" foods like yogurt). Nutrition scientists have mostly buried those findings because nobody understands why. [The Atlantic]

3 | Dennis Johnson, who eventually made the NFL as a defensive end, played in varsity high school football games when he was in second and third grade. (Kentucky banned elementary school kids from playing the next year.) He was reportedly 5'7" and nearly 170 pounds at the time. [@smartfootball]

4 | You can't search for monkeys or similar animals in Google or Apple Photos, presumably to prevent the embarrassing mistake from several years ago when some pictures of Black people showed up for "gorillas." [NYT]

5 | The average price paid for college, adjusted for overall inflation, has been declining since 2017. [Brookings]

6 | Taco Bell was named for its founder, Glen Bell. [Shutdown Fullcast]

7 | Many common beliefs about “birds” only apply in Western countries. For example, only males sing in the US and Europe (they find territory first after migrating and have to defend it), but both partners sing in other regions (they don't migrate so they defend their homes year-round). [The Bird Way]

8 | The world’s best bowler throws the ball two-handed, and many top junior players now follow his technique. [GQ]

9 | The population-weighted center of Canada is in Michigan.¹ [@realmemes6 via Astral Codex Ten]

10 | Amazon started accepting returns before it finished building the system to track them against orders, so you could return any book for Amazon credit even if you didn't buy it there. [Eugene Wei]

11 | In 2022, Florida + Texas + Georgia + Tennessee + the Carolinas had a higher combined GDP than the entire Northeast (from New England to DC). [@conorsen]

12 | Limo companies now use “stretch limos” for less than 1% of rides; today’s customers prefer black cars, vans or buses. [NYT]

13 | The original "wisdom of the crowds" story comes from a 1907 fair when the crowd guessed the weight of a 1200-lb ox within one pound. But part of the "wisdom" was that people just knew a lot about farm animals at that time—half of individual guesses were off by less than 3%. [The Human Network]

14 | However, that doesn't mean individuals must be highly capable for the wisdom of crowds to work: according to one study, crowds are accurate even if everyone is drunk. [@emollick]

15 | There is no “home-field advantage” in chess. (Not coincidentally, chess has no referees or active spectators.) [@DegenRolf]

16 | During the Nixon administration—when the nation was arguably even more politically divided than today—both parties in Congress and 43 states passed the 26th Amendment to lower the voting age from 21 to 18, even though the change was expected to help young-leaning Democrats. [Nixonland]

17 | The screenplay for the animated children's movie Stuart Little was co-written by M. Night Shyamalan. [NYT]

18 | Airbnb only offered literal "airbeds" at first; there was a big internal debate when someone wanted to offer a separate bedroom with an actual mattress. They decided yes, that was allowed, as long as the host was still there to make "breakfast." [The Social Radars]

19 | The North American Numbering Plan Administrator projects that we'll run out of 10-digit phone numbers in 2051. [The Atlantic via Links I Would Gchat You]

20 | If you're worried about frozen food spoiling in a power outage, use a "sentinel ice cube"—always keep one cube out on its own, and if it's ever lost its shape, you know your freezer thawed before refreezing. [The Portable Pediatrician]

21 | At least one NFL analytics team was asked to study the camera locations that different broadcasters use, so coaches can decide whether a play at a particular spot on the field is worth challenging or if there won't be a good enough angle to overturn it. [Sam Schwartzstein]

22 | Millions of US military emails have been sent to Mali (which is closely aligned with Russia) because people confuse the .mil domain with .ml. [FT via Matt Levine]

23 | In the 1700s, the average novel used 250 words to cover each day of plot-time; by 1900, it had slowed down to 250 words per hour. (It's stayed roughly flat since.) [Ted Underwood]

24 | Only about 1/3 of people say they want to spend less time online. (Among Millennials and Gen Z, about the same fraction say they want to spend more time online.) [New Consumer]

25 | German hyperinflation was so severe in the early 1920s that at times they literally couldn’t print money fast enough. [Lords of Finance]

26 | Ted Williams retired before the 1955 season, then came back in May and played for six more years; the "retirement" was allegedly just a ploy to reduce his income and get more in a divorce settlement. [Pebble Hunting]

27 | When the IRS started requiring that parents list their children’s social security numbers on tax filings in 1987, seven million dependents disappeared. [LA Times]

28 | In 1945, the US made 500,000 Purple Hearts, anticipating massive casualties in an invasion of Japan (before it dropped atomic bombs instead). Eighty years later, medals are still being given from that batch. [@MattGlassman]

29 | Across nearly all cultures, breakfast is more conservative than other meals (in the variety of foods eaten, spice level, and portion size). [Home Comforts]

30 | Since 2000, inventors have become nearly 10 percentage points more likely to join big companies instead of joining or founding startups. When they do so, their income rises, but they're less likely to create future patents. [Marginal Revolution]

31 | When Lincoln was nominated for President in 1860, he was still obscure enough that many newspapers called him “Abram.” [Team of Rivals]

32 | People who claim to be 100+ years old often have indicators of fraud or inaccuracy (such as disproportionately having birthdays on the 1st of a month, or living in areas without good record keeping). [BioRxiv]

33 | Women see more distinct colors than men on average, but men are better at perceiving motion. [The Intrinsic Perspective]

34 | Knuckleball pitchers accounted for more than 5% of major-league appearances for much of the 1950s-60s; now they're basically extinct. [firsthand research]

35 | "Gifted" assessments are very weak predictors of future ability in kindergarten, but they're pretty accurate by third grade. This is because kids have "growth spurts" in brain function that usually happen in between. [NurtureShock]

36 | Baby actors in movies are often identical twins, so if one is cranky or sleepy the other can be subbed in. [NYT]

37 | After public libraries were rolled out around the turn of the 20th century (largely funded by Andrew Carnegie), patents increased by ~10% in towns that got a library compared to similar towns that didn't. [New Things Under the Sun]

38 | People in the US tend to turn right when entering a building, but in the UK and Australia they turn left. [Marc Abrahams via Tom Whitwell]

39 | Richard Nixon often claimed he was “less affected by the press than any other president,” and he complained bitterly when the press wouldn't say that about him. [Nixonland]

40 | Happiness rises with income even at rich levels, but unhappiness only declines with income up to about $100k. [PNAS]

41 | You can estimate the speed of light using just your microwave and a slice of cheese. [@museumofscience]

42 | Why do retail stores let you get "cash back" for no fee if you use your debit card? Handling and depositing large quantities of cash has (small but non-zero) costs, so swapping it for electronic funds is a good trade for the store. [Bits About Money]

43 | Through the 1970s, checked swings were usually called balls even if the batter swung most of the way around before stopping. [Pebble Hunting]

44 | How much of an afterthought were vice presidents in earlier times? Hannibal Hamlin had never met Abraham Lincoln before being nominated as his VP in 1860. [Team of Rivals]

45 | Only children aren't any worse at socializing than siblings, perhaps because sibling interactions reinforce bad behaviors as well as good ones. [NurtureShock]

46 | “Spring cleaning” became a ritual because winters with oil heating and candlelight made everything really grimy. [Home Comforts]

47 | I always thought the ruling that limited baseball’s “reserve clause” to one year of control (leading to free agency) was a surprise loophole, but everyone actually knew about it: Rick Barry had already used the same language to become a free agent in the NBA, and MLB owners aggressively raised offers to earlier players who hinted at challenging it. [Lords of the Realm]

48 | According to a study of nearly a million Chinese couples, people are 5-20% more likely to marry a partner with the same blood type. [PNAS]

49 | "Philadelphia cream cheese" was invented in New York; they branded it after Philadelphia because the city had a reputation for making quality dairy products. [company website]

50 | The share of grades at Yale that are straight A's rose from 40% in 2011 to 58% in 2023. [@sfmguire79 via Marginal Revolution]

51 | Think Beanie Babies were a big fad? In the 1950s Americans spent $10 per child ($90 in today's dollars) on Davy Crockett merchandise, most notably "coonskin caps" (though there's no evidence Crockett actually wore those). [Priceonomics]

52 | Preschoolers ask average of 75 questions per hour. [The Gardener and the Carpenter]

1. There was a mini-debate on this in the comments, essentially arguing that you should use polar coordinates (in which case the center is underground somewhere in Canadian territory) instead of Cartesian coordinates. It’s a fair point, but since we usually look at maps in 2-D space and "population-weighted center" doesn't mean anything tangible, I think the original fact stands.