Here is the fourth edition of the Annual Best of Lists I traditionally do every year over the holidays and we have another 52 things I learned & 81 things that blew our minds, the biggest discoveries in physics, the Financial Times person of the year, the top 10 hotels, the airlines we lost, many photography award winners and a lot more, enjoy and see you Friday!
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Welcome to my quirky original authentic blog. It all started back in 2012 focusing on my crazy hobby addiction of frequent flyer miles along with hotel and bank points. It has since evolved to a curated weekly post of the best web content I find along with my commentary. Here to Educate primarily, sometimes Entertain and if I get to Inspire you, well, that is a bonus.
This blog publishes on Fridays. This is a one man labor of love operation, enjoy it white it lasts. I may post on a Tuesday going forward whenever I get to it.
Update: Last night the University of Michigan football team won the National Championship in a convincing fashion. Undefeated, 15-0. We drove to downtown Ann Arbor to celebrate so I am lacking sleep, everything hurts so good! We managed to get there before the game ended and my video went viral. Last time I did this was in 1989 when the UofM basketball team won it all, for the record. It’s great to be a Michigan Wolverine!
52 Things I Learned in 2023
One more, this one from Kent Hendricks. I picked the five below that blew my mind:
Costco is responsible for 50% of all cashew sales in the world. [50%!]
Pheasant Island, a 200-meter long island in the middle of the Bidasoa River between France and Spain, swaps sovereignty every six months. Spain holds the island between February 1 and July 31 each year, and France gets it from August 1 through June 30. It’s been this way since the end of the Thirty Years’ War. [Never heard of this!]
Most of the pasta made in Italy is from wheat grown in Yuma, Arizona. [What?]
In Iceland, it was legal to kill Basque people until 2015. [Seriously?]
There’s a new accent developing among scientists stationed in Antarctica. [Wonder what it sounds like]
Airlines We Lost in 2023
Amazingly, there will be another long list in 2024. The story of the US airline Red Way is something else. Another COVID money giveaway and waste of taxpayer dollars but who is counting?
This was the virtual airline started thanks to a whole bunch of COVID funds that the locals near Lincoln pushed into action. The money was meant to act as a backstop if this operation — using a GlobalX A320 — failed to make money on these sub-daily flights from Lincoln to places all over the US. In the end, it wasn’t a backstop at all but rather a key source of revenue. The operation lasted just a couple months before the company in charge pulled the plug, realizing there was no hope. Now there is word that promised refunds haven’t fully materialized, and the state auditor is calling it a “riverboat gamble.” So, while Red Way isn’t flying any longer, it is still making a lot of enemies.
Dezeen’s Top 10 Most Innovative Materials of 2023
We pivot to science-y things next. I believe in science even though I don’t understand anything about these lol.
81 Things That Blew Our Minds in 2023
I don’t do clickbait crap so let me please continue to blow your minds…
You have two noses, and you can control them separately via your armpits. [What?]
Hawaii’s feral chickens are out of control. [I warned you about this in my blog in the past]
iPhone cameras can perform trillions of operations to optimize a single photo. [Trillions?]
The Biggest Discoveries in Physics in 2023
More science for you to enjoy. Lots of James Webb Space Telescope and Quantum computing stuff.
Science’s 2023 Breakthrough of the Year
Maybe I should rename the post and add Science to the headline? No surprise what the winner was.
The drugs mimic a gut hormone called glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), and they are reshaping medicine, popular culture, and even global stock markets in ways both electrifying and discomfiting. Originally developed for diabetes, these GLP-1 receptor agonists induce significant weight loss, with mostly manageable side effects. This year, clinical trials found that they also cut symptoms of heart failure and the risk of heart attacks and strokes, the most compelling evidence yet that the drugs have major benefits beyond weight loss itself. For these reasons, Science has named GLP-1 drugs the Breakthrough of the Year.
Financial Times FT Person of the Year
It is Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen of Novo Nordisk. The company from Denmark making these obesity drugs that were the breakthrough of the year. And he is a really nice guy too.
Dezeen’s Top 10 Hotels of 2023
Some amazing finds in this list. Especially the first one listed, the PituRooms in Indonesia which has only seven rooms and each room is only 2.8 meters wide. I guess we are not going to get upgraded to a suite in this one you guys lol.
The 84 Sentences That Explain 2023
Fun post: In a year as weird as this one, the only way to recap it is to break it down to its molecular level.
March 15, 2023: “I went into the darkness, and I contemplated a lot of different things.” —Aaron Rodgers
July 21, 2023: “I am become death.” —J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) and Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh), Oppenheimer
October 11, 2023: “Same, except exactly the opposite.” —Sam Bankman-Fried
November 22, 2023: “You think you’re so great because you have boats!” —Napoleon Bonaparte (Joaquin Phoenix), to a British dignitary, Napoleon
December 1, 2023: “To hell with this place.” —George Santos
The Nature Conservancy 2023 Photo Contest Winners
Nature’s Best Science Images of 2023
So much science stuff in this post it reminded me of that song back in the 80s by Thomas Dolby “She Blinded Me With Science”. Yeah, what ever happened to Thomas Dolby?
Winners of the 2023 Mangrove Photography Awards
Winners of the 2023 International Landscape Photographer of the Year Contest
2023 People’s Puskas Award: Amazing amateur goals caught on camera
Pure magic of the beautiful game, enjoy!
See you on Friday!
Let me leave you with this:
Some of the links are behind a paywall. You can try to read them using Archive.is.
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TBB
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Opinions expressed here are author’s alone, not those of any bank, credit card issuer, hotel, airline, or other entity. This content has not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of the entities included within the post.
Almost 2,000 likes on that video! Does this mean you’re an “influencer” now? Time to sell out?
It has made absolutely no difference in my life and I will never call myself an influence, for the record.
On that thought, no thought leader on anything too.
My printer broke last night, ordered a new one from my computer guy, it will arrive on Friday. So I am trying to reconnect an older one I had in storage and it is not working…whatever happened to the paperless society lol.
And I need sleep
After about a week I got my Ink approval yesterday through your links. My luck through you continues, with 100% success for me and my wife. Thanks.
Oh, that was you, thank you!
100% success with my cc links, can any other blogs say that? Hmm, ok, maybe we should not go there lol.
New post dropping in a few hours while we are hunkering down for a winter storm here. Had 2 client meetings canceled due to it so maybe this weekend I can relax a bit for a change.
Thank you again.