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TIL a 12-country coalition of African nations is working together to build the ‘Great Green Wall of Africa’, an unprecedented organic barrier to span nearly 5,000 miles across the continent and combat the relentless spread of desertification

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xbB5 TIL Stephen Colbert is a devout Catholic and Sunday school teacher.
eGVb TIL of the Ideological Turing Test to determine if someone understands his opponents arguments: a partisan writes an essay from the POV of his opposite. If a neutral observer cannot tell the difference between the partisan’s answers and the opposite’s answers, the partisan passes the test.
wLVRW TIL that when Kim Peek managed payrolls of 160 people, he was able to complete this task in just hours without a calculator and when he was fired to be replaced by a computer, it took two full time accountants plus the computer just to replace him.
aeK9 TIL that in 1987, a prison inmate, Ronnie Lee Gardner, broke a glass partition and knocked out the lights in the prison visiting area to have sex with a woman who was visiting him. The other inmates cheered and barricaded the doors. Gardner later claimed breaking the glass was an accident.
94gQ Today I learned of the horseshoe theory which “ asserts that rather than the far left and the far right being at opposite and opposing ends of a linear political continuum, they in fact closely resemble one another, much like the ends of a horseshoe.” (the picture helps)