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TIL the term "Fremen Mirage" coined by Dr Bret Devereaux (referencing the Fremen of the Dune series) debunking the timeless fallacy of how harsh conditions and brutal lifestyles produce people superior to less harsh but more settled societies, with the former inevitably conquering the latter.

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6E96X You’re in luck. For their senior project, two Cornell University computer-engineering whizzes recently built a machine that does just that. After learning in class how breathalyzers work, Robert Clain and Miguel Salas assembled a fart detector from a sensitive hydrogen sulfide monitor, a thermometer and a microphone and wrote the software that would rate the emission. A “slight perturbance in the air” near the detector sets it to work measuring the three pillars of fart quality: stench, temperature and sound. Temperature, Clain explains, is critical.
wLrQP TIL that a social experiment was conducted where wallets were left in 20 cities to see if the people there were honest enough to return them. Only in Denmark and Norway were they all returned.
QJ6eM TIL that in the 1970s, American Kitchen Foods released 'I hate peas!', which were just peas disguised in a fry-shaped format to get more kids to eat peas. The product, along with the rest of the 'I hate' line, was not well-received by kids.
E1bZ0 TIL about the windshield phenomenon. People tend to find fewer insects smashed on the windscreens of their cars now compared to a decade or several decades ago.
d1Wj TIL that when we burn fat, the ‘lost weight’ is exhaled as carbon dioxide and water.