› added 8 years ago

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TIL Slate wrote a piece on why they believe the New York Times’ Mini crossword puzzles suck. The following day, the New York Times’ Mini crossword puzzle had three long Across answers which read, AWFUL PIECE SLATE.

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RPRw TIL Mother Teresa considered suffering a gift from God and was criticized for her clinics’ lack of care and malnutrition of patients.
l0d1 TIL that gamers, playing an online protein folding game, helped decipher the structure of an AIDS causing virus in 10 days; It had remained unsolved by scientists for 15 years. Using the same platform, gamers also helped redesign a widely used enzyme, increasing its activity by a factor of 18.
B9Nk TIL Tsundoku is Japanese for buying books, but letting them pile up in one’s home without reading them.
oR9PW TIL that the Great Sphinx of Giza’s nose has been broken since at least the 1400s. A 15th century writer blamed the incident on the actions of a zealot in 1378. Archaeological evidence indicates the nose was broken off by rods or chisels.
M0pW TIL fracking is exempt from sections of several U.S. laws, including the Clean Water Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, Clean Air Act, National Environmental Policy Act, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act, and CERCLA (aka Superfund)