🗿 I love this story, but I don’t know Y: A team who discovered a lost civilization’s alphabet on a fifth-century B.C. slate slab posted a pic on X. The rock caught the eye of a part-time researcher, who recognized a symbol as the Paleohispanic letter “i.” He’s been invited to join the official research team. Maybe X isn’t all that bad? Wait, yeah, it is.
$12,500 award on eBay
It’s a 1990 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame statue given to the Kinks’ guitarist Dave Davies. The seller got his hands on it after Davies had a stroke and missed a storage unit payment. Looks like they figured out a deal, because the statue is marked as sold.
☄️ That was close: A Florida family is suing NASA after a chunk of metallic space debris crashed through their roof. No one was hurt, but the family’s 19-year-old son was just rooms away from the impact zone. They want a payout for the stress and impact (no pun intended).
4-hour driving detour
Suggested by Google Maps to “avoid turns.” A driver shared the wacky alternative road trip route on X. The comments are a goldmine if you need a laugh. Be smarter than your GPS, people.
Repeat after me: Elon isn’t hawking crypto on YouTube: The AI deepfake Elon livestream ran for five hours, attracting over 30,000 concurrent viewers. It told folks to deposit ethereum, dogecoin or bitcoin on a site promising to double their money. Poof! It all went into someone else’s wallet.
Researchers prove it: Our brains can distinguish deepfaked voices from real ones. The brain’s reward system, called the nucleus accumbens, is less active when you hear a fake voice. Your auditory cortex hears the difference, too. Next time you get a call and the voice feels “off,” trust your instincts.
🔋 Dead battery: In June 2023, EVs were $8,201 more expensive on average than a gas car — a 25.1% difference (paywall link). Now, one year later, they’re 8.5% cheaper, or around $2,657 less than a gas car. And 46% of all EV owners want a gas-powered car.
You got an unexpected package from Temu or Amazon: It might be a brushing scam, where third-party sellers send something you never asked for to fake a verified purchase and post reviews using your name. If it happens to you, check your order history to see if you were charged. Then, change your password, because someone may be in your account. Either way, you can keep the stuff.
7% to 9% of results
On Google Search have an AI Overviews response. That’s when Google’s AI drums up an answer right at the top for you to skim. No surprise, Reddit posts fell out of the cited info big time after Redditors’ sarcastic and/or ridiculous replies made their way into Google’s real answers.
🏦 They’ve hacked Fort Knox: Ransomware group LockBit says they have 33TB of U.S. Federal Reserve data, claiming it holds “Americans’ banking secrets.” There’s no proof yet, but they’re threatening to spill it. Get proactive: Set up banking alerts, use two-factor authentication on your bank login and watch your accounts.