We talk with Rob Walch from Libsyn about the current state of podcasting and get his top tips for starting your own podcast. Plus, X makes your ‘likes’ private, SoftBank uses AI to make angry customers sound calm, and nobody likes being called a bot.
State of inn-ertia: This is nuts. A woman found a deal on Expedia and got a message from the hotel asking her to cancel because the rate was “too low.” Expedia reassured her that as long as she didn’t cancel, the hotel had to honor it. But the hotel threatened to cancel the room unless she backed out.
200 cookies
What the average American eats each year. A 50-state survey showed one in six Americans, or a little over 16%, eats dessert daily. That percentage is highest in Tennessee, at 25%. On average, sweets cravings hit hardest at 2:30 p.m. For the record, Newman-O’s are my favorite cookie.
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🐷 I think, therefore I ham: Ham radio operators will be setting up in parks to talk with others across the country today. Use the Field Day Locator: Type your town and state under Location or Call Sign, click a marker and get the details. Fun times!
$2.25
The nightly fee Hawaii’s tacking onto a $300 hotel stay, for climate karma points. It’s barely the price of a sad airport coffee, but multiplied by millions of tourists, it adds up, with some estimates as high as $100 million annually. Hawaii just became the first U.S. state to hit tourists with a climate tax: a 0.75% hike. Mahalo.
3 years straight
How long Utah’s been crowned Best State in America by U.S. News. From Footloose punch line to economic powerhouse, Utah’s glow-up is the stuff of chamber-of-commerce dreams. It’s got a booming tech sector, top-tier math scores and a 6% smoking rate; Utah is basically a straight-A student in a startup hoodie.
Every map lies: We live on a globe (sorry, flat-Earthers), so 2D maps can distort how big countries really are. The True Size Of lets you see how they actually compare to each other. Just type a state or country in the search bar, then click and drag it around the map. Neat!
$2 loss
For every $1 put toward sports betting. As federal and state guidelines have loosened, fewer Americans are investing in stocks and other safer assets. This past January, folks put $14 billion into online sports betting — compare that to $1.1 billion in January 2019.
Florida legislature's attempt to silence bloggers
Can a proposed Florida bill mandating state registration for bloggers pass constitutional scrutiny? In one minute, I’ll break it down.