Owners of personalised license plates in Uganda are facing a tax increase of over 300%, which will raise the tax from $1,498 to $5,992.
100 Mind-Blowing Facing Facts
Japan is facing a ninja shortage. There is a high demand for “ninja shows,” but it is a dying tradition, and companies have trouble time finding properly trained ninjas.
Mirrors facing each other don’t produce infinite reflections. Each reflection will be darker than the last and eventually fade into invisibility. Mirrors absorb a fraction of the energy of the light striking them. The total number of reflections mirrors can produce? A few hundred.
Humans specifically have eyes that face forward to see in 3D. On the other hand, vegetarian dinosaurs such as the Triceratops had eyes facing both sides so they could look out for predators.
In Russia, competitive slapping is a sport. In March 2019, Russia held its first-ever competitive slapping contest. The winning contestant must deliver the hardest slap and endure the longest time being slapped. The contest was tournament-style, with winners for each match facing other winners until one man was left standing. The first-ever champion turned out to be Vasiliy Kamotskiy, nicknamed Pelmen or “Dumpling.” the 370-pound man won 30,000 Russian Ruble (US$470).
The Moon is drifting away from Earth. You read that correctly! The Moon is gradually drifting away from Earth at a rate of approximately 4 cm per year. This phenomenon is caused by the Moon pulling on Earth’s oceans creating tidal forces that produce a bulge of water on the side of Earth facing the Moon. This bulge in turn creates a gravitational pull on the Moon, causing it to accelerate slightly and move further away from Earth. Over time, this process has caused the Moon to move farther away from Earth each year. This gradual drift is not noticeable on a day-to-day basis, but over millions of years, it can have significant effects on Earth’s rotation. Today, most scientists believe the Moon is ‘Earth’s child’ – a large body collided with Earth, destroying our planet’s mantle and sending material into orbit from which the Moon formed. This ‘big splash’ theory would explain why the Moon’s rocks are similar to those on Earth. Bonus fun fact: Australia is wider than the Moon. The Moon sits at 3400 km in diameter, while Australia’s diameter from east to west is almost 4000 km. The Moon, as a sphere, has more surface area, but it’s still pretty impressive.
Japan is facing a ninja shortage. There is a high demand for “ninja shows,” but it is a dying tradition, and companies have trouble finding properly trained ninjas.
Throughout history, different cultures around the world have experienced time in different ways. In the Western world, we tend to think of time as linear and flowing from left to right. But this isn’t the case for everyone. Language affects how people conceptualize time, particularly the spatial metaphors they use to describe and map it. Those who read languages that flow from right to left, such as Arabic and Hebrew, generally view time as flowing in the same direction. The Aymara, who live in the Andes Mountains in South America, consider the future to be behind them, while the past is ahead. In their view, because the future is unknown, it’s behind you, where you can’t see it. Some Indigenous Australian cultures, which rely heavily on direction terms like north, south, east, and west in their languages, visualise the passage of time as moving from east to west. If they’re facing north, for example, the past would be to their right, or east, whereas the future would be to their left, which would be west.
26 per cent of phishing attacks exploited public-facing applications. (IBM)
Open AI is facing several lawsuits for copyright infringement in ChatGPT’s training process. Some of the plaintiffs are The New York Times and book authors like George R.R. Martin and John Grisham.