Be smitten, not bitten

Price tag of the world’s most accurate clock. The Aether clock OC 020 is as big as two refrigerators and weighs over 440 pounds. Let it tick for 10 billion years, and it would only be off by a second. That’s better than atomic clocks and could help predict earthquakes. No word if it has a snooze button.

The number of calls a day businessman and talent agent Ari Emanuel makes. He also wakes up at 4 a.m. to work out, then jumps on a call with his buddy Mark Wahlberg (paywall link). Quick math? If each call is two minutes, that’s 600 minutes, or 10 hours a day on the phone. Either he’s got a clone or a Bluetooth headset glued to his head.

That’s the year the world allegedly ends, according to a 12th-century prophecy. The internet is going nuts. After Pope Francis’ sudden death at 88, the so-called Prophecy of the Popes resurfaced with its final line: The next (and last) pope, “Peter the Roman,” will lead during a time of chaos, followed by Judgment Day. Out of the nine front-runners to become the next pope, three are named Peter. No pressure.

That’s the average refrigerator temperature in thousands of homes across Europe. The FDA says yours should be at 40°F or colder. Anything warmer,  bacteria grows on your ready-to-eat food. So yeah, check your settings. If your cheese grabs you back, maybe turn that dial down.

Taobao downloads spiked this month. The Chinese shopping app is now the No. 2 free iPhone app, behind DHgate at No. 1. Folks are buying directly from China after watching TikToks of luxury items being relabeled and marked up. Now for $12.99, you too can own a “Gucchi” belt with radiation.

How long it takes to cook the perfect egg. If you hard-boil it, the yolk goes chalky. Soft-boil it, and the whites stay wobbly. Why? Yolks cook best at 149°F, whites at 185°F. Scientists found a fix: Switch the egg between boiling water (212°F) and tepid water (86°F) every two minutes for 32 minutes. This isn’t a breakfast, it’s a culinary hostage situation.

Of people are polite to AI. The kicker? All those “pleases” and “thank yous” are adding up and costing OpenAI tens of millions of dollars in electricity. CEO Sam Altman doesn’t think it’s a bad thing, though. Why? Just in case there’s an AI uprising someday. Plus, being nice can get you better responses.

That’s the range of the U.S. military’s MQ-9B spy drone. The twist? It just got a whole lot deadlier. They’ve strapped a 25-kilowatt laser to it that can melt incoming kamikaze drones and missiles right out of the sky. And it doesn’t stop there: The laser can be scaled up to 300kW in future versions.