🎓 Fake it till you make it: On TikTok, people of all ages are pretending they got into Harvard. The viral videos are funny, but it’s no joke that lawsuits have exposed donors and alumni kids getting special treatment. Speaking of … A Texan went to an Ivy League party on the East Coast. He walks up to a group of young women and asks, “Howdy, which school did y’all go to?” One of the women replied, “Yale.” The Texan asked again loudly, “WHICH SCHOOL DID Y’ALL GO TO?” (I saw you smile!)
57 years old
The new Spanish Scrabble world champion. This is wild. Nigel Richards is from New Zealand and doesn’t speak any Spanish. He has an encyclopedic memory, memorizing words as soon as he reads them. He’s also won the Scrabble world championship multiple times in French and English (paywall link). Reminds me … My dog accidentally swallowed some Scrabble tiles. Her next poop could spell disaster. (Oh, that was so good.)
🙏 Siri to the rescue: I love stories about tech saving lives. A 70-year-old in Florida had a stroke and couldn’t reach his landline. He spent 48 hours drifting in and out of consciousness, then he crawled into the living room. He yelled for Siri to call his daughter, who then contacted 911. He’s doing well! Most stroke patients need help within an hour. Talk about beating the odds.
$439
For AirPods that aren’t the default Apple white. ColorWare sells custom-painted earbuds in neutral skin tones with names like “Glaze,” “Toasty” and “Java.” Heads-up: You don’t need to waste money. A colorful AirPod cover is around $5 if you want to jazz yours up.
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Fewer bells, fewer whistles: The average CPU performance is dropping for the first time in 20 years. It’s not because chips are getting weaker. Most folks don’t need a powerhouse processor to check emails and scroll social media, so the cheaper option works just fine.
You might need this: OpenAI’s fancy ChatGPT deep research agent pulls info from multiple sources but takes 30 minutes per search. It’s coming to Free and Plus tiers pretty soon, not just the $200-per-month option. The catch? Plus users get 10 prompts a month and Free users get two. I’ve mentioned before this is great to use with medical issues, business ideas and just about anything that needs a ton of research.
🦉 Gone but not forgotten: RIP to Duolingo’s green owl mascot. In a very strange marketing stunt, the language-learning app put up a video that shows the little guy getting run over by a Cybertruck, shooting through the sky, past space and straight into hell. Now there’s a reward for anyone who IDs the driver. Hey, it worked, because #RIPduo is trending.
🤖 Not the AI Zuck wanted: Harry Potter, Jesus Christ and Taylor Swift walk into a bar … in the form of Meta chatbots. Anyone can whip up a chatbot on Instagram, Messenger or WhatsApp. Meta’s system is supposed to flag religious figures, real-life people and trademarked fictional characters, but it’s easy to get around that with a typo or two.
He’s not that into you: A woman lost $375,000 to someone pretending to be “Virgin River” actor Martin Henderson. It all began when she left a comment on a fan page and “his agent” slid into her DMs to say Martin wanted to chat. The scammer used AI voicemails to lure her in, and she moved to New Zealand to be closer to him. The full story is wild.
🚨 Etsy sellers, watch out: A new scam starts with an email from “support” and a PDF invoice hosted on a legit domain: etsystatic.com. The goal is to get you to fill out fake identity verification requests on a cloned Etsy site. Official Etsy emails always end with @etsy.com.