Breakdown

Good morning Staker! Here’s what’s cookin’ today. The latest tip on how to improve your blood sugar, LiveNation wants the lawsuit against it dismissed, what it really takes to win the lottery, and these birds really know how to show off 🤩

Let’s get into it!

New research into the antioxidant properties of broccoli sprouts suggests the tiny but ultra-healthy vegetable indeed contains nutrients that can help lower blood sugar levels in those with prediabetes.

Specifically, the researchers found that when the vegetable is chewed, a nutrient called glucoraphanin is converted into sulforaphane, which is known to have antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and anti-aging properties.

“Sulforaphane helps reduce glucose production in the liver and lowers oxidative stress, which in turn supports better insulin sensitivity,” explains Vandana Sheth, RDN, CDCES, FAND, an expert in plant-based nutrition and diabetes.

Going deeper, however, Sheth says the research revealed the full benefits of sulforaphane are most effective in people with certain types of bacteria living in their gut microbiome.

“Some gut microbes, including strains of Bacteroides, Lactobacillus, and Bifidobacterium, help convert glucoraphanin to sulforaphane,” explains Sheth.

Overall, experts say the sprouts can pack 100 times more glucoraphanin than regular broccoli. While both are leafy greens long associated with longevity, if you’re looking for glucoraphanin specifically, sprouts may be the way to go.

The Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit against Live Nation in September, alleging it and its subsidiary Ticketmaster created an environment that allowed for scalpers to purchase more tickets per event than the company’s rules permit, resulting in a cornering of the market and sky-high resale ticket prices.

Lawyers for Live Nation filed a motion on Tuesday asking for the suit to be dismissed, calling it an “egregious instance of agency overreach.”

The company accused the FTC of misapplying the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act of 2016, and said such a misapplication itself should be grounds for dismissal.

“This statute is designed to help ticket issuers like Ticketmaster combat ticket harvesting and scalping, ensuring that tickets are accessible to genuine fans,” the lawyers wrote. “Plaintiffs now ask this Court to take the unprecedented step of applying this law against a ticket issuer for its operation of a resale platform.”

They admitted scalpers have achieved the ability to basically corner the market of any live event they want, but insisted Live Nation and Ticketmaster aren’t to blame. Brokers use technology that allows for the creation of hundreds of thousands of Ticketmaster accounts that can all be logged in at the same time using software that circumvents company screening tools.

It’s yet to be determined if Live Nation is responsible for defending against such technology, or if law enforcement and government officials should be preventing its use.

Everyone knows the odds of winning the lottery are basically zero, but when it comes to the mathematical likelihood (or lack thereof), it actually eludes the human ability to comprehend.

A website called “Lottery Every Second” is exactly what it sounds like—a site that plays the lottery every second in order to demonstrate just how absurd it is that so many people play the game every week.

It simulates the Powerball lottery and the EuroJackpot. The Powerball requires contestants to select five numbers between 1 and 69, along with one between 1 and 26. The EuroJackpot requires five numbers between 1 and 50 and two between 1 and 12.

The site simulates both games every second, and—surprise—never wins. That’s because the odds of selecting every number correctly for the Powerball are 1 in 292,201,338, and for the Euro, they’re 1 in 139,838,160.

“These numbers are so large they become meaningless to our brains,” the site reads. To put that in a perspective that may be more comprehensible, you would need to play the Powerball for 5.6 million years just to have a 50% chance of winning, and that’s with a draw taking place every second. 🤯

It’s gotten to a point where perhaps birds-of-paradise could learn a thing or two about humility. They’re already well-documented as some of “the most demonstrative show birds” on the planet, and researchers just discovered they’ve secretly been hiding yet another aesthetically magical trait.

Ichthyologists at the American Museum of Natural History were studying biofluorescence in fish, which is the ability for a creature to absorb ultraviolet light and release it in a greenish-yellow glow.

While conducting their research on biofluorescent fish, they wondered what other animals had similar traits, and when shining UV light in dark cabinets containing birds-of-paradise, they discovered 37 of the 45 known species are indeed biofluorescent.

So not only do these birds have feathers and bodies of eye-popping colorful and symmetrical patterns, along with some feathers that are so black they absorb light like a black hole, they can also glow in the dark.

The jury’s still out on why these already-gorgeous birds would need an extra trick up their sleeves, but the researchers speculated it could be to enhance their existing features in a more competitive mating environment.

Birds-of-paradise are monogamous, after all, so each courting ritual is for all the marbles and they need to be on their game. ❤️

Quizmaster’s choice

Happy Friday, Staker! It’s time for another round of trivia à la carte.

We’ve got a set of 10 random questions—the only thing connecting them is that they’ll make sense if you were born in the ’60s. So walk on down memory lane with today’s trivia!

Complete the game and earn a shot at a $25 eGift Card ;)

Winner will be notified on Monday afternoon. Keep an eye on your inbox and don’t forget to check your spam folder!*