Cutting the cord

Growin’ up in the ’70s, you knew exactly how far you could walk away from your phone before yanking it out of the wall. But by the mid ’80s, these cordless wonders were all over the place. And for a reasonable price, maybe even in your home!

Oh how far we’ve come. Let’s not forget the ‘90s and early 2000’s though, aka the Nokia era. You can still hear the ringtone, can’t you? Starting in January of next year, Nokia is opening its own design archive to honour the classic cellular. 

If you couldn’t hear it before, you can now ;)

Congratulations to our Day 3 winner, Maureen Patton! Now let’s get ready for Day 4 of our annual 12 Days of Giving. Each weekday between now and December 20th we’re giving away a $100 Amazon eGift card and all you have to do to get in on the fun is answer the poll question before 6PM (ET)!*

NOTE: If you’re checking us out here online and would like to take part in the giveaways, please subscribe to the newsletter. Good luck!

The Associated Press reported the other day that the Mexico Immigration Institute will impose a “collective visa to every person on the ship’s passenger list” for every cruise ship that docks at a Mexican port, regardless of whether or not a passenger disembarks while docked.

The fee would be valued at US$42 and would be imposed in addition to the $5 fee already levied by individual Mexican states, making the country one of the most expensive cruise ship destinations in the world, according to the Mexican Association of Naval Agents (AMANAC).

The group released a statement urging the Mexican government to reconsider, saying such steep costs would significantly impact Mexico’s ability to compete with other Caribbean cruise ship destinations and ultimately hurt the industry and the country’s economy by extension.

“Mexico could lose up to 10 million passengers and more than 3,300 ship calls in 2025” the statement read.

Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum said the fee is just an “adjustment of existing charges” and not a new tax, claiming it’s a necessary financial move due to shifting costs caused by years of inflation.

There are many types of stretching, but static stretching is the most common, in which you lengthen your muscles and joints and hold the position for a set amount of time.

Historically, though, it’s been unclear what the optimal amount of time or intensity is to achieve healthy flexibility. A new study by researchers at the University of South Australia may have an answer.

“We found holding a stretch for around four minutes (cumulatively) in a single session is optimal for an immediate improvement in flexibility,” wrote the researchers in an article outlining their findings. “Any longer and you don’t appear to get any more improvement.”

In terms of intensity, they found it doesn’t really matter how “hard” you stretch; whether you’re comfortably extending your joints/muscles or painfully doing so, the results tend to be the same.

They also determined frequency isn’t actually that taxing. The intervals within a week aren’t particularly important, but stretching each intended point of improvement for ten minutes per week will serve to improve flexibility of that muscle or joint.

An ancient tablet was unearthed by locals near Bashplemi Lake in the country of Georgia in 2021, and the first in-depth analysis of the curious artifact was just published in the Journal of Ancient History and Archeology, possibly rewriting the previously understood origins of civilization in the region.

“The signs on the tablet undoubtedly represent a script,” the researchers wrote in the study, adding that it could even “have been an alphabet.” The inscription, “dubbed ‘Bashplemi inscription’ after the nearby lake, is composed of 39 unique characters—likely including numbers and punctuation marks—with some repeating for a total of 60 signs divided into seven horizontal lines.”

The tablet is believed to have originated from some time in the Iron Age, between 2,500 and 3,750 years ago, and the characters inscribed into it have never been seen before.

“Generally, the Bashplemi inscription does not repeat any script known to us; however, most of the symbols used therein resemble ones found in the scripts of the Middle East, as well as those of geographically remote countries such as India, Egypt and West Iberia,” the researchers wrote in their paper.

Merriam-Webster announced its word of the year the other day, and just like Oxford’s “brain rot,” Merriam-Webster’s is surprising nobody.

Word of the year: polarization.

“Polarization means division, but it’s a very specific kind of division,” said Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster’s editor at large, in an interview with The Associated Press. “Polarization means that we are tending toward the extremes rather than toward the center.”

These types of divisions have been slowly devouring Western democracies over the last decade and change, and are perhaps most clearly exemplified by American political culture.

A survey of 120,000 Americans conducted by VoteCast ahead of the election found 80% of Kamala Harris voters were very or somewhat concerned about Donald Trump’s views, and 70% of Trump voters felt the same about Harris.

There are always political and ideological differences in a healthy democracy. The degree to which the vast majority of Americans seem to disagree today, however, is the difference between having different beliefs and being polarized.

Guess what Staker! Today is Dewey Decimal System Day! 📚️ You may have never really known how to use it, but you’ll never forget that it ruled the library.

What about your high school reading list though? Do you remember any of that? Well, you can find out with today’s trivia ;)

Have a great day ahead Staker!

Trivia courtesy of funtrivia.com. Today’s issue written by Michael Cowan, Joey Cowan, and Maureen Norman.


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