Not so small after all

Before Iceman took to flying jets, he had to go college. It was there that Val Kilmer polished his comedy chops, and proved to be a Real Genius. Not only was the movie surprisingly good, it gave you a rare window into what three months of continuously popping popcorn would look like 🤣

Even if you’re not a real genius like Kilmer’s character, that doesn’t make you a birdbrain—and that wouldn’t be so bad either. A new study of living and extinct birds has shown that, all things considered, birds actually have very large brains. 

Brainiacs, brainiacs of the sky ;)

(Love nostalgia? Play today’s trivia below for a chance to win a $25 Amazon eGift Card!)

The post-pandemic travel boom is showing no signs of stopping. While the pandemic recovery is officially in the rearview, global travel is soaring to new heights, according to the UN’s World Tourism Organization (UNWTO).

After compiling the requisite data, the UNWTO released its 2024 report on global tourism, revealing 1.4 billion people travelled internationally last year, representing 99% of the number who did so in 2019.

$1.9 trillion was spent overall in tourism last year, according to the report, meaning those who ventured off spent an average of $1,000 while doing so.

Europe was the biggest beneficiary of the spending, attracting 747 million visitors over the course of 2024, 100 million of whom went to France, which hosted the Olympics last summer. Notre Dame re-opening probably helped as well.

“2024 was an exceptional year for French tourism, promising prospects for 2025!” said Atout France, the country’s national tourism marketing department.

316 million visited Asia, while 213 million travelled to the Americas, 95 million toured the Middle East, and 74 million dropped in on Africa.

What’s in store for 2025? More of the same, according to UNWTO, who cautioned the need for sustainability in tourism as much as the desire to generate wealth from it.

According to a study published recently in Neurology, limiting red meat consumption even by just a little bit can lead to much lower chances of developing several health ailments later in life.

The study analyzed participants whose eating habits included a quarter serving of red meat a day, and found they had a 13% higher risk of developing a form of dementia than those who consumed less than 0.1 servings per day.

Furthermore, it found adding a serving of processed red meat each day—examples of which are two strips of bacon, 1.5 slices of bologna, or a hot dog—can accelerate brain aging by1.6 years.

“Large, long-term cohort studies are essential for investigating conditions like dementia, which can develop over decades,” said study co-author Dr. Daniel Wang, an assistant professor in the department of nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “We are continuing to piece together this story to understand the mechanisms causing dementia and cognitive decline.”

Red meat’s high salt content, heme iron, and artificial additives are all largely to blame for the damage caused caused to long-term brain health, even when fairly small portions are consumed on a daily basis.

Between five and six million years ago, the Mediterranean Sea dried up due to what scientists have called the Messinian Salinity Crisis, rendering the great big sea a great big pile of salt deposits, cut off entirely from the Atlantic Ocean. A new study suggests the replenishing of the sea was the consequence of a single historic flood.

“The Zanclean megaflood was an awe-inspiring natural phenomenon, with discharge rates and flow velocities dwarfing any other known floods in Earth’s history,” said Aaron Micallef of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California, lead author of the study published recently in Communications Earth & Environment. “Our research provides the most compelling evidence yet of this extraordinary event.”

300 “asymmetric” ridges were discovered by the authors near the Sicily Sill, which divided the eastern and western Mediterranean Sea, but were covered in layers of erosion debris that formed just before and overlapping with the time in which a flood would have occurred.

“The morphology of these ridges is compatible with erosion by large-scale, turbulent water flow with a predominantly north easterly direction,” Paul Carling of the University of Southampton, who participated in the study, said in the statement. “They reveal the immense power of the Zanclean Megaflood and how it reshaped the landscape, leaving lasting imprints on the geological record.”

It’s almost impossible to imagine getting all your groceries from a dumpster behind the supermarket, but that’s exactly what Sofie Juel-Andersen did while living in Sydney Australia.

“My sister sent me a photo of some hidden treasures she’d found dumpster diving. I knew about it, but I’d never seen it as an option to put food on the table.”

So she and a friend went to a supermarket and took a look out back.

“What I found was insane. It was filled with food—some of it had expired, but a lot hadn’t. It was like a treasure hunt for me. I quickly realized that there was so much good food in the dumpsters, I didn’t need to go shopping anymore.”

Still with us?

“There would literally be two dumpsters in the back of a supermarket filled with packaged food, like whole chickens, frozen pizzas, and drinks. We once found 300 cans of Diet Coke still in their boxes and saw an entire box of kombucha bottles which had been thrown out because one of them was damaged.”

Since moving back to Denmark in 2022, Sofie’s been just as—if not more—lucky with her dumpster dive discoveries, saving handsomely on food costs and giving herself the freedom to travel and enjoy the finer things in life.

If you’re still with us, this is real, and you can watch her vlog about it here.

The roots of glam may lie in the ’70s, but with shredding guitars and dudes who looked like ladies, it really came into its own in the ’80s 😎 

If you dance the night away to Van Halen, if you sing your heart out when Bon Jovi plays on the radio, you’ll have nothin’ but a good time with today’s trivia! Complete the game and you’ll earn a shot at a $25 Amazon eGift Card ;)

Winner will be notified tomorrow afternoon—keep an eye on your inbox!*

Have a great day ahead Staker!

Today’s issue written by Michael Cowan, Joey Cowan, and Maureen Norman.


*SEE FULL STAKE TRIVIA CONTEST RULES HERE.