October 23, 2025

Good morning Staker! Here’s what’s cookin’ today. Drinking can lead to speaking in tongues, pickleball injuries are on the rise, and Bonjovi’s back, baby 🤘

But first, our weekly poll!

Have you ever had drinks with someone who, when they get lubricated enough, can all of a sudden speak with a foreign accent or in a different language?

While no one can literally learn a language from a swig of the good stuff, a study conducted by researchers at the University of Bath and the University of Freiburg won an Ig Nobel Peace Prize revealing people really may get more comfortable with a second language or accent when drinking booze.

The Ig Nobel Prizes were created in 1991 by American mathematician Marc Abrahams, with the goal of highlighting “achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think.”

They weren’t launched just to introduce levity into a historically serious institution, but to honour the importance of works that may seem innocuous on the surface, because "a lot of good science gets attacked because of its absurdity. A lot of bad science gets revered despite its absurdity." 

The study’s researchers followed 50 German-language speakers who had recently learned some level of Dutch, and asked them to have a small conversation in that language, with some participants doing so after having a few sips of alcohol.

They had native Dutch speakers assess the quality of pronunciation, who indeed confirmed the loosey-goosey bunch had notably better pronunciation than those who hadn’t drank.

"Our results suggest that moderate alcohol consumption can reduce inhibitions when speaking a foreign language and lead to more fluent pronunciation, although these findings only apply to German students who spoke Dutch and therefore cannot be generalised," said co-author Jessica Werthmann. 

Think about what happens to your brain when you scroll through nonsense on social media for a few minutes. Now imagine that, but multiply it by a million, and that’s what happens to large language models that consume endless flows of garbage in the interest of “training.”

Researchers at Texas A&M, University of Texas at Austin, and Purdue University tested the “LLM Brain Rot Hypothesis” by feeding large language models multitudes of junk data, which they divided into two categories: social media posts with high-level engagement (likes, clicks, reposts, etc.), and articles or other types of longer-form content designed in a sensationalized manner with clickbait-y headlines and very little useful information.

All four models in the experiment were fed millions of pieces of junk, and unsurprisingly, all four models experienced cognitive decline. The higher the rate of junk, the more likely it became that the models would cease reasoning altogether.

On top of cognitive decline, some of the models also experienced personality changes, slipping into narcissistic and even psychopathic pathologies the more junk they consumed.

Perhaps even more disturbingly, after feeding them a steady diet of endless garbage, the researchers found it was difficult to reverse the onset of “brain rot,” prompting them to issue a warning in their paper about the potential effects of brain rot in humans.

According to the Sports & Fitness Industry Association, roughly 20 million people regularly play pickleball in the United States today.

As one the world’s fastest growing sports, morale is up, revenue is up, skill levels are up, and unfortunately, injuries are also up.

According to a study published in JAMA Ophthalmology, eye or eye-adjacent injuries have been shooting up just about as much as the sport’s popularity itself. Injuries such as lacerations around the eye, corneal abrasions, and inflamed irises rose by 405 cases each year between 2021 and 2024.

The study’s authors compared these annual increases to the national average, and unsurprisingly found pickleball injury growth is rapidly outpacing the country. In their paper, they called on game officials to introduce a standardized method of eye protection and injury prevention—similar to what already exists in squash—to stop what they described as an “alarming” increase, 90% of which could be prevented.

Some say the sport isn’t getting more dangerous.

“More people are playing, so there's going to be more injuries at a higher volume," said Dr. Natasha Desai, the co-director for the Center for Women's Sports Medicine at NYU Langone. Desai wasn’t involved in the study, and she conceded it caught her off guard to find out 70% of such injuries were sustained by adults over 50.

After years of dealing with a complicated recovery from his vocal cord surgery, Jon Bon Jovi and the band that bears his name are finally heading back on tour.

The group released its 16th studio album, Forever, in June last year ahead of what was supposed to be an album-supporting tour. However, Jon was still struggling to regularly perform a concert-length sets, and the band continued playing the sporadic and somewhat secret shows they’d become familiar with for years.

The tour will begin with four nights at Madison Square Garden starting on July 7, and will then head overseas for shows at Edinburgh’s Murrayfield Stadium, Dublin’s Croke Park, and London’s Wembley Stadium. No additional dates have been announced.

“There is a lot of joy in this announcement—joy that we can share these nights together with our amazing fans and joy that the band can be together,” Jon Bon Jovi said in a statement.

“I am lucky enough to be able to hold a light out to the audience each night and stand in their reflection for a tremendous collective experience—I get to stand in the WE of our concerts. And I’ve spoken extensively on my gratitude but I will say it again, I’m deeply grateful that the fans and the brotherhood of this band have been patient and allowed me the time needed to get healthy and prepare for touring. I’m ready and excited!”

Fall all over again

Falling for you, Part 2, Staker!

Are you ready to be seasonally inspired, but this time with songs inspired by autum? Put your thinking cap back on, pour another coffee, and try your luck at answering 10 questions featuring some great fall songs with today’s trivia.

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

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