Sweet 16

If your crush was a heartthrob when you were a teen, chances are you never missed an issue of 16 Magazine. It always featured someone totally rad along with some juicy scoops. And honestly, what else were you doing with that $1 allowance anyways 😏

Fast forward to today, and magazines seem to have lost all their traction…or so we thought. As it turns out, print magazines are making a comeback. And when you start to consider all these cool reasons, it’s not all that surprising.

Just ask the guy who read it in a magazine ;)

Congratulations to our Day 4 winner, Nettie Bolton Thacker! Now let’s get ready for Day 5 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 today’s 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 used car market has been soaring in recent years with price hikes caused largely by a chip supply shortage during and after the pandemic. Fewer cars were able to be leased, leading to fewer used cars entering dealership lots a few years later.

However, if you’re in the market for one, an analysis conducted by iSeeCars recently revealed a staggering number of deals available for used cars at this time of year. Specifically, it found that on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, there are 47.9% more deals offered than the average throughout the year.

What is it about these two days? For starters, dealerships have one day left to hit their annual targets, and if they can do so by lowering a few prices, you bet they’re going to.

On top of that, they’re trying to get a head start on the dreariest days of the year making it harder to move metal.

“It’s just easier for car dealers to sell in warmer months and harder to sell in colder months,” said Karl Brauer, executive analyst at iSeeCars. “They have to counter that by offering better deals.” 

There are plenty of other available details to know when it comes to hunting down a great deal on a used car, many of which you can read about here.

A new study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine found that women who don’t exercise regularly could see their risk of a serious cardiovascular event cut nearly in half, simply by vigorously exercising for 1.5 to four minutes throughout the day.

The study analyzed 81,052 middle-aged men and women from the U.K. Biobank who wore an activity tracker for a full week for 24 hours per day between 2013 and 2015.

They were asked to describe their level of routine exercise. They were split between categories of “regular structured exercise or only going for a recreational walk once a week (22,368)” and those who “said they were regular exercisers or who went for a walk more than once a week (58,684).”

Several hundred were identified from the group after the researchers adjusted for control factors like genetic predispositions, co- or pre-existing conditions, and others. Those remaining participants were monitored over a period of eight years.

The researchers found women who said they weren’t regular exercisers but routinely participated in vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity—such as the short bursts mentioned above—had a measurably smaller likelihood of suffering a major cardiovascular event: 30% lower in general, 33% lower for a heart attack, and 40% lower for outright heart failure.

The universe originated as a small, dense, hot singularity, but about 13.8 billion years ago, it rapidly expanded in a process referred to as inflation. After about one minute, it stopped expanding and cooled off, allowing light and matter to begin forming.

However, about a hundred years ago, scientists determined the universe is not only expanding again, but the rate at which it’s expansion is increasing.

Blueberry muffins baking in a tray are often used as a metaphor for this, with the blueberries moving apart from one another as the muffins heat up and expand into the tray. The comparable objects in the universe are galaxies, which astrophysicists have determined are moving away from each other at a rate seemingly faster than the speed of light—which is seemingly not possible.

Therefore, it means the universe itself is expanding…but into what?

The working theory is that there must be something physicists aren’t able to see that’s causing the expansion, a factor that’s currently referred to as dark energy. It supposedly makes up 68% of the energy in the universe, compared to dark matter at 23% and the rest comprising the “observable universe.”

If the universe is all there is, though, it doesn’t make sense that it could be expanding, at least not based on modern understanding of quantum mechanics and classical mechanics.

This may be the last true cosmological mystery, and is part of the puzzle that could solve what’s referred to as the Grand Unified Theory. You can read on here.

Researchers at the Graz University of Technology installed some of the smartest traffic lights in the world in Vienna, Austria in 2018 with the sole goal of improving pedestrian safety. Six years later, they just upgraded them with “exponentially deeper learning capabilities.”

Chief among the improvements are characteristics designed to enhance safety for those with disabilities, those in need of walking aids, and even people pushing strollers.

According to the team’s research, those in wheelchairs are 36% more likely to die in a car-related accident than pedestrians who are walking. The computing power available today compared to 2018 will allow the upgraded smart traffic lights to account for scenarios that include such statistics.

Specifically, the term “floating point operations per second,” or just “flops” is used to describe the computing power required for the smart lights to manage traffic flow. Teraflops—one trillion floating point operations per second—are possible now. In 2018, the lights had 0.5 teraflops of computational ability; today, they have between 100 and 300. 🤯

Geezer Butler suggested in a recent interview that Ozzy Osbourne is holding onto hopes that he’ll be able to perform one more show to say goodbye to live rock ‘n roll, and wants it to include one more reunion of Black Sabbath.

“Ozzy was talking to me about, when he does his farewell concert—which he still wants to do—he’s dying to still get out there and play,” Butler said in an interview with Lifeminute. “And he suggested, at his very final concert, for the four of us to get up on stage and maybe do three or four songs together. And that would be it, finished.”

The band’s last reunion ended in 2017 after a farewell tour consisting of most of the original lineup. Ozzy and guitarist Tony Iommi played together in 2022 at the Commonwealth Games, but it was in 2005 when the original lineup of Ozzy, Tony, Geezer, and Bill Ward last shared the stage.

The Prince of Darkness and his original band mates were supposed to play the 2023 Power Trip Festival in Indio, California, but had to withdraw due to Ozzy’s health problems stemming from several back surgeries and Parkinson’s disease.

Despite the odds being against him, it’s likely never wise to bet against the seemingly indestructible godfather of heavy metal.

IN THE NEWS

Back when you were flipping through 16 Magazine in ’78, acts like the Bee Gees and the Rolling Stones were scorin’ #1 hits, and gracing the cover.

If you remember which tracks were topping the charts that year, you’ll have no trouble 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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