5 things we learned this week
1
Friends tend to smell alike. Using an ‘electronic nose’ and specially recruited human ‘smellers’, says The Economist, researchers in Israel showed that people pick pals at least partly on the basis of smell, ‘rather than the body odours of people who become friends subsequently converging’. One researcher speculates that there may be ‘an evolutionary advantage in having friends that are genetically similar to us’, although he couldn’t say what it was.
2
We’re about to hit ‘cucumber time’. That’s what several countries in Europe call what we refer to as ‘silly season’ – when politicians go on their holidays and news slows down. This is because, historically, cities would empty while the refreshing green vegetables were in season. Germans, Estonians and Croatians go one step further – they call it ‘pickled cucumber season’.
3
The world’s languages vary hugely in the way they spell out laughter. Instead of ‘haha’ or ‘lol’, there’s jajaja in Spanish, høhøhø in Norwegian and kkkkk (pronounced ‘kah kah kah’) in Portuguese. In Mandarin Chinese there’s the familiar ‘haha’, but also ‘hehe’, and ‘hihi’, each represented by two written characters. And increasingly common among the online generation is a series of numbers: 23333. This refers to 233, the number for the ‘lol’ emoji on an an old list.
4
British politicians aren’t taken seriously by ordinary Americans. That’s according to former Tory MP Rory Stewart, who said on The Rest Is Politics podcast that when he and fellow MPs visited Washington, the security guards at government buildings didn’t believe they were politicians. Whereas American senators are usually over six foot tall with brilliant white teeth and swanky suits, he said, our lot were all ‘5ft 6 or 8, a bit tubby, a bit dishevelled’. The Americans couldn’t see how such pathetic men could possibly be important.
5
Microsoft Excel spreadsheets have become an unlikely TikTok trend. The undisputed star is Kat Norton – Miss Excel to her 840,000 followers, says Air Mail. The American, 28, makes irreverent tutorials featuring dances to rap music alongside explanations of keyboard shortcuts. Norton says she makes up to $300,000 a month by giving private courses. ‘Her record is making $105,000 in just 24 hours,’ says Air Mail.
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