John Stokvis

February 11, 2025

January 2025: 4 things I learned (🐢, ❤️, 📚, 🍬)

A little late on this one. But you know, <waves hands all around>.

  1. The endless free lives trick in Super Mario Bros. (where if you time it right, you can keep hopping on a turtle shell to get as many 1UPs as you want), seems like a bug, but was actually put into the game intentionally by the developers. It's like a mini-game inside the game. A reward for mastering a small dexterity challenge.
  2. There are two animals that average over 2 billion heartbeats in a lifetime: humans and chickens. (h/t Kottke.org)
  3. Iceland has lots of crime writers but only one forensic psychologist. He held a seminar so he could stop answering all the questions he was getting. It immediately sold out. So he added another one, which also sold out.
  4. The Wrigley Company started out selling soap and gave away baking soda. Then it started selling baking soda and gave away chewing gum. Then it started selling chewing gum.