52 interesting things I learned in 2025

Following last year’s tradition, here is a list of things I learned this year, one for each week.

1. Temperature inversion is a phenomenon in which a layer of warmer air overlies cooler air.
2. In the 1980s, a man with severe OCD shot himself in the head in an attempt to commit suicide. Instead of killing him, the bullet destroyed the part of his brain responsible for his OCD.
3. In 2003, there were between 50 and 100 people in the US who still had nuclear-powered pacemakers.
4. SQLite is in public domain, and open source, but is not open for contributions.
5. A title drop is when a character in a movie says the title of the movie they’re in.
6. Trains in Switzerland must not have exactly 256 axles, or the signaling system gets confused.
7. Blue Monday is the name given to a day in January (typically the third Monday of the month) to be the most depressing day of the year.
8. git was able to track itself from day one.
9. In 2023, bands occupied just 4% of the music charts–compare to 41% in 1995.
10. A score bug is a digital on-screen graphic which is displayed at either the top or lower third bottom of the television screen during a broadcast of a sporting event in order to display the current score and other statistics.
11. The uninhabited Pheasant island in the river Bidassoa that separates France and Spain switches countries every six months.
12. In ancient Greek religion and mythology, the Moirai—often known in English as the Fates—were the personifications of destiny.
13. There is a hidden feature to mark file as template in macOS.
14. European Council maintains a catalogue of ID, passport, driving license, and other legal specimens of many countries.
15. The Chinese room argument holds that a computer executing a program cannot have a mind, understanding, or consciousness, regardless of how intelligently or human-like the program may make the computer behave.
16. Sirtaki is not a traditional Greek dance, it was created for the movie Zorba the Greek (1964).
17. Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.
18. Bath foam prevents water from cooling, it keeps the water warm longer.
19. How an aluminum can is produced.
20. How a plastic bottle is produced.
21. You can get disenshittified Google search by adding &udm=14 to the search url.
22. The backside of the Bahraini Half dinar features the Bahrain International Circuit.
23. May 2nd is the International Harry Potter Day.
24. Bosnian-gauge railways are widespread in Austria. This is a legacy of the Austria-Hungarian Empire.
25. If you divide 1 by 998,001 you get all three-digit numbers from 000 to 999 in order, except for 998.
26. King of the Netherlands has a commercial pilot license and (co-)pilots KLM flights regularly.
27. A small Austrian village Serfaus has a 1.3 km long underground.
28. All maps in China must use GCJ-02 datum which obfuscates coordinates by applying random shifts.
29. Apple produced video game console and digital cameras in 1990s.
30. Palau’s capital Ngerulmud has no residents.
31. The Cinta Coster (Coastal Beltway) is a bypass of historical part of the Panama City built right in the ocean.
32. French word vasistas originates from German was ist das? Which is literally What is that? and means fortochka – a small ventilation window, which in turn is borrowed from Russian, which in yet another plot twist originates from German word Pförtchen (small door).
33. The Romanian word for chainsaw (“drujbă”) comes from “Дру́жба” (Drúžba, meaning “friendship”), which is the name of a Russian trademark that heavily exported chainsaws to Romania during the Communist era.
34. Estimated 3 millions mines were laid before the battle near El Alamein in the Second World War, most which remain there. The place is now called Devil’s Garden.
35. GMC made a motorhome that pumped sewage through its exhaust on purpose.
36. 15% of 5586 companies in the world older than 200 years are in Germany. Many of them are, unsurprisingly, breweries.
37. Popular German children detective series Die Drei ??? is based on the American The Three Investigators series, which I read when I was a teenager.
38. Mudflat hiking is hiking during low tides popular in northwest Germany and nearby countries.
39. A triple gauntlet track in Kaufungen, Germany.
40. Crayon color picker was added to Mac just for fun.
41. The IKEA effect is a cognitive bias in which consumers place a disproportionately high value on products they partially created.
42. IKEA meatballs were introduced 40 years ago.
43. Airport runaways are numbered with regard to magnetic north, except in northern Canada, where they use true north due to their proximity to magnetic pole.
44. Apple TV intro is made with practical effects.
45. It is possible to run Linux in a pixel shader. (Remember LLM in a font file from 2024?)
46. The Darién Gap is a remote, roadless, and dangerous area of rainforest on the international border between Colombia and Panama.
47. US Mint ended production of pennies on Nov, 12. The previous discontinued US coin was half-cent in 1865.
48. There is a single track metro station on a double track line in Bangkok BTS. Apparently, it was a temporary solution 🤷🏻‍♂️
49. Bulgaria joins Eurozone from 1 January 2026.
50. ßh invokes ssh on macOS.
51. How punycode works.
52. Typefaces designed to help dyslexics have no effect.

This is post 39 of #100DaysToOffload

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