The 0K Big Things That Happened In TK 2019
Between the fools and the showers, it's a good thing April is all over with.
If you're reading this post, you're probably a Digg dot com reader, which means you probably generally keep up with What The Internet Is Talking About. But even the most astute news nerd can miss a major event or two. That's fine. It's good, actually. Especially if you went on a vacation or did a digital detox or something.
Still, it's important to keep up with The Story that is always unfolding in front of us, no matter how funny, exciting, depressing or infuriating it can be. Composed of some of the most trafficked, best-performing stories of the month, this One Big Post should catch you up, starting with…
April 1 — Actor Cut Together A Compilation Of His Work As A Background Extra, And It's Freakin' Hilarious
Eduardo Zapata is a working actor in Hollywood. According to his Instagram bio he's a member of SAG-AFTRA. And if that doesn't convince you, take a look at this hilarious sizzle reel of him poking around in the backgrounds of famous TV shows, movies and commercials. It went viral on April Fools Day and might have been the funniest thing we saw online all day.
April 8 — Guys Figure Out A Brilliant Hack To Get Free Food From A McDonald's POS Machine
One week later, a different genius went viral for his life's work. As it turns out, it's fairly easy to scam McDonald's digital kiosk into selling you a burger that costs zero dollars. All you need to do is hold onto your buns:
April 10 — Scientists Capture The First Ever Image Of A Black Hole
One of the most fascinating astronomical discoveries in history was made this month. You surely heard about the Event Horizon Telescope's photo. You probably even looked at it. But I suggest you take a minute to look at it again, because it really is incredible.
Here's what my colleague Mat Olson wrote about the black hole on the day of the discovery, which I think sums up its importance nicely:
Blurry? Yes. Realer than any simulation? Absolutely…
Black holes are no longer the stuff of astronomical theory, mathematical models and science fiction. We've observed one, we can study it and, hopefully not long from now, we'll know even more about black holes than we've been able to piece together without having seen one.
[Digg]
April 18 — The Mystery Of Kim And Kanye's Basin-Free Sink, Finally Revealed
After a tweet questioning the design of the sinks in the American Royal Family's bathroom went viral, Kim Kardashian herself whipped her phone out to show off their Kanye-designed sinks.
We at Digg cannot condone everything West nor Kardashian does. But these sinks are phenomenally designed, in a very mid-2000s where-does-the-water-go kind of way, at least.
April 19 — The Salary You'd Have To Earn To Buy A House In The Largest US Metros, Visualized
Looking to buy a house someday? Good luck! Especially if you live in certain metro areas along the American coasts, where you'll need to pull down big bucks in your yearly salary in order to afford property.
At least that's what this map from personal finance resource HowMuch says:
HowMuch built this map with data from HSH Associates, an authority on mortgages, lending and borrowing. HSH's report also packs a fairly discouraging nugget: the only metro where home prices dipped year over year is the least affordable one.
However, don't get the sense that homes are suddenly getting more affordable, which isn't the case at all; However, year-over-year prices actually did decline in one market, the San Jose metro area. The Silicon Valley-influenced metro is usually the most expensive, and remains so even with a 1.57 percent year-over-year decline in median price.
[HSH]
April 20 — 'Jeopardy!' Wasn't Designed for a Contestant Like James Holzhauer
You might have caught wind that there's a new "Jeopardy!" king in town. You might have even seen a clip of James Holzhauer absolutely wrecking nearly every record the show had.
But what you might not have heard about is what Holzhauer's affect on the show's finances. Someone has to pay the winners, even when they're raking it in. Those are the rules of the game. In an interesting story for the Atlantic, Joe Pinsker explored what a hot streak could potentially do to a game show like "Jeopardy!"
"Every game show has a prize budget," says Bob Boden, a former head of programming at Game Show Network who has worked on dozens of shows there and elsewhere, including Family Feud. "Typically, for a long-running show the prize budget is determined by way of averages of what has been won in the past." Large deviations from such averages can strain these prize budgets. "James's performance, I'm sure, is causing grief for an accountant somewhere,"
April 22 — Crazy Footage Of A Rooftop Pool Spilling Off A High-Rise During Philippines Earthquake
On the day after Easter a 6.1 magnitude earthquake hit the Philippine town of Bodega. Eleven people died. Many more were injured. And other powerful shocks followed.
It's a terrible story all around. But one odd illustration of the earthquake's destructive power is this rooftop pool spilling what appears to be 50 floors mid-tremor.
Watch:
April 24 — Battle Scenes Are Very Boring
I have two things to say about this hot take from Vox's Rebecca Jennings, one of which is a semi-spoiler for "Game of Thrones" season 8, episode 3.
- This opinion drew a lot of ire among Digg's Facebook's audience.
- This opinion is exactly in line with what folks disliked most about the most recent Big HBO-Budget "Game Of Thrones" Battle, especially this part:
There are a few reasons incredibly long war sequences are bad; one of them is that most of the time, you have absolutely no idea what's going on because the fighting is limited to male actors wearing 50 pounds of the exact same armor. Battle scenes often take place at night — and sometimes in the rain! — in order to make an already deeply bleak event even more depressing, which also has the effect of me knowing who precisely zero of the people fighting even are.
[Vox]
On-screen battles can be fun, but so often they are not. Jennings is right. And if you disagree you can bring an army and fight me on it.
April 29 — Chase Did A Tweet So Tone-Deaf They Had To Delete It Immediately
On April 29, Chase tweeted a piece of personal finance advice and a bunch of folks got mad about it. Then a bunch of other folks took issue with the idea that first group of people got offended.
I'm going to try to explain why this whole thing is fucked. Stick with me, and maybe the next month will go better for us.
Chase's now-deleted tweet read like a meme. Here's the full text:
You: why is my balance so low
Bank account: make coffee at home
Bank account: eat the food that's already in the fridge
Bank account: you don't need a cab, it's only three blocks
You: I guess we'll never know
Bank account: seriously?
#MondayMotivation
Here, Chase is saying people (and the context of doing this in a Twitter meme suggests Chase is aiming this message at young people) who don't have a lot of money are in that predicament because of their own overspending.
That might be true, sort of, for some people. No one is denying that budgeting is important. That's conventional wisdom, and Chase is not breaking ground by saying it. In fact, they're condescending. But hey, I don't really care about that aspect, so let's forget about it.
The problem with Chase's advice is that it's essentially a non-sequitur considering that you don't add money to a bank account by saving, you do that by earning. And earning money is harder than ever when wages haven't kept up with inflation since the 1970s.
Meanwhile, 11 years ago a handful of financial institutions lost a bunch of money and were gifted billions of taxpayer dollars in order to stay afloa– oh that's right Chase took $12 billion as a part of the big banks bailout. Seems like someone at JP Morgan has to learn some financial responsibility.
Here's to May <3
Did you like this One Big Post? Did you hate it? If you have criticisms, questions, concerns or queries shoot me an email at [email protected]. Make the subject line "April 2019 Post" so I know it's real.
