About that Apple monopoly

Here are PC Magazine's ratings of current smartphones

The Best Phones for 2024

In the U.S., Apple commnds about 58% of the smartphone market.

Globally, Apple's market share is about 30%.

Those dolphins

Five Shocking Animal Hybrids That Truly Exist in Nature, From Narlugas to Grolar Bears to Coywolves

When it comes to reproduction, dolphins may be among the least discriminatory creatures on the planet—frequently mating with cetaceans of other species, dolphins seem especially “open-minded,” wrote the Washington Post’s Jason Bittel in 2019.

Shocking. But nothing new. All humans of non-African descent have DNA that's from one to four percent Neanderthal, this Smithsonian article says (Africans' DNA is about 0.5% Neanderthal). And then there's the kunga — "a cross between a female donkey and a male Syrian wild ass" — believed to be a human-made hybrid much prized in Mesopotamia some 4,500 years ago.

And groler bears.

And also Napoleon

Natural wonders. Napoleon’s exile. A remote island in the South Atlantic is now easier to reach

Coffee connoisseurs seek out St. Helena’s beans, often touted as one of the rarest and most expensive varieties in the world due to their export costs and single-origin status. It sells online for $150 per half pound. Extreme isolation has ensured that the coffee plants, which were imported from Yemen in the 18th century, have never been cross-fertilized.

If you think easier means easy: "weather can be unpredictable and supplies occasionally run low when you’re 1,200 miles from the nearest continent."

Beauty, whatever that means*…

Beloved ice cream brand is being let go by Unilever

The company announce [sic] that it would also be spinning off its ice cream business, which includes iconic brands Ben and Jerry's and Magnum. The move allows Unilever — whose portfolio exists mostly of non-food brands like Dove and Vaseline — to shift its focus to more high growth category industries like beauty.

…is a "more high growth category industry" than ice cream. Ice cream.

*Cosmetics, mostly, it seems. I'll have chocolate chip mint.

Break out some Spring

 

Hours? Hours!

 

And, by the time you see this, even less.

Maybe, maybe not, possibly

"A Ukrainian military source believes that Russia’s long-range strikes are aimed using satellite imagery provided by U.S. companies."

Can't be proven absolutely, but pretty suspicious, says this Atlantic article. [Also available on Apple News+]

And it's not just Russia, of course. From The Dispatch:

Do you also worry that social media writ large is saturated with foreign propaganda and that enemy states are harvesting data from American users? The TikTok ban won’t do much about that, I’m afraid. As one House Democrat noted Wednesday, there’s nothing stopping the Chinese government from buying Americans’ personal data from willing brokers.

[TikTok, by the by, which claims it would never use its data to meddle with U.S. affairs, recently created an avalanche of phone calls to D.C. by instructing it's users to call their congresscritters.]

Joseph Stalin reputedly said "When we hang the capitalists they will sell us the rope we use." Maybe he was right.

As long as you spell the name right

How water in a can became a billion-dollar business

If you’ve been to a live event recently, you may have noticed something called Liquid Death being sold at food and drink stands.

There is, famously, no such thing as bad publicity. 

Democracy

Russian voters, answering Navalny’s call, protest Putin’s forever rule

Voting took place over three days, beginning Friday, which some critics said would allow greater opportunity for ballot manipulation and other fraud. Voting was also taking place in areas of Ukraine occupied by the Russian military, with reports of electoral teams accompanied by soldiers forcing people to vote at gunpoint. In 27 Russian regions and two in occupied Ukraine, voters can also use a widely criticized opaque online voting system, with no way to verify votes or guard against tampering.

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