I think that the game would be improved by returning to a basket with a bottom, and requiring that the ball stay in the basket to score; this would remove all of the excesses of the people who fixate on slamming the ball into the basket as hard as possible, and increase the skill needed to make a free throw, or any other long-range shot. With a latch and spring mechanism on the basket bottom, the ball could be dumped out of the basket after a score, eliminating any need for a ladder to retrieve the ball.

Like the rest of the mall, the Cinnabon at Horton Plaza in San Diego is no more, but they had a unique delivery method -- they had a duct venting the baking-cinnamon-roll aroma from their ovens out and down over the walkway outside the store, so that you got a faceful of warm cinnamon and sugar just by walking by.

It's kind of surprising that, with the example of the Pacific Northwest sitting in their face, people still didn't recognize the risks of glacial lakes.Admittedly, there was no human record to flog it across newspapers, since it happened 12,000 years ago, but the collapse of the glacial dam that formed Glacial Lake Missoula and, separately, Glacial Lake Columbia, created the Channeled Scablands across Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. But I suppose if you don't live in the region, or watch the lectures given by Nick Zentner on the geologic history of the Pacific Northwest, all of that will just run under your radar.

Another fine example of mashups is Peter Schickele's "Eine Kleine Nichtmusik", a quodlibet on Mozart's "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik", which is played in its entirety with a wide variety of other pieces used as counterpoint Several recordings of the piece can be found on YouTube; Schickele attributes this under his name, rather than his creation P.D.Q. Bach, because some of the pieces used as counterpoint did not exist during PDQ's lifetime.

The use of technical jargon can speed communication between two people where the jargon compresses a lengthy description into a single term, but that depends on both of the people in the exchange having the vocabulary to compose and break down that jargon; if one of the people in the exchange doesn't understand the jargon, then they either lose comprehension or, if they interrupt to ask for clarification, slow the communication below what using the longer, simpler descriptions would have taken.

The Emancipation Proclamation was issued in 1863, but it only pertained to enslaved people in the Confederate states. Slave states like Missouri and Kentucky that remained in the Union were not included.

It's a little more nuanced than that; it specifically limited the emancipation to the parts of the United States (not recognizing the secession of the southern states) in rebellion against the federal government, so slaves in areas that had been occupied by the Union Army, and were therefore no longer in rebellion, were also excluded from emancipation.
Also, in practical terms, the Emancipation Proclamation was political grandstanding, with Lincoln declaring slaves to be free in territory not under the control of the United States government, and over which he technically had no authority.

I have been tempted, several times over the years, to go to a bank and get a 'sheaf' of $2 bills (an entire wrapped stack of 100 bills -- cashiers hate people asking for a small number of them, because they have to 'buy' a whole sheaf out of their till, which restricts their ability to serve other customers), then clamp them to a cardboard backing and brush a short edge with pad glue to make a pad of $2 bills, which I would stick in a checkbook cover and pay for things by peeling $2 bills off the pad, just to see how many cashiers would, as in the anecdote above, think they were fake.

There are other oddities in music -- for example, you can sing 'Clementine', 'The Halls of Montezuma', and 'Deutschland Uber Alles' to each other's melodies. You can also do it with 'Amazing Grace', the theme from 'Gilligan's Island', 'House of the Rising Sun', and 'O Little Town of Bethlehem'.

"Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving, and revolving at nine hundred miles an hour. That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned, a sun that is the source of all our power. The sun, and you and me, and all the stars that we can see, are moving at a million miles a day, in an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour, of this galaxy we call the Milky Way..."

If this keeps up, they're going to have to change the company name to "EverGrounded"...

The article has one paragraph and no links, so there's nothing to learn.

Doesn't a transparent solar panel waste a significant fraction of the potential energy capture?

If it hadn't rained in Greenland in 1933 and 1950, I'd be amazed. Apparently, 70 years is "recorded history" now. A report from the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in 1975 (https://erdc-library.erdc.dren.mil/jspui/bitstream/11681/11728/1/SR-216.pdf) notes "Hogue also notes that in the Centrale-Eismitte area, drizzle and rain were each reported once in a three-year period, on 20 and 21 June 1950, respectively". CNN itself is hypocritical on the issue, the headline blaring "Rain fell at the normally snowy summit of Greenland for the first time on record", then in the article stating "It was the heaviest rainfall on the ice sheet since record keeping began in 1950"; using "first time on record" in the headline and then contradicting themselves in the article suggests that CNN's intent is to whip up fear about climate change, not report news. And with the paucity of sensor stations on Greenland, it is entirely possible that there have been more that have gone unnoticed and unrecorded.

I don't recall which airline it was that had the advertising campaign, but there was a running joke after the rash of hijackings to Cuba started:
(stewardess 1) "I'm Carol. Fly me to Orlando!"
(stewardess 2) "I'm Barbara. Fly me to New York!"
(man in balaclava with gun) "I'm Manuel. Fly me to Havana."