The wackiest headlines from the week as they would appear in a Classifieds section.

Careers

ISO GRANDMAS: The Grandma Stand, a small mobile booth where passersby can stop to chat with a grandma and receive advice, has returned to the Upper West Side of Manhattan. That’s nice, dear.

BEETLE WRANGLER: Hawaii is scrambling to stop invasive coconut rhinoceros beetles from taking over its coconut trees and soil. The beetle was first spotted in Hawaii 10 years ago and decided to stay because it likes the feeling of sand between its tarsus talons.

HALLMARK ACTOR: Not the best way to announce a casting call, but an age discrimination lawsuit filed against the holiday movie channel alleges that Lisa Hamilton Daly, the executive VP of programming, referred to two actors aged 42 and 60 as “old people” who needed to be replaced.

Personal

ISO LANAI: The top-searched features renters looked for in their house hunt were outdoor amenities like patios, porches, and decks, per a Point2 analysis. It makes sense, since the nation’s most popular residential activity remains sitting outside quietly in an attempt to hear your neighbors’ argument.

PENGUIN UPDATE: Periwinkle, a five-month-old penguin at a Washington state zoo, is recovering from two surgeries to repair torn ligaments in his right leg. He has to wear a special penguin-sized boot, but he can still swim with his friends.

*SIGH* MORE WIZARDS: Just when you thought there was nothing left to learn about those wand-waving teens, Warner Bros. Discovery said a new Harry Potter TV series will go even more in-depth than the movies. Guess we will finally know their blood type.

For sale

SEAWORLD 4D: An orca at SeaWorld in San Antonio defecated during a show and then splashed the crowd with the poopy water. The whale responsible for the incident said if you got a little closer to the tank, it would give you something else to write about.

MISFORTUNE COOKIES: Liquid Death, the canned water brand trying to unseat Duolingo for having the most questionable marketing campaigns, is distributing black fortune cookies to Chinese restaurants around New York and LA. The cookies contain playfully negative fortunes that would make your mom go, “Well, that’s not very nice.”

RARE HORSE 4 CHEAP: Two Przewalskis, an endangered horse breed originally from Mongolia, somehow ended up on farms in the western US. For the full story, you’ll have to wait for the Disney animated movie about it.—MM

Photo of the week

Mount Fuji looks as majestic as ever in this photo, but there’s something curiously missing from Japan’s highest peak at this point in autumn: snow. This is the latest in a year that Mount Fuji has been snowless since records began 130 years ago. On average, Mount Fuji receives its first snowfall on October 2 and had never waited for even a light dusting beyond October 26 until this year, which tied for the hottest summer on record for Japan.

Fortunately, Mount Fuji won’t be bald for much longer: Snow is finally in the forecast later this week.—DL

Dept. of Progress

Here are some illuminating scientific discoveries from the week to help you live better and maybe even catch an indie-alternative bee.

Forever may not be long enough for a monkey to write Shakespeare. The Infinite Monkey Theorem—a classic hypothetical about probability and infinity—is wrong, according to two Australian mathematicians. The theory states that a primate randomly hitting typewriter keys forever would be able to reproduce the full William Shakespeare catalog at some point. But in practice, even if all the monkeys on Earth were on the job, the researchers say they wouldn’t get it done by the time the universe dies in a googol years (1 followed by 100 zeroes). In one monkey’s lifetime, they estimated a 5% chance that it would type “bananas” and a one in 10 million billion billion shot that it would spit out a proper sentence before keeling over. The theory is a “grossly misleading” real-world application of a mathematical concept, one of the study’s authors said.

The animal kingdom is boozing heavy. We’re not the only ones looking for a buzz: A broad range of species consume ethanol in their regular diet and even seek out high-ethanol food like overripe fruit, according to a new study. Chimpanzees in Guinea eat alcoholic sap, spider monkeys in Panama like yellow mombin fruit with 1%–2.5% ABV, and a type of bird in Brazil flies into fences after eating fermented berries, to name a few. You also might be more similar to a flying insect than you’d care to admit—male fruit flies that got rejected by a mate were observed eating more ethanol-laden foods afterward.

20 Pennsylvanians have caught 25,000 bees. Don’t worry, they’re not coming for you, partially because they’re dead. For about three years, a group of master gardeners has been trapping, washing, drying, pinning, and identifying species of bees. So far, they’ve spotted seven that were never before seen in PA and set more than 600 records for new county-level sightings, meaning it’s not just bumbles, honeys, and carpenters buzzing around your backyard. The massive collection is plugging gaps in researchers’ understandings of pollinators, which are key to the growth of about a third of the world’s food. Before setting out with their nets, the volunteer collectors—nicknamed “beeple”—recite the insect collector’s oath, in which they promise only to kill bugs humanely and for the purpose of education.—ML

How networks are preparing for election night

In the lead-up to the political equivalent of the Olympics, news outlets are cracking their knuckles as they prepare to break down all the ways numbers can add up to 270.

To grab the attention of anxious Americans who want real-time updates on the vote tally in Muskegon County, networks are pulling out all the technological stops for one of their biggest nights in four years. On Tuesday, they’ll whip out Marvel-level visuals with accompanying commentary on TV and digital platforms.

Networks are also going the extra mile by offering granular number crunching, more journalists, and plans for extended coverage if there’s no clear winner on election night.

Souped-up election

In 2000, the late Meet the Press host Tim Russert used his famous whiteboard to explain how Bush or Gore could achieve victory with 270 electoral votes. While charming, those analog methods are now confined to museums (literally).

In the years since, TV news channels have added more tech to their election night coverage in response to Americans’ hunger for complex electoral math visualized in a digestible way. Now, they’re even delivering it to viewers’ fingertips.

CNN is offering its iconic Magic Wall electoral map—which anchor John King has used to break down election results since its 2008 debut—as an unpaywalled interactive feature in its app. Users will get to explore the minutiae of various races in specific jurisdictions so they “can feel like John King at home,” senior director of product management at CNN Manav Tanneeru told Variety. The magician himself recorded a Magic Wall tutorial for nerdy election watchers who crave nitty-gritty updates.

Meanwhile, for those who want NFL Red Zone but for politics, NBCUniversal’s streaming service Peacock will present the triple-screen setup it deployed to cover the 2024 Paris Olympics this summer. Users will be able to simultaneously stream (or switch between) breaking news, real-time results, and “Kornacki Cam,” where election whiz Steve Kornacki will break down the latest results in his khakis.

Crowded night

As media has decentralized, networks must give viewers a reason to tune in. While they used to be the only way Americans could get live election results, TV news channels now compete with a slew of online sources offering up-to-the-second election updates and context, from the New York Times’s famous election needle to political Twitch streamers.

The number of people who watched election night coverage on TV fell sharply during the last presidential matchup. In 2020, 57 million people tuned in during prime time, almost 15 million fewer than in 2016, according to Nielsen.

Plus, this time, election night TV will have to contend with programs not typically associated with the national sport of vote tallying:

• The business network CNBC will cover election night with a Your Money, Your Vote special featuring commentary from experts in business and finance.
• Comedy Central will air an election night special of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart featuring voting results and humorous takes.

Meanwhile, Amazon Prime Video will debut an election night stream anchored by Brian Williams, available to all Amazon customers even if they don’t have a Prime subscription.

“Source?” “trust me bro” won’t cut it

With the surge in voting early and through the mail, interpreting results has become more complex, and tinfoil-hat punditry in need of debunking tends to proliferate online.

Fact-checkers will be on high alert. CBS News formed a 20-person misinformation task force, and a similar team will be busy separating fact from fiction at NBC. The networks will also beef up their correspondent crews reporting from contentious areas to investigate local controversies and cover legal challenges.

Meanwhile, Fox News, which is historically the most-watched network on election night, is putting an emphasis on explaining the data behind its election calls using flashy new AR visuals. The focus on the show-your-work part of the electoral math, which all networks are embracing, is particularly urgent for Fox. The network was the first outlet to call Arizona for Joe Biden in 2020, but its anchors appeared unprepared to explain the result on air, even though it was correct.

Election night could be election nights. Networks have been preparing their on-air talent to cover the election results for days following Tuesday, since the 2020 race showed that final results might not be called on the night that polls close. The major networks proclaimed Biden the presumed winner of the electoral college tally on Saturday, November 7, four days after Election Day.—SK

Place to be: Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show

It’s a big world out there. In this section, we’ll teleport you to an interesting location—and hopefully give you travel ideas in the process.

The world’s largest in-water boat show is currently taking place in Fort Lauderdale, FL, which has become America’s premiere destination for the superyacht set.

The 65th Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show (aka FLIBS) wraps today in the city known as the “Venice of America” because of its 300 miles of inland waterways and is not to be confused with the Venice of Florida—Venice, Florida, a city located 200 miles away.

While the moniker might be confusing for the residents of the actual Venice, FL, Fort Lauderdale’s desire to attract wealthy people who like to dress as sea captains is very evident.

• One of the locations hosting the boat show is Las Olas Marina, which reopened after a $130 million renovation that created space for superyachts up to 315 feet long.
• That’s nothing compared to the $2 billion megaproject of Bahia Mar Marina that was announced this week. With plans for a five-star resort and room to dock 350-foot vessels, developers are aiming to turn Fort Lauderdale into a “Mini Monaco,” which should only further confuse the whole Venice of America thing.

The city loves its boats and shows. FLIBS is expected to draw a record 100,000+ people and has more than 1,300 seaworthy vessels on display across seven locations. The city’s signature event is estimated to have an economic impact of $1.8 billion.—DL

Crowd work

A few Sundays ago we asked: What popular product from the past will get a second-life resurgence? Here are our favorite answers:

• “Burnt CDs. A Spotify playlist doesn’t have the same effect. There’s nothing better than writing the track list in Sharpie on the disc.”—Matt from Sunnyside, NY
• “George Foreman grill. Apartments keep getting smaller, eventually kitchens will be eliminated, and these will come back as the upscale ‘college panini press,’ aka clothing iron.”—Adam from Montpelier, VT
• “I believe the original Wii is due for a triumphant comeback. Why? Because who doesn’t miss the pure joy (and slight risk of knocking over furniture) that came from swinging that Wiimote like it was a life-or-death tennis match in Wii Sports? The world just isn’t as fun without Wii Sports tournaments. It’s time for the Wii renaissance.”—Brooklyn from Kentucky

This week’s question

Everyone’s always excited about the drink of the summer, but what’s the drink of the winter?

Matty’s answer to get the juices flowing: “Ginger ale, because I’m always nauseous after riding in an Uber with my coat on.”

Share your response here.