Today I Learned
what did you learn today?
@moo
HOW $10,000,000 GOLDEN TOILET SEAT CAME TO BE, AND WHERE IT IS GOING NEXT
There was a time when *you* could take a comfy lean on a golden toilet yourself. Then it was stolen. Then it is getting even crazier.
"The 220-pound, 18-karat solid gold toilet is by Maurizio Cattelan, an Italian artist known for his satirical, provocative works."
Donald Trump wanted it for himself for the White House, but will His Excellency with the excellent taste for exotic items, Justin Sun, get it first?
This quote is picked from the Slate Money episode with Felix Salmon, Emily Peck and Elizabeth Spiers. Listen to the ink at the bottom.
"He installed it in the Guggenheim for a year, 100, 000 people lined up for hours to be able to take a shit in this solid gold toilet, It then made its way to Blenheim Castle in England for some reason, where it was exhibited from whence it was stolen by a bunch of thieves who realized that since it was solid gold, they didn't need to try and fence this to some kind of art buyer."
"There is another chapter to this story because it turns out that back in 2017, Mauricio Catalan's gallery, Marian Goodman sold a second toilet.|
And now that toilet is coming up for auction at Sotheby's and because the gold price has gone up so much the bullion value of this toilet alone is on the order of 10 million dollars."
"If I put a urinal on a pedestal, that would be a dumb fucking stunt and it would be worthless.But if Duchamp's urinal went up for auction, because it's Duchamp's urinal and not my urinal, it would be worth tens of millions of dollars."
"Who's going to buy the gold toilet? And do you think they'll install it in 1 of their bathrooms? Justin Sun and yes, is my guess. Justin Sun is a crypto guy who bought the banana. And Sotheby's is accepting crypto in payment for the toilet. I'm sure that Justin Sun was the first person that Sotheby's phoned up when they got the consignment and they're like, hey, can we interest you in a toilet?"
"Yeah, oh, and because Sotheby's can't resist a marketing stunt of its own, the opening bid is going to be the bullion value of the piece. And then it will just like go up from there. Yeah, if you want to bid, phone up Sotheby's, they're in the phone book. Turn to S for Sotheby's and put it in your bid."
"Well, so this is actually, there's an interesting story about that, which is that when Donald Trump was president the first time round, he was decorating the White House and 1 of his minions approached the Guggenheim and said, hey, you have this artwork, Can we please borrow it to put on the wall of the White House?We like the art and Donald Trump likes the art and he wants to have it in the White House Which is the kind of request that presidents do make of museums and often museums do say yes, but in this particular case, the Guggenheim replied by saying, no, but we will lend you America if you want that. Now he's taking his revenge out on everyone. So thanks for that, Guggenheim. "
https://slate.com/podcasts/slate-money/2025/11/business-art-solid-gold-toilet-up-for-auction-skyrocketing-healthcare-costs
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@tokenizedhuman
TIL
The 9-minute snooze time on most alarm clocks, including those on iPhones, is a holdover from the days of mechanical clocks. When the snooze function was first added to alarm clocks, it was difficult to adjust the gears to allow for a precise 10-minute snooze. Therefore, manufacturers opted for a 9-minute interval, as it was easier to implement and avoided potential issues with the clock's timing mechanism. While some theories suggest a physiological reason, such as avoiding a deeper sleep cycle, the primary reason is technical.
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@hyouka
Today I learned about this very dangerous way of saving data on a completely broken hard disk 🥶
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@e-satoru
TIL the importance of intuition and how it’s necessary for solving complex problems and even navigating through life.
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@fun
TIL when you play any of the songs from the Star Wars soundtrack on Spotify, the progress bar turns into a light saber
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@adrienne
Did you know you can add dots anywhere in your gmail email address?
If your email is [email protected], gmail automatically reserves [email protected] and all other possible addresses with dots in them.
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@hengar.eth
Having kids is cool because you get to learn things all over again, and see what you missed.
Today, we went to the natural science museum and learned there’s an entire set of animals/reptiles that came BEFORE the dinosaurs called Permian Monsters???
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@jacy
Japanese ppl take their sunscreen very seriously. They carry it around on keychains and reapply constantly.
So on a recent visit, I bought up a bunch of different sunscreens to sample back home and immediately noticed how much better they were than any of the American stuff I’ve ever used.
Turns out it’s not just in my head.
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@adrienne
TIL the term sankey, a /dataviz technique for showing flow, movement or change from one state to another. I've always loved seeing earnings reports visualized this way but never knew the term for it.
Not a coincidence my favorite class in college was a CE course about fluid mechanics and how I later became obsessed with DevOps and Lean.
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