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1 percent increase
2.2 miles
4 inches
6.1 percent
Percentage of Albanians who sought an American green card in 2013 through a U.S. State Department immigration lottery called the Diversity Visa Program. [Dadaviz]
30 percent of beaches
32 percent chance
After finishing its regular season undefeated, the University of Kentucky men’s basketball team has roughly a one-in-three chance of finishing 40-0, based on probabilities calculated before Saturday’s regular-season finale. [FiveThirtyEight]
$180
Two New York City auxiliary police officers were arrested after allegedly ripping off a delivery man of his wallet, his phone and $180 in cash. Courtesy, professionalism, respect. [The New York Times]
227-page report
The International Cycling Union dropped a report about how doping was tolerated for years in cycling, blaming Lance Armstrong. Whatever, right? Here’s the crazy part: In order to smuggle blood into France — without trying to sneak blood bags past border police — one rider was given “two to three units of blood in Madrid and he would then travel to France, where the units would be removed immediately, to be used later throughout the Tour.” The hell? [The New York Times]
9,000 recipes
IBM supercomputer Watson is taking a stab at cooking, factoring in 9,000 recipes from Bon Appétit to understand what kinds of food go well with one another, like black pepper with saffron, paprika with carrot, or boxed macaroni and cheese with all the remaining booze in my house. [Kernel Mag]
$337,209,000
“American Sniper” surpassed “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1” as the top-grossing film of 2014 this past weekend. Local lifestyle writers were heard to say that the latter film “totally had it coming because of that stupid title.” [Box Office Mojo]
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