How special is your birthday, really?
Your birthday, your special day. But how special is it? According to Reader’s Digest, about 20.8 million people worldwide share the same day of their…
Author: The Smart Reader Staff
Briefs and quick reads selected and edited by The Smart Reader's editorial team of Rick, Allyson, and Ryan Good.
Webb space telescope spots supermassive black hole on the run
Supermassive black holes usually stay put in the middle of large galaxies, but at least one has gone rogue. It’s 10 million times bigger than the Sun,…
RAMageddon is here
No, not Armageddon — RAMageddon, as in RAM for computers. It’s an essential component of pretty much any computer or computer-adjacent device, and the…
ByteDance signs agreement to sell TikTok, but what can users expect?
The American version of TikTok is one step closer to reality after a group of investors finalized a deal with parent company ByteDance to acquire the…
Treasure in the attic
Three brothers from San Francisco decided to clean out the attic in a house belonging to their late mother. What they found was astounding. The men, whose…
Dogs share wolf DNA
Your chihuahua is just a little bit wolfy. In fact, scientists at the Smithsonian and American Museum of Natural History, have found that the majority of…
Queen of the San Diego Zoo passes peacefully
Gramma the Galapagos Tortoise has passed away at an estimated age of 141, after spending about 100 of those years at the San Diego Zoo. Gramma was the…
The prima donna of fruit
The most popular apple in America is a diva, one farmer told The Wall Street Journal. It’s the most finicky fruit around. The Honeycrisp apple has all the…
Russian robot makes underwhelming debut
An AI-powered humanoid robot took the stage at a Moscow technology event and promptly face-planted, according to the New York Times. Dozens of journalists…
IRS moves to tax foreign cryptocurrency accounts
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is moving closer to taxing Americans’ overseas cryptocurrency accounts if the White House grants its approval….