It's October - a month best known for Halloween (I'll be Rooster from Top Gun this year). What's lesser known is that October is packed with a variety of esoteric food holidays.

Oct 3rd is National Soft Taco Day. Oct 5th is National Apple Betty Day. Today is National Frappe Day. Oct 8th is National Fluffernutter Day.

The most bizarre is Oct 20th - National Brandied Fruit Day. Who puts fruit in brandy?! *Quietly Googles "brandied fruit recipes" on second screen...*

As always, please forward IQNEWS to a friend if you're a fan!

Elon Musk changed his mind about Twitter again, declaring earlier this week he wants to buy the "bird app" for a cool $44 billion (his original offer price).

Let's rehash the full saga...

Jan-Feb: Musk buys 5% of Twitter. Mar: Musk trashes Twitter for censoring speech and contemplates joining Twitter's board, taking Twitter private, or building an alternative. Apr: Musk becomes the largest shareholder, is offered a board seat, declines the offer, and makes a full buyout bid. The board says "no," then changes its mind and says "yes." May-Jul: Musk changes his mind about the purchase, claiming 20% of Twitter is bots.

Fast forward to this Tuesday. Musk changes his mind once more and offers to finalize the buy. Pending resolution of a few lawsuits between Musk and Twitter, the deal will now almost certainly close. So what'll change at the social media giant afterwards?

It's unclear, but now-public text messages involving Musk suggest he'll...

1. Fire Twitter's CEO, Parag Agrawal (unless he resigns).
2. Reverse all Twitter bans, excluding bots, in the name of free speech (e.g., Trump).
3. Lay off large swaths of Twitter employees to "reduce bloat."
4. Release new payment features and a subscription product dubbed “X."
5. Wage war on bots to eradicate them all.

Strange times. Even stranger? Elon's texts in general. Google at your own risk there.

Maneuvering through an event crowd is brutal. Let's say you want to get to the front row at a concert - this almost always entails unfortunate contact with elbows, sweaty backs, and even the occasional voluptuous rear-end.

But there's a better way...

Instead of stiff-arming your way through the abyss of human flesh, simply purchase three drinks at the event bar, raise them over your head, and start walking.

Crowd members will dutifully step aside as if you were an ambulance in traffic. Everyone respects the refill guy or gal!

Caveat: ~5% of the time, this move will result in a beer shower.

1. Trees live underground. They just use their upper portion as a snorkel.
2. We will never see how far humanity goes.
3. Human thoughts before language must have been weird.
4. Pockets were a revolutionary invention at one point in human history.
5. You can most safely cross a street if there are absolutely no cars, or there are way too many cars.

Robert Brault: “Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you might look back and realize they were the big things.”

Today I learned that the pistol shrimp “shoots” deadly bubbles to kill prey. When these bubbles pop, they make a sound louder than a gun and generate heat four times hotter than lava. (more here)

akimbo [ uh-kim-bow ] - adverb
(of limbs) flung out widely or haphazardly
He collapsed on the bed, legs akimbo.

Q: What popular children’s toy was originally created to wipe soot from wallpaper?
A: (see below next section)