Having a counterintuitive, provocative interpretation of a mainstream film is an easy but effective way to be heard, since it allows the person who comes up with it to ride the coattails of a well-financed ad campaign or a project that connected with millions of people. Consequently there are a lot of popular opinions of…
Author: Dustin Koski
John Lyly’s proverb “All’s fair in love and war” hasn’t resonated so much since he wrote it in his 1578 novel Euphues for no reason. A commander would be in a pretty difficult situation if they had to explain that they let an enemy inflict losses on them out of some abstruse sense of fairplay.…
In past TopTenz lists of badass women, we’ve often featured exclusively those that were in the military. While we don’t regret our choices and this list will feature many more, we’re going to widen the scope for this one. A person doesn’t need to be carrying a weapon to be a badass, though it sure…
Older than Texas’s status as one of the United States of America, the humble beginning of the Texas Rangers was when Stephen F. Austin formed a militia of 10 men in 1823 because he didn’t think Mexican militias were sufficient protection from Native American raids. Today there are 166 rangers and 68 support members. They’re…
From Austria to Japan, from Eastern Turkey to Vietnam. These were the borders of the largest contiguous empire in human history. Nine million square miles it stretched, much more than double the size of the modern United States of America. Its rise began in 1206 and its fall finished in 1368, a blip compared to…
In past TopTenz lists of badass women, we’ve often featured exclusively those that were in the military. While we don’t regret our choices and this list will feature many more, we’re going to widen the scope for this one. A person doesn’t need to be carrying a weapon to be a badass, though it sure…
Who wants to take a break from the turmoil civilization is experiencing? Let’s go somewhere away from all humanity’s troubles. To paraphrase what a wise man once sang, we’ll find better down where it’s wetter, so let’s go under the sea. There we know what we’re getting. There’s fish, crustaceans, reefs, and rocks. We know…
It’s no wonder that so many of us take our bodies for granted; we take them with us everywhere we go. We’ve all been there when it comes to complaining about aches and pains. People have been known to spend more than a million dollars altering the appearance of their bodies. There are some, such as neuroscientist Randal…
We know what impressive armies Ancient Rome could field, as brutally treated as the troops were. Curiously, though, most TopTenz articles have focused on times they lost. In fact we’ve done whole lists of them. It’s enough to make you wonder how they ever conquered an empire which stretched from Great Britain to the Persian…
The cyclical nature of boom and bust capitalism has been held off for an unusually long time. On average, the US economy is supposed to go through a recession every 57 months. At present it’s been more than 10 years. Whichever policies have staved it off to date, it’s left much of the populous so…
The Freemasons. The Illuminati. These are secretive organizations that many people suspect have extreme, nefarious influence on society around the world. But they seem like small fries compared to the Bilderberg Group, an annual gathering of many of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world to make plans regarding global issues. It’s as…
It’s no wonder that so many of us take our bodies for granted; we take them with us everywhere we go. We’ve all been there when it comes to complaining about aches and pains. People have been known to spend more than a million dollars altering the appearance of their bodies. There are some, such…
In the USA, ghost towns are primarily associated with the Old West. The idea is mostly that a town sprung up next to a mine or as part of some other form of speculation, and then eventually the business opportunity dried up and forced everyone to move away. Around the world, the reality is very…
The media will tell you that the communal cultural experience of going to see a movie in a theater is on its way out. While the budgets of the biggest films are going up and up, over the course of 2019 American box office revenue was down five percent. While 2018 had been up one…
Society’s approach to automation requires delicacy. The automated tools can be captivating to watch in action, the process can spare workers immeasurable injury and danger, and automation is no small part of why worker productivity rose roughly 70% from 1993 to 2011. Yet you probably didn’t hear the pervasive stat that automation cost the US…
In 2016, $80 billion was spent on lottery tickets in the United States alone. For comparison, that same year the US spent roughly $30 billion on video games. It’s very revealing how much people hold on to that dream even though their odds of winning big from a video game and a lottery ticket aren’t…
Since it began in 1971, the Witness Protection Program has provided new identities for more than 18,000 people, though most of them are not the witnesses themselves but their family members. It’s by no means a perfect system, with some children that are entered in the program later saying that they have trouble with identity…
The cyclical nature of boom and bust capitalism has been held off for an unusually long time. On average, the US economy is supposed to go through a recession every 57 months. At present it’s been more than 10 years. Whichever policies have staved it off to date, it’s left much of the populous so…
So many of the most successful and celebrated stories are about singing the praises of notorious criminals from real life. Ed Gein has provided morbid fascination in multiple different thinly disguised forms, such as Norman Bates of Psycho. Ted Bundy has both biopics and a Netflix series. How many dozens of actors have been hired…
In 2016, $80 billion was spent on lottery tickets in the United States alone. For comparison, that same year the US spent roughly $30 billion on video games. It’s very revealing how much people hold on to that dream even though their odds of winning big from a video game and a lottery ticket aren’t…
Think of how long ago it was that the Western Roman Empire fell in the 5th Century AD. That’s nearly 1,600 years, more than 50 generations as understood by historians. Few nations from that time are still around today, major religions didn’t exist yet, and so on. Now consider that it’s roughly the same amount…
A clash of the greatest generals of their age. The end of the Napoleonic Era. The last stand for the gravedigger of the revolution. The greatest triumph of the Duke of Wellington. There are many ways to summarize the Battle of Waterloo that play up its epic scope and seemingly decisive place in history. However,…
We all know that the Amazons are supposed to be an ancient race of warrior women. Most of us are aware of their connection to Greek mythology, but we don’t have a much more detailed mental image. We have no idea where they were supposed to be, for example. We don’t know their battles, exploits,…
Movies, books, paintings, and other forms can portray war with all the pomp and pageantry their creators want. The truth remains that you get a more honest look at the nature of war by studying these battles. War does not create nobility and courage for the majority of participants. It’s a process by which empathy…