Self-defense is big business. You could learn boxing, jiu-jitsu, krav maga and dozens of other fighting styles. You can also invest in tools that range from telescoping batons to tasers to high-powered rifles. If you want to defend yourself, the sky’s the limit. Animals, on the other hand, have far less at their disposal. Most…
Author: Ian Fortey
YouTube has become the entertainment hub of the modern world. There are 30,000 hours of new video posted to the website every single hour of the day. With all of that content, it’s not hard to imagine you’re getting a mixed bag. Some are really interesting and entertaining stuff. Some are nonsense that isn’t interesting…
Science fiction has a curious way of being prophetic. We can only hope that stories like The Matrix, Terminator, I, Robot and others missed the mark when they suggested robots and computers are going to rise up against us and either use them as batteries or fertilizer for plants they’ll crush under their robot treads. …
In this day and age, it seems like everyone is getting a side hustle. Making ends meet gets harder every year and a lot of us are looking for part time jobs and gigs that can provide some quick money without a lot of time and effort. They may not be careers, but they can…
According to quantum physics, everything that is is made up of particles. Matter, light, things seen and unseen. It’s all particles and they control the function of the entire universe. Some are common and well known to most of us, like electrons. Others are a little more unusual, like quarks. But the basic idea of…
The universe is full of millions of tons of debris of all shapes and sizes. Out in space these are meteoroids. The moment it hits our atmosphere, it becomes a meteor. And if it actually makes it through the atmosphere and hits pay dirt, we call it a meteorite. Literal tons of this stuff hits…
People love a lot of things. And by that we don’t mean a large variety of things, but when there are just a large number of things. For some reason, a lot of any given thing is oddly fascinating, and this is made even more fascinating when you find that large number of things in…
We spend a lot of time dealing with the history of culture and language, war and art, and for good reason. But one section of history that is often overlooked is food history. The things we eat often have fascinating and unexpected origins. It may not make the food taste any better or worse, but…
What’s in a name? The question has been asked more than once and more than one person has racked their brain trying to come up with a perfect name for a screenplay, a dog, and even a baby. There’s a Swiss consulting company that’ll charge you upwards of $29,000 to help you name a baby…
An acronym is what you call a word form from the initial letters of other words. NASA is the acronym we use for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. BOGO means “buy one, get one.” They’re pretty common in everyday life. But less common are backronyms – when you take an already existing word and…
Playing dead seems like the last ditch effort of someone or something that has given up all hope. When you have no ideas left, just stay very still and hope the world passes you by. It’s not clever and it doesn’t take a lot of skill, but you’d be surprised at how effective it is.…
These days, most of us don’t consider the intentionality behind the places we live. No one questions why New York is New York and how people come to live there. But there are new communities popping up all the time, intentional communities where like minded people choose to come together with similar goals and beliefs…
Trial and error is one of the best ways to figure things out in life. You have an idea; you test it, and if it doesn’t work, you try something different. That works well with new recipes, math equations, even relationships. But sometimes a person can test an idea that’s just terrible, and even if…
Popularity is a fickle thing. Anything and anyone can become famous for almost any reason. It’s very unpredictable and hard to orchestrate or control. What makes a new kind of cereal popular? Or a particular song? If anyone knew the exact recipe, nothing would ever be unpopular. That said, sometimes things are really not trying…
One of the most difficult things to deal with in life is realizing you believe something that isn’t true. Having your beliefs challenged and coming up with something that alters your worldview can be either enlightening or devastating. And when you realize something you believe in never existed at all, that can shake you to…
The world is laden with plastic. It’s estimated that there are about 8.3 billion tons of it out there. The idea that it’s ever going to go away is pretty much a fantasy and even our best efforts to mitigate it can only go so far. The reality is, plastic is probably in far more…
Some people believe that there’s a universal good, an inherent sense of right and wrong that exists independent of humans and our concepts of laws and justice. It’s this universal “right” that makes us feel like things have gone wrong if a criminal gets away with a crime. But that’s now how the law of…
America’s Most Wanted debuted on FOX back in 1987. Since its inception it has proven to be incredibly popular, even surviving a cancelation and a network move before ultimately being canceled again in 2011. That was until 2021, when it was revived yet again. Over the years, the show has been directly responsible for tips…
Everyone knows what you mean when you refer to a weapon of mass destruction these days. We typically categorize them in one of three ways: either nuclear, chemical, or biological. Essentially is any weapon that can cause mass death and destruction fairly quickly. The term dates back to 1937 when it was apparently coined by…
You can feel a real sense of satisfaction when you MacGyver up an invention and use one thing in your house to solve a problem in a way that was never intended. There’s a whole industry of “hack” videos that have been around for years showing this off. But not everything is done at an…
Space isn’t just the final frontier, it’s a logistical nightmare. Movies about space gloss over a lot of little details that people in the real world need to think about for real astronauts. Things like what happens when you’re sick, or you need to go to the bathroom, or how a lack of gravity and…
A human can only live for about three days without access to water. We need to drink or we’re doomed. And while our ancient ancestors probably managed just fine with water and the odd squirt of fruit juice, we evolved to enjoy a far more diverse palate. You might even say we’re spoiled for choice…
The Byzantine Empire was actually the Roman Empire, just further East. It existed from the year 330 AD all the way until 1453. Constantinople was the capital, serving as the head of Roman interest in their Easter lands because the Empire had spread so far it needed another base of operations. Travelling by land from…
You’ll be hard pressed to find a practice more taboo in the world than cannibalism. This is despite the fact the earliest evidence of cannibalism dates back 100,000 years. It’s been an ugly secret we try to avoid every time it pops up because, as a people, we almost universally agree that it’s absolutely horrifying.…