Author: Karl Smallwood

Air Force One, a.k.a. that enormous plane that carts the president around, is one of the most enduring symbols of American power. To this end, the planes carrying the Air Force One designation are filled to the brim with bleeding edge technology and a bunch of other cool stuff we’re going to talk about… well,…

In recent years the world of pro wrestling has been dominated by the WWE (formally known as the WWF before those panda guys sued for exclusive rights to the name), which has risen to become a near-monolithic corporate entity with a vice-like grip on the throat of the industry. While the WWE has made a…

Most films and TV shows take place within the confines of their own fictional universe, which differs from our own in varying ways. Even shows that do seemingly take place in our world, like Friends or The Office, are dramatically different to the reality we all know when you take the time to do the…

Social media is an unavoidable facet of modern life, and while we’ll never make fun of people for using it (we wouldn’t ask you to follow us on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube if that was the case) we do quite enjoy pointing out examples of objectively awful people getting a much deserved comeuppance because of…

The Knights Templar, a.k.a. the bad guys from the original Assassin’s Creed that you take out with pin-point accurate knife-punches to the back of the neck from horseback, are a popular facet of pop culture. Which has meant that over the years, what exactly they did and who they were has been muddied by Hollywood.…

With our world of ubiquitous digital storage and our ability to have, like, 150 Skyrim saves, it’s hard to believe it’s possible to lose something like a film. Alas, thanks to a multitude of factors (such as inadequate record keeping and people plain old not giving a crap), hundreds – if not thousands – of…

As we’ve discussed previously (like, a lot), dedication is a thing that should be admired. Yes, even if that dedication is to something that seems totally ridiculous, like owning every copy of Speed ever released on VHS, or photoshopping Michael Cera’s face onto a random image every day. With that in mind, here are 10 more people…

Work sucks. It’s boring, it’s soul-killing, and it really cuts into your “me time.” Work also limits our chances of accomplishing something really great. Like becoming famous, releasing a number one single, or travelling the world. Unless of course you’re one of these 10 people, who accomplished all that and more by doing literally nothing.…

A short while ago we published a list (and a video) about the oft-romanticized samurai of feudal Japan. It turns out, they were actually pretty awful. Today, we’re turning our attention to the samurai of the west: medieval knights. As you can probably guess from the title, once again the common perception of knights isn’t…

As Louis CK once so eloquently put it, “If you’re white and you don’t admit that it’s great, you’re an a*****e.” White people have it pretty easy, all things considered. Sure, there are problems unique to white people like…erm…well…whatever people on Reddit get annoyed about. But for the most part, there are few negative connotations associated…

Fiction is littered with male characters who are inexplicably portrayed as being, or claiming to be, “nice guys.” In this context, we’re using the more modern interpretation of the phrase, which basically means a guy who believes he is nice to women. In reality, he’s often a total jerk who thinks treating a woman with basic decency and…

To paraphrase famed scholar Homer Simpson, beer is the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems. That’s probably why almost every country on Earth has a particular beer its denizens prefer. But each of those market dominating beers holds a secret… (EDITOR’S NOTE: Now and then we like to dig back into the…

Pop culture would have you believe that the samurai were a noble bunch of honorable warriors who served and protected their communities. In reality though, samurai were jerks of the highest order, who abused the power they were given in ways that would make a bloodsucking parasite think they were overstepping boundaries. For example, consider……

Music can be inspired by many things, such as love, family, and how much you miss the plains down in Africa. It may come as a surprise, though, to learn that there are many bands out there, from almost every conceivable genre of music, that cite JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings (henceforth shortened to…

For most people a hobby is a way of passing the time, a facet of their personality that helps shape who they are as a person but is ultimately of little importance to the eventual impact they make on the world. For these 10 people though, their hobby not only defined who they were, but…

As the old saying goes, “failure to prepare is preparing to fail” and nobody takes this adage more seriously than the elite Special Forces and police units of the world. Along with more traditional skills like shooting and martial arts, many special operations units learn and perfect things that are only really useful in the…

With 365 days in a year, it’s a statistical unavoidability that at least some of them are going to suck. Surprisingly though, even popular holidays aren’t immune from this, which is why we’re able to compile this list of 10 popular days of the year with all together depressing facts behind them. For example did…

Kickstarter and similar crowdfunding sites where users can pool their money together to help a struggling entrepreneur realize their dream without any help from the man are pretty popular these days. However, with only an estimated 9% of projects that get all the funding they’re asking for actually delivering on the promises they make to…

Fiction is littered with a litany of awesome weaponry capable of doing everything from cutting clean through a starship hull to taking out a platoon of demons with nothing more than the push of a button. For the most part, we as an audience are happy to appreciate these weapons on a purely superficial basis,…

Given my status as an outsider to the American political system (I’m British, baby), I am in a fairly unique position amongst the writers of this site in that I have no real stake in who becomes President next year. Which means I can do something no American writer can: Dump all over candidates from…

As we’ve discussed before, there’s a fine line between obsession and dedication on the internet. As a result, we’ve been able to find another 10 people whose dedication to something most of us would consider petty, worthless, or kind of dumb, is so excessive, you sort of have to admire them. For example consider… 10. The guy…

Considering how many films released these days are either straight up remakes of other, usually better movies or adapted from an older piece of media, the news that Hollywood also likes to reuse the same sets and filming locations over and over again probably isn’t that surprising. However, when you really look at some of…

Considering that Bruce Lee is simultaneously known for being one of the greatest martial artists to have ever lived and dying before he’d ever have a chance to sell out in an Expendables movie, most every “cool” thing he has ever done on and off film has been painstakingly categorized and listed online. That said,…

We don’t think we’re really breaking new ground when we say that the Nazis weren’t very nice, that has already been very well established. What is less known about the Nazi regime however is all of the silly ways high-ranking Nazis abused their power and generally acted like terrible people that make you hate them…