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“Whataboutism” is a Cold War propaganda tactic that the Soviet Union started using in the 1940s to avoid or shoot down criticism.
Instead of addressing people’s concerns or answering uncomfortable questions, Soviet leaders would respond with, “What about…” and then draw attention to unfavourable events in the U.S. and other parts of the Western world. . https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2014/03/russia-and-western-double-standards-the-long-history-of-russian-complaints-about-unfair-treatment.html |
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Studies show that people decide if you’re trustworthy, adventurous, successful, smart, extroverted, or likeable within the first three seconds of meeting you.
. https://digest.bps.org.uk/2006/07/20/your-trustworthiness-is-judged-in-a-tenth-of-a-second-or-less/ |
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In 1997, two composers created ‘The Most Unwanted Song’ by issuing a public opinion survey and compiling all the lyrical and musical elements that most people found annoying.
It combines a harp, accordion, out-of-tune children singing about Christmas and Walmart, high-pitched flutes, tubas, keyboard demos, someone yelling random political terms through a megaphone, and an operatic soprano rapping over cowboy music, bagpipes, and screams. . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Most_Unwanted_Song |
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People who are raised in warmer climates tend to be friendlier than those brought up in places with cold, harsh temperatures.
. https://www.adn.com/nation-world/2017/11/28/our-personalities-are-shaped-by-the-climate-we-grew-up-in-research-indicates/ |
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Consuming a lot of energy drinks can stress you out, make you depressed, and cause you to lose sleep.
. https://www.bustle.com/p/are-energy-drinks-bad-for-you-a-study-found-they-may-have-impact-on-both-your-mental-physical-health-5550568 |
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People who check their work email at home or on vacation have a lower sense of well-being than those who keep their work and free time separate.
. https://www.spring.org.uk/2017/12/work-wellbeing.php |
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Some Converse sneakers have a thin layer of felt on the bottom.
Its only purpose is to save the company money because shoes with fuzzy soles technically qualify as slippers, which have import taxes up to 30% lower than regular shoes. . https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-is-why-your-converse-sneakers-have-felt-on-the-bottom-6016648/ |
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When a falconer wants to breed their birds, they let the male bird mate with their head.
A falcon born in captivity imprints on its falconer, and, after bird puberty, it might see them as a mate. If the falconer can impress the bird with a seductive mating song, it copulates with their special sex hat, which collects the semen for artificial insemination. . https://www.earthtouchnews.com/wtf/wtf/behold-the-falcon-sex-hat-a-species-saving-hump-helmet/ |
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One of the world’s biggest living things is a mushroom.
There’s a giant network of honey mushrooms spread across 2,200 acres of Oregon that’s more than 1,500 years old, and it strangles trees from underground by cutting off their nutrient and water supply. Scientists call it ‘The Humongous Fungus.’ . https://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/fsbdev3_033146.pdf |
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It’s almost impossible to change someone’s mind using facts.
This happens due to ‘motivated reasoning,’ a psychology term that refers to the way people usually believe whatever they want to believe and use the flimsiest piece of evidence to justify that belief, even when there is plenty of verified evidence to disprove it. . https://curiosity.com/topics/motivated-reasoning-is-why-you-cant-win-an-argument-using-facts-curiosity/ |
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When a decapitated flatworm regrows its head, it gets all of its old memories back, too.
. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/these-decapitated-worms-regrow-old-memories-along-with-new-heads-9497048/ |
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People who were given corporal punishment as children are more likely to engage in violence with their adult romantic partners.
. https://abc3340.com/news/local/spare-the-rod-spoil-the-child-new-corporal-punishment-study-claims-to-have-an-answer |
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‘****speck’ is a German word used to describe emotional overeating. In English, it literally translates as ‘grief bacon’.
. https://www.dw.com/en/word-of-the-week-****speck/a-17129263 |
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In honour of their famous ‘secret blend’ of 11 herbs and spices, KFC’s Twitter account only follows the 5 Spice Girls and 6 different guys named Herb. When a Twitter user noticed this and called it out, KFC sent him a painting of himself holding a drumstick and getting a piggyback ride from Colonel Sanders.
. https://twitter.com/kfc |
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The more you use Facebook, the worse you feel. Studies show that with increased use over time, Facebook users have lower life satisfaction, mental health, and physical health, and a higher BMI.
. https://hbr.org/2017/04/a-new-more-rigorous-study-confirms-the-more-you-use-facebook-the-worse-you-feel |
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The flu virus has a gel-like coating that keeps it protected in cold temperatures. The coating starts to melt around 72° F, so warmer weather means it’s more vulnerable in the open air. The closer it gets to freezing, the safer it is inside its ‘shell,’ which melts once it’s in your body. That’s why winter is ‘flu season.’
. https://curiosity.com/topics/why-do-people-get-sick-when-the-seasons-change-curiosity/ |
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Prehistoric women had super strength. Studies of their bones show they had extremely strong arms due to a lifetime of rigorous manual labour. They had greater arm strength than even top-end modern athletes.
. https://www.geek.com/science/science-says-ancient-women-did-majority-of-manual-labor-were-stronger-than-modern-athletes-1724551/ |
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On the set of Home Alone, Joe Pesci avoided Macaulay Culkin so that he’d be genuinely afraid of him. He also gave Culkin a scar on his finger while rehearsing the scene where he says he’s gonna “bite off every one of these little fingers, one at a time,” because he actually bit him and broke the skin.
. http://rulefortytwo.com/articles-essays/movies/macaulay-culkin/ |
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A Texas man went to the ER with a blood-alcohol level of 0.37 but swore he hadn’t been drinking. For years, people thought he was a “closet drinker” because he often became randomly drunk and claimed he didn’t know why. Doctors found that he had auto-brewery syndrome, a condition which caused intoxicating fermentation inside his stomach whenever he ate a lot of carbs.
. https://blog.nationalgeographic.org/2013/09/21/beer-gut-mans-belly-brews-own-beer/?cjevent=04287c94d98911e882bd03800a240614 |
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When a BBC hoax documentary aired on Halloween 1992, it terrified its 11 million viewers so much that the network had over 20,000 complaints.
‘Ghostwatch’ featured well-known BBC presenters, was shot with hand-held cameras, and, though billed as a drama, was mistaken for a real documentary. The experience was so frightening for both viewers and the network that the program was never again rebroadcast in the UK. . http://mentalfloss.com/article/87007/bbc-halloween-hoax-traumatized-viewers |
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Challenging your brain with problem-solving activities can help curb your anxiety.
. https://today.duke.edu/2017/11/brain-activity-buffers-against-worsening-anxiety |
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The best way to remember information long-term is to read it out loud to yourself.
. https://www.spring.org.uk/2017/12/memory-trick.php |
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The ampersand used to be the 27th letter of the alphabet. To avoid confusion with the word ‘and’, people added ‘per se’ before its name when reciting the alphabet so that it ended: X, Y, Z, and per se &.
Over time, the ‘and per se and’ ran together, and the term ‘ampersand’ was born. . https://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/feb/15/from-a-to-ampersand |
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Kids who are ‘cool’ in high school are more likely to have social problems, struggle with substance abuse, and engage in criminal activity as adults.
. https://www.spring.org.uk/2017/10/cool-kids.php?omhide=true |
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‘Grimalkin’ is an old word for a domestic cat, especially an elderly female one. It was used often during the 15th-18th centuries when women tried as witches were accused of having cats as their familiars. Even Shakespeare used it in Macbeth, when one of the three witches refers to her familiar, who takes the form of a cat, as ‘Graymalkin’.
. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/grimalkin |
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Men who post a lot of selfies on social media sites are more likely to have psychopathic personality traits.
. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191886914007259?via%3Dihub |
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Depression-era gangster John Dillinger survived a shootout with the FBI, escaped from jail with a wooden gun, robbed police stations, had plastic surgery to change his face and remove his fingerprints, and led the government on a year-long chase that cost them 4 times the amount he had ever stolen.
. https://www.history.com/news/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-john-dillinger |
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The desire to lay in bed all day is called clinomania.
. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/clinomania |
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The Beatles refused to play in front of segregated audiences. It was written as a stipulation in their contracts, and at a 1964 concert in Jacksonville, FL, John
Lennon said: “We never play to segregated audiences and we aren’t going to start now. I’d sooner lose our appearance money.” . https://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/sep/15/beatles-refused-play-segregated-audience |
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Traffic jams would be greatly reduced if people stopped tailgating.
2017 research from MIT shows that if we all kept an equal distance between both the car in front of and the car behind us, like how birds fly in flocks, we would get to our destinations nearly twice as fast. . https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/12/171214092319.htm |
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The loudest sound ever heard on Earth was the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883.
The Indonesian volcano ruptured the eardrums of sailors 40 miles away, and people 3,000 miles away reported it as “a distant roar of heavy guns.” To put that in perspective, it would be like sitting in Boston and hearing a noise that came all the way from Dublin. . http://nautil.us/issue/38/noise/the-sound-so-loud-that-it-circled-the-earth-four-times?utm_source=frontpage&utm_medium=mview&utm_campaign=the-sound-so-loud-that-it-circled-the-earth-four-times |
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Contestants in the 2017 Miss Peru competition used their platform to bring awareness to violence against women.
Instead of stating their body measurements when they stepped up to the mic, the women reported statistics like “the 65% of university women assaulted by their partners” and “more than 80% of women in my city suffer from violence.” . https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/nov/01/miss-peru-2017-contestants-accuse-country-of-failing-to-measure-up-gender-violence |
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theuselessweb.com helps you waste your time by taking you to countless random websites that are mildly entertaining, but completely useless.
. https://theuselessweb.com/ |
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A 32-year study found that the largest percentage of people who reported being ‘very happy’ was over 80. Some of the factors that indicated happiness was having a significant other, being healthy, and having no children.
' https://www.spring.org.uk/2017/12/age-happiest.php |
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The man who created the Pringles can, Fredric Baur, was so proud of his invention that he had some of his ashes buried in one when he died in 2008.
. http://content.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1811730,00.html |
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Dogs sometimes lie awake at night worrying about their problems.
. https://www.ladbible.com/news/animals-weird-turns-out-dogs-also-lie-awake-at-night-thinking-about-their-problems-20171026 |
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Iridescent deli meat is perfectly normal.
A rainbow or ‘oil slick’ effect sometimes happens when meat is cut ‘against the grain,’ because slicing through bundles of muscle fibres can result in a greasy surface that is perfect for light diffraction- but it’s still safe to eat. . http://mentalfloss.com/article/519239/why-some-cold-cuts-make-iridescent-meat-rainbows-and-why-theyre-still-ok-eat |
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Anxiety and depression medications are 3 times more likely to make you feel better if you think they’re going to work.
. https://www.spring.org.uk/2017/12/reason-antidepressants-fail.php |
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There’s a section of Yellowstone National Park where you could probably get away with murder.
The ‘Zone of Death’ is a 50- square-mile area on the Idaho side of the park that’s entirely uninhabited. If you committed a crime within the zone, there could be no jury because nobody lives there, a trial would be impossible, and, therefore, you could not be convicted. . https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/zn8nnw/theres-a-50-square-mile-section-of-yellowstone-where-you-can-get-away-with-murder |
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Having frequent sex can boost brain activity in people over 50.
' https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170622083020.htm |