The world is more interesting than you think.
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A little more wonder
Microsoft's HD-DVD gamble died with Blu-ray's victory
Before Blu-ray officially won the optical media throne, there was a bitter, costly battle for living room supremacy. Microsoft boldly produced an external…
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Moving platforms broadcast endless warning loops
Just in case you forgot how to stand still, automated voice systems on airport conveyor belts will aggressively remind you to hold the handrail every ten…
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The composer who counted leaves on trees
Genius comes with some truly spectacular neuroses. Bruckner suffered from severe arithmomania, compelling him to frantically count everything in his path,…
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Dream yoga focuses on controlling nocturnal plots
Why rest when you can use your eight hours of shut-eye to practice intense spiritual discipline? You literally train yourself to stay spiritually awake while…
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Dorothy Parker left her estate to Martin Luther King Jr
The cynical queen of the Algonquin Round Table had a surprisingly righteous final act. Despite never actually meeting him, Dorothy Parker left her entire…
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Superimposing light waves measures microscopic changes
When standard rulers are not pretentious enough, scientists use overlapping light beams to measure the impossible. Interferometers split a beam, send it down…
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Light waves wiggle strictly perpendicular to their path
While sound shoves things straight forward, light is infinitely more dramatic. An electromagnetic wave propagates forward while its internal electric and…
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Switch Lite literally cannot connect to a television screen
The entire selling point of the namesake console was its ability to seamlessly swap between handheld and television modes. So naturally, the company released…
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Perfectly flat surfaces can fuse without any glue
Forget tape and adhesives. If you manufacture two extremely smooth, perfectly flat solid blocks and press them together, atmospheric pressure and atomic…
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New York developers can buy the air above buildings
Because Earth is apparently not enough, capitalism found a way to commodify the literal void. In dense urban areas like New York City, property ownership…
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When visa fees become a geopolitical tit-for-tat
If one country decides to arbitrarily charge foreigners a massive entry fee, the opposing country will instantly retaliate with the exact same fee. This…
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Sherlock Holmes finally entered the public domain
The world's greatest detective finally solved the ultimate mystery: how to escape his corporate overlords. As of 2023, all of Arthur Conan Doyle's original…
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Your passport has a hidden sentence under your signature
What looks like a solid underline beneath your signature is actually a continuous sentence printed at an impossibly small scale. This micro-printing requires…
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The missing word that told readers to commit adultery
One single dropped word can utterly ruin your theological credibility. A pair of London printers released a reprint of the King James Bible in 1631,…
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Tapas involves intense self-discipline to clear impurities
Willingly subjecting yourself to difficult circumstances to build character is a core mystical practice. It basically frames suffering as a highly efficient…
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This artist let gravity make his collages
Deciding that human intention was totally overrated, this Dadaist let gravity do the hard work. He stood over a canvas, dropped perfectly torn squares of…
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A preserved body still attends college meetings
Refusing to let something as trivial as death interrupt his influence, the founder of utilitarianism demanded his body be preserved. His skeletal remains,…
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E. E. Cummings turned rejection into an urn
Rejection hurts, but wealthy poets have a uniquely permanent way of biting back. After his manuscript 'No Thanks' was rejected by fourteen different…
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Pranayama restricts your breathing intentionally
Controlling the exact duration of your inhales and exhales is touted as the key to enlightenment. Apparently, doing it manually is somehow vastly superior to…
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New Zealand is the tip of a sunken continent
Geologists finally realized that New Zealand wasn't just an isolated island chain, but the highest peak of a massive, mostly drowned continent. It spans…
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Why your body decides when you feel productive
You do not control when you feel productive; a hidden internal master clock dictates your peaks and crashes with ruthless precision. Fighting this schedule…
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Xbox One once demanded a camera in your living room
Nothing terrifies consumers more than a mandatory microphone and camera staring at them from the entertainment center. The console originally launched with a…
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Why the PlayStation 3 used a movie font
Brand synergy usually makes sense, unless you just lazily copy and paste your movie fonts onto your expensive electronics. Sony explicitly utilized the exact…
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Forklifts carry a hidden iron counterweight
If you pick up two tons of concrete on the front forks, the whole machine should instantly tip over. To combat this pesky physics problem, the rear end is…
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