Culture & entertainment
Discover facts about culture & entertainment. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Culture & entertainment
Why K-pop groups have a designated visual
Forget vocal range; some members of mega-groups are recruited and officially titled 'The Visual' because their primary job is to just stand there and look…
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The escape stunt that nearly killed Houdini
The master of escape finally met his match when he decided to bypass water and locks for six feet of solid dirt. Without a casket, the immense weight of the…
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Why film crews stand silently in empty rooms
The most tense moment on any set is recording 'room tone'. After a long day, the entire exhausted crew is strictly ordered to stand completely frozen in…
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The bizarre food zombie extras ate on set
Feasting on the living looks entirely horrifying on screen, but behind the scenes, it was a bizarre culinary nightmare. Independent filmmakers supplied their…
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In Harvest Moon, you can marry a kappa
While most players focus on charming the local village bakers and blacksmiths, true chaotic farmers can court a water-dwelling Japanese folklore monster. It…
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Push notifications interrupt routines with trivial updates
Your phone buzzes urgently, demanding immediate attention to inform you that someone you haven't spoken to in three years just went live. Applications claim…
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The unlikely link between Steve Jobs and Toy Story
Before you credit Apple for all of your aesthetic tech obsessions, remember that Steve Jobs was also secretly bankrolling your childhood. Jobs bought the…
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Desktop wallpapers are usually default generic landscapes
Despite having the ability to display any image in human history, most screens just show whatever scenic mountain the software company chose. We spend…
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Why piano keys were called “ivories”
The phrase tickling the ivories is brutally literal. Before plastics were invented, the white keys on pianos were sliced directly from elephant tusks, meaning…
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Undertale lets you win without killing anyone
Unlike every other role-playing game that measures your success by a massive body count, this subversive indie title actively tracks your mercy. You can…
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Bruce Willis was Die Hard's last resort
Before he was an unstoppable action icon, Willis was just a smug TV comedy actor on Moonlighting. The studio was desperate, having already been rejected by…
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Hosting a pageant to keep tourists in town
Beauty pageants exist purely as desperate local tourism strategies. The most prestigious beauty pageant functions essentially as a blatant gimmick just to…
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When synthesizers filled an entire room
Before you could drop a synth plugin into a laptop, making electronic sounds required heavy machinery. The earliest synthesizers were massive, wall-sized…
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When Metallica lost a Grammy to Jethro Tull
Nothing embodies the raw, aggressive spirit of heavy metal quite like an old guy aggressively playing the flute. In 1989, the Grammys finally introduced a…
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Cinema ushers once patrolled aisles to stop kissing
Before they existed just to sweep up trash, ushers were the moral police of the dark. In the early days of cinema, young couples notoriously used the…
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MiniDiscs store audio data in a protective plastic shell
Imagine taking a CD, shrinking it down, and wrapping it in armor just so it wouldn't get scratched in your pocket. MiniDiscs used magneto-optical technology,…
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The four-panel comics that shaped internet humor
Long before video clips dominated feeds, static four-panel internet comics pioneered the exact format of relatable, highly shareable visual jokes that entire…
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Harrison Ford literally stapled his iconic fedora to his head during Raiders of the Lost Ark
When gravity is actively ruining your cool guy aesthetic, extreme bodily modifications are the only logical answer. While filming the intense action sequences…
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Stock image models are forced to point at blank screens
The corporate world runs on pictures of deeply enthusiastic people staring at literally nothing. Digital repositories are packed with sterile photography…
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Johnny Depp fired Hunter S. Thompson from a cannon
Honoring the godfather of Gonzo journalism requires significantly more explosives than a standard funeral service. Thompson famously requested that upon his…
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Why meat pies are padded with potato flakes
Filling a pie entirely with ground meat causes it to sink in the middle, looking rather depressing. To keep the crust plump and perfectly domed, the interior…
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Shrek was supposedly a punishment assignment
Nothing screams 'corporate discipline' quite like creating a billion-dollar franchise. Animators who failed at animating the prestige film The Prince of Egypt…
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Trivia teams invariably choose names containing terrible puns
Attempting to sound clever at a bar immediately devolves into exhausting wordplay. A deeply unspoken rule of pub trivia dictates that team names must feature…
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Why Among Us tasks leave you vulnerable
Swiping a card or connecting wires doesn't actually fix the ship; it just covers half your screen to make you vulnerable. The tasks are purely designed to…
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