Author: Josh Taylor
What happens when you quit sugar for a month
Posted by Josh Taylor / September 21, 2018Sugar is in almost everything you eat and drink. Anything from Starbucks, basically, is loaded with sugar. Most of the bread you buy from the store, condiments, processed foods, drinks, and more. And according to some health-conscious people and mommy bloggers, sugar is basically arsenic. So what happens if you get rid of sugar? Or, first things first, what counts as sugar? This video goes through what kinds of foods you can eat if you want to avoid sugar, and what happens if you do (spoiler: not much).
Read MoreHow to give a non-apology
Posted by Josh Taylor / September 21, 2018Apologizing is part of life. We all make mistakes, and apologizing for those is fair enough. But sometimes you have to apologize for things that weren’t your fault. And sometimes, frankly, you just don’t like the person or people you’re apologizing too and so it wouldn’t be heartfelt. If you’re in that situation, then this is the video for you. It offers some basic tips on how to avoid apologizing without people realizing you’re doing so. For example, if you can just clarify what you meant, you may be able to dodge the bullet.
Read More500+ cases of price gouging in Florence’s wake
Posted by Josh Taylor / September 20, 2018Natural disasters bring out the best in people. In the wake of a major Hurricane like Florence, people even from outside the effected area will drop everything to go help. Unfortunately, natural disasters also bring out the worst in some people. There have been over five hundred cases of price gouging reported in North Carolina in the wake of Hurricane Florence. There is a law in effect that prevents price spikes during natural disasters, so if you’re in North Carolina and see any price gouging, call 1-877-5-NO-SCAM or file a complaint at www.ncdoj.gov.
Read MoreIf you think Netflix’s movie selection is getting worse, you’re right
Posted by Josh Taylor / September 20, 2018There has been grumbling about the quality of Netflix’s streaming library for awhile. It may seem like the entitled whining of spoiled millennials, but there is evidence to the contrary. Out of the 250 top movies on IMDB, Netflix has only 35––just above ten percent. A few years ago, Netflix had 20% of those titles. It seems that now Netflix is moving towards original content. If you’re curious, here’s the movies Netflix has from the IMDB list of movies.
Read MoreThe origins of the Ouija Board
Posted by Josh Taylor / September 20, 2018The Ouija Board is now firmly in the realm of teenage sleepovers and crappy scary movies––contrary to the claim of this Vox video, which says it’s a “big part of our lives.” Despite the overstatement, this Vox video is an interesting foray into the history of a weird object. Essentially, the board is linked to the antebellum phenomenon called Spiritualism. Spiritualists believed that the spirits of the dead could communicate with the living. The board was one way that they could do so.
Read MoreHow police interrogation really works––and why you’d lose
Posted by Josh Taylor / September 19, 2018On TV or in movies, police interrogations are big, dramatic affairs. There is lots of shouting and table slamming. But the reality is much different. Interrogations are rather banal affairs. They take place in boring, small rooms. The detectives questioning you would be mellow at first, probably even nice. They’ll give you coffee and make small talk. And then things will slowly change. Before you know it, you’ll be convinced that the detectives have an iron clad case against you, and you’ll be willing to confess.
Read MoreBorder Patrol agent allegedly serial killer who murdered 4 women
Posted by Josh Taylor / September 19, 2018Awhile ago, John Oliver did an exposé of the U.S. Border Patrol. The Border Patrol, according to this investigation, doesn’t exactly hire the best of the best, and their rules and regulations are, well, loose. Unfortunately, Oliver’s warning went unheeded. A Border Patrol supervisor was recently charged with going on a killing spree, murdering four women. The spree ended when a fifth woman––undoubtedly a future murder victim––escaped and raised the alarm. According to the Texas Tribune, the supervisor shot four people in the head, all women and all sex workers.
Read MoreWe can build a moon base right now, here’s how
Posted by Josh Taylor / September 19, 2018Space colonization may seem like something out of science fiction, but this Kurzgesagt explains how we can actually begin colonizing the moon today. The process would take place in three stages, moving from very temporary landing pads to more permanent colonies. What this video does not ask, however, is whether we should colonize space. As C.S. Lewis wrote in his Space Trilogy, the desire to spread human civilization is “the idea that humanity, having now sufficiently corrupted the planet where it arose, must at all costs contrive to seed itself over a larger area: that the vast astronomical distances which are God’s quarantine regulations, must somehow be overcome.”
Read MoreThe 2008 Crisis explained in 5 minutes
Posted by Josh Taylor / September 18, 2018The economists who predicted the 2008 financial crisis recently predicted that another crisis is on its way. That should scare you, and it should also inspire you to look into the 2008 crisis. This video explains how predictable that crisis really was. It was rooted in bad mortgage assets, called “toxic” at the time, which were then traded and insured. Insiders made a ton of money by selling these mortgages, so no one thought to ask what might happen if they gave mortgages to people who couldn’t afford them.
Read MoreRunner shatters world record marathon time by over a minute
Posted by Josh Taylor / September 18, 2018Eliud Kipchoge might be the best runner on the planet. Of all time.
Let that sink in for a minute. It’s hard to describe just how incredible Kipchoge’s feat was at the recent Berlin Marathon. He pulled ahead of all his competitors at around mile sixteen. They simply couldn’t keep up. So he had to run the last ten miles alone, meaning that he had no one to inspire him to run faster. He ran on sheer discipline for that last ten miles and beat the world record by 78 seconds.
Read MoreWhen and why did people start keeping pets?
Posted by Josh Taylor / September 18, 2018Our beloved dogs and cats are so intertwined in our lives that we do not often think about how they got there. Not in the “where did you adopt that cute dog?” sense, but rather in the “why did humans start keeping pets to begin with” sense. This video explores the origins of domesticated animals, and how humans bridged the gap between working animals, animals to eat, and animal companions. The history is far longer than you think, which explains in part why humans are so keen to keep pets.
Read More15 beginner cooking mistakes
Posted by Josh Taylor / September 17, 2018Cooking isn’t complicated. There are a few people who can burn ramen, but most of us can handle the basics. That’s as far as most people get, however. This video will take your cooking from total amateur to “hey, this isn’t bad!” with fifteen simple tips. And we mean simple. You won’t need a sous vide machine to make tender and properly cooked chicken––just a meat pounder. Chicken breasts are complicated because they’re different sizes throughout. Pounding evens them out.
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