China is walking a fine line between soft autocracy and full autocracy. The social credit system is basically a dystopian nightmare. It turns the population of China into its own Big Brother, with citizens watching over their peers and themselves to ensure social conformity. That’s soft autocracy. But the revelation that the state has been using bird-shaped drones to surreptitiously spy on their citizens. That’s full autocracy. From the article: “The bird-like drones mimic the flapping wings of a real bird using a pair of crank-rockers driven by an electric motor. Each drone has a high-definition camera, GPS antenna, flight control system and data link with satellite communication capability.”

In the same way that we like to predict what might happen in the future, people of the past liked to predict what would happen in the future––except we happen to live in that future. Lots of those predictions were ridiculous. There are no flying cars, for example, and a lot of those concept kitchens would be a huge waste of money and time. But some of those predictions were right in some aspects. This video takes a look at some of those.

The Trump administration’s immigration policy of the last several months has been borderline disastrous. There was a massive public outcry when it became apparent that children were being separated from their mothers and fathers. Now there is another major blow for the administration. A facility in Texas has allegedly been “almost certain to be administer[] psychotropic drugs like Prozac regardless of [the child’s] conditions and without their parents’ consent.” A judge has removed all but the most troubled children out of the facility. 

Depending where you are in the world, you might be experience brutal, unseasonable heat. Large swaths of Sweden are currently on fire, people in the U.K. are basically melting, and if you’re in Texas you haven’t left your house in three weeks. This video examines the factors that have led to the rise in temperatures in certain part of the world. And, before you get up in arms, this video is not entirely about “global warming.” 

John Oliver’s latest long-form piece on Last Week Tonight is, arguably, his weakest. It’s disappointing that there’s little investigation into the issue of workplace sexual harassment, considering the seriousness of the subject. Instead of asking whether it’s true that the issue is complicated and wondering why men might be saying they’re afraid to interact with women, Oliver simply mocks that viewpoint. Oliver calls for better processes re: workplace harassment, but he actually plays the mob mentality that has everyone so worried. Coincidentally, the cast of the Guardians of the Galaxy released an open letter about the character assassination of James Gunn. “There is little due process in the court of public opinion.James is likely not the last good person to be put on trial. Given the growing political divide in this country, it’s safe to say instances like this will continue, although we hope Americans from across the political spectrum can ease up on the character assassination and stop weaponizing mob mentality.” You can read the Guardian’s cast’s open letter here.

The internet can be a dark place. Take a wrong turn on the information superhighway, and you’ll be reading stories of true crime that will give you nightmares or seeing photos of grisly, horrible things. Take another turn, and you’ll see thousands of videos of cats and dogs just being themselves. It’s very cute and releases some dopamine, but those kinds of videos don’t really enlighten us to the nature of the human condition or inspire us to greater heights of goodness. These videos are meant to do just that.

In mid-July, a National Public Radio story mentioned that the city of Iga, Japan––the birthplace of the ninja, allegedly––was struggling to keep its ninja-based tourism industry alive due to lack of labor force. The source of the confusion was this line from the NPR story: “”Iga will build a second ninja museum [but faces a] labour shortage…. [which] also extends to ninjas. There’s a ninja shortage, or to be accurate, a ninja-performer shortage.” This led to a mass wave of applications for the position of ninja, forcing the city to shut it down. 

Canadians are a very sneaky lot, you can never really tell who is Canadian and who isn’t. So many of you might be surprised to learn that Will Arnett is a Canadian actor. In this video, he teaches you some Canadian slang. A few of these words you might know already, such as “hoser” or “clicks.” But others are just downright confusing, like gotch, gitch, or gonch as underwear. Arnett also uses the words in sentences, which are as hilarious as you’d expect. 

John Schnatter has been in the news a lot lately, and unfortunately not for his company’s delicious pizza. No, not even close. He used a racial slur on a conference call and was forced to step down as chairman of the board. According to Schnatter’s lawyer, they are investigating company documents “because of the unexplained and heavy-handed way in which the company has treated him since the publication of a story that falsely accused him of using a racial slur.”

A little while ago, we posted about how China is engaging in a silent, new Cold War against the United States. We also noted in a feature piece about Russia that the United States is so distracted by Russia that we are all––citizens and politicians alike––missing the fact that China is making moves to position themselves as the major international power. This video describes another of China’s moves––the way that they are prematurely erasing their border with Hong Kong.

Miyako Chiyo was born on May 22, 1901. Let that sink in for a minute. She was born before both world wars. She was already an adult during the Great Depression. She was alive when the Titanic sank. Chiyo’s family described her as “a patient, kind and chatty ‘goddess’ who brought joy to those around her.” Chiyo took the title of the oldest living person from Misao Okawa, who was also aged 117 when she died but a few months younger than Chiyo. 

Now that Tony Stark Elon Musk has promised to build a “hyperloop” high speed train system, high speed trains are back on peoples’ minds. But this isn’t the first time that new technology promised to revolutionized the train industry. Hovertrains sound like something out of science fiction, but they were real for a time. Using a cushion of air, these trains would travel several hundred miles per hour. This video explores the sad fate of the hovertrain.