Little white lies about blue light 2024 Sep 11
Everyone knows that seeing blue lights at K-Mart means things are on sale and also that blue lights at night time makes you sleep less gooder. However, to nobody with a brain's surprise, one of these two claims is completely bullshit.

This river doesn't exist 2024 Jul 26
Early in the days of European exploration of America the surveyors hoped for and desired for and even drew onto maps a great river running from the Rocky Mountains and out west into the Pacific Ocean. A river such as that would've been very useful to their goals of providing easy transport to settlers fulfilling Manifest Destiny. They even named this river: the Buenaventura.

But the map, clearly, is not the territory, and the Buenaventura as we now know does not exist. As the many, many expeditions sent to find it proved, The Great Basin exists, the Great Salt Lake, while big, is not actually the Pacific Ocean, and the Sacramento, while mighty, flows only from the Sierra Nevada.

It took intrepid explorer and asshole John C Fremont himself to talk President Polk out of this riparian denial, that drawing lines on a map cannot simply conjure up a river. Although all this desire to get people going west did inspire Fremont to invest heavily into railroads... which would have made him rich, had he speculated on the correct railroads.

Juan de Fuca 2024 Jul 3
If you're on the west coast of North America you've probably heard the name Juan de Fuca in reference to the strait or tectonic plates named after him. But not only was he actually a Greek man named Ioannis Fokas, he may not have even existed. His legacy remains primarily in accounts of an Englishman Michael Lok, and despite sailing supposedly for King Phillip II no Spanish records of de Fuca exist. The Pacific Northwest strait became named after him because of Lok's stories, famous to another English captain named Charles Barkley.

The Lost Cosmonauts 2024 Jun 5
In the height of the Cold War, two Italian amateur radio operators claimed to have intercepted secret Soviet space communications where they overheard, among other things a cosmonaut being lost to the depths of the abyss. At the time, people believed them, after all, the Soviet Union was known to keep quiet about their follies. Now-declassified Soviet records have no mention of this, and while absence cannot prove a negative, it's a strong case that this supposed recording of a "lost cosmonaut" was a hoax. Although, any skeptic could point out that the manner in which some of the most dramatic records were made – at press events, in front of journalists – is perhaps a bit too theatric to have been taken seriously in the first place.

The Forged Apple Employee Badge 2024 May 16
Apple (the computer company) has inadvertently created a market in memorabilia, apparently, to the point that sellers on eBay are forging old company documentation and selling it for (in this instance) $950. Good lord.

Finance worker pays out $25 million after video call with deepfake ‘chief financial officer’ 2024 Feb 5
Phishing has reached a whole new level of dumb.

Chan said the worker had grown suspicious after he received a message that was purportedly from the company’s UK-based chief financial officer. Initially, the worker suspected it was a phishing email, as it talked of the need for a secret transaction to be carried out. However, the worker put aside his early doubts after the video call because other people in attendance had looked and sounded just like colleagues he recognized, Chan said.

The Secret History And Strange Future Of Charisma 2023 Jun 29
Grifters, conmen, and cult leaders are fascinating in how they are able to bring people into their orbit and convince them to do things against their own best interests. This long article talks about the nearly-undefinable term "charisma" and how it is, and has been, understood throughout time.

Moneylike 2023 Apr 20
Another Cory Doctorow article, this one on the origins of money and why cryptocurrency isn't actually money. Maybe a touch too reductionist, but on the flip side, it's easy to understand.

The Hollywood Personal Egg Service That Wasn't 2023 Mar 11
I fell for this 'Personal Egg Service' hoax hook, line, and sinker back when it first went around the internet. It's a mark of shame that only now, eight years later, am I realizing I was taken. I'm usually so much the skeptic! Or so I envisioned myself. Maybe I'm more gullible than I realized. Either way, the mental image of a 'scrambled egg' faucet has been firmly lodged in my head ever since, and the real story is a fascinating follow-up to a fascinating hoax.