New York has seen its share of characters: subway poets, rooftop pigeon trainers, guys selling “vintage” iPhone 6s outside the L train. But every once in a while someone shows up who just… breaks the simulation. Enter Pei Chung, the foodie influencer who apparently views every restaurant in the five…
Humor
Read more
The 100 Things Humans Fear Most And Somehow Driving Beats Dying
There’s something beautifully chaotic about seeing all of humanity’s deepest anxieties squeezed into a single word cloud. And not a subtle one, either — this thing looks like a stress bomb went off in Microsoft Paint. Right in the center, the biggest word of all: job. Not “death,” not “illness,”…
Humor
Read more
Turns Out Monkeys, Wolves, and Polar Bears Were Kissing Before We Existed
There’s nothing like waking up to a BBC headline that basically says, “Hey humans, you’re not special — monkeys did it first.” Scientists now believe the first mouth-on-mouth kiss goes back 21.5 million years, long before humans, before Neanderthals, before whoever invented the first scented candle. And get this: they…
Crime
Read more
The Fake Attack Story So Bonkers I Had to Read It Twice
There are bad decisions. There are regrettable decisions. And then there’s the “I hired a scarification artist to carve me up so I could report a violent political hate crime” decision — which is its own category somewhere between Maury Povich and unemployment line. I read the DOJ release like…
Humor
Read more
La Niña vs. Polar Vortex-The Winter Forecast Nobody Saw Coming
There’s a special kind of dread that creeps into your chest when you see meteorologists argue online. It’s like watching two doctors disagree over an X-ray of your lungs — you’re not sure what’s happening, but you know it’s probably bad for you. Right now the argument is over whether…
Science
Read more
The New Species That Made Me Say -“Oh sh*t… Not Another Bug”
I saw the headline “devil-horned bee discovered in Australia” and had that familiar jolt through my spine — the same one I get when a mosquito buzzes past my ear at night and I assume it’s carrying some apocalyptic disease. I don’t know why the universe keeps rolling out new…
Humor
Read more
The Cave Where Every Spider On Earth Apparently Has a Timeshare
I knew before even reading the story that I’d hate it. AP News, via ABC, reported that researchers stumbled into a cave on the Greek-Albanian border and found what’s probably the biggest spider web ever recorded. That one sentence alone made every hair on my arms stand up. Any headline…
Happiness
Read more
The Simplest Workout workout I’ve Ever Seen — And Shockingly, It Might Be Exactly What We Need
I like simple. Also, there’s something funny about the modern fitness world. We’ve got gyms that feel like aircraft hangars, treadmills with more buttons than a regional radio console, and influencers who swear you can’t possibly get fit unless you buy their $189 resistance band set that looks suspiciously like…
Culture
Read more
A Titanic Love Story Encased in Gold
Every once in a while, something goes up for auction that isn’t just an object — it’s a fragment of a moment. This time, it’s a gold pocket watch from the Titanic, the one owned by Isidor Straus of Macy’s fame. The thing stopped ticking at 2:20 AM, the exact…
Culture
Read more
Kids Don’t Shake Piggy Banks Anymore — They Check Their Balance
Somewhere in an attic — next to the Beanie Babies and the box of VHS tapes nobody wants to throw out — sits a ceramic pig with a coin slot carved into its back. It had a good run. But like most analog traditions, it’s now being replaced by something…