Kimberly Porter dropped her Mercedes C300 at the dealership for service — routine stuff, the kind of transaction that’s supposed to be boring and forgettable. What she got instead: a phone alert at 1 a.m. showing her car was on the move. She tracked it to a sports bar using…
Category: Culture
Culture
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How One Ancient Tortoise Survived Nearly Two Centuries of Chaos — And a Heartless Scam
Jonathan the tortoise turned 193 this year. He’s lived through the invention of the telegraph, the airplane, the internet, and whatever fresh hell social media became in 2024. And on April 1, 2026, someone tried to kill him off with a fake death announcement — complete with a crypto donation…
Culture
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DEAD BROKE AT 90 DAYS: The Survey Wall Street Doesn’t Want You to See
Financial collapse three months away. That’s the average cushion most Americans say they have before the bills stop getting paid. Not six months. Not a year. Three. A national survey of 1,421 adults, conducted in February 2026 by JG Wentworth, found that 40.8% of respondents could cover basic living expenses…
Culture
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Classrooms Go Retro to Combat AI — But the Pop Quiz Got a Warning Label
A Cornell German instructor hauls in vintage typewriters once a semester and makes her students write essays without spell-check, translation apps, or the ability to delete mistakes. No screens. No autocorrect. Just manual keys, ink ribbons, and the unmistakable ding at the end of each line. Grit Matthias Phelps started…
Culture
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The Surveillance Towers Cops Call “Scarecrows” Are Multiplying — And “Minority Report” Wasn’t Supposed to Be a Manual
There’s a new fixture in American parking lots, commercial districts, and public spaces: solar-powered surveillance towers mounted on trailers, bristling with cameras and flashing lights. Police departments call them COWs — “cameras on wheels.” The rest of us might as well call them what they look like: scarecrows for the…
Culture
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Forest Bathing Cures Stress — Your Grandma Called It Sunday Afternoon
The first time someone told me about forest bathing, I pictured a guy in a clawfoot tub surrounded by pine trees. Wrong. Turns out forest bathing stress relief is just… walking outside. Slowly. Among trees. Paying attention. Which is what your grandmother called “getting some fresh air” before wellness culture…
Culture
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CBS News Radio Dies at 100: What We Just Lost
CBS News Radio is done. Not struggling. Not “pivoting to digital.” Done. After a century—through the Depression, World War II, Kennedy’s assassination, 9/11, every hurricane, every blackout, every moment when the power grid failed and the internet went dark—CBS News Radio kept broadcasting. Until now. David Ellison’s Skydance Media just…
Culture
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Happiness Report 2026: Finland Dominates, Youth Wellbeing Craters, Social Media Gets the Side-Eye
Finland just claimed the top spot in the world’s happiest countries ranking for the ninth consecutive year. Not eighth. Ninth. At this point, it’s less a streak and more a statement—like watching someone casually lap the field while the rest of us are still tying our shoes. The 2026 World…
Culture
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Doomsday Believers Aren’t Fringe Anymore — They’re Your Neighbors
There seems to be quite a bit of chatter about the end of times in the news. Yesterday, I wrote about Peter Thiel hosting a four-day event on the Apocalypse. Then, a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that one in three Americans believes the…
Animals
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Argentine Teens Are Identifying as Dogs — And TikTok Made It Go Viral
A Buenos Aires plaza turned into an impromptu wildlife preserve last Sunday. Teenagers in lifelike animal masks ran on all fours across the grass. A 15-year-old named Aguara — who identifies as a Belgian Malinois and counts her age in dog years — leapt through an obstacle course. Others dressed…