If you’ve ever tuned in to The Learning Channel, you’ve undoubtedly come across America’s favorite competitive fertility families: “Quints by Surprise” “Sweet Home Sextuplets” “OutDaughtered” “19 Kids and Counting” These families made household chaos a spectator sport. With each passing season, viewers watched in slack-jawed amazement as coordinated diaper changes, meal prep for nine, and synchronized tantrums became normal. But…
-
-
Gold Leaf and Gossip How courtly chatter became a breeding ground for iconic idioms
idiom [ˈɪd.i.əm] noun A phrase whose meaning isn’t literal but understood through common use (e.g., kick the bucket). Also refers to a distinctive way of speaking or expressing unique to a group, language, or era. Idioms. Those quirky little nuggets of speech we casually toss into conversations like linguistic seasoning aren’t exactly modern inventions. Believe it or not, they started…
-
Steampunking’s Greatest Hits Leather, Lace, and Laser-Powered Lullabies
steampunk noun /ˈstiːmˌpʌŋk/ A genre and aesthetic combining 19th-century steam-powered technology with futuristic inventions, often set in an alternate Victorian-era world and characterized by retrofuturistic fashion, machinery, and design. Once-rebellious rock anthems from the ’70s and ’80s are hitting that awkward phase, somewhere between timeless and timeworn. What once shook stadiums now barely stirs a Bluetooth speaker, as the Spotify…
-
The Agony of Appointment #2 This time it's personal
There’s something uniquely sinister about the second doctor’s appointment. Something dark, cold, and vaguely antiseptic that sets it apart from the friendly handshake of the first and the resigned acceptance of the third and fourth. The first appointment is often a warm-up, a meet-and-greet with a stethoscope. You show up as a mystery, an unopened file, a symptom in a…
-
Top News Stories from Around the World And why you’ve never heard of them
Think the world’s gone completely off the rails? You could be right. And we’ve got the stories to prove it. From gnome invasions to perfume that smells like pizza, these stories sound like rejected plotlines from a fever dream, but every one of them actually happened. They’re real and based on actual reported events. We’ve just added a little seasoning…
