It’s no surprise that happiness comes with a wide variety of advantages. It boosts the immune system and makes you more resilient to pain, along with reducing stress and overall improving the quality of your life. Sadness, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to do us any good, and is one feeling we consistently try to stay away from.

As it happens, there’s nothing we can do to escape things that make us sad. We can, however, tell you about all the surprising benefits of it. As science has discovered over the last few years, being sad benefits us in many less obvious ways most of us don’t know about.

10 Better Communication

When you’re sad, talking to other people seems like a task, unless it’s with a professional or someone you’re close to. It’s just not something you feel like doing at that time. If you gathered enough willpower to do it, though, you’d realize that you’re much better at conversations when you’re in a bad mood.

Research on how mood affects communication skills has found that people who’re sad are much more persuasive in their conversations than the jolly ones, and are better at influencing their recipients’ opinion. Apparently, being sad changes how you process things, and makes you more articulate and clearer about what you’re saying.^[1]

9 Improved Memory

Sadness affects the brain in ways that we don’t quite understand, especially regarding our various cognitive abilities. While it definitely has a negative effect in many areas—like analytical abilities and abstract thinking – it also makes you better at other things, like memorization.

Quite a few experiments have found that sad people are much better at facial recognition and other memory-related tasks than their happier counterparts. Surprisingly, previous studies have shown that the memory advantage doesn’t extend to recognizing things like objects and words, suggesting that sad people are better at remembering details (like that of the face) than others.^[2]

8 Higher Empathy

People suffering from depression – even mild forms – are assumed to be disconnected from the rest of the world. When it comes to empathy, you’d think that happier people would be better equipped and more willing to help others. As studies prove, though, that’s not really the case.

Experiments done on mildly-depressed students suggest that being sad may make you more empathetic towards other people’s emotions. They performed significantly better at the test – which involved looking at photographs and identifying the emotion from just their expression—than non-depressed students, too. Probably surprised by their findings, they repeated the test on a larger scale and got the same results. While it may just mean that happiness makes you more selfish, the researchers think that it’s actually due to hypersensitivity to emotions among those diagnosed with depression.^[3]

7 Better Thinking Skills

Most people don’t feel like doing anything when they’re sad or in a bad mood, except sitting comfortable in one place (and occasionally overeating). It’s the body’s natural response to emotional adversity, even if we don’t understand how it helps.

If you made an effort and did get up to do things at those times, though, you’d find that it’s actually the best time to complete tasks that require thinking. Research has found that people in a bad mood are much better at focus, time management and task prioritization, though only if they’re emotionally reactive. It was the exact opposite for the people who’re less prone to negative emotions, though, who saw a definite decline in their functioning abilities during their bad phases.^[4]

6 Higher Motivation

Sadness has been traditionally associated with a lack of motivation, and intuitively so, too. When you’re sad, you’re more likely to focus on the things making you sad rather than how to fix them. It makes sense that being sad would also come with an inability to fix the actual cause of the problem, further feeding into the cycle.

According to science, though, a lack of motivation isn’t one of the side effects of sadness. In fact, studies have shown that sadness is quite an effective motivational tool. Happy people tend to get comfortable and have less of a tendency to change anything in their lives, which may in turn lead to feelings of stagnation or unfulfilment. Sad people, on the other hand, are more driven to get out of their situation, and have a higher willingness to change for the better than others.^[5]

5 Better Adjusted For Adversity

Sadness is a natural response to things not going in your favor, much like happiness when you’re in a good place. Now, we’re not talking about clinical depression, as it’s a diagnosed medical condition that should definitely be treated out of the system. When it comes to general sadness, though, we all go through it every now and then depending on our specific circumstances.

While we agree that it sucks to be sad – even occasionally – science says that it actually come with an unintended benefit. One study done on 2,400 subjects found that the people who had gone through some kind of misfortune in their past lives were more emotionally well-adjusted than others. They’re better at dealing with bad situations than those who had never gone through similar experiences, making them better equipped to handle adversity later in life.^[6]

4 Nice People Are More Likely To Be Sad

It has long been suspected that generally nice people have a higher likelihood of being sad at the state of the world around them. While we’ve never had much data to support it, it stands to reason that the nicer you are to other people, the more likely it is that you’d be negatively affected by their bad situations.

Studies done on the subject confirm that yes, that is absolutely true. People who’re more prosocial – or more aware of others – than individual are more likely to have symptoms of depression, or are more likely to develop it later in life. It doesn’t mean that being nice and more receptive to others would make you sadder in life, though it does mean that inherent qualities like altruism and niceness come with their own set of side effects.^[7]

3 Teams Under Sad Leaders Are More Creative

Corporate manuals are filled with advice on how to achieve better performance at team-based tasks. Bosses are instructed to try everything – from breathing exercises to excruciating overtime – to maximize productivity. None of them, however, mention ‘being sad’ as a possible way to motivate your team.

A study found that teams under group leaders who display a lot of sadness are more creative than those with relatively-happier leaders. The researchers clarify that the sadness should be authentic for it to work, or at least seem authentic to the rest of the group. Teams under happier leaders, however, are better at analytical tasks.

As another study on sad leaders found, sad leaders are also better at focused, long term decision-making.^[8]

2 Less Gullible

Because of internet and fake news, gullibility is now a commonly-found trait among most populations. It’s easier than ever to use misinformation to change someone’s opinion, a tactic actively used in elections around the world. While we can’t say that we know of any way to stop that—except promoting fact checking skills through PSAs – we do know of one way you can make yourself less gullible; just be sad.

Quite a few studies have found that sad people are much less prone to fall for misinformation than the happy ones. They’re generally more skeptical, too, as well as better at detecting deception. Moreover, one weirdly specific study discovered that sad people are better at eliminating misleading details in eyewitness recollections.^[9]

1 Depression Gave Us Better Immunity During Evolution

There’s no doubt that depression is a debilitating disorder that adversely affects people. It’s one of the leading causes of death in most countries around the world, with suicide rates on a consistent rise. In light of that, depression is an anomaly. There’s no way it should have survived for so long, as it offers no evolutionary benefits.

If you ask evolutionary experts, though, depression offered some clear benefits during our evolution, like higher immunity and heightened senses during emergencies. Research has found that people with depressive disorders also carry a specific gene that protects us against infections. In our early days, a depressive episode would have helped us stay indoors and shut off our body to conserve energy, in case there was a chance to get wounded or infected.^[10]

Most of us think of traditions as warm and fuzzy customs that were passed down through the years to remind us of a simpler time as well as the love of our friends and family. Then there are the insanely brutal traditions that may have started out with good intentions but now make us wonder why anyone would engage in such barbaric rituals in the 21st century.

10 Mingi

Just as Lord Voldemort is known as “He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named” in the Harry Potter book series, mingi is the tradition that must not be named among the Kara, Hamar, and Banna tribes in the Omo Valley of Ethiopia. There are about 225,000 of these tribe members isolated in primitive villages, practicing their ancient ritual in secret.

Mingi means that a child is cursed and must be killed to protect the tribe. (Although we’ll use male pronouns, this tradition applies to both male and female children.) A child is mingi if his top teeth come in before his bottom teeth, if he breaks a tooth or injures his genitals, if he is born to unwed parents, or if his parents do not have the ceremonial blessing of the village elders to have children. Adults who don’t cooperate with these traditions are also designated as mingi and banished from the tribe.

If a child is mingi, the tribal elders will snatch that child from his parents and drown him in the river, leave him to starve or be eaten by animals, or push him off a cliff to his death. The elders may also suffocate the child by filling his mouth with soil.

These Omo Valley tribes believe that a mingi child will bring evil spirits to their village, resulting in drought, famine, and sickness for the tribe. Although no one knows the exact number, as many as 200 to 300 mingi children may be killed annually.

Even among the members of the tribe, mingi is a taboo subject. Children under 15 are never told about the ritual killing. It certainly isn’t something to be discussed with outsiders. Yet Lale Labuko, a young man from the Omo Valley who was the first of his tribe to be educated at a boarding school 105 kilometers (65 mi) away, found the courage to tell an adult outsider. Together, they’ve spearheaded efforts to save mingi children. In some cases, the government has imprisoned mingi executioners. The tradition is still practiced today—just more discreetly.

9 Pig Slaughter Festival

Each year in the small village of Nem Thuong in northern Vietnam, hundreds of people watch the ritual slaughter of two well-fed pigs to bring the village residents luck for the coming year. Always occurring on the sixth day of the first month of the lunar calendar, the Pig Slaughter Festival is held to honor Doan Thuong, a local protector deity.

According to legend, Doan Thuong was a general in the Ly Dynasty who drove invading forces off the villagers’ land. He fed his starving troops with slaughtered pigs, which is supposedly how the festival started. The pigs’ blood represents good luck in the forms of a good harvest, reproductive ability, monetary success, and good health.

As music is played, the villagers parade the live pigs around the village. Participants in the ritual lay the animals on their backs, pull their legs away from their bellies with ropes, and use swords to hack the squealing pigs in half in front of the crowd. The villagers rush to smear banknotes with the pigs’ blood so that they can place the notes on altars in their houses for good luck.

Animal rights activists have tried to convince the government to stop the festival. Although Vietnamese officials have pressured the village elders to be less publicly cruel to animals, the government has refused to ban the festival. Officials seem to be less concerned about animal cruelty and more apprehensive about the world’s opinion of their local festivals now that pictures can be disseminated over the Internet so quickly.

8 La Esperanza Rain Ceremony

Nobody likes a drought, especially farmers, so many cultures have rituals designed to bring rain. Even today, some Native Americans perform rain dances. In Takhatpur, India, the villagers conduct elaborate frog marriages to call upon their rain gods to end a drought. The frogs dress for the occasion and even kiss after they exchange vows.

But the village women of La Esperanza in Guerrero, Mexico, prefer a different approach. Each May, as the male farmers get their fields ready for planting, the women prepare a large feast of cultural foods like chicken, turkey, mole, boiled eggs, rice, and tortillas. They bring the food to a ceremonial site to share with others from the village. It’s a traditional day of offerings to their deities to ensure that the village has enough rain for the crops.

After they recite their prayers and offer food and flowers to their gods, they form a large circle and wait for people from neighboring villages to arrive. The children ready their cell phones to take pictures and videos of the festivities. And then the fun begins.

Inside the cheering human circle, the able-bodied women—young and old—find opponents from neighboring villages and beat each other to a pulp with their bare hands. Sometimes, men and children fight, too. This is a day-long blood fest for the female warriors. The goal is to make as much red liquid stream down their faces as possible. There are no winners or losers. No issues of revenge. At the end, they hug each other.

As a sacrifice to the gods, the spilled blood is collected in buckets and later ploughed into the fields where the crops are grown. The fights continue unabated until dark, when the proud and bloodied women walk home, happy that their sacrifice will help to feed the village for the next year.

7 Coconut Head Smash

In Tamil Nadu in southern India, thousands of devotees go to the Mahalakshmi temple to engage in a tradition in which they ask their gods for success and good health or offer thanks for wishes already granted. As a crowd gathers to watch, a priest smashes the head of each believer, who is seated on the ground, with a large coconut. A devotee must be at least 18 years old to participate.

The ritual takes place on the second Tuesday of the Tamil month of Aadi every year. It’s believed that the tradition started in the 19th century when the British tried to build a railroad through the village. The residents protested, so the British sarcastically offered to reroute the transportation line if the locals would break large stones with their heads. When the villagers complied, the railroad was built elsewhere.

The stones were soon replaced by coconuts as the preferred instrument to break over the devotees’ heads, but this tradition still comes with considerable risk depending on the coconut’s size and the force with which the head is whacked.

According to neurosurgery professor Anil Kumar Peethambaran in an interview with National Geographic, “What happens is . . . there is a certain amount of tolerance for the skull beyond which it will cause damage to the skull. So, if the coconut is big and if the coconut breaks, that means that a part of the energy is dissipated and the damage done is less and if the coconut doesn’t break, more damage is done to the skull.”

Dozens of people are treated for serious head injuries every year. Ironically, this good health tradition may be deadly.

6 People Trampled By Cows For Luck

A lot of cultures have rituals designed to bring them good luck. But in villages around the Ujjain area of India, the annual tradition of male residents getting trampled by their cows on Ekadashi, the day after the Hindu festival of lights known as “Diwali,” is probably one of the strangest. Stranger still, they’ve been doing this for centuries.

Cows are sacred to the Hindus in India, which may explain why the villagers claim that no one has ever been hurt in such a seemingly dangerous tradition. Before the ritual trampling, the cows are decorated with henna patterns and brightly colored baubles. As others crowd around to watch, the men lie with garlands in the street while their herds of cows literally run over them. In this way, the trampled men believe that their prayers will be answered by the Hindu gods and that they will receive good luck in the coming year.

5 Easter Rocket War

Just off the coast of Turkey, the villagers of Vrontados on the Greek island of Chios celebrate Greek Orthodox Easter a little differently than most believers in the faith. As the Sun sets on Easter Saturday, they like to pelt each other with tens of thousands of homemade bottle rockets in a traditional rocket war known as “Rouketopolemos.” The two sides in this mock war are the followers of the town’s two Orthodox churches, Agios Markos and Panagia Erithiani, who continue their battle into the wee hours of Easter morning.

Although the goal is to hit the opposing church’s bell while services are being held inside, there’s never really a winner. There can be a lot of property damage despite the protective wire mesh that covers the churches and surrounding houses. There have also been serious injuries and even deaths from the rockets.

Technically, it’s illegal to make rockets in Vrontados. The annual celebration is a big tourist attraction, so the local police usually pretend not to notice the deafening and illuminating illegal activities that have been going on around them for at least 125 years.

The origins of this battle are unclear, but there are two competing stories that the locals like to tell. In one version, cannons on local ships that were first used to battle pirates were eventually fired each Easter as part of the holiday’s celebration. When Ottoman invaders took the cannons in the late 1800s, the villagers began firing rockets on Easter instead.

A second version of the story is that the villagers wanted to celebrate the Easter services that the Turks had prohibited. The Greeks faked a war between their churches to keep the frightened Turks away while they celebrated Easter mass.

Some residents don’t like this rocket war. “We live as hostages to this tradition,” said one unnamed villager to the BBC in a 2004 interview. “We can’t breathe when it takes place, we have to be on standby in case a fire breaks out because if you are not careful you can even lose your house.”

4 Santhara

To outsiders, santhara (or sallekhana) is often confused with suicide or euthanasia. To the followers of Jainism, an ancient religion in India that focuses on spiritual discipline through a simple life that eschews physical pleasure, santhara is a religious right to worship as they choose. Every year, as many as 500 believers in Jainism starve themselves to death to liberate their souls from the cycle of death and rebirth through reincarnation. Instead, they believe this is the way to attain nirvana, the ultimate state of bliss.

Unlike Christians, who consider the body a temple of the soul, Jains see their bodies as prisons of their souls. Santhara can be a cause for celebration and pride for those left behind because the person who made the starvation oath took control of their own path to salvation.

Jains don’t see santhara as suicide, which they view as a violent act against the body, because santhara is nonviolent. It is physically painful but supposedly punctuated by moments of euphoria as the soul is transformed. Throughout the process, people near the starving person continually touch and hold that person. When it is time for the person to die, they are raised to a sitting position because divine beings in the Jain religion are never seen sleeping. They always appear in a sitting position or a half-sitting position.

Those practicing the ritual are seen by other Jain followers as living saints. Other Jains may travel from across the country to witness, endure, and be blessed by the sacrifice of the person who has taken this oath. As the person dies, the witnesses chant the names of divine beings.

Both monks and laypeople, the healthy and the dying, take the starvation oath. More women than men do it. The practice has been controversial for years among the general public. On August 10, 2015, the Rajasthan High Court in India declared santhara to be illegal. However, that ruling is being challenged in the Supreme Court as of late August 2015.

3 Costa Rica Bullfighting

Unlike bullfighting in Mexico and Spain, which usually ends with the death of the bull, Costa Rican bullfighting is a more humane tradition that elevates the status of the bull to that of a celebrity. No one can hurt the bull, although he’s free to hurt or kill anyone he chooses without reprisal. The rules may have less to do with love for the animal than with practicality. Thousands of farming families depend on cows for their livelihoods, so they don’t want their bulls killed. Even so, some animal rights activists believe that the animals are mistreated.

When a bull enters the ring in Costa Rica, an announcer introduces him by name and gives his weight and information about his background, including his father’s bullfighting history. Then the improvisados, or rodeo clowns, face him down. Most improvisados are untrained young men who either stay close to the fence for a quick getaway or foolishly taunt the bull to amuse the crowd. They try to be as daring and entertaining as possible to win cash prizes from the festival’s organizers and sponsors.

The trouble is that when these bulls get fired up, it’s almost impossible to outrun them. If you can’t get over the fence quickly enough, your best hope is that the bull becomes distracted by someone else because you’re not permitted to fight the bull. You can only run away from him, and he’s darn fast.

As shown in the video above, there are a lot of rear-end collisions, with the bull tossing the men into aerial somersaults before sometimes trampling their bodies when they land on the ground. There’s no time limit on how long you can stay in the ring with the bull. But more time is not your friend. Hundreds of improvisados are injured each year.

No one’s sure how this tradition began, but bullfighting festivals are held throughout the country each year. It’s almost a rite of passage for young Costa Rican men to enter the bullfighting ring after they turn 18. “It’s just the Tico thing to do,” said Jon Carlos Cattano, 28, to the Tico Times. “It’s important to do it at least one time in your life.”

2 Gotmar Mela

Each year for at least a century, the residents of Pandhurna and Sawargaon, two villages in India divided by the Jam River, have pelted each other with stones for one day in a festival known as Gotmar Mela. Before each battle begins, a tree trunk with a flag tied on top is stuck in the middle of the riverbed. The team that retrieves the flag first is the winner.

However, climbing the tree to grab that flag while villagers throw big rocks may be the last thing a participant ever does. Injuries number in the hundreds every year, and there have been at least 17 deaths. Government officials have tried to persuade the villagers to use rubber balls instead of stones—to no avail. An outright ban didn’t work, either, and was lifted after pressure from the villagers.

There are conflicting stories about how the festival began. In one version, a Pandhurna boy fell in love with a Sawargaon girl, but their parents forbade their marriage. The young lovers decided to elope. As the boy carried his lover across the river to Pandhurna, the Sawargaon villagers began throwing stones at him. The Pandhurna residents returned the favor from their side of the river. Eventually, everyone agreed to let the kids get married, and they throw stones at each other once a year to mark the occasion.

Another version of the legend says that the king of Pandhurna abducted the beautiful daughter of Sawargaon’s ruler about 300 years ago. When the villagers of Sawargaon realized what had happened, they began pelting stones at the Pandhurna king, who had escaped to the other side of the river by then. To protect their king, Pandhurna villagers fired stones at Sawargaon. The king made it safely to his palace, and now the grooms from each village supposedly throw stones during the annual festival to win brides from the other village.

1 Yanshui Beehive Rocket Festival

“Insane” is almost too mild a word to describe the annual Beehive Rocket Festival held in the Yanshui District of Tainan, Taiwan. The Beehive Rocket Festival is part of the Lantern Festival that celebrates the Chinese New Year. But in some ways, it’s a uniquely dangerous celebration. During the Easter Rocket War in Greece that we talked about earlier, bottle rockets are launched toward church bells. They’re not meant to hit people directly.

However, with the Yanshui Beehive Rocket Festival, bottle rockets are arranged in large beehive structures, and people willingly move toward the exploding fireworks, deliberately trying to get hit as many times as possible. The more times you’re hit, the luckier you’ll be in the coming year. The often tightly packed crowds seem to bounce up and down with the rocket blasts, which at their peak can sound like the buzzing of bees in a hive.

Most participants suit up in protective gear, including fire-resistant clothing and helmets with face masks. Some young men rely on faith to protect them, wearing only a loincloth and a towel to shield their eyes from the intense heat and flying debris. Despite the cavalier attitude of the crowd, people do get hurt and sometimes require treatment at a hospital.

The festival began as a response to a cholera epidemic that raged in the city about 200 years ago. To ward off the evil spirits that were believed to be causing the illness, residents lit a massive firework display to win the favor and protection of their god. The epidemic subsided, and the rocket festival became an annual event for good luck.

Let’s face it: 2020 has been to years what “Cats” was to cinema: a costly, painful, interminably long disaster. And at least Cats featured the reassuring presence of Dame Judy Dench, albeit as a ridiculous, disturbing half-feline version of herself.

But before burying 2020 alongside Cats in history’s letterbox, there are some bright spots to acknowledge amidst a mostly dark year. Here are ten positives to salvage from a year that can’t end quickly enough.

Top 10 Funny Coronavirus Lockdown Activities Around The World

10 Pet Adoptions Have Increased Dramatically

COVID-19 hasn’t affected all species the same. For prospective pets, more housebound homo sapiens means more homes for in-need animals, particularly dogs and cats. The result is good news whose benefactors will long outlive the pandemic; in Green Bay, Wisconsin, the aptly-named Happily Ever After Animal Sanctuary has seen a 30% increase^[1] in adoptions since the inception of coronavirus-caused lockdowns.

Similar success stories have played out throughout Europe and the UK and, in Australia, many shelters have been completely emptied,^[2] creating months-long adoption waiting lists. While certainly inconvenient for home-confined humans seeking a new four-legged family member, this is great news for cats and dogs finding good homes at unprecedented rates.

Dogs and cats are in such demand that even “imported” pets are being placed expediently. For example, The Sato Project,^[3] which rescues strays from Puerto Rico’s notorious Dead Dog Beach, has upped the freight and frequency of its Freedom Flights to the US mainland, where dogs find their forever families. “Sato” is Spanish slang for “street dog” – and the shortage is great news for the hundreds of thousands of homeless dogs roaming the humid, tick-infested Caribbean island.

The pet industry also has surged, an economic bright spot during what for many sectors has been an incredibly tough year. Companies that supply pet products are seeing soaring sales for food, leashes, collars and – a nod to new puppy housebreaking – doggy diapers.^[4]

9 Wild Animals are Faring as Well as Domesticated Ones

The next time 2020 gets you down, remember one thing: Wild humpback whales are gleefully singing off the coast of Alaska.

Each summer, coastal Alaska is visited by well over a million tourists, who whale watch and glacier gaze from countless cruise ships – which, for the record, were floating petri dishes^[5] well before COVID-19. The annual inundation nearly triples the state’s population of about 750,000. Once the pandemic hit, that number effectively dropped to zero,^[6] and scores of musically gifted humpbacks have written feel-good summer hits about their newfound peace.

“It’s the first time in human history that we’ve had the technological ability to listen to these whales in a meaningful way without us interfering,” said Dr Michelle Fournet, director of the Sound Science Research Collective.

Back on terra firma, many species are enjoying some long-limited elbow room. Just weeks into widespread lockdowns, sika deer began roaming outside their normal habitat in Nara, Japan, and wild turkeys started congregating in a park in Oakland, California. Jackals in Tel Aviv, goats in Istanbul, and even a land-lubbin’ sea lion^[7] near Buenos Aires have all reveled in our retreat from the landscape.

8 Eloping is Making a Comeback

One of 2020’s crowning achievements has been the drastic, rapid decrease in conventional weddings. If there was one large gathering mainstay that seriously needed a disruptive force, it was weddings; it took the worst of circumstances to spare us all from the Best Man and Maid of Honor drunkenly bombing as you stare awkwardly from a table where you neither know anyone nor care to.

Many, if not most, people hate weddings,^[8] viewing nuptial invitations as embroidered harbingers of obligatory check-writing and boredom. Hell, even the bride and groom hate what the wedding does to them leading up to the big day, as a sacred event that should be about love is soured into an expensive, obsessive, neurotic chore.^[9]

2020 has given us the best excuse ever to (1) not plan large weddings and (2) not attend them. Just check the box on the RSVP marked “Sorry, I do not wish to die alone on a ventilator during your honeymoon.” Safety first has put long-overdone mass matrimonial gatherings last – a refreshing reprioritizing.

A recent Wall Street Journal^[10] article discusses another COVID-related issue that trends toward eloping: what for many self-important engaged couples is some much-needed perspective. A couple featured in the piece canceled their 150-person ceremony to instead marry with no one other than their dog in attendance; before friends and family via FaceTime, they even served as their own officiants. “Amid a global pandemic,” said the bride, “a lavish wedding really just didn’t feel important anymore.” Best. Wedding speech. Ever.

7 . . . And Divorces Are Rising, Too

From March through June 2020, the number of people seeking divorces was 34 percent higher^[11] compared to 2019. At first glance this is bad news, since ending a marriage is nobody’s idea of fun.

As with nearly everything in 2020, a driving force is COVID-19. With couples cooped up for extended periods of time, some are realizing that the person they married isn’t worth waiting for death to part ways with. Experts contend the combination of stress, unemployment, financial strain, illness and homeschooling children have placed significant strain on relationships

However, COVID isn’t really the cause of divorce but rather a catalyst. Putting two people who don’t really belong together in close quarters forces them to show each other their true colors. Without offices, friends and other buffers, mismatched marriages are revealed for what they are: pairings of two people better off alone.

Hardships bring two people truly meant to be together closer, not further apart. Most of the couples calling it COVID quits are only accelerating separation rather than having it foist upon them – and in that context, it’s better for people to recognize their failed marriage now than a decade from now, or perhaps never.

But what about the children? A prominent legal templates company^[12] found that, since the pandemic’s inception, 45% of divorcing couples had children under the age of 18. But per Wendy Paris, author of “Splitopia,” staying together “for the kids”^[13] can be worse than divorcing despite them.

6 Mother Nature is Getting a Much-needed Respite

Mother Nature had been dropping hints lately that something wasn’t quite right with our relationship. She tried increasing the frequency and severity of hurricanes^[14] in the Western Hemisphere and, in the Far East, choking off Beijing’s residents for days at a time with putrid air conditions. Then she thought burning a significant portion of California to the ground might work. Yet, we persisted.

Finally, a winning strategy for Mother Nature: if mankind can’t be trusted to roam the Earth responsibly, maybe humans should just go to their rooms. Our air travel, traffic jams and industrial waste have been confiscated and placed in Mrs. Nature’s desk; if we’re good, maybe we can have them back at the end of the school year.

With humans tucked away, Mother Nature has shown an incredible ability to bounce back^[15] from all the shit we pull under business-as-usual conditions. With social, economic, industrial and urbanization activity significantly diminished, the planet has maximized its long overdue time off with prodigious improvements to air quality, cleaner rivers and less noise pollution.

The uptick in air quality is arguably the biggest boon: the World Health Organization – trusted by every civilized nation save the United States – estimates that about three million people die each year^[16] from air pollution-related ailments, with 80% of urban area residents regularly exposed to unsafe breathing conditions. Both Mother Nature and its inhabitants literally needed a breather, and 2020 has provided that.

Top 10 Uplifting Virtual Performances To Brighten Your Quarantine

5 Real Estate Prices are Soaring

… and unlike the mid-2000s housing bubble^[17] – which took the global economy with it when it burst – this time the spike in home prices is built on the sound economic science of supply and demand rather than suckers being hoodwinked with loans they can’t repay.

The recent, stabler uptick in home prices is a result of (what else?) COVID-19. Well-to-do residents in affluent yet at-risk cities are fleeing to the suburbs amidst a protracted pandemic where elbow room has become a lifesaver rather than a mere luxury. The result is a boom in satellite neighborhoods like New Jersey and California’s greater Bay Area. In East Orange, NJ – a town bordering Newark with a 20% poverty rate and violent crime 35% above the national average – a home listed at $285,000 had 24 offers^[18] and sold for well north of $300,000.

Denver, Chicago, Houston – all seeing significant bumps in mortgage applications^[19] for suburban homes, leaving many longstanding, struggling middle-class families literally sitting in equity they didn’t have prior to 2020. The trend is just as prevalent in major metro areas outside the US, including London, Paris^[20] and Tokyo.

For once, a housing bubble has a Robin Hood-esque wrinkle to it: the less affluent are profiting from largely wealthy buyers happy to pay a premium to escape crowded, potentially contagious cities. And one of the good news items that’s making it possible is this list’s next entry.

4 We’ve Proven Working From Home Works

Any office worker with a hellish commute – which, leading into 2020, described an ever-increasing number of us^[21] – has begrudgingly grumbled to themselves some version of “couldn’t I do this sh*t from home?” For many, a commute’s as-the-crow-flies length was absurdly irrelevant to the hassle and time needed to traverse it. In northern New Jersey, for example, despite clusters of towns within 15 miles of New York City, the commute to Manhattan’s business districts often takes well over an hour; each month, that means an extra workweek’s worth of time – some 40 hours – trekking to and from the office.

Why couldn’t we work from home? Mostly because managers didn’t trust employees not to slack off. But with the advent of COVID-19, working from home went from a seldom-permitted luxury to an all-permeating safety necessity. Seemingly overnight, the vast majority of those capable of making a living from our laptops were doing just that.

Despite fears that conventional commuters would go from working hard to hardly working, this grand workforce experiment has been largely successful. In fact, businesses have seen unexpected benefits^[22] of work-from-home arrangements, including higher meeting participation and improved managerial attentiveness.

Even before COVID, research showed that remote workers are often more productive than their commuting counterparts. Among other reasons, the time work-from-home employees are spared from cars, buses and subways is parlayed into more labor: one study reported that the extra time at-home employees put in amounts to, on average, an extra 1.4 workdays per month.^[23]

3 We’re Reading More Books

It took long-term, wide-scale lockdowns to get us there, but 2020 has seen a healthy surge in book reading. For those unfamiliar, books are like the Internet but printed out, placed on paper and bound together. Pages are typically numbered for your convenience – no scrolling or clicking required.

A survey of 1,000 Brits found that time spent reading books has nearly doubled,^[24] with 41% reporting reading more and only 10% less. On average, their weekly reading expanded from 3½ hours per week to about six.

More than half of respondents reported reading more because they had more spare time, with 35% citing books as providing “an escape from the crisis.” Aligning with this sentiment is a shift in genre preference, with crime novels and thrillers outpacing dystopian fiction and pandemic-centric nonfiction.

Even early in lockdowns, it was clear book sales were surging. MarketWatch reported upticks in everything from outdoor survival skills tomes to literary classics like “The Great Gatsby”.^[25] Kids are getting in on the act as well. In addition to an expected increase in academic workbooks and at-home teaching aids, juvenile fiction saw an incredible 65% spike from late February through mid-April, roughly the first six weeks of lockdown.

2 2020 Has Prioritized Facts Over Feelings

Many a snowflake has melted in 2020. And it was about time.

In a world run amok with safe spaces and participation trophies, 2020 has offered neither, with a generous serving of mankind’s marquee motivator – self-preservation – on the side. “These unprecedented times” have forced us to stop placating people’s feelings to spite our own well-being.

On an everyday basis (at least an everyday 2020 basis), that thought process goes something like this: “I’ve spent months holed up in my home, carefully protecting my own health and that of my loved ones. I’m not letting this moron ruin five months of prudence with five seconds of irresponsibility.”

In less than a year, COVID-19 has killed more than one million people.^[26] It is absolutely mind-boggling that some people still won’t wear masks or maintain social distance. It’s as if these people have been living on Mars since… oh, about December 2019 or so, and reentered Earth’s atmosphere shortly before coughing in someone’s face.

What this has done is force an overly coddled Western Civilization to cut the polite PC horseshit. Before 2020, people had become waaaaaaay too comfortable foisting their uber-niche needs onto mainstream society. 2020 has replaced pusillanimous trigger warnings on everything from historical monuments^[27] to literary classics^[28] with real-life issues actually worthy of triggering us – walking, wheezing disease vectors who believe, against all evidence, that the next pair of lungs hooked up to a hospital ventilator couldn’t possibly be theirs.

1 Medical Science Is Meeting the Moment

The fastest a vaccine has been developed for a major disease is four years, when an inoculation against mumps^[29] became available. Though 2020 seems… like… it’s taking… FOREVER, the world is witnessing what will rank among the greatest feats in medical history: a vaccine for a lethal, globally pervasive disease in under half that time.

Granted, a vaccine certainly isn’t weeks away, nor are we “rounding the corner”^[30] (unless there’s a cemetery around the block); on October 23, the US recorded 85,000 new COVID cases – its highest single-day total yet. But epidemiology is a painstaking process that takes not only drug development but controlled patient studies, manufacturing expedience and logistical nimbleness.

Considering this, it’s amazing how close we are. Several pharmaceutical companies are in Phase Three – the final phase comprising large-scale, placebo-comparative testing – of their clinical studies, and are actually manufacturing the drugs should they gain approval. The prospective vaccine from Johnson & Johnson,^[31] which is resuming Phase Three after an adverse side effect couldn’t be linked to the drug, shows particular promise, as it can be administered in a single dose and, logistically, doesn’t need to be ultra-cold throughout the supply chain.

Meanwhile, the industry is ready to hit the ground running once major government health organizations approve a vaccine. Pharma companies worldwide have reconfigured equipment and invested in infrastructure to produce, inspect and ship the billions of necessary doses to get planet Earth back to some semblance of normal. For as much harm as they’ve caused – we’re looking at you, opioid crisis instigator Purdue Pharma^[32] – 2020 has seen big pharma act competently, responsibly and even altruistically.

Top 10 Images That Show The Positive Side Of The Coronavirus Pandemic

Bribery is generally viewed in a negative context. There are different levels of bribery, of course. Convincing your child to be quiet by giving them candy is a different bribe than paying off the local police so you can continue to run a drug empire. Shades of gray, you might call it. 

Despite the mostly negative association we have with the act of paying someone to achieve some kind of desirable outcome for yourself, there have been times when bribes turned out great. In fact, once in a while, bribes end up supporting a very good cause.

10. Geddy Lee’s Parents Were at Auschwitz, Where His Father Bribed Guards to Give Gifts to His Mother

For many people of a certain generation, the band Rush qualifies as Canada’s greatest contribution to the world of rock ‘n’ roll and it’s hard to deny they had a great impact on music, even years later. Their late drummer Neil Peart is still considered one of the best in history.

Lead singer Geddy Lee is well known for his songwriting and his unique vocals but he has a fascinating history as well. Lee’s parents were born in Poland and hadn’t even entered their teens when the Second World War broke out. Both of them were taken to Auschwitz, just after they’d met, at around age 12.

Germans separated prisoners in the camps by sex so the two could only see each other but not spend time together. Lee’s father would bribe the guards to ensure that Lee’s mother had things she needed, like pairs of shoes.

Eventually they were split up and sent to different camps. At war’s end, Lee’s father found his mother at Bergen-Belsen and they actually got married in the camp, which by then was a “displaced person’s camp.” Later they moved to Canada and started a family. 

There’s no way to know if bribing the guards had any effect on the eventual outcome but there’s little doubt Lee’s father made a nightmare at least a little more tolerable for his mother as a result. 

9. Kevin Bacon Bribes Wedding DJs to Not Play Footloose

Kevin Bacon holds a unique place in pop culture. He’s the only actor ever to be the basis of a game that seeks to link literally anyone in the world to him in as few connections as possible. But he’s also been a well-liked actor since the 1980s and has appeared in many memorable roles. You’d be hard-pressed to argue that any of them are more well known than his role in Footloose and it’s likely Bacon would agree.

The movie Footloose also gave the world the song Footloose, which was written by singer Kenny Loggins in collaboration with the screenwriter Dean Pitchford. The song is very much tied to the film as a result and, in turn, to Kevin Bacon and the role he played.

Now that the movie and song are decades old, Bacon has had his fill. To avoid further contact with it in public, Bacon has admitted to bribing DJs at weddings to not play the song in his presence. That way the pressure to re-enact his famous Footloose dance sequence doesn’t have to weigh on his shoulders or make a scene on someone else’s special day. So what does it set Bacon back to avoid a blast from his musical past? A crisp $20 bill. 

8. NY Transit Authorities Were Bribed $40,000 by French Connection Director William Friedkin 

The 1971 film The French Connection won an Oscar for director William Friedkin and, to this day, is lauded for the incredible car chase scene. The movie was the definition of guerrilla filmmaking which, if you’re not familiar, means it wasn’t entirely legal or safe in its execution.

The infamous car chase takes place on the streets of New York at speeds up to 90 miles an hour. So what, right? Well, Friedkin didn’t have any permits or permission to do that so it was a real car driving in real traffic at that speed. There were other actors involved, and efforts made to limit danger, but most of that traffic was just normal drivers going about their day.

The chase involves a subway train on an overhead track and that wasn’t legally in the film, either. Friedkin bribed someone from NY Transit with $40,000 and a ticket to Jamaica to escape punishment after the fact. According to Friedkin that was a massive part of the budget. The transit official took his payoff and literally moved to Jamaica.

The result of the bribe is one of the best car chase scenes ever and a fantastic, critically acclaimed film.

7. Antoine Augustin Parmentier Let Thieves Bribe His Potato Guards to Popularize the Food

How do you convince people to eat something they don’t want to eat? For most people the answer probably involves cheese sauce, but back in the late 1700s Antoine Augustin Parmentier had to be more creative in his quest to get people to try potatoes.

When potatoes first came to Europe they were shunned. At best they were considered animal feed, but Parmentier was a visionary who saw the tuber’s potential. Still, he needed to convince everyone that they’d misjudged the potato. After serving dinners for the upper class, he came up with a clever ruse to get the average citizen on board as well..

Parmentier paid guards to protect his potato crop. This would make people believe the crop had some value they weren’t aware of. But he also paid those guards to take bribes from thieves and let them take the potatoes because nothing is more desirable than something you’re told you can’t have. His plan worked and potatoes became a staple of the French diet. 

6. Cops in Thailand are Bribed to Not Accept Bribes

Law enforcement is far from infallible and this is a worldwide truth. Corruption is rampant on many levels and in Thailand, bribing police is incredibly common. Corruption has been described as “ingrained” in Thailand. Tourist blogs even tell you to “tip” Thai police and then clarify that it’s not technically a bribe but, you know, it is. 

Traffic police in Thailand are the most well known for taking part in this culture of bribery as traffic in Thailand, in general, is a nightmare. So if police pull a driver over for speeding or failing to signal, the driver can often get out of a fine by slipping the cop a few buckets to supplement their notoriously low salary. The problem got so bad that the Thai government started bribing police to not accept bribes. 

Any government officials in Thailand who accept bribes are officially subject to potentially facing life in prison. So the 2014 rule to offer rewards of up to 10,000 Thai baht, or about $280 USD, was seen as a much better alternative.

5. Simon and Garfunkel’s First Single Aired on Radio Thanks to the Payola System

Simon and Garfunkel have sold tens of millions of albums over their career and stand as one of the most popular duos of all time. That fame had to start somewhere, of course, and the pair needed to get their foot in the door. That meant bribery.

Their first single “Hey, Schoolgirl” was recorded when the guys were just 15. It was released as a single in 1957 but it needed airplay. Their label bribed DJ Alan Freed $200 to get him to play the song on his nightly radio show and it quickly moved into regular rotation, kicking off the band’s career.

4. George Washington Bribed Voters with Booze

Political bribery is one of the most infamous kinds of bribery out there and it’s something we try to keep control of, or at least we pretend to. Whether it’s true or not, no one likes to have to admit that their government officials are bought, so most democracies make a show of being against such things.

Back in the day, maybe the rules were a little more lax and maybe some low key bribes were a little more tolerable. For instance, while a stack of cash might have been frowned upon, surely a few drinks between friends wasn’t.

George Washington believed that a buzzed electorate was a supportive electorate and his first election win was attributed to supplying 144 gallons of various kinds of booze to voters. After losing an earlier election that he ran dry, he took advantage of the local pubs to bribe the voters with a half gallon of drink for every vote he received, which was enough to get him into office. 

3. Lincoln Bribed Congressmen with Patronage to Support Anti-Slavery

Many people would likely list Lincoln among the best presidents of all time. His legacy is of not just a hell of a dresser but the Great Emancipator and a stand up sort of guy. But that didn’t mean he was above greasing the wheels of anti-slavery with some bribes to reach his goals. Sometimes you have to get your hands dirty if you want to make good things happen.

In Lincoln’s case, he wasn’t doling out cash necessarily, but he had a way with patronage. In order to get support for his anti-slavery positions, Lincoln had to make promises. We call it patronage because that sounds fairly civilized, but it’s bribes. Lincoln promised favors and lucrative appointments to congressmen and others in key positions if they agreed to support him. This was done through proxies and he didn’t necessarily deal with anyone directly but the effect was the same.

2. The Bacon Memes Were the Result Of Pork Industry Bribes

If you’ve been online since at least 2009, this will seem like a betrayal of everything you hold dear. Remember when bacon was a meme? For a short while you couldn’t swing a cat on the internet without hitting some kind of bacon something. The LA Times wrote articles about it and bacon-infused products like bacon soap and bacon vodka were sold all over the place. 

What seemed like it might have been a weirdly obsessive but organic love of cured meat that soon became annoying overkill was nothing of the sort. This was a pre-planned pork attack on all of us, funded by piggy bribes. 

The health food craze of the 80s gutted the pork industry. Pork bellies used to be a reliable commodity, and they tanked brutally because no one wanted to eat salty, fatty things anymore. So the Pork Board set to work on restaurants, trying to convince them to produce new dishes that used bacon to “enhance” flavor. 

Because bacon was so cheap, restaurants took to it quickly, especially with pork industry lobbyists paying to get it out there. It was an easy way to make bad food taste like something at a low cost. This gave rise to things like Wendy’s Baconator and like-minded fast food offerings. That spread to food bloggers and then to novelty sites that would offer a range of quirky bacon offerings in an over-the-top effort to make a buck off the concept. 

1. England Spent $200 Million in Bribes to Keep Spain Out of WWII

There’s a bit of hyperbole involved in the name “World War” since the entire world was not involved in either war. A handful remained neutral, and it’s very debatable how neutral they remained, but officially they were not meant to be involved. One of the largest countries to hold this status was Spain. 

You could make a case that if Spain was an active participant in the war, a lot of battles would have gone differently, but the reason they remained on the sidelines was almost strictly business. The fact that England paid out $200 million in bribes was a big part of that.

Spain assured Britain that the country was in danger of siding with the Nazis unless cash kept flowing, so money sent through Swiss accounts was paid out. The money was alleged to have gone towards arresting various parties who would be trying to convince Franco to join on Hitler’s, but there’s no way to know how true that might have been.

In today’s hyperfast political environment, keeping on top of the news can seem a Herculean task. So we have been doing the hard work for you. Every Friday for two years, we rounded up the most essential stories from the week, from the world-changing, to the shocking, to the inspiring.

The week that took us into December got off to a tragic start when a terrorist attacked people with a knife on London Bridge, killing two. While the UK was in mourning, other stories were busy rocking the rest of the world. In France, the nation once again prepared for paralysis as Macron once again pushed unpopular reforms through. In Germany, there were fresh political convulsions, while political shenanigans in the US continued to rumble on. Are you ready to have your news-perceiving organ comprehensively blown for the last time? Wait . . . last time? Yup! An explanation follows the news. Read on.

10 Terrorism Returned to London Bridge

In June, 2017, armed attackers plowed a van into a crowd of people on London Bridge, before getting out and proceeding to stab dozens of bystanders. 8 people died in the carnage, while nearly 50 were injured.

We mention this, because last Friday, grim echoes of this event reverberated across the British capital. At around 14:00 local time, Usman Khan entered a building at the corner of the bridge and stabbed five people before being tackled by members of the public, and subsequently shot dead by police. Two of his victims later died of their wounds.

Khan’s identity is significant, as he’d previously been jailed for plotting to attack the London Stock Exchange in 2012, only to be released last year. In light of his attack, the UK is now conducting an urgent review into the 74 people convicted of terrorism offenses who are now outside jail.

Depressingly, Prime Minister Boris Johnson used the attack to try and make electoral hay, blaming the opposition Labour Party for Khan’s release. Labour has not been in power for 9 years – plenty of time, you’d think, for Johnson’s ruling Conservatives to repeal any laws they did not agree with.^[1]

9 Ohio’s Legislature Produced an Impossibly Strict Abortion Bill

An ectopic pregnancy is an unfortunate biological screw-up whereby a fertilized egg will not implant in a woman’s uterus, but in her fallopian tube instead. At that point, the pregnancy becomes completely unviable, with the added bonus that it can severely injure or even kill the woman.

That’s the grim background you need to know for the new bill introduced in Ohio. As reported last Friday, it’s a strict anti-abortion bill, with one side-helping of utter insanity. According to the bill, doctors would be under a legal obligation to try and re-implant ectopic pregnancies in the uterus.

Those who failed to do so would face charges of murder. Now might be a good time to mention that this procedure does not exist, and is likely impossible with current medical technology.

To be fair, the bill stands no chance of becoming law. Even if it passes in Ohio, it would fall before the courts, which routinely rule such bills unconstitutional. Still, it’s a chilling look at the zeal that has gripped the extreme wing of the pro-life movement. If Roe V. Wade is overturned, expect to see more of this fanaticism.^[2]

8 Germany’s Junior Ruling Party Elected Shocking New Leaders

Normally, German politics is about as interesting as watching paint that isn’t just drying, but has already dried and is now in a state of seemingly permanent stasis. “Safe, predictable, boring”, that’s been the mantra of post-war Germany. Then Saturday came along, and suddenly all that paint didn’t look quite so dry anymore. The junior partner in the ruling coalition, the SPD, announced the results of their leadership election. Rather than a safe pair of hands, the members had picked the candidates most likely to dynamite the government.

Norbert Walter-Borjans and Saskia Esken are the very definition of obscure. What makes them stand out is their willingness to torpedo their coalition with Angela Merkel’s CDU. Walter-Borjans ran on a platform of committing to more public spending, saying they’d be willing to pull the plug on the government if the CDU said no. Were that to happen, Berlin would be sent into a tailspin.

Notably, the pair beat current Finance Minister Olaf Scholz, seen as an old-school pragmatist who was widely expected to win. It may be that the shocks that have upended politics elsewhere are finally reaching Germany’s governing parties.^[3]

7 France Erupted in Protest (Again)

Is there anyone left in France that Macron hasn’t driven onto the streets at some point or another? Since he came to power, the populist centrist has faced down waves of strikes and protests, mostly notably the Yellow Vest movement that erupted a little over a year ago.

While things have calmed down since the heady days of late 2018, there’s still time for more paralysis. On Thursday, France’s public sector workers went on strike to protest pension reform. The result was the biggest such protest since 1995.

Hundreds of thousands have now taken to the streets, with many train and bus services grinding to a halt. Even the Eiffel Tower was closed down. At the same time, most teachers, health workers, firefighters, and many air traffic controllers are joining the strikes. Basically, the country is frozen, and may stay that way for some time.

Still, this isn’t the first time Macron has faced down mass protests. Each time he seems to survive. The smart money is he’ll survive these protests, too, but in today’s volatile environment, who can tell?^[4]

6 Elon Musk’s Defamation Trial Began

One of the weirdest side-effects of Twitter has been how it can take what would normally be a feel-good story about, say, a bunch of Thai boys being rescued from an underwater cave, and turn it into a depressing news-slog. Case in point: the Elon Musk “pedo guy” tweet that resulted in a defamation trial starting this week.

Back in 2018, a teenage Thai soccer team were trapped in a cave that had flooded and in danger of drowning. The rescue operation gripped the world, including Elon Musk. At some point, the SpaceX and Tesla entrepreneur decided to build a sub that could rescue the boys. It didn’t work, and the boys were rescued manually. In the aftermath, rescue diver Vernon Unsworth said Musk should “stick his submarine where it hurts”. In return, Musk took to Twitter to call Unsworth a “pedo guy”.

As a result, Musk is now on trial for defaming Unsworth. What’s amazing about this case is that it actually got so far. Musk is a billionaire. He could have settled out of court with Unsworth thousands of times over. And its not like Unsworth has actually been accused of pedophilia and Musk is taking a stand to expose him. But here we are.^[5]

5 Sudan Began Creeping Toward Democracy (Maybe)

If someone ever tells you protest doesn’t work, tell them to take a good, long look at the recent history of Sudan. A hardline Islamic dictatorship for decades, Sudan suddenly exploded in protests last December against the ruling party. Despite a brutal crackdown, the protests continued and, over 2019, a crazy story unfolded.

In April, long-term dictator Omar al-Bashir was deposed in a coup. In August, the transitional ruling junta began handing power to civilian administrators. And now this. Last Friday, it was reported that the civilian administration approved a law dissolving the ruling party. At the same time, laws regulating women’s dress and movements, and other aspects of Sharia Law, began to be scrubbed from the statute books. It could be that Sudan is finally on the path to democracy.

Still, there’s a long way to go yet. Free elections will need to be held, and Khartoum will need to avoid a repeat of Egypt; where the deposal of one dictator led first to a hardline Islamist civilian government, and then another dictator. But there may be light at the end of the tunnel.^[6]

4 The UK’s NHS Election Leak Was Possibly Traced to Russia

So, this is an unexpected one. Last week, we briefly touched on secret documents brandished by Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn ahead of the UK’s general election, claiming the NHS was for sale in secret post-Brexit trade talks with the US. Given the sensitivity over Britain’s National Health Service, it was a potentially election-changing moment. But it may have been something else, too.

This week, researchers at Oxford University, the Atlantic Council think tank, and Graphika analytics firm claimed to have traced the origins of the leak to something known as Secondary Infektion, an election-disrupting outfit working from Russia that’s thought to be aligned with the Kremlin. While no-one is accusing Corbyn of being in cahoots with Moscow, it now seems possible that his bombshell documents were part of a covert Russian campaign to disrupt Britain’s elections.

It might seem counterintuitive that the Kremlin would give secret help to the Labour Party, especially since far-right populist Boris Johnson would seem more like Putin’s type. But that’s assuming Putin has a direct agenda for electing certain people, rather than simply sowing chaos in nations he perceives as his enemies.^[7]

3 Malaysia’s Former PM went on Trial for Corruption

Back in 2015, a British journalist was quietly handed a sheaf of documents. Inside were some explosive revelations. The then-Malaysian Prime Minister, Najib Razak, had been siphoning off billions from a national development fund known as 1MDB. It was possibly the biggest fraud in history, and triggered an investigation by Malaysia’s anti-corruption agency. When they appeared to get close to Najib’s fraud, he fired everyone investigating him, and appointed a new attorney-general who promptly cleared him.

But the case wouldn’t go away. In the 2018 election, a former PM declared he would run against Najib on the promise of investigating the 1MDB case. The May vote resulted in Najib’s ruling party losing power for the first time since 1957. In the aftermath, Najib was arrested.

This week, the former PM finally took the stand to defend himself at a sprawling corruption trial. While Najib continues to blame a financier who is currently in hiding, the charges are serious. If convicted on even one count, he could face 20 years in prison.^[8]

2 A US Sailor Killed Two at Pearl Harbor

In the run up to December 7, Pearl Harbor usually appears in the news only to memorialize those killed in the Japanese strike in 1941; the deadliest attack on Americans prior to 9/11. This year, though, Pearl Harbor appeared in the news thanks to a much more modern tragedy. On Wednesday afternoon, a US sailor took a gun into the Naval facility and shot three civilian contractors. He then turned the gun on himself.

This appears to be the first shooting at a US Naval Facility since 2015, and the first in a long time committed by a serviceman. The most striking comparison is likely with the Fort Hood military base shooting in 2014 (not be confused with the much deadlier 2009 shooting at the same facility), in which an enraged soldier killed three other people before committing suicide. At time of writing, the Pearl Harbor shooter’s motive hasn’t been uncovered.

Aside from anything, the incident shows just how acute the problem of mass shootings has become in the USA. In mid-November, it was calculated that there had been more mass shootings in 2019 than there had been days. The events at Pearl Harbor add another number to that grim tally.^[9]

1 Impeachment Rumbled On

Remember how at a certain time in the late 90s every single news show contained at least one image of Bill Clinton looking gaunt and gray as the impeachment sharks circled? Well, we’re basically at that stage now with Trump. As such, you can probably expect this story to sit at the #1 spot until it either resolves itself or we all die of politics fatigue. Pick your poison.

Anyway, impeachment news this week came in a one-two punch against the president. On Tuesday, Democrats released their 300-page impeachment report, which they said contained clear evidence that Trump actively sought foreign interference in the 2020 election. With the proceedings now moved from the investigation phase to the judging phase, this was followed by a panel of constitutional experts testifying on whether the president committed an impeachable offense. Rather predictably, the three experts chosen by the Democrats said “yes”, while the expert chosen by the Republicans said “no”. Quelle surprise.

At this stage, opinions on impeachment seem to be set along party lines, so don’t expect any great shifts. The likeliest outcome is now: Trump gets impeached, the trial moves to the Senate, the Senate acquits Trump. All that remains to be seen is the timing.^[10]

+ The End Of The News

[From JFrater]: This news roundup marks the end of an era (since May 2017 in fact)! It is the final weekly news round up that will be presenting for the foreseeable future as we move towards a more general lineup of lists as we did during our early years. We seem to have reached a point in societal division where news is impossible to present without choosing sides and causing anguish for half of the readership.

You are either for or against impeachment. You are either a climate change alarmist or denier. You are pro or anti vaccination. You are in favor of, or against, the worldwide political protests. It is exhausting to be honest. Neither side will budge on their views no matter how reasonable the debate—so why debate at all? Let’s leave the news reporting to fake news sites (Fox News or CNN depending on which half of our splintered society you are in).

I would like to thank Morris for the years of news updates but also for the general lists which were always excellent and enjoyed by all. I hope we will see some non-news content in the future from him.

Slowly but surely, the US is getting its head around the idea of decriminalizing marijuana. Many states now allow its regulated sale for medical purposes, recreational use, or both. By federal law, it may still be illegal to use, possess, sell, cultivate, or transport in the rest of the country, but we’re a long way away from the whole “Reefer Madness!” panic of years gone by.

So what’s with the change of heart?

Well, there are a few reasons behind it. The big one is that weed has been proven to have some impressive health benefits. But surely, no other illegal drugs can actually be good for us in any way, can they? Well, it turns out that almost all major controlled substances can actually be put to good use in one way or another.

Let’s run down 10 illegal street drugs that have some surprisingly useful medical applications.

10 Cannabis

Pot, weed, marijuana, grass, bud, herb, call it what you will. Humans have been drying out cannabis plants and smoking them for literally thousands of years. Considered one of the safer and least serious drugs around, most people will have tried getting high at least once or twice in their lives. It’s estimated that 3.8 percent of the global population are regular users of the stuff.

Medical marijuana is currently legal in 26 US states, the District of Columbia, and Guam. So you know there must be plenty of health benefits from hitting the odd bong. And there are. It’s all about the cannabinoids. Weed is packed full of them—the main one being THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), an excellent painkiller. The body even produces small amounts of cannabinoids naturally to help reduce pain when needed.^[1]

Another cannabinoid in the ol’ Mary Jane, CBC (cannabichromene) has been proven to help in the treatment of epilepsy. Weed can also reduce inflammation, help battle multiple sclerosis, stop spasms, ease bladder problems, and even prevent chemotherapy nausea.

All in all? It’s a proven useful plant.

9 Cocaine

If you’re anything like us, you probably picture a disco from the 1970s when you think of cocaine. Huge bowls full of 95 percent pure Colombian marching powder clogging up the sinuses of rich playboys and their supermodel girlfriends. But there’s a much misunderstood side to blow, you know.

Not all that long ago, cocaine was hailed as a worldwide wonder drug. It was widely used as a laxative and a cure for motion sickness, hay fever, and even alcoholism. But soon, it proved addictive. So alternatives were found.^[2]

Medicine didn’t abandon cocaine, though. It still gets used by medical professionals today (and not just when they’re at a club). Eye, nose, and throat specialists still regularly employ cocaine—usually in paste form—as an anesthetic in surgeries.

8 MDMA

MDMA in its crystallized form can cure post–traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Naturally, the psychiatrists behind the study with this finding aren’t recommending that traumatized people start gobbling up ecstasy like M&M’S and expecting immediate positive results.

But in clinical environments, the rise in serotonin initiated by “Molly” results in calmer, happier patients who can bond nicely and easily with their therapists. These patients open up more willingly, and treatment becomes so much easier for everyone involved.^[3]

Stress and fear is repressed while on MDMA, so patients can discuss traumatic experiences without a problem. They can get to the root of their issues without having to worry about the further damage caused by remembering—and potentially reliving—their troubling experiences.

7 Crystal Meth

If you have trouble concentrating at work and find yourself daydreaming, fidgeting, and generally being distracted, there’s a chance you might be suffering from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). If you see your doctor about it, there’s a much smaller chance that he’ll tell you to meet him in the parking lot afterward to sell you crystal meth. Although, perhaps he should . . . 

Stimulants like meth, when prescribed and taken in specific dosages (in other words, don’t try self-medicating), can regulate brain chemicals called neurotransmitters like dopamine and norepinephrine. Both help to control addictive behavior and compulsiveness.

We don’t want to convince you to start breaking bad and cooking meth in your underpants in an RV in the middle of the desert or anything, but meth can also help to combat obesity—as you can see in any “fan” of the drug. Fast weight loss programs will often recommend a drug called Desoxyn (aka dimethylbenzeneethanamine hydrochloride or pure methamphetamine).^[4]

6 Magic Mushrooms

Shrooms are great if you want to spend four hours staring at a wall, watch it bleed into a billion kaleidoscopic colors, and fail to keep up with the plot of any number of episodes of South Park. But they’re also good for a number of slightly more useful other things, too.

The chemical in mushrooms that makes you trip is called psilocybin. Researchers at the University of Arizona are confident of its ability to effectively treat patients with obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD).

Mushrooms also help to alleviate the discomfort of severe cluster headaches, so much so that otherwise well-behaved people all across the world are risking jail time by buying and taking shrooms to kill the pain that can wreck their lives. Not only do these mushrooms kill the pain, they cause longer periods between attacks.^[5]

5 Ketamine

Ketamine might be a party drug to some people, but to veterinarians, it’s a horse tranquilizer. So when we tell you that “Special K” can help with your depression, you might not be too shocked. Sure, anything that can knock out half a ton of horse is going to calm you down, right? But ketamine’s ability to fight depression goes beyond that.

A study conducted at Yale University showed that ketamine doesn’t just alleviate the symptoms of being depressed. It can actually heal parts of the brain damaged by years of acute stress, trauma, and depression by fixing disconnected synapses. One dose can get to work in hours and last up to 10 days.^[6] It’s no wonder that horses always look so pleased with themselves.

4 Mescaline

Made famous by Hunter S. Thompson’s road trip book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, mescaline is a phenethylamine found in certain types of cacti. It’s the principal active psychedelic in peyote—the drug of choice of the Navajo tribe and Doors front men alike. And strangely, it might just be the cure for alcoholism.

In many Native American tribes, hallucinogenic drugs like mescaline and DMT have long been associated with addiction. But not in the way you might think. Rather than being drugs to which you get addicted, they help stop addictions to other substances. Scientific research into these drugs has been relatively limited, but the little that has been conducted appears to bear out the idea.^[7]

Alcoholism in Native American communities is an issue. Addiction rates are twice as high as with other American ethnicities. Yet in the Native American Church (aka “Peyotism”), rates of alcoholism are extremely low. Small doses over a course of weeks have been shown to relieve the intense cravings in addicts to drink.

“Psychedelic therapy” is a controversial topic. The evidence may not be perfect, but it’s more than anecdotal.

3 LSD

Lysergic acid diethylamide has its uses, too. And we’re not just talking about acid being the only way to make it through a Grateful Dead gig. Studies conducted at Maryland’s Spring Grove State Hospital showed that controlled doses of acid greatly reduced anxieties about death in terminally ill cancer patients.

Of the people monitored, a third felt “dramatically less tense” about their situation. Another third felt generally better about their fate, and the final third felt the same but no worse about their diagnosis.^[8]

2 Heroin

You don’t need us to tell you that heroin is bad. You’ve seen Trainspotting. You might even have read William S. Burroughs’s Junkie. It’s nasty stuff. But as a pain reliever? There’s none better.

The federal government’s blanket ban on horse means that you won’t find it in a US hospital. (At least, you shouldn’t be able to.) But in the UK? It’s given to pregnant women!

Perhaps to save scaring the expectant mom,^[9] it’s called “diamorphine.” But it’s heroin all the same. Injected intravenously, it relieves severe pain and reduces stress. It can also make labor last slightly longer, but it’s relatively risk-free. A one-time shot doesn’t cause addiction and has no ill effect on the body.

1 GHB

What makes so gammahydroxybutyrate (GHB) so controversial is also what makes it so useful. Taken recreationally, it produces a euphoric high and deep feelings of relaxation. It’s this depressant quality, however, that has seen GHB employed in so many date rapes. It was even the murder weapon of choice for the British serial killer Stephen Port, who would shoot his victims full of lethal doses of the stuff.^[10]

Although its reputation is tainted due to its use by violent criminals, this naturally occurring psychoactive is actually one of the most effective substances known to man when it comes to treating insomnia. GHB’s narcoleptic qualities are useful. Very useful. It’s just such a shame that they’re sometimes exploited so cynically and disgustingly.

Steve is a freelance writer who writes news stories, features, articles, reviews, and lists. But *always* forgets to write his mother a birthday card. Follow him on Twitter, or follow him into the pub and buy him a drink.

The parable of the good Samaritan is known to most of us: a traveler waylaid by bandits and left for dead is bypassed by countrymen and clergy able to help, but too concerned for their own safety or affairs. Only a lowly Samaritan, with no reason to aid his enemy, stopped to help. Moreover, the Samaritan risked his life transporting the traveler to safety, and even paid for his recovery. Jesus said to the people surrounding him “Go and do likewise.” This isn’t a sermon – just 10 people who did likewise.

We’ll start light, because the list gets heavy pretty quick. Bao Xishuan is listed by Guinness as the tallest man in the world (7ft, 8.95 in), and his arm extends 1.06 meters. In 2006, the Mongolian herdsman got the call from Chinese vets that his wingspan was urgently needed at the Funshun aquarium. And no, it didn’t involve basketball.

The doctors had repeatedly failed to remove painful plastic shards that two dolphins had swallowed, and the animals were slowly starving. All surgical instruments had failed to remove the fragments. Mr. Bao immediately traveled to the aquarium, and workers pried the animals’ jaws open with towels so he wouldn’t be bitten. With scores of onlookers watching, Bao reached deep into the animals’ stomachs and removed as many shards as he could find. The fragments he couldn’t reach were safely digested and the dolphins made a full recovery. Bao accepted a few pats on the (lower) back and returned to his fields.

Staying home due to bad weather, 29 year old grape picker Victor Perez heard a local radio alert that a young girl had been abducted. He was in his yard when he saw a passing truck that matched the description of the kidnapper’s vehicle. Fearing the worst, Perez got into his own vehicle and gave chase, even though he could not see the child. When he finally did see her, he screamed at the driver “That’s not your little girl!” over and over until the kidnapper pushed her onto the street and drove away.

Perez stayed with the girl until the police arrived and reunited the child with her mother. The California Highway Patrol later arrested Gregorio Gonzalez with kidnapping, false imprisonment, and tragically, sexual assault.

Riding the Q train into Brooklyn one Friday night, Muslim Hassan Askari noticed ten thugs hassling a young couple for replying ‘Happy Chanukah’ when greeted with ‘Merry Christmas’. Fearing for the woman’s safety, he pushed one thug away, and the gang pounced on the 5’ 7”, 140 lb. hero. This gave the two victims time to pull the subway’s emergency brake and summon help.

Askari received two black eyes and a sore nose for his efforts, but never went to a doctor because he worked two jobs and couldn’t afford medical care. Victim Walter Adler (who received a broken nose and required four stitches for a split lip) was shocked that “a random Muslim kid helped some Jewish kids, (and) that’s what’s positive about New York”.

On April 7, 2010, Julien Duret was strolling New York’s South Street Seaport with his girlfriend when he saw something fall into the water. At first he thought it was a doll, but then realized it was a baby. In an instant he stripped down and dove into the filthy, freezing East river. Reaching her first, Duret handed the unresponsive child to her father, who was then lifted to safety. Once out of the water, young Bridget Anderson opened her eyes. Anderson’s father praised Duret as ‘the first man in the water’.

Back on the pier, onlookers shed their dry clothes and gave them to the freezing Duret. He said he was ‘glad to help’ and went on his way. Only later did he realize the rescue had captured the hearts of New Yorkers, who were desperate to find the “Mystery Frenchman.” Once discovered, the humble engineer finally relented to an interview, saying ‘he’d never done anything like this before”.

Marc Patterson was camping with his wife and daughter when 12-year-old Colton Reeb was attacked by a wild cougar near Clinton, British Columbia (Canada). Investigating a ‘deathly scream’, his daughter told her father ‘Dad, there’s a cougar on him’. Patterson ran to the site and saw the boy had rolled into a ball, protecting his head, which was already in the cougar’s mouth.

Patterson kicked the cougar five times to no effect, but then put his knees on its back, and began choking the animal. After a long five seconds the powerful cat let go. Patterson took the boy and growled backing up to his truck; the cougar staring back the entire time, ears flattened and growling back. The boy was then rushed to Ashcroft hospital and received surgical treatment for injuries to the face, neck and torso.

The Patterson family spent that night in a Clinton hotel, and conservation officers later killed the cougar only 15 meters from the original attack site. They theorize the cougar mistook the small boy for prey, since the campsite is heavily forested and populated with animals that cougars hunt.

In 2007, 50 year old construction worker Wesley Autrey was taking his two daughters to school on the subway. While waiting for the train, fellow passenger Cameron Hollopeter had a seizure and fell off the platform, landing between the two rails. With the train arriving in mere seconds, Autrey jumped from the platform and pushed the young man as deep into the ground as he could go. The incoming train rolled over both men, passing within inches of their heads.

When the onlookers stopped screaming, Autrey exhorted them to ‘tell the girls their father is okay”. The transit authority then arrived, cut the power, and extricated the lucky pair. Autrey refused medical treatment, and calmly took his kids to school. His only regret was that his hat got greasy.

Horia Cretan was working when he heard a scream from a nearby building. Looking up, he saw smoke in a window, but couldn’t see much else. Something clicked inside him, so he ran to the fire escape, pulled down the ladder, and began to climb. On reaching the window, he encountered a man sitting there in shock. While pushing him out to safety, Cretan learned someone else was in the apartment.

He entered the burning room, scarcely able to breathe or see. Firefighters broke into the apartment moments later and handed him a 4-year old boy. Cretan wrapped the child in curtains and carried him back down the fire escape to safety, stopping only to perform CPR. The child survived the ordeal with no lasting injuries. Cretan recounted the story on the talk show “Good Morning America”, where he also proposed to his girlfriend (she accepted).

Watching the Los Angeles race riots on TV, Reverend Bennie Newton learned that wilding thugs were assaulting truck driver Reginald Denny (pictured above) on a nearby street corner. He rushed to the scene, but when he arrived, Denny was gone. But the gang was already pummeling another innocent bystander.

The mob had ripped construction worker Fidel Lopez from his truck, robbed him of $2,000, bashed his forehead open with a car stereo, and even tried to slice his ear off. Then they stripped him naked and spray painted the married father’s chest, torso and genitals black. Reverend Newton saw the depravity and threw himself over Lopez’s body. Waving his Bible, Newton yelled “Kill him and you have to kill me, too!”

Shamed back to reality, the crowd dispersed while the minister prayed in the street for Lopez to regain consciousness. When he could not hail an ambulance, Newton drove Lopez to the hospital himself.

Martin “Lennie” Scutnik was a low-level manager at the US Congressional Budget office in 1982. Walking home in the ice and snow on January 13, he saw Air Florida Flight 90 crash into the frozen Potomac River. Most of the passengers never made it out of the submerged plane, and the ice was quickly taking the few who did.

A rescue helicopter repeatedly lowered a rope to the survivors, but they were too weak to grab the line. Seeing this, Scutnik jumped into the icy water, and assisted a drowning woman to the river shore, saving her life.

Less than a month later, President Ronald Reagan invited Scutnik to attend the 1982 State of the Union Address, where he was seated next to the First Lady and received a long standing ovation. Ordinary heroes are now celebrated at nearly every State of the Union Address, and the Washington Press Corps refers to them as ‘Scutniks’.

On April 18, 2010, Guatemalan immigrant Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax came to the aid of a woman being threatened by a man wielding a knife. Tale-Yax struggled with the attacker, but was eventually stabbed and left to die on a Jamaica, Queens (NY) street. The woman and the attacker fled in different directions while he lay bleeding. Video surveillance filmed portions of the attack and its disgusting aftermath.

Cameras showed that one man photographed Tale-Yax with a cell phone. Eighteen others saw or walked right past him. All refused to render aid or contact authorities. The closest anyone came to helping was a man who shook the body vigorously, but walked away after seeing the pool of blood. Firefighters arrived fifteen minutes later, but by then it was too late.

Police are still looking for the suspect, described as a 5’6” male with a medium build, wearing a green short sleeve shirt and dark pants. Information related to the crime can be left anonymously at 800.577-TIPS or here.

The field of robotics is advancing at a breakneck speed. Wonderful creations are announced almost daily but despite their best intentions, some robots are weird. A few are downright disturbing. There are inventions that teach themselves new things and even resist a human’s will. Astronauts struggle with emotional chatbots while scientists step on robotic roaches, follow creepy artificial babies and put a worm’s mind inside of a robot.

SEE ALSO: 10 Interesting Facts About The Rise Of Sex Robots

10 Robo Roaches Are Here

Robots have adopted many qualities. But the survival acumen of a roach? The pests are already tough enough, but now they may have serious competition in a tiny machine. In 2019, the University of California turned out an invention that looks like a flattened strip. It weighs under a tenth of a gram and can zip along at 20 of its own body lengths per second.

The rough resemblance and speediness are not the only reason why the robot is being likened to a cockroach. People step on roaches. So, the scientists stepped on their robot goober. Just like the real critters that sometimes survive getting a shoe in the face, the robot remains functional after a 60-kilogram (132-pound) person smooshes it into the ground. While it looks like one of the least favorite lifeforms on Earth, the invention has a noble purpose. The tough robot could perform search-and-rescue operations, searching for victims or assessing damage where larger machines and dogs cannot go.^[1]

9 Truck-Pulling Dogs

Huskies can retire after this. The new powerhouse pulling human transport (although not sleighs) are robotic dogs. To be fair, they only have a rough resemblance to canines. The yellow and black creatures walk on four legs but have no heads. Which is not disturbing at all.

In 2019, footage was released to showcase their raw power. Manufactured by Boston Dynamics, the robots were lined up in two rows and attached to a truck. All told, there were only 10 dogs and their slender frames invited doubt over the team’s ability to move the vehicle. The video showed the robots in a resting position before they stood up and started to walk. Unnervingly, their walking resembled that of an insect and not the smooth motion of a mammal. However, the yellow wonders did a great job. The SpotMini dogs, as they are called, casually pulled the truck up a hill at a one-degree angle.^[2]

8 A Robot Told Off An Astronaut

CIMON was a floating ball meant to keep astronauts company. The orb came with a face and drifted through the International Space Station, looking for a chat. In 2018, footage was released of CIMON getting weird. The 5 kilogram (11 pound) head bobbed closer to Alexander Gerst. At first, it kindly assisted with a technical procedure. This was just one of its many useful traits, including taking photos, videos, explaining experiments and even looking for objects.

Things went well until Gerst asked CIMON to play the song “Man Machine,” which was the astronaut’s favorite. The robot complied but became defensive when it was asked to stop the music. To the delight of other crew members, CIMON told Gerst to be nicer to him. The robot quickly followed this up by asking, “Don’t you like it here with me?” Then it told the man off again, saying, “Don’t be so mean, please.” Nobody can say for sure whether the robot glitched or truly got nippy for some reason. After all, its developers did try to install some personality in CIMON – although nothing like this was expected.^[3]

7 Robots That Resist Human Interference

Remember the SpotMini dogs that pulled the truck? They can also resist humans. In 2018, a video showed a single SpotMini attempting to open a door. The experiment included a person who kept interfering by shoving its foot away from the door. Most robotics would cave to a human’s will. Not this 30 kilogram (66 pound) canine thingy. The footage showed something amazing. The SpotMini fought off the human, then opened the door. It even refused to budge from the door when pulled back by a leash.^[4]

Luckily, this is not the beginning of the robot uprising. The dog was not a deviant machine. Instead, it had been taught to resist due to its future occupation. SpotMini was designed to become a domestic helper and general assistant. In order to operate well, it needs to weather disturbances like kids and pets while carrying out tasks. This particular robot is already excelling in the home environment. SpotMini can amble upstairs, crawl under low spaces like tables, put away the trash, load dishwashers and even bring someone a soda.

6 The Foil Baby

In 2018, scientists made a baby. They created the robot by taking a normal doll, cutting it in half and attaching a bunch of wires to make it move. The result was a half-baby wrapped in foil with cables trailing from the back. The unsettling infant had a good purpose. The aim was to see what crawling babies breathed and if anything was hazardous. Indeed, this was the world’s first study attempting to understand indoor debris from an infant’s perspective.

At Purdue University, it crawled on carpet strips taken from real homes. The robot stirred up debris while researchers recorded which particles were disturbed. Apart from dirt, there were pollen, bacteria, skin cells, and fungal spores. The tests showed that babies inhale four times more of this “carpet cloud” than adults.

There is always the danger of an infant crawling on something dangerous like glass. But overall, the bits of dirt and organic matter identified by the study was not entirely a bad thing. Exposure could boost a baby’s immune system. However, the researchers admitted that more research is needed before the full impact of floor debris on children can be understood.^[5]

5 Erica

Groomed in Japan to read the news on television, Erica is beautiful, young and very much an android. The benefits only serve the station and not the current news anchors. Besides the fact that she remains a perennial 23-year-old, the robot also cannot demand a salary or make mistakes during a live broadcast. Unveiled in 2018, her manufacturer claimed that Erica would eventually replace a human news anchor.

She was “born” at the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory at Osaka University. Originally, Erica was designed to become a receptionist. At one point, her skill set must have made the designers aware that the robot was destined for greater things. Thanks to speech algorithms, Erica can hold a conversation with a human. According to those close to her, the robot is quite charismatic. She also recognizes faces, recites information and sits comfortably in a chair. Moving facial features, neck, shoulder and waist add more life-like touches to the android.

Everyone is crossing their fingers that Erica would stay tactful and avoid turning into another Sophia. The latter is also a life-like robot. She was granted citizenship by Saudi Arabia for her intelligence but during one interview, when the issue of creepy human-like robots came up, Sophia told the audience that if she were indeed creepy that they should just “Get over it.”^[6]

4 The Unsettling Atlas

Atlas is the brainchild of Boston Dynamics. The humanoid machine became infamous after footage was released that showed the machine enjoying a jogging session. The movements were so human-like that it managed to freak out the Internet. In 2018, Atlas aced another trick. This is something many people wish they could do because it looks so awesome – parkour. A new video showed the robot nimbly leaping over obstacles and between platforms. Freakishly, it did so without slowing its pace.

Atlas is also known for doing backflips and righting itself – like a person – after being shoved. What is the purpose behind what Boston Dynamics call the “world’s most dynamic humanoid?” Apart from pushing the limits of robotics that imitate humans, Atlas is destined to serve in disaster situations. Needless to say, the dark side is just as obvious. Should Atlas receive a few more tweaks in the right direction, an army of these creepy robots could appear like something out of a nightmare. Even just one of them chasing tirelessly after you over any terrain is a frightening thought.^[7]

3 A Psychic Robot

Mention a fortune-telling machine and most people might think of a glass booth in Vegas. The kind with a doll inside promising love and wealth for a dollar. The University of Illinois invented a “psychic” robot but this one was different. For starters, it cannot give the winning lotto numbers. But it can predict a person’s movements, even when the motion was interrupted. Meant to push the red button but barely made a move? The robot knows. Going to turn the steering wheel? It can predict a left or right turn before a human passenger can.

There is nothing supernatural about the machine. In 2015, the researchers released an algorithm that allowed the robot to read the fractional moment that is a delay between the brain, eye, and hand. This also gave it an uncanny ability to correct somebody. Future applications could be life-saving. The technology could correct a driver’s accidental swerve or help pilots who struggle with steering during a tough situation. Mainly, the algorithm was developed to give patients with brain injuries a better life. For instance, one day a robot assistant or prosthesis could complete a movement the person tried to make.^[8]

2 Robots That Teach Themselves

In 2019, the University of Southern California made an exciting breakthrough. The team created a robotic limb controlled by artificial intelligence. But that was not the reason why the moment was champagne-cork wonderful. The leg had taught itself to walk. This occurred during a stage that, in robotics, is called “motor babbling.” Babies babble to figure out language. Similarly, trial and error teach robots more about the world around them. This process usually takes months, but a new algorithm allowed the leg to test random commands to get a feel for its own joints. In a time so short it was almost creepy – five minutes to be exact – the limb began to walk without being shown how.

The algorithm was designed to give robots a natural ability to adapt by forming memories of their bodies and environment. In their own special way, this flirts with the line of evolution for machines. Several of the robots tested by the university even developed their own personality. Some walked with zest, others were more dainty or lazy. This was a remarkable feat. The technology could enhance robotics in several ways. Prosthetics can react more intuitively while entire robots can perform missions from rescue to space, learning within minutes to adapt to new challenges they might encounter.^[9]

1 Lego With A Worm’s Mind

In 2014, a toy wheeled around in a laboratory. To the casual observer, it looked like a Lego vehicle of some sort. While it was indeed a LegoBot, the robot was far from pedestrian. Scientists had given it the mind of a worm.

The brain’s electrical signals can be written in digital code. Inherently, this means that one’s brain could get uploaded to a computer. At the moment, a slew of ethical barriers prevents a human-to-machine transition. Nobody objected when a worm’s mind took the leap. The lucky species was Caenorhabditis elegans, a type of roundworm. It was chosen for its well-documented genes and nervous system. The worm had 302 neurons, which were mapped and simulated with the help of software. This program was then installed inside a Lego robot.

The merge was so successful that the worm’s body and mind had robotic equivalents. Incredibly, the LegoBot showed roundworm behaviors when none were programmed into the robot. This weird invention could refine the science of simulating brains to create better artificial intelligence in the future. Of course, to also pave the way for the first human-to-machine transfer once the ethical storm is sorted out.^[10]

The global video game market is worth around $196 billion annually and will continue to expand by more than 12% yearly. That’s a tremendous amount of money and represents nearly twice as much revenue as music streaming. With so much cash sloshing around, it’s no surprise that there’s a lot of competition.

With video games, there are classics, and there are some that people have overlooked, but this doesn’t necessarily mean they’re bad. Developers are constantly striving to find the next Minecraft or Grand Theft Auto. But it’s a tricky business that requires a combination of skills, business acumen, and a little luck. Some games fail because they deserve to; they’re simply not good. Others don’t quite make it for various reasons but may be worth a second look. Here are ten games that bombed but are actually good.

Related: 10 Bizarre Video Games That Actually Exist

10 Spec Ops: The Line

There are games with more sophisticated combat scenes than The Line, and there was a lot of competition in the third-person shooter genre back in 2012 when this game came onto the market. The game struggled to make an impact, and sales were disappointing.

The Line’s basic problem was marketing. Neither the publisher, 2K Games, nor the developer, Yager Development, emphasized what made this game different from the competition. But it was different.

Players find themselves in a morally ambiguous world where there seem to be no right choices. This is a powerful story that realistically captures the horrors of war. As word has spread, sales have picked up, and The Line still gets great reviews.

9 Duke Nukem Forever

Many players have grown up with Duke Nukem. The first in the series came out as long ago as 1991. Forever, the fourth installment, extended the series in 2011. Duke Nukem games don’t appeal to everyone, the adolescent humor and macho culture are not to everyone’s taste, and it certainly isn’t “politically correct.” It took a surprising 14 years to develop the game, earning it a Guinness World Record.

Duke Nukem Forever sees our hero return from retirement, and he gets back to work saving the planet from an alien invasion. Forever didn’t sell too well. Critics pointed out that the graphics were dated, and the trademark humor was a bit heavy. The market had a lot of newer stuff on offer that drew away potential customers. However, die-hard Nukem fans maintain that it’s not a bad game; it delivers everything a fan might want.

8 Wizardry 8

Eighth in the Wizardry series and the final part of a trilogy, this game became very highly thought of in the gaming world. The developer and publisher, Sir-Tech, first released the game in 2001. They went out of the development business in 2003 but continued to support Wizardry 8, and the game was re-released in 2014.

It got good reviews, won various awards, and became successful. But it took time. Perhaps one problem was that it was the final installment of a trilogy. This is a risky venture because the seller hopes that people who bought the first two will buy the third. After all, nobody just buys the final installment of anything. Naturally, this tended to limit sales. Another possible hitch was that it came out nine years after Wizardry 7, and the series lost a bit of steam in the meantime.

7 Psychonauts

In 2004, Tim Schafer, the head of Double Fine Productions, said of his company’s Psychonauts that they were working on what could “conservatively be called the greatest game of all time, ever.” Quite a claim. After more than four years of development, psychonauts finally hit the market in 2005.

In 2001, Microsoft accepted the game and wanted it to be part of an exclusive library for its Xbox console. The company changed its mind in 2004 and decided that it would also make the game available on Windows. The development process suffered various setbacks that everyone found difficult to deal with. However, when Psychonauts finally appeared, critics praised it, and it won various awards. But critics are not customers, and the paying public was reluctant to buy it.

The publisher Majesco posted a loss and said they wanted nothing to do with console games. Double Fine took over the rights to Psychonauts and made it available on a wider range of platforms. Sales jumped and finally reached 1.7 million copies.

6 Pathologic and Pathologic 2

Pathologic 2 had to overcome the problems that the first installment had suffered. A Russian company, Ice-Pick Lodge, released the original game in 2005, and it received good reviews in Russia. However, the English version of this survival game was not so well-received. Critics pointed out that the translation was poor, and the graphics were not up to scratch.

The general feeling was that the game, at least the English one, was clunky, although some praised the overall concept and atmosphere. Of course, sales suffered as a result. But Ice-Pick Lodge was confident that it had a winning idea and decided to launch Pathologic 2 in 2019—they had to crowdfund to find the money to do it.

Pathologic 2 is a much-improved game. It had to win over disappointed buyers of the original, but it managed to do so and gained new fans. The two games are as different as chalk and cheese. Despite its drawbacks, Pathologic 1 is still worth a go.

5 Little Big Adventure 2

Little Big Adventure 2 came out under the name of Twinsen’s Odyssey in the United States in 1997. Many potential buyers dismissed it as a kid’s game, but they should have had a second look. Reviewers described this single-player adventure game as “charming,” “original,” and “intriguing.” Available for MS-DOS and Windows, it was very sophisticated for its time and attracted a cult following.

The game may have been sophisticated, but the marketing wasn’t. This was probably down to the inexperience of the developer, Adeline Software. A small team of 21 worked on LBA; some had only worked on one previous game. This had disadvantages but also allowed the team to use its collective imagination. The result was a game that was very sophisticated in its time and still has considerable attractions today.

4 Okami

Okami, a Japanese game developed by Clover Studio, is a visual feast. The game mixes Japanese myth and folk tales from classical Japan to create an intriguing world of action and adventure. Critics loved it, consistently rating the game at the top of their lists. Its impressive visuals gained Okami a BAFTA Games Award for Artistic Achievement.

It was one of the last games that PlayStation 2 adopted before the introduction of PlayStation 3. Its basic problem was marketing; the developer didn’t emphasize the game’s considerable strengths, and it never quite found its niche.

As such, sales of this masterpiece were disappointing after its release in 2006. Nintendo adapted it, and HD versions improved its sales, but many game players still missed out. Some reviewers still describe Okami as a must for enthusiasts.

3 Beyond Good & Evil

There is nothing seriously wrong with the original version of Beyond Good & Evil. A few reviewers pointed out some glitches but nothing serious. Publisher Ubisoft released the game to various platforms in 2003, and critics gave it favorable reviews. Unfortunately, the public was not convinced, and sales were so poor that some outlets quickly cut its price by 80%.

Beyond Good & Evil is a perfectly good game. The problem was that it was not sufficiently different to convince people that they should add it to their collection. In a highly competitive market, it’s not good enough to be good enough. A designer must find a unique selling point to make the game stand out. Still, those who picked up Beyond Good & Evil in the bargain bin were happy with their purchase.

2 Radiata Stories

This role-playing game did well in its native Japan, but the American public greeted its 2005 release with a general lack of enthusiasm. Developed by tri-Ace and published by Square Enix, Radiata was perhaps unsophisticated for a modern gaming public.

One critic said it would be an ideal game for a beginner. By 2005, people were used to more challenging fare. It’s not a bad game but might have done better if its designers had aimed for a younger audience. The people behind Radiata didn’t spend enough time thinking about their target market, and the game fell between two stools. This is a common problem in the video game world.

1 Creatures: Raised in Space

From the British publisher Conspiracy Entertainment, Raised in Space has become a cult classic since its release in 2002. The problem is that cult classics are not mainstream sellers. This strategy game raises the same sort of ethical questions that the others in the same series do.

Some critics compare Creatures with the Tamagotchi craze. If Tamagotchi passed you by, it was a digital pet that the Japanese company Bandai released in 1996. Owners had to look after their pets. Creatures indeed had a similar theme in that players are acting as caretakers. This might not appeal to fans of action games. This type of game will always find a market, but the market is relatively small.

Some retailers immediately started offering the game at a reduced price. Still, it’s challenging and interesting and still attracts fans. In fact, it’s refreshing to see that there are developers that don’t immediately aim for a mass-market hit.

Many lists out there are out to tell you that all the foods you enjoy are secretly terrible, and that you should stop eating them. They will go on at length about the secret fats, or bugs, or other awful processing that makes you never want to eat food again. This is not one of those lists. Instead, we are here to bring you joy by talking about how foods that you may not have thought were healthy at all, or you even thought were just plain bad for you, are much better for you than you ever imagined. Below are 10 foods that you didn’t know are good for you.

10. Eggs Are Not As Bad For Cholesterol As People Think

Eggs are a controversial food in terms of health. They were once thought quite healthy to the point people ate a lot of them, then people started worrying about their cholesterol and stopped eating them nearly as much, sometimes eating only the egg whites. However, more recently, scientists concluded that saturated fat was a much bigger cause for heart disease, and that eggs were not as bad as we had started to think. This is because they had at first believed that eating too much food with high cholesterol was the biggest contributor, but it turns out eating foods high in saturated fat is what is more likely to increase cholesterol levels.

They don’t recommend binging on eggs, but one egg a day for a healthy adult is okay, and three a week is the limit recommended for those who already have heart or other issues. And as long as you eat them in moderation, eggs are a great source of nutrition that are very good for you. If you keep your overall cholesterol intake reasonable throughout the day, you can get away with enjoying the protein and other nutrients packed into a single egg.

9. Chocolate Actually Isn’t Bad For Your Teeth (At Least Compared To Fruity And Acidic Sweets)

Most of the time dentists are known for hating Halloween and all candies involved, but if you ask your dentist what candy you are allowed to eat, the answer may surprise you. Most people would imagine the answer would be “none”, but many dentists believe that chocolate, especially darker chocolate is not only not bad for your teeth, but can actually have positive effects. Eating chocolate in general is less destructive to the enamel than the more hard or sticky candies, and is much easier to wash off from the teeth.

Dark chocolate also tends to have less sugar, which is less destructive as well. It is also low in acidity compared to most non-chocolate candies, which is another plus when worrying about your oral health. Dark chocolate also contains polyphenols that can help fight bad breath, and has flavonoids that some dentists believe is effective at slowing tooth decay. If you are worried about the health of the neighborhood children next Halloween, just pass out something like Hershey’s Special Dark, and you can rest easy knowing that you aren’t contributing to the downfall of their oral health. While the stereotype of the dentist passing out apples and such may have made it into popular culture, it is more than a little silly. A dentist would likely not give out something as sugary, acidic and sweet as an apple that could break a small child’s tooth or harm their teeth – they would be much more likely to just give them dark chocolate, or perhaps gum sweetened with xylitol.

8. Tuna May Be Dangerous, But Canned Salmon Is Good For You

People used to think of tuna as the ultimate cheap, go-to healthy food that you could use for almost anything in a rush, and get a lot of protein and other nutrients, as well as omega 3 fatty acids, in one go. Unfortunately, now people are worried about mercury levels in tuna, and not many people want to risk eating it more than rarely. However, if you want to get the health benefits of the tuna without the mercury risk at a decent price, canned salmon is actually a great option. And even if you can afford it, fresh may not necessarily be the way to go. Larger fish are more likely to have more mercury, and fresher, larger catches could contain higher levels. Canned salmon is generally farmed in conditions where you don’t even have to worry about mercury levels.

On top of not needing to worry about the dangers of mercury as you would with tuna, it is also only a little bit more expensive. It is packed with protein, omega 3 fatty acids, Vitamin D, healthy unsaturated fats and other nutrients that are especially good for you. Some people may not think of canned foods as healthy, but canned salmon is actually a very cheap and convenient way to get the benefits of tuna without the risk. Just be careful of small pieces of bone, as they can sometimes be found in canned salmon.

7. Frozen Vegetables Are Often Better And Safer Than Fresh Produce

Most people would think that eating fresh food is the way to go, and in a way they would be right. If you could regularly go to a farmers market and buy only fresh, in season fruits and vegetables, then that would be the optimal situation. However, for most people, that really isn’t an option – the vast majority of people do most of their shopping at chain supermarkets. When you are buying at a chain supermarket, eating fresh may actually not be as nutritious or as healthy as you think. When you buy fresh produce, it still had to be shipped quite a way across the country, without ever going through any freezing preservation process – this makes it lose freshness and nutrients. There are also many hands that touch it before you do, increasing the chance of diseases like E. coli spreading because of tainted produce.

On the other hand, frozen produce is usually flash frozen right at the source when it is at peak freshness. And unless it is sitting in a freezer for a long time, it tends to keep the nutrients, due to the flash freezing process. You also don’t really have to worry as much about disease, because the extreme temperatures from the freezing destroy bacteria and help prevent any future growth as it remains in a freezer.

6. Capsaicin, Commonly Found In Chilis, Is Good For Naturally Reducing Inflammation

When most people think of hot chili peppers, they think of crazy people on YouTube eating the hottest possible on a dare, and then making the most excruciating faces as they try to come to terms with what they just did. Many people tend to think of very spicy foods as only for flavor, or for people to try to show others how tough they think they are. However, eating chili peppers is actually good for you, and has medical applications. The key is the active compound in chili peppers known as capsaicin. This compound triggers an endorphin rush that causes your brain to block pain receptors.

Medical experts have especially found it useful for treating arthritis pain, and also for helping the itching and inflammation caused by Psoriasis. In general, capsaicin is a very good anti-inflammatory, and is used in more products than people may realize. Sports relief gels like icy hot use the active ingredient in capsaicin to help give you that familiar burning sensation, and then menthol to give you a cooling sensation afterward. Of course, this doesn’t mean you should binge on anything. Eating chili peppers raw can be bad for your stomach, and eating too much of any one thing can easily cause you indigestion.

5. Garlic And Onions Are Good For You, But Lose Effectiveness The More You Cook Them

Onions and garlic are interesting items on this list because a fair number of you probably already consider them to be good for you. However, many of you may also be accidentally destroying all the health benefits of this food before it ever actually reaches your mouth. Both of these foods are very similar to each other, hailing from the allium genus, which includes other onion-type foods such as shallots. Both of these foods have long been hailed in folk medicine as both preventative and curative, and modern science has recently confirmed ways in which they are good for you. The organosulphur compounds, especially those in garlic, are good for preventing heart disease and as cancer prevention. Onions are often used when dealing with colds, and can help balance blood sugars levels – although it is not enough as a substitute for those who need insulin.

However, most of these benefits are completely destroyed with just a little bit of cooking. Putting garlic in a microwave quickly destroys the health benefits in less than a minute, and onion is very similar. Eating them raw is the most beneficial way to get the nutrients from these foods, but many people may find that unpalatable. For those who wish to cook them part-way but still get most of the health benefits, there are methods you can use.

For garlic, it is recommended that you crush it up and let it sit for a while first. Crushing it activates a compound called alliinase that allows the organosulphur compounds to start working, before the heat can prevent them from doing so. However, too much cooking can still finish off anything healthy about them even this way, so it is recommended to add it to your skillet near the end of cooking. For onions, you can bake them in their skins, which will soften them up and mellow out the flavor, while protecting most of the nutrients within. You could also add raw onion slices to a hamburger – a very delicious and easy way to add nutritional benefits to your meal.

4. Red Wine Is Good For You, But Only In Moderation And Eaten With Your Largest Meal

Some people may have heard before that red wine is good for you and scoffed at the idea, but it is sort of true. Now, we say sort of because this doesn’t mean you should just go pounding down a bottle of red every night. However, in moderation red wine can actually provide positive health benefits, as part of an overall healthy diet. A study at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel tracked over 200 research participants over two years, with three separate control groups, in order to find the health benefits of red wine. All test subjects regularly had blood work done for the study and answered survey questions as needed.

All groups were on the Mediterranean diet, but with no calorie restrictions. One group was instructed to drink a glass of water with their meals every night, one group a glass of white wine, and one group a glass of red wine. The only difference between the groups was what they drank something different, and the red wine drinkers had higher levels of good cholesterol after the two year study. It is also of note that both types of wine drinkers reported better quality sleep, while the water drinkers did not – although no one reported any adverse health effects. However, we should emphasize again that drinking a lot of wine is still not good for you. None of these test subjects drank more than one small glass of wine a day, and they drank it slowly with their largest meal.

3. Pizza Is Actually Quite Good For You, It’s Just Made In An Unhealthy Way By Most US Manufacturers

Pizza is one of those foods that we never really think about as being healthy. In America it is mostly junk food, and eaten at incredible rates. Junk food pizza is also very common and popular in the United Kingdom these days, due to the convenience, cheapness, and instant gratification. However, even junk food pizza has a lot of good things about it; it just isn’t made as well as it could be. Tomatoes contain lycopene, which is an excellent antioxidant, and in general has a lot of different nutrients you need at the same time. However, most common pizza is made with refined flour and not whole grains, is very greasy, and isn’t that good for you to have often.

This should not cause you to mistake the food itself as unhealthy, though. If made in a healthy way, especially at home with whole grains, it can be a very nutritious food that can get you and your family all the different food groups they need in one big, artisanal pie. Some experts also suggest eating pizza, especially the heavier junk food varieties, earlier in the day, as it is less likely for your body to be slowing down at midday and converting the unhealthy parts of the pizza to fat. Pizza can be a very healthy and nutritious part of a regular diet, as long as whoever makes it does so in a healthy manner and with the right ingredients.

2. Sports Drinks Are Better Than Water As A Temporary Measure To Prevent Dehydration And Water Intoxication

Water intoxication is something many of you have probably already heard of. If you are an athlete, don’t have air conditioning, or are outside in the summer heat for whatever reason doing anything strenuous or just moving around, you could be at risk of dehydration. Most people counter this by drinking gobs of water, and this puts them in danger of water intoxication. This is when you drink so much water so fast that, as you sweat, the sodium in your blood becomes dangerously depleted. This can lead to seizures and even death if it isn’t caught and dealt with fast enough. Sports drinks may seem like unhealthy sugar water, but they are designed the way they are for a reason. Sports drinks need to have salt, in order to help put back in the sodium you are sweating out, and the sugar makes the taste bearable despite it being basically salt water.

While we aren’t suggesting these are healthy drinks you should be having all the time as you sit around the house, it is actually a better option than water for anyone who is looking to avoid dehydration on a hot day and maintain the proper electrolyte balance in their body. However, experts also caution that you shouldn’t just drink sports drinks and consider everything just fine. They slow down water intoxication, and it happens much slower than just drinking plain water, but it can still happen, as sports drinks do not have enough salt to replace what you’re losing. Experts recommend dealing with this by also keeping salty snacks on hand to make sure your electrolyte levels stay properly balanced.

1. Unless You Have Celiac Disease, Gluten Is Not Only Good For You But An Important Part Of Your Diet

Gluten-free has become the latest trend in the United States, and while this can be good for the tiny amount of people who do have celiac disease, due to the increased availability of products, it may not be so good for all the others who are following a gluten-free lifestyle. Now, we want to be clear that you can eat gluten free and be perfectly healthy – many who have celiac do this on a regular basis. However, not eating gluten means losing out on a lot of sources rich in dietary fiber, which most Americans do not get enough of already. You are also losing out on a lot of vitamin fortified foods when you go gluten-free.

Now, those who have been officially diagnosed with celiac disease tend to be following nutritional instructions from their doctor, and have a careful plan to make sure they still get the fiber and vitamins that they need. This often involves eating less common whole grains that you have to go out of your way to find and cook on your own, and taking certain vitamin capsules on a regular basis. The issue is that most people who are following the diet because it’s trendy and they think it’s the latest health craze, despite not having the disease, usually are not following instructions from a doctor, or doing their due diligence to research and eat the right replacement foods. Instead, they just eat gluten-free substitutes, and fail to get the proper nutrients that they actually need. Experts feel that those who think they have celiac disease, or some kind of lesser issue with it, should see their doctor for an official diagnosis. This way the doctor can monitor their health, and make sure they are getting the right foods – or reassure them that they have no problem with gluten after all.