Music has been a part of human life since time immemorial. It penetrates our souls and becomes a part of us, just as we, its creators, are a part of it. We and our creations grow and learn together, and each phase of human development brings with it new tools to create the aural extension of our soul.

The future will be no different. As we progress into the horizon of time, these ten instruments of tomorrow will sing the soundtrack of our ascension.

10 Pocket Synths

As music technology advances, the production of music and musical instruments becomes more accessible, more affordable, and more casual. The need for massive studio setups, at least below the highest professional echelons of the industry, is rapidly dwindling in favor of simplicity and the capacity to create and display music casually and on the fly. Enter: pocket synths.

These compact yet versatile systems for the creation of music are a perfect fit for the needs of tomorrow’s aspiring musicians. Models like the Korg Volka and even models by Teenage Engineering that cost as little as $49 are giving modern songsmiths all the tools they need in a pocket-size package at a fraction of the price of the typical studio and stage synths that are much more expensive and much less convenient.^[1]

And, if the simplicity of pocket synths is, for some reason, still too much for you, there are the wearable triggers made by DrumPants, which integrate with your clothes to allow you to create drumbeats simply by tapping your lap and stamping your feet, just like you already do to your favorite tunes, anyway!

9 Enhanced Guitars

Guitars have been a mainstay of music since their invention, through the creation of the first electric versions, and into the present day, with recent advancements like extended-range models (seven-, eight-, nine-string, etc.) and the synth pickup. Given the continuing relevance of this instrument, it’s safe to say that it won’t be disappearing anytime soon. How, though, will they manage to remain relevant in the ever-changing landscape of modern music? The same way they always have: by adapting and advancing. Any of the older versions of the guitar could be included in this list, but the way they are used in most music is the same as it always has been, so we’ll focus on the guitars of the future.

The aforementioned synth pickups in particular allow guitars a level of sound control generally reserved for synthesizers, and Boss’s GK series even allows for the articulation of electric guitar—the trait that gives instruments their ability to create feeling, and a trait for which electric guitar is particularly renowned—to be utilized with synthesized sounds, which are usually especially lacking in this regard.^[2] Additional add-ons, fringe components, and various other Frankenstein-esque technologies are constantly in development, assuring that this instrumental mainstay is here for the long haul.

8 Digital Simulated Instruments

Much like the synth pickup guitars mentioned above, many other instruments are attempting to modernize through digitization. Electric versions of classical strings, for example, are readily available, and electronic wind instruments feature the ability to simulate various wind and brass instruments with a single interface. (These instruments are usually all played differently and require separate training.)

Perhaps the most prevalent of these digitized classics is the electronic drum kit. Acoustic kit drums are not particularly versatile in their sound, regularly replaced by electronic versions in professional recordings, difficult to transport, and a nightmare to record (despite the fact that they will likely be mostly dubbed over regardless). Electronic drums, however, feature a wide variety of sounds (both acoustic-sounding and synthy) which are performance- and recording-ready and are far more convenient for both recording and travel, not to mention the adjustable volume which allows you to play and practice—even late at night—without making mortal enemies of your roommates and neighborhood.^[3]

7 Pan Drums

One type of preexisting instrument that requires no technological advancement to survive the progress of the musical world is the pan drum. In fact, one type of pan drum—called the tongue drum—is thought to be the most ancient instrument besides the voice! Some African cultures even have a language developed for them. So if that’s the case, then why is it that these instruments are featured on a list of the instruments of tomorrow?

There are actually a few collected reasons that keep pan drums relevant and even presently rising in popularity:

Firstly, pan drums are easy to learn and play, making them accessible to beginners and those intimidated by the perceived difficulty of learning a musical instrument.^[4]

Second, they are convenient. As stated above, they do not require the additional accessories, particularly amplifiers and other electronic elements, making them easy to carry and perform publicly and on the fly. This is often done by even the most notable of lap drum artists, such as Hang Massive.

Third, and possibly most importantly, the etheric and almost psychedelic sound created by pan drums is strikingly dynamic and complex for an acoustic instrument. The sound is otherworldly and speaks to a primal part of the soul which is as ancient as the instrument itself. This naturally mystical tone conjures a dreaminess unparalleled by even most synthetically created and richly layered musical sounds.

6 Nomis

The main pitfall of DJing and performing other forms of loop-oriented music is the lack of showmanship of performing the utilized instruments. Well, for those in the loop world looking to up the performance ante, the Nomis by Jonathan Sparks is here to answer the call in a fantastically theatrical fashion.

The Nomis features a flashy, vertical octagonal controller framing the person playing it. This controller is flanked by two lighted towers. The first towers displays a color representing the sound being used. A rotation of the large octagonal controller loops the melody played and activates a similar light on the second tower which pulses as the looped notes play, not only creating an amazing light show but also allowing the audience a detailed look at the essence of the music they are enjoying.^[5] This engrossing display of electronic musicianship is sure to bring the art of electronic music performance headlong into tomorrow.

5 Expressive Synths

Expression and articulation are shortcomings of synthesized instruments, as well as keyboard-based instruments in general. The keys of a piano cannot be bent like the strings of a guitar, and even the digital bending and expressive features of a synthesizer pale in comparison to those of a string or wind instrument played with all the infinite subtlety and detail of precise, articulate human movement and the natural dynamics of a real-world vibrating instrument.

There are, however, various new models of synthesizer that are challenging this notion and increasing the degree of detailed expression in digital instruments dramatically. Take, for example, the Continuum Fingerboard; a synthesizer featuring a flat, rectangular surface with evenly spaced notes—similar to the keys on a keyboard but digitally projected—on which the finger can slide and move to generate expressions such as pitch-bending and dynamic touch sensitivity based on pressure and other intricate elements of human touch.^[6] The ROLI Seaboard features similar dynamic traits but is controlled by flexible silicon rubber keys. There are also various other options for expressive keyboard synthesizers and even drum machine-style synthesizers which feature similar dynamic touch controls to the aforementioned keyboard versions.

4 Metatonals

Imagine you were told that literally every piece of music you’ve ever heard, save for a cappella and a small, select collection of horns and fretless string instruments, was played incorrectly, or at least inaccurately. Would you believe it? Well, you should, because it’s the truth, and here to prove it, as well as to correct the mistakes, is a collection of instruments referred to as “metatonals.”

Music is a much more complex science than the vast majority of people realize. The precise pitch of a note varies depending on the notes with which it is resonating. For example, a G-sharp on its own is a slightly different pitch than a G-sharp resonating with an E, and those are different than if they were resonating with different notes, and so on. No instrument with notes in controlled locations, such as with the keys of a keyboard or the frets of a guitar, can match these minute variations accurately and thus settle for roundabout pitches that resonate well together but not perfectly in each context.

Additionally, there are many intervals at which resonant notes can be organized. The standard set used collectively as a standard by modern musicians (known as diatonic) is only one of an infinite set of choices, picked for the sake of uniformity of instruments and the ability for musicians to communicate.^[7] After all, if instruments didn’t share the same notes, they wouldn’t be able to play together, and their players wouldn’t be learning and understanding the same information.

As instrumental technologies advance, however, the ability is growing within them to have more options to make them more versatile in their types of resonance and more precise within the keys and context in which they are being played. There are various new technologies, including removable and/or adjustable fretboards as well as fretboards with different spacing that allow guitars and basses more versatility.

Most significant of the metatonal instruments, however, is likely the Tonal Plexus, a keyboard-like instrument featuring a massive amount of intervals in between each standard musical note, making for a virtually unlimited set of keys and the precise ability to harmonize notes for any context. Instruments like these not only explode the amount of potential melodies and other tonal elements that a musician can use but also make the music we already love sound significantly better, both increasing creative options and making all music sound better at its foundation.

3 Eigenharp

One of the most important elements of the future of musical instruments is convenient versatility. This is plainly evident in the rise of synthesizers as opposed to singular instruments, which have greater dynamics, expression, and articulation (though, as stated in items above, synthetic instruments are rapidly catching up). The Eigenharp is perhaps the greatest example of this notion.

Combining the features of synthesizers, drum machines, and sequencers in an instrument that can be played similarly to a guitar, keyboard, a wind instrument, or some custom hybridization of those and with expression in both the fingers and the “breath pipe” (the feature which allows wind-style playing), this instrument is the ultimate in versatility and expression. Not only that, but the guitar-style playing position of the instrument makes it ideal for live performances as well. The Eigenharp is the ultimate all-purpose instrument.^[8]

2 Bioinstruments

Okay, time to get wild. What if the human body itself was included on this list? One would likely assume that this means singing, perhaps beatboxing, maybe even ham-bone, but that’s not it at all. Granted, these things are not going to disappear by any means, but as they also aren’t likely to change dramatically in the way they are used, it would be imprudent to have them take up extra space on this list. What this item represents is, in fact, none of these things but rather technologies that are used to collect signals from the natural functions of the body, such as the heart and brain, to create music. Sound confusing? Let’s frame it this way:

What if you could think music and make it happen? Seriously.

The encephalophone is a device that converts brain waves into musical signals. This fantastically inventive instrument is a revolutionary way to express the music imagined by a musician regardless of technical instrumental talent and academics. Research is also being done to use this amazing tool to help musicians suffering from some form of injury or ailment that prevents them from singing or interacting with a musical instrument to be able to create music despite their condition.

In addition to the encephalophone, there is also a device called the cardiophone, which uses the heartbeat to generate rhythmic tones for either musical or medical monitoring purposes.^[9] Clearly, the human body is one of the emerging musical instruments of our time.

1 Computers

Perhaps this item seems like a bit of a cop-out, but the necessity of computers to the future of music is undeniable. Every item on this list requires a computer to operate, save for the pan drum, which still requires a computer to be recorded (unless you consider more outdated recording methods, like tape or wax, but these methods are largely abandoned except for in certain enthusiast circles). Recordings on computer can also be manipulated and fine-tuned in a seemingly infinite collection of ways in order to make a piece of music into precisely the form imagined by its creator.

Additionally, computers can be used to manually enter musical information into a program, bypassing the need for another instrument entirely.^[10] There is no doubt that the computer is the most quintessential piece of musical equipment for now and into the foreseeable future.

The music that will resonate through our own futures and the lives our children is unforeseeable. We may, however, get a taste of the sound through the instruments on which the songs will be written, and if the tools listed above are any indication, the sound will be most wondrous.

Jason Karras writes, therefore he is.

Fish tanks are tranquil until scientists want answers and drunk people want some fun. Then the fish stories start to get interesting . . . and more than a little weird.

Beyond the laboratory and fish-related emergency room visits, some of the best tales come from public aquariums. From lifesaving firsts to the mysterious case of a shark abandoned at a worm farm, no fishbowl will ever look the same again.

10 Infectious Fish Pedicures

A trendy way to exfoliate feet is to get a fish pedicure. Clients soak their feet in a container full of tiny fish that consume dead skin cells.

In 2018, a woman in New York allowed the fish, called Garra rufa, to feast on her toes. Months later, her toenails fractured. The bottom layer could be seen underneath the top.

Since it was painless, she did not visit a doctor for six months. Ultimately, she was diagnosed with onychomadesis. This condition occurs when something stops nails from growing and, eventually, they fall off. When all other causes of onychomadesis were ruled out (injury or a family history of nail disease), the woman became the first case linked to a fish pedicure.^[1]

In the past, Garra fish had tested positive for several bacteria that cause skin and tissue infections. Hygiene is another problem. Since the fish are in the tubs, the containers cannot be properly cleaned between customers. Sanitary risks include individuals with foot diseases who use the tub before other clients.

9 Oldest Fish In Captivity

In 2018, an Australian lungfish in San Francisco celebrated her 80th year at the California Academy of Sciences’ Steinhart Aquarium. Her age is closer to 90 as she arrived as an adult in 1938. Named Methuselah, she measures 1.2 meters (4 ft) long.

The oldest fish in captivity loves figs and prawns, belly rubs, and certain volunteers. Methuselah also prefers her own tank. When caretakers placed her in a larger aquarium with two younger lungfish, she insisted on hovering upside down until they moved her back.

Genetics play a role in her long life, but the species is extraordinary in other ways. Lungfish, which are primitive and go back 400 million years, use a swim bladder to float and breathe air. Some even walk over the ground to search for a new pond.

Methuselah seems happy to aim for a century. According to her caretakers, she eats like a pig and loves human interaction. For this reason, the aquarium’s coddled group of lungfish are often called “underwater puppies.”^[2]

8 Fish Have Personalities

Scientists tackled a tricky question in 2015. Wondering if fish had personalities, they decided to create a horror show. They scared guppies with a fake heron beak plunging into the water. On another occasion, they used “Big Al.” He was a carnivorous fish called a cichlid which would suddenly appear on the other side of the glass.

When a guppy was moved to this scare tank, the only shelter was a small plastic cover. After getting the holy sin frightened out of it, the single fish would be returned to a well-protected tank full of other guppies. After three days, it went back to the scare tank to endure five minutes of terror. This continued for a month.

After putting each of the 105 guppies through this experiment, scientists concluded that the fish had personalities. All reacted in a unique way. It was not accidental. The guppies repeated their chosen behaviors (hiding, fleeing, freezing) during the follow-up encounters with the heron and cichlid every three days.^[3]

7 Catfish Drinking Game

In 2016, a drunk man arrived in the emergency room with a bizarre injury. That evening, the unnamed 28-year-old had partied with friends in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. They had decided it would be a good idea to swallow live fish.

Several goldfish were taken from a home aquarium and gulped down without a problem. Then someone suggested another tank occupant—a small catfish. However, it was a Corydoras aeneus, a toxic creature with spines. When threatened, these catfish stiffen their venom-filled needles to avoid getting eaten.

Needless to say, the spiky creature got stuck in the man’s throat. Choking, he threw up blood and beer—but no fish. His drunk friends applied the Heimlich maneuver incorrectly. The man tried to wash the fish down with beer, ice cream, and honey. Finally, after waiting several hours, he went to the hospital.^[4]

Delicate surgery ultimately removed the dead catfish. It was preserved in the Rotterdam Natural History Museum, joining a collection that highlights dramatic encounters between humans and animals.

6 Wrasse Recognize Themselves

There is a simple test for self-awareness. A mirror shows the subject an artificial mark on their body. Any related reaction, like rubbing the spot, suggests an awareness that the image represents their real body. Animals that have passed include dolphins, chimpanzees, elephants, pigeons, and crows.

In 2018, researchers wanted a self-aware fish. They picked the cleaner wrasse. One ability made them the perfect candidate. Wrasse feed on parasites. They have evolved to notice unusual spots on other fish.

When 10 wrasse were isolated in individual mirrored tanks, things got interesting. At first, they mistook their reflections for rivals and fought with themselves. However, within days, they performed “friendly dancing” in front of the mirrors.^[5]

Wrasse are solitary and do not dance for other fish. Although hard to prove, they could have been dancing to see themselves move. When colored gel was applied to their heads (only noticeable in the mirror), seven wrasse spent more time with their reflections or rubbing their heads against things in the tank.

5 Fish Floaties

Leafy sea dragons resemble seahorses that ate too much plant fertilizer. The entire fish is covered with leaflike fronds.

In 2018, the Florida Aquarium in Tampa acquired three young sea dragons. While observing the Australian fish, the aquarium’s vet noticed something distressing. They ate badly and kept sinking to the bottom of the tank.

Leafy sea dragons float for a reason—to look like seaweed and not food. For them to hit the dirt meant something was seriously wrong. Surprisingly, it was discovered that all three suffered from the same condition—a swim bladder that never developed. The organ is responsible for buoyancy, and without it, the trio could not get off the floor.

In a genius move, the vet created floaties. He used black rings made of neoprene, a buoyant material that was both comfortable and resistant to salt water. The rings were looped around the sea dragons’ fragile midsections and sewn together at the ends. It worked. Once the fish found themselves floating, they started feeding and growing again.^[6]

4 The Stickleback C-Section

Stickleback females spray eggs for hopeful dads to fertilize. There is no hanky-panky or pregnancy with this species. In the 1950s, a pregnant stickleback was found in Scotland. No investigation was done. But in 2016, researchers trawled Scotland for more and found a heavily pregnant stickleback. Since she was dying, the fish was humanely destroyed and the eggs removed via C-section.

Although three cases are known (where egg-laying fish got pregnant), this was the only time that the embryos survived. They hatched in the laboratory and became healthy adults.

But how did a member of a species that doesn’t get pregnant carry healthy young in her belly?

DNA tests showed that she did not clone herself because the babies had two parents. The stickleback likely swam through a sperm cloud and was fertilized through her egg tube.

Beyond being a major evolutionary leap, the mother’s body also aced a crucial male role. To stimulate a healthy development, stickleback dads fan the eggs. The C-section fry were normal, meaning a mysterious internal process had replaced the father’s fanning.^[7]

3 Robot Guppies

The Trinidadian guppy does something weird with its eyes. Although the eyes are usually silver, anger turns them black within seconds. As researchers are curious creatures who go the extra mile, they decided to create robot guppies to find out if the change was voluntary and what it communicated within this fishy population.

In 2018, they took a dead specimen and made silicone replicas. The incredibly realistic fakes had either silver or black eyes. They were positioned over food and given lifelike movements thanks to a small motor. The social dynamics that followed showed that black eyes had a very specific meaning.

Smaller guppies approached the food when the robot had silver eyes. However, a dark look communicated what researchers called “honest aggression”—the guppy’s absolute readiness to fight. It also meant that the guppy was guarding a worthy resource.

When the real guppies were bigger, they beat up the robot. This was to loot the resource and thrash a smaller fish that dared to use the look. It remains unknown how guppies flood their eyes with black.^[8]

2 The Sandwich Ray

Macduff Marine Aquarium in Aberdeenshire is home to several thornback rays. Late in 2018, staff decided to clean one of the tanks. It was filled with ray eggs, known as a mermaid’s purse. In this case, they had to be removed as all the babies had hatched and the cases were empty.

However, when an employee tried to push the air out of one purse, it would not give. He peeled back one side and was surprised to find an unhatched ray. The unlucky creature had been trapped inside its egg. Since the case was destroyed and the ray was still an embryo, a surrogate shell had to be found.^[9]

The solution was as simple as it was unusual—a sandwich bag. The ray happily incubated inside the plastic for two months and eventually “hatched.” The day came when staff decided that it was ready to leave the bag. The baby thornback was removed and placed with 10 others where it thrived, seemingly unaffected by its peculiar past.

1 The Abandoned Shark

In 2012, a wildlife sanctuary was closed down outside of Melbourne, Australia. The operator was supposed to preserve a species of giant earthworm but was caught running an illegal animal park.

One of the creatures that was definitely not an earthworm was a great white shark. The enormous predator was supposed to stay there temporarily while its real home was being prepared elsewhere. However, when new owners took over the park, they kept the shark.^[10]

When the park was closed due to irregularities, the animals were handed over to the RSPCA. At this point, the shark’s story gets muddy. Not only was it left behind at the worm sanctuary, but it also somehow ended up in a tank of formaldehyde. This preserved the 4-meter-long (13 ft) great white.

The empty park could be considered spooky, but the shark tank was downright haunting. The corpse, hanging motionless in green water, recently became an Internet sensation after urban explorers encountered the beast and posted the video to YouTube.

Secret societies have interested people for a very long time, which makes sense; mysterious groups who remain hidden are understandably intriguing. However, they’re often seen as evil, corrupt, or insidious institutions that intend to do harm to humanity. From the Masons to the Illuminati, conspiracy theorists openly deride such fraternities (whether real or fictional) and claim that they control the world or would at least like to. Here are 10 secret societies that go against that nefarious stereotype, instead having been founded for a good cause.

10 Whiteboys

Formed in Ireland in the 18th century, the Whiteboys were a secret peasant group, bound by secret oaths and known by elaborate pseudonyms, who rebelled against the way that farmers and laborers were being treated by the establishment. Their name derived from group members’ tendency to wear white shirts and the fact they were exclusively young males.

The Whiteboys would proclaim new “laws” that wages were to be increased, tithes were to be reduced, or some other act to help the workers. If these laws were disregarded by the authorities, then the Whiteboys would enforce them through violence, intimidation, and destruction of property. Sometimes, they would even dig graves and place coffins on public roads as a sign of what was to come if the landowners did not change their ways and support the rural poor.

9 E Clampus Vitus

Sounding far more serious than it actually is, E Clampus Vitus is a fraternal society which has its origins in the 19th-century American Gold Rush. It is believed to have been created to poke fun at the actual secret societies that were spreading throughout the West at the time and is essentially a group that promotes alternative local history and having fun—so it’s not your average fraternity.

In good keeping with their original purpose, which was to provide miners with some humorous relief from panning for gold, the “Clampers” mocked institutions such as the Odd Fellows and the Masons with absurd initiation ceremonies. Even their name is a joke, since E Clampus Vitus is not actually Latin, and reportedly, nobody knows what it means. These days, they spend their time putting up plaques for places forgotten by more serious historians, such as saloons and bawdy houses.

8 Family Of Love

A little-known secret society founded in Holland in 1539 with a rather corny name, the Family of Love was a religious movement which sought to aid the poor and believed that religion was about the experience of divine love, not simply belief in one set of doctrines instead of another.

This lack of belief in one particular set of scriptures was quite powerful at a time when Europe was split between Catholicism and Protestantism. Having taken hold in England, the Family of Love was soon outlawed by Queen Elizabeth I, who ordered all adherents to be imprisoned and books to be burnt. Yet, it had a lasting influence on the development of the Quakers, a movement into which the Family of Love was eventually assimilated.

7 Mau Mau

African secret societies are rarely mentioned, and this one certainly deserves more attention than it gets. Mau Mau was a Kenyan nationalist society that originated in the 1950s and engaged in ritual initiations inspired by belief in magic. Unfortunately, Mau Mau’s adherents ended up perpetrating brutal crimes and a great deal of violence, starting an uprising which resulted in the deaths of thousands.

However, it should be noted that Mau Mau was formed to challenge the perceived cruelty of British colonialism in Kenya, and its members’ desperation, hunger, illness, and exploitation was the basis for their violence. Only a few years after this society disappeared, Kenya finally became independent in 1963, and its first president was reported to be a member of Mau Mau.

6 Patrons Of Husbandry

Better known as the Grange, the Patrons of Husbandry was founded as a national agricultural fraternity in 1867 in the United States. Formed along Masonic lines with oaths, passwords and closed meetings, it was alleged that they were essentially controlled by Freemasons and Odd Fellows. However, the Grange, unusual for its time, permitted women to become members, distinguishing it from other, similar organizations.

After a period of rapid expansion due to the Panic of 1873, the Grange became large enough to set up schools, lobbying for causes such as free trade, railroad regulation, and better education. From a peak of over 850,000 in the 1950s, the membership today has fallen to nearly 200,000, perhaps due to the fact that only two percent of Americans are now farmers.

5 The French Resistance

By far the most famous group on this list, it’s often forgotten that the French Resistance was a secret society, at least in some ways. After all, they opposed the Germans in Nazi-occupied France from within the country, something which could only be done in secret. The term “French Resistance” encompasses a broad range of different organizations that existed to fight the Nazis, some choosing to use violence and others deciding instead to spread underground newspapers and broadcast anti-German radio programs.

Led by Charles de Gaulle, who commanded them from the United Kingdom, the Resistance remained secretive and was central to the liberation of France. Regularly carrying out missions of sabotage against railways and intelligence gathering, membership is estimated to have been around 100,000, made up of nine different underground networks, by 1944. Around 50,000 French Resistance fighters were captured by the Nazis and sent to prison camps, of which half never returned.

4 The Order Of Chaeronea

It is well-known that homosexuality has been repressed throughout history, and it is only recently that some parts of the world have fully accepted it. In 1897 in London, a man named George Cecil Ives sought to create a secret society that would allow homosexual men to communicate and gather support for their cause, safe from the rejection and disdain of society.

The Order of Chaeronea’s hard-to-pronounce name comes from the location of an ancient battle in 338 BC, but it remains important in the 21st century. Perhaps the most famous member of the Order was Oscar Wilde, who was imprisoned on charges of homosexuality.

3 Sons Of Liberty

The Sons of Liberty was a patriotic secret society that fought against British colonial rule in America and helped to pave the way for the Boston Tea Party. Initially known as the Loyal Nine when they protested against the Stamp Tax in December 1765, they got their name from words spoken by an Irish MP when debating that very act.

There are countless famous names associated with this society, including Benedict Arnold, John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and Paul Revere. Although women had little political empowerment at the time, they were actively encouraged to become “Daughters of Liberty” and join the cause against the British Empire.

The Sons of Liberty organized acts of resistance by stockpiling guns, using tactics of mob rule and intimidation, and even methods such as tarring and feathering. As history shows, they got what they wanted in the end.

2 Grand Order Of Water Rats

The charitable fraternity known as the Grand Order of Water Rats was founded by two British musicians in the late 19th century, after they decided that the profits won by their prize racing pony should be used to help struggling performers less fortunate than themselves.

Their rather unimpressive name stems from one occasion when their pony was soaked in the rain, and a nearby bus driver called it a “bleedin’ water rat.” The story goes that because “rats” is “star” spelled backward, and “vole” is an anagram of “love” (the water rat being a type of vole), the name “Water Rats” would embody the society’s desire to bring people together with love and friendship.

However unlikely that may sound, the self-styled “brotherhood” has a long list of very famous members, including Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, and Brian May, all of whom have joined in the Grand Order’s cause to help other performers through charitable work.

1 Royal Society

The oldest national scientific society in the world, the Royal Society was founded in London in 1660 as the “Invisible College for the promoting of Physico-Mathematical Experimental Learning.” It was likely “invisible” because of the English Civil War. The society had tried to form in the past, but in 1658, they were disbanded when soldiers stormed their meeting rooms. Yet this group did eventually gain a royal charter from King Charles II, hence the Royal’ in their name.

Despite these turbulent beginnings (and early attempts to discover whether a spider could be trapped in a circle of ground unicorn horns), the Royal Society is far less secret than it once was and has gone on to spread knowledge throughout the world. It boasts an impressive list of members which includes Stephen Hawking, Alan Turing, and Albert Einstein, among many more.

He’s from a flat place with a big sky. Gotta fill all that sky with something, so he filled it with his dreams.

The idea of “secret projects” such as MKUltra were once considered complete fiction and nothing but conspiracy theories. As were secret projects to influence the weather or the use of remote viewers by such intelligence agencies as the CIA. However, we now know that these efforts existed, at least on an initial research and experimental level.

If these top secret and once-denied projects were more factual than authorities would have originally had us believe, then what should we make of some of the other, albeit bizarre, allegations of top secret projects and programs that operate in the shadows of governments, funded by the “black budget?” Here are ten such programs. Some are more believable than others, no doubt, but all are intriguing to the max.

10 Project Mannequin

According to several whistle-blowers, Project Mannequin is a joint operation involving the NSA and the British intelligence agencies.^[1] Although a variety of activities and projects operate under the Mannequin name, the main purpose is to train and develop units of “super soldiers.” Some of these are used as part of UFO retrieval and security lockdown operations. Others, though, are called “sleepers” and are claimed to be mind-controlled and activated remotely to carry out deadly assassination missions, of which they will not be aware.

Not crazy enough for you? Okay, most of these super soldiers become members of these programs via kidnappings or through years of grooming via military and high-status families, who apparently submit their children to such programs for rewards unknown.

The main hub of the operation is said to be in a top secret facility 60 meters (200 ft) underground in Berkshire in Southern England. In addition to the training sessions in developing super soldiers and mind-controlled assassins (if, of course, we subscribe to these apparent leaks of information, which most don’t) there are also remote viewing sessions. These occur for a variety of purposes, not least to gain political and military advantages. Some whistle-blowers even claim “astral attacks” take place from this facility under the Project Mannequin name.

Perhaps one of the most high-profile people to make claims of involvement in Project Mannequin was Max Spiers, who died in the most suspicious of circumstances and whose death—shortly after making such claims—remains unsolved to any satisfactory degree still today. Make of that what you will.

9 Project Bluebird/Artichoke

In contrast to the outlandish claims about Project Mannequin, our next entry is all too real. Most of us, even those who don’t involve themselves with “conspiracies” and the like, are aware of such programs as MKUltra, even if only by name. The forerunner to this very real project went first under the name Project Bluebird, and then, very likely for security reasons and for a lack of a clear paper trail, under the moniker of Project Artichoke.^[2] Perhaps this activity is indicative of the nature of the “black budget projects” that would seemingly become standard operating procedure for many intelligence agencies as the 20th century progressed.

These programs began around 1950, in the aftermath of World War II and, incidentally or not, Operation Paperclip. (The Nazis were known to have carried out extensive experiments with mind control.) While there is no direct evidence to link him to the programs, it is generally accepted by many researchers that the work of Jose Delgado, who was looking to replace the brutal nature of lobotomies with electrical stimulation of the brain, perhaps unintentionally provided intelligence agencies with the insight they required to use such knowledge to their own ends.

8 Project Dreamscan

While the objectives of Project Dreamscan have little documentation to back up the whistle-blower-type claims, the methods utilized within the program very much do. It is widely known, for example, that the CIA experimented relatively extensively with remote viewing, particularly during the Cold War (mainly due to intelligence that their Soviet counterparts were doing so).

According to the claims of some, the objective of Project Dreamscan was to have remote viewers leave their bodies and enter a target’s mind in a dream state.^[3] These missions were thought to have been attempts to influence the thought processes of the targets. Interestingly, some researchers suggest that such remote viewers often accompany high-ranking officials to meetings with the UN in order to use their powers on other countries’ officials for similar reasons. Rumors even exist that Uri Geller was employed in such a way.

Furthermore, a purported CIA document declassified in 2017 suggests that similar missions would “send” remote viewers not only to other planets but to different times, both in the future and the past. While most dismiss this aspect entirely, it is an interesting notion that time travel may be something achieved on an astral plane as opposed to a physical one.

7 Project Stargate

As we mentioned above, many of these secret programs were a product of the Cold War and the intelligence obtained by both US and Soviet agencies. In reality, it is tempting to say that each country likely fed the other a good helping of purposeful disinformation. However, in the paranoid nature of the times, neither side could afford to ignore possible intel, no matter how absurd. It is easy to see, then, where the murkiness of such projects comes from.

One of these operations was Project Stargate, which, according to what little information is available on it, was a “psychotronic research” program.^[4] Furthermore, beginning in the late 1970s, established and proven remote viewers would “teach” other to hone their skills—all at the expense of the United States government, of course. This was, according to some, the new “psychic warfare” that was taking place in full view of an unknowing and unsuspecting public.

There are even more bizarre reports from some researchers that suggest these talented remote viewers would, on occasion, be “loaned out” to friendly countries for use in their own private matters. Like many such programs, whatever the truth of their operations, Project Stargate would suddenly cease operating, at least under that name, in the 1990s.

6 Project Rainbow

Perhaps another seemingly outlandish “secret” operation was Project Rainbow, whose roots allegedly reside in such equally insane projects as the Philadelphia Experiment, which, of course, most people insist are mere fantasy at best. It also has more direct connections to another supersecret program in the Phoenix Time Travel Project, which some researchers believe is essentially the same operation under a different name.^[5]

While much of the project—if we accept, for a moment, the authenticity of the claims—revolved around the attempted creation of time tunnels and wormholes, the other part of the Project Rainbow umbrella would look at weather control. This, particularly in recent years, is something that is increasingly being dragged from the conspiracy tray to the fact tray.

Perhaps one of the most intriguing connections to other conspiracies are the claims that it was from these weather and space-time experiments that the seeds of the fully working mind control devices came from. It is another interesting layer to such conspiracies that sees a now all-but-proven “conspiracy theory” such as weather control coupled with the much more unpalatable prospect of controlling the minds of unsuspecting members of the public.

5 Operation Sleeping Beauty

Project Rainbow was not the only operation to involve experiments more akin to mind control. Rainbow’s weather control research allegedly also reportedly resulted in the secret program known as Operation Sleeping Beauty.

Whether these experiments ever made it off the drawing board is unknown, although as you might imagine, some conspiracy theorists insist they did. And what’s more, they contend that the experiments are likely still going on today.

The drive behind these conspiracy theories is the notion that mind-altering electromagnetic weaponry could be used to the US military’s advantage.^[6] They would, through such advanced and experimental technology, be able to achieve battlefield superiority. Their enemies would be mentally disorientated to the point of surrender.

Another interesting aspect of this approach was that the soldiers affected would not have the slightest idea of what was happening to them. This confusion alone would inspire substantial fear. In short, such a secret, advanced weapon is not at all beyond the realms of imagination or possibility.

4 The Mindwreaker Project

A very similar advanced battlefield weapon program would be Project Mindwreaker (sometimes called “Mindwrecker”) an effort to create a state of artificial paralysis through “mentally induced” weapons.^[7]

According to the conspiracies (and, once again, we should note that there is no absolute solid evidence to back these outlandish claims up), the project came to light through another unintended observation during the weather control experiments of Project Rainbow. Once they realized there was a potential to paralyze subjects through the technology they had created, they looked to weaponize it.

In a conspiracy claim already bordering on lunacy, further accusations suggest that this technology was derived from reverse-engineered alien spacecraft, which only made the conspiracy theory more appealing to some and more unbelievable to others. Perhaps just to add another layer of appeal to the whole affair, Mindwreaker is also claimed to be one of the last secret projects commissioned by the Reagan administration. Of course, who was actually in charge during the Reagan years is perhaps also open to debate and is, in fact, likely the bigger conspiracy.

3 Project Sigma

Maybe the claims behind the apparent Project Sigma are the most intriguing of them all, if only because they offer an admittedly tentative explanation for the alien abduction phenomenon.

The roots of Project Sigma go back to the alleged, and equally controversial, meeting between President Eisenhower and two different alien races. One race was the Greys, whose offer of advanced technology apparently won Eisenhower’s mind against the offer of “green technology” from the other alien race (said by some to be the Nordics). Further rumors suggest that Eisenhower didn’t wish this technology to end up in the hands of the Soviet Union.

So, then, if we buy into the theories that Eisenhower did indeed meet with two alien races, one of which was the Greys, what was the outcome of such a meeting? Well, according to some researchers, themselves relying on whistle-blower testimony, it was Project Sigma. This was essentially an alien-human hybridization program. The reason behind this is said to be that the Greys’ DNA had suffered “extreme degradation” due to exposure to radiation on their home planet. In short, they could no longer reproduce. So, in return for this technology, the Greys were apparently granted “access” to humans for abduction, under the condition the abductees would not recall such abductions and would be returned unharmed.^[8]

It is certainly an interesting notion. Might this be the ultimate reason behind the reports of abductions by Grey aliens since the early 1960s?

2 Project Moon Dust

The official reason for Project Moon Dust was to recover the remains of Soviet satellites that reentered the atmosphere and crashed to Earth. And they didn’t just recover these satellites in the United States but all over the world, in places such as South Africa, Bolivia, and even as far away as the Himalayan Mountains.

However, according to some researchers, most prominently Clifford Stone, a great many of the Moon Dust missions actually recovered crashed UFOs. Many of these craft are thought to have been taken back to the United States to various air bases and research facilities, with a view to reverse-engineering the technology available.^[9] Stone, who also claimed involvement in the missions, would state shortly before his death in 2014, “While we were doing this, we were telling the American public there was nothing to it [UFOs].”

Stone would also state that on most of these missions, the unit thought they were going for a satellite or a Soviet test plane. However, he would also state that on each of these missions, there was also a person assigned at the last minute who “wasn’t an Army official.” It would appear that these mysterious additions to the mission were the only ones in full possession of the actual facts of each incident. The claims, while perhaps requiring a pinch of salt or two, are certainly intriguing.

1 The CHANI Project

Perhaps one of the most intriguing of these alleged secret projects is the CHANI (Channeled Holographic Access Network Interface) Project, which one researcher described as an “orgasmic interaction between science theory and spiritual awareness.”^[10]

A simple way of explaining this apparent project is a moving of remote viewing and the use of psychics into the digital age. Through various computer software programs, the conspiracy says, a digital “channeler” or presence would make contact with spirits and energies from another realm—or, more accurately, with one energy or spirit, who was referred to rather ominously as “the Entity.”

Even more bizarre, the Entity was in contact with humanity on behalf of “the Elders,” the creators and overseers of the universe. This is an interesting notion and one that is found in the legends of many ancient civilizations. Ancient Egypt, for example, had legends of nine creator gods. Perhaps interestingly, it is claimed that similar channeling experiments in the 1950s and 1960s, themselves an offshoot of the MKUltra and remote viewing experiments, made contact with one of these creator gods.

Everyone loves going to a concert. There is a certain thrill to seeing your favorite artist live and up close in front of your very eyes. Even in the biggest of stadiums, you can feel completely at home surrounded by people who share a love and appreciation for something.

But what happens when gigs go wrong? It can be an embarrassment for the artist, a shock for the audience, and an absolute gift for social media. Here, we’re going to discuss the top 10 live music mess-ups, falls, and fails!

10 Michael Jackson
Oslo (July 15, 1992)

When it came to live shows, the king of pop was known for his energetic stage presence and complex dance routines. Unfortunately, such an active stage show means that a live vocal isn’t always going to sound the best. That’s why MJ employed the use of playback—where he would lip-synch to a prerecorded vocal. This is all well and good . . . until it’s not.

During his one and only night in Oslo, Michael started to lip-synch to his opening song, “Jam,” but found the playback vocal wasn’t there. The crew had to hastily switch to Michael’s somewhat wobbly and out-of-breath real live vocal until the playback issue was fixed a little further into the song.^[1]

9 Justin Bieber
Glendale, Arizona (September 29, 2012)

Love him or hate him, it can’t be denied that Justin Bieber is a music sensation. Midway through a performance of “Out Of Town Girl” during the opening night of his tour, Bieber turned from the audience and doubled over before vomiting all over the stage.^[2]

He rushed off while the backing dancers professionally continued on as if nothing was wrong. Sheepishly, Bieber returned a few moments later. After the show, he took to social media and blamed drinking too much milk before the concert for his unsettled stomach. Nice!

8 The Foo Fighters
Ullevi, Gothenburg (June 12, 2015)

During a particularly enthusiastic rendition of “Monkey Wrench” with his band, The Foo Fighters, lead singer Dave Grohl made for the edge of the stage but tripped and stumbled forward, spectacularly nose-diving from the 2.4-meter-high (8 ft) platform. He tried to stand. But unfortunately, his leg was broken and he had to abandon the show.

Medics rushed in and put him on a stretcher. But before being whisked away from the stadium, Grohl said to the crowd, “I’m gonna go to the hospital, I’m gonna fix my leg, and then I’m gonna come back and we’re gonna play for you again!”

He was carried to an ambulance to wild cheers and the audience chanting his name. Rock ‘n’ roll!^[3]

7 Paul McCartney
Quebec (July 20, 2008)

Positioned two-thirds of the way into the ex-Beatle’s mammoth live set, “Live and Let Die” was supposed to be a highlight of a concert containing over 30 songs. However, things didn’t go quite as rehearsed one night in Canada!

Having obviously missed playing a note during a quiet section, McCartney looked to his drummer and took the wind out of the song’s sails by audibly laughing during the final word of the lyric “makes you give in and cry, say live and let die.”^[4]

Seconds later—as if to compound this goof-up—the people in charge of the pyrotechnics also missed their cue, with the spectacular fireworks coming in several seconds late. Live and let d’oh!

6 Oasis
Toronto (September 7, 2008)

Mistakes are not always the fault of the band, artist, or crew, as happened with Oasis while performing their smash hit song “Morning Glory” at Toronto’s 2008 Virgin Festival. Midway through the song, a man ran up behind lead singer and guitarist Noel Gallagher and forcefully pushed him off the stage.^[5]

Of course, the show was brought to a halt as security tackled the assailant and Gallagher limped into the wings. A few tense moments later, a band member came out and addressed the concerned audience: “Thank you for your patience. Just give us five minutes, and we’ll be right back!”

Much to the delight of the fans, the concert soon resumed without further incident!

5 U2
Vancouver (May 14, 2015)

We’ve all done that thing where we’ve tripped over something or walked into something when we’re not looking where we’re going. Well, a similar thing happened during U2’s performance of their smash hit “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” in Vancouver.

It seemed The Edge was concentrating more on looking out over the expansive crowd than looking where he was going . . . and he stepped right off the edge of the stage. He fell several feet from the platform where he was quickly attended to by staff at the venue.

Luckily, this was the final song of the show. U2 lead singer Bono kept the crowd going and the energy up during the mishap as the rest of the band left the stage in the planned fashion.^[6]

4 Metallica
Abu Dhabi (April 19, 2013)

Performing in front of so many people puts a lot of pressure on an artist as Metallica’s Kirk Hammett discovered while strumming the subdued intro to “Nothing Else Matters.”

After hitting several bum notes, he stopped playing, stepped up to the microphone, and addressed the metal-loving audience: “My hands are really sweaty, and it’s just really hard for me to play. So I’m going to do it one more time, okay?”^[7]

The audience roared their approval, and he performed the intro flawlessly the second time around!

3 Pink
Nuremberg (July 15, 2010)

Pink is renowned for her super energetic and gymnastic-filled live performances. The encore of her 2010 tour consisted of her being whirled around the venue on cables while performing “So What” like some sort of glamorously amazing musical pinata.

Unfortunately, she was not properly secured into her harness in Nuremberg and ended up being dragged off the stage and into the pit below. Clearly in pain and complaining that she couldn’t feel anything in her back, Pink was rushed to the hospital for X-rays.

Luckily, she avoided any serious injuries.^[8] She just had a few bruises to both her body and her ego!

2 Ed Sheeran
London (July 12, 2015)

A huge draw to Ed Sheeran’s live shows is that he is pretty much a one-man band. With the help of his loop pedal, he can do amazing things and sound so much bigger than just one man and his guitar.

But one evening while performing “You Need Me” in London, the loop pedal^[9] went haywire and stopped working. Insisting that the pedal be quickly fixed by the crew so that he could re-perform the song, he told the audience, “We do have a curfew, but I’m not having this!”

1 Paul McCartney
London (July 13, 1985)

This is possibly one of the most widely seen mess-ups in live music history! During his solo performance at Live Aid, Paul McCartney took to the stage to serenade Wembley Stadium (and approximately 1.5 billion people watching live around the world) with The Beatles’ classic “Let It Be.”

However, when McCartney started to sing, he found the microphone wasn’t working.^[10] It turns out that a technician for the band that played before McCartney had accidentally unplugged the mic, meaning that no one in the arena or at home could hear him.

It took over a minute, but the problem was identified and fixed. The very next day, McCartney went to a studio to rerecord the missing vocals for all subsequent broadcasts and releases.

So which of these was your favorite live mess-up? Have you seen musicians mess up, fall, or otherwise fail at any concerts you’ve attended? Be sure to let us know in the comments section below!

I am Josh Gill from Barnsley in the UK. I studied journalism and English literature/language at Coventry University before going on to work as a freelance writer. I love music, sci-fi movies, and dark humor. I also daily vlog on my YouTube channel JoshAndLaurensWanderWorks.

Are you sick of struggling to find anything decent to watch out of Hollywood these days? Me too! Long a bastion of great movie making, Hollywood has recently abdicated the bulk of its role as an entertainment creator in order to enter the rather tiresome world of politics and social engineering. Gone are the regular releases of brilliant new ideas that inspire, thrill, or humour us. Now, when not producing politically-corrected remakes of past favorites, Hollywood producers, writers, and directors are throwing together cookie-cutter films based on trite and tired themes.

But . . . from time to time a little gem has emerged unscathed from the mire of new releases; a gem that surprises us with its brilliance, twists and turns, or just simply new ideas. This list looks at ten recently released movies in the horror genre that give us some hope that at some point in the future, saner heads will prevail in the entertainment industry and these types of moving pictures will become the rule, and not the exception to it.

10 Bird Box, 2018

Birdbox is an unusual film in its use of reduced sensory perception (blindness) to create a feeling of fear in the viewer. The protagonist (played by Sandra Bullock) must take her children to a safe place after the world has been largely driven to suicide by an unseen presence. They must travel without the use of their sight as it is only when the evil presence is perceived visually that it can drive a person to self-murder.

This is one of three films on this list that uses reduced senses to great effect (also items 9 and 2). The film released to mixed reviews but it is definitely worth the watch in my opinion, particularly if you like “edge of your seat” type horrors that are less about violence (though it does contain some) and more about psychological thrills.

9 Hush

This is the second of the sensorily-deprived movies on the list. Hush focuses on the life of a deaf and mute woman who lives in relative seclusion where she works as a writer. Things take a rather dark and horrible turn when a masked man appears at her window. Not surprisingly this leads to a fight to the death for the woman who proves herself rather adept at self-defense and out-of-the-box thinking.

This, like the previously mentioned Bird Box, uses the protagonist’s disability to create an extremely unsettling atmosphere. However, unlike Bird Box this film has a faster pace and is less cerebral. This may not be the best film on the list but it is definitely worth the watch.

8 The Witch

Brilliant scoring, an atmosphere of disquiet, and a historic setting make The Witch a somewhat modern-gothic film. Much of the horror here comes from psychology which is oftentimes better than in-your-face gore (though that is not to say gore has no place in horror of course!) The film follows a devout homesteading family in the 17th century who slowly unravel after the disappearance of their newborn boy.

Don’t expect fast pacing and do expect to do a little thinking. Even if you don’t like period pieces, I recommend you give The Witch a go; I think you will pleasantly surprised.

7 The Babadook, 2014

It is not always easy for a New Zealander like me to celebrate Australian achievements (few and far between that they be). Nevertheless I must laud the efforts of the team who gave us the original and unusual film The Babadook. The Babadook is a sinister presence first seen in a rather disturbing children’s book that the main character reads to her son . . . a child who appears slightly disturbed from the get go. There are some minor cliche moments in the film but on the whole it manages to bring something new to the screen. If Hollywood had produced this film it would open with an overly happy mother kowtowing to a bratty child, but here we see a mother racked with exhaustion who has all but given up on life having to deal with a non-medicated hyperactive (and slightly crazy) kid. This actually leads to a rather interesting and unexpected ending with a nice twist.

For those who want to take a deeper look at the why’s and wherefores of the movie, it is said that it may be a metaphor for grief. Certainly the surprise ending seems to confirm that theory (I wish I could say more but that would spoil the film for those who haven’t seen it).

6 It Follows

The atmosphere of this film is palpable thanks largely to the musical score with its retro (yet timeless) feel. The soundtrack hearkens back to the golden age of horror that gave us the likes of Friday the Thirteenth and Halloween. It is for that reason that viewers who have seen (and no-doubt loved) those older horrors will get more from that aspect of this movie. But hey, the ’80s vintage vibe of Netflix’s Stranger Things managed to entice an entire generation of young viewers so who knows.

The “It” in the title refers to a creature (in human form) which follows a victim relentlessly. The creature can only walk (which actually heightens the tension and fear in the film) but if it catches up with its victim . . . he is dead—in a rather gruesome manner as we discover early in the film. In order to stop “it” from following you, you must have sex with someone else which transfers the danger to them (much like the pass-the-parcel handling of the mysterious video tape in Ringu).

The film seems to be rather obviously a warning about the dangers of promiscuity . . . though perhaps I’m just reading too much into it. Of all the films on this list, “It Follows” is my favorite. Watch it.

5 Bone Tomahawk

Is it a Western? Is it a comedy? Is it a horror? Yes. I am not generally a fan of the Western genre but here it is combined with a little wry humor and a considerable dose of violence (some very gory so be warned). The film opens with a visibly brutal slaying of a couple, which gives you a little taste of what is to come (eventually). It segues into a more traditional western format as we meet various characters and there is even some humor tossed in for good measure.

While the film is slow paced (mostly) and definitely tending more toward being a Western, once the horror starts it horrifyingly switches to a Western cum “Cannibal Holocaust” movie. Not for the faint of heart . . . trust me.

4 Midsommar

Modern horror meets the Wicker Man—without being a trashy remake of that great oldie (tsk tsk Hollywood for its 2006 disaster). I am a great fan of Director Ari Aster’s previous film Hereditary (more on that shortly) so I was eager to see his second movie, Midsommar. Midsommar is set in an idyllic Swedish countryside (actually filmed in Hungary . . . fewer no-go zones perhaps!) It is, in the words of Guardian reviewer, Peter Bradshaw, a “carnival of agony” and I certainly concur.

While some of the premise of the film is slightly clichéd, that should not stop you from seeing this broadly unique and chilling picture. I predict a long and rewarding career in horror for Ari Aster.

3 Hereditary

Shocking . . . the one word that really sums up this picture. This film has so many twists and turns and dread-inspiring moments that you are kept on the edge of your seat constantly. Hereditary follows a family suffering from family loss leading to even more loss and horrifying discoveries. It is intensely disturbing on a psychological level in many scenes, and on a physical level in others (one particular driving scene springs to mind).

This is Ari Aster’s first film and what a great introduction to his work! And of course his second work, Midsommar, is listed as item 4 on this list so be sure to check that out too. Hereditary is a must-see even if only to experience what is perhaps the best screen performance from Toni Collette in her long and shining acting career.

2 A Quiet Place

A film built around the concept of silence. Whereas Bird Box focuses on blindness, and Hush on deafness, A Quiet Place focuses on muteness. I have, as yet, not discovered a film that focuses on the absence of touch (in the horror genre at any rate) so there is still room for another sensory-deprivation horror film in the future!

A quiet place follows a family living in a world filled with creatures who, with great rapidity, dismember all humans they come into contact with. The creatures have acute hearing so the slightest sound draws them in. And so our family finds itself in a world of silence, where every footstep and utterance must be hushed. This is an incredibly well conceived movie and a real edge-of-your-seat ride. I don’t think I know of anyone who hasn’t raved upon seeing it.

Bonus: seeing The Office’s John Krasinski playing a deadly (literally) serious role.

1 The Lighthouse

Just like The Witch at position 8 on this list, The Lighthouse is a period horror and what better location could be found for such a film than a remote lighthouse? The tale follows two lighthouse keepers (played by Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe) who have to battle a real life horror: their own nightmares and loss of sanity. The film is directed by Robert Eggers (who also directed The Witch) and has been widely acclaimed by critics (though don’t be put off by that!)

The film is shot in black and white (risky these days) but if a younger audience can come to terms with that it will undoubtedly prove extremely popular across the generations.

This film is the only one on the list that is not actually out at cinemas but hopefully the trailer above will serve to entice you to give it a shot when it is available on October 18th this year.

So, there you have it. My selection of ten of the better recent releases in the horror genre. If you disagree with my choices or, better still, have another great film to add to the list, please mention it in the comments (you can find those by scrolling past way too many content recommendations!)

The cold cubes in your soda deserve a hat tip. They are made of capable stuff, spawning mysterious feats like emerald green icebergs in Antarctica and ice volcanoes in space.

The frosty wonder can also move in nanoseconds, hide things for millions of years, and become the material of choice in a nuclear disaster. Ice is celebrated in a big way all over the world—from China to Norway, where festivals bring out the true splendor and weirdness of this natural wonder.

10 Long-Lasting Ice Pop

A hot day can melt an ice pop so fast that you end up licking your hand more than the snack. In 2018, a British firm announced the answer. They called it the world’s first “non-melting ice lolly.”

In truth, it does melt. To be more positive, it lasts hours longer than ordinary ones. The company, Bompas & Parr, is known for quirky foodstuffs like flavored fireworks. Their solution to the irritating ice pop drip was clever.

In World War II, Geoffrey Pyke invented pykrete, ice that contains wood pulp and sawdust. Pike envisioned that aircraft carriers could be build from the material. Winston Churchill supported him. But when the project cost too much and was shut down, Pike committed suicide. He could not have foreseen his invention’s influence on the non-melting lolly.

The pykrete inspired the snack’s main design for heat tolerance—strands of fruit fibers. Although it sounds simple, the ice pop took a year to develop and was rolled out to the public in apple flavor. Thanks to the fiber content, this ice pop is a little more chewy than ordinary ones.^[1]

9 The Giant Spinning Disk

In Maine, winter 2019 left a treat in the Presumpscot River. Near a bend in the river churned a disk of ice. It was hefty, measuring 100 meters (330 ft) in diameter.

Slowly spinning in a counterclockwise direction, the swirl was unusual but not unique. The right circumstances will spawn one right there and then. A large eddy, usually where a river kinks, traps pieces of ice.

The one in Maine probably began with ice fragments tracing the egg-like rotation of the eddy. As pieces kept arriving from upstream, the swirling and knocking against the shoreline crushed the ice together. It froze into a solid plate. As it kept turning with the eddy and chafed against the banks, the disk became circular.^[2]

Presumpscot River likely has produced similar ice wheels in the past, and in 1993, the same thing happened in North Dakota. The Sheyenne River produced a disk (smaller than the one in Maine) when ice collected at an eddy.

8 Destruction Of Larsen B

Larsen B was an ice shelf in Antarctica. Noteworthy for its stability, the structure was around 10,000 years old. In 2002, it collapsed within weeks. Around 3,250 square kilometers (1,250 mi²) of ice tumbled into the sea, the first time that this volume had vanished so quickly.

The only clue was a dramatic one. Over 2,000 lakes had sprung up all over the shelf during the months before. These meltwater lakes are normal for the summer season when ice melts and collect in basins. As one reservoir can hold over a million tons of water, researchers wondered if their combined weight caused Larsen B to break apart.

In 2016, the theory was tested. With melt season approaching, several basins on the McMurdo Ice Shelf were rigged with measuring equipment. The data showed that lakes filling with melt caused the shelf to bend.^[3]

McMurdo survived the season. But during a hypothetical test, the shelf “broke” when the lakes were slightly bigger and closer together. This was pretty much the smoking gun for Larsen B.

7 Frozen Mountain Range

Antarctica’s biggest mountain range is the Gamburtsevs. It’s about the same size as the European Alps, but nobody had ever seen the giant in the flesh, so to speak.

The whole thing is covered by a layer of ice as thick as 3,050 meters (10,000 ft). The frozen blanket is why the 100-million-year-old mountains look baby fresh. At that age, they should have been severely eroded. This natural process probably hit a pause button when ice enveloped the region, including the then-young Gamburtsevs.

During a four-week project that ended in 2009, scientists zipped over the range in planes. Radar measured everything below and revealed a stunning geography. The mountaintops were 2,700 meters (8,850 ft) above sea level. Deep valleys flowed with rivers and lakes.

Curiously, at certain points, the water flowed uphill. Heavy pressure from the ice overhead helped the liquid to move against gravity. At higher elevations, however, the water froze and provided the layer of ice that preserved the Gamburtsevs.^[4]

6 Fukushima’s Ice Wall

In 2011, an earthquake and tsunami wrecked a nuclear plant in Japan. The consequences continue to this day. One of the worst is water contamination. In 2017, the government devised a plan to stop radioactive water leaking from the Fukushima plant from reaching groundwater.

They constructed an underground wall made entirely of permafrost. Running 30 meters (100 ft) deep and 1.6 kilometers (1 mi) long, the project cost $320 million.^[5]

From the start, the ice barrier has had its critics. Soon, it became obvious that the wall slowed down the contamination, but it did not seal anything. Radioactivity continued to contaminate a frightening 500 tons of water every day. The good news was that about 300 could be pumped out to be purified. Before the ice wall was installed, the daily amount was worse.

However, the venture remains expensive. The permafrost hedge requires $9.5 million per year to maintain. For now, it remains the best solution for a plant so irradiated that not even robots can enter to clean up the uranium trapped inside.

5 Ice Volcano

Ceres is an odd duck. From the 1800s to modern times, astronomers changed its classification three times. It was discovered as a planet and then demoted to an asteroid before its recent upgrade to a dwarf planet.

This chameleon is noteworthy for something else—the first evidence of cryovolcanism. This occurs when volcanoes made of ice spew boiling salt water instead of hot lava. Scientists suspected that cryovolcanoes existed in the solar system, but they had never found one.

In 2016, NASA’S Dawn spacecraft investigated the 965-kilometer-wide (600 mi) Ceres. Of particular interest was Ahuna Mons, a massive mountain standing 3,962 meters (13,000 ft) tall and measuring 17.7 kilometers (11 mi) wide at the base.

Finding such a gargantuan cone on a small planet was weird. Even stranger, it stood alone. But the shape and the isolation were healthy signs of a volcano. (Only volcanic activity can create lone mountains.) To boot, Ahuna Mons was made entirely of ice. It even had a volcanic dome, flanks, and summit similar to Earth’s volcanoes. Everything points to Ahuna Mons being the first recorded cryovolcano.^[6]

4 Ice Instruments

The 2018 Ice Music Festival in Norway happened on a stage carved entirely from ice. Musicians also played instruments fashioned from the frozen waters of Lake Finse as well as a local glacier. Things like drums, woodwinds, guitars, trumpets, and harps are made to resemble—and sound like—the real things. The festival also created the world’s first ice double bass and saxophone with two openings.

As far as music goes, people are often surprised by how similar the ice instruments sound to traditional ones. The most notable difference is volume. The frosty pieces whistle, thump, and toot in softer tones. Musicians also face an unusual challenge. Playing with gloves hampers the quality of the music, so none are worn.

Handling an ice guitar in extremely cold conditions is enough to suck the feeling from anyone’s fingers. During a performance, musicians take turns to warm their hands or play.

The most mysterious fact about the ice instruments concerns their origins. When carved from natural ice, they produce musically accurate sounds. Instruments that come from artificial ice (the freezer type) have no acoustic properties.^[7]

3 The Harbin Festival

Every winter, China hosts a spectacular festival. The theme is all about ice. In 2019, 10 million visitors were expected to arrive at the 35th annual Harbin International Ice and Snow Festival.

For two months, people explored massive ice and snow sculptures. They included buildings like castles and the Colosseum constructed with giant ice bricks. However, the real magic happened at night. The replicas were lit from inside with different colors, giving a fantasy feel that almost distracted tourists from the extreme cold.

There was no chance for sightseers to get bored. The ice creations covered 743,000 square meters (8 million ft²) of the city of Harbin. Building the wonderland required around 113,000 cubic meters (4 million ft³) of material. This achievement was made within days by an army of workers in the thousands who carved the large blocks.

Apart from the icy architecture, the festival also hosted subzero swimming, mass weddings, and snow sculpture competitions.^[8]

2 Green Icebergs

The Southern Ocean has a lot of icebergs, but some of them are green. Impressively green. Scientists first boarded one in 1988 near East Antarctica. More surprising than the color was the clarity. The ice looked like solid glass without bubbles. This type of ice hails from ancient glaciers, but those are usually blue.

At first, the green wonders seemed like a quirk of nature. When researchers searched for the reason behind the hue, it became clear that the icebergs could play an important role in dispersing ocean nutrients. The green ice did not come from glaciers on land. Instead, they calved from the undersides of floating ice shelves.

A recent study found that the Amery Ice Shelf (where the 1988 iceberg was found) was packed with iron. The iron came from rocks crushed into a powder as glaciers snailed over them. Eventually, they end up in shelves and oxidize in seawater.^[9]

Iron oxide particles turn green when light shines through them. The icebergs probably disperse iron to phytoplankton, helping them survive in remote places where they normally could not.

1 Ice VII

In 2018, the world’s quickest ice was found inside diamonds. Discovered deep underground, Ice VII grows at over 1,600 kilometers per hour (1,000 mph).

Laboratory tests revealed a few characteristics about the speedy stuff. It formed when high pressure and temperatures were both present. The ice could also freeze almost all at once or work its way down from the surface.

The two variations confused scientists until they discovered that Ice VII does not freeze water in the usual way. Normally, heat must be reduced before a liquid can turn solid. This makes ice expand slowly as it cools its way into growth.

Ice VII first blooms inside molecule clusters. This bypasses the heat problem, allowing the ice to spread in nanoseconds. Whether it explodes all over the place or works downward from the surface depends on temperature differences between the water and ice crystals.^[10]

This type of ice could help to find extraterrestrial life, ironically by eliminating the dead worlds. The pressure needed to create Ice VII is several thousand atmospheres—too much to allow life. Any alien world with this kind of pressure is likely to be barren.

Superheroes are the objects of fancy and admiration for millions the world over. They right wrongs, protect the weak, and rescue society from innumerable forms of injustice and peril. There’s only one glaring problem: They aren’t real. The incredible feats performed by these stalwart defenders are made possible by uncanny powers that, sadly, are fictional.

Or are they?

SEE ALSO: 10 Real-Life People With Real Superpowers

What if I told you that natural superpowers exist sealed away in our bodies, only waiting for the proper training to awaken them? Well, as unbelievable as this may sound, it is actually true. So if you’re ready to transcend your fragile human shell and become the superhero you’ve always dreamed of being, here’s a list of ten abilities that you can unlock to become a superhuman!

10 Superhuman Strength

Strength is a much more complex concept than many realize. It is not just about how much muscle we have, but even more so how well we use it. One need not be a bodybuilder to have super strength, as proven by grand master strongman and pound-for-pound strongest man in the world Dennis Rogers. Rogers has performed many incredible feats of strength, including preventing airplanes from taking off and holding back four Harley-Davidson motorcycles at once. These are impressive feats for any strongman but are especially incredible considering that Dennis Rogers is only 168 centimeters tall (5’6″) and 76 kilograms (168 lb). And he’s in his fifties. So how does he do it? The answer is plyometrics.

The goal of plyometrics is to access more of the dormant strength in our muscles by partially bypassing a natural function of the nervous system called the inhibition reflex. The golgi tendon organ (GTO)—present in every muscle—sends nerve impulses to our spinal cords every time we use a muscle. The spinal cord then responds with an inhibition reflex, which limits the amount of power your muscle can use. This process exists because human muscles are capable of creating a higher degree of force than they and other structural elements of the body can withstand. If not for this, reflex muscles would tear themselves from tension, and people would strike things with more force than their bones and tendons could handle without breaking. The GTO however, does not suppress your power only at the edge of damage. Through training with quick, explosive exercises, plyometrics gives us the ability to force out more power more rapidly, before the inhibition reflex occurs.^[1]

The intent of plyometrics is to train your muscles to release more power more rapidly from the muscle that you have, with the goal of generating as much power as possible before the inhibition reflex occurs. To achieve this, plyometrics is based on quick, explosive exercises, which focus on generating immediate force and developing your fast-twitch muscle fibers. In addition to training explosive burst techniques and exercises, an important part of developing fast-twitch muscle is exhausting slow-twitch muscles in other, more extended stamina-oriented workouts, at which point fast-twitch muscle fibers take over and begin to develop.

Plyometrics are wonderful, but muscle is still the source of that strength, so we still need some. There is a difference between how much muscle you have and how strong that muscle is. Both are equally important, and both are trained differently. Muscle growth, or hypertrophy, is best trained through pushing muscles to the point of exhaustion through high reps and consecutive workouts for the same muscle groups. Strength, on the other hand, is developed with lower reps of more weight and reasonable rest time in between.

9 Lightning Speed

You’re probably thinking, “Sure, there are some fast people out there, but there’s a difference between being really fast and ‘superhuman speed.’ ” However, anyone lucky enough to have had the illustrious pleasure of working with the late, great Bruce Lee would likely beg to differ. In order for Lee’s movements to be reasonably visible on film, they had to be slowed down two-fold. First, he would intentionally move slower so that the camera could capture his movements, and then afterward, the film would be slowed so that the eyes of the viewer could follow what was happening. If these measures weren’t taken, it would appear that the villains surrounding him would simply fall over for no reason without any visible cause.^[2] If speed beyond the comprehension of the human eye isn’t fast enough in your opinion to be considered superhuman, then you’re certainly a tough one to impress.

Fighting fast is one thing, but if we’re going to talk about real super speed, we need to take running and other types of movement into account as well. Luckily, this traces back to the same core concept, which is fast-twitch muscle fiber. This is the same fast-twitch muscle fiber discussed in the previous installment regarding super strength and is trained largely with the same type of concepts: plyometrics and explosiveness, as well as focusing these types of training on the muscle groups necessary for the abilities you want to achieve.

Fast movement, however, is not the only element of lightning speed. In order to be capable of utilizing this speed effectively, one must also have super reaction time. Without this, all the speed in the world is meaningless. The best way to train reaction time is through reaction-oriented activities, such as the hand-slap game and speed bag training, as well as through visual athletic training, such as robo-pong, focus loop, and brock string exercises.

8 Incredible Agility

So far, we’ve explored a few powers that will help you knock around the baddies. To do so, you’ll need to get there in time to save . . . whoever it is you’re saving. Super speed will help you with that, but you’ll need to round it out with the super agility to get past obstacles that most people can’t, and quick!

Parkour is just what you need. As stated by founder David Belle: “Parkour is a method of training which allows us to overcome obstacles, both in the urban and natural environments.” Likely the most notable paths for parkour users (traceurs) is across rooftops, as shown in the Rush Hour BBC promo, which was the introduction of parkour to the mainstream.^[3] Being agile enough to climb and jump and run across daunting obstacles may not sound like much of a superpower, but just watch any of the wealth of homemade parkour videos out there, and you’ll be shocked by the incredible things already being done by many across the world!

Founded in 1990, parkour is a relatively new concept but has taken the world by storm and has many training schools around the world. This is important because parkour, when not learned under professional guidance, can be extremely dangerous for obvious reasons (including falling from the rooftops you’re jumping across).

7 Extreme Flexibility

Extreme flexibility is one of the most well-known of all real superpowers. Contortionists have been a staple of the performance world since as far back as ancient Egypt and possibly beyond. A master of this art is Daniel Browning Smith, also known as “Rubberboy.” Recognized by Guinness World Records as the world’s most flexible man, he is known for squeezing himself through unstrung tennis rackets, rotating his torso 180 degrees, bending in half backwards from a laying position, and, of course, squeezing into tiny boxes, not to mention all of the other skills commonly associated with the art.

Jujutsu and its cousins, Brazilian jiu-jitsu and judo, as well as other forms of technical grappling are highly effective and popular martial arts. These styles of ground combatives utilize submission, choking, limb-breaking, and various other types of grappling techniques, and flexibility is essential. Flexibility also increases the quality of many striking techniques, and that’s not just for flashy moves and high kicks. Speed and range of motion in power-generating body parts, like the hips, lead to more powerful strikes.

Healing and recovery are also dramatically increased with superior flexibility, as it decreases stress on joints and reduces pain, making us more resilient and getting us back into action more quickly after a particularly strenuous battle or damaging injury.

Training flexibility is largely based on engaging in all types of stretching regularly and frequently. Dynamic stretching involves gradually increasing reach, movement speed, or both, when moving parts of your body. Ballistic stretching is less controlled and relies on using momentum to push a body part beyond its usual range. Static stretching involves holding a muscle stretched at its farthest point and has two subtypes: static-passive, which is holding the stretched muscle with some external force, and static-active, which means using only the muscles to hold the stretch. Another type, isometric stretching, involves tensing of the stretched muscles, such as if a partner is holding your leg high while you try to push it down. (This is but one of many examples of isometric stretching.)

All types of stretching are necessary for extreme flexibility, but isometric stretching is the best for developing strength and range of motion for athletics and contortion, so using it as a primary focus in your training is key for this kind of ability.^[4]

6 Ultra Fortitude

For a truly superhuman body, fortitude and toughness are of primary importance, as superheroes are faced with constant threat to their bodies. Methods of body conditioning have been used for many years in the world of martial arts, one of the most common concepts being bone mineralization, also called calcification. Bones are primarily comprised of calcium, and the amount and density of calcium in those bones determines their size and structural strength. Resistance training in one’s workout routine is a simple and safe way to achieve mineralization. It is even suggested to help the elderly maintain their health.^[5]

When the body detects that its bones are absorbing large amounts of force, a natural mechanism sends more calcium into the bones, increasing their size, density, and weight, thus adding to the structural integrity of their owner’s body and, in some ways, even striking power. This concept is called Wolff’s law. Many types of martial artists through history have utilized this concept by striking objects repeatedly to cause a calcifying reaction in the bones, including the legendary Shaolin monks.

Davis’s law is a concept similar to Wolff’s law, the difference being that where Wolff’s law concerns bones, Davis’s law concerns soft tissue. The body’s capacity to respond to stress is not limited to bones, and the soft tissues of the body can be trained to harden through stress as well, resulting in more resilient muscles and organs, as well as a boost to pain resistance, which is important, as well.

Having a body that can structurally survive as much punishment as possible is great, but how much pain and suffering the hero can endure before giving in to a villain or extraordinarily arduous task is another thing and also extremely important. Pain has two primary concepts behind it: threshold and tolerance. Threshold represents how much stimulus is required for something to feel “painful,” and tolerance represents how much of that pain one can physically and psychologically endure. Unfortunately, there seems to be no way of increasing one’s pain threshold, but tolerance can be trained, and to a remarkable degree.

A good place to look for this is once again is to the Shaolin. These incredible warrior monks perform superhuman feats of pain regulation, such as lying on spears and having large stones smashed on their stomachs. How do they do it? Meditation. By controlling their minds, the Shaolin can actually distract themselves from and even reduce pain, making it nearly, if not totally, irrelevant. If that’s not superhuman pain resistance, than what is?

5 Surviving Extreme Temperatures

In 2007, Wim Hof set a world record when he immersed himself in ice for 72 minutes in nothing but shorts and boots, and this isn’t even his most incredible feat. He has also climbed Mount Everest, again, in nothing but shorts and boots (he was only stopped from reaching the summit by a foot injury), and run a marathon in the desert without water.

Wim Hof, or “The Iceman,” as he is known, manages such things with a heightened connection to and control of his body. This may sound like something that is likely a trick or hoax, but Hof has always done his work under scrutiny by scientists and journalists, all of whom verify his claims.^[6] Though he has been observed by the scientific community closely enough to prove his legitimacy, exactly how his methods work remains a mystery to science.

So how is it possible to train something that can’t be identified? And how is it that we can be sure that Wim Hof isn’t a one-off freak of nature? Because he teaches people. That’s right, you can take lessons from the man directly, and even if traveling to Europe to train with the man is too much, there are training videos on his website!

4 Enhanced Immunity

Another accomplishment of the Wim Hof method is increasing your immunity! This was proven when Wim Hof was documented resisting that symptoms of an endotoxin introduced in a medical laboratory. The scientists were astonished by what they witnessed but doubted that anyone else could replicate Hof’s feat. To test this, 12 students of Hof’s were brought in, and all of them resisted the toxin, just like Hof!

The Wim Hof method may be incredibly impressive, but it’s not a cure-all, and as dangerous as it may be, for many potential contaminants, the only way to protect ourselves is to expose ourselves. Tolerance to poisons and other toxins is most commonly achieved by consuming or injecting a very small, survivable amount into one’s body at a steadily increasing rate as the body’s natural defensive reactions continuously toughen the body’s immunity to said toxin. This term for this is “mithridatism.”^[7]

Vaccines are a similar concept, created as “imitations” of a disease that cause no illness and are intended to provoke a response from the immune system, which then produces antibodies and T-lymphocytes which protect us against the illness in question.

3 Apnea Diving

Apnea diving, or freediving, is so popular and well-known that it is not only a superhuman ability but also a sport! AIDA International Freediving is a democratic, international organization that sets rules and regulations for safety in the sport, in addition to maintaining world records and organizing events all over the planet. Although scientists believed for years that humans could only survive underwater for a few minutes tops and at depths no deeper than 50 meters (164 ft), some of the world records in this sport include dives to depths well over 200 meters (656 ft), with some lasting over 11 minutes on a single breath!^[8]

This is possible because of an evolutionary adaptation called the “diving reflex.” The action of this reflex is to shut down and/or slow physiological functions that use oxygen, thus allowing our bodies to operate on less oxygen for a longer period of time. Blood shift is another phenomenon also necessary in freediving. This function allows the lungs to fill with plasma, preventing their collapse from pressure.

Though recognized as a sport worldwide, freediving is still extremely dangerous to the ill-prepared. Improper preparation and faulty or mismanaged equipment have caused numerous deaths in the sport. Because of this, it is important to seek proper instruction.

2 Echolocation

Many have heard about how some blind people can use echolocation to navigate their surroundings, but a 2013 study from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich biologists shows that sighted people can learn this skill, as well! It turns out that the ability to echolocate is a talent that lies dormant within everyone. This is because our brains have learned to shut out echoes so that we can focus more effectively on the primary source of a sound, rather than having the constant distraction of echoes of everything around us. The trick to learning echolocation is to learn to “tune in” to the echoes that already exist in the world.

The LMU experiment consisted of sighted people outfitted with a headset that contained earphones and a microphone. The participants made a vocalization, and the appropriate echo in relation to objects and spaces in the room was created through the earphones. This test allowed sighted people, over a few weeks of training, to learn to extrapolate information regarding shape, size, and distance from the given echo.^[9]

1 Mind Control

Controlling others like puppets may not be realistic, but implanting thoughts and altering the way people think very much is. The human subconscious is frighteningly vulnerable, and controlling minds through planted suggestion is more accessible a skill than many would presume. This is why the reader should learn about this, not only to use if need be but also to defend against it should one come across a user of these techniques.

The essential element of this process is to go after the subconscious mind while the conscious mind is otherwise focused, and here are the five most common techniques: Covert hypnosis entails convincing someone that your thoughts are their own through suggestive, focused conversation. When one engages in pattern interruption, they create a brief hypnotic moment by forcing someone’s concentration through an abnormal behavior (such as placing a hand on someone’s chest in place of shaking their hand in a greeting—the moment it takes them to analyze the situation will cause a brief hypnotic state). The Zeingarnik effect is concentration that naturally occurs in people toward incomplete tasks. This can be achieved by telling someone an incomplete story, otherwise causing them to focus on an incomplete task. During this period of distracted focus, they are highly suggestible. Another method is to use ambiguous phrases or comments that require someone’s focus to analyze, causing a brief period of high suggestibility. Finally, there are hypnotic keywords, subconscious-evoking phrases like “imagine if . . . ” that can cause a rise in accessibility to someone’s subconscious. This technique is a bit vague and weaker but still very commonly used.

Controlling others is not, however, the only use of these skills. One of the most important uses—and the reason this item was saved for last on the list—is that these tricks can be used to help develop ourselves. The reader may be overwhelmed by the sheer apparent degree of effort needed to attain the things listed here, but by getting control of oneself using techniques such as self-hypnosis, it is remarkable what challenges the average person can overcome and what accomplishments they are able to achieve.

Using mind control on yourself is largely made up of neurolinguitsic programming (NLP), which in this context, is largely made up of two techniques: The flash technique is an NLP exercise in which one visualizes an image associated with a negative feeling in a given circumstance brightly and vividly. The person then implants in that imagined image another, much smaller gray scale image of their preferred feeling in that circumstance. Gradually, the preferred imagine grows to take over the negative image, with the color draining from the negative image to the preferred image. This process is repeated over and over until psychologically successful. Anchoring is associating an internal response with an external or internal stimulus in order to reaccess the internal response (similar to how seeing something nostalgic will remind you of how you felt when you first saw it). This effect can be manually created by choosing a simple, self-creatable stimulus—such as making a hand gesture or touching yourself in a certain way and repeating that action when you want to associate the anchored feeling to a given task at hand.^[10]

Though only a few techniques in each category have been listed here, there are actually a great number of others that can be used to achieve the same forms of control.

So there you have it: ten learnable superpowers ripe for practice. Clearly, in the brevity of this listicle, the complete process of learning such wondrous things is not expressible, but all of the items are out there and ready to be trained. All that’s left now is to reach out, grab for destiny, and, of course, always use your powers for good.

Excelsior!

Jason Karras writes, therefore he is.

Nudity is often dismissed as superfluous or sexualized, but these nude scenes left their mark on movie history and culture as a whole.

SEE ALSO: Top 10 Most Famous Adult Film Stars

Nude scenes can seem arbitrary and gratuitous, but some are markers of history that either moved cinema forward, shocked the world, or changed the culture. These are the 10 most iconic moments in movie nudity. A few caveats before the list: these films are natural nude scenes meaning they don’t include prosthetics or CGI (sorry, Mark Wahlberg in Boogie Nights). Here are the most important nude scenes in movie history and their impacts on culture as a whole.

WARNING: Videos in this list contain sensitive content. Images do not.

10 Hedy Lamarr in Ecstasy

Watch or Buy Ecstasy on Amazon

Leave it to Hedy Lamarr—one of the most fascinating people in global film history—to have a controversial nude scene in 1933. She runs naked through a field and also goes for a naked swim in this Czech film from director Gustav Machaty. The plot was liberating, too, as Hedy plays a woman whose husband is impotent. As a result, she decides to have an affair. She also had the first onscreen orgasm depicted in cinema! The film was a major success, slipping into the public before the strict Hays Code took effect. Hedy went on to become an inventor whose work in radio technology was used by Allies during World War II and is also the basis for Bluetooth technology. All of that from an actress who brazenly went nude!

9 Phoebe Cates in Fast Times at Ridgemont High

Watch or Buy Fast Times at Ridgemont High on Amazon

There is no denying the power of the teen sex comedy and its height in the 1980s. From Revenge of the Nerds to Porkys, there were countless films where teens and college students were getting naked and ogling each other all in the name of good fun. One film stands out above the rest and it’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Directed by Amy Heckerling, the movie gives a little more attention to its female characters than other movies in the genre (David Lynch was actually approached to direct, but thankfully the honor went to Amy). One of the most memorable scenes is a dream sequence in which one young man is in the bathroom dreaming about Phoebe Cates slowly emerging from a swimming pool and opening up her red bikini top to show her bare chest. Why is this important? It’s definitely one of the pornier nude scenes in movie history that managed to elevate the genre of the teen sex comedy. When people think of the genre and this movie, in particular, that scene comes to mind.

8 Eva Green, Louis Garrell, and Michael Pitt in The Dreamers

Watch or Buy The Dreamers on Amazon

Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers is an ode to bohemian youth in 1960s Europe as an American spends time in Paris in 1968. He meets a brother and sister duo whose parents are out of town, so the three stay at the family apartment and spend time exploring that very 60s notion of free love. Threesomes have been depicted on screen in all kinds of ways (Y Tu Mama Tambien is a great example), but The Dreamers introduced incest and political unrest. The sensuality in the movie is juxtaposed with the greater cultural strife felt in Paris in the late ’60s. It feels like the entire city—and the world—is about to explode, and in this scene, the three find their curiosities also explode as the damn bursts, and they engage in a menage a trois. The dreamers love to escape the greater political revolutions going on around them, either in the apartment without parents, at the movies, or with one another’s bodies. It’s a beautiful scene in a poetic film that shows how people actively ignore the struggles of the outside world.

7 Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan in 50 Shades of Gray

Watch or Buy 50 Shades of Gray on Amazon

The film 50 Shades of Gray may be easy to dismiss for its campy eroticism, but the truth is that these wildly successful books-turned-movies brought S&M and kink to mainstream Hollywood. A young woman meets a powerful man who introduces her to a world of BDSM. The indie film Secretary before it playfully explored some of these themes, but 50 Shades was such a monumental hit by comparison. BDSM in a loving relationship simply wasn’t exposed to the mainstream in such a financially successful way before this. Star Dakota Johnson has been quoted talking about her admiration of BDSM that she developed after filming the movie. There were sequels, of course, which turned kink into a franchise.

6 Kathleen Turner and William Hurt in Body Heat

Watch or Buy Body Heat on Amazon

In classic film noir (such as The Big Sleep, To Have and Have Not, and Double Indemnity), sex was confined largely to innuendo and subtle wordplay. To some extent, that was a response to the conservative production codes of the era, but it also lent the films a kind of latent sexual tension: We couldn’t see the characters having sex, so we imagined them having sex for the whole film. But in the ‘70s and ‘80s, we got to see the sex. And in Body Heat, we got to see a lot of it, as William Hurt’s lawyer and Kathleen Turner’s alluring, married socialite found themselves having a torrid, fatal affair. Indeed, it’s hard to pick one particular sex scene among the many featured in this film, but we’ll go with the mostly clothed one in which Turner, playing vulnerable but never taking her eyes off him, strangely seduces Hurt into breaking into her own house. After 1981, whenever anyone referred to a “steamy legal thriller”—and, curiously, people often did—visions of Body Heat began to dance in everyone’s heads.

5 Chloe Sevigny and Vincent Gallo in The Brown Bunny

Watch or Buy The Brown Bunny on Amazon

There are rumors about several realistic sex scenes in film history that are unsimulated, like Gaspar Noe’s Love and 1979’s Caligula. Still, one such famous scene that’s long been believed to be real is from the 2003 Indie film The Brown Bunny. This isn’t the only “real” sex scene in movie history, but it is by far the most famous. Chloe Sevigny gives graphic oral sex to Vincent Gallo who directed this bleak film about a traveling man looking for meaning on his way to California. Chloe Sevigny has said she thought the film would barely be seen and was surprised that this art-house flick got so much attention. She says the scene didn’t hurt her career, only some of her personal relationships and that she and her mom don’t talk about the movie at all. That’s fair.

4 Janet Leigh in Psycho

Watch or Buy Psycho on Amazon

Filmmaker Alexandre O. Philippe has been quoted as saying, “There were movies before the shower scene and movies after the shower scene.” While it’s not the most explicitly nude scene on this list, it essentially did away with the censorship code that ruled Hollywood for nearly thirty years. Not only that, but it made people terrified to ever take a shower again. This scene is another one that is so iconic, some people might not even know what movie it is from. It’s been widely parodied, remade, and referenced ever since its debut in 1960 to horrified crowds around the country. Director Alfred Hitchcock fooled censors by using extreme closeups and revolutionary editing techniques for a total of 78 camera shots and 52 edits. Not only was Janet Leigh in her bra and underwear having a post-coital conversation with a man she was not married to, but this shower stabbing had censors in a tizzy. The most controversial scene shot? The shot of the toilet flushing at the end of the scene. That was actually Hollywood’s first toilet scene. As for the nudity, Janet wore moleskin on her nipples to hide her most sensitive areas and a body double, Olympic swimmer Marli Renfro, stood in for her for some shots. Between the two women, the most famous shower scene in history was made.

3 Michael Fassbender in Shame

Watch or Buy Shame on Amazon

Full frontal male nude scenes are very disproportional to female full frontal scenes. Leave it to the film Shame about a man struggling with sex addiction to boldly show Michael Fassbender’s penis as he walks in and out of frame. The NC-17 film is filled with nude scenes and sex scenes devoid of love to show what this man’s shameless addiction feels like. As shocking as the movie is as a whole, it’s most memorable for Fassbender’s penis making its way on camera. It’s rare to see this much male nudity in a movie that isn’t being used for comedic effect, which has partially become what the drama is most famous for. In some ways, that’s a “shame” because the movie is very good, but on the other hand, the world got to see Michael Fassbender nude.

2 Jaye Davidson in The Crying Game

Watch or Buy The Crying Game on Amazon

Jaye Davidson’s role as Dil in The Crying Game is an example of a nude scene advancing the plot. This story about a man who goes searching for a deceased soldier’s lover and ends up also falling for her. The movie takes a shocking turn when it is revealed that Dil is a transgender woman (shocking for 1992, anyway). The reveal of Jaye Davidson’s body is one of the most shocking and well-done twists in history while also showing the layers and complexities of gender and sexuality. The movie as a whole is filled with more twists and turns.

1 Sharon Stone’s Leg Cross in Basic Instinct

Watch or Buy Basic Instinct on Amazon

It’s actually pretty rare to see a flash of a woman’s downstairs on the big screen, which is why Sharon Stone’s crotch flash was so shocking. It’s the kind of scene people know about even if they’ve never seen the movie. Sharon is effortlessly cool, wearing a white minidress with her legs crossed as she smokes a cigarette during an interrogation. She keeps her cool and her steady gaze as she very deliberately uncrosses her legs, opens them slightly, and crosses them again. She’s not wearing underwear and she lets everyone in the room see it! The scene is not only shocking and sexy, but it shows Sharon’s character as in control. She commands attention, and she knows how to use what she’s got to gain more power. This is a leg cross that will never be forgotten.

About The Author: Stephanie Weber is a pop culture writer and comedian who has been published in Slate, The AV Club, Bustle, Refinery29, Reductress, and more. She is a staff writer for Mr. Skin.

A daily stampede of 1.2 billion users makes Facebook the world’s biggest social media platform. This massive landscape comes with the usual creepy users. If they had a super-bizarre king, it would be Facebook itself. Recent investigations found that the company has information on people not using the platform and that violence is used to keep Facebook interesting. While its moderators struggle with PTSD, the company also wants users’ bank details, phone calls and know the last time when they had sex.

SEE ALSO: 10 Creepy Things Social Media Does To Control Your Mind

10 Brain Scans Can See Facebook

Most people have experienced the obsessive compulsion to check their Facebook page. Some might even experience withdrawal symptoms. Researchers decided to see if this so-called “Facebook addiction” showed up in the brain like a drug. The study was small and by no means conclusive, but the results were interesting.

In 2014, 20 volunteers answered questions about their Facebook habits and were diagnosed with a mild addiction. Afterward, each had their brain scanned while viewing images and pushing a button. The pictures rotated between Facebook-related pictures and road signs. The participants could choose when to push the button, but those who scored higher on the addiction survey turned trigger happy when Facebook popped up.

The scans showed that the platform caused a powerful response in the brain. Similar to cocaine users, the impulsive regions lit up. However, there was a big difference between people addicted to drugs and those hooked on Facebook. A cocaine addict’s prefrontal cortex is underactive. This region controls the impulsive areas of the brain and it worked just fine in the Facebook volunteers. In other words, social media addicts are not driven by real cravings they have no control over, but instead a complex mix of habit, cultural and social factors.

9 Users Have A Reputation Score

Reporting legitimate posts as false news is a problem on social media. To fight this, Facebook devised its own system to identify guilty users. Based on what content they flag, for what reason and how many times a user pushes that button determines a person’s “trustworthiness.” For some reason, this score only runs on a scale from zero to 1.

The system took a year to design before being implemented in 2018. The main purpose is to find the trolls and bullies. Many people maliciously report content as violations just to get a thrill. Others genuinely disagree with the material but because of personal preference and not because the post is inherently wrong.

The score is not an all-powerful fly swatter. This is merely one tool, used in conjunction with thousands of behavioral clues mined by Facebook to separate the genuine flags from the false. While this is clearly a great idea, the process that ultimately gives a user a score remains mysterious. Even more so; how these scores are being used.

8 Shadow Profiles

Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive and founder of Facebook, appeared in front of Congress in 2018. During the proceedings, he answered tough questions about user privacy. In addition, he was grilled about shadow profiles collecting data on people who were not even using Facebook. Despite that this issue had been making the rounds for five years, Zuckerberg claimed he was not familiar with the term “shadow profile.”

This feature figures out the social circle and contact details of people who avoid Facebook but have friends using the platform. When these friends upload their own phone details, a shadow profile is created for every mobile contact without a Facebook account. Eventually, users with mutual friends give the site a perfect view of their social group.

Should somebody with a shadow profile join, Facebook will send them friend suggestions based on their social circle which, by then, is already known to the company. The idea seems to be a legitimate way that Facebook tries to connect people on the site. Even so, some people might not appreciate any company using their number, after purloining it from a friend’s phone, to create a ghost membership for them.

7 Secret Transcripts

In 2019, a group of third-party transcriptionists broke their silence. Facebook had hired them to transcribe recordings, most of which were voice conversations between Facebook Messenger users. The work was already strange, considering that some of the files contained vulgar topics and language. Additionally, the social media giant never provided an explanation as to why it needed the countless transcriptions.

Smelling a rat, the contractors went public. Facebook had no choice but to admit that users were being secretly taped through their phone microphones but added that permission was always given. However, this permission was necessary—and hidden in the small print—for anyone wishing to use voice messaging. When investigators combed through all the policies, they found nothing where users could agree to have their conversations recorded and farmed out to third-party transcriptionists. In other words, Facebook users could not agree even if they wanted to.

The company said it ended the project and that the transcriptions’ only purpose was to test Facebook’s speech-recognizing AI. This pedestrian explanation, whether true or not, was an admission that user privacy had been violated.

6 Moderators Have PTSD

A lot of users ignore Facebook’s policy against posting graphic, offensive and illegal content. That is where the moderators come in. Their job is to weed out these posts. In 2019, The Verge published an investigation into their working conditions. The original paper ran 7,500 words and covered an in-depth look at one of Facebook’s moderation offices in Arizona. During interviews, moderators claimed that the stress of viewing disturbing material, Facebook’s crappy employee rules and low pay created an unhappy environment.

Employees’ strategies apparently included smoking marijuana and having sex, which happened due to “trauma bonding.” Apart from struggling financially and working under what they described as Facebook’s “inhumane” rules, moderators buckled under a huge load of unsavory posts. These included child abuse and exploitation, racism and graphic violence. Several moderators broke down, developed PTSD symptoms while others turned paranoid by the repetitive conspiracy theories they reviewed.

5 The Brazilian Witch Hunt

In 2014, a tabloid posted a sketch on Facebook. The article claimed that the woman in the picture abducted children and used their organs for witchcraft. A group of people realized that the image “showed” Fabiane Maria de Jesus. As a result, the 33-year-old housewife from Brazil was attacked by a mob.

A graphic video showed the unconscious woman having her head smashed into the ground. She was then tied to a bicycle and dragged through the streets while a crowd cheered. The Military Police cleared Fabiane of any crimes related to black magic, organ trafficking, and kidnapping. Several people were also arrested in connection with the mob attack. However, none of this helped the victim. She was so brutalized that two days later, she died.

Facebook responded by saying the company did nothing wrong and accepted no responsibility for the murder. However, the attack could have been sparked by Facebook’s ignorance of Brazil’s fear of witchcraft and organ theft. Both are real issues, especially for the poorer communities. Facebook’s moderators allowed the post because it seemed mild but considering its audience, it was a cultural trigger that ended in tragedy.

4 FBI Recruits Spies On Facebook

In 2019, Business Insider reported that the FBI placed spy ads on Facebook. True enough, according to the platform’s Ad Library, the three ads went live on September 11. Despite the auspicious date and the cloak and dagger theme, the FBI was open about their intent. They were holding the door open for Russian informants.

When a person feels like giving Putin the finger, they can click on the image. The ad leads the future spy to another website. This page belongs to the FBI’s Washington Field Office Counterintelligence Program. A message, written in both English and Russian, informs the reader that the United States uses intelligence on foreign nations to protect its own citizens. Anyone with useful information is invited to meet with the FBI in person. This may seem like a strange suggestion but the fact is that 99 percent of Russian spies just walk into the relevant building and start spilling. When asked why they targeted the Russians, the Bureau would only reveal that the vast number of active soviet operatives posed a security risk.

3 Facebook Follows Sex And Periods

Privacy International is a Britain-based watchdog. In 2019, it discovered that Facebook had a creepy habit of following women’s periods and the last time they had sex. Of course, none of the women involved volunteered the information nor shared anything on social media. They made the mistake of trusting two period-tracking apps.

Named Maya and MIA Fem, users entered information to manage their health, birth control and even help themselves to conceive. The two apps, however, shared these details without permission with third parties that included Facebook. In other words, these third parties knew when the women last had sex or a period, when they were fertile and what birth control they used.

The apps started gathering details the moment a user installed and opened the tracker, before any privacy terms were agreed to. The information was passed on through the Facebook Software Development Kit, a product linked to the platform’s advertising network.

The unauthorized sharing of intimate details can be life-destroying. Experts are concerned that insurance companies and employers could use the information to discriminate against women by denying them leadership roles and making their premiums extra expensive. Why Facebook likes periods is anyone’s guess.

2 An Attempt To Grab Bank Details

In 2018, Facebook sidled up to a few banks. The company asked them to turn over the financial information of their clients. More specifically, Facebook wanted to eyeball people’s account balances and what they purchased with their credit cards. The Wall Street Journal broke the story and named some of the banks that Facebook approached. They included Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, and Citigroup.

In return for the financial data, banks would get featured on the Messenger app. This was enticing. Banks face a lot of competition from companies like PayPal. Messenger has over a billion users, which is a massive market and also Facebook’s commerce center. Should the app turn users towards using the banks, the latter would get an edge against their competition.

Give credit where it is due. Facebook shoved a delicious deal across the negotiation table but every bank thus far had said: “No, thank you.” One bank openly refused out of concern for their clients’ privacy, despite promises not to misuse the information. However, Facebook’s shoddy track record with privacy does not inspire trust. Least of all the idea that its staff members will eyeball every product or service you just paid for with a credit card.

1 Facebook Profits From Violence

In 2018, a journalist applied for a job as a Facebook moderator. The reporter took the position at a Dublin-based company called CPL Resources. This contractor has worked with Facebook since 2010. The undercover investigator was gathering material for a Channel 4 documentary called “Inside Facebook: Secrets of the Social Network.”

The training CPL provided was based on Facebook’s community standards. It soon became clear that not all abuse was created equal. The false employee was told to allow certain offensive posts. The training officer then provided two examples. One was real footage of a toddler being beaten by a grown man. The video was flagged as inappropriate in 2012 but still floated around on Facebook. Another was a meme showing a little girl being drowned with the words, “when your daughter’s first crush is a little negro boy.” When Channel 4 brought it to Facebook’s attention, the platform said that both should have been deleted.

It beggars belief that two graphic posts slipped through the cracks before being chosen as training material. Indeed, as much as Facebook protested that users were not being lured with violence to bolster their numbers and ad revenue, a CPL trainer told the journalist, “If you start censoring too much, then people lose interest in the platform. It’s all about making money at the end of the day.”