Undercover operatives have one of the toughest jobs in law enforcement, and their activities can help bring down even the most bulletproof of criminal enterprises. Sometimes, however, as with all human endeavors, there are problems. The following operations were in the best of cases spectacularly ill-conceived and in the worst accomplished the exact opposite of their intended purpose. Some of the names of these operations were made up. Some, amazingly, were not.

10 Operation Wheelchair

Vancouver Police sergeant Mark Horsley had a simple but brilliant plan to put a dent in a gang of thieves that had been conducting a string of robberies on the east side of town in 2015. These cowardly bandits had been robbing disabled citizens in wheelchairs, and Horsley planned to catch them in the act by posing as a wheelchair-bound man himself. For five days, he tooled around the city’s most crime-ridden areas with money hanging out of an open fanny pack. The ploy attracted plenty of attention—just not the kind he had been expecting.

Despite over 300 contacts with citizens, nobody robbed him. They gave him money instead, although he was doing nothing resembling panhandling. Many people just stopped to chat and see if they could help, and two separate people brought him pizza. Only one man reached for Horsley’s fanny pack . . . to zip it shut for him and tell him that he should be more careful with his things. Horsley even recognized crooks he had busted in the past, approaching him to see if he needed assistance. It would appear that either the reports of roving bands of wheelchair robbers were highly overstated, or the Vancouver PD undercover unit has a serious leak.

9 Operation Have It Your Way

In 2016, Officer Nicole Fair had only joined the Thurmont, Maryland, police department about a month prior to her first big assignment. The tiny town of about 6,000 was having a bit of a problem with drugs, and citizens had reported dealing taking place out of the local Burger King. As Fair was not well-known in town yet, she was inserted into the fast food joint to go undercover as an employee and catch the dealers.

For two months, Fair flipped burgers—twice as long as she had actually worn a police uniform at that time—and befriended fellow workers. Finally, she hit pay dirt when she got employees Tommy Lee Miller and Jonathan Moser to sell her the goods. Speaking to the local paper, Fair said: “I was hired to help and protect the community of Thurmont, and that was what I was doing. You hear about all the drug problems [ . . . ] we’re really feeling the effects of it. To be able to do something to directly address that, especially being a new officer, was extremely rewarding.”

The drug haul? 5 grams of marijuana (roughly $50 worth) and two pills. Thurmont, you can sleep easy.

8 Operation Autistic Kid

Burger restaurants are one thing, but everyone agrees that drug dealing in schools is serious business. Since the 1970s, police have used youthful-looking cops to go undercover at high schools and ferret out the dealers, but one such operation at Chaparral High in Southern California in 2012 took a wrong turn on the first day. The undercover cop, “Dan” to his high school friends, immediately befriended young Jesse Snodgrass, an autistic student with bipolar disorder who had extreme difficulty keeping up with conversations.

“Dan” asked Jesse if he could score some weed, and Jesse said he could, barely cognizant of what that meant and ecstatic to have made a friend. After coming up with $20 worth of pot that he’d purchased from a guy outside a legal dispensary, Jesse was arrested and charged with drug dealing.

A judge, recognizing that there’s no way this crime would have ever taken place without the officer’s involvement, threw out the charges. A subsequent lawsuit filed by Jesse’s family against the school district was also, unfortunately, dismissed.

7 Operation Backfire

In 2012, a new store called Fearless Distributing opened in downtown Milwaukee. It was, to put it plainly, a front. Those staffing the store were agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), and they were determined to take some illegal guns off the streets by buying them from felons through their storefront. It didn’t work out quite how they intended, but perhaps you’re asking for problems when you name your sting Operation Backfire.

Pretty much everything that could go wrong did. For one, the sting failed to net a single gunrunning operation. Many arrests were made, but the ATF was found to have targeted mentally disabled people almost exclusively, and only a few low-level charges were filed. The store was broken into and robbed of $35,000 worth of merchandise. Agents caused $15,000 worth of damage to the property, resulting in a lawsuit by the landlord. Bungled handling of guns resulted in a military-style machine gun hitting the streets.

After the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel broke the story, they took a look at a few other ATF operations—and discovered that they had employed similar tactics, with about as much to show for it, in at least six storefront stings across the US.

6 Operation Helping Hand

From 2010 to 2012, Florida’s Tri-County Task Force, which strangely consisted of only two agencies, attempted to stem the flow of laundered money from the state’s drug trade by going undercover as money launderers. Operatives from the Bal Harbour Police Department and Glades County Sheriff’s Office would pass tips and information on to federal agencies, which would move in to make the bust when they had enough to do so. The operation was a success, resulting in the seizure of $30 million in dirty money.

Except that the $30 million wasn’t all of the money laundered by the undercover task force. In all, over $70 million was laundered for drug cartels by the task force, more than twice what was seized. The agents involved took a nominal fee for their services, skimming $2.4 million for themselves, which went to various operating expenses like stays at resort hotels and meals at expensive restaurants. After the Miami Herald exposed these shenanigans, the heads of the departments involved in the sting were terminated, and the operation itself was dismantled.

5 Operation Illegal Business

You may recall that in 2015, several states moved to defund Planned Parenthood after a series of undercover videos shot by the “Center for Medical Progress” (CMP) purported to show illegal activity within several of the clinic’s locations, including the sale of aborted fetuses. A grand jury was convened, and it was determined that multiple felony charges were in order—for the people who produced the videos.

The grand jury found that Planned Parenthood was not engaged in any kind of illegal activity and that the videos were edited deceptively to imply that the opposite was the case. Because of this, CMP founders David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt, the creators of the videos, were charged with felony counts of tampering with a governmental record. On top of that, Daleiden was charged with prohibition of the purchase and sale of human organs, because he offered—in a video that he shot—to buy human tissue, which is illegal. Although these charges were eventually dropped in July 2016, a lawsuit filed by Planned Parenthood against the pair is moving forward.

4 Project Gunrunner

In the mid-2000s, before they’d moved on to busting confused, mentally impaired people in Milwaukee and across the nation, the ATF was busy trying to keep guns from crossing the border into Mexico and getting into the hands of the drug cartels. The nationwide project, centered in Arizona and Texas, did indeed result in a good number of seizures, but the unfortunately named Project Gunrunner proved to be even better at doing what its name implied: running guns.

The project’s strategy was to facilitate “straw purchases” of firearms (which is the illegal purchase of legally obtained guns) and then trace their path into the depths of the cartel, exposing the supply chain. The second part didn’t work out so well, but the operation did result in about 2,500 fresh guns crossing the border and plopping into the cartels’ laps, as estimated by an actual ATF agent. Since the bungled operation has come under fire, it has even been suggested that the ATF was attempting to boost the number of US guns being supplied to the cartels to justify their budget or even for political reasons.

Amazingly, this was not the only time that this incredibly flawed strategy came back to bite the ATF.

3 Operation Fast And Furious

In 2009, an undercover operation began targeting several Phoenix residents thought to be moving guns. For years, undercover agents watched as guns flowed freely through safe houses, resisting every bit of their training to seize them as their superiors repeatedly told them to let the sales go through. By the end of what would become known as Operation Fast and Furious (because one of the suspects belonged to an underground car club) the ATF had let over 2,000 firearms cross into Mexico unimpeded.

The whole sorry saga of the “ATF Gunwalking Scandal” came to light after US Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was killed with a gun that the ATF had declined to remove from the streets. Many more firearms set free by the ATF have been found at crime scenes on both sides of the border. According to former Mexican attorney general Humberto Trevino, at least 150 Mexican civilians have been injured or killed as a result.

2 Operation What Private Property?

Early one morning in 2012, Craig Patty got the weirdest phone call of his life. The owner of a small North Texas trucking company with only two trucks, Patty found himself being informed by a business partner that one of his drivers, hired only five weeks before, had been shot dead inside one of the trucks, which had been loaded up with with enough marijuana to, well, fill a truck. Stunned, Patty tried to figure out how he could have fallen in with drug dealers—but he hadn’t. He had fallen in with an undercover DEA agent, who had been using the truck to try to bust smugglers.

The operation had gone spectacularly awry when said smugglers attempted to hijack the truck and its shipment, killing the undercover operative in a hail of bullets in full view of a dozen federal agents and local police. The officers involved, not all of whom knew each other, even ended up shooting at each other in the confusion, with one Houston cop wounding a sheriff’s deputy.

A lawsuit brought by Patty against the DEA for more than $1.3 million was dismissed in 2015, finding that the DEA was not even liable for his bullet-riddled truck. The decision is currently being appealed.

1 Operation Never Mind

In 2013, Worcester, Massachusetts, police were conducting an online sting operation aimed at snaring child predators. Posing as a 14-year-old girl, an undercover agent began a conversation with a user going by the name Latenightcop171. Soon after the user began making sex talk, officers discovered his identity: Neil Shea, an officer in their department.

So, did they reel him in? Not exactly. The undercover agent was told to terminate the conversation, ostensibly because “no line had been crossed” and there was “insufficient evidence to pursue a criminal complaint.” That is, despite this exchange:

Undercover — What can you teach me
Latenightcop171 — Lot of things
Latenightcop171 — We’d have sex

Also, after the conversation was terminated, Shea left a friend request for who he thought was his underage sexual prospect. While this may seem to indeed be sufficient evidence of the officer’s intent to pursue sex with a minor, the Worcester PD disagreed. Shea was allowed to resign and is free to collect his retirement benefits.

There are many things around us that we think work but actually do nothing, like that hotel thermostat. It’s essentially a placebo, intended to trick you into thinking you’re controlling the temperature in your hotel room. Now you know why you always feel hot despite adjusting the thermostat several times.

There is no single reason why businesses and governments trick us into thinking these things work. It could be about the money, convenience, or some problem with the underlying technology. Nevertheless, read on; you will be surprised by what you will find.

10 Hotel Thermostats

Have you ever lowered the temperature of your hotel air conditioning system yet still felt hot? That must happen a lot, considering that many hotel thermostats do not work. Hotel operators only put them there because you’ll ask them to change the temperature in your room otherwise. Besides, they don’t want you to leave a negative review on TripAdvisor.

Some hotel thermostats actually act as heat and motion detectors. The detectors automatically adjust the set temperature depending on your movements and the room temperature. Some even signal the air conditioning system to stop working when you leave the room or open a door or window.

To be clear, some thermostats do allow some control, but there is usually a minimum and maximum limit. You are unaware of these limits, and exceeding them won’t make your room any hotter or colder. Interestingly, many travelers are already catching on to this fake thermostat thing and are finding ways to bypass it.

While keeping energy use low is good for the environment, rigging thermostats is all about money for the hotels. Hotels save money when lodgers use less energy. And hotels are desperate to keep that in check, considering that guests will often waste power since they aren’t the one picking up the energy bills.^[1]

9 Progress Bars

Those progress bars that show the percentage or time left to complete a file transfer or download on our phones, computers, and other electrical gadgets don’t really work, at least not in the way we think. For instance, a progress bar at 50 percent does not mean half of a file has been downloaded. Almost all of the file could have been downloaded—or none at all.

Progress bars are not accurate because downloads and transfers involve many variables beyond the control of the system. For one, Internet speeds and network availability often determine how quickly a download will complete, while hard drive speeds often determine how long it takes to complete a transfer.

Also, a hard drive can copy a single large file faster than it can copy several smaller ones, even if their total file size is less and the large one. This is because hard drives expend more time and resources in finding and processing series of smaller files than finding and processing a single larger one.

The inability to correctly determine these variables is the reason programmers work with milestones instead. Computer programmers set milestones for transfers and downloads. The system only updates the progress bar as these milestones are reached. So that progress bar at 50 percent only means that a predetermined milestone has been reached.^[2]

8 Pedestrian Crossing Buttons

Many reading this have likely had the experience of being at a crosswalk and pressing the button hoping the “walk” signal will come up. Well, it turns out that those buttons don’t always work.

Sometimes they do work. We could divide the crosswalk button into three categories. The first works, the second does not work, and the third sometimes works.

For the first, the walk light never comes up until a pedestrian presses the button. In the second instance, the walk signal comes up at intervals, whether there is a pedestrian waiting to cross or not. Pressing the button does absolutely nothing in this instance.

The walk light is programmed to automatically come up during periods of heavy pedestrian traffic in the third instance. However, it requires a pedestrian to press the button before it will show up at other periods.

That said, it can be difficult for pedestrians to determine whether a crosswalk button works or not, so just push the button anyway. Or you could wait and see if the walk signal lights up on its own.^[3]

7 Fitness Trackers

Fitness trackers and smartwatches work fine if you are concerned about monitoring your heart rate. But if you’re concerned with measuring the amount of calories you burn during exercise, then forget them, because they don’t work well for that.

This problem is one that even affects high-end fitness trackers and smartwatches, including the Apple Watch, Fitbit Surge, Microsoft Band, and the Samsung Gear S2. A 2017 study by researchers from the Stanford University School of Medicine revealed that fitness trackers and smartwatches have error margins of less than five percent when measuring heart rates. This is pretty much okay.

However, the same fitness trackers and smartwatches had high error margins when used to measure calories burned during exercise. FitBit Surge got its calculations wrong by 27 percent, which is too high. That becomes troubling when we realize it was actually the best among the seven devices tested. The Samsung Gear S2 performed worst, with an error margin of 93 percent.

Fitness trackers do not work well for measuring calories because differences in height and weight (among other factors) mean that people burn calories at different rates. However, the trackers are often programmed to use a preset height and weight for every user without considering their actual data.^[4]

6 Open-Close Buttons On Tube Trains

Tube trains operating in London have “open” buttons that passengers can press to open the train doors. Some even have a “close” button that supposedly allows the passengers to close the train doors right before it begins its journey. We say “supposedly” because the buttons do not work. The doors are controlled by the train drivers.

Passengers actually could operate the doors until the 1990s, when operators discovered that the trains spent less time at the stations when the driver controlled the doors. There were some other reasons that forced management to pass the controls to the drivers, too. One had everything to do with safety.

Some naughty passengers were fond of pressing the “close” button when other passengers were still boarding. One such prank ended in disaster when a boy was injured after getting stuck in the door.^[5] In some trains, the buttons have been removed as part of refurbishing.

5 Sunscreen

Sunscreens have only one job: to protect us from the Sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays. A study by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) has shown that they fail miserably at that. Only one in every four actually works.

EWG conducts annual studies to determine the effectiveness of sunscreens. In 2017, the group revealed that only 73 percent of the 880 sunscreens it tested worked as advertised. The rest either did not work or contained some troubling ingredients that could do more harm than good.

EWG revealed that most sunscreens did not protect users from ultraviolet A and B rays. Some sunscreen makers also claimed their products had a sun protection factor (SPF) of over 50—which should indicate a very high quality—even though the actual SPF was much lower. The misleading labeling could cause users to think they are more protected than they really are.^[6]

4 Ultrasound Mosquito Repellents

Ultrasound mosquito repellents have been around for some years. They are small, portable devices that emit ultrasonic noise that supposedly sends mosquitoes fleeing. Sometimes, they take the form of phone apps that make an annoying buzzing sound that repels mosquitoes.

The devices and apps do not work. The rumor that ultrasonic sounds can repel mosquitoes first appeared over four decades ago. One common belief is that the ultrasonic noise mimics the sound of the wings of a dragonfly. Mosquitoes supposedly flee upon hearing the sound.

This claim seems to make sense, considering that dragonflies are natural predators of mosquitoes. However, it is wrong, since the ultrasonic sounds used in the repellents are around 15 kilohertz. The flapping wings of dragonflies emit sounds that measure between 20 and 170 hertz. Besides, mosquitoes do not flee on hearing the beating wings of a dragonfly.

It has also been claimed that the sound mimics the mating call of a male mosquito. This, too, appears to make sense, considering that biting female mosquitoes are often carrying eggs and therefore will not want to mate. However, again, this is false. The beating wings of the male mosquitoes only reach around 700 hertz, which is still nowhere near the 15 kilohertz produced by the ultrasonic apps and devices.

Besides, there is little evidence that female mosquitoes are disturbed by the sounds of male mosquitoes or any other sound, for that matter. Nevertheless, the myth is one that will continue to linger for some time. Once, a Brazilian FM station even played the ultrasonic sounds on its airwaves in an attempt to send mosquitoes fleeing from its listeners.^[7]

3 PC Cleaning Software

Ever come across premium PC cleaning software that promises to clean your computer and make it as fast as it was when you bought it? They, too, do not work. In fact, they have a terrible reputation in the tech community and have been described as the digital version of snake oil.

The premium third-party cleaners are often rigged to make it seem like they really work when they actually do not. They detect nonproblems and list them as problems. For instance, most will consider browser cookies and temporary files as having an effect on the speeds of the computer, even though they do not.

Various PC cleaning software programs also exaggerate smaller problems and make them seem like they are larger than they really are. Most operating systems have built-in cleaners that work fine if you ever need to clean your computer. They do not require you to dole out any extra cash, either.^[8]

2 Office Thermostats

Hotel thermostats aren’t the only fake ones out there. Office thermostats don’t work, either. Estimates vary wildly, but anywhere from two to 90 percent of office thermostats do not work. Interestingly, many offices once had working thermostats, but they’ve been removed because the tenants could not determine the best temperatures for them.

However, similar to the hotel situation, the tenants inevitably began ringing the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) businesses that manage the air conditioning systems to complain that the preset temperature was either too hot or too cold. The complaints lessened after the HVAC businesses sent fake thermostats to the offices.^[9]

1 Sports Drinks

Sports drinks are often promoted as the holy grail of sportspeople. These days, advertisers advise athletes to guzzle a drink midway through their exercise to prevent dehydration and loss of electrolytes.

This is even though most people would do themselves a lot of good if they just drink water instead. Sports drinks are really just water with some minerals and lots of sugar, coloring, and flavor. Those minerals are often sodium and potassium, which are what we consider electrolytes.

For a start, consuming excessive amounts of liquid (water, sports drinks, or whatever) at any time could lead to overhydration. Overhydration often leads to hyponatremia (shortage of sodium in the blood), since excessive amounts of water dilutes the sodium content of the blood.

No marathoner has ever died of dehydration, but as of 2012, 16 marathoners had died of overhydration and hyponatremia. Over 1,600 more had been hospitalized. That said, sports drinks can work for athletes who engage in high-endurance exercises that last for over a hour. The average Joe doing basic exercises should just drink water.^[10]

Many people will cringe at the thought of working for free, especially for a trillion-dollar corporation like Google. To summarize the truth in one sentence, we have all worked (and are still working) for Google for free.

Every now and then, Google gives us a few simple tasks to complete. These tasks are so easy that you won’t realize they are part of a larger and more complicated project that would have cost Google billions of dollars in salaries and payments.

Top 10 Ways Google Is Censoring Free Speech

10 Book translators

If you’ve ever solved a CAPTCHA, you know, those annoying curly letters on blurry backgrounds that Google used to ask us to solve to prove we are not robots, then you’ve worked for Google for free. Specifically, you helped Google digitize all the books in its Google Books archive. Thank you!

Every CAPTCHA had two words. One was a control word to prove to Google that you knew what you are doing, while the other was the new word Google wanted to transcribe. Since Google didn’t specify which was which, we had to put equal efforts into solving both correctly.

Google used CAPTCHA to digitize its entire book archive and every New York Times newspaper printed since 1851. It did this within two years and without paying a single cent to anyone. Well done Google, well done!^[1]

9 Autonomous car trainers

If you hated CAPTCHA, reCAPTCHA is worse. It is CAPTCHA on steroids. You see those annoying images of signposts, cars, buses and traffic lights Google occasionally asks you to tag to prove you are not a robot? That is reCAPTCHA.

I may appear to be a bit hard on reCAPTCHA, but if you’ve ever spent a few precious seconds deliberating on whether the traffic light pole is part of the traffic light, or just abandoned Google for a few hours because you kept getting reCAPTCHA after reCAPTCHA, you will understand why I’m pissed off.

Why do you think reCAPTCHA only contains those things you only see while driving down a road, or to be more specific, those things a self-driving car will see while driving down a road?

It’s because Google is using reCAPTCHA to train its artificial intelligence for driverless cars. You are teaching driverless cars how to recognize objects, one reCAPTCHA at a time.

Google confirmed this on its developer blog at the time it introduced reCAPTCHA in 2012. It said it was “redirecting the efforts” we put into solving CAPTCHA into improving machine learning. As if anyone ever said they loved solving CAPTCHA.^[2]

8 Image labeler

Image Labeler is Google’s most shameful attempt at making us work for free. As much as we hate to say this, it worked. Google released Image Labeler as a game. It then used that game to improve its image search result while we had fun while working for free.

Google released the first version of the Image Labeler over a decade ago. The web-based game showed two random strangers the same photo and asked them to tag it before the countdown timer counted down to zero.

The players got some points if any of their tags matched one of the several tags of their partner. There was also a scoreboard where both players could see who was winning.^[3]

Image Labeler is still around today but not as a game. Google just shows you an image and asks questions like “Does this image contain water?” and “Is this a drawing?” You only need to click one of the Yes or No buttons. And while you’re at it, remember that you are still working for free.^[4]

7 Mobile traffic sensors

If you use Google Maps, you would have noticed that Google usually knows the traffic situation of your route. How do you think Google knows this information? It’s with your android smartphone, of course.

Everyone with an android phone doubles as a mobile traffic sensor for Google Maps. When several phones are stuck on a stretch or road, Google knows there is a traffic jam there. When they’re far apart, Google knows the road is free.

German artist, Simon Weckert, manipulated this system earlier this year when he stuffed 99 android phones into a cart, which he pushed through the streets of Berlin. Google Maps instantly listed every road he passed as “congested” even though they were free.

To drive his point home, Weckert even pushed his cart past the front of Google’s offices. No one noticed anything. A Google spokesperson later said they love seeing such creative use of Google Maps because it helps them improve the product. What else could they have said?^[5]

6 Unaware cartographers

A cartographer is someone who draws or makes maps. That includes anyone who ever used the now defunct Google Map Maker.

Released in 2008, Map Maker allowed anyone tag places and upload pictures of roads, rivers, buildings, businesses and other landmarks of interest to Google Maps. However, the tool had one fatal flaw that would later lead to its demise.

That flaw was its lack of adequate moderation. Google only moderated entries uploaded by new users. It did not moderate images or information from existing users.

This soon led to abuse. One user was so pissed off with the lack of moderation that he uploaded a photo of Android’s logo urinating on Apple’s logo in place of the photo of some location outside Rawalpindi, Pakistan. He added a message discrediting Google’s review policy.

Google responded by shutting down Map Maker.^[6]

Top 10 Disturbing Facts About Google

5 Human seismometers

Seismometers are instruments used to detect earthquakes. Despite their importance, many earthquake-prone states and countries cannot afford one since they are costly to build and maintain.

Enter Google, the multinational conglomerate that likes free work even though its owner, Alphabet, is worth over $1 trillion. Google is currently building the world’s largest and cheapest seismometer, using the two most common items out there.

That’s you and your android smartphone.

Smartphones make good seismometers because they contain accelerometers. That’s how your phone detects whether you’re holding it in portrait or landscape mode.

While the accelerometer in a single smartphone is not big enough to detect an earthquake, hundreds, thousands or even millions of tiny accelerators can detect one if they work together. Google calls this program ShakeAlert.

Like Google’s human traffic sensors, you don’t need to do anything to help Google detect earthquakes. You only need to have your android smartphone in your pocket and be in the wrong place at the wrong time.^[7]

4 Google local guide

Half of Google users are looking for information on some local business or location. Since Google cannot afford to, sorry, does not want to pay employees or contractors to help it gather that information, it set up the Local Guides program.

Local guides add comments, photos and reviews of popular locations to Google Maps. You will be correct if you called this the successor of the failed Map Maker we talked about in the previous entry.

This is where it gets interesting. Google does not pay local guides for their work. Instead, it rewards them with points for any information they add to Google Maps. Now, what do you think happens when the local guide get enough points?

They get a badge and continue working to earn more points for a bigger badge. The cycle continues until they earn the biggest badge, which is as useless as graffiti on a peeling wall.

Local guides who work hard enough may also receive gifts ranging from a pair of socks to a phone case, and one terabyte storage space on Google cloud. Before anyone decides to become a local guide because of the free storage space, we should add that the “gift” only lasts for two years before Google starts asking for money.

Google also added that successful local guides might receive some rewards from its partners. Google did not provide information on who these partners are or what those benefits are. However, some local guides have received discounts on online courses on Udemy.^[8]

If you think that sounds good, wait until you hear that Udemy always discounts its courses for everyone.^[9]

3 Content moderators

In 2017, thousands of businesses pulled their ads from YouTube after their ads appeared on suggestive, controversial and extreme videos that did not represent their brand. What no one talked about at the time was how those ads ended up in those videos. YouTube has a large team of paid moderators, doesn’t it?

Yes, it does, but they are not enough. Google will need over 50,000 employees or contractors if it ever hopes to watch and moderate every video uploaded on YouTube. That’s hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars in salaries, bonuses and allowances.

Since Google doesn’t want to pay that money, it depends on regular users like you and me to help it moderate YouTube. It’s paid moderators only step in when enough unpaid moderators (again, that’s you and me) flag a video. This means YouTube will not moderate inappropriate videos unless we report them.^[10]

2 YouTube translator

In March 2017, around the same time YouTube (and Google) were taking a beating for showing ads on controversial videos, YouTube released a feature to allow users translate the titles and descriptions of any video into other languages. As usual, this position is unpaid even though it is a lot of work.

Google claimed the feature would allow video creators “connect with audiences” that do not speak their language. However, we all know YouTube did that to encourage more people to watch videos, which means more money for them. By them, I mean YouTube and not the creators.^[11]

1 360 photographers

Street View is a Google Maps feature that allows users view 360 degrees around a position. Imagine standing on a single point and turning round until you return to your starting position. That’s how Street View works.

360 photos are shot by people Google calls “Google Street View trusted photographers”. The position is a real one even though Google does not appear to trust the photographers enough to pay them for their work. Google says it gives the photographers some rewards but wait until you find out what those “rewards” are.

Beginner photographers need to take 50 photos to receive a Google Street View badge. They are then upgraded to something Google calls Trusted Pro. As a trusted pro, they receive free training on how to sell their photography services to private businesses that want to appear on Street View.

Thereafter, Google adds them to the list of photographers it can recommend to nearby businesses that want to be on Street View. The business pays the photographer for their services, and Google makes it clear that it will not involve itself in any dispute they may have.

To sweeten the deal, Google also gives the photographer some discounts on some stickers to encourage clients visiting the business to view the business on the Google Street View app. If they have more money to spare, Google suggests they buy the $7.59 Google Cardboard for their client.

Successful 360 photographers advise would-be photographers to bypass Google and offer their services directly to businesses that want to be on Street View. They will receive payment for all their photos and may even put their own sticker in the business instead of Google’s.^[12]

This entry is incomplete without the story of the photographer who spent $2,390 dollars on 360 cameras, internet and other gear he needed to become a Street View photographer. What do you think Google gave him when he reached the 50 images mark?

He received an offer to rent a movie for just $0.99.^[13]

Top 10 Ways Google Does Evil

When you create something, no matter what it is, it’s natural to feel possessive of that thing. If it was something you thought up and brought to life, it’s literally yours. If that thing ends up in someone else’s hands, for whatever reason, it’s hard to watch that person make changes. Even the best-intentioned creator can fall victim to resentment or outright anger if their thing gets altered and adapted in a way they never intended. Once in a while they even hate what their work became.

10. Roald Dahl Hated the Willy Wonka Movie

Roald Dahl was what people in modern times might call “problematic.” The writer, most famous for his work Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, was a known anti-Semite, given to racial stereotypes, and an adulterer. But he wrote some colorful prose, and that’s how most people remember him.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has been adapted to film more than once now but the most famous version, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, dates back to 1971 and Dahl was alive to see it happen.

Dahl had a laundry list of issues with the movie adaptation, starting with the change of name. He also notoriously disliked Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka, despite most modern audiences finding it to be a perfect performance. Dahl hated Charlie in the movie, he hated the film’s score, and he hated pretty much all the changes to the original test. 

9. Legendary Animator Chuck Jones Hated Space Jam

For a certain group of people, the 1996 movie Space Jam is considered a classic. The melding of real life and classic Warner Brothers animation captured a lot of imaginations even if it wasn’t a critical favorite. It also wasn’t a favorite of animation icon Chuck Jones.

Jones was one of the founders of Warner’s cartoon empire and he along with a team of others, created Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and all the rest. He wrote and directed many of those classic cartoons over his 30 years working with Warner from 1933 to the 1960s.

Jones was once asked his opinion of Space Jam, something he’d never talked about publicly before, and his answer was unequivocal. “I thought it was terrible,” was the direct quote attributed to him. He felt the story was completely wrong and pointed out that Porky Pig would never claim to have wet himself. 

Jones also stated that Bugs Bunny would have never needed help to win a basketball game against aliens, either from other Looney Tunes or from Michal Jordan. And he would have ended it in under seven minutes.

8. Charles Schulz Hated the Name Peanuts

You may not think of the Peanuts franchise as a big deal these days, but it is. Snoopy, Charlie Brown and the gang have been around for decades and they have made a lasting cultural impact. The estimated worth of the property is over $17 billion. That’ll buy more than a few peanuts. 

The first Peanuts cartoon ran all the way back in 1950 but the creator, Charles Schulz, never planned it to be known as such. He didn’t pick the name Peanuts, had no input in using the name, and notoriously hated it.

Schulz named his comic strip Li’l Folks. He ran an older strip by that name and wanted to keep it. He thought it had some dignity which was his intention. The word “peanuts” implied something that lacked worth in his mind, and it’s true that we use the term in that way.

There already was a comic called Li’l Abner when the Peanuts debuted, and in the ‘30s there had been a different strip called Little Folks. Not wanting to deal with potential legal issues, a newspaper editor just picked the name Peanuts and ran with it before the first of Schulz’ strips was ever published. 

Schulz hated the name, but they refused to change it, so Schulz simply rolled with it, writing and drawing thousands of them under that name for the rest of his life.

7. TMNT Co-Creator Peter Laird Hated the 5th Turtle, Venus de Milo

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have been a part of pop culture for over 30 years now. Much of that time has been spent as a goofy children’s cartoon, even though the franchise was born from a violent comic book parody of the superhero comic universe. 

Along the various iterations and evolutions of the characters, several feature films have been made, various cartoon series’, video games and more. And somewhere along the way they even introduced another turtle.

In the late ’90s, one of the TV series introduced a fifth turtle, a female character named Venus de Milo. The character was short-lived, and no one was more relieved than Ninja Turtles co-creator Peter Laird who hated Venus. 

Laird did not have creative control of the characters or for most of what came from the turtles, so he could only offer opinions. His opinion on Venus was that having a female turtle was “creatively bankrupt.” He especially hated the idea that they could introduce a new turtle that just happened to have been created along with the other four, we just never saw it before.

When Laird worked on Turtle properties after the creation of Venus, no one could speak of her. It was actually a rule on set and director Kevin Munroe said in an interview once that they could not even joke about her around Laird; he hated the character just that much. 

6. The Live Action Dragonball Movie Was So Bad It Forced the Creator Out of Retirement

Critics and fans alike really hated Dragonball: Evolution, the live action movie based on popular anime Dragonball Z. That hate was felt especially strongly by original series creator Akira Toriyama who had stopped his series years earlier. After seeing the live action movie he was inspired to return to the franchise and start writing new Dragonball content because it made him so angry.

The terrible film is therefore seen as a good thing because it saved the franchise, which otherwise might have ended years earlier. The terrible live action film forced new content and gave fans what they really wanted. 

5. Paul Newman Paid for Ads to Keep People Away From One of His Movies

Some artists let their hate end with emotion. They’ll answer interview questions about how they didn’t like this or that and we get an amusing story about it. Not so for Paul Newman. The man was a go-getter and when it came to things he hated; he put in the effort to make them go away.

In 1954, Newman made his acting debut in a movie called The Silver Chalice. In later years he referred to it as the worst movie made in the entirety of the 1950s. He disliked it so much he went out of his way to get people to not watch it which arguably backfired poorly on him.

In 1963, the movie was going to be played on TV and Newman paid $1,200 to place ads in the local paper telling people to not watch it. Adjusted for inflation, that’s about $12,000. The ads read “Paul Newman apologizes every night this week.” He also apparently screened the move at his home once for friends, but he handed out pots and wooden spoons so people could make noise to drown it out. It’s safe to say his dislike was a little tongue in cheek, but he really was unhappy with the movie. 

4. Don Henley Hates People Covering His Music

Don Henley, frontman of the Eagles, may not be well known to the younger generation but his influence certainly is. He’s behind some of the biggest songs in rock, and has been sampled by several more current artists including Frank Ocean. And it was Frank Ocean in particular Henley had a problem with.

Ocean’s mixtape track American Wedding sampled the Eagles hit Hotel California and Henley threatened to sue. He compared Ocean and artists like him to vandals who go into a museum to paint mustaches on other people’s art. 

Henley’s threats aren’t idle, either. He forced Okkervil River to take down a cover, one they had posted for free, of his track The End of Innocence. 

3. William Friedkin Hated The Exorcist Sequel

Legendary Exorcist director William Friedkin passed away in 2023 and he left behind a legacy of memorable films and equally memorable opinions. Friedkin never minced words and would often tell interviews about how much he disliked certain actors and films. He was also vocal about his dislike for the sequels to The Exorcist.

The first sequel, Exorcist II: The Heretic, featured original actress Linda Blair, but it was received poorly by both audiences and critics for being an all around awful movie. Friedkin was quoted as calling the movie “an abomination” and an “f-ing disgrace.”

He said he thought the movie was the equivalent of someone taking a novel by Dickens and then turning it into a porno musical, which is a colorful critique if nothing else.  It wasn’t just the first sequel, either. In 2020, when rumors of a new Exorcist were circulating, he took to Twitter to say there wasn’t “enough money or motivation in the world” to get him to go back to the franchise. 

2. Writer Michael Ende Hated What They Did to The Neverending Story 

Michael Ende wrote The Neverending Story in 1979. It became the basis for one of the most popular fantasy films of the ‘80s, and a movie that is still beloved today. Beloved by many but definitely not Ende.

Ende was clearly very attached to his work and agreed to a deal with a filmmaker after working out a vision for the movie. He was even promised a high level of control over casting and production. 

Things fell apart for Ende soon after the deal began. The movie rights were sold to someone else. One day he received a message asking if he liked the new script, something he had never even heard about. 

The new script was something Ende hated but the production company threatened to sue him if he hampered production. He was left with little recourse. He tried to sue the filmmakers and felt they had changed the entire story in their new version. He demanded they either stop making the movie or change the name. Neither thing happened, so he had his own name removed from the credits.

1. Clive Barker Disowned Hellraiser: Revelations in No Uncertain Terms

Hellraiser has been one of the most enduring horror movie franchises, right up there with Halloween or Nightmare on Elm Street. The first film, written and directed by author Clive Barker, was based on his own short story The Hellbound Heart and introduced the character of Pinhead to audiences, though Barker never called him Pinhead in his own work.

After part one, the movies were no longer in Barker’s hands, and the franchise grew. It also grew notoriously bad. Towards the end of the franchise’s run with the original actor playing Pinhead, the sequels were heavily derided. 

It became common knowledge that the studio was producing terrible movies on purpose because they needed to make movies to legally retain the rights. If they didn’t make a movie within so many years of the previous film, the rights would switch to someone else. 

The strategy of churning out films resulted in several notoriously bad movies. The awfulness really seemed to culminate with 2011’s Hellraiser: Revelations, which was allegedly filmed in only a matter of weeks and didn’t include Pinhead actor Doug Bradley at all.

Clive Barker made a very brief statement about the movie on his Twitter account after it was advertised as having come from the mind of Clive Barker. Barker said, and this is a direct albeit censored quote, “I have NOTHING to do with the f***** thing. If they claim it’s from the mind of Clive Barker, it’s a lie. It’s not even from my butt-hole.”

From San Diego to Singapore, we all want to get to work as quickly and conveniently as possible. For many of us, our commute constitutes of spending an hour underground with next to no personal space or stuck in traffic for what can seem like an eternity.

This, unsurprisingly, is not for everyone. Whether it’s for speed, comfort or just to be a bit more individual, the following list explores how a number of people have left the ordinary behind for their own crazy commutes.

10 Crazy Origins Of Popular Websites

10 Paramotor

Most workdays, Paul Cox enters his office with a four-stroke motor in a suitcase. Paul isn’t a mechanic or a budding engineer, he simply paramotors into work when the weather allows. His 10 mile journey in Anglesey, Wales allows Paul to literally fly over the traffic as he travels to Holyhead Boatyard where he works for the Royal Navy.

His £8,000 motor can be a hassle to get ready each morning, but Paul says that it is totally worth it for the views of the coastline. Paramotoring to work does come with its risks. In 2019, Tom Prince who had learnt to paramotor specifically to commute to his job, died when he crashed into an electrical power line.^[1]

9 Rail Cart

A quick online image search for the Philippines will see hundreds of beautiful tropical islands and lush forests. Away from the tourism propaganda for the western world, The Philippines has over 4.5 million homeless residents with 21.6% of the population living below the national poverty line.

Many of the homeless population in Manila provide a popular, yet dangerous transport service for those in the city. Manila’s ‘trolley boys’ push adapted rail carts, often wooden benches with train wheels attached, along the maze of Manila’s existing train lines. For some, the carts turn into their beds after what is commonly a 16 hour working day.

At 2 cents per kilometre, it is a far cheaper option than traditional buses and trains. It is also more direct and comes with no traffic. These saving do however come with a risk. The train lines are still active. Deaths are not uncommon and near misses regular. The trolley boys rely on their knowledge of the train schedules to ensure a safe trip for both themselves and the commuters. All the trolley boys, and most of the commuters have a narrow escape story to talk about.^[2]

8 Climbing

As kids, many of us got to school via a short walk, a bus ride or in the back of our parent’s car. For the children from the village of Zhang Jiawan in southern China, the school commute is more akin to an extreme sport. An intricate network of unsteady wooden ladders helps the students, some as young as 5, climb the Badagong mountains on which sits their school. Whoever decided to build a school on top of a mountain was either in a pretty bad mood or wasn’t much of a forward thinker.

The ladders are not secured and instead rest against the rock. With no safety measures in place, school children are merely advised to not look down during their ascent. Although much has been done to get the government to create a more accessible route, at an estimated cost of $10million, the 100 residents of Zhang Jiawan will be waiting a while longer.

There is another option if the ladders don’t take your fancy. A 4 hour cross-country detour is available.^[3]

7 Wicker Sledges

In the 19th century, wicker sledges resembling toboggans were used to transport locals down the hills of Monte to the city centre of Madeira. Pushed by two ‘carreiros’, who still wear the traditional white cotton clothes and straw hats, it was the chosen mode of transport for businessmen in the area.

Nowadays, these toboggan sledges are predominantly used by tourists, with thousands sliding their way down the roads each year. The popular route to Livramento is 2km and takes around 10 minutes, with speeds reaching 48km/h. Trips cost around €30 and you can still occasionally see local businessmen commuting through this traditional mode of transport.^[4]

6 Swimming

If someone asked you to swim in a river with water snakes in it to get to work, you’d probably tell them to get lost. Well for one teacher in Kerala, India, a 1.5km swim is the preferred route to school than a 24km road journey. Since 1994, Abdul Malik, donning an inflatable tube around his waist and a plastic bag with the day’s supplies has made his way to the Muslim Lower Primary School by swimming across the river. Once out of the water, he changes into his dry clothes and continues with a short walk to work.

Even through monsoon seasons, Malik swam to work. His choice of commute is down to time saving. Malik explains that a standard commute would involve traffic, bus changes and a longer distance. He also takes his students swimming and together fill bags with plastic and rubbish they find floating in the river.

However, for the past two years, Malik has had to take the longer route to school as he now has greater responsibilities since the headmaster retired.^[5]

10 Crazy Facts That Will Wow You

5 Kayaking

Anyone who has been on the London Underground during rush hour will have experienced the definitions of confined and uncomfortable at first hand. Opened in January 1863, the Tube network is used by roughly 2 million people on a daily basis. With the population of London rising year on year since 1988, the Tube is more cramped than every before. Although significant improvements have been made throughout the years, the capacity of the system is restrained by the original size of the underground tunnels.

One man who decided to give the Tube the boot was George Bullard. As someone who kayaked across the North Atlantic, George is no stranger to being a bit different. Growing disillusioned after his time at sea, George decided to swap his hour-long commute on the tube for a more peaceful 90 minute kayak along the River Thames. It does (unexpectedly) come with its challenges. Tides, the elements and countless larger vessels means that there is no chance of catching up on some missed sleep before work.

Regarding the London weather, George states that it is all “part of the parcel”.^[6]

4 Zip Wire

When I say zip wires, often the thoughts of James Bond or some other action hero springs to mind. For the families of Acacías, 40 miles south east of Bogota, Colombia, a 1,300 foot steel zip wire is the quickest option to connect to the opposite mountainside where the nearest town is. Children travel to school this way, speeding at up to 64km/h, 365m/1,200 feet above the Rio Negro river, controlling their speed by pressing a wooden fork against the cables. Those too young to travel themselves are carried in a jute bag for the trip.

This is not a modern system either. In 1804, German explorer Alexander von Humboldt first witnessed ropes, then made from hemp being used by the locals as a method of transport. In recent years, a hiking trail has been established which takes 2 hours. However, the zip wires remain the popular option as it is far quicker and easier. The zip wires aren’t just used for transportation. Locals use the cables to transport goods between the two sides of the valley.^[7]

3 Rowing

From 1997 to 2016, 74 year old Gabriel Horchler rowed to work every morning as the Head of the Law Cataloguing section of the Library of Congress. It was an idea that came to him whilst on his motorbike and stuck in heavy traffic and found himself looking at the Anacostia River. A journey sandwiched between two 15 minute cycling trips, it takes Gabriel a total of 90 minutes from door to door.

His decision to take to the bikes and rowing boat is down to the quietness, staying healthy and the wildlife he enjoys seeing on his journey. But mainly to avoid the traffic jams and other commuters. As with other entries in this list, the unusual choice of transport isn’t without its challenges. Unexpected rainstorms and changes of wind direction has resulted in Horchler capsizing three times.

In 2016, Gabriel retired from his role at the library, however he can still be seen still rowing up and down the Anacostia from time to time.^[8]

2 Swimming

Another person who has taken up swimming as their daily commute is 42 year old Benjamin David. Fed up other commuters on Munich’s busy street, Mr David packs his belongings, including his laptop, suit and shoes, into a waterproof bag, pulls on a wetsuit and jumps into the river Isar. David works at a riverside bar, so his unusual commute takes him Directly to work.

Mr David credits the river’s current to the ease of his trip to work. The almost 2km journey takes just 12 minutes and involves more floating than swimming, helped by the inflatable waterproof bag he carries with him. David claims his journey is more relaxed and quicker than the drier option. He does however, wear rubber sandals to protect his feet from anything nasty on the riverbed.^[9]

1 Private Jet

A trip in a private plane is something many of us can only dream of. For Curt von Badinski, a private plane is his chosen method of travelling to and from work every day. Travelling from Los Angeles to San Francisco, a distance of over 568km each way, von Badinski spends 6 hours each day on his daily commute.

By completing a background check, von Badinski is able to bypass the usual security measure in place for the ordinary commoner. So how much does it set him back? Well each month, von Badinski pays $2,300 to Surf Air, allowing him to take as many flights on a single-engine turboprop plane as he likes.

Regarding the sizable carbon footprint attached to his method of transport, von Badinski uses a hybrid vehicle for the drive from Oakland airport to San Francisco to allay his guilt for the horrific climate sin he is committing! Von Badinski also reminds himself to check the weather in San Fransisco every day and dress appropriately before setting off as it can be very different from the climate outside his home in Los Angeles.

I wonder if he has ever considered moving closer.^[10]

+ Paddleboard

A bonus place goes to Scott Holt for paddle boarding across the Hudson river in a suit to get to his meeting. When Holt realised his train was delayed due to signal problems, and the ferry was too expensive, he did what anybody sane would do and jumped on his paddleboard. Scott went viral after pictures of his crossing appeared all over social media.

A comedian by trade, Holt had a meeting with a prospective manager which could not be missed. as it was a once off event, Scott doesn’t get a place on the list, but it was incredibly impressive non the less!^[11]

Top 10 Crazy Storage Unit Finds

Poaching is snowballing out of control. By threatening the variety of life on Earth, poachers disturb our ecosystems in ways that are not completely known. Resources are overused in the fight against these criminals. To ward off the threats, conservationists must think outside the box.

They leave cell phones in the woods to catch loggers and turn rhino horns pink with poison. Then there is EAGLE, the only eco-group that takes down the bad guys James Bond–style. All right, maybe not entirely like 007, but they are still pretty badass.

10 Environmental Disaster Time Bombs

10 Saving Water By Turning It Into Art

Fine living often comes at the expense of the environment. But a few years ago, a design student named Simin Qiu proved that taps can be upper-crust utensils and save water. While the faucet itself is chic, the real stunner is the water. While pouring, it looks like glass with patterns.

Qiu achieved this by running the water through a double turbine and nozzles capable of spinning different patterns. The faucet also limits the flow by 15 percent. Considering how much taps are used each day, this feature saves a lot of water. Additionally, the award-winning “Swirl Faucet” keeps the temperature steady which avoids unnecessary heating costs.^[1]

9 Saving Lions By Painting Cows

Antelope are swift. Lions and cows not so much. For this reason, the big cats are increasingly looking to buy steak. But the farmers are not selling. Instead, they shoot any lions that kill livestock or plainly any lion they see. There is a problem with that—wild African lions are endangered.

In 2015, desperation led to innovation. Conservationists started to paint the butts of cows.

They took inspiration from two facts. First, lions are ambush hunters. These predators often give up the hunt the moment they realize that their cover is blown. Second, butterflies have wing patterns with fake eyes to look more “aware” of anything that might be trying to eat them.

An experiment in Botswana suggested that these “butterfly eyes” might discourage lions from an attack. A herd of 62 cattle was followed for 10 weeks. A third of them grazed while fake eyes on their bums glared at the world behind them. During that time, three cows were killed but none of them were the marked ones.^[2]

8 Letting Grannies Count Toxic Snakes

In New Caledonia, tourists love swimming near the city of Noumea. The bay is also home to sea snakes. Researchers wanted to better understand the reptiles in order to protect them (and people from getting fangs in unspeakable places).

After studying all species for 15 years, the focus switched to one deadly customer. The greater sea snake is a 1.5-meter (4.9 ft) ribbon of venom. The survey was heartening. Only around 10 were spotted every year. But the numbers changed dramatically when a group of snorkeling seniors got wind of the project.

The seven women in their sixties and seventies were frequent swimmers at the bay. They offered to photograph any greater sea snake they saw. After receiving the green light, the grandmothers swam with the reptiles for years. Their work was groundbreaking.^[3]

The seniors captured unknown breeding behavior and hundreds of the toxic snakes. This massive population proved that the species was not aggressive. Countless swimmers visit the area, but nobody has ever been bitten.

7 Stalking Fish With Another Fish

The stalker is not a normal fish. Wiggling through the waters off Fiji, this robot rubs shoulders with shoals and they cannot tell the difference. The critter is called SoFi—or more adorably, the Soft Robotic Fish.

It was created by MIT to study fish without disturbing them. As pollution and overfishing decimate the oceans, time is running out to gather knowledge about vulnerable species. But a scuba diver with a notepad is not going to get up close and personal with fish. This is where SoFi can help.

The lifelike robot can record videos of natural behavior, the kind that rarely happens when humans are around. Besides spying on the reef crowd, SoFi also allows an accurate look at the health of the marine ecosystem. In fact, the wobbly wonder is doing such a good job that shoals of SoFis might monitor the ocean’s well-being one day.^[4]

6 Growing A Monster Jungle From Orange Peels

When Princeton scientists approached a fruit company in the 1990s, they wanted to make the land more fertile. They chose Del Oro, a juice company in Costa Rica. If Del Oro donated a part of its property to a nearby reserve, they could use the land as a free dumping site for all their orange peels. The company agreed.

Del Oro dumped 12,000 tons before a rival company interfered. TicoFruit claimed that the reserve was being defiled, and Costa Rica’s Supreme Court agreed. It did not seem to matter that the soil was so lifeless that it could not be defiled, even if Del Oro tried. But when the gavel came down, the experiment ended.

In 2013, a Princeton scientist was visiting Costa Rica for other reasons when he decided to check on the dumping site. He found something shocking. The soil had become insanely fertile. He could not find the giant sign that marked the site because it was overgrown with vines. (They finally found it years after his visit.)

The dead land was now a virile jungle. One fig tree was so thick that three people had to link together to hug the trunk.^[5]

Nobody had expected this level of success. Even more mysterious was how the humble orange peel had turned things around so quickly. Indeed, Del Oro had only dumped their waste for two years. Then the site was left alone for 16 years. The speedy recovery was inexplicable—and probably the greenest defilement on record.

10 Weird Environmental Issues With Serious Impacts On Wildlife

5 Making Cows Burp Seaweed

Cows are burping massive amounts of methane. This potent greenhouse gas is a natural part of their digestion. They swallow food, burp it back up, and then chew the cud before swallowing it again. Unfortunately, cows burp countless times a day and Planet Earth has a lot of cattle. A lot.

When a cow munches, an enzyme in their gut produces the methane. After trying several things, researchers found that seaweed made the enzyme a bit lazy. Which was great. The less active it was, the less methane the enzyme was likely to cough up.

One of the most remarkable reductions was seen when scientists added a mere 2 percent of seaweed (a type called Asparagopsis taxiformis) to the animals’ regular feed. The cows still burped up their food to chew, but it happened less and the methane dropped by 99 percent.^[6]

4 Hunting Poachers Like Foxes

The Kruger National Park is South Africa’s flagship reserve. Sadly, most rhinos that are poached are killed inside this park or the surrounding game farms. In the past, tracker dogs were used, but they stayed on leads. This slowed the chase, and too many poachers escaped.

Then the staff heard about coonhounds in Texas. This bloodline was bred for generations to be aggressive and to run in packs after escaped inmates. They ran the men down like foxes. The South Africans liked the idea of free-running dogs but not the fact that they were so aggressive. One demonstration left a heavily padded volunteer badly bruised.^[7]

The Texans complied and retrained some of their best dogs not to bite. The pack was then flown to South Africa. Scarcely had they landed when a call came in that a rhino had been killed.

The dogs were released from helicopters and caught the poachers. The next day, they caught some more. The day after that, two more. Since then, the coonhounds have caught 54 percent of poachers that enter the park. (Previously, it was more like 3 percent.)

3 Leaving Cell Phones In The Forest To Catch Loggers

Illegal tree loggers are swift and sometimes armed. In places where the local rangers are too scared or understaffed to deal with the problem, they can now look forward to catching thieves with an unusual surveillance system. Topher White is a conservation technologist who rigs treetops with old cell phones and AI software.

His California nonprofit, Rainforest Connection, has an annual budget of over $1 million, thanks to wealthy donors like Google and Huawei. By 2019, his units hugged treetops in several countries. Combined, these contraptions listened to a forested area of 2,590 square kilometers (1,000 mi²).

The cell phones are tweaked to detect noises from as far away as 1.6 kilometers (1 mi). The software then filters the feed in real time to look for sounds of logging. Once it picks up on trucks, chain saws, or trees splintering, the authorities are instantly alerted via an app.^[8]

This quick response has brought success. A pair of prolific Peruvian loggers was recently arrested. In Sumatra, illegal cutting slowed dramatically after Rainforest Connection strung the trees of a severely affected island.

2 Serving Up Poisoned Rhino Horns

There are rhinos in South Africa with pink horns. When poachers see this, they know that the product is spoiled. Rhinos are slaughtered in record numbers each year for traditional Eastern medicine. But a spice that promises bouts of diarrhea, vomiting, and stomachache will cause the loss of customers. These are the symptoms that come with eating pink rhino horns.

In 2013, wildlife managers walked into a store. They purchased over-the-counter dip for ticks and mixed it with pink dye. The poison was then injected into the hood ornaments of 100 rhinos.^[9]

The project is entirely legal. Those involved also played open cards with poachers and consumers by launching a media campaign to warn them. Reserves posted warning signs along their own fences, too. The pink toxin can be detected by airport scanners—even when the horn is already ground into a powder.

1 Going Undercover Like Nobody’s Business

The EAGLE Network is an eco-group. However, they do things differently. They do not march and wave placards at meat-eating people. They have zero interest in opening sanctuaries, educating the public, or tweaking policies. Instead, EAGLE is devoted to law enforcement. In fact, this is the world’s only nongovernmental enforcement agency.

They excel at undercover work and gathering evidence. In 2015, they took down Ansoumane Doumbouya, the top wildlife official in Guinea. For years, he illegally sold the very animals he was supposed to guard, especially great apes.

EAGLE members posed as buyers and built the case. Thanks to their work, Interpol and Guinean authorities had enough dirt on Doumbouya to arrest him. The moment was a big one. As many as 3,000 of Guinea’s wild apes are trafficked every year.^[10]

This avalanche of primates leaving the country is mainly due to corruption. Removing a powerful player like Doumbouya was a step in the right direction. For EAGLE, it was not the first step, either. Over 1,000 arrests across the world have been spearheaded by this group.

10 Problems With the Green Agenda

Are you aware that there is no Amazon rainforest anymore? Ok, that’s not true. But do you know what is true? There is a form of ethnic cleansing occurring in China right now. Corruption, disease, a growing income gulf, food shortages. How will the public even know about any of this unless clued-in, virtuous people decide to wear a brightly coloured lapel pin for a month? Many awareness campaigns work wonders to, well, raise awareness. Others, like the entries in this list, backfire. Hard.

10 Times Virtue Signalling Ended In Disaster

10 The Gray Ribbon for Zombie Awareness…not Diabetes, Brain Tumours or Borderline Personality Disorder.

Ribbons, ribbons, ribbons and wrist bands and badges, we’re changing the world one piece of apparel at a time, folks! have you seen a yellow ribbon on someone’s sweater recently? Maybe you have. Know what it means? Yup, neither do I. So, look it up. Ah, it could mean one of several things.

Perhaps the best example of this sort of messy messaging is the gray-coloured ribbon. It could be for Diabetes awareness month, maybe brain tumours. Perhaps the wearer is supporting increased awareness for borderline personality disorder. But, most likely nowadays, they’re raising Zombie Awareness, (check for neck beard and/or barbed wire wrapped baseball bat in their hand to know for sure). Confused? Let’s look at the month of November, what should we be aware of? Movember, right? Prostate Cancer and Men’s Health awareness, no? Well, it’s also Alzheimer’s Awareness month…and No Nut November, promoting abstinence…and COPD Awareness month…and National Novel Writing Month. So plenty to do, along with early Xmas shopping, Guy Fawkes Night (in Britain) and your job and family duties. Just make sure you don a gray ribbon so that people know you also care about the inevitable zombie apocalypse (even though that should be done in May).^[1]

9 Justice for Jussie

We’ve all heard the story; Juicy Smulliet was a French actor who was subject of a rather implausible racially-motivated attack in January 2019 by two white supremacist Nigerian brothers in Chicago (the city known as ‘MAGA country’ since the 1871 fire), prompting a host of his celebrity brothers and sisters to speak out in support of him.

The real story isn’t much less ridiculous, in fact, I’ve barely changed anything except for comedic affect (thank you, Dave Chappelle!) The outpouring of support for the actor, whose testimony was quite obviously inconsistent and implausible, was immediate and telling. There was so much confirmation bias that the whole thing seemed orchestrated, not just the ‘attack’ itself. We can forgive our cognatively challenged, elite but guilt-ridden celebs, but politicians? No dice, I’m afraid. No sooner had the story gained traction, Democratic Senators Corey Booker and Kamala Harris had described the ‘attack’ as an attempted lynching, Booker going as far as trying to pass a federal anti-lynching bill. Good timing, eh? And all the while, nobody could locate Kanye West…(Dave Chappelle is the GOAT).^[2][3]

8 Environmentally Friendly Seafood (Bought by the People who Already Know)

This is a sad case of preaching to the choir. Overfishing is a serious issue, whether you are an eco-warrior or not. So how could one expect to combat this phenomenon? First step, raise awareness. Maybe put an eco-friendly sticker on products that are from stable seafood populations? Sounds good, doesn’t it? Well, according to research, the only people who take the time to look for such stickers are people who already care about the cause and, furthermore, already know what to buy and not to buy. Corporation and state-level measures seem to be a better way o combat the issue in this case. Maybe the arming of supermarket frozen fish aisle workers? Ok, too far.^[4]

7 ‘Dumb Ways to Die’ Campaign may have led to Increase in Suicide by Rail

Millenials, when they get to their late sixties, will look back at the song and app ‘Dumb Ways to Die’ like Boomers look back at Abba and Space Invaders at the gaming arcade. It was huge. I downloaded the game and hummed the tune on more than one occasion.

As awareness campaigns go, it was very effective, gaining many prizes and accolades to go with the millions of downloads. The problem? It didn’t quite work the way the Metro Trainsrail franchise in Melbourne, Australia intended it to. Not only was the original claim of a ‘20% decrease in risky behaviour’ a tad suspicious, some evidence suggests that the campaign served to take away the visceral nature, and even glamorize, suicide by rail.^[5][6]

6 The Vaccine that fewer Kids get and the STD they probably will get.

Do you want your child to have a potentially fatal disease? If you answered ‘no’, not only are you sane and I don’t need to call the authorities, but luckily there is probably a vaccine for to immunise your little tyke or tykette from contracting a fatal disease. One very effective vaccine is the HPV vaccine. So why do only around 49% of kids aged 11-17 in the US receive the vaccine? A bad awareness campaign certainly didn’t help.

When parents hear about this particular vaccine and the diseases it prevents, one question seemed to become a rallying cry against uptake—why do you assume my child is sexually active? The campaign seemed to force parents to face up to a (probably untrue and, to many, morally reprehensible) fact about their beloved little ones—they’re having sex. Along with the usual anti-vax campaigns, this one can be chalked up as a big loss for the medical community, underlining the dangers of mixing science, politics and values without providing a clear delineation or just focussing on . . . you know . . . the medical side of things.^[7][8]

Top 10 Signs We Are Entering A New Dark Age

5 BDS Movement Opposed by President of Palestine

What? That was what must have been the first word uttered by supporters of the ‘Boycott, Divestment and Sanction’ movement against the state of Israel when the President of Palestine said he did not support their wide-ranging, global campaign. Ooft, that’s got to hurt. Well, at least rock legend Roger Waters of Pink Floyd fame supports the movement, right? Ok, that doesn’t really help…

Abbas did support a boycott of firms that operate out of the so-called ‘illegal’ settlements, the disputed territory where Israeli people have built homes. Makes sense. But Abbas, and many other people who oppose “Israeli aggression” and the BDS movement, realise that if Israel were to be brought to her knees economically, any possible outcome would be terrible for Palestine too. Well, it didn’t last. Abbas has since adopted the campaign as an official strategy of his administration. Yet another step towards peace in the Middle East. Wait…^[9][10]

4 The Burger King ‘DGAF’ Meals

Does a ‘Happy Meal’ make you happy? That is one of the points of the beloved fast food offering aimed at kids, I mean, it’s in the name. What about a ‘pissed meal’, fancy one of those? One would expect such a meal to contain a cold chicken sandwich, an empty box of fries, a thumb in your soda and an action figure of Al Gore. I’d be pissed. Burger King’s “Rea Meals” campaign aimed to normalize and raise awareness about mental health. Not schizophrenia, Borderline Personality Disorder or Drug Abuse induced Psychosis, don’t be silly. The campaign wanted to let the world know that people can feel a little ‘DGAF’ sometimes, and that’s OK. It’s tough to imagine a campaign that downplays the very thing it’s trying to boost more than this one. Now shut up and eat your Whopper.^[11]

3 Melania Trumps’s ‘Be Best’ Campaign for Better Social Media Use…Yeah.

This entry seems like a worse decision than Juicy Smulliet’s (ugh, for legal reasons I’ll say this—suspected) hoax hate-crime. Melania Trump knows who her husband is, surely? Maybe this campaign to help, in part, improve the nature of social media use is aimed at President Trump and his Tweets. But, to avoid this list being labelled as ‘fake news’, I must immediately retract the previous statement…

All in all, it was a noble cause. In the words of Mrs. Trump herself: “As we all know, social media can be both positively and negatively affect our children, but too often it is used in negative ways…When children learn positive online behaviours early on, social media can be used in productive ways and affect positive change.” Alright, let’s just move on to the next entry.^[12]

2 Anything Celebrities are Doing During the Covid-19 Pandemic

Ooft, I think my cringe bone has broken. Ricky Gervais must be spinning in his, uh, house. The current pandemic has really exposed the tenuous grasp humanity has on everything from law & order to logic, reason and the truth. One thing everyone seems to agree on is that our modern day gentry, Hollywood celebs, are awful at doing anything except what they are famous for. Remember when actors just acted? Singers sang? Me neither. It seems that a Hollywood celebrity can be as famous for speaking out for some cause de jour as they are for whichever movie they’re starring in alongside Dwayne Johnson.

We covered much of this on Top 10 Tone-Deaf Celebrity Coronavirus Messages That Are Cringey AF, but if you don’t have time to check it out here’s a summary: first off they sang a song, (‘Imagine’ by John Lennon) which advocates for a world without borders and nation states…during a pandemic which, as has been shown, is better combated by closing borders. Along with a slew of instagram stories, YouTube clips, Tweets and TokToks showing celebrities going a little bit loopy during quarantine, we saw the single most cringe-inducing video in response to the BLM protests. If you can watch the clip above without spasming so hard your retina detaches, you’re a woker man than I, bucko. Or buckette. Nobody is pleased, commentary from all sides of the political compass deriding these clueless elites and their self-serving faux flagellating. This is not unique to the current period though, they’ve been at it a while. Stop. For the love of Snoopy. Stop.^[13][14]

1 Lush take on the Police

This is probably the most controversial entry, (yes, even after I’ve talked about vaccines, the dreaded ‘Orange Man’, and the Israel Palestine situation, but stick with me on this). Cosmetics and Toiletry company Lush have a history of taking ethical stances (albeit often self-determined). They tend to be supportive of environmentalist issues, animal welfare stuff, transgender pronouns, and anything your local Green Party will stand for, so will Lush. You may disagree with their opinions on any given matter, but they do tend to stick to certain principles. On the other hand, they sell bath bombs…why should we care what they think or tolerate being preached to by a corporation who sell Karma Kream body lotion?

The now infamous #SpyCops campaign, raising awareness of honey trap tactics used by police in Britain against environmentalist activists, certainly got people talking. In the main, the loudest voices were in support of the police, viewing the whole campaign as unfair and anti-police, too general in the messaging. Stats show, however, that Lush’s numbers didn’t take the hit that many commentators expected in light of the negative PR situation; defenders of the company are keen to point out that their numbers went up in the period after #SpyCops. But was that the point? I thought it was about spying cops? Ah, whatever, Karma Kream is lush, I’m off to the powder room.^[15][16]

Top 10 Origins Of Controversial Stereotypes

About The Author: C.J. Phillips is a storyteller, actor and writer living in rural West Wales. He is a little obsessed with lists.

Most of the time, we tend to think of insects as annoying little things invading our homes—that is if we even think of them at all. And the word “worm” typically evokes thoughts of earthworms or of a particularly unsettling sea creature, depending on your interests.

Although it can be frustrating to have a fly or a wasp buzzing around your room when you’re trying to get to sleep at night, there are little critters out there that actually play a big part in helping to keep us humans alive by contributing to treatments for various illnesses and diseases. The following are ten examples of medical treatments involving the use of various creepy-crawlies that seem pretty strange on paper but are actually very effective.

10 Wasp Venom Cancer Treatment

If there is any one single disease that we are desperate to find a cure for, it is cancer, so any breakthrough in this area is something that has to be welcomed—even if it involves using venomous wasps. Scientists now believe that the venom of a particular type of wasp that is found in Brazil contains a toxin, dubbed Polybia-MP1, capable of killing off cancer cells while leaving normal cells completely unaffected.^[1] The type of wasp in question is Polybia paulista, which is extremely common in Southeastern Brazil. The toxin works by taking advantage of the weaker spots in these cancerous cells, created by their abnormal mix of lipids, and penetrating them to mix with the fats. The end result is that molecules the cancer cells need to be able to survive and spread leak away.

The prospect of being injected with wasp venom doesn’t sound very enjoyable, but most of us would put up with it if doing so gave us a better chance of surviving one of the deadliest diseases around. At the moment, this potential cure is still very much in the research and testing stage when it comes to humans, but it has shown itself to be effective during these tests and could prove to be a major breakthrough.

9 Ant Head Stitches

When you’re lying on the ground bleeding profusely from an injury of some kind, you probably won’t care very much what is used to stitch the wound up—even if it’s the heads of decapitated ants. Driver ants are a genus that is mainly found in Africa. They are known for their very large, sharp jaws that can bite into flesh and be difficult to get out—-not to mention incredibly painful for the person who has been bitten. This alone would seem like a pretty good reason to cut the heads off them, but there are also medical reasons for doing so, as removing their heads can provide us with a temporary suture when we’ve hurt ourselves. (This can be done with other types of ant as well.)

It is a fairly grim process for both the injured person and the ant, as you have to get the ant to bite you in the affected area and then twist it to break the body from the head, with the jaws and severed head serving as a makeshift suture.^[2] This rather grisly but effective way of stitching up wounds was depicted in the 2006 movie Apocalypto.

8 Parasitic Worm Drinks

Ulcerative colitis is a condition that causes bowel inflammation, and it can often be every bit as painful as it sounds for those who suffer from it. Furthermore, while it is possible to reduce the effects of this condition via options like medication and changes to your nutrition and diet, there is no actual cure available at the moment. That may change over the next few years, however, as a research team led by Dr. Joel Weinstock has uncovered a potential treatment that has shown signs of being pretty effective—swallowing drinks that have parasitic pig worm eggs in them.

Weinstock and his researchers began by testing out the treatment on a single patient with a chronic bowel condition, adding the eggs to a soft drink, and the patient experienced an improvement. Larger trials saw drinks containing the worms given to 54 people with ulcerative colitis and 29 with Crohns disease, with 47.8 percent of the former and 72.4 percent of the latter finding that their conditions got better in the following weeks.^[3] The theory behind why it works is that these tiny worms are actually supposed to be in our stomachs to help regulate our immune systems and that by getting rid of them through advances in hygiene, we have left ourselves more at risk to immune-based diseases like ulcerative colitis.

7 Powdered Centipedes

The use of powdered centipedes as a health supplement originated in China, where it is called wu gong. It’s linked to the liver meridian and is used in the treatment of a number of physical ailments—including convulsions, seizures, and lockjaw. Centipedes in powder form also have a history of being used by the Chinese as a cancer treatment dating back hundreds of years.

Although some people may be skeptical of traditional Asian medicine, the ability of wu gong to prevent the development of tumors has been recognized by scientists in the West as well. These scientists conducted tests on rats and mice with cancers, and the results showed that wu gong extract had a real effect on the development of the tumors—suppressing the growth of the cancerous cells.^[4] While powdered centipede is not being used as a treatment for cancer among human beings in Western countries at the moment, it may just be possible that we are lagging behind traditional Eastern medicine on this occasion.

6 Flesh-Eating Maggots

As if finding out that the heads of ants can be used to stitch wounds wasn’t strange enough, it is also possible to clean the wound before stitching by tipping maggots into it. This may sound incredibly gross and painful, but in fact, maggot therapy is a recognized form of treatment for certain types of wounds, and the US Food and Drug Administration gave its approval to their use for this purpose in 2004. The history of cleaning wounds with live maggots goes back much further than that, though; doctors treating soldiers in Napoleon’s army employed this rather unorthodox form of cleansing, as did a surgeon from the US named William Baer during World War I.

The maggots actually perform two different functions in treating wounds: Firstly, they eat away all of the infected or dead tissue around the wound while leaving the healthy tissue alone; secondly, they produce secretions that keep the part of our immune system that fights off pathogens, known as the “complement response,” balanced, helping to get rid of infections.^[5] You also do not have to worry about them crawling away into the body and popping out of your nose at a later date, because they are kept inside the wound area by a “cage” made of nylon net and tape.

5 Silkworm Heart Patches

Silkworms have a slightly magical quality to them as it is, but what most people do not realize is that the silk they produce can make a real difference to those who have had heart attacks. We all know that people often survive heart attacks, but they are left with permanently damaged hearts due to the inability of cardiac muscle tissue to regenerate after it is killed by an attack. Science has been working for a long time to create patches that allow for the growth of new cells, and a number of different materials have been experimented with and abandoned because the immune system rejected them or because they were too brittle. A possible solution, however, has been found in a place we would hardly expect to find it: the tasar silkworm.

A group of scientists based at the Indian Institute of Technology produced disks the size of a coin out of this silk, which turned out to be better for making heart patches due to their coarse texture and the presence of proteins which help cardiac muscle cells to knit together.^[6] The treatment was carried out successfully on rats, but before we humans can benefit from it, a way of getting enough of the cardiac cells needed to start the process has to be figured out.

4 Blister Beetle Wart Removers

Having a wart on a visible part of your body is one of the more embarrassing medical conditions to suffer from, and that means most of us would accept any treatment that would get rid of it—including ointment made from beetle secretions. Various species of blister beetles are found throughout the world and produce a substance that is called cantharidin. This substance causes blistering when it comes into contact with human skin, which is bad in most circumstances but can make it a useful way of removing a wart.

This form of treatment began to be used by dermatologists during the 1950s. Nowadays, it is generally used when other options—such as freezing the wart using liquid nitrogen or putting salicylic acid on it—have failed. The treatment sees the cantharidin rubbed on the wart, which then has a bandage put over it. This is removed after around six hours, and the affected area is washed with soap. The skin will either blister or scab, and when the blister is dry, the wart will just drop off.^[7]

3 Leeches

During the 19th century, leeches were used the US, Asia, and Europe to drain blood from patients out of a misguided belief that a range of illnesses could be cured in this way, but we now know that leeches do actually have a legitimate role to play in health care. In modern medicine, leeches are used mostly in helping patients heal following skin grafts, as they are able to suck up blood that has built up inside veins—or under the graft—thereby restoring blood circulation and preventing cells from dying.

This is not the only condition that can be treated using leeches, though. Scientific studies have found that putting them on the knees of patients with arthritis greatly reduces the pain they suffer, while a study from Russia found that the secretions in the saliva of medicinal leeches can be helpful in treating ear conditions like tinnitus. This particular treatment sees one leech placed behind the ear of the patient and another on the jaw in front of it, but what is even stranger is that we do not really know why it works because doctors are not clear about what causes tinnitus in the first place.^[8]

2 Caterpillar Flu Vaccine

The flu is an illness we all get sometimes, and although it is not usually life-threatening, it is unpleasant. Flublok Quadrivalent is what is known as a recombinant flu vaccine, which means that a vaccine virus grown from an egg is not used in its production. It is the only flu vaccine of this type that is currently on the market in the US, and clinical trials have shown that those who were given it were 31 percent less liable to catch flu than those given vaccines grown from eggs. Flublok also has an ingredient that makes it stand out even more—armyworm caterpillar cells.

Part of the flu virus is grafted onto a virus from an insect, and this is then injected into cells from the armyworm, where it grows and develops into the substances used to create the finished vaccine. Ovary cells are used for this process, and they have to be taken when the caterpillar is in the pupal stage. Developing the vaccine this way means that it can potentially be produced a lot more quickly than using the traditional method.^[9]

1 Bee Honey Burn Cream

Honey is nice to eat, but it is also surprisingly useful in treating a range of different illnesses and injuries. For example, a poultice of honey is a recognized way of curing burns, with the honey being placed on the burned area after cold water. It keeps the air away from the burned skin, which makes it less painful. It also rehydrates the skin in addition to possessing antiseptic qualities that help prevent it from becoming infected. The type of honey most commonly used for this treatment is Manuka, which is made by Apis mellifera, aka the European honey bee, which was introduced to New Zealand by settlers from Europe and is now generally found in that country.

Manuka honey isn’t just good for treating burns, as it has also proven effective with pressure ulcers and bacterial infections. The US Food and Drug Administration officially approved it for treating wounds over a decade ago. Clinical trials have also found that it helped burns to heal more rapidly than dressings that are made of film or gauze while cutting down on inflammation, scarring, and smell during recovery.^[10]

I am a freelance writer based in Dundee, Scotland. I also make short films under the name Wardlaw Films.

The span of human history has seen many extremes in medicine that have gone horrifically wrong. This linear narrative of trial and error to help the diseased among us has had mixed results. Particularly in the Middle Ages, the Western world was trapped somewhere between ancient medicine, relying largely on ideas by Greek thinkers and the like, and religious beliefs and superstitions that dominated much of humanity at the time.

Back then, people were also exploring new scientific ideas. As a result, many supposed cures involved things like the elements or other seemingly important objects that didn’t in any way treat the poor person who had been injured or sickened. The stars and planets were a big influence on the medicine of the day until scientific experimentation ultimately prevailed.

Here are 10 medical treatments from medieval times that actually had at least a bit of success for suffering patients or that still work today.

10 Skull Knitting

There has always been a major risk of death, whether immediate or in the longer term, with a traumatic injury to the head, as often happened in the medieval world. Research has shown that people who suffered a brain injury, likely during combat or personal disputes, were 6.2 percent more likely to die an early death than those who hadn’t.

Field surgeons had to do their best to keep people alive as long as possible. One way to do this when a severe injury had been sustained and bone had been fractured was to knit the bone back together. This helped to hold in position the organs that were protected or held in place by the bone so that the body could heal.

Yes, they even knitted skulls. Between jousting, fights, and combat, head injuries were quite common. Many peasants and knights alike sustained them, though only the upper classes had access to actual medicine, including skull knitting.^[1]

9 Examination Of Urine

Ancient Greek thinkers like Hippocrates and Galen believed that most of the bodily sicknesses came from an imbalance in the four humors—black and yellow bile, phlegm, and blood. They wrote about this in their works, which survived into the Middle Ages and were common up to 1,000 years later.

Drawings and manuscripts from the Middle Ages directed doctors to inspect urine. Although the four humors were proven to be fairly nonsensical, the idea was spot-on. The instructions we still have today tell doctors to look for blood and other discoloration of the urine.

If modern doctors didn’t have better means, discolored urine is still a telltale sign they could use to determine if someone is suffering from kidney problems or certain other issues. The examination of urine was spot-on for making a diagnosis of illness even if the method of treating the problem wasn’t always correct.

If someone has kidney disease today, doctors will ask that person to submit a urine sample to see what they can find in it. Sure enough, the signs they look for are much the same as the ones from the Middle Ages, namely blood or a darkened color.^[2]

8 Garlic And The Black Plague

As with all other cases of the bubonic plague, the Black Plague was a horrifying time for Europe. Doctors had zero idea how to combat this deadly bacterium which ripped through the European landscape, decimating populations. Anything that worked to save even one life was held up as a “cure” in this time of sheer terror. People were becoming infected every day with one of the worst of all afflictions.

But medieval nobility and peasants alike found at least some relief in an ancient remedy that’s as simple as applying a garlic clove to an open wound or other site that’s prone to spreading infection. The poor might have done especially well as they relied heavily on occult doctors and herbs and spices. Some of these items, such as garlic, were actually effective.

One fascinating piece of history lies in folktales of four thieves vinegar, which is basically a tale of four actual bandits who plundered the medieval landscape and protected themselves from the plague with a concoction of garlic and herbs mixed with oils and vinegar.^[3]

At the very least, garlic was effective at halting the plague from completely ravaging the body and slowed its progress. At best, garlic may have even saved many more lives than we’ve imagined. Garlic is a powerful antibiotic that’s perfectly natural.

7 Street Cleaning

The effective healing of street cleaning came about largely by accident, and its beneficial effects were unintended. Until the Black Death plague of 1348, many medieval people just dumped their human waste—excrement, vomit, urine, you name it—into the streets.

Finally, in 1349, Edward III wrote a letter to the mayor of London complaining about the streets being so filthy, believing that the smell of the human waste was contributing to the spread of the plague. Though he was only slightly wrong, much of Europe eventually got its act together. England raised the penalty for anyone caught dumping human waste into the streets to twice and then thrice the levels of the fines before the plague struck.

This greatly helped to manage plague cases by forcing people to remove the human excrement. This had proved to be a perfect breeding ground for the plague bacteria with people coming into close quarters with it.

The practice of horrible sanitation techniques was a stain on medieval culture. When people finally started treating themselves to healthy sanitation, the effects of the plague receded. Much like modern vaccines, this broad tactic worked in reducing the plague outbreak by depriving the bacteria of a place to reproduce and spread.^[4]

6 Trephination

The medical practice of trephination stems all the way back to at least the Neolithic and was practiced in many unrelated cultures around the world. Its logic is fairly simple: If there’s pressure in the body, drill a hole where the pressure is and release it.

This is why it’s so widely practiced by many people around the world. The idea that you can just drill a hole into someone’s head and fix the problems inside seems so silly to us that we can’t help but laugh.

But trephination has actually grown up today from its humble roots. When trephination affects the head, we call it a craniotomy. However, this procedure is used all over the body to relieve problems and obtain access to otherwise difficult-to-reach places.

Although trephination may have been hit or miss, one can only infer that this rendition of bloodletting may have actually done some good even in those times, especially in cases of a head injury or intracranial bleeding. Some people were trepanned multiple times, giving evidence of a relatively decent survival rate for those who had the procedure done in olden times.^[5]

5 Bald’s Eye Salve

Bald’s eye salve is a unique and intriguing topical ointment that was originally designed for the eyes in the ninth century. It’s composed of onions, garlic, various spices, and herbs—just what you’d expect from your usual medieval era remedy. The recipe comes from Bald’s Leechbook, a medieval book of various treatments and remedies that’s over 1,000 years old and is written in old English.

Interestingly, if you take a single ingredient out of the millennia-old recipe, it loses at least some of its effectiveness as a combatant against infections. Even more curious is the degree to which the recipe is effective. It kills some fairly serious bacteria and stops infections, including MRSA, dead in their tracks. Many antibiotics even have a difficult time treating MRSA or are completely ineffective.^[6]

4 Cauterization Of Wounds

One of the much less fun methods of healing people that stems from the Middle Ages is the process of cauterization, which could be summed up as a rudimentary form of surgery. Cauterization was used for all types of things, not just men who had their arms chopped off on the battlefield. In those cases, they had to cauterize the remainder to keep the men from bleeding out in minutes. However, cauterization also treated infections and smaller injuries.

We have quite a lot of evidence of even these smaller types of cauterization, some less than 2.5 centimeters (1 in) in diameter. Cauterization is both extremely dangerous and effective in treating wounds, so it’s a bit of a double-edged sword.

Its effectiveness lies in its ability to stop bleeding and seal wounds. Its dangers stem from its changing of the chemical proteins in the flesh which can increase the likelihood and rapidity of infection at the site of injury.

While dangerous, if there’s little else around and immense blood loss is taking place, cauterization can definitely save a life, at least for a little while. However, this occurs at the expense of a possible infection growing underneath the cauterized tissue and spreading rapidly.^[7]

The means of cauterization depended on the site and the injury being treated. Sometimes, a flat surface would be used. At other times, a red-hot poker would be stuffed into the location of the wound to cauterize even the inside. There’s no doubt that the patient had to be held down while this happened.

3 The Catheter

The catheter was a medieval treatment most commonly used for bladder infections that would stop up the urinary tract, disallowing the flow of urine outside of the body. The old-fashioned catheter was a long, pointed, metal object that you hoped was clean before it was shoved inside you and wrestled around until the obstruction was cleared.

The catheters were curved to follow the natural course of the urethra up into the body. Typically, several people would hold a patient down while the surgeon inserted the catheter into the person’s body and try to clear the obstruction. Ouch.

The old-style catheters actually worked, just nowhere near as effectively as today’s catheters that more closely resemble straws and seek to channel the fluid out of the body rather than clearing the obstruction with brute force.^[8]

2 Cataract Removal

Cataract removal is nothing new as people have had issues with cataracts since, well, forever. Cataracts are a buildup of proteins in the eye causing cloudy spots and vision. In medieval times, the only option for removal was using a very sharp blade, similar to a scalpel, and the surgeon would simply cut them out.^[9]

It should be noted here that surgeons of the day were typically barbers or engaged in some other profession. They just also happened to do surgery when needed. Barbers used blades, and surgeons used blades. Makes sense, right?

This is why barbershops still have the red-and-white signs where the two colors swirl around outside their establishments. Red represents the blood of surgery (or bloodletting), and white stands for the healing of the bandaged wound. In some places in America, this has been changed to red, white, and blue for obvious reasons.

Imagine it’s 1387 and you’re suffering from cataracts. So you go to your nearest barbershop and just hope that they’ve done enough surgeries to become moderately skilled as they plunge a scalpel toward your naked eye. This was obviously terrifying, but it was the best thing they had at the time. And it definitely worked as long as the person performing the task had a steady hand and was a good surgeon.

1 Hemorrhoids

For medieval Europeans, the treatment for battle wounds was cauterization. So it was only a matter of time before inquisitive minds found another use for the red-hot pokers they had lying around—the burning off of hemorrhoids. Yes, in the Middle Ages, they would actually burn off your hemorrhoids with one of the hot pokers that had just rested in a fire until it was glowing orange.

Of course, this meant that simply resting the heated metallic surface on the hemorrhoids would suffice if they were external. But if they were internal, the device might need to be inserted to clear the hemorrhoid.

Interestingly, this is still the hemorrhoid treatment today when creams and topical ointments fail. Many times, people will turn to laser surgery to remove the obstructions and end the pain or itchiness that stem from hemorrhoids.^[10]

Dark stuff and history is still my forte. This is a dark and historical list about medical treatments from the Dark Ages that actually worked.

Many of us adore the rich and famous tech CEOs around today. However, the reality is very different for those on the inside. By inside, we mean those who work for them. They know the bad and the ugly sides of these CEOs, which are the two sides we on the outside do not get to see very often. We only see the good.

This is not to say all tech CEOs are nasty. The truth is far from that. Some are but most are not. However, most have insanely high standards and it can quickly become a problem when their employees fall short of their expectations.

Top 10 Tech Myths That Just Won’t Die

10 Jeff Bezos

 

Jeff Bezos has a very high standard he expects every Amazon employee to meet every single time. Amazon insiders will tell you that if Bezos ever forwards an email to you, you had better find a solution to it, or else you may find yourself in deep trouble.

There are actually many ways to piss Bezos off. However, whichever one you use, be rest assured he would fall into what his employees call “nutters”, which involves him screaming and saying some unkind things to you.^[1]

Jeff Bezos often ridicules his employees by asking or making suggestive questions and statements. He has asked people questions like “Are you lazy or just incompetent?”, “I’m sorry, did I take my stupid pills today?” and “Why are you wasting my life?”

On other occasions, he has told people, “We need to apply some human intelligence to this problem” and “This document was clearly written by the B team. Can someone get me the A team document? I don’t want to waste my time with the B team document”.^[2]

9 Elon Musk

 
In a recent article, we talked about how Tesla employees avoid passing in front of Elon Musk’s desk because he could fire them for no reason. However, it appears that we may have underestimated how vicious Elon Musk could be. People familiar with the CEO have described him as a “destructive but highly localized tornado” that causes problems for everyone.

Elon Musk is notoriously infamous among Tesla employees for his fondness for changing their jobs without notice.^[3] Things are no better for SpaceX employees who are used to his quirks and lack of emotions. He once yelled at several executives before a party, right in front of their spouses, because someone was lagging behind on a part of a future rocket.

Steve Davis, who was one of SpaceX’s best employees, experienced Elon Musk’s lack of emotions firsthand when he helped develop a part that cost $120,000 from third-party contractors for $3,900. He sent an enthusiastic email to Elon Musk detailing what he considered his greatest achievement at SpaceX. Elon Musk replied him with the two-letter word, OK.^[4]

8 Steve Jobs

 

Steve Jobs was infamous for insulting, harassing and intimidating his employees. He was harsh, quick to lose his temper and would publicly scold anyone the moment they stepped out of line. Several top executives like Rob Johnson (who created Apple’s stores) and Alison Johnson (a one-time vice-president) even left Apple because they could not tolerate being around him.

Steve Jobs had a thing for rules, which he expected everyone to follow the letter. Anyone who attempted to break the rules or do something different was fired on the spot without questions. This, you will all agree, is contradictory for someone who always parked in spaces reserved for the physically challenged.

Steve Jobs also had a thing against clarifying himself. He believed everyone should understand whatever he said without asking for further explanation. Jobs ridiculed employees who defaulted on this unwritten rule. He would often raise concerns about their intelligence or even out rightly fire them instead of clarifying himself.^[5]

7 Evan Spiegel

 

Evan Spiegel is the CEO of Snap Inc., which owns Snapchat. Employees say he runs Snap like a dictator, leading to a “toxic” and “cut-throat” work culture they compared to “swimming in a shark tank”.

For starters, Evan is too secretive and never listens to advice. He is also fond of making employees do work they are untrained for, before turning around to fire them for being incompetent. Employees also accuse Evan of operating a system of favoritism, which encourages them to engage in office politics to earn his trust and become a member of his inner circle.

Unfortunately, not everyone works this way. Many top Snap executives have even resigned because they could not cope with the CEO. Fortunately, it appears Evan knows he has leadership issues and may be working on improving himself. He once engaged a management coach and conducted a survey where he asked employees for ideas on how he could be a better CEO.^[6]

6 Jia Yueting

 

You have probably never heard of Jia Yueting. He is the former CEO and now, Chairman of Faraday Future, a battery electric vehicle maker that was once considered the main challenger to Tesla. However, Faraday Future never lived up to its name and its future is literally hanging in the balance.

Current and former employees agree the company failed because the CEO and his lieutenants are clueless and directionless. Jia himself has been singled out for his lack of vision. For example, he calls Faraday Future an internet company even though he is trying to build a car.

Employees describe Faraday Future as a “toxic” and “chaotic” place where abusive managers rush through major tasks, force workers to remain at work until nine in the night and stop them from pointing out obvious defects in the company’s product. Little wonder the company ended up with a 1.9 (out of five) stars on the popular job review site, Glassdoor.^[7]

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5 Larry Ellison

 

If you think most of the CEO’s on this list are annoying to work with, wait until you meet Larry Ellison, the former CEO, current Chairman and co-founder of Oracle. Ellison is infamous for publicly ridiculing his business partners and rivals.

Unsurprisingly, he is no better with his employees especially his top executives, who are always at the receiving end of his eccentric behavior. For instance, he was fond of arriving late to meetings. By late, we mean he arrived an hour and thirty minutes behind schedule. Another executive even nicknamed him “The late Larry Ellison” because of his habitual lateness.

Ellison was also fond of firing his top executives just before they became eligible to receive the stock options stated in their contracts. This made a journalist compare him to a juicer that extracts the juice out of people before dumping them.

If you think Ellison could not go lower, wait until you hear that he also fired top executives the moment they became powerful and influential enough to replace him. One peculiar case was Ray Lane who once saved Oracle from bankruptcy. Ellison fired Ray because Ray was beginning to attract the attention of Oracle’s shareholders.^[8]

4 Tim Armstrong

 

Tim Armstrong of AOL is another CEO renowned for his ruthlessness. A former employee described him as a “robotic and possibly sociopathic manager” who will fire you while smiling. According to the employee, Tim fires on impulse and liked announcing the details of his latest layoffs in internal memos. He also has a fondness for publicly ridiculing his workers for minor infractions.

In one notorious incident, he fired a man for taking his photo during a conference. Tim repeatedly shouted at the man and ordered him out of the hall in the presence of his colleagues. Later during the same conference, he went on to ridicule two female employees for giving birth to sick babies. He claimed their hospital bills cost the company $2 million.^[9]

3 Mark Pincus

 

Mark Pincus is the former CEO, current Chairman and co-founder of the internet gaming company, Zynga. Employees have described him as a “controlling” and “fearsome” person who created a not-so-ideal workplace at the time he was CEO. Pincus is probably aware of this too, which was why he hired a consultant to help him with what he called “emergency likability intervention”.

However, he may have also been unbothered about whatever effect his management style had on his workers. While talking about his former job as a management consultant back in 2010, he said, “I went out of my way to tell people they were stupid if I thought they were”. He then added, “People loved me or hated me”. It appeared he wanted replicate the same thing at Zynga.

Pincus first hit infamy in 2010 when he forced employees to hand over their stock just before Zynga went public. He later returned a fraction of the stock. However, what he gave back was so small that his employees considered it “an insult”.

Pincus “reign of terror”, as his employees called it, ended in 2013 when shareholders elevated him to the post of Chairman in an attempt to disengage him from actively running Zynga. People were so glad about the news that the company stock appreciated right after it was announced.^[10]

2 Tom Rutledge

 

Tom Rutledge is not a big name in the tech world. He was the third highest paid executive in the United States in 2019 after Elon Musk and Tim Cook. That year, he received $116.9 million in salary, bonus and stock as the CEO of Charter Communications, which trades as Spectrum.^[11]

Rutledge has always managed to stay under the radar and would not have made this list if he had not caused the longest strike in the United States.

Rutledge laid the groundwork for the strike in 2016 when he bought Time Warner Cable and renamed it Spectrum. He then went on to change the contract Spectrum’s 1,800 cable technicians had with their former employer. However, the technicians got enough and went on strike in March 2017 after he modified their health and retirement benefits.

Rather than negotiate with the striking workers, Rutledge hired temporary workers to do their jobs. The strike has become so drawn-out that around half of the employees have returned to work even though their demands are unmet. Meanwhile, others have stuck to their guns and taken on low-paying jobs like driving for Uber.^[12]

1 Elizabeth Holmes

 

Rounding up this list is Elizabeth Holmes, the former youngest self-made female billionaire who is currently worth $0. Her downfall is tied to the failure of her tech company, Theranos, which she claimed was going to build a machine that can detect series of health problems from a pinprick of blood taken from the finger.

Former employees say Holmes ran Theranos like her personal empire. She expected them to work 16 hours a day, every day of the week, just as she did.^[13] She even shifted dinnertime to 8 pm just to keep them at work while her boyfriend and Chief Operating Officer, Ramesh Balwani closely monitored the time everyone signed in and out.

Holmes and Balwani were also ridiculously secretive and controlling, giving rise to a toxic and distrustful work culture. However, this was not enough to stop Holmes from extending her madness to visitors, who were required to sign non-disclosure agreements before entering the facility. Security guards followed them around throughout their stay, even when they went to the bathroom.

Holmes downfall began in 2015 when reporter, John Carreyrou, revealed her supposed machine did not work. Holmes initially denied this but her sham was soon exposed. She was charged with fraud and forced to close Theranos. Meanwhile, analysts have reviewed her $4.5 billion wealth, which was based on her stock of the now-failed Theranos, down to zero.^[14]

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