By Luke Miller Truth Theory

Homer Simpsons wrote the equation for what is now known as “The God Particle” 15 years before science made the discovery.

When we think of The Simpsons most people usually think of the quirky dysfunctional fictional family, that are a lot closer to us in their behaviour than most would like to admit. The idea of time travel, precognition or media planned events probably do not come to mind for the average person. However, it seems like The Simpsons have shared very specific stories and information on many occasions, which later turned out to be true.

1. Trump As President  

In 2000, in the episode called Bart to the Future, Lisa (as a presidential candidate) referenced the “current” president Mr Trump. They also shared images that looked remarkably similar to future events that would include trump as president.

3. Disney Buying 21st Century Fox

In 2016 Disney paid $52.4 billion for 21st Century Fox, who prior to this deal actually owned The Simpsons. 20 years ago they made this prediction in 1998 a tweaked logo showed the 21st Century Fox logo with the words “A division of Walt Disney CO”

4. NSA Spying

In a scene from The Simpsons 2007 movie- Marge, Lisa and Bart are trying to lay low while they rescue Springfield from destruction. Lisa tells her family to keep quiet, to which Marge says “It’s not as if the government are listening to everyones conversations”. The scene then goes to the NSA where they are listening to everyones conversations.

This would later become reality when Ed Snowden would blow the whistle on the NSA’s spying scandal in 2013, 6 years later.

5. The Ebola Virus.

In a 1997 episode called ‘Lisa’s Sax’ Marge gives Bart a book to read called ‘Curious George and the Ebola Virus’. This was when the virus was pretty much unknown. 17 years later there would be an outbreak and it would be top of the news agenda.

6. Yoko Ono’s Floating Plum

In the 1993 Simpsons episode “Homer’s Barbershop Quartet” Yoko ordered “a single plum, floating in perfume, served in a man’s hat.” Very specific:

In a 2016 exhibition put on by Ono, Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson, submitted a piece of his art which was: a single plum, floating in perfume, served in a man’s hat.

7. The Three Eyed Fish

In the 1990 episode named “Two Cars in Every Garage and Three Eyes on Every Fish” Bart caught a three eyed fish named Blinky, who was a result of contaminated water from a nuclear power plant.

Quite worryingly in 2011, a real three-eyed fish was found in contaminated water from a nuclear power plant in Argentina.

8. Horse Meat

While still on the subject of Animal mistreatment, The Simpsons also predicted the horsemeat scandal. In a 1994 episode, you can see the Springfield Elementary school lunch lady adding “assorted horse parts’, with “more testicles”

9 years later in 2013 the horsemeat scandal broke out across Europe, with the authorities finding horse meat in over a third of beef burger samples from UK supermarkets.

9. When Michelangelo’s David Was Forced To Cover Up

In “Itchy and Scratchy and Marge” a 1990 episode, Michelangelo’s David was forced into censorship, as locals protested about the statue’s nudity.

In 2001, this story came true in a Florida-based shop, which had a replica of the statue. A few outraged citizens thought of the statue as “indecent” and successfully campaigned to have the naked statue clothed.

10.

The God Particle

Perhaps the most unlikely and amazing of all the predictions is that of the God Particle. In the 1998 episode “The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace” Homer wrote a formula on a blackboard which correctly predicted the mass of the Higgs boson (The God Particle)

These are just six of the most asked questions, and not the six most
6. Which celebrity do I look like?

Search frequency: 14,800 times per month

While on the surface this search seems purely fun, what concerns me about it being searched with such frequency is that it really showcases how much our thoughts are rooted in comparison.

We all know that social media as a whole is a cesspool of comparison, where the vast majority of us post nothing but the highlight reel captures of our life rather than true snippets of our reality. The last thing we need is to even further compare ourselves to those we aren’t connected to on social media -especially those who for the most part work in an industry obsessed with physical appearances.

We need to keep in mind that the way Katy Perry looks on the red carpet is different from the way she looks upon waking up on a Friday morning. Let’s choose to embrace our uniqueness and spend our spare time being ourselves rather than comparing that person to who we think we need to be.

5. Why did I get married?

Search frequency: 49,500 times per month

Rather than reading someone’s blog on why you should appreciate your partner, or another person’s rant on why we should all run from marriage like the plague, choose to spend that time instead of having an open conversation with your spouse.

Be honest about where you stand with things and come to a collective conclusion as to what you can and cannot do as the next steps.

4. Who unfollowed me on Instagram?

Search frequency: 74,000 times per month

Long gone are the days where we happily followed and liked everyone and everything, and here to stay are the days where we handpick who we follow to give off a “celebrity status” based on the seemingly much higher amount of people who have chosen to follow us.

If you care so much about your following count dropping from 714 to 713 that you need to look into who it was that you lost overnight (or even if you realize that the drop happened at all) you’ve got some serious self-worth issues that you need to address and work beyond.

3. How to make money online?

Search frequency: 135,000 times per month

We need to debunk the belief that the internet is a great way to get rich quick. Realize that everyone who is advertising their online course, seminar, or book designed to help you do this, is doing that as their primary tactic to attain wealth -and they’re paying a hell of a lot of money to get their ad in your face. Those who have attained it have much bigger and better things to do.

2. How to lose weight fast?

Search frequency: 301,000 times per month

On the surface, this too seems well-intentioned since it’s great to see that a large portion of us are regularly searching for ways to improve our health. But what concerns me about this is largely the last word: fast.

We live in a world where we need instantaneous results (hence why we’re turning to Google in the first place) or we don’t bother. Long-term solutions exist but we have virtually no confidence in our ability to commit to anything, so we instead opt for ways to cheat the system.

If losing weight or gaining muscle is truly important to you, than focus on what you’ll need to do to keep yourself motivated to put the work in to get there rather than what can zap it away.

1. Any and all health advice

Search frequency: Unknown but seemingly infinite

We’ve all done it. We go to Google for advice on a persistent pimple and three minutes later we’re convinced that we are mere weeks away from being on our deathbed.

While there are plenty of great articles and medical journals scattered throughout the net, there is also a lot of “click-baity” crap with nothing to support much of what it suggests. Rather than taking your chances, why not instead turn a trusted healthcare professional who can diagnose your unique circumstance?

This study looks into the psychology behind what makes people want to share content. Research conducted by The New York looked into what motivates people to share information. Just under half of the people asked in the survey said they share information on social media to inform people and to “enrich” those around them.

Conversely, they found 68 percent share to reinforce and project a certain image of themselves – in a sense, to “define” themselves. In the words of one participant from the study: “I try to share only information that will reinforce the image I’d like to present: thoughtful, reasoned, kind, interested and passionate about certain things.”

It also raises the question of whether online media is just a massive “echo chamber”, where we all just like pages and viewpoints that reinforce our own beliefs and are not interested in information for the sake of information. Even the algorithms of social media sites mean that individuals or pages that you tend to click on, like, or share – which are most often the articles or viewpoints that you agree with – will more frequently turn up on your News Feed.

Online news domains increasingly rely on social media to drive traffic to their websites. Yet we know surprisingly little about how a social media conversation mentioning an online article actually generates clicks. Sharing behaviors, in contrast, have been fully or partially available and scrutinized over the years. While this has led to multiple assumptions on the diffusion of information, each assumption was designed or validated while ignoring actual clicks.

We present a large scale, unbiased study of social clicks - that is also the first data of its kind - gathering a month of web visits to online resources that are located in 5 leading news domains and that are mentioned in the third largest social media by web referral (Twitter). Our dataset amounts to 2.8 million shares, together responsible for 75 billion potential views on this social media, and 9.6 million actual clicks to 59,088 unique resources. We design a reproducible methodology and carefully correct its biases. As we prove, properties of clicks impact multiple aspects of information diffusion, all previously unknown. (i) Secondary resources, that are not promoted through headlines and are responsible for the long tail of content popularity, generate more clicks both in absolute and relative terms. (ii) Social media attention is actually long-lived, in contrast with temporal evolution estimated from shares or receptions. (iii) The actual influence of an intermediary or a resource is poorly predicted by their share count, but we show how that prediction can be made more precise.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll know that millennials are simply young people who reached adulthood in the early 21^st Century. It’s difficult to categorize exactly which age groups that spans; but let’s for argument’s sake say that this demographic covers those born roughly between the early 80s and late nineties. Otherwise known as Gen Y, this lot incorporates many of the people who’ll be reading this right now. So, how are we different to Gen X who came before us? It’s not just that their hair is gray and ours is only just starting to pepper. It goes a little bit beyond that. But could you really go so far as to say our brains are actually different?

It’s All About Technology

As always, we can rely on science to give us all the answers we need. And, it should come as really no surprise to nobody, but technology plays a huge part in all of this.

Younger brains are craving multi-sensory approaches to life, and technology can give them just that. Additionally, because of this “sensory overload”, we’re better at filtering information and processing it in ways that make us ever more productive. Social sharing makes us feel good – so we’ve learned to harness that power across all aspects of life. But how have we managed to get our approach to technology to actually change our brains?

Look At The Ways Our Use Of Tech Is Manifesting

We often hear a bunch of negative stuff about how technology is destroying our brains. A study of Canadians found that the average human attention span is now shorter than that of a goldfish, sadly all down to smartphones, apparently. In 2000, we could concentrate for 12 seconds. Now, that’s down to just eight – as opposed to a goldfish’s nine.

However, all is not lost. Microsoft actually reckons that millennials have much more capacity to multitask. While they can’t concentrate for long periods, the more digital a person’s lifestyle – often synonymous in itself with being a millennial – the more they can direct their attention to multiple sources at once, and give their attention to lots of places in intermittent bursts. This is echoed by studies by the National Library of Medicine here in the US, highlighting that 79% of their respondents regularly used dual screens, using their phones to Snapchat at the same time as watching TV, for example.

This isn’t just allowing us to create entirely new past times, though. Millennials are using their new-found reliance on technology to revive hobbies from the past. When you think of bingo, a lot of people might think of the older generation. However, the emergence of online gaming has proven that all you really need to revitalize something old like bingo is a fresh new take on it. Chat rooms to mimic the obsession with messaging apps. Celeb endorsements to appeal to the cross-platform marketing norms of our century. And, of course, apps, for true mobility. Bingo is just one example of how millennials approach age-old activities with a spin of their own.

The Future

It’s not all fun and games, literally. While many of the baby boomers might criticize us for not owning houses because we eat too much avocado (yeah… really), we’re actually redefining the way we live for the better.

In our digital age, millennials are increasing connectivity. The world is becoming smaller, and as such, our possibilities only grow larger. We travel more, and we’re creating jobs which allow us to do so, too – effectively transforming the workplace. Remote working is on the increase, a work-life balance is becoming ever more possible, and soon, millennials will be in the majority at work, armed with their ever-expanding skills and knowledge.

And as the distance between us gets smaller, so too do the differences between us all. Relationships are far easier to foster in faraway places, meaning that we can now much more easily interconnect, on a global level, transcending cultures as we go.

Millennials tend to be progressive, and always looking for new ways to fix the problems of old. Only now, for the first time, they may well have the information and the abilities to explore the possibilities to make real change, at their very fingertips. Stay tuned.

source: ReltivelyInteresting

They have been known by many names throughout history. Creatures that prey on the blood or life-force of the living have frightened millions into locking doors and windows at night. Cultures around the globe each have their own depictions of these monsters, but most have come to know them as Vampires.  However, what led our ancestors to put so much faith in the creation of these beings?

1. Identification:  vampires are undead

Prior to current biological understanding, a corpse could show signs of “life” after death. Many misunderstood blood from the mouth and nose as being signs of the creature feeding.  The truth?  Gases from decomposition cause remaining fluids in the body to be forced out through any available orifice.

2. Teeth:  vampires have 2 longs canines to suck your blood

Elongated teeth after death were viewed as signs that the dead were rising from the grave to feed. The truth?  Receding of the gum-line and lips is a common occurrence of decomposition, which makes the teeth look like they have grown longer. This is also a sign of some forms of porphyria.

3. Fingernails:  vampires have long fingernails

Our ancestors viewed the growth of fingernails after death to be a sign of the dead manifesting claws. The truth?  As in teeth, decomposition causes the skin to recede from fingernails as well giving the illusion that the nails are growing.

4. Hunger:  vampires feed exclusively on blood

Cravings for blood in the early centuries could get one burned at the stake. However, cravings for a certain material is often a sign of a deficiency in our diets. The truth?  Those suffering from Iron-deficiency Porphyria could experience cravings for iron-rich foods – such as meat and blood.

5. Combustible:  vampires are burned by sunlight

As this has been embellished upon for hundreds of years, some are affected by sunlight, and this could cause severe irritations, rashes, and even burns.  The truth?  There are a variety of illnesses that affect people on a regular basis keeping them indoors at all times – such as forms of Porphyria.

6. Wooden Stakes:  vampires can be killed with a wooden stake through the heart

It is well known that the only way to truly kill the vampire is a wooden stake through the heart.  The truth?  Anything piercing your heart has a good chance of killing you.

7. Crosses:  vampires are sensitive to the crucifix

Prior to Christianity, crosses were unheard of which left humans without a means of deterring the vampire.  The truth?  After the creation of Christianity, vampires took on characteristics of the religion and were thus affected by a symbol of divine nature – such as the cross.

8. Shape-shifting:  vampires can can change their shape

Like werewolves, it’s thought that some vampires have been able to change shape and species at will. Versions of Dracula could shape-shift into a bat. The truth?  There has been no scientific documented evidence that anyone could shape-shift in this manner. Scientifically, you could not alter the mass of an object to be less than or greater than the current mass. At least, not without altering the density of the mass.

9. Reflections:  vampires do not reflect in a mirror

Your mirror won’t show you if a vampire is coming up from behind you.  The truth?  The only way to hide something from view in a mirror is to bend the reflection of light around the object – are we saying vampires have cloaking technology?

So, do vampires really exist?

As children, we’ve probably all tried a Ouija board at one time or another. Remember how it went? Two or more players would gather around the board, and each would place two fingers on the planchette (the pointer). Each person would then ask the board a question one at a time, and, if there was a connection to the spirit world, the planchette would begin to move across the board, spelling out the answer. Sometimes, the board will answer with a simple “yes” or “no”, sometimes it will spell it out.

Generally, using a Ouija board is harmless. However, there are times when the connection to the spirit world can go very wrong. Sometimes, the connection will be to an evil spirit, a demon, or devil. In order to avoid such an evil link, one must follow the five rules of the Ouija board…

Ouija Board Rule #1
Never play with the Ouija board alone. This is for your safety both physically and mentally. Ouija board experiences are occasionally extreme and should this occur you will need someone with which to support you, both during and after the occurrence.

Ouija Board Rule #2
Do not allow the planchette to count down through the numbers or backwards through the alphabet. Doing could result in the spirit escaping from the board, allowing it to terrorize you and the other players indefinitely.

Ouija Board Rule #3
Always place a silver object upon the Ouija board before playing. Silver is known (ahem) for its power to repel evil energies.

Ouija Board Rule #4
Never, ever mention ‘God’, as it is believed that entities contacted through the Ouija board are generally ‘evil’ in nature. Some may appear “good” at first, but it is likely a demon who is playing tricks.

Ouija Board Rule #5
When you are done playing, say ‘goodbye’. Failure to close the Ouija board session by saying ‘goodbye’ may result in the contacted entity remaining present long after you have finished playing.

According to The Skeptic Dictionary, tests devised by American psychologist William James, French chemist Michel Chevreul, English scientist Michael Faraday, and American psychologist Ray Hyman have demonstrated that many phenomena attributed to spiritual or paranormal forces, or to mysterious “energies,” are actually due to ideomotor action. Furthermore, these tests demonstrate that “honest, intelligent people can unconsciously engage in muscular activity that is consistent with their expectations” (Hyman 1999). They also show that suggestions that can guide behavior can be given by subtle clues (Hyman 1977).

So, when people go to play the Ouija board, they know in advance of what it’s supposed to do, they (often) expect it to give some sort of results, and unconsciously, they guide the pointer so that it gives “answers”. There are no demons or undead. There are no spirits. It’s just a piece of plastic/cardboard. Nothing more.

In a world filled with Photoshopped images, it’s easy to raise your skeptical flags when an image of a one-eyed albino shark appears – like the Cyclops Shark.

It is claimed to have been removed from the belly of a pregnant dusky shark caught by a fisherman in the Gulf of California in the summer of 2011. Apparently, shark researchers have examined the specimen and concluded the eye is made of functional eye tissue. However, they agreed that the shark would likely not have survived had it been born.

“Cyclopia” is a real developmental anomaly, so this defect is entirely impossible. It is extremely rare, but has occurred in several animals, including humans (for example, in 1982 a baby girl was born with no nose and only one eye in the center of her face… she died 30 minutes after birth).

The researchers plan to release their data later in the year – so until then, I will remain at least partially skeptical.

Warning: Watching This Video May Give You Hallucinations

Hallucination video footage is popping up more and more frequently today. This is due to not to the demand, but to the effect the videos have on the uploader. People who seek instant fame resort to different measures. For this reason, most people use the internet to enjoy as their catapult to stardom. Some people upload videos of their various talents to YouTube. But there are only so many times one can listen to a cover of Brittany. This causes some people to take more drastic measures. Crazy stunts are a common go to in this scenario. But things have definitely taken a turn for the weird in recent times. More and more people have begun to upload hallucination video footage to their feeds. For whatever reason, this trend has caught on and keeps viewers coming back for more. But why?

The Intricacies Of Creating A Hallucination Video

People carefully design a “hallucination video” to create a strong, natural hallucination. This is very similar to videos based on optical illusions. In essence, people are witnessing something that is not actually there. This can sometimes give one the sense of euphoria. But not always. Usually, the effects on the viewer are what have people coming back for more. However, some hallucination videos are sometimes too much for someone to handle.

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Walter Sickert's creepy painting titled "Jack the Ripper’s Bedroom" hangs in England’s Manchester Art Gallery.

Created in 1907 by Walter Sickert, Jack the Ripper’s Bedroom is a painting that hangs in England’s Manchester Art Gallery. From the perspective of an open doorway, the painting, shrouded in shadows, depicts a dark room with indistinct furniture barely made out through filtered window light.

An English painter and a founder of the Camden Town Group, a group of Post-Impressionist artists, Sickert was considered an important influence on avant-garde art and made a name for himself in Victorian London.

He was an eccentric man and his work was often mysterious and ghoulish. At the time, his personality and eerie paintings simply defined the cutting-edge artist he was. But decades later, a deeper look at Sickert gave rise to the possibility of another identity — that of the person whose bedroom Sickert painting all those years ago: Jack the Ripper.

Walter Sickert Develops His Gloomy Style Of Painting

Born in 1860 in Munich, Germany, Walter Sickert moved with his family to England in 1968. Before starting the Camden Town Group, he studied at the University College School in London

In 1882, Sickert moved to London and became the apprentice and assistant to James Abbot McNeill Whistler, an artist Sickert greatly admired. While working under the Whistler, Sickert began creating more work that portrayed the seedy, unglamorous nature of everyday life in the dark corners of London. Through the late 1890s, Sickert continued to paint scenes of London’s working class.

Later on, these grittier pieces served as a jumping off point for people to link Sickert to Jack the Ripper.

It wasn’t a secret that Sickert was fascinated with Jack the Ripper’s murders. When he moved to Camden Town in the early 1900s, he painted Jack the Ripper’s Bedroom after his landlady told him that the Ripper was the previous tenant of the room he was staying in.

In 1920, Sickert’s wife died. She was a student of his who was 18 years younger than him. Her death took a toll on him, with his behavior becoming progressively more erratic.

In 1926, his mother died, which allegedly sent him into a full-on depression. He moved to Bathampton, Bath in 1938 and died there on January 23, 1942. At that point, he was only remembered as a prominent modernist painter.

During Jack the Ripper’s murders, Sickert was 28 and a little under 6 feet tall. He had light brown hair, a light complexion, and a mustache. It was close to descriptions that had been given of infamous serial killer, but nobody then gave a thought to Sickert in connection with the shadowy killer.

The first time Sickert was mentioned in relation to Jack the Ripper was decades after his death, in the 1970s, when the Royal Conspiracy Theoryemerged. The radical theory suggested that the Whitechapel Murderer was a member of the Royal Family.

In this theory, Sickert isn’t the murderer himself, but an accomplice to the crimes. The book by Stephen Knight, Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution, said that Sickert was forced into being an accessory to the murders by the Royal Family member.

In the 1990s, Sickert moved from a supporting role in the Ripper murders to the main character. Jean Overton Fuller released a book, Sickert and the Ripper Crimes, and drew on evidence that was given to her mother by Florence Pash, who was a colleague of Sickert’s. In her old age, Pash had confided in Fuller’s mother, telling her she had kept the secret that Sickert was the true identity of Jack the Ripper. Fuller also used clues in Sickert’s artwork to support the idea.

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