Our customary map of the world, the Mercator projection, is wildly inaccurate. Africa appears to be the same size as Greenland, when in fact it is 14 times larger. Antarctica seems to be the biggest continent, but it’s actually the third smallest and dwarfed by both the Americas. The map was first used by explorers because it preserves angles and shapes (for navigation), but as a result it massively distorts the size of land masses.
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It has been popularised by Shakespeare, Tom & Jerry and many others, but in reality mice don’t have a strong preference for cheese. They prefer sweet foods, such as fruits or grains. So think twice before setting your next mouse trap.
They signal a restaurant’s success, and often the start of its collapse. A UCL study of highly rated restaurants showed that
A series of studies have shown that middle names make us sound smarter. When the author’s name, David Clark, was given without initials, it was evaluated less positively than the same essay written by an author named David F. P. R. Clark. However, the middle initials effect only occurred in domains where intellectual performance matters (e.g. quizzes) but not where it is secondary (e.g. team sports).
Millennials are the “me me me” generation, just like every other one.
The Mo Salah effect: after Salah joined Liverpool F.C. hate crimes in the Liverpool area dropped by 16%, and Liverpool F.C. fans halved their rates of posting anti-Muslim tweets relative to fans of other top-flight clubs.
The Mona Lisa became the world’s most famous painting only after it was stolen. Before its theft in 1911, it was celebrated not widely known outside the art world. But its disappearance prompted an international media frenzy and a frantic criminal investigation, and two years passed before it was discovered.
The aphorism was seemingly proven in 2010, when economists found no increase in well being above an annual income of $75,000. But the research was flawed – in how the data was collected and how the questions were asked – and when it was revisited in 2023 the conclusion changed: well being and life satisfaction continued to rise with income, even past $500,000.
Monopoly released a new ‘simplified’ version of the game, where a mobile app handles all transactions and removes the need for a banker or physical money. Sure, players will find it easier to pay, and harder to cheat, but in the words of one journalist: “it is nowhere near as tantalising as the prospect of flaunting piles of pink and orange notes in a delicious victory over your competitive mother.” Plus, as any regular player will know, a bit of fraud is part of the fun.
By the time of Monty Python’s 25th anniversary, author George Perry wrote that “the five surviving members had with the passing years begun to occupy an institutional position in the edifice of British social culture that they had once had so much fun trying to demolish.”
The bank initially required customers to join a three week waiting list, creating the sense that the product was special. It then gave customers a golden ticket – but only one – to pass to friends so they could skip the waiting list and get immediate access. According to founder Tom Blomfield, “it just worked incredibly well – about 40% of our sign-ups in 2017 came from golden tickets and it cost us nothing.”
The brand has a simple rule: add ‘by monkeys’ to any sentence to stop yourself from creating writing that feels passive.
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Most people think moral values are getting worse. But archival data shows we’ve been thinking that for over 70 years. Plus, there is no evidence that morality is in fact declining (e.g. in terms of how helpful and respectful we are to each other).
Every penny counts for supermarkets. So Morrisons has recently increased the temperature of its freezers from -18°C to -15°C, after a previous trial suggested the move would save 10% on energy costs.