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The power of 9s—and other marketing tricks that make you spend more We like to think we're smart about estimating value, but the reality isn't so pretty.
Most of us are senseless lemmings at the mercy of marketers and psychologists who are far, far smarter than we will ever be. It’s hard to think otherwise after reading William Poundstone‘s Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value (and How to Take Advantage of It) – a delightful dissection of the tricks, tools and tactics behind the way we haggle over salaries, buy houses, and eat out at posh restaurants. (The same concepts can apply to how we value illegal goods and services, from prostitutes to purple haze.) “We don’t have an inner sense telling us what things are really worth,” Poundstone told us. “Instead, we rely on advertised prices…
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10 signs you’ve gotten old but not realized it yet Think you’re still 30 years away from retirement? Think again.
8 rumors about the Founding Fathers that refuse to die off The dead bodies in Ben Franklin's basement were actually sacrificed by the Hellfire Club.
How to survive a royal beating The complete prick's bag of simple tricks to avoid coming down with a life long beating-induced neurological disorder.
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9 weirdest jobs held by celebrities before they became famous We all have to start somewhere, and sometimes that somewhere is Hike Master at an Indian burial ground.
Most of us have had lousy jobs and famous people are no exception. Of course, there are your ordinary crappy jobs and then there are those jobs that are truly weird – either because you would feel kind of uncomfortable around anyone who did them, or they don’t fit what we know about the person at all. So let’s roll up 9 of the weirdest jobs held by celebrities before they became famous – because we all have to start somewhere. Tim Allen Watch this video on YouTube The job: Drug Dealer Yes, despite his wholesome every-man family guy persona, Tim Allen was once just a sleazy drug dealer. Hell,…
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11 TV and movie products that crossed over to reality We rate 11 movie products (and a couple from TV) that crossed over to reality and became things you can buy.
Here are all the mentions of prostitutes in the leaked US diplomatic cables I sifted through WikiLeaks' dump of secret government cables for entries about sex work.
How close did we actually come to Fallout’s nuclear future? Nuclear cars, robots, mutants, the atom-bomb apocalypse... where did Fallout’s grim retro-futurism come from, and how close did we come to a Fallout future?
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10 of the dumbest million dollar ideas of all time Completely useless ideas and inventions that still made a ton of money thanks to a gullible public and great marketing.
Not every product has to be useful or worthwhile to earn a ton of money. Sometimes, all you need is a really stupid idea and some great marketing to strike it rich. Below are 10 really terrible ideas that actually made a ton of money. Pet Rock Watch this video on YouTube Would you pay $4 for a rock that has googly eyes glued onto it? Well, if you were around in 1975 you just might have. Created by Gary Dahl, the pet rock was marketed as the perfect pet (no feeding, no walking, no grooming!). For some reason, this idea appealed to shoppers, and profits for the item topped…
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Those VHS tapes in your basement could be worth thousands of dollars You were right to keep them. Here's a list of the most valuable VHS tapes, and some tips for identifying antech treasures generally.
Cruel and unusual: history’s most disturbing medical treatments Let's be grateful for how far healthcare has come.
A brief history of toilets Going to the bathroom used to be a lot weirder. And in some countries, it still is.
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20 vintage ads that will make you squirm, possibly cry Advertising is a Mad Men world minus anything that can conceivably offend someone. It wasn't always that boring.
The golden age of advertising is truly well behind us, but we still live in a world swarmed by commercial messaging. No matter where we’re going, there’s always something--or someone--trying to grab our attention. It’s a Mad Men world minus anything that can conceivably offend someone--and that’s boring. Let’s look back and be surprised at how far some older ads went to grab attention. None of this would fly today. Love’s Baby Soft; 1970s What were they thinking? Apparently not much. Love’s Baby Soft Cosmetics decided to show a picture of a (very) young girl wearing mature makeup while holding a teddy bear with an image of phallus-shaped perfume bottles.…
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The penny-pinching bible: 500 frugal tips guaranteed to save a fortune Twitter's frugality guru presents ingenious life hacks that will set you on track to possibly retire in the future.
Fun sounding techniques for measuring horrible things When things go horribly wrong, there are people paid to measure just how bad things actually are. And they're really funny.
Smells like nostalgia: this is why smells trigger old memories You take a whiff and a flood of vivid memories from twenty years ago rush through you.
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From super glue to the Slinky: the odd stories behind 15 accidental inventions Necessity is the mother of invention, but this list proves that sometimes the best inventions are created by accident …or maybe fate?
Looking for something often results in nothing, but stumbling on to something while looking for nothing can change the world forever. Consider the following products and how your life might have been different without them coming about by sheer coincidence. Post-It Notes Dr. Spencer Silver, a chemist working for 3M, was trying to develop a super adhesive when, in 1968, he instead ended up developing an adhesive that would barely hold paper onto another paper. Silver considered the super weak glue a useless failure and abandoned it. In 1974, Arthur Fry, another 3M scientist, heard about Silver’s weak adhesive and thought it might be useful for a new type of…
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The catchy genius of the ‘nonsense song’ It's easy to dismiss nonsense songs as silly and dumb, but they have a rich history and channel the very lifeblood of rock'n'roll.
20 vintage ads that will make you squirm, possibly cry Advertising is a Mad Men world minus anything that can conceivably offend someone. It wasn't always that boring.
The quest to put our sleeping brain to work New study suggesting we can do basic processing and, perhaps, even math in our sleep, is a big step forward.
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15 terrible students who became wildly successful The report card doesn't matter much in the real world.
Spending time in the education system is not a guarantee of success, and for some it even turns out to be an impediment. You are already familiar with classic ‘dropout’ stories like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, but there are many more inspirational stories worth a look. Barry Charles Diller (1942) Barry Diller first found a way into business by working at the mail room of the William Morris Agency, a job he found worthy enough to drop out of UCLA after only three weeks of attendance. While working there, Diller learned the inside scoop on the entertainment industry by reading the mail of everyone of importance in the agency.…
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The rise and fall of Shia Labeouf’s He Will Not Divide Us art project RIP livestream. You will be missed.
Ok, boomer—and 20 more horrific realities of becoming an adult And there's nothing you can do about it.
The true story of a Victorian swindler and his spectacular underwater bachelor palace Upon first glance, Witley Park in Surrey, UK is just like any other extravagant Victorian mansion. But look closer.
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The 15 red flags that reveal you’re about to get fired It's better to have quit than having been fired. Look out for these signs that definitely mean your company wants you gone.
People can get fired for any number of reasons – for the way they look, the things they say, not “voluntarily” doing those lame social events, and approximately 1,692 other excuses. If you’ve ever been kicked to the curb you know the feeling of embarrassment and anger that can come with it. If you’ve never experienced it, we salute you and hope your lucky streak continues. Sometimes the best (and most satisfying) scenario for the employee is to extravagantly quit before getting fired, and the rest of the time it’s better to just get ahead of an official dismissal any way. Whether or not you’re brave enough to carry out…
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Inspiration from the 7 most stubborn people in history You think your kids are stubborn? You have no idea how bad it gets.
46 things I learned from being gulaged Varlam Shalamov spent much of the period from 1937 to 1951 gulaged in the arctic cold of Kolyma. This is what he learned from the experience.
10 signs you’ve gotten old but not realized it yet Think you’re still 30 years away from retirement? Think again.
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Things school doesn’t teach you about money—but should Students are more ignorant than ever when it comes to real-world stuff like financial literacy.
Students today are being churned out of college more ignorant than ever before, at least when it comes to real-world stuff like financial literacy. A study in the Journal of Consumer Marketing reveals that the majority of college students now don’t even know the interest rates on their credit cards. That’s because behind the veneer of high tech gadgets, the whole education system is a relic from simpler times. Your grandparents could go to college for the few hundred dollars they earned in their spare time and come out set for life, but students today are taking out hundreds of thousands of dollars in crippling life-long loans to learn a…
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8 insane Tumblr moments that went down in history Tumblr was a hotbed of weirdos and insanity. Let's look at the stuff that made even its own userbase go WTF.
15 terrible students who became wildly successful The report card doesn't matter much in the real world.
The most notorious insane asylums in history Gothic palaces of abuse and neglect that will send a chill down your spine.
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10 cathartic ways to quit your shitty job (that people have actually pulled off) Sometimes your typical two weeks notice just won't do...
Many people fantasize about creative ways to quit their jobs in a way that humiliate their horrible workplace and/or boss, and the theme has been the subject of great cult classic movies like Office Space. It doesn’t hurt that surveys now show most people’s dream job is to be a YouTube content creator, and petty revenge we can all relate to is truly the stuff of a million clicks. Still, you know as well as I do they won’t ever actually take that fantasy to real life. You want to keep that reference as clean as possible after all. Here are 15 people who actually did epically quit. Resigning in…
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The mystery of Larry Wachowski Could the co-creator of The Matrix real life truly be stranger than fiction?
The 11 most traumatizing TV episodes of all time The episodes and scenes that both shocked and scarred us with the misery they portrayed.
A brief history of toilets Going to the bathroom used to be a lot weirder. And in some countries, it still is.
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LEGO bricks are a better investment than gold, study says Don't open that LEGO set.
You can build anything out of LEGO—from a working difference engine to a full-scale giraffe to a diversified investment portfolio. It turns out that LEGO Hogwarts Castle kit could one day put your kids through college. The plastic construction sets demonstrated stronger returns than large stocks, bonds, and gold over the three decades ending in 2015, according to a study titled LEGO – The Toy of Smart Investors, by Victoria Dobrynskaya and Julia Kishilova of Russia’s Higher School of Economics. It seems absurd that a 7,541-piece Millennium Falcon model could yield enough money for the downpayment on a house. But, thanks to supply and demand in the collector’s market, a…
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How to make body language your superpower and get hired for any job Body language is more important than spoken words. We explain the science + demonstrate a hypothetical job interview.
10 hilariously stupid products everyone knew would fail, and then they did Serious people in expensive suits looked at each other and agreed; we're gonna make baby food for adults and make a killing.
The lottery curse: 8 lottery winners who lost everything Explore the archetypal ways lottery winners end up down and out, through eight real stories.
