A new study published in Animals found that people tended to overestimate the level of legal protection provided for dogs. The study, which was conducted in the United Kingdom, found significant gaps in knowledge about dog law, both real and hypothetical, with half of respondents believing there was a nationwide ban on...

In a bit of a shock, despite being the host of the World Cup, the United States actually experienced a year-over-year decline in visitors in June. Total overseas visitors were down 1.8 percent year over year in June to 2.8 million; that is compared to an already-low June 2025 figure, which itself was down 3.4 percent f...

A new study has determined that birds probably actually do enjoy flying, with the researchers inviting 17 galas at Vogelpark Avifauna to take part in flight demonstrations, and then subsequently observed the birds, tested their levels of optimism and then collected droppings to determine levels of a breakdown product o...

Consumers have begun to use credit card chargebacks more liberally than in the past, and it's changing the math for both merchants and credit card companies alike. American consumers filed 158 million transaction disputes in 2025, up 29 percent from 2021. That spike well outpaces any change in overall transaction volum...

The food chain that added the most locations in 2025 was Wingstop, with 382 new locations added last year, which brought it to a grand total of 2,586 restaurants in the United States. That's up from 785 units when it IPO'd a little more than a decade ago in 2015. That's good enough to make it the 15th largest food chai...

Fervo, the enhanced geothermal company, has drilled Sawtooth 7, a 19,448-foot-deep well, one that includes a 7,500-foot span laterally across the subsurface. It took just 21 days to drill, which was the same amount of time it took to drill the smaller Phase I wells. By comparison, the company's Project Red well in Neva...

Data center developers in Texas are exploiting state law to secure on-site power sources like diesel generators without the typical level of scrutiny. They're skirting by on getting permission to operate them with minor permits known as "permits by rule" and "standard permits," which are generally u...

Earth's rotation speed increases and decreases based on a number of factors, meaning that since 1972, the International Bureau of Weights and Measures has occasionally announced a leap second for Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), adding to a year to keep up in lockstep with the astronomical solar year. This is deeply a...

J.M. Smucker bought Hostess for $5 billion in 2024, which in retrospect certainly seems like the wrong time to buy a snack food company. Sales have declined, thanks to cuts in discretionary spending, trends related to health and fitness and the rapid ascent of GLP-1 drugs. Overall snack sales in the United States are d...

De Beers, the diamond mining colossus, has rolled out a drastic price cut and slashed the number of diamond buyers that receive its product. De Beers has strenuously avoided official price cuts because of the impact that such things have on diamond market sentiment, instead opting to sell discounted stones in secret sa...

California has banned "sell by" dates in most food items, owing to the fact that there is no actual meaning of the phrase legally speaking, and that ambitious sell-by dates are considered to be a contributing cause of food waste. Manufacturers must now use either "best if used by" labels to describe...

There has been a steady decline in the number of places in the United States designed for in-person socializing. The number of bars and nightclubs has dropped from 19.05 per 100,000 people in 2001 to 12.45 per 100,000 today, a decline seen in other third spaces. Bowling alleys dropped from 1.72 to 0.92 per 100,000 peop...

Homeowners in the United States installed 673 megawatts of battery storage in the first three months of 2026, a new record that is all the more interesting because it happened even after the federal government stripped the incentives that had previously been fueling the rise in solar installs. Most of the installations...

Kayakers and Canoers wanted for the 34th Annual Race the Red! This event is open to all skill levels. Learn more below: Three Flag Races: Choose your distance from 1.5, 3.5 or 6 miles. Participants paddle up river to a designated turnaround point, grab a prize, and return down river to the finish. The Course: All races...

A new study asked respondents if they thought they would be able to handle a situation presented to them, finding that 70 percent said they could pass a U.S. citizenship test, 55 percent said they could perform the Heimlich maneuver successfully, 38 percent could do a random stranger's job for a day, 33 percent could s...

The next trendy device is one specifically designed to disable the rest of your trendy devices. The Brick is one of many phone-locking gadgets to emerge in response to people getting concerned about their screen time; it locks off parts of a phone's operating system and apps once the phone taps a small plastic brick. A...

BTS has notched their second consecutive month as the top tour in the world as of May, grossing $127.8 million selling 641,000 tickets across 12 shows entirely in North America, with nine shows in the United States and three in Mexico. Though this particular chart only goes back to 2019, they have now beaten out the Ro...

..hacky sack? The bean-filled footbags best known as the genericized brand Hacky Sack are once again popular, a 1990s throwback that had faded for much of the 21st century but has evidently caught on among the youth, fueled in no small part by shortform video apps. While many are selling for between $5 and $15, this is...

Traffic collision data collected by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration undercounts people injured or killed in automobile collisions because the data only includes serious crashes that take place on public streets. This means that traffic fatalities in parking lots and driveways are not actually tallied...

THE 5 YEAR STRANGER THEORY _ Ever heard of the 5 Year Stranger Theory? Let's see if you agree with it. The 5 Year Stranger Theory is an idea that many of the people you interact with today - coworkers, neighbors, friends - will feel like strangers in about five years, because life changes naturally shift who stays in y...