• Trovants - rocks in romania that can grow rock babies, made out of calcium carbonate. It absorbs rain, rock is very porous, which creates a strong pressure until it grows out a rock baby. But these rocks can only expand by an inch(inches?) every 1000 years.
• Tulip mania in the 1630s - the dutch loved (still loves as well) tulips and used it as a marker of your affluence - to the point that each bulb could cost up to $25(0?)k ~ 1 mil dollars in modern currency. Was an economic bubble: an economic bubble occurs any time that the price of a good rises far above the item's real value. Loads of low-middle class people sold off their assets to invest in tulips to sell at a higher price

• a recent discovery that there's two different types of Parkinsons Disease - brain first vs body first parkinsons - and how there's still little research on it, but this discovery means that treatment plans will improve. More and more people getting parkinsons because, a) life expectancy has generally increased, which increases ones likelihood of getting any disease (most probably), b) pesticides, c) air pollution.

The guardian

• The great cheese heist, 2024: $300k UK pounds worth of award winning british cheddar had been stolen in the UK (by fraudsters who went over the top pretending to be cheese connoisseurs - down to the paper work - which worked.)
  • There are so many cheese heists in history, lol
• Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist, 2011-2012: $16mil CAD worth of maple syrup was stolen - thousands of barrels of maple syrup were stolen and replaced by water
  • Ringleader Richard Vallières caught in 2017, imprisoned and fined $9 mil CAD
  • Inspired the movie, ‘The Sticky’

highest trade surplus countries:

• china (largest)
• germany

Highest trade deficit countries:

• US (1.1T)
• India
• UK

CHIM WORDS

• UNPREPOSSESSING: UNAPPEALING; UNATTRACTIVE
• COSSETED: CARED FOR IN AN OVERINDULGENT WAY; PAMPERED
• MENARCHE; MENSTRUATION
• INSUBSTANCIAL; LACKING PHYSICAL EXISTENCE
• INSUPPORTABLE: UNABLE TO SUPPORT OR JUSTIFY; INTOLERABLE
• PRETERNATURAL: BEYOND WHAT IS NORMAL OR NATURAL
• tumult: a state of confusion or disorder.
• indefatigable: persisting tirelessly adj.
• discomfited: make someone uneasy or embarrassed
• infamy: state of being well known for a bad quality or deed

• tell your shoulders to wake you up if you dont have an alarm clock or a phone nearby. Basically just tap both your shoulders one by one, three times while saying the time at which you want to wake up the next day and trick your brain.
  • didn't work the first time, haha.
• pray to Saint Anthony when you lose something.
• Whenever you lose something like your keys or phone, smell your right palm. It invisibly triggers the memory and you always find what you you are looking for.

Joan Smith, 'Moralities' - delicious writing style mmm

• Bill Clinton and cigarette-masturbation scandal
• The Vatican having a long history of supporting fascists (??) - Wartime pontiff, Eugenio Pacelli, Pope Pius XII (NAMED 'HITLER'S POPE') was supportive of Nazi's regime (and consistently refused to denounce the Nazis) + admires Spain's general franco (killed republicans and placed homosexuals in psychiatric hospitals WHAT) + supported the fascist regime in Croatia 'Genocide of Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia, 1941-1945)
  • 'The regime systematically murdered approximately 200,000 to 500,000 Serbs. 300,000 Serbs were further expelled and at least 200,000 more Serbs were forcibly converted, most of whom de-converted following ...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_o...

• tone of writing
• varying sentence in length, pattern of sentence (simple, compound, complex, compound-complex), no. of loose & periodic sentences occurring in the selection, fragmentary sentences or clauses, total effect of simplicity or complexity? How does the writer's sentence structure help create their tone & style?
• Frequency & effects of the writer's use of ellipsis? Use of connectives?

• convoluted
• sophisticated
• alienation
• otherness
• altercation
• docile
• subservient
• grapple
• radical counterpoint
• desolation
• vindictive
• corroborate
  • confirm or give support to (a statement, theory, or finding).

"the witness had corroborated the boy's account of the attack"

• faux pas (embarrassing blunder in social setting)

• Climate litigation: nature as a human right, companies fighting against climate considerations in their financial plannings (especially in the US), how there are an increasing no. of climate cases as governments are too slow in their crawl towards net zero carbon emissions (?)
  • International Tribulation Law of the Sea (ITLOS)
• How scientists aren't able to create life in the lab yet, a cell comes from another cell - life is too complex to create - but all of us, this, must have come from somewhere.
  • Theory that life began in the ocean
  • Simple life forms were probably created before indefinitely more complex ones came about

• Lab-grown chicken, a small nuggest sized chunk (1 by 2cm) floating in a gel, recieving its nutrients through hair thin tubes. They’re growing pork, fish, and beef as well. This research is headed by a professor in the University of Tokyo!
• Pope Francis - the humble pope who chose to live in a humble(r) abode rather than a space reserved for popes, who wanted to be buried somewhere plain, without similar rituals, i think.
• A village filled with one-horned rhinoceros - u can see them on the roads, opposite restaurants, and even in your gardens grazing your grass. Though many people have died or suffered consequences of living in such close proximity with these wild creatures, such as death or having their crops eaten or destroyed, most of them still support the conservation of them

The economist

• Different ways to cook tofu, and tofu as great source for protein
• The origins of Michelin stars and how Thailand paid them $4.4 mil to rate Bangkok's cuisine (And Michelin commented that they will still be subjected to their strict rating styles - you can't buy Michelin stars with money, hehe)
• The revolution of chess matches - showing chess players' heartbeats during their matches to heighten the tension in the audience, playing a new type of chess where chess pieces are randomly placed on the board at the start of the game, etc. The whole point of it is to make it as exciting to watch as a soccer match.
• American university graduates are having less sex than others.
• Pope pius' nose fell out (and now that i've researched again, it seems like this w...

• India's dying democracy
  • https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/artic...
• Victor Orban, right wing populist and Hungary's prime minister
  • How to dismantle democracy: Lessons aspiring autocrats may take from Hungary's Orban: https://www.tpr.org/2025-04-20/how-to-di...
• The space race between the US and the Soviet union
• Vaccine wars between America and China 'while scientists embrace collaboration, politicians often don't'
  • Vaccines being a chess piece in the political world (geopolitical), eg if China has a vaccine it can use it as a strategic chess piece to get countries on its side.
  • Trump tried to buy a German company?
  • China blames Russia for covid origins fro...

• Rousseau
  • Concept of Amour-propre vs Amour de soi
• Immanuel Kant
• Sigmund Freud

• propensities
• instigate
• insurrection (organised rebellion against authority)
• revolt
• mutiny (rebellion against authority)
• tumult (state of confusion/disorder)
• acrid (unpleasant; bitter; pungent)
• captious (raising petty objections; easy to find fault)
• reproved (criticize/correct someone gently or with kindness)
• wonton (cruel/violent action- deliberate and unprovoked)
• aversion (repugnance towards with desire to avoid or turn from it)
• incredulous (disbelieving)
• reproach (express to someone disapproval/disappointment
• disposed (inclined; willing)
• acrimonious (bitter)

• When I really need to clean my house I tell myself "if you died today this is the house your family and friends will have to see".

"...the horror...and I start cleaning...

• Time yourself doing a task you hate.

Then every time you have to do it try and beat your last time. This is how I discovered I can unload and out away a completely full dishwasher in 2 minutes.

• I yell "an object in motion stays in motion" and then throw myself off my bed

• orientalism": depiction of Asia in the colonialist perspective
• 'neo' -> new
• postmodern parody

Language scorer:

• rhetorical questions
• indubitably, evidently,

totalitarianism:

• Aneurysm
• Propensity
• Luminosity (not that obscure I admit, but eh- it looks and sounds cool)
• Iridescence
• Ascetic
• Congeal
• Pragmatic
• Encumbered
• Acrimonious

• replace this text with your list
• begin each item with an asterisk

Real movies? Reality

• The florida project - 1h 51m, 96% rotten tomatoes
  • Set in the shadow of the most magical place on Earth, 6-year-old Moonee and her two best friends forge their own adventures, while Moonee's struggling mom and a kindhearted motel manager protect the kids from the harsh reality that surrounds them.

K dramas/ movies

• Family by Choice (drama) - 16 eps
  • tells the story of three individuals, Kim San-ha, Yoon Ju-won, and Kang Hae-jun, who, though not biologically related, form a strong bond during their teenage years, raised together as family by their respective fathers, Yoon Jeong-jae and Kim Da...

Korea:

• Seoul; store: Rettre: Sending in a picture, answer some questions, smelling different scents, and measuring your brain's response to them. They will create (or customer will put together) a custom scent for you.
  • https://www.instagram.com/rettre_seoulsu...
• Creating a custom facial wash

Japan

• Custom pillows

• 2 significant democratic declines in india: a) 21-month period from June 1975 to March 1977 known as the Emergency, b) contemporary decline beginning with Narendra Modi’s election in 2014

• Defaulting debt
  • Sri Lanka
• Japanese economy
• India's recession

Consumers are yet again, let down by profit-hungry/driven corporations.

Toothpaste laced with heavy metals

• Studies of toothpastes in Nigeria, Palestine: 'Cobalt, zinc, chromium, copper, iron, and nickel were the essential heavy metals, and cadmium, lead, mercury, arsenic and silver were the toxic heavy metals analysed in these studies.'
  • Toxic -> they interfere with vital cellular processes, disrupt normal bodily functions, and accumulate in the body, leading to long-term health problems
• America, Tom's Natural Kids Toothpaste Lawsuit: '...and found lead and arsenic levels that are not only hazardous to adults, but “staggeringly more dangerous for children.” According to Lead Safe Mama testing results, Tom’s Natural Kids Toothpaste has four times the level of arsen...

• James' definition of asshole: (a)“allows himself special advantages in social relationships in a systematic way”; he is (b) “motivated by an entrenched (and mistaken) sense of entitlement”; and he is(c) “immunized against the complaints of other people”

New words;

• ass-clown
• über-asshole (German for extreme)

In 1969, oil was discovered in a Norwegian offshore field in the North Sea, marking the beginning of Norway’s oil wealth. When oil production began, there was intense discussion on how best to manage the huge but volatile revenue windfall. A key question was how to create wealth that would outlive the depletion of the oil field for future generations. The result was the founding, in 1990, of the country’s SWF, the Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), or The Oil Fund, as it is commonly called.

With a fund size of slightly more than US$1 trillion, the GPFG is now considered the largest SWF in the world. The GPFG holds only overseas investments and invests broadly across countries. It avoids investing locally to prevent the Norwegian economy from over-he...

• contentious (adj) - causing or likely to cause an argument; controversial. "a contentious issue"
• democratize (v) - make (something) accessible to everyone. "mass production has not democratized fashion"
• propensity (n) - an inclination or natural tendency to behave in a particular way. "his propensity for violence"
• meditative (adj) - relating to or absorbed in meditation or considered thought. "meditative techniques"
• congenial (adj)(of a thing)- pleasant or agreeable because suited to one's taste or inclination. "he went back to a climate more congenial to his cold stony soul"