All Work and No Play Makes Self-Driving Cars a Dull Ploy

All Work and No Play Makes Self-Driving Cars a Dull Ploy

Back in the 1950s and 60s, self-driving cars represented the fantastic life of luxury that was supposed to be just around the corner. But here in the 21st century we can’t even pretend that our driverless cars of the future will be filled with board games and light reading. No, our self-driving car of tomorrow will be for one thing: work.

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This Week in Time Capsules: Disappointed Students Boo Boring Capsule

This Week in Time Capsules: Disappointed Students Boo Boring Capsule

Time capsuling is hard. Everybody wants to find that ancient capsule with the dozens of gold bricks or the mummy or whatever. But more often than not, they’re quite boring. Your average 20th century capsule generally has just a handful of old pennies and an American flag. But we keep searching. Because sometimes, we find that super-duper, amazing capsule that makes it all worthwhile.

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A Century-Old Prosthesis So Advanced Even an Expert Thought It Was Fake

A Century-Old Prosthesis So Advanced Even an Expert Thought It Was Fake

In our quest to rid the world of fun and joy, we’ve done a number of posts fact-checking viral images. Sometimes we’ll come across an image that just doesn’t smell right, and enlist the help of experts to determine its authenticity. And sometimes, even the experts aren’t quite sure.

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First Video of the Steve Jobs Time Capsule Being Unearthed

First Video of the Steve Jobs Time Capsule Being Unearthed

This past September one of the most sought after "lost" time capsules of the 20th century was finally found. After years of various people searching for the thing, the so-called Steve Jobs capsule was finally unearthed in Aspen by a team of excavators from the National Geographic Channel show Diggers. And now we have video of the discovery.

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The Automatic Lumberjack of the Future

The Automatic Lumberjack of the Future

In the 1950s Americans were obsessed with push-button convenience. The future promised push-button meals, push-button cleaning, and even push-button schools. But this 1955 ad for ball bearings imagined something even weirder for the world of tomorrow: the push-button lumberjack. And amazingly, it was a vision that was delivered on.

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Tell Me You Wouldn't Buy This Snow-Fighting Fire Plow

Tell Me You Wouldn't Buy This Snow-Fighting Fire Plow

Sick of shoveling the snow off your sidewalk? Well, the good folks of 1925 have a brilliant idea for you: just set it all on fire.

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8 Viral Sochi Olympics Photos That Are Total Lies

8 Viral Sochi Olympics Photos That Are Total Lies

Thousands of images are pouring out of Sochi in the lead-up to the Olympics. And things don’t look great. There are unfinished buildings, a lack of winter weather, and an abundance of trash. But don’t believe every image you see. Like so much of what gets passed on social media these days, a lot of them aren’t exactly what they claim.

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1990: Pop Music Will Just Be Musical Orgies By 2010

1990: Pop Music Will Just Be Musical Orgies By 2010

Back in 1985 Tipper Gore testified in front of a Senate committee warning that children were being exposed to all kinds of naughty stuff in modern music. Sex, heresy and violence were destroying good old-fashioned American values. Won’t somebody think of the children!

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This Ridiculous Victorian-Era Rocking Bath Wasn’t Just For Fun

This Ridiculous Victorian-Era Rocking Bath Wasn't Just For Fun

Hydrotherapy was all the rage in the 19th century. Inventors devised countless contraptions to immerse people in water, hoping to restore them to health using nature’s favorite liquid. But none were quite as awkward as the invention above: the "rocking bath tub" of 1891.

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When a Bar Full of Women Was a Nightmarish Dystopia

When a Bar Full of Women Was a Nightmarish Dystopia

Harry Grant Dart had quite an eye for the future. The early 20th century illustrator imagined women driving flying machines, the airmail of the future dropping from the sky, and even a world of robot butlers long before the word robot had even been coined. But one of Dart’s illustrations from 1908 was perhaps the most startling for people of his generation: a bar filled with nothing but women.

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