Category: Things

  • Where does Eric Pickles buy his pickles?

    The big political question that no-one is willing to talk about is where members of parliament do their shopping. I mean, obviously when they’re in parliament they probably go to that little Tesco Express by Westminster tube station to buy, e.g. a lasagne and a miniature bottle of wine, but what about when they’re at…

  • Executive Class

    The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator assessment is a special sort of scientific test used mainly by people in HR who don’t know anything about science. It’s a bit like horoscopes but with more boxes to tick: you fill in a questionnaire and it tells you about your unique personality that means you think about things, or…

  • The 10 Numbers You’re Most Likely To Read In A Buzzfeed Headline

    I trackedĀ the RSS feed for Buzzfeed’s homepageĀ for about a month, collecting data on around 3000 articles. About 40% of the Buzzfeed headlines in my sample contain a number, although that does include years. All the numerology is “genuinely” from the internet. 10. The number 22. The most popular topic for Buzzfeed articles with 22 in…

  • Small World Syndrome

    The six degrees of separation theory states that everyone in the world is only six social connections away from anyone else (as in, Doug is connected to Fred because they both know Emily). It turns out this theory isn’t strictly speaking true, not least because of isolated tribe, children raised by wolves and so on,…