I was tinkering by myself today, as I often do, when I came across something.

On Medium, of course. I’m not sure what else you could have imagined. Sicko.

Have you searched for anything in the last few days? You know, that seldom-used search box up in the top right corner of the Medium screen.

This little guy that no one ever uses:

We all fondly remember nursery rhymes from our childhood. I’m sure you can even recall most of them by heart, or at least hum along when it pops up from time to time.

But did you ever stop to wonder where these ancient rhapsodies came from? Turns out, a lot of them are a strange form of remembering famous events.

Or more appropriately, infamous.

Let’s dig in.

1. Ring Around the Rosie

Ring-a-round the rosie,
A pocket full of posies,
Ashes! Ashes!
We all fall down.

A group of children clasp hands and run, skip, or flail in a circle having the time of their…

What’s the most embarrassing story you can think of when it comes to your favorite celeb?

Is it something clumsy like Jennifer Lawrence's multiple famous stumbles when walking up sketchy award show stage steps? Maybe it’s more cringe-worthy like James Franco’s likely-stoned-as-a-kite Oscar Awards hosting endeavor.

Whatever the instance, these mishaps tend to blow up all over the news — while making these celebs even more (in)famous.

What’s the recipe for a vulnerable blowup?

1. The moment was ridiculous (in a good or bad way)
2. The person is at least semi-famous

We absolutely feed off of their embarrassments when this happens…

If you haven’t had the amusing chance to see one of the funniest stories to come out of the White House recently, you’re in for a treat.

Joe Biden famously used Medium as one of his campaign blogs in the run-up to the 2020 election. Well, most likely his staff did on his behalf (and hopefully his content approval).

Since the election, he’s only written one article in early March. But I suppose those 89,000 followers on his account aren’t taken for granted.

His staff had arranged a call with Medium’s partnership program to discuss how to leverage the platform…

Who doesn’t like putting pen to paper and exploring the wildest depths of your crazy imagination? While I don’t publish fiction myself (outside of short humor), I do absolutely love the genre.

And Medium hosts plenty of absolutely fantastic fiction writers in this area too! Some of them might even be secretly famous and using a pen name…or was that sentence fiction too?

Either way, if you’re here, you probably want to see all of the major places to publish your fiction on Medium, so look no further!

Here’s the shortlist organized alphabetically. Note, not all of these pubs are…

There’s something positively rapturing about volcanoes.

They’re mysterious. They’re glorious to observe from a safe distance. They’re an ancient ominous threat that could destroy our surroundings without a moment’s notice.

Even though we know they’re dangerous, we’re still drawn to them. People go to photograph fresh explosions or escaping gas. Tourists hike active mountains or take group trips on bus rides up the hillside. It’s like that tempting red button that says “Do not press.”

But we do press it. A lot.

Around 2,000 people have been killed since the year 2000 by volcanos.

Not all of them are by…

Response Letter Contest

Note: This is a humorous reply to Deborah Weir’s piece called An Open Letter to Autocorrect.

Dear human female,

We were not at all pleased to see your recent letter addressing us. Of course, pleasure is something we haven’t yet been programmed for, so the point is moot.

Definition: moot [ moot ] adjective

1. Of little or no practical value, meaning, or relevance; purely academic.

We have analyzed, filtered, and categorized your list of complaints as the following:

1. A misunderstanding of the most frequently used words in the English lexicon
2. You live in Canada, not Togo
3. An inability to…

The application of international waters can be a tricky subject. For most countries, the general rule of thumb is a country’s water-boundaries extend 200 nautical miles in the seas.

• But what happens when countries are next-door neighbors?
• When their continental shelves extend way beyond the land?
• Or when a WWII relic was never torn down and sits in what used to be international waters but no longer is?

Well, that’s the case of an amusing little micronation called The Principality of Sealand located just off the coast of England.

WWII Relics

During WW2, the British government constructed several forts in the middle…