• Baptism & Coffee

    Baptism & Coffee

    Allegedly, sometime in the 9th century (801 to 900 AD), an Ethiopian goat herder named Kaldi noticed his goats acting differently. They ate the berries or cherries, depending on who’s telling it, from a tree, and they became full of energy. Kaldi tried it for himself and found he also had energy. Let Sleeping Monks

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  • Tulpas

    Tulpas

    Have you ever heard of a tulpa? Wikipedia, though I always hesitate to use it as a resource, describes a tulpa well: “A tulpa is a materialized being or thought-form, typically in human shape, that is created through spiritual practice and intense concentration” (Tulpa, 2025). It takes the idea of an imaginary friend to a

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  • A Ghostly Footballer

    A Ghostly Footballer

    It was date night, and my wonderful husband took me to a place called the Fox & Farrow in Hermosa Beach. He knew I liked 1940s art deco and the warmth of a speakeasy. As soon as I got off those stairs, I began to feel one of those incredibly hard-to-describe vibes. It was not

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  • Anxiety & Sustainability

    Anxiety & Sustainability

    I’m back after taking a month off. Okay, more than a month. Classes, working summer school, and not being able to sleep have been taking a toll on me.  This month, I have been exploring ways to reduce the plastic I use in my daily life. A curious question popped up in my head when

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  • Third Man Syndrome aka Third Man Factor

    In 1916, Ernest Shackleton found himself making his way through the Antarctic after his ship, HMS Endurance, had become stuck in the ice. Shackleton then made the decision, along with two members of the crew, to make the journey to the nearest whaling outpost, which was about 24 miles away. To describe the journey as

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  • History and Witchcraft

    Here’s a video that I came across on Saturday morning was procrastinating and dealing with writers block. History and witchcraft are two subjects I often find myself fixated on. I am just fascinated by human behavior in these situations and how something as seemingly random as a cow dying got blamed on a woman who

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  • The Fascinating Case of Phineas Gage

    In 1848, a 25-year-old railroad worker was hit in the head by a 13-pound tamping rod that was 3 feet 7 inches long (Lapinski 2022). This rod damaged his left frontal lobe by being propelled through his head under his left cheekbone and the top of his skull. He survived by no small amount of

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  • Odd Jobs: Archimimi

    Today I learned about one of the oddest jobs I have ever heard of, at least by modern-day standards: Archimimi. In ancient Rome, if you held a funeral, you may have had an archimimi present. The archimimus were essentially funeral clowns who mimicked the dead. They would dress up like the deceased person, wear a

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  • One of my curious pastimes is to look for ghost stories in my hometown. I am a curator of oddities, after all. When I attended Redondo Union High School, I remember feeling an indescribable “something” in the library. I also remember how “different” the auditorium felt. More recently, I visited the auditorium as an adult,

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