Build a conspiracy theory from scratch.
The best way to learn to spot a conspiracy theory is to make one yourself.
Pick a real news story. On the next step you'll choose who's behind it and why. Then walk through the four moves real conspiracists use, with a debunk on every step.
- Hunt anomalies — turn coincidence into evidence of a secret plot.
- Fabricate connections — draw lines between unrelated dots until they look meaningful.
- Dismiss counter-evidence — if a fact disagrees, make the fact part of the cover-up.
- Discredit the critics — dismiss people who point out flaws in your theory.
Pick the event.
Choose whichever real-feeling headline your imagination will run wildest with. Don't overthink it.
Airline to weigh passengers pre-flight.
South Korea's flag carrier Korean Air will begin weighing passengers and their carry-on luggage at Gimpo and Incheon airports. The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transportation has required the checks to collect actual passenger weights for aircraft weight-and-balance calculations. Airline officials say measuring passengers helps crews calculate load distribution, takeoff performance, and fuel needs more accurately than relying on assumed average weights. Officials emphasize it is about technical calculations, not personal data collection.
Oldest jellyfish species revealed in fossils
Scientists have identified Burgessomedusa phasmiformis as the oldest known swimming jellyfish, based on fossil specimens recovered from the Burgess Shale in Canada. These animals lived more than 500 million years ago during the Cambrian period. Researchers classify them as medusozoans, the group that includes modern jellyfish, and say the fossils provide direct evidence that jellyfish-like animals had already evolved by that time.
Cat bite leads to new bacterial infection
A 48-year-old man in the UK was bitten by a stray cat and developed a serious soft tissue infection. Doctors and microbiologists investigated the wound and identified a previously undescribed species of the bacterium Globicatella as the cause. The finding is reported in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, which describes how the organism was isolated and linked to the bite after routine laboratory testing and genetic analyses.
India launching Sun-bound spacecraft.
India’s space agency ISRO plans to launch Aditya-L1, a satellite designed to observe the Sun, on 2 September. The spacecraft will travel to the Sun–Earth Lagrange Point 1, about 1.5 million kilometres from Earth, where it can keep the Sun continuously in view. The mission follows India’s successful Chandrayaan-3 Moon landing and represents a major step in the country’s expanding space programme, aimed at improving understanding of solar activity.