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.
Spanish town's streets turn tomato-red
Spain's annual Tomatina festival draws thousands each year to the town of Buñol, where participants playfully pelt one another with overripe tomatoes. This year about 15,000 people, many tourists, threw roughly 120 tonnes of fruit, turning streets and buildings into red pulp. The event lasts about an hour, and people commonly wear goggles and old clothes; there is a small participation fee of about €12 to help manage the crowd.
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.
Cooking's chemical reaction aided life's origin
The Maillard reaction is the chemical process that browns food and creates complex flavors when we cook. New research led by Professor Caroline Peacock at the University of Leeds reports that a similar reaction can occur in the deep ocean. There, it converts small organic carbon molecules into larger, stable polymers. The study, published in Nature, estimates this process locks away roughly four million tonnes of organic carbon each year.