How a scam artist fooled investors with a simple trick.
Skyscrapers are long buildings that touch the skies. These monstrous products of beautiful engineering touch the clouds and shine with the rising sun. When you think about these buildings, they are very comparable to mountains.
However, there is one skyscraper in Wichita, Texas, that stands 40 feet (12 meters) tall. It is the Newby-McMahon building. It is popularly known as “the world’s littlest skyscraper.” This “skyscraper,” smaller than a lot of houses, was meant to be very tall.
Instead, a simple mistake changed its fate completely. In 1918, a petroleum reserve was discovered in Texas. This caused a massive oil…
Aiming for the stars as a non-profit organization — delusional or genius?
The timeline of the Internet is astonishing. The way things have progressed in the past two decades has brought humanity to a new and exciting place. This is the age of the Internet, and it all starts in 1999.
In 1999, the dot com bubble was reaching its peak. Everyone was busy making startups. Companies like Google were started at around the same time. The Internet was starting to take over the world. But competing with other companies with the same goal was hard work, and startups were not for everyone.
Enter Sal Khan
Sal Khan, a student at MIT, as suggested by…
#7: Says that they will “wipe off all the rats in the country.”
- Does not like people.
- Would kill you if they got the chance.
- Will eat you after you die.
- Does not like it when you pet them — a little more than normal people.
- Hates that dog you have and would rather kill it too.
- Will get near to you, asking for help when you’re in a lonely, dark place.
- Says that they will “wipe off all the rats in the country.”
- Does not want your hugs. Blood would do.
- Will sniff you for unknown reasons.
- Might eat mice? You never know.
- Might just have a secret group that does all…
Use the “WOOP” technique to learn whatever you want.
I often find myself wishing to learn something great. I fantasize about it and how my life would change for good. But then, I forget about it, and that thought occasionally crosses my mind just to make me suffer in my fantasies. It is a vicious cycle that repeats itself day in, day out. I never learn that skill.
If that sounds familiar, maybe “WOOP” is what you’re looking for. WOOP stands for Wish, Outcome, Objective, and Plan. WOOP is also known as Mental Contrasting with Implementational Intentions (MCII). This technique was created by the social psychologist Gabrielle Oettingen.
How 7 guys created the greatest mathematician in the world
Nicolas Bourbaki made exceptional contributions to mathematics — except he never existed.
In the 1930s, the world of mathematics was shattered due to the deaths of so many mathematicians in the First World War. Many mathematicians had died in that time, and it was hard for one mathematician to even find another mathematician who worked in the same field as them.
On December 10, 1934, in France, Nicolas Bourbaki was born who would later go on to become one of the greatest in the field, a Russian genius who wouldn’t appear publicly. But there is a slight problem. …
What happens when you let your consumers decide the price of your product?
In 2007, Radiohead’s contract with their record label, Capitol EMI, had expired. They were releasing an album, In Rainbows, independently, without a record label. But that was not the unique part about that album.
They put their entire album on their website and gave people the option to pay whatever amount they liked, even $0. You could pay anything you like, and you’d get the album.
People had varying opinions about it. Some people hailed it as a great way to sell albums, and some called it flat-out dumb. Fortune magazine listed this experiment in "101 Dumbest Moments in Business."
How It Performed
How United stock went down by 10% because of a musical customer complaint
United Airlines is not the best when it comes to customer service and public relations. It is remarkable how they seem to not care about their customers. It seems that they’re fond of breaking things. Sometimes, passengers and sometimes… guitars.
The Incident
In 2008, Dave Carroll, a Canadian musician was flying on a United Airlines flight. From the window, he saw some baggage handlers throwing guitars. He asked the flight attendants about it, but they told him that there was nothing that could be done.
After he got off the flight, he saw that the guitar was broken. It took him $1,200…
The psychology of psychological pricing
We’ve all seen how most products have a price ending with a 99. It has been going for over a century now. This tactic is frequently used in advertisements everywhere around the world. Let’s dive a little bit deeper into the world of psychological pricing.
The Psychology Behind It
This tactic is based on the fact that, as we read things from left to right, the first number we see has a greater impact on us. So if something has a price of $19.99, instead of $20, you might be influenced by the “1” at the beginning, and pay for it as it’s lesser…
Binit Acharya
Walking on the boulevard of life for 18 years and counting...
![Members of Nicolas Bourbaki [Wikimedia Commons:Public Domain]](https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bourbaki_congress1938.png){kind=link}