the weird things year in review, 2018
Even though the site has officially been back for a little over three months, it’s been a very busy quarter. First, there was the complete design revamp and migration back from Medium. Then, there was a symbiotic transition from Rantt Politech. Then there was the launch of a podcast. Meanwhile, there was constant fine tuning and debugging to make sure the new midtier and UI worked as quickly and efficiently as possible, and with enough useful metadata for social media and user curated feeds. And as we get back to track and start thinking about the future, it might be nice to get back to some old traditions and open up the site’s dashboard to see what articles were popular, starting with the top five in absolute views.
5. Why We Need To Return To The Moon And Do The Other Things
4. At The Mountains Of Political Madness
3. The Billion Year Old Connection Between Tasmania And Arizona
2. The State Of California vs. Coffee
1. Oumuamua: The Galaxy,s Slowest Interstellar Spaceship
Of these articles, the third, exploring how the theory of plate tectonics not only explains how continents on Earth work and change, is also the most discussed on social media, primarily on Reddit, with the tale of how California’s Proposition 65 has been undermined by needlessly confusing scientific bureaucracy of the IARC, a close second. And speaking of most discussed articles, one was even featured on Canadian national radio due to its subject matter’s nearly perfect intersection of sex, artificial intelligence, and current events.
Almost needless to say, with the almost being specified because I am actually saying it, that was fun and we’re hoping for more chances to talk weird science and technology with a bigger and more diverse audience. Meanwhile, an older primer on how scientific advancements of the past can look like primitive superstition to us today, became the most searched for article on Weird Things, perhaps as a sort of confirmation that since a lot of articles on this site aren’t based on any specific breaking news item, they can be just as relevant years after they were written and are often created with this hope and purpose in mind.
Next year, with the podcast and some new ideas in the works for the first quarter of year, there should be many more fun data points to cover and many more articles from which to choose. So in the meantime, enjoy the return of Weird Things, and stay tuned in 2019 for more bleeding edge science, experimental technology, and much needed context and fact checks when it comes to both. And of course, subscribe to the World of Weird Things podcast on all major audio and music platforms to learn something new on your morning commute every Friday.
