Neutering dogs is considered normal, but it’s seen as barbaric when done to humans.
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In ancient Egypt, cats were objects of worship – considered to be a manifestation of the goddess Bastet. Fast forward to Europe in the Middle Ages, and cats had become linked with witchcraft by the Catholic Church. Thus ensued a 300 year campaign of systematic feline torture and genocide, the goal of which was to exterminate cats entirely.
Cazoo’s £6 billion valuation hinted that all car buying would be done online. But the company has now gone into administration, after generating losses of £700 million in 2022.
In Japan 78% of music sales are still physical CDs. But it’s not because consumers love the audio quality – it’s because CDs allow fans to engage with artists, who will bundle them with perks such as concert ticket vouchers, invitations to meet-and-greet events, and voting cards.
Want to be a CEO? It helps to be tall. In the U.S, 14.5% of men are 6ft or taller. But among CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, that figure rises to 58%.
One of the main determinants of whether people donate to charity is not whether they can afford to but whether they are asked to. The percentage of people being frequently asked to donate plummeted during Covid-19. Sure enough, the percentage who donated fell – and only really recovered at the end of 2023, when charities started asking again.
Charli XCX used a text cover for Brat – her breakout album of 2024 – purely to save money. She didn’t think the album would appeal to lots of people, so didn’t want to waste money on the album design.
ChatGPT gradually spits out information as if it was thinking and responding in real time. In reality, the code was instantly ready when you clicked the prompt – but it presents the illusion of effort.
ChatGPT may dominate conversations on LinkedIn, but it’s still relatively niche: even among 18-24s, its biggest audience, only a quarter use it at least weekly (as of April 2024).
The Chilean sea bass is a marketing invention. Lee Lantz, a fish wholesaler, wanted a more attractive way of describing the Patagonian toothfish so he could sell it to Americans.
The China playbook: go from bottom to top in a matter of years.
To overtake Johnnie Walker as market leader, Chivas Regal simply acted like market leader; putting the price up, and creating ads that didn’t show the pack (because no.1 is always recognisable).
Sending Christmas cards is a dying tradition, but it’s being kept alive by the social media generation. In a 2024 survey, under 35s were most likely to send at least one card, and the majority planned to send more than in the previous year.
Bang and the dirt is gone.
Citigroup accidentally credited a client account with $81 trillion instead of $280. The system requires employees to manually enter the transaction, but (bizarrely) the amount field comes pre-populated with 15 zeros – which the employee forgot to delete. Thankfully the error was quickly spotted and rectified, not that Citigroup could afford that payment anyway.