🎮 Donde esta...?

Slay your way to language fluency, how one soldier leveled up his relationship with his son, and more.

Andrew Nusca

Eric Alt

, and

Marques Edge

Jul 07, 2023

Mornin’. Now that summer is in full swing, it’s time to ponder some big questions.

Like: Is the ocean soup?

We’ve all argued about the sandwich status of hot dogs and burritos, but what about this? Think about it—what do you need to make soup? Water, salt, some veggies, some meat.…

It makes sense. Enjoy our offerings today and then go back to being a bay leaf in the world’s largest bouillabaisse.

—Eric Alt, Andrew Nusca, Marques Edge

Buffed/Nerfed

What’s up and down in the world rn.

Buffed: Your commute. The FAA just handed out an air-worthiness certificate to a flying car. Alef Automotive’s “Model A” is an electric vehicle capable to driving on land and flying in the air (the new hybrid?). Get ready to retire the “It’s the 2020s, where are our flying cars?” memes!

Nerfed: Missions, possible and otherwise. Tom Cruise is so inspired by Harrison Ford’s return as Indiana Jones that he wants to keep making Mission: Impossible movies until he’s 80. Is anyone gonna argue with a guy still doing this at age 61?

Buffed: Ice, ice, baby. The 2023 Global Peace Index has named Iceland the most peaceful country in the world. Fire up some Björk and celebrate. (Oh, what about America? We’re number one…hundred and thirty-first!)

Nerfed: Snack time. The FTC has begun cracking down on cannabis snacks that look way too much like existing products—such as “Stoneos” from “Dabisco.” The lack of creativity is the real crime, honestly.

Buffed: Bigger leaps for mankind. India is rapidly becoming a space power, and is looking to strengthen its collaborative efforts with NASA. “International” space stations finally start living up to their names.

Field Upgrade: Learn a new language with games

Level up your game.

Unless you’re the one person who travels all the way to Madrid really, really needing to know where the biblioteca is, learning a new language as an adult can feel like a lot of work with not a lot of practical pay-off.

But what if you could teach yourself a new tongue by playing the video games you already love?

Contributing writer Dan Noel explains how to turn game time into your own personal Duolingo.

Dive in.

Mic Drop: How gaming helped me reconnect with my son after military deployment

Contributed commentary.

Completing a chore, tossing around a ball, reading a book, fixing a thing—all stereotypical activities a parent and a young child could normally do together to create a bond.

For Max Levasseur and his son Christian, the “thing” was a tad different: video games.

After the U.S. Army veteran returned from nearly a year’s deployment to Afghanistan, Levasseur racked his brain trying to figure out how to catch up. Turns out a couple of controllers is all he needed.

Here’s what he shared with managing editor Marques Edge.

Fun Fact Friday

About a month ago, former U.S. intelligence official David Grusch came forward and claimed the government has been in possession of crafts of “non-human origin” for decades.

Grusch led analysis of Unexplained Anomalous Phenomena (UAP)—which is the new preferred term over “UFO”—within a U.S. Department of Defense agency for 14 years, so it’s not likely he was just saying this for the LOLs.

Could one of those crafts Grusch refers to be the one that supposedly crashed in Roswell, New Mexico on this day in 1947? Maybe. But you should always keep in mind just how much BS there is in UAP history.

Here’s a quick spin through which truths were, in fact, not out there:

In 1945, near the end of World War II, Japan began using devices called “Fu-Go Balloons” (literally, balloons with bombs attached) with the hope the devices would randomly detonate inside the U.S. and cause havoc. On July 9, 1947—two days after the alleged crash—the U.S. Army identified the debris they found as a weather balloon. This has been widely mocked as a lie—but maybe the lie wasn’t “weather balloon = aliens” but rather the fact that “weather balloon” is safer than saying “random floating bombs.”
On July 11, 1947 a mysterious disc was discovered in Twin Falls, Idaho (over 1,000 miles away from Roswell). Was it part of the same alien craft? Nope! A couple of teenagers made it, and confessed a few days later. Youths!
Maybe you heard about the alien bodies recovered from Aztec, New Mexico? Yeah, that turns out to have been the handiwork of con artists who tricked Variety journalist Frank Scully (Hmmm….?) into printing a made-up story.
There are have been lots of other wild stories debunked over the years, but none beat the one posited by investigative reporter Annie Jacobsen in 2011. In her book Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base, she claims there were bodies uncovered at the scene of the Roswell crash, but they weren’t aliens. That’s silly. Aliens? How ridiculous! No, no, no…these were child-size aviators grown in a lab by Nazi doctor Josef Mengele under orders of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin! Makes so much more sense, doesn’t it?