Author: Steve DiMatteo

When Richard Nixon (who absolutely committed treason in 1968 and had no idea how to open a prescription pill bottle) was inaugurated as our 37th president on January 20, 1969, the United States was fresh off one of the worst years in its history. The war in Vietnam continued to rage on with seemingly no end in sight, Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy had been assassinated, students were dying in protests, and there were riots in the streets. Nixon, of course, was not the president to bridge any divides or attempt in any particular way to help the nation heal. He…

Catholic nuns in the United States are quickly becoming an extinct species, as only 1% of nuns in the country are under the age of 40. Even more concerning is that the average age of an American nun is a whopping 80 years old. Why Are Nuns Decreasing in the United States? None of this should really come as much of a surprise, at least not to the younger generations of this country. Religious affiliation and participation continues to dwindle in the United States, as the number of Americans who identify as Christian has dropped 12% over the past decade.…

Garth Brooks is a country music megastar, but is he a serial killer? That’s the conspiracy theory going around the internet, though it’s less a conspiracy theory than a joke run wild. It all began on the Your Mom’s House podcast, hosted by comedian Tom Segura and his wife Christina Pazsitzky. There is a running bit on the show where the hosts make fun of Brooks, dating back to 2018 and his stadium tour/the overall awkward vibe of his social media presence. Segura pontificated in passing on a particular episode that Brooks is “thinking about all the bodies he’s got…

Franklin Pierce – our 14th president from 1853 to 1857 – is often considered one of the worst presidents in American history (and one of the most obscure), with historians typically citing his role as a pre-Civil War compromiser who greatly favored an expansion of the country at all costs. Pierce supported the expansion of the nation even if that meant ceding power to more slave-holding states, which enraged the North and only exacerbated the growing tensions between the two sides of the burgeoning conflict. Pierce even wanted to annex Cuba, even if that meant taking it by force. He…

In recent years, I’ve become quite militant over public transportation and our society’s desperate need to move away from its car fetish. That being said, that means I’m also a glutton for punishment for getting excited about sci-fi-esque pipe dream projects that will probably never happen, such as the Great Lakes Hyperloop, which purports to someday transport people from, say, Cleveland to Chicago in around thirty minutes at speeds reaching 700 miles per hour. What Even Is the Hyperloop Concept? Essentially, the Hyperloop will exist as pressurized capsules that will float on a frictionless cushion within tubes, utilizing a developed…

How Did the Los Angeles Dodgers Get Their Name? Back in the day, it was common to see teams across all sports moving from city to city, like that was their sole purpose. And for many teams, their names don’t make any sense upon moving to a new city. The Los Angeles Lakers? The Utah Jazz?! In baseball, the Los Angeles Dodgers obviously didn’t start in California. The team began in New York as the Brooklyn Dodgers for 68 seasons, moving to the West Coast in 1958. Like the Yankees or Red Sox, “Dodgers” is such a great name, synonymous…

You might not be in the market for anymore bleak news, and this might already be common knowledge to you if you have a new car, but Americans are paying a lot for their vehicles right now. The average car payment climbed to $717 a month in the fourth quarter of 2022, a record high and up 50% from 2010. Back in the summer, car payments had just crossed $700 for the first time ever. Even more terrifying is that nearly 16% of car buyers agreed to monthly payments reaching at least $1,000, which is up from 10.5% in the…

Pretty much every American is familiar with the infamous leg lamp from the movie A Christmas Story, thanks in large part to the 24-hour TBS marathons every December. You might even know that the Christmas Story house is alive and well in Cleveland, Ohio, where the exteriors of the film were shot. You can even go inside the house, which now functions as a museum for the movie and a replica of Ralphie’s home. What you might not know is that Chickasha, Oklahoma is, according to legend, home to the inspiration behind the beloved leg lamp from the movie. Apparently,…

The Pizza Hut buffet is now a relic of the past, a symbol of a more utopian time in our history where you could go to your local Pizza Hut and see before you a seemingly limitless number of options. The world then seemed to make so much more sense. Adorned between the bottomless serving trays of pizza and salad was a copious amount of decorative kale. So much so that Pizza Hut was once one of the largest kale buyers in the entire United States. The thing is, nobody was actually eating the kale at Pizza Hut – it…

Netflix is desperately trying to find new revenue, and in 2023, the streaming service will start cracking down on the long-standing tradition of password sharing. How they’re going to do that is anyone’s guess, but some form of this measure is on the way. Since the dawn of time, heroes out there have been paying for Netflix and allowing untold numbers of people to share access and watch millions of movies and TV shows for free. Boyfriends and girlfriends (and ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends), siblings, parents, roommates, random people you met once and drunkenly gave your login credentials to – it’s…