Powers of Horror

01Kristeva coined 'abjection' to describe the process by which the maternal body is expelled to create the illusion of a clean, bounded self.
02She argued that horror literature and religious pollution taboos — blood, corpses, excrement — share the same unconscious target: the mother.
03Published in France in 1980, the text was taught in feminist theory courses before it was taught in psychoanalysis programs.

Ecclesiastes 3 in the Leningrad Codex

The Wow! signal represented as "6EQUJ5". The original printout with Ehman's handwritten exclamation is preserved by Ohio History Connection .

Skydiver Bill Booth 's second rule states that "The safer skydiving gear becomes, the more chances skydivers will take, in order to keep the fatality rate constant."

Powers of Horror

Julia Kristeva's 'Powers of Horror' argued that civilization is built by expelling the mother's body — its fluids, its borders, its intimacy — and that all disgust traces back to that founding rejection. The self is a structure built on maternal revulsion.

Ecclesiastes

Ecclesiastes uses the word 'hebel'—breath, vapor, nothing—38 times in 12 chapters. Its conclusion that all human effort is meaningless is so extreme the rabbis debated pulling it from the canon entirely.

Men Behind the Sun

Director T.F. Mous used an actual child's corpse — sourced from a local hospital — for a dissection scene. Chinese censors banned it; Hong Kong screened it. The corpse is in the frame.

Killing of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki

Sixteen-year-old Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen eating dinner in Yemen, was killed by a drone two weeks after his father. The Obama administration later said it was a mistake. His grandfather asked why.

Wieliczka Salt Mine

Polish salt miners 64 meters underground carved a Gothic cathedral — vaulted ceilings, chandeliers, bas-relief altarpieces — entirely from salt over 700 years. Mass is still held there; the air tastes of the walls.

Amiriyah shelter bombing

A US GBU-27 penetrator cooked 408 civilians alive inside a reinforced bunker on February 13, 1991. Charred handprints remain on the walls today. The US still insists it was a military target.

Wow! signal

On August 15, 1977, astronomer Jerry Ehman circled a 72-second spike on a printout and wrote 'Wow!' beside it. It broadcast on the 1420 MHz hydrogen line. It has never come back.

Risk compensation

After seatbelt laws passed, Sam Peltzman measured the data: drivers sped up and followed closer, killing roughly the same number of car occupants — but significantly more pedestrians and cyclists.

CIH (computer virus)

CIH triggered on April 26 — Chernobyl's anniversary — flashing BIOS chips into permanent silence. Written by Taiwanese student Chen Ing-hau in 1998, it destroyed hardware, not just files.