Weird Stuff You're Researching

Also known as Why You Wouldn't Want The Government Looking Into Your Search History and a plethora of other names.

Me? I'm researching Brief Reactive Psychosis. Though he passed his pre-flight psyche evaluation, I have a astronaut under the delusion that space is a sea in which he can swim.

individually, I don't think my research topics are weird. Together? maybe so.

I'm researching magnets, blood types, and lightning.

Uh, methods of human sacrifice is a pretty weird one.

Also lots to do with pregnancy in Ancient Greece - both for my 37-year-old queen of Mycenae, and my 19-year-old priestess of Artemis.

I expect I'll have to do some pretty bizarre searches later on. :)

Medieval poisons that are used on arrows, and also in food.

Alchemy, Paganism, and the Magical properties of various things including witch histories and traditions. I figure I'll get away with it because we're close to Halloween but I live in the South right now so I have reason to worry about these kinds of things.

Abortion, art schools, teacher hiring processes, and adoption. Maybe not so weird, except for that first one.

The history of toilet paper, tramcars, sleep paralysis, and Russian folklore. Not suspicious, just...odd.

I just searched "homosexuality in spiders". It makes sense in context, I swear...

Mostly anything to do with falling/jumping out of buildings. And what happens when the body hits the ground. Lots of science is involved, and it never has been my strong suit ... even more worrying is that I'm researching math. The subject I swore that, as a writer, was of no use at GCSE level to me. Guess who has egg on their face now?

A lot of it's the grisly side of this, though. Height of the jump affecting splatter radius and all that.

Some of the weirder searches are likely to involve research into the porn industry, mostly, although that was pretty much already done earlier this year (another story required it ... wow, that's actually quite worrying), but most of it was just Wikipedia entries, and funnily enough, reading Snuff by Chuck Palahniuk went a long way toward helping me with this one. Incognito browsing is kind of a blessing, as is having a 14-year-old brother to blame it on should anyone bother to look through my search history.

Wow. I need a laptop.

Major Australian public buildings, anti-personnel mines, the toxicity of an adult female funnel web spider, how to set up a newspaper and the network of stormwater drains around Canberra. To top it off, my browser still has search results from my past two uni assignments: one on the terrorist tactics of the IRA (history) and the other on 21st century dictators (politics).

Warp drives, force fields, artificial intelligence, and artificial/mechanical appendages.

Urm, right now, I'm working on Capggras delusion (or syndrome) which is a psychological disorder where you believe that the people close to you have been replaced by imposters.
Right before that, I was searching google body for the femoral artery.
And before that was first aid for a large-ish item, like a stick, stuck in someone's eye.

...I think that qualifies as pretty weird!

A specific group of graffiti in Moscow, Russia related to Mikhail Bulgakov's book "The Master and Margarita"

Subway train riding stray dogs in Moscow

Abandoned/no longer in use subway train stations in Moscow

A lot of strange pop culture things in Russia/Moscow (for example, I was just looking at pictures of a 24 hour baked potato stand in Moscow)

Yarn bombing/knit graffiti

I'm on the etiquette rules of various societies around the world. Somehow Jane Austen and Korean Gisaeng just don't seem like they should go together.

Astral Projections and various techniques. Also gemstones and anything else that might amp up your psychic "power"

Cloning.
TV schedule for 1990.
Time travel, paradoxes, fringe science, and multiverses.
Would Skittles be anachronistic at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair?
The differences between Smilodon and Homotherium.
Tunguska event and other big explosions.
Swords, specifically from the Hundred Years' War.
Joan of Arc.
Exttinct animals, specifically dodos.
Destroyed landmarks.
Marie Curie and radium.
The opposite of a time traveler.
The Donner Party.
Amelia Earhart.
Schrodinger and his cat.
Quantum mechanics.
Destroying quantum entanglements.
How to say "I love you, kitty" in Polish. Now my Internet history includes the Wikipedia page for "Polish Phonology."

Did I mention this was all for ONE story?

I'm doing a lot of research on amputations and amputees. It's pretty harmless stuff, but if my family found out they'd probably think it was nuts for a fully functioning and healthy teenager to be looking a things like that.

I've also been looking at types of swords, their functions, where've they come from in origin. Next it'll be about training with a sword and where the "kill points" are in the body. >_< I should just put "how to kill someone with a sword" and see what pops up.

Relative value of common metals
The taste of rat meat
The taste of goat meat
Alcoholic beverages
Ale
How to set fire to a stone building
Amputation without anesthesia
Cauterization
Fighting with flint knives
Non metallic knives

The last one gets worse when you realize that half of the sites with any information are talking about sneaking them past metal detectors...

Nothing too horrible this year, but a LOT of mental health stuff. Many of the results have been of the "What you should know if you or someone you love has been diagnosed with (insert potentially-dangerous disorder here)..." variety.

Which means if someone checked my search history, they'd think that I or someone I love had been diagnosed as bipolar, narcissistic, BPD, APD, schizophrenic, and a number of others. All at once, I guess. Um.

Also a bunch of suicide-prevention stuff.

The best place to strike somebody with a blunt object if you want to kill them, how to dispose of a body in the wilderness, as well as the rate of decomposition in various climates, and what sort of diseases somebody could get from extensive amounts of cannibalism.

YAY RESEARCH