The Scoville Scale is the official ranking system for spice. Spice is the thing you put on pizza. The thing that makes a boring dish interesting. The thing that tickles your tongue and fills your body with delight. This article will take a picante dive into the world of spice.

Spice is a peculiar food in our universe; spice is an anomaly of all plants; best of all, they taste tangy and pungent, and at first bite your mouth is reaching for more. To measure the amount of spice left within a certain pepper, humans invented the Scoville Scale.

Reach for the nearest jar of something spicy. Somewhere on the packaging, you may come across its spices listed as a Scoville Heat Unit (SHU). However, it’s more than just a system. It has history, a specific ranking formula and more.

To make jam is to perform a delicious alchemy—a defiant act of capturing the wild, chaotic heartbeat of a summer afternoon and locking it inside a glass vessel. Raspberries are the most temperamental of the orchard jewels, prone to bruising and vanishing into thin air the moment they reach their peak of vine-ripened perfection. When you drop them into the pot, you are engaging in a slow-motion transformation, watching as the pale, fuzzy drupelets surrender their structure to heat, bleeding into a deep, electric crimson that stains the air with an aroma so sharp and floral it feels almost electric.

This isn’t just about preservation; it’s about architectural flavor. By balancing the raspberry’s inherent, aggressive acidity with just the right calibration of sugar and time, you are constructing a spread that vibrates with intensity. Whether it is staining the porous surface of a toasted sourdough or cutting through the rich, heavy cream of a dollop of yogurt, this jam is an essential, high-contrast element in your pantry. Forget the cloying, one-note sweetness of the supermarket shelf; this is a vivid, nuanced concentrate of the season that demands to be treated with the reverence of a fine wine.

Ok, I’ll admit - City Spies sounds like a book about some random kids riding in high-tech cars with top-of-the-notch training and first-rate equipment. That is not the situation here. On the contrary, it includes no high-tech cars or first-rate equipment: one member was recruited weeks before a mission, so that eliminates top-of-the-notch training too. Instead of “missions” where spies leap around with suction shoes, the main focus is computers and hacking.

When Brooklyn finds herself on trial for just trying to expose her adoptive parents for illegal actions, she’s about to face the ultimate sentence when an MI6 official swoops in and saves the day. She then has a choice - live a peaceful life somewhere else, or take part in a series of dangerous, illegal and challenging events. Of course, her choice is the latter. Will things spiral into chaos? Or will they just unravel into victory?

At NTS NEWS, we like to cover quirky and unusual topics - and usually, arts & literature does not fall into that category. We’re not denying art isn’t spectacular, but sometimes it’s not very interesting to read about - this artist, however, has changed that. Meet Bolin, the Vanishing Artist.

This section is part of the NTS Shorts Project. The NTS Shorts Project aims to capture interesting news articles and write them all in a few succinct paragraphs. The frequency of NTS Shorts is randomized, but usually it appears every two or three weeks.

Seems weird, right, to just say someone vanishes, even though it’s humanly impossible to completely do so. Whilst we can’t say he can turn completely invisible, he’s definitely amongst the humans who are closest to doing so. Liu Bolin, the Vanishing Artist, has proven art is a form of camouflage: probably the most interesting and beautiful. The picture below will kind of explain how he vanishes.

The White House is a symbolic icon of America - it’s where the world-famous president resides, it’s bursting with many historical artifacts, meticulous architecture and much more.

Many see the White House as a governmental facility, which it may be, but there’s truly more to it than laws and justice. It’s not a building - it’s a symmetric masterpiece.

At NTS, we love handing out subscriptions to our subscribers: we feel extremely grateful that you’ve chosen NTS NEWS. We like to value our customers over the company: this means we’ll make articles longer, more interesting and more engaging anytime we can.

At a group of our subscribers request, we’re excited to announce the launch of our lifetime subscription plan. By paying a certain amount (revealed later on), you can earn the rights to a lifetime of fun reading with NTS NEWS!

That’s what a diamond subscription entitles. A lifetime of NTS NEWS. But you could go further. We have an entire range of “jewel” subscriptions, which are all lifetime, but some of them have further benefits. It’s all listed in our easy-to-navigate pricing plans table below!

Watches are truly an incredible invention, sometimes tracking footsteps and heart beats, others recording swimming speeds, and of course telling the time. Many have taken on the watch and twisted and molded it into something of their own, with newer, more advanced, high-tech features. It’s time to take a technological dive into a world where time and technology fuse together…

THE HISTORY OF WATCHES

Humans invented the concept of time thousands of years ago at around 1500 B.C, and the style and presentation of it has only evolved into newer, better inventions.

Dear Founding Member,

Welcome to WOOD.

Many tech experts predict that the virtual reality industry will grow to be a massive tech industry, becoming one of the largest in the world. The estimated market size is predicted to reach $44.7 billion by next year.

VR companies have been building their products more efficiently, using cheaper parts, but still displaying a substantially good quality. Newer models have been costing less than $300, and is expected to become even more cheaper, which will help the companies to start generating more revenues.

Dear Subscribers,

We’re delighted to announce that today NTS NEWS has reached a notable milestone, publishing 100 posts, and still climbing! We value our subscribers more than anything: we’re immensely grateful you chose NTS NEWS. To celebrate this wonderful occasion, we have a few promotions, discounts, special mentions and more.

PayPal, a world-famous payment company, has recently launched a new cryptocurrency, called PayPal USD (PYUSD).

Just this Monday, PayPal set a new record and became the first major financial company in the US to launch a dollar-backed stablecoin.

Do you like giddy anticipation? If you do, that’s great - NTS NEWS is taking it all to the next level. Look at the comments section below, and you’ll find out about future articles!

For all of our exclusive, VIP paid-subscribers, we offer a completely-free, unlimited QR Code service. Instead of making the boring, uninteresting black QR code, we allow paid subscribers to choose from a large range of QR code options.

Free subscribers may also get access to this service, for £1 - otherwise, it’s restricted to premium subscribers.

You can pick from the styles below, and all you have to do is give us a link that the QR code will direct the scanner to. If you’d like to have a more visual representation, contact NTS (ntsnews@substack.com) and tell us the style(s) you’d like to see.

Lizards are actually very interesting animals, quickly scuttling across the surface. Find out all about them in this informative article!

Lizards are a unique type of animal, living across the globe as thousands of different species. Each type has special traits and adaptations, and they can come with frills, horns, wings, scales and much more! Many lizards share the fact that they have four legs, but some scuttle around with just two and others manage with none.

Have any insights, feedback, tools or apps you think NTS NEWS should use? We’d love to hear your thoughts and opinions - just post them on the commenting section below, and expect a speedy response (usually within 16 hours).

Comment below on this thread!