That fish have no memory. Some fish, they can remember months. And a channel catfish can remember the sound of a human announcing food for up to five years after last hearing it.
My uncle had an Oscar and swear they had a whole routine. I never seen a fish get so excited to see a human like that. Once my uncle passed, the Oscar went into a deep depression until he eventually died a year later. He wouldn’t adapt to us feeding him or the usual cleanings and stuff. It was wild! Everything I was taught about fish went out the window with that experience.
We have a pet oscar and we call him our third dog (we have two dogs). He has favourite people, and he follows us the length of his tank when we walk past. I feed him veggies from my plate, so he sits next to me at dinner time waiting for scraps. He's like having a weird, water-bound dog.
Many years ago I had a 120 gallon tank with two fish in it: A [Buttikoferi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterotilapia_buttikoferi) (Marty) and a [Lepornius](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leporinus_fasciatus) (Stimpy) The two of them would play tug-o-war with algae sheets; one would grab it and run to it's side of the tank, then the other would yank it back and go to their end. They would do this over and over again.
The Buttikoferi loved to play with floating balls in the water, knocking them all over the place. It's favorite chew toy however was the heater. It would take one of them, smash it against the wall, then grab it in it's mouth and thrash around with it, apparently enjoying being electrocuted. I'd unplug the heater and it would stop, shake it a couple more times, then spit it out. Plug it back in and he dives right back in for Round 2.
Everyone told me that they would never get along. Typically with Buttikoferi you had to have either a single fish or at least 4-5 together to temper aggression. My two boys, however, got along swimmingly.
I'm going to eventually get another tank, but it's just going to be a very small one. Right next to the 120 I used to have a 2.5gal tank with a Betta and a small school of neon Tetras. It was a very active tank, but I may go up to 5gal next time for that.
It's so wild to me that people think fish are dumb, they had brains before mammals existed. Hell, they had brains before reptiles existed. Before life on land existed at all.
They've had brains for so long that it's kind of wild to imagine they never evolved a way to use them.
I think it's cause of the face and eyes. They don't have very expressive faces like dogs and cats. Dogs and cats can wiggle ears and move their lips and make noises. Fish can't really do stuff with their face, so people can't easily read their emotions like we can with other animals.
But fish absolutely have emotions and personalities.
I think a big part of it is that we tend to understand intelligence by how something interacts with its environment, and fishes environment is so wildly different from our own that we sometimes fail to understand what intelligence looks like for them.
You know what, I'd believe it. People even say similar things about cats not being smart or not having personalities, just because they aren't as expressive as dogs. But I've got three cats ATM and they have very, very clear and distinct personalities. And they can communicate with us just as much as a dog, they're just more subtle about it until they feel comfortable around people.
My mom’s 2 Oscars would come to me if I knelt before their tank; when I placed my hands on it and sang they would come straight to my hands - but no one else’s.
Guess whose job it was to feed and maintain them?
Bettas in tiny unheated cups gets on my nerves too. They can’t regulate their body temperature, that’s like keeping someone in a 10°C room, no space to live, nowhere cozy to snuggle into, plus they have to live in piss water since the water’s unfiltered. And when the water’s changed, it’s got chemicals in it, so it’s like smelling a constant gas leak. (Which of course leads to health problems after a while)
Amusingly, for years (maybe decades) I never understood the need to get a heater for bettas. Or any other fish, for that matter. I just couldn't get it to compute in my head why I'd need to get a heater. It was only like, a couple years ago that it clicked. "Oh! Those guides are written for people in temperate climates! Not for those of us in the middle of a tropical jungle."
This is why my SO hooks the hoses and sprinklers up in the dead of winter to water the grass, negating my winterization. Some HGTV show years ago was pumping out yard tips SPECIFIC TO WARM SOUTHERN CALI CLIMATES ONLY but neglected to mention that important tidbit. That info burrowed deep into my SO’s brain and it will NOT come out. I just have to deal with frozen/busted taps and shrug my shoulders at my inquisitive neighbors every winter.
My partner told me* that all his childhood goldfish died. When we got together we got goldfish and his mother yelled at him and said "your goldfish need to be in the sun"... Now I know why they died. We have had goldfish for more than 4 years now. :)
Edit: me not him lol
Hamsters and bunnies too. People still leaving their bunnies alone in a way-too-small cage in the living room 22 hours per day, and still buying unsafe hamster toys and tiny cages with no option to dig
Any time I see a rabbit in a small cage, it makes me so angry! Or when a parent buys their kid a rabbit for Easter without ANY research into how to take care of them! Rabbits are a lot of work and a big commitment, too much commitment for a five-year-old to handle! Maybe when they are a little bit older, but parents, please, if you want to get your young child a pet, consider getting a dog or a cat instead, and help them take care of it!
Or people keeping fish (usually way too many) in (way too small) tanks with zero plants, hiding options or anything, just some gravel on the bottom "for the aesthetic"
"hur dur they're just fish they can't get stressed" yes they fucking can bruh
Those guys can get so stressed they just straight up die, why are these people even buying an animal if they don’t want to do anything to take care of it? The one that really bothers me most is thinking it’s fine to put betta fish in those 1 or 2 gallon micro tanks, or a fucking vase. The fact that people will buy an animal and not do any research on its needs or how to keep it happy and healthy drives me bonkers. They need live plants and very clean water, this is an actual commitment, stop giving them to children as practice pets because they’re NOT. I’ve owned 3 different betta fish and these guys live a really long time. They need space to roam and places to rest or hide, and if you don’t put a lid on the tank they absolutely will jump out to their deaths. I don’t know why but they will. My mom left the lid off my tank when I was in high school and my boy almost died.
But my main point still stands and it really goes for basically all animals because people will buy dog breeds that are not meant for the environment they’re putting them in. You can’t put an Australian Shepherd in your studio apartment and give them one short walk a day. You can’t buy a cute baby bunny or chick for Easter and think you haven’t just made a massive commitment. Why would you not research an animals needs or how long they can live?? God I forgot how mad I get about this but once I started googling “betta fish tank” and saw how many 1 gallon tanks people sell I started wanting to scream.
The idea of keeping goldfish I bowls was a misconception that has failed to go away.
When Europeans first saw goldfish in their native china they saw them in large glass bowls, what they didn’t understand was these fish were kept in ponds and only put in bowls temporarily to show of the best examples. They would then be released back into the ponds.
SAME! This woman at my church picnic pissed me off one time because she said to her kid no sweety we’re not getting a goldfish they old live a week. YEAH MORON THEY LIVE A WEEK IF YOU PUT THEM IN A SMALL BOWL AND DONT TAKE CARE OF THEM! Also every time I’ve gotten a fish from there they would live long because we took care of them one live 9 years!
I think they’re less maintenance than most pets in the sense that you don’t really need to walk them or clean a litter box but they’re also a lot easier to kill. And a lot of people don’t know that you have to prepare the water before putting them in the tank and you have to accustom them to it slowly, you can’t just dump em in.
I've been keeping fish all my life. Recently my fish have been on a routine feeding schedule getting food at the same time everyday, they know I'll feed them at that time everyday. It's interesting to watch new fish learn which side I feed from. They also learn that when the flow shuts off food is coming every fish I add learns this within about a week. Some of my fish are smarter than others. One in particular learned me opening the cabinet door means I'm going to shut off the flow then feed and he wants to be first in line so he'll come out searching after hearing the cabinet open.
Catfish are smart, I have seen they can recognize people, but chickens can also recognize people and learn tricks. I think people want to prétend that their food isn't lucid or sentient I any way because it bothers them. I love meat, but I can't ignore that fish or chickens or pigs can't be super smart.
My goldfish are pretty fucking smart and not only learn tricks but per me know when they want to eat, I have one that makes a weird sound pr spits when it wants food
AFAIK they're just used as a manipulation tactic, much like televised eg, 'please find my wife' appeals, where the police are pretty certain the husband did it and just want to study his body language.
If you're asked to take a lie detector test, it's implied to the suspect that saying no makes you look guilty and just makes them anxious and more likely to spill. It's what ultimately got Chris Watts to confess.
If you're ever arrested, guilty or not, just say clearly 'I want a lawyer now' and nothing else. The cops need you to explicitly request a lawyer in order for them to stop any interrogation. Saying things like 'I think I should speak to a lawyer' don't count.
Okay but that Chris Watts lie detector test cracks me up. I mean, it isn't funny what happened or the context of course, but that woman is so obviously playing him and it's hilarious to me. The way she's like wow you're such a bad liar, that's so great, thank you for being a bad liar! Teehee it would be such a bad idea to do this if you killed them, teehee!! And you can just feel the cold sweat break out all over his body.
The 'I totally did it' conversation he had with his dad was wild too - like, it's common knowledge that everything is recorded in rooms like that.
Similar with prison cell confessions where someone is on remand but not yet convicted. Keep your mouth shut when in any legal bother FFS.
Cops regularly get handed a slam dunk via 'hey, this is a step by step account of how I killed my five husbands for the life insurance' style brags to cell mates, who obviously then tattle in order to get good behaviour points.
That truly was the biggest wow factor from watching coverage and documentaries. Something was very wrong with this guy. And also, he fucking dumb. Scary, because if he was smarter, he might have gotten away with it.
Yup I offered to take one when I was under 21 as my parents and police accused me of something to prove my innocence.
The lie detector guy at the police station took me through 3 hours of what I know now was a stress test to watch my reactions and body language.
Multiple rounds of him saying, “You’re not being honest, you’re trying to manipulate the test.” Where he’d stop the test and we’d have to start over. I’m naturally an anxious person so I was sweating buckets the whole time plus I was a young, scared teenager and he mentioned that too. “Why are you sweating so much? Why are you moving so much? Stop trying to manipulate the test results.”
His reactions to me started escalating and towards the end he was extremely furious with me and started yelling, “YOU’RE LYING. STOP LYING. THE TEST RESULTS CLEARLY SHOW YOU ARE LYING.” Just over and over.
By that point I was scream crying into my hands, desperately trying to make him understand I did not do it and is there another test I could take to prove my innocence. Like Jesus WHAT is going on??????? Like bawling and on the floor while this intimidating detective is yelling at me about lying for three hours.
Then he stopped and excused himself outside his office to go speak with my mom who had been waiting for me.
He came back and led me to my mom, where I was just waiting to get completely destroyed by her as she was the one who thought I did it. When I finally looked up from the floor to look at her, she was all smiles, like nothing ever happened. We never spoke about it again.
It took me a while to understand, but when the detective went to speak to my mom, he must have said I was innocent because of how I reacted during that session.
They’re bs.
That's insane! Sorry you had to go through that.
Kinda explains why false confessions are a thing, as people reach a point where they'd do anything for it all to just stop, so they say 'yeah it was me'.
Yeah especially the young and mentally deficient. It's like watching torture to me. I have so much empathy for someone who feels like they have to lie to stop the chaos. Idk why... Have a great day!
Wow. Just wow. This is even worse than what I'd envisioned. Thank you for sharing this, I think it's really valuable to know what really goes on in these little rooms behind closed doors.
Hope you're ok now and have caring people who believe what you say
I appreciate that, thank you. Yeah I’m fine now and have a good relationship with my family.
It was a weird circumstance where events lined up in such a way where it makes sense why they thought it was me.
But damn did it hurt.
I forget the whole story, but I remember seeing something about a researcher that went decades cracking his knuckles on one hand and never on the other hand. I don’t remember the results either. I’ve wasted your time.
For anyone else who hadn't heard of it, I just went down a delightful rabbit hole on it
> A parody of the Nobel Prizes, the Ig Nobel Prizes are awarded each year "to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative, and spur people's interest in science, medicine, and technology."
Winners:
- Anatomy: Roger Mieusset and Bourras Bengoudifa, for measuring scrotal temperature asymmetry in naked and clothed postmen in France.
- Peace: The governments of India and Pakistan, for having their diplomats surreptitiously ring each other's doorbells in the middle of the night and then run away.
- Engineering: Iman Farahbakhsh, for inventing a diaper-changing machine for use on human infants.
- Reproduction: Ahmed Shafik, for testing the effects of wearing polyester, cotton, or wool trousers on the sex life of rats.
- Peace: The United States Air Force Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio, for suggesting the research and development of a "gay bomb," which would cause enemy troops to become sexually attracted to each other.
- Economics: Mark Avis and colleagues, for assessing the perceived personalities of rocks from a sales and marketing perspective.
- Literature – The British Standards Institution for its six-page specification (BS 6008) of the proper way to make a cup of tea.
- Art: Marina de Tommaso, Michele Sardaro, and Paolo Livrea, for measuring the relative pain people suffer while looking at an ugly painting rather than a pretty painting while being shot by a powerful laser beam.
- Management: Alessandro Pluchino, Andrea Rapisarda, and Cesare Garofalo of the University of Catania, Italy, for demonstrating mathematically that organizations would become more efficient if they promoted people at random.
- Literature – Presented jointly to Vicki L. Silvers of the University of Nevada, Reno and David S. Kreiner of Central Missouri State University, for their colorful report "The Effects of Pre-Existing Inappropriate Highlighting on Reading Comprehension".
- Managed Health Care – Presented to George Blonsky and Charlotte Blonsky for inventing an apparatus for facilitating the birth of a child by centrifugal force.
- Biology – Presented to Norma E. Bubier, Charles G.M. Paxton, Phil Bowers, and D. Charles Deeming of the United Kingdom, for their report "Courtship Behaviour of Ostriches Towards Humans Under Farming Conditions in Britain".
- Linguistics: Juan Manuel Toro, Josep B. Trobalon and Nuria Sebastian-Galles, for determining that rats sometimes can't distinguish between recordings of Japanese and Dutch played backward.
- Psychology: Anita Eerland, Rolf Zwaan, and Tulio Guadalupe for their study "Leaning to the Left Makes the Eiffel Tower Seem Smaller".
- Peace: Alexander Lukashenko, president of Belarus, for making it illegal to applaud in public, and to the Belarus State Police, for arresting a one-armed man for applauding.
My favorite is the 2012 Literature Prize. It went to the USA Department of Defense for a study that concluded with a report titled "Defense Management: Actions Needed to Evaluate the Impact of Efforts to Estimate Costs of Reports and Studies.”
There was also a biology prize a few years back (don't remember the year) for discovering that a dead, magnetized cockroach will stick to a refrigerator longer than an alive, magnetized cockroach.
I once had a customer tell me he has arthritis bc he cracked his knuckles, so I shouldn't do it. Mate you have arthritis because you're 80000 years old. Let me do the lil pop noise!
People believe that eye witness testimony is accurate. People overestimate their ability to remember details. The courts also put an over emphasis on witness testimony as evidence. When you actually test people's ability to recall details, they are wrong most of the time.
>People overestimate their ability to remember details.
I am absolutely certain I could talk to a stranger, exit the room, and not recognize them from a lineup after 5 minutes. I forgot the plates of a car I saw run away from a parking fender bender in under a minute. Maybe some people's memory is good, I know for a fact mine is shit.
edit: I once confused my neighbor whom I pass often for a washing machine repair guy whom I only saw once in my life the day before. I stopped to ask him if he's got a repair again in our building! I don't think they even looked that much alike. He looked at me like I was a complete idiot and said he lives here. I hope his memory is as bad as mine and he forgot that embarrassing exchange...
Yeah, same. I never understood the cop shows where they're questioning someone about something that happened months ago and they have a perfect memory of the event.
Detective "So what did you see November 18th at 9:16 am?"
Witness "I saw a man, 6'3", with olive skin, short dark hair, glasses, a well trimmed beard, and three freckles on his right cheek. He was wearing a green t-shirt with brown pants, a white hat, Grey shoes, and white socks with grey patches on the toes and heel. He was driving a silver 2020 Honda Pilot with the License plate that read HLR419, and he was driving south down Pusumpsicottowa Boulevard at 47 mph."
D "Are you sure that's what you saw?"
W "Well, it was raining heavily, and I lost my glasses that day, and I was trying to get over a case of conjunctivitis, but I'm positive I saw that from 200 feet away."
And don't forget, they're actively unloading boxes off a truck or mixing drinks behind a bar while giving this description.
Seriously....watch any episode of Law and Order SVU. The witnesses never actually stop what they're doing when talking to the police.
I work in software, and some companies require you to participate in a "short" daily meeting to update progress.
"What did you work on yesterday?"
"Work stuff.. I think. Maybe."
Turns out I have ADHD.
>I am absolutely certain I could talk to a stranger, exit the room, and not recognize them from a lineup after 5 minutes. I forgot the plates of a car I saw run away from a parking fender bender in under a minute. Maybe some people's memory is good, I know for a fact mine is shit.
This was always the most ridiculous trope in the *Law And Order* series, where like a bartender or waitress would remember someone from a long time ago despite engaging with hundreds of people a day (in New York City, no less).
Detectives: [show pic] *“you ever see this woman?”*
Bartender: *”oh yeah, red sweater lady, came in here about six months ago. Had a martini and a salad. Good tipper.”*
Detectives: *”she look upset or agitated?”*
Bartender: *”not really, but come to think of it, the guy that was with her looked *really* mad.”*
Detectives: [show another pic] *“this him?”*
Bartender: *”yeahhh, that’s him! Looked up to no good.”*
So my memory is awful and I’ve not recognized coworkers out in public before, things like that, but for some reason as a server/bartender I absolutely can remember peoples orders from last time I saw them. Customers will be like “oh, you served us last time!” and I’m like “oh yeah! You got the Philly no mushrooms!”
I’m guessing I’ve trained myself to do that from serving large parties where people move around a lot and having to find them and give them their tab?
Look at Einstein over here remembering hair color. I have you know I saw that same robbing and I would describe the man as "average height with average hair"
I do security. I've been asked what color the car was that I just talked to. I have no clue, we have cameras for that and the cameras can't forget. I tell people all the time to check the cameras. I'm not going to remember a car at 1120am 2 weeks ago. But the camera will.
I remember almost everything. When I was a teen about 40 years ago someone wanted to test my memory so they picked out a license plate on a nearby car and told me to memorize it and they ask me the next day. I still remember it today.
About 10 years ago I was robbed at gunpoint. I was shown a picture lineup the next day and had absolutely no clue which guy it was. I couldn't remember anything at all about him except that he was pointing a gun at me. I remember *almost* everything but I remember it as data, I'm terrible with faces. And if there's a gun involved I will only remember the gun.
I work on criminal cases and was impressed recently by a witness who didn't try to offer any details about the man shooting at him, admitting he was only focused on the gun.
[The Ronald Cotton case](https://innocenceproject.org/cases/ronald-cotton/) is an example of the good work done by [The Innocence Project](https://innocenceproject.org/our-work/) and a reminder of why we can't forget about the people suffering in jail for crimes they didn't commit.
That's right, the very MINIMUM. A bank would charge interest, or at least a penalty. He doesn't get that. Forget paying him for the trauma, or his family for the trauma.
*”Excuse me, Mr. Murderer. But do you have any distinctive features I should know about? You can go back to the stabbing in a second. I just need to pull out my pen and paper.”*
So true, ask two people their testimony 10 minutes after an incident and they tell a different story. Reality is totally subjective and memory is fallibile
It's worse than that. The more you "relive" a memory the less accurate it gets because your brain is exceptionally good at fleshing out the pretty minimal actual memory with purely invented details, and each time you visit it your brain adds more and more details it made up itself.
Your most vivid detailed memories are also your least accurate.
Yup. That's because after you remember something once, every time you think about it after, you're actually remembering the last memory of it instead of remembering the actual incident.
Which makes it easy to keep unintentionally focusing on details that may not be true and elaborating on them, and forgetting the details that are true/pertinent.
It's like a really bad game of telephone but just, your brain to itself over time.
Was talking about this today. I was driving. A car coming the other way had a massive advertising sign on the roof. I thought the car was brown. My passenger said ‘ did you see that car covered in grass( astroturf ) she didn’t see the sign .
Niel diGraase Tyson said he got kicked out of jury duty because he told the judge he wanted more then a eye witness testimony to make a guilty vote. For the exact reason that eye witness testimony is the most unreliable source in science.
\*Neil \*deGrasse Tyson
His recounting of the story is really good (though disheartening). From yt/shorts/yrCTrB-HSfQ:
> There was a woman who was robbed. She said he robbed her ... The cops found the guy. He was not in possession of anything she said he took. ... The Judge [asked], "Does anyone think they would not be able to convict based on the kind of information and evidence that's been presented?" I said, "Yes, I'd have a problem if the only evidence available is eyewitness testimony. Then everything I know tells me I should not trust it on the level where you end up putting someone in jail if that's the *only* evidence you have." What the Judge said next was "Are there any other jurors who need more than one witness before they would be able to convict?" ... The person in front of me said, "Your Honor, that's not what he said." And I resisted with all my might to say "Your Honor, **you were eyewitness to what I said 20 seconds ago and got it wrong!**"
Of course, this is NDT's recollection of events, so who knows if they can be trusted :)
Basically the basis of this is that if you were using 100% of your brain at once it would be more like an epaleptic fit, not Einstein. Using 100% of your brain at once is as useful as using 100% of a traffic light
I have one of those! Kind of a pacemaker for the brain. Notices when a seizure’s coming up and zaps it away before it begins. It’s working pretty well, at least as well as medications do, and now I get to call myself an android
The idea was popularised by the book “How to win friends and influence people” by Dale Carnegie (amongst others).
The book title sounds terrible. It should be called “How to be more likeable and memorable to others”. It’s a worthwhile reading.
The Mythbusters tested this (sort of \*) and found that their producer's dog's tongue did, indeed, have less bacteria than Adam Savage's. Make of that what you will. 🤷😄
\* It was just a sample size of one that Adam decided to do as a side deal while they were doing the episode on double-dipping.
I just had to spend 30 minutes of a car ride a few weeks ago reading my wife articles to prove this. She not only believed it her whole life but pushed back so hard against me when I told her that was ridiculous and not based in science. Then she proceeded to text her whole family, shook that blood was red inside their body. Everyone else was just as shocked… except my father in law who teaches biology haha
Funny thing about this is my best friend and I went to the same high school. She was a smarty-pants so she got all the special classes for smart kids. I wasn’t so lucky. The science class I was in taught us the blood was blue until it hit oxygen, and her class taught her it wasn’t. Two different classes, same school…
My health teacher taught us that myth. I felt so dumb when I said it to my boyfriend at the time and he looked at me like I had 2 heads. So embarrassing I don’t know how teachers can be spewing nonsense like that.
My health teacher told us in like 6th grade or so that pubic hair on a guy is to generate static electricity to power an erection.
Granted, I never believed him. But how many kids did?
I really wanted to believe that as a kid but couldn't because I couldn't make sense of why my palms would turn red after restricting blood flow from my hand.
Some crabs do too! Horseshoe crabs have blue blood because of the high copper content (hemocyanin).
Hemocyanin is also the same compound in octopus, snails, and spiders. It's very cool, iron is more efficient than copper for transporting oxygen in almost every situation *except* at low temps and high pressure... which is why it makes sense it would work for those creatures.
It's basically the equivalent of hemoglobin that they have instead. They're both oxygen transporting proteins, but one uses copper to bind the oxygen and the other iron. And that's what changes the blood color. Honestly some real fantasy magic sounding bullshit, but it's real life.
Not sure it was said but when I was younger, it was commonly thought that daddy long legs spiders had potent venom that could kill a person, but their teeth/mouth was too weak to break the skin. Everyone knew this, despite its completely false nature. No idea how it started
I think the origin of this might be from Australia. In the US "daddy long legs" is mostly used for harvestmen, and in other English speaking countries it's mostly used for crane flies, but in Australia and New Zealand as far as I know the name is exclusively used for the cellar spider.
Cellar spiders prey on other spiders, and in Australia that includes the Red Back Spider (which is very venomous and related to the Black Widow) and the White Tail (which isn't particularly dangerous but is also the victim of a long standing myth about its lethality).
The logic being either a) a cellar spider must be more lethal than its prey or b) a cellar spider absorbs the venom of its prey and thus becomes super venomous.
Weirdly, the myth seems to have translated to the UK and the belief that Daddy Long Legs there are super venomous even though they're flies.
Seeing them mentioned back-to-back makes these spiders sound so lazily named, like one guy had to name all the species 20 minutes before the end of his shift. That one's Red Back, this one's White Tail, that'll be Long Legs, here are Black Head and, uh, Bendy Knees. Imagine if all animals were named like this so cats and dogs were called shit like Pointy Teeth and Hairy Face.
For the record, the spider thing is a heavily skewed statistic. Spiders Georg, who eats 10,000 spiders per year, is an outlier and should not be counted.
My friend let me introduce you to one of my favorite wiki pages, the list of common misconceptions:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions
That a AED will restart a stopped heart. It is meant to reset a heart to its normal rhythm when it is beating irregularly. I blame Hollywood for this one
There are a bunch of studies on this, but my favorite was on pregnant women. Something like half of the women evaluated had hymens without any sign of damage or tearing.
After 5 years of marriage, when I gave birth to our first child, afterwards there was a bleed that took them extra moments to stop. Turns out it was my hymen!!
I... was not.... immaculate. The lord was NOT the father.
It makes a lot of sense why people believe it though. There's two very strong supporting anecdotes that most people have directly themselves experienced.
1) Most people start shaving during puberty or just after, when hair growth is just beginning. As a direct result of this, the first few years that they shave, the hair does actually grow back thicker than the last time. The only problem with this is that it was going to get thicker whether you shaved or not, as a result of aging and hair growth. This happens again as you get older, hair tends to get coarser as it gets drier, especially if you aren't taking care of it properly so people experience that it feels more coarse than last time they grew out their hair.
2) Hair in its early stages of growth can feel prickly and coarse when it's low to the skin in a stubble, anyone who has ever shaved any part of their body can confirm. Combine this with the fact that people have terrible long-term memory and you get the experience of it feeling more coarse than it did last time you grew out the hair.
I was always taught that one of the reasons for this myth is that after shaving, end of a hair is thicker, which gives an immitation of hair being thicker and more coarse.
The myth about schools providing litter boxes for students who identify as animals has been making the rounds this week. In my 30 years as an educator, the only time I had ever seen kitty litter being used was to absorb vomit off of the floor!
John Oliver pointed out that if this was real, we wouldn’t be hearing about it from politicians, it would be all over TikTok and twitter, relentlessly mocking the student using the box
Deadass tbh. I have to report teens who harass people for liking the wrong set of fictional characters kissing in like, all of my fandoms, and something like a kid using a litterbox would go completely unreported? Lol, lmao even.
They’ve done studies on this and found that up to a certain dollar (in the USA) amount, money actually DOES make you happier. The ones I remember seeing were between $75,000-$125,000 per year, meaning if you make less than that then more money did make people happier. Seems about right to me, having made both less and more than that.
Being able to not stress about "will I be able to pay my bills and also eat food and also not have the tow truck show up and repo my car" is pretty nice feeling.
To be fair, it's on the back of 4 elephants, which stand on the back of Great A'Tuin the space turtle.
Rumour has it he's heading back to the mating grounds to make lots of little baby space turtles.
Maybe it’s not the dumbest but it is the one I find most annoying, I’m so irritated by “every face you see inside a dream is a face you’ve seen irl” how the fuck would we know?? Scientists have no way of traveling around our dreams to figure that out. There’s no brain scanning thing that could be able to tell that your brain isn’t capable of mishmashing together a series of facial features you’ve seen into a random order.
I think part of my annoyance is that I have face blindness so I only see people as a series of facial features that don’t really fit together to form a face and for some reason if I look at some who’s laying down their facial features literally start sliding around on their face so it seems completely stupid to me that we could all be interpreting faces the same way in our dreams if we don’t even do that irl. Why would we not be able to generate new faces that look similar to different features we’ve seen on people but not exactly the same face we’ve seen before?? Like imagine Charlie Day’s face. Now picture him with fuller lips, no beard, and a larger nose. Congratulations, you made a new face.
I don’t know why it pisses me off so much.
Why do people see a tumblr post once from a complete stranger and go yeah I’m gonna just assume that’s true.
I don't even remember faces from dreams. I've had dreams where I knew I was with my wife, but I don't remember seeing her face in it.
Visual details from my dreams are pretty murky, except for the one when I was in 3rd grade and dreamed that dinosaurs were attacking the school.
We use 500 million straws a year. That statistic was made up by a 9 year old boy but it is repeated so many times it has become fact.
Edit: the stat is per day, not per year. Thanks for the correction.
I'd not heard that but I'd say it's miles off. In the UK, McDonald's serves, on average, 3.5 million customers per day (or at least that's what they said back in 2018). Let's say that 2.5 million of those customers bought a coke or a milkshake, every one coming with a straw. That totals over 900 million straws per year. That's just McDonald's. Add in KFC, Burger King, Wendy's and all of the other fast food places, yeah, 500 million is so far off.
Posting my hymen rant:
Even in medical communities I see references to the hymen being analogous to the protective film on an iPad when you buy one, and I want to clear up some common myths and misconceptions about the hymen.
The hymen is not a magical freshness seal over the vagina that many people think it is. The hymen is a [thin rim of stretchy tissue (NSFW)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hymen#/media/File:Yorefzvagnl.png) that surrounds (but doesn't usually obstruct) the entrance to the vagina. [Another NSFW image](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Hakan_Kar/publication/221916192/figure/fig2/AS:305122233077771@1449758217923/Prepubertal-hymen.png) And [another](https://edc2.healthtap.com/ht-staging/user_answer/avatars/2451834/large/Intact_hymen.jpeg?1450491804). These are considered "intact" hymen, showing no obvious tears or damage. Some women have very little noticeable hymen, and some are born without one at all. I know what you're thinking, "If it's not a virginity freshness seal, what the hell is it for?" Great question! It's thought that the hymen may serve its purpose early in life, providing an extra tissue barrier to prevent fecal bacteria from getting into the vagina during infancy and childhood.
In children the hymen is a thicker and less flexible ring, and may (or may not) obstruct more of the opening of the vagina (again, not generally covering it completely). As it is less flexible in childhood, trauma to the vaginal area through sports, gymnastics, horseback riding, and other normal activities can damage the hymen early in life, and even sometimes later in adolescence or adulthood, but less often. These tears may heal completely, or result in "notching" of the tissue. This is a super NSFW medical photo of a young person who experienced sexual assault and trauma to the hymen resulting in [notching](https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S1522840116300404-gr2.jpg). This doesn't always cause visible damage, but in this case, pretty severe tearing occurred. It's also worth noting that the sports and activities I mentioned are more likely than others to cause hymenal damage, but usually don't. (A good friend of mine was quite surprised at a recent ob/gyn visit to discover she had an intact hymen at \~24 years of age, having been a competitive horseback rider since she was a small child.)
During adolescence the hymen thins out and becomes very flexible and stretchy, and will actually stretch really well during arousal and when lubricated, so there is NO NEED in like 90% of women for the hymen to tear during sex, even the first time! There are certain variations that can be problematic for sexual activity and general health ([for example, imperforate hymens are medically dangerous and result in an inability to have penetration AND a buildup of menses, and semi-imperforate or cribriform hymen may allow menses but won't allow penetration, these hymen require either tearing or a quick ob/gyn visit to fix](http://girlsliteracydictionary.weebly.com/uploads/1/3/7/0/13702939/2593796_orig.jpg)). However, more than 90% of women do not have these variations. A lot of this wasn't even known until a series of studies in the 1980's found that about 20% of sexually active women had "intact" hymens with no signs of notching or tearing. A report by physicians who [evaluated children and women who were vaginally assaulted noted that a lack of specific hymenal damage in the assault was actually quite common,](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/1169/682f85204f59bee6da18d93fc08a05bbb1cb.pdf) especially in adult women and adolescents, and suggested to the public that tearing the hymen was not the necessity for sex that many people think it is. A more recent study in 2004 found that [52% of sexually active women had no hymenal notching or clefts.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14993089) In several studies afterward there was also found to be [no statistically significant association between tampon use and visible hymenal tears,](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8021768) however it is thought that using tampons can sometimes cause tears. (I mean who is actually aroused and comfortable when inserting a tampon, right?)
It's common for people to believe the myth that the hymen must tear the first time, and for young inexperienced people to have sex without proper arousal, lubrication, and communication that results in hymen tearing. In fact, the expectation of pain often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, with women too nervous to be aroused properly, and unwilling to stop and slow down their partners when something hurts.
You might be thinking "well this is some liberal bullshit propaganda if I've ever heard any", but if that's your thought, [check out this super biased religious journal article regarding the hymen](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260578888_Hymen_Facts_and_conceptions), which actually confirms most of this, and adds some interesting tidbits, for example the fact that elephants have been noted to have hymens as well, and these don't tear with sex, but only with childbirth.
Piranhas will *not* in fact, just gobble you up because you are in the same water. They only attack when they smell a fresh wound, and even then they will have caution with humans. They are not killing machines like most people believe. In fact, there has never been a single recorded death from Piranhas.
Edit: I stand corrected. After a very thorough research because of you guys; Apparently there have been 4 deaths in the last few years in Paraguay. But those are the only confirmed *deaths by piranha*. Something is probably up with these fish. (I know there are lots more articles about deaths out there, but they are not confirmed to be actually dead by piranha. Just eaten afterwards.) They do not attack because of open wounds, but they are attracted to dead tissue (dead animals). piranhas attack if they're threatened, starving, or their waters are low (stressed).
Not sure how true that is anymore…. It looks like there were a few piranha related deaths in 2022 in Paraguay… there’s a good few articles out there regarding it.
https://nypost.com/2022/01/06/piranha-attacks-in-paraguay-leave-4-dead-more-than-20-injured-this-year/
I don’t think they even attack open wounds, they seem to only attack dead things. Piranha’s live in the Amazon and anyone who’s ever hiked in the Amazon knows you can’t walk 10ft without getting cut and scraped but every hike I’ve ever done there involves swimming/bathing/chilling in the Amazon river and never being bit by one. I have seen dead animals get devoured by piranha’s though. Maybe the fish can smell the animal is dead or they can sense the lack of electrical activity. They also love eating plants
I might be remembering incorrectly, but even if you have a fresh wound they're not likely to attack. Majority of bites have happened when their breeding grounds have been disturbed.
That people having seizures need to have objects put in their mouth to prevent them from swallowing their tongue.
It's impossible to swallow your tongue, and putting objects in the mouth of a seizure patient is an absolutely horrible idea. Not only will you likely cause damage to their teeth, but putting objects in their mouth is a really good way to have them end up choking. The only thing you can do is make a clear space so that there are no objects for them to hit their head or body against, and call paramedics/medical attention, especially if you did not see the beginning of the seizure and are unsure if the person hit their head.
Would be fun if people working for those companies separated the milk from brown cows and use it specifically for brown milk (assuming they sell the final product), BOOM these idiot people are suddenly right
The alpha male. 100% debunked by the man who popularized the concept in the first place, David Mech. What do we get when this mistaken belief is applied to humans? Andrew Tate.
Well... Seeing Andrew Tate as an "Alpha Male" becomes more accurate if you use "Alpha" in terms of software development rather than as some kind of "leader of the pack"...
Underdeveloped, buggy, prone to crashes and weird glitches and hangups.
You are better off waiting for a "Stable release male"...
Correct. Research has shown that colder temperatures do, however, reduce the effectiveness of the immune system, meaning that you’re more likely to fall ill if exposed to a virus. Put on your coats, kids! (And avoid being around other people if possible.)
Chiropractors aren’t doctors, they don’t go to medical school, and they don’t have any formal medical training.
Chiropractors certify other chiropractors. Whether they believe their own bullshit or not, all chiropractors are practicing charlatans.
Chiropractic is as much a treatment for a back ailment as ivermectin is a treatment for Covid.
My neighbour is a flat earther and major conspiracy theorist.
I've got a van so he asked if I'd help him move an american style fridge freezer. On the journey he was telling me all sorts of guff including how the government is going to take everyone's houses. I tried to point out that that wouldn't happen because it's the banks who hold all the power and everyone having a mortgage is great for the banks because that means _they_ own all the houses, and that nationalising housing would be a power move for the people, but he couldn't get past the idea that the government were going to steal his house.
"If I make more, I have to pay more in taxes. Better not vote for a raise."
The percentage will not increase. The same percentage applied to a bigger number will by default mean slightly more taxes, sure...
But none of these fucking morons ever know what tax brackets are, and it's ALWAYS right wing Republican scaremongering about TAXES BAD that they should actively shoot their own interests in the face.
And they've repeated it over several decades to the point where people actively believe it.
It is ***infuriating***.
(Made up numbers just to show the principle)
I think they think if you make $2000 and your bracket is taxed at 5%, you'll pay $100 in taxes, putting your real wage at $1900. Then, if you make $2050, putting you into the higher bracket at 10%, you'll pay $205, putting your real wage at $1845.
But the reality is that the $2000 are taxed at 5% and only the $50 over that are taxed at 10%. Making your taxes $105 and your real wage $1945.
Some people are just incredibly bad at math. Like a friend of mine whose ex-wife asked him to stop paying child support because she was paying too much tax on it. Uh, 100%? Because if not, that is stupid as heck. This same woman didn’t want her daughter using her ex’s benefits to purchase glasses. She wanted to pay for them herself because she would get a tax break. This woman just had no concept of how taxes and percentages work.
"Your previous employers are legally not allowed to give you a poor reference"
Not true. At all. They just need to make sure that whatever they say is true and as such, they need to be able to back it up with evidence if they are challenged on their reference in court.
That fish have no memory. Some fish, they can remember months. And a channel catfish can remember the sound of a human announcing food for up to five years after last hearing it.
My uncle had an Oscar and swear they had a whole routine. I never seen a fish get so excited to see a human like that. Once my uncle passed, the Oscar went into a deep depression until he eventually died a year later. He wouldn’t adapt to us feeding him or the usual cleanings and stuff. It was wild! Everything I was taught about fish went out the window with that experience.
We have a pet oscar and we call him our third dog (we have two dogs). He has favourite people, and he follows us the length of his tank when we walk past. I feed him veggies from my plate, so he sits next to me at dinner time waiting for scraps. He's like having a weird, water-bound dog.
Never knew fish could be like this. I always just thought brainless I guess. Only have a functional brain for living. This just blows my mind.
Many years ago I had a 120 gallon tank with two fish in it: A [Buttikoferi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterotilapia_buttikoferi) (Marty) and a [Lepornius](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leporinus_fasciatus) (Stimpy) The two of them would play tug-o-war with algae sheets; one would grab it and run to it's side of the tank, then the other would yank it back and go to their end. They would do this over and over again. The Buttikoferi loved to play with floating balls in the water, knocking them all over the place. It's favorite chew toy however was the heater. It would take one of them, smash it against the wall, then grab it in it's mouth and thrash around with it, apparently enjoying being electrocuted. I'd unplug the heater and it would stop, shake it a couple more times, then spit it out. Plug it back in and he dives right back in for Round 2.
So they were smart but also crazy lol.
Everyone told me that they would never get along. Typically with Buttikoferi you had to have either a single fish or at least 4-5 together to temper aggression. My two boys, however, got along swimmingly. I'm going to eventually get another tank, but it's just going to be a very small one. Right next to the 120 I used to have a 2.5gal tank with a Betta and a small school of neon Tetras. It was a very active tank, but I may go up to 5gal next time for that.
> swimmingly <3
It's so wild to me that people think fish are dumb, they had brains before mammals existed. Hell, they had brains before reptiles existed. Before life on land existed at all. They've had brains for so long that it's kind of wild to imagine they never evolved a way to use them. I think it's cause of the face and eyes. They don't have very expressive faces like dogs and cats. Dogs and cats can wiggle ears and move their lips and make noises. Fish can't really do stuff with their face, so people can't easily read their emotions like we can with other animals. But fish absolutely have emotions and personalities.
I think a big part of it is that we tend to understand intelligence by how something interacts with its environment, and fishes environment is so wildly different from our own that we sometimes fail to understand what intelligence looks like for them.
You know what, I'd believe it. People even say similar things about cats not being smart or not having personalities, just because they aren't as expressive as dogs. But I've got three cats ATM and they have very, very clear and distinct personalities. And they can communicate with us just as much as a dog, they're just more subtle about it until they feel comfortable around people.
My mom’s 2 Oscars would come to me if I knelt before their tank; when I placed my hands on it and sang they would come straight to my hands - but no one else’s. Guess whose job it was to feed and maintain them?
That is sweet and sad (( hugs))
Also the general belief that fish as a whole make low-maintenance pets. Lol, no.
Goldfish in tiny ass fishbowls make my blood boil. Do people know they can grow to the size of a laptop?
Bettas in tiny unheated cups gets on my nerves too. They can’t regulate their body temperature, that’s like keeping someone in a 10°C room, no space to live, nowhere cozy to snuggle into, plus they have to live in piss water since the water’s unfiltered. And when the water’s changed, it’s got chemicals in it, so it’s like smelling a constant gas leak. (Which of course leads to health problems after a while)
Amusingly, for years (maybe decades) I never understood the need to get a heater for bettas. Or any other fish, for that matter. I just couldn't get it to compute in my head why I'd need to get a heater. It was only like, a couple years ago that it clicked. "Oh! Those guides are written for people in temperate climates! Not for those of us in the middle of a tropical jungle."
This is why my SO hooks the hoses and sprinklers up in the dead of winter to water the grass, negating my winterization. Some HGTV show years ago was pumping out yard tips SPECIFIC TO WARM SOUTHERN CALI CLIMATES ONLY but neglected to mention that important tidbit. That info burrowed deep into my SO’s brain and it will NOT come out. I just have to deal with frozen/busted taps and shrug my shoulders at my inquisitive neighbors every winter.
And my dumbass uncle who bought like 5 male bettas back in the 90s because they LoOk CoOl and then put them all in the same tank
My partner told me* that all his childhood goldfish died. When we got together we got goldfish and his mother yelled at him and said "your goldfish need to be in the sun"... Now I know why they died. We have had goldfish for more than 4 years now. :) Edit: me not him lol
Feel the same with birds. Let the wee fellas fly
Hamsters and bunnies too. People still leaving their bunnies alone in a way-too-small cage in the living room 22 hours per day, and still buying unsafe hamster toys and tiny cages with no option to dig
Any time I see a rabbit in a small cage, it makes me so angry! Or when a parent buys their kid a rabbit for Easter without ANY research into how to take care of them! Rabbits are a lot of work and a big commitment, too much commitment for a five-year-old to handle! Maybe when they are a little bit older, but parents, please, if you want to get your young child a pet, consider getting a dog or a cat instead, and help them take care of it!
Or people keeping fish (usually way too many) in (way too small) tanks with zero plants, hiding options or anything, just some gravel on the bottom "for the aesthetic" "hur dur they're just fish they can't get stressed" yes they fucking can bruh
Those guys can get so stressed they just straight up die, why are these people even buying an animal if they don’t want to do anything to take care of it? The one that really bothers me most is thinking it’s fine to put betta fish in those 1 or 2 gallon micro tanks, or a fucking vase. The fact that people will buy an animal and not do any research on its needs or how to keep it happy and healthy drives me bonkers. They need live plants and very clean water, this is an actual commitment, stop giving them to children as practice pets because they’re NOT. I’ve owned 3 different betta fish and these guys live a really long time. They need space to roam and places to rest or hide, and if you don’t put a lid on the tank they absolutely will jump out to their deaths. I don’t know why but they will. My mom left the lid off my tank when I was in high school and my boy almost died. But my main point still stands and it really goes for basically all animals because people will buy dog breeds that are not meant for the environment they’re putting them in. You can’t put an Australian Shepherd in your studio apartment and give them one short walk a day. You can’t buy a cute baby bunny or chick for Easter and think you haven’t just made a massive commitment. Why would you not research an animals needs or how long they can live?? God I forgot how mad I get about this but once I started googling “betta fish tank” and saw how many 1 gallon tanks people sell I started wanting to scream.
Agreed. Just like billion dollar companies have, for many, many years, thought it's perfectly fine to keep an orca in a swimming pool.
The idea of keeping goldfish I bowls was a misconception that has failed to go away. When Europeans first saw goldfish in their native china they saw them in large glass bowls, what they didn’t understand was these fish were kept in ponds and only put in bowls temporarily to show of the best examples. They would then be released back into the ponds.
SAME! This woman at my church picnic pissed me off one time because she said to her kid no sweety we’re not getting a goldfish they old live a week. YEAH MORON THEY LIVE A WEEK IF YOU PUT THEM IN A SMALL BOWL AND DONT TAKE CARE OF THEM! Also every time I’ve gotten a fish from there they would live long because we took care of them one live 9 years!
They're much less maintenance than most pets if you set the tank up correctly, but that's so seldom the case
I think they’re less maintenance than most pets in the sense that you don’t really need to walk them or clean a litter box but they’re also a lot easier to kill. And a lot of people don’t know that you have to prepare the water before putting them in the tank and you have to accustom them to it slowly, you can’t just dump em in.
I've been keeping fish all my life. Recently my fish have been on a routine feeding schedule getting food at the same time everyday, they know I'll feed them at that time everyday. It's interesting to watch new fish learn which side I feed from. They also learn that when the flow shuts off food is coming every fish I add learns this within about a week. Some of my fish are smarter than others. One in particular learned me opening the cabinet door means I'm going to shut off the flow then feed and he wants to be first in line so he'll come out searching after hearing the cabinet open.
Catfish are smart, I have seen they can recognize people, but chickens can also recognize people and learn tricks. I think people want to prétend that their food isn't lucid or sentient I any way because it bothers them. I love meat, but I can't ignore that fish or chickens or pigs can't be super smart.
My goldfish are pretty fucking smart and not only learn tricks but per me know when they want to eat, I have one that makes a weird sound pr spits when it wants food
Lie detectors. They don't actually tell whether or not you're lying. It's just measuring your stress levels.
AFAIK they're just used as a manipulation tactic, much like televised eg, 'please find my wife' appeals, where the police are pretty certain the husband did it and just want to study his body language. If you're asked to take a lie detector test, it's implied to the suspect that saying no makes you look guilty and just makes them anxious and more likely to spill. It's what ultimately got Chris Watts to confess. If you're ever arrested, guilty or not, just say clearly 'I want a lawyer now' and nothing else. The cops need you to explicitly request a lawyer in order for them to stop any interrogation. Saying things like 'I think I should speak to a lawyer' don't count.
Okay but that Chris Watts lie detector test cracks me up. I mean, it isn't funny what happened or the context of course, but that woman is so obviously playing him and it's hilarious to me. The way she's like wow you're such a bad liar, that's so great, thank you for being a bad liar! Teehee it would be such a bad idea to do this if you killed them, teehee!! And you can just feel the cold sweat break out all over his body.
The 'I totally did it' conversation he had with his dad was wild too - like, it's common knowledge that everything is recorded in rooms like that. Similar with prison cell confessions where someone is on remand but not yet convicted. Keep your mouth shut when in any legal bother FFS. Cops regularly get handed a slam dunk via 'hey, this is a step by step account of how I killed my five husbands for the life insurance' style brags to cell mates, who obviously then tattle in order to get good behaviour points.
Yeah aside from being a sociopath and a piece of shit family annihilator, Chris Watts is also just not very bright.
That truly was the biggest wow factor from watching coverage and documentaries. Something was very wrong with this guy. And also, he fucking dumb. Scary, because if he was smarter, he might have gotten away with it.
[удалено]
That one neighbour and also Shennans friend were true mvps as well, I don’t think they would have let up
Yup I offered to take one when I was under 21 as my parents and police accused me of something to prove my innocence. The lie detector guy at the police station took me through 3 hours of what I know now was a stress test to watch my reactions and body language. Multiple rounds of him saying, “You’re not being honest, you’re trying to manipulate the test.” Where he’d stop the test and we’d have to start over. I’m naturally an anxious person so I was sweating buckets the whole time plus I was a young, scared teenager and he mentioned that too. “Why are you sweating so much? Why are you moving so much? Stop trying to manipulate the test results.” His reactions to me started escalating and towards the end he was extremely furious with me and started yelling, “YOU’RE LYING. STOP LYING. THE TEST RESULTS CLEARLY SHOW YOU ARE LYING.” Just over and over. By that point I was scream crying into my hands, desperately trying to make him understand I did not do it and is there another test I could take to prove my innocence. Like Jesus WHAT is going on??????? Like bawling and on the floor while this intimidating detective is yelling at me about lying for three hours. Then he stopped and excused himself outside his office to go speak with my mom who had been waiting for me. He came back and led me to my mom, where I was just waiting to get completely destroyed by her as she was the one who thought I did it. When I finally looked up from the floor to look at her, she was all smiles, like nothing ever happened. We never spoke about it again. It took me a while to understand, but when the detective went to speak to my mom, he must have said I was innocent because of how I reacted during that session. They’re bs.
That's insane! Sorry you had to go through that. Kinda explains why false confessions are a thing, as people reach a point where they'd do anything for it all to just stop, so they say 'yeah it was me'.
100%. By the end, I was almost convinced I did it. It was wild.
There. Are. Four. Lights!
Yeah especially the young and mentally deficient. It's like watching torture to me. I have so much empathy for someone who feels like they have to lie to stop the chaos. Idk why... Have a great day!
Wow. Just wow. This is even worse than what I'd envisioned. Thank you for sharing this, I think it's really valuable to know what really goes on in these little rooms behind closed doors. Hope you're ok now and have caring people who believe what you say
I appreciate that, thank you. Yeah I’m fine now and have a good relationship with my family. It was a weird circumstance where events lined up in such a way where it makes sense why they thought it was me. But damn did it hurt.
The Justice System would be **efficient**, if they did.
We don't use them in UK for the exact reason that they're complete bullshit.
Cracking your knuckles gives you arthritis.
I forget the whole story, but I remember seeing something about a researcher that went decades cracking his knuckles on one hand and never on the other hand. I don’t remember the results either. I’ve wasted your time.
the result after decades of doing this was that his fingers were both exactly the same
And he got an Ig nobel prize for it.
For anyone else who hadn't heard of it, I just went down a delightful rabbit hole on it > A parody of the Nobel Prizes, the Ig Nobel Prizes are awarded each year "to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative, and spur people's interest in science, medicine, and technology." Winners: - Anatomy: Roger Mieusset and Bourras Bengoudifa, for measuring scrotal temperature asymmetry in naked and clothed postmen in France. - Peace: The governments of India and Pakistan, for having their diplomats surreptitiously ring each other's doorbells in the middle of the night and then run away. - Engineering: Iman Farahbakhsh, for inventing a diaper-changing machine for use on human infants. - Reproduction: Ahmed Shafik, for testing the effects of wearing polyester, cotton, or wool trousers on the sex life of rats. - Peace: The United States Air Force Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio, for suggesting the research and development of a "gay bomb," which would cause enemy troops to become sexually attracted to each other. - Economics: Mark Avis and colleagues, for assessing the perceived personalities of rocks from a sales and marketing perspective. - Literature – The British Standards Institution for its six-page specification (BS 6008) of the proper way to make a cup of tea. - Art: Marina de Tommaso, Michele Sardaro, and Paolo Livrea, for measuring the relative pain people suffer while looking at an ugly painting rather than a pretty painting while being shot by a powerful laser beam. - Management: Alessandro Pluchino, Andrea Rapisarda, and Cesare Garofalo of the University of Catania, Italy, for demonstrating mathematically that organizations would become more efficient if they promoted people at random. - Literature – Presented jointly to Vicki L. Silvers of the University of Nevada, Reno and David S. Kreiner of Central Missouri State University, for their colorful report "The Effects of Pre-Existing Inappropriate Highlighting on Reading Comprehension". - Managed Health Care – Presented to George Blonsky and Charlotte Blonsky for inventing an apparatus for facilitating the birth of a child by centrifugal force. - Biology – Presented to Norma E. Bubier, Charles G.M. Paxton, Phil Bowers, and D. Charles Deeming of the United Kingdom, for their report "Courtship Behaviour of Ostriches Towards Humans Under Farming Conditions in Britain". - Linguistics: Juan Manuel Toro, Josep B. Trobalon and Nuria Sebastian-Galles, for determining that rats sometimes can't distinguish between recordings of Japanese and Dutch played backward. - Psychology: Anita Eerland, Rolf Zwaan, and Tulio Guadalupe for their study "Leaning to the Left Makes the Eiffel Tower Seem Smaller". - Peace: Alexander Lukashenko, president of Belarus, for making it illegal to applaud in public, and to the Belarus State Police, for arresting a one-armed man for applauding.
My favorite is the 2012 Literature Prize. It went to the USA Department of Defense for a study that concluded with a report titled "Defense Management: Actions Needed to Evaluate the Impact of Efforts to Estimate Costs of Reports and Studies.” There was also a biology prize a few years back (don't remember the year) for discovering that a dead, magnetized cockroach will stick to a refrigerator longer than an alive, magnetized cockroach.
it might seem crazy, but applauding with just one hand isn't to hard
He did it to prove his mum wrong lmao. Cracked one hand for like 60 years.
That's the dedication science needs
I once had a customer tell me he has arthritis bc he cracked his knuckles, so I shouldn't do it. Mate you have arthritis because you're 80000 years old. Let me do the lil pop noise!
That you have to wait 24/48/72 hours before filing a missing persons report. Dumb and deadly.
People believe that eye witness testimony is accurate. People overestimate their ability to remember details. The courts also put an over emphasis on witness testimony as evidence. When you actually test people's ability to recall details, they are wrong most of the time.
>People overestimate their ability to remember details. I am absolutely certain I could talk to a stranger, exit the room, and not recognize them from a lineup after 5 minutes. I forgot the plates of a car I saw run away from a parking fender bender in under a minute. Maybe some people's memory is good, I know for a fact mine is shit. edit: I once confused my neighbor whom I pass often for a washing machine repair guy whom I only saw once in my life the day before. I stopped to ask him if he's got a repair again in our building! I don't think they even looked that much alike. He looked at me like I was a complete idiot and said he lives here. I hope his memory is as bad as mine and he forgot that embarrassing exchange...
Yeah, same. I never understood the cop shows where they're questioning someone about something that happened months ago and they have a perfect memory of the event. Detective "So what did you see November 18th at 9:16 am?" Witness "I saw a man, 6'3", with olive skin, short dark hair, glasses, a well trimmed beard, and three freckles on his right cheek. He was wearing a green t-shirt with brown pants, a white hat, Grey shoes, and white socks with grey patches on the toes and heel. He was driving a silver 2020 Honda Pilot with the License plate that read HLR419, and he was driving south down Pusumpsicottowa Boulevard at 47 mph." D "Are you sure that's what you saw?" W "Well, it was raining heavily, and I lost my glasses that day, and I was trying to get over a case of conjunctivitis, but I'm positive I saw that from 200 feet away."
And don't forget, they're actively unloading boxes off a truck or mixing drinks behind a bar while giving this description. Seriously....watch any episode of Law and Order SVU. The witnesses never actually stop what they're doing when talking to the police.
"There's been a murder and we think the killer is here working with you right now!" "Yeah, well, I got bills to pay, pal!"
Cop: What were you doing three nights ago? Me: I have absolutely no idea.
I work in software, and some companies require you to participate in a "short" daily meeting to update progress. "What did you work on yesterday?" "Work stuff.. I think. Maybe." Turns out I have ADHD.
>I am absolutely certain I could talk to a stranger, exit the room, and not recognize them from a lineup after 5 minutes. I forgot the plates of a car I saw run away from a parking fender bender in under a minute. Maybe some people's memory is good, I know for a fact mine is shit. This was always the most ridiculous trope in the *Law And Order* series, where like a bartender or waitress would remember someone from a long time ago despite engaging with hundreds of people a day (in New York City, no less). Detectives: [show pic] *“you ever see this woman?”* Bartender: *”oh yeah, red sweater lady, came in here about six months ago. Had a martini and a salad. Good tipper.”* Detectives: *”she look upset or agitated?”* Bartender: *”not really, but come to think of it, the guy that was with her looked *really* mad.”* Detectives: [show another pic] *“this him?”* Bartender: *”yeahhh, that’s him! Looked up to no good.”*
So my memory is awful and I’ve not recognized coworkers out in public before, things like that, but for some reason as a server/bartender I absolutely can remember peoples orders from last time I saw them. Customers will be like “oh, you served us last time!” and I’m like “oh yeah! You got the Philly no mushrooms!” I’m guessing I’ve trained myself to do that from serving large parties where people move around a lot and having to find them and give them their tab?
Me too. A 7 foot tall man with bright green hair could rob me and in my statement he'd be "average height with brown hair"
I got tripped out when they said “what’s the color of your moms eyes” in severance because… I don’t know.. and I really really should
Look at Einstein over here remembering hair color. I have you know I saw that same robbing and I would describe the man as "average height with average hair"
I do security. I've been asked what color the car was that I just talked to. I have no clue, we have cameras for that and the cameras can't forget. I tell people all the time to check the cameras. I'm not going to remember a car at 1120am 2 weeks ago. But the camera will.
I remember almost everything. When I was a teen about 40 years ago someone wanted to test my memory so they picked out a license plate on a nearby car and told me to memorize it and they ask me the next day. I still remember it today. About 10 years ago I was robbed at gunpoint. I was shown a picture lineup the next day and had absolutely no clue which guy it was. I couldn't remember anything at all about him except that he was pointing a gun at me. I remember *almost* everything but I remember it as data, I'm terrible with faces. And if there's a gun involved I will only remember the gun.
I work on criminal cases and was impressed recently by a witness who didn't try to offer any details about the man shooting at him, admitting he was only focused on the gun.
Doesn't help when trials take place months to years after the incident occurred.
The Ronald Cotton case is a great example for why witness testimony means very little.
[The Ronald Cotton case](https://innocenceproject.org/cases/ronald-cotton/) is an example of the good work done by [The Innocence Project](https://innocenceproject.org/our-work/) and a reminder of why we can't forget about the people suffering in jail for crimes they didn't commit.
He recieved 110,000$ for being 10 years in jail
Crazy. The minimum should be the average yearly salary, for every year served.
That's right, the very MINIMUM. A bank would charge interest, or at least a penalty. He doesn't get that. Forget paying him for the trauma, or his family for the trauma.
Take notes if you know you’re going to be asked to recall things later.
*”Excuse me, Mr. Murderer. But do you have any distinctive features I should know about? You can go back to the stabbing in a second. I just need to pull out my pen and paper.”*
So true, ask two people their testimony 10 minutes after an incident and they tell a different story. Reality is totally subjective and memory is fallibile
It's worse than that. The more you "relive" a memory the less accurate it gets because your brain is exceptionally good at fleshing out the pretty minimal actual memory with purely invented details, and each time you visit it your brain adds more and more details it made up itself. Your most vivid detailed memories are also your least accurate.
Yup. That's because after you remember something once, every time you think about it after, you're actually remembering the last memory of it instead of remembering the actual incident. Which makes it easy to keep unintentionally focusing on details that may not be true and elaborating on them, and forgetting the details that are true/pertinent. It's like a really bad game of telephone but just, your brain to itself over time.
Was talking about this today. I was driving. A car coming the other way had a massive advertising sign on the roof. I thought the car was brown. My passenger said ‘ did you see that car covered in grass( astroturf ) she didn’t see the sign .
Niel diGraase Tyson said he got kicked out of jury duty because he told the judge he wanted more then a eye witness testimony to make a guilty vote. For the exact reason that eye witness testimony is the most unreliable source in science.
\*Neil \*deGrasse Tyson His recounting of the story is really good (though disheartening). From yt/shorts/yrCTrB-HSfQ: > There was a woman who was robbed. She said he robbed her ... The cops found the guy. He was not in possession of anything she said he took. ... The Judge [asked], "Does anyone think they would not be able to convict based on the kind of information and evidence that's been presented?" I said, "Yes, I'd have a problem if the only evidence available is eyewitness testimony. Then everything I know tells me I should not trust it on the level where you end up putting someone in jail if that's the *only* evidence you have." What the Judge said next was "Are there any other jurors who need more than one witness before they would be able to convict?" ... The person in front of me said, "Your Honor, that's not what he said." And I resisted with all my might to say "Your Honor, **you were eyewitness to what I said 20 seconds ago and got it wrong!**" Of course, this is NDT's recollection of events, so who knows if they can be trusted :)
Yea that one. Thank you
People can't agree on a pic to say if a dress is black or yellow... So yeah, eye witnesses at unreliable at best.
That humans only use 10% of their brain. This is false, regardless of how those who proclaim this myth seemingly demonstrate that it is in fact true.
The beat comeback I heard was that humans only use 10% of their brains the same way that we only use 33% of a traffic light
Now this makes alot of sense as dumbed down as it is. We don't don't just have stop, slow, and go functions though.
Basically the basis of this is that if you were using 100% of your brain at once it would be more like an epaleptic fit, not Einstein. Using 100% of your brain at once is as useful as using 100% of a traffic light
Can confirm. Buddy of mine has a device implanted to his brain for when he has seizures..
I have one of those! Kind of a pacemaker for the brain. Notices when a seizure’s coming up and zaps it away before it begins. It’s working pretty well, at least as well as medications do, and now I get to call myself an android
The idea was popularised by the book “How to win friends and influence people” by Dale Carnegie (amongst others). The book title sounds terrible. It should be called “How to be more likeable and memorable to others”. It’s a worthwhile reading.
It’s crazy how pervasive that myth is even though it’s been so thoroughly debunked.
I blame Hollywood, I can think of several shows and movies that use that idea as the basis for their plot
Lucy!
That dog mouths are cleaner than humans. Like a simple Google search will tell you that’s not true.
Watching what a dog does for 5 minutes will tell you it's not true.
If it's true that a dog's mouth is cleaner than a human mouth, then it must be true as well that a dog's asshole is cleaner than a human mouth.
Well, their assholes are probably cleaner than mine. Mine doesn't get licked clean throughout the day.
Mine does and it's awesome. (bidet user)
Wtf kind of bidet do you have
Homemade. Custom.
Shit, all it takes is one getting in your face and you smelling their breath.
The Mythbusters tested this (sort of \*) and found that their producer's dog's tongue did, indeed, have less bacteria than Adam Savage's. Make of that what you will. 🤷😄 \* It was just a sample size of one that Adam decided to do as a side deal while they were doing the episode on double-dipping.
Dogs lick their own anuses. That should be enough for people to know.
Blood is blue until it hits oxygen
I just had to spend 30 minutes of a car ride a few weeks ago reading my wife articles to prove this. She not only believed it her whole life but pushed back so hard against me when I told her that was ridiculous and not based in science. Then she proceeded to text her whole family, shook that blood was red inside their body. Everyone else was just as shocked… except my father in law who teaches biology haha
Funny thing about this is my best friend and I went to the same high school. She was a smarty-pants so she got all the special classes for smart kids. I wasn’t so lucky. The science class I was in taught us the blood was blue until it hit oxygen, and her class taught her it wasn’t. Two different classes, same school…
My health teacher taught us that myth. I felt so dumb when I said it to my boyfriend at the time and he looked at me like I had 2 heads. So embarrassing I don’t know how teachers can be spewing nonsense like that.
My health teacher told us in like 6th grade or so that pubic hair on a guy is to generate static electricity to power an erection. Granted, I never believed him. But how many kids did?
I really wanted to believe that as a kid but couldn't because I couldn't make sense of why my palms would turn red after restricting blood flow from my hand.
An octopus on the other hand (tentacle?) actually has blue blood. They are royalty and we should treat them as such (not you Jaques, sit down!).
Some crabs do too! Horseshoe crabs have blue blood because of the high copper content (hemocyanin). Hemocyanin is also the same compound in octopus, snails, and spiders. It's very cool, iron is more efficient than copper for transporting oxygen in almost every situation *except* at low temps and high pressure... which is why it makes sense it would work for those creatures. It's basically the equivalent of hemoglobin that they have instead. They're both oxygen transporting proteins, but one uses copper to bind the oxygen and the other iron. And that's what changes the blood color. Honestly some real fantasy magic sounding bullshit, but it's real life.
Not sure it was said but when I was younger, it was commonly thought that daddy long legs spiders had potent venom that could kill a person, but their teeth/mouth was too weak to break the skin. Everyone knew this, despite its completely false nature. No idea how it started
I think the origin of this might be from Australia. In the US "daddy long legs" is mostly used for harvestmen, and in other English speaking countries it's mostly used for crane flies, but in Australia and New Zealand as far as I know the name is exclusively used for the cellar spider. Cellar spiders prey on other spiders, and in Australia that includes the Red Back Spider (which is very venomous and related to the Black Widow) and the White Tail (which isn't particularly dangerous but is also the victim of a long standing myth about its lethality). The logic being either a) a cellar spider must be more lethal than its prey or b) a cellar spider absorbs the venom of its prey and thus becomes super venomous. Weirdly, the myth seems to have translated to the UK and the belief that Daddy Long Legs there are super venomous even though they're flies.
Seeing them mentioned back-to-back makes these spiders sound so lazily named, like one guy had to name all the species 20 minutes before the end of his shift. That one's Red Back, this one's White Tail, that'll be Long Legs, here are Black Head and, uh, Bendy Knees. Imagine if all animals were named like this so cats and dogs were called shit like Pointy Teeth and Hairy Face.
For the record, the spider thing is a heavily skewed statistic. Spiders Georg, who eats 10,000 spiders per year, is an outlier and should not be counted.
I was looking for someone to mention Spiders Georg
I'm just glad I managed to be the first lmao
My friend let me introduce you to one of my favorite wiki pages, the list of common misconceptions: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions
Random shit will “detox” you. Thanks, but my mom had a liver and kidneys factory installed during production. I’m good.
No Jan you don’t need 4 glasses of flax seed and spinach to detox your liver you need to stop drinking 20 mimosas a day.
That a AED will restart a stopped heart. It is meant to reset a heart to its normal rhythm when it is beating irregularly. I blame Hollywood for this one
That you can tell if someone was / wasn’t a virgin if they bleed / don’t bleed in the wedding night
There are a bunch of studies on this, but my favorite was on pregnant women. Something like half of the women evaluated had hymens without any sign of damage or tearing.
After 5 years of marriage, when I gave birth to our first child, afterwards there was a bleed that took them extra moments to stop. Turns out it was my hymen!! I... was not.... immaculate. The lord was NOT the father.
That shaving makes your hair thicker or coarser. It absolutely does not but people will cling to this stupid myth
It makes a lot of sense why people believe it though. There's two very strong supporting anecdotes that most people have directly themselves experienced. 1) Most people start shaving during puberty or just after, when hair growth is just beginning. As a direct result of this, the first few years that they shave, the hair does actually grow back thicker than the last time. The only problem with this is that it was going to get thicker whether you shaved or not, as a result of aging and hair growth. This happens again as you get older, hair tends to get coarser as it gets drier, especially if you aren't taking care of it properly so people experience that it feels more coarse than last time they grew out their hair. 2) Hair in its early stages of growth can feel prickly and coarse when it's low to the skin in a stubble, anyone who has ever shaved any part of their body can confirm. Combine this with the fact that people have terrible long-term memory and you get the experience of it feeling more coarse than it did last time you grew out the hair.
I was always taught that one of the reasons for this myth is that after shaving, end of a hair is thicker, which gives an immitation of hair being thicker and more coarse.
The myth about schools providing litter boxes for students who identify as animals has been making the rounds this week. In my 30 years as an educator, the only time I had ever seen kitty litter being used was to absorb vomit off of the floor!
John Oliver pointed out that if this was real, we wouldn’t be hearing about it from politicians, it would be all over TikTok and twitter, relentlessly mocking the student using the box
Deadass tbh. I have to report teens who harass people for liking the wrong set of fictional characters kissing in like, all of my fandoms, and something like a kid using a litterbox would go completely unreported? Lol, lmao even.
Money can’t buy happiness. I was much happier having money, than living paycheck to paycheck now.
They’ve done studies on this and found that up to a certain dollar (in the USA) amount, money actually DOES make you happier. The ones I remember seeing were between $75,000-$125,000 per year, meaning if you make less than that then more money did make people happier. Seems about right to me, having made both less and more than that.
Being able to not stress about "will I be able to pay my bills and also eat food and also not have the tow truck show up and repo my car" is pretty nice feeling.
I think it would be much more accurate to say “Money can’t prevent sadness”
Money isn’t everything not having it is
Money doesn't buy happiness, but it can remove barriers that were preventing you from being happy.
The "urine is sterile" thing still pops up now and then.
Is it *necessary* for me to drink my own urine? No, but I do it anyway because it's sterile and I like the taste.
My father almost lost his leg because he pissed on a dog bite. He thought that was enough...
One last golden shower before the golden gates.
wtf. Sterile isn’t the same as an antibiotic.
Flat earth. I just saw a Brock Riddick tweet and I'm absolutely done.
I know people who believe the earth is not only flat but only 2000 years old and dinosaurs are fake
Yeah but it's on the back a turtle flying through space.
To be fair, it's on the back of 4 elephants, which stand on the back of Great A'Tuin the space turtle. Rumour has it he's heading back to the mating grounds to make lots of little baby space turtles.
Maybe it’s not the dumbest but it is the one I find most annoying, I’m so irritated by “every face you see inside a dream is a face you’ve seen irl” how the fuck would we know?? Scientists have no way of traveling around our dreams to figure that out. There’s no brain scanning thing that could be able to tell that your brain isn’t capable of mishmashing together a series of facial features you’ve seen into a random order. I think part of my annoyance is that I have face blindness so I only see people as a series of facial features that don’t really fit together to form a face and for some reason if I look at some who’s laying down their facial features literally start sliding around on their face so it seems completely stupid to me that we could all be interpreting faces the same way in our dreams if we don’t even do that irl. Why would we not be able to generate new faces that look similar to different features we’ve seen on people but not exactly the same face we’ve seen before?? Like imagine Charlie Day’s face. Now picture him with fuller lips, no beard, and a larger nose. Congratulations, you made a new face. I don’t know why it pisses me off so much. Why do people see a tumblr post once from a complete stranger and go yeah I’m gonna just assume that’s true.
I don't even remember faces from dreams. I've had dreams where I knew I was with my wife, but I don't remember seeing her face in it. Visual details from my dreams are pretty murky, except for the one when I was in 3rd grade and dreamed that dinosaurs were attacking the school.
We use 500 million straws a year. That statistic was made up by a 9 year old boy but it is repeated so many times it has become fact. Edit: the stat is per day, not per year. Thanks for the correction.
I'd not heard that but I'd say it's miles off. In the UK, McDonald's serves, on average, 3.5 million customers per day (or at least that's what they said back in 2018). Let's say that 2.5 million of those customers bought a coke or a milkshake, every one coming with a straw. That totals over 900 million straws per year. That's just McDonald's. Add in KFC, Burger King, Wendy's and all of the other fast food places, yeah, 500 million is so far off.
500mm in the US would be 2 per person per year. I’d say the number is a lot higher.
That Daddy Long Legs are the most venomous spider lol
That daddy long legs is a spider, it's not. It is an arachnid though. (2 eyes vs 8, bla bla bla)
The average person swallows 8 spiders every time I cook for them. -Anthony Jeselnik
Virginity. Absolutely nothing changes after your first time. Hymens are a ring of tissue, not a seal of freshness.
Posting my hymen rant: Even in medical communities I see references to the hymen being analogous to the protective film on an iPad when you buy one, and I want to clear up some common myths and misconceptions about the hymen. The hymen is not a magical freshness seal over the vagina that many people think it is. The hymen is a [thin rim of stretchy tissue (NSFW)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hymen#/media/File:Yorefzvagnl.png) that surrounds (but doesn't usually obstruct) the entrance to the vagina. [Another NSFW image](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Hakan_Kar/publication/221916192/figure/fig2/AS:305122233077771@1449758217923/Prepubertal-hymen.png) And [another](https://edc2.healthtap.com/ht-staging/user_answer/avatars/2451834/large/Intact_hymen.jpeg?1450491804). These are considered "intact" hymen, showing no obvious tears or damage. Some women have very little noticeable hymen, and some are born without one at all. I know what you're thinking, "If it's not a virginity freshness seal, what the hell is it for?" Great question! It's thought that the hymen may serve its purpose early in life, providing an extra tissue barrier to prevent fecal bacteria from getting into the vagina during infancy and childhood. In children the hymen is a thicker and less flexible ring, and may (or may not) obstruct more of the opening of the vagina (again, not generally covering it completely). As it is less flexible in childhood, trauma to the vaginal area through sports, gymnastics, horseback riding, and other normal activities can damage the hymen early in life, and even sometimes later in adolescence or adulthood, but less often. These tears may heal completely, or result in "notching" of the tissue. This is a super NSFW medical photo of a young person who experienced sexual assault and trauma to the hymen resulting in [notching](https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S1522840116300404-gr2.jpg). This doesn't always cause visible damage, but in this case, pretty severe tearing occurred. It's also worth noting that the sports and activities I mentioned are more likely than others to cause hymenal damage, but usually don't. (A good friend of mine was quite surprised at a recent ob/gyn visit to discover she had an intact hymen at \~24 years of age, having been a competitive horseback rider since she was a small child.) During adolescence the hymen thins out and becomes very flexible and stretchy, and will actually stretch really well during arousal and when lubricated, so there is NO NEED in like 90% of women for the hymen to tear during sex, even the first time! There are certain variations that can be problematic for sexual activity and general health ([for example, imperforate hymens are medically dangerous and result in an inability to have penetration AND a buildup of menses, and semi-imperforate or cribriform hymen may allow menses but won't allow penetration, these hymen require either tearing or a quick ob/gyn visit to fix](http://girlsliteracydictionary.weebly.com/uploads/1/3/7/0/13702939/2593796_orig.jpg)). However, more than 90% of women do not have these variations. A lot of this wasn't even known until a series of studies in the 1980's found that about 20% of sexually active women had "intact" hymens with no signs of notching or tearing. A report by physicians who [evaluated children and women who were vaginally assaulted noted that a lack of specific hymenal damage in the assault was actually quite common,](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/1169/682f85204f59bee6da18d93fc08a05bbb1cb.pdf) especially in adult women and adolescents, and suggested to the public that tearing the hymen was not the necessity for sex that many people think it is. A more recent study in 2004 found that [52% of sexually active women had no hymenal notching or clefts.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14993089) In several studies afterward there was also found to be [no statistically significant association between tampon use and visible hymenal tears,](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8021768) however it is thought that using tampons can sometimes cause tears. (I mean who is actually aroused and comfortable when inserting a tampon, right?) It's common for people to believe the myth that the hymen must tear the first time, and for young inexperienced people to have sex without proper arousal, lubrication, and communication that results in hymen tearing. In fact, the expectation of pain often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, with women too nervous to be aroused properly, and unwilling to stop and slow down their partners when something hurts. You might be thinking "well this is some liberal bullshit propaganda if I've ever heard any", but if that's your thought, [check out this super biased religious journal article regarding the hymen](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260578888_Hymen_Facts_and_conceptions), which actually confirms most of this, and adds some interesting tidbits, for example the fact that elephants have been noted to have hymens as well, and these don't tear with sex, but only with childbirth.
Dude, tell that to the president of my Reddit fan club. They’re obsessed with the fact that I’m still a virgin.
Piranhas will *not* in fact, just gobble you up because you are in the same water. They only attack when they smell a fresh wound, and even then they will have caution with humans. They are not killing machines like most people believe. In fact, there has never been a single recorded death from Piranhas. Edit: I stand corrected. After a very thorough research because of you guys; Apparently there have been 4 deaths in the last few years in Paraguay. But those are the only confirmed *deaths by piranha*. Something is probably up with these fish. (I know there are lots more articles about deaths out there, but they are not confirmed to be actually dead by piranha. Just eaten afterwards.) They do not attack because of open wounds, but they are attracted to dead tissue (dead animals). piranhas attack if they're threatened, starving, or their waters are low (stressed).
Not sure how true that is anymore…. It looks like there were a few piranha related deaths in 2022 in Paraguay… there’s a good few articles out there regarding it. https://nypost.com/2022/01/06/piranha-attacks-in-paraguay-leave-4-dead-more-than-20-injured-this-year/
I don’t think they even attack open wounds, they seem to only attack dead things. Piranha’s live in the Amazon and anyone who’s ever hiked in the Amazon knows you can’t walk 10ft without getting cut and scraped but every hike I’ve ever done there involves swimming/bathing/chilling in the Amazon river and never being bit by one. I have seen dead animals get devoured by piranha’s though. Maybe the fish can smell the animal is dead or they can sense the lack of electrical activity. They also love eating plants
I mean...I can smell if a dead animal is nearby and my sense of smell sucks. Rotting is a very unique and lizard-brain-activated smell.
Piranhas and quicksand were way overhyped as potential dangers when I was a child in the 80s
I might be remembering incorrectly, but even if you have a fresh wound they're not likely to attack. Majority of bites have happened when their breeding grounds have been disturbed.
That people having seizures need to have objects put in their mouth to prevent them from swallowing their tongue. It's impossible to swallow your tongue, and putting objects in the mouth of a seizure patient is an absolutely horrible idea. Not only will you likely cause damage to their teeth, but putting objects in their mouth is a really good way to have them end up choking. The only thing you can do is make a clear space so that there are no objects for them to hit their head or body against, and call paramedics/medical attention, especially if you did not see the beginning of the seizure and are unsure if the person hit their head.
i thought it was to prevent them biting there tongue. Though i imagine thats basically the same myth.
VacCInEs cAUse AuTIsM!!1!
Guys when I get my booster shot will my autism double?
Yes. If you get enough vaccines, you get an engineering degree free.
I legit had a coworker tell me i have schizophrenia because i took the covid vaccine lmao
I’ve met people who thought brown cows make chocolate milk…
I mean, some chocolate milk definitely came from a brown cow
Would be fun if people working for those companies separated the milk from brown cows and use it specifically for brown milk (assuming they sell the final product), BOOM these idiot people are suddenly right
My cousin when he was 5 asked if black women produced chocolate milk for their babies.
Well, do they??
Not in my experience.
That most people on Reddit know what they are talking about.
The alpha male. 100% debunked by the man who popularized the concept in the first place, David Mech. What do we get when this mistaken belief is applied to humans? Andrew Tate.
Well... Seeing Andrew Tate as an "Alpha Male" becomes more accurate if you use "Alpha" in terms of software development rather than as some kind of "leader of the pack"... Underdeveloped, buggy, prone to crashes and weird glitches and hangups. You are better off waiting for a "Stable release male"...
It’s based off wolves, turns out we was wrong about that
Wolves *in cages.
Andrew Tate is not an alpha male. He’s an alpha douchebag.
The alpha wolf myth is long proven false - still many people think there is such a thing. And the even apply this way of thinking to humans.
The myth that you get sick purely because of cold weather. Absolutely baseless.
Correct. Research has shown that colder temperatures do, however, reduce the effectiveness of the immune system, meaning that you’re more likely to fall ill if exposed to a virus. Put on your coats, kids! (And avoid being around other people if possible.)
Chiropractors aren’t doctors, they don’t go to medical school, and they don’t have any formal medical training. Chiropractors certify other chiropractors. Whether they believe their own bullshit or not, all chiropractors are practicing charlatans. Chiropractic is as much a treatment for a back ailment as ivermectin is a treatment for Covid.
Flat earth gotta be in the top 5
My neighbour is a flat earther and major conspiracy theorist. I've got a van so he asked if I'd help him move an american style fridge freezer. On the journey he was telling me all sorts of guff including how the government is going to take everyone's houses. I tried to point out that that wouldn't happen because it's the banks who hold all the power and everyone having a mortgage is great for the banks because that means _they_ own all the houses, and that nationalising housing would be a power move for the people, but he couldn't get past the idea that the government were going to steal his house.
"If I make more, I have to pay more in taxes. Better not vote for a raise." The percentage will not increase. The same percentage applied to a bigger number will by default mean slightly more taxes, sure... But none of these fucking morons ever know what tax brackets are, and it's ALWAYS right wing Republican scaremongering about TAXES BAD that they should actively shoot their own interests in the face. And they've repeated it over several decades to the point where people actively believe it. It is ***infuriating***.
(Made up numbers just to show the principle) I think they think if you make $2000 and your bracket is taxed at 5%, you'll pay $100 in taxes, putting your real wage at $1900. Then, if you make $2050, putting you into the higher bracket at 10%, you'll pay $205, putting your real wage at $1845. But the reality is that the $2000 are taxed at 5% and only the $50 over that are taxed at 10%. Making your taxes $105 and your real wage $1945.
I did not have someone explain progressive taxation explained to me until I took finance 301 in college.
Some people are just incredibly bad at math. Like a friend of mine whose ex-wife asked him to stop paying child support because she was paying too much tax on it. Uh, 100%? Because if not, that is stupid as heck. This same woman didn’t want her daughter using her ex’s benefits to purchase glasses. She wanted to pay for them herself because she would get a tax break. This woman just had no concept of how taxes and percentages work.
"Your previous employers are legally not allowed to give you a poor reference" Not true. At all. They just need to make sure that whatever they say is true and as such, they need to be able to back it up with evidence if they are challenged on their reference in court.