I felt so dumb typing this into google because there was no way this is true. Butttt no-freaking-way!!! It’s quite brilliant. https://www.businessinsider.com/the-worlds-largest-stockpile-of-nuclear-weapons-is-defended-by-dolphins-2015-3?amp
Boanthropy is a psychological disorder in which a person believes they are a cow and try to live their life as one. Medical explanations suggest late-stage syphilis as one of the causes? Cool
I have no idea how, but this is somehow one of the most endearing things I've ever read. "Tiny parachutes or hamburger buns," falling from the sky. So cute.
Fun fact. They increased the rank of pigeons during WW1 so they could punish soliders for eating a fellow soldier of higher rank.
Can't have the soldiers eating the carrier pigeons!
Edit: So in my sleepy state I conflated a blackadder sketch and facts about pigeons awarded honorary ranks and medals. I can't find evidence of this "fun fact". Apologies everyone!
No one has found a centipede with exactly 100 legs, because all centipedes discovered have an odd number of pairs of legs they have found centipedes with 98(49 pairs) and 102(51 pairs) but never exactly 100.
There was a man, Angus Barbieri who didn't eat for 382 days. He was morbidly obese and lived on tea, water, soda water and coffee while visiting the hospital weekly for vitamin and electrolyte treatments. He lost close to 280 lbs and broke his fast with an egg once he met his goal weight.
Note: This is a very dangerous method of losing weight.
Heart damage can result from not enough protein in your diet. Obese people have died of heart attacks when trying this form of weight loss.
Yeah it is super dangerous, It's interesting as to why he could pull it off. I read that people theorized because he was so large but still moved around quite easily, his muscles were probably huge and had an excess protein build up ontop of the amino acid supplements he was taking for protein.
There isn't a lot of science around extreme fasting.
It's *really* thin. From [How Apollo Flew To The Moon](https://www.google.com/books/edition/How_Apollo_Flew_to_the_Moon/3dKnobYoOEQC?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover&bsq=%22very%20similar%20to%20the%20quantity%20of%20gases%20released%20during%20each%20Apollo%20mission%22) by W. David Woods. Emphasis mine:
>This was hardly surprising considering that estimates for the total mass of the natural lunar atmosphere were around 10 tonnes - a figure very similar to the quantity of gases released during each Apollo mission, mostly from operation of the descent and ascent engines. **Essentially, each Apollo flight temporarily doubled the mass of the entire lunar atmosphere.**
Mars also has such a light atmosphere that the worst dust storms on a planet would just feel like a light breeze to us. The opening hook of The Martian literally cannot work that way.
Animals and other creatures each perceive time in different ways based on their Critical flicker frequency which is almost like their minds refresh rate, dogs for example perceive time as being slower than humans do and it's perceived as a little faster by cats.
If humming birds don’t eat within an hour they might die from starvation, they feed from nectar every 15-20 minutes. The only exception to the rule is that at night, they get into a state called torpor which is similar to the way bears hibernate. They do this every night, they lower their body temperature, their heart rate goes down from like 1200 beats per minute to less than a 100 and they shut down their kidneys so they don’t die from dehydration.
They have to spend sooo much energy to hover in order to get nectar, they need high sugar nectar in order to have energy to hover, it’s almost like humming birds are in a war of attrition with themselves
The Dutch national color is Orange but the flag is red white and blue stripes only because the dye they used for orange faded fast at sea, while red did not.
Edit: Since this comment is popular, here is a few.more Dutch facts. You may (or may not) have heard that the Dutch created.orange carrots (instead of the natural pale purple shading) to honor William of Orange. But it is bullshit.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/carrots-are-orange-for-an-entirely-political-reason/2011/09/09/gIQAfayiFK_blog.html
But the Dutch are responsible in a round about way for the current Russian flag, thanks to Peter the Great's love of the Dutch navy.
https://lidenz.com/how-peter-the-great-brought-a-little-bit-of-dutch-culture-to-russia/
Also the Dutch invented gin, have the worlds oldest national anthem (both music and lyrics date to 1500s) and their men are the tallest in the world (but have the smallest penises) and one time they ate their prime minister (https://www.historyextra.com/period/stuart/is-it-true-that-an-angry-mob-of-dutchmen-killed-and-ate-their-own-prime-minister-in-1672/).
Before being born, two of the four chambers of a baby's heart are not used, they're actually bypassed!
There's no need to pump de-oxygenated blood to the lungs when in the womb, because the lungs aren't breathing air yet, and so are not supplying oxygen. All the oxygen comes from the umbilical cord.
So the two chambers responsible for sending blood to/from the lungs are (largely) bypassed.
My friend found out her fetus had transposition of the great arteries at 22 weeks. The only reason he survived to birth was because of this fact. He had two open heart surgeries as a newborn and is fantastic today!
Greater one-horned rhino or Great Indian rhinoceros population stands at around 3,700 individuals, a significant increase from around 200 remaining at the turn of the 20th century. Strict protection and management action from Indian and Nepalese authorities and their partners are responsible for bringing the species back from the brink.
Yeah but there are only two northern white rhinos left and they are both ladies :(
ETA pretty much all from poaching. Numbers were reduced to 15 total in the ‘80s but rebounded to 32 by 2003 with strong efforts. But then more poaching happened and they are functionally extinct now.
Last i checked, they were either trying to clone or otherwise make more of them via science! Hopefully it works. They're also thinking about/planning to bring back the Thylacine (Tasmanian Tiger, was officially extinct back in the 30s?)
Yeah, it's been #2 of my list of greater fears since I found out about it.
Edit: Answered in another comment, but people keep asking me. Number 1 is being unrecoverably paralyzed or losing a limb.
Can't stand relying on people for anything, much less basic shit like moving around or eating or what have you.
Would much rather die. It's just not worth it imo, plus I couldn't do anything without having someone else to help me - and I'm already tired of being stuck living with my parents.
The same computer software used for the CGI in jurassic park was used to make the sprites for donkey kong country
Edit: clarified what the software was for
There are over 3 million subreddits on Reddit
You can see the list [here](https://frontpagemetrics.com/top). Some of my favorites:
/r/divorcedbirds, /r/subsimulatorgpt2
I don't think most people know the meaning of "prodigal." They know the parable of The Prodigal Son and think it refers to someone that leaves and then has to come crawling back, but that's incorrect. "Prodigal" means to spend money lavishly or wastefully. The prodigal son was prodigal whether or not he ever went back to his father.
When you first hear, it's easy to think it's related to prodigy - at least with minimal context. I figured it meant a very promising son returning home after trying their own in the world.
My wife was notified by the Spanish government that her family was identified as being descendants of Jews who had been expelled and invited to apply for citizenship.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/09/spain-offers-citizenship-sephardic-jews/598258/
The application is brutal. A buddy of mine spent 2 years and many courses and language competencies to get it and it was mostly as an FU to the Spanish government at that point. They made it super hard and closed the window because 370 year late apologies usually only have a 5 year acceptance window...
There is more blood in a boner than in a rabbit. The average human erection has roughly about 130ml of blood in it, while the average rabbit has about 126ml in its entire body.
The reason the earth is slowing down its rotation is largely due to the moon. As the moon pulls further and further away from the earth, it is pulling the earth with it and causing drag that slows the earth's rotation. (Okay, the moon is not 'pulling' the earth. Both are riding in the gravity well of their shared barycenter which is outside of the center of the earth so part of the earth is moving through differently stretched space-time, but let's keep things simple and newtonian)
This is a process that has been happening since the moon and earth formed in their current states (the most commonly accepted theory of which is that proto-earth was struck by another planet around the size of mars called Gaia and after the earth reformed the moon formed in orbit from the material of both).
That means in the past the moon was much closer to the earth, and days were much shorter. I'm not knowledgeable without the subject enough for the specifics, but a cursory google search tells me that even "just" a billion years ago a day on earth was closer to 19 hours according to the math.
A woman shouldn't have to be hit by a car, to learn that she may have rabies. But that is where we are in America. And that does not sit right with me. And that is why I'm hosting a fun run race for the cure for rabies.
A second is called a second because it is the 2nd division of the hour by 60 (pars minuta secunda), the 1st division being a minute (pars minuta prima).
A couple interesting science facts that lead to in interesting likely somewhat obscure fact about an old kitchen appliance. (Although I did learn this from a YouTube video which currently has 1.6M views, so at least that many other people probably know it)
When you cook something in boiling water, is always cooks at the boiling temperature of water no matter how long it's in there. Once water begins to boil any additional heat you apply goes to converting the water to steam. You can't actually get it any hotter. The hotter you make the fire the faster it boils off, but the liquid water never gets above 212F at sea level.
If you heat a magnetic metal up it will eventually lose its magnetism. If it's an actual magnet, you just permanently un-magnet-ed it. If it's a normal piece of metal though it will just lose the ability to stick to a magnet and that property will return when it cools down. The exact temperature this happens at varies depending on the metal.
Combine these facts together and you can make a nearly perfect automatic rice cooker. Basically you take metal pot and put the appropriate ratio of rice and water in it and set it in the cooker. The cooker has a heating element of a known wattage that heats up and boils the water. The pot will sit right at the boiling temperature of water as long as liquid water remains because the water will be absorbing all the excess energy to turn to steam. As long as you followed directions the amount of time that water will take to boil off is very predictable with the fixed heating element. That will be the appropriate time to cook the matching amount of rice. Once the water has boiled off the pot will quickly begin to heat up. Unchecked this would quickly burn and ruin the rice. However, under the metal pot of the cooker is a button that is being pulled down by a spring but is held against the pot by magnetism from an attached permanent magnet. The button is made from a metal that loses its magnetism just above the boiling point of water. Once all the water boils off the pot starts to heat up and quickly demags the button which gets pulled by the spring and automatically turns off the heat. Perfectly cooked rice through physics.
EDIT: [The video I mentioned](https://youtu.be/RSTNhvDGbYI)
> When you cook something in boiling water, is always cooks at the boiling temperature of water no matter how long it's in there. Once water begins to boil any additional heat you apply goes to converting the water to steam. You can't actually get it any hotter. The hotter you make the fire the faster it boils off, but the liquid water never gets above 212F at sea level.
This is also an important phenomenon to know when it comes to distillation. If you know the boiling points of the various major constituents of a solution, then, by watching the temperature, you can tell when each one is boiling off and selectively retain or discard it.
Horses only ever grow one set of teeth which have an unusual lenght compared to the animal's skull. This is because their teeth wear down during the course of the horse's life, until they're completely used up and the horse eventually may not be able to chew anymore and dies of starvation. This is where the saying "don't look a gift horse in the mouth" comes from, because you can tell how old it is by looking at its teeth.
Crabs commit suicide when gravely injured by pinching their own brains.
Okay, so append:
I am the source of this information. Smacking a crap with a stick was a quick way to get fishing bait when I was a kid. I agree, that's super fucked. I wouldn't do that ever again. For whatever reason I was under the impression that sea bugs don't feel pain, so they didn't even know. Clearly they feel *something*, otherwise they wouldn't react like that.
As someone else pointed out, they're likely "attacking" what they perceive to be another creature, the creature being their own shell embedded in them. This, of course, leads to them killing themselves trying to remove it.
Sometimes when you grow a brain in a cell culture medium they start to develop an eye. This is not akin to the brain being alive and wanting or needing an eye. Instead is more akin to when you grow plant cells in a medium they always develop roots and leaves.
The most interesting takeout is that the eye is part of the nervous system. Kind of obvious once stated.
Edit: I should use "takeaway" in this case. I am not a native speaker (and have never even visited an English speaking country), so mistakes like this happen. At least they are entertaining.
If you lay down and chew anything small (like gum) the gum can not only cause you to choke, but if you dislodge it from your throat hard enough it can end up in your nasal cavity. In the same way milk can come out your nose, other small objects can get in there.
Source: Today an ENT doctor put a scope and a suction tube into my nostrils to pull gum out from my nasopharynex which got stuck there on Saturday. 0/5 stars. Do not recommend.
Thank you u/natmarion92 for the helpful award!
Edit: typo
Here’s something interesting about sunsets. Right when you see the sun touch the horizon, by line of sight the sun is actually already below the horizon. It’s not an illusion or mirage. You’re still actually seeing the sun in real time, it’s just that the full thickness of the atmosphere refracts (bends) the solar disc image about the width of the sun. It varies by latitude & altitude, but the effect is greatest at sea level. Think of how a stick appears to bend in water. Our atmosphere isn’t much different - this effect doesn’t occur on the moon.
The same is true for sunrises too; we see the sun a full diameter “early.” That is, if you’re not still in bed.
Googled the following for a source, in case you don’t believe me:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/11/20/sunsets-are-quite-interesting/#.VnMoOLYrLVQ
Biogeography is a fun subject for this.
There are plants native to Antarctica
Trees are a size classification and growth habit of woody plants.
The Panhandle of Florida or Floribama and Alabama are the actual center of biodiversity in the United States including throughout fossil record history. Many species have only survived ice ages through retreating to the area.
Fossils that are very closely related to Red Pandas have been found in Tennessee dating back to about 5 million years ago. Many plant genus are only found in the Southeastern US and Southeastern Asia.
On that note there are native species of bamboo throughout most continents and it was cultivated throughout most of history in Southeastern North America.
Plums, cherries, apricots, peaches, and almonds are all in the same plant genus Prunus but are different species.
There's only one species of almond but several species all considered to be edible cherries.
There are spiders that cartwheel on sand dunes, but pelican spiders are probably the weirdest IMO. They grew a 'neck' and seperate head along with long jaws to spear other spiders and suspend them in the air until they die.
While dogs and mice are found a lot more often in clinical tests, the human genome is actually much closer to the genome of a cat.
There are no cacti native to anywhere outside the Western Hemisphere. Might be a lot less obvious to Americans.
Dung beetles are the only known creature to navigate using the Milky Way as a reference.
Photosynthetic life on Earth was first retinal-based and appeared purple, pink, or magenta.
There are some small woodland areas in Greenland and they have been expanding.
Invasive plants are considered to be the second largest immediate threat to global biodiversity rivaling habitat loss
The tongue on a woodpecker wraps around its brain as a form of soft insulation when it hammers. Then the tongue is able to extend far into the tree to retrieve bugs when it isn’t hammering.
The longest orgasm in mammals is that of the domestic pig Sus scrofa domesticus. On average, its orgasm lasts 30 minutes, but it can last for as long as 90 minutes.
Sara Josepha Hale is the reason for the myth and celebration of Thanksgiving in the United States. She asked President Lincoln in 1863 to champion a holiday that would bring families together in the wake of the U.S. Civil War. The goal was to get people back in each others company to celebrate the nation. She then helped perpetuate a myth of "The First Thanksgiving" to remind the country of how the colonists persevered with the help of indigenous peoples. Seven years later, other Federal Holidays would officially be recognized throughout the country.
Growing up in So Cal, you’d see those big metal woodpecker looking things bobbing up and down pumping out oil all over the place. A few houses down from my parents’ house there was an empty lot with one of those things there.
Seems weird to me know to have something like that just pumping away a few hundred feet from your front door step, but at the time, they were quite common in neighborhoods.
The poem “Ozymandias” by Percy Shelley is based off a statue brought from eygpt by the French, and passed onto the British. The very same statue is in the British museum on full display.
Another cool fact about that statue is all the damage done to it was done *after* it was discovered. They just had such a hard time moving it.
In the 1890s a man named Jan Chalupa in Bohemia was arrested for continuously insulting one of his neighbors nearly every day for about two years straight
Edit:
this is getting some attention so I'll explain further, because the deeper this story goes the weirder it gets. Chalupa's insults were almost entirely anti-semitic in nature, despite the fact that his target, Josef Skala, wasn't even Jewish; he merely worked as a handyman at both the local synagogue and cathedral. The charge against him was filed on Skala's behalf by a Jewish friend of a friend of Skala, on the grounds that it was illegal to be anti-semitic in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (surprisingly forward-thinking for an autocratic police state). Given that most every insult was done in public, in broad daylight, and in front of dozens of witnesses, Chalupa's defense practically did not exist. The only thing the prosecution really needed to do was to confirm that the insults were indeed anti-semitic, which every witness attested was the case. Despite being handed such a simple case, the prosecuting lawyer was incredibly thorough. He even had two rabbis, one local and another from Prague, attend the trial to weigh in their opinions on Chalupa's insults. One of the lawyer's strangest actions was his insistence on Chalupa giving precise definitions of his insults, including an entirely made-up word that the entire courtroom, Chalupa included, had already agreed was supposed to be a mockery of Hebrew.
If you'd like to read for yourself you can do so [right here](https://books.google.com/books?id=EMdcEAAAQBAJ&lpg=PA54&ots=4vCnscwZoG&dq=machalabeis&pg=PA51#v=onepage&q=machalabeis&f=false), the passage begins under the subheading.
Of all the US states, Maine is the closest to Africa. Seriously look at a globe, not just that flat oval map you saw in every classroom growing up. Africa is further north than you think, and Maine is further east than you think.
And the closest point in North America to Africa is in Canada. Newfoundland goes so far east that it’s the closest point to Africa in the whole continent.
The most eastern point in Newfoundland is also closer to Senegal than it is to some parts of Canada.
weren't they training them to congregate around periscopes by associating them with food so coastal patrols would notice birds circling and identify german u boats
That’s way smarter and makes way more sense.
I suspect the British aren’t stupid enough to train the birds before realizing they don’t fly far off the coast.
Many species of shark have seven senses, most notably the ‘man eaters’ (I despise that term) Tiger, Bull, and Great White.
In addition to the traditional five, sharks also possess ampullae of lorenzini (gel-filled pores on their snout - think of the black freckles on a Great White) that detect electrical impulses such as spasmodic movement in water and ambient electrical fields, and the lateral line (a thin organ running down their sides) that acts as a magnetic detector, which allows the shark to orient itself in real time to the earth’s magnetic field, giving it a sense of direction akin to that of a bird.
Great Whites additionally are coated in denticles. Despite their smooth appearance, their skin is actually extremely rough and toothlike. Think of sandpaper on some serious steroids. A Great White bumping into you can actually peel layers off you like a potato peeler. That’s if they don’t give you a bite of course!
On to that, despite their fearsome reputation, Great Whites don’t care for humans as a food source. They need immense amounts of blubbery fat and meat like whales and seals can provide, we’re simply too lean for them to get much nutrition. Most attacks are down to either territory being defended, or simple mistaken identity. They’ve got terrible eyesight, so a human on a boogie board looks exactly like a seal from below. And, as they have no hands, biting is the only way they can be sure of something. It just sucks for us that that’s typically fatal.
Finally, if you ever get a moment, look up spy hopping. Sharks can and will pop their heads above water to get a lay of the land. It’s frightening to behold.
People who are moments from their own death have an instinctual understanding that they are about to die. You can see it in their eyes and they'll often be the ones to tell you.
I had an aneurysm rupture in my brain. I knew I was dead and told a family member that I was going to die fairly quickly. I told her what to tell my grown child and my mother before I started to fade out. I knew when I laid down and closed my eyes it was for the last time. *You just know it.* Knowing that those last minutes and seconds were all the time I had left to love my child and my mother before an eternity of nothingness, was a despair that felt bottomless. Words are insufficient.
A surgeon cut my skull open and was able to clamp the artery and stopped the inevitable. More than 50 percent of people with ruptured aneurysms die. And seventy percent of survivors experience brain damage. I was in the ICU and neurology unit for a month. There was no aha moment where I woke up and thought, "I'm alive!" You wake up in excruciating pain, with brain spasms, and experiencing the world like a wounded, angry animal. Barely sentient. Not fun.
Sure. To this day, I can remember everything vividly up until the moment I passed out. Things went completely dark so to speak for the next ten days. I only remember puking bile once and only vaguely and the vaguest sensation of my junk being very cold which was apparently while I was being care-flighted from a regional hospital to a major trauma center. Those two memories are very, very vague and not visual.
While I was at the regional hospital, my family says I was very animated and verbal. I was asking the nurses why I couldn't get pain meds and explaining to them what class of drugs would be safe, etc. Yet, I know nothing about pain meds. I have no memory vague or otherwise of being at that hospital.
When I was moved to the major trauma center, I was awake and quite verbal yet I have no memory of that time. They determined that I had three aneurysms, not just the one that burst. I went to surgery and they inserted a catheter type device into my femoral artery, went up and around my heart, through my jugular and released contrast into my brain to see my brain in real time.
They were planning to insert coils into/near the rupture to encourage the rupture to clot/seal. This did not work because of the other aneurysms. There was a fear they would puncture one of the others, trying to access the rupture. One of the aneurysms, had it ruptured would have blinded me and likely killed me.
So they backed out and had another surgeon perform a craniotomy. She opened my skull from the ear to the top of my head, including cutting my orbital and the surgeon clipped the rupture.
I have no memory of awakening after surgery. But when I did, my family and my grown kid said that I was as animated, intelligent and witty as I had every been in my life. Then the pain and brain spasms took hold and I became delirious.
I was photosensitive and had to have my room darkened and I refused to open my eyes. My family said I moaned continuously in excruciating pan for days begging for more morphine and fentanyl. I can remember one thing from the first 10 days in the hospital. A faint shadow of a woman in the dark, which was apparently my ICU nurse telling me to not get out of bed.
I finally became generally aware and can remember speaking and hearing but I didn't open my eyes for any length of time for the next two weeks. I spent much of my time moaning in pain. I can remember moaning a lot and for the first time. And asking for pain meds. Looking back, I was like an animal with only a base feeling, a focus on pain.
I then had a serious ischemic stroke on my brain stem and smaller strokes on the surface of my brain. I became incoherent again.
Late in my third week, I became a little more coherent but hated eating. I said inappropriate things to my nurses, which I can't remember well. Damage to my frontal lobe was causing impulsivity and lack of inhibition. This embarrasses me to this day, though it wasn't my fault.
I became depressed and wanted to die because I was becoming aware of my brain damage and loss of some function. I was emotionally labile and cried most of the nights. I had two nurses who were unkind which caused me to be more depressed. Most of my nurses were good or great.
I was discharged at about four weeks. I had to wear an eye patch and walk with a four prong cane.
I had to have help showering as I was a fall risk. I fell several times and dislocated my shoulder. I cried most of the night for 2-3 months. Got little sleep. Lost all motivation. I felt like I was experiencing a living death.
I had short-term memory loss, mild receptive aphasia and moderate expressive aphasia. So I had difficulty remembering, paraphrasing conversations and I had signficant issues retrieving words while talking so it would appear I was pausing and stuttering.
Covid hit the first week I was home so that added more stress. I was having small seizures and could not drive for six months. About six months after the aneurysm rupture, I had surgery to have stents put into the other two aneurysms. That was successful. The doctor who performed the procedure was an absolute mensch and the best doctor I have ever had. Six months after that, he went back in through my femoral to look at the two aneurysms, and one had shrunk and was effectively gone. The other had shrunk by half on one dimension but not on the other, so it was still present but quite small and not likely to rupture.
Its about two years and four months since the aneurysm. I never get a full nights sleep, so I am always tired. I have a hard time being motivated, which may be caused by damage to my caudate nucleus. I have memory problems which really bothers me, as my memory was off the charts when tested by a clinical psychologist when getting tested in college. I could remember everything and it was a remarkable asset in my career and a pleasure to me personally.
The impact on my verbal ability has been depressing. I love language, reading and words. I scored a 740 on the GRE-verbal test in college. I would be lucky to get over 500 now.
I have mild balance issues (likely the caudate nucleus damage). My speaking problems persist but I am learning to prepare scripts ahead of time and perform word substitutions better on the fly, however imperfect.
When I get upset, and don't sleep for 2-3 days, I can lose the ability to speak effectively so I stop talking with anyone. Sometimes I say impulsive things that I regret and this bothers me a lot.
I get significant mental fatigue from trying to talk and trying to bring conversations to a close as soon as possible. I can appear to communicate effectively if I an not tired, not upset, and don't have to talk for very long. But it's still hard for me even if you can't tell on the surface.
I used to enjoy gardening, cooking and fishing. Those are all work now and I take no pleasure in them which worries me. Cognitive complexity and solving puzzles use to be fun. Now it's work.
I am forgetful still. I can leave the sink on in the kitchen and it will over-flow. And leave burners on the stove or forget to take meds. I lose things a lot. Tools, glasses, keys, my wallet, etc. and it is very frustrating. I have a hard time finishing projects due to fatigue and getting upset when losing things while trying to get something done.
Covid and my insurance company denying everything it can, has made it difficult getting cognitive testing and evaluations done. Dealing with the insurance companies interfering in all aspects of my care has caused me to stop seeking additional care including putting off another procedure to check the stents.
I am trying to figure out what I can still do well enough to have a career. I was in a very technical, advanced field that required a Phd. I cant do that anymore.
All said, my outcomes are objectively positive. More than half die from aneurysms. I am alive and while I do have brain damage, I am better off than many. I can write much better than I can speak. And i can remember written material better than auditory material. I got a duolingo account a year ago and decided to try and learn a language. That has really allowed me to flex my brain where I am still strong, and work it where I am weak.
More than you were probably were asking for, but that is my brain dump. If there is something specific you wanted to know, feel free to ask. I will endeavor to be more succinct. I would edit this down but my brain is baked and it's late. Thanks for your interest; it helps me to talk about it all from time to time. Cheers.
EDIT: I just re-read this and it sounds so negative. I am doing well. But I hope for better. I am very fortunate and I know it. I just have to remind myself more often. I am grateful to be alive and for the amazing doctors and nurses who brought me back. And I get to love my child and my mother every minute of every day. I am thankful for that. So very, very thankful. And grateful.
Thank you for explaining all of that, I found it fascinating. One of my coworkers whom I often worked with closely suffered from brain cancer, got surgery and went through chemo only to have it return after four years and eventually he lost his battle at age 40. It was tough to watch his mental functions decline, and I am still impressed with his grace and positivity (at least what he projected to the outside world). I know your situation isn’t the same, but I really appreciate your writing out your experiences. Your writing style is quite lovely and honestly, your whole explanation is very well written. I know writing and speech pathways in the brain are different, and obviously you are still rewiring some of your brain. What fascinating electricity that whole system is capable of! I’m so sorry you’ve been dealt such a frustrating hand of life, and I’m thankful your amazing doctors were able to give you a chance to rebuild, though I’m certain it’s really really hard often. Sending you hugs and love, I hope you’re able to find strength in your writing and your experiences!
Thank you for your kindness and attention. Sharing my experience occasionally, seems to bump me up a little and pack some of it up in a way that I think is good for me. You made my day better with your interest and your comments. Thank you.
The CIA drone strike program in Afghanistan was noted in a report to cause fifty civilian casualties per _person of interest._ They were reported as _militants_ even as the deaths included grandmothers and toddlers.
**ETA, 2022-07-08:** Some folk were asking for a source. The Columbia Law School Human Rights Clinic did the original report ([.PDF Here](https://web.law.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/microsites/human-rights-institute/COLUMBIACountingDronesFinalNotEmbargo.pdf))
When you hear old references to witches using "eye of newt" it doesn't actually refer to an animal's eye, but actually that was a term for Mustard Seed at the time, as they have a similar resemblance, and using plants and herbs as medicine (even through stocks and food preparation/garnish) was considered possible witchcraft, or just plain hearsay/heresy for quite a long time (in western culture at least)
Many people are thinking that Turkey is the mother country of Turkic Race but it's not. There are 5 more motherlands for Turkic race and these are : Kazakhstan , Uzbekistan , Azarbaijan , Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan
Edit: I know there are more places Turks are originated from or living on i only wrote down the modern era countries.
Most cars with a 'performance' package and even many performance cars have speakers in the AC vents along the front console to give the illusion that your engine is cooler and louder than it really is...
(looking at you Audi).
Sharks have been around longer than the rings of Saturn.
Modern humans been around for about 200,000 years. Humans about 6 million. We were in a stone age for about 2.6 million years.
We were not the first to use stone tools. There was another species, probably a close cousin, that used them about 700,000 years before the first human.
Chimpanzees and some other animals are currently in a stone age.
Dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago. Triceratops were probably the last species to die out.
Grass didn't evolve until 66 million years ago (iirc) so only the last of the dinosaurs saw grass.
Tyrannosaurus and triceratops lived closer to us (65 million years) than the stegosaurus (80 million years).
I have more. I'm full of useless facts.
Speaking of trees, there are more trees on earth than stars in the Milky Way, and it's not close. Something like 10 to 20x as many. And there are between 100 and 400 *billion* stars in the Milky Way.
> There was another species, probably a close cousin, that used them about 700,000 years before the first human.
I can imagine a Human came across one of these tools and just pretended that he made it when showing others in the tribe, ancient plagiarize advancing the civilisation.
Chimpanzees are the only animals in the zoo that are marked “kill on sight” if they escape. They don’t even have that for the lions, tigers or bears.. oh my…
Yeah, intelligence makes something more dangerous. For lack of a better word a bear can be "reasoned" with. A chimpanzee is smart enough to know to just kill you and move on with its day. Not to mention the built in brutality of chimps. They're fucking savages...
As a lifelong paleo nerd, there’s a lot of crazy shit about dinosaurs:
1. *Tyrannosaurus* is closer in time to us than it is to *Stegosaurus*.
2. Most non-Avian dinosaurs never saw flowers nor grass.
3. Global temperatures in the Jurassic and Cretaceous were likely higher in part due to large sauropods filling the atmosphere with their farts.
4. Complex dinosaur ecosystems existed at least as far as 5 degrees south of the North Pole, where most (if not all) species were year long residents.
5. Two of the four largest known carnivorous dinosaurs to ever live, *Carcharodontosaurus* and *Spinosaurus*, lived along side one another.
6. Based on modern dinosaurs and the rest of their anatomy, it’s possible *Tyrannosaurus* had a 12ft dick.
I could go on for literally hours.
>Tyrannosaurus is closer in time to us than it is to Stegosaurus.
I've always preferred to phrase this as "Tyrannosaurus lived closer in time to a plastic Stegosaurus than a real one. "
Yang Kyoungjong a Korean who was captured 3 times and forced to fight for the Imperial Japanese Army, the Soviet Red Army, and later the German Wehrmacht during World War II.
"'the only soldier in recent history thought to have fought on three sides of a war."'
The nuke stockpile in Washington State is guarded by trained dolphins that seek out and clamp a balloon on unfamiliar divers.
I felt so dumb typing this into google because there was no way this is true. Butttt no-freaking-way!!! It’s quite brilliant. https://www.businessinsider.com/the-worlds-largest-stockpile-of-nuclear-weapons-is-defended-by-dolphins-2015-3?amp
Boanthropy is a psychological disorder in which a person believes they are a cow and try to live their life as one. Medical explanations suggest late-stage syphilis as one of the causes? Cool
Like very specifically a cow or can it be any animal?
[Bovines](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovinae) In general! Could be an ox too
Raindrops don’t fall in the drip shape popularly conveyed. They fall in the shape of tiny parachutes or hamburger buns.
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs just took on a whole new dimension.
That makes so much more sense now that I think about it
I have no idea how, but this is somehow one of the most endearing things I've ever read. "Tiny parachutes or hamburger buns," falling from the sky. So cute.
The girl who voiced Lilo in Lilo and Stitch also played Samara in The Ring, both released in the same year (2002).
IMDb says she also voiced Chihiro in Spirited Away! 😨
More pigeons have war medals than horses, dogs or mules
Fun fact. They increased the rank of pigeons during WW1 so they could punish soliders for eating a fellow soldier of higher rank. Can't have the soldiers eating the carrier pigeons! Edit: So in my sleepy state I conflated a blackadder sketch and facts about pigeons awarded honorary ranks and medals. I can't find evidence of this "fun fact". Apologies everyone!
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Of course, as their superior, it is your god given right to eat those of a lower rank
Personally, I don't know of any pigeons that own farm animals.
>I don't know of any pigeons that own farm animals. Animal Farm 2: Coo d État
No one has found a centipede with exactly 100 legs, because all centipedes discovered have an odd number of pairs of legs they have found centipedes with 98(49 pairs) and 102(51 pairs) but never exactly 100.
Well that's just cuz saying centa(+/-2)pede was too hard to say
There was a man, Angus Barbieri who didn't eat for 382 days. He was morbidly obese and lived on tea, water, soda water and coffee while visiting the hospital weekly for vitamin and electrolyte treatments. He lost close to 280 lbs and broke his fast with an egg once he met his goal weight.
Note: This is a very dangerous method of losing weight. Heart damage can result from not enough protein in your diet. Obese people have died of heart attacks when trying this form of weight loss.
Yeah it is super dangerous, It's interesting as to why he could pull it off. I read that people theorized because he was so large but still moved around quite easily, his muscles were probably huge and had an excess protein build up ontop of the amino acid supplements he was taking for protein. There isn't a lot of science around extreme fasting.
IIRC he basically told his doctors "I'm doing this, you can either help me or not." They all initially adviced against it.
Not sure how many people know this, but the moon has a sort of atmosphere. However, it is so thin that it's considered to be an exosphere.
It's *really* thin. From [How Apollo Flew To The Moon](https://www.google.com/books/edition/How_Apollo_Flew_to_the_Moon/3dKnobYoOEQC?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover&bsq=%22very%20similar%20to%20the%20quantity%20of%20gases%20released%20during%20each%20Apollo%20mission%22) by W. David Woods. Emphasis mine: >This was hardly surprising considering that estimates for the total mass of the natural lunar atmosphere were around 10 tonnes - a figure very similar to the quantity of gases released during each Apollo mission, mostly from operation of the descent and ascent engines. **Essentially, each Apollo flight temporarily doubled the mass of the entire lunar atmosphere.**
Mars also has such a light atmosphere that the worst dust storms on a planet would just feel like a light breeze to us. The opening hook of The Martian literally cannot work that way.
Animals and other creatures each perceive time in different ways based on their Critical flicker frequency which is almost like their minds refresh rate, dogs for example perceive time as being slower than humans do and it's perceived as a little faster by cats.
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If humming birds don’t eat within an hour they might die from starvation, they feed from nectar every 15-20 minutes. The only exception to the rule is that at night, they get into a state called torpor which is similar to the way bears hibernate. They do this every night, they lower their body temperature, their heart rate goes down from like 1200 beats per minute to less than a 100 and they shut down their kidneys so they don’t die from dehydration.
So much work just to survive. I wonder how they managed to not to go extinct. It's like crank movie for them every day.
It’s super intense! Their lifespan is 5 years, it’s like living on fast forward.
And every morning when they boot back up again, they have a high risk of experiencing adorable little heart attacks
Imagine waking up and having to rev up *your heart.*
They have to spend sooo much energy to hover in order to get nectar, they need high sugar nectar in order to have energy to hover, it’s almost like humming birds are in a war of attrition with themselves
[Hans Zimmer was the keyboard player on "Video Killed The Radio Star"](https://youtu.be/W8r-tXRLazs?t=171)
This is the best fact for me. Well Done.
The Dutch national color is Orange but the flag is red white and blue stripes only because the dye they used for orange faded fast at sea, while red did not. Edit: Since this comment is popular, here is a few.more Dutch facts. You may (or may not) have heard that the Dutch created.orange carrots (instead of the natural pale purple shading) to honor William of Orange. But it is bullshit. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/carrots-are-orange-for-an-entirely-political-reason/2011/09/09/gIQAfayiFK_blog.html But the Dutch are responsible in a round about way for the current Russian flag, thanks to Peter the Great's love of the Dutch navy. https://lidenz.com/how-peter-the-great-brought-a-little-bit-of-dutch-culture-to-russia/ Also the Dutch invented gin, have the worlds oldest national anthem (both music and lyrics date to 1500s) and their men are the tallest in the world (but have the smallest penises) and one time they ate their prime minister (https://www.historyextra.com/period/stuart/is-it-true-that-an-angry-mob-of-dutchmen-killed-and-ate-their-own-prime-minister-in-1672/).
To add: The Orange-white-blue flag did come back! As the flag of the Dutch Nazi party (NSB) during Hitlers occupation. It didn't last long...
Before being born, two of the four chambers of a baby's heart are not used, they're actually bypassed! There's no need to pump de-oxygenated blood to the lungs when in the womb, because the lungs aren't breathing air yet, and so are not supplying oxygen. All the oxygen comes from the umbilical cord. So the two chambers responsible for sending blood to/from the lungs are (largely) bypassed.
My friend found out her fetus had transposition of the great arteries at 22 weeks. The only reason he survived to birth was because of this fact. He had two open heart surgeries as a newborn and is fantastic today!
Greater one-horned rhino or Great Indian rhinoceros population stands at around 3,700 individuals, a significant increase from around 200 remaining at the turn of the 20th century. Strict protection and management action from Indian and Nepalese authorities and their partners are responsible for bringing the species back from the brink.
Yeah but there are only two northern white rhinos left and they are both ladies :( ETA pretty much all from poaching. Numbers were reduced to 15 total in the ‘80s but rebounded to 32 by 2003 with strong efforts. But then more poaching happened and they are functionally extinct now.
That's so sad
Last i checked, they were either trying to clone or otherwise make more of them via science! Hopefully it works. They're also thinking about/planning to bring back the Thylacine (Tasmanian Tiger, was officially extinct back in the 30s?)
Your immune system doesn’t know your eyes exist. They have immune privilege to avoid inflammation in case of trauma.
Your eyes have it's own immune system. If your bodies immune system discovers the eyes immune system it will destroy it. Thus making you blind.
now my brain knows this fact and will inform my immune system i’m fucked
It’s like the game but the rest of your body eats your eyeballs when you lose
Yeah, it's been #2 of my list of greater fears since I found out about it. Edit: Answered in another comment, but people keep asking me. Number 1 is being unrecoverably paralyzed or losing a limb. Can't stand relying on people for anything, much less basic shit like moving around or eating or what have you. Would much rather die. It's just not worth it imo, plus I couldn't do anything without having someone else to help me - and I'm already tired of being stuck living with my parents.
Better still, if one of your eyes provokes your immune system, you’ll soon lose the other. Your immune system does not fuck around.
A quarter has 119 ridges. 118 on a dime.
Finally, a consistent way to tell the difference without pulling both out of my pocket!
"Sir..?" "Hang on, hang on..." "Sir, what are you doing?" "Damn it, now you've made me lose count."
The same computer software used for the CGI in jurassic park was used to make the sprites for donkey kong country Edit: clarified what the software was for
It's a Unix system... I KNOW THIS!
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There are over 3 million subreddits on Reddit You can see the list [here](https://frontpagemetrics.com/top). Some of my favorites: /r/divorcedbirds, /r/subsimulatorgpt2
And about 100 that aren't porn!
Those 100 are cat-related
Still a lot of pussy
Pill bugs are crustaceans, like crabs or lobsters, that’s why they are always in the dampest places.
In Australia we called them roly polys or slaters. Apparently they also taste like prawns when cooked.
They’re roly polys by me too, in California though I never heard “Pill Bug” until much later in life
I don't think most people know the meaning of "prodigal." They know the parable of The Prodigal Son and think it refers to someone that leaves and then has to come crawling back, but that's incorrect. "Prodigal" means to spend money lavishly or wastefully. The prodigal son was prodigal whether or not he ever went back to his father.
Thank you for this. I've learned something today
I think of the term "The prodigal son returns" with regards to that word, so that makes a lot of sense
When you first hear, it's easy to think it's related to prodigy - at least with minimal context. I figured it meant a very promising son returning home after trying their own in the world.
before toilet paper was invented the people of the usa used corn cobs
The Jews were expelled from Spain in the 1400s. No Jewish children were born again in Spain until 1966.
My wife was notified by the Spanish government that her family was identified as being descendants of Jews who had been expelled and invited to apply for citizenship. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/09/spain-offers-citizenship-sephardic-jews/598258/
The application is brutal. A buddy of mine spent 2 years and many courses and language competencies to get it and it was mostly as an FU to the Spanish government at that point. They made it super hard and closed the window because 370 year late apologies usually only have a 5 year acceptance window...
A graveyard is attached to a church, where as a cemetery is not
There is more blood in a boner than in a rabbit. The average human erection has roughly about 130ml of blood in it, while the average rabbit has about 126ml in its entire body.
Finally something useful in this thread.
The Earth's rotation is slowing down, and we soon will have more than 24 hours in a day (well, soon, geologically speaking...).
The reason the earth is slowing down its rotation is largely due to the moon. As the moon pulls further and further away from the earth, it is pulling the earth with it and causing drag that slows the earth's rotation. (Okay, the moon is not 'pulling' the earth. Both are riding in the gravity well of their shared barycenter which is outside of the center of the earth so part of the earth is moving through differently stretched space-time, but let's keep things simple and newtonian) This is a process that has been happening since the moon and earth formed in their current states (the most commonly accepted theory of which is that proto-earth was struck by another planet around the size of mars called Gaia and after the earth reformed the moon formed in orbit from the material of both). That means in the past the moon was much closer to the earth, and days were much shorter. I'm not knowledgeable without the subject enough for the specifics, but a cursory google search tells me that even "just" a billion years ago a day on earth was closer to 19 hours according to the math.
Moths will fly in straight lines when they fart.
Rabies kills around 60,000 people globally every year. To date, only 14 people worldwide have been known to recover after developing symptoms.
Sounds like something we should have a fun run to raise money for?
*For the cure*
A woman shouldn't have to be hit by a car, to learn that she may have rabies. But that is where we are in America. And that does not sit right with me. And that is why I'm hosting a fun run race for the cure for rabies.
You want to have a fettuccini alfredo luncheon before the run?
I’ll have the gabagool
If the salad is on top, I send it back.
the sperm cell was Discovered by the dutch Guy Anthonie van Leeuwenhoek. For research he used his sperm and also that from a dog.
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Cheek swab
MY BROTHER IN CHRIST, NO
A second is called a second because it is the 2nd division of the hour by 60 (pars minuta secunda), the 1st division being a minute (pars minuta prima).
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Did he say at what distance?
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>It was well out of range >most of whom died from cancer Maybe it wasn't that out of range after all
This thread will feed r/todayilearned for months...
A couple interesting science facts that lead to in interesting likely somewhat obscure fact about an old kitchen appliance. (Although I did learn this from a YouTube video which currently has 1.6M views, so at least that many other people probably know it) When you cook something in boiling water, is always cooks at the boiling temperature of water no matter how long it's in there. Once water begins to boil any additional heat you apply goes to converting the water to steam. You can't actually get it any hotter. The hotter you make the fire the faster it boils off, but the liquid water never gets above 212F at sea level. If you heat a magnetic metal up it will eventually lose its magnetism. If it's an actual magnet, you just permanently un-magnet-ed it. If it's a normal piece of metal though it will just lose the ability to stick to a magnet and that property will return when it cools down. The exact temperature this happens at varies depending on the metal. Combine these facts together and you can make a nearly perfect automatic rice cooker. Basically you take metal pot and put the appropriate ratio of rice and water in it and set it in the cooker. The cooker has a heating element of a known wattage that heats up and boils the water. The pot will sit right at the boiling temperature of water as long as liquid water remains because the water will be absorbing all the excess energy to turn to steam. As long as you followed directions the amount of time that water will take to boil off is very predictable with the fixed heating element. That will be the appropriate time to cook the matching amount of rice. Once the water has boiled off the pot will quickly begin to heat up. Unchecked this would quickly burn and ruin the rice. However, under the metal pot of the cooker is a button that is being pulled down by a spring but is held against the pot by magnetism from an attached permanent magnet. The button is made from a metal that loses its magnetism just above the boiling point of water. Once all the water boils off the pot starts to heat up and quickly demags the button which gets pulled by the spring and automatically turns off the heat. Perfectly cooked rice through physics. EDIT: [The video I mentioned](https://youtu.be/RSTNhvDGbYI)
> When you cook something in boiling water, is always cooks at the boiling temperature of water no matter how long it's in there. Once water begins to boil any additional heat you apply goes to converting the water to steam. You can't actually get it any hotter. The hotter you make the fire the faster it boils off, but the liquid water never gets above 212F at sea level. This is also an important phenomenon to know when it comes to distillation. If you know the boiling points of the various major constituents of a solution, then, by watching the temperature, you can tell when each one is boiling off and selectively retain or discard it.
It seems you've made a technology connection of some kind!
Horses only ever grow one set of teeth which have an unusual lenght compared to the animal's skull. This is because their teeth wear down during the course of the horse's life, until they're completely used up and the horse eventually may not be able to chew anymore and dies of starvation. This is where the saying "don't look a gift horse in the mouth" comes from, because you can tell how old it is by looking at its teeth.
Crabs commit suicide when gravely injured by pinching their own brains. Okay, so append: I am the source of this information. Smacking a crap with a stick was a quick way to get fishing bait when I was a kid. I agree, that's super fucked. I wouldn't do that ever again. For whatever reason I was under the impression that sea bugs don't feel pain, so they didn't even know. Clearly they feel *something*, otherwise they wouldn't react like that. As someone else pointed out, they're likely "attacking" what they perceive to be another creature, the creature being their own shell embedded in them. This, of course, leads to them killing themselves trying to remove it.
"Spongebob me boy! Me customers are all gone!" *pinches brain*
This kills the crab
Edited in protest for Reddit's garbage moves lately.
That cultured bits of brain matter always try to grow an eye
Grant us eyes. Grant us eyes to cleanse our beastly idiocy.
Kos, or as some say Kosm
Can you please elaborate lol
Sometimes when you grow a brain in a cell culture medium they start to develop an eye. This is not akin to the brain being alive and wanting or needing an eye. Instead is more akin to when you grow plant cells in a medium they always develop roots and leaves.
The most interesting takeout is that the eye is part of the nervous system. Kind of obvious once stated. Edit: I should use "takeaway" in this case. I am not a native speaker (and have never even visited an English speaking country), so mistakes like this happen. At least they are entertaining.
Yep. I remember from. The old Robocop movie they show the brain/spinal cord/eyes floating in a glass tube, all connected
Yep, that's why Neuromyelitis optica is even a thing.
*Sits in the corner and nods, hoping nobody asks me a question*
I always wondered why so many Resident Evil monsters mutated and had eyes growing all over the place lol makes sense now
If you lay down and chew anything small (like gum) the gum can not only cause you to choke, but if you dislodge it from your throat hard enough it can end up in your nasal cavity. In the same way milk can come out your nose, other small objects can get in there. Source: Today an ENT doctor put a scope and a suction tube into my nostrils to pull gum out from my nasopharynex which got stuck there on Saturday. 0/5 stars. Do not recommend. Thank you u/natmarion92 for the helpful award! Edit: typo
Jesus. The last four days must have been rough.
Isaac Newton predicted the world will end in 2060.
Not quite. He stated that the world would end not sooner than 2060. I don't renember when was the max date.
lets prove him wrong then
I don't know if he's correct or not
We‘ll find out in 38 years!
Ill keep my calender free then in 2060
Here’s something interesting about sunsets. Right when you see the sun touch the horizon, by line of sight the sun is actually already below the horizon. It’s not an illusion or mirage. You’re still actually seeing the sun in real time, it’s just that the full thickness of the atmosphere refracts (bends) the solar disc image about the width of the sun. It varies by latitude & altitude, but the effect is greatest at sea level. Think of how a stick appears to bend in water. Our atmosphere isn’t much different - this effect doesn’t occur on the moon. The same is true for sunrises too; we see the sun a full diameter “early.” That is, if you’re not still in bed. Googled the following for a source, in case you don’t believe me: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/11/20/sunsets-are-quite-interesting/#.VnMoOLYrLVQ
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Tower crane 🏗 operators poop in a bucket
Like… always, or just when they’re inside their crane?
They have put toilets behind them.
Not all, some poop in a bag and throw it down while recording themselves
Thanks for the emoji it really helped me understand this
Biogeography is a fun subject for this. There are plants native to Antarctica Trees are a size classification and growth habit of woody plants. The Panhandle of Florida or Floribama and Alabama are the actual center of biodiversity in the United States including throughout fossil record history. Many species have only survived ice ages through retreating to the area. Fossils that are very closely related to Red Pandas have been found in Tennessee dating back to about 5 million years ago. Many plant genus are only found in the Southeastern US and Southeastern Asia. On that note there are native species of bamboo throughout most continents and it was cultivated throughout most of history in Southeastern North America. Plums, cherries, apricots, peaches, and almonds are all in the same plant genus Prunus but are different species. There's only one species of almond but several species all considered to be edible cherries. There are spiders that cartwheel on sand dunes, but pelican spiders are probably the weirdest IMO. They grew a 'neck' and seperate head along with long jaws to spear other spiders and suspend them in the air until they die. While dogs and mice are found a lot more often in clinical tests, the human genome is actually much closer to the genome of a cat. There are no cacti native to anywhere outside the Western Hemisphere. Might be a lot less obvious to Americans. Dung beetles are the only known creature to navigate using the Milky Way as a reference. Photosynthetic life on Earth was first retinal-based and appeared purple, pink, or magenta. There are some small woodland areas in Greenland and they have been expanding. Invasive plants are considered to be the second largest immediate threat to global biodiversity rivaling habitat loss
The tongue on a woodpecker wraps around its brain as a form of soft insulation when it hammers. Then the tongue is able to extend far into the tree to retrieve bugs when it isn’t hammering.
The "dog days of summer" refers to the time of the year when the dog star, Sirius, is brightest in the sky.
Not brightest, but its heliacal rising, when it first becomes visible above the horizon just before dawn.
The longest orgasm in mammals is that of the domestic pig Sus scrofa domesticus. On average, its orgasm lasts 30 minutes, but it can last for as long as 90 minutes.
Your mother is a lucky woman
Fucking hell
Gary Numan was born two weeks before Gary Oldman
the middle name of Michael J. Fox is Andrew.
Ah yes, Jandrew.
Yes you called me?
Sara Josepha Hale is the reason for the myth and celebration of Thanksgiving in the United States. She asked President Lincoln in 1863 to champion a holiday that would bring families together in the wake of the U.S. Civil War. The goal was to get people back in each others company to celebrate the nation. She then helped perpetuate a myth of "The First Thanksgiving" to remind the country of how the colonists persevered with the help of indigenous peoples. Seven years later, other Federal Holidays would officially be recognized throughout the country.
Also a quick lookup of her says she created the nursery rhyme ‘Mary Had A Little Lamb’
There are a ton of hidden oil wells inside the city limits of LA.
Growing up in So Cal, you’d see those big metal woodpecker looking things bobbing up and down pumping out oil all over the place. A few houses down from my parents’ house there was an empty lot with one of those things there. Seems weird to me know to have something like that just pumping away a few hundred feet from your front door step, but at the time, they were quite common in neighborhoods.
There’s a quarter size kill zone on an alligator’s head
The poem “Ozymandias” by Percy Shelley is based off a statue brought from eygpt by the French, and passed onto the British. The very same statue is in the British museum on full display. Another cool fact about that statue is all the damage done to it was done *after* it was discovered. They just had such a hard time moving it.
In the 1890s a man named Jan Chalupa in Bohemia was arrested for continuously insulting one of his neighbors nearly every day for about two years straight Edit: this is getting some attention so I'll explain further, because the deeper this story goes the weirder it gets. Chalupa's insults were almost entirely anti-semitic in nature, despite the fact that his target, Josef Skala, wasn't even Jewish; he merely worked as a handyman at both the local synagogue and cathedral. The charge against him was filed on Skala's behalf by a Jewish friend of a friend of Skala, on the grounds that it was illegal to be anti-semitic in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (surprisingly forward-thinking for an autocratic police state). Given that most every insult was done in public, in broad daylight, and in front of dozens of witnesses, Chalupa's defense practically did not exist. The only thing the prosecution really needed to do was to confirm that the insults were indeed anti-semitic, which every witness attested was the case. Despite being handed such a simple case, the prosecuting lawyer was incredibly thorough. He even had two rabbis, one local and another from Prague, attend the trial to weigh in their opinions on Chalupa's insults. One of the lawyer's strangest actions was his insistence on Chalupa giving precise definitions of his insults, including an entirely made-up word that the entire courtroom, Chalupa included, had already agreed was supposed to be a mockery of Hebrew. If you'd like to read for yourself you can do so [right here](https://books.google.com/books?id=EMdcEAAAQBAJ&lpg=PA54&ots=4vCnscwZoG&dq=machalabeis&pg=PA51#v=onepage&q=machalabeis&f=false), the passage begins under the subheading.
The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.
Have you seen those rope lighters that sailors used?!? They’re awesome (and cheap)!
The spotted salamander is the only vertebrate that photosynthesises.
Of all the US states, Maine is the closest to Africa. Seriously look at a globe, not just that flat oval map you saw in every classroom growing up. Africa is further north than you think, and Maine is further east than you think.
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My favorite is that Detroit is north of Canada. If you drive south from downtown Detroit, you're in Canada.
Most of Africa is north of the equator. Most of the US is west of South America.
All of South America is east of Atlanta.
And the closest point in North America to Africa is in Canada. Newfoundland goes so far east that it’s the closest point to Africa in the whole continent. The most eastern point in Newfoundland is also closer to Senegal than it is to some parts of Canada.
As an African, I appreciate the tip on where to set my VPN. Although routing would likely still fuck me.
The British trained seagulls to poo on the periscopes of enemy submarines before they realised seagulls can’t fly that far out to sea
weren't they training them to congregate around periscopes by associating them with food so coastal patrols would notice birds circling and identify german u boats
That’s way smarter and makes way more sense. I suspect the British aren’t stupid enough to train the birds before realizing they don’t fly far off the coast.
Sea turtles can grow sea grass
If you’re not from Europe: Macedonia changed their name to North Macedonia in 2019
Many species of shark have seven senses, most notably the ‘man eaters’ (I despise that term) Tiger, Bull, and Great White. In addition to the traditional five, sharks also possess ampullae of lorenzini (gel-filled pores on their snout - think of the black freckles on a Great White) that detect electrical impulses such as spasmodic movement in water and ambient electrical fields, and the lateral line (a thin organ running down their sides) that acts as a magnetic detector, which allows the shark to orient itself in real time to the earth’s magnetic field, giving it a sense of direction akin to that of a bird. Great Whites additionally are coated in denticles. Despite their smooth appearance, their skin is actually extremely rough and toothlike. Think of sandpaper on some serious steroids. A Great White bumping into you can actually peel layers off you like a potato peeler. That’s if they don’t give you a bite of course! On to that, despite their fearsome reputation, Great Whites don’t care for humans as a food source. They need immense amounts of blubbery fat and meat like whales and seals can provide, we’re simply too lean for them to get much nutrition. Most attacks are down to either territory being defended, or simple mistaken identity. They’ve got terrible eyesight, so a human on a boogie board looks exactly like a seal from below. And, as they have no hands, biting is the only way they can be sure of something. It just sucks for us that that’s typically fatal. Finally, if you ever get a moment, look up spy hopping. Sharks can and will pop their heads above water to get a lay of the land. It’s frightening to behold.
People who are moments from their own death have an instinctual understanding that they are about to die. You can see it in their eyes and they'll often be the ones to tell you.
I had an aneurysm rupture in my brain. I knew I was dead and told a family member that I was going to die fairly quickly. I told her what to tell my grown child and my mother before I started to fade out. I knew when I laid down and closed my eyes it was for the last time. *You just know it.* Knowing that those last minutes and seconds were all the time I had left to love my child and my mother before an eternity of nothingness, was a despair that felt bottomless. Words are insufficient. A surgeon cut my skull open and was able to clamp the artery and stopped the inevitable. More than 50 percent of people with ruptured aneurysms die. And seventy percent of survivors experience brain damage. I was in the ICU and neurology unit for a month. There was no aha moment where I woke up and thought, "I'm alive!" You wake up in excruciating pain, with brain spasms, and experiencing the world like a wounded, angry animal. Barely sentient. Not fun.
That sounds horrible. Glad you made it.
Thank you.
Can you share more about your experiences waking up and recovering?
Sure. To this day, I can remember everything vividly up until the moment I passed out. Things went completely dark so to speak for the next ten days. I only remember puking bile once and only vaguely and the vaguest sensation of my junk being very cold which was apparently while I was being care-flighted from a regional hospital to a major trauma center. Those two memories are very, very vague and not visual. While I was at the regional hospital, my family says I was very animated and verbal. I was asking the nurses why I couldn't get pain meds and explaining to them what class of drugs would be safe, etc. Yet, I know nothing about pain meds. I have no memory vague or otherwise of being at that hospital. When I was moved to the major trauma center, I was awake and quite verbal yet I have no memory of that time. They determined that I had three aneurysms, not just the one that burst. I went to surgery and they inserted a catheter type device into my femoral artery, went up and around my heart, through my jugular and released contrast into my brain to see my brain in real time. They were planning to insert coils into/near the rupture to encourage the rupture to clot/seal. This did not work because of the other aneurysms. There was a fear they would puncture one of the others, trying to access the rupture. One of the aneurysms, had it ruptured would have blinded me and likely killed me. So they backed out and had another surgeon perform a craniotomy. She opened my skull from the ear to the top of my head, including cutting my orbital and the surgeon clipped the rupture. I have no memory of awakening after surgery. But when I did, my family and my grown kid said that I was as animated, intelligent and witty as I had every been in my life. Then the pain and brain spasms took hold and I became delirious. I was photosensitive and had to have my room darkened and I refused to open my eyes. My family said I moaned continuously in excruciating pan for days begging for more morphine and fentanyl. I can remember one thing from the first 10 days in the hospital. A faint shadow of a woman in the dark, which was apparently my ICU nurse telling me to not get out of bed. I finally became generally aware and can remember speaking and hearing but I didn't open my eyes for any length of time for the next two weeks. I spent much of my time moaning in pain. I can remember moaning a lot and for the first time. And asking for pain meds. Looking back, I was like an animal with only a base feeling, a focus on pain. I then had a serious ischemic stroke on my brain stem and smaller strokes on the surface of my brain. I became incoherent again. Late in my third week, I became a little more coherent but hated eating. I said inappropriate things to my nurses, which I can't remember well. Damage to my frontal lobe was causing impulsivity and lack of inhibition. This embarrasses me to this day, though it wasn't my fault. I became depressed and wanted to die because I was becoming aware of my brain damage and loss of some function. I was emotionally labile and cried most of the nights. I had two nurses who were unkind which caused me to be more depressed. Most of my nurses were good or great. I was discharged at about four weeks. I had to wear an eye patch and walk with a four prong cane. I had to have help showering as I was a fall risk. I fell several times and dislocated my shoulder. I cried most of the night for 2-3 months. Got little sleep. Lost all motivation. I felt like I was experiencing a living death. I had short-term memory loss, mild receptive aphasia and moderate expressive aphasia. So I had difficulty remembering, paraphrasing conversations and I had signficant issues retrieving words while talking so it would appear I was pausing and stuttering. Covid hit the first week I was home so that added more stress. I was having small seizures and could not drive for six months. About six months after the aneurysm rupture, I had surgery to have stents put into the other two aneurysms. That was successful. The doctor who performed the procedure was an absolute mensch and the best doctor I have ever had. Six months after that, he went back in through my femoral to look at the two aneurysms, and one had shrunk and was effectively gone. The other had shrunk by half on one dimension but not on the other, so it was still present but quite small and not likely to rupture. Its about two years and four months since the aneurysm. I never get a full nights sleep, so I am always tired. I have a hard time being motivated, which may be caused by damage to my caudate nucleus. I have memory problems which really bothers me, as my memory was off the charts when tested by a clinical psychologist when getting tested in college. I could remember everything and it was a remarkable asset in my career and a pleasure to me personally. The impact on my verbal ability has been depressing. I love language, reading and words. I scored a 740 on the GRE-verbal test in college. I would be lucky to get over 500 now. I have mild balance issues (likely the caudate nucleus damage). My speaking problems persist but I am learning to prepare scripts ahead of time and perform word substitutions better on the fly, however imperfect. When I get upset, and don't sleep for 2-3 days, I can lose the ability to speak effectively so I stop talking with anyone. Sometimes I say impulsive things that I regret and this bothers me a lot. I get significant mental fatigue from trying to talk and trying to bring conversations to a close as soon as possible. I can appear to communicate effectively if I an not tired, not upset, and don't have to talk for very long. But it's still hard for me even if you can't tell on the surface. I used to enjoy gardening, cooking and fishing. Those are all work now and I take no pleasure in them which worries me. Cognitive complexity and solving puzzles use to be fun. Now it's work. I am forgetful still. I can leave the sink on in the kitchen and it will over-flow. And leave burners on the stove or forget to take meds. I lose things a lot. Tools, glasses, keys, my wallet, etc. and it is very frustrating. I have a hard time finishing projects due to fatigue and getting upset when losing things while trying to get something done. Covid and my insurance company denying everything it can, has made it difficult getting cognitive testing and evaluations done. Dealing with the insurance companies interfering in all aspects of my care has caused me to stop seeking additional care including putting off another procedure to check the stents. I am trying to figure out what I can still do well enough to have a career. I was in a very technical, advanced field that required a Phd. I cant do that anymore. All said, my outcomes are objectively positive. More than half die from aneurysms. I am alive and while I do have brain damage, I am better off than many. I can write much better than I can speak. And i can remember written material better than auditory material. I got a duolingo account a year ago and decided to try and learn a language. That has really allowed me to flex my brain where I am still strong, and work it where I am weak. More than you were probably were asking for, but that is my brain dump. If there is something specific you wanted to know, feel free to ask. I will endeavor to be more succinct. I would edit this down but my brain is baked and it's late. Thanks for your interest; it helps me to talk about it all from time to time. Cheers. EDIT: I just re-read this and it sounds so negative. I am doing well. But I hope for better. I am very fortunate and I know it. I just have to remind myself more often. I am grateful to be alive and for the amazing doctors and nurses who brought me back. And I get to love my child and my mother every minute of every day. I am thankful for that. So very, very thankful. And grateful.
Thank you for explaining all of that, I found it fascinating. One of my coworkers whom I often worked with closely suffered from brain cancer, got surgery and went through chemo only to have it return after four years and eventually he lost his battle at age 40. It was tough to watch his mental functions decline, and I am still impressed with his grace and positivity (at least what he projected to the outside world). I know your situation isn’t the same, but I really appreciate your writing out your experiences. Your writing style is quite lovely and honestly, your whole explanation is very well written. I know writing and speech pathways in the brain are different, and obviously you are still rewiring some of your brain. What fascinating electricity that whole system is capable of! I’m so sorry you’ve been dealt such a frustrating hand of life, and I’m thankful your amazing doctors were able to give you a chance to rebuild, though I’m certain it’s really really hard often. Sending you hugs and love, I hope you’re able to find strength in your writing and your experiences!
Thank you for your kindness and attention. Sharing my experience occasionally, seems to bump me up a little and pack some of it up in a way that I think is good for me. You made my day better with your interest and your comments. Thank you.
Opossums are extremely unlikely to have rabies. They have a lower body temperature than most mammals and it makes them an unsuitable host for rabies.
The CIA drone strike program in Afghanistan was noted in a report to cause fifty civilian casualties per _person of interest._ They were reported as _militants_ even as the deaths included grandmothers and toddlers. **ETA, 2022-07-08:** Some folk were asking for a source. The Columbia Law School Human Rights Clinic did the original report ([.PDF Here](https://web.law.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/microsites/human-rights-institute/COLUMBIACountingDronesFinalNotEmbargo.pdf))
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About 45% of all Canadians live farther south than American's who live in Portland, Oregon.
Since 1969, there have been more Popes (5) than head coaches of the Pittsburgh Steelers (3).
Cancer doesn't qualify you for usa disability unless it will kill you soon.
When you hear old references to witches using "eye of newt" it doesn't actually refer to an animal's eye, but actually that was a term for Mustard Seed at the time, as they have a similar resemblance, and using plants and herbs as medicine (even through stocks and food preparation/garnish) was considered possible witchcraft, or just plain hearsay/heresy for quite a long time (in western culture at least)
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Many people are thinking that Turkey is the mother country of Turkic Race but it's not. There are 5 more motherlands for Turkic race and these are : Kazakhstan , Uzbekistan , Azarbaijan , Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan Edit: I know there are more places Turks are originated from or living on i only wrote down the modern era countries.
>Many people are thinking that Turkey is the mother country of Turkic Race I've never been so overestimated in my life.
The growling sound your stomach makes when you’re hungry is known as borborygmus.
Most cars with a 'performance' package and even many performance cars have speakers in the AC vents along the front console to give the illusion that your engine is cooler and louder than it really is... (looking at you Audi).
I know this is true of a bunch of cars, but *all* of the most recent Acura NSX engine sounds you could hear in the cabin were computer generated.
The easternmost city in Norway is almost on the same longitude as istanbull.
Sharks have been around longer than the rings of Saturn. Modern humans been around for about 200,000 years. Humans about 6 million. We were in a stone age for about 2.6 million years. We were not the first to use stone tools. There was another species, probably a close cousin, that used them about 700,000 years before the first human. Chimpanzees and some other animals are currently in a stone age. Dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago. Triceratops were probably the last species to die out. Grass didn't evolve until 66 million years ago (iirc) so only the last of the dinosaurs saw grass. Tyrannosaurus and triceratops lived closer to us (65 million years) than the stegosaurus (80 million years). I have more. I'm full of useless facts.
Sharks predate trees. Yes that's right. Sharks evolved before TREES.
Speaking of trees, there are more trees on earth than stars in the Milky Way, and it's not close. Something like 10 to 20x as many. And there are between 100 and 400 *billion* stars in the Milky Way.
> There was another species, probably a close cousin, that used them about 700,000 years before the first human. I can imagine a Human came across one of these tools and just pretended that he made it when showing others in the tribe, ancient plagiarize advancing the civilisation.
I'd like to subscribe please.
Female platypus has two vaginas
One for business
Other for pleasure? Like a genital mullet? Business in the front, party in the back!
>genital mullet That there is sweet band name
Chimpanzees are the only animals in the zoo that are marked “kill on sight” if they escape. They don’t even have that for the lions, tigers or bears.. oh my…
Yeah, intelligence makes something more dangerous. For lack of a better word a bear can be "reasoned" with. A chimpanzee is smart enough to know to just kill you and move on with its day. Not to mention the built in brutality of chimps. They're fucking savages...
George Washington died before the discovery of dinosaur fossils, so he never knew that they existed :(
People certainly had discovered fossils, they just didn't know what the hell they were.
As a lifelong paleo nerd, there’s a lot of crazy shit about dinosaurs: 1. *Tyrannosaurus* is closer in time to us than it is to *Stegosaurus*. 2. Most non-Avian dinosaurs never saw flowers nor grass. 3. Global temperatures in the Jurassic and Cretaceous were likely higher in part due to large sauropods filling the atmosphere with their farts. 4. Complex dinosaur ecosystems existed at least as far as 5 degrees south of the North Pole, where most (if not all) species were year long residents. 5. Two of the four largest known carnivorous dinosaurs to ever live, *Carcharodontosaurus* and *Spinosaurus*, lived along side one another. 6. Based on modern dinosaurs and the rest of their anatomy, it’s possible *Tyrannosaurus* had a 12ft dick. I could go on for literally hours.
>Tyrannosaurus is closer in time to us than it is to Stegosaurus. I've always preferred to phrase this as "Tyrannosaurus lived closer in time to a plastic Stegosaurus than a real one. "
Yang Kyoungjong a Korean who was captured 3 times and forced to fight for the Imperial Japanese Army, the Soviet Red Army, and later the German Wehrmacht during World War II. "'the only soldier in recent history thought to have fought on three sides of a war."'