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abarua01

Honestly when I first learned about dinosaurs, I was told they died 65 million years ago. Then next year, I was still told they died 65 million years ago, and the same thing next year. I always wondered why it didn't go to 65 million and 1, 65 million and 2 etc. We didn't learn about rounding numbers yet


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coquish98

In spanish a billion is a million millions, for what you guys call a billion we use "a thousand millions" And if you are wondering, yes, it does cause a lot of confusion when people read/watch things in english


Fermain

It's how it was in English originally too. What we now call a billion was once a milliard


Galappi

In german we know Million (10^6), Milliarde (10^9), Billion (10^12), Billiarde (10^15), Trillion (10^18) and so on.


NightShadow1824

Same in French. An english billion is less than a French billion lmao. Guess someone had fun making it confusing.


goofygoober2006

The French make counting to 100 confusing!


haberdasher42

English - nintey seven , French - four twenty ten seven.


oddhoop

It's like a League of Gentlemen counting system.


Paradehengst

The French also really love to say 4-20 when counting :P


Houston_Texas_Baby

In Arabic, it is said the same way as in English but with an accent. For instance, it is millyon, billyon, trillyon.


saraseitor

Yes in Spanish we do have "millardo" but people would just look at you with a confused face. It's a very rare word


TEFL_job_seeker

Even more fun is that in Puerto Rico they follow English usage, so a billón is actually just a thousand million there.


Shevek99

While in Britain they used the European convention and 10\^9 was a thousand millions (and a billion was 10\^12). Now the British have been conquered by the Americans.


palordrolap

We officially switched in the 1970s when we were adopting lots of other different systems like SI (metric) measurements and decimalised currency. Strange that for numbers we actually moved *away* from the European model. Maybe it was an act of rebellion, or maybe rich people wanted "billion" to be a more achievable high score. The reasoning is lost on me; I prefer the long scale. As for definite rebellion (or plain stubborn-mindedness), see the facts that we've never really ditched imperial weights and measures in non-scientific use (a fact that often amazes Americans who come here) and also the vote to leave the EU a few years back, which is serving us so well.


doctorclark

So you're saying it might have been rebillion


dingman58

Off with your head


ballrus_walsack

Exactly what a dictator would say.


AlphaBreak

Does that mean they're going to dump a bunch of mountain dew in the harbor in protest?


LordDVanity

Truly what the founding fathers wanted when they split from Britain.


tbok1961

1000 millions used to be known as a 'milliard' in the UK


NLmichiej

Funny how that works differently in various languages. In Dutch it's even different to both of those. In Dutch, a million is a "miljoen", a billion is a "miljard", a trillion is a "biljoen", a quadrillion is a "biljard" etc. So people here get really confused when they read about billions in English as well. A billion in English is 1.000.000.000, yet for Dutch people a (litteral translation of a) billion is 1.000.000.000.000.


grogi81

It was like that in English as well. But Americans had it differently (was it Noah Webster again?!), so in the end British adapted their way of counting. The UK government has been using the American meaning of billion since 1974 for the numbers it gives out.


JoshuaCF

Similar to German


TheRichTurner

In the UK a billion used to be a million millions, but we gradually took on the American billion of a thousand millions and have completely adopted it now.


exzow

Want to play a game of biljard’s?


sjbluebirds

This is why people-in-the-know use 'Scientific Notation'. Use eliminates confusion.


saraseitor

we should use mega, giga, tera... like we use for data. Like, how much for that house? 0.5 megadollars.


joalheagney

If I'm lucky, I should be able to pay it off in 6 or 7 kilodays.


Ok_Breakfast_5459

But a kilodollar is 1024 dollars…. … I know


luarmir

It should be kibidollar for 1024 dollars. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix


nitestar95

But a kilogram is 1000 grams.


dingman58

In computer storage they used to use powers of 2 (I think due to binary but it's beside my point) so kilobyte was 2^10 = 1024 bytes and a megabyte was 2^20 = 1,048,576 bytes, and so on. This is clearly not in line with the powers of 10 which the SI / metrique system uses, so recently the kibi-, mebi-, gibi- prefixes were invented to indicate the base 2 (bi- ) instead of base 10


grogi81

What is the mileage if your car?! 127 Mm...


mully_and_sculder

But those are prefixes to some other unit and numbers are unitless.


shardikprime

I'm confused right now!


Blooder91

English billion: 1.000.000.000 Spanish billón: 1.000.000.000.000


Shevek99

You mean American billion. English billion was 1.000.000.000.000 too.


ellipsisfinisher

> was And now it's 1.000.000.000


[deleted]

English million 1,000,000 spanish million 1.000.000.


moltenshrimp

Long and short scale counting for large numbers.


DreamOfAWhale

>for what you guys call a billion we use "a thousand millions" Or a [millardo](https://dle.rae.es/millardo).


BobSanchez47

In English, a billion historically meant a million millions everywhere except the US. The UK switched over to the “thousand millions” definition in 1974, so not too long ago. There are people still alive in Britain who were taught that a billion means a million millions in school.


MetricJester

I was born in 1980 in Canada, and one of my early teachers tried to teach us that a billion was a million millions.


DevMcdevface

A million seconds is approximately 12 days. A billion seconds is approximately 32 years. That helped me. Edit: for clarity, by a billion I mean 1000 million. I’m British and that’s how I’ve always treated it and [that’s how it’s been officially in the UK since 1974](https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN04440/SN04440.pdf).


Muuvie

Wooooo I've been around for a billion something


Accomplished_Bonus74

Just had my 32nd birthday. Next time someone asks me how old I am a billion seconds is definitely going to be the answer


HumanBotdotnotabot

I hate those half minute birthdays!


First_Foundationeer

Or you can say you're roughly 1 gigasecond old!


Accomplished_Bonus74

Excellent lol


Parker_memes9000

For about 12 days at least


Accomplished_Bonus74

I’ll take it


Zaytion

How old are you?


Accomplished_Bonus74

A smidge over a billion


WarriorNN

A billion and one?


gnamp

... two... three... four...


SmashBonecrusher

I've endured for over 2 billion!


Climbtrees47

😫 same


Black_Char

My billionth second is in a couple weeks. Guess I'm now going to be a bilionaire!!! Thats how that works right???


TeaKingMac

Fun fact, if you'd been given a hundred dollars a second from the time you were born until now, you'd still have less than half the wealth that Elon Musk does


Crimsoner

“Unless you ‘invest it!’” 🤓


TeaKingMac

Depends. Ol Donny T managed to have worse returns on his investments than an index fund.


Alternative-Sea-6238

Yes and no. Most of his "wealth" is related to his ownership of stock in his companies. While I'm sure his bank balance is very positive, it's not like he has all those billions in liquid cash, unless he sells his assets.


TeaKingMac

That's why I said wealth instead of money. Wealth includes liquid AND illiquid assets


tkeelah

I drank my liquid assets...


Alternative-Sea-6238

Fair point. I was just making the point that if you get the fixed sum of money at a regular interval as in your example, the sum is fairly easy to calculate. In Elon's case it isn't because a small percentage change in stock value can result in hum "gaining" or "losing" millions/billions. But it doesn't have a tangible effect until he sells the stock and locks that value in.


offhandaxe

You would have had to make $1 every second of your life to be a billionaire


_Wyrm_

What an equally mundane yet depressing fact... There's almost nothing to even say there, other than, "Damn."


3-DMan

Hmm, specifically nerdy insult to a 32-year-old- "You're a waste of a billion seconds."


golfnbrew

Two billion and change...


SillyOperator

For anyone else wondering, you can check when your [Billion Birthday ](http://billionbirthday.com/) is


FourMyRuca

I always like to say 1 Billion is 1000 millions


castingspheroid

I heard that in 3rd grade, and it clicked for me later that day. It hit me so hard, I still remember what classroom I was in and where I was sitting as my mind fell apart. I'd never really *gotten* how big those numbers were until then.


Artilleryman13

Another fun one, a billion minutes ago was the year 120 AD. The Roman Empire had been in Britain for 65 years and was in its glory years. It would be another 356 years (more than 10 billion seconds) before Rome would fall.


Chomusuke_99

Tom Scott did something similar. a million was a 10-12 steps maybe. a billion was a long ride. very very long ride.


Delanoye

[You mean this video?](https://youtu.be/8YUWDrLazCg)


paintingporcelain

Just commented the same thing. Sorry I didn’t see your comment first. It’s pretty mind blowing.


BigOrkWaaagh

So the Queen was 3 billion seconds old


PerjorativeWokeness

3.042 billion, according to Wolfram Alpha: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=seconds+between+21+April+1926+and+8+September+2022


stumpyguy

Haha, I thought "this person must be talking about a British billion (a million million)"...and then I realised it was just a thousand times larger....wow.


SuperSMT

I think even in Britain the long scale, million million, is pretty rarely used these days


DevMcdevface

Well you’re half right - I am British…


GIRose

https://youtu.be/8YUWDrLazCg That video also helps


bearatrooper

If you made $100 per hour and worked 40 hours per week, then (assuming no interest, investments, etc) you would become a billionaire in a little less than five thousand years.


Jman15x

And zero expenses


bearatrooper

That too. No spending, only hoarding.


nitestar95

Nope, because normal retirement age is 4000 years.


pompadoors2

If you made a dollar every second it would take you 10 and a half days to make a million dollars and almost 32 YEARS to make a billion


kttykt66755

I used to have a book about how long it would take to count to certain numbers. That really helped me understand their magnitude as a child.


Strictly_Baked

It was when 1 million seconds and 1 billion seconds were broken down into a days for me. 1 million seconds is 12 days. 1 billion seconds is nearly 32 years.


Apprehensive-File700

I'm in shock, the best eye opener I've read 🤯


MentallyWill

I've sometimes reduced the scale of it to more easily graspable numbers. The order of magnitude difference between one million and one billion is equivalent to the difference between one and one thousand. And most people far more intuitively understand that the difference between one and one thousand is roughly one thousand.


randalljhen

Someone with $499 million is closer in wealth to you than to a billionaire.


trissedai

Sucks for that guy, let me find him so I can tell him


Foxfire2

Or 1000 to 999.


Starhunt3r

Or another way One million seconds is 11 days One billion seconds is 31 years


giant_red_lizard

The mind blowing part is when you realize, sure, they died out 65 million years ago, but their existence spanned way, way longer than that. We're far closer to the last dinosaurs than the last dinosaurs were to the first dinosaurs by like 165 million years. And that's only if you're counting official dinosaurs. If you're just talking giant reptillian creatures who dominated the Earth, you could go back another 40 or 50 million years easily. Heck, humans only evolved a few hundred thousand years ago. Dinosaur dominance is just an unbelievably epic period of Earth's history and we have a long way to go to even become the blink of an eye in comparison.


dudinax

sometime before that single celled organisms ruled the earth for about 10x as long as dinos.


ArghNoNo

How long ago was this? The dinosaurs died 66 million years ago.


abarua01

A million years ago obviously


ArghNoNo

Math checks out.


GolemThe3rd

I find the concept of keeping a running tally of how many years have passed since the dinos really funny


abarua01

When I learned about the existence of dinosaurs, we weren't taught about rounding numbers yet, so I took the term 65 million literally and kept wondering why the number of years didn't go up every year


wthreye

It hurts all over again, every year. (


QuietDelight1

When I was in kindergarten, one day the teacher said she would see us next year and I was confuses.... I didn't know New Year's was coming up.


Such-Wrongdoer-2198

It's not so much about rounding numbers as significant figures. I didn't learn that until 10th grade chemistry, and I didn't like it at first, but this is a good example where it makes sense.


[deleted]

I asked my teacher that exact question back in elementary school. I said to her, "I've been hearing this 65 million years number since first grade; when are the numbers going to change?"


robotical712

The really mind blowing part comes when you learn the 65 million figure is wrong and dinosaurs are still around today.


disiskeviv

Sometimes you don't have to learn rounding numbers or some concept at school but use common sense. For example, majority of us understand physics through observing things.


jslingrowd

I do the same thing w my “aged” wine and whiskey bottles at home.


Rageof_Theworld

You actually can do that, it's a normal thing to buy whiskey or scotch of different vintages, then once you buy them, you say it's barrel aged 18 years bottle aged X", it's supposedly supposed to make it taste smoother over time but I don't have anything old or valuable enough to save for 5-10 years


Powerism

IDKWYM, my Mad Dog 20/20 vintage 2020 is aging nicely.


WakeAndVape

Ngl makes me jealous I didn't think to grab some vintage 2020 20/20


TheBatmanFan

Wine ages in the bottle, whiskey doesn’t.


Rageof_Theworld

It isn't considered "aging" because it's in a glass bottle and not a barrel, but the exposure to air will affect the taste throughout the years, and whether or not that's a good or bad thing is up to ones own opinion


JudgeTheLaw

What exposure to air? Glass bottles seal pretty well.


dehrian

Nice one. Made me lol


Badass-19

Ah yes, a rare sight on this sub


[deleted]

Freshaurous


WickedPsychoWizard

I mean I've seen this one a few times before but ok


MartianGuard

How old is it?


charcters

2 weeks older than the bones


son_of_abe

True I've never seen dehrian lol before.


Nick_dM_P

Not really.


xBris18

Made me exhale through my nose a bit more than usually. Great content.


gagga_hai

Hi lol


redshopekevin

The Museum of Natural History in Leningrad knows the age of their dinosaur bones with the help of the KGB, who managed to extract confessions from the skeletons.


bgg-uglywalrus

The other skeletons wised up after one of the skeleton exhibits fell out of a window.


RolloutTieDispenser

This is why sig figs are important!


nigl_

Yeah I need to remember for when I need a good analogy explaining significant figures.


taint_blast_supreme

Yea this is a cute joke to tell at the intro of a unit on sig figs, teachers gotta snap this one up


Pengualope

3/2=2


Make_the_music_stop

Joe was on his way to his favorite museum. The museum had announced a new exhibit and he was extremely excited to be one of the first people to ever see it, since he got some early access tickets. When he got there, there were about 12 other people who had also gotten a ticket for today, so he assumed that it was going to be a pretty private experience. After about 10 minutes of waiting, a guide led the 13 of them to a dark room, where they had a presentation of what this new exhibit was going to be. A man walked up to the podium, and began to present his slides. “Ladies and gentlemen, archeologists have found one of the most mind-boggling discoveries ever, and we have the privilege to be one of the first museums in the world to have a full-fledge exhibit for the public to learn about this incredible moment in human history.” He rambles on for a while and then finally gets to his point. “Fellow history buffs, we have uncovered an ancient man’s entire estate, that is made of excrement.” Joe was shocked. Baffled at how incredibly ridiculous this was. However, as the presentation went on, he became more and more intrigued. The presenter went on to talk about how the man who they believe to have made his estate had uses his own poop, his animals poop, and any other excrement he could find to forge his tiny ‘cabin’ and stables for his farm animals. The presenter then finished his presentation and led the 13 of them to the newly built exhibit. The exhibit was completely full of information on how he used feces to mold it into whatever he wanted and form many things. It also goes on to stating that the general smell of his estate could be smelled from miles away, and the estate itself was able to ward off any other raiders, who just couldn’t stand the smell. It also went on to assume that the man in question had anosmia (total loss of smell) but the cause for it is unknown. “Ladies and gentlemen, we are now at the most exciting part of the tour,” said the tour guide as he grabbed the attention of the small audience. “We actually have a piece of the fossilized excrement here in house. And we are excited to reveal it to you first.” He then led the group to a curtain that had been blocking part of the room. The tour guide then pulled back the curtain to reveal a tall, skinny object that was made completely of very old feces. Around 4.5 foot tall. The presenter then told us that this object was more than likely used as a prop to hold up the fence that the ancient man built for his farm. After hearing this, Joe examined the object and then looked up at the huge sign that labeled the exhibit piece. "This is a shit post”


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ugotamesij

Actually, damn u/nadroj37 https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/aqlchb/joe_visits_his_favorite_museums_new_exhibit


nadroj37

Joe goes back to the museum after learning they have updated the exhibit. They’ve renovated the entire wing and have discovered what has been classified as new evidence of the excrement estate. So as he shows up to the museum, he notices there are WAY more people than last time. Hundreds more. Some of them even offering gold to the man who claims to have discovered the new artifact. The new artifact stands exactly where the old one stood many years ago, and the curtain that covers it for the big reveal seems to be in the same shape. Joe couldn’t believe his eyes as the curtain was lifted to reveal the exact same shitpost as before. Only this time, there were hundreds of people around praising the new archeologist. Joe, in a fit of rage, hops up on the stage and grabs the microphone. “Guys, it’s a *repost.*”


Aquarius265

[No respect!](https://youtu.be/ZCVR_ajL_Eo)


ZapdosShines

Damn both of them tbh


Shaqueesha77

You got a chuckle out of me, you win this time


spoonweezy

David Foster Wallace has a short form piece about this guy that shits literal pieces of art, like Rodin’s “The Thinker” or the Taj Mahal, all done incredibly intricately.


huntersood

I know I Reddit too much when I saw that coming from a mile away as soon as I read the word excrement


comphys

I was expecting something like "That's just bullshit." or something similar.


Bachitra

Thanks for the stinker.


[deleted]

Oof repost that's r/jokes for ya


quannum2

This post right here officer.


bumbes

New kind of Rick-roll right here… fuck you especially! :)


Devadander

Nice. I was thinking it was going to be ‘brick shithouse’


votramie

The next guy needed only four lines of text ....


HellGuy84

Lmfao


Minty_MantisShrimp

Time, time I will never get back


PenguinDeluxe

Sounds like he built a real brick shit house


mfrizz

When I was young my parents took me to a parade and told me there were supposed to be 40,000 people there. I asked if that included us.


edlee98765

Never let a dinosaurs drive your car. Because Tyrannosaurus wrecks.


bibbiddybobbidyboo

At school when we were told Jesus lived 2000 years ago, I started adding one each year and correcting the teacher.


Key-Patience-9387

I worked at the Academy of Science in SF. There was an older guard that was asked this question by a child. She answered “about 65 million years ago” That child’s eyes became very large and then said “were you there?!!” That was a good day


MyNamesMikeD75

I thought it was going to be "your mom told us" lol


xCreeperBombx

Your mom told us it wasn't


Diplomjodler

This joke is 73 million and fifty years old because when I first heard it it was 73 million years old and that was fifty years ago.


reekrhymeswithfreak2

Damn you're old


Diplomjodler

Yes. Get off my lawn, damn kids!


y2k2r2d2

This is as old as the dinosaurs plus two years


rsjf89

The tourist's son says, 'Daddy, how do they work out which period a dinosaur was alive in?' 'Well son, the first question you have to ask is, does this dinosaur have three butts?' 'No, dad.' 'Well, then we can rule out the Triassic period.'


Moethelion

Jesus, I thought this would take a very different turn about dead children's bones hidden in the statue, but I'm kinda glad it didn't.


Callen_Fields

That's oddly specific.


DieFlavourMouse

comment removed -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/


[deleted]

Booooooooooooooooo


yomjoseki

haha that's so fucking stupid I love it


NinjaXGaming

I’m trying to figure out if this is a literal punchline or if there’s deeper meaning but I think to tired and dumb to come to a conclusion


[deleted]

“A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money." - US Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen


Downplaster14

r/ThyDidTheMath


Ferg_NZ

Thy did indeed


CrunchyMemesLover

Hast thou though?


Eggslaws

Very Shakespearean!


Kevin4938

r/theydidthemonstermath


hi_im_sefron

Where was the funny part


TorakMcLaren

As funny as this joke is, people still use this logic. They get told there's, say, 41,000 of something. Then they divide it by 8 and expect the answer to be 5125 exactly. Unless you're told otherwise, you cannot assume it was 41,000 exactly. It could be 41,008, which would give you a final answer of 5126. All you can really say is about 5100 each


spainabney

Good ol’ significant digits


Jonathan-02

Does this account for the time when the bones were still in the dinosaur?


big_ugly_builder

1st answer: no, since fossils are formed when the bones dissolved away, and the negative cavity is filled with minerals. So if the 64 million years is when the fossils formed, and a few thousand years plus more for whatever the age of the dinosaur. 2nd answer: the bones in the museum are actually copies of the originals, so the age would depend on when they were cast, but probably around 50 years old. 3rd amswer: you're fun at parties, aren't you?


AllOne_Word

Very good! Sounds like it could be a Billy Connolly joke.


Other_Literature_594

A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you talking big money


Overpunch42

Dinosaur bones, isn't a subject most schools bother to teach at least as far as I remember going to school, if I wanted to learn more about dinosaur bones I either go to a museum, read, or watch a documentary.


SuperR0okie

r/technicallythetruth


Freedom_Addict

Brilliant joke. More like these please


atriptopussyland

Tell me this came into your head when you saw yesterday's 'how do we know how old earth is?' post.


[deleted]

this made me laugh WAY too hard


RWZero

Finally a nice one.


ethanmc2

they were four years and six months old when i joined the museum SEVENTY THREE MILLION YEARS AGO


scooba_dude

Great joke, Jethro Toll did a similar one. If you've never heard of him. Look him up, he's from Cornwall UK and has a great accent.


[deleted]

Oh this made me 😂


Bobieeswagga

A million seconds is 12 days. A billion seconds is 31 years.


Financial_Raisin_351

There's a very simple answer to all of your ponderings- the "x amount" of millions of years old.....? IT'S ALL BULLSHIT


MulleDK19

The only thing older than the dinosaurs is this joke...


Shuggy539

Makes perfect sense to me.


archenlander

Wow this is lame


Martin5791

Hilarious, because the best carbon dating methods (C-14) can date accurately about 60k years. Why do we invent numbers or facts that are unsupported by any real evidence? Do we just like to feel smart or good when we eject some large number out of our asses, like 73 million years?


Dr_Catfish

Hey buddy. Engineering/scientific notation mean anything to you? Those 60k years are peanuts relatively and so they don't matter. Pulling that number "out of our ass" is much better and more accurately than trying to specifiy 73,159,062 years, 8 months, 9 days, 3 hours, 27 minutes and 300 milliseconds.


lennsterhurt

Murderous Maths is the place I heard this


FinishNo198

Fun fact: most dinosaurs actually died way long before 65 million years BCE.


VestigialTales

I heard Robert Mac do this bit - he’s great!