TIL

Discussion, in general

Re: TIL

Postby Australia » Wed Oct 03, 2018 8:06 pm

Apparently it's poor form to repeatedly say 'Hiya Georgie' in a Pennywise voice to your three-month old nephew. Well, a) his parents shouldn't have named him George because he'll be getting that his entire life and b) they shouldn't have let me anywhere near him, my step-sister is well aware I'm a terrible human being.
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Re: TIL

Postby cmsellers » Fri Oct 05, 2018 6:27 am

Guava skins are edible and taste faintly of pine resin.
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Re: TIL

Postby Aquila89 » Sat Oct 06, 2018 3:25 pm

I was reading up on Clarance Thomas and I found a 1995 article in The New York Review of Books, reviewing several books about his confirmation. One of them was written by John C. Danforth, a Republican senator, one of Thomas's biggest supporters and a personal friend of his. And there's a quite interesting story in it about how Thomas first reacted to Anita Hill's allegations.

Thomas, according to Danforth, was going into a state of hysterical withdrawal, almost catatonic. He was unable to focus while his own lawyers questioned him. He lay clenched in a fetal position. He sobbed convulsively and hyperventilated before many of his intimates, saying that his destroyers had finally succeeded. Danforth saw many of these symptoms, and Thomas’s wife, Virginia, told him there were some she would not confide even to him. Danforth did not want to know more: “There are matters that should remain private between a husband and a wife—certainly matters that are hard to include in a book about a good man who is a friend. That a future justice of the Supreme Court was writhing on the floor is awful enough to tell.”
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As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.
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Re: TIL

Postby Deathclaw_Puncher » Tue Oct 09, 2018 7:54 pm

TIL that, in Catonese, "Picasso" sounds somewhat like "Buk ga si sok" (written in Chinese characters as "不加思索"), which means "not putting any thought into it".
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Re: TIL

Postby Absentia » Tue Oct 09, 2018 9:25 pm

Halloween is a Christianized and modernized version of an ancient Gaelic festival called Samhain. The Irish Celts believed that the periods roughly halfway between the equinox and the solstice (November 1 and May 1) were when the spirits of the dead were able to leave wherever they hang out for the rest of the year and walk the earth.

The origin of trick-or-treating was the ritual of giving offerings to these spirits to secure their blessings for the winter, or else risk them coming to your home and doing mischief. Eventually it became traditional for people to dress up as spirits and receive the offerings on their behalf. The religious significance of the ritual slowly eroded after the introduction of Christianity until it became just a fun thing for children and probably-drunk revelers to do.
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Re: TIL

Postby cmsellers » Tue Oct 09, 2018 10:04 pm

Absentia wrote:Halloween is a Christianized and modernized version of an ancient Gaelic festival called Samhain. The Irish Celts believed that the periods roughly halfway between the equinox and the solstice (November 1 and May 1) were when the spirits of the dead were able to leave wherever they hang out for the rest of the year and walk the earth.

See, I knew that because I had a sixth grade teacher who taught us about the Celtic calendar. I got on the local news a year or two later, explaining how May Day had derived from Beltane to a reporter at a local May Day festival.

She also taught us abut how Groundhog's Day derived from Imbolc (actually, that's only one theory), but sadly I didn't grow up near Punxsutawney and therefore never got the chance to use that one on the local news.
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Re: TIL

Postby cmsellers » Fri Oct 12, 2018 7:20 am

Cats don't just give you toxoplasmosis, they can also make you allergic to bacon.
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Re: TIL

Postby sunglasses » Fri Oct 12, 2018 10:25 pm

That if I don't make something part of my routine I just neglect it.

Sorry TCS.

I have scattered brians. I mean brains.
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Re: TIL

Postby iMURDAu » Sat Oct 13, 2018 8:36 pm

Absentia wrote:Halloween is a Christianized and modernized version of an ancient Gaelic festival called Samhain. The Irish Celts believed that the periods roughly halfway between the equinox and the solstice (November 1 and May 1) were when the spirits of the dead were able to leave wherever they hang out for the rest of the year and walk the earth.

The origin of trick-or-treating was the ritual of giving offerings to these spirits to secure their blessings for the winter, or else risk them coming to your home and doing mischief. Eventually it became traditional for people to dress up as spirits and receive the offerings on their behalf. The religious significance of the ritual slowly eroded after the introduction of Christianity until it became just a fun thing for children and probably-drunk revelers to do.


I learned that from the Ghostbusters cartoon. That's where I heard of Samhain and I learned more from reading about it. I wonder if today a child under ten could check out books on old religions and the occult without anyone saying something.

TIL the plot of the second episode of the Ghostbusters cartoon is very similar to the main plot of the second movie. Which would be released a few years later. The ghost "Killawatt" gains his energy through negativity and feeds off of it. Talk about foreshadowing.
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Re: TIL

Postby CarrieVS » Sat Oct 27, 2018 11:38 pm

TIL it's not entirely uncommon to break an arm arm-wrestling. That in itself is not especially surprising but what astonished me is that it's the humerus - the upper arm - that breaks, not the forearm (radius and/or ulna.)

Apparently when you arm-wrestle you rotate your shoulder as hard as you can while your elbow is fixed in position, and if you push hard enough while your opponent doesn't give any ground, you can just put so much torque on your humerus that it snaps.

(To be clear, it didn't happen to me. I just heard about it.)
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Re: TIL

Postby Anglerphobe » Sun Oct 28, 2018 12:18 am

People also get pretty gruesome shoulder injuries from arm wrestling. The loser often gets a sudden, instant Americana as a result of the competing forces. There is sometimes an audible tearing noise.
It also has the potential to do serious damage to the ends of all the bones in the elbow. Brazilian Jujutsu legend Ronaldo Souza had to have surgery to remove this big pot of broken off bone and cartilage fragments from his elbow joint from stresses similar to those imposed by arm wrestling.
somewhat disgusting in context
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Arm wrestling is probably even worse, because the force on the body is so massive and instantaneous.
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To sharpen others, when themselves are blunt."

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Re: TIL

Postby JamishT » Sun Oct 28, 2018 12:29 am

Yeah, I don't watch arm wrestling gifs or videos anymore, I've been traumatized too often.
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Re: TIL

Postby Absentia » Sat Nov 03, 2018 1:53 am

Louis Pasteur was kind of a dick. One of his most famous developments, the first successful attenuated vaccine (vaccine using a lab-grown, weakened form of pathogen), was more or less stolen wholesale from a guy you've never heard of called Jean Toussaint. Toussaint was working with cholera bacteria and offered Pasteur, whom he admired, an opportunity to examine his preliminary findings before he was ready to publish. Pasteur simply copied Toussaint's method, and even though Toussaint published first, Pasteur was able to claim all the glory and money by virtue of his higher profile (and his willingness to lie shamelessly).

For years Pasteur refused to reveal the exact method he used to create his vaccines (which would prove he was a fraud), or to give credit or even mention Toussaint in his papers.
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Re: TIL

Postby cmsellers » Sat Nov 03, 2018 5:25 am

Duck fat is half monounsaturated fat, which is why it is liquid at room temperature and also why I should stop throwing it out.
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Re: TIL

Postby cmsellers » Sat Nov 17, 2018 2:34 am

There is a children's song which popped into my head for some reason. I haven't thought of it since Google was a thing, so google it I did. In the process, I learned that it's "Skidamarink" or "Skinnamarink" not "Skiddly-rink-a-dink-a-dink" and also that the original version has actual verses.

As a kid, I used to sing a parody that went "Tiddlywink-a-dink-a-dink," not sure if that's the cause of or a result of my confusion.
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