Official Random Fact/Random Thought Thread!

Knotorious said:
I don't know what to think about this.
Click to expand...

While I find the Mandela effect to be supremely intriguing, that was an AI version of Joe's voice.

Aside from that...

Everytime CERN starts the LHC, wierd shit starts happening. The Mandela effect website has forum that's pretty active, and they monitor CERNs activity and the various correlations between that activity and reported "ME" incidents.

Some belive that those subtle changes in logs and branding, constitute a "road map" of sorts, allowing you to determine which reality you're currently in. Things like how the PepsiCo logo is oriented, the Chevron gas station sign is another one. A classic one is the little golden books, in specific, a certian family of bears. They're either the Bernstein or Burnstain bears. And of course how did Mandela die? A hunger strike in prison, decades ago, or old age, just a few years back.

Revisionist history is a real problem, but not so big as simply not teaching it. How many people in our age group or younger know how WW1 was started. The cause of the Civil War has been obfuscated, and nobody talks about reconstruction.

How many people will tell you we lost Vietnam? They are wrong. Operation Linebacker II bombed them into a treaty, and we left. Not the most elegant pull out, but neither was Afghanistan.
 
  • Thread Starter Thread Starter
  • #278
Random Fact: When was the first organ transplant? On December 23, 1954, the first successful living-related kidney transplant led by Dr. Joseph Murray and Dr. David Hume at Brigham Hospital in Boston: A kidney was transplanted from Ronald Herrick into his identical twin, Richard.

Random Fact: How much of the Earth's fresh water is locked up in ice sheets and glaciers? The amount of water locked up in ice and snow is only about 1.7 percent of all water on Earth, but the majority of total freshwater on Earth, about 68.7 percent, is held in ice caps and glaciers.

Where is all of Earth's water allocated?

Earths Water.png
 
Knotorious said:
Random Fact: When was the first organ transplant? On December 23, 1954, the first successful living-related kidney transplant led by Dr. Joseph Murray and Dr. David Hume at Brigham Hospital in Boston: A kidney was transplanted from Ronald Herrick into his identical twin, Richard.

Random Fact: How much of the Earth's fresh water is locked up in ice sheets and glaciers? The amount of water locked up in ice and snow is only about 1.7 percent of all water on Earth, but the majority of total freshwater on Earth, about 68.7 percent, is held in ice caps and glaciers.

Where is all of Earth's water allocated?

View attachment 135288
Click to expand...
Nice caveat on the transplant. That's a very nice way of avoiding the icky business of WW2 and the human experimentation carried out.

Did you know that almost all of the information we have on the effects of hypothermia and frostbite came from the Japanese freezing people alive? They also taught is that humans are 70-80% water, by weighing people, then freeze drying them and weighing again.

Beware what rabbit holes you fall into...
 
  • Thread Starter Thread Starter
  • #280
I meant to say "first SUCCESSFUL organ transplant." I did know that about the Japanese. They were vicious.
 
Japan's Unit 731. Google that shit. Pure nightmare fuel.

I think the first successful transplant was at either Auschwitz or Dauchau. I dont remember which organ it was. They did perform several successful open heart surgeries as well.
 
  • Thread Starter Thread Starter
  • #282
"While Unit 731 researchers arrested by Soviet forces were tried at the December 1949 Khabarovsk war crimes trials, those captured by the United States were secretly given immunity in exchange for the data gathered during their human experiments.[6] The United States helped cover up the human experimentations and handed stipends to the perpetrators.[1] The Americans co-opted the researchers' bioweapons information and experience for use in their own biological warfare program, much like what had been done with Nazi German researchers in Operation Paperclip.[7][8]"

Source: Unit 731 - Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731
 
Yep, those guys. A little digging should inspire some insomnia in anyone.

The Nazis were no better, but most everyone knows the holocaust, not so the Rape of Nanking. Another one to look into for an insight into the depths of human depravity.
 
  • Thread Starter Thread Starter
  • #288
Kaveman said:
More lips or assholes in a gas station hot dog?
Click to expand...
Considering any animal whose byproducts will be getting used to make hot dogs would universally have two lips versus just one asshole, I'm inclined to believe that a gas station hot dog might typically contain more lips However, the reality is that this may not always be the case. =-P
 
Knotorious said:
Considering any animal whose byproducts will be getting used to make hot dogs would universally have two lips versus just one asshole, I'm inclined to believe that a gas station hot dog might typically contain more lips However, the reality is that this may not always be the case. =-P
Click to expand...
That's sexist! Women have more lips than men...
 
I'm not sure these qualify as "facts". It's a list I found online, and has just the right amount of truthiness to seem believable, but also smells a little like bullshit. It's interesting to consider though, and perhaps someone here knows enough to refute some of the entries...

###

The next time you are washing your hands and complain because the water temperature isn't just how you like it, think about how things used to be.
Here are some facts about the 1500s:

Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and they still smelled pretty good by June.. However, since they were starting to smell . ...... . Brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting Married.

People used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families used to all pee in a pot & then once a day it was taken & Sold to the tannery.......if you had to do this to survive you were "Piss Poor" But worse than that were the really poor folk who couldn't even afford to buy a pot......they "didn't have a pot to piss in" and were the lowest of the low.

Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children. ..Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it.. Hence the saying, "Don't throw the baby out with the Bath water!"

Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof... Hence the saying "It's raining cats and dogs."

There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That's how canopy beds came into existence.

The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the saying, ”Dirt poor."

The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entrance-way. Hence: a thresh hold.

In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire.. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme: Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old.

Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could, "bring home the bacon." They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and chew the fat.

Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.

Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the upper crust.
Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would Sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial.. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a wake.

England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive... So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift.) to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be, saved by the bell or was considered a dead ringer.
 
  • Thread Starter Thread Starter
  • #291
lxskllr said:
I'm not sure these qualify as "facts". It's a list I found online, and has just the right amount of truthiness to seem believable, but also smells a little like bullshit. It's interesting to consider though, and perhaps someone here knows enough to refute some of the entries...

###

The next time you are washing your hands and complain because the water temperature isn't just how you like it, think about how things used to be.
Here are some facts about the 1500s:

Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and they still smelled pretty good by June.. However, since they were starting to smell . ...... . Brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting Married.

People used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families used to all pee in a pot & then once a day it was taken & Sold to the tannery.......if you had to do this to survive you were "Piss Poor" But worse than that were the really poor folk who couldn't even afford to buy a pot......they "didn't have a pot to piss in" and were the lowest of the low.

Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children. ..Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it.. Hence the saying, "Don't throw the baby out with the Bath water!"

Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof... Hence the saying "It's raining cats and dogs."

There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That's how canopy beds came into existence.

The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the saying, ”Dirt poor."

The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entrance-way. Hence: a thresh hold.

In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire.. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme: Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old.

Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could, "bring home the bacon." They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and chew the fat.

Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.

Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the upper crust.
Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would Sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial.. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a wake.

England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive... So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift.) to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be, saved by the bell or was considered a dead ringer.
Click to expand...

Thanks for sharing that with my thread! I greatly appreciate it! I honestly hope the majority of these are factually accurate, because of how elegant most of these answers are...however, I agree with you that a few of them did seem suspiciously convenient. I'm personally very well aware of how confusing the etymology of a huge number of words and phrases can be. The explanations for both is sometimes disorienting, not intuitive or uninteresting So when I see a list of perfectly demonstrated phrases using historical context, it seems like some of the information might be hyperbole or speculation.

But as I said, my hope is that everything is factually accurate. I very much WANT all of these to be legitimate because, even if they aren't, the explanations are actually rather well thought out. Maybe a list was made which contains a small percentage of the phases or terms with the most elegantly explained answers (this list). If anyone doesn't believe that there exists easily 50X or more terms or phrases with equally as beautifully explained origins, then they are likely not fully aware of how many different examples currently exist.

I'm way too lazy to research any of these. Whenever I make a post that claims to be a "fact," I am also at risk of potentially sharing misinformation. Sharing information with all of you on this thread is something I do to relax and have fun, so I don't spend unrealistic amounts of time verifying the information I'm posting. My protocol is to at least find three different websites that echo the same information before I share it on this thread, making it reasonable to assume that my "fact" is actually, indeed, a fact. This process takes less than one minute using Google and it's the least I can do to ensure that I don't continue the dissemination of misinformation.

I'm not saying that you were supposed to do that. I genuinely enjoyed reading the list you shared. I'm trying to relate to your skepticism of some of those facts. There have been countless instances in the history of the internet where inaccurate information about anything whatsoever has reigned superior in the amount of sources perpetuating that information, which exist throughout the entire chronology of the World Wide Web. Sometimes misinformation will prevail for months or even years or decades (or longer) before someone comes around who actually cares enough to attempt to verify or disprove the claim or claims made and to set the record straight when necessary. So at any point, I run the risk of sharing a "fact" that isn't actually a fact.

For anyone wondering, I currently use Google's AI to produce an interesting and endlessly array of random facts. Simply assessed for the current times, so long as I rely on AI for ANY information whatsoever, I run a statistically significant (I realize I use this term a lot in my posts regarding satistics, but that's only because it is such a good way to say "a value you should care hugely about") risk of being provided information that is completely inaccurate, totally random, and highly erroneous. But so long as I try to locate two separate instances where this information is touted as being factual in a convincing matter, the odds of this happening is still acceptably low.

EDIT: I don't really know what my point was. I wasn't being critical of @lxskllr at all. I was babbling about facts, "facts," and the interwebs. Just grab a laser pointer and start pointing it at the ground by my feet. As soon as I see a shiny object, I will become distracted! I'll start chasing the laser pointer like a cat that just huffed 20 bales of catnip through a gas mask. And then I'll have shut up and spared you the rest of this monologue. =-D
 
  • Thread Starter Thread Starter
  • #293
"Fact" versus "Factoid" focused random fact:

The suffix "-oid" has multiple meanings:

  • In American English
    "-oid" is an adjective and noun suffix that means "resembling" or "like". It often implies an incomplete or imperfect resemblance to what is indicated by the preceding element. For example, "humanoid", "steroid", and "plantoid".
  • In Latin
    "-oid" is a Latin suffix that means "resembling" or "like". It is attached to the end of medical words and changes their meaning. For example, "Erythroid", "leukemoid", and "nucleoid".
  • In math
    "-oid" is used for horizontal categorization, such as "groupoid", "algebroid", and "ringoid".
  • In astronomy
    "-oid" comes from the Ancient Greek word eidos, which means form, likeness, or essence.
  • In investopedia
    "-oid" may refer to original issue discount, which is the discount in price from a bond's face value at the time a bond or other debt instrument is first issued.
"-oid" is derived from the Greek word oeidēs which means "resembling, having a specified form".

So, @Mick! is correct on many fronts.
 
Mick! said:
More like factoids.
I mean one in 25 people were buried alive in ‘old’ England?
Interesting where old sayings come from.
’skid row’ is an old one related to logging i believe.
Click to expand...
You are correct, little boom towns sprang up near logging operations, and often the skid road the logs came out on became the main street of the town. As the town developed (if it did) it would naturally build away from the old skid road, which with the towns oldest buildings, often ramshackle from the start, would devolve into the low rent district.
 
That's a cool story.

My random thought... Why does it always feel colder in the house than it does outside? I'll walk in the door, and think "Oh, chilly. Maybe I'll open the door to warm the house up", but when I check the thermometer, it's cooler outside. Today, it was 48° in the house, and 41° outside. I'd have bet $50 that it was warmer outside.
 
  • Thread Starter Thread Starter
  • #297
lxskllr said:
That's a cool story.

My random thought... Why does it always feel colder in the house than it does outside? I'll walk in the door, and think "Oh, chilly. Maybe I'll open the door to warm the house up", but when I check the thermometer, it's cooler outside. Today, it was 48° in the house, and 41° outside. I'd have bet $50 that it was warmer outside.
Click to expand...

Do you know how accurate your thermostat is? Sometimes there can exist large discrepancies between a signle temperature and the recorded temperature of two or more digital thermostats. Although your thermostat would be providing an unusually large discrepancy, most digital thermostat devices will recalibrate if you remove the battery, wait around ten seconds, and then replace the battery. On the other hand, it's possible that you simply mistakenly thought that your home was colder than the outdoors. Sometimes my instincts aren't accurate or correct either. This is a pretty commonplace occurrence for many people, relatively speaking. People overwhelmingly make many more correct decisions than bad decisions, so take the previous statement with a grain of salt.

Maybe your mind saw the outdoors and believed that it was warmer out than it actually was because of how the weather physically/visually appeared to exist. In other words, I've sometimes looked out a window first thing in the morning to see the sun out, animals everywhere, calm winds and everything looking pretty dry and believe that it's probably warm and nice out today. But then I might actually go outside and it turns out to be much colder than I expected. Most people have either stopped anticipating weather for a long time now or base their expectations of the weather on forecasts done by professionals. I'm the former. I live in Arizona, so I quite literally NEVER watch the weather or look at forecasts unless I'm going to do some alpining in a differen region or go for a climb...but sometimes, even when I'm going climbing, it's reasonable for me to expect that the weather is going to be nice all day, because that is pretty much always what happens. So I am able to simply venture out on a cloudless day, without checking the forecast, and have zero serious consequences resulting from "poor planning."

But sometimes, when I look out and see the sky is covered with clouds, the wind is blowing hard, and I think it's going to be colder (for example) than usual...because that's how my subconscious interpreted visual cues fom my environment and for no other real reason...it might actually turn out to be much warmer once I actually go outside and experience the weather. But I think this is a pretty commen phenomenon among most people throughout the world to speculate on most everything. Perhaps not openly, but internally, endlessly. As with anything, until we fully understand something, we all have ideas about what it is probably like. So it's perfectly natural to interpret the appearance of your surroundings as having certain qualities; but you are fully aware that you are speculating and so, when you do find out your assumptions are incorrect, you don't really think about it or concern yourself with it. Just because you subconsciously made a speculation about the outdoor temperature doesn't mean that you also aren't going to go outside and discover the correct answer for yourself. Just because you might speculate doesn't mean you will act on that information. People who have successfully evolved over time have a long history of basing as much of their behaviors off of factual information versus acting on speculation.

Anyways, I'm done rambling. Everyone is now free to continue on with their lives. =-D
 
It's an analog thermometer with a probe that goes outside. Never checked calibration, but it appears to be close.

I think your second paragraph is probably correct, but with a slightly different setup. I suspect I have expectations of what it should feel like inside, so when it's cooler than anticipated, it feels colder than the absolute temperatures would indicate. IOW, it's winter, so I expect it to be cold outside. I don't consider 41° to be particularly cold, so it's a warm day. Going inside, I expect it to be relatively warm, but since I don't run a lot of heat and it's 48°, it feels cold.
 
Humidity and air movement also dictate temp and feel.
But I can say with certainty, that if I can see the flames in a fire box, I feel warmer than if I can't.
You can literally "fool" folks with a fake set of flames in a room.
 
I feel homes can also radiate cold once the walls and floors are cooled off. Noticed here. The temp in the house is like 65 to 68 and feels like 45. Touch the wall or bare feet on the floor tells you they are cooler than the air temp.
 
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