this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
172 points (95.3% liked)

Asklemmy

43946 readers
634 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 151 points 1 year ago (5 children)

70% of the worlds surface is covered in water. None of that water is fizzy. Therefore the earth is technically flat…

I’ll be my coat, no need to send the pitchforks.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago (3 children)

You're so wrong!

Only 70% of the Earth is flat.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago

Banned for being too fun

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 120 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Many people who die "of old age" have an utterly miserable time of it at the end, sometimes for months or years. Medical treatment to keep a person alive when they've already lost their faculties irrecoverably can be incredibly cruel.

There's a reason that longevity research focuses on prolonging healthy life, not just prolonging life processes.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 83 points 1 year ago (5 children)

"Stranger Danger" is largely a myth as the most likely place for a child to be abused is in their own home and the most likely culprit is a trusted family member.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's why I don't trust family members that would abuse my kids.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I don't trust myself with my kids either since I'm a close relative, I exclusively only entrust my kids to totally random strangers off the Internet.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] [email protected] 80 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Your eyes have “immune privilege” meaning your immune system effectively does not know they exist as it would attack them and make you go blind if it did.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago

Additional unfun fact, in case the implication goes by anyone; some few folks have discovered exactly how much it sucks when your immune system discovers your eyes and have, indeed, gone blind because of it :(

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Meaning, if you ever get a cut in your eye, go to the doctor, or else you'll lose the eye.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
[–] [email protected] 72 points 1 year ago (2 children)

There's tons of carbon frozen in Arctic permafrost. As the planet warms up, the ice melts, dumping more CO2 into the atmosphere and causing a runaway effect.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Yet we can't runaway from that problem

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 60 points 1 year ago

Statistically speaking, 30 of the dalmatians in the movie 101 Dalmatians were deaf.

[–] [email protected] 53 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (8 children)

[This comment has been deleted by an automated system]

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Just in case anyone was looking for a slickly-animated, duck-filled video with soothing narration that they could watch to learn more, here:

https://youtu.be/ijFm6DxNVyI

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (7 replies)
[–] [email protected] 49 points 1 year ago (5 children)

There is an athropod that will replace a fish's tongue.

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] [email protected] 46 points 1 year ago (3 children)

That our memories are all we really know and have. They're also volatile, and are usually changed to support a narrative.

Be careful.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hey remember when you promised to give me that $100? Don't tell me your memory has changed to support the narrative that you've forgotten!

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago

“There are a group of people who believe that each day, when they sleep, they die,” the old man continued. “They believe that consciousness doesn’t continue—that if it is interrupted, a new soul is born when the body awakes.” The old man continued....

“The thing about this philosophy is how difficult it is to disprove,” the old man said. “How do you know that you are the same you as yesterday? You would never know if a new soul came to inhabit your body, so long as it had the same memories. But then … if it acts the same, and thinks it is you, why would it matter? What is it to be you?"

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 45 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Fanta's creation was a result of American companies cutting off business with Germany during WWII. Coca Cola stopped sending ingredients to the local bottling plant in Germany but the ones there still wanted to work and make money. They took the ingredients they still had access to and made a new drink, Fanta! Once the war was over and Coca Cola made contact with them again they liked the new drink and just made it part of their brand.

I had to stop telling this normally as it tends to make people hate me for making them feel bad about drinking Fanta. I tell them it's fine. I drive a Volkswagen. But they still feel gross about it so I stopped telling people or at least tell them that they may not want to drink Fanta anymore and give them the choice.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 45 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

That there's notorious war criminals still alive such as Henry Kissinger that probably won't face any repercussions for their atrocities in their lifetimes.

Also there are billionaires and politicians in power that could easily at least start switching to clean energy and plastic alternatives but choose not to.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Kissinger received a fucking Nobel Peace Prize.

It was one of the defining moments of my childhood that turned me into a radical.

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 year ago (6 children)

A factoid is something that looks like a fact, but is not

load more comments (6 replies)
[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

There was once a study to test the amount of "poop particles" (feces based bacteria) on everyday objects. The study consisted of putting objects in places that would be more or less likely to have feces and a control group which was isolated from any source of feces based bacteria to the best of their ability. The microbiologists running the study were unable to tell which group was the control.

This is written to the best of my memory and some details may be wrong but the meaning is the same

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (13 children)

In graduate school I swabbed a public toilet seat and wiped the specimen in a Petri dish. My cohort swabbed the bottom of their shoe and did the same. The public toilet specimen grew virtually nothing. The shoe specimen grew the equivalent of a rainforest in bacteria.

load more comments (13 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The word "bed" looks like a bed

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There are more Panda Express restaurants than there are pandas.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago

The guy who shot john Wikes Booth was once solicited by prostitutes. He was so so appalled by his boner that he decided to castrate himself with pinking shears (scissors). He then goes to church and walks it off before seeing a doctor.

The real sad part is that he was undeniably driven insane by his work as a hat maker. Fur hats were shaped and then brushed with mercury, which led to hat makers getting mercury poisoning from the fumes.

Basically the poor guy melted his brain, chopped of his balls, enlisted into the union army and was forced to march on a boken leg, killed the most infamous man in the world, and was then locked up in an asylum.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (4 children)
load more comments (4 replies)
[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Conditions on the road of bones in Russia were so bad that and it was so hard for them all to be taken to a cemetery that, for every meter of road, there's a body of an overworked road worker buried underneath the road. And the road never got to anywhere good.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Several (if not all) of the astronauts who died in the Challenger explosion probably didn’t die immediately. They likely remained conscious and aware for at least several seconds, and died on impact with the ocean surface.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (6 children)

That fairness doesn't exist, everyone has their own idea of it based on their background, experience and belief system.

load more comments (6 replies)
[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (9 children)

You're never more than eight feet away from a spider.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Did you know that arachnids' legs are hydraulicly controlled? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arachnid_locomotion

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (8 replies)
[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (7 children)

I once, out of curiosity, mounted an expedition to the darkest regions of the internet, aka The Dark Web.

There's some shit there that can scar you for life. Don't ever go there, seriously.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I was on the Internet in the wild west period when you could just as easily stumble upon the kind of stuff you can only find on the dark web just making a Yahoo search.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Ahh the days of orgish, rotten, thisisacryforhelp, stile project, theync

Why, when I saw.my first decapitation video I was merely a boy!

Yeah, the internet used to be fucked. There were noooo rules. It was kinda like paradise but with landmines. Lots of landmines.

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (6 replies)
[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (9 children)

The age of consent in Germany is 14.

Also applies to other countries in Europe iirc, but I can't confirm that because that's not something I'm willing to put in my search history again.

Edit: It's more complex than that, read the replies by @[email protected] and @[email protected].

[–] [email protected] 50 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Age of consent in Germany is a staggered system. With 14 you're able to consent under specific conditions (them being there's no exploitative element to the relationship), but still could file charge against the older person if they're over 16. With 16 the first rule still applies; from 18 on you're able to consent, period.

So for example when I was 14 I had a boyfriend, also 14, and neither of us committed any crime under this ruling. The law acknowledges that teenagers are allowed to have relationships with each other while putting every borderline case through a case-by-case hearing at court.

It's actually a really good idea, so it kinda is a fun fact.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (8 replies)
[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Genocides typically are never actually punished and their main perpetrators often get away with it.

If you rape someone in the U.S., your odds of going to jail for it are only 0.01% . A hundredth of a percent. 0.01 out of 100 rapists ever actually see jail or prison.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

As I get older I see more unfair aspects of the world

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›