Teach Me Something

[Touch of Insanity]

Early Christian monks were actually desert hermits running away from taxes that the Romans imposed upon them and in the Egyptian area.

 

[Dervish]

Some fun things from Norse mythology,

The gods we're familiar with (Odin, Thor, Frigga, et cetera) belong to either the Vanir or Aesir, which are similar to the Olympian gods in the sense that they overthrew the Jotunn (often known as the Frost Giants), much like the Olympians overthrew the Titans. Loki was half Jotunn, and when Ragnarok came to pass, it was him who lead the Jotunn army across the Bifrost, the rainbow bridge that connects the realms to Asgard, where the Aesir and Vanir resided, from Jotunheimr, the realm of the frost giants. Loki is also the father to Fenrir, the great and terrible wolf that murders Odin during Ragnarok, Jormungandr, which is the giant serpent that surrounds Midgard (the realm where we live) and is destined to both slay Thor and die by his hand, Odin's steed, the 8 legged horse Sleipnir, and Hel, the goddess who rules over Helheimr, which is not unlike Hell or Hades and is a realm of torment. Hel, the goddess, is also fucking scary. Basically, the shit that comes out of Loki's loins is fucking insane.

Next time you see Tom Hiddleston's handsome mug, just picture him doting over a serpent that's large enough to circle the world, a giant god eating wolf, and a fucking 8 legged horse, all of which probably forget to get him father's day cards but still show up when he wants to destroy the world and end the cycle so it can all hit a giant cosmic reset button with a small handful of surviving gods and two humans who have to somehow bone the rest of humanity back into existence.

Speaking of humanity, it's pretty common knowledge that Valhalla is a giant mead hall where Norse warriors go to train and party until the gods summon them to fight the final battles of Ragnarok. What you probably don't know is that all that mead is constantly supplied by a giant goat that lives on the roof named Heidrun, and there's a giant pig that the meat comes from that is magical and they carve off slices of pork, which replenishes without end.

Sucks to be that fucking pig, man.

Also, about the gods? They were brought into existence when a giant cow licked them free of ice because it liked the salt. So... that was a thing that happened.

Midgard was also created when Odin and his brothers killed Ymir, one of the Jotunn, and crafted the fences that keep the Jotunn and the other realms from invading Midgard out of Ymir's eyelashes, the clouds were formed from his brain matter, and the sky is the inside of Ymir's eye. So the next time you see a girl shave off her eyebrows to stencil them on later, feel free to tell her she probably doomed a tiny realm of existence to frost giants.

 

[Greenie]

So the next time you see a girl shave off her eyebrows to stencil them on later, feel free to tell her she probably doomed a tiny realm of existence to frost giants.

I am so going to keep this in mind. XD

 

[IntrusivePenDesperateSword]

Love is nothing more than a series of chemical compounds in the brain mixing with your personality to create feelings of bliss and pleasure. This means that no matter how much you love someone, all love is unrequited. Someone else may love you too, but they'll love you their own way, and that's something you have to learn to live with.

Estrogen is produced primarily by the ovaries, and during pregnancy, the placenta. Secondary producers of estrogen include the liver, adrenal glands, the breasts... And fat cells. No, seriously. This is also why being fat increases the odds of breast cancer rapidly, since breast cancer feeds off of estrogen, especially if there is an overabundance of it. It's also why women in the extremely athletic category (Olympians for example) typically experience health problems when they hit menopause or get pregnant: They have less estrogen than is normally considered healthy.

There are many differences in storytelling devices between eastern and western culture, but I'll teach you a quick (and random) one here for you to look for in the future via "the mythos of the gun."

• In the West: A gun (or weapon) is merely a tool of the one who uses it. A person can use it to accomplish whatever task they like and, no matter how much they like it, they must be willing to part with it if it would increase their odds of success or survival. Guns are merely tools. People who obsess over any particular weapon are usually depicted as sentimental or eccentric at best, or unhealthy egomaniacs at worst. This is why this scene in Game of Thrones is both fucking hilarious and a perfect representation of that mentality: The sword doesn't matter, its name doesn't matter, it's just what you do with the damn thing that matters.
• In the East: A gun (or weapon) is an extension of the one who uses it. Discipline demands of you that whatever tool you use is not a mere item or article, but it is a core part of you. To lose your weapon is as dramatic as to lose a limb. This is why in their fiction (though especially prominent in anime), you'll find scenes where, say, a mecha cuts through an entire fleet of warships with a sci-fi laser sword: It's not about the firepower, it's about the discipline of the warrior who uses their weapon. It's all metaphors. The ending scene to Cowboy Bebop makes a lot more sense watching it with this lens.

I'm sure you're aware that you have a blind spot in your eyes, but did you know that your brain does a lot of subconscious functions to guess at your reality?

• If you're not thinking about it, you won't see your own nose, in spite of both of your eyes being clearly able to see it. Your brain removes it and guesses at what is past your nose based on information previously fed to your brain about what existed there (but it will always be blurry.)
• The edges of your vision are blurrier than the centre of your vision. This is because we evolved as a predator species, where we sacrificed some situational awareness for greater visual acuity and depth perception to targets in front of us. (Seriously, think about it. Prey species have eyes on the sides of their heads because they're looking for predators. Predator species have eyes in the front of their heads, because they're trying to spot prey before prey spots them and gain greater depth perception to have greater odds of hitting their target when they make their killing blow.)
• Our eyes evolved to function underwater, more specifically, the ocean. This is why your tears are salty: We have a thin layer of salt water over our eyes to allow us to see properly. This is also why mirages fuck with us: Our eyes were not originally designed to deal with how light wavelengths travel through the air, so in certain conditions, our eyes malfunction and fail to properly understand the information given to them by the environment, which causes the brain to take a guess at what it might be. (Usually water.)

Though our atmosphere is 300 miles long, the majority of it (about 80%) is contained within the first ten miles up into the air. No, really, the only thing separating you from a horrible, painful, suffocating death, is ten miles of air. Sleep well tonight.

Speaking of sleep, while we still don't know why we evolved the function (it's so fucking stupid for survival really) there is a theory about it. Our brains generate waste fluids over time while functioning, and when you go to sleep, your brain goes into a "low power mode." This may be when the brain flushes said waste fluids. This could explain why after an intense use of one's brain over a prolonged period they fall into a mentally exhausted state even if they aren't physically tired, and why people who go without sleep for long periods start hallucinating and experiencing psychotic symptoms. It also explains why sleep deprivation can eventually kill someone: Your brain is literally drowning in a sea of its own shit. SO GET YOUR FUCKING SLEEP KIDS, IT MAY LITERALLY SAVE YOUR LIFE.

Caffeine is not only one of the only addictive substances that has little to no significant negative effects, but it has several potentially healthy benefits. Also, quitting it requires only about 1-2 weeks of suffering headaches and sleepiness, and then you're free of it. So go ahead, indulge in it, it's one of the few addictions that won't kill you... So long as you're drinking, say, tea, and not several cans of coke cola every day.

Ferrets, like mice or rats, have a flexible spine that allows them to flatten out their bodies to compress themselves into tight areas that you wouldn't even imagine they could fit through. Seriously, even cage bars may not be enough to stop them. Ferret proofing apartments and the like is harder than you think. They're also smart enough to be known to figure out what you consider valuable to steal it to get your attention (ex: keys), to comprehend rudimentary lockpicking skills, to drag objects around in order to reach higher places than they normally could, et cetera. They're basically eight year olds problem solving: They're a lot smarter than you think if they're determined enough to get at something.

 

[Jorick]

Lots of people know the word 'petrichor,' a word for that pleasant post-rain smell in the air, thanks to its inclusion on lists of cool words that get circulated. Most people don't know the source of that smell despite knowing the word.

It's a mix of two things. First, plants secrete oils when it's dry in order to have a little protection from the sun. Second, there are some bacteria in the soil that work to decompose organic matter of all sorts, and that creates some chemical byproducts. Rain kicks both of these things into the air, creating petrichor.

In other words, that nice smell after it rains is caused by plant sweat and bacteria poop.

 

[Greenie]

@Jorick

That's actually a new word for me, so thanks! I'm going to share it with my friend ^_^ We have a 'new word of the day' game.

 

[Autarch]

Caligula once accidentally ordered his legionnaires to pick up seashells because the word "musculi" had a double meaning, and the soldiers thought the emperor above using slang to describe soldier's huts.

---

The battle of Karánsebes, though officially recorded sixty years after the fact, was a clusterfuck wherein the Austrian Army effectively kicked it's own ass and let the Ottomans walk into victory. The conflict allegedly begun when a hussar and an infantryman had a disagreement; the hussar and his friends got prissy and made a impromptu pillow fort, and then someone had the bright idea of shouting "Turci (Turks)!" People flipped their shit, shots went off, and the hussars gathered their homeboys and shot off into the night-- a corps commander mistook the fleeing cavalry for a turkish charge and began shelling, thus waking up the rest of the army to the sounds of combat. Since most of the infantry was comprised of different auxiliary that didn't speak the same language, the situation quickly devolved into everyone shooting at everyone else.

Days later, the Ottomans arrived, and they found what appeared to be a massed Austrian suicide. Some believe that the event was only recorded decades later because everyone agreed to "never speak of this again."

---

At Agincourt in 1415, an army under the ¿leadership? of Henry V came across a vastly superior force of Frenchmen. Instead of retreating, Henry would order his troops to taunt the enemy into charging through a literal swampland, wherein english archers had the best practice session of their lives.

---

Reading about famous historical fuckups makes me feel better about my own life, in truth. They're pretty fun.

 

[IntrusivePenDesperateSword]

Caligula once accidentally ordered his legionnaires to pick up seashells because the word "musculi" had a double meaning, and the soldiers thought the emperor above using slang to describe soldier's huts.

---

The battle of Karánsebes, though officially recorded sixty years after the fact, was a clusterfuck wherein the Austrian Army effectively kicked it's own ass and let the Ottomans walk into victory. The conflict allegedly begun when a hussar and an infantryman had a disagreement; the hussar and his friends got prissy and made a impromptu pillow fort, and then someone had the bright idea of shouting "Turci (Turks)!" People flipped their shit, shots went off, and the hussars gathered their homeboys and shot off into the night-- a corps commander mistook the fleeing cavalry for a turkish charge and began shelling, thus waking up the rest of the army to the sounds of combat. Since most of the infantry was comprised of different auxiliary that didn't speak the same language, the situation quickly devolved into everyone shooting at everyone else.

Days later, the Ottomans arrived, and they found what appeared to be a massed Austrian suicide. Some believe that the event was only recorded decades later because everyone agreed to "never speak of this again."

---

At Agincourt in 1415, an army under the ¿leadership? of Henry V came across a vastly superior force of Frenchmen. Instead of retreating, Henry would order his troops to taunt the enemy into charging through a literal swampland, wherein english archers had the best practice session of their lives.

---

Reading about famous historical fuckups makes me feel better about my own life, in truth. They're pretty fun.

Can't forget the Emu war. A couple highly ranked Australian military officials and two machine guns, versus like 800.000 emus ravaging Australian farms.

 

[Brovo]

Reading about famous historical fuckups makes me feel better about my own life, in truth. They're pretty fun.

Oh, god, tell me about it.

Some more historical facts: During the beginning of world war 1 (about the first month or two of it) military commanders were so horrendously out of touch with technology that they kept sending cavalry charges into machine gun lines. They were convinced that horse charges were indomitable in spite of facing hundreds of rounds of bullets.

Trenches were set up with a front line, secondary line, and sappers. (Usually, not always.) Sappers were essentially holes dug out ahead of the front line where 1-2 guys would hide in them and peek out to see if trouble was coming. If trouble was coming, they were basically dead men. The secondary line is where supplies and manpower would be quickly moved up to the front line if necessary. The front line is where machine gunners and riflemen set up watch, waiting to fire upon the enemy. The issue with the way trenches were built was that trenches had facings, you didn't simply dig a line in the dirt. Even if you ran in and took an enemy trench, you would have to essentially rebuild the trench while under artillery fire and enemy counter-attacks to face the proper direction. This is why The Great War (at least, on the western front anyway) was basically four years of dudes in holes shooting at each other: The cost in human lives and resources it took to actually take, hold, and rebuild a trench to push your front line was immense.

Though not talked about (and I guarantee your history teachers didn't tell you this), during World War 1, there were night raids. Germans, Austrians, British, Russians, and sometimes the French, would wait until the night to sneak into the enemy's trenches with small groups of people. There, they would try to steal supplies (ex: food), murder men in their sleep via slitting their throats, sabotage machine guns, et cetera. This resulted in both sides ramping up their recruitment of dogs, who would bark to alert their masters of incoming trouble (as their sense of smell and hearing is greater than ours), and if successful, save men's lives at the cost of their own. (Since they would end up getting shot by retreating night raiders.)

The Swiss weren't the only ones that were neutral during World War 1. The Netherlands were also neutral. At least, officially. They were so neutral in fact that at the end of World War 1, when the German Kaiser stepped down, they willingly took him in and gave him sanctuary.

The story of the last German Kaiser is really sad. It honestly is. He spent most of the war being little more than a morale figure as his military ran itself without him in most instances and aspects. At the end of the war, he was blamed for most (if not all) of the failures of the war, as he was the one who signed the declaration of war in support of Austria's war against Serbia. He therefore was forced to step down and left his country to go to the Netherlands in disgrace. There he spent several years of his life writing letters back to his people, and back to the various governments, begging to be allowed back into his homeland. Most letters were never responded to. When the Nazis began to rise to power, he initially thought it might be an opportunity for him to rise back to power, but upon realizing that Hitler had little to no care for him (and that he was abusing the Jewish subjects that he held dear), he immediately changed his tune and decried the Nazis as inhumane monsters. To give you an idea of how much the Kaiser hated the Nazis: When one of his sons started to feel sympathy towards the Nazis, the Kaiser disowned him. Completely. In 1938, he outright described Nazism as "an all swallowing state, disdainful of human dignities." As he was growing close to death, he began requesting that he be allowed to be buried on his homeland, to be reunited with his people one last time. The requests were ignored/denied. He was left to die in the Netherlands in 1941, where you can still find his grave today, and for whatever absurd reason, the media still thinks he's somehow responsible for nazism and that returning his body to Germany would somehow recreate nationalism and nazism. Good ole' clowns in the media. Rewriting history to serve their own ends.

During the Christmas Truce, certain sections of the Western Front stopped fighting. Instead, British and German soldiers stepped out of their trenches, met each other in no man's land, and exchanged gifts. Barbers gave haircuts. There was a football (soccer) match played between British and German troops. The Germans won, 3 to 2. The French, however, did not participate, and continued fighting, as all of this was going on over their war-torn lands. There are reports of french women spitting on british soldiers who participated in the Christmas Truce. Orders were given by the military commands on both sides to never allow this to happen again, and thus, it never happened again. This is the only time (that I'm aware of) in recorded modern history where two modern military ceased fighting to play a game of soccer instead.

 

[Autarch]

Can't forget the Emu war. A couple highly ranked Australian military officials and two machine guns, versus like 800.000 emus ravaging Australian farms.

And how the Australians fucking lost.

​

 

[Greenie]

And how the Australians fucking lost.​

My Mister was just telling me about that. The things you learn every day!

 

[Turtle of Doom]

Artificial banana flavoring was actually made using a type of banana that went extinct shortly after the flavoring was created. So, every time you eat artificial banana you're tasting an extinct plant. That's also why it doesn't quite taste like the bananas you can get at the store.

(I've know I've probably shared that fact before, but it's one of my favorites)

Every time you learn something new you get a new wrinkle in your brain.

 

[Wolk]

Monday = Moon day
Tuesday = Týr's day
Wednesday = Odin's day
Thursday = Thor's day
Friday = Freyja's day
Saturday = Saturn's day
Sunday = Sun day

 

[Gwazi Magnum]

I like how many of these Science ones I already knew from Cosmos! XD (Thanks Neil).

As for stuff I know that wasn't mentioned yet?

Mohammed was over 40 years old before he started with creating Islam, both of his parents died having absolutely no idea what would happen.
Additionally, the whole Shia VS Sunni issue broke out over something as small as Mohammed forgetting to name an heir before dying.

Although it's feasible to be colonizing Mars in the next 20-30 years (given we have good fortune with the Commercial Space Industry), actually turning the planet to be breathable likely won't happen for several 100 years.
One of SpaceX's engines was called the Merlin... That's it. My Arthurian Legend side of me enjoyed this tidbit way more than I should have. :3

The reason for Hitler's Moustache was that he couldn't get a Gas Mask to fit, so his famous moustache was an improv cut to make it fit.

Helium is called what it is because of Helios, God of the Sun. \o/
Any Element with "Tech" in the name is because it's an element created by man.
(Once again, thanks Neil).

Pink and Blue were originally reverse in regards to what sex they were assigned to. Pink being Masculine, Blue being feminine. But then one Feminist Movement happened where they essentially took Pink for women, and it was so successful the colours remain that way to this day.

 

[Greenie]

Mohammed was over 40 years old before he started with creating Islam, both of his parents died having absolutely no idea what would happen.

Just to further clarify, Muhammad's father passed away even before he was born, his mother when he was only 6. Essentially, he was an orphan.

 

[Brovo]

Although it's feasible to be colonizing Mars in the next 20-30 years (given we have good fortune with the Commercial Space Industry), actually turning the planet to be breathable likely won't happen for several 100 years.

In order to colonize Mars: In order to make Mars breathable, we'd first need to pump a fuckton of CO2 into the atmosphere in order to create a greenhouse gas effect that can trap heat, so that we can warm the planet up appropriately to sustain life and so we can alter the atmospheric composition of the planet via the introduction of hardy (like GMO) plant life. We would also need to find landing locations where the soil has some concentration of nitrogen so that plants can do their thing and start converting CO2 into O2. A bonus effect of this is that we can increase the amount of air pressure, so that when you step outside of your habitation bubble you won't pop like a fucking balloon. We'll also need to melt the polar ice caps so we can start creating natural weather patterns on Mars, which will require that we land our plant-growing nitrogen soil rich site in a location where air currents will ensure a regular series of rain storms.

The hardest part of making Mars habitable is to reduce the level of radiation striking the planet's surface. At present, even if you pumped a fuckton of CO2 into the atmosphere, the greenhouse gas effect alone would not be enough to prevent our painful deaths. (Like, you would step outside, and the amount of solar radiation still hitting your flesh would cause it to boil at an atomic level, basically giving you super cancer within minutes.) The only way to (feasibly) do this, is to restore Mars' magnetic field. However, this is really, really hard. Like... Let me give you a picture, so you can visualize the sheer, insane complexity of this plan.

Earth's molten core generates our magnetic field. The core of Mars is dead, that's why it has no magnetic field. Therefore, the only way we could possibly restart Mars' magnetic field, is by turning the core of the planet into a molten plasma. To give you an idea of how hot that is, the minimum temperature for the creation of plasma is 5,000 degrees Celsius. For you Americans out there, that's over 9,000 Fahrenheit. The only way we could possibly achieve this with Earth-based technology, is if we detonated several hundred (probably thousands) of nuclear warheads simultaneously at the planetary core.

That is the real thing really stopping us right now. We could easily seed the surface with plant life that could survive the harsh radiation and, well, humanity is already pretty fucking great at producing massive fucktons of CO2. We'd just have to tell corporations "you can put out whatever pollution you want on Mars, it's actually helping" and corporations would be like "fuck yeah mate, we're in." However, drilling to the planetary core would be extremely hard, and I don't think anyone would trust anyone else with thousands of live nuclear devices anywhere right now.

Plus, even if we did achieve all of that, the plants would take a century or two to spread far and wide enough to create a sufficient change in the atmosphere to make it breathable for humans. BUT! If we did do that, after a certain point, the atmosphere would be largely self-sustaining. It would take minimal human upkeep to maintain the ecosystem. We'd have two Earth-like planets. Albeit, the gravity on Mars would be a little lighter than on Earth, so traveling from Mars to Earth would require you to be physically in shape so that you could survive the atmospheric reentry without dying. That's the one side effect we can't feasibly fix.

 

[Grothnor]

de·fen·es·trate
dēˈfenəˌstrāt/
verb

Comes from the latin word fenestra, which means window.