What have you learned today?

The Rogue Wolf

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I just found out that Windows 11 copies every picture I clip to copy paste is also copied to my OneDrive and there does not appear to be an easy way to delete all. So as it fills up, MS is going to want money.
One of the first things I do on any Windows 11 installation is disable OneDrive.

Today I learned about Operation Acoustic Kitty.


The CIA spent $20 million in the '60s on a system to wire up cats with microphones and transmitters in order to spy on the Soviets. Their first feline subject was set loose near the Soviet embassy as a test run- where, reportedly, it was almost immediately hit and killed by a taxi.

$20 million in 1960 is worth $206 million today. For comparison, the F-22 Raptor jet fighter costs $143 million out of the box.
 

Xprimentyl

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Today, I learned what quarternary twins are. It's the rare phenomenon where a pair of identical twins males procreate with a pair of identical twin females, and each couple has a child less than 9 months apart. While the resulting children are technically cousins, genetically, they are brothers/sisters, and are often identical to one another. Makes sense and is confusing as hell at the same time.

 
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Chimpzy

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Today, I learned what quarternary twins are. It's the rare phenomenon where a pair of identical twins males procreate with a pair of identical twin females, and each couple has a child less than 9 months apart. While the resulting children are technically cousins, genetically, they are brothers/sisters, and are often identical to one another. Makes sense and is confusing as hell at the same time.

Hmm. If one of the twin sisters in such a matchup were to have an affair with the other twin brother and get pregnant, would it even be possible to determine who the actual father is?

Anyway, here's a pic of identical twin brothers who married identical twin sisters, who in turn each gave birth to identical twins.
 
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Thaluikhain

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Hmm. If one of the twin sisters in such a matchup were to have an affair with the other twin brother and get pregnant, would it even be possible to determine who the actual father is?
Hmmm...I would expect that to be quite difficult. Unless one father had some environmental health issues that were passed along to their children, but then that'd only be an indication, not a guarantee.
 

Zykon TheLich

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Hmm. If one of the twin sisters in such a matchup were to have an affair with the other twin brother and get pregnant, would it even be possible to determine who the actual father is?
What if it wasn't an affair? What if the other brother was pretending to be his brother to shag his wife's twin? But then what if his wife was trying to shag his brother? And they ended up thinking they were banging their brother/sister's wife/husband, but actually they were just doing their spouse? How would they ever know what was going on?
 

Xprimentyl

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What if it wasn't an affair? What if the other brother was pretending to be his brother to shag his wife's twin? But then what if his wife was trying to shag his brother? And they ended up thinking they were banging their brother/sister's wife/husband, but actually they were just doing their spouse? How would they ever know what was going on?
Somehow, I imagine that'd be mentally damaging, getting cheated on by your spouse with your identical twin. I mean, if your spouse cheats on you, you'd at least hope it'd be with someone who's hung like horse/a freak in the sack, extremely wealthy, or better looking; but to get cheated on by someone who is literally identical to you would mean you're not even the preferred version of yourself. That's some ice-cold shit right there.
 

davidmc1158

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Somehow, I imagine that'd be mentally damaging, getting cheated on by your spouse with your identical twin. I mean, if your spouse cheats on you, you'd at least hope it'd be with someone who's hung like horse/a freak in the sack, extremely wealthy, or better looking; but to get cheated on by someone who is literally identical to you would mean you're not even the preferred version of yourself. That's some ice-cold shit right there.
Perhaps less a matter of consciously cheating and something worthy of a La Cage aux Folles style film?
 

TheMysteriousGX

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Today I learned that the capacity for menstrual is not and has never been based on the fluid material they're actually supposed to absorb: it's based on saline and water, which is significantly thinner.

Main problem is, that's also a main diagnostic criteria for relevant medical diagnosis. So basically the medical establishment has been fucking it up forever because, well, it's women's health, why bother?

 

The Rogue Wolf

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Today I learned that the capacity for menstrual is not and has never been based on the fluid material they're actually supposed to absorb: it's based on saline and water, which is significantly thinner.

Main problem is, that's also a main diagnostic criteria for relevant medical diagnosis. So basically the medical establishment has been fucking it up forever because, well, it's women's health, why bother?

I mean, it's not like women have been doing this for a while, right?

As an aside, I've heard stories of women being worried because they were menstruating actual blood instead of the blue water every commercial for sanitary pads shows.

I mean, yeah, we're not gonna show blood in an ad, but what's going on with sexual education in this country?
 

TheMysteriousGX

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I mean, it's not like women have been doing this for a while, right?

As an aside, I've heard stories of women being worried because they were menstruating actual blood instead of the blue water every commercial for sanitary pads shows.

I mean, yeah, we're not gonna show blood in an ad, but what's going on with sexual education in this country?
I'm gonna go out on a limb and say It's Bad. We have *got* to get less squeamish as a culture
 

Thaluikhain

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At the Bostian Bridge in North Carolina, there was a derailment in 1891 that killed 23 people. Supposedly, on the anniversary of the accident, a ghost train can be seen.

In 2010, a bunch of ghost hunters went on the tracks to see it, and saw what they thought was the ghost train coming towards them. It ran into them and killed one, because it was actually a perfectly normal real train.
 

Dalisclock

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The biblical flood narrative is basically two interwoven stories, which explains a fair bit about why it's difficult to read it as chronology and why there's so much repetition.

Quick example:

Gen 6:19 You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. 20 Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive.

Gen 7:2 Take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, 3 and also seven pairs of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth.

So either these are two different narratives placed next to each other, or the guy writing genesis literally forgot how many pairs Noah was supposed to bring on the ark despite the verses being almost right on top of each other.

Later on, you get this bit.

Gen 8:3.... At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down, 4 and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. 5 The waters continued to recede until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains became visible.

Clearly two different timelines in play here, or somehow the ark came to rest on the mountain 3 months prior to the mountain actually becoming uncovered by the receding water that's going....somewhere never addressed in the story.

Finally

Gen 8:6 After forty days Noah opened a window he had made in the ark 7 and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth. 8 Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground. 9 But the dove could find nowhere to perch because there was water over all the surface of the earth;

Again, this is just after the last verse about the ark resting on the mountain and the tops of the mountains now being visible. So either Noah is fucking blind(or drunk), there's a different narrative in play here, or the author just forgot that the earth is already visible in some way. The 2nd narrative makes the most sense unless you want to go with the "Noah is drunk on wood alcohol" theory if you try to read it literally and infer he's a boozer from later on.

Thank you for attending my TED talk on ancient narrative structure.
 
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Gordon_4

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The biblical flood narrative is basically two interwoven stories, which explains a fair bit about why it's difficult to read it as chronology and why there's so much repetition.

Quick example:

Gen 6:19 You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. 20 Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive.

Gen 7:2 Take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, 3 and also seven pairs of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth.

So either these are two different narratives placed next to each other, or the guy writing genesis literally forgot how many pairs Noah was supposed to bring on the ark despite the verses being almost right on top of each other.

Later on, you get this bit.

Gen 8:3.... At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down, 4 and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. 5 The waters continued to recede until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains became visible.

Clearly two different timelines in play here, or somehow the ark came to rest on the mountain 3 months prior to the mountain actually becoming uncovered by the receding water that's going....somewhere never addressed in the story.

Finally

Gen 8:6 After forty days Noah opened a window he had made in the ark 7 and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth. 8 Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground. 9 But the dove could find nowhere to perch because there was water over all the surface of the earth;

Again, this is just after the last verse about the ark resting on the mountain and the tops of the mountains now being visible. So either Noah is fucking blind(or drunk), there's a different narrative in play here, or the author just forgot that the earth is already visible in some way. The 2nd narrative makes the most sense unless you want to go with the "Noah is drunk on wood alcohol" theory if you try to read it literally and infer he's a boozer from later on.

Thank you for attending my TED talk on ancient narrative structure.
“Noah was a drunk, look what he accomplished. And no one’s asking you to build an Ark”
-Metatron, Dogma.

Suddenly that throw away joke makes much more sense.
 
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Absent

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The biblical flood narrative is basically two interwoven stories, which explains a fair bit about why it's difficult to read it as chronology and why there's so much repetition.

Quick example:

Gen 6:19 You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. 20 Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive.

Gen 7:2 Take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, 3 and also seven pairs of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth.

So either these are two different narratives placed next to each other, or the guy writing genesis literally forgot how many pairs Noah was supposed to bring on the ark despite the verses being almost right on top of each other.

Later on, you get this bit.

Gen 8:3.... At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down, 4 and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. 5 The waters continued to recede until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains became visible.

Clearly two different timelines in play here, or somehow the ark came to rest on the mountain 3 months prior to the mountain actually becoming uncovered by the receding water that's going....somewhere never addressed in the story.

Finally

Gen 8:6 After forty days Noah opened a window he had made in the ark 7 and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth. 8 Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground. 9 But the dove could find nowhere to perch because there was water over all the surface of the earth;

Again, this is just after the last verse about the ark resting on the mountain and the tops of the mountains now being visible. So either Noah is fucking blind(or drunk), there's a different narrative in play here, or the author just forgot that the earth is already visible in some way. The 2nd narrative makes the most sense unless you want to go with the "Noah is drunk on wood alcohol" theory if you try to read it literally and infer he's a boozer from later on.

Thank you for attending my TED talk on ancient narrative structure.
Tsk tsk. 6.19 gives the gist of it, 7.2 goes into the details. Also what about 8:3 ? A ship runs aground on immerged land, so of course the earth will be revealed later. And if he's on the highest mountain, it will take a while till the lower mountains' peaks get visible. As for his own peak, of course her can't see it. THERE IS A BOAT OVER IT.

Also he clearly sends the dove right after having sent the raven, not after the water dried up. It's just a tidy mention of the fate and mission of the raven, before getting to the dove story.

I don't get this nitpicking. That story about a dude gathering in one boat all the animals that he fetched from the entire planet is absolutely airtight.
 
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Ag3ma

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"Learnt" might be pushing it, but today I saw one of my own tendons in action. The bad part of that was the large, deep, cut in my hand that enabled me to see it.
 

Xprimentyl

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"Learnt" might be pushing it, but today I saw one of my own tendons in action. The bad part of that was the large, deep, cut in my hand that enabled me to see it.
Ouch. You alright? They have medical books; you don't need to re-discover what science has already taught us! What happened?
 

davidmc1158

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"Learnt" might be pushing it, but today I saw one of my own tendons in action. The bad part of that was the large, deep, cut in my hand that enabled me to see it.
I'm going to echo Xprimentyl. Are you doing OK? That sort of injury can be nasty. Hopefully, treatment and recovery goes smoothly, well and completely.
 

Ag3ma

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Ouch. You alright? They have medical books; you don't need to re-discover what science has already taught us! What happened?
I'm going to echo Xprimentyl. Are you doing OK? That sort of injury can be nasty. Hopefully, treatment and recovery goes smoothly, well and completely.
I fell - actually pretty trivially - but my hand came down on the corner of my laptop around a knuckle, and it just gouged a massive split over the knuckle. They did some tests and although the tendons to the finger were exposed, they seem to have taken no significant damage, so shouldn't be any long-term loss of function that needs physio.

What added insult to injury is that the impact also popped the touchpad out of the laptop, so that's a laptop repair bill as well.

Tell us you got actual medical attention for that. I've known people who'd basically slap a bandage on a wound like that and say "good to go".
God yes. I have done surgery training (in a sort of veterinary sense) and I've got a decent eye for what needs stitches so I went to hospital. Although I didn't realise the tendons were visible until the hospital assessment.