What have you learned today?

Kae

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That the amount of US adults that fail to reach literacy level 3, the level that is deemed required to function in a modern society and read something as complicated as for instance a recipe, is 52 %.


My jaw dropped when I heard that.
Yah I really like that video, I used to work in finance and I worked with a lot of customers that couldn't read and it always made me depressed when I heard them say they were stupid because of it, I remember I tried to cheer them up, but we as a society make them so ashamed of that fact that they don't try to get educated because they feel they're being judged.

It's also important in any given country there are also a lot of monolingual people that don't speak or read the native language either and these people also go through similar struggles.
 

Dalisclock

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St. Louis(the namesake of numerous cities around the world) is also French King Louis IX. Because apparently being canonized as a king is a thing you can do(at least at one time). Apparently, among other reasons, he was tight with the Church and that may have had a lot to do with it.

Also, I never realized that Rosaries are so complicated. Not being Catholic I just saw them as these little bead chains that Catholics used a lot. I never realized it's this whole counting system for Prayers and such, which is fascinating and feels like way too much work(to me anyway, I understand the purpose is to be ritualistic and meditative, to put it simply and not at all comprehensively). That's not meant to be disrespectful, just feels very overly complex to someone looking in from the outside though I understand that appeals to a lot of people.
 
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Bob_McMillan

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Also, I never realized that Rosaries are so complicated. Not being Catholic I just saw them as these little bead chains that Catholics used a lot. I never realized it's this whole counting system for Prayers and such, which is fascinating and feels like way too much work(to me anyway, I understand the purpose is to be ritualistic and meditative, to put it simply and not at all comprehensively). That's not meant to be disrespectful, just feels very overly complex to someone looking in from the outside though I understand that appeals to a lot of people.
What do you find complicated about them? It's been a longgg time since I've prayed the rosary but I'd think they're simple enough.
 

Dalisclock

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What do you find complicated about them? It's been a longgg time since I've prayed the rosary but I'd think they're simple enough.

I'm going from the wikipedia article so I could be wrong here but it has to do with the decades, that you're supposed to count each bead for a prayer(and the bigger beads are a different type) or a hail Mary, and on top of that I guess you can be assigned penace to go with it which means doing x thing as part of that.

The way it's described in the article feels like there's a lot going on there and not actually hearing it done makes it sound complicated. Like reading musical notes.
 

Bob_McMillan

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I'm going from the wikipedia article so I could be wrong here but it has to do with the decades, that you're supposed to count each bead for a prayer(and the bigger beads are a different type) or a hail Mary, and on top of that I guess you can be assigned penace to go with it which means doing x thing as part of that.

The way it's described in the article feels like there's a lot going on there and not actually hearing it done makes it sound complicated. Like reading musical notes.
Hmmm no idea what the penance thing is, never did anything like that. But yeah, the rosary really is basically just three prayers that you repeat a bunch. It's like a manual for an assembly line, except for some reason the manual repeats the instructions for the product again and again on new pages until you meet your quota.

Some rosaries have just a fifth of the beads of a normal rosary, and it's up to you to remember how many decades you've prayed.
 
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davidmc1158

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I'm going from the wikipedia article so I could be wrong here but it has to do with the decades, that you're supposed to count each bead for a prayer(and the bigger beads are a different type) or a hail Mary, and on top of that I guess you can be assigned penace to go with it which means doing x thing as part of that.

The way it's described in the article feels like there's a lot going on there and not actually hearing it done makes it sound complicated. Like reading musical notes.
Hmmm no idea what the penance thing is, never did anything like that. But yeah, the rosary really is basically just three prayers that you repeat a bunch. It's like a manual for an assembly line, except for some reason the manual repeats the instructions for the product again and again on new pages until you meet your quota.

Some rosaries have just a fifth of the beads of a normal rosary, and it's up to you to remember how many decades you've prayed.
If I remember my Catholic schooling correctly, you could be assigned to "perform" a number of rosaries as penance by the priest during confession (each "performance" being one circuit around the rosary). Each small bead is a recitation of the Hail Mary prayer,. Each large bead is the Lord's Prayer (the Our Father, Thou Art in Heaven one) and a one minute meditation on each station of the cross (the seven notable moments leading up to Jesus' crucifixion).

In our church, it wasn't unusual to see many of the older ladies of the parish sitting in the church pews going through their rosaries for quite some time. Basically a form of meditation, from my perspective.

As for a little something I learned today, I have a circle of friends that meet every other Saturday to game a TTRPG over zoom. None of us are youngens anymore, and 2 in particular always seem to take the position of "we've lived for over 60 years and are smart enough to see through the bullsh*t that is everywhere nowadays". While we were chatting as things were getting set up, both of them immediately launched into a couple of conspiracy theories concerning some deaths that were in the news this week. Thankfully, I was smart enough to keep my mouth shut . . . . .
 

Xprimentyl

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Also, I never realized that Rosaries are so complicated. Not being Catholic I just saw them as these little bead chains that Catholics used a lot. I never realized it's this whole counting system for Prayers and such, which is fascinating and feels like way too much work(to me anyway, I understand the purpose is to be ritualistic and meditative, to put it simply and not at all comprehensively). That's not meant to be disrespectful, just feels very overly complex to someone looking in from the outside though I understand that appeals to a lot of people.
I haven't prayed a rosary in decades (ironically,) but, at least at my church, wasn't it used as penance; penance was typically a number of Hail Marys and/or Lord's Prayers prescribed by the priest dependent upon the severity of the sins you confess. Like, if you confess to using cuss words, he'd tell you to say 5 Hail Marys; if you confess to murdering someone, you'd get 6 Hail Marys and a Lord's Prayer.

The Rosary is more used as meditative prayer, usually by older, staunch Catholics.
 
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Xprimentyl

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Today I learned that Howie Mandel was the voice of Gizmo in 1984's Gremlins. Makes sense; I always thought Bobby from Bobby's World sounded like Gizmo.
 

hanselthecaretaker

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Tis the season for spooky true stories -



Also, personally more familiar with this one as I grew up by Lake Superior-
 

Mister Mumbler

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So, that latest Lone Ranger movie apparently made a giant, full-size train set for the film, including a 5-mile long oval, locomotives, and railcars.
 
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Xprimentyl

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That bukkake was not originally about covering some poor individual in semen, but a Japanese dish where hot broth is poured over noodles.
Now the question is: from which direction did you come upon (no pun intended) this information? Like, were you Googling stuff about noodles and "surprise," or... y'know.

Go figure! Next you're gonna tell me that a creampie was originally some sort of pastry!
Speaking of, I give you the most brilliant scene in It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia: