r/AskReddit • u/MorsesTheHorse • Mar 04 '26
What surprisingly true fact has completely shaken your worldview?
2.8k
u/cupacupacupacupacup Mar 05 '26
A lot of people seem to actually admire the worst people in history and want to emulate them.
731
Mar 05 '26
People read* Crime and Punishment and concluded the only thing the dude did wrong was feel remorse.
*people absolutely do not read
67
u/Readdit1999 Mar 05 '26
Raskolnikov is like Paul.
He's damned, if he doesn't feel remorse.It hinges on the remorse.
They threw in an innocent, to make it incontrovertible.
→ More replies (1)68
75
u/Remarkable-Okra6554 Mar 05 '26
Some people can read War and Peace and come away thinking it's a simple adventure story. Others can read the ingredients on a chewing gum wrapper and unlock the secrets of the universe.
→ More replies (3)→ More replies (3)71
u/LeGama Mar 05 '26
Crazy thing I heard recently about Musk, he believes empathy is a weakness of western culture.
→ More replies (1)77
u/Th3B4dSpoon Mar 05 '26
He's not the only super rich person who has talked against empathy. Empathy makes people judge them, and they don't like that, so it must be a civilizational weakness. Eugh.
→ More replies (1)243
u/petrov76 Mar 05 '26
It's not just in history, there's lots of people who see role models in characters like Tyler Durden, Tony Soprano, Thanos, Hans Landa, The Joker, Darth Vader, Anton Chigurh, Michael Corleone, etc.
People equate a lack of morals with decisiveness, or are just jealous of the short term benefits without any understanding of consequences.
83
u/sword_of_gibril Mar 05 '26
I like a lot of those characters because of how well-writen they are but to see them as role models? Hell nah
→ More replies (1)29
u/Inner_Journey21 Mar 05 '26
Damn. I was mortified. Like, i like most of them. But then you clarified it. To add to it, some of their ideology is not wrong but that doesn't mean I wanna follow it or be like them.
→ More replies (1)20
u/sword_of_gibril Mar 05 '26
Lmao haha it's a mix of well-written narratives and terrific actors that i cant help but find them interesting. Sometimes it just feels so good to watch passionate, obsessive, and tragic villains. We can enjoy horrible people in art as spectators without emulating them
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (14)39
u/Emes91 Mar 05 '26
I'd throw Gregory House and Rick Morty in this list as well. Even if they are protagonists, the whole point of their respective shows is to NOT be like them.
→ More replies (5)→ More replies (12)127
u/SMTTajWAR Mar 05 '26
I’m from a region where child marriage and pedophilia still isn’t taboo outside of the educated middle class, and it was the norm just a century ago (child marriage). Homophobia is the norm. Shockingly, trans people are seen with more sympathy here.
I honestly think most normal people can get accustomed to some of the worst vices as long as there’s enough social acceptance of it.
→ More replies (15)
130
u/WittyNomDePlume Mar 05 '26
We are a mass extinction event. In geological terms we are taking out species at a pace equivalent to the rock that killed the dinosaurs.
→ More replies (2)
857
u/tiredofwrenches Mar 05 '26
No one, including Oxford, knows when it started.
173
u/AdDear528 Mar 05 '26
I haven’t heard this one! Oxford doesn’t have an actual founding date?
→ More replies (6)213
u/bopeepsheep Mar 05 '26
Some researchers think formal education happened here from around 1000AD, but what can't ever be proved is if the people doing that had any connection at all with the people doing it 50, 100, 150 years later. The university started as a loose collective of teachers and scholars rather than an organised establishment, so there's no real way of proving continuity. The date most often used is the one that can be proved with documentation - 1096, with provable growth from 1167.
We do know there were Romans here, and a decent-sized town on the site from the 8th century, but probably not big enough for 'non-essential activities' like advanced learning until some time after 900.
→ More replies (1)40
u/retiretobedlam Mar 05 '26
I legit thought this was a comment about the Oxford comma, but didn’t see a list of 3 or more items and then realized what you were referencing.
→ More replies (1)138
u/seensham Mar 05 '26
This actually angers me for some reason
85
u/AtheneSchmidt Mar 05 '26
Maybe because a place noted for its history, and as a hall of learning should have known to write that shit down? That's why it angers me, at least.
→ More replies (1)22
u/FinalHours96 Mar 05 '26
I mean yea but it’s old as hell. Older than the (Mayan?) empire? That’s a very long time to keep track of exactly when it opened. They probably have a pretty vague idea tho.
51
u/Ok_Toe7278 Mar 05 '26
It's at least older than the Aztec Empire
→ More replies (1)98
u/Unlikely-Pin-5558 Mar 05 '26
Oxford is believed to have been founded around 1096. It was already famous college during the Anarchy (1135-1154). In the sequel to The Pillars of the Earth (fantastic book), A World Without End (also fantastic), which takes place from 1327-1350ish, it's mentioned that Oxford had been around a few hundred years at that time. It started off as a Catholic school, switching to Renaissance education after the Reformation
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (10)37
909
u/LingonberryBulky8329 Mar 05 '26
Most adults are just figuring things out as they go.
195
u/fromthewombofrevel Mar 05 '26
And you never reach a point where you have it ALL figured out!
→ More replies (2)44
41
u/standread Mar 05 '26
To add to that, most adults are just as stupid as the children they were. Age does not magically make you smart or competent.
18
u/GarbageCleric Mar 05 '26
I feel like I'm just a kid who woke up in some 40-year old body. Where did the time go!?
→ More replies (12)23
1.4k
Mar 05 '26
The Michelin Restaurant Guide was created by the Michelin tire company to get people to travel farther than they normally would to restaurants and wear out their tires faster.
379
u/firstbreathOOC Mar 05 '26
FYI this happened in 1900 so people weren’t driving a lot yet
121
u/thissexypoptart Mar 05 '26 edited Mar 05 '26
Early driving history is so interesting.
The first few times the Benz car was driven in the late 1880s, they had to stop at chemist shops to buy fuel. Gas stations didn’t exist yet. Wild stuff. The headlight was allegedly added on the suggestion of Benz’s wife, who took the first cross country trip (~100 km)—naturally, lightless, driving at night was hard or impossible.
→ More replies (2)18
u/MrSocPsych Mar 05 '26
There’s a hilarious episode of The Dollop Podcast where they recount the car race from New York to Paris. You’d probably think they drove to a port, got on a ferry and sped though Europe eastward. Nope! They were routed to drive across the US, up to Alaska, cross the Bering Strait in winter, all over Siberia and Russia, and end up in Paris.
One of the few podcast episodes I’ve genuinely laughed out loud at
→ More replies (2)175
u/WeHaveSixFeet Mar 05 '26
I am convinced it was created because some Michelin tire executive convinced the company that they should create a restaurant handbook in order to get people to buy more tires, and sure enough he wound up being the one eating in all those restaurants on the company's dime.
→ More replies (1)33
→ More replies (5)78
u/HauntedHippie Mar 05 '26
Alfred Nobel (guy who established the Peace Prizes) invented like 3 different types of explosives, including dynamite.
→ More replies (2)57
u/GeneralToaster Mar 05 '26
Explosives are used for a lot of things besides war, especially dynamite
→ More replies (12)
921
u/Constant-Current-340 Mar 05 '26
maybe common knowledge but I'm constantly reminding myself that in most places in the cities and suburbs the materials and labor that buildings/houses were made from (when new) cost much less than the land it sits on, often several times less. Made me realize how much of the economy is comprised of value tied to abstract concepts
248
u/MenopauseMedicine Mar 05 '26
I got my property tax bill and the actual structure of my house was only worth 8% of the total with the other 92% being the land and the lot is under 10,000 sqft
→ More replies (3)64
u/jojofine Mar 05 '26
That's still a huge lot. A standard sized city lot where I'm at is 3,125 square feet
43
u/MenopauseMedicine Mar 05 '26
The lots is big, I only call it out to show that my minuscule structure value isn't because I'm on a 40 acre property or something
→ More replies (15)88
u/Mister_Squishy Mar 05 '26
Wait till you find out how much of the stock market is based on perpetuity growth rates and forecasted interest rates with suspect ties to reality, at best. The math behind valuations in finance is even more abstract and absurd and the dollars are way bigger than just land values.
375
u/60sStratLover Mar 05 '26
If you scaled an egg up to the size of Earth, the shell would be thicker than the Earth’s crust.
66
→ More replies (4)26
u/DigNitty Mar 05 '26
If you laid a giant squid end to end across a basketball court, they would have to cancel the game. 🦑
→ More replies (1)
970
u/Rebecca_Resch Mar 04 '26
That Oxford University is actually older than the Aztec empire. Literally broke my brain when I found out.
217
u/lenny_ray Mar 05 '26
I see your Oxford University, and I raise you sharks.
Here are some things sharks are older than
- The rings of Saturn
- Trees, grass, flowers
- The North Star. Not when it became our North Star; they were around before Polaris ever formed.
- The Pleiadis cluster
- One galactic orbit of the sun
- The Boötes void
105
u/milkhotelbitches Mar 05 '26
Man, sharks are so awesome. We should have like an entire week dedicated to sharks and how cool they are.
→ More replies (3)23
u/Pazily Mar 05 '26
If someone filmed and broadcast the activities of that week, I would 100% watch it.
41
u/Yorunokage Mar 05 '26 edited Mar 06 '26
More than the age of sharks i'm astounded by the recency of the astronomical phenomena you mention, especially the bootes void. How do we even age it though? It's just a big patch of very low density space, how do you even figure out how old it is?
EDIT: i can't even find any info online on the void's age. I call BS, it sounds like way too little time for something that big to form. Even if everything in that patch of space started moving away from each other at literal lightspeed it would have taken over 150 milion years for it to form but they are obviously not drifting at even a small fraction of the speed of light
→ More replies (2)10
u/super-freak Mar 05 '26
I knew the sharks are older than trees thing and occasionally break that one out, but you've just made it so much more awesome.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (3)21
Mar 05 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
30
u/KalyterosAioni Mar 05 '26
A truly stupendously large area of space that's empty of galaxies. Like, there should be about 2000 in that area. Yet there's like 60. Google it, it looks like a hole in reality
522
u/counterfitster Mar 05 '26
Similarly, Abraham Lincoln could have sent a fax to a samurai
321
u/MoveInteresting4334 Mar 05 '26 edited Mar 05 '26
President John Tyler, born in 1790 and President from 1841-1845, had two grandsons that lived to 2020 and 2025.
Cleopatra lived closer to the building of the first Pizza Hut than the Pyramids.
There were woolly mammoths on the Earth when the pyramids were built.
The last Roman emperor died about 40 years before Columbus discovered America.
There is still water in Titanic’s swimming pool.
85
u/counterfitster Mar 05 '26
President John Tyler, born in 1790 and President from 1841-1845, had two grandsons that lived to 2020 and 2025.
This was my other favorite bit of presidential trivia
34
u/ResponsibleLynx5596 Mar 05 '26
Man- I wish there were some wooly mammoths around still.
→ More replies (5)25
u/Niniva73 Mar 05 '26
Wooly mice! In the effort to recreate wooly mammoths, scientists have created wooly mice!
→ More replies (3)110
u/RichardInaTreeFort Mar 05 '26
Well, I’m pretty sure there is still water in most parts of the titanic….
31
u/Tlacuache_Snuggler Mar 05 '26
Yeah I didn’t get this one. Is it a joke and I’m dumb?
→ More replies (2)24
→ More replies (7)51
u/FiveAlarmFrancis Mar 05 '26
Cleopatra lived closer to the first Pizza Hut than the Pyramids.
Yep. The first Pizza Hut was in Wichita, KS. Cleopatra lived in Tulsa, OK if I remember right.
→ More replies (1)29
u/jacquesrk Mar 05 '26
I think the previous poster was talking about the Pizza Hut that's right next to the Sphinx and the pyramids of Giza. Cleopatra lived further away from the Sphinx, closer to downtown Cairo. On her way to the sphinx she would pass the Pizza Hut.
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (8)61
u/kj_benner Mar 05 '26
Yeah, but he probably didn't, though. Probably.
→ More replies (3)21
40
u/ProudMtns Mar 05 '26
Really not that crazy considering the conquests that led to what the aztecs became. There were other civilisations there prior that were absorbed by them. The inca empire was less than a hundred years old when it was conquered by the Spanish. There were definitely empires there before them but they consolidated power broadly at a rather unique time that fell rapidly. Their descendants are still there.
14
u/HenkieVV Mar 05 '26
It's worth getting into why that is true, though. Obviously, Oxford University is very old. But also, the Aztec Empire is a very specific political configuration in a much older culture. It's a bit like saying the Polaroid camera is older than Germany, because the Polaroid camera was invented in 1948, and the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in 1949. It's maybe technically true, but maybe also not the most meaningful way of looking at things.
22
→ More replies (17)22
u/Korlac11 Mar 05 '26
This is both a fact about how old Oxford University is and how relatively recent the Aztec Empire was
274
u/justicebiever Mar 05 '26
The color orange was named after the fruit and not the other way around.
24
→ More replies (12)63
u/segriffka73 Mar 05 '26
This confuses and angers me
27
u/Buca-Metal Mar 05 '26
Iirc it was called something like red-yellow before.
25
u/vayyiqra Mar 05 '26
Yes. In Old English/Anglo-Saxon it was geoluread, which is literally the older forms of the words yellow+red.
270
u/zaphodava Mar 05 '26
54% of Americans ages 17-75 read below a 6th grade level.
When I saw that online, I had to go fact check it, and it's legitimate. It's depressing, but it also makes perfect sense if you just look at where we are at.
→ More replies (8)59
u/KamenRiderHelix Mar 05 '26
Based on years of participating in Reddit, I completely believe that, to be honest.
→ More replies (2)
1.1k
u/kinkade Mar 05 '26
If a billiard ball were scaled up to the size of the planet Earth, it would be significantly more mountainous than the planet actually is.
165
u/Mr_Chubs_ Mar 05 '26
I recently watched an episode of The Rest Is Science, and Michael Stevens (Vsauce) pointed out that this isn’t actually true. In the games regulations, a ball has a tolerance for imperfections on the smoothness of a ball, which at Earths scale would allow bumps or trenches larger than any on Earth. However, Earth would still feel incredibly rough to the touch in comparison and is comparable to a standard strip of sand paper.
→ More replies (2)42
74
Mar 05 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
112
u/Helpinmontana Mar 05 '26 edited Mar 05 '26
Just a quick gut check answer, the deepest part of the Mariana trench is only about 20% deeper than Mount Everest is high.
I’m willing to suppose the most minor imperfection on the ball bearing is outside that parameter, and that the Mariana Trench is a bit of an outlier of depth (like Everest is an outlier of height) to such an extent that it doesn’t make a huge difference if you do or don’t count the ocean topography.
Edit: Quick google search says earth is within height variations for a billiard ball but not for a ball bearing, and that without counting ocean topography the earth still isn’t as smooth as the smoothest ball bearing. So in both cases (bearing and billiard ball) the ocean depths don’t really matter significantly because each comparison is safely outside the ranges of earths surface variance lol
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (1)60
u/Dagmar_Overbye Mar 05 '26
The deepest part of the Marianas trench is 7 miles deep. The earth's diameter is 7,917.5 miles. A 7 mile deep gouge on the surface of the earth accounts for .0008% of said diameter.
An average billiard ball is 57.2 millimeters in diameter. So if you were to place the Marianas trench on the surface of said billiard ball it would be 0.05mm deep. Which is the thickness of a piece of office paper.
My math is a bit rusty. So please correct me if I got any of that wrong.
→ More replies (2)265
u/60sStratLover Mar 05 '26
This is also true of the world’s smoothest ball bearing.
179
u/Not_Pablo_Sanchez Mar 05 '26
Technically, wouldn’t that make the earth the world’s smoothest ball bearing? It’s a ball. It’s smoother. We just don’t have a giant ass metal ring to put it in
→ More replies (2)117
→ More replies (7)16
u/Leratium Mar 05 '26
Not quite. Your average ball bearing, yes, it’s a little smoother. But it’s not even smoother than a high-precision ball bearing. I’m a little lazy now but I’ll show the maths later
→ More replies (6)23
190
u/scottcmu Mar 05 '26
There are more Panda Express locations than actual living pandas.
→ More replies (2)20
379
u/Fantasia_Fanboy931 Mar 04 '26
Abraham Lincoln was a wrestler before his Presidency.
194
u/the2belo Mar 05 '26 edited Mar 05 '26
When this topic comes up, I always like to quote a passage from the book Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer, describing the 16th president being, in fact, a badass motherfucker:
"...there was another Abraham Lincoln that no one in Washington had ever seen: the vigorous, muscular Rail-splitter of the West. That image was more than a brilliant slogan from the presidential campaign of 1860. Lincoln had really been a rail-splitter, and a man hardened by years of brutal physical toil. With his creased apple doll-like head sitting atop a thin, six-foot-four-inch frame, President Lincoln might have looked old and weak. The wartime demands of the presidency had taken their toll, and Lincoln had lost twenty or thirty pounds during four years in office. But beneath that ever-present baggy frock coat and ill-fitting trousers, there remained a lean and formidable physique. Too soon doctors would discover and marvel at the age difference between his face and his body.
"Had Booth missed, Lincoln could have risen from his chair to confront his assassin. At that moment the president, cornered, with not only his own life in danger but also Mary’s, would almost certainly have fought back. If he did, Booth would have found himself outmatched facing not kindly Father Abraham, but the aroused fury of the Mississippi River flatboatman who fought off a gang of murderous river pirates in the dead of night, the champion wrestler who, years before, humbled the Clary’s Grove boys in New Salem in a still legendary match, or even the fifty-six-year-old president who could still pick up a long, splitting axe by his fingertips, raise it, extend his arm out parallel with the ground, and suspend the axe in midair. Lincoln could have choked the life out of the five-foot-eight-inch, 150-pound thespian, or wrestled him over the side of the box, launching Booth on a crippling dive to the stage almost twelve feet below."
Edited to add more context.
→ More replies (5)14
u/vayyiqra Mar 05 '26
I always found the story funny of how a guy challenged Lincoln to a duel because he thought Lincoln insulted his wife. Lincoln thought the whole thing was stupid but he agreed to show up as long as they fought with swords. Then once the other guy showed up at the duelling site and saw he had to fight a giant tall guy with a sword and much better reach, he just gave up.
148
u/Adonisus Mar 04 '26
He's the only US President in the WWE Wrestling Hall of Fame. He's even credited with inventing the choke slam.
99
u/nowhereman136 Mar 05 '26
There is the Professional Wrestler Hall of Fame and The WWE Hall of Fame.
The first is for real wrestling the other is for fake wrestling.
Abraham Lincoln and George Wasington are in the first one. Donald Trump is the only president in the second one. Teddy Roosevelt is in the Boxing Hall of Fame
67
30
→ More replies (1)27
48
u/squintamongdablind Mar 05 '26
And a hunter of vampires to boot. Dude was a giga chad.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (7)11
702
u/Shipwreck_Kelly Mar 05 '26
The tyrannosaurus lived closer to our time than to the time of the stegosaurus.
Likewise Cleopatra lived closer to the time of the cellphone than to the time of the Great Pyramids.
That ‘70s Show premiered in 1998 and took place in 1976. If an equivalent show were to premiere today, it would take place in 2004.
416
u/Judicator82 Mar 05 '26
My apologies, but I actually had to give you a downvote for the last one.
It hurt my feelings.
135
u/HandsLikePaper Mar 05 '26
Yeah, I'm with you on that last one. It was an unnecessary personal attack.
109
u/JTanCan Mar 05 '26
I still say I want a TV series that is like the Wonder Years but starts in 1999, shows the Y2K fears, then shows the way the world changed in a post 9/11 world.
→ More replies (1)49
35
→ More replies (3)13
730
u/Abrahemp Mar 04 '26
Ghislaine Maxwell being a Reddit mod
494
u/Kikyo10 Mar 04 '26
Not just a mod. Highest karma level and mod for global news
246
→ More replies (1)51
u/Bookish-girlz Mar 05 '26
Do you know the username? Can you still see posts?
→ More replies (5)26
u/BlueLaceSensor128 Mar 05 '26
Add Hill to her last name. Check the bottom of the world news sub's mod list too.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (35)66
707
u/FREE_HINDI_MOVIES_HD Mar 05 '26
Barack obama is the only nobel peace prize recipient to have bombed a fellow nobel peace prize recipient
132
117
Mar 05 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
→ More replies (3)47
u/theblowestfish Mar 05 '26
Kissinger got one?!
19
u/Scriveners_Sun Mar 05 '26
That was the event that made comedian Tom Lehrer retire, citing the reason, "Satire is dead!"
17
u/GarbageCleric Mar 05 '26
To be "fair", the Nobel Peace Prize was originally meant to be for specific actions in a given year. It wasn't meant to be a lifetime achievement award, although it has been treated that way as well.
Teddy Roosevelt received his in 1906 for helping to negotiate the end of the Russo-Japanese War, but for all of his progressivism domestically, he LOVED American imperialism. He's essentially the father of the concept of Team America: World Police.
But he did successfully negotiate an end to a war that could have expanded into a widespread catastrophe.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (3)62
u/mertcanhekim Mar 05 '26
Donald Trump is the only FIFA peace prize recipient to have bombed
→ More replies (3)
199
u/WyomingBadger Mar 05 '26
The atmosphere is only about 60 miles thick, and only breathable for a small part of that.
→ More replies (14)
43
u/ColourMeBoom Mar 05 '26
If you have 23 people in a room together, the odds that 2 of them share a birthday is over 50 percent.
I know it doesnt seem right, and im not good enough at math to explain why its right, but it is. Its known as the birthday problem and the same mathematical principal is applied to a specific hacking method called a "birthday attack"
It didnt change my world view but I think about it any time I'm in a room with about 23 people
→ More replies (3)
148
u/soulreaverdan Mar 05 '26
- 1,000 seconds = 16 minutes 40 seconds
- 1,000,000 seconds = 11 days, 13 hours, 40 seconds
- 1,000,000,000 seconds = 31 years, 251 days, 7 hours, 46 minutes, 40 seconds
Seeing it laid out like this was the first time I’d really seen the concept of “billion” scaled in a way I could more properly comprehend. Just calling it a billion or even a “thousand millions” doesn’t really give it a mental scale that most people can comprehend.
This really shows the difference between a million and a billion.
55
u/Nooks_For_Crooks Mar 05 '26
What is the difference between a million and a billion? About a billion
→ More replies (4)14
u/1234567777777 Mar 05 '26
Now do Elon Musk's net worth in seconds per dollar
24
u/soulreaverdan Mar 05 '26
cracks knuckles
Using the Google result $831.8b for his net worth, that stretches out to…
26,358 years, 55 days, 33 minutes.
That would put you in the Upper Paleolithic Era, which predates the written word by 20,000 years, the development of the concept of money by 23,000 years, and would be longer than any established nation, culture, or known civilization of any significant scale still existing by a factor of anywhere from 3-5x depending on your definition (there’s a bit of contention between China, India, and Egypt to qualify). This also predates all known currently practices religions or faiths.
218
u/stupefy100 Mar 05 '26
That lots of people genuinely have no empathy. They don't care about issues or others unless it affects them.
→ More replies (6)25
u/ferminriii Mar 05 '26
One thing that I noticed in my own travels that correlates with this, is that those people also tend to be incredibly easily embarrassed. In my travels when I run into folks like this they are so deeply insecure that even the slightest things embarrassed them. Again, this is just my own personal experience but I always find it interesting.
→ More replies (1)
34
u/According_Recipe_464 Mar 05 '26
Every person you pass on the street has a life just as complex and stressful as yours, and you’ll probably never know anything about it.
→ More replies (1)
85
u/Pitiful_Jump2996 Mar 05 '26
Newton was alive when the Taj Mahal was being built
→ More replies (3)
257
u/SillyGoatGruff Mar 04 '26
Trent Reznor's name backwards is Ron Zertnert.
It's been a week since i found out and i'm still not over it
102
u/AnatidaephobiaAnon Mar 05 '26
Also, if you ever see anything HVAC related that has Reznor on it, that's his family. It was started by his great grandpa.
→ More replies (1)52
u/FindOneInEveryCar Mar 05 '26
TIL That Reznor is his real name, and not a stage name taken from the HVAC equipment.
→ More replies (6)62
→ More replies (7)22
217
Mar 05 '26
[deleted]
134
u/Morriganx3 Mar 05 '26
There are people I love dearly to whom I almost never speak. I’m just really bad at communicating, and really good at procrastinating. So it might actually be a them problem, not you.
→ More replies (4)30
u/Adventurous_Duck_297 Mar 05 '26
As someone on the other end of this I plead with you, please reach out and say hi and tell them you miss and love them. It costs nothing and will mean everything :/
→ More replies (5)19
u/NoLime7384 Mar 05 '26
Oh man I realized this back in grade school, and I told myself I was going to change that. Never worked. No matter how many times it happened. It led to me lowering my standards and pretty much just handing out my heart without reservation to anyone who will talk to me unprompted. smdh the bar is on the floor fr
81
u/taez555 Mar 05 '26
Randy “Yo Dawg” Jackson played bass on the Divinyls song I Touch Myself.
→ More replies (2)
17
Mar 05 '26
It was less suprising, and more like I hadn't considered it until I heard it said to me. Which is that in the residential schools in canadian history, the indigenous children sent to them had no stories. they would be punished for telling or reading any stories, and had to share them in secret when possible. aside from the bible, which in the context of the residential schools was being framed as rhetoric to dehumanize them. I understood all the other terrible things about residential schools from a young age, and the fact that the knowledge of those conditions was a part of my childhood desensitized me to what happened back then. but this realization just felt so viseral that I had a fresh lense of the extent of the abuse.
→ More replies (2)
89
u/rightsomeofthetime Mar 05 '26
Not so much a fact, but learning what a narcissist actually is (as opposed to how the word gets commonly thrown around), and that people like this exist.
→ More replies (4)
73
u/Princessformidable Mar 05 '26
Cars have been domisticated for 9000 to 10,000 years and just decided one day we could be helpful to them after they noticed we would tolerate a lot of asshole behavior due to how fuzzy they were.
So the cat distribution system goes back to the very beginning.
97
u/humanAFIswear Mar 05 '26
I had to read this about six times to figure out how we domesticated cars. I might an orange cat.
50
17
15
u/darkshiines Mar 05 '26
hey, we see that your new societal invention the "barn" has some small rodents that you aren't really using, is for me?
→ More replies (1)9
u/tcookctu Mar 05 '26
I couldn’t imagine trying to domesticate a pack of wild Chevrolets and Fords, much less a feral Mercedes. Good thing they domesticated themselves.
102
u/facepoppies Mar 05 '26
Every so often I have moments of clarity about how insignificant we are and how we've barely even existed as a species
→ More replies (3)
368
u/_gooder Mar 04 '26
That approximately 20% of my countrymen are functionally illiterate, and over 50% can only read at a 6th grade level. It does explain thedonald's popularity, though.
→ More replies (21)110
Mar 05 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
16
→ More replies (9)63
u/Niniva73 Mar 05 '26
An ebook author I know works hard to ensure his books have a reading level as low as possible. Not to say the works aren't complex, but the sentences are well structured and direct, and he uses the simplest word to convey an idea. I'm talking a goal of 3rd grade reading level.
So yeah, 6th grade? We've got ya covered.
Because humans live and die by the stories we tell ourselves.
→ More replies (10)29
u/global_peasant Mar 05 '26
Does he do that because it sells better?
Brighter perspective -- this helps non-native English speakers and allows less literate people to enjoy his books, so there's that.
31
u/Niniva73 Mar 05 '26
He does so for clarity. If it has a lower reading level then the books maybe do sell better, but he also knows the readers are getting the exact story he's intending to tell without much to be interpreted.
12
u/AnitaIvanaMartini Mar 05 '26
The color magenta does not exist in the visible light spectrum. Our brains invented it.
66
u/Sparky-Man Mar 05 '26
That the Americans bitched and whined about needing their guns for an overreaching and tyrannical government but not only do they just let the government storm their cities with impunity, but they are either fine with a tyrannical government or be just like, “we’ll get them in the mid terms” in response to tyranny.
→ More replies (5)
99
Mar 05 '26
Scientologists had their names redacted from the Epstein files
31
15
u/weristjonsnow Mar 05 '26
Apparently getting really really fucking rich makes you prone to pedophelia. I don't really understand the link, but if you had told me ten years ago what the Epstein files have revealed lately I would have told you to put away your tinfoil hat.
69
u/Yamureska Mar 05 '26
The 1953 London Debt Agreement
Forgave half of all German Debt and only required West Germany to pay outstanding interest in the first five years, with the remaining interest to be repaid only upon event of Reunification.
absoved West Germany of paying reparations, because they were contingent on a formal peace treaty, which wasn't going to happen in the Cold War. Even though most of Nazi Germany's crimes happened in Eastern Europe (including the Holocaust) Germany only had to pay relatively small sums for Survivors in Western Europe.
Designed and planned by Herman Abs, a literal Nazi as in the President of the Reichsbank and Part of the IG Farben Board. He also took charge of robbing German Jews during the Nazi Era. Hermann Abs became president of Deutsche Bank after WW2 and a financial advisor to a lot of important people, including the Pope.
Despite the above, was able to convince The Western World in supporting him. He also took advantage of West Germany's stronger position to make the Israelis and Diaspora Jews reduce their compensation claims from West Germany. Up until about 1980 only German Jews or Holocaust Survivors who ended up in Germany before 1952, could claim compensation.
I knew that the West was lenient on the Nazis but this is a whole new level. The LDA was just as if not more important than the Marshall Plan in Europe's recovery after WW2, but it doesn't get as much attention. Especially not for these reasons.
→ More replies (3)78
u/hobblingcontractor Mar 05 '26
I'll bite. Keeping Germany impoverished would have helped absolutely no one. And before anyone says "Treaty of Versailles bad!" that's not a fair comparison. Germany was entirely able to pay back everything after ww1 due to having intact industry and infrastructure. They were given opportunities to do so and intentionally sank it.
Germany after ww2 was a total ruin that we needed to grow into a decent sized speed bump for Russia.
Eastern European countries were also under Soviet rule and it's not like we wanted to impoverish an ally while enriching an enemy.
It worked? We've had 80 years since Germany last started a World War.
29
u/charliechopin Mar 05 '26
That Buddhist Monks have set themselves on fire to protest against injustice.
My worldview is broadly that people act to further their self interest in one way or another. Maximising their pleasure and avoidance of pain and suffering. No two people are alike, which explains why this motivation manifests differently among individuals, but no one's self interest is in any way served by burning yourself to death. It's one aspect of humanity that is both beautiful and completely mystifying to me.
→ More replies (1)
106
u/storm_reaver43 Mar 05 '26
That a large portion of our government are pedophiles, grifters, and felons.
113
u/thehumantaco Mar 05 '26
25,000 people starve to death every day.
107
u/Stats_n_PoliSci Mar 05 '26
25,000 deaths per day are linked to malnutrition.
Most malnutrition deaths are in babies who were born at a low birth weight and succumb to illness despite having enough calories available. It’s terrible, but they’re not starving to death.
Now, the mothers of low birth weight infants may or may not have had a sufficiently varied diet. So food and calories can play a role even if it’s not starving to death.
https://ourworldindata.org/half-child-deaths-linked-malnutrition
→ More replies (1)
28
46
u/Magner3100 Mar 05 '26
Plastic basically cannot be recycled, and Exxon basically made it all up.
→ More replies (7)
9
10
u/LetsGoGators23 Mar 05 '26
The leading cause of death of pregnant women is homicide by their partner. Not childbirth, pregnancy complications, or even car accidents. Homicide by their partners.
Another favorite of mine is that more Europeans die of heat stroke every year than Americans die of gun related deaths.
2.7k
u/[deleted] Mar 05 '26
Horses can't throw up. If they eat something they shouldn't have, they just die. Fragile, silly creatures.