xkcd

by **emceng** » Thu Apr 19, 2012 1:23 pm UTC

YIL: or perhaps it was confirmed, that my feet are different sizes. I've had issues with my left shoe not fitting quite right before. Tried on climbing shoes last night. Left one fit great, right was 1/2 inch too small, and very painful.

by **ahammel** » Sat Apr 21, 2012 6:37 pm UTC

Yesterday, it struck me that the plot of Mulan centres around an invasion of China from the north by a group of Huns. I was all like "I think you mean Mongols, morons" and was about to go post this on "How Have I Never Noticed That Before?". But according to Wikipedia there was a group called the Xiongnu that lived north of China before the Mongols, and there's a hypothesis to the effect that the Huns were a group of nomadic Xiongnu who moved west to fuck up Rome's shit (although the evidence for this is sketchy). Shan Yu was a real person, and he fought a three year campaign against the Han dynasty.

Friends, I believe I've just been outsmarted by Disney.

by **The Scyphozoa** » Sat Apr 21, 2012 7:10 pm UTC

Yeah, they're just so DAMN clever, what with their getting historical facts right.

by **ahammel** » Sat Apr 21, 2012 7:12 pm UTC

The Scyphozoa wrote:Yeah, they're just so DAMN clever, what with their getting historical facts right.

Well it's not exactly a documentary, but it's not nearly so stupid as I though it was.

by **dragon** » Sun Apr 22, 2012 9:41 am UTC

Today I learned that Arthur the aardvark from the children's cartoon actually used to look like an aardvark.

by **Plasmic-Turtle** » Sun Apr 22, 2012 11:18 am UTC

dragon wrote:Today I learned that Arthur the aardvark from the children's cartoon actually used to look like an aardvark.

...wow. I never even knew Arthur WAS meant to be an aardvark. Not surprising I guess, given that he doesn't look like one (I mean removing the nose? seriously?! sure it personifies him more successfully, but it's like removing the trunk of an elephant in a cartoon and expecting people to know what the heck it's meant to be!)

by **Hyphe** » Sun Apr 22, 2012 11:49 am UTC

I knew that Arthur was meant to be an aardvark, but that's because I only remember two snippets of that show; one where his little sister is confused about a thesaurus, and one where Arthur learns to spell his surname by remembering a particular rythym and a little dance. "A-A - R-D - V-A-R-K".

by **The Scyphozoa** » Sun Apr 22, 2012 4:15 pm UTC

I thought he was supposed to be a mouse.

by **Jave D** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 2:06 am UTC

TIL: Prayer, like sex, is better when there's more people involved.

by **The Scyphozoa** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 2:20 am UTC

Group sex vs pair sex is subjective, of course.

by **Noc** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 3:25 am UTC

TIL: You can make honey mustard by taking mustard and putting honey in it. I thought it was more complicated than that, but it's not.

by **Magnanimous** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 3:58 am UTC

Noc wrote:TIL: You can make honey mustard by taking mustard and putting honey in it. I thought it was more complicated than that, but it's not.

Whaaaaaaat.

by **SecondTalon** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 4:03 am UTC

Magnanimous wrote:
Noc wrote:TIL: You can make honey mustard by taking mustard and putting honey in it. I thought it was more complicated than that, but it's not.

Whaaaaaaat.

Turns out, it's one of those "Exactly what it says on the tin" situations. Unlike spotted dick.

by **Giant Speck** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 4:50 am UTC

Noc wrote:TIL: You can make honey mustard by taking mustard and putting honey in it. I thought it was more complicated than that, but it's not.

Your post led me into a Wikisurf session:

Honey Mustard (within the Mustard article) -> Mustard (disambiguation) -> Sulfur mustard -> Chemical warfare -> Ricin -> Incidents involving ricin -> List of poisonings -> Love Canal -> Times Beach, Missouri

:shock:

by **Ulc** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 5:29 am UTC

Noc wrote:TIL: You can make honey mustard by taking mustard and putting honey in it. I thought it was more complicated than that, but it's not.

You'll probably be delighted to learn this then:

Making mustard from scratch is really, really easy!

by **roband** » Mon Apr 23, 2012 8:35 am UTC

SexyTalon wrote:
Magnanimous wrote:
Noc wrote:TIL: You can make honey mustard by taking mustard and putting honey in it. I thought it was more complicated than that, but it's not.

Whaaaaaaat.

Turns out, it's one of those "Exactly what it says on the tin" situations. Unlike spotted dick.

Ahem. I believe the convention is to now refer to it as "Spotted Richard" to avoid accidentally offending someone.

by **Apparently Anonymous** » Tue Apr 24, 2012 10:05 pm UTC

TIL that eating 3-4 low-carb bars in a day is NOT A GOOD IDEA.
My stomach pains have eased up enough that I'm able to lie on the bed and type, but the last couple of hours have been some I'd rather not re-live. Ah well, hoping my mind will at least make the connection of giving into cravings = pain.

by **Zarq** » Sun Apr 29, 2012 12:09 am UTC

TIL that the guy who made the soundtrack for Total Annihilation, my favorite game as soon as I passed the Putt Putt stage, is the same guy who did the soundtrack for Skyrim. Woah.

Also, the guy who narrated the intro from TA is married to Ellen McLain, a.k.a. GLaDOS.

by **Menacing Spike** » Sun Apr 29, 2012 12:35 am UTC

Zarq wrote:Also, the guy who narrated the intro from TA is married to Ellen McLain, a.k.a. GLaDOS.

He also voices the TF2 Sniper.

by **Igidich** » Sun Apr 29, 2012 1:18 am UTC

TIL about the existential crisis of zoos in revolutionary France. Keeping animals locked up didn't quite square with the ideals, see.

by **OBrien** » Sun Apr 29, 2012 5:12 pm UTC

TIL Darkthrone's Fenriz made and recorded a lecture on the origins and early days of Black Metal. It's pretty awesome.

Part 1
Part 2

by **thorgold** » Tue May 01, 2012 11:51 pm UTC

TIL about the scale of the universe.

In 2003, astronomers pointed Hubble at an 11 square arcmeter section of the sky - the equivalent of the area seen through a pinhole on a piece of paper held a meter from your face. Over 300 hours, that dark, empty pinprick of the sky turned up this. That picture contains 10,000 galaxies, each galaxy contains billions of stars...

To chart the entire sky at this level of detail, we'd need 13 million pictures.

Queue screaming.

by **shawnhcorey** » Wed May 02, 2012 12:25 am UTC

That would be 130,000,000,000 galaxies of a minimum of 1,000,000,000 stars. Or 130,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars. It may just be possible that there is life elsewhere in our universe.

by **SecondTalon** » Wed May 02, 2012 3:43 am UTC

thorgold wrote:TIL about the scale of the universe.

In 2003, astronomers pointed Hubble at an 11 square arcmeter section of the sky - the equivalent of the area seen through a pinhole on a piece of paper held a meter from your face. Over 300 hours, that dark, empty pinprick of the sky turned up this. That picture contains 10,000 galaxies, each galaxy contains billions of stars...

To chart the entire sky at this level of detail, we'd need 13 million pictures.

Queue screaming.

Now remember that pretty much every star in that image is dead, as they're that far away.

by **Giant Speck** » Wed May 02, 2012 4:20 am UTC

Today I learned what amok really means.

by **SlyReaper** » Wed May 02, 2012 11:49 am UTC

Now remember that pretty much every star in that image is dead, as they're that far away.

Most of the stars would be red dwarfs, and they last a lot longer than a few meagre billion years. Even something as big as our own sun has a life expectancy of about ten billion years, which isn't far off the current age of the universe. Indeed, the contents of the Hubble Deep Field are "only" about twelve billion LY away, so a star within that field of view would only have to be slightly smaller than our sun in order for it to still be burning.

Stars: they last quite a long time.

by **roband** » Wed May 02, 2012 11:57 am UTC

Giant Speck wrote:Today I learned what amok really means.

"with rage" right?

by **emceng** » Wed May 02, 2012 1:12 pm UTC

Saturday I learned what the broil function on my oven does. I've heard of broiling things, and may have actually set it to broil when cooking before. I just didn't know what it did. I also learned why my frozen pizzas weren't cooking on the bottom.

by **SecondTalon** » Wed May 02, 2012 2:21 pm UTC

roband wrote:
Giant Speck wrote:Today I learned what amok really means.

"with rage" right?

Sure, why not.

by **tastelikecoke** » Thu May 03, 2012 3:38 pm UTC

Giant Speck wrote:Today I learned what amok really means.

It also means having tantrums or running with huge butterfly knives.

Really huge butterfly knives.

by **Hofstadter'sLaw** » Fri May 04, 2012 3:37 am UTC

Giant Speck wrote:Today I learned what amok really means.

I'm curious: What did you think it meant before you learned what it really meant?

by **Giant Speck** » Fri May 04, 2012 5:17 am UTC

Hofstadter'sLaw wrote:
Giant Speck wrote:Today I learned what amok really means.

I'm curious: What did you think it meant before you learned what it really meant?

I thought it simply meant "out of control". I had no idea that its modern idiomatic usage is a much watered-down version of the actual, more murderous definition.

by **Hofstadter'sLaw** » Fri May 04, 2012 6:06 am UTC

Giant Speck wrote:
Hofstadter'sLaw wrote:
Giant Speck wrote:Today I learned what amok really means.

I'm curious: What did you think it meant before you learned what it really meant?

I thought it simply meant "out of control". I had no idea that its modern idiomatic usage is a much watered-down version of the actual, more murderous definition.

Oh, crap. I thought it meant "out of control" too.

TIL what "amok" really means after reading SexyTalon's link to the Wikipedia page.

by **Daimon** » Fri May 04, 2012 11:58 am UTC

Today I learned that a lower case q is a backwards p. Looking at it some more after the fact, it didn't look like an English letter to me anymore. This also happens with things like, T-shirt, microphone &c.

by **roband** » Fri May 04, 2012 12:13 pm UTC

Daimon wrote:Today I learned that a lower case q is a backwards p. Looking at it some more after the fact, it didn't look like an English letter to me anymore. This also happens with things like, T-shirt, microphone &c.

When I write a 'q', I always put a diagonal line up and right on the bottom of the letter.

And now, after analysing the font on the forum, 'q' also doesn't look like a letter to me. Thanks for that

by **ExplodingHat** » Fri May 04, 2012 9:13 pm UTC

Now that you mention it, "q" without the tail inflection is uncannily alien in form...

by **Ptolom** » Fri May 04, 2012 10:50 pm UTC

I have a similar issue with 4 and g.

by **Soralin** » Sat May 05, 2012 1:49 am UTC

Daimon wrote:Looking at it some more after the fact, it didn't look like an English letter to me anymore.

qp db qp db qp db qp db

by **Vieto** » Sat May 05, 2012 2:37 am UTC

Soralin wrote:
Daimon wrote:Looking at it some more after the fact, it didn't look like an English letter to me anymore.

qp db qp db qp db qp db

qpdbqpdb9pd69pdbgpdbqpdlb

by **RollingHead** » Sat May 05, 2012 12:43 pm UTC

The similarity between handwritten 'q' and '9' has always been a major annoyance when writing equations.

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