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The dog that played specks girlfriend in Pee Wees big adventure is also the same dog that played precious in silence of the lambs.
The guy who played Cowboy Curtis on PeeWees playhouse also played Morpheus in the Matrix.
This feels like one of those fun facts that theatres would have on screen with cheesy background music if you showed up to a movie too early
The definition of a second is the time it takes for a caesium-133 atom to fluctuate between its two hyperfine ground state 9,192,631,770 times (I did not look the number up).
Congrats 😃👍 btw in that time light in vacuum will travel 299,792,458 metres (didn’t look that up either)
Fun fact 1: Polish people are honoraribly black after they fought alongside the Haitians against the French (they switched sides as the only reason they were there was because France sent them there)
Fun fact 2: Alaska was almost purchased by Lichtenstein
Fun fact 3: Singapore was given independence against their own wishes
Fun fact 4: Abraham Lincoln read some of the works of Karl Marx as he wrote for his favorite newspaper
Television is one of the few words combined by one greek part and one latin part.
Wombats shit is cubic.
The sun accounts for more than 99.99% of the mass of the solar system
The PC I had as a teenager had teal trim.
Physiologically, rats can’t vomit. (Not to brag or anything, but I also know somebody who claims they saw it happen once)
That REAL Pi actually ends at 7 digits. Discovered by a greengrocer named Dennis.
There’s been an easy say to calculate it since 1800s using an abacus.
Edit: thought the /s was implied with, you know, “Dennis.” I knew I should have gone with “Humperdink.”
What makes it “real”? Pi is an irrational number, by definition it doesn’t end
I would like to learn more about this. Wiki says:
In the 5th century AD, Chinese mathematicians approximated π to seven digits, while Indian mathematicians made a five-digit approximation, both using techniques.
So it looks like they were all approximations, but it actually is much longer like I was always taught.
A sperm whale penis is 14 feet long.
If presented with an old 1970-2000 era landline phone, I can call someone by rapidly hanging up in the pattern of their phone number.
In case anyone is wondering, this is how old phones with rotary dials worked: you wound the dial to the digit you needed and the built-in mechanism would automatically wind it back; as it did it would momentarily disconnect the line as it passed each digit generating pulses that the exchange would count. If you still live somewhere where landline phones exist odds are this still works because the exchange maintains backwards compatibility with pulse dialling.
Up until about twenty years ago virtually every supermarket had a phone by the checkouts with a single pre-programmed button for a local taxi company; we used this trick all the time to call home, our mates, etc.
You’re welcome to dial into my Modem on which Doom is listening for a connection at 40c3 :3
Used to do this in payphones as a kid. The numpads were disabled when no coins were inserted, effectively disabling tone dialing. But pulse dialing still worked.
I am pretty sure I could do it sans phone and only the handle, by rapidly pulling the plug out of the socket and putting it back in.
Never thought to try it when I had the chance.
Often the rj-12 handset cabling would not plug directly into the rj-11 jacks. If they did, I’d be surprised to learn they’d work on the wire as-is.
Yeah, you’d have to change the plug.
The “brat” in “bratwurst” doesn’t come from “braten”, which means to fry. It actually comes from the old German word “brät”, which means finely chopped meat.
You are telling me Wurstsalat Crew did lie to me?
That’s so brät
Like 15% of people can rumble their ears and make a sound only they can hear
I always just assumed this was a thing anyone could do, Is there some other name for this i can look into?
Auto-Earatic Affixation
I’m convinced people that “can’t” just don’t know how.
It’s the same movement as closing your throat off so you can open your mouth underwater, and you just push “up” past that till it puts pressure on the eustachian tubes, and the rumble is your muscle fibers contracting against that which resonates on your eardrums.
Anyone can do it, it’s just hard to explain
That’s odd, I can do either of those things independently. Maybe it’s just wired that way for some people?
That’s a minor sound when I do it if I understand correctly. Audible but light. I can flex the muscles in my jaw/tongue as one would to attempt to pop ears, but pushing out from the back of the mouth and pulling my jaw backwards. I think it slightly restricts blood flow and makes it turbulent past the ear. Sounds like pulsar tinnitus (probably not relatable) but constant as long as I hold it.
Yeah, that’s it.
I think some people just do the “water lock” thing to close their jaw off naturally to try and stop a yawn, and that’s how they “discover” they can do it.
It also makes several values in EEG charts go up
Oh thats interesting, i wonder what causes it, the thinking of doing it or actually doing it
Mine sounds like a snare drum.
@ascend it’s easier for me to do when I squeeze my eyes shut and yawn. I don’t know why
Ooh, I can make a little rumble thunder happen if I do that! But why would anyone want to? And weirdly, just yawning doesn’t really do it, but squeezing the eyes while yawning does. Huh.
I often do it to dampen unpleasant noises. Car alarm? Siren? I make my ears go Frrrrrrrrrrrr. It helps a lot.
“Loanword” is a calque, and “calque” is a loanword.
Whats a calque
It’s a loanword from the French “calque”
A compound word that enters another language via direct translation of its parts.
As an example, “loanword” comes from German “Lehnwort”, with Lehn = loan and Wort = word.
Grostesques are mythical or fantastical creatures carved into the sides of building. If they have been designed to drain water away from the building, they are called gargoyles .
That’s not useless! I’m totally using this to impress someone, someday.
