Commented - til - kbin.life

TIL lemmy.ml is a pro-authoritarian CCP shill instance (lemmy.ml)

For all the newcomers that aren’t aware, I just stumbled upon this insane drama. Apparently lemmy.ml is the result of a reddit sub ban of a bunch of pro-china bots who vigorously defend the Chinese government, and the two top admins are also the top devs of the Lemmy source software. Pretty terrible stuff!...

TIL that some people do not have an inner voice and think in different nonverbal ways. (humanities.ku.dk)

cross-posted from: lemmit.online/post/2916897...

TIL In the Hot Coffee lawsuit against McDonalds,punitive damages were given due to McDonalds intentionally overheating coffee to save money on refills (www.poolelg.com)

During the trial it was revealed that McDonald’s knew that heating their coffee to this temperature would be dangerous, but they did it anyways because it would save them money. When you serve coffee that is too hot to drink, it will take much longer for a person to drink their coffee, which means that McDonald’s will not...

TIL 40 states in the US charge you $20-$80 a day for being incarcerated in prison. (en.m.wikipedia.org)

Very weird that I am so old and have literally never heard this mentioned in a TV show or book or movie or anything....

TIL about Earl Silverman, a domestic abuse survivor who founded a shelter for men. It was denied funding from the government and he was ridiculed. The shelter went bankrupt and he died by suicide (en.m.wikipedia.org)

TIL the US is the only rich country offering no national paid parental leave (www.bbc.com)

TIL just 20% of European homes have air conditioning compared to 88% in US (www.nbcnews.com)

TIL The Katy Freeway in Houston, TX was expanded in 2008 to 26 lanes (one of the widest in the world) and 5 years later had longer peak travel times than before the expansion (www.nytimes.com)

For critics of widening projects, the prime example of induced demand is the Katy Freeway in Houston, one of the widest highways in the world with 26 lanes....

TIL personal credit scores only started in 1989 (en.m.wikipedia.org)

I always assumed credit scores were an integral and historic part of the American financial system....

TIL humans are the only animal with a chin. We aren't sure why. (www.smithsonianmag.com)

TIL about Roko's Basilisk, a thought experiment considered by some to be an "information hazard" - a concept or idea that can cause you harm by you simply knowing/understanding it (en.wikipedia.org)

Roko's basilisk is a thought experiment which states that an otherwise benevolent artificial superintelligence (AI) in the future would be incentivized to create a virtual reality simulation to torture anyone who knew of its potential existence but did not directly contribute to its advancement or development, in order to...

TIL about Swatch Internet Time, a decimal time system that has no time zones. (en.wikipedia.org)

I feel that this is what we should be using instead of the current illogical time system.

TIL the dev of Iron Lung, an acclaimed indie horror game, faced significant backlash over increasing the price from $6 to $8 (www.ign.com)

Then, responding to those who have said he’s “only doing this for the money", Szymanski tweeted: “Yes, no fucking shit. I make games for a living. If I didn't want to earn money from them I wouldn't charge money for them.”...

TIL "How do you dress?" means "Which pants leg do you put your penis down?" (www.realmenrealstyle.com)

So the tailor doesn’t touch your penis when they’re measuring you

TIL that a bunch of medieval manuscripts featured illustrations of knights fighting giant snails, and no one knows why (www.bbc.com)

TIL Children as young as eight can and have been put on the sex offender registry, which lasts the rest of their lives. (jlc.org)

TIL if you live in Pennsylvania and make minimum wage you'd have to work 105 hours a week to afford a "modest" one bedroom rental. (nlihc.org)

This site has these sorts of stats for each state.

TIL the word 'lox' (smoked salmon) is the oldest word in the English language- unchanged in meaning and pronunciation for 8,000 years (nautil.us)

it’s also yummy

TIL a Canadian from Greece took an American version of an Italian dish and added tropical fruit to it and called it a Hawaiian pizza. (en.wikipedia.org)

TIL the term Redneck likely originated from the sunburned red neck of those working in fields. (en.wikipedia.org)

The term originally characterized farmers that had a red neck, caused by sunburn from long hours working in the fields. A citation from 1893 provides a definition as “poorer inhabitants of the rural districts … men who work in the field, as a matter of course, generally have their skin stained red and burnt by the sun, and...

TIL you can improve your google search result by adding "before:2023" (mastodon.social)

TIL in Australia the name of the band "AC/DC" is pronounced "Acca Dacca" (en.wikipedia.org)

TIL about the "'New York Times problem'—the dilemma of indicting Assange for the very same kind of investigative journalism that mainstream media engages frequently" (www.newsweek.com)

Two of us, Ellsberg and Noam Chomsky, testified for Assange at his extradition hearing last year. In Ellsberg’s words then, the WikiLeaks publications that Assange is being charged for are “amongst the most important truthful revelations of hidden criminal state behavior that have been made public in U.S. history.” The...

TIL the FBI struggled to hire hackers because of a rule that required applicants to have not smoked marijuana for the past 3 years (www.nydailynews.com)

TIL the adjective 'daily' in the lord's prayer is actually written in the original Greek as epiousion, which occurs nowhere else in known history (en.wikipedia.org)

the full line being “Give us today our epiousion bread”...