Fun facts!

  • Want to keep track of this thread?
    Accounts can bookmark posts, watch threads for updates, and jump back to where you stopped reading.
    Create account
Mathematical models suggest that, on a planet covered partially with liquid water, the proportion of deserts to total land should be comparable to the proportion of land to total planetary surface area. This relationship seems to hold for Planet Earth (desert constitutes 33% of land; land constitutes 29% of total planet surface area), and it is believed to hold for any Earth-like exoplanet as well.

For the argument and mathematical derivation please refer to Life in the Cosmos: From Biosignatures to Technosignatures by Lingham and Loeb, page 418-419.

Indeed planets that contain both dry land and liquid water ocean, like our planet, are exceptions rather than the rule. It is estimated that around 1% of exoplanets fit this description but these might be more common (around 6%) around G-type stars like our Sun.
 
Last edited:
Elvis was offered the lead role in the movie West Side Story, but his absolute dogshit of a person manager refused to let him do it.

This would unfortunately not be the last time Elvis would be offered, or at the very least, considered for the lead role in an iconic movie only for his manager to make him turn it down. Let's just say it happened a decent number of times, and that if his manager actually had let him play said roles, film history, and pop culture as we know it would be very different.
 
George Floyd died from complications resulting from drugs he willingly ingested.

Any other healthy human being would be reacting clearly and violently to having their airway forcefully restricted; they would be choking, gasping, convulsing, struggling and possibly having seizure like symptoms. The people simping for this nigger refuse to believe the facts he had large amounts of fentanyl in his system the moment of asphyxia, he was recorded on tape yelling "I took to many drugs"!, when the PD is cuffing him on the pavement.


also fun fact: The George Floyd memorial was literrally struck by lightning, strongly suggesting if there is a god they are incredibly displeased by society making a martyr out of some nigger who OD'd, who's been arrested 30 times for shit ranging from passing fake money to assault and battery on a pregnant woman.
 
demicolon said:
Heathen is a dated term used primarily of someone who is not religious, or whose religion is not Judaism, Islam, or especially Christianity. It is also sometimes used disapprovingly of someone who is not cultured; this use is also dated.

Heathen likely comes from a term for a country inhabitant—in particular, a “heath dweller.” The Latin source of pagan, paganus, originally meant “country dweller” or “civilian;” it was used at the end of the Roman Empire to refer to people who practiced a religion other than Christianity, Judaism, or Islam, and especially to those who worshiped multiple deities.

It’s believed that the religious meanings of paganus developed either from the enduring non-Christian religious practices of those who lived far from the Roman cities where Christianity was more quickly adopted, or from the fact that early Christians referred to themselves as “soldiers of Christ,” making nonbelievers “civilians.”

(from Merriam-Webster)


Kinda funny how today neo-poganism keeps to the big cities while Christianity keeps to the sticks.
Click to expand...

Heathen is one of my favorite English words (it's such a fun insult) and I think we should adopt it as the Anglophone/American version of Spanish gringo and Japanese gaijin - giving it the meaning "dumb foreigner we can't understand."

On that topic, here's some fitting trivia for turkey month: America may seem like a Latin name but it's actually Germanic. Amerigo Vespucci's first name was brought to Italy after the Fall of Rome as the Gothic Amalrich - literally "work-ruler" with ama being an old Germanic word for "labor/trouble" replaced by "work" and rich clearly being related to "reich" and "reign." The Anglo-Saxon form of the name (Emmerich) became Emery, Emerson (son of Emery) with the female form becoming Emily. In the other Germanic countries the name became Emil, and back in Italy the masculine form became Emilio and the feminine became Amelia.
 
Breathing is automatic, except when you think about it.

You are now breathing manually and will continue to do so until you stop thinking about it, sorry.
 
Positron said:
Mathematical models suggest that, on a planet covered partially with liquid water, the proportion of deserts to total land should be comparable to the proportion of land to total planetary surface area. This relationship seems to hold for Planet Earth (desert constitutes 33% of land; land constitutes 29% of total planet surface area), and it is believed to hold for any Earth-like exoplanet as well.

For the argument and mathematical derivation please refer to Life in the Cosmos: From Biosignatures to Technosignatures by Lingham and Loeb, page 418-419.

Indeed planets that contain both dry land and liquid water ocean, like our planet, are exceptions rather than the rule. It is estimated that around 1% of exoplanets fit this description but these might be more common (around 6%) around G-type stars like our Sun.
Click to expand...
What’s the TLDR on why? Is it just something about how much land is expected to be at X elevation and so on?
 
Last edited:
Multiplication can also be thought of as a difference of squares.

(m - d)(m + d) = m^2 - d^2

Say I want to solve:
36 * 48

We can first find the midpoint m (i.e. the average) between the operands.

m = ( 36 + 48 ) / 2 = 84 / 2 = 42

Next, the distance d is the distance from the operand to the midpoint m.

d = | 48 - m | = | m - 36 | = 6

So, we have this:

(42 - 6)(42 + 6) = 42^2 - 6^2
36 * 48 = 42^2 - 6^2
36 * 48 = 1764 - 36
36 * 48 = 1728

We can compute multiplications more efficiently than the standard way if we can lookup squares on the fly. And we don’t even need to store that many squares.

Say we don’t have 42^2 stored. Remember,

(a + b)^2
= (a + b)(a + b)
= a^2 + 2ab + b^2

We can split 42 into two smaller numbers a and b. Say, a = 21 and b = 21

42^2
= (21 + 21)^2
= 21^2 + (2 * 21 * 21) + 21^2
= 21^2 + (2 * 21^2) + 21^2

Just look up 21^2 and plug in. If we don’t have 21^2, then split 21 up!

This has many implications in prime and non-prime numbers, quadratics, and computing theory, but I will end it here.
 
jebsurge said:
The longest piece of literature ever created is a Super Smash Brothers Brawl fanfiction.
Click to expand...
Turns out of what i could find as longest fanfic was https://fictionlit.com/longest-fanfiction/ the first one at the top of the list in that link "This fanfic is a crossover between:

  • Terminator
  • Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles
  • Firefly
  • Serenity
It has 1509 chapters with a total length of 6,713,475 words, making it one of the longest stories on this website.

The story follows an alternate storyline for season 3 of the Sarah Conner Chronicles.

The main focus is on Sarah Conner, Cameron Phillips, and John Conner.

It starts where season 2 ended, and instead of focusing only on the battle with Skynet, it also shows a lot more character development.

It is quite an action story with so many layers that there is something for everyone who loves this fandom"


The actual longest piece of literature is Marienbad my Love at 17.8 millions words or 10,710 pages and this is what the description for it i found
"Exiled on a deserted island, a Christ-haunted journalist-turned-filmmaker attempts to persuade a married women from his past to help him produce a science-fiction-themed pastiche to the 1960s French New Wave classic, “Last Year at Marienbad.” Through this act of artistic creation, he expects to carry out the will of God by prophesizing the death of time and the birth of a new religion. If only he can make the woman remember him… “Marienbad My Love” is the world’s longest novel, a multi-million-word, multiple-volume work meticulously assembled through calculation and chance from fragments of pre-existing texts both written and appropriated by Mark Leach over the course of 30 years – “the movie,” as Leach calls it, “of all my labours and all my inspirations.””"
 
Adolf Hitler loved Disney films, especially Mickey Mouse shorts and he apparently watched Charles Chaplin The Great Dictator twice.
 
Plants can use chemicals to defend themselves from herbivores. Some can release a pheromone warning nearby plants when eaten or damaged.

Nicotine and caffeine are poisons meant to deter animals from eating the plant, as are chemicals that cause spiciness (humans have adapted to overcome the spice deterrent and obtain endorphin hits from it).
Ewan McGregor said:
Adolf Hitler loved Disney films, especially Mickey Mouse shorts and he apparently watched Charles Chaplin The Great Dictator twice.
Click to expand...
After the war, Emperor Hirohito visited Disneyland and obtained a Mickey Mouse Watch.

Kim Jong-il was also a big fan of American movies.
 
Meat Target said:
Plants can use chemicals to defend themselves from herbivores. Some can release a pheromone warning nearby plants when eaten or damaged.

Nicotine and caffeine are poisons meant to deter animals from eating the plant, as are chemicals that cause spiciness (humans have adapted to overcome the spice deterrent and obtain endorphin hits from it).
Click to expand...

Nicotine can easily kill smaller animals
 
Meat Target said:
Nicotine and caffeine are poisons meant to deter animals from eating the plant, as are chemicals that cause spiciness (humans have adapted to overcome the spice deterrent and obtain endorphin hits from it).
Click to expand...
Additionally, birds don't have a problem with spice, so birds still carry the seeds from pepper plants and deposit them elsewhere in their droppings.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom