Fun facts!

[Sirius]

The world's largest farm tractor ever produced is the (still operational!) Big Bud 747, with only one unit ever being made.

• It has a 24.1L, 1,100 horsepower, 16-cylinder Detroit Diesel engine, fueled by a 1,000 US gallon diesel tank.
• That engine has two turbochargers and two superchargers for induction.
• Torque output is about 3,100 lb-ft at 3,400 RPM.
• The tractor's primary function is chisel plowing, which it does with an 80-foot (24 meter) wide plow unit at around 60-80 acres (24-32 hectares) per hour.
• It was out of operation from 2009-2020 simply because the only company that made tires big enough went bankrupt. The old tires eventually were replaced with slightly smaller Goodyear LSW1400/30r46 ones.
• Unit weight is about 95,000lbs (43,000 kg) unloaded.

 

[Hamstirer]

The old tires eventually were replaced with slightly smaller Goodyear LSW1400/30r46 ones.

Those tires are about $15000 each

 

[Yugica]

A tiny little frog from Cuba has become invasive all over the world. They're known as "greenhouse frogs" and the reason for why they're so invasive is because they lay their eggs in the dirt and skip the tadpole stage. They've been unknowingly smuggled over and over again through the trading of various plants for gardens and landscaping. They also are very tiny and make cute little chirps.

A video with one chirping whilst visible beyond the netting too.

 

[Sirius]

Literal methamphetamine is still prescribed for severe cases of ADHD in the US under the brand name Desoxyn. It's only offered in 5 mg doses and doctors are very reluctant to give it to people, but it does happen. I've also heard it being used short-term for obesity.

 

[Yugica]

Nematodes, and apparently other kinds of Ecydozoans(the group that includes all arthropods, tardigrades, penis worms and more), have amoeboid sperm. I even found a whole chapter on the biology of nematode sperm(sci-hub link). Here's a picture of a nematode sperm cell.

 

[Positron]

Nematodes, and apparently other kinds of Ecydozoans(the group that includes all arthropods, tardigrades, penis worms and more), have amoeboid sperm.

Insect sperms are not amoeboid. These are for example Drosophilia sperms

Nematodes are special because their bodies are under a high hydrostatic pressure beneath their cuticles, and in such settings flagella aren't effective.

 

[Yugica]

Nematodes are special because their bodies are under a high hydrostatic pressure beneath their cuticles, and in such settings flagella aren't effective.

Yeah, the more I'm looking into it the more I can see that the guy I heard this from might've been taking a heaping helping of liberties when he said "other ecdysozoans"(or just plain wrong and talking out of his ass). Although trying to find what other sperm cells are like in other ecdysozoan lineages has shown me that they're very diverse for their sperm morphology.

Spoiler: Various arthropod sperm morphologies

So the following illustrations are from chapter 3 "Sperm morphological diversity" in Sperm Biology, an Evolutionary Perspective(sci-hub link), figure 3.2 which covers the section on aflagellate and multiflagellate sperm.

(A) in this is from Moina brachiata, a relative of daphnia("water flea") and a crustacean.

(B) is from Daphnia longispina.

(C) is from Moina macrocopa.

(D) is from a Cypridopsis specimen("clam shrimp" or ostracod).

(E) is from a harvestman(Opiliones, a chelicerate and relative of spiders and scorpions), Nemastoma lugubre.

(F) is a "Generalized oxyrhynch sperm", from the grouping of true crabs.

(G) is from Acrotrichis intermedia, a beetle.

(H) is from another branchiopod(the group the water fleas and clam shrimp are from) in a Sida specimen(picture is of Sida crystallina).

(I) is from Artemia salina, the brine shrimp.

(J) is a relative of the brine shrimp, Polyartemia forcipata(I want to collect them now after having seen them, they remind me of some Dinocaridids from the Cambrian).

(K) is from a termite specimen of the genus Reticulitermes.
(L) is from a millipede of the genus Pachyjulus(the 'J' and 'I' in how it's written out is swapped from some links I've seen), pictured is Pachyjulus hungaricus.

(M) is from a conehead(Proturan, an ancient lineage of hexapods(the group insects are in)), Eosentomon transitorium(pictured is Eosentomon vermiforme).

Speaking of nematodes though, the deepest living animal to have ever been found was a nematode. Halicephalobus mephisto was found over 2.2 miles(3.6 km) beneath the Earth in a deep rock fracture full of groundwater. They were found in very oxygen poor waters and filtered from thousands of liters of water pumped out from the fracture. Only one specimen has been found and the original had its tail partially broken, but it was able to survive long enough to lay 8 eggs and all of the specimens after that are from that original nematode's line.

They feed on various kinds of bacteria in their habitat and in tests have preferred to eat an endolithic sulphophile(endolith = within rock, sulphophile = sulfur loving) bacterium, that's native to depths close to this, known as Desulforudis audaxviator over E. coli. Here's a picture of one of the worms . Also a nice article to read up more on them.

 

[Debunkarella]

Literal methamphetamine is still prescribed for severe cases of ADHD in the US under the brand name Desoxyn. It's only offered in 5 mg doses and doctors are very reluctant to give it to people, but it does happen. I've also heard it being used short-term for obesity.

View attachment 7740808

There are many Amphetamine-based ADHD medications.

Mixed Amphetamine Salts

These combine different amphetamine isomers (levoamphetamine and dextroamphetamine):

• Adderall (immediate-release)
• Adderall XR (extended-release)
• Mydayis (long-acting, similar to Adderall XR but lasts up to 16 hours)
• Evekeo (racemic amphetamine sulfate, 50/50 mix of d- and l-amphetamine)
• Evekeo ODT (orally disintegrating tablet)

2. Dextroamphetamine-based

Primarily d-amphetamine (more CNS-focused, “sharper” effect):

• Dexedrine (immediate-release)
• Dexedrine Spansule (extended-release)
• Zenzedi (immediate-release)
• ProCentra (liquid form)

3. Lisdexamfetamine-based

A prodrug of dextroamphetamine (activated in the body, slower onset):

• Vyvanse (known as Elvanse in Europe)

In 2021, around 41 million Americans were prescribed Adderall—for ADHD, narcolepsy, and related conditions .
As of 2019, approximately 10% of U.S. children had an ADHD diagnosis; around 3.3 million children—roughly 5 out of every 100—were prescribed ADHD medication

 

[Rome's rightful successor]

The old lady that played Aunt May in the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man films is still around and is going to be 98 soon.

 

[Ventrue]

The pictures that were taken by Richard Fish for TV Guide in 1964 shows that The Addams Family set had a vibrant pink colour.

There can be various reasons behind this contrast. Because the Addams Family was filmed in black and white, the colours for some of the items simply didn’t matter. Another reason was the way that black-and-white film registers certain colours when shooting.

In other black-and-white films, characters often had to wear strange shades of lipstick (like brown or green) to get the right shades to appear on black-and-white film and many of the colour choices on this strangely colourful Addams family set were probably deliberate, they all came together to create the dark and odd world.

 

[Positron]

There are only four elements that, in their pure forms, are magnetic at or near room temperature. Everybody knows about Iron, and the other three are Cobalt, Nickel, and Gadolinium (below 20°C only). The Neodymium magnets that audiophiles talk about is an alloy.

 

[Yugica]

There are only four elements that, in their pure forms, are magnetic at or near room temperature. Everybody knows about Iron, and the other three are Cobalt, Nickel, and Gadolinium (below 20°C only). The Neodymium magnets that audiophiles talk about is an alloy.

Bismuth is also weird and is a diamagnetic(weakly repelled by magnetic fields) material. If you were to go by the general assumption for predicting what kind of magnetism it should have(by its electron orbitals) then it should be paramagnetic(weakly attracted to magnetic fields) but instead it's the strongest diamagnetic element without any kind of special structure. Pyrolytic graphite is a stronger diamagnet(if we don't count superconductors) and is lighter but that's with a specialized structure and carbon in other forms is quite weakly diamagnetic. It makes me wonder if something like planar bismuth layers stacked on top of one another like pyrolytic graphite might in fact be a far stronger diamagnet.

Here's a copy of the graph on the wikipedia page for diamagnetism to show off some diamagnetic materials:

 

[Sirius]

Three of the six 1200 kW emergency diesel generators underneath the original World Trade Center complex survived 9/11. Two were salvaged and reused for a different purpose, while one (pictured here) was put in a museum. The generators didn't play a major role on 9/11, but they ran for over 3 hours during the 1993 bombing.

More Info

 

[Ventrue]

Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper is not 100% da Vinci's work.

Leonardo worked on The Last Supper from 1495 to 1498. Unlike traditional frescoes, which Renaissance masters painted on wet plaster walls, Leonardo experimented with tempura paint on a dry, sealed plaster wall in the Santa Maria delle Grazie monastery in Milan, Italy. The experiment proved unsuccessful, however, because the paint did not adhere properly and began to flake away only a few decades after the work was finished.

Three of da Vinci's students, including Giampietrino, made copies of his painting early in the 16th century. Giampietrino did a full-scale copy that is now in London's Royal Academy of Arts.



This oil painting on canvas was the primary resource for the latest restoration of the work. The second copy by Andrea Solari is in the Leonardo da Vinci Museum in Belgium while the third copy by Cesare da Sesto is in the Church of Saint Ambrogio in Switzerland.

In 1652, monastery residents cut a new door in the wall of the deteriorating painting, which removed a chunk of the artwork showing the feet of Jesus. Late in the 18th century, Napoleon Bonaparte's soldiers turned the area into a stable and further damaged the wall with projectiles. During World War II, the Nazis bombed the monastery, reducing surrounding walls to rubble.



At the end of the 20th century, restorer Panin Brambilla Barcilon and his crew relied on microscopic photographs, core samples, infrared reflectoscopy and sonar to remove the added layers of paint and restore the original as accurately as possible. Critics maintain that only a fraction of the painting that exists today is the work of Leonardo da Vinci.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

I got this from ChatGPT so it's probably made up, BUT I see no reason it would not be true:

In the Civil War, if you died in a mass battle, there was a decent chance you could be eaten by a wild hog.

These things were everywhere. The traditional Southern agricultural practice was to basically just let pigs feed freely on the mast of the forest and collect them together for wintering, and the feral ones of course became the boar population we are plagued with today, very dangerous creatures. Worse than bears, frankly, because boar are very powerful themselves and a million times more aggressive.

So you get these mass deaths, and then what happens? Oink oink. Like a bunch of ghouls in a Witcher game.


Edit: Confirmed, most famously at Shiloh.

 

[Guiron]

Bismuth is also weird and is a diamagnetic(weakly repelled by magnetic fields) material. If you were to go by the general assumption for predicting what kind of magnetism it should have(by its electron orbitals) then it should be paramagnetic(weakly attracted to magnetic fields) but instead it's the strongest diamagnetic element without any kind of special structure.

Speaking of bismuth, it occurs in one of the stranger weather phenomenons in the Solar System. While diamond rains on gas giants have become more commonly talked about thanks to media outlets and documentaries mentioning it in great detail, one other strange weather phenomenon which isn't mentioned nearly as much is Venus snow. High on the slopes of Venus's mountains, including Skadi Mons, the tallest mountain on Venus, considerable amounts of powdery bismuth(III) sulfide (aka Bismuthinite) and lead(II) sulfide (aka Galena) precipitates out of the sulfur-rich atmosphere and falls as a strange, blisteringly-hot snow, because even here, some 35,000 ft. above Venus's 'sea level' (or rather, its mean planetary radius, given its total absence of surface water), temperatures are still in excess of 380 °C. This process of metal compounds vaporising, condensing and precipitating as snow is somewhat similar to the industrial processing of metal vapours on Earth, albeit on a much larger scale, and leaves behind bright regions on the planet's highlands, further mimicking the water-based snow we're used to.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

The first known graphical user interface (GUI) OS was Xerox Alto which was around all the way back in 1973.

Like the first Mac OS from years later, it was in binary monochrome (a pixel could only be black or white)?

 

[Raging Capybara]

Late in the 18th century, Napoleon Bonaparte's soldiers turned the area into a stable and further damaged the wall with projectiles. During World War II, the Nazis bombed the monastery, reducing surrounding walls to rubble.

The same people (you know, the ones with neo classical statues on their X profile) who worship Hitler, Bonaparte, and all of those canibals as if they were radtrads are the same ones who (pretend to) get mad at ISIS terrorists destroying relics in the Middle East. Funny how shit works, right?

 

[AnOminous]

Speaking of bismuth, it occurs in one of the stranger weather phenomenons in the Solar System.

Other bismuth fun fact: The naturally-occurring isotope that comprises virtually all bismuth in nature, Bismuth-209, used to be thought to be the largest stable isotope of any element. It is in fact very slightly radioactive, with a half-life of 2.01×10^19 years, a billion times the estimated age of the universe itself.

Also, despite being a heavy metal, it is generally considered non-toxic. Unless you do something nuts like drink a bottle of Pepto-Bismol every day it won't generally harm you in any amounts you're likely to encounter.

 

[Guiron]

Although occurring at a very slow rate, geologists believe that Earth's core periodically leaks gold into the mantle, where it is then carried up over millions of years through convective processes until it escapes into the crust through volcanic activity, so there's a good chance that some or all of the gold in the average jewellery piece or bullion coin may have spent billions of years near the very heart of the planet, and millions more under the crushing weight and heat of Earth's interior before finally being mined and worked.

What makes the above even cooler, is that there is another theory that suggests a sizeable amount of Earth's gold may not have been here since Earth's formation - the impact between Earth and Theia which formed Earth's moon delivered vast quantities of precious metals and other rare elements to Earth, which became 'suspended' in the viscous mantle rather than sinking down to the core, as most of Earth's existing heavy elements had done as it coalesced. That means that the valuable elements that human society has spent virtually all of its existence marvelling over, buying, selling, trading, waging wars for, and incorporating into myths and legends the world over, came from one of the most dramatic moments in the entire history of Earth's existence, which is pretty damn cool, if you ask me!