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[–] 48 points 7 months ago* (5 children)

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.

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  • [–] 9 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 7 points 7 months ago

    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.

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  • [–] 28 points 7 months ago (10 children)

    Like 15% of people can rumble their ears and make a sound only they can hear

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  • [–] 12 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    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

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 25 points 7 months ago* (1 child)

    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 .

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  • [–] 17 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    rats can't vomit

    flamingos are pink due to diet. otherwise they'd be grey

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  • [–] 15 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    An electric eel is not an eel.
    A mountain goat is not a goat.
    A maned wolf is not a wolf.
    A mountain chicken is not a chicken.

    Also, there is an animal called the Headless Chicken Fish.

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  • [–] 28 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 13 points 7 months ago

    The sun will explode. Eventually. Interesting and fascinating, yes. Useful? Nope.

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  • [–] 11 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 child)

    One of the people that worked in Turkish translation of the "alice in wonderland" for Zambak magazine has the cool birthday "January 1st, 1969."

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  • [–] 10 points 7 months ago

    The synths that were used in the first doom reboot's music were made from samples of an actual chainsaw running.

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  • [–] 9 points 7 months ago (10 children)

    Alaska is the eastern most state of the USA.

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago (6 children)

    Yeah, but it settles in its final location to the south...

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (5 children)

    I am not sure what that means. Does that mean it is also the southern most state?

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    It's the edge of the world and all of Western civilization

    The sun may rise in the East, at least it settled in a final location

    It's understood that Hollywood sells Californication

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlUKcNNmywk

    The joke being if Alaska is "The east" it's where the sun rises, then goes 99% around the planet to Cali

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (1 child)

    For 27 years I have been singing this as "at least it settles in a _fun_location", like "you guys may get the sun rise but of course it wants to settle down in California" and I thought that was such a clever line.

    Now I don't know how to feel.

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    [–] 9 points 7 months ago*

    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

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  • [–] 9 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    If you put enough energy in one place it will cause a black hole. This type of black hole is called a Kugelblitz.

    Current graphics cards do not yet use enough energy to worry about a kugelblitz occurring in the 12-pin connector.

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  • [–] 9 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    The dog that played specks girlfriend in Pee Wees big adventure is also the same dog that played precious in silence of the lambs.

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  • [–] 9 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    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).

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  • [–] 8 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    But wouldn't it be useful if I can use it here?

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  • [–] 8 points 7 months ago

    Television is one of the few words combined by one greek part and one latin part.

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  • [–] 8 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    There are several rivers in England called the Derwent.

    One of them flows into the Ouse in Yorkshire, another flows into the Trent in Derbyshire, both of which later combine to form the Humber estuary, so the Humber has two Derwents in it

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago

    Forza Horizon 4 has an awesome open map based on several disparate areas of England and Scotland pushed together. It includes the Derwent Reservoir and damn, which drains into one of the Rivers Derwent, which leads to Derwent Water - none of which are actually connected in real life. I thought that was a neat Easter Egg.

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  • [–] 13 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    None, because knowledge and the search for it is an end unto itself, so all facts are useful to learn and know.

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  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    Cheese is unhealthy for mice.

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  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    The most efficient base is the number e

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    On diesel? With its time management? Efficient how!?

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago*

    With decimal you have 10 digits 0-9 and each digit place represents a 10^n*digit, binary is 0-1 digits with each digits place represents 2^n*digit. Binary requires fewer digits to memorize than decimal, but more places to represent the same value compared to decimal. If you are trying to find the most efficient base for balancing the number of digits to memorize vs the number of places a value requires to represent you get a graph like this showing the minimum approaching e (~2.718):

    https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=beta%2Flog%28beta%29+from+1.5+to+5

    And the derivative approaching e:

    https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=derivative+beta%2Flog%28beta%29

    That comes into play when you're doing something like picking a base for computer architecture. Almost all computers theses days are binary, but some were base 3 trinary for a bit. But you don't need to pick an integer value and can pick pi or e as a base too. Here's a better write up with an explanation of radix and bases:

    https://web.archive.org/web/20160324100419/http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/2001/11/third-base/2

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  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago

    Wombats shit is cubic.

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  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago (1 child)
  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago (1 child)
  • [–] 8 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    when the great pyramids were being built, there were still mammoths and sabertooth tigers walking the earth.

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    I knew about the relict popularion of mammoths that was still around. Wasn't aware of the tigers. Can you please tell me more?

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    I can’t 100% give you facts. I just go off of the rough estimate of fossil records for both mammoth and sabertooth tigers roughly and this is just a random thing I like to tell people when I was younger to kind of blow their mind.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    It's f'in neato. I'll be looking into it.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago

    Another really good random “did you know” When the battle of Little Bighorn, a.k.a. custard‘s last stand happened the Brooklyn Bridge was just being completed in New York, and there were Native Americans who fought in the battle who were still alive to see Neil Armstrong step on the Moon so in the span of one lifetime we went from custard‘s last stand to one giant leap for all mankind.

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  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago

    The sun accounts for more than 99.99% of the mass of the solar system

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  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    Snakes have two penises. Or at least pythons do.

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  • The PC I had as a teenager had teal trim.

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  • [–] 7 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    Nipples can't operate heavy machinery.

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    The closest US state to Africa is Maine

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago

    The Moon is much further than you'd intuitively assume. In fact, you can fit every other planet in the solar system between the Earth and the Moon. At the same time.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago

    the fact that it is useless

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  • Physiologically, rats can't vomit. (Not to brag or anything, but I also know somebody who claims they saw it happen once)

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

    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."

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago*

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    A sperm whale penis is 14 feet long.

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