Thanks Hank Green.

  • Wugmeister
    link
    fedilink
    English
    533 months ago

    African Wild Dogs decide on when to go hunting by voting. If there is a supermajority of votes in favor of hunting, they will go out and hunt. If that quorum is not reached, they will stay home.

      • @idiomaddict
        link
        93 months ago

        Well now wait, if pregnant people have four (or more) arms, we’ve got to have more than half as many pregnant people as people missing one or more arms, right?

    • @wolfpack86
      link
      13 months ago

      I’ve always thought the drummer from Leppard was below average

  • Bahnd Rollard
    link
    34
    edit-2
    3 months ago

    In the movie “Catch Me If You Can”, the french police officer that arrests Leonardo DiCaprio who is playing a young Frank Abagnale Jr. Is Frank Abagnale Jr.

    • @andrewta
      link
      73 months ago

      Don’t know that. That’s kind of cool.

    • Wugmeister
      link
      fedilink
      English
      73 months ago

      That’s a wild way to think about the universe. Gonna steal this

      • @FourPacketsOfPeanuts
        link
        123 months ago

        Over billions of years, hydrogen left on its own collapsed under gravity into stars, under went fusion, supernovaed, created all the heavier elements, formed secondary stars and rocky plants, evolved into creatures, which learnt chemistry and gave it a name. We’re all stardust + time basically. But we’re stardust that names itself.

  • @NineMileTower
    link
    253 months ago

    The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.

  • @joe_archer
    link
    22
    edit-2
    3 months ago

    The number of possible combinations of cards in a standard 52 card pack is so large that there is very little chance that any two packs of shuffled cards that have ever existed have ever been in the same order.

    52 factorial is a larger number than the number of atoms in the observable universe.

    • @Valmond
      link
      143 months ago

      Chess positions are like that too, after any “main line” it quickly becomes a never played game…

      • @triptrapper
        link
        0
        edit-2
        3 months ago

        Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems more realistic to say:

        1. Playing the same game twice is unlikely because of the number of possible games, OR
        2. It’s possible the same game has never been played twice, OR
        3. After a certain number of moves, it’s very possible to create a never-played game

        I’m certain I’ve played the same game multiple times, because I suck at chess and I fall into the same obvious traps over and over.

        • @Valmond
          link
          13 months ago

          You were in a main-line then.

          And what you states is matematics/statistics, but if you take that ar face value, you could just win the lottery 10000 times in a row too.

    • LostXOR
      cake
      link
      fedilink
      73 months ago

      52 factorial is a larger number than the number of atoms in the observable universe.

      Not true, 52! ≈ 8x10^67 < 10^80.

      • @FourPacketsOfPeanuts
        link
        63 months ago

        If you divided the universe’s mass into 52! parts, each part would contain ~1x10^13 atoms. Which, as far as solids go, is not visible to the naked eye. Which is still quite mental…

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        63 months ago

        It’s only in a statistical sense. Combinations based off a few shuffles from a standard sorted deck would be fairly common in practice.

      • @FourPacketsOfPeanuts
        link
        63 months ago

        The first part is a matter of probabilities. It’s very unlikely by virtue of the sheer number of possible configurations vs how many times a deck is shuffled in history (even erring on the high side)

        For the second part, the composition of elements in most stars is known. And the total mass of the universe is approximated by observing gravitational effects. Which is what you need to work out approx number of atoms.

    • Captain Aggravated
      link
      fedilink
      English
      13 months ago

      I bet there are certain shuffled combinations that repeat. like, take a new deck, divide perfectly in half, do one perfect riffle. that has probably happened more than once.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    183 months ago

    Emoticon :) has etymology stemming from emotion + icon. Tis from the 80s, early computer stuff

    Emoji 😊 is japanese, from 絵文字 which is like, drawing + character, basically. It’s a word MUCH older than computing.

    False cognates. Sound similar, similar function, nothing to do with each other.

    • @HeyThisIsntTheYMCA
      link
      English
      83 months ago

      There’s a :) in a typewritten cookbook I have from the 40s. I don’t know how widespread smileys were back then, but they existed.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      53 months ago

      My favourite false cognate is the plural ending -s in French and English. The English one has Germanic roots, while the French one come from Latin accusative plural -as/-os. They are unrelated etymologically.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        43 months ago

        After looking it up I have to correct myself, the Germanic plural - s also come from the accusative plural

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    18
    edit-2
    3 months ago

    Honestly literally anything about QR codes. Those things are insane. Did you know there’s a very obvious 01010101010101 pattern in it if you know where to look?


    (look in-between the paper)

  • @cheese_greater
    link
    17
    edit-2
    3 months ago

    Your lips and butthole are the two ends of the same tube. Same glaborous vermillion border type skin or something

    • @j4k3
      link
      English
      33 months ago

      Shhh! Diffusion AI might hear you.

      • @andrewta
        link
        33 months ago

        Time to screw with stable diffusion

  • @nycki
    link
    English
    153 months ago

    Almost all web traffic now uses the utf-8 encoding, a clever hack which works because ascii is a seven-bit code but web traffic uses 8-bit bytes.

    • If the first bit is 0, treat the byte as ascii.
    • if the first bit is 1, treat the byte as part of a multi-byte unicode character.

    multi-byte characters in utf-8 can officially be up to four bytes long, with 11 of those 32 bits used for tracking the size of the multi-byte block. That leaves 2^21 code points available, about two million in total, easily enough for every alphabet you could need to write on a website, and all without breaking ascii.

      • @nycki
        link
        English
        33 months ago

        yep! the ascii standard was originally invented for teletypewriters, and includes four ‘blocks’ of 32 codes each, for 128 in total, so it only uses seven bits per code.

        the first block, hex 00 - 1F, contains control codes for the typewriter. stuff like “newline”, “backspace”, and “ring bell” all go in here.

        The second block has the digits are in order, from hex 30 = ‘0’ all the way to hex 39 = ‘9’,

        The uppercase alphabet starts at hex 41 = ‘A’, and exactly one block later, the lowercase alphabet starts at hex 61 = ‘a’. This means their binary codes are 100 0001 and 110 0001, differering only in a single bit! So you can easily convert between upper and lowercase ascii by flipping that bit.

        The remaining space in the last three blocks is filled with various punctuation marks. I’m not sure if these are in any particular order.

        The final ascii code, 7F, is reserved for “delete”, because its binary representation is 111 1111, perfect for “deleting” data on a punch card by punching over it.

  • @thesohoriots
    link
    English
    13
    edit-2
    3 months ago

    Kevin Spacey’s middle name is Spacey.

    And that’s a rock fact.

    • @[email protected]M
      link
      fedilink
      English
      163 months ago

      For anyone else wanting to look this up: yep. His full name is Kevin Spacey Fowler. Not Kevin Spacey Spacey as I thought OP meant.

      • Drusas
        link
        fedilink
        13 months ago

        Who the fuck gives their kid a middle name of Spacey? No wonder he turned out weird.

        • @Feathercrown
          link
          English
          23 months ago

          Middle names are for messing around a bit

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    133 months ago

    On Titan, you could strap on wings and fly around.

    Moreover, the atmosphere is >5% natural gas, but without oxygen you can’t burn it. I suppose oxygen would be considered the fuel in that case and you’d pipeline that instead? And being able to breathe would be a nice side-benefit.