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| Oh, this is rich coming from Mental Floss, not the most trustworthy source of information. "Waltz, if they're not trustworthy, why link them?" Well, someone's gotta point this shit out. No outlet is right all the time. Not print encyclopedias, not Wikipedia, not the BBC, not ChatGPT, and certainly not me. If you’re looking for some unbelievable tidbits to whip out at parties, the latest episode of The List Show has plenty. You can read a few of them below, and get the full list by watching the video above. Because of all my script blockers and add-ons, I don't see the link to the video. I assume someone will. But I don't usually work with videos in here; I'd rather have text I can copy/paste. I really only have a few to comment on. Letters are called “uppercase” and “lowercase” because of where they were stored. The technical terms for the letters are majuscule for uppercase scripts and miniscule for lowercase scripts, which both have Latin roots. While this isn't incorrect, I noticed that they used both "minuscule" and "miniscule" as the lowercase spelling. According to at least one  dictionary, the latter is a disputed spelling, but common enough to, maybe, be on the verge of being acceptable? Dictionaries are reactive, not proactive, so I don't accept arguments-from-dictionary here. But my point is, pick one and stick to it.Sharks are older than trees. The first thing we’d call a tree, Archaeopteris, dates back 350 million years, and it’s now extinct. Sharks, meanwhile, have been around for 400 to 450 million years. Well, first of all, why name an old tree so similarly to the name for the flying dinosaur archaeopteryx, if not to confuse all of us? And second, I do hope that people understand that this means "sharks were around before trees" and not "the sharks swimming in the ocean right now are older than the living trees on land." Bananas are naturally radioactive. Oh no! Ooga-booga! Fear everything! I've also noticed an uptick in "Your ______ is absolutely loaded with bacteria!" articles, which experienced a downswing during Covid, because all the fearmongering was centered on that. For the record, almost everything is radioactive to some degree, and bacteria are almost everywhere. Now, when radioactive bacteria get loose and start taking over the world, maybe then you need to start being afraid. Butt is a real unit of measurement. If you’ve ever talked about having a “buttload” of something, hold on to your butts, because butt is a real unit of measurement. As a student of the lore surrounding fine fermented and distilled beverages, I knew this. I also know there's a large barrel called a tun, which is equivalent to four hogsheads. I know a butt-tun of this archaic information. Ladders kill more people than sharks. Sharks again? Fine. Cows also kill more people than sharks. Not just bulls. Cows. Lots of this is just availability bias. We don't share a habitat with sharks. Most of us don't share a habitat with cows, either, but many do. Sharks are also older than the North Star. As we saw earlier, sharks, in something resembling their current form, are thought to have been around for nearly half a billion years. Turns out they think Polaris is quite a bit younger than that, on the order of having formed approximately when the dinosaurs mostly went extinct. So yeah, this part may be surprising, in the same way that people get surprised and have to go check when you tell them that Reno is further west than Los Angeles, or that part of New Jersey is further south than part of Virginia.But maybe the real shocker here, for some, is that Polaris wasn't always the North Star, and in the future, it once again won't be. Farts can leak out of your mouth if you hold them in. And we're done here, so you can go try that one for yourself. |
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