TIL: Today I Learned

blotsfan

blotsfan

My in-laws have one and while it's certainly better than having to keep one on top of the counter, I don't miss it with my over-the-stove one.
 
Bubble181

Bubble181

Read about it, and no, you can find drawer microwaves starting around €400 in most places. But there's really no upside I can think of. It takes time to open/close, takes more space in your kitchen (losing full drawer width), it's harder to clean,... It's a "cool" idea but impractical as heck.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

Was talking online with some people who were watching Armageddon, and one of them said out loud, “Oh, there’s so much extra DRAMA. The gravity has to be so much lower on an asteroid the size of Texas.” Not having seen the movie, that got me to thinking—just what IS the gravity on an asteroid the size of TX as compared to that of Earth? Well, assuming the size of TX to be ~782mi and the weight of 1 cubic foot of generic rock to be 165lb on average…
Anyway, several metric conversions and online calculators later, and the gravity on the surface of a spherical TX-sized asteroid comes out to be almost exactly 1/21 (~4.75%) that of Earth.

—Patrick
 
Tinwhistler

Tinwhistler

Bubble181 said:
www.sheldoncomics.com

Language Adapts - Sheldon® Comic Strip

www.sheldoncomics.com www.sheldoncomics.com

TIL it is, in fact, champing at the bit and not chomping at the bit.
Huh.
Click to expand...
"Champ" was the original word...but we've been morphing it into "chomp" since 1581, and they mean the exact same thing. So one might be given a little slack for using either interchangeably in a saying.

"Chomp chomp chomp!" makes so much better onomatopoeia than "champ champ champ!" anyway
 
sixpackshaker

sixpackshaker

Usage is sliding, but not the actual meaning. Chomp is some thing you do to an apple. Like something edible. Champ is what a horse does to the bit or the railing in their stalls. Biting something you can't eat or swallow.
 
bhamv3

bhamv3

PatrThom said:
All this discussion is making me think is, “First they champ, then they stamp, and then they stand still.”

—Patrick
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Whereas for me, all this discussion made me think of a passage from Dave Barry regarding the world's funniest joke:

The scientific community, having run out of things to clone, is now trying to identify the World's Funniest Joke. I refer to a project called Laugh Lab, being conducted by Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire (pronounced "Scotland"). Wiseman has set up an Internet site -- http://www.laughlab.co.uk/home.html -- that has received more than 10,000 jokes, which have been rated by more than 100,000 people, most of them wrong. I say this because the joke they have so far rated as the funniest is this:

"Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are going camping. They pitch their tent under the stars and go to sleep. Sometime in the middle of the night Holmes wakes Watson up. 'Watson, look up at the stars, and tell me what you deduce.' Watson says, 'I see millions of stars and even if a few of those have planets, it's quite likely there are some planets like Earth, and if there are a few planets like Earth out there, there might also be life.' Holmes replied: 'Watson, you idiot, somebody stole our tent!' "

Now, I'm not saying this is a bad joke. I'm just saying this is not even close to being the funniest joke in the world. It would be funnier if Holmes woke Watson up and said, "Watson, there's a weasel chomping on my privates!" I'm not sure where the joke would go from there, but you can't go wrong with a setup like that.
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I think this illustrates the difference between me and Pat when it comes to our preferred reading material.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
TIL Samsung digital cameras just straight up replace the moon with a stock photo when you try to photograph it.

www.theverge.com

Samsung caught faking zoom photos of the Moon

A photo of a blurry image of the Moon revealed some telling results.
www.theverge.com www.theverge.com

TLDR: somebody took a picture of the moon, blurred it intentionally, and displayed it on a computer screen... then used a samsung to take a picture of THAT... and miraculously it became a crystal clear image of the moon.

 
PatrThom

PatrThom

These show up from time to time on things like r/whatisthisthing and people are like, "Heeeeeeyyy you might want to be careful with that."
My father used to be a railroad cop, and he had one when I was a kid. Nobody knows what happened to it, possibly because I was a pre-teen and it was relocated somewhere "safe."

--Patrick
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

Growing up, I got used to seeing US$1.00 = CAD$1.25 everywhere I went (Detroit area). Now it's apparently US$1.00 = CAD$1.34.
It might not look like much of a change, but a LOT of interesting stuff went on between there.

--Patrick
 
Far

Far

PatrThom said:
Growing up, I got used to seeing US$1.00 = CAD$1.25 everywhere I went (Detroit area). Now it's apparently US$1.00 = CAD$1.34.
It might not look like much of a change, but a LOT of interesting stuff went on between there.

--Patrick
Click to expand...
From Windsor originally, know exactly the signs you're talking about.
 
Celt Z

Celt Z

I'm just happy to see she's not going over-board with the cosmetic treatments a lot of actresses get pressured to have as they get older. Some absolutely end up destroying their faces, like poor Meg Ryan. Hopefully she'll stick to the subtle stuff she's been doing (which seems like fillers in her cheeks, some stuff around her eyes), or just let it go and age naturally. It did wonders for Michelle Pfieffer, who went way too heavy on that stuff in Hairspray, but by the time Quantumania came around, it was clear she wasn't doing all the fillers and such anymore, and I think she looked more beautiful than she has in years.
 
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