TIL: Today I Learned

[BenitoChavez]

Teach me, oh Win10 master!

First you need to set up the international keyboard. To do that you search for Language Settings in the start menu. Under Preferred Languages, click on English (United States) then click on Options. In the next screen click on Add a keyboard and scroll down until you find United States-International. After that you're all set up and can toggle between keyboard setups in the lower right part of the screen on the taskbar. Then to actually be able to type characters, this is a handy cheat sheet on the specific key combinations.

Spoiler Pictures :

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Cool!

 

[The_J]

If you want to mess with people, just set your keyboard to a layout which is mostly similar to yours, but partially different (like the French or German one).
Will drive them mad ^^.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I once accidentally set my keyboard layout to Chinese. I couldn't even google how to put it back because everything kept changing to Chinese words.

 

[Lohrenswald]

I once accidentally set my keyboard layout to Chinese. I couldn't even google how to put it back because everything kept changing to Chinese words.

If it's a pinyin keyboard (taiwan for example is not that) you can type latin letters instead if you press (not hold) shift

just in case it'll come up to someone someday

 

[Berzerker]

a little late with this, but Rush drummer Neil Peart died at age 67 from brain cancer

ty Neil for the 3-4 decades of great rock and roll

one of the best drummers of all time and probably my favorite musician given he was also Rush's lyricist

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Now all they have is Nickelback...

 

[Synobun]

Nickelback is good. Today you learned.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Actually, TIL that the propulsion system for the ISS during its early development was rocket-propelled astronaut piss. (true story)

Contamination effects, reliability and maintainability assessments, safety issues, and operational scenarios of the waste gas thruster and disposal system are considered.

Funny I've never actually hated Nickelback and didn't understand the hate but today Pandora played a song that was so bad I just nodded and thought, I get it now.

 

[Takhisis]

Actually, TIL that the propulsion system for the ISS during its early development was rocket-propelled astronaut piss. (true story)

They just told the astronauts to get off the vehicle and push?

 

[Broken_Erika]

Actually, TIL that the propulsion system for the ISS during its early development was rocket-propelled astronaut piss. (true story)

Kinda creates an entirely different meaning to the term "piss-off"

 

[hobbsyoyo]

And TIL that a stay-at-home father was stabbed to death by a homeless guy while he was biking on the trail I take 3 or 4 times a week. It happened 3 years ago and they just declared the homeless guy mentally incompetent to stand trial which is how I found out about it as I didn't live here at the time. I don't really feel scared as this is a rare thing to happen and this is a very safe town but it's just crazy to be confronted with how cruel and random life can be, even in a place that brings me a lot of joy.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

TIL that Max Yasgur (the guy who rented out his farm for the 1969 Woodstock festival) was a conservative Republican who supported the Vietnam War.

Also Mountain's "For Yasgur's Farm" was actually named differently when it was performed at Woodstock, but they retittled it.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

TIL of the theory of cosmological evolution. The theory goes that if black holes create new universes, that the new universes that are spawned may have different cosmological constants from the parent universe. Over time, many of these new universes will fail to grow and spawn new black holes if the conditions (dictated by cosmological constants like the speed of light or force of gravity) are not right. This means those universes 'fail to reproduce' and what happens is that over time you will wind up with a universe like ours where all the cosmological constants are 'just right' to lead to the conditions we see because they are necessary conditions for black hole formation.

How oddly specific the cosmological constants are is an ongoing area of inquiry in physics. Our universe is extremely sensitive to very small changes in most of the constants and it is weird that we wound up with the exact values necessary for the universe to be stable long enough to spawn intelligent life.

 

[Synobun]

TIL of the theory of cosmological evolution. The theory goes that if black holes create new universes, that the new universes that are spawned may have different cosmological constants from the parent universe. Over time, many of these new universe will fail to grow and spawn new black holes if the conditions (dictated by cosmological constants like the speed of light or force of gravity) are not right. This means those universes 'fail to reproduce' and what happens is that over time you will wind up with a universe like ours where all the cosmological constants are 'just right' to lead to the conditions we see because they are necessary conditions for black hole formation.

How oddly specific the cosmological constants are is an ongoing area of inquiry in physics. Our universe is extremely sensitive to very small changes in most of the constants and it is weird that we wound up with the exact values necessary for the universe to be stable long enough to spawn intelligent life.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, my friend.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

TIL of the theory of cosmological evolution. The theory goes that if black holes create new universes, that the new universes that are spawned may have different cosmological constants from the parent universe. Over time, many of these new universes will fail to grow and spawn new black holes if the conditions (dictated by cosmological constants like the speed of light or force of gravity) are not right. This means those universes 'fail to reproduce' and what happens is that over time you will wind up with a universe like ours where all the cosmological constants are 'just right' to lead to the conditions we see because they are necessary conditions for black hole formation.

How oddly specific the cosmological constants are is an ongoing area of inquiry in physics. Our universe is extremely sensitive to very small changes in most of the constants and it is weird that we wound up with the exact values necessary for the universe to be stable long enough to spawn intelligent life.

Also known as the "pulled directly from my anus" theory?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

It's taken more seriously than that. The 'fine tuning' of cosmological constants is a pretty big issue and area of study and this offers a testable hypothesis that could explain what we observe. The originator of the theory postulates that if he is right, then we should expect that the maximum mass of a neutron star to be about 2 solar masses. The reason why gets in the weeds but basically it comes down how easily black holes form. This past year they discovered a neutron star with 2.17 solar masses, which may disprove the theory or may also be due to large uncertainties in the theory due to the nature of its speculation.

The program I learned this from is hosted by a physicist who ended the show by emphasizing how important theories like this are for probing the limits of our observations and theoretical models.

Here's the short episode for reference:

The main program lasts until 12:30, after that he does a sponsor thing and then takes audience questions. The PBS app leaves those parts out entirely if you have that.

LOL the host (Matt O'Dowd) developed a mobile observatory that he debuted at Burning Man.

 

[Arakhor]

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, my friend.

In this case, it's not even an extraordinary claim. After all, if this universe hadn't spawned intelligent life, we wouldn't be around to speculate on whether it was weird or not.

 

[Synobun]

In this case, it's not even an extraordinary claim. After all, if this universe hadn't spawned intelligent life, we wouldn't be around to speculate on whether it was weird or not.

The joke is that we aren't intelligent.

 

[Arakhor]

That does make more sense.