Today I Learned #3: There's a wiki for everything!

[The_J]

That's bizarre and horrifying.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Color meaning is closely tied to culture and geography.

Yep. In some cultures white is the color for death.

 

[Kyriakos]

Some colors do have a soothing effect, while others have an alarming effect.
I doubt there are cultures that use pale blue as the color of passion

 

[Birdjaguar]

Yes, even among non humans, red is often associated with passion and sex.

NSFW


Link to video.

 

[Samson]

TIL that the richest and poorest US congressional districts are just down the road from each other (OK, nearly 100 miles down the road, but still).

• California's 18th (Silicon Valley) Median household income = $149,375
• California's 21st (San Joaquin Valley) Median household income = $46,037

 

[Zkribbler]

Ballgowns in the time of Versailles were so restrictive that women, rather than trying to wrestle into a WC, would find a secluded hallway, hoist their skirts, and drop their loads.

 

[The_J]

Depending on the time you were talking, this would have been useless too, because there would not have been any toilets there (AFAIK).

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Depending on the time you were talking, this would have been useless too, because there would not have been any toilets there (AFAIK).

Even medieval castles had indoor facilities, though they weren't the flushable kind. Just don't go swimming in the moat.

 

[r16]

we have always been taught that there was no privacy and say the French King or any other European person would the deed and a servant would attach a feather to the still flexible cr p thing , you know , these things you could also use to pen stuff with ink . When solid enough , out of the window . Next to the general emnity against of taking a bath , that would explain the development of the perfume market .

 

[GinandTonic]

THE TOILETS (OR LACK OF) OF VERSAILLES

Apparently taking a dump in the corridor in Versailles was normal. Only the Royal family had access to "the English Place" - flushing toilets.

 

[The_J]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagfish

They are the only known living animals that have a skull but no vertebral column

Related critters:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancelets

Lancelets contain many organs and organ systems that are closely related to those of modern fish, but in more primitive form. Therefore, they provide a number of examples of possible evolutionary exaptation. For example, the gill-slits of lancelets are used for feeding only, and not for respiration. The circulatory system carries food throughout their body, but does not have red blood cells or hemoglobin for transporting oxygen.

 

[Berzerker]

til Willie Nelson has no vocabulary

However, after accounting for other factors that could affect brain performance, such as education level, only the association between long-term marijuana use and verbal memory persisted. Specifically, for every five years that someone uses marijuana, they recall one less word from a list of 15.

 

[GinandTonic]

Dope bad for short term memory shocker.

 

[Kyriakos]

Blinky: directly to Pacman
Pinky: in front of Pacman
Inky: a function with inputs of being closer in front of Pacman and Blinky's position
Clyde: weirdo scattering if he comes close to Pacman, identical to Blinky when still away

 

[Samson]

By wealth, the Netherlands is the most unequal country in the world (Gini = 0.902), and Ukraine is by far the most equal (Gini = 0.241, 2nd is Slovakia at 0.498).

Spoiler Graph of every other country for some reason :

 

[The_J]

In Ukraine everyone's poor, that's easy ^^.

I wouldn't see why NL is that unequal, especially compared to Belgium. It doesn't seem so that there's a huge divide in the incomes, at least you don't see that cities are mostly composed of ghettos and areas full of villas .

EDIT: Also Sweden compared to Norway.

EDIT2: According to a list in the German wikipedia, the average wealth in NL is nearly 280.000$, whereas the median wealth is 31.000$. I have the feeling the housing prices might be to blame for this.

EDIT3: So he listed values in Samson's post are the one for wealth inequality, so how much you own. The Netherlands rank a lot better for income inequality, so for how much you earn. 2 different things.
EDIT4: But the link is confusing both, meh.

 

[Samson]

In Ukraine everyone's poor, that's easy ^^.

I wouldn't see why NL is that unequal, especially compared to Belgium. It doesn't seem so that there's a huge divide in the incomes, at least you don't see that cities are mostly composed of ghettos and areas full of villas .

You get this is wealth equality. By income Netherlands is pretty low, at 0.285. Is home ownership less common than other countries?

 

[The_J]

It took me a while to figure the details, see my edits.

Actually no, it's more common, I think. If you can afford it. Not sure if the Gini takes mortgages into account, because it's rather easy to get a mortgage to buy a house, if you are above a certain income limit (very common for people in their 20s to buy a house; it feels very different to Germany for me). If you're below, then you're more likely to rent, and NL has, from my feeling, a rather high amount of social housing. So I guess this could explain the split in wealth.

 

[Hrothbern]

TIL that species like birds really "see" the earth magnetic field they use to navigate their long flights.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03618-9

Night-migratory songbirds are remarkably proficient navigators1. Flying alone and often over great distances, they use various directional cues including, crucially, a light-dependent magnetic compass2,3. The mechanism of this compass has been suggested to rely on the quantum spin dynamics of photoinduced radical pairs in cryptochrome flavoproteins located in the retinas of the birds4,5,6,7. Here we show that the photochemistry of cryptochrome 4 (CRY4) from the night-migratory European robin (Erithacus rubecula) is magnetically sensitive in vitro, and more so than CRY4 from two non-migratory bird species, chicken (Gallus gallus) and pigeon (Columba livia). Site-specific mutations of ErCRY4 reveal the roles of four successive flavin–tryptophan radical pairs in generating magnetic field effects and in stabilizing potential signalling states in a way that could enable sensing and signalling functions to be independently optimized in night-migratory birds.

 

[Chukchi Husky]

TIL that species like birds really "see" the earth magnetic field they use to navigate their long flights.

Including foxes.

https://www.wildlifeonline.me.uk/animals/article/red-fox-senses

It is suggested that foxes, like many other animals, may (thanks to cryptochrome proteins in their retina) see magnetic north as a shadowy ring; the fox could then line this ring up with (i.e. superimpose it over) the direction from which it hears its prey rustling.