Today I Learned #4: Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

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Today I learned I’m very toxic. Thanks to the sophomore that rejected me.
 
Riiiight. I wouldn't pay attention to someone who's saying much about you when there's a romantic rejection standing between you two.
 
And he's married to 'Number One' from Strange New Worlds.
They co-hosted the Love Boat reality dating show set on a cruise ship. He was smarmy and revolting, and she was... boring, and acted bored by the whole thing. It may be part of ship lingo, but telling a rejected contestant to "shove off" just sounds incredibly rude.
 
Not sure if it's from hate watching breadtubers, but there's a ton of things I'm processing right now.
 
TIL that there is a native American Stonehenge found underwater, and it is twice as old

The site was discovered in 2007 by a team of archaeologists led by Mark Holley, a professor of underwater archaeology at Northwestern Michigan College.

Holley and his colleagues were conducting a survey of the lake bed when they chanced upon a series of large stones, arranged in a circular pattern. The discovery was made at a depth of about 40 feet, just off the coast of Traverse City, Michigan.

Investigation revealed that the stones were arranged in a circular pattern, with some weighing as much as 3,000 pounds. The circular pattern formed by the stones at the ancient site is about 40 feet in diameter, with an inner circle of stones that is about 20 feet in diameter. The stones are arranged in a manner that suggests they were intentionally placed there by human beings, rather than by natural means. The stones at Lake Michigan’s ancient site are made of granite that is found locally in the area. The stones have been dated to around 10,000 years ago, making them some of the oldest structures ever discovered in North America.

Carvings and engravings have been found on some of the stones at the Lake Michigan site these carvings include images of mastodons.

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Spoiler More pictures :
 
40 feet is only about 12 m, which is well within sport-diving time/depth limits (IIRC, the PADI table allows >180 minutes no-stop time!).

So I'm a little puzzled as to why that diver's packing a full tech-diving rig, with a deco-cylinder to boot. How long was he planning to stay down there...? :lol:
 
I suspect that 10,000 years ago the lake was much lower because of the glaciers.
 
I suspect that 10,000 years ago the lake was much lower because of the glaciers.
I am fairly confident they did not use scuba gear to build it.
 
TIL that in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Donald Duck may have called Daffy Duck a [negro]. I never noticed it when I watched the movie, but I was listening to a movies & tv podcast this morning, and they played the clip, and it sure sounded like he said it. Of course Donald Duck is deliberately difficult to understand, that's part of his character. Some places claim that he said "nitwit", and others say that if you turn on the subtitles for the movie, the N-word does not appear. One person says the subtitle for the line reads "you [goshdarned] little...", with the ellipsis. I haven't gone back to watch the scene myself. fwiw, this is the first time I'm hearing about it, but this isn't actually a new thing. The oldest hit on Google I saw is dated 2007, and the writer of that blog-post notes that he first heard about it a few years earlier. So this is at least 20 years old.
 
Learnt that Vsevolod the Big Nest, Grand Prince of Vladimir, was called 'the Big Nest' because he had fourteen children (though the Wikipedia article offers no citation)
 
I am fairly confident they did not use scuba gear to build it.

Glaciers are heavy. They also create amazing new lakes and river systems when they retreat.

North America used to look very different. Where I'm sitting right now used to be at the bottom of an inland sea.

Berzerker would likely disagree with you.... :mischief:

Shhh! He might hear you and come back! :run: :hide:
 
Don't we have mods to prevent that?
 
Don't we have mods to prevent that?

He's not banned, just absent. According to his profile his last login was in July 2022. I'd just rather avoid the elebenty-umpteenth round of telescopes given to the ancient Babylonians, Saturn's rings pointing every which way, accusations that I made up the Oort Cloud, and ancient drawings of Louis Vuitton handbags somehow proving ancient aliens.
 
He's not banned, just absent. According to his profile his last login was in July 2022. I'd just rather avoid the elebenty-umpteenth round of telescopes given to the ancient Babylonians, Saturn's rings pointing every which way, accusations that I made up the Oort Cloud, and ancient drawings of Louis Vuitton handbags somehow proving ancient aliens.
He would've loved our AI images thread
 
Yikes. I'm having flashbacks of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, an Andrew Lloyd Webber/Tim Rice rock opera in which Pharaoh is depicted as Elvis.
 
TIL about illegal high adrenaline hot air ballooning in Brazil

Launching balloons is a decades-old tradition brought to Brazil from its former coloniser Portugal, and was originally part of June festivities honouring the Catholic saints Anthony, Peter and John. It took root in Rio’s working-class suburbs in the 1950s before spreading to São Paulo and cities in the south. Today, Brazil has hundreds, perhaps thousands of competing balloon turmas (crews or gangs), who hold annual tournaments with names such as Boca de Ouro (Mouth of Gold). “It’s the Oscars of the balloon,” said Erika Paula dos Santos, the director of a film about the world of baloeiros.

As the movement flourished, Rio became the cradle of “gigantismo”, the construction of astonishingly large and flamboyant balloons, some the size of 10-storey buildings, others laden with fireworks to ensure they go up with a bang. Santos remembered witnessing the launch of a balloon that had a height of 107 metres, which is 11 metres taller than Big Ben.

After the balloons are released, recovery crews called turmas de resgate give chase in cars and speedboats, hoping to gain prestige or earn a prize by salvaging them before rivals. Guided by GPS trackers attached to the balloons, the rescuers track them, sometimes for days, through the countryside or out to sea during perilous Wacky Races-style adventures. “Sometimes you’ll have 10 cars giving chase but perhaps only three will make it to the end,” said one rescue driver, a businessman in his 40s who asked not to be named.

Speaking to the newspaper O Globo last year, the police chief tasked with foiling Rio’s baloeiros insisted ballooning was a crime, not a cultural practice. As well as endangering aircraft and vehicles, balloons had landed on homes, power lines and petrol stations, causing explosions, forest fires and deaths. In recent months, military police helicopters – normally tasked with hunting gangsters in Rio’s favelas – have been put to work shooting down hot air balloons.

Balo Céu’s members played down such concerns as they prepared to launch the group’s largest creation since it was founded in 2012: an 18-metre balloon made up of nearly 150,000 5cm square tiles of tissue paper that had been painstakingly stitched together in a workshop called a bancada. “It’s true there are balloons that might come down and start a fire,” Araújo admitted. “But when a balloon’s released properly … has the correct weight and [flies at] the right height, its flame will have gone out by the time it comes down.”

Police exchange gunfire and arrest balloonists after raid on Galleon to catch 18-meter balloon [google translated]

Part of the group, which had more than 30 bandits, managed to escape with motorcycles, cars and even a boat. According to police, the two prisoners said they would receive R$ 5 thousand to remove the balloon from the airport.

Federal police and civilians arrested two balloonists who allegedly stormed Galeao International Airport in the North Zone of Rio, looking for an 18-meter balloon, in the early hours of Tuesday (21).

According to the police, more than 30 criminals participated in the action. Part of the group managed to escape with motorcycles, cars and even a boat. According to police, there was an exchange of gunfire at the scene.

Police reported that the prisoners said that the “balloon panel” was disputed by ballooning classes, with reward of R$ 5 thousand in kind, plus a trophy for whoever did the rescue.

The balloon was seized and, according to PF, could cause “air crash of gigantic proportions” on the spot.

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Spoiler More pictures :
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At the airport:
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