Can you share with us some obscure knowledge?
Asked by
kruger_d (
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)
April 8th, 2022
For example, a common colorant used in textiles, cosmetics and food is made from bugs. The cochineal beetle produces a brilliant scarlet color when crushed.
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In Vray, the bitmap used in the normal map shader needs to have its gamma value set to 1, or else the material it is slotted into will not be rendered correctly.
Canada had oil pipelines to British Columbia and Texas 40 years ago. They just want a more efficient and higher capacity pipelines.
When I saw Jimi Hendrix play at the Hollywood Bowl in September, 1968, The Experience did a cover of “Sunshine of Your Love”.
Wow, I thought the above was unGoogleable, but I’m wrong! ;-o
Howard Hughes during the 1940s and 1950s grew celery on fields West of Lincoln Blvd in Culver City. The profits from the sale of the celery were the Christmas bonuses for his employees at the facility East of Lincoln Blvd.
They also paid in 1958, a $5.00 per pelt of Jack Rabbit, there was a airfield for landing planes and helicopters. Rabbits and planes don’t play well together !
It creates the candy coating on MnMs too.
A nautical mile was created as 1/60 of a degree of latitude, also called 1 minute of latitude.
So your distance from the equator in nautical miles is your latitude x 60.
For example, Rome is at 42 degrees north latitude. So it’s 42×60, or 2520 miles from the equator.
It gets a little more complicated because Earth isn’t perfectly round, but close enough.
Also, a speed of 1 knot is 1 nautical mile per hour.
I had no idea why miles were different at sea until I happened upon this info recently.
The word clue originated as a variant of clew, meaning “ball of yarn or thread”. The semantic change resulted from the story of Theseus using thread to mark the path through the labyrinth.
The slope of the sewer pipe coming from your house should be ½” per foot.
I’m editing this if you don’t mind. Sorry about that.
Agathokakological: composed of both good and evil.
My vocabulary is catching up to @raum’s!
Bellingcat The investigative journalism group that specialises in fact-checking and open-source intelligence (OSINT) was first named “Brown Moses” after a song by Frank Zappa.
The “brown tone” Not to be confused with the “brown note” is the sound of a Marshall JMP/JCM guitar amplifier with every knob turned all the way up. Some players, notably Edward Van Halen used a variac (variable AC transformer) to lower the mains voltage to the amp slightly to dial in his famous “brown sound.”
@Dutchess_III
In the binary numerical system, 1+1 does equal 10.
This is because in that system, the highest digit is 1, so the counting goes: 0,1,10,11, 100. 101, 110, 111, etc.
Here’s a binary “joke”: there are 10 people in this room- you and I. ;)
We don’t sneeze in our sleep because our brain shuts down that reflex. Thank you, Brain.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world – those who know binary numbers and those who don’t.
Binary is a base 2 system, not just for computers. For example in base 16, 5 + 5 =A
Maybe this is common knowledge but it was a big surprise to me when I learned it recently.
Female red-wing blackbirds are not black birds with red wings. They look more like common sparrows. I’ve been around these birds all my life and I never suspected I only recognized the males.
Cornell Lab – All About Birds – Red-wing blackbird
You can form infinitely right triangles with integer valued lengths. Just find two integers a and b such that one is even and the other is odd and they have no common divisors. Then form a triangle with lengths (a2-b2), 2ab and (a2+b2). You can always satisfy the conditions for a and b by choosing two consecutive numbers.
^^^ God you are so smart @LostInParadise! And I mean that for real. I ♡ smart people. (((hugs)))
Thank you kindly, but my math knowledge is pretty rudimentary compared to a mathematician.
If you’re standing on something that’s high above the ground, one way to measure how high you are is to drop a coin over the edge.
Then count how many seconds it takes to hit the ground.
Next, use the formula 16T², where T is the number of seconds.
E.g., if it takes 10 seconds, then you are way above the surface below: 16×100=1,600 feet.
Iquitos, Peru (my wife’s native nation) with a population of 422,000, is the world’s largest city that can’t be reached by road.
How do they get supplies there @Brian?
I guess airlifting is one way.
It’s on the Amazon River, so perhaps also by small water vessels.
Ain’t no freighters gettin’ that far up the Amazon. ;)
It may look comical, but when an owl bobs its head forward, back, up, and down, it is working to maximize its depth perception.
The motion allows owls to triangulate objects and build a composite picture of their surroundings.
With eyes nearly immobile in their sockets, owls must rely on various head movements (including the famed 270º swivel and the wide-eyed bobbing) to visualize their environment and to prepare to nab their prey.
Iquitos, Peru port Located about 3700 kilometers upstream from the Atlantic Ocean on the Amazon.
Jimmy Hendrix had only one Top Forty hit. “All Along the Watch Tower”.
I just read that the yo yo was invented in Ancient Greece and was rather popular.
I have lived in California USA where I could look east and see the Pacific ocean. I have lived in Michigan USA where I could look south and see Canada.
Iquitos, Peru port Located about 3700 kilometers upstream from the Atlantic
Chicago (1200 miles inland by water) is an international port.
So is Duluth, Minnesota, 1,600 miles upstream.
Freighters can travel from the Atlantic through the St. Lawrence Seaway to the Great Lakes. Ships of up to 23.8 meters width and 8 meters draft can make the trip.
@raum
Lmao!
While that “knowledge” was once obscure, I don’t think it is anymore.
After all, what corporation could possibly withstand a $40 shortfall in their inventory?! ;-o
@Brian1946 I, too, was shocked to learn of this. ;-o
Birds almost never mate outside their species.
I’m not certain but I believe that whales jump out of the water because they are itchy.
I did a Web search for why whales jump out of water. It is not known for certain, but it seems to be a form of communication. Link
If you order a “pepperoni pizza” in Europe, you get a pizza topped with pickled chili peppers, not a sausage pizza,
Sausage and pepperoni are two different kinds of meat.
“Sausage” is defined by the shape, not the type of meat in it.
@Dutchess_III Pepperoni is a subset of salami. Salami is a subset of sausage.
Need some Venn diagram action over here.
You can order Salami pizza?
Staple pizza? Sounds very metallic.
Pepperoncini in the US means pickled hot peppers. I keep some in my fridge at all times. There are hundreds of brands, and the quality varies immensely.
My favorites are Mt. Olive Pepperoncini .
Just a few days ago I discovered a nearby store with them. Woohoo! I had been deprived since I moved to Milwaukee a couple of years ago.
The San Andreas Fault is a slip-strike fault, which means that the fault itself — a crack in the Earth’s crust — is vertical, like the way you’d slice a cake.
The opposite is a dip-slip fault, where the division is essentially horizontal and the two parts of the crust are moving above and below each other, rather than side-by-side.
But the San Andreas Fault isn’t just any old slip-strike fault: it’s also a transform fault, which is a certain type of slip-strike fault. A transform fault is a slip-strike fault that happens along the boundaries of continental plates.
You can’t make Jell-O with kiwi or pineapple.
@RedDeerGuy1 You can’t make sugar free jello with kiwi or pineapple. Regular jello, you can.
Eggs in Europe are not refrigerated.
I just saw this essay posted at Nextdoor.com by a woman living in Edison, NJ:
Please do not hurt me or my mom.
We just temporarily moved to the neighborhood so we could be safe.
If you have suddenly seen a fox in the yard near your home, there is a good reason for this.
It is denning season. Between the end of March and early April, a mother fox will give birth to between 4 and 5 kits (a baby fox is called a kit).
A coyote will often find a fox den, dig out the babies, and kill them.
A mother fox knows this and will frequently choose a den site close to people, away from where coyotes generally go.
A fox will often den under a porch, shed, garage, barn, or side of a hill, trying to keep her little family safe.
Please offer them a short-term rental because this is not a permanent situation.
If you are lucky enough to see how beautiful an adult fox is, or witness the kits playing (at a distance of course), you will be glad you did!
It is not uncommon for Red Foxes to change dens several times during the season, so you may not see them for long.
Kits are slow to develop and will not leave the den until they are about a month old. Foxes do not live in a den year-round, only when a mother has babies.
During the summer as the kits grow older, you will see less and less of them, and by September everyone will have packed up and moved on. Please do not call a service to “relocate them”, they will often be killed.
If you see a fox during the day, it does not mean she is rabid. A mother fox works tirelessly to feed her kits and will often be out during daylight hours foraging for food.
Foxes are omnivores, generally feeding on berries, grasses, and small rodents. They are solitary and prefer to be left alone.
They do not want to hunt and eat your children, mate with your dog, or kill your cat.
A fox just wants a place to raise her family safely, please allow her to do that.
I read recently that the last fight between the US Army and Native Americans took place in Jan. 1918, when units of the Tenth Cavalry (Buffalo Soldiers) tracked down, and had a fire fight with, a band of Yaquis who had been raiding Arizona ranches from a stronghold in Mexico. Thought that was kind of interesting.
The longest walking distance on Earth Is 14,000 Miles.
From Magadan in Russia, to Cape Town in South Africa, you can walk 14,000 miles (with bridges and open roads). No flying or sailing is required.
The microwave oven was invented by accident.
In 1945, Percy Spencer, the inventor of the microwave, was standing next to an active magnetron when he discovered it had melted a candy bar that was in his pocket. Curious, he attempted to pop popcorn, and when it worked he realized microwaves could potentially be used to cook food.
@Brian1946 family friend in the 1960s had a Amana RadarRange microwave !
From Dr. Who T.A.R.D.I.S. is “Time and relative dimensions In Space”.
According to Grand Canyon Helicopter tours:
Based on local emergency room visits, the ROCK SQUIRREL is the most dangerous animal of all the Grand Canyons inhabitants. Thousands of these innocent-looking creatures hang out in the national park. But Park Rangers often describe them as both “unforgiving” and “absolutely ferocious”. Rock squirrels are diurnal. They’ve been known to lure in unsuspecting tourists and then attack them. In fact, people of all ages have been attacked by these creatures. Each year, many tourists end up in the emergency room as a result of rock squirrel attacks. While a squirrel bite might not be the most life-threatening, it’s frightening to know squirrels might carry a disease.
I find that hard to believe, because the GC also has rattle snakes.
However, perhaps more GC visitors are attacked by Rocky than they are by rattlers, so they’re basing their opinion on ER visit frequency, rather than the degree of incidental harm.
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