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The [Interesting Facts] are coming from INSIDE THE HOUSE

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Posts

  • PlatyPlaty Registered User regular
    edited August 2020
    There was a kerfuffle when Afghanistan adopted a woodland camouflage pattern instead of a desert pattern, due to a popular perception that the country is mostly desert

    But there is actually geographically a lot of vegetation

    Platy on
  • tynictynic PICNIC BADASS Registered User, ClubPA regular
    in my experience a lot of US people have trouble conceiving of other countries as not being mono-seasonal mono-biomes. The number of times I get asked if Australia has winter ...

    I blame Star Wars.

  • 3cl1ps33cl1ps3 I will build a labyrinth to house the cheese Registered User regular
    Honestly, I blame the fact that American schools always teach the Mercator projection. It makes everything south of the equator look a lot closer to the equator than it actually is (while also shrinking it), and we get taught that equator == never not hot in school, so people go from there.

  • tynictynic PICNIC BADASS Registered User, ClubPA regular
    edited August 2020
    Hmm. When I talk to people, it seems less like they're extrapolating from topological data and more like other countries aren't seen as quite inhabiting the real world. They're somehow abstracted into lower-dimensional spaces mostly informed by the Discovery Channel. I do think part of it is a lack of intuitive understanding that we live on a globe, though.

    (To be fair, Germans always used to ask me what Australians eat for breakfast, which is also a totally baffling question ("uh ... whatever they want ...?") until you realise Frühstuck is an extremely rigidly defined ritual in most german households).

    tynic on
  • SolarSolar Registered User regular
    edited August 2020
    Incidentally if anyone ever wants to read one of the most powerful and moving book about war ever, Boys In Zinc by Svetlana Alexievitch is an incredible collection of interviews with ordinary Russians about the Afghan War, including soldiers, families of soldiers, nurses and support staff, politicians, logisticians etc. It's not a dry book about the tactics and high level politics of the war, it's about what it was like to experience in Russia and Afghanistan, and it is astoundingly gripping and emotionally devastating.

    It is arguably one of the best works of non-fiction I have ever read and I recommend it to anyone. It's also very easy to read because it's in the language of very ordinary people. It also will not inflame any warlike sentiments you have, because it's pretty honest about how fucking awful it was (and after reading it you realise the parallels with the NATO invasion and what an insane idea that was too)

    Solar on
  • 3cl1ps33cl1ps3 I will build a labyrinth to house the cheese Registered User regular
    tynic wrote: »
    Hmm. When I talk to people, it seems less like they're extrapolating from topological data and more like other countries aren't seen as quite inhabiting the real world. They're somehow abstracted into lower-dimensional spaces mostly informed by the Discovery Channel. I do think part of it is a lack of intuitive understanding that we live on a globe, though.

    (To be fair, Germans always used to ask me what Australians eat for breakfast, which is also a totally baffling question ("uh ... whatever they want ...?") until you realise Frühstuck is an extremely rigidly defined ritual in most german households).

    That could be, too, but in my experience Americans don't do this so much with countries north of the equator and I think the squishing of countries south of it strongly contributes to the idea that they're just hot all the time.

    Some if it is also ignorance of where things actually are. Like, a lot of Americans think Chile is Amazonian rainforest.

  • tynictynic PICNIC BADASS Registered User, ClubPA regular
    3clipse wrote: »
    tynic wrote: »
    Hmm. When I talk to people, it seems less like they're extrapolating from topological data and more like other countries aren't seen as quite inhabiting the real world. They're somehow abstracted into lower-dimensional spaces mostly informed by the Discovery Channel. I do think part of it is a lack of intuitive understanding that we live on a globe, though.

    (To be fair, Germans always used to ask me what Australians eat for breakfast, which is also a totally baffling question ("uh ... whatever they want ...?") until you realise Frühstuck is an extremely rigidly defined ritual in most german households).

    That could be, too, but in my experience Americans don't do this so much with countries north of the equator and I think the squishing of countries south of it strongly contributes to the idea that they're just hot all the time.

    Some if it is also ignorance of where things actually are. Like, a lot of Americans think Chile is Amazonian rainforest.

    yeah there's definitely a hemispherical bias of some kind going on. You can practically spit on Antarctica from south america, and that's not hard to see on a map.

  • SolarSolar Registered User regular
    3clipse wrote: »
    tynic wrote: »
    Hmm. When I talk to people, it seems less like they're extrapolating from topological data and more like other countries aren't seen as quite inhabiting the real world. They're somehow abstracted into lower-dimensional spaces mostly informed by the Discovery Channel. I do think part of it is a lack of intuitive understanding that we live on a globe, though.

    (To be fair, Germans always used to ask me what Australians eat for breakfast, which is also a totally baffling question ("uh ... whatever they want ...?") until you realise Frühstuck is an extremely rigidly defined ritual in most german households).

    That could be, too, but in my experience Americans don't do this so much with countries north of the equator and I think the squishing of countries south of it strongly contributes to the idea that they're just hot all the time.

    Some if it is also ignorance of where things actually are. Like, a lot of Americans think Chile is Amazonian rainforest.

    I reckon that's not remotely limited to Americans tbh

  • tynictynic PICNIC BADASS Registered User, ClubPA regular
    Australians would be just as ignorant if we didn't all spend about eight years of our life backpacking around the globe.

  • PinfeldorfPinfeldorf Yeah ZestRegistered User regular
    tynic wrote: »
    3clipse wrote: »
    tynic wrote: »
    Hmm. When I talk to people, it seems less like they're extrapolating from topological data and more like other countries aren't seen as quite inhabiting the real world. They're somehow abstracted into lower-dimensional spaces mostly informed by the Discovery Channel. I do think part of it is a lack of intuitive understanding that we live on a globe, though.

    (To be fair, Germans always used to ask me what Australians eat for breakfast, which is also a totally baffling question ("uh ... whatever they want ...?") until you realise Frühstuck is an extremely rigidly defined ritual in most german households).

    That could be, too, but in my experience Americans don't do this so much with countries north of the equator and I think the squishing of countries south of it strongly contributes to the idea that they're just hot all the time.

    Some if it is also ignorance of where things actually are. Like, a lot of Americans think Chile is Amazonian rainforest.

    yeah there's definitely a hemispherical bias of some kind going on. You can practically spit on Antarctica from south america, and that's not hard to see on a map.

    Yeah there's a significant penguin population in Argentina.

  • tynictynic PICNIC BADASS Registered User, ClubPA regular
    there's a significant penguin population in Australia!

  • PiptheFairPiptheFair Frequently not in boats. Registered User regular
    tynic wrote: »
    there's a significant penguin population in Australia!

    when I went to Oz 30 years ago, the emperor penguins were returning

    so we did a tour

    I think we saw about 7 of them total and me and and very small japanese man almost got blown over the cliff due to high winds

  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    edited August 2020
    I wonder if you could undo the desertification of australia like in those areas where those lone peeps planted trees

    bowen on
    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • tynictynic PICNIC BADASS Registered User, ClubPA regular
    edited August 2020
    bowen wrote: »
    I wonder if you could undo the desertification of australia like in those areas where those lone peeps planted trees

    I don't really know how to react to this. We're trying, obviously? It's a whole big environmental thing here? Repopulating native grasses is usually more important than planting trees though. The best scenario right now would be to return the country to its pre-colonial state.

    https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/may/13/its-time-to-embrace-the-history-of-the-country-first-harvest-of-dancing-grass-in-200-years

    tynic on
  • tynictynic PICNIC BADASS Registered User, ClubPA regular
    Fun fact: mound building termites can hold back desertification in a lot of places.

  • PiptheFairPiptheFair Frequently not in boats. Registered User regular
    tynic wrote: »
    Fun fact: mound building termites can hold back desertification in a lot of places.

    how about emu corpses

  • tynictynic PICNIC BADASS Registered User, ClubPA regular
    PiptheFair wrote: »
    tynic wrote: »
    Fun fact: mound building termites can hold back desertification in a lot of places.

    how about emu corpses

    weirdly those make things worse

  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    tynic wrote: »
    bowen wrote: »
    I wonder if you could undo the desertification of australia like in those areas where those lone peeps planted trees

    I don't really know how to react to this. We're trying, obviously? It's a whole big environmental thing here? Repopulating native grasses is usually more important than planting trees though. The best scenario right now would be to return the country to its pre-colonial state.

    https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/may/13/its-time-to-embrace-the-history-of-the-country-first-harvest-of-dancing-grass-in-200-years

    Not really an attack on australia, just wondering out loud what that would look like if it was like extremely large scale

    did australia have forests millions of years ago before its plate started migrating, or was it more grasslandy?

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • tynictynic PICNIC BADASS Registered User, ClubPA regular
    edited August 2020
    bowen wrote: »
    tynic wrote: »
    bowen wrote: »
    I wonder if you could undo the desertification of australia like in those areas where those lone peeps planted trees

    I don't really know how to react to this. We're trying, obviously? It's a whole big environmental thing here? Repopulating native grasses is usually more important than planting trees though. The best scenario right now would be to return the country to its pre-colonial state.

    https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/may/13/its-time-to-embrace-the-history-of-the-country-first-harvest-of-dancing-grass-in-200-years

    Not really an attack on australia, just wondering out loud what that would look like if it was like extremely large scale

    did australia have forests millions of years ago before its plate started migrating, or was it more grasslandy?

    I didn't think it was an attack it just seemed weirdly patronising, like "ok BUT has australia tried sending out a bunch of old men with saplings and a shovel? that's a great initiative" when we have entire scientific institutions devoted to this stuff.

    millions of years ago everything (landmass location, atmospheric composition, local geology, flora in general) was so different that it's not really relevant. There were native australian coniferous trees in what is now Argentina 52 million years ago, if that helps. Almost certainly it would have been heavily forested during the high CO2 high humidity periods, I don't know the fossil records off the top of my head.

    From the point of view of maintaining or restoring biodiversity to a range that would be considered normal over the last, say, 10 millennia (which is about as long term as we can really think about in terms of conservation), we can look to indigenous records and the diaries of the very first colonial expeditions. The biomes vary massively across the continent, but there was certainly a lot more old growth forest/rainforest, especially in the equatorial and temperate regions. However, probably also a lot less secondary forest/sparse bushland, which has tended to come back in areas which were once cleared for grazing and now been left alone.

    The areas most subject to desertification (central/south australia) were probably not forested within a human-inhabited era, they would have been mostly grasslands and scrub. But a lot of those zones were cultivated, the product of millennia of agricultural activities planting (native) roots and seeds. So, I don't know if you would call that a natural state, it's very much human-maintained, but it seems to have been a sustainable state that was adapted to local conditions and had reached some kind of equilibrium with the native fauna. So, if we want to reclaim those areas, that's usually considered the best approach, rather than trying to transplant trees from the hills and highlands, which usually have much higher water requirements.

    tynic on
  • PlatyPlaty Registered User regular
    The breakfast question sounds to me like they wanna know if Australians eat English breakfast or more continental-style breakfast

  • Al_watAl_wat Registered User regular
    Or maybe if their meal order is upside-down, like they eat dinner for breakfast and breakfast for dinner.
    please dont kill me tynic

  • tynictynic PICNIC BADASS Registered User, ClubPA regular
    edited August 2020
    Platy wrote: »
    The breakfast question sounds to me like they wanna know if Australians eat English breakfast or more continental-style breakfast

    Well, yeah, that's what I assumed. It's just a question I can't answer sensibly because there isn't a singular breakfast tradition in australia, especially considering our multiple waves of immigration. So the answer is "Both, and neither". Like, as an answerable question it's about on par with "How do australians style their hair?"

    I can tell you what you would get if you ordered a 'full aussie breakfast' at a cafe, but almost nobody would ever eat that at home.

    edit: I should have just said "congee" and dared them to make an issue of it.

    tynic on
  • PlatyPlaty Registered User regular
    When we were in Vienna, the Parisian breakfast would come with a condom

  • BrainleechBrainleech 機知に富んだコメントはここにあります Registered User regular
    Platy wrote: »
    There was a kerfuffle when Afghanistan adopted a woodland camouflage pattern instead of a desert pattern, due to a popular perception that the country is mostly desert

    But there is actually geographically a lot of vegetation

    When I got deployed way back in 2001 I had a tan ground crew jumper {Being as tall as I am the Corps did the wear this} I had the m81 armor in tan as well so I kind of stood out in a group wearing green and tan vests

  • HobnailHobnail Registered User regular


    Two Chechen gentlemen in Syria are almost certainly up to no good

    But...damn they fly though.....

    Broke as fuck in the style of the times. Gratitude is all that can return on your generosity.

    https://www.paypal.me/hobnailtaylor
  • Houk the NamebringerHouk the Namebringer Nipples The EchidnaRegistered User regular
    Solar wrote: »
    3clipse wrote: »
    tynic wrote: »
    Hmm. When I talk to people, it seems less like they're extrapolating from topological data and more like other countries aren't seen as quite inhabiting the real world. They're somehow abstracted into lower-dimensional spaces mostly informed by the Discovery Channel. I do think part of it is a lack of intuitive understanding that we live on a globe, though.

    (To be fair, Germans always used to ask me what Australians eat for breakfast, which is also a totally baffling question ("uh ... whatever they want ...?") until you realise Frühstuck is an extremely rigidly defined ritual in most german households).

    That could be, too, but in my experience Americans don't do this so much with countries north of the equator and I think the squishing of countries south of it strongly contributes to the idea that they're just hot all the time.

    Some if it is also ignorance of where things actually are. Like, a lot of Americans think Chile is Amazonian rainforest.

    I reckon that's not remotely limited to Americans tbh

    sure but nobody does exceptionalism like us americans

  • Donovan PuppyfuckerDonovan Puppyfucker A dagger in the dark is worth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered User regular
    tynic wrote: »
    Platy wrote: »
    I can tell you what you would get if you ordered a 'full aussie breakfast' at a cafe, but almost nobody would ever eat that at home.

    Isn't that just a bowl of Weetbix?

  • Donovan PuppyfuckerDonovan Puppyfucker A dagger in the dark is worth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered User regular
    Platy wrote: »
    When we were in Vienna, the Parisian breakfast would come with a condom

    Was it to keep the cigarette dry in the espresso?

  • tynictynic PICNIC BADASS Registered User, ClubPA regular
  • Donovan PuppyfuckerDonovan Puppyfucker A dagger in the dark is worth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered User regular
    tynic wrote: »
    Piss someone off, did you @chr1sh4ll3ttb3
    I like Injustice but I hope that's not true because anyone who replaces "e" with "3" in their titles in 2020 deserves to be labelled a turbodork for the rest of their days.

    Mods please change PaperLuigi44's forum handle to Pap3rLuigi44 at your earliest convenience!
    sure thing chrishall3ttbe
    Tube wrote: »
    I like Injustice but I hope that's not true because anyone who replaces "e" with "3" in their titles in 2020 deserves to be labelled a turbodork for the rest of their days.

    Mods please change PaperLuigi44's forum handle to Pap3rLuigi44 at your earliest convenience!

    My finger slipped

  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    how does login work with a name like that, email?

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • PlatyPlaty Registered User regular
    Chrish All Ettbe

  • Houk the NamebringerHouk the Namebringer Nipples The EchidnaRegistered User regular
    yup, still reading it as chrishalibut

    chrishallebutte

    christhalleberry

  • BrainleechBrainleech 機知に富んだコメントはここにあります Registered User regular
    bowen wrote: »
    how does login work with a name like that, email?

    Well there was some really interesting names that were chosen that I did wonder how that person would remember like the Lord of Reading

  • Donovan PuppyfuckerDonovan Puppyfucker A dagger in the dark is worth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered User regular
    bowen wrote: »
    how does login work with a name like that, email?

    Keen of you to assume I ever log out...

  • Houk the NamebringerHouk the Namebringer Nipples The EchidnaRegistered User regular
    bowen wrote: »
    how does login work with a name like that, email?

    Keen of you to assume I ever log out...

    when tube changed my name i thought i'd gotten banned, because everything was saved and my phone naturally thought i was trying to log in as just 'houk'

    i literally had to go in and find a post of mine to discover my name had been changed, and then update all of my auto-login info from there

  • chromdomchromdom Who? Where?Registered User regular
    tynic wrote: »
    Piss someone off, did you @chr1sh4ll3ttb3
    I like Injustice but I hope that's not true because anyone who replaces "e" with "3" in their titles in 2020 deserves to be labelled a turbodork for the rest of their days.

    Mods please change PaperLuigi44's forum handle to Pap3rLuigi44 at your earliest convenience!
    sure thing chrishall3ttbe
    Tube wrote: »
    I like Injustice but I hope that's not true because anyone who replaces "e" with "3" in their titles in 2020 deserves to be labelled a turbodork for the rest of their days.

    Mods please change PaperLuigi44's forum handle to Pap3rLuigi44 at your earliest convenience!

    My finger slipped

    I tell ya, I ran across this, and laughed, out loud, for a good 45 seconds.

  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    bowen wrote: »
    how does login work with a name like that, email?

    Keen of you to assume I ever log out...

    I mean I don't purposefully log out but the forums sometimes tell me to log in 8 times in a row.

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • BrainleechBrainleech 機知に富んだコメントはここにあります Registered User regular
    tynic wrote: »
    in my experience a lot of US people have trouble conceiving of other countries as not being mono-seasonal mono-biomes. The number of times I get asked if Australia has winter ...

    I blame Star Wars.

    I have a hard time thinking in 40k about agriculture worlds {worlds given over the whole production of food} As there are temperature zones and other factors
    And worlds like Catachan producing a number of guard regiments on a constant schedule.
    Worlds of continental sized jungles {as it would be humid as F on that world if it was a earth like atmosphere.}
    and atmospheres! we humans only work in a certain mix so not everyworld would be the same or even within that narrow band
    I blame science fiction in general
    World building is hard

  • tynictynic PICNIC BADASS Registered User, ClubPA regular
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