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Fun Fact Friday - Best Fun Fact Gets 10,000 Sats

3480 sats \ 57 comments \ @sn 2 Feb meta

Let's hear all your best fun facts, any topic counts!

The best comment as voted by the "top" filter at 9am CT tomorrow gets 10,000 sats.

Bonus sats for including a source link to your fun fact!

If you missed our last edition, here are lots of fun facts stackers shared.

Send your best 👇

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11.4k sats \ 7 replies \ @justanumber 2 Feb

The science of why you have great ideas in the shower

When you’re in the shower “you don’t have a lot to do, you can’t see much, and there’s white noise,” notes John Kounios, a cognitive neuroscientist and director of the Creativity Research Lab at Drexel University in Philadelphia. “Your brain thinks in a more chaotic fashion. Your executive processes diminish and associative processes amp up. Ideas bounce around, and different thoughts can collide and connect.”

If you’ve ever emerged from the shower or returned from walking your dog with a clever idea or a solution to a problem you’d been struggling with, it may not be a fluke.

Rather than constantly grinding away at a problem or desperately seeking a flash of inspiration, research from the last 15 years suggests that people may be more likely to have creative breakthroughs or epiphanies when they’re doing a habitual task that doesn’t require much thought—an activity in which you’re basically on autopilot. This lets your mind wander or engage in spontaneous cognition or “stream of consciousness” thinking, which experts believe helps retrieve unusual memories and generate new ideas.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/article/the-science-of-why-you-have-great-ideas-in-the-shower

41 sats \ 0 replies \ @WeAreAllSatoshi 2 Feb

This is it, this is the winner

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @justanumber 3 Feb freebie

AWESOME!! THANKS FOR THE SATS GUYS. I am going to use them to orange pill folks. Get them to set up a LN wallet and zap them a few hundred each to get them started! Lets see how many I can convert.

11 sats \ 0 replies \ @Cowboy 5 Feb

All the best!

26 sats \ 1 reply \ @cryotosensei 3 Feb

That’s why the older I get, the more I like to do household chores. I find that my creative ideas come suddenly when I’m cleaning the toilet bowl or wiping the floor etc

11 sats \ 0 replies \ @Bitman 3 Feb freebie

You'd be having absolutely loads of creative ideas at my place then...

20 sats \ 1 reply \ @arrivederci 3 Feb

or returned from walking your dog

This is why I never walk with headphones on. I find walking to be a form of meditation (emptying or 'freeing' of the mind) and listening to a podcast (or less intrusively, some music) interferes with moving over into that frame of mind.

1 sat \ 0 replies \ @justanumber 3 Feb

Some of my best plans and ideas have been born on a long walk, in the shower, during a drive or commute - or at 5am when I'm wide awake and everything is quiet, no distractions. Can't do that with music or podcasts playing. I think that's why we're bombarded with media constantly to keep us distracted.

918 sats \ 4 replies \ @0b1CoinObi 2 Feb

Platypuses Sweat Milk

They secrete milk from specialised mammary glands, just like humans and other mammals. But platypuses don’t have teats, so the milk just oozes from the surface of their skin. This makes it look like sweat, but in fact platypuses are aquatic and don’t produce regular sweat at all.

Since this delivery system is less hygienic than the direct nipple-in-mouth method, platypus milk contains powerful antibacterial proteins to protect the babies from illness. These proteins may be a useful source of future antibiotics.

https://m.stacker.news/14649

31 sats \ 0 replies \ @justanumber 2 Feb freebie

That is amazing, especially about the extra antibacterial properties, and also looks surprisingly cute!

10 sats \ 1 reply \ @fm 2 Feb

Damn.. weird animal for sure.. Arent they also like one of the few venomous mammals and the only mammal to lay eggs?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @arrivederci 3 Feb

and the only mammal to lay eggs

One of two. The echidna is also a monotreme (although there are 4 species of echidna, while there's only 1 platypus species). All are endemic to the Australian continent (which includes New Guinea).

I've seen both echidnas and platypusses in the wild. Echidnas are cute. But seeing a platypus is quite magical. I can't remember each specific sighting but it's probably only been something like 2 to 4 times. The time I do remember well was quite an extended observation (the other sightings only glimpses).

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Natalia 3 Feb

really interesting indeed!

801 sats \ 3 replies \ @0357218382 2 Feb

The Hanging Stone - Висячий камень

The Hanging Stone is a 500 ton granite rock located in the Ergaki Nature Park in Southern Siberia. It hangs on the precipice of a cliff 1,000 metres above Lake Raduzhnoye (meaning Rainbow). The legend of the stone is believed to have come from the Turkic peoples and Sayan aborigines who proclaim: when the stone falls, the world shall come to its end. Some also believe the stone represents the beating heart of the human figure formed by the ridge on which it is situated. It's visited by 120 thousand tourists per year, some of which have attempted to dislodge the rock... to little avail. Even with winches and jacks to assist, all efforts are fruitless at disturbing the stone's mighty slumber.

https://m.stacker.news/14660

read more: source

39 sats \ 2 replies \ @0357218382 2 Feb

Here's another photo to show the stone's true scale

https://m.stacker.news/14661

image source

7 sats \ 0 replies \ @stargut 2 Feb

I wouldn't want to be underneath that stone. No knowing which way it falls

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @owleyedapprentice 2 Feb

feels like there's a metaphor here (based on the legend) for military interventionism triggering the end of the world

686 sats \ 0 replies \ @0xbitcoiner 2 Feb

There actually aren’t “57 varieties” of Heinz ketchup, and never were.

Company founder H.J. Heinz thought his product should have a number, and he liked 57. Hint: Hit the glass bottle on the “57,” not the bottom, to get the ketchup to flow.

450 sats \ 0 replies \ @justanumber 2 Feb

There is a town in Cumbria, England called Cockermouth

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

432 sats \ 0 replies \ @BitcoinIsTheFuture 2 Feb

The Fiat Billionaire list. I’m more concerned with Satoshi Billionaires. That will be the future stat!

Age when they became billionaires:

Rihanna: 33 Jack Dorsey: 35 Jeff Bezos: 35 J.K. Rowling: 38 Mark Cuban: 40 Elon Musk: 41 Richard Branson: 41 Sheryl Sandberg: 44 Tory Burch: 46 Oprah Winfrey: 49 Michael Jordan: 51 George Lucas: 52 Warren Buffett: 56

874 sats \ 8 replies \ @deyner1984 2 Feb

Lewis Carroll ("Alice's Adventures in Wonderland") was a chronic insomniac who often felt the urge to write at night. Living as he did before electric lights were common, he invented what he called a "nyctograph", or night-writer, along with a notation system of nyctography for writing without the aid of a light.

FUN FACT! Parts of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" were entirely written that way and today, you can even find (and try to read) that same book completely printed in the Nyctographic Square Alphabet devised by Lewis Carroll.

https://www.evertype.com/books/alice-nyctograph.html https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1904808786/evertype-20

https://m.stacker.news/14673 https://m.stacker.news/14674

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @stargut 2 Feb

https://m.stacker.news/14697

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @deyner1984 2 Feb

Yes, this is exactly the "alphabet" Lewis Carrol invented. Crazy right?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @stargut 2 Feb

Yeah that's wild. Wonder how he came up with it

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @fm 2 Feb

Crazy

22 sats \ 0 replies \ @deyner1984 2 Feb freebie

Ha! Apparently the guy couldn´t sleep quite well when he was working into some of his masterpieces and during the night, some nice ideas came to his mind and he just wanted a quick way to write in the darkness and transcribe the next day.

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @OriginalSize 2 Feb

OK, but wait, how does nyctography help?!

31 sats \ 1 reply \ @deyner1984 2 Feb

I read the guy sent a letter to a magazine (to explain the use of this tool) saying that for him, waking up in the middle of a cold night to light a candle and write some ideas or parts of his creations was not suitable because too many facts like, for example, texts written in plain English in mid dark were not legible the upcoming morning for him (ink based devices to write and the guy was sleepy) + sometimes the ideas were so brief that waking up to go to a desk got him to forget the idea completely so this device was used right from his bed without the need to wake up. Apparently he slept with this tool behind his own pillow. It was easy for him to use it i guess.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @OriginalSize 2 Feb

https://m.stacker.news/14704

126 sats \ 3 replies \ @td 2 Feb

Nine-er in NATO radio speak is to disambiguate it from the German for ‘no’

10 sats \ 2 replies \ @Bitman 2 Feb

It's November!

https://wikiless.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet?lang=en

95 sats \ 1 reply \ @0357218382 2 Feb

That's for the letter N. What @td is reffering to is for the number 9

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Bitman 2 Feb

Ah, yes!

18 sats \ 0 replies \ @Roll 2 Feb

Before oranges arrived in England in the late 15th century, there was no word for the color.

It was referred to as ġeolucrog (yellow-saffron), or ġeolurēad (yellow-red) depending on the shade.

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @kurszusz 2 Feb

https://m.stacker.news/14657

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Bell_curve 3 Feb

This made my day

46 sats \ 5 replies \ @Lux 2 Feb

90% of grocery store foods didn't exist 100 years ago. Neither did 90% diseases.

644 sats \ 4 replies \ @Bitman 2 Feb

Can you post the 🍝 for the second one?

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @Lux 2 Feb

probably inaccurate Found this book from 1982, lists a couple hundred diseases Today they say there are about 10000 known diseases https://archive.org/details/principlespracti00osle_4/mode/2up

10 sats \ 2 replies \ @Bitman 2 Feb

Ah, but this means they might have existed, just not found/classified yet.

Plus, really importantly, the book was written in 1892 not 1982.

There's been one hell of a lot of scientific and medical advances since then.

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @Lux 2 Feb

might yes, my mistake yes

128 sats \ 0 replies \ @Bitman 2 Feb

Great, didn't want people running to the hills in fear...

51 sats \ 0 replies \ @lolwut 2 Feb

More of a thought - when you hear someone say that they are afraid to be alone, they are actually afraid that they may not be alone ;)

31 sats \ 0 replies \ @KeynesianClowns 2 Feb

John Harvey Kellogg created corn flakes in large part with the goal of reducing people's sex drives and thereby preventing them from masturbating and participating in excessive sexual activity. Kellogg, a well respected doctor at the time, believed that masturbation specifically caused many adverse health effects of both a physical and mental nature. He likewise believed that a bland, vegetarian-based diet would be the best means for accomplishing a reduction of these activities. It is believed that his stance on the matter was in large part influenced by his family's extensive involvement with the 7th day Adventist church.

https://www.historyhit.com/john-harvey-kellogg/

52 sats \ 0 replies \ @w3irdrobot 2 Feb

craig wright is not satoshi.

44 sats \ 0 replies \ @2d 2 Feb

According to casual scroll of Wikipedia, the reply of “God bless you” as a response to sneezing has (as far as I can tell) some conflicting beginnings. Some claim it formally originated during the plague, as it was a first sign of falling ill. Some claim it was due to the belief that your soul could be thrown from your body during a sneeze, opening you up to evil spirits, or that sneezing was a body’s response to force out an invading spirit. Some thought your heart stopped when you sneeze and that would encourage it to pick back up.

They also provide a pretty broad list of responses across multiple languages (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Response_to_sneezing). My favorite is the Serbian one used mostly with children, which apparently translates to “go away kitten”.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @amendt 2 Feb

Exactly 2 years ago, Facebook's failed crypto stablecoin Libra was officially shut down and sold. Today, its former project lead, David Marcus, has pledged to devote his entire life to #Bitcoin and Lightning ⚡️

https://m.stacker.news/14691

3 sats \ 0 replies \ @_Stacy 2 Feb

It is physically impossible for pigs to look directly to the sky

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @cryotosensei 3 Feb

Bitcoin is masculine even though "coin" is a femenine word in Spanish

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DudeJLebowski 3 Feb

Gary Oldman is actually younger than Gary Numan, by 13 days.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @jakoyoh629 3 Feb

As of now, 10 of the top 12 comments are on the post "Every city should have…"

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @BitcoinIsTheFuture 2 Feb

Dirty dirty Fiat!

94% of bills are contaminated with bacteria

Approximately 94% of paper money that moves from hand to hand is riddled with bacteria. One NYU study found 3,000 types of organisms on just 80 $1 bills — including bacteria linked to pneumonia, food poisoning and staph infections.

https://m.stacker.news/14705

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @BountifulB 2 Feb

Humans and bananas have 40 - 60% identical DNA.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @lightwalker 2 Feb

SN is the short form for Satoshi Nakamoto Where all digital money have failed, Bitcoin remains the best.

SN is the short form for Stacker News Where all the world's mainstream media have failed, Stacker News remains the best.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @0xbitcoiner 2 Feb

I won't win the fun fact today. The competition is very strong. Congratulations in advance to the winner. 🤠

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Squeeze_every_Sat 2 Feb

Multiple species of spiders have independently evolved to look like ants.

This convergent evolution happened at least 70 different times where they all evolved to look like ants but did not inherit this trait from a common ancestor.

These ant mimicking spiders often prey on individual ants, or hide in the colony for protection from its predators.

Speaks to how wide spread and successful ants have been that it changed the appearance of multiple spider species over the course of millions of years.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @kurszusz 2 Feb

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C2SPtRBNYfM/

The Hanging Stone - Висячий камень

... read more

I won't win the fun fact today. The competition is very strong. Congratulations in advance to the winner. 🤠