this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2023
6 points (100.0% liked)

Asklemmy

43963 readers
2467 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy πŸ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] CannotSleep420@lemmygrad.ml 12 points 1 year ago

That the 13^th^ amendment outlawed slavery.

[–] Ordoviz@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago (5 children)
[–] dogmuffins@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

Thinking that there are different learning styles probably helps poor teachers develop better content though.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] jannis@feddit.de 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] Ghast@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

I'll add that most people think Noah took two of each animal onto the ark. It was seven of the male and female of the clean animals, and two of the male and the female of the unclean animals.

[–] potcandan@lemmy.one 6 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I always think about when I was taught about taste and the human tongue back in grade school, they had these diagrams about zones on the tongue corresponding to sweet, sour, bitter, etc. like a "taste map". I'm not sure how many generations were taught about it but turns out it just isn't true at all. So, not like it's important but you got a lot of misinformed folks out there in regards to taste lol

[–] Swintoodles@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That always confused me as a child, since it was super easy to just test it for yourself. Turned out salt tasted salty regardless of where on your tongue it was, the same for the rest of the flavors.

[–] potcandan@lemmy.one 4 points 1 year ago

Yup I remember thinking to myself at the time that I must be tasting incorrectly or somehow my tongue is different from everyone else lol.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] Adi2121@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago

Nearly anything abouth Pre-Columbian North and South America. Turns out, there was no homogeneous "Native" culture, just as there was no "European" culture. Every different group had their own traditions and stories. They all were complex people, not one-dimensional savages or pacifists. We should simply view them as any other people.

[–] flipcoder@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago

That the first amendment and free speech are the same thing

[–] StoneBleach@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

That looking too closely at the screen will blind you or damage your eyes. This myth originated decades ago in the 1960s from an advertisement by a television manufacturer. Basically in 1967 General Electric reported that their color TVs were emitting too many x-rays due to a factory error, so health officials recommended keeping children and pretty much anyone else at a safe distance from the screen. The problem was soon resolved, but the myth endured.

If you ask me I would say that x-ray radiation has little to do with going blind, I have no idea if radiation can actually make you blind, but it's funny how somehow eye diseases got in the way as the only possible consequences in the myth just because we use our eyes to watch TV.

[–] argv_minus_one@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago

Good ol' desktop particle accelerators.

[–] Inductor@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

CRT screens generate bremsstrahlung (x-rays) from slowing electrons, so the front piece of glass is normally made of lead glass, or barium-strontium glass to block it.
After the General Electric incident, testing showed that nearly every manufacturers TVs were emitting too many x-rays. This led to the recommendation to stay 6 ft. away from the TV when it was on. The FDA then later imposed limits on how much radiation a TV was allowed to emit.
With the these regulations, if you were to absorb all x-rays from a CRT for 2 hours a day, every day, you would get 320 millirem per year (comparable to the average US background radiation of 310 millirem per year). See here, as well as this article.
Edit: Also, significant doses of x-rays can blind you. Radiologists in medicine particularly have to shield against it, since they are exposed to it every day, and exposure builds up. See here and here.
Edit again: Wasn't paying enough attention. That last source talks about ionizing radiation specifically, so not x-rays.

[–] fomo_erotic@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

Mmm. I worked on CRT screens when I was in the US Navy and had some CRT monitors in the past.

After a long session, my eyeballs 100% felt 'burnt' inside.

[–] Rhabuko@feddit.de 5 points 1 year ago
[–] TheOubliette@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That by not being ridiculously overtly bigoted, they have actually interrogated and rejected their own bigotry. The former is basic and mostly relies on social conditioning. The latter requires reading history and people who are criticizing things with which you may identify and therefore take very personally. The latter is not taught in school and school does not provide the tools (outside of literacy) to do so, so it's a difficult, painful, abd regrettably rare thing to see, usually requiring sone trauma to change.

[–] CoinOperatedBoi@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Going through the process of discovering I was trans and surrounding myself with trans people really made me re-examine how little work I’d done on issues of race, among other things. So many of the little passive aggressive things I found myself getting annoyed at cis people doing, I also found myself doing to people of color. Nothing particularly awful, but definitely inconsiderate.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] ancedactyl@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That the average person will swallow 8 spiders a year in their in their sleep.

[–] EponymousBosh@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

Spiders Georg really threw the average off

[–] fomo_erotic@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

Every one knows that its closer to 1000 spiders.

[–] unnecessarily@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago

Americans: You’re not tired after eating Thanksgiving dinner because of tryptophan in the turkey, you’re tired because you ate a lot of food.

[–] this@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 year ago (5 children)

At the risk of upsetting people, most if not all religions. They can't all be right.

[–] lvxferre@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I think that a lot of Atheists oversimplify religion. (NB: I'm Atheist myself.)

"True" and "false" only apply to statements about reality (epistemic). And sure, religion has a lot of them: "God exists", "if you fornicate you'll go to Hell", "the world was created in seven days" etc. I think that most of them are false.

However a religion isn't just its epistemic statements. It's also morals, practices/rituals, and a community. Those things cannot be true or false, because they are not statements about reality. You need another ground to refer to them, as "good" vs. "bad" (deontic).

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
[–] nik282000@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

WiFi/Cell phones give you cancer. Both devices operated in the microwave spectrum, at or below 1 watt of power. That's about the same amount of power as the flashlight on your phone but in a wavelength so unenergetic that you can't even see it. You could put the phone in your mouth and get absorb less energy than just walking outside into the sun.

[–] JillyB@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I get your point but the sun does give you cancer.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] cypherpunks@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago
[–] Billy_Gnosis@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago (20 children)

The government is looking out for your best interests

load more comments (20 replies)
[–] branchial@feddit.de 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

You have to completely decharge batteries before recharging them.

[–] jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 year ago

For modern lithium batteries, that is even harmful for the battery.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] mrmanager@lemmy.today 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That there are heroic countries in the world.

There are, but who they are depends on who is asking and who is asked.

[–] animist@lemmy.one 4 points 1 year ago

I mean define heroic, it's super subjective

[–] tubbadu@lemmy.one 2 points 1 year ago (4 children)
load more comments (4 replies)
[–] SkepticElliptic@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago (6 children)

That cold water will boil faster than warm water.

It's a confusion. You should always cook with cold tap water, not hot, because hot tap water can contain excessive amounts of lead.

There are several instances where hot water can freeze faster than lukewarm water. I believe people saw this on shows such as Bill Nye and then forgot the specifics.

load more comments (6 replies)
[–] PanaX@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I know it's low hanging fruit, but religion.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The Russiagate https://jacobin.com/2020/04/russiagate-christopher-steele-dossier-trump-election

edit: all the people being mad and downvoting just goes to underscore that once people internalize nonsense, no amount of evidence will change their minds

[–] Martin@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That they're right. You should be able to question your own opinions. A lost art, it seems

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments
view more: next β€Ί