Things you didn't know until very recently...

Discovery Communications owns a 3.08% stake in Lionsgate.

That the name "Bede" is properly pronounced "bed-eh" or "bay-deh", not "beed".

edited 27th May '17 4:01:36 PM by Madrugada

According to Wikipedia, the 8th-century historian by that name is pronounced as "beed".

Before I looked the name up I don't think I've encountered it before (and I didn't know about the saint/historian), but if I had to guess, just from seeing it, I wouldn't have guessed that it's an English name. I would've guessed Norwegian or Danish. That name existed before the Norman conquest, though. (Then again, Germanic people had contributed to the population that became the Anglo-Saxons, and the Nordic peoples - with the exception of the Finns - are Germanic, so perhaps the history of that name derives from Scandinavia.)

edited 27th May '17 4:38:05 PM by BestOf

Speaking of Wikipedia, I found out that cockroaches showed up later in the fossil record than previously believed. They actually showed up in the Cretaceous Period.

'Nuala may be incorrect, then. Assuming that the etymology is similar to "rede", it would be from Old English, and cognate to various other Germanic languages. ("Rede" is Old English, cognate to Old Saxon (rad), Dutch (raad), German (Rat) and Old Norse (rað). It's pronounced "reed".)

Aha. On further digging, I bet she's going on this: "Modern form of the Old English name Baeda", which would have the ending aspirated schwa. So he would have pronounced it "bay-deh" or "bee-deh", but the modern pronunciation "beed" is now considered correct..

Socrates thought that the choice of who should lead shouldn't be left in the hands of every citizen, because not everyone knows what is truly best for their lives. Not everyone is educated enough to vote. Come centuries later, and we have elected few educated figures.

That's pretty much what I would've expected. That seems to always happen with sufficiently old names. "Plato" still has the n at the end in most languages, but not all, and of course there's the whole Ramesses->Ramses scenario.

For something more on topic (as in, something I learned recently, and not a comment on someone else's post), I recently learned a lot more than I had known before about terra preta, the black soil of the Amazon rainforest.

Regular Amazon soil is poorly suited for farming because it has few nutrients, and it doesn't retain the nutrients it has very well. Rains wash away the good stuff in the soil, so the rainforest is largely dependent on the compost that's constantly accumulating on top of the top soil.

Terra Preta is different. It's got a high carbon content, with bits of charcoal mixed in; and that charcoal, then, supports fungi that bind even more carbon - and nutrients. If the top layer of the soil gets washed away or otherwise damaged, the fungi and bacteria will restore it, along with its special properties. It retains nutrients much better than regular rainforest soil, and it also prevents carbon emissions because it doesn't release (most of) the carbon in it into the atmosphere, basically ever.

This type of soil is not natural, as evidenced by the carefully prepared charcoal that's mixed in it, as well as shards of pottery that are also found in it. Members of peoples native to the land presumably started developing the land when they would have discovered that places where they had had their kitchen or dumping grounds before had come to have excellent soil for farming.

There's evidence of an agrarian society that would have existed and thrived at the time the Europeans came - and basically killed almost everyone and devastated those cultures by bringing in European diseases.

The extent of the black soil - somewhere between 1-10% of the entire Amazon basin - indicates that when the native peoples discovered the properties of the type of soil they had created, they went to a great deal of effort to keep extending it, creating more arable land for future generations. This process would have taken centuries.

Terra preta also has nutrients that don't occur naturally in the surrounding soil, but would have been added to the soil from the waste of fish and algae that were harvested from the river. Normally, if you dump that stuff on the ground, the nutrients will be used up or washed away very quickly; but terra preta will retain them.

There's an effort under way to establish a process for the artificial production of new terra preta, which would be exported around the world for use in agriculture. Not only is the soil better for retaining nutrients, it binds a whole lot of carbon. In the Amazon rainforest, some terra preta sites have the black soil extending to a depth of two metres, and since it regenerates itself, it could be great for protecting lands that are facing erosion. For mitigating the effect of our greenhouse gas emissions, terra preta, if produced in sufficient volume, could really help bind carbon to the soil. At least it could reduce carbon emissions from agriculture.

Huh. Slash-and-burn land preparation. Cut down everything growing, burn thew debris rather than moving it away, plant. After harvest, burn everything that's left. After some years of that, let it go wild again, then start over with the "slash" step.

If you export two projects with the same name in Wondershare Video Editor, the second one will simply have a 1 tacked onto the end of its name before whatever format you've put it in with no space in between.

There's a grocery store near me that has two drive-thru windows: one for the pharmacy, and one for a Dairy Queen attached to the store. There is also a Starbucks in the store.

All of this sounds like the coolest grocery store ever.

The gulper eel & pelican eel are different animals.

Today I found out what that barking noise is on a plane is. It's called a power transfer unit (PTU) and it maintains pressure of the blue and yellow hydualic systems.

The Arena Football League is still operating...with 5 teams, two of which are new this year.

Cookies were first made in 7th Century Persia.

There's a fasting observance known as Ramadan, practiced in the Muslim world, during which it's forbidden to eat, and even touch, food between sunrise and sunset.

It takes place during the ninth month of the Islamic calendar.

One of the writers of The Powerpuff Girls (2016) created an Author Avatar of himself (looks like him, is voiced by him, only appears in episodes he writes) that he used to live out his fantasies of Blossom being in love with him NO I AM NOT MAKING A SINGLE WORD OF THIS UP◊

edited 28th May '17 6:42:40 PM by Midna

I'd like a better source than a screenshot of 4chan calling the guy autistic.

The source is in the picture. What more evidence do you really need?

My Final Edits, are there not many Muslims around where you live? In large parts of the world, not knowing about Ramadan would be more weird than not knowing about Christmas, but I suppose if you don't know any Muslims personally and don't follow world news it makes sense you wouldn't have bumped into it.

In Finland, this stuff is covered in primary education, in the mandatory religion classes. Which ever religion is the emphasis of your religious education at school (and there's a parallel class for those who don't belong to any church), you get the basics of all major religions covered. (I'm assuming it's roughly the same in every Western country.) I doubt that that's the main way Finnish kids are learning about Ramadan these days, though - we don't have loads of Muslims, but I'm sure we have enough that most kids in school would know at least one enough to have talked about this stuff by the time they finish primary education.

I never learned about it in school. In fact, I didn't even learn about it in any formal piece of literature, digital media or audiovisual work. I did after reading a book called Maleducada Yo?, in page 250. It speaks about the etiquette for travelers and those who intend to visit the Middle East.

I know I'm evidently uneducated about this, and I apologize. That's the reason why I stopped posting in certain Yack Fest threads; because some communities are best learned about on your own before seeking friends in them. =/

no.

Not in the US. You might have a "comparative religions" class offered in a private high school. And that will probably only cover the Abrahamic religions.

MyFinalEdits, BestOf: Guys, we gotta keep in mind that every one of us could be part of today's Ten Thousand, and that what's common knowledge in one part of the world may be virtually unknown elsewhere. Some parts of the world have very few Muslims, if any.

One thing I learned recently is that lamium (also known as dead-nettle, a pretty groundcover plant with purple flowers) transplants really well. You can basically dig some up, move it a few feet, make sure the roots are good and buried in the new spot, water it, and it grows like nothing happened.

It's not impossible to not know about Ramadan. I don't think I knew about it until I first heard "The Most Unwanted Song". I think I barely even knew what Hanukkah was until I had a Jewish friend just after high school.

I also know practically nothing about world history, because I got literally none of it in high school. I have no idea who Charlemagne is, nor could I tell you when Henry VIII reigned, nor could I tell you what the Magna Carta was.

I didn't meant to mock anyone. As I said, not knowing about Ramadan in some countries is as strange as not knowing about Christmas would be in others, and I wouldn't mock anyone for never having heard of Christmas before.

I'm sad to hear that some countries don't include the basics of the major world religions in their mandatory education curriculum. The would would be a much better place if everyone got at least enough of the basics of major world cultures to avoid having to make contact from a completely blank slate when we first meet people from other cultures.

Christianity and Islam are a bit special, in my opinion, because of the number of people who follow those religions. I'm not religious myself (I did grow up a Christian, technically, but I don't remember a time when I really believed that it was true, even as a child). Still, when I encounter some key concept in one of those religions that I've not heard of before I feel disappointed because they're such important religions in the current world that I would have hoped that, as someone who considers himself curious of the world around me, I would've learned about it sooner.

I'm not saying that everyone should feel this way, I'm only talking of my fairly privileged position as someone who grew up in a country that, back then, still used to have a fantastic education system.

But you know, even in Finland I've met people who don't know that they speak Spanish in most of South America and Portuguese in Brazil, or that Bangladesh used to be part of Pakistan, or that Indonesia has more Muslims (and, you know, population in general) than Iran. Not everyone cares about "the rest of the world", and while learning about other cultures is something I consider interesting and fun, I wouldn't assume that everyone else would be interested in it, until something became relevant to them through their personal life (eg, making a friend from another culture).

Yeah, the American education system is very US-centric.

A former neighbor of mine has gone off the deep end. He's wildly misinterpreting scripture and trying to claim he's in the right when I know he's either very mistaken or has allowed a lot of pride into his heart. He gave a testimony in church (in his own ward in Idaho) about how The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints isn't always true because the members are not infallible. This is very much against church doctrine. Yes, the even the General Authorities are not infallible, but God will not let his people to be led astray as a whole; only on an individual level. It prompted his stake president to visit him and rebuke him because this behavior is spiritually dangerous not only to himself, but his family and fellow members. His response? Essentially calling the stake president, a man who has been called of God to call the people in his stake to repentance when stuff like this happens, a wicked man who needs repentance himself. On Facebook. Where all his friends, family and priesthood leaders can see.

His most recent post was trying to justify him not forgiving the people who called him out on his major spiritual screw up. What does his wife think of about his behavior? His children? God forbid he drag them down with him. I've not responded to any of his posts. I've only read them in utter disbelief.

I guess the thing I didn't know until very recently is how heartbreaking it really is to see someone fall from what they know, even if you didn't know them all that well.