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TIL polar bears are fucking _massive_
I knew they were big bears but not TWICE A HUMAN size! I didn't even google this image for the polar bear I wanted to see how big a black bear is.
guess I'm never going to Antarctica!
The Metric System
Yes, it's from a book called "Uncle John's Bathroom Reader" and that book was resting on a closed toilet seat in a nation that only kind of uses the metric system in certain situations... however, you'd be surprised how much you can learn after a single visit to any local fast-food joint!
TIL wolves have been noted to engage in a kind of "fallow field-farming", whereby they allow the deer population in a particular area to recover over the course of several years before killing any
Reading Barry Lopez's book "Of Wolves and Men":
[...] disadvantage. The important thing to bear in mind is that generally wolves do not overrun the prey population and kill it out, although they have been known to do so, just as they have, extraordinary as it seems, practiced a kind of fallow-field farming by not killing deer in certain parts of their territories for four or five years, letting the prey population recover there.
TIL "WC" is an initialism for "water closet"
I'm from non-english speaking country but we use "WC" for toilet and I just found out the meaning behind it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet#NamesOpen linkView original on lemmy.world
Cloudflare uses lava lamp as a source of randomness
cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/36134515
https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/ssl/lava-lamp-encryption/
since the motion of fluids is notoriously hard to compute, this makes for a good source of randomness.
TIL about Emma Sulkowicz who carried the mattress she was raped on every day at Columbia until her rapist was expelled. He never was.
Columbia University senior Emma Sulkowicz, 21, says she was raped in her own bed at the beginning of her sophomore year. This week, two years after the alleged assault, Sulkowicz, a visual-arts major, has made a promise to carry her mattress around campus every day as part of her senior thesis. It is, she says, a symbol of the burden sexual-assault survivors carry with them every day.
“The act of carrying the mattress from inside my room out into the light has mirrored the way my life has changed, as I’ve brought my personal story out into the light,” Sulkowicz told TIME. “This project is a way to heal one of the most difficult things that happened to me. As I will build muscle and get stronger, hopefully I will also build emotional strength.”
Sulkowicz started the performance-art project on Tuesday, and she said she is determined to continue carrying the mattress wherever she goes — to class, the library, the gym — as long as her alleged rapist is still on campus. That means her project could last until graduation day in May 2015 — unless her alleged assailant is either expelled or chooses to leave the school. Last year, Sulkowicz and two other women reported the same person to the university. All three cases were dismissed.
https://time.com/3259455/columbia-student-pledges-to-carry-a-mattress-every-day-till-alleged-rapist-leaves-campus/Open linkView original on sh.itjust.works
TIL about the Time when Oil Derricks Loomed all over California Beaches, 1910-1955
so, apparently california is (well, used to be) naturally rich in petroleum, that was so close to the surface that you could just stick your hand in the ground to reach it.
these photos are from 1910 - 1955, California, USA.
cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/35897819
source: https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/oil-derricks-california-old-photos/
(Oil derricks line a road outside Los Angeles. 1930.)
there's many more pics on that website
