Ask Lemmy

Until he was 50 years old my father did not know how his mother could see through walls.

When he was little his mother sat in the living room while he was playing with his sister in their playroom. With a wall and a hallway between them. But every time he tried to pull his sister's hair or something their mother would shout from the living room for him to stop it. He was really angry and confused because he couldn't fathom how she could see them.

On his 50th birthday his mother revealed that she could see them perfectly fine through the reflection in a wardrobe that stood in the hallway.

Mum: we’re definitely going the wrong way

Me: how do you know?

Mum: because we need to go south and we are currently going north

Me: how do you know we are going north?

Mum: because the sun sets in the west

Me: oh…

Chipotles are jalapeños. They are just roasted.

Rhode Island isn't really an island. Like, yeah it's named after one of its islands, but people who live in the state are on the continental part. I thought the whole state was an island lmao

I thought Edinburgh was two different places because of pronunciation.

I always read it as pronounced like -berg, but there was this other, similar town pronounced -bruh or -boro that people talked about.

Just one of those place names that didn’t come up often at all, so I never compared them in my head and wondered if “hey, these might be the same place…” It came up and bit me in conversation far too recently where my misunderstanding was worth a laugh among friends.

That, and I thought we’d elect basically decent (as far as politicians go) people to the presidency that would at least honor tradition and the institution. Boy, was I wrong about that.

Growing up deep in the dusty heart of the American West, I lived far from the conveniences and attractions of city life. But once in a blue moon, my parents would take my siblings and I to enjoy the rides at the park in The City.

Despite being the region's commercial hub, The City was small - barely 50,000 souls - yet it contained a park with mechanical rides. It was less a theme park and more a clamorous set of decrepit carnival rides that had been once erected and never removed. Naturally, the rides at the park were a favorite birthday treat.

The years passed and I traded the wide open spaces for a major metropolis, but I never forgot that little park and its rides.

...And so it was not until my thirty-third year that I realized the many signs upon our nation's freeways were advertising commuter parking lots - and not a local "Park and Ride".

My parents told me to always leave the "big mosquito bugs" alone as they eat the little mosquitoes. Then I told everyone to do the same for years. Turns out those "big mosquito bugs" were actually "Crane Fly" and they do not eat mosquitoes....

https://www.mrbuggs.com/giant-mosquitoes-aka-crane-flies/

Having a tooth pulled wouldn't be that expensive.

Now I see why Noone in America goes to the dentist

How young are you guys, Jesus Christ 😂

They are different though! The glass measuring cup is for liquid and the ones that nestle into each other are for dry ingredients. You need to fill the little ‘1 cup’ dry measuring cup to the brim with ingredients to get an accurate measurement, which is pretty much impossible with the glass wet measuring cups.

When you are measuring dry ingredients, you can fill the same cup with more flour or whatever depending on how you fill it as well, but with liquid it’s, well, fluid.

So, you can measure wet ingredients in the dry ingredients cup, but not the other way around.

That social skill and practical skills are far more valuable than theory.

I thought that getting a degree in computer science may allow me to buy a home. That was wrong, unless you join a startup early, you will not buy a home.

I thought that doing a masters in bioinformatics will screw me economically when I saw the salaries of my CS peers that went to the market. That too was wrong, doing a multidisciplinary masters left no free time, so SO doesn't want kids.

I thought global warming will screw us only decades away, but that too is false. Don't have kids and economics won't matter in a few years (< 10, probably 3-5).

Humans are basically good.