facts

Like this tumblr thread on the age of the Appalachians says, those mountains are older than bones. Not individual bones, but like the advent of bones. Alex Petrovnia gets into the geological wonder of a mountain range that spans continents and eras. It's weird how sometimes the most mundane things can be extremely interesting, like this thread on lobsters orthe electric story on the naming of Triscuits.

Ever meet someone, think their cool, and then discover that they have absolutely no understanding of what events and circumstances have shaped the world that they live in? What a shame. Sure, ignorance is bliss, but knowing where potatoes come from and why wars happen gives us the unyielding burden of our own context. Also knowing references lets us enjoy history memes for the historically inclined.

It doesn't matter how long you've been on this planet or how much you know, smart people still do stupid things. Even the concept of "smartness" is variable. Anyone might know everything there is to know about brain surgery but might not know that it's stupid to put metal in the microwave. Some of us were just sick the day we learned that snow is made out of water, only to have that fact make us look like complete smooth-brains a decade later. There are too many obvious things people realize way too late.

While it is a teacher's responsibility to know things, they're still human and are capable of getting those things wrong. It's when a teacher says something wrong and doesn't own up to it when things get weird. What's the value in lying to kids just so that you can maintain a false sense of authority? Sometimes teachers don't give their students enough credit, like this tumblr thread about a teacher underestimating their students for a social experiment. With the veritable weirdness some educators display, luckily there are also teachers who pulled total bro moves.

It's not like we should be constantly disgusted just walking around the world we live in, but there are definitely some parts of it that are hard to process. They say that ignorance is bliss, and that certainly feels more true when learning about all the strange and gross weirdness of everyday life. Knowing this kind of junk doesn't even make someone more likeable. Anyway, here's more un-fun facts to quote around respected colleagues.

Once you get down to it, it becomes pretty clear why things are in the state they are. We live in a world where on any given day you just might hear someone say the dumbest thing you've ever heard. Things get especially hairy when people have vastly different preconceptions about the nature of reality. What's worse is when people say absurd things in complete seriousness, cause that means their gonna be defensive about their misconceptions.

Just about everyone grew up watching the Simpsons, and the show remains a wonderful memory for many of us, up to somewhere around season 9. Here are some Simpsons facts, from ideas that got dropped, to obscure canon, to the real world inspirations for certain episodes. Here are some absurd moments of cartoon logic that make perfect sense.

If there's one benefit to learning history (other than developing a keener understanding of the world and your context in it) it's getting sweet history memes. Knowing what happened to various astronauts or the attitudes of different colonial powers may not win you any popularity contests, but it sure is fun to look at history memes and become one with time.

Some inventions like escalators and seltzer have been around for hundreds of years longer than most people think. And other stuff, like sharks, are older than entire species. for more interesting history stuff, here's a thread about how mundane people are important to history as well as some history memes to feel smart about.

What's better than looking and dumb memes and feeling smart at the same time? Absolutely nothing. That's why there are history memes to feel smart about. Sometimes you gotta take a deep breath and drink in that memeshake with an extra helping of facts and geography. That's the good stuff.

If your goal is to make people think you're a completely hopeless social outcast, just bombard them with facts about necropants and how much skin you can bake into a cake! Why not? On the off-chance someone is interested by your freaky knowledge, that person is either awesome or should be avoided. Here are some more useless facts and some not-so-fun facts to feel bad about.

It must be hard being an anti-vaxxer or flat-earther. You have to dodge so much information! Here are some folks getting hit with some satisfying displays of weaponized knowledge. For comebacks with less science and more funny, here are clever comebacks from spicy silver tongues. 

For all the creepy unsettling facts out there, it's goof to have a balance of nice facts to counteract all the messed up ones. For every fact about brain eating zombie fungi or how many missing nuclear bombs there are in the world, there's another fact about how cows have best friends and how much of a bro Jupiter is.