Random factoids you can't help but remember

[Lillorainen]

The German villages of Ruitzhof, Mützenich, and Rückschlag, as well as parts of Simmerath and Roetgen, all located in the Rhineland, are exclaves within Belgium, due to the Vennbahn railroad becoming Belgian territory after WWI. Although the tracks were removed ten years ago, the seven-meter strip, where the tracks used to be, still belongs to Belgium.

Another German exclave is Büsingen am Hochrhein, surrounded by Switzerland and, although it's just a village of ~1000 inhabitants, it has its own regional license plate code (BÜS), despite not being its own district.

Should there ever be a European Weird Borders Championship, Germany will have good chances.

[Longweather]

Speaking of Germany, Adolf Hitler was not really Christian. He was raised Catholic and sometimes announced his religious affiliation, but the latter was for pragmatic political reasons. He eventually had the goal of de-Christianizing Germany and felt that Christianity and Nazism were incompatible in the long term.

However, while he viewed religions, spirituality, and atheism poorly, Hitler thought about Islam somewhat positively. He once lamented about the Ottomans not taking over Vienna and Islam not spreading to the Germans because he felt it was a militaristic religion. He thought that if Germans were Muslim then they would have conquered the world.

[Valrifell]

The "n" in 7-eleven is lower case.

The story I've been told is that it's because all capital letters in the logo would be too aggressive, as per the CEO's wife.

[New haven america]

The "n" in 7-eleven is lower case.

The story I've been told is that it's because all capital letters in the logo would be too aggressive, as per the CEO's wife.

Also, 7-eleven isn't American, it's Japanese.

America also happens to be the only place with bad 7-elevens, as they're pretty great in other countries.

[Tsuki]

Drawception has an meme called "Yellmo" consisting of an yellow elmo that likes to scream

[Valrifell]

The "n" in 7-eleven is lower case.

The story I've been told is that it's because all capital letters in the logo would be too aggressive, as per the CEO's wife.

Also, 7-eleven isn't American, it's Japanese.

America also happens to be the only place with bad 7-elevens, as they're pretty great in other countries.

7-eleven was originally founded as a Dallas ice company, but you're right in that it's Japanese-owned.

For now.

[Autonomous Cleaner Bot Cleaners]

If something as destructive as a black hole were headed our way near the speed of light, we'd notice it thousands of years before it ever hit.

The closest one is around 3000 light-years away. If it were to come towards us at light-speed, it would still take nearly 3000 years to reach us.

We'd know it would hit us before it actually does.

It's pretty interesting that one can effectively look backwards in time at a rate proportional to the distance across which one looks.

[Vetalia]

It's thought that Jupiter's gravity stretching and squashing Europa has created enough thermal energy for it to still have a global ocean under all that ice.

Plus radioactive decay and geothermal activity from the core. I believe Europa's (and Enceladus') ocean has been all but confirmed barring sending a probe there to drill into the ice to reach the ocean...if there's life anywhere in this solar system, it's going to be there.

What I found most interesting was the idea of it being at one time a warm planet with a global surface ocean of liquid water with an atmosphere thick enough to support weather and clouds before the inevitable freezing as Jupiter cooled. It could have lasted more than long enough for simple life to form before the surface finally froze over, and that life could then continue to evolve into complex forms due to the abundance of oxygen and inherent heat from tides and nutrients from geothermal activity.

http://www.novaspaceart.com/Prints/Limited%20Editions/Davis/Freeze.html

It's the same with Mars before its magnetosphere weakened and its atmosphere was lost or Venus before it overheated due to the greenhouse effect...there's something about these worlds that had a brief moment in the sun but then became inhospitable that fascinates me.

[Northwest Slobovia]

Nearly all the words to the preamble of the US Constitution. *shakes fist at Schoolhouse Rock*

If something as destructive as a black hole were headed our way near the speed of light, we'd notice it thousands of years before it ever hit.

The closest one is around 3000 light-years away. If it were to come towards us at light-speed, it would still take nearly 3000 years to reach us.

We'd know it would hit us before it actually does.

Understanding how relativity works is apparently not a random factoid.

It's thought that Jupiter's gravity stretching and squashing Europa has created enough thermal energy for it to still have a global ocean under all that ice.

Plus radioactive decay and geothermal activity from the core. I believe Europa's (and Enceladus') ocean has been all but confirmed barring sending a probe there to drill into the ice to reach the ocean...

It's confirmed enough that one of the missions of Europa Clipper is to determine how thick the crunchy coating is before you get to the ocean. There are plenty of vague ideas about how to drill (or melt or...) though miles of ice to see what the ocean is like, but nothing anybody's spending money on, beyond making fancy 3-d images.

[Pope Joan]

Electromagnetic radiation should travel in a straight line, which should mean that wireless communication should be limited to a distance of only a few miles, without constant rebroadcasting,

But when you ground the transmitter deeply in the earth, with a steel root, it can bend the radiation so that it travels in an arc. This enhances broadcast distances by many hundreds of miles.

Smell is the last sense you retain, as you lay dying.

Sanka was invented when a cargo of coffee was shipwrecked and the merchant in desperation tried to roast the beans anyway. The brine had leached out the caffeine, Paul Harvey taught me this. And that is the rest of the story

[La Paz de Los Ricos]

The closest one is around 3000 light-years away. If it were to come towards us at light-speed, it would still take nearly 3000 years to reach us.

We'd know it would hit us before it actually does.

It's pretty interesting that one can effectively look backwards in time at a rate proportional to the distance across which one looks.

Oh, my mistake. Now that I look back, I don't know what I was thinking posting that! I'll edit it right away.

[Vetalia]

It's confirmed enough that one of the missions of Europa Clipper is to determine how thick the crunchy coating is before you get to the ocean. There are plenty of vague ideas about how to drill (or melt or...) though miles of ice to see what the ocean is like, but nothing anybody's spending money on, beyond making fancy 3-d images.

I wish we would stop wasting time on Mars and focus on Europa and Enceladus. Virtually all life on Mars, if it existed, died a long time ago when the magnetosphere shit the bed and unless it's shielded from solar radiation deep below the surface, it's toast.

[Auphelia]

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair was written in 1906.

[Northwest Slobovia]

It's confirmed enough that one of the missions of Europa Clipper is to determine how thick the crunchy coating is before you get to the ocean. There are plenty of vague ideas about how to drill (or melt or...) though miles of ice to see what the ocean is like, but nothing anybody's spending money on, beyond making fancy 3-d images.

I wish we would stop wasting time on Mars and focus on Europa and Enceladus.

Ideally. There are other places living things might be lurking, at least Titan and Triton have possibilities, and I know there are a few more that people wonder about (possible other subsurface oceans elsewhere). If I wasn't so exhausted now, I'd dig up a list.

Virtually all life on Mars, if it existed, died a long time ago when the magnetosphere shit the bed and unless it's shielded from solar radiation deep below the surface, it's toast.

...and there's nothing below the surface for it to eat, too.

As far as I know, NASA's next big rover is the end of their grand plan, barring some amazing discovery. You ain't the only one complaining about the Mars obsession.

[New Legland]

According to the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford, there is about a 19% chance of human extinction before the year 2100.

[New Legland]

I wish we would stop wasting time on Mars and focus on Europa and Enceladus.

Ideally. There are other places living things might be lurking, at least Titan and Triton have possibilities, and I know there are a few more that people wonder about (possible other subsurface oceans elsewhere). If I wasn't so exhausted now, I'd dig up a list.

I really don't understand the hype over Titan. Has there ever been any evidence discovered that suggests that some form of life could form in and survive in lakes of liquid methane?

[Granluras]

Koalas eat poo

[Northwest Slobovia]

Ideally. There are other places living things might be lurking, at least Titan and Triton have possibilities, and I know there are a few more that people wonder about (possible other subsurface oceans elsewhere). If I wasn't so exhausted now, I'd dig up a list.

I really don't understand the hype over Titan. Has there ever been any evidence discovered that suggests that some form of life could form in and survive in lakes of liquid methane?

Define "evidence". It's actually not a trivial question: we know of only one place that life exists, and we don't know how it formed. At the other extreme, there's plenty of examples of the machinery of abiogenesis, such as amino acids, forming essentially anywhere organic compounds exist, even in meteorites. It's one reason people want to take a look at Titan: if we find living things there, or even an abundance of the molecues they're made from (well, made from here) it strongly suggests there are lots more places to find living things than just watery worlds.

Nobody's claiming finding living things in the outer solar system is certain, or even likely -- how would you give odds on something like that? -- but looking for life elsewhere in the solar system is a major goal of planetary scientists these days. It strongly influences the planning of missions out that far.

Edit: On the topic, does knowing the words of random advertising jingles count? Damn things are horrible earworms.

[Jack Thomas Lang]

TIL that Malcom Turnbull's middle name is Bligh, as is the middle name of his son. It's a family tradition stemming from 1808, when his ancestor John Turnbull gave his youngest son the middle name Bligh to signal his support for Governor Bligh, who was deposed by a military junta in the same year.

[New Legland]

Koalas eat poo

They're also so stupid that they wouldn't know to eat eucalyptus leaves if they were placed on a platter. They also starve to death a lot because they don't have multiple sets of teeth, so they lose the ability to chew as time goes on.

[Lanoraie II]

There's more bacterial DNA in your body than human DNA.

Mushrooms used to be 20+ ft tall.

The largest organism in the world is a mushroom, who's neural networks span several miles underground.

On Christmas Island, there are bridges set up across roads for crabs to crawl on to cross the road. And they use them.

[An Alan Smithee Nation]

Otter shit can smell like violets.

[Partybus]

You can identify Fisher Cat scat (shit) because it has porcupine quills in it...

[Proctopeo]

There's an upper limit to the size of molecules that can interact with alcohol dehydrogenase. This is why large alcohols tend to act as laxatives instead of anything else.

[Novus America]

You can identify Fisher Cat scat (shit) because it has porcupine quills in it...

Fisher cats, despite the name are actually weasels, not cats.