Some, like mathematician Roger Antonsen, believe that numbers are the key to understanding the world. (Antonsen even gave a brilliant TED talk to explain this statement, which I highly recommend.) And there's a Reddit thread that vividly illustrates the point.
It started when platform user JustinMGH made a post, asking others to share facts and stats that sound like obvious exaggerations but actually aren't.
Immediately, people started delivering fascinating, weird, and even disturbing titbits of information, changing each other's perspective about everything around them, even if ever so slightly.
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The difference between million and billion is huge (relatively):
1 Million seconds = 11 Days
1 Billion seconds = 31 years
And with all the billionaires in the world, we're still letting people go hungry, still letting people die because they can't afford health-care. And the list goes on and on
I know, I don't know what kind of illusion those people live in
Load More Replies...Comes up a lot these days when we talk about Billionaires and Millionaires. A Million dollars and I could retire. A Billion dollars and you could retire 1000 people just like me. 100 billion? Well that's 1oo,ooo people who would never have to work again. That's how math works.
To clearify, the word "billion" is defined differently, depending on where you are (not the translation between languages though, for instanace a billion translates to "1 Milliarden" in German).
It may be 1,000 or 1,000,000 times a million.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales 1300px-ESc...eb-png.jpg
That’s exactly what bothers me a lot. In Czech language, billion is (similar as in german) “miliarda” and “bilion” is 1000x larger. Causes large amount of ambiguity 🙄
Load More Replies...If you had a billion pounds/dollars/yen/etc and spent 10,000 every day, it would take over 270 years to spend it all
Are we talking a billion as a thousand million, or a million million. Also a big difference
The budget to send to the Curiosity Rover to the Mars is less than the worldwide military expenditure for thirteen hours
Every time I think about the US Military budget I don't get sad, I get angry. $13billion for a Gerald Ford aircraft carrier? Absolutely insane.
Load More Replies...What I'm hearing is, if we want the US to fund more space missions, we need to tell them that woke Antifa culture warriors have a base on Jupiter.
We could spend that money feeding, housing, and providing healthcare for people... but no, let's spend that money killing people and trying to show off our huge d***s! That world is so messed up.
Sadly, the problem is that other people don't see it that way.
Load More Replies...And they say we should stop wasting money exploring space
Cleopatra was alive closer to the Moon landing than she was to the construction of the great pyramids.
I’ve heard this one a hundred times and it blows my mind every single time… what a history
And students were attending Oxford University while the Aztec Empire was still going strong.
Load More Replies...She died a few years before the birth of Jesus. A Ptolemy who ruled at the very very end of the Egyptian rein. She was probably just as fascinated by it as we are. Except I’d give anything to see that lighthouse and marvel at that library!
And yet, so many people will read it for the first time and be amazed the way you and I were!
Load More Replies...She was more Macedonian than Egyptian. She had no connection with the "real" Egyptians . Other than ruling their country.
USA citizens privately own more firearms than all countries combined. Even more than most militaries.
(Paraphrasing Thanos) i used the guns to destroy the guns
Load More Replies...But half are not. And many kept unsecurely or are in the hands of currently sane, law-abiding, and not angry people. Will ALL of those tens of millions of gun owners remain sane, law-abiding or peaceful tomorrow... unlikely.
Load More Replies...Good. We have enough citizens who blindly believe propaganda as it is, we don't need more.
Load More Replies...Or Wyoming. Back in the 70’s and 80’s wasn’t uncommon to see teenagers trucks in the parking lot of the high school with gun racks with fishing poles and rifles hanging in the gun rack. But that was like 40 or 50 years ago. And I grew up in a town of less than 800 people if that. The town is smaller now of course. But I’m sure things are different now. Times are a changin.
Load More Replies...One young man falls off a roller coaster and dies so the Government is placing new regulations on Roller Coaster Construction. How many people have died from gunfire this week alone?????
Since all mass shootings are committed by males, we just need to ban males from owning guns. End of problem.
Load More Replies...When you are preparing for a civil war against the "commies", the Liberals, the lizard people and "the man" as well as a government take over of whatever c**p town you live in, you need the guns. You know to feel safe and act like an unlicensed, untrained cop or a poor facsimile of Rambo. A lot of those gun owners also drink alcohol while shooting, have way too much camo themed anything, and love things with the word "tactical" in front of it. Tactical dinnerware was my favorite thing marketed to these gullible folks.
Feeling the need to always be prepared for a bloody civil war, or any other kind of insane Fort Alamo situation, where you will have to kill your neighbour before they kill you. Such a sad way to live, such a horrific vision of the world if you just think about it.
And yet as a country they seem sadly passive about having terrible working and living conditions. It confuses the heck out of me.
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Pocahontas and William Shakespeare died less than a year apart less than 150 miles away from each other.
Barbara Walters, Anne Frank, and Martin Luther King Jr were all born the same year.
Captain Kyra don't pay attention to Jordan this is actually the first I've heard of that. So thank you from one Bored Panda to another for stating that fact.
Load More Replies...This puzzled me for a while, as they were clearly born on different continents. It turns out that Pocahontas lived in England for a time and became ill as she was returning to the States and died in Gravesend, which is not that far from Billy Wobbledagger.
Yes, she and her husband John Rolf (Who was British) went to London, Rolf later moved back to America, and their son later became a leader who worked to make peace between natives and europeans.
Load More Replies...James T. Kirk, Luke Skywalker and Donald Trump are all fictional characters who might have been born on the same day.
Typo. The third one is a frictional character.
Load More Replies...C. S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley died on the same day JFK was assassinated, so their deaths went mostly unnoticed. Same thing with Farrah Fawcett; she passed on the day Michael Jackson did.
The original height of Mount Everest was calculated to be exactly 29,000 ft high, but was publicly declared to be 29,002 ft in order to avoid the impression that an exact height of 29,000 feet was nothing more than a rounded estimate.
Everest gets a little taller every year. It's where the plates of India and Russia come together, they are still crashing into each other and rising. In a few thousand years they will peak, then begin falling very slowly. There was a point when the rising mountains changed the entire world's weather pattern. That will also change again in future. What a world!
With headlines like the one below I think the cat is out of bag on that one. "Why did they add 3 feet to Everest? This new measurement means the world's tallest mountain technically reaches a bit higher into the sky than we previously thought. The measurement also stands as a de facto agreement between the two nations as to Everest's true elevation above sea level.Dec 8, 2020 "Mount Everest Is Now Officially 3 Feet Taller"
Americans won't understand unless you use football fields or skyscrapers for scale. Unfortunately it's too large for Bananas. It's hard to imagine something 49,714 Bananas high.
Are the Bananas stacked Side by Side or End to End ?
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The typical cloud weighs 1.1 million pounds
Does that mean my water butt holds the key to my financial woes??
Load More Replies...It actually doesn't "weigh" anything. It may have a mass equivalent to 1.1 million pounds, bt mass and weight are not the same thing. Pounds are a unit of weight not mass. Weight has no meaning without acceleration. Mass does. Sorry had to get that out.
Weight is a force, derived from gravity. So the acceleration is 9.8 m/s2. A cloud has forced acting in the opposite direction that counteract gravity.
Load More Replies...I have a copy of "Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics". I should be able to calculate this for typical cumulus, rain cloud, storm cloud, stratus, cirrus. I'll get back to you.
Nah, most clouds are in international airspace, or not above the US, therefore a typical cloud weighs about half a million kilos. :D
Which is about 1102.31101 pound. Don't you understand conversions of mass?
Load More Replies...I'm very curious what would be considered a " typical cloud", seems mighty arbitrary to me
80% of Soviet males born in 1923 didn’t survive WWII.
I know. They threw there bravest and best into a meat grinder. Probably going to be downvoted for saying this, but they are repeating history right now in Ukraine as well.
Load More Replies...This image shows an US army vehicle entering a french town (Meaux) in 1944. + why is the electric pole (right) cut ?
The halftrack previously visited Larry and Curly
Load More Replies...Putin's well on the way to repeating history. War is horrible.
Stalin's decision to kill almost all his top professional military personnel is in no small way responsible.
1 in 2 Australians will get skin cancer in their lifetime
Forgot all the things living outside that can kill you. Just walking outside can
Load More Replies...Can confirm, am Australian & had a squamous cell carcinoma removed from the back of my left leg 10 days ago
I hope you make 100% recovery and hope the cancer never returns! F*ck cancer.
Load More Replies...In Tasmania the weather is colder than the rest of Aus but our sun is stronger. You'll burn even if you think it's cold
Indeed. As soon as you feel the sun, the burning statts
Load More Replies...It's true. I was 12 when I was told that I had some moles that were melanomas. The doctor couldn't even cut them out until I was much older, so I just had to live with cancer in the back of my neck for most of my teen years.
No I am sorry, melanoma is deadly. No doctor would leave it there to grow. You may have misunderstood.
Load More Replies...Nah high rates but not as high, Aussies got the brunt.
Load More Replies...The UV index where I am today is 13. 10 is considered "extreme". And it's only just starting to get hot.
Neutron stars are so dense that if you dropped a gummy bear from one meter away it would hit the surface in a microsecond with the force of 1,000 nuclear bombs.
One teaspoonful of this matter weighs more than 3 billion tons. If we were capable of dropping a small piece of neutron star onto the ground, it would slice through Earth like a bullet through cotton and come out the other side.
Sorry, didn't realise I dropped something. I'll try to be more carefull next time.
Load More Replies...If you're one meter away, you have much bigger problems than dropping your Haribo!
I tried to duplicate this by throwing gummy bears at my cat but had to stop when I became dizzy from blood loss.
This is terrifying. But why does the word "neutron" make me wanna dance? EDIT: Neutron Dance - Pointer Sisters- Thanks Google!
The state of Maine has more Black Bears than black people.
This does actually appear to be more-or-less correct, depending on the estimation of the bear population and the accuracy of the first Maine demographic statistics which popped up in a quick web search. Also, with the same caveat, there seems to be approximately one black bear for every square mile of Maine.
I agree, as long as the animals don't line up for census, I think it's more an educated guess than a fact
Load More Replies...Californian here, went to Maine for first time, so weird, motel housekeeping, white kids, busboys & kitchen staff in cafe, white kids, saw 1 black person in the 5 days there, no Latinos, no Asians.... here in Bay Area there is so much diversity
Vatican city has a population of 2 popes per 1 square kilometer.
Don't worry, it's just my doppleganger
Load More Replies...Vatican City is about 0,5 square kilometre big (or small), having 1 Pope on half a square km equals 2 Popes per square km.
How else are you supposed to measure the inside area of a Volkswagen beetle?
Load More Replies...This is not correct, and hasn't been so since Pope Francis was en-popened. There are currently two popes in the Vatican (the current pope - Francis, and the pope emeritus - Benedict). Vatican City is 0.49sqkm in size. This means that per square km, there are 2/0.49 popes, or 4.08 popes.
I thought it was darth vader in the background at first because of the shape
No, he only comes around for tea on fridays.
Load More Replies...I know its pedantic but its actually 4.55 popes per square km. Vatican city is only 109 acres or .44 sq km so the density is actually higher. Density stats for very small areas and very large areas when combined with very large or very small number of individuals are meaningless because they skew horribly. On the other end of the spectrum, density stats say the sun doesn't exist. The sun is .0047 AU wide and the solar system is 79 AU wide for a density of .00000594 suns per solar system.
More silent films have been lost than saved
We live in an era where everything is saved, and it's hard to imagine such a massive loss of creative material. Plenty of films are lost, as late as the 1970s too.
Yeah. They were printed on celluloid and celluloid rots. It's made from cotton. Durable, but not durable enough to last centuries.
Load More Replies...Martin Scorsese's Film Foundation claims that "half of all American films made before 1950 and over 90% of films made before 1929 are lost forever." Deutsche Kinemathek estimates that 80–90% of silent films are gone; the film archive's own list contains over 3,500 lost films. A study by the Library of Congress states that 75% of all silent films are now lost. While others dispute whether the percentage is quite that high, it is impractical to enumerate any but the more notable and those that can be sourced.
1970s? Try 2008! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Universal_Studios_fire
Thinking that "everything is saved" because it's stored somewhere as 1's and 0's is delusional. I just received an email from the Internet Archives that said: "Digital Books Don’t Last Forever Ebooks are immune to dogeared pages, cracked spines, and coffee rings… but in some ways, they can be extremely vulnerable to the passage of time. Why are digital books more fragile than physical ones, and how can we prevent them from being lost over time?"
Having so much in digital format makes us more vulnerable. An event that causes massive and long-lasting power losses, such as a repeat of the Carrington Event, will seriously screw us. This is why I promote the concept of the Knowledge Ark, a low-tech way to save our high-tech knowledge - as well as the best of our culture.
Load More Replies...Lots of Harold Lloyd's movies are still around thanks to some foresight. I think his granddaughter controls the release of some of the early silents. I have a few recorded. I have laughed so hard that I have cried at some of his antics. If you have the time you should watch.
Consider that not every film is worth keeping. Something old is not automatically better. Most libraries before 1800 were filled with religious books, opinions, propaganda and those of no significant information worth passing on. Most music that has ever been played had no way of being recorded, also doesn't make everything worth keeping even if it is. Cherish what there is and look for private collections. One source many years ago was found in Alaska. Movies played there were not returned but thrown into a pit. The cold preserved most of them. I question how much digital information will be saved when the format changes again, and a lot of movies now are not worth watching or saving. Do you even remember the Oscar winning movie from last year? The punch was the biggest news . . .
Ummm... burning libraries comes to mind. Many documents and creative or scientific material have been lost... Library of Alexandria for instance. Sadly, this is nothing new.
Monsters Inc was released closer to the fall of the Berlin wall than to the present day.
And not just a bit closer. It's 12 vs 21 years. In fact, anything released in 2005 and earlier is also closer to the fall of the Berlin wall. For example: The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Harry potter 1-4, Corpse Bride, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Madagascar, The Chronicles of Narnia: The lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and many more
Wow! You did your research! Thanks for educating us folks 🤘
Load More Replies...When you have a list that includes Cleopatra, the pyramids and the moon landing, this fact isn't impressive at all.1989 isn't that long ago.
All the ants in the world weigh about the same as all the people in the world.
Also, they work extremely hard and live only about 8 days, while turtles don't do shït and get to live 150 years. Let it sink in.
We had ants in our house this year. They were every where. In my bedroom, kitchen, bathroom etc..I'd be sitting in my bed and in the crook of my arm I'd feel a pinch. I put my arm down and there was a ant. They have a pretty good bite. It does sting. I would crush it and then they smelled like old damp wood. It was very off putting. I usually catch spiders or moths and take them outside. I feel bad for the ant.
We could eat them but they get stuck between your teeth.
Load More Replies...If all the 8 billion people on Earth were melded into one giant human, what would the dimensions of that person be?
So for each human, there's an ant who weighs the same. Hmm. I wouldn't have guessed that.
That's not actually true. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29281253
Nintendo existed at the same time as the Ottoman Empire.
Nintendo also existed at the same time as the ottoman D**k Van Dyke always tripped over at the start of his show.
OK, challenge accepted: Beretta (famous Italian manufacturer of firearms) existed before 30 Years War and to this date operates under the same name.
Kongō Gumi Co., Ltd, a Japanese construction company, has been in business since 578.
Load More Replies...I have that exact 3DS! I still play Tomodachi Life and Animal Crossing New Leaf on it!
There is a company in Japan called Kongō Gumi, which has been operating since 578 AD. It is one of the first companies in Japan to use concrete with wood for the building of temples. There is also a Ryokan (think Bed and Breakfast) in Japan that has been owned by the same family since 717 AD, passed down through 46 generations.
The company I work for was founded before our country's (Canada) birth.
You could walk from North Korea to Norway and only pass through one other country.
Also, your feet would be a little sore.
I get the impression noone is able to walk away from North Korea... ?
Yea, landmines, then best you could hope for is to hop to Norway.
Load More Replies...The only crossing point on the Russia-North Korean border is the Korea-Russia Friendship Bridge. It is a rail bridge, not designed for foot passengers. But, I suppose a person could walk whilst on the train. :) From border to border, Google Maps estimates it would take about 2060 hours walking. If you were to walk 8 hours per day, 5 days a week, you'd get it done in under a year. :)
Never mind the sore feet. If you find yourself in North Korea, immediately head for Norway, and don't stop anywhere until you get there.
I didn't know north korea has a border with Russia. It's only around 10 miles long, so I guess I never noticed it on a map.
Radio astronomer here! You exert more energy when you unfold a single piece of paper than we have collected in *all* the radio waves we have *ever* collected from outer space.
Do love the story of one of the "unexplainable" deep space microwave signals that was detected. Turned out very explainable. Someone was opening the door to the breakroom microwave before it had stopped and the brief burst of microwave radiation that occurs while the magnetron is still on and the Faraday cage of the door is opened befor it switched off was enough for the radio telescope to detect .
Whatever they use it must be based on wave propagation or the laws of physics as we know it are all wrong
Load More Replies...Radio waves are light we can hear. Infrared waves are light we can feel.
You can't hear radio waves. You can hear sound waves.
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In a room with 23 people there is a ~50% chance that 2 people share a birthday
funnily enough, my twin and i don’t share a birthday, or even a birth month. she just LOVES to say “i’m a month older than you LISTEN TO ME I AM WISE”
Load More Replies...I've met loads of birthday with my birthday. I went to school with two people who were born on the same day as me. That's what happens when your birthday is in September 🤣
Good point. I was getting ready to say that some months have way more birthdays than others. My birthday is in late January, and I rarely meet anyone with my birthday.
Load More Replies...I heard about this in school. Never had anyone had mine. Now I didn't know until I was in my teens that the neighbor I had lived next to for 15 or 16 yrs.old had my birthday. Also oddly enough when I turned 16 I was walking to my bus and found $16 all fanned out on the rain soaked ground. I started looking around and nobody was there. The money was wet from the rain. It really freaked me out to be honest.
I was behind a guy in the supermarket, buying a bottle of whiskey. It's my birthday tomorrow he said, I'll be 49. The next day was also my 49th birthday. Weird. I didn't buy whiskey though. We had an interesting chat.
Load More Replies...Even though I googled it and I am not the worst in this kind of mathematics (sorry, I don't know how to call it in English, I'm not native) I still don't get how it works. Can somebody please explain? :3
The calculation is as follows: For 1 person the chance is 0% or the chance that no one has the same birthday is 100%. For the 2nd person the chance of having a different birthday than everyone else is 364/365 (I use the rounded value 365 to make it simpler). For the next persons the chances are 363/365, 362/365 and so on. For person number 23 the chances are 343/365. If you multiply these numbers (365/365 x 364/365 x … x 343/365) you get a chance of 49.3% for all of them having different birthdays and 50.7% that at least two persons have the same birthday.
Load More Replies...I share a birthday with Graham Norton, Jonathan Agnew and Robert Downey Jr. We're so similar.
According to former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, every two days human beings create as much information as we did from the dawn of time until 2003.
We constantly produce data: commenting on BP, making online payments, taking pictures, registering heartbeat on smartwatches... the volume of this (vastly useless and unprocessed) information is so huge, that in 2 days we produce more data than we did cumulatively before 2003.
Load More Replies...Weather, stocks, anything that needs a supercomputer, ect. Global average my dude when the majority is all automated. The amount of data that is individually created personally will be a fraction of a percent compared to all the data that is auto generated without any human input.
Load More Replies...it's all the data collection that's being collected on us. it's a shame.
Samsung is responsible for 25% of South Korea's GDP
I see that. smart phones ,watches. appliances, TVs. and used by so many ppl. I hope the new fridge were getting comes with some free kimchi.
Shipbuilding, heavy machinery and other industry. Not just electronics.
Load More Replies...This lacks some context. Samsung produce more than just electronics/phones/tablets and white good. They are involved in ship building, running and maintaining(including bulk ore carriers, oil tankers, ferries, container ships)/maritime architecture they produce cranes, wind turbines and a whole lot of other stuff
The same facts that BP has posted 20 million times before. This s**t has been posted over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. Annoying af
I try posting new articles and for whatever reason BP just won't publish them. Wonder how many people try and get the same results.
Load More Replies...9 US states have more cattle than people. Texas is not one of them due to being very populous but Texas has more cattle than there are people in 45 states and DC.
A light bulb, which is known as the Centennial Light, has been burning at a Livermore, CA firehouse since 1901. It is very rarely turned off, which accounts for its longevity, since turning bulbs off and on contributes to wear and tear. To put it in perspective, this bulb has been around longer than powered flight, and was shining all through the Chicago Cubs' notorious World Series drought.
The same facts that BP has posted 20 million times before. This s**t has been posted over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. Annoying af
I try posting new articles and for whatever reason BP just won't publish them. Wonder how many people try and get the same results.
Load More Replies...9 US states have more cattle than people. Texas is not one of them due to being very populous but Texas has more cattle than there are people in 45 states and DC.
A light bulb, which is known as the Centennial Light, has been burning at a Livermore, CA firehouse since 1901. It is very rarely turned off, which accounts for its longevity, since turning bulbs off and on contributes to wear and tear. To put it in perspective, this bulb has been around longer than powered flight, and was shining all through the Chicago Cubs' notorious World Series drought.
