Author: Matt Gilligan

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Pilots Discuss What They Wish They Could Tell Passengers

Being a pilot is not easy and it comes with a ton of pressure to keep everyone on board safe and comfortable.

I’ve been on enough plane rides to know that the seatbelt sign is on for a reason. I’ve found turbulence can pretty uncomfortable and usually a few passengers voice their displeasure when it happens. Unfortunately, turbulence isn’t the only thing pilots have to worry about.

Pilots are human beings like us and they think of lots of things in addition to lifting off, flying and landing.

Here are 13 confessions from pilots they wish people knew but will never share.

1. Taking off brings out their inner child

You would say it, too.

I love to watch the skyline tilt as the plane ascends. It makes me feel like I’m a kid on my way to Disney World again!

Source: Whisper

2. Prankster

That’ll keep ’em awake. Unfortunately none of my pilots have cracked jokes over the AV system.

Source: Whisper

3. Not immune to fear

Facing their fears every day. Inspiring!

I don’t think I could do this job. I enjoy flying, but I’m not good with heights.

Source: Whisper

4. Sleepy head

A passenger seat is better for a cat nap.

I’ve never seen a pilot asleep in the cabin, but if I was a pilot, I think I would consider doing it.

I’m nocturnal, so it could happen!

Source: Whisper

5. Not perfect

Hey, it’s a lot to memorize! There are so many things to remember and manage. It’s remarkable.

Source: Whisper

6. The sky is their playground

But they’ll put the seatbelt sign on, at least. Thank goodness none of my pilots ever did this.

The image of the heart is on point because mine would be out of my chest!

Source: Whisper

7.  A hero

We’d all want to brag about it, to be honest.

All of my flights have been flown by very professional, skilled pilots, which means flying hasn’t exactly exciting.

I don’t have a wild personal story about a heroic pilot, but I treasure feeling safe.

Source: Whisper

8. Wow

So it’s not just in the movies, then.

I really hope this isn’t common among pilots. It disturbs me that it happens at all.

Source: Whisper

9. Sleep-Deprived

Not exactly a comforting thing to read. I’m going to be thinking about this the next time I’m on a plane. (Shudders)

Source: Whisper

10. No room for illness

The stakes are high. I can’t imagine how stressful it would be to wonder if your health or a perceived health issue could end your career.

Source: Whisper

11. A Power Trip

Well that’s one way to pass the time…

I loved to pull stunts like this as a kid when I was bored, but as an adult at work? I’m not sure.

Caption: Whisper

12. They pay a price for a career in the sky

That’s so sad. Poor kid. I would have missed my dad so much if he was absent this much.

Source: Whisper

13. Their thoughts can be darker than an overnight flight

Horror movie material. I hope pilots are evaluated for problematic thoughts.

Source: Whisper

Next time I get on the plane I’m definitely going to wonder what my pilots have gone through in their careers and I’m grateful all of my flights have been uneventful — not even any screaming children!

I will make a point to thank my pilots on my next flight — whenever that will be.

Has your pilot ever shared any stories with the passengers about life in the skies?

Leave us a comment.

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A Person Wants to Know if They’re a Jerk for Messing With Their Ex and His Assistant

It kind of blows my mind sometimes when people talk about how much time they have to mess with people…

Why aren’t you people working?!?!

But that’s another story…

This story comes to us from Reddit’s “Am I the *sshole?” page and is pretty interesting…

Let’s take a look at what happened and how people on Reddit responded to this situation.

AITA for screwing with my ex and his assistant?

“My ex’s assistant has disliked me since she started working for him. I have to stay in touch with my ex because we have a 9-month-old together.

His schedule changes a lot so his assistant is supposed to let me know if there’s a change which will mean he can’t use his visitations and if he wants to reschedule the time.

She’s started “accidentally” sending me his personal things. If he’s making dinner arrangements with his current flavour of the week, she “accidentally” sends it to me asking to confirm when it’s meant for someone else. She “accidentally” got two gifts mixed up, so she ended up sending me/our baby lingerie. There have been other things, but you get the idea.

Last Tuesday, she “accidentally” called me whilst my ex was having a pretty sexual conversation with his best friend in which I came up an uncomfortable number of times. It was muffled but I heard way more than I wanted to.

In the past, I would complain to my ex, but he always laughs her mistakes off and promises he’ll have a word with her, but she keeps doing it.

I was supposed to see my ex last Friday, but I was kind of annoyed with him, so I decided to screw with his assistant and him. I called her and told her he couldn’t come on Friday because I had a date. On Friday, I called him when he didn’t show and asked him why he didn’t come.

He ended up coming over later than he was supposed to, and he was sulking the whole time and kept complaining that he thought I was going on a date and he’d need to have a word with his assistant about making mistakes because he had to cancel “important” plans to come over last minute.

I did end up telling him the truth after our son went to sleep and I confronted him about what he said. He denied it but then got angry at me for wasting his time and making him miss time with his son. He said I was being petty over small mistakes.

I told my best friend what I did, and she said I was an AH because his assistant could get fired over this and I shouldn’t have told him about hearing the call.

I do feel kind of bad now but I’m really sick of her making mistakes when it comes to me and getting away with it.

So, [am I the a-hole]?”

Here’s how people responded.

This person said that she is not in the wrong in this situation.

Photo Credit: Reddit

This person thought the whole thing stunk of immaturity and pettiness.

Photo Credit: Reddit

Another person also argued that she was not the *sshole in this situation and that she needs to be very deliberate with keeping records about this whole situation.

Photo Credit: Reddit

Finally, this person said (and I agree) that everyone involved in this situation kind of sucks and they’re all playing immature games.

Photo Credit: Reddit

Do you think this person is a jerk?

Or is this whole thing really no big deal?

Share your thoughts with us in the comments. Thanks!

The post A Person Wants to Know if They’re a Jerk for Messing With Their Ex and His Assistant appeared first on UberFacts.

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People Share Scientific Facts That Really Creep Them Out

There is no shortage of scientific facts that creep me the heck out – the natural world is full of endless weirdness that can really unsettle a person when you stop and think about it for too long.

If that seems like something you’d be into today, have we got a list for you – these 15 people are sharing the creepiest science facts they know, and they really are some doozies!

15. These scare the crap out of me.

The existence of prions.

The prion mode of action is very different to bacteria and viruses as they are simply proteins, devoid of any genetic material.

Once a misfolded prion enters a healthy person – potentially by eating infected food – it converts correctly-folded proteins into the disease-associated form.

To date, nobody knows quite how this happens

14. Excuse me, what?

There is something called “the squeeze,” where when people had old scuba suits with tubes, you could actually get sucked into that tube if the pressure was off.

You are literally shredded through your own breathing tube.

13. There are always more questions.

Humans are bioluminescent (nothing to do with body temperature).

We emit visible light that can be photographed in specific conditions.

But, this light isn’t visible to us. Which makes it a strange thing to have evolved, and begs the question

“what organisms is this light visible to, and why?”

12. Beware the bugs.

Doctors/ scientists are BARELY keeping up with the influenza virus. It keeps on mutating rapidly. It really wants to get inside you.

11. I hope to never encounter one.

Rogue black holes. There are black holes that just are floating around in space and potentially f*cking up solar system just by passing through it.

10. We could do it if we tried I bet.

That so many vegetables came from the same plant. Broccoli, kale, kohlrabi, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, etc.

They are, botanically speaking, the same species. Humans have just bred them to emphasize different traits (buds, leaves, tubers…)

Imagine if humans were as genetically flexible.

Imagine a person walking around with GIANT toes, but otherwise normal.

Actually, plant genetics in general is a weird, weird world.

9. No thank you.

Not exactly scientific or creepy but, it’s close enough and I want to contribute.

Mouth pipetting was a thing in labs in the 1980s. A pipette is, for simplicity sake, a glass straw that lab staff would use to transfer liquids. Now a days we use special bulbs, that when squeezed, would suck up the liquid for us. Kinda like a turkey baster or eye dropper.

Before we had these bulbs lab workers had to use their mouths to suck up the liquid. Which meant if they weren’t careful they’d get whatever they were sucking up in their mouth. I’m currently training to be MLAT and those fluids would usually be urine, liquid stool, sputum and so on.

8. It’s your brains world.

Your brain literally creates your own reality and your senses and body just go along with it.

7. You are a whole universe.

There is more micro organisms on your body than people in earth.

6. How is this a thing?

Also a lot of schizophrenics are pretty normal well adjusted people aside the schizophrenia, so like if you were sitting in your room and a dog floated in attached to a balloon or the number 7 started telling you you’re worthless at first you’re gonna get freaked out by it but once you confirm that it’s not there you’re going to realize “okay this is me”, it helps that a lot of hallucinations are recurring as well, so if you know they happen you can just tell yourself they’re not, even though everything in you is saying that’s not the case

It’s really weird but it’s fascinating

The really hard stuff is like extreme paranoia, I worked with a woman whose whole family basically was schizophrenic, her included, and there were a few times she’d say things like “you’re not hacking my phone right?” Or “the mayor is stalking me”, that kind of thing and for someone who has experienced similar paranoias (to a considerably lesser degree) I can understand that those aren’t really that easy to shake

5. This makes a lot of (creepy) sense.

Spider webs were used as bandages in ancient times.

My grandpa was from rural Eastern Europe and he told me about his grandma and mom using spider webs on wounds. It’s not even that ancient of a thing

4. It’s hard to wrap your mind around.

The way quantum mechanics works is pretty creepy to me for reasons I can’t exactly pin down.

Particles aren’t points, at least not that we can possibly ever observe. The best physical description of a particle’s position is a wave over at least a four-dimensional volume showing where it probably is. I say four-dimensional because there’s a non-zero time uncertainty as well. This isn’t a limitation on what we can observe, it’s an actual testable property of particles, that they don’t have exact positions, velocities, energies, times. When they’re “observed” by interaction, the wave collapses, which still doesn’t make it exact, just more likely to exist in a smaller space. The argument that there really is an exact point in there somewhere and it’s just always hidden from observation isn’t true; the Bell inequality proved that. For example, because of this uncertainty, it’s physically impossible to cool helium enough to freeze it at atmospheric pressure.

This uncertainty even applies to the vacuum. It can’t be at zero energy, because that would violate the uncertainty principle. So sets of virtual particles pop into existence in the vacuum and stick around for an incredibly short amount of time, given by the time uncertainty, before annihilating each other in a zero net energy process. This is, very simply put, how black holes hypothetically lose mass; pairs of virtual particles are spontaneously created near the event horizon, one enters, one escapes. The one inside annihilates a particle within, the one that leaves becomes real. Information is transported outside the event horizon in an incredibly obfuscated, but still existent, form, meaning information isn’t destroyed by black holes.

Then you get into the weird math. It starts raising questions about what “real” is. Can we say something’s real if it’s not testable, or is the math describing the situation the closest to “real” that we can get? For example, you could look at the predicted path for a particle. There’s a non-zero chance for it to take any path between two points. So you basically take all the possible paths, account for the probability that it takes that path, add ’em all up, and you can recover Newtonian mechanics from it in the classical limit. Is this actually what’s happening? It isn’t really testable.

Even the Bell inequality that I mentioned earlier has some crazy philosophical implications. It basically says one of three things are true: information travels faster than light (which we have never seen), cause doesn’t always come before effect (wtf), or the universe is superdeterministic (which would disprove free will). We don’t know which.

People make a lotta crazy claims based on quantum mechanics, and I think a lot of it has to do with how uncomfortable the idea of living in a universe that seems to be inherently uncertain is.

3. You can be convinced of anything.

You can be convinced you committed a crime. You can also give false confessions.

2. If only we could replicate that.

You get and cure cancer in your own body thousands of times a day…..

Your body produces thousands and thousands of cells with damaged dna.

It’s a bit of exaggeration to call them cancer but if any of these cells were to survive they could become cancerous. Your immune system destroys them before they get to that point.

This is also why if you were to live forever you would eventually get cancer because the chances of your body missing them statistically increases. This occurs thousands upon thousands upon thousands of times a day

1. What are yours?

A doctor once told me, on average every human has three anomalies. Not all are visible.

I can never un-read some of these, that’s for sure.

Share the creepiest fact in your arsenal with us down in the comments!

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Treasures and Horrors That Garbage Collectors Have Found

People throw away all kinds of stuff, for reasons that only they can possibly know. Some of them are treasures no matter who you are. Some things are treasures to certain people, trash to others. Some things are just plain trash, and a very few are horrors that literally no one wants to see.

These 15 people have found all manner of things in the trash, and lucky for all of us, they’re here to give us all the dirty details.

15. This is such a great story.

My father was a garbage man when I was born. I don’t remember because I was like 3 months old. But my first dog was in the trash. My dad stopped. Picked up a box and heard some shuffling on the inside and there were two puppies. My dad kept one and the driver kept the other. They were brother and sister (my dad assumed). He kept the male and named him Jasper.

He was literally my best friend growing up. I had him for 13 years and my dad tells me the job was worth it just for that dog. He called the police and animal control on the residence but doesn’t know what happened after that. All I know is I’m 37 and still love that dog so much. I’m so thankful my dad saved him and his sister.

14. Must have been a popular item.

I worked in the scrap metal business and have found not one, but two of three exact same bread statue, of two bears screwing each other

***BRASS statue, my bad

13. Just needs a little elbow grease.

Not a garbage person, but I live in a large apartment complex. I could have furnished multiple apartments with all the stuff that gets thrown out here (and partially furnished mine), but the best thing I’ve seen in the pile was one of those grandfather clocks you can make from a kit.

Still looked very nice, but it needed some fixing to get it to run again. I’m still waiting to find a piano (I would like a piano).

12. That’s quite a deal.

Found a 55 inch tv next to the dumpster 4 years ago. It was missing 1 hdmi port on the side. It looked like someone might have tripped and ripped it out.

Anyway, I opened it up googled the motherboard serial number and found a brand new replacement for like $60 less then 25min away….needless to say I called ahead on my day off picked it up and it works like a charm. Still use the tv to this day.

55in Sony 2012 lcd tv. I have chromecast with google tv hooked up to it now and it’s awesome.

11. Man that’s rough.

My uncle was (still is?) a garbage man and found a fully boxed Power Rangers Megazord toy. I don’t remember which season or what but it had been previously opened and all of the parts and such were still inside.

I don’t remember if they sold it off or what but it was super cool to see.

A part of me feels like maybe a collector tossed their boxes away and mistakenly threw the whole figure with it or some kid’s parents ditched it while cleaning up after a birthday or Christmas. I don’t know but feels bad.

10. I can’t honestly even imagine what this looks like?

I’m not a garbage man, but I once scored a whole custom built staircase from a dumpster. It was in perfect condition but apparently built to the wrong spec. It worked great for my barn.

9. There are some cool perks.

I worked as a showcleaner in Melbourne a few years ago and we would sometimes get leftovers from shows and fairs and other events. For example after a Coffee Fair we got hundreds of cases of all sorts of plant based milk. They were still on the pallets and the trader didn’t want to load them back up. At a beer and wine fair the same happened, but with wine and craft beer. We had quite a few parties “sponsored” from that one.

Then there was this one big concert where a huge storm hit and everyone left everything they had brought behind to hide in their cars and leave. We found camping furniture and lots of closed beverages and food. One coworker even found a bunch of bundled up cash, which amounted to a couple hundred bucks. And, since it was a concert of a band a lot of older people listened to, we found coke, handed it over to the authorities and later were told it was enough to buy a small car from the market value it represented.

But the coolest thing that happened at one of the shows was not something we found. There was a big classic car event at the show grounds and it had some of the finest and rarest cars you could imagine. At the end, we were cleaning as usual, and this guy comes up saying he saw us during the shows checking out some of the cars. At first I thought he’d berate us, because we were just the cleaners and should focus on the job. But then he invites us to ride along if we wanted to. So that was the time I got a childhood dream fulfilled and was allowed to drive in a ’69 Dodge Charger R/T.

This experience and the fact that we got to go backstage with some of the coolest bands was the big plus of an otherwise hard and dirty job.

8. A magical childhood.

My father was a garbage man who also did clean-outs for homes and businesses, where they’d rip apart the entire building and throw everything out in their dumpsters. He worked on a ton of really massive houses, some worth 10s of millions of dollars, one was worth 40 million and wasn’t even the permanent residence.

Best things I got as a kid: A pretty much unused trampoline with a net and everything.

A go-kart that my dads friend was able to fix up and we used all the time (I live on a dead end).

And once he cleaned out a deli that was closing down, and we no joke had unlimited Snapples and Sodas of every flavor for almost a year. I’d drink the Snapples while out on the trampoline. I used the hell out of all 3 of those things in my childhood

7. That’s quite a haul!

Finally something I can contribute too! I do trash at apartments. In the year I’ve worked the job, I’ve found and kept:

-a couch

-2 desk chairs

-a floor lamp

-deck furniture

-a TV stand

-my cat

-various decorations I’ve given to my mom

Some things I’ve sold

-a bike, $40

-some outdoor vases, $30

-a bed frame, $50

-an original xbox with at least 80 games all in a box, $20 (to my friend that collects old video games)

But yeah, it’s crazy what people throw away.

6. This is hilarious.

I was a garbage man for a few years, and on these trucks it had a grapple arm that come out off the side of the truck and grabs the bin, lifts and dumps it.

There are three cameras on the truck, two to see the bin and hep you line up and grab ahold of it and then switches to another camera view as you dump the bin out and you can see the trash fall out.

Well one day I’m doing my run, grab a trash bin, pick it up, dump it and out falls a bunch of mannequin parts! I nearly sh%t myself thinking a serial killer dismembered somebody and put them in the trash

5. The stories they have.

Oh man, my time to shine! I’ve been working at a waste transfer station (“garbage dump”) for many years.

The worst I’ve seen (just garbage, not counting stuff brought to the hazmat department):

A freezer stuffed with a skinned, rotting, headless deer carcass. We nearly called the cops before we realized it wasn’t human. Used needles. The worst being a tie between “porcupine couch” and the lady who literally handed me a paper bag full of syringes she found during a park cleanup. large container of old crystallized picric acid. Bomb squad had to deal with that one.

The best:

A high end laptop in perfect condition except for a tiny crack on the lcd panel. Easy DIY repair that took $40 and 5 minutes, thing would’ve cost $1.5K new
enough brand new furniture to literally furnish my whole apartment a high end military grade inflatable boat, brand new

The weirdest:

A 1st gen platelet counting machine, complete with weird tubes of bright green liquid and mercury. When I was prepping it for hazmat disposal I had to call the company that bought the company that made it for some info… they never digitized the records but the oldest repair tech still working was super excited because he remembered servicing them 50 years ago.
coffin. No body, just the coffin. Couldn’t see anything wrong with it either.

Buckets of testicles (from a ranch) that had been sitting out in the summer heat for a week. Smelled so bad my coworker hurled. That’s not the weird part… the weird part is the guys wanted their buckets back. Do you know how bad it has to smell to make a garbage collector puke? And they wanted them back?!

The $10k duffel bag. Lady came in super upset because earlier she threw out a duffel bag that she didn’t know her boyfriend kept cash in. Over $10,000 in cash. We never found the bag.
16 full size barrels of old vegetable grease some guy had saved up in his garage. He was planning to make a biodiesel car or something

4. Odds and ends, bits and bobs.

We sometimes have to do house clearances at work (dead people with no family and the house is to be sold).

Lot of the time stuff isn’t worth the time it takes to sell it so we get to keep stuff that’s gonna be thrown out, I’ve gotten so much fabric, embroidery thread, all sorts of sewing/dress making materials, I will never have to buy another buttons in my lifetime, I like to think the old ladies it used to belong to would be glad to know it was gonna be used.

3. Small town America.

Grew up a small town so everyone knew everyone. Our garbage man (Lee) would regularly cull out items for us because he knew my dad would tinker on them. Lee gave me my first bike, which only needed to be painted, and so so many books.

He passed a few years ago. When I saw the notice I called up my sister and we had a bit of a nostalgic cry about what a nice man he was to us kids.

2. That’s a nice payday.

Not me but my brother. Someone apparently threw out grandpas stuff from the attic after he passed away. This was the last scheduled pickup at the house and everything was already moved out, nobody living there.

Driving an automated (claw to grab and dump) truck, my brother was irritated there were these 2 bowling bags he had to get out to throw in the truck. He realized they seemed a bit heavy, so he opened them to see why.

Inside there was real silver silverware/flatware. He ended up selling it for scrap prices to a jeweler and got $3000.

1. “Rescued.” I like it.

Not a garbage man, but have rescued projectors, computers, furniture and even a very expensive Yahama keyboard (just needed a new plug) from skips / being thrown out. Loads of music scores. A dining room table with nothing wrong with it.

I may be just about to get a 65″ touchscreen TV that’s no longer touchscreen, too, depends on what happens to it over the next few days.

Large companies throw all sorts away and they’re far more focused on “I just need to get rid of this” than spending the time to find someone to take it.

By the same token, I’ve also binned about 20 fully working interactive whiteboards because I couldn’t get anyone interested in taking them.

P.S. Yes, I sought permission before taking any of the above. If I just took whatever I saw, I’d have even more stuff.

I will never understand some people, but maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

If you’ve found something weird or interesting or amazing in the garbage, tell us about it in the comments!

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Did You Know There’s a Test to Find Out if You Might Be a “Super Recognizer” Of Faces?

Since people’s names and faces seem to flow right in one side of my brain and out the other, I don’t think I’m a “super-recognizer” of faces (or anything else), but according to scientists who study this phenomenon, around 1% of the population can honestly say that they never forget a face.

In 2009, a team of neuroscientists at Harvard did a study on super-recognizers, testing just four people who claimed they could always remember faces of the people they met – and even those of strangers on the street.

Image Credit: Pexels

The four people felt like their abilities were “creepy, and even that there was something wrong with them. One subject confessed that she hid her ability to “pretend that I don’t remember people, because it seems like I stalk them, or that they mean more to me than they do.”

All of the subsequent studies on the topic have included only small numbers of people – everyone they can find who might have this uncanny ability – and though researchers have found a few more, it seems to be extremely rare.

Image Credit: Pexels

This recent study that was published in PLOS ONE that looked at people with excellent memories in general showed that the two are not necessarily related. You don’t have to have a good memory to have faces burn into your brain, and vice versa.

“These findings lend support to the idea that face processing abilities are at least to a certain extent hard-wired.”

Since the 1990s, researchers have assigned the ability to identify a face to a region of the brain known as the fusiform face area (FFA).

Image Credit: PLOS ONE

This is because people who have damage to this area of their brain experience the opposite of what we’re talking about here – they have what’s known as “face blindness,” and can’t retain faces at all.

Image Credit: PLOS ONE

One of the scientists most interested in learning more about this phenomenon now, psychology professor Josh P. Davis out of the University of Greenwich, is hoping to find more people who think they have this ability so that he can study it further.

Image Credit: Greenwich University

If you do very well on this test he developed, he would like to hear from you.

Police in the UK are already thinking that people involved in these studies might be great for identifying murder suspects and the like.

If anything bad ever happens to me, I hope one of them just happens to be around.

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Dark Facts About Countries That Most People Love

There are certain countries in the world that a majority of people would say they would love to visit – Italy, France, England, China, Ireland, Australia…

My list actually goes on and on, because there’s hardly anywhere I wouldn’t like to go if I had the chance!

Some (or all) of these beloved countries have dark histories and lesser-known facts, though, so before you visit, here are 16 things you might like to know.

16. That’s not the worst thing they did during the war.

During ww2 japan used living POW’s for bayonet practice.

The Japanese were worse than the nazis in some ways. The difference is Germany knows their dark history and paid for it.

Japan swept it all under the rug and never paid for or owned up to their war crimes.

15. But I want to see the pyramids.

In Egypt , sexual harassment is like the air , everywhere. Something every woman must live with.

I don’t know if it’s the same now, but I travelled around Egypt for a few weeks in the late nineties when I was in my early twenties. I had a couple of rather forceful attempts against me (as a man). I learnt to be quite careful using a public toilet.

14. I think it must have been.

Here in Colombia we have enough material to have a dedicated post, but for mentioning one….

In 1928, a banana company workers ceased their production and got in protests. They wanted better work conditions because They worked a lot for the crap of payment they got.

The government’s response was send the national army to shoot a place where between 2000 and 4000 people were sleeping or relaxing. Officially 13 people died, but the people there told that number was faked and the death counter was a lot higher

13. It’s so beautiful, too.

New Zealand has one of the highest youth suicide rates in the OECD.

New Zealand also has some of the highest rates of bullying (in school and in the workplace). Everyone talks about how nice Kiwis are… but in addition to the ‘macho’ culture (and maybe along with it) there is this big, dark, ugly underbelly of wide spread bullying.

I can imagine that this very much contributes to high suicide rates.

12. I have questions.

Mongolia wiped nearly 11% of the ENTIRE world population off the face of the planet.

The largest acts of mass killing/genocide in human history.

It literally changed our carbon footprint by an estimated 700 million tonnes of carbon in the atmosphere during the 13th century.

11. Eat the rich?

The Dutch once ate their prime minister.

When Johan de Witt – the ‘Grand Pensionary’ (in effect, prime minister) of the Dutch Republic – was killed along with his brother in 1672, there are accounts of some among the mob taking parts of the bodies and eating them.

10. What the heck, New Zealand?

New Zealand: high rates of child abuse, hidden poverty and a housing crisis on the brink (not enough housing and what there is is extremely expensive to both rent and buy and rapidly rising at a ridiculous rate. It’s also not particularly high quality).

9. The face I just made.

On Toronto’s beaches up to the mid 1950s, it was common to see signs that read “No Dogs or Jews Allowed.”

8. They don’t take sides.

During WWII, the Swiss National Bank accepted large quantities of gold from the German Reichsbank.

It was payment for Swiss export shipments(weapons, ammunition..).

A large part of this Reichsbank gold had either been looted by the German occupying forces from the stocks of the occupied countries (Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Poland, Czechoslovakia, etc.), or it came from the victims of the Nazi persecution of the Jews [Holocaust].

7. In Canada? Seriously?

Canada had a cult leader named Roch Thériault of Ant Hill Kids who did some VERY VERY disturbing things to his followers and the children.

Also the podcast “Cults” had an episode on them but they even left out the worse things they did.

6. Where is it going?

Canada is the biggest producer of asbestos in the world, although using the product is banned in the country.

“In 2009, about 9% of the world’s asbestos production was mined in Canada. In late 2011, Canada’s remaining two asbestos mines, both located in Quebec, halted operations. In September 2012, the Quebec government halted asbestos mining.”

5. No one teachers this bit of Western history.

France had concentration camps… in 1936 for Spanish immigrants who fled the Civil War.

They also had concentration camps in Algeria in the 1960’s, and a weird bit of bureaucracy where they didn’t call them camps.

4. Same awful story, different country.

Norway used to suppressed the natives from up north, by separating them from their parents and forcing norwegian culture upon them.

Learning norwegian and how to live like a norwegian.

3. That’s not so happy.

Bhutan forcibly expelled Hindus in order to create its “happy” paradise.

Yes.. Uncle was working for UN during the whole Bhutanese Refugee situation in Nepal. He said they were kicked out by the country. There is a large Bhutanese refugee community in Baltimore.

2. NINETEEN NINETY-SIX.

From the 1700s up to 1996, Ireland was home to “Magdalene Laundries,” basically labor camps run by the Catholic Church for “Fallen Women” who had sex outside of marriage (a lot of time the women were SA survivors who’d been molested/impregnated by priests or male relatives)

1. They can keep their lips sealed.

If you’ve ever looked at a country like Liechtenstein on a map and wondered how a country that small can maintain a flourishing economy the answer is that they’re one of the largest offshore banking sites in the world.

Most people only think of the Cayman Islands when it comes to offshore banking but the Cayman Islands aren’t even close to being the only place where rich people stash their money to avoid paying taxes on it. Most of the places that do it are territories and not countries (the Cook Islands, Anguila, Jersey and Guernsey are a few other big offshore banking sites) but Liechtenstein has made it the core of their economy.

I had no idea!

Do you know any other weird facts about these countries that might give people pause?

Share the with us in the comments.

The post Dark Facts About Countries That Most People Love appeared first on UberFacts.

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Amazing Recovery Stories About Patients That Therapists Were Sure Wouldn’t Get There

There are upsides and downsides to every job out there.

That said, some have got to just be more emotionally tough than others. Take, for example, being a therapist (especially to children) – you listen to people in the worst states of their lives, and then let them walk out the door at the end of the hour, into the world that has broken them over and over again.

Success stories are probably relative, and maybe not measured exactly in that way, but these 12 therapists had glimpses of moments that must make all the rest of it worth it.

12. That’s one great day.

I worked on an outreach team that helped homeless folks off the streets. Found a guy downtown one day that was a classic schizophrenic. Word salad, things tied around his arms and legs, the whole 9 yards. Spent a few weeks buying him lunch and building a relationship with him.

He eventually let me move him into a hotel room and take him to a doctor. Got a shot from one of our doctors and started doing better. I transferred him to a longer term care team and went on with my life. Years later I was doing a homeless count for the city and boom, there he was standing in front of me. Clean, well spoken, happy.

He introduced me to his cousin. I’ll never forget it. “Damn Robert, this is the guy who helped you get off the street? You saved his life man. My family can’t thank you enough.”

One of the best moments of my life.

11. What keeps you going.

Psychiatrist here:

I used to do sessions at a government run long-term psychiatric hospital. Where I am a patient can only stay in a psych hospital for 3 months max, & if they didn’t get better we had to transfer them to the long-term hospital, So, the people who ended up here already had very poor prognoses to start off with, and to add to that they were all there on an involuntary basis, so co-operation was an ongoing battle. Very few are ever successfully discharged back into the community. There is a gross shortage of resources and the place itself looks pretty bleak, but we did all we could within our limited means.

I have had a few successes with patients here over the years, which you kind of hold on to in order to remind yourself that there’s always hope.

One lady I recall had been admitted via the courts after vandalizing a colleagues car that she believed had been using witchcraft against her. After being admitted and treated at the regular psych hospital, she was diagnosed with treatment resistant schizophrenia, which is probably one of the worst case scenarios in psychiatry.

Once she arrived at the long-term facility, I started treatment with probably the only drug we have for treatment-resistant schizophrenia. This drug is basically our last “big-bomb” for schizophrenia, but is not a pleasant one to have to use with a patient. It has a lot of serious side effects, requires blood to be drawn every week for 18 weeks (& then monthly for the rest of the time you’re on it, which is generally life-long in schizophrenia) and most frustratingly there is no injectable formulation, so patients need to take it willingly everyday which is a real uphill battle for involuntary patients that lack insight (lack of insight being part of schizophrenia as well, so you can imagine how challenging that can get). If they refuse more than 2 days worth of meds, the whole 18week initial phase needs to be restarted from scratch.

This patient was extremely paranoid and very hostile towards treatment in general. Every time I saw her she would get aggressive, argue with everything, and refused the meds on several occasions, necessitating a restart every time. She was one of the most challenging patients I have had to deal with, and honestly I didn’t hold out much hope for her. But, we just kept on trying, worked through every aggressive episode and tried to at least keep things steady enough so that she wouldn’t deteriorate any further.

After two years, things slowly started to change for her. She started taking the meds regularly and we had noted small incremental improvements. Despite this, her prognosis was still poor and I was just hoping to improve her overall level of functioning in any way I could.

Then one day when she walked into my office, she looked like an entirely different person. Her grooming and self care were definitely better – she had done her hair, wore earrings and actually smiled at me… all for the first time since being admitted to the hospital. To say I was thrilled at her progress would be an understatement, I was flabbergasted really.

Having gone back to her almost normal self, she was a pleasant, articulate lady with a wicked sense of humor. After that, we did a lot of work on her insight & helping her make sense of what had happened to her and understanding the medications she would need to take for the rest of her life.

After about 3 years, she was discharged home and resumed her previous occupation of being a high school teacher. Last I heard from her she was till doing well and even became a grandmother. Sadly, I no longer work at that hospital so I have since lost touch with her, but her story stays with me every time I see a “hopeless” case. It’s the starfish analogy for me, and although my job can be emotionally draining & frustrating, every now and again you get to make a life-changing difference for someone, and that keeps me going.

10. That’s all they want to hear.

I had a client who was a Senior at a highschool I was contracted at. I got him the day after he had been released from the ER for a Suicide attempt. He was smart and his plan was well executed, painless to being a diabetic. He had his method of suicide literally on him 24/7. He had second thoughts.

He was a wreck, paranoid, didn’t want to live. Are one point I had to have him involuntarily committed by the police because he could not garuntee me he could keep himself safe and his parents really couldn’t either. I hated to do it. I had no other choice though.

Every week we met. He was intense, angry and paranoid. His parents were Asian immigrants and were woefully under prepared for dealing with and understanding the extent of his mental health issues. We went on a regiment of Cognitive behavioral therapy for 6 months. He went all in, did every price of homework I gave him and utilized it. By the end of the 6 months he graduated and was accepted to NYU and prepping to attend in fall.

The last day we met I asked about his experience in therapy and to reflect on his journey. He ended by saying. ” I’m glad I didn’t kill myself”. Don’t know where he is but I hope he is doing amazing.

9. Sometimes experiments work out for the best.

I work with veterans who have had traumatic brain Injuries a lot of whom additionally have some combination of ptsd anxiety and depression. One of our most recent patients was a graduate student before deciding to enlist in 2011 to fight isis. He came back unable to walk and unable to read and remember things properly as a result of the damage to his brain.

He could no longer focus in classes, and was severely depressed which lead to him not able to finish his PhD. We do an experimental 10 days brain stimulation treatment combined with vision and working memory therapy and after his 10 days the changes were astounding.

He feels motivated again, there was an improvement of almost 100% on every cognitive and executive function task as well as improvements to his vision/reading/focusing ability. He signed up for classes at the community college here and is hopeful he can finish his PhD in geology and get his life back on track. I’ve never seen such a dramatic improvement before and it made all the difference in the direction of his life. Reminds me why I do what I do.

8. They just keep showing up.

I had barely graduated and was working in the public sector as a clinical psychologist. One day a 47 yo woman arrived. The patient was experiencing depression and had told me that in another episode she couldn’t even take a shower.

I was nervous cuz I was so inexperienced and felt a weight on my shoulders thinking: “how Am I gonna help this woman?”. But as the months progressed I saw a big transformation. In the beginning she wouldn’t even look me in the eyes and she had told me that she couldn’t even hug her children (they were young adults). She was my patient for 8 months until I had been approved to work somewhere else with a much bigger salary.

In our last session she was looking at me, dressing up, smiling and when I told her that I wouldn’t be working there anymore, she even gave me a hug. It was quite a challenge, but in the end it all worked well. I no longer work as a clinical psychologist (and don’t intend to return), but this experience transformed not only her, but myself.

I gained confidence to work with other people and was extremely satisfied to see that I could help improving someone else’s life.

7. Sometimes all you do it listen.

I’ve regularly had clients tell me some version of, “Remember that thing you told me about breaking up with them/applying for that job/telling them such and such… Well, I took your advice and it really worked and made such a difference!”, and in my head I’m thinking, “that’s not at all what I said” or “oh, that was just an offhand remark that had nothing to do with what I thought I was trying to do, but good job!”

It has made me realize that change is kind of inevitable (tho not necessarily for the better) and that when people are ready, there’s little that will stop them from moving toward that change; they’ll take what I say or, a song lyric, or a convo with the Lyft driver, or whatever is around them and turn it into the thing they need.

So maybe I’m just more like the catalyst in the sense that I can help start the reaction, but I’m not there in the end result.

6. Some parents are not the best.

I tutored students with learning difficulties and helped them learn to coordinate with their guidance counselors and teachers etc. I was kinda the go between for a lot of these kids whose parents had no idea what to do.

One of my students was one of a few siblings. Parents were totally checked out and self absorbed, entitled, expected others to do everything for them and the state to pay for everything so they don’t have to work because they don’t feel like it. They were convinced his adhd was his fault and he wasn’t sad or anything, just bad at school (because his twin brother had been using the “I’m depressed” statement for years as a reason for him to refuse to go to class or do any homework and instead play video games and hang out with a not so good crowd. his brother was evaluated by mental health professionals over and over who deemed him completely fine just unwilling to work hard because he didn’t want to and expect the state to take care of him like it did his mom and dad…this was a whole other story) But this kid was drowning in himself and I saw it and so did others. I sat his parents down and told them if they didn’t get their shit together and get him some help, he wasn’t going to make it. Period. It was crisis level bad and his brothers issues were being reflected on him as the same thing and thus ignored.

I finally got his guidance counselor involved and laid it all out. This kid needs help, his parents are ignoring it, his other older brother is trying to help but can’t, the twin brothers issues are being used as a reason why “nothings wrong with him, he needs to try harder”, the extended family isn’t close enough to do anything but know there’s a problem (they were calling me at this point), and I can’t watch this kid loose this battle. She was on board the second I informed her and jumped right in to coordinate help.

3 months later I watched him walk across the stage graduating with honors, on track with a good mental health plan, a therapist, and his grandparents directly involved in supporting him.

He’s off to trade school as of last year.

5. You’ve gotta love that.

I am a private practice therapist. I had a long term client I saw for over 2 years who was able to overcome so much (poor support, negative self talk with some suicidal thoughts, trouble regulating emotions, using substances to escape, etc).

She ended up moving away but checks in with me from time to time. Her life has completely changed and is doing so well now.

4. Sometimes it’s a simple answer.

when I was a Patient at the psychiatric ward there was another patient who I still think of sometimes. When she arrived she was so white and apathic. Some days later I met her in the halls of the facilities and she looked way better. So I talked to her to get her story.

She was brought in because she had drunk various cleaning products after 14 days without any sleep. She just wanted to sleep and didn’t know any further – I guess it was kinda like a psychotic episode. When she arrived they pumped everything out of her and fortunately she didn’t had any long term damage.

The doctors found out that she couldn’t sleep because of menopausal issues so she got sleep medication and hormones for menopause. When I talked to her she already had slept two nights in a row and she looked so much better, was smiling and talkative.

She said herself she didn’t know what happened to her. Being without sleep made her into a completely different person. I was so happy that she felt better. Overall she just stayed about a week.

Came to us like a ghost. Left us full of life. It was amazing

3. Most people have a reason.

I’m a therapist inside and outside of the prisons. I’d say at least 1x a month I meet an inmate that was likely a major piece of shit when they committed their crimes

Fast forward 10-20 years of incarceration later, and they are intellectual, hardworking men of integrity. It’s amazing what a little bit of structure can do for someone.

2. It happens to men, too.

I’m a therapist and mine is one of my clients getting out of a ridiculous, controlling relationship. He had difficulty conceptualizing that abusive (emotional and physical) relationships can happen to men and it was so bad that he internalized all those negative feelings.

I’m talking about significant, bat-sh%t controlling too like “send me a snap every 10 min, no even LOOKING at other girls, you aren’t allowed to be outside” type of thing.

Working through all of those issues over years was super satisfying to see his progress and recovery.

1. Tell the truth to yourself, first.

I spent most of my childhood depressed and chronically wanting to throw myself off a cliff. There was abuse and a lot of trauma that doesn’t need to be detailed. But I spent pretty much all of high school suicidal and self-harming. College was slightly better but about the same. I never looked depressed mind you, I was high functioning and I always did well in school, etc.

My parents knew but did nothing. I was also dealing with a lot of internalized homophobia and coming to terms with my sexuality in a strict religious environment that had no room for me. I ended up a lesbian married to an abusive man, with a decades long history of trauma, self-harm, etc.

I started therapy four years ago now. Something my therapist instilled in me from the beginning was this: once you can tell the truth about your life, then you can start to create a better story.

She taught me to identify the terrible things I had endured at the hands of the people who should have protected me. She taught me to bring those truths into the light, see them fully, and grieve the childhood I didn’t have and the way that followed me into adulthood. She helped me identify the ways I was perpetuating toxic cycles as a result of trauma: in my relationships with other people and also in my relationship with myself. She reminded me over and over again, that it was not my responsibility to create safety for myself as a child, but it is my responsibility now to protect the child inside myself. It is my responsibility now, to do better than people did to me. She taught me that I could trust myself to know what I need and what I want and what I deserve. She showed me what my life had been, held my hand and pulled me through all the paralyzing, desperate things I did to cope, and then asked me what I wanted instead, and what I could do to build that. She gave me permission to imagine better and then build better.

So I came out. I named what happened to me and stop trying to keep all the abuse a secret. I left my abusive ex. I quit the job that was killing me. I stopped drinking. I started taking medication. And it was absolutely terrifying. But I knew that I had built a trust in myself and I could trust myself to take care of myself. I believed there was a version of life that could be as good as I wanted it to be. I leapt.

And now I live in a beautiful city with the kindest woman I have ever known, whose love feels like coming home. Whose touch is gentle. Who knows every tiny thing about me. I do work I love. I have the derpiest dog to ever exist. I sleep well, which is a new thing. I say yes when I mean yes, and no when I mean no. I don’t abandon myself anymore.

Things can get better. Not overnight. Not without a fuck ton of pain and nights spent possibly sobbing on your kitchen floor. But it is possible for things to get better. And it’s also possible for things to get worse, and for you to not be alone in that, which is a different sort of better.

I owe my life to my therapist. Truly.

These just make my heart happy, y’all.

If you’re a therapist, what’s a moment that made it worth it to you? Share with us in the comments!

The post Amazing Recovery Stories About Patients That Therapists Were Sure Wouldn’t Get There appeared first on UberFacts.

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People Talk About What Celebrities They Felt Bad for Who Got Cancelled

Famous people are getting cancelled left and right these days.

Actors, musicians, politicians, no one is safe.

And I’m sure that you know that a ton of them did really horrible things and they deserved to be called out for them.

But did some of them just get caught up in all the “cancel” hoopla?

AskReddit users talked about what cancelled celebrities they actually feel bad for.

1. That’s too bad.

“Brendan Fraser got blacklisted after being molested by a higher up in the movie industry. His wife divorced him, taking his money too.

After all the joy that man has brought us, he got the short sh*t covered side of the stick.”

2. I’m glad he’s back!

“Paul Reubens aka PeeWee Herman.

He had a reputation of being kind of a stuck up asshole when the PeeWee character shot to fame, but not really any better or worse than other famous folks. He got “cancelled” because he was arrested for public indecency.

He was caught masturbating in an adult theater. Aside from the undercover cop who caught him, he was alone, and it was a normal adult p*rnography film. But the industry and media acted like he’d been caught with child p*rn or had r*ped someone.

He’s made a bit of a comeback recently though. I think people finally realized that in the grand scheme of “s*x crimes”, jerking it by yourself in a p*rn theater is nothing at all.

I saw his PeeWee revival on Broadway several years ago and enjoyed it, and I’ve seen him on a lot of the celebrity game shows on TV recently.”

3. Too much pressure.

“Britney Spears when she shaved her head and all that.

I’m no fan of hers but she just seemed like someone who cracked under all the pressure and lost her sh*t. Craig Ferguson did an absolutely amazing job talking about that and relating it to his own life.

Major respect to him for that.”

4. Backlash.

“The Dixie Chicks got their career ended and death threats for saying they didn’t support the war in Iraq.”

5. The Hollywood power machine.

“Megan Fox.

She called out Michael Bay on his s*xist sh*t that’s clear in all his movies but what really got her “cancelled” was that she called him a Nazi.”

6. No big deal.

“Janet Jackson after “Nipplegate.”

I was a kid when it happened so I had no awareness of it but I don’t get how everyone blamed her.

Is there any reason she was at fault instead of Justin Timberlake other than s*xism?”

7. Taking on the Church.

“I’d have to say Sinead O’Connor.

She was absolutely trashed by the media. Written off as a complete nutcase and ruthlessly mocked. All because a bunch of pearl-clutching fools refused to believe the increasingly obvious realities of the Church and decided that the Pope was above criticism.

She was entirely vindicated in the subsequent years (actually, the truth was far worse than even the Church’s worst critics could have imagined), but the legacy of that witch-hunt lives on.

Did SNL, Frank Sinatra, or any of the other f*ckers who were involved ever apologize to her?”

8. A dumb decision.

“I was pretty upset for James Gunn when he got fired from Marvel for things he had said over 10 years ago

But obviously fan outrage over that managed to make Disney realize how stupid their decision was.”

9. Isn’t that ironic?

“Lisa Bonet.

Bill Cosby put a scarlet letter on her after the movie Angel Heart. The convicted rapist thought she “sullied” the image of “The Cosby Show” and “A Different World” and this affected her career going forward.

Not saying she was an Oscar contender, but I remember being upset about how mysogynistic the whole thing was”

10. Don’t hear much from him anymore.

“Al Franken.

He was both my Senator and my favorite politician.

He would have made a great president.”

11. People got offended.

“Liam Neeson.

He was having a frank and honest conversation about his past feelings and emotions around a sensitive topic from his past.

In the interview he is clear that he knows what he said and felt is wrong yet what’s the point in trying to justify it when the sound bite has already been provided.”

12. That was a weird one.

“Michael Richards.

I don’t feel bad he got cancelled. I just felt bad when he tried to apologise on Letterman and the audience was laughing and thinking it was a joke just because it was “Kramer”.

Seinfeld was a good friend and he told the audience this wasn’t a laughing matter.”

13. Thoughts on this one?

“Aziz Ansari definitely didn’t deserve the public shaming he received for what amounted to an awkward, bad date.”

How about you?

Do you think there are some celebrities who got unfairly cancelled?

Talk to us in the comments and let us know!

The post People Talk About What Celebrities They Felt Bad for Who Got Cancelled appeared first on UberFacts.

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Tourists Share the Most Messed Up Things They’ve Seen While Abroad

Travel is one of the best things in the world. It’s one of the things I’ve missed the most; there’s just something about stepping into a totally different, or new place that really makes you feel alive.

It can also present some awkward moments, if you’re somewhere that’s unfamiliar in language or culture, and these 16 tourists definitely ran into some sticky situations.

16. So many stories.

I was in Rio de Janeiro in a taxi with a friend. We stopped at a stop sign at a busy intersection and two prostitutes were soliciting themselves. Now, this all happened very quickly, but neither my friend nor I said anything, but the taxi driver told them to get lost. They kept soliciting themselves. The taxi driver told us not to open the doors or windows. The prostitutes pulled out knives and started stabbing/slashing the taxi. The taxi driver pulled out in front of traffic to get away from the situation, but thankfully we didn’t get into a car accident.

In Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, my (ex)girlfriend and I hired a driver. We went to a marketplace and the driver informed us it wasn’t the safest place, so he would walk a few meters behind us and observe. Not 5 minutes in and he grabbed us by the arms and said “Don’t turn around, don’t react, I’m going to guide us out.” After getting into the car, we asked what was up. It took several times of asking until he finally said that there was a group of older boys following us with knives and he wouldn’t say anything else.

In Jerusalem myself, a friend, and family experienced a situation that only 4 of us and the tour guide could understand. There was an announcement in Hebrew at the Wailing Wall that a backpack was left unattended. No one was allowed to enter or leave until the bomb squad came and inspected it. Turned out to be a backpack a kid left on accident, but the majority of our group had no clue what was happening until after it was all over.

15. Thanks for the head’s up?

The guy that flashed my friends and I in a very nice park in central Europe. We were having a picnic.

He was very polite about it, saying “Excuse me girls, I’m just going to masturbate in front of you.” And then did so.

14. Not such a fine morning.

I unknowingly booked a hotel a block from the red light district in Paris, once I figured that out I tried not to return too late to my room. The next morning I was so energized and enthused to begin my vacation I threw open my window to greet the day, only to see… the police scraping someone off the road. I wasn’t that high up so it was the first time I saw something so grizzly.

It was definitely murder. They definitely used a knife.

13. How terrifying.

In the middle of the winter, flying back to Canada, from a Caribbean Island.

A middle age man was ready to board the plane with a very thin teenage girl wearing flip flops, shorts and a poncho.

The girl had a shaved head, the man wouldn’t let go of her, she was staring at the floor he entire time, everything looked just odd.

The flight attendants were doing all sorts of delaying manoeuvres. My family and I were late and boarded right after them. Before the flight took off, the police came into the plane and started asking questions, and took the man and girl off the plane. The girl didn’t speak any English, Spanish or French.

I’m convinced that the airline personnel saved a girl being trafficked into Canada.

12. Eerie, for sure.

I was walking through a forest in central France when I came across a group of old style horse drawn Gypsy caravans in a clearing. They were obviously very old and looked like they had just been abandoned. There was a very eerie, unsettling feel to the place so I took a few photos and moved on.

A couple of days later I was talking to an old guy in the village and he explained that the Gypsies had been dragged from their wagons and murdered by the invading Nazis during WW2. Out of respect the surviving Gypsies in the region just left the caravans where they were.

11. I guess that’s how they handle problems there.

Cyprus in the mid nineties, I was 15 and on holiday with my parents.

I saw an old Cypriot guy getting beaten within an inch of his life by a young Russian guy, after a row over unpaid rent. As i understood it the Russian was renting an apartment of the victim.

Police promptly turned up and dragged the Russian guy into the nearest building.

The Cypriot guy was taken to hospital by ambulance and a short while later the Russian guy was brought out of the building on a stretcher and was also taken to hospital once the police had dealt with him.

10. He had a “reputation.”

Was in Serbia and my collegue i was there with and i had rented a car to go explore the beautiful country. We followed google maps but end up on a dirt road in some small village like area and and had to make a turn. It was heavily raining and we got the car stuck. We couldn’t get it unstuck on our own so we wanted to ask for help and as we approached the first nearby house a large dog came running out barking loudly and an elderly looking man came out with a rifle yelling at us in serbian.

We decided next house was a better bet and they were the kindest people on earth. We told them that we had tried the other house with no luck and they told us we were lucky to be alive. Appearantly the man had a reputation but they didn’t wanna to further into details.

No more dirt roads for me thanks.

9. A bit, yes.

In a small town in Korea, I saw two guys run out of a restaurant.

One of them was holding a 10 inch kitchen knife and shoved it into the other guy’s belly. The guy’s standing there holding the knife in his gut and an old lady comes out of the restaurant and starts hitting him in the head with her shoe.

Two other guys jumped on the stabber and held him on the ground. Ambulance came and loaded the stabbee and drove away, cops came and drove the stabber away, restaurant owner came out with a bucket of water and washed the blood off his steps.

Turned out it was a wedding party and there was a bit of a disagreement.

8. That’s a new one.

Sheep wearing plastic bags from the local store tied across their a$s.

Turned out to be sheep birth control. ???

Location: Faroe islands in the mid ’90s

7. Definitely don’t come out.

I was hearing an argument happen in an apartment complex between a couple, and then I heard a gunshot, and then silence.

This was in Venezuela.

6. That’s quite a greeting.

In Cambodia I got a ride from the airport to my hostel on a motorcycle. It became clear the driver was drunk. Once there I was offered a child prostitute while waking down the street.

The next day at the killing fields, bones had unearthed themselves due to a recent rain. That was all in the first 24 hours. Not going back to Cambodia.

5. Well that’s a twist.

Was in Mexico City for a work assignment. Had just gone to dinner in the Zona Rosa (pink zone). Walking back to the hotel I saw a hit and run. A pedestrian was thrown thru the air and flung to the ground.

A lot of people witnessed this and an ambulance was called. The ambulance came screaming around the corner, going really fast, and hit another pedestrian. Who then was thrown thru the air and flung to the ground. It was awful.

4. Just…go with it?

i saw some guy get beaten and dragged away in front of club in spain.

it made me so uncomfortable and i didn’t know what to do.

then some people who were with the “beating the guy up” party came over and talked to us for a while.

i think because they could tell i was watching them. the french people i was with didn’t bat an eye.

just said “girl, it happens all the time”

3. I would never have gotten over this, honestly.

Back in 1978 when i was 10, i went to Jamaica with my Mom.

one morning after coming out of the British embassy, i saw four baby mongoose in a rain gully about 5 feet deep behind where we were waiting for a bus.

i thought they were adorable and started feeding them by throwing them biscuits.

Some guy saw me doing that, walked over and dropped a large brick on them killing them instantly. i was pretty inconsolable for several hours.

2. Sometimes you don’t want to know.

My mum was on one of the Spanish islands a few years ago for a family members hen party and she saw a guy get thrown out of club by a bouncer and bang his head on the floor and then a pool of blood formed.

She was so traumatized that she came home the next day.

She didn’t find out what happened to the guy.

1. I’m making a mental note.

I had a knife pulled on me in Germany by a couple of crackheads.

And in Thailand a tourist was smoking a joint on the police started beating the sh%t out of him.

Had an officer holding each arm and leg while another just kept jumping as high as he could and dropping knees onto the man’s face.

He started convulsing and foaming at the mouth so they threw him in the back of the police van and drove away.

I do not know how well I would have handled some of these!

Has anything like this ever happened to you? If so, tell us about it in the comments!

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Colorblind People Discuss the Most Unexpected Hurdle They’ve Faced

I think it’s fascinating to get a peek behind the curtain of other people’s lives, and even more so when it’s an aspect of living that I’ll never experience for myself. Don’t get me wrong; I’m glad I can see a full range of colors.

That said, it’s fascinating to hear what it’s like to not see a full spectrum, and also to realize how many everyday things us “regular” folks take for granted.

These 16 colorblind people were surprised by these hurdles, so no way you won’t be, too.

16. That’s an excellent hack.

I had a teacher who was color blind. His daughter would make sure his clothes matched everyday and when she moved out he got a whole new wardrobe where every piece matched, so only grey or black pants only blue white green shirts and all jackets were black so he was always color coordinated.

Funny part was no one ever noticed the granimals set up.

15. That’s a bit off-kilter.

The football (soccer) team I support now occasionally wears a colour I can’t really distinguish from the bloody pitch.

So, I now watch 11 players from an opposing team walk about with ghosts as a show of support.

14. That’s bound to get annoying.

People asking what colour something is upon hearing that you are colour blind.

What people don’t understand is how good we’ve gotten at guessing based on context.

So then after 2 or 3 color questions that you get right you can see their face change into “oh… this is not as interesting as I thought it would be…”

13. I never thought about the silly names being a problem.

Shopping for clothes…

I’m not severely colorblind, but have issues with things like purple from some shades of blue, dark greens from browns, teal from grey, things like that.

So I hate when clothing store tags or website color options either have number codes for color or non-descriptive names for colors.

Olive Green on a sweater is great. Pine Tree and I’ll figure it out. Misty Hike and I am lost.

Same with 091.

12. At least they had a tiebreaker handy.

I don’t pick up on certain colors of blue/purple, and see them as purple.

My old roommate doesn’t pick up on blue/purple and sees them as blue.

Lots of drunk arguments which we’d then pull our third roommate over and ask and he’d be like “bruh… that’s obviously purple/blue” and we’d lose our minds.

11. I hope she likes green.

On my stepdads behalf, I’ll say that he doesn’t know that the kitchen utensils are all pink.

And also the time he got my mom a fluffy “pink” robe for Christmas, but it was actually green.

10. I feel like that shouldn’t have been a surprise?

My brothers and I (all colorblind) see reds, especially dark reds like maroon, as black.

Both of them went to a high school where the school colors where maroon and black.

Definitely some mind losing when we found out the school colors weren’t just black.

9. It’s easy to lose them in the granite.

Not color blind but my fiancé is, he struggles with the ties on loafs of bread.

The color of the tie will blend in with our counter top and I’ll hear him tapping his hand up and down trying to find it so he can close the packaging on the loaf.

8. A likely excuse.

Mowing the lawn, sometimes I’ll miss a small patch and wont see it.

7. Just leave it the same!

watching the NBA after they stopped forcing teams to wear white at home. It’s a confusing mess most of the time.

Every team should pick a home color and stick with it all year, mix it up on the road. OP is right, especially with teams like Brooklyn, or Dallas, or my Lakers, it’s a total mess.

Lakers used to wear gold at home, purple on the road, white on Sunday. How complicated is that? Now you turn on the TV and sometimes it looks like the Lakers aren’t even out there then you realize it’s freaking Wednesday and they’re wearing the Sunday uniform. Aggravating to say the least!

6. At least you can laugh about it now.

We had a lot of pecan trees when I was young. My father would get so mad when he had me collecting pecans with him.

He would point at the ground behind me at all the ones I overlooked.

It wasn’t until two decades later, and well after it was established that I was colorblind, that I recalled the pecan collecting days and realized what happened.

He had a good laugh about it when I told him my revelation.

5. How dare they actually fix something?!

I had a color blind science teacher. He brought it up when we got to genetics and recessive genes.

The small town had an upside down traffic light for decades. The teacher knew it was upside down, and just remember too was go, bottom was stop.

Then the town suddenly flipped it it rightside up. Luckily there wasn’t an accident, he just had to explain to the officer what happened.

4. Good thing there are also warning sirens.

I can’t read a lot of color coded charts. For example when they show rain intensity on the radar. If there’s just red, green, and blue I do ok.

When they start adding yellow, orange, purple, etc, it just looks like a jumbled mess.

3. Did they…actually say “defect?”

I was then only colorblind student in my h.s.

When science classes were on the subject I was called out of class to demonstrate my “defect”.

4 years worth at least everyone knew who i was.

2. Pick another color!

Color blind physician:

-Test such as urine pregnancy tests will often turn red when positive.

-Electronic medical record software would “flag” important information in red.

-rashes can be tough.

-I once thought I was being helpful by cleaning up blood on the floor. Apparently I just smeared it around, walked through it and tracked it around the clinic.

-I walked in to clinic and my coworker didn’t even look up, she just said “Nope. Never wear that tie with those pants ever again.”

1. He couldn’t diffuse a bomb, either.

Trying to pick outfits or matching clothes for my kids.

Thankfully my daughter helps me get clothes for her little brother when my wife isn’t around.

It’s also very difficult (read: impossible) for me to safely do electrical work.

I honestly never would have considered the majority of these.

If you’re colorblind, what would you add to the list? Drop it in the comments!

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