Author: Mike Walsh

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People Break Down The Best Hacks To Fall Asleep Faster

Some people have been blessed with the ability to get into bed and fall right to sleep, but sadly, most of us have not been as lucky.  We are up until all hours of the night, tossing and turning, and just wishing sleep would come, but it never shows.

What if we tried some new sleep hacks?

Redditor Joydipisalamer asked:

“What is your life hack to fall asleep faster?”

Here were some of those hacks.

Tense, Relax…Tense, Relax…

“Progressive Muscle Relaxation. I learned about it from therapy, but it’s also very useful in helping you relax both your body and mind.”

“The practice basically boils down to the intentional of tensing and releasing of muscles in a specific order, while maintaining your breathing.”-Technical_Worker_264

“I used to have a job where I’d work freight for about 5 hours straight and then manage the rest of the time I was there, another 3 hours on my feet running around.”

“I would be drop dead exhausted, come home, shower, sit on the couch for 15-20 minutes and feel like I was going to pass out right there.”

“Then when I got in bed because I couldn’t keep my eyes open, I’d just lay there for an hour or longer wishing I could fall asleep.”-justalittleparanoia

“I only have intermittent issues with falling asleep, but I did try a weighted blanket. I’ve heard it works wonders and I’m sure it does for many, but for me it gave me night terrors.”

“I’m already prone to them, and maybe if I gave my body time to adjust to the feel it wouldn’t last, but night terrors are awful and it wasn’t worth it for me.”

“So just a note of caution for anyone who gets occasional night terrors. I’m glad it helps you OP, I did love the feel of it, but my subconscious did not.”-chikaygo

Routines Work As Well Here Too

“If possible, go to sleep at the same time every night and wake up at the same time every morning. But you have to really stick with it… not just do it for 3 days and then go ‘oh it isn’t working.’”

“As you keep doing it, your body will get used to it and you’ll naturally get tired at the same time every day. Also, make sure you are in a cool dark room. Those are ideal sleeping conditions.”

“If it’s too hot, it’s really hard to fall asleep. Ideally, you should NEED your blanket to actually be a comfortable temperature. If you are not a bit chilly without the blanket, the room ain’t cool enough.”

“And if you have a night light or light coming in from a window, that also makes it tough. Even just a TINY bit of light coming in compared to pitch black makes a huge difference.”

“Blackout curtains are great.”-mew5175_TheSecond

“I try to think of the longest word I can that starts with each letter of the alphabet, in order.”

“Then start over and do words that start with ‘Ab,’ ‘Ac,’ ‘Ad,’ ‘Ae,’ and so on until I’m so bored that my brain says ‘nahhh fam we’re done here.’”-Ok_Security_8657

A New Spot In My Mind

“Visualize standing in a nice cool wooden hallway and you’re turning a brass knob to go through a wonderful door.”

“And remember the door only opens to where you want to go you have to tell yourself over and over slowly as you twist the knob where you want to go keep that picture sharp in your mind and repeat it.”-WolfThick

“Two Gravol and a glass of wine. I don’t necessarily recommend it but I suffered from insomnia for years and this is the fastest way for me to sleep. I rarely do it now.”

“I think there’s a reason (bad job, stress…) that gives us insomnia and if we don’t find the cause it’s hard to get better. For me, the moment I quit my stupid job I was able to sleep a lot better.”-sonia72quebec

“Imitate the breathing patterns of sleeping – close your eyes, deep breath, deep release. Focus on only this, and you can listen to some sleep soundtracks on Spotify to cancel out potential distractions.”

“Honestly though, nothing works as well as physical exercise. I’m practically unconscious by the time the day ends.”-cakehole07

Hygiene?! Now I Gotta Clean My Sleeps?!

“Every few weeks or months I end up giving some version of this comment because someone says they’re having a hard time with sleep issues.”

“I have and sometimes still do, and when I’m having ongoing inadequate sleep I notice my mood and outlook tanks hard.”

“Crabby bastard and everything sucks and !@#$ you for that minor oops that shouldn’t even bother me, you !@#$!@#$.”

“It’s a two part answer. First is sleep hygiene. Second is a little trick that has helped me, and with a few days of using it it can be pretty reliable.”

“So first, sleep hygiene. Some or all of these will definitely help. If you have chronic sleep problems (and surprisingly many people do)”

“Try to limit caffeine to the early part of your day. No caffeine 8-10 hours before bed. Caffeine you had 10 hours ago might not have any noticeable effect on your alertness, but it can stop you from sleeping and stop you from getting good sleep.”

“This can be a huge downward spiral for people who use caffeine to overcome how tired they are from sleep problems.”

“Try not to use any electronics in bed. Try not to watch tv in bed. You want to associate bed with sleeping, and NOTHING ELSE.”

“Want to use your phone before bed? Do it in a comfy chair in your bedroom or livingroom. Even sitting on the floor next to your bed. My only exception is a kindle with the brightness all the way down, with the lights off.”

“Blackout your room if possible. Block all the light coming in from the window, close the door, if your alarm has a dim setting, use it. Light is a trigger for activity in our caveman brains.”

“White noise can be a huge help, blocking out all kinds of noises. There are free apps/websites, my favorite is this site with a combo white noise / rain generator: https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/whiteRainNoiseGenerator.php”

“Lastly, make sure you are budgeting enough time for sleep. Most people need approximately 7.5 hours. After maybe a week or two of enforcing this stuff you’ll probably notice you wake pretty refreshed before your alarm goes off, if you give yourself enough time.”

“Okay one more lastly: If you snore or always seem to be tired even with ‘enough’ sleep, or wake up tired after a normal/long sleep, you might have apnea and should get that checked out.”

“Sleep studies are expensive though, so I definitely will not tell you that a lot of people sell their old cpap machines privately.”

“You should definitely not buy one without a doctor’s input, should definitely not buy a new hose and mask for it, and should definitely not start with the lowest pressure setting and raise it a 1/2 lb at a time until you magically wake up feeling awesome.”

“And you should definitely, ABSOLUTELY never get the idea that shouldn’t ever set the pressure setting above 15 lbs without seeing a doctor, because you should really see a doctor about apnea.”

“Now for the trick. It sounds stupid, but it (hopefully for you) works: However you lie comfortable for sleep, do that.”

“Let your eyes relax to a natural straight-ahead aiming position, and then imagine a black circle in front of you. Don’t think about anything, just imagine the black circle. Any size. Tiny, huge, whatever. What’s that?”

“Your old kindergarten teacher wants you help power wash your old neighbor’s trampoline? Ooops, almost got me, brain, back to the circle.”

“What? No I still am not over what that b*tch Cassie said at work today, but black circle time. It will take a few minutes the first few nights if you really try this, but eventually you’ll discipline your mind to stop thinking weird sh*t (that sometimes results in that adrenaline spike) and you’ll get to sleep quickly.”-inthrees

“Exposure to most kinds of light at night messes up your circadian rhythm, and simply fixing that problem can make a huge difference.”

“In the evening, I use a blue light filter app on top of my phone’s built in filter and it has turned around my sleep SO much. It takes a few weeks to see a huge difference but it’s so easy and so worth it.”-Crabtoe

Do you see any habits that you can add into your arsenal of tricks for getting to sleep early?

For us insomniacs, even one of these tricks can quite literally save a life.

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History Professors Divulge The One Fact They Love Sharing With Their Students

History is full of fascinating figures and stories.

Humans have been interesting, wild, strange, goofy, ridiculous, horrible, murderous, and pretty much any other thing you can name.

Time has eroded societies and built new ones, introduced technology and killed off hallmarks of the past.

When you specialize in history you become the keeper of this arsenal of facts.  And even better, you become responsible for sharing them with others.

In a way, you become the shaper of how we, in the contemporary era, experience history.

A Redditor asked:

“History Professionals of Reddit. What is that one history fact that you just love sharing with people?”

Here were some of those factoids.

A King’s Ransom

“Daniel Steibelt, a top pianist in his own right, challenged his contemporary Beethoven to a musical improv duel.”

“Steibelt did believe he had a shot; he was no kid, and had already composed for Marie Antoinette and operatized a successful version of Romeo and Juliet.”

“He showed up to the improv and played one of his own works, for which he’d brought the sheet music.”

“Once it was his turn, Beethoven turned the sheet music upside down and beautifully f**ked the piece sideways and backwards, overturing Steibelt’s style all the while like a cat teasing a particularly boring mouse.”

“No one ever challenged Beethoven to a musical improv again, least of all Steibelt, who never again set foot in Vienna.”-Tmaffa

“The longest piano piece of any kind is Vexations by Erik Satie.”

“It consists of a 180-note composition which, on the composer’s orders, must be repeated 840 times so that the whole performance is 18 hours 40 minutes.”

“Its first reported public performance in September 1963, in the Pocket Theater, New York City, required a relay team of 10 pianists.”

“The New York Times critic fell asleep at 4 a.m. and the audience dwindled to 6 masochists. At the conclusion, one sado-masochist shouted ‘Encore!’”-Back2Bach

“Julius Caesar was once kidnapped by pirates, and when he found out how much they were ransoming him for, he was offended at how low the amount was and told them to raise it.”

“Meanwhile he spent his captivity annoying the sh*t out of his captors, holding poetry readings and generally being a pompous dick.”

“Oh, and he also joked that he’d eventually hunt them all down and crucify them. The ransom was paid, Caesar was released, then he hunted them down and crucified them.”-Tmaffa

Misleading Names

“I like telling people about orphan trains. During the late 19th-early 20th century, Progressive reformers loaded ‘orphans’ onto trains, sending them to the countryside for what often amounted to indentured servitude.”

“Also, some of the kids that were targeted were not orphans, and the Protestant reformers may have intentionally targeted the children of intact Catholic and Jewish immigrant families to make sure they were converted to the right religion.”

“I’ve found that it’s not a very well known part of the Progressive Era.”-[username deleted]

“The Pentagon wasn’t built that way for any defense reason — in fact, it’s not even a regular pentagon.”

“It was designed to fit nicely into the empty field between five major roads, but then later there was some reason why they had to build it somewhere else, I think it was too close to some city or something.”

“Anyway they’d already paid someone to design this five-sided building so they just said f**k it, it’s a pentagon now.”-Tmaffa

“From the memoirs of a Bill Bellamy, a British WW2 tank troop commander: One of our favourite pursuits was to eavesdrop on other squadron wireless nets while we were resting. This could be very exciting and, on occasion, very amusing.”

“One splendid moment occurred when C squadron were out on a standing patrol and Michael Payne, a young and popular troop leader, was in a hedgerow with shelling taking place to his front.”

“Apparently the whole area was covered with cattle, who paid little attention to the lethal objects dropping around them and concentrated on the job in hand.”

“Suddenly over the air came the laconic voice of Mickey, ‘Gunner, you see that poor cow in front which has just been wounded? Put the poor devil out of its misery will you?’”

“He obviously imagined he was talking on his intercom and not broadcasting to the world, because he then remained on the air with his microphone switch pressed.”

“There was a moment of silence and then a rat-tat-tat of the Besa machine-gun. Then came Mickey’s agonised cry, ‘Not that one you bloody fool, the one on the left!’”

“We didn’t let him forget that for a long time.”-Tmaffa

Today Is War!

“There once existed an alleged theoretical state of war that lasted 335 years and 19 days, and was between the Dutch and an archipelago off the coast of southwest England called the Isles of Scilly.”

“What’s more, there were no casualties (because the Dutch forgot that they were at war with the Isles).”

“It wasn’t until a Sicily historian contacted the Dutch about the ‘war’ in 1985, and received the information that the ‘war’ was still technically ongoing, that a peace treaty was signed in 1986.”-CarbonSpectre

“I’m not a history professional but love talking about how the South Korean and US governments launched Operation Paul Bunyan.”

“And the US went to combat readiness DEFCON 3 (the US went to DEFCON 2 over the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Gulf War; the US last went to DEFCON 3 on 9/11) because of a single poplar tree that blocked the line of sight between a United Nations Command checkpoint and an observation post.”

“To be fair, this was also called the Korean Axe Murder Incident and had to do with the killing of two United States Army officers in the Joint Security Area (JSA) located in the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ).”

“The U.S. Army officers had been part of a work party cutting down a poplar tree in the JSA that partially blocked the view of United Nations (U.N.) observers when they were assaulted and killed by the North Koreans, who claimed that the tree had been planted by Kim Il-Sung.”

“North Korean propaganda machine immediately spun this incident in their favor, describing how American aggressors forced the North Korean guards to defend themselves.”

“The CIA considered that this was a pre-planned attack and evaluated their options and the US went to DEFCON 3 the day after the two US Army officers were murdered.”

“Originally, the plan was to trim the poplar tree but now it was decided that – back with completely overwhelming force – the tree had to go.”

“South Korea and US initiated Operation Paul Bunyan which resulted in the following:”

“-Task Force Vierra (a convoy of 23 US and South Korean vehicles) drove into the JSA without warning the North Koreans at 0700. The vehicles had a compliment of two eight-man teams of combat engineers equipped with chain-saws to remove the tree.”

“-Task Force Vierra would be accompanied by two 30-man security platoons from the Joint Security Force, who were armed with pistols and axe handles. 1st Platoon secured northern entrance to the JSA via the Bridge of No Return while 2nd Platoon secured southern edge.”

“-Another company had activated the detonation systems for the explsoives on Freedom Bridge and had the main gun of a combat engineer vehicle aimed at the middle of the bridge to make sure that it collapsed should explsoives vailed.”

“They were also building rafts on the Imjin River in case an emergency evacuation was required.”

“-A 64-man task force of South Korean Special Forces accompanied them, armed with clubs and were trained in Tae Kwon Do but bore no firearms.”

“Once they parked their trucks near the Bridge of No Return, they began throwing out sandbags and armed themselves with M16s with grenade launchers.”

“Some of the commandos also had claymore mines strapped to their chests while holding the trigger in their hands, shouting at the North Koreans and daring them to cross the bridge.”

“-A US infantry company in 20 transport helicopters and seven Cobra attack choppers were right behind them. And behind those helicopters were B-52 bombers escorted by F4 Phantom jet fighters. F5 and F86 fighters also took flight to provide overwatch at higher altitudes.”

“FB-111 fighter-bombers and more F4 Phantoms were deployed, and the U.S.S. Midway (aircraft carrier) and its task force was moved just off-shore.”

“Near the DMZ were more heavily armed US and South Korean infantry and artillery units, an air defense regiment with mobile surface-to-air missile batteries and main battle tank platoons were waiting to back up the special ops team.”

“Bases near the DMZ were prepped for demolition in case of a North Korean counter-attack. 12,000 more soldiers and 1,800 more Marines were deployed to Korea, and nuclear-capable strategic bombers were called in to circle over the JSA.”

“Task Force Viera – who was directly responsible for cutting down the tree – totaled a little over 800 men.”

“North Korea deployed about 200 troops in response and were all armed with small arms and support weapons, and were deployed in buses but they didn’t immediately disembark their busses because they were bewildered by the show of force that was arrayed before them.”

“When they finally got out of their buses and set up their machine gun positions, all they could do was watch in silence as the tree was felled. After all of this, a six meter tree stump was left standing.”

“All of this because a tree’s foilage was blocking the view of an observation post.”-Tangowolf

“I love sharing the story of Deborah Sampson. She was effectively the American Mulan. During the Revolutionary War she masqueraded as a man to fight.”

“While she did eventually get caught after being wounded, she managed to avoid that issue once by digging a musketball out of her thigh!”

“She was the only woman following the war to receive a soldier’s pension. Awesome.”-22glowworm22

Ozzie Ozzie Ozzie!

“Melbourne was once terrorised by a crime gang that consisted exclusively of men with one leg and crutches.”

“‘The Crutchy Push, with one exception, consisted of one-legged men. The exception was a one-armed man who kept half a brick in his sewn up empty sleeve. He led his followers into battle swinging the weighted sleeve around his head.’”

“‘Behind him came the men on crutches – each one expert at balancing on one leg. The tip of the crutch was used to jab an opponent in the midriff. With the enemy gasping for breath the crutch would be reversed and the metal-shod arm rest would be used as a club.’”

“It gets better.”

“After several incidences of their member outrunning cops sent to track them down, the police got together the ten most violent police officers in Australia, called them ‘The Terrible Ten’ and sent them to beat up the Crutchie Push with hoses, because Australia is clearly one giant Carry On movie.”-suitcasedreaming

“So about a thousand years ago a Pope, declared that his predecessor was a wicked priest and shall be tried for vile behavior. The problem was that his predecessor was dead and 6 feet under.”

“So, logically, the Pope exumes the body and puts it on the defense stand to stand trial. The corpse loses. Thus the punishment was the cutting off of the three fingers on the right hand used to bless people, and the mutilated corpse was put back to rest.”

“Later the good ole Pope decides that the punishment wasn’t severe enough, so he RE-EXHUMED the dead f**ker, tries him again, finds him guilty, again, and dumps the dead pope in the Tiber F**KING River.”

“Thankfully a monk retrieved the body. The Great Schism between the Catholic and Orthodox Christians happened 60 years later. If you don’t believe me, google the Cadaver Synod.”-Saramello

Truth is stranger than fiction when it comes to history and any history buff will know just how true that is.

And strange things and funny history facts are being added every single day to the ongoing compendium that is the human experience.

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People Divulge The Most Morbid Facts They Know

Life ends.  All life does.

And entire new biological processes take place in death that we would never know about—or want to.

Except, that is, if you DO know about it.  If you’ve been gifted the awareness of what exactly happens to a human body while it decomposes, you would be the bearer of a morbid fact..

And as a matter of fact, morbid facts are a lot bigger of a demographic of facts than you would really think they are.

So when a Redditor asked:

“What morbid fact do you know?”

Here were some of those answers.

The End Of Life Cancels All

“If bodies are kept in coffins that are sealed tight enough, such as the in wall type of memorial, sometimes enough gases can build up that the body basically explodes and can spill out onto the ground.”-Mangobunny98

“If you electrocute someone while they are submerged in water, it won’t leave burn marks.”-R3dShield

“I think this is pretty well known on Reddit, but it’s a common misconception that your hair and fingernails continue to grow after you die.”

“What actually happens is your skin dries out, and recedes, which gives the appearance of nails/hair being longer than they were before death”-Antitheistic10

“In Formula 1, safety belts were not mandatory until 1972.”

“Before then, drivers believed it better to be ejected in a crash, and either die instantly from a broken neck or suffer many broken bones.”

“The alternative, they thought, was to be trapped and essentially cremated alive should the gas tanks ignite.”-[username deleted]

“A professor at my lecture today said that deer will lay on decaying corpses because they produce heat and the deer like that. Basically deer treat corpses as their personal sauna.”-4ensicmess

Thud

“An adult human body impacting on concrete does not sound organic or ‘wet’ at all, it reminded me more of a car accident than anything else.”

“Source: Last week someone committed suicide by jumping off of the building I live in, I heard the impact and saw the body when I walked out onto my terrace to see what was going on.”

“Second morbid fact, from the same source: The human brain looks far more white & pink when it gets ejected from the skull, I always thought a ‘live’ brain would be red from the blood in it but I was wrong.”-Octosphere

“In the middle ages, you could be boiled in a pot of lead for certain crimes. What crimes they were I have forgotten, but it certainly was a thing.”-necrophiliaisillegal

“Before you die, your last words could be, ‘I don’t feel so good.’”

“I was a paramedic for 15 years and heard dozens of people’s final words. The phrase I heard most often, possibly from half to three quarters of them, were some form of ‘I don’t feel so good.’”

“I’ve also heard, ‘Wait, somethings wrong,’ ‘Somethings happening,’ ‘I don’t feel right.’ ‘Wait, somethings wrong,’ ‘It’s happening,’ and ‘Oh no, Oh no.’”

“People feel the blood leaving their brain I think. Must be like a rush.”-Forbidden_Donut503

What A Way To Die

“The whole “‘f your erection last more than 4 hours, receive immediate medical’ or whatever is the reason why the Brazilian wandering spider (located in the Amazon) is so dangerous.”

“Its bite is supposed to make you have an erection for a long time and it’s pretty hard to find medical services when you’re in the Amazon.”

“What happens with boners is that blood fills up the penis and mostly stays there until the boner is gone. If it stays longer than 4 hours, the blood is deprived of oxygen.”

“It can turn into a jelly like substance with lots of clotting, so leaving it untreated could clog you up as the blood flows back. By the time you get to a doctor, they have two options.”

“One is get a 60ml syringe w/ a needle and suck out the blood (that’s the consistency of toothpaste), while also flushing it with salt water (also w/ syringe and needle) when those clots stop the needle.”

“The second option, which is usually saved for last, is to vertically insert a small blade inside the meatus/slit in the head and sharply twist it by 90°. Then just let it drain.”-marcy1010

“After the Pulse night club shooting, when the cops were investigating, you’d think it was pretty quiet in there.”

“It was actually a cacophony of ringing cell phones. So many friends and loved ones calling people they knew were there, hoping they’ll answer the phone and say they’re ok…”-Veritas3333

“There’s something called ‘Anaesthesia Awareness’ where of certain people go into surgery and they don’t give you enough anaesthesia, it will look like you’re asleep (eyes closed, not talking or moving), but the patient can still hear and feel everything that’s happening.”

“But here’s the scary part. You’re unable to move, speak or open your eyes. Unless they have a monitor to show your brain activity, you’re stuck with having to endure the pain.”-EveryNameIsStolen

Was It Worth It?

“On Mt. Everest, you have the rainbow valley, the last zone to climb to reach the peak.”

“Which sounds cute but it’s really the colorful jackets of dead climbers who are frozen in time against the white harsh snow.”

“Also, when close to the peak, the oxygen levels are so low that the body is starting to die. You only have a few minutes to reach the top.”-tarantulaboi

“Also, not sure of how much of a standard practice it is, but if you donate body to a school they will possibly ship your body elsewhere.”

“I know I saw a comment about how you need to be nearby the place you donate to because they dont want to ship you to them, but they may ship you elsewhere.”

“I know at least at the local college by me, they get all their cadavers from Texas (in Illinois, and we ship ours to them) so that theres less of a chance that a student may know the person.”

“And they also cover the faces unless doing any sort of head/face things (again at least the one by me does)”-future_nurse19

“Mausoleums have not only a ventilation system to prevent smells, but the crypt slots are angled towards the back and have a drainage system for uh…liquids coming out of the caskets.”

“Airtight caskets are a problem in mausoleums because the body liquifies inside and can build up so much gas that the lid can almost explode off of the caskets, sometimes even breaking the stone slab at the entrance of the slot.”

“Can you imagine walking through a mausoleum and suddenly the slab to a slot just shatters from the inside?”-crescentcactus

Despite being bone-chilling and morbid in life, these facts could actually be useful for you some day—but hopefully for most of us, that day is very, very far away.

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Scientists Share The Scariest Facts The General Public Doesn’t Know About

As our planet earth hurdles through space at dizzying speeds and rotations, things are happening all of the time at every single moment throughout the universe that could have a profound affect on us as a species.  And at every moment, life has the potential to end due to millions upon billions of things that are completely beyond our control.

Thankfully, though, we don’t spend our lives thinking about that.

We may get little flashes of anxiety, but for the most part, we need to live our lives. People can’t be caught up in that fear all the time.

Unless it’s their job to.

Enter scientists, who think of all the scary things in the world at all times so that you don’t have to.

We really owe it to scientists.

So when Redditor LukasXB78 asked:

“Hello scientists of Reddit, what’s a scary science fact that the public knows nothing about?”

The scientists were eager to share their answers.

It’s Cosmic, It’s Terran, It’s ALL Of Them Honey

“I’ve got three for you: 1: Rabies. Once symptomatic, rabies has a 100%* fatality rate. The only options are the rabies vaccine and immunoglobulin therapy, which, again, must be administered before any symptoms.”

“2: Gamma Ray Bursts (henceforth referred to as GRBs). GRBs are a rare phenomenon emitted from the poles of rapidly spinning supernovae and hypernovae.”

“In the event of a direct hit from suitably close (which is actually really, really far), all life on earth would be wiped out.”

“The facing side would be annihilated instantly, while the trailing side would quickly die due to the conditions on earth no longer being suitable to support life.”

“And there is absolutely nothing we can do about it. Kurzgesagt’s video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLykC1VN7NY”

“3: Runaway global warming. There are many stores of greenhouse gases (namely carbon dioxide and methane) all over the place.”

“But the conditions required to keep these gasses trapped are delicate. The worst part? It may already be too late to stop, even if humanity immediately ceased all greenhouse gas emissions and put every single resource we have into carbon sequestration.”-zipybug14

“There is a gravitational anomaly in space called the great attractor which is pulling everything within the Virgo and Hydra-Centaurus superclusters towards it.”

“It lies 150-250 million light years from the milky way, which itself is being pulled towards it too.”

“The scary part is that relative to us, this anomaly lies within the same plane as our own galaxy making it very difficult to observe. Essentially, we have almost no concrete idea of what it is.”-Nervous_Relation9213

This Toxin, Mr. Bond

“If your dog swins in a lake after receiving a spot on flea treatment – it absolutely decimates the invertibrate population.”

“A large dog swimming in 8 Olympic swimming pools worth of water soon after treatment will leech enough neurotoxin to kill 50% of the lake’s invertebrate population within 48 hours.”

“There’s some awareness of this, but it’s not being taken seriously enough!”-konwiddak

“Cancer geneticist here. Most cases of cancer that are sequenced generally just denote the prognosis or how long a patient has to live, rather than treatment options.”

“People always say ‘let’s cure cancer’ however this simplifies cancer as though it is only one disease. It’s far more complicated than that.”

“I studied at one of the largest cancer hospitals in the world where the motto is to make cancer history, but the only obtainable goal is to make it chronic.”

“We study and research as much as possible but every cancer requires different research, and unfortunately the powers that be often prohibit funding and proficient research.”

“It’s work I am passionate about, but also a broken system that is infuriating to work in.”-shhhhnahcuh

“Scientific litterature conclusion on alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative diseases in general is that the diseases start decades before the first obvious symptoms and that we need to treat them at this stage.”

“When you exhibit obvious symptoms, it’s too late, your brain is already mush. If you get diagnosed with alzheimer’s at 65, you had the disease since your early 40’s at least.”

“And you experienced very mild symptoms but didn’t notice it. And your brain fought like hell to compensate the deficit. When you get diagnose, your brain is already very severely damaged and will never recover from the deficit.”-Matrozi

“The bacteria that causes anthrax, Bacillus anthracis, is part of the normal soil ecology. In the wild, B. anthracis rarely causes illness, and when it does, it’s a cutaneous (skin) infection like a rash.”

“The common soil strains are not particularly infectious to begin with. You can, and we as a civilization have, weaponized B. anthracis.”

“Specifically, we can grow it, make it produce spores (hardy forms of the organism that are resilient), and can aerosolize it for dispersal to cause respiratory anthrax.”

“Having said that, we are on alert for the use of Anthrax, it doesn’t spread in the population after the initial infection, it’s easy to treat with antibiotics, and there are vaccines for it, which our military personnel and researchers already receive.”

“MRSA is a much scarier and more urgent bacterial concern.”-tricksterloki

What’s The Buzz?

“Haven’t seen this one yet – insects are going extinct. We have lost a significant chunk just since the 80s. I think it was around 20%? Mozzies are going up, because of course, but just about everything else is going.”

“Wasn’t until I read this that I realised that as a kid in the 90s I used to see butterflies all the time. Dragonflies. My house used to get invaded by Christmas beetles every year.”

“Not so much. These days I might see only one or two Christmas beetles in December, if any at all. When I was a kid I remember finding eight in my house in a single night… same house.”-Echospite

“The Cascadia Subduction Zone (CSZ) runs off the coast of northern California to southern canada and ruptures about every 250-350 years.”

“We know this from the geologic record. The last rupture was in January 1700 and there are written records from Japan of a tsunami that resulted from the earthquake on the other side of the Pacific.”

“This zone is still active and is likely to rupture in the next 100 years resulting in a mag 9+ earthquake that impacts the west coast from northern cali to southern Canada.”-socks4fun

“Prions. Misfolded proteins that cause a cascade of protein misfoldings that lead to amyloid plaque buildups, resulting in uncontrollable neurodegeneration that is fatal in 100% of cases within two years.”

“There is no cure. We don’t understand what causes it. We don’t understand the mechanism of the misfolding cascade. We don’t even fully understand the structure of the misfolded proteins.”

“It could in theory happen to anyone, at any time, and there’s no way to tell until you start showing symptoms, at which point you might have 18 months to live, if you’re lucky, the last 6 of which will be intensely unpleasant.”-FoucaultsPudendum

Poor Mother Earth

“Soil science-adjacent researcher here. We are degrading, polluting, and losing our topsoil at such a rate that we may not be able to produce enough food to feed everyone within 50-60 years, let alone what impacts climate change may bring to bear on our food supply.”

“And the US government’s crop insurance programs and incentives all reinforce the bad practices, while discouraging regenerative practices.”

“These bad policies are extremely hard to change because of lobbying from the major agribusiness companies, who make money off of these short-sighted policies.”

“Our food supply is further threatened by our agricultural over-dependence on aquifer water, which is not being replenished, making it an unsustainable source of water.”

“If the aquifers are over-drawn, depleted, or polluted, we hit a hard wall of water scarcity, and we will have no back-ups to address the problem with.”

“The drawdown of the aquifers also causes land subsidence, which causes costly infrastructure and building damage. The general public does not realize the impending crisis that will be caused by the confluence of these factors.”-Berkamin

“If you live in the Netherlands and your house is older than let’s say 100 years and you have not renovated your pluming, chances are fairly high that you can get lead poisoning.”

“It is impossible for water treatment companies to pinpoint where they are and how many, and many building plans do not include the plumbing schematics. So check your pipes for lead, they can do harm, especially to children!”-Wooshmeister55

“There’s a solar event known as a CME, or a Coronal Mass Ejection, it occurs very frequently on a cosmic timescale, every few decades to centuries there’s a decent size one.”

“Why are they scary? A CME is a massive burst of radiation, easily able to fully envelope the earth in its path, and it’s the equivalent of a non-stop EMP barrage.”

“The last time a big one hit earth, was when we had telegraph lines for communications and they spontaneously caught fire.”

“In today’s world, with everything running on electricity, when the next big one hits we’ll have at most a few days warning, and it’d be a literal apocalypse movie scenario.”

“With planes going down due to their whole electrical system frying, nobodies vehicle starting, untold billions in fire damage would wreak havoc everywhere, and the machines we depend on to help would be similarly fried.”

“Soooome stuff would be unaffected, being parked in deep, concrete roofed parking garages and the like, but our entire infrastructure would be useless for years.”

“It’d literally send us into a mini dark age while people tried to get things working again, recovery would take decades to centuries.”-Wimbleston

The truth is, life around us is as fragile as anything else in it.  We have such little control over when we end our brief stay on this planet Earth.

But we might as well enjoy the time we know we have—the present.

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People Break Down The Most Mind-Blowing Facts About Space

Space.

It truly is the final frontier—a place so vast and unknown we haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of truly knowing what awaits us out in the cosmos.

Space also has some things in it that are absolutely mind-blowing.  As space essentially holds the answers to the mysteries we humans seek about our existence, we explore—as much as physically possible in this day and age—even if it is dangerous.

Redditor TheLichB*tch asked some space fanatics:

“What are the most mind-blowing facts about deep space?”

Here are some of those answers.

Asteroid Fat, Pockets Full, I’m Going Shopping

“While NASA catalogs all the asteroids in the asteroid belt, they don’t actually take them into account when firing probes and such through it because it’s so spaced out that there’s a very low chance of them actually hitting the probe.”

“Densely packed asteroid fields where you’d have to dodge and weave through them are pretty much sci-fi.”-Tmaffa

“But there is enough mass there that calculations have to be made to account for small gravity perturbations.”

“I had a professor who had worked on the Voyager project on the team that plotted the trajectories.”

“He was disappointed that Voyager 1 reached Saturn on a path that was off by approximately 600 km from what they expected due to some incomplete information about objects in the asteroid belt. A discrepancy of 0.00000007%, so we forgave him.”-TheGooOnTheFloor

“Astronomer here! One thing I don’t think we discuss enough lately is that sharks are older than Saturn’s rings!”

“Explanation: recent research from the Cassini spacecraft indicate that Saturn’s rings are, in fact, very young- as young as 100 million years old.”

“(We can tell this because years of bombardment from essentially tiny soot particles would make the rings much darker than they currently appear.”

“They definitely weren’t around 4.5 billion years, the age of the Solar System.) Sharks, on the other hand, have been around ~450 million years. Ergo, sharks > Saturn’s rings!”

“As for what caused the rings, it was likely an impact of some sort, and people are now arguing over the various details.”

“Here is a simulation of one of my favorites, which involves a comet hitting a large icy moon. Pretty lucky for us though, because TBH Saturn would appear nowhere near as incredible without the rings!”-Andromeda321

 

Zoom Zoom Zoom

“There’s a large cloud of dust and gas near the centre of the Milky Way called Sagittarius B2.”

“It contains a significant amount of alcohol — non-drinkable forms, but also standard ethanol — and also high levels of a compound called ethyl formate, which is used as a flavouring in raspberry flavoured things.”

“It’s also about 150 light years across, which is pretty damn big. The centre of the galaxy smells like a giant raspberry daiquiri… maybe.”-Portarossa

“Hold up your hands and clap them together. Wait one second, then do it again. If you could plot the distance between the first clap and the second clap, it would be more than 800 kilometers.”

“This is because the Earth is moving around the sun, the sun is moving around the center of the galaxy, the galaxy is moving through the Virgo Supercluster, and the Virgo Supercluster is barreling through the universe.”

“When you add up all the velocities and compare the result to the cosmic microwave background (which is the closest thing we have to a universal frame of reference), it comes out to about 800 kilometers per second.”

“Sit still for an hour, and you’ll travel farther than you’ll ever walk in your life.”-RamsesThePigeon

A Big Ole Nothin’

“The concept of voids has always been mind-bending to me. For those who aren’t familiar – our universe is basically formed of galactic groupings called ‘clusters’ and ‘filaments,’ depending on whether they are groupings or long strands.”

“Voids are the space in between these groupings, and are essentially massive zones of near-total nothingness, with something like ten times fewer particles than even interstellar space. Sh*t’s wild.”-KyleAparthos

“If you snap a piece of metal in half in the vacuum of space it will weld itself back together seamlessly if you rejoin the pieces.”

“The only thing that stops it from happening on Earth is because we have a pesky oxygen rich atmosphere that ruins everything cool. Except fire. Fire is cool.”-Tmaffa

“Space is empty, like, really empty. If you flew a spacecraft from one side of the galaxy to the other, what are the chances you run into something?”

“What is ‘something’? If you go through the galaxy you’re guaranteed to hit molecular gas, dust, and maybe up to pebble-sized objects or something.”

“But if you mean hitting anything planet-sized or bigger, you have a 0% chance (within rounding errors).”

“Put another way, if the entire universe had stars as densely packed as they are in galaxies, you’d still have to travel all the way across the observable universe 6300 times before you’d expect to run into anything planet-sized or bigger by accident.”-Syradil

“To add onto how empty space is. When Andromeda and the Milky way collide, there is almost no chance of there being a collision of planets or stars.”

“It will impact gravity, but on a grand scale, not a scale where any solar system will be affected.”-jaytrade21

Out Of Known Space

“I’ll bungle the details, but that a man made object, Voyager, has left our solar system, has gone billions of Kilometers away and that we are able to receive info from it (via radio waves?)”

“This truly boggles my mind. That we can receive a message from that far away. I think someone pointed out that it’s largely because space is mostly empty.”-Tmaffa

“This image is the result of a 10-day exposure by the Hubble telescope pointed at the darkest point of the night sky, the size of Teddy Roosevelt’s eye on a dime held at arm’s length away from your eye.”

“Every blip of light is another galaxy with hundreds of billions of stars and planets.”-FlamingoJump

“That deep space is so ‘far away’ that if we (humanity) ever tried to go there, by the time we got there, we’d have already been there, colonized it, and possibly gone extinct there.”

“Imagine you’re a pioneer. You’re the first person ever who is about to move from the east coast to the west coast. You set out on a journey that’s going to take 10 years by horse and carriage.”

“(Moving very slowly with a family.) 1 year into the trip cars are invented. And so another family sets out and makes it to California in 1 week. By the time you show up, family B has already been living in California for nearly 9 years.”

“Take that scenario, and apply it to space. I’m blanking on the name of the theory but essentially it says that If we tried to travel anywhere of great distance, technology advances too fast for a faster means of transportation to not be invented before we get there.”

“So someone would always arrive before us.”-habeeb51

It’s probably on most of our bucket lists to get to space at some point in our lifetimes.  With the speed at which technology is advancing, that is absolutely plausible.

And once we can get there en masse, who knows what new facts will emerge.

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People Break Down The Geography Facts That Totally Blow Their Mind

Sure, the world is a fascinating place, but planet Earth itself is just as fascinating on its surface.  The bodies of land and water that cover our mother Earth are as much a character in the story of our lives and the story of humanity as humans themselves.

Also, sometimes looking at a map doesn’t quite convey accurately what those places are LIKE, geographically.

We know in general where they are and what shape their borders take, usually, but do we know some of the cooler things?

Redditor storm1902 asked:

“What geography fact blows your mind?”

Here were some of those answers.

Is Bigger Better?

“Australia is wider than the moon.”-fouryinthehouse

“There are 14 mountains over the height of 8000 metres. All of them are in Asia.”-victoryofsamothrace

“Texas is large enough that I could fit Copenhagen, Brussels, Zagreb, and Warsaw with their real life distances from each other inside the State lines.”

“The Great Lakes contain enough fresh water to flood an area the size of Great Britain in over 100 meters of water.”-whatifevery1wascalm

“Alaska is actually HUGE. It’s larger than Montana, Texas, and California combined. Yet, illustrated on maps as being tiny.”-Maximum_Mountain_446

Far Across The Distance And Spaces Between Us

“The distance between New Zealand and Australia is roughly the same as the distance between The Netherlands and Libya.”

“Came up in this thread comparing chocolate milk around the world.”

“One redditor made the assertion that NZ’s choc milk was probably as bad as Australia’s, because of the proximity of the two countries”-Javanz

“When I worked for FedEx back in the 90’s, one of the reasons why they chose Anchorage as a global hub?”

“Apart from the fact that aircraft use less fuel due to it being cooler, it was that it is one of the only places in the world that is within 10 hours of the three biggest global markets; North America, Europe and Asia!”

“Who would have thought that a place considered in the middle of nowhere is actually the centre of the world.”-Geronimo2U

Is A Geography Oxymoron A Thing? A Geoxymoron?

“Despite Canada being the US’s ‘neighbor to the north,’ the majority of Canadians live south of Seattle.”-Slant_Juicy

“My parents in Canada live closer to me in England than they do to my in-laws in Canada.”-Kurgan1536

“If you took a boat out of Reykjavík and sailed directly south, the first land mass you’d hit would be Antarctica.”-RyzenRaider

“-The Appalachian mountain range formed before the North American continent broke away from Europe, so there’s a little chunk of the Appalachians in France.”

“-Relatively speaking, we live on the skin of an apple. That’s about how thick the Earth’s crust is in proportion to its volume.”

“-The Australian tectonic plate is drifting north at a rapid rate relative to other plates. The whole continent is moving north and slightly clockwise at around 2.7 inches a year, which is fast enough that GPS systems have had to compensate for it to stay accurate.”

“In a few hundred million years, Australia will probably collide with Asia, creating a mountain range even taller than the Himalayas when it does.”

“-It’s also easy to forget how recent some of our research and discoveries are. Though the idea of ‘continental drift’ was first proposed in 1915, the theory of plate tectonics wasn’t really well developed until the 1950s, continuing into the 1970s.”

“And while we currently understand pretty well that an asteroid impact caused most dinosaurs to rapidly go extinct, down to the exact location of the crater and the size of the asteroid and everything, the asteroid-impact theory wasn’t proposed until 1980.”-Taman_Should

“The most southern piece of land of Canada (Middle Island) is further south than the entirety of 13 US States. As well as partially of another 14.”

“Also even though its located in Canada’s territorial waters and always been a part of Canada:”

“Up until 2000 it was privately owned by the owner of an Ohio Car Dealership and was purchased by (edit; a private charity for $867k and donated to) Parks Canada when he died.”-GreyGonzales

The Continents

“Antarctica is the world’s largest desert, since it doesn’t get all that much rainfall. Also, if you put a cherry on top of it, Antarctica is the world’s largest dessert.”-CrabbyBlueberry

“How far north Europe is. I always pictured Europe as roughly parallel to the US, so northern Europe would be the same latitude as Minnesota and southern Europe as Florida.”

“Not even close. The UK is almost entirely north of the lower 48 states and Rome is further north than New York City.”-mordeci00

“In Iceland, you can see where the North American tectonic plate and the Eurasia tectonic plate are moving away from each other.”

“Another place that is similar, but not as intense, is Point Reyes National Seashore in California. It is separated by the San Andreas Fault, where the North American and Pacific plates come together.”-[username deleted]

“The earth is remarkably smooth.”

“Everest at 8.85km above sea level compared to the Marianas trench at -11kms. A net difference of 19.85kms on a sphere 12,742kms. 0.156% of the planets circumference contains all terrain heights.”

“The surface of a cue ball (2.25in), has a tolerance for surface finish allowing pits or grooves to be up to 0.005in. 0.222% of its circumference.”

“Earth is smoother than a cue ball, even if you put Everest next to the Marianas trench or dug the trench another 9km deeper, it would still be within scaled cue ball tolerance for smoothness.”-Jtothe3rd

торопить ее? Я почти не знаю ее

“Russia’s western most border and city in Europe is farther west than Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Romania, and Bulgaria. The city is also farther west than Warsaw, Poland.”

“Not really mind blowing per se, but people forget about Kaliningrad Oblast, lol. For all the ‘Finland/Bielefeld doesn’t exist’ jokes, I’m surprised no one ever tried it with Kaliningrad given the weirdness of the Oblast.”

“Kaliningrad is closer to Berlin than Gusev is to Pskov or Smolensk.”-Legion213

“Even though on the maps, and how people describe Russia, it seems like a really, really big country. In reality, it’s less than twice the size of the U.S. (It’s still a large country, I just over-estimate it).”

“Also: The largest country (Russia) is over 38.8 MILLION times larger than the smallest country in area (Vatican City).”-Pingu277

“Astronomer here- also, Russia has more surface area than Pluto!”-Andromeda321

“I was always told growing up that Russia and Alaska are only 2 miles apart from each other at their closest point.”

“They are, but not the mainlands. The Diomede Islands are 2 islands, 1 owned by each country, and only about 2 miles apart.”

“The mainlands are closer to like 50 miles apart, which is still closer than most people might realize.”-whatifevery1wascalm

Like we said, looking at a map doesn’t tell the entire story.

Some parts of Alaska are closer to Russia than New York City is to Washington DC or Boston.

Australia and Asia will one day collide.

No matter what field you choose to inspect when it comes to our mother Earth, gold and fascinating subject matter await you at every turn.

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People Divulge The Most Surprising Computer Skills That People Still Don’t Know How To Do

It seems like the younger generation is often the generation in charge of having basic computer skills and walking our older counterparts through how to use them.

Teaching them how to save something as a pdf, or how to install a firewall and how not to download creepy solitaire game from third party websites takes up a lot of our time..

Eventually, though, you expect they will pick up some skills of their own.  When they don’t, it can be incredibly frustrating to go through what you consider a simple process again and again and again.

So when Redditor anushitech polled Reddit:

“What is one computer skill that you are surprised many people don’t know how to do?”

People saw it as an opportunity to vent.  And vent they did.

Cyberspace: The Final Frontier

“I remember my aunt wondering why her document wasn’t in the My Documents folder on our family computer.”

“She had saved it in her own My Documents folder on her own computer the next town over and apparently assumed there was only one Windows 98 communal My Documents folder in existence.”-b*ttboy3

“I taught a computer course several years ago.”

“I remember the biggest thing for most completely-new computer users was not looking at their hand while moving the mouse, and being terrified of breaking the computer by accidentally closing a window or something.”

“Oh, and knowing whether they should single click or double click – this was a major preoccupation for some.”-timmyrey

“I teach web design at the college level. Used to teach community weekend workshops. Html and css with some expected knowledge of computer basics.”

“Local workforce development group would enroll people to update their skills, but would never actually check for prior knowledge. Had to teach how to hold a mouse, that right-click meant use the right mouse button.”

“Had to teach how to open and save files. That the web was not loaded onto a computer and that you needed to connect to the internet first.”

“Not a lot of actual html taught some weekends, which was a shame for those who really wanted to learn. Waste of time for everyone.”

“I started sharing curated resources for web design. started pointing people to a basic into to computer class that should be taken before mine.”

“Kept making requests to have someone vet the students before putting them in my class.”

“Finally gave up when i had a student who wanted to use her ancient flip-phone so she could take work with her.”

“No internet on the thing so made her user a school computer. She got pissy when something wasn’t working.”

“Turns out she was trying to go online with Windows calculator. No idea how she even got there. She eventually went ballistic when the code she typed in her email wouldn’t work (again, wanted to save the work to take with her).”

“I have almost eternal patience, but couldn’t take an irate woman screaming in my face because aol email won’t work for writing code.”

“The class was supportive and I patiently let her leave early. I decided teaching those weekend workshops weren’t worth it after that.”-mister-chad-rules

Going The Long Way

“I once had a guy send me a picture of his desktop. I asked for screenshot of his screen as it was generally easier then asking for the IP address which our company puts on the desktop.”

“Guy couldnt figure out how to screenshot his desktop wallpaper but figured out how to take a photo with his phone and attach it to an email.”-pixxie84

“Working in phone customer support, the number of times I’ve had an old person do a Google search for a web address instead of going to the url has made me realize most middle aged and elderly have no idea what a browser or address bar are.”

“‘Type “site url” into the address bar,’ I say. ‘I did! The page isn’t here!’ they say.”

“9 times out of 10 they were just on a Google page and I lost a week of life expectancy.”-taburde

“I’ve tried to incorporate spreadsheet skills into the chemistry labs I teach, and at the intro level some of them are REALLY uncomfortable using it for repeated calculations, and instead want to just work it all out one by one.”

“Some of these students are the same ones who complain that I give way too much work…”

“That’s not to say I’m not still learning new functions in Excel (just learned about sumifs and countifs recently, which def simplifies my gradebook calculations), but I really feel like everyone should have a grasp of the super basic stuff and have a concept of what a spreadsheet can be used for.”-caffeinated_tea

There Are More Ways To Do One Thing

“I was training a new 22 y/o coworker and noticed a lot of her typing mistakes involved both the first and second letter of a sentence being capitalized.”

“I inquired about it and her response was ‘sometimes i don’t turn caps lock off fast enough’… i was puzzled but kept it cool…”

“I decided to watch her type a little later on and sure enough she would hit caps lock every time she needed a upper case letter followed by turning caps lock back off…”

“When I told her what the shift key did she was genuinely ‘mind blown.’ She had just graduated college.”-Satanic_Nightjar

“People are generally pretty computer illiterate. I’m not a tech guy whatsoever but a basic understanding of shit will save you so much time.”

“I used to work at a Planet Fitness and good god do the managers need basic training in computer skills.”

“I was treated like a god for knowing how CTRL+F worked and having a basic understanding of Snipping Tool for printing out QR codes.”

“They used to really push us to sell Gym Essential Kits and when writing reports on how much they sold they would bring up the report and count one by one.”

“I was a front desk guy and had to show my regional training manager that if you just press Control + F and type in an individual employee’s name, however many times it came up minus 1 (it showed the employee’s name one extra time) was how many they’d sold.”

“This saved us hours over the course of a week. In typical manager fashion, he went ahead and took credit for this and promoted his real-life friend who was bad at their job.”

“F**k that place. I’ve never seen a company with that much incompetence at a manager-wide level.”-PrecariousAchiuwa

“As a teacher, I’ve been saying this for years. Kids and teens these days aren’t as tech savvy as they claim to be, or rather we claim them to be.”

“They grew up in a world populated by apps, very user-friendly apps.”

“90% of apps have the same structure- the lines or dots to indicate the menu, same style controls or swipe methods, etc..”

“They know which apps to find and can navigate them very efficiently; however, ask them to do intermediate level tasks on a desktop or even successfully using their browsers when researching and they struggle quite a bit.”

“Things I learned in tech/computer class in the early 2000s is not really taught anymore.”

“Instead, it’s heavily focused on programming and apps, and while very cool and likely a marketable skill, they seems to skipped basic functions and tools.”-ElZarigueya

“Google how to fix their problem. Apparently I have some superpower where I see the error code or know the name of the software and a brief description of the problem and get helpful google results with little effort.”

“Everyone else seems to just say ‘I don’t know how to find that…’ and then treat me like some kind of mystical wizard afterwards.”-anon_e_mous9669

The little tips disclosed here about computer use could really save you time and work one day if you didn’t already know them, so it might be a good idea to break out that notebook and write some of these down.

At the very least, we can all avoid becoming another story on AskReddit.

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People Describe The Stupidest Financial Decision They’ve Ever Made

Learning how to use and save money isn’t a natural born instinct.  It’s a skill that comes with a lot of time and a lot of budgeting.

It also comes with a lot of mistakes, as the only way to make sure someone learns is to make sure they mess up all the time.

Unfortunately messing up with money can have serious long term consequences.  Having something on your credit report that brings down the score will stay there for years—seven whole years in the United States.

And since we don’t learn how to budget when we are young, how are we supposed to not make crazy mistakes that follow us around our whole lives?

Redditor viKiKing0 asked:

“What was the stupidest financial decision you ever made?”

Here were some of those answers.

Milestones Don’t Matter

“My now wife and I were renting a terrace house for $50 a week. The landlord who was a very strange cat offered to sell us the house if we paid the weekly rent for 10 years.”

“Rent per year was about $2600 so for $26000 we would have owned a house. We were 20 years old and ten years was forever so we said no . That was my BIG mistake.”

“To people who have asked : The house was in Tasmania. About 40 years ago. At that stage I was earning about $250 per week.”

“It was double story ,2 bedroom terrace house. We bought a house about 6 years later for about $75000. We knew the landlord, he was divesting a lot of properties he owned.”-1999falcon

“Was a 10-99 day trader out of college. Didn’t pay taxes for a year or two. Making peanuts, IRS won’t notice, right?”

“The penalties were more than the original amount owed. Had to put $6,500 on a credit card (bad choice #2). Sent me on a 20 year whirlwind of credit card crappiness. Should have paid my taxes.”

“Should have set up a payment plan with the IRS.”-LurkersGoneLurk

“I got my B.S. in criminal justice. Applied for quite a few jobs, tested in and interviewed for several, but never got them.”

“My dream job was to be a coroner investigator, but I totally flubbed the interview.”

“I ended up going back to school for 3 semesters and got a second A.A./certificate in Paralegal Studies, got a job within a month of graduating.”

“I somewhat regret my CJ degree, but having a Bachelors really helps with other job prospects, so it all worked out in the end.”

“Find something related to the field that you might enjoy if finding work in the field doesn’t work out.”-callhersavage

When Stress Lies To You

“Last year at the start of the pandemic I got a great job as a video game developer working on one of the most successful VR titles.”

“After a few weeks the imposter syndrome was getting worse and worse and eventually I just…quit, I couldn’t take the stress it was causing me and I explained I’d need some time.”

“I never went back to it, never communicated, just returned to a state of depression.”

“Now I’m sat at work on a hot Sunday afternoon back in my call centre job, worrying about how I’ll get to the end of the month with the money left in the bank.”-MrSpindles

“Columbia warehouse records and tapes. I was 15….didn’t read the fine print stating i agreed to purchase at least one tape or record EVERY month for a year.”

“I got my 13 cassettes for a penny…and bought maybe one or two more cassettes as the year went on then forgot about it.”

“Cut to a year later i owed the difference of $86 for the cassettes i didnt buy. They hounded me for 10 yrs…one day when i came back from working offshore i had a few grand and was like ‘fuck it..u win’…i sent them a check for $86.”

“I like to think my account went through multiple hands through the years within the biz and once i eventually paid, the person got a promotion and a celebration was had for FINALLY getting this dude to pay up.”-ImInArea52

“My ex and I moved in together. Paid half each for deposits and all the bills etc. I took out a 4k loan in my name and bought furniture with it, I also bought us a 1.5k bed on finance.”

“My mistake was not getting it in writing that as I was paying the loans anything purchased with that would be mine.”

“I walked away with an £800 telly and nothing else and was still paying the loan off for 1.5 years after I moved out. In the future I will be keeping receipts and written agreements!”-spitroastyomum

Getting Screwed By An Ex, An Ex-Family Or An Ex-Hobby

“When I split with my ex husband, we came to our own agreement – I gave him the house (my share was about $100k) and he wouldn’t ask for child support (even though we had 50/50 care, I’d still have to pay him as I earned more).”

“I thought it would be less disruption for our kids if they could stay in their home half the time, and I’d be able to save for my own home deposit over the coming years.”

“We agreed the house would eventually go to the kids anyway. Despite the split, I had complete trust in him sticking to the deal.”

“4 months after the house was in his name, he moved in with his new girlfriend, sold the house and took me to court for child support saying there was no agreement.”

“The court believed him and I had to pay him another $80k over the next 5 years. It’s the worst decision I’ve ever made in my life, and I’m still suffering for it.”-idontwannabeflawless

“I wound up with a good $5k in credit card debt because “family”. Cut off most of my family 4 years ago, and it took another 3 years to pay off the debt.”

“My credit is still only decent because of how often I’d skip paying the bills because my family needed money again. I kept being told it would all get paid back, and they would pay off the credit cards.”

“Shockingly – they never did. Told me since I was cutting them off, I didn’t deserve it.”

“It’s RIDICULOUSLY hard to recover your credit once the debt is paid off because now you have nothing to pay to prove you can pay it, but no one will lend to you, because your history shows you can’t pay it. Capitalism ftw.”

“Sometimes I wonder how my family would react now if they knew how much more money I make now than I did back then, and they can’t get their grubby little hands on any of it.”-Emmyisme

“Last year around this time a buddy and inwere discussing AMC stock..it was like $1.98 or so…i told him ‘dude..im looking at the amc stock..when covid is over by next summer its going to pop..might go to $10 a share..we can make a quick buck.’”

“I was going to put $20,000 in it on margin….we discussed this for the next two months a few times a week…its gonna pop..its gonna pop….THEN the news started hitting around november of movie chains going bankrupt..out of biz for ever.”

“Streaming new movies is the new way of life…movie companies releasing movies same day as theater and in some cases ONLY on streaming…etc..etc…it was relentless news on how theaters are done for good…….so i didnt buy it.”

“Yes..im a dumb a**….but i believed streaming new movies was taking off big time and amc was on the verge of collapse based on all the news and chaos.”-ImInArea52

“I met a woman online, went to see her for a week, then decided to move across the country to be with her.”

“To afford this move, I sold all of my Magic: The Gathering cards which were older than Mercadian Masques for $3000.”

“These included a full set of dual lands (about an even split of Revised and Unlimited), some Arabian Nights stuff, and Mana Drains and about ten Force of Will.”

“She met someone else while I was figuring out to how move, and informed me when she met me at the airport.”

“About 10 months later, I used my last dime on gas as I packed my stuff into my car and drove across the country to move back in with my father at age 24.”-bp_516

Everybody makes major money mistakes.  Financial independence and stability is not something anybody comes by naturally, if they’re not from a wealthy family.

Perhaps it’s time to be a little bit more forgiving of our own transgressions.

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People Break Down Factoids That Almost Feel Illegal To Know

The world is a place absolutely saturated with information.  Facts and knowledge surround each and every surface of your day-to-day life.

You need to know what temperature to cook your chicken.  You need to know how to get from your house to the post office.

You know so many things, and you don’t even know how many you know.

But then there are some things you are acutely aware of knowing—because you feel like you shouldn’t know them.  These are facts you found out by complete accident or by complete necessity and there’s almost no in‐between.

The only reason you know these kinds of facts is because they somehow snuck their way into your life.

So, when Redditor poisionivey3 asked:

“What’s a piece of information you know that feels illegal to know?”

Here were some of those little factoids that freaked people out.

Security Is A Joke

“Most conventional locks, like door locks from the hardware store or padlocks, are a joke. Hell you can take your house key and go door to door and eventually find aanother door that it’ll open.”

“What they’re counting on is that most people aren’t going to make the effort to acquire or make lock picking tools, then learn how to use them.”-frightenedhugger

“Really (before 1997/98 or so) old microsoft product keys relied on a REALLY simple validity check.”

“They were numbers in the form XXXX-YYYYYYY. The first 4 digits were specific to the software (I think Office 97 was 0402?) and fixed.”

“The last 7 .. the check was just that the sum of all digits has to be able to be divided by 7 without rest.”

“So 1111111 worked all the time. 1234567 worked all the time, 7777777 did.”-cerker

“If your local Walmart is closed overnight but there are employees working there, the doors probably aren’t locked and the self check registers are on.”

“There’s actually nothing keeping you from going in there, picking up a few items, using self checkout and walking out.”

“I work at Walmart overnight and this guy did that a couple nights ago. He didn’t speak English and when a manager noticed him they actually just escorted him to grab his items, check out and go.”-lenniemane

“A lot of military contract fleet vehicles use the same key for the entire fleet. Lowest bidders and all. And even then a lot of them are just keys to the door.”

“The actual ignition switch is just a knob on the dash.”

“Same vain fords crown victoria police interceptor variants all use the same key. It’s not even restricted you can buy them online.”-SkyAdministrative970

Stupid Life Hacks

“Back in the day, we used to go to this very popular night club, where people started lining up at 6pm. Met a guy inside partying one night wearing an orange construction vest.”

“He said he bypassed the entire line and they let him right in the door, because he was wearing that vest and carrying a clipboard. He told the bouncers he was the Fire Marshal.”-Rubyshooz

“A school trip in a downtown metro area for geography had us carrying clipboards around to mark off points on a map.”

“When we decided to eat, we found an Asian food restaurant. Walking in to this particular restaurant with a clipboard set them into panic mode.”

“So, we played along and went to inspect the kitchen, ran out fingers under the counter and made a few fake notes.”

“After a few minutes, my friend and I agreed they passed the inspection and we left the restaurant and found somewhere else to eat.”-Silken-red

“Car website company I used to work for (around 15 years ago) sold themselves as being the safest place to buy new and used cars”.

“Claiming they would check every car added to their website to make sure it wasn’t stolen or previously totalled.”

“Only problem is that they only carry out these tests every few months and the sales team actively inform their car dealership clients when this will happen, so they have the opportunity to take any stolen cars off the site first.”-CptBloodyObvious

Do Not Ingest

“There are plenty of toxic plants around, whether cultivated or wild. Poison hemlock, which is an invasive that grows in huge patches, is deadly if you consume just a few leaves.”

“Nightshades are pretty common as well, though the toxicity of different species varies greatly. Spurges, which are pretty common and inconspicious garden weeds, have sap that is severely irritating to the eyes, and can even potentially be blinding. Isn’t nature wonderful?”-AggravatingCrow

“That restaurants often do really disgusting things and have disgusting issues.”

“I used to waitress and then later manage a pizza place — mosquitos in the drain, nests of mice, stink bug infestations…”

“…Flies feasting on food that falls behind the appliances that isn’t cleaned up frequently like it’s supposed to be, mold in the soda machine, expired ingredients still being used, etc.”

“It’s just.. a lot. I was very, very surprised. I knew that most restaurants naturally deal with these things from time to time, but I didn’t expect it to be this often.”

“I also didn’t expect for management to be so nonchalant about going against inspections and regulations.”

“Other restaurants that friends of mine have managed/otherwise worked at have also had similar issues and it’s pretty wild.”

“I’ve never eaten at the restaurant that I worked at since quitting. I wouldn’t trust it.”-lemonlady7

The Sad Truth Of Our Daily Lives

“For any single instance of crime, the chance of getting caught and punished is exceedingly low.”

“It’s dependent on the crime, and easily influenced via various precautions like planning and proper target acquisition.”

“Only 40% of murders are solved and the majority of those which are are fairly obvious. 15% for assault and 10% for rape and sexual abuse.”

“Most of the folks caught for violent or sex crimes are committing crimes of passion (when emotions overwhelm all else) often involving family members (especially common for child abuse) so put little thought into concealing it, hence, they get caught.”

“The number one serial killer alive today has a high score of 300+ and is still at large. He targets prostitutes and the homeless and other folks that nobody important gives a fuck about.”

“For property crimes you have to be either stupid or frequent. closure rates for these are like 4% for mugging and 2% for burglary, and like 0.1% for white collar crimes like wage theft. The best crook in this game is your boss.”

“Drug crimes are like 0.01% if you count each individual instance. Half of you folks reading this comment have committed one.”

“Basically, corporate crime is easy and everyone does it, property crime is more difficult and less worth the effort, violent crime is especially bad risk-reward, and drug crime is just an excuse to violence brown people.”

“Basically, criminal justice is an oxymoron. It’s all a game of luck.”-Reagalan

“Area 51 soldiers have special orders compared to other military bases.”

“If were to drive your car or truck a hair to close to the limits of property, soldiers will detain you and they actually can shoot you right then and there if they decide you’re a threat.”

“Normally other soldiers would just let other authorities like the higher ups handle trespassers but Area 51 soldiers have the right to kill someone if they feel like it.”-KrookedCell

It’s a privilege to live and to know.

We as humans are afforded that privilege so readily we even sometimes wish we didn’t have it.

Learning can be a blessing or a curse.

Choose wisely which things you truly want to know the truth about because what is known can’t be unknown.

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People Who’ve Taken A DNA Test Share The Biggest Family Secrets They’ve Uncovered

The human story is an impossibly long and yet relatively short period of history.  And most humans are met with an insatiable desire to figure out their purpose in life—something sometimes their past can shed a light on.

In our infinite curiosity, we’ve updated technology to the point we can now trace our very own DNA back generations and find members of our extended family from all around the world.

However, digging up our genealogy can unearth some secrets we may have never wanted to hear.

So, when Redditor VideoFork asked:

“People who have taken an ancestry DNA test and accidentally uncovered a family secret, what was it?”

People shared their stories from inception to thrilling conclusion.

Deceptive Parents

“Not my story, but someone very close to me discovered that none of the ethnic background that they were expecting was present in the results.”

“This person, whose father was deceased at the time, questioned their mother. The mother admitted that the person’s father was not biological as they believed their entire life (they were older than 40).”

“The mother gave the name of the biological father. My friend then found the biological father, contacted him, and then discovered that they had several 1/2 siblings.”

“The biological father was unaware he had another child and accepted my friend into his family as did the siblings.”-galtsgulch232

“My bio-dad left his family and two daughters in Washington and married my mom in Los Angeles 5 weeks later.”

“I found his first marriage certificate but nothing about a divorce. I’m pretty sure he was a bigamist.”-khegiobridge

“I have an uncle that was put up for adoption. He contacted my grandma and she thought he was going to extort her (they’re well off). Turns out he’s a multi, multi millionaire on his own.”

“They still have limited contact, though my dad has reached out and formed a relationship.”

“Apparently they look exactly alike and have the same personality (which sounds kind of stupid now that I’m writing it out, but they’re only half-siblings).”-RolandDPlaneswalker

New And Nearby

“I exported my raw DNA from 23andme and threw it through promethease to find out why I have porphyria, which is supposed to be hereditary.”

“My mom and dad are definitely my mom and dad, but neither of them have this, which means it was environmental exposure that caused it.”

“Discovered a rare AMPD enzyme deficiency in mom, found out dad carried a recessive LUPUS gene and gave it to my sister. DNA is WILD.”-djspacebunny

“A woman over in Chicago decided to find out who her real parents were. She was getting close to 60 and realized that there may not be much time left to find her father.”

“So through the magic of ancestry she was matched to my grandfather.”

“She reached out to him and told him who her mother was. He didn’t recognize the name but dug up his little black book and lo and behold…there she was.”

“So now I’ve got a new aunt!”-dazeyd

“My male cousin did one and found a female cousin we did not know about. He reached out to her and apparently our deceased uncle was good friends with her mother.”

“Mom wanted a baby so uncle got her pregnant simply as a sperm donor.”

“Female cousin lived a few blocks away from my grandmother. She had met her a few times going around selling Girl Scout cookies or something.”

“My grandmother had no idea that she was buying cookies from her granddaughter.”-OrangeTree81

A New Extension Of Family

“Not me, but a friend never knew who his father was (mom had a weekend fling in college and never contacted the guy after) and his wife helped him use ancestry.com to try and track him down.”

“My friend reached out and the guy was obviously surprised, but flew across the country to meet him.”

“They have a great relationship now, the dad attended his wedding, and they try to get their families together a couple times a year or so.”-djsquidnasty

“A full 100% older brother. My mother got pregnant by my father before the were married. Scandalous in 1960.”

“So, with my father’s knowledge of the situation, mom left town, and lived with my aunt until the birth. Mom gave the baby up for adoption, and then returned home.”

“A couple years later, she married my dad and had three more children together, including me.”

“Fifty five years later, after both my parents had died, my aunt let it slip that me and my siblings that were not the only children of our parents.”

“To paraphrase from Star Wars, there is another. My sister took a DNA test, and a couple of year later she got a hit. Soon thereafter, we met our new big brother and his family (wife, kids) and have become quite close.”-Freeagnt

“My great gran (who I knew) was an orphaned live in servant in Greenock, Scotland in 1900, got pregnant by her employer, kicked out, ended up in the poorhouse where she abandoned the baby.”

“DNA turned up the granddaughter of the baby. Met her in Glasgow a couple of years ago. She turned up as a cousin via DNA.”-TheRealMommaG

A Life-Changing Secret

“So, I did the health DNA one 18 months ago because I wanted to see if I had the breast cancer gene, as there is several incidences on both sides of my family.”

“Got my results and became very confused, it claimed I had no Italian despite my father’s grandma literally coming over from Sicily in 1920. It took me a few minutes to realize what that actually meant.”

“My parents have been together since my mother was 14, I was born when she was 17, and my father joined the military and married my mother.”

“Called my mom and she literally said ‘that’s interesting.’ Then she asked me not to talk to my father and she would explain everything the next time I visited. She did not, and just refused i talk about it.”

“Honestly, I was just shook. I did not see it coming and it was never even presented to be a possibility to me. My sister ended up doing a DNA test and it showed that we were half siblings.”

“I went no contact with my mother 4 months ago, due to this incident and several others. I haven’t told my dad but I realize at some point the truth is going to come out, my sister matched with some of my fathers relatives while I did not so if anyone checks that sh*t, they’re gonna be asking questions.”-sunshineykris

“That my grandmother was biracial. She was abandoned shortly after birth at a church by an older white lady, adopted by a white farmer with 11 kids, stopped talking to most of that family due to nondescript unpleasantness as an older teen.”

“She died 20 years before I was born and looks like Maya Rudolph in the few photos I’ve seen but insisted she was part-Sicilian.”

“My father and his brother both look more white than not; my father worshipped the ground she walked on and never questioned her ancestry.”

“My uncle was always pretty sure she was Black and argued with her a lot (both dad and uncle ended up being super active in the civil rights movement and still are devoted to antiracism work nearly 60 years on, which largely stemmed from these discussions growing up).”

“Anyway, my mom (divorced from my dad) got me a DNA test a few years ago. My grandmother was definitely half-Black, I have no Sicilian or Italian DNA.”

“I’ve connected with a few Black distant cousins over email and zoom, am waiting for the pandemic to mostly end to talk to my dad about it and introduce him to more family.”-ReddishWedding2018

“Not me, but a friend. My friend (34F[emale]) decided to get her twin sister and parents a DNA testing kit for Christmas.”

“When her parents opened the gift they looked at each other and said ‘Oh…thanks.’ They quickly tried to move on to other presents. My friend was slightly confused, but dropped it.”

“Later they went for their Christmas Day walk. The mom and sister were walking ahead while she walked with her dad. Her dad spilled the beans! Her and her sister were adopted.”

“The mother looked back and started crying – she couldn’t believe her husband told her daughter without them talking about it first. They were going to keep it a secret forever.”

“She had never suspected she or her sister were adopted because they look a lot like their parents. They are also very short, as are their parents. Whoops!”-hyggelady

With new technology comes great opportunities.  However, this is a clear case of “be careful what you wish for.”

Not everyone finds out that their whole life is a lie, but still-an opportunity to trace your heritage is not something to take lightly.

Be prepared for it if you decide to do so.