Things that are actually pretty weird when you think about them?

Time does not exist unless you measure it with a clock? Do other animals experience time?

queenofknives i remember hearing that about time in the sixth form over 30 years ago and I've never really understood it

Swearing, who decided whether a word was slang or a swear word, who decided the ‘C word’ was the worst?

Size of the universe. The solar system with our bog standard sun at the centre is already way too vast for a human being to imagine but if we made the Milky Way the size of the United States, the solar system would just be the size of a pea. And the Milky Way is just one galaxy among a trillion. You are very, very small on the universal scale.

Eckhart I agree. We are designed to live in lean times and sometimes very lean times. That is why we store fat but we are designed to use that fat when there's nothing to eat so fasting is normal for our bodies. We wouldn't eat grains or seeds and both of these have compounds designed to stop them being eaten. 90% of what we eat is probably harming us. We would eat shoots, nuts, leaves and bugs with the odd root and meat if we can get it and likely go days between meals sometimes. The whole three squares a day is bollocks.

Disgusting alert**
I think not cleaning your teeth properly is weird
A dentist I used to know would get a Jacob's cream cracker, scrape plaque from a patient's mouth then spread it on the cracker.
Then he would dare the patient to eat the cracker. They always refused- 🤮
His point being that was in your mouth already.

Time is completely weird. There is no past, present or future - everything is happening at the same time. But our bodies create this narrative of moving through time. It's just this made up thing but at the same time it is completely real. Blows my mind.

I find the alphabet mind blowing. 26 shapes that can convey masses of information, stories, news and all the other billions of things that are written down/typed.

@ShizeItsWeegie

I also think it's weird how so many diets and so much advice tells us to drink eight glasses of water ever day etc. when this cannot possibly be good advice

Yes! Also, the way we're told to eat healthily these days can't possibly be healthy in an evolutionary sense, because the balance of nutrients is based on availabilities facilitated by (relatively) new technologies.

And 3 meals a day/getting your 5 a day are meaningless too, in terms of our biological needs, and yet so many accept them as 'fact'!

Even Albert Einstein accepted that there must be a God, but that he was nebulous, universal and not comprehensible to the human mind.

The fact one day I will be gone forever. I go hot and panic when I think about it.

The fact that in not much more than 50 years’ time, my entire life will have disappeared and nobody will even think about or talk about me, except a rare passing mention by my great (great?) grandchildren.

Pets again. The fact that our relationship with pets is on our terms and ultimately for our benefit. Sure, people love their pets but if they really cared about animals, they would want them to live like animals (not humans), surely? This x1000 for pets that need to be kept in cages

The Universe.

It would take over 46 billion light-years to cross the observable universe (that's very big) and it's over 13 billion years old (that's very old).

... and what's at its edge? Apparently it is infinite in every direction. How does that work?

The only concept I have of infinity is waiting in a queue for someone at a call centre to answer me.

Hymens. Why don’t men have something to ‘lose’ when they first have sex too? I’m aware that it can be lost in ways other than sex and isn’t a conclusive proof of virginity but I do wonder why it became such symbol of repression. Who came up with the idea of keeping women virgins until they were married but allowing men to shag about? I’m guessing a man but which one?!

I often wonder if the side saddle was invented due to someone’s tearing whilst riding astride and causing such a scandal that it became taboo. I’ve been reading up on the Regency period so I’ve got a head full of questions on these kind of things but can’t seem to find any answers when I attempt to look for them. 😳

Two things:

Skiing. Who decided that strapping bits of metal on your feet and pushing yourself down a mountain at high speed was a good idea? Then, when you get to the bottom a lift thingy takes you back to the top to repeat the process. And you do this for at least a week? And pay through the nose for the privilege?

Religion (again). Tbh this thought led me to atheism. The God I was brought up with, the Christian one, is similar to the Jewish one, but the Jewish one only follows the OT and there is no heaven. The bible has the OT and NT and it's a book, so it cannot be disputed, but the interpretation has led to different types of Christianity. Then, there is the Quran which is also a book but again there is more than one interpretation. And then there is Hinduism with not just one god but hundreds, and Sikhism, and Buddhism....so who is right? Or are all religions false? No-one can know, really, can they? But representatives of all religionslike a good war, don't they? And whilst religion was a way of explaining the world why did some of them restrict normal human behaviour like sex and homosexuality? Where is religion's place now we have rational explanation for many phenomena? Why do so many highly educated scientists still follow a religion? It blows my mind.

I can never understand how I can be lying on the sofa, can just touch the screen a couple of times, and within seconds an entire book of 100,000 words will fly through the ether into my Kindle for me to read.

remember when my friends daughter was young she could not get her head round the fact that her gran was her mums mum

I was the same. I remember having a stand off with my mum about something when I was about 4 and saying “I’ll tell my Gran on you” and her saying she would tell her mum and not believing her mum was my Gran

I also think it's weird how so many diets and so much advice tells us to drink eight glasses of water ever day etc. when this cannot possibly be good advice.
We are designed with thirst for a reason. No animal overdrinks like this and it is counterintuitive. People that drink when not thirsty must be washing all their electrolytes and minerals out of themselves and making their kidneys and other organs work far harder than necessary. I have a theory that because a lot of people drink all the time when not actually thirsty because someone offers us a cup of tea or coffee or we go for a pint or three for example, we are in fact harming our bodies. I suspect a lot of illness is caused by us endlessly drinking when we would not if we lived as we are designed to live.
As a result of these thoughts in the middle of the night a few months ago, I have cut down the amount of fluids I take in and I believe I feel better for it. Our bladders are designed to take overflow when the body has taken what it needs, not to be full constantly and emptied every hour and a half. Just my two pen'orth.

Ive lived in Denmark for 13 years and something that really strikes me as weird about the Uk is uniforms. Its not that your children dont look adorable but the concept is fucking ridiculous. But it always seemed perfectly normal until september 2020 and I saw lots of photos on fb and thought wtf.

I have cadaver bone in my jaw. Part of my jaw used to be inside someone else. Freaky.

Maple syrup. Who had the idea to drill a hole in a tree, collect the sap, boil it down, and put it on pancakes? Crazy.

Oh and the perfect size of humans. Fire is a certain size as in the flames. If we were any smaller we'd have had trouble containing and taming them and civilisation would probably not have advanced as it has.