Please or to access all these features

Mumsnet classics

Relive the funniest, most unforgettable threads. For a daily dose of Mumsnet’s best bits, sign up for Mumsnet's daily newsletter.

See all MNHQ comments on this thread

Things that are utterly bloody fascinating

784 replies

ElizabethBest · 06/03/2023 14:24

Let's hear it please - I love a good wikipedia rabbit hole. I'll start - The Willard Suitcases. Over 400 suitcases of possessions were found in an attic at the Willard Insane Asylum belong to patients who had died whilst inpatients so never left. The New York State Museum started a project to document the cases and their contents, and you can learn all about it and see the cases on their website.

OP posts:
Thread gallery
15
Sweetpea1532 · 17/03/2023 22:41

@SinnerBoy please do make sure your cellphone is charged so in case you go missing in Oz, you'll be able to be located..of course the WAG gang and The Happy Cafe group will all be out searching for you until you are safely back!

PhillySub · 17/03/2023 22:08

youngestisapsycho · 07/03/2023 08:17

Spider webs… I once sat in the garden for 5 hours watching one being made 🕸️🕸️

Robert The Bruce?

Riverlee · 17/03/2023 21:22

OhFFSMum · 17/03/2023 09:33

Everyone I tell about this thinks I'm strange lol. But sometimes if I'm reading an article, or looking at social media and someone mentions a town or place somewhere in the world (some random town in America, or an old colleague who I follow posts her runs in Oz where she lives now) I search the place on Google Earth and go on little virtual tours, looking at the roads, what the houses / shops / schools are like there... places I'll never actually visit but by the medium of technology I can explore. I find it fascinating lol

I do that as well.

Peverellshire · 17/03/2023 15:48

@CriticalAlert interesting! A prototype or ‘abandoned game’ does/might make sense…

I was reading about the recent ‘planet’ discoveries on the edge of the universe..furthest we’ve ever seen with the new telescope thingy? And they are the ‘wrong size’ or something? Anomalous with what ‘is known’?

I even read that the garden of Eden/Adam & Eve, ‘apple’ is actually a ref in reality to ‘Apple’ tech! :) Some sort of allegorical pun/joke?’l!

CriticalAlert · 17/03/2023 15:31

Peverellshire · 17/03/2023 15:01

It’s fascinating & the whole concept of Plato’s cave etc an early description of just this? Because the fact we exist at all is bonkers/incredible this ‘SIM’ concept makes sense to me. Or is just humans can’t understand eternity?

Are we an ancestor simulation? Is the ‘game’ to see how long it takes us to figure it out? Destroy ourselves? Colonise space? Are we one of many simulations? Each with a slightly different ‘input’?

Even more bizarre is the idea this reality is ‘heaven’, ‘God’ is an alien & that each person you meet & who is on earth is, in fact, ‘you’?

Are some of us avatars and some ‘main characters’?

Ah ha! Then Plato was an avatar for coming up with that thinking! His Cave is an extraordinary philosophical concept, that what we see is not reality, but merely the shadows of it.....? Then when we leave the Cave....oooer, goes pear shaped! Thinking about it the SIM idea does make some sense in my little brain, but then it still begs the question, what/who put us here in the first place?? What put them there? Other avatars could be the true genius mega heads like Newton (I mean how did he formulate the concept of gravity ?? calculus???), Einstein. Greek philosophers, even Picasso. These people were way, way above the plebs. Funny thing I read about Newton was that he used to stick needles in his eyes to 'study the function of light' passing through them. Had to bandage his eyes because he nearly blinded himself! Now that's not too clever.

Another thing is that the moon is at exactly the right position for us to witness a perfect solar eclipse. Is that a coincidence, or has it been put there.....so we can start to question outer space?

Black holes do my head in as well. I mean wtf are they all about? They're dotted about the place just sucking all and everything into a particle of infinite density....er why?? What is that doing to gravity across the universe? Perhaps it's just some gigantic act of equilibrium to keep gravity in check?

But if the SIM controllers are out there I wish to goodness they'd get this world sorted. They can't be a very kindly bunch to witness continuous wars and mayhem, inequality, starvation, poverty etc. etc. and do nothing about it. (But I suppose that is a righteous God concept). I dunno, perhaps we are a mutant virus that's gone rogue, and master SIM controllers have abandoned the game. The planet was an OK place and in perfect 'harmony' before we started to destroy it. They may have a peek now and again to see if we've annihilated ourselves yet.

Peverellshire · 17/03/2023 15:01

CriticalAlert · 17/03/2023 14:39

You see! It's just too mind boggling to comprehend! Perhaps there'll be a point when we start to become too aware.... and we are turned off. My friend swears we're all part of a computer game.....

It’s fascinating & the whole concept of Plato’s cave etc an early description of just this? Because the fact we exist at all is bonkers/incredible this ‘SIM’ concept makes sense to me. Or is just humans can’t understand eternity?

Are we an ancestor simulation? Is the ‘game’ to see how long it takes us to figure it out? Destroy ourselves? Colonise space? Are we one of many simulations? Each with a slightly different ‘input’?

Even more bizarre is the idea this reality is ‘heaven’, ‘God’ is an alien & that each person you meet & who is on earth is, in fact, ‘you’?

Are some of us avatars and some ‘main characters’?

SinnerBoy · 17/03/2023 14:47

OhFFSMum · Today 09:33

Oh no, you've given me ideas! I often look places up on Maps and have a look at the street plans. I'm in a hotel in Darwin at the moment, waiting to join a ship, for a job.

I found a restaurant with good reviews and found a route on Maps. I zoomed in here and there, looking at places of interest and businesses etc. I sketched a route out on paper (North Up) and went to find it. I realised quite quickly that I was going 180° in the opposite direction, because I needed to go Southeast and the sun was in front of me.

The map had directed me out of the back of the hotel, which is not accessible to residents; and after 3 crossroads, I hadn't found the right street name!

CriticalAlert · 17/03/2023 14:39

Peverellshire · 17/03/2023 13:38

www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-we-live-in-a-simulation-chances-are-about-50-50/?amp=true

Are we in base reality? Are we ever likely to develop a computer simulation with conscious entities within it? Will we ever have the computing power to do so?

if we DO ever manage the above, the odds of us being ‘Sims’ ourselves ramp up massively.

You see! It's just too mind boggling to comprehend! Perhaps there'll be a point when we start to become too aware.... and we are turned off. My friend swears we're all part of a computer game.....

Peverellshire · 17/03/2023 13:38

CriticalAlert · 16/03/2023 14:20

Just the thought that the earth is suspended in an infinite universe and we are tiny tiny specks of life. It can drive me nuts thinking about it, I mean WHAT is the universe doing there in the first place? I know it's Big Bang and all that, but something had to be there to make that happen......

www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-we-live-in-a-simulation-chances-are-about-50-50/?amp=true

Are we in base reality? Are we ever likely to develop a computer simulation with conscious entities within it? Will we ever have the computing power to do so?

if we DO ever manage the above, the odds of us being ‘Sims’ ourselves ramp up massively.

Needmorelego · 17/03/2023 11:01

@OhFFSMum I am obsessed with Google Earth.
I am currently watching an old New York set crime show on Disney+ and I managed to find on Google Earth some of the buildings they used as the exterior shots for characters apartments. I have then looked at the whole area thinking about how the characters would have shopped at which shops in the area, which Subway route they would have done to get to work...
Ok. That makes me sound like a crazy stalker 😂
They are fictional people though so not so weird 🤔😂

Tricyrtis2022 · 17/03/2023 09:45

@OhFFSMum, I do that too, it can be so interesting. I like to imagine what it would be like to live there.

OhFFSMum · 17/03/2023 09:33

Everyone I tell about this thinks I'm strange lol. But sometimes if I'm reading an article, or looking at social media and someone mentions a town or place somewhere in the world (some random town in America, or an old colleague who I follow posts her runs in Oz where she lives now) I search the place on Google Earth and go on little virtual tours, looking at the roads, what the houses / shops / schools are like there... places I'll never actually visit but by the medium of technology I can explore. I find it fascinating lol

Emotionalsupportviper · 17/03/2023 07:27

The link someone posted earlier with the "spaces" in "space" between the planets, etc was incredible.

What I think is heartbreaking is how we on earth have given ourselves a ring of rubbish around our beautiful planet.

api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Space-debris.jpg

Is there nothing we won't destroy?

Viviennemary · 16/03/2023 23:19

Space going on for every and ever. Billions of universes.
Fatima and Lourdes. Are they a hoax or not. I dont believe in the apparitions. But there is no requirement to believe apparently,

Peverellshire · 16/03/2023 22:48

Thanks, are there any interesting ‘artefacts in wrong place/time’ that still stand/are anomalies?

Misunderestimated · 16/03/2023 19:49

@TheVanguardSix @Emotionalsupportviper
The Henrietta Lacks book is amazing. The way that Johns Hopkins treated black patients (free treatment but using them as guinea pigs without consent) was shocking. It is also incredible that someone giving her cells away for free, inadvertently created an industry - thousands of tonnes of her cells have been sold - with not a cent being received by the family.

Embelline · 16/03/2023 18:38

@TheVanguardSix sorry my post wasn’t clear it was in reference to the Disney documentary Finding Michael

DailyMaui · 16/03/2023 15:29

SinnerBoy · 16/03/2023 14:44

Bollocks, that's marmots.....

I remember my mum and dad going on holiday to the French alps one summer and telling me all about these giant rodents that they saw there. I thought they were bullshitting until t'internet and I googled it.

Bloody lovely furry chonks. I'd love to come upon them in a walk in the hills.

Things that are utterly bloody fascinating
Tricyrtis2022 · 16/03/2023 14:54

Arf!

SinnerBoy · 16/03/2023 14:44

Bollocks, that's marmots.....

SinnerBoy · 16/03/2023 14:44

Tricyrtis2022 · Today 14:37

I think I need to get to know a marmoset.

They're a reservoir of bubonic plague, in the wild. Several people contract it annually, in Mongolia and Central Asia, from eating them!

Tricyrtis2022 · 16/03/2023 14:37

I think I need to get to know a marmoset.

BinturongsSmellOfPopcorn · 16/03/2023 14:32

Not birds, but marmosets are completely freaked out by hats. I took mine off in front of a marmoset once and you could absolutely see the thoughts: 'She took her head off! Oy - you lot - anyone else see that?! Took her head right off!!'

SinnerBoy · 16/03/2023 14:29

-Kazaks

  • Kazakhs. Sorry!
Tricyrtis2022 · 16/03/2023 14:28

The birds. I wonder what they think about humans constantly changing their 'plumage' and if they question what is happening when they us hanging said plumage on the washing line.

I know the birds watch us and recognise some of us because the resident robin is very used to me. He comes to me for mealworms every day, but one day I went out to feed him and I had a towel wrapped around my head. He didn't notice to start with but then he looked up, saw the towel and flew into the garage in a panic. I took it off, shook my hair out and said 'It's okay, it's only me' and he gave me a stare, then came back over and started eating again. What was he thinking? I wonder about that.