Please share your mind boggling ponderings.

[Florries]

My baby is 8 months old and I find myself staring at him, thinking 'I GREW that!' I made those tiny fingers and tiny toenails. My human body actually produced another human. It's just amazing when you sit at think about it.

And what's really blown my mind is thinking that I was born with all my eggs, all ready and waiting to go - it's like I carried DS around with me my whole life until one day that particular egg desended and it met that 1 particular sperm which made DS. If it had been any of the other eggs, I could have a completely different baby!

Women's bodies are amazing.

Please share your own equally pointless but also mind bending ponderings.

The fact that bedbugs have bedbugs that have bedbugs that have bedbugs ad infinitum.

That cells are spherical as are the stars and planets because they are the same thing being balls of energy but on different scales.

That earth is a mere cell of a body or entity of something so vast it is incomprehensible that lives and breathes.

That we have been deliberately designed never to know or really understand.

That something observes us in the same way as we watch ants

I always wonder about great music partnerships like Lennon and McCartney, who met each other as kids. How does the chat go? Let's finish this game of football then create something that will change the world? It seems so random.

Why did Bella have to become a vampire, why can't she stay human?

Sometimes late at night when I'm trying to get to sleep my mind wanders & I wonder if James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Ritchie Valens, John Lennon, George Gershwin, Bryan Jones, JFK & Martin Luther King had survived, what would the world be like in the terms of entertainment & world politics?
Which actors & musicians wouldn't have become famous if the above had lived & which actors & musicians have we missed out on?
For example would Marlon Brando have appeared if James Dean hadn't crashed his car & died. Did we never get James Washington the famous movie star because his mother never watched all 35 films James Dean starred in & never called her son after him. And this little boy called James was actually called Eric & never watched any James Dean films with his mum as she wasn't really into any male actors so little Eric didn't watch that many films at home & didn't have any desire to be an actor & grew up to be an architect instead of the Oscar winning actor & director James Washington.
And what if Marlon Brando had lost out on all roles he auditioned to James Dean, so Marlon Brando decided to give up acting & teach drama instead (or become a police officer) & nurtured the talent of a young man called Lincoln Troy who became the famous Oscar winning actor Troy Lincoln. Troy Lincoln married Marilyn Monroe & their son Caleb Lincoln Monroe became an actor too.

What musicals have we missed out on because Gershwin died early?
What albums have we missed out on because Elvis & John Lennon died young & what artists have we missed out on because they weren't influenced by the music that Elvis & John Lennon co wrote when they joined forces in 1989 & had 4 future best selling albums.

What if JFK had won a second term as President. Did Martin Luther King miss out on being the first black President of the USA?

Finally would Jayne Mansfield's daughter Mariska Hartigay have still become an actor? Or would her mother have steered her into studying law & Mariska became a lawyer & the role of Olivia Benson (Law & Order) gone to Troy Lincoln & Marilyn Monroe's youngest daughter Atarah Monroe instead?

I'm sent my mind spinning & sleepy from all that!

That every time I go into a supermarket or public area, or restaurant or on a plane there's a high chance I'll never be gathered with this particular group of people ever again, ever.

Also- That so many people meet their soul mates. How does this happen? Out of the relatively small number of people we ever meet, compared to the number of people in the world, how likely is it that Derek from the Co-op is my soulmate, over say, a Tibetan Monk or a sous chef in Brazil..... I don't get it.

Cats. What are they really doing here?

InSightMars

They are judging us.

How do we all contain bits of cosmic dust?

(explanation at www.physics.org/article-questions.asp?id=52 - I just googled it)

Cats are the real life version of vogons.

Mine is wondering what the absolute, unknowable totals of things are. In the grand scheme of things it's so unimportant but I wonder what the number of trees in the world are ( and then leaves on those trees) or fish in the sea, or how many hairs have grown in my head in my lifetime.
Approximate numbers are no comfort, because it drives me mad knowing that there is a total out there that I'll never know.

*Insomnibrat
*
I guess you have to believe in the concept of soul mates in the first place.
There absolutely might be someone in Tibet, or Australia who you'll never meet but could have been a better match for you than your partner. There are probably thousands of people across the globe who fit that description for every one of us.
I love my husband more than anyone else I've ever met, but I'm completely fine with the fact that had it not been him, it would have been someone else. #easy

I wonder how pregnant animals feel when they go into labour. Do they experience the pain thinking 'Wtaf is going on here, and what the hell is this thing emerging from from my undercarriage?' After all, they have no antenatal classes, and their mothers or midwives can't sit them down for a chat, and tell them to read 'What To Expect When You're Expecting'.

Then after the birth this primal instinct takes over and they just know what to do with their young; encouraging them to feed and to eliminate and keeping them clean, safe and warm. Fascinating.

Greenandcabbagelooking - I have always had the same thoughts about colours and our perception of them - I find it fascinating!

My thing is fire! How did the first people discover it - it must have been an accident in the first place, but then how did they learn to harness it to use when they wanted it??

The sheer computer power of what we now consider everyday devices like our smart phones. What used to be banks and banks of computers is now all that packed into a tiny microchip. How does that work?

The amount of code that is involved in software like Microsoft or a site like Facebook. Is is reams and reams of it? I cannot imagine all the countless of steps that need to take place to perform a function which all is backed up by code and the permutations that could happen. Is this like coding chess?

I ask as a non-computer person. It boggles my mind.

You could look at it that way Insomnibrat but you could also think about the randomness of meeting your soul mate , my mum and dad met in a club in in Manchester , my Dad lived couple of miles from Manchester city centre so the chances are he could have met any one in that particular club, but my mum lived about 30, miles from Manchester if she haden t gone to that club on the night I wouldn't have existed

Soap. What possessed our ancient ancestors to try combining animal fat and ash in an effort to get clean?

It amazes me how many billions of people there are all over the planet living their own little lives. I sometimes look up some random small town in the U.S or Australia or other countries and look up the library or church there, read about the events and facilities there and think 'There are people living in these little places right now, thousands of miles from me going about their lives at this very moment. They're in the library, going to this church, working in the local factory, attending a bake sale etc. For some reason it fascinates me to think of everyone in the world going about their business.

Stock photos. Who are the people in them? How are they created? Do they take dozens of shots at once? How did they recruit the people in them? Is there an intended market or do they just add them to their library and see who buys them? How do the people in them feel about the companies that have used them? What are the models doing now?

I sometimes wonder what percentage of the people in the world or in your country that you'll see either on television or in the street. By see I mean quickly glimpse, not meet.

I spend far too much time thinking about other people's lives, especially for someone who doesn't use social media.

Toot- I can answer the stock photography question (sort of)as I used to work in this field:
Models are from an agency....you can get people in all sorts of ages/shapes/sizes/ethnicities ...including whole families.
They will shoot a whole load of shots in the same day. So, for example, you wanted a festive shoot, a location or studio would be styled and the appropriate props on hand so you could shoot unwrapping gifts/making Christmas cookies/mum-looking-harassed-with-children-acting-up-in-front-of-Christmas-tree. If you look through a photo agency catalogue it is easy to see which photos were taken on the same day.
A lot of the work I did was a young woman holding stomach looking apprehensive (pain/pregnancy/late period, etc) or woman with hands in front of face (relationship breakdown/ mental health,etc). Very generic stuff you see online or in magazines and newspapers.
HTH

Thank you, VulgarLady. This is fascinating. The festive theme makes sense. If you're taking a lot of photos of a person showing pain or frustration, would that be the specific theme for the day like a Christmas or birthday party, or do they cover a whole host of emotions and situations in one day? Who decides which themes and types of images are needed? Sorry, I'm turning this into an AMA you don't need to answer, but thank you for enlightening me. I've always been fascinated by behind the scenes jobs.

Toot...what we used to do was do all the shots that we thought worked in the setting, e.g Christmas...happy family/sad/angry etc and if we had any time left at the end of the day we would do some more generic shots like I described above with minimal props such as a man sitting on the edge of bed with pill bottle in hand looking puzzled/ worried as these shots are always popular (eg the daily fail) .

We had to be careful as to what props and clothing we used too. No brands on clothes/toys or technology that dates really quickly.

It was a fun job but sometimes challenging to get the props together ( Easter eggs in October!)

As we are born with all our eggs then a bit of me was inside my Nan when she was pregnant with my Mum
I never thought of that. So the eggs of my possible future grandchildren were inside me when i was pregnant with my daughters.

@thighofrelief101

Bad writing 😂😂😂

Thank you so much, Vulgarlady. I appreciate you taking the time to tell me more and I've loved hearing about it. It's funny that you should mention props. That's another job I'm fascinated by, people who buy props for tv, films and theatre. It must entail so much work and thought. It amazes me that this teacup they got from a charity shop or props supplier somehow develops its own story and becomes perhaps part of a wedding gift the characters were given forty years ago.