Things that are really weird when you think about them

[Shitshitshitshit]

Someone said to me today that balloons are like a plastic bag of someone's breath...

I'd never thought of it like that before and to be honest it made me feel a bit nauseous!

Do you have anymore examples of things that are actually really fucking weird when you think about it?

Could you imagine explaining to medieval people that we hold all of the answers to everything in the palm of our hands but instead we use it to randomly scroll through pictures and words, half of which are from people we've never met or don't even like all that much.

Or that we have vaccinations which can destroy the diseases which killed them and their family members, but some people choose not to give them to their kids.

MissFitton

Totally agree about trees. And they are as big underground as they are overground!

but instead we use it to randomly scroll through pictures and words

Or to watch funny videos of cats.

The colour thing, I have often wondered if everyone actually has the same perceived favourite colour.

For example by favourite colour is green, ds's is red. But perhaps the way I perceive green wavelengths of light and the way ds perceives red ones are actually the same in our brains. The same would go for ugly colours. I might hate day glo pink and someone else might hate brown but maybe they actually fire off the same signal in our brains that makes us go 'no, this is a bad colour'

When my Grandmother was pregnant with my Mother, I was already a formed egg within my unborn Mother, so in a weird way, my Grandmother carried me too!? Does that make any sense???

Actually, could you imagine trying to explain electricity?
Or plug sockets... "yeah, heres a plug socket, stick this thing in there and it comes to life and works. Take it out and it stops thanks to the invisible power hidden in the walls"

Does that make any sense???

Yes, and it's fucking weird.

I can't sleep reading all these.

"This Hallowe'en will be my five hundredth deathday," said Nearly Headless Nick, drawing himself up and looking dignified.

Re the domestication of dogs and crops, and drinking of milk etc, there are many interesting ideas in Alice Roberts "Tamed", about his these things may have come about

The cloud (ie the computery storagey thing). I just don't get it and I can't help picturing it as an actual whizzy cloud with all my emails floating up into it.

That nobody technically dies. We're made of energy, and you can't destroy energy, only change it. So when someone 'dies' their 'energy' doesn't cease to be, it changes into something else.
That one courtesy of my eldest stepson, who is a physicist. lt hurts my brain if l think about it too long.

I'm so glad I'm not the only one who ponders frequently about how we see colours. DH is colourblind and I think I've worked out that, to him, green is a sort of orangy/browny (to me!) colour. He thought our patio furniture was dark green but it isn't, it's brown.

Also sleep. Ever told your kid they'll feel better after a good night's sleep? You're basically telling them to turn themselves off and back on again!

I'd love to be clever enough to have the capability of actually understanding all this space stuff. Like actually 'get' the maths and physics behind it.

@maxibondi I wondered similar a few days ago when I watched a cannibalism documentary. People went to a dumping ground of bodies to collect a body as they were starving. Families swapped their dead children so no family would have to eat their own child! I mean I get survival instinct, lizard brain and all that but .. who’d want to eat a human, an emaciated child’s body just to survive knowing you’d likely have to continue for the foreseeable future?

You're right Bessie, I mean our skin is literally crawling with countless strains of bacteria, but when I'm eating out, and I go to put a fork in my mouth, I can't help but see all the other diners sliding their forks out of their mouths and realise my fork that I'm about to slide into my gob has recently been in someone else's. I mean, would you ever dream of picking up a used fork, that you had witnessed a stranger eating with, give it a quick wipe over with a napkin, then start merrily suckling away on its prongs! Haha, maybe I'm just over thinking it

I think it's weird that with games which do not use dice or any other randomness to determine what happens, such as chess, how two games can be so very different.

And team games, such as netball. When I'm playing, it's just such an amazing thing to see a team working together, especially when the players work well together, and can anticipate each other's moves.

one of my dc was conceived via ivf and that freaks me out a lot. He was outside of my body before he was born.

basically any modern technology from printer onwards blows my mind

I get a bit stuck on the fact that the people I know (except family) really just coincidentally are alive at the same time as me. Like, of all the possible generations to be born into, they coincidentally were born into mine. We’re on the same roller coaster turn, by freak of chance.

It makes me feel generally friendlier towards ‘my’ people, but also sometimes a little that I had to score some dick neighbour when so many of the people living next door to me, past & future might have been lovely.

When I see on tv a man being kicked in the testicles. My bits clench up as well, how weird is that.

There are people alive today who knew people who knew people who were born a very long time ago. That blows my mind.

Totally agree about trees. And they are as big underground as they are overground!

They're about as wide, so if you stand level with the edge of the canopy you will be roughly level with the root tips too, but they are not very deep at all. Even the root plate of a huge oak or beech is only a few feet deep. I used to vaguely imagine that they had a big sort of tap root in the middle going down 20 feet as well as the roots that go sideways- they don't.
Also, the big roots are purely structural to stop it falling over- the feeder roots that collect water and nutrients are tiny and very close to the surface, and so are much vulnerable to compaction than you'd think- particularly from heavy vehicles but even from lots of people and mountain bikes going over them every day.

I live in a very old cottage and it always freaks me out thinking that a lot of other people will have lived and made their homes here before me.