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?

Going on holiday.

People book time away from their jobs and go somewhere often quite far away from where they live, and the people who live locally there will be paid to entertain them in different ways.

Holidays are a relatively very new phenomenon as well.

Dancing

Aeroplanes.

A giant thing in the sky, weighs loads and doesn't fall out of the sky.

Even weirder - you can get drinks, go to the loo, walk about. All while not falling out of the sky.

and the people who live locally there will be paid to entertain them in different ways.

This reminds me of the weirdness of eating out... sitting down as instructed at a table laid by someone else, to be fed food cooked by someone else, which is brought to you by someone else. You eat this in a room of strangers sitting at other tables, with which you do not interact. You pay handsomely for this, with a social expectation that it will be enjoyable.

eating food someone else cooked and will wash up after is eminently sensible though

i still genuinely don’t understand how fax machines work. you put a bit of paper in, and it rings another fax machine, which draws the image on another bit of paper.

smartphones, telly, the internet - yep, i can buy that. electronics, innit.

but fax machines? nah. dark magic.

the weirdness of eating out... sitting down as instructed at a table laid by someone else, to be fed food cooked by someone else, which is brought to you by someone else. You eat this in a room of strangers sitting at other tables, with which you do not interact. You pay handsomely for this, with a social expectation that it will be enjoyable.
Yes, I find eating out really weird if I stop and look at it objectively. Also the idea of menus –you go to a restaurant in the full knowledge that you can choose from only THIS selection of foods and dishes. But this is priced higher than buying your own choice food from a shop and therefore considered more valuable/enjoyable.

I got an A in A-level physics but I genuinely still do not understand electricity, how someone can just "harness" it from somewhere and send it through a wire and then it does really specific things like light up letters on a computer screen.

Not a clue what "earthing" means or why shuffling my shoes will mean I get an electric shock when I touch a metal rail.

Black magic!

Also, one thought I had (admittedly not sober) - is there a parallel universe out there with people just like us but their natural state is high/drunk, and then they take special substances to feel just how we do normally? And they're like "wow this is so cool"

HolyForkingShirt

I have a (rare!) night out tomorrow- a few wines will be drink, and this is all I will be thinking about now!

(And still about why do show our teeth as a gesture of friendliness but animals show their teeth as a sign of aggression?? I need to know !!)

That some people believe the shape of the metal box on wheels which conveys you around the country is in any way indicative of your personality/wealth/status. That some people will turn their heads when a particularly shaped metal box on wheels passes them by and make appreciative nosies/facial expressions about it.

Hair grows long on the top of our heads but short everywhere else. Except for men who also have it grow long out of their face. So weird.

Walking around with an animal on a bit of rope.

That the earth is so large, that if it was proportionally the size of a snooker ball it would feel smooth- Mount Everest and the Himalayas and the Alps and the Grand Canyon, and the Rocky Mountains would all feel as smooth as a snooker ball does to us given how big the planet is.

@bathshebaknickerstickers I'm late to this thread but wanted to say your post about the atoms was like a beautiful poem

What blows my mind is that so much of our history was shaped by Kings and Queens making massive political decisions but who were barely more than teenagers.

Henry 4th of France was a teenager when he was leading battles against other (equally young) Kings, Joan of Arc was 16/ 17 when she first went into battle and was giving strategic advice to armies (she was dead by the time she was 19), and Henry 8th was only 22 when he decided to invade France.

Considering what kids today are like at similar ages –and the fact that we now know the adult brain is not fully developed until mid-20s (was it the case then or did the human brain develop more quickly as life expectancy was so much shorter?) – it just seems like so much of our history was shaped by a bunch of children having arguments and falling out with each other – rather like they do now only historically the battleground was a real one.

Also Henry 8th was dead by the time he was 55 so in just 14 yrs from when his first marriage to Catherine was annulled in his mid-30s until he died - he managed to oversee the English reformation, the dissolution of the monasteries, and marry five more wives (two of whom he executed). Mind blown.

Though sadly only people with a certain amount of privilege have access to the tools, education etc needed to come up with new advances. Imagine how much further on we'd be if we all had equal chances.

Also, just think how many more advances (and how much earlier) we'd have made as a society if a little more than 50% of the population had actually been allowed to contribute their knowledge, ideas and wisdom instead of simply being ignored and denied education and opportunities - even the advances that don't crucially require you to have dangly things between your legs....

What blows my mind is that so much of our history was shaped by Kings and Queens making massive political decisions but who were barely more than teenagers

It's fascinating!

I am amazed at how few people there were back then too. It is estimated that back in 1066 the population of England was less than 2 million. Maybe even as low as 1.25 million. So the whole country had only the population of Kent now. Sparse.

i also am horrified that my beloved 1990s are now considered ‘retro’ by kids, in the same way that the 60s seemed to me as a teenager in the 80s.

i mean, 1995 was about a week ago, right?

(honestly though, if there was a way to go back and just have 1995 again i would sell my dark, shrivelled soul for it)

Also, just think how many more advances (and how much earlier) we'd have made as a society if a little more than 50% of the population had actually been allowed to contribute their knowledge, ideas and wisdom instead of simply being ignored and denied education and opportunities - even the advances that don't crucially require you to have dangly things between your legs

Definitely!

That someone took DH's sperm and the egg of a woman we've never met and know very little about and created this, froze it for 6 months and which then became the 23+5 whole new human I have inside me. And the other woman has absolutely no clue if it actually ever worked. Or the fact we still have 4 in the freezer and could potentially have more I am not though

i also am horrified that my beloved 1990s are now considered ‘retro’ by kids, in the same way that the 60s seemed to me as a teenager in the 80s.

i mean, 1995 was about a week ago, right?

I still can't come to terms with the ostensibly obvious mathematical fact that somebody born in 2000 is now actually an adult!

I know what you mean by the retro thing, though. I saw an iPod case in Tesco that was styled to look like an old cassette. Presumably, they're cool now, but I don't for one moment think that today's youngsters would be willing to tolerate an actual cassette.

"Wow! Something the size of an iPod that can fit up to 12 songs on it - and you don't even have to listen to them strictly in order - all you have to do is press this button to go forward, no a bit more, bit more, too far, press the other button to go back, no too far, oh that'll do - there's only a minute left of the previous song...."

Fuel tanker drivers have to use fuel to drive themselves to the refinery/depot, where the fuel tankers are kept, and which then have to use fuel in order to deliver fuel to fuel stations, so that customers can use fuel to get their vehicles, which are low on fuel, to the fuel stations in order to buy fuel.

The worlds largest ship weighs 600,000 tonnes.
And it floats. If I throw a pebble in the sea it sinks.