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

[PutItInYourPocket]

I've just been thinking about this as I've been lay in the bath.

I'm currently pregnant and baby goes mad when I'm in the bath and I was watching him kicking and squirming inside me and just thought... This is actually pretty odd when you think about it. I have a living thing that's moving around inside me!

A friend had to have a blood transfusion not so long ago and she can't think about that for long without feeling squeamish that someone else's blood was inside her!

What other things do you find strange when you really think about them?

Just picking up on a few.

Dinosaurs: how do we KNOW they were X amount years ago? Who was taking notes, how and with what?? Plus the moon mars earth stuff. How do we know there isn't another existence similar to earth out there? And how do we KNOW these planets are X billion years old?

On another morbid note. Death. Watched a film with youngest today, the lead characters mum had "died" but was living on the moon. Daughter reunited with mum. I know there is another trailer for a film cartoon style where son goes to meet dad in the other life after death. I can't help but feel it gives a false hope?

humans are complicated and irrational, prey to hormones and emotions. The excuses they make for themselves are wonderful

I once heard that they've done psychology tests which show we make decisions then justify them afterwards. Rather than make decisions based on reasoning. Odd!

@MrsDeltaB

Just picking up on a few.

Dinosaurs: how do we KNOW they were X amount years ago? Who was taking notes, how and with what?? Plus the moon mars earth stuff. How do we know there isn't another existence similar to earth out there? And how do we KNOW these planets are X billion years old?

On another morbid note. Death. Watched a film with youngest today, the lead characters mum had "died" but was living on the moon. Daughter reunited with mum. I know there is another trailer for a film cartoon style where son goes to meet dad in the other life after death. I can't help but feel it gives a false hope?

I think the dinosaur/space thing etc. all the time

'This rock is 10 million years old' sure it is not that I disagree but how can you prove it, you can do a science test or say it because of other reasons but how do you actually know?

How do you know if you go into space and turn left then keep on going you don't end up with another planet with human type creatures on it

All these questions are what means I can't believe in religion - if you can't prove to me god exists how can I believe

among any other questions I have

and OP the baby in my body thing freaked me out a bit when I was pregnant (not badly just in a amusing way)

Why are we not born at 1 years old? (I think there is an Asian country perhaps that does do this?)

Is there a law that means if you commit a crime but would not have committed the crime if you knew a 'test' could be done to prove you did it - for example so back when fingerprinting was discovered 'I would not have broken into the house if I knew that the new fingerprint test would prove I did it' not saying morally about the crime and no I have no desire to commit one just wondering the legalities of it

Our brain takes in everything in our life so why do we remember little things on our life more than some big things

@PutItInYourPocket

Organs are pretty weird too. Well just bodies in general. I sometimes wonder how does everything fit? I look at me in the mirror and think, how does everything fit in there, lungs, heart, diaphragm, stomach, bladder, kidneys and so on. It must all be so squished together. And somehow now there is another person with another set of all of those things inside me as well. HOW IS THERE ROOM?

Yes! And connected -

Why is it that my torso is so much smaller than a man’s yet I can fit an actual baby in there. WHAT is in a man’s torso that he needs so much extra space and doesn’t even have space for a womb? Are his organs much bigger or is there loads of just wasted space?

Hi Op I agree echo similar favourable comment to @Namechangeme87
Really good ,thought provoking,refreshing thread.
I find it fascniting and wonderful how nature works and the moon and the planetry galaxy and sun interact with each other,the fact that moon, the sea tides are created by the way the moon interacts and how our menstrual cycles the moon plays a key part and how if women are living in communal setting their menstrual cycle synchronizes.
I find insects and how they interact and slimly creatures like slugs and snails how they sense things but they have no brain quite interesting too ,also crabs,molluscs and sea creatures all wonderfully weird and intriguing too.
Thanks for thread idea

Having babies. And the fact that people do it so casually.

Computers. How come those little bits of metal circuitry can do so much? Each time I pay for something with my phone using Touch ID, I get ever so slightly weirded out.

Space.

Flying. This gigantic metal box. With trusting people in it. Yes I know, physics. But still, it’s weird.

And who made God? Or what was before the Big Bang?

In fact do you all exist? Is this real or just a dream?

When I was studying biology I used to think how weird it was that I was a bunch of cells learning about cells.

I get this when I drive on the motorway. Where tf are all these people going and all at once, all day every day?

Whoever thought 'if I mix flour, butter, milk and eggs and bake it, it will turn into a delicious soft sponge...

Go back a stage.

Who had some fresh milk with cream floating to the top and though, "I know I'll stir / shake this cream and see if I can get something I can spread on bread"?

Cheese I can understand, it's basically milk that has gone off, but butter?

And on the subject of dairy - The amazing fact that most Europeans evolved to eat dairy as adults and a tolerance for alcohol.

Currency -

Has no value other than what we assign to it. Coins and notes are no more than ious in effect "I promised to pay the bearer..."

Certain types of Preppers are particularly aware of this and so have stashes of gold and other valuables in case banks collapse

Sex!

The first time I told dd about it she looked at me as if I had 2 heads and thought I was winding her up!

As a vegetarian -

Meat eaters being squeamish about exactly what meat they eat! From offal to animals not generally consumed in this country but happily consumed in others - seems odd and hypocritical to me

and not burn off all the calories from a croissant just by concentrating extra hard to burn them but you can do this if by concentrating you exercise enough to burn the cals off

On food generally all the stuff that happened eons ago and we don't really know how or why the 1st person who did or discovered x was not only safe to eat (ok I get there's an evolutionary factor here the ones that ate the bad shit died!) but things like why the fuck would you think an egg was a suitable thing to eat? Or cows milk? Or that certain things taste better cooked? Or that certain parts of plants tasted good but other parts of the same plant didn't? Or how the use of herbs and spices developed? Right up to using lots of ingredients to make a particularly food - like bread, cakes, chocolate, alcohol? Or in an odd way - like tea! I mean how fucking weird is that?! Take a bitter tasting leaf from a particular plant, rinse it, dry it out, mash it up then cover in hot water for a few mins REMOVE the plant and drink the flavoured water! Let alone who the fuck came up with adding milk/sugar/lemon/honey/herbs/spices/fruit/syrup/butter/salt/cream/alcohol to it?!

If you can't tell already I love my food and this UTTERLY fascinates me, like where the hell did the ideas come from?

What other combinations haven't been invented yet?

Love this question

@dayswithaY the prescribed meals you describe are peculiar to the Uk, in other countries they have things we would consider lunch or dinner items for breakfast etc there's long cultural history behind meals

@Mizydoscape We don't know our full selves either as we can't see how others see us not really

As someone born before home computers were even a "thing" tech absolutely fucking blows my mind!

I've gone from being taught to do long multiplication and division with pencil and paper to having a scientific calculator permanently to hand on not 1 but 2 devices in my home. From not having any phone at all in my home to being permanently contactable via several options. From having a tv that was black and white and needed to be tuned to change the channel and had a wire coat hanger as an aerial to having a handheld device on which I can access all the free Uk tv channels plus catchup services and via streaming services and internet can access and watch almost any tv show I want (except bloody quantum leap!). From having a pen pal in Canada as a kid that I wrote to monthly via snail mail and eagerly awaited her replies to being able to talk to ANYONE in the world including world leaders if I do wished via any number of options of sm and email. From avidly reading encyclopaedias and atlas books to being able to learn about anything I care to quickly and easily from a device I can carry in my pocket.

Astonishing!

That 2 numpties like me and my ex managed to produce a dd who is smart, kind, gorgeous and capable. Thank fuck she got my brains and his looks!

Languages - how there are so many different ones spoken by one animal (makes me wonder if animals have "foreign" languages, dialects etc - there's apparently evidence they do) how language developed and which countries ended up not only speaking different languages but even completely different symbols for those languages in the form of alphabets and accents etc

The two things that really blow my mind when I think about them in any depth are space - the vastness of it

look up the true meaning of awe - that's what you're feeling applies to much of this thread really - great thread op

How does something as massive and heavy as an aeroplane stay up in the air? as a fight phobic I really struggle with this one, I know the physics and understand them basically but I still don’t feel safe!

Christmas Day how strange it is that most people are doing exactly the same thing and eating the exact same food up and down the country!

have you been on mn long? Every year TONS of threads full of posters adamantly arguing that the way THEIR family does Christmas is the RIGHT way against others equally adamant.

The 1st time I spent Christmas with another family I was completely thrown that they did things DIFFERENTLY! And I was 17!!

Death, that even when we die some of our dust, ashes, atoms remain in minute form forever and ever

Also, time zones

not even properly time zones but the way from looking at my weather app on my phone I can at times see that it's dark here (Scotland) while my friends in London are still in daylight! Wtf!

Also, reading and writing is baffling if you think about it too much. I've actually studied this - still a bit baffled

Basically semiotics into linguistics for anyone interested but I warn you it's a HUGE subject area. Also of interest to anyone curious about language development, accents, dialects etc Wars have been fought because of minor language misunderstandings!

What if we all forgot how to read? I mean literally forgot the alphabet and it's all just a jumble of symbols that's all totally made up anyway?!

This literally happens to millions of people every day - brain injuries

harvesting breast milk for human consumption (why haven't we done that?!)

essentially contamination issues because a human blood product like breast milk especially in these times of hiv/aids, hepatitis etc will likely contain any number of infections that are human to human transferable. With cows/goats/whatever milk SOME of the infections they can get can be transferred to humans but not all and we can regulate animal exposure far more easily

I've been on MN a very, very long time - but can honestly say this is a brilliant thread! We've got everything - from teenagers trashing kitchens to sex and outer space.

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

Ahh that reminds me of my own dd when little getting very upset with her cousin as she couldn't get her head around my mum being the cousins granny too! "No that's MY granny!"

Colours, how do I know that what I see as orange is not seen as my “blue” by another person?

May I direct you to the work of sapir-Whorf and linguistic relativity? - fascinating if you're genuinely interested

@MadameMeursault I had my 2nd mc the year before I got pregnant with dd, if I'd not mc those babies I'd have still been pregnant when dd was conceived so she wouldn't be here

Does anyone get the thing where if they stare at the same word for too long or say it lots of times it starts to look/sound wrong?

that's called semantic satiation - blew my mind when I first learned there was a term for it!

Ditto most buildings, especially old ones. Who checks they are going to actually stay up? How can they check that?

this is essentially what civil engineers do

Gravity and the Southern Hemisphere. People are living upside down

only according to northern hemisphere thinking there are globes and maps with the Southern Hemisphere at the top

https://www.flourish.org/upsidedownmap/

And why, for example, to Italian people speak English with the same Italian accent and German people speak it with a German accent etc?

they don't totally - if you're a native speaker of THEIR language you'll notice their accent even if they're speaking a different language.

@Shizzlestix back injuries - the main problem comes down to the fact we're not really meant to be upright/walk on 2 legs only. I too have a spinal disability following an accident and it's life changing

Op re organs squished especially while pregnant is this your first? If so wait till after birth! You can feel the organs settling back into roughly their usual places it's very weird! I say roughly because your body changes permanently as a result of pregnancy and childbirth so your hips, rib cage etc change shape forever which means the organs aren't exactly in the place they were before.

As an endo sufferer I fucking love that description of periods!

As an insomniac I can honestly say I have NEVER been able to go to sleep by pretending to be asleep and I've never understood how people do that it's never ever worked for me I always have to be doing something (reading/tv/radio/mning) and then I eventually fall asleep when exhausted

why not tell your brain so you can take yourself to the doctor

that's what symptoms are? Your body telling you something is out of the ordinary and to prepare accordingly

If I'm on an aeroplane for example ; I'm not a confident flyer, but I tell myself that it's mind over matter and that the chances of a crash happening are very low. But then I think about those poor souls who have crashed in the planes in the past, and did they think and tell themselves the exact same thing, and it actually happened to them. And if they did tell themselves, did they get a chance to process the fact that they thought about it happening only an hour before and that it's actually happened to them?

If you haven't already definitely NEVER watch “final destination”!

Things we "know" now may be completely wrong we are no more omniscient than previous humans who at various points thought:

The Earth was flat
The sun and planets revolves around the earth
That infections were spread by poisonous air/smells
That washing hands/personal hygiene had no effect on the passing on of infections
That your tongue has "taste regions"
The atom was the smallest thing on Earth
That we would never be able to travel at the speed of sound because it would have certain effects on the body

Imagine with the speed of technological development (In less than a 100 years we've gone from computers occupying large flooor space that could barely complete basic calculations to having hand held computers that can do amazing things in mere seconds) we're currently experiencing what things we think we "know" now that will be DISproved in the next 10, 20, 50 or 100 years!

Every day, someone on Earth unwittingly does the biggest poo in the world for that day.

@FenellaVelour

Every day, someone on Earth unwittingly does the biggest poo in the world for that day.

😂😂😂😂😂

@The3rdWatermelon

History. The idea that so many billions upon billions of people have lived whole, full lives and then died and been completely forgotten. They’ve had real feelings and they wasted time picking their noses and having 5 more minutes in bed. They farted, they got headaches, they stubbed their toes and did that thing where your drink goes down the wrong way and you choke and it spurts out of your nose. They’ve loved so hard it hurt, cried until they couldn’t cry any more, been furious, been on top of the world, been terrified, and brave, and selfless and ashamed. And now they’re dead, and all the people who knew them are dead, and, aside from a few individuals, their names are forgotten and everything they felt so strongly is gone, and the things that made them angry and happy and sad and scared are gone and forgotten and of no consequence any more. I find it paralysingly terrifying. I’m a historian.

Also, the idea that one day someone decided to give someone else an item of value in return for them performing a useful task, and now I have to get up and go to work every day, and waste this momentary flash in the pan we call a life in answering pointless emails for money.

I have anxiety and depression ATM and this has weirdly made me feel a lot better. Like, how can something make me feel so anxious that will just cease to exist soon enough. It's nice!

The thing I've always found weird is sort of this but more that it's all happening right now - people are just living their lives all around the world at the same time and we just don't know anything about pretty much all of it. When I sit down to eat my falafel wrap and watch the lunchtime news, people all over the world might be eating, going to the loo, chatting with friends/family, going to work, doing work, playing, dancing, whatever from the highflying businessman in NYC to the fisherman in Peru, all with different but also quite similar lives.

I also find it strange to think about the indigenous people who don't have contact with outsiders. There's an island in the Indian Ocean that has no contact with the outside...how different must their lives be and what would they think of us....(also there could still be people living in the Amazon that outsiders haven't come across, mental).

Languages

Eggs.
A sort of daily chicken period. But we steal them and eat them. And often if you incubate them instead of eating them, they hatch. And chickens, ostriches and crocodiles come from eggs...

Electricity; I ponder about where it goes when I turn off the switch. My family think I am mad, but to me it is really odd.

Perspective is really weird.

Your brain is bombarded with all this information all day and all night and tries to filter it by what’s useful.
We could all read the same book or watch the same film or sit in the same room and all perceive it totally differently. It’s the same information but we’re all filtering it with really random internal criteria.