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?

The Queen doing normal human stuff like farting (all that rich food), weeing, pooing, shaving her bits and having sex. I don't spend a lot of time pondering about this but I really hope she plays 'pull my finger' with Philip

Re the Russian doll eggs, it doesn’t go on indefinitely there will only be a pregnant lady, a foetus, and the foetus’ eggs. No further eggs in eggs. The eggs in the foetus are a single cell with only half the genetic material to begin production of a new human. Only once that egg meets and gets cosy with an X sperm will it have the potential to make its own eggs. Same as the eggs in the foetus don’t have fingernails or eyelashes etc....

@Probablygreen
I’ve always thought this too. I can see how an indigenous language could start and evolve within a community, but how did the first translators ever get past basic stuff? Maybe some bilingual children had to be raised once the two communities mixed!

The Pauli Exclusion Principle. The idea that if you change the frequency of electrons in something by say heating it you make all the electrons in the universe change because no two electrons can occupy the same frequency.

Therefore, if I make a cheese toastie I am, for a short time, Queen if the Universe - or something like that.

www.theguardian.com/science/life-and-physics/2012/feb/28/1

I always find it really strange that everyone else on the planet is going about their business, even though I can't see them! Like right now, in Rome (for example) people are having a late lunch, maybe a glass of wine. Of that David and Victoria Beckham are sat watching TV or arguing! I just can't get my head round it!

Also I often think, what if we're all Sims, being controlled by a player. Bizarre but I think about it all the time!!

We live in an environment now so unlike the one we evolved to inhabit. Lots of humans would have died or become ill from eating poisonous plants and mushrooms, but knowledge would then be passed around the group not to eat them. If you’re a hungry hunting/scavenging human and you find an egg to eat and you’ve seen a different creature eat one, you would eat it. Then that knowledge is passed down that eggs are safe and nutritious. A lot of what we know today will have been on behalf of other’s trial and error. No-one suddenly made a Victoria sandwich, but they may have had a couple of things to mix together and thought “let’s give this a try” heated it, and ended up with some hard but edible lump. The process would then be refined over generations to try to improve it, as they wouldn’t be in a position to think “That was yuck, I’ll order takeaway instead!”
I find the natural world fascinating but the things we feel the need to do in polite society bizarre!

Zoos. There's a herd of elephants and a family of orangutans living just down the road from me.

Also when I went on holiday to Egypt I remember thinking "what on Earth am I doing in the middle of the desert??"

I wonder how much of our lives are influenced by others? In my family I was the clever, impractical one. My Dad has a very skilled practical job. If the message had been "you are good with your hands just like Dad" would I have ended up doing a more practical job? So how much is what we are told from a very young age, and conditioned into is and how much is our true self? I was lying in bed last night and thinking why is it so outside the realms of possibility that I could do the same job as my Dad...my life could have been totally different!

@WizWoz You do get sedation for some procedures, twilight sedation they call it. When they don't give you enough of it you become aware of what's going on and it's horrible. It's happened twice to me and I now demand more drugs to ensure I don't "come to" during the procedure. The feeling afterwards, if you've not "come to" is brilliant though. You're high as a kite which is a very different feeling to the one you get after proper anaesthetic.

How come nobody has ever seen a dinosaur ghost? 🤷🏻‍♀️

@walksonthebeach

How come nobody has ever seen a dinosaur ghost? 🤷🏻‍♀️

They’d probably be underground. If you’ve ever been to the Jurassic Coast you can see the layers in the cliffs.

They’d probably be underground. If you’ve ever been to the Jurassic Coast you can see the layers in the cliffs.
This is mine. The idea that the land we live on now is layers and layers laid down over all sorts so that fossils etc have to be excavated but the Earth isn't bigger, it's just moved from places.

Yes, sex. And also religion.

@walksonthebeach

How come nobody has ever seen a dinosaur ghost? 🤷🏻‍♀️

Have people seen ghosts of other animals?

I hope this thread keeps going - I’m enjoying it so much!

The idea that we all have a skeleton inside us. I see those plastic skeletons and really makes me feel odd when I think I have one inside me.
Also that one day your heart could just stop beating, and really it's actually amazing how our bodies work to keep us alive

@JJsDinerWaffles

I used to work in a pub with a ghost cat. It was the most haunted pub in England, actually. The cat was never seen, but people regularly went to stroke it when it brushed past their legs. Even people who didn't know there was a ghost cat there.

Losing weight, where does the weight go

Mostly we breathe it out funnily enough, also sweat contains fats, and of course yes in urine too.

@Eckhart Yes, language is changing so much faster these days, with communication being so much freer than it was even just a few years ago.

Not only that, the world is so much "smaller" as a result and people are communicating with others who speak other languages more than ever before I'm sure.

I started compiling a list of things we don't have a word for in English

Somehow missed this earlier I think

It would be a VERY long list because most words we use in "English" are actually french/Italian/German/Dutch/Hindustani/Swahili/Japanese...

Much shorter list - Anglo Saxon words we still use!

@honeylulu there's been whole threads on 'post apocalyptic survival skills which do you have?' - not a real thread title not sure how you'd find them. I'm fairly good as had practical and outdoorsy parents plus I was involved in guiding and scouting for a LONG time from the age of 7 until mid 30's and learnt a lot there too. A lot of people have skills but a shocking amount wouldn't know so much as how to start a fire without a match or a lighter!

Re walking as humans and teaching babies to walk. I've looked after a LOT of babies and I don't think we do teach them, I think they teach themselves at different stages. I certainly didn't bother with dd as I didn't need to! The little bugger was off and into everything at 9 months!! She never crawled though she side rolled to get places before that and not for very long and then just one day only a short while after pulling to standing she just walked clear across the living room floor with no warning! Pleased that day...not so pleased in the days and weeks following as she really did find her way into everything! She was a right "climber" too. Never mind just regular baby proofing we had to make chairs, boxes, toys that could be stood on etc inaccessible too as she'd use them to climb.

Building whole cities on areas prone to earthquakes - why?! Surely the humans living in those areas KNEW there were loads of earthquakes there?!

LOVING this thread!

That the royal family, George Clooney, David Attenborough etc. are real people who at the same time as I'm writing this will be busy eating/weeing/making princesses/picking their nose...

The royal family as a concept. We have one family who get to live in palaces and castles and we bow and curtsey and think they're special because their great great x 1000 grandad was the biggest, baddest caveman, chieftain or something. Why?

Space. It's huge. It gives me vertigo just thought making about us whizzing around in it on this little chunk of rock.

Human civilization. We have millions of houses, roads, cars, suitcases, pooing unicorns, boxes, glitter glues, clothes and other random stuff instead of a nice nest like everything else.

[quote Eckhart]@Bettina500

I started compiling a list of things we don't have a word for in English.

So far, I only have: Those things you blow at parties, that unfurl lengthways and whistle; the thing you put between your shopping and the next person's shopping on the conveyor belt at the supermarket till; another one I can't remember.

Can anybody think of any others?[/quote]

1. Party blowers.
2. Dividers.

You're a bit late to the party, sunshinecake!

I did scroll down to see if anyone had answered as they had to have done as it is so obvious, but I got bored of looking. No big deal.

Apologies if anyone else has mentioned this but I find clapping really strange.

It seems such primitive and child like way to show approval.

At a end of a concert, for instant, all these 'civilised' grown up people sitting in a room together banging their hands together. Very odd.

If I think about clapping while I'm clapping my hands lose all rhythm and one hand is likely to miss the other because it makes no sense.

@SunshineCake it was me that posted the original post, not me who asked what those items were called

Courgettes become marrows. Not sure who asked this but they are also called courgettes in English (as well as France).

You burn fat. Like you burn oil in a lamp or burner. Your body converts the fat into energy (like an oil burner creating a flame) in the same way it does with eaten calories.