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Original poster

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

839 replies

PutItInYourPocket · 28/10/2020 20:33

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?

OP posts:
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7
SleepOhHowIMissYou · 30/10/2020 21:28

Kissing developed as we lost our strong sense of smell and is used to taste the pheromones of our mate to see if they are compatible for breeding.

wannabebetter · 30/10/2020 22:26

Money & economics - just really weird that every country seems to have a national debt - who did they borrow it from & how is it repaid (if it is!) & ultimately it's just printed pieces of paper - just print some more!! I know it's all economics & stuff but just seems to get crazier & crazier when everyone owes billions to everyone else!! Also space - Brian Cox speaks in a way that you think you're going to understand, but I'm completely lost within 5 mins & my brain just can't cope with space / time / light year stuff (and don't even get me started on dark matter')! Also the thought that everything on earth has always been here in one form or another, and yet we've got more rubbish than ever - where's it going to go when there's no more room to dig landfill sites?

Gwenhwyfar · 30/10/2020 22:29

@SleepOhHowIMissYou

Kissing developed as we lost our strong sense of smell and is used to taste the pheromones of our mate to see if they are compatible for breeding.
Interesting. I thought it came from mouth to mouth feeding. I've seen images of mothers chewing food first for their children and then passing it on.
lampshadery · 30/10/2020 22:40

I find the concept of how humans look weird. We all have two blob things in our heads to see with, a weird long thing sticking out of the middle with two holes in, a big hole at the bottom and then two wrinkly things out the side! The way our faces are made up is really weird to me - and that we consider some faces beautiful.

It really bothers me if I think too much about it 😂

Gwenhwyfar · 30/10/2020 22:41

"I only had some schoolgirl french that I'd not used in years! This was also prior to my studying the English language and so I knew very little about European language history.

As it turned out my knowledge of Scots Gaelic came in very handy! That will have confused a few of you reading!

Turns out they're all Germanic languages and I was able to fairly quickly pick up enough to get by just from my previous knowledge of Scots Gaelic, I learned more the longer I lived there of course as immersion and necessity REALLY helps! Early on I got on the wrong bloody bus! To find my way to getting the RIGHT bus home involved using a mish mash of the few Dutch words"

Have I misunderstood here? Neither French not Scots Gaelic are Germanic languages. English and Dutch are, of course.

Gwenhwyfar · 30/10/2020 22:46

"Absolutely with you on this. I'm not into kissing at all."

Apparently it's not normal in many parts of the world.

Eckhart · 30/10/2020 22:49

@lampshadery

I get that, but with hands. They're just so weird, and we forget all the time.

Gwenhwyfar · 30/10/2020 22:52

@Turgha

Not sure if this has already been mentioned, but smell.

The fact that if someone does a poo in the loo and I smell it from the hallway, basically tiny little particles of that poo have got into the air and have made it into my nose... TINY BITS OF POO IN MY NOSE. Shock

Yes, but wear a mask and notice how much less you smell things and then be happy that it seems fewer particles of Covid are getting into your nose :)
Gwenhwyfar · 30/10/2020 22:56

"Say a polish person living in England and in there dreams if I appear do I speak English or Polish."

I've had dreams in my own language featuring people speaking it who don't normally if you see what I mean. Quite often, there's no language or speech though, just images.
I think that if there is language in my dream, it would be the one I was thinking in before going to sleep.

Sixtonskip · 30/10/2020 22:59

@TheSpottedZebra this one blows my mind too!

Lovely1a2b3c · 30/10/2020 23:03

@Gwenhwyfar

"I only had some schoolgirl french that I'd not used in years! This was also prior to my studying the English language and so I knew very little about European language history.

As it turned out my knowledge of Scots Gaelic came in very handy! That will have confused a few of you reading!

Turns out they're all Germanic languages and I was able to fairly quickly pick up enough to get by just from my previous knowledge of Scots Gaelic, I learned more the longer I lived there of course as immersion and necessity REALLY helps! Early on I got on the wrong bloody bus! To find my way to getting the RIGHT bus home involved using a mish mash of the few Dutch words"

Have I misunderstood here? Neither French not Scots Gaelic are Germanic languages. English and Dutch are, of course.

No, yeah Gaelic is a Celtic language. They're all Indo-European languages but Gaelic is not Germanic.
di2004 · 30/10/2020 23:04

How we are born, we live and then die ... it’s something that blows the mind when you think about it.

AlaskaThunderfuckHiiiiiiiii · 30/10/2020 23:09

Different languages like Some European languages where words are jumbled in the sentence if you were to translate it but when they are talking to each other it makes perfect sense and it’s just like me speaking In English to someone else. Can not get my head around that at times.

Also the English language using the same sounding words for different things but have different spellings e.g. there and their, meet and meat, flower and flour. Trying to explain the difference between there and their and why they are spelled differently to a 6 year old is fun Grin

sunsalutations · 30/10/2020 23:10

Social norms. Why do we almost universally accept certain norms and who decides what the norm is? How does it happen? A Pat on the back for something well done, three meals a day, ironing (why are flat clothes better than a bit crumpled, picking your nose is a bad thing - those sorts of things. How is it decided what is polite and what isn't?
All of this puzzles me!

Lovely1a2b3c · 30/10/2020 23:10

Prosopagnosia (face blindness), colour blindness etc. and what these conditions teach us about how our brains construct our world rather than simply taking an external world in.

The world is like a big computer - it is not objectively organised in the way we see it, we see it so it's organised that way.

AlaskaThunderfuckHiiiiiiiii · 30/10/2020 23:25

Oh and another one. That there are machines that have been sucked into the earth, there is peat place near me that apparently has a perfectly preserved train in that came off the track during the war. Also that there are big machines just left in quarries to flood and in underground caves. Infact that all makes me feel incredible weird and horrible so more likely to be some kind of weird phobia!

Graphista · 30/10/2020 23:59

but they are also called courgettes in English (as well as France)

I think you need to learn the concept of Loan words

@Gwenhwyfar Scots Gaelic is a Germanic/Celtic language mish Mash, English is Germanic

French isn't it's a Romance language but the German/Dutch person who was giving me directions (I know you couldn't make this shit up!) Also had some french so we muddled through! It was most odd!

yesiamyesiamokaycallmeback · 31/10/2020 00:48

h

MadameBlobby · 31/10/2020 00:54

Time and the passing of time

That one day I’ll (hopefully) be an adorable cute old lady like my gran and friends’ grans were

That the 14 years since I had my eldest son passed in the blink of an eye and if they pass as quickly again I’ll be in my 60s with a 28 year old before I know it

MadameBlobby · 31/10/2020 00:57

Re the dreams/languages thing. My gran moved here with my grandad after the war and she was not a native English speaker, although she was of course fluent. I once asked her if she dreamt in English or her native tongue...she told me it was English

Language generally I find fascinating. I could be parachuted into a random remote village in China or somewhere and in a few years I’d be able to fluently speak the language.

MadameBlobby · 31/10/2020 00:59

@sunsalutations

Social norms. Why do we almost universally accept certain norms and who decides what the norm is? How does it happen? A Pat on the back for something well done, three meals a day, ironing (why are flat clothes better than a bit crumpled, picking your nose is a bad thing - those sorts of things. How is it decided what is polite and what isn't? All of this puzzles me!
I find all this really fascinating as my youngest son is autistic

So many weird social norms...yet he’s the one with a disorder for not getting it?!

SleepOhHowIMissYou · 31/10/2020 01:27

@Graphista I think I'm fine with loan words, but thanks for your concern.

SleepOhHowIMissYou · 31/10/2020 01:40

@Gwenhwyfar I think premastication is thought to be an evolutionary step towards (French) kissing but I was talking more about kissing as a sexual act and why we do it. You're right that kissing may have developed between courtship feeding (rather than between mother and child) though.

Bassarid · 31/10/2020 01:46

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

Have they ever been weirder?

Mamanyt · 31/10/2020 02:45

Does anyone else think that platypuses and giraffes look as if they were designed by a committee? AFTER happy hour?