Bore - not a problem :)
WellWhoKnew
this is how URLs are constructed...
there are different sections which all are of use to the server...
www.domain.com/folder/page?variable1=fred&variable2=mary
in the above, lets split it down:
https
is the protocol being used - http = Hyper Text Transfer Protocol or some such thing :) - basically it means pages linked together and is how the web started... the s bit at the end is a secure bit which encrypts the conversation between computer and server. You can have other bits here - e.g. ftp:// for file transfer protocol - which is a bit more technical...
://
don't worry about it! - usually your browser ignores it / hides it
www.domain.com
this is your 'domain' well sort of :) the domain is actually the domain.com bit... the world is split in top level domains (TLDs) - the .com bit and alternatives might be .co.uk or .uk for the UK - .com is american as that is where they started this process...
when you buy the domain - you can then choose the bits to go before it so you could have forum.domain.com / www.domain.com / etc. - www is a convention and not required, sometimes they all just end up at the same place...
/
this is significant - everything to the left of the first single slash says which server to go looking for - everything to the right is about finding something on that server...
folder
you can now subdivide pages etc. so can have folders if you wish, you can also use this bit differently using htaccess rules, but roughly speaking if we think of each bit between slashes as being a method of categorising then that generally makes sense - used to make it legible for users, and easy to use for the computer...
page
eventually you have something to the right of the last slash - this is likely to be the actual page - it might have an ending such as php or aspx - or it might not :)
? &
this is the start of a list of variables to feed into that page, the first one is a question mark, the rest being ampersands.
between each is a variable and its value e.g. variable 1 = fred the page will suck that in and use it to personalise the experience...
so in your examples:
/talk/shite_stuff/123456-wot-is-going-on?trending=1
/talk/shite/123456-wot-is-going-on?#prettyphoto.
the ?trending=1 is simply a variable to be read by the page - and irrelevant -you can put your own in and see what happens - it used to be an earlier form of hacking - add &user=admin to the end and early web pages would let you be admin 
that is a very generalised overview of URLs - but maybe helpful - the key thing with hackers is to check the www.domain.com bit - if that is not as you expect then you are on someone else's website - if that is fine, then the rest may not matter...
of course you can use URLs in a far more complex way (look at Amazon) - but for now that will do :)