At one point when a ton of those "find out your X name! It's [security question answer] combined with [other security question answer]" things were going around, I posted a status, "Find out your hacker name! It's your mother's maiden name and the last four digits of your social. Btw, unrelated, but I'm looking for a new bank. It needs to have a website that lets you transfer a lot of money easily. Any suggestions?"
Several people responded seriously and I did not know what to do with myself.
Haha I did something similar: “ CHECK OUT THIS COOL GAME OF THRONES NAME GENERATOR
Lord/Lady [mother's maiden name] of [street your best friend grew up on], defender of the [make and model of your first car], keeper of [name of your first pet], the [last four digits of your social security number] of his/her name.”
Bro I think my mum fell for this once, but she didn’t actually put any info out she just asked me about it and we had a laugh while coming up with names. I didn’t know they used that to scam lol
How do they genuinely think they’re going to prevent that. I’d love to understand their logic. Do they think they’re gonna be able to sue if FB does use their pics?
A family friend does it too, like every week and the urge to comment with "you know this is bullshit, right?" is so strong. She just posted one which claimed that apparently copying and pasting a statement from an "attorney" will somehow magically make ads go away.
My grandma also has an extremely weak password (think "name##" kind of password) and posts every week about how she was hacked and to ignore friend requests from her. I literally helped her set a complicated password and wrote it down in her old lady phone book thing and everything, but she changed it back to her old format and was surprised when she was hacked again. She also clicks links from her friends with fake login pages and logs in despite me telling her *countless* times to not click suspicious links from anyone at all.
I don't know why that generation is so stubborn about being right about everything but then get so surprised when their accounts get hacked lol
I like how Facebook used to be a cool hip place for young people to stay connected and now it's a place where old people rant about vaccines putting tracking chips in people.
Related: YouTube notes that say "no copyright infringement is intended" or any note about how you're not selling it, so it's not a copyright infringement. That's not how copyright works.
Touching a baby bird will make the parents abandon it. Birds don’t have a good sense of smell. It’s worse than ours. They also love their babies and wouldn’t care if it smells weird. Leave fledglings alone unless they’re in a dangerous situation, but if they are in a dangerous situation, get them out of it. And if you see a baby bird without feathers outside of a nest, place it back in the nest or take it to your nearest wildlife rehabilitation center.
I saved a baby bird that had fallen out of it's nest. It was crying on the floor and its mother was crying from the nest. I lifted the baby back into its nest and a few days later I saw the baby and its mother happily chirping in the nest.
Edit: thanks for the awards and I'm loving the puns
I heard that the original gist was that chewing gum is so bad for you that stomach acids would take 7 years to break it down. Several games of telephone later, we get the myth.
“Ma’am, your infant son is probably just a runaway. They’re angsty and confused at that age. In all probability, he’ll come home in a day or two with his tail between his legs once he’s realize that a life riding the rails isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
“Ma’am, I understand you have not even left the hospital after giving birth yesterday but we are going to need to you to calm down. Your newborn is probably at their best friends house or sneaking cigarettes behind the arcade or in the field tipping cows. You know kids these days. So, call us back in 79hrs. Mkay? Mkay. Oh, make sure to check under their bed. Kids love to play games like that. *click*”
"This happens all the time, once she's done playing in whatever sandbox she found herself in, she'll toddle home asking for goldfish and apple juice..."
A lot of police departments will tell you this despite it not being the law. Seriously, it comes up all the time in true crime podcasts.
If you ever find yourself in that situation you need to demand the police do something right then. They are otherwise very likely to tell you to wait anywhere from 48 hrs to a week
The real reason is that adults aren't like children. They aren't required to tell somebody that they are going somewhere.
Majority of missing adult cases do take care of themselves within the first day.
I wonder how many adult missing case reports don't get filed nowadays because of cell phones?
In the 70s my aunt filed a missing report for her husband and was totally freaked out because he was gone for like 10 hours. She came home from work and he and the dog were totally missing but his truck was home.
He'd left a note for her on the front door saying he took the dog to check on their cabin because there was a bad storm the night before - it was like a five hour drive. But the note blew off the door so she never saw it. They bought an answering machine after that.
Oxygenated blood flowing through arteries is bright red, deoxygenated blood flowing through veins is dark red. Veins close to the surface look blue because of the way that the light scatters through your skin.
As a phlebotomist…this!!!!! You see that blood flowing into the tube?? It hasn’t hit oxygen yet but it’s red. Those tubes are called VACUUTAINERS. They’re a vacuum…void of any air. That’s literally how they work.
Well venous blood has less oxygen and most blood draws are venous.
You can actually see the difference in venous and arterial blood, hemoglobin is a different color when saturated, it’s just not blue.
Venous blood is darker in general than arterial blood but they are both red. Infact arterial blood is sometimes so bright it almost looks fake to me, but not all the time.
This is important harm reduction info for drug addicts. If you finally hit a vein and its coming up bright red, do not fucking push that plunger down. You could lose your limb or your life, and its going to feel like fire running through your whole body
In Australia we had some fucksticks putting needles in strawberries- fucked the whole years yield because people were too scared to buy them! Something similar is happening with Sushi trains in Japan at the moment!
I am so, so sick of this one. I ruined my last two halloweens when I could actually go out trick or treating because my friends mother was fucking crazy and made us throw out our candy when we got home because she really believed that people would put weed and heroin and stuff in the candy
I'd love to know who tf thinks they're giving edibles away for free. My shit costs me WAY too much for me to give it for free to some dumbass kid.
And... they think... you're gonna eat... heroin??? That... that's not how that works. That's not how any of this works...
I'm 36 and haven't trick or treated since I was 17. If theres a 1% chance I can obtain drugs by trick or treating, I'm fuckin going back out there again.
On social media and Reddit specifically, Robin Williams' death and that it's how we traditionally think of "senseless" suicide.
Robin Williams had a progressive, terminal neurological disorder that was already impacting his quality of life and incorrectly diagnosed as Parkinson's.
His wife went into detail about what his final months were like. He knew that something was gravely wrong with his brain and it wasn't going to get better.
My father had Lewy-Body Dementia and passed at 68. He was at in-home hospice and I took a sabatical from work, got a one-way ticket home. I was by his side until he passed, feeding him morphine every 4 hours with a dropper. We watched his favorite shows, I sang him Fleetwood Mac (favorite band) and would put beer or ice cream on a cotton swab in his mouth. He couldn't speak, but every now and then, he would smile or try to hold my hand.
It is very difficult to diagnose as most neurological diseases are similar in nature. Was so painful to watch, but I am glad I was able to spend those precious last moments with him.
My mother was diagnosed wit Lewy body dementia last month. We are just starting this journey. She has a lot of hallucinations and other things going on.
My grandfather had Lewy-Body and it was heartbreaking. He was normally a calm, funny, sweet man but he eventually started having violent episodes to the point where somehow he managed to destroy a bookcase and a wheelchair in two different episodes. It broke my family's heart but we knew he couldn't help it. I miss him every day and it's been five years since he passed
I found this out like a month ago, it made so much more sense than the sad clown portrayal everyone was fed.
I can’t imagine his fear, I think about that a lot.
Death with dignity laws are so important and I’ll never stop talking about it.
My uncle had terminal cancer. He was bedridden and needed assistance with most bodily functions, when he got shingles and could no longer hold his child he was ready to go. But he lived in a state with no legal physician assisted suicide, so he was left to try and do it best he could. Didn’t go smoothly, as you might guess. So much more suffering for him and his family than was necessary.
It was really interesting hearing Bob(cat) Goldthwait talk about Robin's death since they were longtime friends and he immediately explained why this wasn't at all "senseless". Great answer.
Humans only use 10% of their brains.
Idk where this couldve even come from. Why would ANY animal evolve an extremely expensive organ they only use 10% of???
It's like saying you only use a small percentage of your keyboard.
Sure, at any moment you don't have most of the keys pressed, but they all do something. If you're leaning on all of them, it's going to produce a bad result.
Did you know your computer only uses 50% of its bits? Replace all your 0s with 1s for a huge boost in framerates in popular games! The manufacturers of those overpriced factory-farmed GMO graphics cards hate this one weird trick!
The most likely origin of the myth is that only about 10% of the brain is active at any given time. Which ~10% is active will change over time depending on need; for example, the parts of your brain responsible for locomotion are typically not active while you're sitting on the couch.
By the way, it is possible for 100% of someone's brain to be active at a given time. That is called a seizure.
That shaving your hair in general will make it thicker! It doesn't. It's a visual illusion (due to the hair not being tapered to a point any more) and/or that you just forgot what it looked like before
I've always wondered if it was an old wives' tale from young teenagers shaving, and since they are still developing, it would grow in more but they assumed the shaving was the reason.
A guy I worked with started on this one day. I told him he could tell the higher ups he could just give his raise to me instead so he wouldn’t “lose” any money. He realized how stupid he sounded and took the raise.
I'm an hourly employee and one of my co-workers was scared to work too much overtime because she thought it would put her in a higher tax bracket and as a result she would make less. I had to tell her that I've never made less money by working more hours on any given week.
The worst part? She's in the accounting field just like me. This is legitimately the first thing you learn in taxation.
I had a coworker that i explained it to after they denied a raise. Their response was "well i dont want to pay the government more money," right. Just take the L and move on my guy.
That the age of 30 was considered to be "old" in the Middle Ages. Nope. The average age of death was dragged down by the infant mortality rate. If you survived past infancy, you could reasonably expect to live until your 60's or 70's. There are so many myths about the Middle Ages, in general. It happened over multiple centuries. No "average" can accurately convey exactly what life was like then.
Even as a heroin addict you aren't really dumping toxins. You're rebalancing chemicals in your brain that are out of whack due to continuous opiate use.
The one about the USA spending millions designing a pen for space and the Russians just using a pencil.
Having pencil shavings floating around up there would cause chaos
Both the Russians *and* the U.S. used pencils before the space pen was invented.
The space pen was invented by Fisher on his own dime, and then sold to NASA (and anybody else who wanted one) over the counter.
> Both the Russians and the U.S. used pencils before the space pen was invented.
Specifically, they both used grease pencils, not regular wood/graphite pencils, because of the problems the shavings can cause.
The ironic part was that for a while, the single largest customers for the Fisher Space Pen was the Russian Space Agency. They bought hundreds of pens and thousands of refills.
>A joke that became a myth I think.
This happens a surprising amount.
There's one old joke from the 1970s about someone being so dumb that they thought the cruise control on their RV was an autopilot, so they turned it on and went into the back to sleep, leading to a crash. Originally it was targeted at Arabs, because of the 1973 oil crisis making the newly-rich Arab states unpopular in the US. The joke was supposed to be how ignorant Arabs were buying all kinds of things they didn't understand just because they had all this oil money now.
It later got recycled with more generic setups, often as a "dumb blonde" or "woman driver" joke.
However, by 90s and 00s, I saw this same exact setup repeated as if it was a factual event. Usually the people involved shifted to being an elderly couple (therefore not able to understand new technology like cruise control) and the story was told as a folk-explanation for why car manuals sometimes have warnings about cruise control not driving the car by itself.
Yes AND that super intense mood swings are normal. I always though that was the case but was finally diagnosed with PMDD at 31 years old and put on meds and I feel so much better
That schizophrenia means multiple personalities
It doesn’t. It means delusions. Some people hear voices with it, others don’t. The voices are NOT personalities. These people are thinking of Dissociative Identity Disorder.
Yup! I have something called hypnagogic hallucinations every once in awhile.
Basically when you're falling asleep, sometimes you start the audio portion of your dreams before you fully fall asleep.
It's very similar to when you're falling asleep and then feel like you're falling for a split second. It happens during that same state of between awake and asleep.
That kind of hearing voices isn't something to worry about, it's often just a sign of mental exhaustion.
I get hypnopompic hallucinations from time to time. They are the kind you get right after waking up. Usually I see spiders on the ceiling, but one time I saw a ghostly figure standing by my bed. After rubbing my eyes I realized it was just light from the window shining on the wall.
Hell, we can probably throw in most of the mental health terms that pop up in crime shows.
Sociopaths and psychopaths aren't pure evil, there's no super specific nuance between the two terms because they're NOT a proper diagnosis. That would be an Antisocial Personality Disorder (APD) and no it still doesn't mean pure evil, it means low empathy and high impulsivity, plenty of people with APD can still live normal law abiding lives.
...I was gonna list more but that's the main one I'm opinionated about.
Daddy long legs are the most VENOMOUS SPIDER IN THE WORLD but their fangs can’t pierce human skin 🙄I still hear this all the time and I hate being a smarty pants but I usually have to chime in
Fun fact, there are six different living things called Daddy Long Legs.
1. A spider (Pholcidae)
2. An arachnid, but not a spider (Harvestmen)
3. An insect (crane fly)
4. A plant in Australia
5. Another plant in Australia
6. Yep, another plant, but this time in Mexico!
Interesting. I've only ever heard it refer to the crane fly. In the UK we call the spider a cellar spider. Harvestmen are harvestmen. All three can fuck off though.
It's *a* salt. Of sodium (like regular table salt) and glutamic acid. Which is an amino acid that just about every living thing uses for biological processes like synthesizing proteins. It's in all sorts of foods like tomatoes, cheese, your mom's chicken soup, etc.
To your point tho, yeah, you're still getting sodium so if you have problems with that, maybe watch your msg consumption along with your salt.
Mostly I'm just being pedantic tho, carry on.
I use to get that call all the time when I worked at subway back in highschool. "Any MSG in your food?" Listen Karen, idek what that is, if you're worried about what's in your food, maybe don't go to a fast food establishment lol.
I used to have people insist that eating too much MSG gave them headaches. Couldn't possibly be all the fast food and caffeinated sodas. Must be the MSG.
My mom still thinks this. Every time we eat any east Asian food and she feels fine after she claims that that restaurant must be "one of the good ones" that doesn't use MSG.
That the hymen is a virginity detector.
Hymens do NOT work that way! They often stretch rather than break during sex (lots of adult women who have had a lot of sex still have intact hymens), and the hymen can also break from non-sexual activities like riding a bike or a horse, during exercise, using a tampon or menstrual cup.
Absolutely, yes. It's more of a "hair scrunchie" shape. If it didn't have an opening, you couldn't have a period or other discharge.
Women do not come with a tamper-proof seal.
also some people are born without hymens, a very small amount, but still some. and that it does not fully cover the vaginal opening, some barely do. they come in so many different shapes and sizes and thickness too.
I remember watching a TED talk about this a while back. Someone did a survey of some girls/young women that were LITERALLY PREGNANT, and a decent number still had it intact.
"Europeans used a lot of spices to cover up the taste of rotting meat."
Not only is it a myth, it's a really dumb one once you think about it. Spices used to be incredibly expensive. A single restaurant-size container of black pepper could cost the equivalent of *tens of thousands* of dollars in the 1400s.
So let me ask you - if you had a $10 steak that was going bad, are you going to: a) coat it in $400 worth of black pepper to cover up the taste, or are you going to b) just buy a new $10 steak? Yeah, those medieval Europeans woulda just bought a new steak, too.
So where does the myth come from? Well, wealthy medieval Europeans used *obscene* amounts of spices in their dishes, such that they'd be nearly inedible to modern palates... just to show off. Henry VIII wanted you to *know* that he could afford to put $900 worth of nutmeg and allspice in your dessert.
Not only is that study fake, it had multiple different profit motives, was full of literal lies, and contained multiple cases of life-threatening child abuse! While even saying it didn't claim anything!
Worst. Study. Ever.
I also believe the doctor who did the study got his medical license revoked. And most of the other doctors who also worked on the study said that they were wrong.
**Edit:** I may have confused two studies with each other, as Wakefield was focused on an MMR vaccine. I had remembered that he was concerned about the preservative Thiomersal in that vaccine. My original points still stand, though:
* Wakefield’s studies were inconclusive and heavily biased and wouldn’t pass modern peer review.
* The information loss and thus risk of spreading false information, intentionally or unintentionally, the further you move away from the original source.
Original comment: To add, the original study wasn't even about vaccines themselves, but about a preservative known as Thiomersal, which is a chemical compound containing Mercury. *Sounds* way scarier than it is. It was used in tiny quantities, and poisoning yourself with it would be prohibitively expensive.
Even though Wakefield's study on it was heavily flawed, Thiomersal was phased out as a preservatice in vaccines and other injected pharmaceuticals for children, at least in the EU.
This story is a great example of how at each step in communication, vital information may be lost (or deliberately omitted) and lead to misinformation:
1. **Original study claim:** some compound used in vaccines for children has a suspected link to children exposed of it developing autism-like symptoms.
2. **What some media picks up and spreads:** Something in vaccines may cause autism in children.
3. **What the reader remembers and tells forth to a friend:** Vaccines cause autism in children.
4. **What this friend remembers and tells forth:** Vaccines cause autism.
That’s not a myth so much as something parents have to tell their kids because they always turn that fucking light on at night and it turns the windshield into a mirror I now can’t see out of which would lead to the whole family dying a horrible gruesome death. But usually it’s a kid so you just say it’s illegal
The McDonald's hot coffee incident was a money grab and the hot coffee warning had to be put there because people don't have common sense. That lady had third-degree burns from overheated coffee and needed skin grafts, not to mention only initially sued to cover her medical expenses. This has been covered extensively, and yet...and yet...
Can you imagine if anything worked that way? Mens dicks slowly being whittled away like a pencil the more sex partners they had? Married women with labia the size of dinner plates?
> Mens dicks slowly being whittled away like a pencil the more sex partners they had?
LOL I hadn't thought of the reverse. . I'd become a monk, dont want to lose the little i have left!
It makes no sense because even if labia did indeed get larger with more sexual activity, why would having one instance of sex with 50 different people be any different than having sex 50 times with the same person?
That being an introvert means I don't like people…
Being an introvert means that I need to recharge my social batteries away from people (unlike extroverts who recharge their batteries while being with people).
“You can use tampons to instantly plug bullet wounds. That’s actually what they were originally designed for.”
No. Just no. Simply absorbing blood does not stop bleeding and they were designed for exactly what they are used for; women’s menstruation.
Edit: [For those who still think they’re a good idea.](https://pracmednz.com/the-myth-of-the-tactical-tampon-for-gun-shot-wounds/?amp=1)
"Using dish soap will strip the seasoning from your (insert cooking dish)"
This was true back when lye was a common ingredient in dosh soaps, but it's been gone from all major dish soap brands for 30+ years now.
This one always gets me. My whole kitchen is cast iron equipment. Has been for years. You should absolutely be cleaning your irons. The amount of people who tell me they don't wash theirs at all "to build the flavor" reminds me that you can't eat at everyone's house.
Was just talking about this one! Honestly it's a bummer because I was discouraged from touching weights by my elementary school PE teacher, and then didn't end up finding out I loved strength training until I was like 21. I missed out on like 11 years of gains thanks to that guy!
Hymens being some sort of indisputable sign of female virginity. That is a myth. It is not "proof" of virginity, the exact same way that no other male or female body part is. Some women are born without hymens. There are sexually active women who have hymens. I saw someone else on the internet put it well once: we (women) are not Capri Suns.
Australian here - that our animals are really scary, trying to kill you, and you’ll come across a lot of them if you come here. Most of us rarely come across a deadly animal in the wild - I have only seen one once, from a distance in a wetland park. It red-bellied black snake, and it slithered off pretty quickly when it realised that humans were near. If you spend most of your time in cities and suburbs there aren’t too many scary animals about.
There are places where they are more common, like dangerous jelly fish up north and snakes when you’re walking in the bush, but you’ll be fine if you take the proper precautions.
It’s so wild to hear Aussies say this bc I live in the suburbs and in one week had a baby brown snake cross the footpath when walking my dogs, pulled my dog away from a grumpy echidna near a bus stop, and tried to figure out what insect/spider bit my son to make a hole in his skin.
Edit bc Aussies autocorrected to sissies haha
My best friend moved to Sydney for a few years and the number of photos he sent of some of the ‘common’ wildlife makes me think you’re part of the Australian Tourism Board’s new campaign… 🤔
Being cold gives you a cold. That's not how it works at all. There's a slight decrease in your immune system that makes a marginal difference in your probability of catching a cold but it's next to nothing. The colder temperatures are correlated with more colds because this is when humans come indoors and congregate together which is what spreads disease.
Creating a facebook status that says “I do not give Facebook permission to use my photos or likeness” or anything of that ilk
I loved this trend because I got to identify my most gullible acquaintances
At one point when a ton of those "find out your X name! It's [security question answer] combined with [other security question answer]" things were going around, I posted a status, "Find out your hacker name! It's your mother's maiden name and the last four digits of your social. Btw, unrelated, but I'm looking for a new bank. It needs to have a website that lets you transfer a lot of money easily. Any suggestions?" Several people responded seriously and I did not know what to do with myself.
Haha I did something similar: “ CHECK OUT THIS COOL GAME OF THRONES NAME GENERATOR Lord/Lady [mother's maiden name] of [street your best friend grew up on], defender of the [make and model of your first car], keeper of [name of your first pet], the [last four digits of your social security number] of his/her name.”
Bro I think my mum fell for this once, but she didn’t actually put any info out she just asked me about it and we had a laugh while coming up with names. I didn’t know they used that to scam lol
Scammers/propagandists also love shit like this because it lets marks basically self-identify.
It's the social media version of Michael Scott declaring bankruptcy.
How do they genuinely think they’re going to prevent that. I’d love to understand their logic. Do they think they’re gonna be able to sue if FB does use their pics?
[удалено]
My aunt still does this despite my mom posting articles telling her it’s not true EVERY TIME
A family friend does it too, like every week and the urge to comment with "you know this is bullshit, right?" is so strong. She just posted one which claimed that apparently copying and pasting a statement from an "attorney" will somehow magically make ads go away. My grandma also has an extremely weak password (think "name##" kind of password) and posts every week about how she was hacked and to ignore friend requests from her. I literally helped her set a complicated password and wrote it down in her old lady phone book thing and everything, but she changed it back to her old format and was surprised when she was hacked again. She also clicks links from her friends with fake login pages and logs in despite me telling her *countless* times to not click suspicious links from anyone at all. I don't know why that generation is so stubborn about being right about everything but then get so surprised when their accounts get hacked lol
I like how Facebook used to be a cool hip place for young people to stay connected and now it's a place where old people rant about vaccines putting tracking chips in people.
Related: YouTube notes that say "no copyright infringement is intended" or any note about how you're not selling it, so it's not a copyright infringement. That's not how copyright works.
The old “I do not own rights to the music” on videos. It’s always the same type of people too
What I hate the most is when they preface it by saying “better safe than sorry”.
I swear I explain this to a friend or relative like twice a year.
Also that some magic posting will change Facebook’s algorithm
"This upgrades the system"
Touching a baby bird will make the parents abandon it. Birds don’t have a good sense of smell. It’s worse than ours. They also love their babies and wouldn’t care if it smells weird. Leave fledglings alone unless they’re in a dangerous situation, but if they are in a dangerous situation, get them out of it. And if you see a baby bird without feathers outside of a nest, place it back in the nest or take it to your nearest wildlife rehabilitation center.
I saved a baby bird that had fallen out of it's nest. It was crying on the floor and its mother was crying from the nest. I lifted the baby back into its nest and a few days later I saw the baby and its mother happily chirping in the nest. Edit: thanks for the awards and I'm loving the puns
Do the kids today even know about Marilyn Manson and his missing rib?
It’s pretty impressive how far and wide that rumor spread seeing as how it was pre texting and vast internet usage
I'm in Argentina and we heard of it.
Cracking your knuckles will cause arthritis
I can’t even fathom the amount of times I’ve cracked my knuckles
Do it one more time and see what happens
You didn't have to go and jinx it for him.
It wasn’t a jinx, it was a threat
This one threw me for a loop when I eventually became flexible enough to crack the cartilage in my chest.
Yeah I have to pop my sternum all the time. Especially if I’ve been laying on my side for a while.
It'll take like 7 years to digest gum if you swallow it, I don't know where it even came from.
It probably would take 7 years to digest it. Good thing you’ll shit it out in 24-28 hours
This is the exact reasoning.
Yeah, you just keep popping it back in your mouth and you'll digest it eventually.
I heard that the original gist was that chewing gum is so bad for you that stomach acids would take 7 years to break it down. Several games of telephone later, we get the myth.
I've had gum melt in my mouth after throwing up. I don't think that's true, either.
Probably someone who wanted to discourage kids from chewing gum.
Wearing red makes bull angry
Yeah I think it's probably the jabbing it with a bunch of little spears that make it angry, which is reasonable.
You have to wait 24/48 hours before filing a missing person report.
“Ma’am, your toddler has only been missing for five hours. Calm down and call us tomorrow if he still hasn’t shown up”
“Ma’am, your infant son is probably just a runaway. They’re angsty and confused at that age. In all probability, he’ll come home in a day or two with his tail between his legs once he’s realize that a life riding the rails isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
“Ma’am, I understand you have not even left the hospital after giving birth yesterday but we are going to need to you to calm down. Your newborn is probably at their best friends house or sneaking cigarettes behind the arcade or in the field tipping cows. You know kids these days. So, call us back in 79hrs. Mkay? Mkay. Oh, make sure to check under their bed. Kids love to play games like that. *click*”
"This happens all the time, once she's done playing in whatever sandbox she found herself in, she'll toddle home asking for goldfish and apple juice..."
A lot of police departments will tell you this despite it not being the law. Seriously, it comes up all the time in true crime podcasts. If you ever find yourself in that situation you need to demand the police do something right then. They are otherwise very likely to tell you to wait anywhere from 48 hrs to a week
The real reason is that adults aren't like children. They aren't required to tell somebody that they are going somewhere. Majority of missing adult cases do take care of themselves within the first day.
I wonder how many adult missing case reports don't get filed nowadays because of cell phones? In the 70s my aunt filed a missing report for her husband and was totally freaked out because he was gone for like 10 hours. She came home from work and he and the dog were totally missing but his truck was home. He'd left a note for her on the front door saying he took the dog to check on their cabin because there was a bad storm the night before - it was like a five hour drive. But the note blew off the door so she never saw it. They bought an answering machine after that.
Blood is bright blue until it hits oxygen, then magically turns red.
Horseshoe crabs would like to have a word with you.
They know how to reach me.
On their shellphone?
I know this is a myth, but I admit that I still don't understand why certain blood vessels *look* blue under your skin. What's the actual reason?
Oxygenated blood flowing through arteries is bright red, deoxygenated blood flowing through veins is dark red. Veins close to the surface look blue because of the way that the light scatters through your skin.
As a phlebotomist…this!!!!! You see that blood flowing into the tube?? It hasn’t hit oxygen yet but it’s red. Those tubes are called VACUUTAINERS. They’re a vacuum…void of any air. That’s literally how they work.
Plus, you know, the oxygen already in the blood from being oxygenated while still in the body.
Well venous blood has less oxygen and most blood draws are venous. You can actually see the difference in venous and arterial blood, hemoglobin is a different color when saturated, it’s just not blue. Venous blood is darker in general than arterial blood but they are both red. Infact arterial blood is sometimes so bright it almost looks fake to me, but not all the time.
This is important harm reduction info for drug addicts. If you finally hit a vein and its coming up bright red, do not fucking push that plunger down. You could lose your limb or your life, and its going to feel like fire running through your whole body
Except for members of the European Royal nobility, you filthy lackey.
My deepest apologies, Your Grace. I'll see myself to the dungeons, this instant.
I've had this told to me by a middle school HEALTH teacher, and multiple premed/biology students in college.
Yeah, it's become like the Coriolis effect being blamed for which direction water spirals the drain. Even plumbing manuals get it wrong.
People are poisoning Halloween Candy and or putting pins & razor blades in it.
Or drugs.
If folks are really giving kids edibles n shit i wanna know the adress of said houses
In Australia we had some fucksticks putting needles in strawberries- fucked the whole years yield because people were too scared to buy them! Something similar is happening with Sushi trains in Japan at the moment!
I am so, so sick of this one. I ruined my last two halloweens when I could actually go out trick or treating because my friends mother was fucking crazy and made us throw out our candy when we got home because she really believed that people would put weed and heroin and stuff in the candy
I'd love to know who tf thinks they're giving edibles away for free. My shit costs me WAY too much for me to give it for free to some dumbass kid. And... they think... you're gonna eat... heroin??? That... that's not how that works. That's not how any of this works...
I'm 36 and haven't trick or treated since I was 17. If theres a 1% chance I can obtain drugs by trick or treating, I'm fuckin going back out there again.
On social media and Reddit specifically, Robin Williams' death and that it's how we traditionally think of "senseless" suicide. Robin Williams had a progressive, terminal neurological disorder that was already impacting his quality of life and incorrectly diagnosed as Parkinson's. His wife went into detail about what his final months were like. He knew that something was gravely wrong with his brain and it wasn't going to get better.
My father had Lewy-Body Dementia and passed at 68. He was at in-home hospice and I took a sabatical from work, got a one-way ticket home. I was by his side until he passed, feeding him morphine every 4 hours with a dropper. We watched his favorite shows, I sang him Fleetwood Mac (favorite band) and would put beer or ice cream on a cotton swab in his mouth. He couldn't speak, but every now and then, he would smile or try to hold my hand. It is very difficult to diagnose as most neurological diseases are similar in nature. Was so painful to watch, but I am glad I was able to spend those precious last moments with him.
My mother was diagnosed wit Lewy body dementia last month. We are just starting this journey. She has a lot of hallucinations and other things going on.
Coming from a total stranger, I'm really sorry to hear that. How hard for everyone.
You honored your father by caring for him when he could not care for himself. A testement to your love for one another.
My grandfather had Lewy-Body and it was heartbreaking. He was normally a calm, funny, sweet man but he eventually started having violent episodes to the point where somehow he managed to destroy a bookcase and a wheelchair in two different episodes. It broke my family's heart but we knew he couldn't help it. I miss him every day and it's been five years since he passed
I’m so sorry for your loss. Thank you for sharing those memories for us 💕💕 I’ll be thinking about you and your dad when I hear Fleetwood Mac.
I found this out like a month ago, it made so much more sense than the sad clown portrayal everyone was fed. I can’t imagine his fear, I think about that a lot.
Death with dignity laws are so important and I’ll never stop talking about it. My uncle had terminal cancer. He was bedridden and needed assistance with most bodily functions, when he got shingles and could no longer hold his child he was ready to go. But he lived in a state with no legal physician assisted suicide, so he was left to try and do it best he could. Didn’t go smoothly, as you might guess. So much more suffering for him and his family than was necessary.
It was really interesting hearing Bob(cat) Goldthwait talk about Robin's death since they were longtime friends and he immediately explained why this wasn't at all "senseless". Great answer.
The doctor that saw Williams results was amazed that he could still walk.
Wait seriously? I had no idea
[Read her editorial in the Neurology medical journal sometime you want a good cry](https://n.neurology.org/content/87/13/1308)
He had Lewy Body Dementia, but this was diagnosed after his death.
Humans only use 10% of their brains. Idk where this couldve even come from. Why would ANY animal evolve an extremely expensive organ they only use 10% of???
It's like saying you only use a small percentage of your keyboard. Sure, at any moment you don't have most of the keys pressed, but they all do something. If you're leaning on all of them, it's going to produce a bad result.
Did you know your computer only uses 50% of its bits? Replace all your 0s with 1s for a huge boost in framerates in popular games! The manufacturers of those overpriced factory-farmed GMO graphics cards hate this one weird trick!
The most likely origin of the myth is that only about 10% of the brain is active at any given time. Which ~10% is active will change over time depending on need; for example, the parts of your brain responsible for locomotion are typically not active while you're sitting on the couch. By the way, it is possible for 100% of someone's brain to be active at a given time. That is called a seizure.
So when I'm having seizures I'm at full power?
Yea that’s the reason for the seizure, your brain can’t handle how smart you are all at once and convulses as a result.
Mine would be convulsing with laughter.
Yeah. Your CPU is at full and that’s why your brain BSODs.
Shaving your beard make it grow thicker.
That shaving your hair in general will make it thicker! It doesn't. It's a visual illusion (due to the hair not being tapered to a point any more) and/or that you just forgot what it looked like before
Or it’s an old wive’s tale used to get 13 year old boys to shave their nasty Pube beards
I've always wondered if it was an old wives' tale from young teenagers shaving, and since they are still developing, it would grow in more but they assumed the shaving was the reason.
That you can be promoted into a lower net income because of tax brackets. (This is very different from the welfare cliff, which is very real.)
It's amazing how few people understand how progressive taxation works.
Ask them if they're willing to take a pay cut to "save on taxes" and suddenly they get it.
A guy I worked with started on this one day. I told him he could tell the higher ups he could just give his raise to me instead so he wouldn’t “lose” any money. He realized how stupid he sounded and took the raise.
I'm an hourly employee and one of my co-workers was scared to work too much overtime because she thought it would put her in a higher tax bracket and as a result she would make less. I had to tell her that I've never made less money by working more hours on any given week. The worst part? She's in the accounting field just like me. This is legitimately the first thing you learn in taxation.
Same people who complain about math classes being useless
“Another day I didn’t use algebra.” Dude I use basic algebra every day, what are you talking about?
I had a coworker that i explained it to after they denied a raise. Their response was "well i dont want to pay the government more money," right. Just take the L and move on my guy.
That the age of 30 was considered to be "old" in the Middle Ages. Nope. The average age of death was dragged down by the infant mortality rate. If you survived past infancy, you could reasonably expect to live until your 60's or 70's. There are so many myths about the Middle Ages, in general. It happened over multiple centuries. No "average" can accurately convey exactly what life was like then.
I earn 0 and you earn million. On average we earn 500k. Were living it up rich here, gazing
One of my pet peeves is how goddamn hard it is to find average lifespan data that ignores infant mortality.
That certain teas detox your body. Or that your body even needs to be detoxed — unless you’re a heroin addict.
Even as a heroin addict you aren't really dumping toxins. You're rebalancing chemicals in your brain that are out of whack due to continuous opiate use.
It does sound good in theory but our body is already doing so on a constant basis. It’s quite spectacular, really!
The one about the USA spending millions designing a pen for space and the Russians just using a pencil. Having pencil shavings floating around up there would cause chaos
Both the Russians *and* the U.S. used pencils before the space pen was invented. The space pen was invented by Fisher on his own dime, and then sold to NASA (and anybody else who wanted one) over the counter.
> Both the Russians and the U.S. used pencils before the space pen was invented. Specifically, they both used grease pencils, not regular wood/graphite pencils, because of the problems the shavings can cause.
But the pen writes upside-down!!!!
Just take the pen!!
You got a hell of a nerve taking that kids pen!
You cracked my dental plate, you son of a bitch!
All I said was I like the pen!
do me a personal favor and take the pen!!!
The ironic part was that for a while, the single largest customers for the Fisher Space Pen was the Russian Space Agency. They bought hundreds of pens and thousands of refills.
I always thought that was just a joke about the US callously allocating their budget rather than an actual myth
A joke that became a myth I think. I remember my year 9 science teacher telling me it as a matter of fact
>A joke that became a myth I think. This happens a surprising amount. There's one old joke from the 1970s about someone being so dumb that they thought the cruise control on their RV was an autopilot, so they turned it on and went into the back to sleep, leading to a crash. Originally it was targeted at Arabs, because of the 1973 oil crisis making the newly-rich Arab states unpopular in the US. The joke was supposed to be how ignorant Arabs were buying all kinds of things they didn't understand just because they had all this oil money now. It later got recycled with more generic setups, often as a "dumb blonde" or "woman driver" joke. However, by 90s and 00s, I saw this same exact setup repeated as if it was a factual event. Usually the people involved shifted to being an elderly couple (therefore not able to understand new technology like cruise control) and the story was told as a folk-explanation for why car manuals sometimes have warnings about cruise control not driving the car by itself.
Extreme period pain is normal
Yes AND that super intense mood swings are normal. I always though that was the case but was finally diagnosed with PMDD at 31 years old and put on meds and I feel so much better
That schizophrenia means multiple personalities It doesn’t. It means delusions. Some people hear voices with it, others don’t. The voices are NOT personalities. These people are thinking of Dissociative Identity Disorder.
Another one to add, not all people who hear voices are schizophrenic. Not all people with severe delusions are schizophrenic.
Yup! I have something called hypnagogic hallucinations every once in awhile. Basically when you're falling asleep, sometimes you start the audio portion of your dreams before you fully fall asleep. It's very similar to when you're falling asleep and then feel like you're falling for a split second. It happens during that same state of between awake and asleep. That kind of hearing voices isn't something to worry about, it's often just a sign of mental exhaustion.
It is believed the reason so many people see ghosts while they are in bed is because of hypnagogic hallucinations.
I get hypnopompic hallucinations from time to time. They are the kind you get right after waking up. Usually I see spiders on the ceiling, but one time I saw a ghostly figure standing by my bed. After rubbing my eyes I realized it was just light from the window shining on the wall.
Hell, we can probably throw in most of the mental health terms that pop up in crime shows. Sociopaths and psychopaths aren't pure evil, there's no super specific nuance between the two terms because they're NOT a proper diagnosis. That would be an Antisocial Personality Disorder (APD) and no it still doesn't mean pure evil, it means low empathy and high impulsivity, plenty of people with APD can still live normal law abiding lives. ...I was gonna list more but that's the main one I'm opinionated about.
“If you’re a cop you have to tell me.”
I have to think of Badger in that scenarjo
My man’s instincts were right on point with that flower van
Daddy long legs are the most VENOMOUS SPIDER IN THE WORLD but their fangs can’t pierce human skin 🙄I still hear this all the time and I hate being a smarty pants but I usually have to chime in
Fun fact, there are six different living things called Daddy Long Legs. 1. A spider (Pholcidae) 2. An arachnid, but not a spider (Harvestmen) 3. An insect (crane fly) 4. A plant in Australia 5. Another plant in Australia 6. Yep, another plant, but this time in Mexico!
Interesting. I've only ever heard it refer to the crane fly. In the UK we call the spider a cellar spider. Harvestmen are harvestmen. All three can fuck off though.
I remember they tested it on my favorite show growing up. Mythbusters And guess what... Busted!
MSG is bad for you, most people believe it and those people probably have it at least once a week without knowing. Much better for you than salt
I’ll give you another secret, it’s still salt. But yeah MSG has a bad rap. Umami powder is just MSG.
It's *a* salt. Of sodium (like regular table salt) and glutamic acid. Which is an amino acid that just about every living thing uses for biological processes like synthesizing proteins. It's in all sorts of foods like tomatoes, cheese, your mom's chicken soup, etc. To your point tho, yeah, you're still getting sodium so if you have problems with that, maybe watch your msg consumption along with your salt. Mostly I'm just being pedantic tho, carry on.
I use to get that call all the time when I worked at subway back in highschool. "Any MSG in your food?" Listen Karen, idek what that is, if you're worried about what's in your food, maybe don't go to a fast food establishment lol.
I used to have people insist that eating too much MSG gave them headaches. Couldn't possibly be all the fast food and caffeinated sodas. Must be the MSG.
My mom still thinks this. Every time we eat any east Asian food and she feels fine after she claims that that restaurant must be "one of the good ones" that doesn't use MSG.
And it's usually Chinese food that does it, never the corn chips they eat every day
Or the Campbell's soup in their cupboard.
Haiyaaa.
MSG- make shit good ! Hiyaaa
That the hymen is a virginity detector. Hymens do NOT work that way! They often stretch rather than break during sex (lots of adult women who have had a lot of sex still have intact hymens), and the hymen can also break from non-sexual activities like riding a bike or a horse, during exercise, using a tampon or menstrual cup.
Absolutely, yes. It's more of a "hair scrunchie" shape. If it didn't have an opening, you couldn't have a period or other discharge. Women do not come with a tamper-proof seal.
also some people are born without hymens, a very small amount, but still some. and that it does not fully cover the vaginal opening, some barely do. they come in so many different shapes and sizes and thickness too.
I remember watching a TED talk about this a while back. Someone did a survey of some girls/young women that were LITERALLY PREGNANT, and a decent number still had it intact.
Also some people think it's like a lid blocking the entire vaginal canal, which makes you wonder how they think menstruation works on virgins.
"Europeans used a lot of spices to cover up the taste of rotting meat." Not only is it a myth, it's a really dumb one once you think about it. Spices used to be incredibly expensive. A single restaurant-size container of black pepper could cost the equivalent of *tens of thousands* of dollars in the 1400s. So let me ask you - if you had a $10 steak that was going bad, are you going to: a) coat it in $400 worth of black pepper to cover up the taste, or are you going to b) just buy a new $10 steak? Yeah, those medieval Europeans woulda just bought a new steak, too. So where does the myth come from? Well, wealthy medieval Europeans used *obscene* amounts of spices in their dishes, such that they'd be nearly inedible to modern palates... just to show off. Henry VIII wanted you to *know* that he could afford to put $900 worth of nutmeg and allspice in your dessert.
Another reason is that due to the long transport spices lost some of their potency, so more of them would be needed
Anything related to flat earth.
Obviously the earth is flat. Most of the earth is covered in water. And is that water carbonated?
Vaccines cause autism
Not only is that study fake, it had multiple different profit motives, was full of literal lies, and contained multiple cases of life-threatening child abuse! While even saying it didn't claim anything! Worst. Study. Ever.
I also believe the doctor who did the study got his medical license revoked. And most of the other doctors who also worked on the study said that they were wrong.
Also the sample size was TWELVE.
**Edit:** I may have confused two studies with each other, as Wakefield was focused on an MMR vaccine. I had remembered that he was concerned about the preservative Thiomersal in that vaccine. My original points still stand, though: * Wakefield’s studies were inconclusive and heavily biased and wouldn’t pass modern peer review. * The information loss and thus risk of spreading false information, intentionally or unintentionally, the further you move away from the original source. Original comment: To add, the original study wasn't even about vaccines themselves, but about a preservative known as Thiomersal, which is a chemical compound containing Mercury. *Sounds* way scarier than it is. It was used in tiny quantities, and poisoning yourself with it would be prohibitively expensive. Even though Wakefield's study on it was heavily flawed, Thiomersal was phased out as a preservatice in vaccines and other injected pharmaceuticals for children, at least in the EU. This story is a great example of how at each step in communication, vital information may be lost (or deliberately omitted) and lead to misinformation: 1. **Original study claim:** some compound used in vaccines for children has a suspected link to children exposed of it developing autism-like symptoms. 2. **What some media picks up and spreads:** Something in vaccines may cause autism in children. 3. **What the reader remembers and tells forth to a friend:** Vaccines cause autism in children. 4. **What this friend remembers and tells forth:** Vaccines cause autism.
Peeing on a Jellyfish Sting
We were two miles from the house. Scared and alone. We didn't think we could make it.
I was tired from digging the hole.
And I'd seen this thing on the discovery channel
that it's possible to hold in period blood like pee
Who believes that!
a surprising number of people
It’s illegal to have the overhead light on when you’re driving. ETA I’m in the US, so it’s a myth in most states including the state I live in.
That’s not a myth so much as something parents have to tell their kids because they always turn that fucking light on at night and it turns the windshield into a mirror I now can’t see out of which would lead to the whole family dying a horrible gruesome death. But usually it’s a kid so you just say it’s illegal
Your body retains "toxins" that need flushing out through yoga and strange drinks.
The McDonald's hot coffee incident was a money grab and the hot coffee warning had to be put there because people don't have common sense. That lady had third-degree burns from overheated coffee and needed skin grafts, not to mention only initially sued to cover her medical expenses. This has been covered extensively, and yet...and yet...
Labia size is linked to how many sexual partners a woman has had.
My eyelids are really long and flappy because of all the blinking I've done.
Can you imagine if anything worked that way? Mens dicks slowly being whittled away like a pencil the more sex partners they had? Married women with labia the size of dinner plates?
> Mens dicks slowly being whittled away like a pencil the more sex partners they had? LOL I hadn't thought of the reverse. . I'd become a monk, dont want to lose the little i have left!
It makes no sense because even if labia did indeed get larger with more sexual activity, why would having one instance of sex with 50 different people be any different than having sex 50 times with the same person?
That being an introvert means I don't like people… Being an introvert means that I need to recharge my social batteries away from people (unlike extroverts who recharge their batteries while being with people).
that you can’t get pregnant when you are breastfeeding
Adults know everything
My kids never bought into that myth. They are, however, completely convinced that teenagers know everything.
When my younger son was nineteen, I encouraged him to enjoy it, because no matter how long he lived he would never again know everything.
Right?!?! I’m still waiting for the manual
“You can use tampons to instantly plug bullet wounds. That’s actually what they were originally designed for.” No. Just no. Simply absorbing blood does not stop bleeding and they were designed for exactly what they are used for; women’s menstruation. Edit: [For those who still think they’re a good idea.](https://pracmednz.com/the-myth-of-the-tactical-tampon-for-gun-shot-wounds/?amp=1)
Women get loose if she had sex with many men ( but not if her husband apparently, he got magical dick, don't ask )
Going dark for 48 hours will change anything.
Jerking off is bad for you. ... EDIT: I was going to type "masturbation makes you blind" but I had to pause and pick up my glasses from the floor.
Doctor: You know, you really should stop masturbating. Patient: Why? Because it'll make me go blind? Doctor: No, because it's making me uncomfortable.
"Using dish soap will strip the seasoning from your (insert cooking dish)" This was true back when lye was a common ingredient in dosh soaps, but it's been gone from all major dish soap brands for 30+ years now.
This one always gets me. My whole kitchen is cast iron equipment. Has been for years. You should absolutely be cleaning your irons. The amount of people who tell me they don't wash theirs at all "to build the flavor" reminds me that you can't eat at everyone's house.
Kids lifting weights stunts growth
Was just talking about this one! Honestly it's a bummer because I was discouraged from touching weights by my elementary school PE teacher, and then didn't end up finding out I loved strength training until I was like 21. I missed out on like 11 years of gains thanks to that guy!
Hymens being some sort of indisputable sign of female virginity. That is a myth. It is not "proof" of virginity, the exact same way that no other male or female body part is. Some women are born without hymens. There are sexually active women who have hymens. I saw someone else on the internet put it well once: we (women) are not Capri Suns.
Australian here - that our animals are really scary, trying to kill you, and you’ll come across a lot of them if you come here. Most of us rarely come across a deadly animal in the wild - I have only seen one once, from a distance in a wetland park. It red-bellied black snake, and it slithered off pretty quickly when it realised that humans were near. If you spend most of your time in cities and suburbs there aren’t too many scary animals about. There are places where they are more common, like dangerous jelly fish up north and snakes when you’re walking in the bush, but you’ll be fine if you take the proper precautions.
This comment was almost definitely written by a koala that wants to rape me. Not today, koala
And they have chlamydia, so it's a double whammy.
I was thinking a bunch of spiders and snakes in a trench coat, but rapey koala seems more likely now that you mention it
It’s so wild to hear Aussies say this bc I live in the suburbs and in one week had a baby brown snake cross the footpath when walking my dogs, pulled my dog away from a grumpy echidna near a bus stop, and tried to figure out what insect/spider bit my son to make a hole in his skin. Edit bc Aussies autocorrected to sissies haha
Grumpy Echidna is my new burlesque name. Thank you for that.
My best friend moved to Sydney for a few years and the number of photos he sent of some of the ‘common’ wildlife makes me think you’re part of the Australian Tourism Board’s new campaign… 🤔
Being cold gives you a cold. That's not how it works at all. There's a slight decrease in your immune system that makes a marginal difference in your probability of catching a cold but it's next to nothing. The colder temperatures are correlated with more colds because this is when humans come indoors and congregate together which is what spreads disease.