Hello everyone and welcome to another weekly topic! This week’s topic is from @RobbyZero!! Thanks again for all the wonderful ideas!
We want to talk about things that we’ve learned. There are so many different subjects to learn about, spanning from complex technical topics like how our computers handle the code that we create all the way to the characteristics of the living things that surround us. We all have so many unique interests and thus have some really cool facts that we’ve come across that others might not know about. So, this week, let’s do a little knowledge sharing!
What is a favorite fact that you’ve learned? It can be something really niche and novel, or it can be something that might be a bit more common knowledge. It’s an important reminder that all types of fact can spark joy and capture someone’s attention. Just the notion that humans have enough knowledge about things to declare a fact is pretty incredible, so let’s talk about them! I’m excited to learn with you all, and please feel free to share more than one fact!
You can usually only tell a young pigeon apart from an older one by their brown eyes. Once they grow up, their eyes shift from yellow to red!
Male pigeons have unusually long toes. Or maybe females just have unusually short toes!
Pigeons usually lay eggs in sets of two, so almost every pigeon has a fraternal twin!
Pigeons actually don’t choose mates based on bright colors or wing patterns; they prefer pigeons that look as close to their natural ancestor, the rock dove- blue with white wings and two black bars!
Despite some rumors, pigeons are very clean birds!
They’re so. very. FLUFFY!!
A few notable individuals I’ve met:
Pepper: She’s super friendly, but has a bad habit of climbing all over people. If you run out of food, she’ll put her feet on your hand and just… wonder where it all went. If she’s unsure if it’s safe to approach you, she’ll fly around and approach from behind… slowly…
Doofus: Her silly husband! HATES stealing. Will not steal from other birds, will be FURIOUS if they steal from him (don’t worry, pigeons are very weak and all he does is flap his wings and make himself look big!) Oddly, loves being stared at. Look him in the eye and he will return the look, and come closer.
Cinnamon: Lovely girl, but has no survival sense. She will sit on top of food sources like they’re an egg. Saw her pecking at asphalt instead.
A group of jellyfish is called a smack
When Benjamin Franklin was a kid he often got in a lot of trouble, yet Americans still trust him with their 100 dollar bills
For some reason Americans call English English, but they have a separate system for everything because they want to be separate. Metric system is better.
Goats don’t actually eat everything.
Pitfall 2 music will never get out of my head, but the only other thing I remember is not being able to get past the alligators at the start.
Centipede was the only joy you could have at the arcade.
pxt means program experience toolkit (I think)
Metroid gets way more hype than needed.
I will defend twilight princess graphics till the end of time.
Goats have 4 stomachs
Goats chew cud in their sleep
Goats are useful for weeding the lawn
Goats eat the poison ivy on my friends stone wall
Ooh, this actually reminds me of a fact that I recently learned when visiting Zion National Park! Based on what type of rock it is (sedimentary, metamorphic, or igneous), a rock actually will behave differently when water is poured on it.
Zion has a lot of sandstone throughout the park. Sandstone is rock made of compacted pieces of sand or gravel, and those pieces of rock, when compacted, don’t usually line up exactly. This means that sedimentary rocks are usually pretty permeable. Because of that, when water is poured on sandstone, the water gets basically absorbed into the rock. Zion also has some igneous rock formations, which is not very permeable. There is an igneous layer of rock below sandstone layers of rock. This combination allows for Zion’s Emerald Pools. It also means that even if the area hasn’t seen much rain, those Emerald Pools will always have water because the sandstone acts like a reservoir of water. Water will drip out of the sandstone rock and collect on the layer of not-as-permeable igneous rock.
There are a couple of ways a word can be taken from a different language:
A loanword is a word taken directly from a different language
A calque is a word that is split apart, translated, and then put back together
The word calque was directly taken from the French verb “calquer”
The word loanword was split apart and translated from the German word “Lehnwort”
Therefore, loanword is a calque and calque is a loanword.
(Some of this could be wrong, I just did quick Google searches for this)
My favorite fact is that trees talk to each other to help each other survive! It makes me wonder what other things trees can do that we might not know of.
Here are a couple of resources for some context/if you want to learn more about it!
That reminds me of a fact I learned about clovers. Their stems are linked and if one gets picked it slowly send a message to the others to “play dead” aka pretend to shrivel up.
