Recent comments in /f/todayilearned

SteelyDan1968 t1_jb1847e wrote

Reply to comment by Justforthenuews in TIL of a man in Iraq who hired an online agent to buy a lotto ticket for him in Oregon, and won 6.4 million. by lazarus870

You can buy a Powerball/Mega Millions in other states. But, you can't cash them out in the state where you are at. If I bought a PB/MM in Texas and drove home to Chicago, and I found out that I won, I would have to go back to Texas to get my winnings. The systems are different.

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Fake_William_Shatner t1_jb166x8 wrote

Reply to comment by 96_doomer in TIL "to pull oneself up by one's bootstraps" is an example of an impossible task. The idiom dates at least to 1834, from the Workingman's Advocate: "It is conjectured that Mr. Murphee will now be enabled to hand himself over the Cumberland river or a barn yard fence by the straps of his boots. by meat-juice

Okay; simply put we have gravity because acceleration or mass causes time to slow down.

Think of it like an eddy in a current. The fast water pushes at the same rate but the slow water resists forward motion, that causes a floating object to start veering towards the eddy.

I think that should be the easy part to understand. It's the same as the "gravity well" and how planets and stars with mass bend the fabric of space.

So, be happy if you get that far. The rest of this is me babbling because I feel like have to spit it out, even if nobody hears or understands it now.

The implication of that gets complicated. We have distance because it takes time to get to places. So relativity and the expansion of the Universe can be seen as a function of time. If it takes more time for light to get from points A and B, then they are now further apart because everything else moves at a ratio of that speed.

When we think about that "bending" of the spacetime curve however, it's not anything we can see -- and I think that's the big clue as to the fact that we might experience 4 dimensions, but it is made of more than that. If it's not obvious, the fourth dimension is time, a ball is 3D and to describe it, you have to not only know where it is, but when it was there. If you lived in a 2 dimensional world, you wouldn't notice if the plane were bent and wiggled. It might have some sort of impact, but none you could see or feel directly.

Well, have to leave it at that. Don't feel bad, very few people understand relativity. And fewer still understand me.

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Hiiipower111 t1_jb0y5wl wrote

Reply to comment by kmosiman in TIL Until 1921 the Colorado River did not flow through the State of Colorado. It took an act of Congress to “move” the river into the state by renaming the Grand River and adding it to the Colorado River. by triviafrenzy

I dunno what you mean by not sure how I am measuring this? I'm not measuring anything, I live in Washington Missouri right beside the MO river and once it gets around the Illinois border it's called the Mississippi.

It's kinda the same as how they name the oceans different names even though they're all connected. Just thought it weird

I'm not out here taking measurements though, and didn't know "a river is determined by flow rate"

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96_doomer t1_jb0xxew wrote

Reply to comment by SCWarriors44 in TIL "to pull oneself up by one's bootstraps" is an example of an impossible task. The idiom dates at least to 1834, from the Workingman's Advocate: "It is conjectured that Mr. Murphee will now be enabled to hand himself over the Cumberland river or a barn yard fence by the straps of his boots. by meat-juice

>But hey again thanks for the long, honest, and respectful response unlike some of the others.

Ur welcome. Dont take that in a wrong way, like I said two perspectives, its almost as if both people are living in different worlds, so even though u may have intended it as helpful advice, from their perspective, it can be seen as cold statement without empathy, although that's not u are trying to do at all. But likewise, from your POV, it may feel like they are just lazy or dont want to to face their problems but like I mentioned, there could be deep rooted problems, which could make them feel like hopeless, like truly hopeless, u genuinely don't think u maybe able to get out of that situation even though that may not be true,but that's what it might feel like to them, and that's when, external advice may feel cold to them, while to u it may feel like they dont want to help themselves. Which might not be the case.because they can't see that perspective. So overall basically like a miscommunication AFAIK.

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kmosiman t1_jb0qj95 wrote

Reply to comment by Hiiipower111 in TIL Until 1921 the Colorado River did not flow through the State of Colorado. It took an act of Congress to “move” the river into the state by renaming the Grand River and adding it to the Colorado River. by triviafrenzy

Not sure how you are measuring this. Typically a river is determined by flow rate not length.

I believe the Mississippi-Missouri branch is the longest. From a water flow standpoint the Ohio is the largest, so the main run of the river to the Gulf should be the Ohio.

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