Recent comments in /f/todayilearned

whatwhat83 t1_jc698l3 wrote

Reply to TIL about Coarsegold, California which holds an annual Tarantula Festival to coincide with Tarantula mating season. The festival includes tarantula racing, a competition for the hairiest legs of both men and women, and a pumpkin dessert contest. by flopsychops

Coarsegold is an interesting town. Their local Indian casino was taken over by an armed rival faction maybe 5-10 years ago during a tribal dispute. Never won a dime all the times I was driving through and stopped there.

6

OldMork t1_jc68qgf wrote

Reply to TIL If Coca-Cola's inventor had decided to file a patent application in 1892 instead of keeping the recipe a secret, patent protection would have expired long before Pepsi ever came onto the market in 1965. Patent protection lasts 20 years at most. Trade secrets can last forever. by ethereal3xp

and if you patent it you must describe every ingredients, something they dont want to do, companies such as KFC keep their secrets very tight.

9

old_el_paso t1_jc64kxi wrote

Reply to comment by zachzsg in TIL Helen Keller is credited with having introduced the Akita, a Japanese dog breed, to the United States by berkosaurus

fwiw she did become quite self-aware in that regard, and would go on to write quite a bit on the topic, in addition to joining the socialist party and later the IWW. For example, from The Hand of the World:

> I had felt in my life the touch only of hands that uphold the weak, hands that are all eye and ear, charged with helpful intelligence. I believed that people made their own conditions, and that, if the conditions were not always of the best, they were at least tolerable, just as my infirmity was tolerable.

> As the years went by and I read more widely, I learned that the miseries and failures of the poor are not always due to their own faults, that multitudes of men, for some strange reason, fail to share in the much-talked-of progress of the world. I shall never forget the pain and amazement which I felt when I came to examine the statistics of blindness, its causes, and its connection with other calamities that befall thousands of my fellow-men. I learned how workmen are stricken by the machine hands that they are operating. It became clear to me that the labour-saving machine does not save the labourer. It saves expense and makes profits for the owner of the machine. […]

> Step by step my investigation of blindness led me into the industrial world. And what a world it is! How different from the world of my beliefs! I must face unflinchingly a world of facts — a world of misery and degradation, of blindness, crookedness, and sin […] My darkness had been filled with the light of intelligence, and, behold, the outer day-lit world was stumbling and groping in social blindness!

2

arbutus1440 t1_jc4jqb3 wrote

Reply to comment by jungl3j1m in TIL Helen Keller is credited with having introduced the Akita, a Japanese dog breed, to the United States by berkosaurus

I'm surprised more in this thread don't know about Akitas. They're mean af. One attacked my dog as well. Vets absolutely hate dealing with Akitas (which I learned from taking my dog to the vet for his stitches and antibiotics after the attack). They really shouldn't be kept as pets. Everybody who's experienced Akitas knows this.

6

zachzsg t1_jc3q8ey wrote

Reply to comment by MeanGreanHare in TIL Helen Keller is credited with having introduced the Akita, a Japanese dog breed, to the United States by berkosaurus

She wasn’t a fraud, however she was born into a wealthy southern family (you can guess how they got wealthy) and she essentially had as much help as a person could have. go and read her Wikipedia and you’ll see she had staunch support from essentially the most famous, wealthy, and influential people in America, the likes of Mark Twain and Henry Huddleston Rogers.

She definitely had some great accomplishments, and was actually deaf and blind. but yeah if she wasn’t born and raised as privileged as a person could be, she would’ve gone the same way any other deaf and blind infant would’ve gone, which isn’t a very good way.

5

themagicbong t1_jc3pe20 wrote

Reply to comment by Lost_in_the_sauce504 in TIL After the Aral Sea dried up significantly, Kazakhstan revived the northern part of the lake while the South Aral Sea in Uzbekistan is almost completely desiccated. Kazakhstan’s 12km-long dyke saved part of the northern sea by connecting it with the southern section by Ok_Copy5217

lol I made that comment before going to bed, STILL can't read the article, but that got weirdly negative, votes wise. It was at like +4 before I passed out.

2

zachzsg t1_jc3p6zb wrote

Reply to comment by Its_Nitsua in TIL Helen Keller is credited with having introduced the Akita, a Japanese dog breed, to the United States by berkosaurus

That isn’t why she was an advocate though. She literally didn’t view herself as somebody that would qualify for euthanasia lol she was completely hypocritical. She was the daughter of slave owning elites that were high ranking members of the confederate army, it’s not really that shocking she developed some controversial and tone deaf/hypocritical views.

3