Recent comments in /f/todayilearned

Ecstatic_Account_744 t1_jce9yka wrote

Reply to TIL using ditto marks, or putting quotation marks under words to repeat what they say, goes back as far as the Neo-Assyrian period (934-608 B.C.) by [deleted]

Story time!

I used to be a truck driver. When returning across the border (am Canadian) I’d have to fax my paperwork to the customs broker to get my load cleared through customs. So I’d usually write down the phone and fax numbers to give to the person at the truck stop to fax it but obviously I’m lazy so I’d use the ditto marks to denote that only part of the number was different. Prefix numbers for one companies phone and fax are usually the same. So anywho, I hand it to the girl at a truck stop in Texas and she goes off and comes back and says it didn’t go through. I asked her to try again, she tries again and nothing. Then she says, “it’s probably because there aren’t enough numbers. The first four are just ones.” It took me a moment to wrap my head around the idea that she tried it twice without asking me if something was wrong with what I wrote down. Didn’t clarify, didn’t consider that those weren’t actually numbers, just went ahead and tried anyway. I wonder if she still works there.

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marmorset t1_jcdy7ex wrote

Reply to comment by [deleted] in TIL: Black Herons turn their wings into an umbrella to “canopy feed”. The umbrella provides shade, which draws fish to the surface where they can be seen and caught more easily. by Geek_Nan

No, but I didn't then decide to fish. And the sun isn't in their eyes, they're doing it because the fish prefer shaded areas. That's a whole different level of thinking. My hand blocks the sun, now I can see better, versus, my wing blocks the sun, now a separate animal will change its behavior.

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gaptoothedneckbeard t1_jcdqz1r wrote

Reply to comment by TheDeadlySquid in TIL that many species of spiders can fly through the air with a technique called ballooning by last_air_nomad

so there's this thing where you can attach a whole bunch of black trashbags together with the last one fully intact so its this really long capped tube, set it up outside on a windless sunny day, inflate with a fan, you got a ^(megga) baloon! I wonder if one could be made long enough that you could fly just like those baby spiders...

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