Recent comments in /f/todayilearned

hoarder59 t1_je4tjtp wrote

Reply to comment by CulturedClub in TIL that children born earlier in the academic year have a higher chance of participating in upper echelons of sports or academia. This is known as the Relative Age Effect. by ThatFaultyGamer

No, they are correct. Many school systems have a cutoff birthdate. So do sports teams. My parents had the choice of keeping me out of school for another year but didn't. As a result, I was usually the youngest and smallest in every class until I graduated high school. While I did reasonably well academically, I was inevitably left to last on sports teams. In our ice hockey system it is even stricter adherence to age.

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jagnew78 t1_je4tgr1 wrote

Reply to comment by blackadder1620 in TIL The oldest musical instrument in the world, a 60,000-year-old Neanderthal flute, is made from the left thighbone of a young cave bear. by gonejahman

if you see the complexity of that it's hard not to imagine there are older, even more simple versions of this from before hand. Someone probable started with a hollow bone after sucking the marrow out after a meal and was just probably fooling around with it and blew into it for fun and it made a cool sound.

Then who knows how long... generations later someone, somewhere down the road realized if you covered your hand over one end you could make it change sound and then at some point, generations more later someone figured out you could drill holes into it and cover or uncover them and create even more sound variations.

this is an evolution of an instrument refined over generations.

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Khysamgathys OP t1_je4sdu3 wrote

Reply to comment by KypDurron in TIL that in Chinese Folk Religion, a mortal human being could ascend into godhood not through the decisions of a clergy/church, but by the sheer number of people who believe that their extraordinary achievements led to apotheosis, which forced Confucian/Taoists clerics to canonize a person as a God. by Khysamgathys

They de facto are no matter how much Catholics say they aren't.

I should know I am an ex-Catholic.

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KypDurron t1_je4s0uc wrote

Reply to comment by Khysamgathys in TIL that in Chinese Folk Religion, a mortal human being could ascend into godhood not through the decisions of a clergy/church, but by the sheer number of people who believe that their extraordinary achievements led to apotheosis, which forced Confucian/Taoists clerics to canonize a person as a God. by Khysamgathys

Um, Catholic saints aren't demigods, don't know where you got that.

I'm not saying that Catholics don't go a little overboard with venerating saints, but nobody worships them as gods of any sort.

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squats_and_sugars t1_je4ri1f wrote

Reply to comment by [deleted] in TIL that after a flood killed thousands and devastated the economy, California legislators and State employees worked unpaid for a year and a half. by WhatsAMisanthrope

I'd add on that calling what they did to you, it's kind of bullshit to call it a "furlough" because you worked the whole time. That's just a paycut. I've had legit furloughs in work when there wasn't enough production work to pay the bills so we didn't work for 2 weeks, didn't get paid for two weeks (most of us picked up a temp job during that time).

For the federal government, it's complex. If you're "essential" you work, and eventually get paid, when the shutdown is over. If you're not marked essential, you don't work, and you (as a result of the 2018-2019 shitshow) do get back pay too as well.

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CulturedClub t1_je4qpuk wrote

Reply to comment by packetfire in TIL that children born earlier in the academic year have a higher chance of participating in upper echelons of sports or academia. This is known as the Relative Age Effect. by ThatFaultyGamer

I often hear this said but you weren't a year younger than the rest of your class. There was likely just days or weeks between you and the next youngest kid. Yes, there was almost a year between you and the oldest but everyone else in your class was somewhere in between.

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