• Huffkin@feddit.uk
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    1 year ago

    Oxford University is older than the Aztec empire.

    Oxford University founded in 1326, Aztec empire ~1428-1521

    • tristophe@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Don’t mean to pick, but Oxford was founded in 1096 and Cambridge in 1209.

      I worked for cambridge in 2009 and got a nice little 800 year badge

    • floofloof@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      And some of the colleges of Oxford University are older than the university. Merton College was founded in 1264.

  • breadsmasher@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The country claiming to have the most “freedom” of any country has the highest incarceration rate of any country.

    • Asafum@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Not so fun fact: the constitution allows for slavery as long as it’s a punishment for a crime.

      Hmmm… Nah, those dots don’t connect at all.

  • swnt@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    Oh, I have two good ones:

    1. Nuclear power causes less deaths (per energy unit produced) than wind (source)

    2. You get less radiation when living near a nuclear power plant, than if that nuclear plant hadn’t been there.

    To explain the second: A major misconception is, that nuclear power plants are dangerous due to their radiation. No they aren’t. The effect of radiation from the rocks in the ground and the surroundings is on average 50x more than what you get from the nuclear power plant and it’s fuel cells. (source). Our body is very well capable of dealing with the constant background radiation all the time (e.g. DNA repairs). Near a power plant, the massive amounts of isolation and concrete will inhibit any background radiation coming from rocks from that direction to you. This means, that you’ll actually get slightly less radiation, because the nuclear plant is there.

    Regarding the dangers of nuclear disasters. To this day, it’s been very hard to find out, if at all any people have even died to Fukushima radiation (ans not other sources such as tsunami/earthquake/etc.) Nuclear radiation causes much more problems by being an emotionally triggering viral meme spreading between people and hindering it’s productive use and by distracting from the ironic fact, that the coal burned in coal power plants spew much more radiation into the atmosphere than nuclear power plants themselves. (source)

    • elboyoloco@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Additional fun fact. There has been a lot of research and activity dedicated to potentially switch coal power plants to nuclear. Currently, they cannot do it, because the coal plants and all the equipment associated produces far more radiation than regulations allow a nuclear plant to emit.

      Therefore, unless they could find a practical way to decontaminate the radiation away from existing coal equipment, or regulations change for transformed plants, they can’t do it.

      • KerPop47@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Did you know, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s only mandate is to ensure the safety of nuclear power, not to promote its implementation. Many regulatory bodies have a dual mandate to stop them from just shutting down what they’re supposed to regulate.

      • niucllos@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        If you’ve ever played around with an old-style lighter (think classic Zippo) you’d get it! They’re fairly expensive, and aren’t airtight so they need to be refilled every few days/weeks. If you fill them too much they need to be kept upright or they’ll spill lighter fluid on you. Super cool and can hold flames for a while but not nearly as conventient as a matchbook for quick fire lighting

        • EmoDuck@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          It just occurred to me that zippos are basically the same type of oil lanterns that we’ve been using for thousands of years

  • mycelium_underground@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    if you scramble a rubiks cube up there is a good chance that it is the first cube to be in that state. there are 43,252,003,247,489,856,000 possible states that a cube(3x3) can be scrambled up in to.

    • darcy@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      this is actually a misconception! the gravity of the planets combined would cause them all to crash into each other!

  • 1019throw@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The northern most part of Brazil is closer to Canada than it is to the southern most part of Brazil.

  • ch00f@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The closest planet to Earth is Mercury.

    On average that is. Mercury is actually the closest planet to every other planet in average. Because when it’s on the other side of the Sun, it’s still pretty close.

    • domage@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Wow, you’re absolutely correct!

      The average distance from Earth to Mercury is about 1.04 astronomical units (au), which is the average distance between Earth and the Sun.

      In comparison, the average distance between Earth and Venus is approximately 1.14 au, while the average distance between Earth and Mars is around 1.7 au.

      You can check that in Wolfram Alpha.

  • Wanderer@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    The world is running out of sand.

    It’s one of the most used materials in the world for construction but islands are disappearing because of its limited supply.

      • jbrains@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        "The average person has… " is very different from “People on average have…”.

        I suspect you meant the second, but sometimes people truly mean the first.

        The difference doesn’t matter until it very suddenly matters. 😉

        • quinnly@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          I was actually quoting Bo Burnham, it’s a direct quote from his 2010 special Words Words Words