Evolutionary adaptations that provide survival advantages in one context can become significant disadvantages in others. For example, sloths evolved a sedentary lifestyle with extremely slow metabolism to survive on low-energy leaves, but this same adaptation makes them vulnerable to exhaustion and death from overeating. Similarly, sharks like great whites and whale sharks require constant forward movement to breathe through ram ventilation, meaning they would suffocate if they stopped swimming. These examples illustrate how natural selection optimizes for survival in specific environments, but may not produce perfectly balanced organisms.
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Hey kids, as we all know, the evolution of species is an incredible process driven by little more than the random chance that certain mutations may happen to provide a practical advantage in a creature's environment. And as a result, there's a lot of things out there that look super dumb once you strip back a few layers. Here's the top 10 worst animal skeletons of all time. So, first and foremost, I'd like to settle a little debate I've been seeing floating around the past few weeks. Yes, penguins do in fact have knees, but in order to hide full-grown legs into one plump cylinder, you got to have a little skeletal trickery on your side. You guys ever do walls sits in gym class or elsewhere? One of the most torturous exercises out there. I now feel even worse for penguins. Because not only do they have to deal with living in a frigid black and white hellscape, the most hostile environment known to man, second only to the vacuum of space, all the while constantly pursued by ravenous, bloodthirsty sea dogs. But they're also secretly doing wallsits their entire life. Quick side note, in Mandarin, the word for penguin consists of the characters for business goose, which is [ __ ] hilarious. Like one day a goose put on a suit and said, "Today it is time to make a name for myself, honk." This next guy is known as Parson's chameleon found in the more remote regions of Madagascar. Notice the fleshy protuberances around its nose area. Turns out not fleshy, not even remotely fleshy, not even one flesh.
Instead, it just has a skull forever frozen in time in the middle of exploding like it sneezed right in the middle of God shaping it out of clay and he was just like, "Ah, whatever. It's a feature now." So, for that, this rough-headed reptilian gets number nine.
Normally, I would have ranked it higher, but that's a dope tail, so he gets some pity points. Next is the puffer fish.
So, for most of my life, I've pictured puffer fish as just not having any bones. I know it doesn't really make sense, but neither does them turning into a balloon like a goddamn cartoon.
Turns out in their normal state, they actually look like this. And when they inflate, those concentric rings of spine slide outwards past one another to cover the full area, like the aperture of a camera lens expanding to cover the full frame of the fish. The sheer ingenuity of this design has shattered my childhood dream of real life balloon animals, which has earned the puffer fish the number eight spot on this list.
Now, if you've gotten around to certain zoological circles, you've been shown this skull and been told, "Ah, yes, that comes from the dwarf elephant. Oh, you've never seen one?" That's because uh they're extinct. And that thing in the middle, ah, yes, nothing more than the nose hole to which the trunk connects. However, if you're a rational, free-thinking adult like me, you can look past the lies spoonfed to you by Nat Geo and other liberal media outlets and see this for what it is, a cyclops.
Next is the orca, otherwise known as the killer whale, the panda torpedo, or the SeaWorld slave. Its skeleton is fairly normal at first glance, but check out this little thing under here. That little bony blip is actually all that remains of the legs and pelvis of the orca from when it evolved from land mammals. Personally, I think that's highly disrespectful to their ancestors.
Like, they could have taken the seal route and use those legs for good in the water. But instead, these sea cowards said, "No thanks. We're going to undo all that evolution and just be bigger, smarter, warmer fish again. But hey, we'll keep this little piece of nothing just to remember you guys by.
Truthfully, I could have chosen almost any citation to pick on for this, but the orca's face also reminds me of SCP 682, which is the most OP overrated [ __ ] out there. So, he gets the number six spot. Moving on. Now, bear with me here.
In every other mammal on Earth, the K9 teeth point downward from the gum to the mouth. You know, like a tooth. But this guy known as the Babarusa said and decided to have them grow up through the entirety of its [ __ ] snoot and out the other end, which is the most nonsensical thing I've ever seen. Like, hm, toenails out the front. How cliche.
Let's make them go through the whole foot instead. Look, now I can kick good behind me. That's not all, though. These tusks also keep growing for the creature's entire life, which isn't a problem in and of itself, right?
Rodents, they keep chewing stuff to wear them down. Alligators, they just let them fall out now and then, but the babar is like, I'll just nut in a lady pig long before this becomes an issue.
So, if it lives long enough, the teeth can curve right on around and slowly bore into the thing's face, like built-in Chinese bamboo torture. And occasionally, they can end up actually piercing the skull and shish kebabing the brain. Now, some people might say that this doesn't belong on this list, given that teeth aren't technically bones. And to those people, kids, we say eat [ __ ] and die. Next, we have the octopus. The octopus skeleton is so bad that it doesn't even exist. Sure, they got this little thing in the middle, but that doesn't count. That's just kitan.
And yeah, they can get in a jar or whatever, but at what cost? At the animal picnics, the crowd shots blun the spineless freak. And at the animal wheelbarrow races with nothing to grab hold of, the sephalopod holds a solitary visual at the starting line. And low, the octopus wins not but a participant medal at the Grand Prix and the number four spot on this list. Moving on, here's the skeleton of a fruit bat. Now, not a big deal to us regular folk, but imagine if humans had no context of bats and they dug this thing up. like class.
Archaeologists have recently found these fossilized remains and using modern technology, we can see exactly what it would have looked like back when it was alive. This abominable creature is known only to scientists as finger boy and is theorized to have fed upon fruit, insects, and the dreams of orphans, which it would siphon out from the ears of the errant little wave so we'll stay slumbered. By the way, if you Google image bat skeleton, like more than half of them have the ears built in just like hm I feel the extraordinarily bat-like wings and figure of our decoration are much too subtle for our consumers.
Better slap these on. At number two, we have the anteater. From its obo-like skull to its gorilla fist and hands, one can only wonder who let this creature exist. Fun fact, if you take the anteater skull and blow into its nose, it plays a beautiful song recounting the animals entire life and then security escorts you out of the museum. Looking at this, I can only pose the question asked for generations long before my own. That being, why the long face?
Before we get to the number one spot, here's a few honorable mentions. the wolf eel, the ostrich, this human cat hybrid I found on a tabloid site, and of course, the mermaid. So, at our number one spot, we have this creature. That's uh that's supposed to be a mirror. I know most of you can't see yourself in it on account of your filthy Doritos smeared screen, so just take my word for it. So, what's wrong with humans, you ask? Well, a lot of things, but for now, let's stick to the skeleton. First off, these bones right here, these are known as the metatarscils. All part of the foot, right? No, that's a bunch of primate propaganda. In most other groups of land mammals, what we'd consider our ankles is actually the quote unquote knee of the animal. Thanks a lot, walking upright. Also, it's estimated that around 80% of people will experience chronic back pain at some point in their life. Thanks a lot, walking upright.
Lastly, probably something you've heard about at some point, our skull to pelvis ratio. For most animals, giving birth, not a big deal. Small heads, wide hips, masletov. But check out the big brain on bread. throws a real monkey wrench in the works there. For a while, it led to some problems till those extra brains figured out how to work around it. So, I guess you win this round, humans. But that doesn't stop you from also winning the number one spot on the worst skeletons of all time. But hey, just cuz you'll forever be flawed on the inside doesn't mean you can't improve yourself on the outside. That's why you need to try Skillshare. Skillshare is an online learning community with over 25,000 classes in design, business, technology, and more. Premium membership gives you unlimited access to high-quality classes on must know topics so you can improve your skills, unlock new opportunities, and do the work you love. For all my life, I thought I knew how to make a grilled cheese. Then I saw this class and I realized I didn't. Now I do again.
But those few minutes between seeing the thumbnail and finishing the course were a dark time in my life. But let's say you don't like grilled cheese. Well, you must be either vegan or dead. And either way, you probably smell terrible. What better way to soak up that earthy must in your home than with a hand selected house plant known to improve air quality. You can even put googly eyes on it. Aw, it's like I have a friend. Join the more than 7 million people already learning on Skillshare today with a special offer just for my viewers.
Everyone who visits the link in the description can get 2 months of unlimited access to the 25,000 plus classes on Skillshare for absolutely free. So, please put down that bone broth and start sipping some brain juice today. Anyway, that's all for today.
Till next time, I'm Salmonella and I'm still scared of swine flu.
Hey kids, it's Food Friday. So today's lesson is on the history of sushi. Sushi first came into existence in Japan around the 8th century. It consisted of gutted salted fish stored in fermented rice. You know, this half rotting rice is good and all, but I can still smell things. Yeah. And I'm not having nearly as much diarrhea as I would like to be.
What should we do? Raw fish. Raw fish. I was thinking exactly the same thing.
God, we are so in sync. Nah, but actually the rice wasn't meant to be eaten. It was only used as a means of preservation. You see, the fermenty juices of the rice would soak into the fish and prevent it from spoiling.
However, as semi- rancid food often does, it would also impart a sour taste on the fish. That's where the name sushi comes from. An antiquated Japanese term for sour tasting. Also, it smelled like death. The odor is described as an extremely pungent cross between blue cheese, fish, and vinegar. Man, I'm mad.
Why is that? I smelled something down the road. Thought a new sushi vendor was in town. Turns out it was just a hobo taking a piss on a tuna sandwich. Later on during the late Edo period, people started pickling the rice which drastically shortened the required fermentation time. So now rather than smelling like blue cheese fish and vinegar, it just smelled like fish and vinegar. Go figure. People found this rice to be much more palatable. So it began to be eaten alongside the fish.
Sheet seaweed was also invented around 1750, which allowed the contemporary sushi roll to take form around this time. Toss in a couple vegetables and you've got something much more resemblant to today's sushi. During the late 19th century, many Japanese immigrated to America to escape the imperial takeover of Japan, which was known as the Maji Restoration. It just so happens that they brought the concept of sushi with them, which enjoyed brief popularity among the upper class during the turn of the 20th century. However, coinciding with the imperial takeover was the fact that Japan started being kind of a dick. Hey, freedom is gay.
What did you just say? Yeah, your way of life is for [ __ ] Oh yeah, guess we'll just stop eating your dumb [ __ ] fish roll things then. Hey, [ __ ] you, you cheeseburger [ __ ] I'll nuke your [ __ ] ass. Wait, what is nuke? 40 years.
You'll see. And thus, sushi lost its place in the West. Cut to the early 1960s. World War II tensions are mostly gone and refrigeration is everywhere.
This allowed sushi to again rise in America, this time for good. By the 1980s, sushi restaurants were everywhere, especially along the West Coast. But as you can imagine, American sushi saw significant alteration in order to appeal more to the Western pallet. For example, if you went to Japan and asked for cream cheese in your roll, they'd probably just put you on a raft and gently push you out to sea. But to each their own, and today, sushi is more popular than ever. So kids, remember to be careful of who you make fun of because the weird smelly kid of today might just be the next big thing tomorrow.
Hey kids, it's MISK Monday. So, I'm going to tell you all a story from my childhood. I was in fifth grade at the time, about 10 or 11. I was in that YMCA afterare program at my school, you know, where they watch kids for a while before their parents pick them up, right? So, the story centers around two other kids there. One was a fifth grader, we'll call him Carl, and the other was a first grader, we'll call him Tyrone. So, to preface, Tyrone was a bit odd. He didn't talk much. She was always just kind of looking around, but generally he was a good kid. So, one day I'm sitting there minding my own business when I see Carl walk into the bathroom and then about 10 seconds later, I see Tyrone follow him in there. I didn't really think anything of it until I hear Carl shout from inside the bathroom. I look over and Tyrone comes running out crying. So, the counselors ask him what happened. Tyrone points at Carl and says, "He pushed me."
They asked Carl if it was true and Carl gives the full explanation of what actually went down in the bathroom. So, it turns out Carl was just at the urinal minding his own business when Tyrone walks in, walks right up to him and starts poking him on the balls while he's peeing. So, Carl, who is still, you know, midstream, couldn't really use his hands to stop him. So, he reflexively did this sort of hip check to push the kid away. The kid hits the ground, immediately starts crying, and runs out of the bathroom.
So, the counselors excuse Carl and politely asked Tyrone what he was doing touching an older boy's nats. Tyrone replies, "I just wanted to make sure he got all the pee out." So, ultimately, it just ended with the counselors explaining to him that you shouldn't touch other people's junk. I'm just glad he decided to pull this sort of thing now in a public school to another kid.
Imagine if he did this in a public restroom. It would have probably ended with some guy getting arrested.
Thankfully, Tyrone never touched another sack again, as far as I know.
Hey, what's up guys? Sam here. So, I've just got a couple announcements to make.
I'm not going to do any drawings because I'm [ __ ] lazy. So, just listen. Uh, first off, 10,000 subscribers. That's insane. That's crazy. I made this channel like two months ago, and I've already got like a town's worth of people following me. So, that's [ __ ] awesome. Thank you guys so much. Um, second of all, summer is coming to a close, as you all know. So, unfortunately, I'm probably going to have a lot less time on my hands going forward. Uh, recently I've been uploading like every 3 to 4 days. is probably going to drop down to like a week, about an upload a week if I can even manage that. So, we'll see. Just don't be surprised. Third, a bunch of people were asking me about making a Patreon account. Uh, I'm not going to do that because see the whole thing with Patreon is like it gets people to do a monthly regular payment to the channel and I can't handle that. That's a lot of pressure cuz like what if I just start sucking out of nowhere? What if my [ __ ] goes to [ __ ] and then I have all these [ __ ] shareholders to be accountable to? So, I I'm not I'm not ready for that kind of commitment, you guys. Of course, if you guys really think I'm more worth throwing money at, I guess I'm not going to say no. So, I'm going to throw the Google Wallet tip jar function on the splash page of my channel. So, if you feel like supporting the channel, you know, perhaps helping me get a less shitty mic, then go right ahead. If not, then that's awesome, too. Like, just the fact that you guys are watching my channel is more than enough for me, honestly. So, thank you either way. So, uh that's all I have to say today.
Hopefully, I didn't sound too [ __ ] without a script in my face. Uh yeah.
So, thank you all.
Hey kids, let me tell you about Swiss Miss Instant Hot Chocolate and why their packaging is [ __ ] So, it comes in a box shaped like this, right? And within the box, there are individual bags of hot chocolate arranged like this.
Already, you can see some of this company's incompetence shining through.
There is no reason for their box to be double wide. It is a waste of cardboard.
Let me prove it. Here's a top- down view, right? Let's say this side is 8 in, this side is 2 in, that adds up to 20 in of cardboard. If you doubled it up like this, just had the package a single file, that's only 16 in. It's a waste.
And if that weren't bad enough, for some reason, they decide to attach the bags with these tiny paper bridges. So when you go to make your packet of hot chocolate, you have to detach the two bags. That doesn't sound so bad, except for the fact that it's impossible to break them cleanly. Every time, every goddamn time, they tear holes into the sides of the bags. And it's never just one bag either. That would be too simple. It puts holes in both. So either way, you're going to have to put one back and just live with it leaking powder in the box. It's gotten to the point where I have to employ surgical precision just to avoid getting chocolate dust all over my freaking house. It would be so simple to avoid, too. Even if you really had to have these pointless attachment things, you could at least put little perforations down the center so they break down the middle. School notebooks have been doing it since the ' 50s. So why in 2016 has Swiss myths not discovered the arcane technology of dotted lines? So, there's powder everywhere. The cat's looking at you funny because it knows you're pissed off. But at least it's time to enjoy some hot chocolate. You pour your bag into the mug, pour in the hot water, take a sip, and it tastes like piss.
Swiss Miss instant piss. So, you go back to check the box thinking maybe you did something wrong. The cat starts shaking cuz it knows what's coming. And that's when you see it. Serving size 6 oz. So, finally the dam breaks. You unleash a primal roar of sheer fury. The cat shits itself and jumps out the window as you punt kick the Swiss mistbox across the room. The average mug is 12 fluid ounces in volume. Who in God's name only drinks 6 o of liquid. So finally you reach into the box and pull out the desecrated corpse of that other bag from earlier and you pour it in. Only then can you enjoy your subpar hot beverage properly.
this whole system, right? This sherrod that Swiss Miss puts you through, it's kind of like telling a guy to just jizz with one ball instead of both of them.
They're in the same container and separating them would be difficult. And even if I were to figure out how to do that, two does the job better than one anyway, so it's pointless. Nowadays, I just fold the packet in half and rip along the seams of both. And maybe that was their intention. But if so, why would you give me the illusion of separability in the first place? It's like Siamese twins. They're joined for no reason and hard as [ __ ] to separate.
So, I guess I'm just going to have to live with both. I don't know which is worse, the fact this minor inconvenience was my biggest dilemma all day or that this inconvenience even exists in the first place. But anyway, I'm Salmonella and thank you for watching.
Hey kids, when living things evolve, it's almost always for the better. After all, the reason genes get passed down is because of the fact that they help the organism survive. Occasionally, though, adaptations that might help an animal in general can become huge drawbacks in other ways. Today, we're going to talk about some inherited traits that can end up screwing certain animals over if they're not careful. First is sloths.
So, evolutionarily, life has found two distinct methods to handling survival on land. You got the plants and the fungi who just kind of hang out. And then you got the animals who actually, you know, do things. The sloth is the one member of the animal kingdom who was brave enough to say, "All right, I made the wrong choice here. This whole mobility thing way overrated. So, you know what?
[ __ ] it. I'm changing teams." The sloth sedentary lifestyle is made possible by the fact that the creature has the metabolism of the average college kid, sleeping 16 hours a day and only crapping like once a week. However, while this lifestyle is easily sustained on a diet of hot pockets and alcohol, it doesn't work as well when you eat nothing but leaves, which provide very little energy relative to volume.
Because of this, you can have sloths who straight up kick the bucket just from being too full. Their sad, slow sloth stomach spends so much energy over so much time trying to digest the matter that by the time they're able to start absorbing energy, they've already fallen out of the tree dead from exhaustion. I learned about this next thing from my uncle Harvey back when I was eight. He said to me, "Hey, Sammy, did you know sharks die if they stop swimming?" At first, I was skeptical because this was the same man that told me that the squirrel on the road was just taking a nap. Several firm props with the stick proved to me otherwise. So, by this point in time, I figured Uncle Harvey just had a generally poor grasp on the concept of death. Apparently though, he was right about the first thing. Some species of sharks, such as great whites and whale sharks, need to constantly move forward in order to push new water into their mouths and through their gills so that they don't suffocate. It's kind of like when you were a kid and you had to keep running to keep the kite in the air. Only instead of a kite, it's your respiratory system. And instead of the kite falling down, you would choke to death on your own deflated organs.
Anyway, this method of breathing is known as ram ventilation. Following this logic, one would think that rams would then breathe through something called shark ventilation, but no, apparently they just breathe like everybody else.
Next, we have ferrets. So, in some cultures, ferrets are referred to as pole cats. And there are two main theories as to why that is. Some biologists believe that the name is based on the fact that ferrets are an evolutionary hybrid of the pole and the cat, as evidenced by their shape and features. However, others believe that the name is actually an outdated piece of Nazi propaganda designed to show that Polish people are so dumb they don't know what a cat looks like. No, I'm just [ __ ] with you guys. They're actually called pole cats because of the old French word pole meaning chicken, which comes from the fact that these guys would always break into farmer's hen houses back in the day. Back to the matter at hand, though, there is one critical difference between ferrets and cats. When a cat eats some weird household item, it can always just vomit or crap it out. Problem solved. However, things get a little more complicated when your intestines are the size of shoelaces, and your body is shaped like a sideways question mark. In fact, ferrets are probably the easiest to clog animals in the world. They can get blocked up and potentially die just from a few of its own hairs or a cherry pit or something getting lodged in their intestines. And it takes more than just a pipe cleaner to fix that kind of issue. Most ferret parrots have to take their pet to the hospital in the event of a blockage in order to have the obstruction removed through surgery. So unless you want to pay thousands of dollars in vent bills, make sure to keep an eye on your ferret so it doesn't end up killing itself on something random.
How it feels to chew Five Gum.
>> HELP! I CAN'T [ __ ] NO MORE.
>> Five gum. Stimulate your ferrets.
Anyway, that's all for today. Till next time, I'm Samanella and thank you for watching.
Hey kids, let's talk about babies for a second. Now, I think we can all agree generally babies suck at most things, either literally or figuratively. They have almost no life skills whatsoever.
However, as it turns out, babies do actually have some traits that make them superior to adults in certain isolated aspects. In this video, I'm going to tell you guys about a few. First is the baby's non-drowning reflex. If babies under the age of 6 months are put underwater, they'll instinctively hold their breath. Additionally, their heartbeat begins to slow down as soon as they're submerged, which allows them to use much less oxygen and as a result stay alive much longer than the average person. As we all know, babies get themselves into bad situations all the time. Soon as your bag is turned, they're off trying to lick another socket or whatever. So, this reflex probably evolved from back in the day, right? Mom's off picking berries, baby wanders off, ends up in the middle of a lake, and somehow this whole reflex thing gives the village more time to, you know, go get a raft and fish them out. Next is a baby's grip. They're able to support their entire body weight with just one hand, which is more than a lot of adults can do. Of course, it's kind of cheating cuz they only weigh as much as a baby, but it's still kind of impressive. This trait is shared by apes whose babies instinctively cling on to the backs of their mothers. So that way, if she gets a little courageous swinging from branch to branch, the baby doesn't just go flying. Anyway, because of this, it's speculated that babies actually got their firm grasp from our ape ancestors millions of years ago. And it's only a bit later in life when your genetics go, "Oh yeah, legs neat." And ditch the whole grabby thing. Next, babies are also very seductive. Not in the sense of like strutting around in thigh highs making dude's eyes bulge. Not that seductive, but just in the sense of, "Hey, I uh I like looking at this thing.
We should uh we should keep it alive for a while." Here's an example. If people saw a 5-year-old on the streets rolling around in a pile of its own [ __ ] they'd be like, "Gh, what a scumbag." But if an infant did it, people would still be like, "Oh, man. Little guy, I want to take you home, clean you up, put you in little hats." Yeah. It has to do with a baby's facial features like their large forehead and eyes which set off a bunch of baby caring instincts in our brains causing us to perceive cuteness. It's only when they hit like two or three when that all goes down to [ __ ] Lastly, babies have a surprisingly good concept of morality. According to a study by Yale University's Infant Cognition Center, babies are born with an innate sense of right and wrong.
Here's how the study went, right? So, first they put on a puppet show for the baby with these two rabbit dolls and they made one of them act nice and the other one act like a dick. Then at the end of the show, the babies were offered either puppet. And in almost every case, the babies took the nice one. And you might say a strong grip on morality doesn't qualify as a superpower.
Personally, I disagree. People are terrible at keeping their basic sense of right and wrong unless their society maintains it for them. Let me give an example. A few days ago in the Philippines, the president of the entire country basically said, "Hey, we should just start murdering every drug addict alive right now." And this isn't seen as insane over there. No. Millions of Filipinos are now on board with this. It is [ __ ] You see, babies lack the mental capacity to justify atrocities with [ __ ] like it's about the greater good. You know, they have no prejudice.
They just see people as people. And honestly, I think we could all learn a thing or two from that. Not to get all George Carlin on you guys or anything.
Anyway, that's all for today. Till next time, I'm Salmonella and thank you for watching.
Hey majors. So, I'd like to start off with a little biology lesson. When a species finds itself living on an island, it can start to evolve in strange ways based on the different pressures applied by the new environment. This is called island syndrome. And while it can manifest in a lot of ways, the biggest driving force is often a lack of predators. For example, the dodo lost its ability to fly since there was nothing to flee from. The saint killed a field mouse got twice as big since it no longer had to hide. And with no one around to bully them, the Sardinians started putting maggots in their cheese. Meet Kazu, literal translation, rotten cheese. It's made by taking a perfectly good wheel of pecorino and letting a special type of fly lay eggs in it. The fly babies then work to partially digest the cheese, rendering it goopy and wet and maybe quite tasty and wormfilled. Now, cheese as a concept is already quite suspect.
It's clotted milk that you fill with bacteria and mold and let sit for a while. But cheese is safe and delicious.
Cheese is my friend. I trust cheese. So, my guard would be down around Kazumatsu.
I've learned to look past to Cheese's childhood. Strange upbringings are what give them their character. But it turns out those maggots are still alive and if you don't chew well enough, they can cause interic measis, which is a fancy term for fly larae living in your intestines. Symptoms are similar to food poisoning, except with the added psychic pain of knowing that again, your bowels are full of squiggly new friends. It's for this reason that kazumsu is banned in the EU and elsewhere. A black market still exists, which is wild, and it's not a small one. In 2019, the elicit kazumatsu trade was estimated to be worth2 to3 million euros annually.
Personally, I would just do it prohibition style. Like definitely don't put these fly eggs on this sumptuous wheel of pecorino. But if you do, you absolutely shouldn't keep it warm and damp for a week. But although it's traditional to leave the larae alive when you eat your mag and cheese, some consumers still prefer them dead.
Shockingly, in that case, one puts the cheese in a sealed bag and when the maggots run out of oxygen, they wythe around and fling themselves all over the place. This is heard as a distinct pitter or patter against the walls of the bag, and when the sound stops, the contents are ready to eat, like popcorn.
Shark fin soup is one most of us have heard about already, mostly in reference to its effect on shark populations and the wastefulness that goes into making it. Until recently, though, I never looked into the nature of the dish itself. I figured, right, the fins are just the only part of the shark worth eating. Big whoop. It's probably not much different from like swordfish.
Apparently, though, I had it backwards.
Shark fins aren't even meat. They're made almost entirely of cartilage and collagen. They are the last part we should be eating. That's why it's only made into soup because without being soaked in broth, it has zero flavor or nutritional value on its own. Their only redeeming quality is their unique mouth feel due to how stringally the collagen grows in structures called seratrichia.
The texture has been described as somewhere between chewy and crunchy, which I find describes most things actually. Other adjectives present on Wikipedia include snappy, gelatinous, and senuey. The exact sensation of eating this substance remains a mystery to me. And the unintended side effect of all this research is that I now really want to try it. Like, it's a big trade.
I've got to be the one that's wrong.
There is imitation shark fin soup available, but I've already decided that it's not nearly as good. So, I've come up with a compromise to this controversy. Everyone on Earth gets just one bite. Say there's 10 bites to a fin, four fins to a shark, 200 million sharks die. Sure, a necessary casualty. But then we can end the practice forever.
All done. You can finally rest, Mr. Ming. Come here, baby. A aki. What? Aki.
Where? Aki. The aki is a fruit originally from West Africa, which is most commonly associated with Jamaican cuisine, where it appears in such dishes as aki and saltfish. These alien kidneys here are called the arrows, and they're the only part of the fruit that's actually eaten. The flavor is on the savory side, being described as kind of nutty or bean-like. What makes the aki controversial though is the effects it can cause when prepared improperly. If the arrows are allowed to completely ripen, they're harmless. But if you eat them too early or don't thoroughly clean off all the non-errol stuff, they can cause Jamaican vomiting sickness. This disease doesn't sound real. It sounds like it belongs next to eastern sweats and tangian bone grindings, but that's actually an official term. And as for symptoms, it does what it says on the tin. Plus, maybe death. While a based products aren't outright illegal in the United States, they are very tightly regulated and the raw fruit itself cannot be imported. So, if you're American and want to try it, your options are fully cooked canned a going to Florida where a few people grow it domestically. Next, we have bird's nest soup. This is another one that I vaguely heard of, and for years, I just assumed the name was a playful metaphor, like ants on a log or [ __ ] on a shingle.
Turns out, nope. This dish contains an actual bird nest, not like a pile of twigs like I was picturing, but rather a specific type of nest only made by certain species of swiftlets. These nests are mostly made out of mucins, which are a set of proteins that, among other things, serve to thicken all those wonderful secretions our bodies make.
There's a little bit in human saliva, a little bit more in mucus, and in swiftllet saliva. Look out, pal. So, all the swiftlet does is it finds a nice wall, starts laying out fat strings of slobber, which dry, and eventually she's got a nice place to roost. That is right up until some gourmand says, "H, today I crave bird spit. You can keep the eggs, though."
>> And they then reconstitute it back into its original gelatinous texture.
Unfortunately, these nests can't enter the US since, believe it or not, eating bird saliva is a great way to catch bird flu. And now the time has come to speak of the Ortalon. The Ortalon is a kind of bunting, which is a sort of paserie, which is a type of bird.
They're birds. Like many animals, they have a long history of being eaten by the French. But what separates the oralon from your average squab or feeasant is the unique way in which it is prepared and eaten. They're typically caught with nets and kept in the dark, which causes them to overeat for some reason. Once it's about twice as fat, the entire bird is then thrown into a container of brandy, alive, and sealed in. While this serves to marinate the creature, it also drowns in the process, thereby killing one bird with no stones.
The oral is then roasted, plucked, and presented whole to the consumer, who inserts the carcass into their mouth, feet first. As they chew, one hand continues holding the bird's head, while the other picks out the larger bones.
This whole ritual is usually performed with a towel or large napkin over one's head. There's a few explanations for the purpose of the towel. Some say it's just there to keep the aromomas in, while others say it's there to quote shield from God's eyes the shame of such a decadent and disgraceful act. Yeah, this one I'm okay with not trying. Actually, notable fans of this dish include, not joking, Bill Cosby and the guy who invented the labbotomy. Odd to be part of that social club. Our mission is to eat birds whole and then make people not remember things. Killing Ortalons was banned across the EU in 2007. Not for any ethical reason, but because French people did this so much that the entire Ortalon population was threatened.
Thankfully, as of 2018, their conservation status is under least concern. So hopefully the French can get back to it soon. Anyway, that's all I have for today. Till next time, I'm Samanella and thank you for watching.
Hey kids, it's Tips Tuesday. So today I'm giving you a beginner's guide on how to unicycle. All right, let's do this.
Tips Tuesday. Step number one, buying a unicycle. This part's pretty easy. Me, I got mine on Amazon. You are going to want to pick the proper size, however, based on your height. Me, I'm lanky as a [ __ ] Kong, so I got a 24 in. If you want the shorter side, go for the 20 in.
If you want a 13, well, you you probably shouldn't be on my channel, but if you are, go for the 16 inch. They're generally only around 60 or $70, mostly because they're basically just a wheel in a seat, so that's a plus. Step number two, assembly. Okay, you can probably do this part on your own. They give you directions in the box, so I'm not going to waste your time with this. However, you do want to make sure your pedals are on the correct way. If you put them on backwards, it could make it so they unscrew while you're riding. Trust me, I learned the hard way. Step number three, mounting. Kids, a unicycle is like a woman. It's not hard to get to know a good unicycle, especially if you've got lots of money. But if you want to mount it, that's still going to require some skill on your part. In my experience, however, I found that those things that are hardest to mount are often times the most rewarding. You see this tricycle?
This tricycle is a [ __ ] It has a poor relationship with its father and it does not deserve your respect. Unicycles, that's where the real men play. Here's how you do it. First off, find something to hold on to. Trust me, you're going to need it. Could be a car or a trash bin or Jay Leno's chin. Me, I use my basement's low ceiling. If you can reach yours, I highly recommend it. Next, rotate the wheel so that one pedal is at the bottommost point. That's where your first foot's going to go. Once you got all your weight on that foot, put the other one into place. As you do so, you will find yourself being placed upon the seat. Now, guys, remember how I said a unicycle is like a woman? Well, forget that for a moment because you want your junk to have as little involvement with the unicycle as possible. Remember in middle school you learned about levers?
Well, you're going to want to use your taint as a fulcrum on the seat in order to maintain your balance. Too far back, you're going to fall over. too far forward, you're just going to castrate yourself. So, be careful. Step number four, riding. Okay, remember my woman metaphor? That's back on. When you're riding a unicycle, you require great balance as well as a steady rhythm.
Also, you probably not going to last too long your first few times. Just FYI. If you prefer, you can deflate your tires a little when you're first learning, cuz a flabby unicycle might not let you go as fast, but they're certainly easier to ride. Anyway, though, riding a uni is a lot like riding a bike, except instead of just balancing on your left right axis, you got to worry about your front back axis as well. So, you want a bike, you want to turn right, you lean right, right? Same with every direction on a unicycle. If you want to go forward, in addition to pedaling, you got to lean forward. For your first few goes, you're probably going to want to hold on to something. This ain't called a crash course for nothing. Fortunately, with the uni, it's very easy to dismount whenever things go wrong. Out of hundreds of failures, I personally only ever landed face first around two or three times. Above all, keep practicing.
Eventually, kids, you'll be like that stupid ass frog meme that everybody hates. And remember, riding a uni is like riding half a bike. You You only half forget. Sure.
Hey kids, when most people think of the Middle Ages, they think of them as being like humanity's dumb teenage years, where all we did was play harpsicord in our room and burn heretics with our friends. But that's not entirely true.
In fact, I would argue that the medieval era saw just as much genius as any other period in time. It's just most of that genius went towards finding new and creative ways to brutally slaughter those you disagree with. Here's a few highlights. First, we'll talk about the Warwolf. So, as you can imagine, medieval castles were not easy to break into. They were basically like those jungle gym things at Chuck-E-Cheese's.
Massive in size, intentionally confusing layout, security everywhere, and by the end of your visit, you'd probably end up with some kind of disease. So in order to help penetrate fortresses, medieval armies would often utilize siege weapons. One of the most popular of which was the trebuche. Now this device is interesting enough on its own, but it gets better. So around 1300 AD, King Edward I of England was in the process of invading Scotland. However, one fortress known as Sterling Castle was giving him a lot of trouble. He laid siege to the building for many months without any real progress. Then one day he woke up and had a revelation. Hey guys, listen. Why are we wasting our time building all these regularsized trebuchets when we could just build one giant one and call it a day? So that's what he did. This gargantuan war machine was known as the Warwolf and stood at around six stories tall. To give a bit of perspective, this is about as tall as King Kong was in his largest film depiction. So basically, picture a giant [ __ ] ape launching boulders like their baseballs, and you've got a pretty good idea of what the war werewolf was capable of. It was so intimidating that when the Scots saw the English constructing the beast outside the castle, they immediately surrendered out of fear. But then Edward was like, "Huh, [ __ ] that. I'm going to test this bad boy out." And proceeded to take pot shots on the castle anyway. Another devious product of the Middle Ages was a flammable substance known as Greek fire.
Contrary to popular belief, Greek fire was not invented by the ancient Greeks.
Rick Ryarden, you lying prick. It was actually invented in the 7th century AD by the Byzantines, who happened to inhabit Greece at the time. Historians still don't know exactly what it was made of, but they do know that it acted a lot like napal, sticking to ships, sticking to people, even floating and continuing to burn on the surface of the water. The Byzantines also had these siphon-like tubes that they'd put on the front of their boats to pour Greek fire on the enemy, kind of like makeshift flamethrowers. These were retired pretty quickly, though, mostly because when you put the words makeshift and flamethrower next to each other, you're bound to run into some problems eventually. Our next bright idea comes from a woman known as Olga of Kev. So Olga was a princess who ruled the area around the capital of modern-day Ukraine from 945 to 963 AD.
And she had quite a track record for being just a total badass. For example, the Drevlians, a tribe of people under Kev's control, once sent 20 men to Kev in order to convince Olga to marry their prince under the pretense that if they did marry, the prince could claim her rule over Keev. In response, she had all 20 of them buried alive. She then sent a letter to the prince saying she accepted his proposal, but she would need a bunch of his most distinguished governors to escort her on the journey. Once the men showed up, Olg was like, "Hey guys, long journey, huh? How would you like to take a bath in this here bath house?" They were like, "Yeah, sure. That sounds great." Okay, have fun, you guys.
Man, it's like a sauna in here. It is a sauna, [ __ ] You have a point.
So, long story short, this lady just did not give a heck. My favorite story about her starts with her besieging a Drevian city that refused to pay tribute to her.
The people in the city were already well aware of the type of rampaging that Olga was capable of, so they were already scared shitless. But when she showed up, she was like, "All right, you know what, guys? I'm going to play nice. Just bring me three pigeons and three sparrows from each household, and I'll be on my way."
Uh, okay. What uh what are they for exactly? We're uh we're just hungry. I mean, we got some food, too. We could just give I'm sorry. Did I [ __ ] stutter? All right, birds. It is. Then, once the creatures were in Olga's hands, she had each of her soldiers tie a clothbound piece of sulfur to one of the birds' feet, which was then set a light.
The birds were then released all at once, and when they flew back into the city, their nests acted like little piles of tinder, resulting in nearly every house in the entire city erupting in flames simultaneously. And while the whole place burned to the ground, Olga just sat and watched. By the way, it's worth mentioning that after her death, Olga was canonized as a Catholic saint.
Presumably around the same time as St. Tiffany, who went around pushing in the soft spots of babies, and St. Jerry the goat [ __ ] who, as the name implies, [ __ ] a lot of goats. In conclusion, pay your taxes. To my loyal subscribers, I'll see you in 3 months. I'm Samanella, and thank you for watching.
and St. Jerry the goat [ __ ] Oh god.
This video is sponsored by Skillshare.
Hey kids, you're probably familiar with at least a few characters whose obsessive penny pinching truly knows no bounds. Yes, from Ebenezer Scrooge to Scrooge McDuck. Nobody hoards money quite like misers. But these guys aren't the most miserly misers out there. Not by a long shot. First of all, look at their top hats, their extravagant use of glasses, their luxurious chairs. These things are worth their weight and precious shekels. No true miser would waste their wealth on such frills.
Second of all, these guys aren't real.
They're fictional characters. Scrooge McDuck does not exist. I don't care what CNN says. It's all liberal conspiracy [ __ ] I mean, look at this article by the Huffington Post. You mean to tell me that this picture isn't photoshopped?
Ridiculous. But you know who was real?
One Daniel Dancer of London, England.
Born in 1716, Daniel's father died at a young age, leaving behind a large agricultural estate for Daniel to oversee. When it was first inherited, the property brought in a few hundred pound a year, which doesn't sound like much today. But given that a general laborer could be expected to make around £19 per year in 1710, it's safe to say that Danzer could afford to live a fairly lavish lifestyle off his passive income alone. But Dan was like, you know, all this food and clothing and stuff is all right, but you know what? I really like owning money. Say, how much does a pound cost? Well, that's a complicated question, Daniel. Can currency really be said to have intrinsic value? Some economists believe that.
>> TLDDR, please. They cost a pound. Jesus, that's a lot. I better start saving.
Thus began one of the most intentionally frugal lifestyles history has ever seen.
Let me walk you through a few of dancers day-to-day habits. First of all, soap, don't even think about it. The closest thing to bathing that Daniel did was during the summer months when once or twice a week he'd wait into the nearby pond and scrub his face with a handful of sand. Say what you will, but what he lacked in deodorization, he certainly made up for an exfoliation. Admittedly, all of London probably rire to high hell back then. So, while Daniel Smell might not have tipped people off to his eccentricity, his clothes almost certainly did. On a good day, he'd be seen in one of his coats, which were homemade patchwork abominations of various garments that Dancer found on the streets in local dust heaps, looking like a walking dementia patient sewing circle. Similarly, all his shoes were either scavenged or Frankensteined out of other pairs of shoes he already owned, with the whole ensemble being barely held together with half-hazardly tied bands made of the hay grown on his estate. In fact, a lot of the time he ditched normal clothes altogether and just wear the hay. To his credit, in his youth, Daniel was known to purchase a whole two shirts per year as his clothing expense. But one day, he looked in the mirror and said, "Daniel, you're bleeding funds like a stuck pig. It's time to grow up and get your act together." And cut his budget to only one shirt per year. One of the few people that Daniel associated with regularly was his sister, whom he lived with. Believe it or not, she shared in a lot of Daniel's tightfisted habits, and it definitely showed. She was described as quote having more the appearance of a walking dung hill than one of the fair sex. Couldn't have said it better myself, honestly. Dancer prepared all of his food for the upcoming week ahead of time, consisting of only 14 hard dumplings and three lbs of beef stretched out over the entire 7-day period. Every day, he'd eat only a single meal that was basically equivalent to two wads of dried out dough and 1 and 1/2 quarter pounder patties from McDonald's. He kept this habit up for years without fail, except for one time when he stumbled upon a fully intact rotting sheep carcass during his daily stroll. He was like, "Good lord, this is just obscene. Who would leave a perfectly good pile of arguably edible meat and organs just sitting around like this?" So, he dragged the thing home and made him and his sister a nice big pile of spoiled mutton pies, which they subsisted off of for several weeks. That's a real life hack right there. Who needs refrigeration if it's already rancid? Am I right? Despite Daniel's rabid fear of any unnecessary spending, he did own a dog named Bob that he was quite fond of.
At this point, I'm almost certain that Dancer just decided to base his entire life off of Lenolium by no effects, which is pretty incredible considering Lenolium wasn't even invented for another hundred years. Anyway, though, one day, Daniel's neighbor came to complain about how Bob had been harassing his sheep. So, Daniel said, "Don't worry, boy. I ain't going to kill you, but we don't want a lawsuit on our hands, do we?" "No, we don't. What would we do if a lawyer came around here?"
Huh?
That's right. And make his children watch. Yeah. So, he decided to take the dog to the local frier, which is basically a blacksmith that specializes in horseshoes and the like. Hey, could you make my dog like not have teeth anymore? Uh, what kind of business you think I'm running here, boy? Come on, man. You file down horses hooves for a living. Teeth are just tiny mouth hooves. That's close. Sorry, buddy, but close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.
Well, got me there. Say, what's a hand grenade? None of my sources say what happened to the dog after his untimely nubbing, but I do know Dan never got sued, so I guess the operation was a success. Daniel's sister passed away in 1766, leaving him so distraught that he actually went out of his way to buy morning clothes for her funeral. And by that, I mean he bought a pair of secondhand black stockings, and that's it. Still, that's a big deal when it comes to the likes of Dancer. At this point, the only person close to a friend that Dancer had was a woman known as Lady Tempest. She was so influential over him that she was actually able to convince him to buy, get this, a one shilling hat. This was quite an accomplishment as Daniel's last hat was older than half of you at 14 YEARS OLD.
WHAT? I'M NOT You don't you?
Of course, the next time Lady Tempest went to hang out with him, he was still wearing his old disgusting hat. When questioned about the one he bought, he goes, "Oh yeah, that frilly old thing.
sold it for a 6 p profit. Super easy, too. I tell you, forget house flipping.
Hat flipping is going to be the cool new thing pretty soon. Lo and behold, 250 years later, he was wrong.
Daniel died at the ripe old age of 78, which seems pretty shocking considering the whole not using soap, eating rotten food thing, but I guess his near total isolation from other people made up for that when it came to preventing illness.
Though he never ended up shelling out any of the massive hoorde of wealth that he accumulated over this time, his efforts weren't completely in vain. By the time he passed away, Daniel's estate was now pulling in about 3,000 in yearly net revenue, 10 times the amount it earned when he first inherited it. So, moral of the story, parsimony has its place. While it's good to save money, don't torture yourself just for the sake of a few bucks. Next time your parent or significant other insists on turning down the thermostat or keeping the windows up to save gas, just say, "Hey, are we human or are we dancer?" But you know what else is more valuable than money? Knowledge.
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You'll learn all the money management skills that really should be taught in school but aren't in no time. If you're looking for something a little more ambitious, it's never too early or too late to try your hand at entrepreneurship. With some of these classes, you can turn that one genius business idea that you and your friends had that one night into reality. Join the millions of students already learning on Skillshare today with a special offer just for my viewers where you can get 2 months of Skillshare for just 99. To sign up, go to skcl.sham4.
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Till next time, I'm Sam Manella and thank you for watching.
Hey kids, time to talk about more cases of stiff lifting from the days of Yore.
If you haven't seen part one yet, go check it out or don't. I'm a YouTuber, not a cop, unfortunately. This first tale doesn't feature an entire dead body, but I still found it interesting enough to talk about. So, one day in 2012, a priest was riding a train out of Italy when his bag got stolen by a trio of thieves. Inside the bag was whatever normal personal possessions the guy happened to own, as well as a small vial containing the blood of none other than Pope John Paul II. So, this begs the question, why did the priest have Pope blood in his bag? Well, an important way that the Catholic Church honors saints and other venerated individuals is the keeping of relics. These relics are ranked in terms of how close they were to the person at hand. You got something that's tangentially related to a saint in any way, that's a third class relic.
If it's a personal possession of a saint, it's second class. And as for first class relics, those typically consist of literal body parts and/or fluids of a holy figure. Now, for you youngsters out there, in 1981, the pope got shot four times by some fascist having a bad day. People are like, "Holy [ __ ] it's a pop aside. Is that even a word?" No, no, I'm okay. Oh, say who left all this first class relic lying around? So to this day, there remained three objects containing the fine-aged Popey juice spilled that fateful afternoon. The vial was found a few hours later by police among the reeds and grass near the station, which basically means the thieves took one look at it and were like, "Blood? I already make this myself. Lame and tossed it out without a second thought."
Here's the thing, though. That's not the only instance of old JP2 getting bloodnapped. In 2014, a similar relic was yonked from the church of San Pedro de laena in Italy alongside a crucifix.
The fact that these were the only items taken led to two prevailing theories.
Some people thought that since John Paul II wasn't technically a saint yet, the relic's value would go way up once the man was actually canonized. So, the thieves decided to take it now and resell it later. The other theory was way more popular with the media. After all, what use does pope blood have other than satanic rituals? This story naturally got a lot of press and the whole world just kind of assumed that Lucifer himself was set to return any day now. Eventually, the thieves confessed. So authorities came to the rehab facility they were staying at.
They returned the cross, but when questioned about the relic, they were like, "Wait, what? Pope blood? Satan, do you guys need to check in here, too?"
Eventually, it was found in a rubbish bin on the facility grounds, which means once again, it was just casually tossed out as nonsense. You ever throw out Pope blood? Cuz apparently multiple people have done that on separate occasions just in the past 7 years. It doesn't end there, of course. In 2016, this happened a third time when a piece of cloth with John Paul fluid on it was taken from Cologne Cathedral. I can't for the life of me find a follow-up to this story, which leads me to believe that they were just like, "Fuck it. Pope blood's more trouble than it's worth at this point."
But if you guys can find some conclusion to where it ended up, let me know below.
Now, our next story begins with a man named Carl Tanler, a German-born radiology technologist in early 20th century Florida. He looked kind of like Sigman Freud, except even more evil looking. On the inside, he was a pretty normal dude, other than the fact that he claimed to have visions throughout his life of some mysterious dark-haired girl. Anyway, in 1930, while working at the Marine Hospital in Key West, he met a young woman by the name of Maria Elena Miraos, called Elena for short, and he said, "Oh my god, that's a girl from the visions I've been having." Yeah, she Wait, what? We were meant to meet today.
We must be soulmates. What? Don't you have like a wife and two kids? Destiny.
Hoyos was soon diagnosed with tuberculosis, which was considered fatal at the time. So, naturally, Carl decided to handle her treatment, going as far as convincing her family to let him visit their home every day. Except he was a radiologist. So, even if there were reliable means to treat tuberculosis at the time, he definitely didn't have the credentials to do so. But whatever, this is the past we're talking about after all. That place was a [ __ ] show from start to finish. I'm not about to get on somebody's case for a little clerical error. In addition to whatever salves and tinctures and such doctors gave to people back then, Tanler showered her with gifts of clothes and jewelry. I know he meant well, but if I was bedridden with a terminal illness, I'd just be insulted. Like, wow, thanks.
Can't wait to show off this little number out on the town. Anyway, eventually Tanler found that the time had come to reveal his true feelings.
Elena, there's something I must confess.
I I'm deeply in love with you.
I'm so glad you feel the same. Oios inevitably succumbed to the disease, leaving Tanler heartbroken. He just wasn't ready to part ways with his pestilence riddled sweetheart. So, he asked the family's permission to commission an above ground mausoleum for their daughter. And since this was the early 20th century, they said, "Ah, what a sweet, selfless man. I'm sure he'd never do this just so he could commit crimes against nature." Then he was like, "Oh, yeah, by the way, could I have some of her hair, too?" "Sure, kind stranger. Here's a bag of her hair we just had lying around for some [ __ ] reason. Again, no red flags here. He went to visit her dwelling nearly every night for 2 years. Then finally one day he said, "You know what, kid? You're all right. Say, how's about we dish this must mausoleum and go back to my place.
I'll take that as a yes."
So, we took her home in a little red toy wagon, which is ridiculous. It makes me picture him skipping around whistling a merry tune. Hey, neighbor. Now, here's a riddle for all you intellectuals out there. What do a dead body in a used PT Cruiser have in common? Sure, they both taste terrible, and you never want to be seen in public with one. Most importantly, though, they're a depreciating asset. But hey, that didn't stop old gnarly Carly from sprucing her up any way you could. Wiring her bones back together with coat hangers, replacing her skin with wax and silk, making a wig out of that bag of hair from earlier, and soaking the body in massive amounts of perfume and disinfectants for obvious reasons. He claimed to have been instructed to do all this by Elena's spirit, which he would apparently talk to frequently. He also did, you know, that thing eccentric loners do with dead ladies in their house, but we won't talk about that.
This went on for 7 years, seven hot and humid Florida years until 1940 when Elena's sister saw him dancing with some lady through the curtains. She's like, "Aw, how cute. I'm glad that old bag of lentils has finally found love." Walks in, comes to find out it's her [ __ ] dead sister. So the cops come, but there isn't any conclusive evidence of any flirting and philandering with the body.
So the only crime Carl could have been charged with was grave robbing. Except the statute of limitations was already up by the time he was found out. So they just took the body, tipped their hats, and went on their merry way. Tanler still missed Elena dearly. But since he couldn't have her cadaavver, he crafted a crude homemade effigy of the lady, which he lived with for the rest of his life. Here's the part that really gets me, though. He apparently went back to live with his aranged wife once the jig was up. just like, "Hey babe, I know we haven't talked since the whole corpse thing, but uh I've been having trouble making rent. Do you think I could come crash for a while?" "Sure, come right in. I'll take your coats. Would you and the demented life-sized replica of your long deadad lover that you left me for like a cup of tea?" I'd like one. None for her, though. It goes right through her.
Of course, I'm making all this out to be a horrifying thing for the goofs and gaffs of it. But at the time, a lot of people read the news stories about Tanler, and many actually sympathized with the man. They saw him as the distraught, hless romantic that he saw himself as. You know why they had that compassion? Because they listened. Say, what would the world look like if we all listened more? Sponsor time. Listening to audiobooks inspires us, motivates us, even brings us closer. And there's no better place to listen than Audible. But what should you listen to, you ask?
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Hey kids, whether you're a precocious young lad down by the swimming pool or a grizzled crime scene investigator, everybody's got some interest in dead bodies. Yes, from Weekend at Bernie to Weekend at Bernie's 2 to Weekend at Bernie's 3: Revelations, stories about Wayward Corpses have certainly carved their niche in today's media. So, I thought I'd spin a few yarns about some real life people who were kept out far past their expiration date. Our first tale follows one Elmer McCertie. He was an outlaw during the Twilight days of the Wild West. Thanks to his former life as a minor, McCertie acted as the demolitions expert to his little posi, using nitroglycerin basically anytime he had the faintest excuse to do so. except he was kind of a [ __ ] so it didn't usually go quite as planned. Got to say, after peanut butter and chocolate, my favorite combination of two things is probably gross incompetence and high explosives. Example, in March of 1911, McCert's band of rabble rousers found out that $4,000 were in a safe in an approaching train. They managed to stop the entire locomotive. I don't even know how you do that. Break in, hold everyone on board hostage, and locate the safe.
McCertie steps up to play, right? Got to blast the thing open. Except I guess the excitement kind of got to him cuz he ended up using like way too much nitroglycerin, like inordinate amounts.
Ended up completely destroying the safe and its contents. And what few silver coins they made out with were literally melted to the frame of the safe and had to be peeled off. Anyway, he died in a shootout with police later that year, and the undertaker at the funeral home he was sent to couldn't find any necks of ken on account of McCertie being a rambling low-life varmint. So, he just embombed the hell out of him and said, "Hey boys and girls, want to see a dead criminal? only one shiny nickel. And since Live Leak wasn't around at the time, there weren't many places a kid could go to stare at a corpse for a while if he or she so desired. So, it actually became a pretty popular attraction. Visitors would pay their dues by physically slipping the coin into the man's mouth, and the creepy ass undertaker would come fish them out later, probably with bare hands, all slowly and sensual like. A few years passed when a couple of guys showed up claiming to be McCert's brothers with a note from the local sheriff to back it up. They told the undertaker they had permission to go bury McCertie, so he reluctantly relinquished the body to the men. Except these guys weren't his brothers. They were just a couple of crusty freaking carnies. They shipped the body off to Kansas to become an attraction in the traveling show. From here, McCertie traded hands a few more times. At one point, he was exploited for this one guy's film about narcotics.
He was like, "Yeah, this pill popping degenerate got shot while trying to rob a pharmacy for more dope the other day."
The body was super old by then, so people are like, "Wait, why is he all descated and flaky and gross?" He just goes, "Yeah, that's what happens when you do drugs, kids. Your [ __ ] skin falls off. Stay above the influence." At some point in his journey, he ended up getting coated in wax and paint to look a little less rotty before ending up in a warehouse in 1949. Here's the thing.
He was in there alongside some actual wax figures. And after spending 19 years in storage, nobody knew he was a real corpse anymore. So he ended up getting sold in 1968 as a mannequin to one spoony Singh, owner of the Hollywood Wax Museum. He tried to lend the guy out a couple times during his stay, but people found him too gross or unrealistic looking for whatever purposes they had in mind. So he ended up getting sold again and used as a prop of a hanged man at the Pike Amusement Zone in their funhouse ride with zero knowledge that he was an actual dead criminal. It wasn't until 1976, 65 years after his death, that an episode of the $6 million man was being filmed at the complex and a stage hand tried to move the prop around only to have its arm break off in his hand. He was like, "H, lousy stiff.
Wait a minute. That's curious. This mannequin's got human flesh and bones inside of it. Wait a minute. Uh-oh.
Uh-oh. Uh-oh." The autopsy confirmed what everyone present at the time suspected. By this point, the body was so dried out and stale that it only weighed 50 lbs. Which makes me think we should start a radical new fat diet where we just get people to mummify parts of their body. Like, Jenny, guess what? I just lost 30 lbs in 5 days. Wow.
Holy heck. How'd you do that? They call it the Egyptian cleanse. Anyway, with that, McCertie was finally laid to rest back in his homeland of Oklahoma, and that film crews lives were never the same again. Flashback to late 18th century.
>> Baloney, there lived a physician by the name of Luigi Galvani. This guy was a big deal. He's the dude who discovered that, hey, animals got electricity in them. And his legacy still survives today in words like galvanize. One of his most famous experiments was the one where he used static electricity to make frog legs twitch on command. Around these parts, we call that the French salude.
Stereotypes funny. Well, in 1803, his nephew, Giovani Alini, said, "Hey, that's pretty nifty and all, but uh what if we tried it on people?" So, the city of London was like, "Hey, now you're thinking with portals. One freshly executed criminal coming up." Alini gathered a crowd and applied two diodes to the corpse's head, causing his face to scrunch up and one eye to flick open.
Alini was a showman, though. He wanted some real action. So, he then put the current through opposite points in the body, which made the whole thing flail around like Pinocchio in heat. Now, today, we know he was just exciting the dead muscles, right? But the people who were watching had no idea what was going on. So they were like, "Jesus Christ, this guy's a [ __ ] necromancer. Quick, go get grandma. Maybe we can get in the whale after all." Fun fact, this experiment actually ended up serving as inspiration for Mary Shel's Frankenstein, which makes me wonder what other famous novels were based on real life events. Was a white whale ever pursued by a vengeful sea captain? Was there actually a mentally handicapped migrant worker who liked hugging rabbits to death? Was there ever a human soul as profoundly asinine and willfully ignorant as Amelia Bedilia? God, I hate her glassy face so [ __ ] much. I just want to mash it into a running waffle maker. Be like, "Huh, isn't that ironic?" Grab her by her vacant [ __ ] head, throw her out of a 747, and say, "Hey, why didn't you shoot yourself when you HAD THE CHANCE?" GET IT?
ANYWAY, one thing we learned today is the importance of reputability. And just as you wouldn't want some dirty cars jack in your stiff phrasing, you certainly wouldn't want the same fate to befall your valuable online information, that's why you need to try Dashlane.
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Dashlane's got your back. Something especially cool about it is that you can automatically change your passwords right in Dashlane without fiddling with stupid security questions from 6 years ago you don't know the answer to for an hour. Dashlane Premium even comes with a VPN. So now you can take full advantage of unsecured Wi-Fi without ever worrying that the janitor in the back of Starbucks knows about those horrific purchases you're making. So please go to dashane.com/sammonella to try Dashlane Premium free for 30 days. Also, the first 200 people who use the promo code Sammonella will get 10% off their Dashlane Premium subscription.
By the way, this video ended up being way too long, so stay tuned for part two in a week or two. Anyway, that's all for today. Till next time, I'm Salmonella and thank you for watching.
Throw her out of a 747 and say, "Hey, why didn't you shoot yourself when you had the chance?" Get it.
Anyway, this video is sponsored by Dashlane.
Hey kids, guess what? You could be a freak of nature and not even know it.
Yep, not every deformity is visible to the untrained eye. Today we're going to talk about a few physical defects that you, the listener, might have. First is situs and versus. So situs and versus is when a person is born with some or all of their organs mirrored along the vertical axis. This can range from a heart that's on the right instead of the left to the entire body cavity being flipped around. The condition is pretty rare, affecting about one in every 10,000 people. According to Wikipedia, plenty of people live their lives with this condition without knowing about it.
Considering that even little kids know that their heart is supposed to be on the left, I find this a little hard to believe, but who knows? At any rate, the first doctor visit where you find all this out sure would be interesting.
Whoa. I uh I think your testicles are on backwards. Wh what? Hold on. Hold on.
Maybe I'm just holding them weird. Let me just No. Yeah, they're definitely on backwards. I uh I don't follow. It's not that hard a concept. The left one's on the right and the right one's on the left. That's all. Okay. Does that Does that mean anything? Well, I mean I I wouldn't want to be the guy with the backwards nut sack, but uh that's just me. What do you mean? Just, you know, kind of weird in it. What is weird about it? How are they different? Can you see it? Can you feel it? Is it dangerous?
Look, I'm a doctor, not a cosmetologist.
All right. Next is bellclapper deformity. This is a condition that affects one out of every 125 males. So in a normal nut sack, the nuts are anchored to the sack in a certain way that limits their mobility. But if you have bell clapper deformity, this anchor isn't present, meaning your nads are free to swing around much more independently than normal. Being that we as males don't often compare our scrotal dynamics with other men, most people aren't aware of their deformity, at least not at first. However, having free floating testes comes with a significantly higher chance of suffering from testicular torsion, which is where your sperm tube gets all twisted around as a result of rigorous exercise or other mechanical means. This condition is extremely painful and oftent times requires a visit to the hospital in order to prevent that nut from literally dying from hypoxia. Wait a minute. These aren't on backwards. They're just all twisted up. What? Fix them? Yeah, I'm trying. Try harder. Hey, you ever try to untangle a pair of earbuds through a plastic bag? This is like that except sweatier. Cut me some slack. All right, don't get your balls in a twist. More of a twist. Next is the accessory spleen.
So, most of us have at least heard of the spleen. For those of you that don't know a lot about it, basically, it's a softball-sized organ right around here that helps out your bloodstream and immune system. But apparently, one out of every 10 people have not one but two spleens. Sadly, the second spleen isn't another full-sized organ, but rather a little enclosed ball of spleen tissue about the size of a peanut M&M. Since it is self-encclosed, it's technically considered another organ. But because of its small size, it's not all that beneficial to have one or anything. It's just kind of there. Hey, I haven't seen you around before. Are you new on campus? Oh, yeah. I just got here a couple days ago. Well, hey, man. Welcome to UCLA. If you want, I can >> Wrangle Rock. Uh, what is that?
>> It's a good show. Oh, that's Toby. He's uh he's my accessory. Do you listen to the Offspring? Is it Is it talking to me? Do you listen to the Offspring? Uh well, I I mean, I used to when I was younger. Not uh not so much nowadays.
Well, uh you're you're uh you're you're going to you're going to you're you're going to you're going to go far, kid.
I'm uh I'm going to go now. Do you think he got the reference?
Yeah, Toby. I'm sure he did. Finally, we have fetal alcohol spectrum disorder.
The only reason I'm including this one is because of something that happened in health class during my freshman year of high school. Our teacher was telling us all about how you should never drink during pregnancy. She also said that between 2 and 5% of people in the United States have some form of FASD. Then she goes, "Looking around the room, I do see a couple people that have the distinguishing facial features. Not going to name names, of course." And then she just continued on with her lesson as if she didn't just drop a huge bombshell on all of us. So needless to say, this scared the [ __ ] out of me. Cuz although I consider myself a little bit on the intellectual side, for all I know, I could have been lined up to be the next Einstein and then my wouldbe genius brain just got Jäger bombed into a merely above average one. So as soon as I got home, I pulled up a chart that showed all the distinguishing facial features for FASD and compared it in the mirror. Thankfully, my filtrum was distinct and my upper lip was plump. So, I'm in the clear as I know now.
Statistically speaking, though, there's a good chance that at least a few of the moms of the people watching this video are not the angels that they make themselves out to be. So, you know, food for thought. It really is a curse though, learning about this chart here, because the features are subtle enough that those who are affected still look normal to the average person. But once you're on the lookout for them, next thing you know, you're on Facebook, your friend posted pictures of her kid, all the comments are like, "Oh my god, he's so cute. What a perfect little guy." and you're the only person there who knows otherwise. Anyway, that's all for today.
Till next time, I'm Salmonella and thank you for watching.
Hey kids, time for another hot, steamy load of knowledge dripping down your neck and chest. Today we're going to talk about the greatest mind to ever live. Nope, not him. Nope, keep trying.
Who I'm really referring to is the ancient Greek philosopher known as Dioynes of Syope. Dioynes followed the school of thought known as cynicism. Far from the yelling at CNN, sitting down during the pledge kind of cynicism we know today, cynic philosophy centers around the rejection of conventional desires in favor of a simple moderate lifestyle. But while many philosophers made the virtue out of self-discipline, Dioynes took all that to a whole new level. He was the most downto-earth guy out there. Literally, he lived on the ground in a big tub in the marketplace where he'd beg for a living. For a while, his only possession was a wooden bowl until one day he saw a child drinking out of his hands and he was like, "What do I need this [ __ ] for?"
Now, though his way of life and perspective was unique enough, it's the way Dioynes showed it that really set him apart from the rest. When someone today wants to go against society, they dye their hair blue and make a blog post about how there aren't any obese women of color in Super Smash Bros. On the other hand, when Dioynes has something to say, he just jerks off in public, takes a dump in the amphitheater, pisses on passerby, whatever. The way he saw it, he was just performing muchneeded bodily functions while also protesting the superficiality of the civilization around him. Keep in mind, though he was an unwashed, publicly defecating homeless man, that's not all he was. His wit was easily on par with his philosophical contemporaries, and his lack of inhibition meant that everyone knew it. For example, here's an often pondered question of the day. How do you define a human in the simplest of terms possible? Plato decided to tackle this question and he came up with featherless biped. And in the ancient Greek world, they didn't have any kangaroos or gibbons or nothing. So people were the only things around that both walked on two legs and didn't have feathers. Plato thought he was real clever with that one. Dioynes, on the other hand, he wasn't having any of it. So he said, "All right, you pompous prick. I'll give you a featherless biped."
So in reality, we do not learn. And what we call learning is only a process of recollection.
Oh, god damn it. Not you again. What's up, [ __ ] Hey, check out this person I found. Isn't it such a human? Look at him. Wow, what a guy. Anyway, love to stay in chat, but I saw some trash outside that look delicious. Smell you later, deliberator.
Yes, my student. Yeah. Uh, what the [ __ ] Here's another anecdote.
Macedonian king Alexander was a big fan of Dioynes, so he decided to pay him a visit and he said, "Hey, man, big fan.
If there's any favor I can do for you, anything at all, just let me know. I'll make it happen." Now, to put this into perspective, this is Alexander we're talking about. The guy who had his cousin straight up assassinated so he could take the throne. The guy who would later go on to conquer the majority of the civilized world. And you know what Dioynes says? He goes, "Yeah, you can do me a favor. Move over. You're in my light." Wow. I'm just I'm not even mad.
You really are just a legend. Dioynes lived up to the ripe old age of 89. I don't know if that's a testament to his lifestyle or if he just got lucky, but either way, if there is a god, he definitely has a sense of humor. The exact cause of Dioenese's death varies depending on which source you look at.
Some say he died from an infected dog bite. Others say it was from eating raw octopus. My favorite theory is that one day he just got tired of living and he just held his breath till he died. He left behind instructions on what to do with his body after he passed. Now, when people think of special post-mortem instructions like these, they usually think, "Scatter my ashes at 6:53 a.m.
off the western face of Mount Reineer using my grandfather's favorite ladle."
None of that with Dioynes. He kept it simple. In the words of Danny DeVito, "When I'm dead, just throw me in the trash." Specifically, he wanted his body tossed into the wild so animals could feast on him, thereby giving back to the earth what little he took from it. So, kids, moral of the story, don't judge a book by its cover. The man who appears to be nothing more than a [ __ ] smeared babbling vagrant could actually be the wisest man you'll ever meet. Or it could really just be a raving [ __ ] lunatic.
Bring a knife just in case. Anyway, till next time, I'm Samanella and thank you for watching.
Hey kids, let me talk to you about dog breeding. Nowadays, dogs are mostly around just to be a cute companion, right? So breeding has gone from functionality to cuteness, and that's fine as long as it stays within the bounds of nature. But that's not enough for today's breeder. So how do you make a dog cuter? Apparently by giving it disgusting genetic deformities. And chances are you, the listener, agree with that. You just don't know you do.
Let me show you what I mean. See this?
This is a relatively normal dog. Notice the snout, the eyes, the shape of the head. Not too far gone from the wolves that today's dogs come from. Now, let me take you through some other breeds.
First is the bull terrier 100 years ago.
Still look pretty normal. Right now, here's today's version. Jesus, who needs snouts, right? Let's just give it a long continuous boomerang shaped head with two tiny holes at the end. Seriously, it looks like twocan Sam is trying to fit inside a dog costume. And look at its eyes. They're permanently pointed up at the sky as if to say, "God, why did you let me become this? Please kill me." Do you guys remember Spuds McKenzie, the old Bud Light mascot? Well, I just realized why they chose a bull terrier of all dogs. It's because he looked like his mom drank nothing but Bud Light for her entire pregnancy. Next up is the pug. I'll probably get some hate for this one, but I don't care. They've been bred specifically to look like they've been smashed in the goddamn face with a frying pan. And because of this, because of their fact that their skull is shaped like a [ __ ] tuna can, they can barely breathe their whole lives. Ever been around a pug? Constantly, no matter the temperature or the weather, they sit there going.
And people think this [ __ ] is cute. If my baby came out with a flat nose, hair, lip, cylindrical head, and no neck going. I'd be like, "Jesus, [ __ ] Put it back in. It's clearly not done yet."
Next is the dachshun. Now, there is no excuse for this one. The head's fine, right? But the body, good god, it's got a torso shaped like a goddamn doors stop with those pointless legs just kind of stapled on. Now, it's been a little while since I reminded you what a normal dog looks like. So, here. Now, let me go into Photoshop real quick and do all the changes necessary to make this dog look like a dachshun. Look at that. That's not okay. Why even have legs at this point? Might as well just keep going until it's just a drumstick from the neck down. And there's no reason. It's just one day someone was like, "Well, people like dogs and people like ferrets, so why don't we make some chimera abomination halfway in between the two and see what happens?" My least favorite breed, though, out of all of them, it's just straight up [ __ ] in every way. A testament to humankind's neverending corruption of the natural world. I'm talking about the Chihuahua.
It's like somebody took a normal dog and boiled away every aspect except for anger and neuroticism, leaving this tiny hell creature behind. And this is one of the nicer pictures I could find. Take a look at this. Someone call a priest and we let these things inhabit our homes.
This poor woman's going to wake up with her [ __ ] nose chewed off and just be like, "Oh, Mr. Wiggles was a little hungry this morning, wasn't he?"
Meanwhile, the dogs are sitting there like blood loss. The only time they're not being needlessly aggressive towards people, it's when they're off pissing, [ __ ] and vomiting all over their surroundings. And you would think such a small dog would at least produce manageable waste. But much like the creature itself, the small things it does expel are straight up toxic. It's like some of the Chihuahua's penup hatred for the mortal plane manifests itself in every dump it takes. I would rather clean up a full-grown man's [ __ ] from my floor than wipe up the septic nightmare that is Chihuahua squirts. The only good thing about owning a Chihuahua is that if it ever gets rabies, it'll be fine cuz you won't be able to tell the goddamn difference. It'll still be sitting there.
Business as usual. So, that's my little rant about the monstrosities that live right beneath our noses. I'm Salmonella and thank you for watching.
Hey kids, I was inspired to make this video while doing research on the ancient medicine man Galen. Apparently, he would often do experiments on animals in order to learn more about the body.
His favorite of which was the Barbarie ape due to its anatomical similarity to humans. Now, when I say experiments, I don't mean push a button, get a peanut type things. I'm talking like Yseph Mangala meets the plague dogs. He'd clamp their PE tubes shut just to watch their kidneys swell, cut their spinal cords in different places to see what went limp and what didn't, and squeeze their brains and make them go unconscious, to name a few. My initial reaction was, "Hey, that's neat." But then, after some thought, I was like, "Wo, hold the phone. In 200 AD, you can get a doornob even. Yet, if you had the right resources, you could order a goddamn monkey. Many monkeys, in fact, by the barrelful, presumably.
Alternatively, if you were born in the right place, you could be the monkey poacher, making a living rrestling up some primates with nothing more than a net, a pokey thing, a hole in the ground, and a whole lot of ambition. So, I got to thinking, what other kind of animals did ancient Rome have access to?
Apparently, basically everything that lived in this part of the map. They were particularly fond of elephants, and it's easy to see why. Sure, elephants aren't that big of a deal to the average person today, right? You've been seeing pictures of them since you were two. Big whoop. But imagine if you were a 20-year-old man who had never seen an elephant in your life. The closest thing you've ever witnessed is like horses, maybe some deer now and then. You get drafted. You go out to battle. You're a little scared, but you've been trained well. You're ready. Then over the horizon, you see 20 house-sized behemoths with giant tentacles sticking out of their faces, horns longer than your body sticking out of their mouths, all screaming their weird trumpety scream, making your whole body vibrate like Mars himself is [ __ ] on your very existence. So naturally, Rome loved to show these things off all the time just as a display of power. Like imagine if you were going to a speech in DC and Trump rolls up with a pack of dragons.
You'd listen to every word he said. He's got [ __ ] dragons. That's what it was like seeing the emperor parade around with elephants back in the day. Of course, that wasn't the only use they had for imported animals when they weren't being shown off in menageries.
Many of the exotic beasts brought to Rome were used in shows called venatios, which were basically like modern-day bull fights, only instead of bulls, you had whatever crazy critters the state could find. Lions, crocodiles, gazels, whatever. Around 55 BC, Roman statesman Pompy the Great decided to organize one such event. The feature creature of which was, you guessed it, an elephant.
Unfortunately, Pompy forgot a crucial Barnum and Bailey trade secret. See, you're supposed to break the elephant spirit before the show, not during. So, the boys get to poking and the thing starts freaking out, just screaming and crying, even gesturing towards the audience like it was begging for mercy.
Now, the crowd at this kind of event was mainly composed of dirty, bloodthirsty peasants. And even they were like, "Holy [ __ ] this is messed up. I came here for a nice familyfriendly disembaling too, but this just deplorable. Then they all start crying and the whole thing just ends up being a huge mess. Anyway, these types of spectacles became larger and larger as time went on. It's said that Emperor Trajan once held a venio lasting 120 days during which some 11,000 animals were killed. They also got pretty elaborate. A lot of creativity went into keeping things fresh for the crowd. In 203 AD, they had a model of a crashed ship built inside the arena and an assortment of 400 animals were set loose from the wreckage and then killed.
That's what we should do for the next Super Bowl halftime show. Honestly, just pack every team's mascot into a decommissioned submarine. Then, when they all run out, we have the troops gun them down while the national anthem plays in the background. Anyway, the ingenuity of the people organizing these events really knew no bounds. One time, they tied together a bear and a bull just to see what they do. Unfortunately, all that happened was the stock market crashed. Also, fun fact, one emperor Komotus is credited with the invention of a unique crescent-shaped arrow designed specifically to decapitate ostriches and watch them run around headless for a while. Seriously, they did that so often that they needed a device to make the job easier.
Sometimes, just to shake things up, they'd have the animals kill the people, which was known as damnatio adbestius.
This form of execution was typically carried out using lions. But other beasts were used as well, including dogs, bears, and at one point even an eagle, although the guy was crucified first, so it wasn't much of a fight. So, moral of the story, if you ever end up in ancient Rome and you want to see some animals, you'll still have access to almost all the same creatures we see in zoos today. And the only catch is that something has to die at the end. Till next time, I'm Salmonella and thank you for watching.
Hey kids, let's talk about Fidel Castro.
We're all familiar with Castro, right?
Dictator of Cuba for the whole second half of the 20th century, main antagonist of the Cuban Missile Crisis, you know. Anyway, this man loves three things. He loves Cuba. He loves communism. And good god, does the man love dairy. Yep, you heard me right. The all powerful dictator of communist Cuba is obsessed with anything related to milk and its derivatives. I drew up a little chart here, right? I call it the leche loving ladder. At the bottom, you got dairy farmers. Then you got Rosso Donovan, then Mr. Bones, then starving babies. And then all the way up at the top here, you got Fidel Castro. Today, I'm going to share a few true stories that illustrate his preoccupation. Okay, the first one isn't really a story so much as a fact, but according to several sources, Castro was known to be able to eat 18 scoops of ice cream after a meal.
That's more than two pints. If that doesn't impress you, then go try it for yourself. Me, I can barely manage a pint and a half on an empty stomach. And Castro is doing it on top of a full meal. But it gets better. Being such an ice cream connoisseur, Castro ordered the construction of an ice cream shop.
But this isn't your average everyday parlor. Not by a long shot. He built a straightup ice cream complex taking up an entire city block. This was a piece of modern architecture, too, in total contrast to the surrounding slums, all for the sake of ice cream. The place is called Copelia, and it's still open today. Of course, Castro's obsession went beyond just personal pleasure.
Dairy was so dear to him that it often found its way into diplomatic interactions. Like one time, a French diplomat came to visit, so Castro whips out some Cuban cheese. Specifically though, it was Cambert cheese, a variety that France is famous for. French guy was like, "Hey, not bad. It's almost as good as the French kind." Try it again.
I think you'll find it's even better than the French. All right, I wouldn't say that. I'm sorry. Are you disrespecting my cheese in my house on my island? No, I mean, it's good. I just said the French kind is better. Maybe if you froggy [ __ ] bathed once in a while, you'd be able to taste the cheese instead of your own BO. Listen, you've got your cigars. We've got our cheese.
to live with it. Fine.
[ __ ] him. It's good cheese. I'm paraphrasing just a little bit, but that's basically how it went down. So, already it's obvious that dairy is of great value to Castro. Most exceptional, however, is how this value reflected in his leadership. Naturally, having an entire nation at his disposal, Castro wanted to bolster the Cuban dairy industry as much as possible. But there was one problem. Cuba initially had two types of cows called Lenas and Zebus.
Lenus came from the days when Spain ruled Cuba and Zebus originated from India. Both of these cows are well suited to the Cuban environment having a very high tolerance for heat. However, they don't produce much milk. They're mostly just raised for their meat. So, Castro decides to import thousands of holings from Canada. Holings are the classic black and white cows and as we all know, you can juice these guys for days. They are utterly superior. Only problem is they're used to living in Canada. So, when they're plopped down under the scorching Caribbean sun, it's going to stress them out. They're not going to be laughing cows by any means.
So, as a result, Castro's imports still didn't put out enough milk to satisfy his desires. At this point, your average run-of-the-mill dairy queen would have given up. But Castro, he's more than that. He's a dairy dictator. So, he ordered the construction of a giant air conditioned complex with the sole purpose of providing a comfortable environment for his holings. And it helped a little bit, but they were still stressed out. They still weren't putting out at their natural levels. And as you can imagine, climate controlling an entire facility is very expensive. So Castro was forced to abandon the project. But like the astronaut he is, Castro held on to his dream of finding the Milky Way. So he gathered a team of scientists and farmers and order them to breed together the Zebus and the Holings in order to produce a heatresistant lactose pumping super cow. The breeding efforts were mostly a bust, never producing the boine master race that Castro longed for. However, there was one exception. Under Castro's program, a single individual was born that met his expectations with flying colors. The cow was named Ubé Blanca, Spanish for white udder, and she produced world record-breaking volumes of milk, peaking at 110 L a day. That's more than 29 entire gallons of lactation. Needless to say, Castro was absolutely euphoric at this isolated success of his. To say he went ballistic would be an understatement. He went intercontinentally ballistic. like India hasn't got [ __ ] on the levels of cow warship that Castro performed. Daily updates were published in the Cuban national newspaper describing Uber Blanca's health and productivity and when she died in 1985, Castro commissioned a giant marble statue of the cow in her honor. He also had scientists harvest tissue and egg samples for the sake of preserving her DNA. After Uberlanca's death, Castro's plans for the Cuban dairy industry got even more desperate and ridiculous somehow. This is based off of an actual conversation that he had with his team of scientists in 1987. Okay, guys, hear me out. What if we make cows that are the size of dogs so that way they can live in people's apartments with them?
Uh, Fidel, I I don't think that's going to work. No, no, no, no. It'll work. You just have to grow grass in the apartment, too. You can't be serious.
Yeah, you just got to put up some fluorescent lights. Bam. little uh little uh little grazing patch for your doggy cow. You are a [ __ ] lunatic.
And obviously nothing ever came of that idea. And Cuba's dairy industry is still floundering today, sadly. So yeah, if you haven't gotten the picture by now, the dude likes milk. Imagine he's at the birth of his grandson, right? Ah, what a beautiful baby boy. Ah, Fidel, there's something we need to tell you. Your grandson, he's lactose intolerant.
Prepare the firing squad. Anyway, there's plenty of other miscellaneous stories surrounding his little preoccupation, like the time the CIA tried to poison his milkshake. So, I just decided to highlight a few big ones. Anyway, that's all for today. Till next time, I'm Samanella, and thank you for watching.
This episode of Salmonella Academy is brought to you by Skillshare.
Hey kid. Yeah, you. I just got off the phone with the big man upstairs and he told me that I need to clear a few things up around here. So, without further ado, here's 10 pieces of malarkey that you might still be spreading. Number one, nobody was ever burned to death at the Salem witch trials. Of the accused, 15 died in prison, 19 were hanged, and one was squished to death. That last one is way more interesting than any cremation, by the way. Dude was a badass. His name was Giles Cory. He was 81 years old and so done with the town of Salem's garbage that he wouldn't even dignify the trial with the plea. So the town stuck him between two boards and stacked rocks on top of him in an effort to draw out a confession. But every time they tried to get something out of him, all he would say was more weight. This went on for three solid days until he finally died, never giving any indication as to whether or not he was a witch. One can only wonder. Number two, the OG Buddha wasn't the obese guy. That's Buddhai, a Chinese folk character meant to represent Matraa, aka future Buddha. Now this shirt is double sad. Number three, Buddha wasn't a god either. He was just a guy named Gautama. Now this shirt is triple sad. Number four, ever heard of a vomitorium? Turns out no. It's not a place where Roman nobles would go to make room for more feeasant spleen and lobster eyelids. It's just a big entrance way to the coliseums that hordes of peasants would spew out of.
Number five, Washington never cut down a cherry tree in his youth. I don't get this one at all. Apparently, it's supposed to paint the man in a good light somehow. It's like Tyler, what the hell happened while we were gone?
Where's the tree in the front yard? Oh, yeah. That was me. Got bored. Just felt like vandalizing something, you know?
Hey, what about my honest character?
Number six, the pyramids weren't actually built by slaves. These workers were respected members of society. They ate meat and worked in threemonth shifts and even got to be buried right next to the tomb after their death. Matter of fact, that's more than we can say for the people working on man's greatest achievements today. If I spent years of my life helping to build the space station, you're damn right I'd want the Salmonella memorial corpse receptacle floating along right next to it. That would be amazing. Number seven, the Great Wall of China is not the only man-made object visible from space. I don't know where you [ __ ] got this one from. First of all, there's no way you could see it with the unaded eye.
The wall is like 30 m thick at most, while the distance to outer space is generally recognized to be 100 km up, known as the Carmon line. To give some perspective, that's like me holding up a standardiz guitar pick from across the entire length of a football field and asking you what color it is. Also, there are plenty of man-made objects that are way bigger in terms of local surface area than the Great Wall. So, even if it was visible, there's no way it would be the only one. Number eight, you might have heard this one before. You know, Hitler was a jerk and all, but hey, he made the autobond, so at least he was efficient. Actually, Hitler didn't create the autobond. It was already there. He just helped expand it into newer territory. In a similar vein, Mussolini didn't make the trains run on time. with most of Italy's infrastructure repairs happening before his rise to power in 1922. And even then, they weren't nearly as punctual as he'd like you to believe. So, unfortunately, you're going to have to find something else to like about these fascists, like Hitler's elegant way of speaking.
>> Or the way Mussolini says spaghetti.
Number nine, iron maidens weren't actual torture devices used in medieval times.
Basically, what happened is some archaeologist in the 1800s saw an old metal coffin and some spikes and said, "Yo, wouldn't it be wilding if we put these things up in here? So that way if someone goes in it, they get poked in their bits." You are a sick man, Cornelius. I like it. Into the museum it goes. At least Iron Maiden was real.
They were as real as it gets. Still are.
And don't you forget it. Number 10.
Einstein never failed math. He had mastered both integral and differential calculus by the age of 15. 99% chance this one was just made up to make glue eaters feel better about themselves.
Well, congratulations, Dimmitri. Looks like you failed pre-alggebra for the third time. Afraid you still can't graduate. Well, hey, that means I'm still on par with famous smart science man. So, uh, yeah, worship me.
So, it just goes to show that we've all got a lot to learn about the world around us. That's why you need to go to Skillshare. Skillshare is an online learning community with over 20,000 classes in technology, design, business, and more. Premium membership gives you unlimited access to highquality classes on must know topics so you can improve your skills, unlock new opportunities, and do the work you love. They've got great courses in graphic design and animation, which I've clearly already mastered. I mean, check this out.
But I'm sure you could get a lot of use out of them. You can also learn plenty of more recreational skills, like how to solve a Rubik's cube or how to play chess really well. Join the millions of students already learning on Skillshare today with a special offer just for my viewers, where you can get 2 months of Skillshare completely free. To sign up, go to skcl.sh/ SH/SAMO.
Again, go to skcl.sh/samo to get two months of unlimited access to over 20,000 classes for free. Act now for this special offer and start learning today. Anyway, till next time, I'm Salmonella and thank you for watching.
that a balance of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats is necessary for a healthy diet. Peanut butter is that balance. Very calorie dense as well, about 90 in each tablespoon. You're going to want to opt for chunk style rather than smooth as it is closer to raw peanuts. Tip number three, no coffee. But Sam, you say, I need the coffee for my energy. Well, guess what?
That's a bunch of [ __ ] [ __ ] A man should be running on pure willpower alone. Coffee is a stimulant that makes you waste energy. It makes you poop, waste the nutrients and it's an appetite suppressant, so you can't stuff your gut as good. Tip number four, supplement with fats. Making spinach, that's good.
It's got the nutrients, but it's also got like six calories total. Throw a tablespoon of butter on top of it and suddenly you up to 106 calories. Don't go with just butter, though. It might turn you into a racist. I'm Paulyine.
Instead, diversify your oils. Olive, peanut, coconut, especially coconut. Pop that [ __ ] on potato. That's a fool. Just don't drink crude oil or else you will die or turn into a billionaire. But I wouldn't risk it. Tip number five, milk.
It's like water except better cuz it's got proteins and lactose.
But Sam, I don't want my friends seeing me drinking milk. That's what children do. I will punt you over my house because that is more [ __ ] [ __ ] They might laugh now, but they won't be laughing once they see your sick gains.
Just don't drink milk all the time. You could die. Okay, probably not, but milk is not too good a hydrator. So, just drink water, too. Do both. Both is good.
Tip number six, eggs. Protein good for chicks. protein good for attracting chicks. Now the egg consists of two parts as you know the yolk and the white also known as the albamin. Albumin albumin.
However, the alpuccino is not nearly as dense as the yolk as far as calories and proteins are concerned. So if you wanted to get technical, you could ditch the alpine ridge and just eat the yolks. You won't miss out on much as the pair have similar protein contents. Just the al-Qaeda also has a lot of water weight.
In conclusion, egg whites are for gays.
That's why they look like J. Tip number seven. Hey Junior, what you drinking there? Pepsi.
Are you [ __ ] me? Tip number seven, no sodas. They contain empty calories for one. Secondly, carbonation is a waste of space. Produces gas, wastes valuable stomach space, so you can't eat as much. You know why they call it pop?
It's cuz I'll pop a cap in your ass if I catch you drinking it. Tip number eight, most important exercise. This is the sole tip that separates the fit [ __ ] from the fat [ __ ] Obviously, you going to want to lift, but you should definitely get some cardio in there as well. But Sam, you say everybody knows that cardio kills gains. I will punt you into the stratosphere because that is more. Say it with me, [ __ ] [ __ ] Sure, an hour of jogging might lose you 400 calories, but you also get all of these benefits.
So, follow these tips and you'll be swollen no time. I'm Samanella and thank you for watching.
Hey kids, today I'll be teaching you how to read these things. The symbol is technically known as NFPA704, but nobody really calls it that. Most people refer to it as a fire diamond or a safety square or if you're British, a pigmenty pigmenty cross tossa, whatever floats your boat. Anyway, when you see the symbol, usually on a door or container or something, it means there's a hazardous material present. And the numbers and symbols on the diamond give information on exactly how dangerous that material is. So, first off, notice the four colors, right? Each one represents a different type of hazard.
Red is for flammability because fire and burning things are usually red. Yellow is for chemical reactivity, I guess, because chemical reactions involve swapping electrons and electricity is yellow. Sure. Blue is for health hazards because [ __ ] you. And then white is just extra space for other stuff. So the three colored diamonds, or if you want to be politically correct, the African-Amean diamonds each have a number from 0 to four. And each of these is like a threat level for that category. If the number is zero, it basically means you'd have to be some kind of professional to manage to [ __ ] things up in that fashion. Sand, for example, has a zero in its flammability.
The only time sand burns is when it's wedged in the cracks of your speedo for too long. However, please note that the health section does not apply to ingestion. For example, motor oil has a blue rating of zero, but that in no way makes it safe to drink. If the number is one, that means there's a threat present, but you'd still have to be like an advanced level dumbass in order to really find it. Cellulose, the primary chemical found in paper, has a flammability of one. So don't, you know, hold it over a fire for a while and you'll be fine. Two is where things start being kind of a big deal. Capsain, the chemical that makes pepper spicy, has a health risk of two. You finish chopping your jalapenos and then you go touching your jalapenis. It's not going to kill you or nothing, but it's going to mess your day up for sure. If you see a three, that's when you know you got to watch out. Gasoline, it's got a flammability of three. And we all know gasoline. you see gasoline walking by, you better take the cigarette out of your mouth. Get the static off your clothes. Fix your hair. Make yourself presentable. Don't make eye contact.
That's the only way to keep yourself safe. And then four is the highest number on the scale. If you see a four, the best thing to do is just start walking backwards. Cuz if you're close enough to read that four, chances are you're not where you need to be.
Nitroglycerin has a reactivity of four.
If you soak a tissue in nitroglycerin and give it to your friend to sneeze in, that sneeze will result in his entire goddamn face getting blown off. So yeah, fours are nothing to sneeze at, literally. Now, let's move on to the bottom bit. Unlike me, this diamond isn't just a big white waste of space.
This is the spot for any extra warnings you need to know about. Most of them are pretty self-explanatory, like radiation or biohazard or gaze. So, I'll just go through a few that aren't as easy to interpret. Take a look at this one.
Unless you hear faint mooing while you're reading it, chances are it doesn't mean what you think. Ox is short for oxidizer, which is basically something that produces oxygen when exposed to heat. This doesn't sound so bad until you realize that heat plus oxygen rarely ends well for most fuels in the vicinity. If you see this one, it means white people aren't allowed to touch the material. Huh, just kidding.
White people are allowed to do whatever they want. It actually means don't mix with water or else it could explode or multiply or something. Essay means simple asphixxiient, referring to gases like helium. It basically means that while this gas isn't poisonous, it's also, you know, not air. So, if you breathe it for too long, you will still die. All right, kids. So, now that you know all the ins and outs of these things, let me give you a little quiz.
On the left, we got a bunch of things, and on the right, we have a bunch of fire diamonds. Pause the video now and see if you can match them up correctly.
All done? Here are the answers. So, now you know all about NFPA74.
Till next time, I'm Salmonella, and thank you for watching.
There comes a time in the life of all content creators worth their salt on this godforsaken website where they look back and reflect on all that they've created, all that they've achieved, all the lives they've touched.
And in this pensive state, they begin to panic because uh the thought occurs to them that perhaps this is it. Perhaps they will be stuck forever following in the footsteps of who they were as an idiot [ __ ] teenager.
So, as an idiot [ __ ] adult, rather than just uh, you know, getting over it and being happy with their incredible lot in life, they offer a little maneuver we call a pivot.
Still Lost is a satirical science fiction linked short story collection with each story beyond the first taking place in the same version of America during the subtitular year of 2080. I've been working on it for a few uh years on and off. Far and away the longest and hardest I've ever worked on any singular project. And it's uh what are some adjectives? It's it's goofy. It's offbeat. It's absurd. It's occasionally philosophical, though I hope it doesn't overstay its welcome in that regard. And uh don't know if it's any good.
I think it's decent. You know, I think whereas it won't be winning any Hugos, it is still something I would read in my own spare time and enjoy and not feel as though my time were entirely wasted by the end. Uh, of course, as the author and sole member of the target audience, I'm a bit biased. Uh, to paraphrase Randy Felface, I may be the mother of a real piece of [ __ ] baby here. My uh my beta readers seem pretty receptive. We have some glowing recommendations from them plastered on the back here, if you can read that.
But uh I paid them, didn't I? So, you know, they could only be so cruel. They had a financial incentive not to crush my dreams entirely. But you do, viewer, are under no such obligation. So, here's what I'd like to ask. If you are someone who enjoys reading science fiction or even fiction in general, I would be honored if you give it a shot. Uh it is available right this second on Amazon.
Link in the description. Um it is four bucks for the Evo, 12 for the paperback.
I would personally recommend the print edition, and I promise that's not just because it's more expensive. Uh, I get kind of experimental with the formatting at times. I want the words to look a very specific way on the page. As a consequence, the ebook is what we call a print replica. It looks exactly like the book, which if you're on desktop, you just want the PDF, no problem. Go grab it. I just cannot guarantee an optimal reading experience on every version of Kindle. You know, the words don't reflow. So, you might have to zoom in and go like this and [ __ ] Yeah. But anyway, whatever your preferred medium is, check it out. As long as it's not audiobook, cuz I don't I want that done, right? I don't know if anybody gives a [ __ ] yet. Um, give it a try and uh and if it's [ __ ] return it. seriously return it and write me a big old diet tribe on uh Amazon or Goodreads or wherever else uh elucidating all the reasons you believe it is [ __ ] and I will take uh maybe 5% of it into serious consideration and I will use that to make another written work which is ideally a bit less [ __ ] So there's your call to action if you're somebody who likes to go into things completely blind. That instinct will serve you well here. In just a sec, I'm going to yap for a little bit about the world of Still Lost and the general premise of each story. Nothing super spoilery, just uh just kind of like trailer content for those of you still on the fence. That said, I think it's best enjoyed without any preconceptions going into it. So, if you're already sold, I suggest turning off this video now. And uh for the 90% of you who couldn't give a [ __ ] about some book and are just here to gawk at the flesh creature with Salmonella's voice as it gs and justiculates, you may be wondering what all this means for the state of the channel. Well, rest assured, things are business as usual.
Uh which is to say I have nothing in the works, nothing even planned now that this is done. You know, we'll see. But uh hey, in the meantime, if you're that desperate for content made by me, got about 250 pages of it right here if you want. What kind of content? Let's talk about it. If you're allergic to spoilers, [ __ ] So, uh you may have noticed on the bookshelf behind me, some of the books are turned forward here.
Let me just uh get out of the way for a sec.
I've put these books on display not only to hide my massive collection of smot, but also because they're some of my favorite pieces of fiction, except for this one. I have not read a page. I just wanted you to know that I own it. Like I said, I was the only member of the target audience when I wrote this, but uh if you're into any of these, you might have similar taste to me. So, let's get into the world of Still Lost.
Uh I would not characterize it as dystopian. I think, you know, we've had enough of that [ __ ] at this point.
Certainly not utopian either. It's just kind of utopian. You know, in some ways it's a bit worse than what we have today, but in other ways it's a bit better. You know, there's universal health care and affordable housing and the government provides frivolous, meaningless jobs to anyone who wants one. And uh oh yeah, and a couple years ago, a hyper advanced alien race came down to solve all major existential threats to humanity. Uh no more climate change, no more nuclear weapons, and no AI significantly more advanced than what we have today. Uh, speaking of which, if you are currently wondering to yourself about what prompts I used to generate this book, you should uh kill yourself probably. I shouldn't even have to say this, but no, AI was not used at any point in the creative process. Not in the ideas phase, not in the outline, not in the pros, not in the editing, not in the formatting, not on the cover.
Obviously, zero zip zilch. Every word of every sentence is the product of careful deliberation on my part and my part alone. And if it sucks, it is because I am a flawed human being.
I do use M dashes in a couple places, and that is because this is a goddamn book. And uh if you've just learned what an M dash is in the past year or so, I suggest reading more of them. But anyway, the aliens are really just to get you in the door. You know, they only feature prominently in the first two stories. After that, they're just kind of there. You know, sometimes there's just a god on the street corner and you walk by and it summons a hologram of your mom screaming at you and you're just like gh it when they do that and uh and you get on with your day. You know, it's not a big deal. But all in all, things are simply different in 2080 and uh people are not any happier whatsoever, hence the title. Now, on to the story. So, Still Loss contains a whopping eight stories in total. They're fairly long short stories. If we go strictly off word count, most of them are technically novelletes, which you know allows them to be a little more character- driven, do a little more exploration of the world and uh have a little more irrelevant [ __ ] sprinkled into them. You will notice by the Neil Stevenson corner up here that I am a fan of irrelevant [ __ ] I believe that as long as a sequence is interesting or entertaining in its own right, it deserves to exist. As a result, fair amount of Unckilled darlings within these pages. If you are a fan of concise, straightforward plots, this might not be the thing for you. Of course, I do try on a few different hats between the stories. You know, some are more genre, some are more literary, some are actiony, some are more thinky. So, you know, there there's different things for different tastes in here. You you will definitely like some of them more than others. Anyway, I'm just going to briefly touch on each one, give you the general premise.
This is my head, by the way. It's me. I I hope it's not a deal breaker. you know, I'm just showing it to you now so that you would uh click on this video and I could sell you something. So, the first story serves as kind of a prologue. It takes place in 2078 and it goes through the entirety of the invasion. These creatures show up and they do some peculiar things, the details of which are on a need to- know basis. And uh the protagonist is a general in the US military who is tasked with killing uh what are essentially gods. And you can imagine how that goes, but uh to save you some time, I've imagined it for you. Uh, next one is titled Xenos, which is the very creative name these creatures are given. It stars a graduate student in molecular biology who has recently pivoted into the new field of xeno studies. So, she wants to learn more about alien physiology. So, naturally, she goes to visit a xeno prostitute and uh and they don't [ __ ] All right. Look, if any of you book talk people are wondering about the spice level of this book, we're sitting at about a black pepper sex exists in this universe. You don't see much of it, right? There's alien on human implied, human on robot implied, baboon on baboon depicted.
But, uh, but that's it. You know, none of that weird human on human [ __ ] You know, they they do say write what you know, after all. I've noticed that certain genre authors have this habit of putting lots of sucking and [ __ ] in their book in order to uh convince themselves and others it's for adults. I did not feel the need to do that. Um, nor did the urge strike me at any time to describe how a woman breasted boobily down the stairs. Um, I do talk about ball sacks a couple of times. I go into a fair amount of detail about the texture and color of men's scrotums on multiple occasions. But uh, but that's it. You know, only only men objectified in this work. Rest assured. So that's the second story. The third one is called uh, Being a Nothingness. It is a loose parody of the 1938 philosophical novel Nausea by Jean Paulo South which uh which everybody has been asking for.
This is definitely one of the more uh pensive ones uh as a result my beta readers were not big fans. Uh the story also contains a realistic depiction of a panic attack which at the time of writing I did not realize had become a cliche. So, apologies in advance if that particular mental illness is too played out for you at this point. Uh, what else we got?
Uh, this next one's called Eggs for Roman. It is about a baboon that gets human intelligence and then he gets cyberbullied.
Uh, after that is four little words, which is just an eight-page discussion about uh grass and uh the nature of grass and uh blood is spilled. After that is Blood Streams. It's about a guy who goes around killing old people with a uh with a sword for fun and profit and uh and he doesn't learn anything or grows a person or any kind of stupid [ __ ] like that. He just kills and uh and rambles. And I genuinely think it's one of the stronger works in this collection. Number seven is called The Prophet. It's about a guy who can predict the future by shoving the entirety of the internet into his head.
And uh because this takes place in the real world, said individual works at a consulting firm and the protagonist is a CTO of a cyber security company who gets a prophecy from this guy and doesn't quite buy it and uh some intrigue happens.
A lot of in a little too much intrigue if you ask me, but uh yeah, this one got away from me a little. That's fine. And uh and the last one is mostly fiction and we'll leave it at that. So if any of that is of any interest to you, please give it a shot. There's uh there's eight stories. You're bound to like one of them. Let me know what you think. I'll be reading as many reviews as I can and trying my best to not take them extremely personally. Uh depending on the content of those reviews, I will be encouraged or discouraged uh to make another book. We shall decide the arc of my life based on the opinions of you [ __ ] Until then, I'll see you on the next uh thing I'm doing. We'll see what it is. Might be a [ __ ] mural. I don't know, dude. What's next?
Cart my name on the moon. And uh I'm really trying to promote the hell out of this thing. So, if you've got a podcast or something, you know, I am kind of hard to get a hold of. And that is by design, but I have set up a business email which can be found in the front cover of this book. Gotcha, [ __ ] This video is sponsored by Wix.
Hey kids, let me ask you. Do you watch the news often? Have you attended a school in your life? You ever look at a dollar? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then chances are you're familiar with at least a couple United States presidents. But if you're like me prior to last week, you've probably never heard of a United States emperor. Um, excuse me, good sir, but I should inform you that we're actually living under an emperor as we speak. At least according to my degree from the University of Reddit. Hey, that's great.
Wa, look over there. It's someone criticizing Elon Musk and he's making typos.
Anyway, let me tell you all a story about a man named Joshua Norton. Norton was born in England at some point in the 1810s. Very little is known about the guy's younger years other than the fact that he spent most of his youth in South Africa as part of the UK's colonization programs. He came to San Francisco in 1849 with a modest amount of wealth to his name and worked his way up in the real estate and commodities markets to become one of the city's wealthiest citizens. All was normal in the life of Mr. Norton until one day when he got a little too big for his britches. You see, in 1852, China was facing a huge famine. So, they completely banned the export of rice. Naturally, San Fran's rice price began to skyrocket in response to the reduced supply, peaking at 36 cents per pound. Norton saw this and decided to buy a $25,000 rice shipment from Peru at 12 cents per pound, thinking he'd corner the market.
Keep in mind, that's around $750,000 in today's money. Little did he know that wasn't the only shipment coming out of Peru. And by the time he was able to sell it, Rice was already back down to 3 cents a pound. Now, according to my calculations, that put Norton at a net loss of a whole freaking lot. He subsequently got into a year'slong court battle with the vendor who sold him the shipment, which only cost him more money and ultimately left the man destitute.
So, Norton did what anybody would do after losing everything. He drank a nice, hefty dose of [ __ ] it all and said, "You know what? The courts can eat my shorts. The house can eat my blouse.
Peru can eat my shoe. I declare myself emperor of these United States and I'm telling every newspaper in the city about it. And then he did. Now the papers could have just been like what a lunatic and that would have been the end of it. But instead they said you know what this guy's kind of a meme. Let's publish his declaration just for Gits and Shiggles. People across the city had their laughs and Norton's rise to power began. From here, he issued several more commands to the media. And unlike nowadays, people loved having regular Norton updates shoved in their face.
Among these announcements was a decree in 1859 to formally abolish the United States Congress, he also gave out a mandate to both the Protestant and Roman Catholic churches to formally ordain him as emperor. Although these edicts were ultimately ignored by the powers they were addressed to, they still served to build Norton's reputation around the city. And before long, he was a fullyfledged local celebrity. He was easily recognized by passerby, typically sporting a blue naval uniform and a beaver hat with a peacock feather in it.
Pretty soon, Norton could expect to receive the royal treatment wherever he went. People started to address him formally on the streets. He got to ride public transport for free, and he even got occasional tax payments from people sympathetic to his impoverished living situation. Oh, and get this, Norton became so famous that toy stores in the city began selling dolls of the man for kids to play with. How many people can you think of that were so legendary that they got dolls made after them? You got Emperor Norton, Mr. T, and the bear that Teddy Roosevelt decided not to shoot.
That's it really. Also, though not backed by actual law in any way, his declarations came to be taken relatively seriously by the populace around him.
For example, according to Norton, saying Frisco instead of San Francisco would be punishable by a $25 fine. Talk to any Frisco native and you'll find that this attitude survives to this day. With the help of a local printing firm, Norton even issued his own currency, which was actually accepted by many residents of the city, despite having no backing behind it whatsoever. In fact, a few Norton bucks are still floating around today as highly valued collector's items. I tried doing the same thing a while back, but unfortunately, Onella rubles are still only worth their weight in Onella rubles. Of course, it wasn't all magpies and molasses for our good friend Josh. He was once arrested by a policeman named Arman Barbieier who wanted to throw him in an asylum for his apparent insanity. Needless to say, when the public caught wind of this, they lost their [ __ ] minds. I rate citizens wrote complaints in droves. All the newspapers published scathing editorials towards the police department. Stray cats were thrown into wood chippers. I don't have any evidence for that last one. I'm just, you know, assuming based on what I would do in this scenario. Anyway, pretty soon the chief of police got the memo and Emperor Norton was released unscathed.
Thankfully, Norton issued a royal pardon towards the man who arrested him. And from that point onward, whenever Norton passed a member of the force, they would stop and salute him. So, although in many ways he appeared godlike, Norton was but a mortal. And as mortals sometimes do, Emperor Norton decided to drop dead on a street corner on January 8th of 1880. However, he left behind a legacy the likes of which most of us could only dream of. Beyond just the comedic value of his many exploits, Norton definitely had his prophetic moments with some of his orders actually coming true decades after they were given. On multiple occasions, he ordered a bridge to be built between San Francisco and the Oakland Bay area, which was eventually constructed in the 1930s. He also told people to form a League of Nations to uphold international interests. Unfortunately, a man yelling in California wasn't quite enough to convince the leaders of the world that such a thing was necessary.
But who knows, maybe little Nordo could have stopped World War I if he had been just a bit louder. I hope this tale has inspired some of you young impressionable kids out there. Not because I expect any of you to succeed in the same way Norton did, but just because it's my personal belief that the world could always use more oddball vagrants. Wait a minute. Oddball vagrants product placement. Sponsor time question. Do you do literally anything?
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Hey kids, hope you had yourself a merry little whatever. I know I did. What do you like best about the holiday experience? My personal favorite part is where we systemically brainwash children into thinking they're supernatural beings who judge their every move and then invade their house at night. Now, everyone knows Santa. Good old Saint Nick. Old Father Christmas. Old Christopher Kringle. Old Elus Prime.
Slayer of elk and bringer of Xboxes. And you've probably heard of some other characters somewhere, too. Guys like Krampus, Bellnickle, Charlie Brown, Xihinping. Well, today I want to show you guys some more obscure yield beings from different cultures all across the globe, but mostly Europe. Now, this first creature's name comes from the Welsh. As a matter of moral principle, I personally don't formally recognize the Welsh language. Maybe someday they'll figure out how W's and Y's work. Then it'll be a different story. But for the time being, you'll have to excuse me for not condoning [ __ ] like this. So, the thing allegedly called Maril Weed isn't a true mythical creature, per se, but more so a tradition carried out for at least the past few centuries in South Wales. No, I mean, old South Wales. This is how it works. Every holiday season, the village wrap scallion will take a horse's skull and affix it to the end of a pole. Kind of like one of these things, except, you know, awful. The skull is typically decorated in some way and sometimes they put in a lever so you can make the mouth move on its own. Then a white sheet is draped over the pole and its holder, thus giving the illusion that famine himself has come to destroy all your figgy pudding. From here, one would think that the nightly festivities would include welching your trousers and repenting for a lifetime of naughtiness.
But no, it gets better. You know that whole mouth moving thing? Turns out that's not just for taking wild snaps at the faces of innocent children. The Mi Lued and its party of caretakers will go around to random houses and sing a song about wanting to be let inside. The inhabitants are then expected to sing back with excuses as to why they don't want this abomination in their home. All in rhyme, of course. This goes back and forth until either the Mari Luid gives up or the party's invited in, at which point they get to raid your pantry and drink all your beer. So, if you ever find yourself rap battling a horse skull in South Wales, don't panic. It's normal, I guess. Next, we have Fra Persa, a witch-like being said to visit during the holidays in the Alpine regions of Germany and Austria.
Depictions of Pera can range anywhere between beautiful woman and whatever the hell this is, but usually they fall somewhere in between. She's also sometimes shown with this big weird floppy goose foot. That's cuz she's apparently real into spinning. Not the two-foot kind though, the one- foot kind. It's said that this delightful spinster pays a visit to all the little wieners schnitles on the 12th night of Christmas. If you were well behaved and hardworking this year, she might leave you a small silver coin in your shoe.
How kind. But if you've been an inattentive young lady and didn't spin all your flax that year, Perto will trample all your halfwoven fibers as punishment. And you'll say weird flax, but okay. [ __ ] cut that out. Jesus.
Then there's the stuff Perto considers especially naughty, which can vary depending on who you ask. If you left your house a mess or you didn't leave out the traditional bowl of porridge or maybe you didn't eat your ceremonial fish and grl on feast day, that's when you've been a real goober. As recompense, she'll rip out your [ __ ] intestines through your abdominal wall and then stuff your empty body cavity with pebbles and straw until you're just as plump as when she started.
So, you know, you win some, you lose some. Nobody knows what she does with your freshly harvested inards after she leaves. But being that she lives in the mountains and has an obsession with thread making, I think we can all infer the obvious truth. Of course, no discussion of folklore of any kind can truly be complete without taking a look at Iceland. Between the centuries of isolation and the volcanic fumes constantly spilling out over the countryside, it's no wonder that they're one of the world's biggest exporters of whack-ass mythology. Seriously, according to one 1998 survey, over 54% of Icelandic citizens said they believed in elves. Let me repeat that just so we're all clear. In 1998, the majority of the population of Iceland said they believed in elves, and a very large portion probably still does today. As such, the cast of characters said to visit during the holiday season over there is naturally quite diverse.
The main lineup consists of the family pictured here. This is the leader of the bunch, a troll goblin ogish type lady named Gorilla. Gorilla just [ __ ] eats kids. That's it. She's said to prefer the naughty ones, but as long as it's small and made out of kid, she's game.
Then you got her husband, Leu, who lives with her in her cave. Generally considered to be equally ogish. When the holidays roll around, if there's no soot in your fireplace, he'll reward you with a pickled herring. But if it's dirty, he'll scoop up the ash and dump it in your bed. Ooh. Nah, just messing with you. None of that's true. He also just eats children. The couple also has a giant cat called uh this. The cat's main concern is whether or not a person received new clothes for Christmas.
Pretty hypocritical considering it walks around naked all the time, but whatever.
Anyway, if you got new clothes, then good for you. You got new clothes. On the other hand, if you didn't get any, well, uh can can uh can can you guess what he does? H you want to take a take a wild stab? Uh yeah, that's uh that's exactly right. He [ __ ] eats you.
Children, adults, doesn't matter. He'll even war your dog. He doesn't care.
Finally, you got the best of the bunch, the 13 Ule lads, each of which visits on a different day leading up to Christmas.
They're kind of like the seven dwarves, but whereas those guys are jolly and helpful and stupid [ __ ] like that, the only real goal of the Ule lads is to harass and inconvenience people as much as possible. And each one has a unique way that they go about doing that. I'm going to go through all 13. Now, please remember, I am making none of this up.
I'm not even going to try to say the Icelandic name, so I'll just give you guys the English translations, which are very apt, by the way. First, you got sheep coat Claude, who goes around harassing sheep, but he's easy to catch on account of his peg legs. Then there's Gully Gulk, who hides in gullies to steal milk from your cows. There's Stubby. He's real short. He eats the leftover crust out of pie pans. This one's called Spoon Licker. He licks spoons. He's also incredibly thin on account of malnutrition for some reason.
There's pot scraper. He scrapes pots and bowl licker who's like spoon licker. The key difference here being that uh he licks bowls. You got door slammer who slams doors in the middle of the night.
And then skier gobbler who gobbles up all your skier which is like a Nordic yogurt type thing. Wa who's that up in the rafters? It's sausage swiper of course here to swipe your sausages. And who's that in the windows? You bet your ass it's window peeper. Look at him peep. And who could forget our favorite, Doorway sniffer, who sniffs your doorway with his giant freakish nose to seek out bread. There's Meat Hook. He steals your meat with a hook. And finally, Candle Stealer, who [ __ ] you get the picture. So, if you know some kids who just won't behave, maybe it's time to take a page out of Iceland's book come next holiday season. Now, remember, your friend dressed up as Gorilla doesn't have to actually eat the kids. Just bite them a couple times. That'll be enough.
Anyway, with New Year's right around the corner, the time comes to make our New Year's resolutions. While you may spend New Year's Eve getting hella turnted, why not spend New Year's Day getting hella learned? You can do just that with skillshare.org. Skillshare is an online learning community with over 25,000 classes in design, business, technology, and more. Premium membership gives you unlimited access to highquality classes on must know topics so you can improve your skills, unlock new opportunities, and do the work you love. Beyond technical skills, there's plenty of lifestyle type stuff on here that'd be perfect for building the 2019. U check this one out. Beat procrastination once and for all. Maybe if I had taken this course, this video would have been out, you know, before Christmas. Do you speak any other languages? Well, you could.
Believe me, I get a lot of joy of shoving my fron down other people's throats. If you try one of these guys on for size, you could be doing the same in no time. Join the millions of students already learning on Skillshare today with a special offer just for my viewers. The first 500 people who visit the link in the description will get two months of unlimited access to the 25,000 plus classes on Skillshare for absolutely free. What are you waiting for? Go. Don't just stare at me with your glassy eyes. People are taking them already. Go hurry. Run. Anyway, that's all for today. Till next time, I'm Samanella and thank you for watching.
No, but seriously, [ __ ] Swift the cockatail. Look at this ugly tree sniffing idiot. I hope he gets AIDS. I mean it.
Hey kids, it's wildlife Wednesday. So today I decided to make some animal planets. No, not that animal planet.
What I mean is if you took every member of a certain group of animals and just like rolled them into a single ball in space, how big would that sphere be? And I got some interesting answers. But before I show you my findings, I'll quickly go over my process. So, first I found the full population of a given creature or set of creatures. Then I would take the average weight of that creature and multiply the two together to get the total mass of that creature on Earth. To go from mass to volume, however, you still need the density of whatever you're measuring. Fortunately, the density of all animals is quite similar. Partly due to the fact that the vast majority of creatures are at least 70% water by weight. Couple that with the fact that the ratio of fat, muscle, and bone or exoskeleton in all creatures is at least vaguely similar, and we can estimate the density of all animals to be around the same. Water is exactly 1 kg per liter. And then I'm throwing in a plus or minus 0.1 as a rounding error for the other material involved. As such, the values at play here are going to have two significant figures at most.
I've included a link in the description to a spreadsheet with all my data and calculations. Quick disclaimer before we get started. A lot of this is based on estimation, particularly in the case of animal population. It's actually quite difficult to get a definitive count of a given animal on Earth. So all of the following is simply based on science's best guesses. Also, this is by no means a comprehensive list. It's just those that I could find the most reliable data on. One more clarification, the amount of specificity I give is the amount I applied to a given sphere, right? So whereas a blue whale sphere is just that one species, an ant sphere would cover all types of ants. That being said, let's roll. First up is the blue whale sphere. Although they are freaking gigantic, there is only like 10,000 of them on Earth. So, the sphere only came out to around 140 m in diameter. That's about the same height as the Great Pyramid. A bit larger than that is the elephant sphere, which came out to around 170 m. Next up is the domesticated cat sphere at around 180.
That's only slightly smaller than the Roman coliseum, which was 190 in diameter. Next up is the camel sphere at around 260 m. Slightly larger was the domesticated dog sphere at 280. Then the chicken sphere at 330. The horse sphere is at 370 m in diameter. Larger than that was the ant sphere which came down to around 420 m. I almost didn't include this one as it is very difficult to find a definitive answer on ant populations.
All the sources I found differed by like an order of magnitude or two, so I just averaged them out. Anyway though, imagine like falling back first into this thing and just having all the little minuscule creatures just consume you into their mass. Feeling itchy yet?
You should. Anyway, this ball was just shy of the Empire State Building, which stood at 440. Next up is the Sheep Sphere, which got up to 650. Close to that is the Vatican City, which is 663 m across. That means the Vatican is just big enough to hold all the sheep in the world. If that's not a metaphor, I don't know what is. Near the top of our list is the Antarctic krill planet, which reached about 950 m. The people planet was just a smidge larger at 960.
Interestingly enough, despite the fact that there are 7.4 billion people in the sphere, it would only take 585 of them stacked to a head to reach the height of the sphere. Anyway though, you'd think the human planet would be the largest since for our size we're so disproportionately represented on Earth.
However, our largest planet is actually due as a result of our giant population as well as our voracious appetite. The cow planet you see is at a diameter of about 1.2 km. That's around 2/3 of the length of the Brooklyn Bridge. So all this time you humans thought you ruled the earth when in fact we are merely the servants to our cow overlords. I'm Samanella and thank you for watching.
Hey kids, if you've ever been Black Friday shopping or visited the Diablo subreddit recently, chances are you've encountered mass hysteria at some point.
Mass hysteria is known medically as mass psychoggenic illness or MPI for short.
It's basically just when a bunch of people start acting a fool for no discernable reason other than maybe a stressful environment. Being that this sort of thing is naturally very noticeable, there's loads of documented cases found all throughout history.
Let's take a look at a few. This first one is what made me make this video in the first place. So, one day, sometime in the Middle Ages, a group of nuns in a French convent were enjoying a quiet, uneventful day until one of them decided to start meowing. You know, like a cat.
You'd think this would last all of 4 seconds before another nun was like, "Excuse me, Sister Gertrude, would you kindly cut the shit?" But instead, another nun joined in. And another until basically the entire nunnery was exchanging mouths like a group of communist trading card enthusiasts. This wasn't just a one-time thing either. It basically became integrated into their way of life. It said that on a given day, they would stand there meowing in each other's faces for hours at a time.
Could you imagine being the first outsider to witness this? You might laugh now, but as they say, everybody gangster till the nuns start meowing.
I'd void my bowels and move to Malaysia without even thinking. Miles more terrifying than this pile of garbage. As you can imagine though, after a while, it stopped being scary and just got annoying, leading to the neighbors calling in a band of soldiers to deal with the situation. Hey guys, can we talk to you for a sec about uh >> Yeah, that uh all due respect, but we have orders to literally beat the hell out of you with whips till you start acting like people again. Sorry, sir.
It's just force of habit. Habit.
Seriously though, we would rather go to hell for throttling a gaggle of nuns than put up with another minute of your [ __ ] Capra. Our next event took place in the parish of Fatima, Portugal, in the year 1917. It all started with three shepherd children, ages 10, nine, and seven, respectively. They were like, "Greetings, fellow Portuguese. Uh, we've been seeing visions of the Virgin Mary, and she told us to tell you that some real crazy shit's going to go down in the sky on October 13th." Now, if three random farm children started spouting out prophecies to the public today, you'd say, "Ha, what tom foolery? Go play in some dirt, you dirty little dirt, baby." But keep in mind, the past is a different country. and Portugal's a different country. So that's like different country squared you got to think about. Plus this was during World War I, a time where a lot of people were holding out for a miracle to begin with.
So the kid story was actually picked up and even spread by local newspapers to the point where when the day finally came, at least 30,000 people gathered in Fatima to witness the alleged miracle.
Lo and behold, on that day, the sun began zooming around, careening towards Earth and sending rays of multicolored light cascading across the sky, creating a light show like nobody's ever seen.
Keep in mind, this happened in the 20th century, way after the era where belief in divine jigory and/or pokery was considered mandatory. So, naturally, there were plenty of skeptics and non-believers present, and even they saw it all happen, or so they thought. How do we know the sun didn't really whiz around half-hazardly that day? Hm. Well, number one, use your freaking brain. And number two, accounts differed wildly from person to person. While some say the sun zigged hither, others say it zagged thither, and others still said it shined a brilliant yellow and stayed perfectly still. As such, it was eventually concluded that the event was just a combination of MPI and weird eye stuff from too much sun staring.
Although, I'd like to believe it was real, just that Jesus's illusion skill was way higher than his alteration at the time. Yep, that's it. Sam's going to hell. Why? For blasphemy. Trust me, that was the least offensive part of that joke. Our next tale took place in 1962 in Tangika, which was basically just the beta version of Tanzania. The nation had just declared its independence from Britain the previous year. And with the future so uncertain, tensions were naturally running high around this time.
One little girl in a tangi nickan school ended up handling the stress in a bit of an unusual way. Rather than overeing or staring at her ceiling for hours like a normal person, she just started laughing and laughing and laughing. Pretty soon, her classmates at the all girls school she attended began to join in to the point where 95 of the 159 students caught the giggles, which lasted anywhere from a few hours to 16 days straight. Beyond just the unprovoked cackling, other odd behavior included aimless running and occasional violence.
The problem got so severe that the school was forced to close down temporarily, leading to the chorders roaming the streets, spreading the affliction further. Thousands of people from all strata came to be affected with 13 additional schools being shut down in the progress. Over the course of the hysteria, several other symptoms began to present themselves as well, ranging from obvious ones such as breathing problems, fainting, random screaming to more anomalous things like rashes.
Despite all this, no physical cause could be found, leaving MPI as the only explanation. The epidemic finally died down after between 6 and 18 months of day in dayout laughter depending on the village. While this whole thing likely sucked for most people involved, it probably could have been worse. A lot of the time when I'm alone, I'll think to myself, "Man, if I ever go full skitso, I hope I'm one of the laughy ones, not one of the screamy ones." With this story in mind, just maybe, if I put my mind to it and believe hard enough, I can be both. Flashback to the year 1518 to the city of Strasburg, at the time part of the HRE. A woman named Mrs. Trophy, began fervently dancing in the streets for no discernable reason for hours, then days, all without music, of course. Her only breaks consisted of occasional food intake and passing out from exhaustion when night came. If you saw that today, you'd just be like, "Huh, drugs." But apparently, people found it pretty inspiring because within a week, 34 others had joined in. And after a month, there were around 400.
This wasn't your casual bobbing up and down either. This [ __ ] made Zumba look like Tai Chi. Here's the best modern-day simulation I could find.
Now, imagine that both of those people were the same person and you got the dancing plague. This would take a toll on any healthy person, let alone a medieval city dweller. But despite bleeding feet and aching bones, they just kept going. In fact, they went so hard for so long that a good portion straight up [ __ ] died from cardiac arrest. It got to the point where around 15 dancers were kicking the bucket every day before the city decided they had to do something about it. They managed to rule out any divine or supernatural causes, which was necessary just cuz, you know, back in medieval times, it was [ __ ] stupid. They eventually surmised that it was a natural disease caused by too much hot blood as per that whole four humors thing that was popular at the time. As for a cure, their prescription was, get this, more dancing. I can see where they were coming from. It's pretty sound logic. If you got a song stuck in your head, you play it till you're sick of it. Same kind of thing. But here's where they goofed. The authorities actually went out of their way to facilitate the dancing, setting up a big stage area, and even hiring musicians to keep the afflicted moving. All this achieved was attracting more passerby who were like, "Man, mass psychoggenic illness looks freaking epic. Let's get in on that."
Causing the contagion to become even more widespread. Seeing that their solution backfired, the city then went the other way and completely banned any public dancing. Those who still showed signs of the mania were subsequently carded off to the shrine of St. Vitus, where an exorcism-like ritual was performed on them. This ended up being highly effective, presumably for no other reason than that the dancers believed it would work, and after nearly 2 months, the plague was quelled. While this whole thing was most likely a case of good old-fashioned MPI, some historians believe it might have been egged on in part by erotism, a state of psychosis brought on by eating tainted bread, which I talked a little bit about in this video. Ding. And hey, while I'm shilling from my channel, I might as well give a shout out to another as well. Today's video was sponsored by Cheddar, a network focused on producing fascinating content covering topics like technology, products, businesses, and the like through the lens of innovation.
Here's one about desire paths. You know, like those lines of dead grass from people taking more convenient routes to places. It's one of those things that plenty of us have thought about but never actually explored in depth like this video. Cheddar's full of intriguing stuff like that. I highly recommend giving them a look. If you're more scienceoriented, they still got you covered with their Cheddar Explorer series. This one's all about how we can be sure if a species is really extinct or not. They talk a bit about animals we thought were gone that suddenly reappeared out of nowhere. Super interesting. Go check it out. Anyway, that's all for today. Till next time, I'm Samanella and thank you for watching.
Hey kids, remember Neanderthalss? Me neither, cuz they're dead. Some say they went extinct because of out competition by homo sapiens, but personally, I don't subscribe to that notion. I believe that they went extinct primarily because they interb bred with early humans, not because they were inferior survivors.
Now, I could ramble on for a couple of hours about the genetic and archaeological evidence for this, but modern experts have already run those points into the ground. No, instead, I want to bring something totally new to the table that I thought of myself. I call it the sexy Neanderthal theory.
Okay, hear me out. From a modern-day point of view, this all sounds ridiculous, right? If someone came up to you asking if you wanted to reproduce with a Neanderthal, you'd say, "No, that's disgusting. Who are you? This is a mall. Where is security?" But that's just what society has taught you to believe. It doesn't really reflect the true animal within you. Don't believe me? Take a look at this sculpture.
Gross, right? Well, guess what? Cavemen used to whack off to that. They thought it was great. So, we're going to have to put away all of our deeply rooted cultural ideiations for a second and instead look at things from a purely biological perspective. First, I got to learn y'all a thing or two about sexual selection. There are two main types of sexual selection. There's intraexual selection, where members of the same sex compete for dominance, and interexual selection, where members of one sex are intentionally choosy about who they mate with. Now, most of these are done by most animals to some degree, but with humans and most other mammals, there's a bit of an asymmetry in how either sex performs its selection. Namely, males tend to focus more on intraexual selection, while females prioritize interexual selection. This isn't just me stereotyping. I swear there's actually an evolutionary reason for this. See, whereas males barely invest anything at all into mating in the absence of monogous culture, childbearing is a huge deal to females, using up a lot of resources. So, it only makes sense that males would want to be more promiscuous and females more selective. So, to recap, the bachelorette, that's an accurate portrayal of our most basic instincts. On the other hand, if the Bachelor were to be done with a bunch of cavemen, there wouldn't be this seasonl long show, just a 5-hour special where The Bachelor bangs every contestant at once, which in all fairness would still be higher quality entertainment than the show we have now. Anyway, what's all this got to do with Neanderthalss, you ask? Well, it just so happens the male Neanderthal's morphology makes it so that they would be able to outman the male homo sapiens, both intraexually and interexually. For one, their thick bones and heavy joints suggest that they had way more muscle mass than humans of the day, putting them at a huge advantage both in asserting dominance and in appearing attractive. Secondly, their facial features exaggerate all the characteristics that makes a face appear male in humans with square, well-defined jaws and heavy brow lines, further increasing their appeal to human females. Broad shoulders, that's hot.
Also, their large chest cavities and broad nasal passages would make it so that their vocalizations would be much louder than humans, adding still to their intimidation factor. So, basically, when the male Neanderthals strut into a human village, they'd be guaranteed casanov, ensuring that they would interbreed. But what about the Neanderthal females, you ask? If the men are more manly by default, surely the women would conversely be more mananish.
One would think that this homeliness would counteract the reproductive success of their male counterparts. But this is where that whole sexual asymmetry thing comes in. Cuz whereas the human females would be selective towards the Neanderthalss, the males don't really care. They're going to take what they can get. Their women already walked off with those jabronies, they're lonely. What's a guy going to lose? So in the end, when a population of humans meets a population of Neanderthalss, there'd actually be an increased chance of genetic ad mixture, thereby making extinction through interbreeding seem like a much more plausible outcome for the Neanderthalss. If the Nobel Committee is watching, I'd like my prize sent to this address. Thank you.
Hey kids, I've been told by a lot of people that there's nothing more exciting than the metric system. They may have a point, but I can still prove them wrong. Today we're going to talk about some specific lesserk known units of measurement. First is the Schmidt pain index. Now anybody could tell you that getting stung by a bug tends to hurt. But just how much does one sting hurt compared to another? Are yellow jackets worse than hornets? Are fire ants worse than honeybees? Nobody in the world of science knew for sure. That is until a young upstart by the name of Justin Schmidt decided to boldly go where no entomologist has gone before.
But how did he plan to quantify the level of pain caused by different insect stings? Well, it went something like this. All right, honeybee.
Ow. God, that hurt. I'll give that like a two. Next. Paper Wasp.
Okay, that's like a three. Next, let's try bullet ant.
Jesus Christ, Mary, mother of Satan's left nipple. It's like my hand is made entirely out of urethra, and each and every one is having a red-hot catheter put in and ripped out five times every second. My very being is on fire. My only desire left is for death himself to bless me with sweet relief. I'll give that a four. No, four plus. In all seriousness though, I'm pretty sure the index is meant to be logarithmic, like earthquake magnitudes. So, just like a magnitude 7 earthquake is 10 times as powerful as a magnitude 6, a bullet ant stain causes 100 times as much pain as a honeybee. In total, Schmidt cataloged 78 different species of the order himopa, which includes ants, bees, and wasps.
You can tell a man is really dedicated to his job when after getting stung by 77 insects, he says to himself, "You know what? That wasn't enough. I need one more creature to inject its venom into me, and only then will this list be complete." I guess you could say he just really gave a schmitt.
Next is the Waffle House Index. So, for those of you that didn't know, the Waffle House is one of the most resilient establishments in the world.
Whereas most restaurants would simply close down in the event of, say, a hurricane, Waffle House just goes from their normal mode to disaster response mode, following extensive protocol that allows that location to keep serving customers in spite of low food supply or even a power outage. In response to this business practice, FEMA came up with what is known as the Waffle House Index, which is a system to easily assess how badly an area is damaged by a natural catastrophe. If the Waffle House is fully open, they're in the green, which means things are basically fine. If the Waffle House is using their low supply menu, you're in the yellow, which means that the area is almost certainly mid- disaster. Finally, if you're in the red, that means the Waffle House is either closed or gone. Now, that's a sign of some real nuclear zombie holocaust type [ __ ] going down. So, if you're not already dead, you should probably vacate the area. Most engineers could tell you that structurally speaking, the triangle is the strongest of all shapes, but I believe that there's one shape that's even stronger. Godspeed, Waffle House.
Next, we have the Aptgar score. So, the APGAR score is a rating system used by hospitals to determine how healthy a newborn baby is on a scale from 0 to 10.
It's called Apgar based on its five criteria, which include appearance, pulse, grimace, activity, and respiration. And each of these is rated on a scale from 0 to two to get your final score. Personally, I think this set of standards is a little flawed.
Here's an example. Well, it's completely blue and it doesn't really want to move at all, but it's got a really fast heartbeat and it's screaming really loudly. I'd give this baby like a 6 out of 10. That's good enough. So, in response, I've invented my own rating system. It's called the Ragu Score. R is for reflexes. It's common knowledge that if you hold any healthy baby by its feet and then drop it, it'll always land upright. If your baby can't do that, that's a sure sign that it's defective.
A is for abnormality. If your baby seems weird, that's typically a good indicator that it's weird. G still stands for grimace, just like in the appguard test.
Only instead of looking at the baby's facial expression, you just bring Grimace from McDonald's into the room and see how the baby reacts. If it starts crying, that's a good sign because Grimace is absolutely [ __ ] terrifying. And finally, U is for ugliness, just because that might sway your decision on whether or not you want to keep it. Now, if the baby passes the test, it gets to go home. But if it fails, then it gets shipped off to the factory and made into Ragu. Hence the name of the test. Some people might be upset by this fact, but you know what they say, prego today, Ragu tomorrow.
Anyway, that's all for today. Till next time, I'm Salmonella, and thank you for watching.
Today's video has been sponsored by Ragu Brand Pasta Sauce. Like the taste of pureed infants, then you'll love Ragu Pasta Sauce.
Hey kids, you know what's cool?
Entomology. I mean emattology. I mean en etmology. There we go. Today we're going to talk about some words, some combinations thereof, and where they come from. First is the phrase white elephant. Now, for those out of the loop, a white elephant is a possession which its owner cannot dispose of and whose cost, particularly that of maintenance, is out of proportion to its usefulness and also a game played during the holidays for people who prefer random garbage over actual personalized presents. According to legend, this saying dates back to the monarchs of Syiam. Whenever one of the king's courts drew his displeasure through whatever means, he would offer them a gift of a white elephant. It was considered the ultimate insult to refuse a gift from the king. So naturally, the elephant tee would be forced to accept. Now, if you know elephants as well as I do, you would know that they are freaking gigantic. They can consume around 50 gallons of water and 500 lb of foliage every day, which would be quite expensive to keep up in modern times, let alone hundreds of years ago. Plus, these ones are albinos, so you have to hose them down with SPF 30 once an hour or else they'll turn into one big tumor.
Okay, not really, but they definitely needed their shade. Also, Southeast Asian cultures considered white elephants sacred, so you weren't allowed to make the animal work. and you'd have to hire a load of people to care for it on a daily basis. Basically, the person getting the gift would have to choose between financial ruin or letting it die and being socially ostracized and possibly even killed. I thought this whole thing was pretty clever, so I've started doing my own version. Whenever someone gets on my nerves, I spray paint progressive comments all over their house. That way, they'll have to spend the whole day angrily scrubbing it off, and then the neighbors will be like, "Wait, does that mean he likes the n-word? Bigoted scum." Next is balls to the wall. This one hearkens back to the days when planes flew in the air. The throttle of many aircrafts would be controlled with either a lever or a plunger, either of which were often topped with a sphere for easy handling.
Thus, when you wanted to throw the plane into max thrust, you'd put the balls to the wall. In a similar vein, the phrase balls deep comes from pinball machines.
When you want to launch the ball full force, you pull the plunger all the way back, otherwise known as going balls deep. Nah, just kidding. That one actually means what you think it does.
Next is getting your goat, a phrase used when someone or something annoys you.
The origin of this phrase is still disputed by etmologists, but one theory traces back to the sport of horse racing. In order to stop horses from getting nervous before a race, their owners would stick a goat in the stables to keep them calm. Apparently, the presence of a goat has some kind of therapeutic effect on horses. Kind of like a therapy dog, except they can't pet it on account of hooves, so they just sniff it for a while, I guess. cut to a pack of young hooligans looking for something to do besides bootlegging and getting polio. They decide to break into the stables at night and escort the goat to an undisclosed location. Then when the race starts, instead of running straight ahead like a normal person, the horse would run into the crowd and dropkick a grandma or whatever, and the old crotchety oil tycoon who owns the horse would stand up shaking his cane, yelling, "Those punks really get my goat." Thanks to modern medicine, anxious horses today can instead be given horsey Xanax to calm them down.
which unfortunately means that the days of hot-blooded goat getting are over.
However, some would argue that stealing horse tranquilizers can be equally rewarding in its own way. But enough of that mumbo jumbo. Hey, speaking of which, you ever wonder where Mumbo Jumbo comes from? Nice segue, Sam. Thanks, Sam. Anyway, strap in, kids. This one's going to be good. Mumbo Jumbo originates from the Mandingo people of West Africa.
The Mandingo were a polygamous culture and whenever a domestic quarrel broke out, they would soon hear animalistic screaming coming from the woods. They look over and out runs this guy known as Mumbo Jumbo. Now, Mumbo Jumbo's arrival was considered a big deal to the Mandingo. The whole tribe would sing and dance in the town center until midnight, at which point Mr. Jumbo would settle the dispute. And by settle the dispute, I mean tie the female to a post and slap her upside the head with a sick for an hour while the rest of the village watched, all hooting and hollering. and then he'd run screaming back into the woods where he would remain until the next complaint arose. What the Mandingo women didn't know is that Mumbo Jumbo is not in fact a wild patriarchal deity from the forest, but merely the offending woman's husband or one of his friends wearing a costume made from tree bark and leaves. Anyway, the guy would be babbling nonsense the whole time, which is where the phrase mumbo jumbo is derived from. So, next time one of your superiors uses the words mumbo jumbo in a jacular fashion, remember to report them to HR for promoting African wife beating. Anyway, that's all for today.
Till next time, I'm Salmonella and thank you for watching.
Hey kids, remember the plague, malaria, smallpox? Kind of bad, right? Well, guess what? They're peanuts compared to the level of destruction that's been rigged over the years across the kingdom next door. Today, I'm going to talk about some of the most interesting diseases to ever strike the world of plants. The most famous one is probably the potato blight. It's a fungus that attacks potatoes. This is what it looks like. On the left, we have a healthy potato, while on the right, we have a bladyy one. Notice how this one is noble and robust like a lion's heart, while the other is shriveled and black like Betsy Devos's uterus. You could try to eat it, but it's basically like rotting cork. You wouldn't get very far. So, in 1845, Ireland relied a lot on potatoes, right? That's cuz their soil was dumb and that's the most nutritious thing they could grow. Then the blight came and all their food turned to poo. 1 million starved, 2 million left, they came to America, they brought freckles and these things. Hoy, toy, toy. Now we have the Celtics. Next is the chestnut blight, which infects, you guessed it, the elderly. Wait, no, that's shingles.
Chestnut blight infects American chestnut trees, which once populated a huge portion of the south and mid-Atlantic regions of the country. Key word, once. During the early 20th century, the blight arrived, which ended up killing around 4 billion trees over the course of a couple decades. Hey, remember that time 4 billion giant things died inexplicably? Me neither.
Nobody does. Let me give some perspective on the situation. Those trees were huge, like 40 m tall a piece.
That means 160 million km of tree was destroyed by this disease. That's long enough to get from the earth to the sun with 10 million km to spare. Here's another. If we take the volume of all these trees, we get 126 billion cub m.
If we burn that much wood, we get 861 quadrillion jewels of energy. That's the amount released by the bomb dropped on Hiroshima time 10,000. So, yeah, kind of a big deal, but who cares, right? Why worry about 4 billion dumb, smelly old trees when there's a thousand whole pandas that need our help? Isn't that right, WWF?
You populist scum. Anyway, moving on.
This next one is called, get ready, broom rape. I'm serious. Broom rape.
Broom rape. Wikipedia broom rape. Naked broom rape. Imagine if we gave human illnesses names like that. I'm sorry, Sam, but you have urethra cactus. I would just end it right there. Doesn't even matter what the actual symptoms are. Anyway, broom is considered a parasitic plant. This is what it does.
The seeds of the broom rape will hang out in the soil for years until the roots of a host plant come along. When they do, the broom rape bursts out of its shell and immediately starts leeching off the other organism.
Eventually, once they grow enough, they'll breach the surface with these little flowers. Notice no leaves, no green. Who needs chlorophyll when you're a filthy freeloader, right? These flowers get fertilized and the whole thing starts over. Just one of these guys isn't a big deal to the host, but once you get enough, they have the potential to suck an entire farm dry, causing sweeping crop failure. Pun definitely intended. Next is this one.
There's a few different ways you can pronounce it depending on your social standing, ranging from urgot to elgo.
Being the disheveled puper I am, I prefer urgot. Rolls off the tongue. You know, urgot is a fungus that mainly infects grains like wheat, barley, and especially rye. and it's capable of producing a whole soup of compounds called alkyoids which can have a variety of effects on the human body. Most of them not fun mostly spasms and diarrhea that kind of thing. However, one particular alkyoid called eretamine structurally resembles LSD and has a similar function when it enters the body. So, a medieval peasant would be sitting there eating a nice loaf of rye bread just minding his own business.
Then all of a sudden, holy [ __ ] I'm blasting out of both ends. My heart's a season, MY LUNGS A WHEEZING. THE [ __ ] WALLS ARE MELTING. I can hear Satan's voice. He's telling me to invest in Apple. What does that mean? Why does he want me to buy apples? This would go on for like a day. Sometimes their fingers and toes would fall off, but then they'd be all right. Unless they weren't. Moral of the story, kids, don't eat strange bread. You could trip balls and die. One more thing before we end today's video.
I've decided to launch a second channel for all the dumb stuff I think of that doesn't fit the academy format. It's called Salmonella Vlog. Go check it out.
It's in the description. I wrote a slam poem. It's there. Go look. Anyway, that's all for today. Till next time, I'm Samanella and thank you for watching.
Hey persons of age. So long before the era of the wiki, there used to be these things called encyclopedias where for a small fee of thousands of dollars, they would mail you a tiny fraction of the knowledge we have access to today and you could put it on a shelf and it would sit there and make you look learned. But while not reading an encyclopedia is easy, not creating one is much easier.
And yet we do it. Encyclopedia Bratannica is still in circulation today, and it's maintained by around a 100 full-time editors and more than 4,000 contributors. So, whose idea was this? Who was the first person to sit down and say, "hm, today I feel like writing down everything." To answer that, we must look nearly 2,000 years in the past to the mid70s AD. Plenny the Elder, author, philosopher, veteran, imperial administrator, and one curious buckaroo. Early in his life, Plenny's father took him to Rome to study law.
Then as a young adult, he spent several years as a junior officer in the Roman military. His interest in literature made him a few high-ranking friends there, and when he came home, he took to writing. Unfortunately, a certain apocryphal fiddler was in charge at the time, who wasn't exactly kind to intellectuals. So, Plenty kept it on the DL, mostly writing about things like grammar and rhetoric, which at the time few people found worth freaking out over. Fortunately, in June of ' 68, Nero finally took a hint and killed himself.
And following the chaos of the year of the four emperors, one Vespatian came out on top. Vespatian was a general and a friend of plyennies. So when he became emperor, he promoted ply to procurator which was like the governor of a province. Suddenly with this guy on the throne and a cushy job to pay the bills, plenty found himself in a position to make complete use of his own potential.
By day he continued his administrative duties, but during nights he wrote and over the course of a few years with nothing but his own wits and whatever authors he could get his hands on, he created a work known as the Historialis.
This consisted of 37 books, each broken up into many dozens of chapters covering just about every topic there is. While it wasn't quite an encyclopedia in the modern sense, it's still the earliest surviving attempt at an all-encompassing scholarly work. And it is a trip. I've been reading it. It is fascinating. Not only is a reflection of what people did and did not know in the Roman Empire, but also as a reflection of Plenty himself, who is a character and who made zero attempt to hide it. So today I come to you with a brief summary of the first part of a brief summary of all human knowledge according to one dude circa 77 AD. Now the original thing makes for a fairly long read, even removing most of the more uninteresting details. I've only managed to fit the first two books into today's video. As for the other 35, we'll see. I'm going to let Plenty do the narration himself using my voice. He gets a lot of things shockingly right and a lot shockingly wrong. Rather than constantly chiming in with fact checks, I'm just going to throw chess.com analysis icons in the corner for every claim he makes. I'll also provide relevant snippets of the actual text I'm paraphrasing just for reference. If you're one of the people who likes to pause the video just to see the funny hahas I snuck into the freeze frame, rest assured there will be none today.
You can just let it play. One last warning. While there is a loose overall structure to this thing, it also seems like Plenty just kind of wrote whatever was in his head for a given chapter. He has a habit of jumping back and forth between completely disperate topics and going on weird personal tangents in between. I am presenting this thing in the exact order it's written. So if it at any point seems utterly scatterrained, it's his fault, not mine.
Anyway, take it away.
Yo, right, let me get right ahead of things.
These books are strictly about this world and the things we can see around it. If you're one of those mad men who think there are other worlds beyond this one, give it a rest. All right, that's psychotic. You can't know these things and you can't grasp infinity. Stop trying. You'll hurt yourself. So, the heavens are a perfect sphere and they spin around us perfectly. It takes 24 hours for them to do one spin, which is actually really fast because the universe is huge. In fact, massive objects all whooshing around us this fast should be incredibly loud at all times. Why isn't this the case? The whole shebang is composed of four elements, right, which sort themselves by weight. Earth is heaviest, so it falls to the middle of everything into a sphere, and it stays still. It's the only still thing. On top of that is water, then air, and fires the lightest, which is why the sun and stars are made of it. The sun kicks ass. Easily the best of the seven things up there.
Basically, a god. Not literally. Uh, don't try to answer questions about God's nature, by the way. You'll just confuse yourself. There's at most one god, and he's everything, and he doesn't do weird human [ __ ] like getting jealous or banging other gods. I swear people just make up new gods every time they want something specific. Let me tell you, there was a temple on Palatine Hill dedicated through my tax dollars, by the way, to fever, like the illness. You understand? That's bad [ __ ] right?
Things like that are why we've got more gods than people at this point. Folks in other countries worship animals and obscene things like stinking meats.
There are gods of theft and other crimes. It's all folly. You want to be godly, just help others. That's the way the old Roman nobles and that's the way of the noblest noble of all, Emperor Vispatian Augustus, who may or may not be my best buddy. But anyway, if there is a god, he doesn't care about what you do. People put crazy emphasis on the religion, avoiding foods, worrying themselves sick about all kinds of sacred rules. Look, I hang around the capital. There's a lot of rat bastards in politics, real scumbags, and they are thriving. You don't need to torture yourself. Have a bacon. Nobody gives a [ __ ] Back to the stars, which by the way also don't give a [ __ ] about you specifically. for big history changing stuff. Yeah, they'll act out, but you reader do not need to worry. Anyway, most of them are fixed in a sphere really high up there. We'll call this the heavens. Between the heavens and the earth, there are seven other bodies to talk about. Highest up there, we got Saturn. Then there's Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon. The heavens spin to the right. All these guys spin to the left. Saturn is cold. Mars is hot, but Jupiter, Jupiter's just right.
The sun's orbit is made up of 360°, one degree per day. Except not quite. We have to add five and a fourth days or else our sun dials break. Down to Venus and Mercury. These guys are weird because they like to hang around the sun. Fun fact, Venus is actually bright enough to help out the sun and moon sometimes. When it's helping the sun, we call it Lucifer, the lightbringer. And when it's helping the moon, we call it Vesper, the sleepy time guy. Mercury tries to do the same thing, but he's much more lame and cringe, so he can't.
The moon's got phases, as you know, and she gets closer and farther away at different times. And Don figured out lots of cool info about the moon's orbit. And you [ __ ] bullied him for it. Yeah, this man unraveled the secrets of the universe. And in return, everyone goes, "Oh ho ho, he's in love with the moon." That's because humans are sick in the head. They'd rather read stories about bloodshed and massacres like that matters more than the fabric of reality.
Get a clue. Anyway, the moon has phases because of the way it borrows light from the sun, which might be what these other guys do, too. We don't know yet. All those spots on it are actually puddles because it likes to draw up moisture from the Earth, which is where we get the tides. And every now and then it casts its shadow on Earth. We call these eclipses, and they are freaking wicked.
Eclipses can happen the other way around, too. And the way these happen prove that the moon is bigger than the Earth, and the sun's way bigger than both of them. Oh, and just so we're clear, eclipses are a natural thing.
It's not the apocalypse or God's wrath.
They follow rules. Even the Greeks could predict them. Settle down. Back to the planets. They're all kind of in the same belt up there, and they all get farther and closer to us at different points because their orbits are complicated.
They mostly follow the same rules as each other, but there's some goofiness.
Like the ones further than the sun move the slowest when they're the farthest away from us, but the closer ones move the quickest. Then we can chalk this up to the sun emitting vapors that must push them around in weird ways.
Thunderbolts come from Jupiter and we don't know why. One theory is that it's because Saturn is very moist and Mars is very fiery. And when they meet in the middle, we get celestial fire thrown down at us. Same reason a wet log crackles and throws off embers in a fire. There is a type of star that moves around and vanishes. We call these comets, and they come in all kinds of flavors. These might actually be omens.
I mean, there have been some weird coincidences. Some people think comets are permanent, and we only see them when they swing by the right way, while others say they're just flare-ups of celestial vapor that dissipate on their own. Now, to talk about some real anomalies, things we've only rarely seen. The sun goes dim sometimes, like when Caesar got killed. Mad fact, during the Civil War with Mark Anthony, it stayed dim for like a year. Multiple suns have been seen at the same time on several occasions, but no more than three. Three is the record. Same with moons. One time, a burning shield darted across the sky, throwing sparks as it went. Another time, someone saw a shooting star fly towards us until it was as big as the moon, and then it turned around and went back to being a normal comet. Side note, even the translator was like, I don't know what the [ __ ] he's talking about. Finally, there are the stars Caster and Pix. If you see both of them, it's good luck.
But be advised, if one's alone, he turns into a little bastard. He can and will come down and set your boat on fire.
That's the celestial sphere taken care of. Now, let's move down a peg to the air. The air ends way before the moon and it mixes with water vapor to create the weather. The sun dries up water on the earth. It goes up and turns into clouds and then it's pushed back down again by the, you know, the star forces that keep stuff on Earth. We get rain and hail and such and it keeps going round and round like some kind of water cycle. The seasons go around once a year and we don't know exactly why, but it definitely has to do with the motion of the stars. like some are wet or dry, hot or cold, and that influences the climate when they move. Especially Saturn. He always soaks the place going by. He's a freak. Like actually. Oh, I almost forgot the dog star. This guy's nuts. It kindles the sun's vapors. And when it rises, the ocean gets upset. Wine fermentss and stagnant waters are set in motion. And there's a creature called the orics in Egypt. And when the dog star goes up, they look at it and they sneeze out of warship. It also makes dogs go rabbit, hence the name. But the stars in the seasons they create have profound effects on nature. And it's not just the weather changes that do it.
Some flora and fauna have weird links to the heavens. Pelgium blooms right on the winter solstice, even when hung up to dry in the house. And helotrope follows the sun even when it's cloudy. The moon makes oysters bigger and ants lazier.
And diseases in the eyes of livestock will grow and diminish based on its phase. That's just a few examples. Hey, let's talk about the winds. The ancient Greeks have published a lot of great observations about the winds. Those were warish, disconnected times, which makes their work all the more impressive.
Nowadays, in this great piece, every shore of this sea welcomes Romans. And what are we doing? When's the last time we sent anybody out to investigate this world with inquiry in their heart?
Plenty of expeditions, sure, but that's just cuz you got some [ __ ] to sell rather than pursue science that could benefit all of mankind. You're hawking olives and Bzantium just to watch your abacus go up. Greed. But anyway, how many wins are there? The ancients recognized four, but that's clearly not enough. The next generation overcorrected, brought it up to 12, and [ __ ] got messy and elegant. So today, us modern folk take the middle of the road with a nice even eight total, two for each quarter of the heavens, and they've got a bunch of fun names. And yeah, if we wanted to add in the old reject winds, we could. And there's even a couple extra secret winds, only recognized by a select few. Plus, there's certain winds that only blow in certain regions of the world. But, you know, broadstrokes, it'll do you fine.
These winds each blow at their various allotted times of the year, and the winter ones make for particularly rough seas. In former times, pirates were compelled by the fear of death to rush into death and to brave the winter ocean. Now we are driven to it by avarice. Direction isn't the only difference between the winds, though.
They can all be characterized by their temperature, their moisture, and the kind of weather they tend to bring.
Volterus is dry. Septentria brings snow and hail. Auster is sultry. Achil is the most healthy. Real mly crew. those winds. But while those guys are generally pretty calm, we must also consider the sudden violent gusts we call storms. Storms are self-contained events that come in a few flavors themselves, like Egenephus, which brings thunder and lightning, or Typhon, which doesn't. Certain storms also give rise to whirlwinds, which are these giant loud pillars of wind and moisture that destroy everything in their path. They are so dense that they can actually support themselves on the ground, and if they happen over the sea, they suck up the water as they go. Thunderstorms produce lightning, and lightning is crazy. It has this unique property where it can damage things on the inside while leaving the outside unharmed. It can empty casks of their wine without breaking the vessel itself, and it can melt gold and silver without burning the bag they're in. One time, a noble woman named Marca was struck by lightning while pregnant, and while the baby got fried, she herself survived without injury. Many people believe that when lightning strikes a man, it can be used to predict his future, with terms and conditions, of course. Some historians also state that man is capable of invoking lightning. The author Elpiso said that the ancient king Numa did it all the time. Then his successor Tullus Hostilius tried to imitate him, but he didn't do the ceremonies right, so he just got electrocuted. Is any of this true? H maybe. At the very least, I buy the fortuneelling thing. Now, we all know that we see lightning before we hear thunder. That's nothing special.
It's just because light has a greater velocity than sound. It's the same event. Thunder is just the sound that lightning makes. Fun fact, man is the only animal that isn't always killed by lightning. Any other creature, instant death every time, but we're special.
Lightning can strike just about anything except for laurels, seals, and eagles.
They're all safe. It also never descends more than 5 ft into the ground. So, if you're someone who's scared of lightning, your best bets are deep caves or a tent made out of seal skin. Besides all this normal weather, we do have records of some real weird stuff falling from the sky. It has rained milk and blood on many occasions. One time it rained flesh and the fallen meat that wasn't eaten by birds just didn't rot.
You know, your casual immortal meat storm. One time it rained wool. Another time there was a shower of baked tiles.
What a country, huh? Stones have been known to fall from the sky now and then.
The Greeks like to brag about how the philosopher Anexagoras correctly predicted such an event, but I find that dubious. We know a stone fell. It was like a wagon load big, but I think Anexagoras just got lucky. I mean, the guy said it would fall out of the sun.
What are you on about? The sun can't do a rock. It doesn't have rocks. Finally, rainbows are nothing special. We get them all the time. They don't predict the weather or anything else. They're just something that happens. Rays of sunlight hit a hollow cloud and they get refracted. And the colors are due to a mixture of clouds, air, and fire. Let's come down from the air onto the earth.
Good old mother earth. The other three elements are bastards. You never know when they're going to turn on you. Fire burns us. Water pelts us as hail and floods our villages. Air rages and squalls. But Earth, she's just hanging out. And what a bounty she has for us.
Given us crops, flowers, medicinal plants. In her compassion, she even gave us poison so when life sucks, we can kill ourselves quickly. And what does man do? Naturally, we take advantage of her kindness. We torture her for all the iron, timber, and stone she can bear.
And then we use that iron to tear out her entrails in search of gems to put on our fingers. Do you know how many hands have to be worked to the bone just to decorate one joint of another? Honestly, if hell existed, all this greedy digging would get us there. But of course, whatever we take from her, we all pay back in blood and bones eventually.
World keeps turning. Just wish y'all weren't such ingrades about it. Anyway, as we said, the Earth is a perfect sphere, except for, you know, mountains and valleys, but close enough. There's a question we get all the time when people first learn about this, particularly from the commoners. They'll go right. If Earth's a ball, why don't people on the other side fall off? To that I say, why doesn't the whole thing fall down? Where would it go if it did? Up into the other sky? That doesn't make sense. No, the Earth is right where it belongs. Then they'll say, "All right, fine. But why is the ocean flat then? Hm. Guess what?
It's not. Here, take a glass of water, fill it to the brim, then drop a little something in there. See that slight subtle curve? That's the ocean. You can see it when a ship goes out to sea. The bottom bit will disappear over the horizon before the mass does. And so it goes all the way around. One time some Indians got blown off course by a storm and ended up in Germany. Side note, this was not the first nor the last time the translator started his annotation with this exact 11 syllable sigh of frustration. The ocean they must have crossed had to be massive, like half the globe. Real quick, let's think about how much of the world is even inhabitable.
We got one hemisphere over here, which is divided into five zones, right? On the top and bottom, miserable. Nothing but cold and darkness. In the middle, sun's too close. Burns everything.
Miserable. So already we only got a fifth of the place to ourselves. Then take into account all the seas and mountains and wilderness and other crap in the way. There's barely anything left. And this is what every war in history has been over. This tiny portion of what amounts to a speck in the universe. Even if you conquered the world, you'd have barely started. And how much of it can you bring with you to the grave, huh? So, the Earth is in the middle of the universe, and we know this because of the equinoxes, day and night, perfectly balanced on these two dates.
We're right in the middle. It just makes sense. There's plenty of other proof that we live on a globe. Certain stars can only be seen from different parts of the world, and that's cuz the Earth's in the way. Just ask a sailor, they'll see new stars squink their way out of the horizon as they go. Also, eclipses show that the time of day depends on your east west position. A few years back, the same eclipse of the sun, the same exact event, was seen at 8 in Campania, but at noon in Armenia. Try explaining that one, plainists. Here's another. One time, a corer named Felades ran from Sission to Ellis, which is a distance of 1200 Stadia. The way there took him 9 hours, but then the return trip took him 15. And it's not cuz he was tired or took a break somewhere, brother. He ran against the sun. Likewise, the length of shadows on a given day depends on your latitude. In Egypt, on the summer solstice at noon, the sun dials cast a shadow half the length of the pointy bit. Whereas in Venice, at the very same hour, the shadows as long as the pointy bit. If you keep going south, eventually you reach a point where the sun's straight up at the solstice. We dug a well in a town called Sen just to check, and sure enough, it's light all the way down. If you go even further south, you'll notice the sun do that twice a year at equal distances from the solstice. There's also a place in India where there just aren't shadows ever.
And as a consequence, the people there don't know what hours are. But because of the way the sun moves, you'll notice that the longest day of the year is longer the further north you go. In Alexandria, on the summer solstice, they get 14 hours of daylight. In Italy, it's 15 and in Britain, it's 17. Following this pattern, we believe that at the very north pole, it's 24, meaning they get 6 months of daylight at a time with 6 months of night on the other side. The difference in climate based on latitude is clearly reflected in the nations that live there. For one, the Ethiopians, let's talk about earthquakes. The Babylonians used to blame these on the movements of the stars. One guy is even said to have predicted an earthquake through astrological means. Is that true? I'll let you be the judge. I for one believe that earthquakes are caused by the winds. Think about it. Before an earthquake, it's always very calm. The seas are tranquil. There's not a single bird in the sky. Why? No wind. They can't fly. Where' the wind go?
Underground. It gets stuck down there and it builds up until finally hell literally breaks loose. It starts off with a horrible noise like cows mooing or people fighting in the distance. Then everything shakes hard. Whole city walls get knocked down and sometimes the earth opens up and swallows them entirely. The shaking is even noticed by people on ships who get hit by waves without any wind. Earthquakes also make well water turn cloudy and smelly. So the obvious question is what the hell can we do about it? Well, places with a lot of natural caverns or man-made sewers tend to get fewer earthquakes. That's because the underground air has an easy way to escape. Buildings that are arched or that lean against each other also tend to fare better in the event of an earthquake. Barring all else, at least things are usually over with quickly, although some earthquakes have been known to last days, months, even one or two years straight. As for related anomalies, about a century and a half ago, two mountains slammed together and collapsed, and fire and smoke came from the ground where they stood. More recently, under Nero, there was a knight named Vectius Marcelis who woke up to find that his fields and olive ground swapped places with each other. No mayhem or destruction, just oh, this is over here now. Okay. But just as Earth swallows up land in one place, she spits it back out elsewhere. As such, islands sometimes rise up spontaneously out of open sea. We have tons of records of these events across the Mediterranean.
They're often accompanied by a giant fiery explosion and loads of dead fish floating everywhere. It's said that one time some people ate these fish and then they too immediately died. But enough of tragedies. Let's turn back to the wonders of the earth. such as their many caverns filled with gas that instantly kills things. Some kill only birds, others kill everything but people, and still more kill everything and people.
In a few caves, those who breathe the gas instead become intoxicated and start predicting the future, as is the case with the famous oracle at Deli. We can ascribe these effects to the divine power of nature. I mean, what else could it be? How the hell do you explain that rationally? But while most islands are attached to the earth at the bottom, there are a few that float. The Calamina Islands are not only moved by the wind, but the people on them can actually push them around with the long poles to go wherever they want. There's another group of floating islands known as the dancers. So-called because they move to the beat of drums played on their surface. I've got a few more miscellaneous wonders here. Let me just rattle them off. In Harpassa, there's a giant rock that can be moved by one finger, but not by the force of the whole body. In Paracini, there's a type of dirt that heals all wounds. In Trrowis, there's a stone that makes dead bodies dissolve. Near the Indis River, there's two mountains, one of which attracts iron and the other repels it.
So if you had iron nails in your shoes, you couldn't step on the one or off the other. In our giraa, the granul plant doesn't grow. And in crustinium, the hay springs up already rotten. Let's turn now to the tides. We know these are caused by the moon and to a lesser degree the sun. Moon overhead, they go up. Moon on the other side, they go down. A large open ocean is needed to manifest this power of the planet, which is why neither lakes nor rivers have tides. In Britain, the tide rises 120 ft. The tides do a full cycle twice a day, except in Yuboia, where they do it seven times. Aristotle said that animals only die when the tide is ebbing. But really, that's only true of people.
Watch. Seawater is salty, and that's because the sun evaporates all the mild sweet water while leaving all the gross crap that ends up in the ocean behind. A number of estimates have been made for the depth of the ocean, ranging from 15 stadia to who the hell knows. Sea water is also heavier than fresh water, which is why things float better on it. As with everything in nature, bodies of water have no shortage of weird stuff they get down to. Some rivers actually run underground before bursting out again elsewhere. We know they're the same river because if you chuck stuff in one, it comes out the other side.
There's a lake in Judea where nothing sinks at all. In Dona, there's a spring called the Fountain of Jupiter. And though the water there is cold as ice, it'll relight extinguished torches held near its surface. The river Mosas turns sheep black when they drink from it.
while the sephosis makes them turn white. The pennas turns them black again and then the Zanthis makes them red. The river Astases makes the horses there produce black milk which the people use for food. There's a spring in the island of Andros that tastes like wine. The river Lincest tastes sour but gets you drunk like wine. And in Arcadia, there's a river called the sticks that kills you instantly. In Labrosis, there are three springs, all of which also kill you instantly, but in a much less painful fashion than the six. That's enough of those. From here, we turn at last to the fourth element, fire. In Samosada, along the Euphrates, there's a big pull of this flammable mud they call malta. It sticks to everything it touches. And if you set it on fire, even water won't extinguish it. Romans invaded these lands long ago, and the people there poured the stuff on our soldiers, cooked them in their armor like a crab. There are certain places in the world where fire is always burning. The summits of many mountains are home to such flames, as are the occasional crater and field.
And of course, the sun and stars are no exception. What a weird thing these are.
Like, fire needs fuel to spread and sustain itself. So, what is it that can feed these flames without destroying itself in the process? There's a thinker for you. But besides these guys, where else does fire come from? You got fires lit by men, for one. Certain stones have fire in them innately. There's the fire you get from rubbing sticks together.
And there's the fire in clouds that causes lightning. You can also use concave mirrors to focus sunlight into fire. Highly potent. Do be careful.
Sudden fires also manifest occasionally in the human body. One time when sixth king of Rome service Tullius was a child, he was just sleeping there when suddenly flames shot out of his freaking head. I've got more fun facts like this to drop later. But it's about time we wrap this book up. And what better way than by sizing up the entire globe. So I ran some numbers, added some distances, check some other people's answers. I've got some estimates here on the width of the inhabited world from the mouth of the Ganges in India to the port city of Gades in the West. These all fall around 9,000 mi, give or take a thousand. But like I said before, the uninhabited Earth extends far beyond that.
Aeratosines was a really bright dude and he put the circumference at 31,500 mi. What a big wild world it is. Just how wild. You'll have to tune in next time for books 3 through six. All of which are titled Ancount of Countries, Nations, Seas, Towns, Havens, Mountains, rivers, distances, and peoples who now exist or formerly existed. But for now, I'm Plei the Elder Edgaratio Zagoti Espandi.
The Pope sitting at home fuming at my pronunciation right there.
Hey kids, had a bad day? Well, could be worse. You could be living in a world without modern anesthetic. Today, we'll be talking about some surgical procedures carried out long before the development of medicine as we know it today. Now once you go back a certain distance, the line between operation and mutilation is pretty thin. So for our purposes, surgery refers to any bodily manipulation carried out with the intent of fixing some injury or illness. And away we go. The very first surgery that we have historical evidence for dates as far back as 6,500 BC. It's called trapanning, which is a nice word for carving someone's freaking skull open using nothing but a rock. Maybe a rock on a stick if you were lucky. In all seriousness though, you can see that a good deal of care went into the procedure, which lets us know that this isn't just the result of random injury.
Many skulls even showed signs of healing around the holes, meaning plenty of the people who underwent this whole thing just got up and went about their day afterwards. All right, hold on. You say this all sounds batch uh guano insane.
No way this was that common of an occurrence. Well, friend, if you've been watching this channel long enough, you should know that if you give human beings the benefit of the doubt, chances are they'll prove you wrong. In fact, so far, over 1,500 Japan skulls have been dug up all across the globe, from Europe to China and even the Americas. This means that between 5 and 10% of all skulls that we've found from the Neolithic period have had at least one man-made hole scraped into them. To put it this way, based on that data, there's a greater probability of someone born in the late stone age having their brain matter exposed by some shaman with a chunk of flint than someone born in the USA being a redhead. To this day, nobody really knows why this was such a common practice, but most theories tend to revolve around the idea of releasing some kind of dark supernatural force from the patient. Man, I'm getting real sick of all these evil entities infecting our minds and bodies. Huh, you can say that again. I tell you, I need these demons like I need a hole in the head. No, wait. Fast forward to 600 BC.
Over in India, there lived a guy called Maharshi Susuta. Now, this guy was a medical mastermind. He wrote a treatise known as Susuruta Samita, which described countless different conditions, treatments, and yes, even surgeries. One of which is the first recorded instance of rhinoplasty. That means nose job. A horn bill is a type of bird. I'm here, too. Anyway, here's how it's done. According to Cisruta, first you get them plastered, obviously.
Second, you use a leaf to measure out the part of the nose you want fixed.
Then you use the leaf to cut off a flap of skin from the cheek or forehead of the patient. This part's important, though. You got to remember to leave a little piece of it still attached.
Otherwise, you just got a chunk of dirty, dead face meat on your hands.
Now, wherever you're looking to stick the new flesh on, you rub that part raw with a knife. Also, you're going to want to stick two plant stalks in their nostrils so their nose keeps its proper shape. Slap the skin on, suture it, dust it with licorice powder for some reason, and cover it with cotton. Sesame oil should be regularly applied until the skin is fully healed. If you're like me, you already do that by default, so it shouldn't be an issue. Finally, at long last, your sniffer is reborn. Don't worry, you still look like a freak, just slightly less so. Moving on, our next surgery took place in 10th century Spain on Sancho I of Leyon, otherwise known as Sancho the Fat. Now, normally back in the day, having some meat on your bones was a sign of wealth and power and all that, but this guy was like TLC documentary tier to the point where he could hardly function as a human being.
So, his constituents said, "Greetings, your thickness. Uh yeah, you can't be king anymore on account of you keep breaking every horse we give you and nobody wants to wash between your accordion-like neckfolds no more. After a Zadapose got him deposed, Sancho decided to seek medical help for his condition under the oversight of well-reputed physician Hazdai Iban Shapod, which is an anagram for ha paintbrush aids. Now, if there's one thing that medieval men understood, it's practicality. Lap band, gastric bypass, belly balloon. These all exist to help people who don't have the self-control to stop eating so much on their own. But Dr. Shapedu didn't believe in beating around the bush. He said, "Well, why don't we just stop the patient from shoving food into his own greasy mall in the first place and decided to just up and stitch the dude's lips together?"
After the operation, the only nutrients that Soncho received came through a straw in the form of a mixture known as thoria, which was a complex blend of several herbs, fruits, and seeds, including opium. It was basically the closest thing you could find to lean at the time. And lean he became, losing around half his weight before ascending to the throne once more. So, this is the part of the video where I pander to the desires of the audience. If there's one thing I know you internet people can't get enough of, it's things going inside people's eyeballs. Let's talk about cataract surgery. The art of dealing with people's clouded lenses has been around for millennia. Believe it or not, that susa guy from earlier actually talked about the most common procedure for cataracts for most of civilized history, which is known as the couching method. Couching is done by taking a sharp object like a needle or a thorn and ever so gently stabbing their eyehole at weird angles until the lens moves out of the way. No lasers, no sedatives, no paralytics, just a rusty old pin and some elbow grease. It's the way God intended. The majority of the time, this operation didn't work.
Usually just damaging the already blind eye irreparably. Shocker, right? And even if it did go as planned, you still, you know, didn't have a lens in your eye. So, you essentially went from I can't tell if I'm dead or not. To ah, yes, it is quite yellow out today.
By God, something moved somewhere. A slightly more refined version of this operation is the suction method, which dates back to at least the 10th century AD, if not older. This procedure is described as requiring quote, "A large incision in the eye, a hollow needle, and an assistant with an extraordinary lung capacity." Though this reads like the setup to the world's most horrifying party trick, it's actually the bare minimum number of tools needed to completely extract the lens from the eye. In case you didn't pick up on how, here's a diagram.
This method generally saw a greater success rate and fewer complications than its non-extracting counterpart. So hopefully you can sleep well tonight knowing that the number of human beings who have sucked a piece of somebody's living eyeball through a straw is above zero. Anywh who, let's all just be thankful that we live in an era where procedures like these are a thing of the past. Now remember kids, even though the surgeries I described here do sound pretty easy to pull off, please don't try them at home. But if you do, please put it on Live Leak afterwards. But you know what you can do at home? Learn stuff about things with brilliant.org.
Brilliant's elegant UI and step-by-step design makes learning seemingly complex topics very intuitive, especially for visual learners like me. Don't think you can understand special relativity. With Brilliant, I bet you you can. I'm just some kid in a room somewhere. And even I got the basics. Check this out.
Relativistic laser tag. Don't tell me that doesn't sound fun. Then later when you're talking to your friends, you can be like, "Yeah, I'm taking a course in special relativity right now. No big deal. Maybe going to hit quantum objects in a couple weeks." So to support me and broaden your understanding of math and science, go to brilliant.org/sammonella and sign up for free. Also, the first 200 people that go to that link will get 20% off the annual premium subscription.
Anyway, till next time, I'm Sammonella and watch you for thanking. Wait. [ __ ] I'm in.
Hey, adults. So, most of us are aware of at least one animal companion to the commander-in-chief. All but three presidents have owned some kind of pet during their term, and there's good reason for that. Not only does a lovable mut serve to humanize an otherwise larger than-l life figure, but their cute antics can also be a great distraction when needed. Huh? Drone strikes. Never heard of her. Hey, we're doing a photo op with this dog that shares a name with my vice president's son, cuz you know that's not weird at all. But as it turns out, dogs and cats are just the tip of the iceberg. There have been a lot of quadripedal occupants of the White House, even without Miss Lewinsky. So today, we'll be going through just a few of the more interesting ones. Going back to the beginning, Washington and Critters galore, including four black and tan slur hounds that he named drunkard, taster, tipler, and tipsy. They sound like if Santa's reindeer were all alcoholics, which would be a shame because Rudolph's red nose would no longer be of note. John Adams had three dogs that presumably spanned the alignment chart, being named Juno, Mark, and Satan, respectively. Not a joke.
Jefferson kept around 40 sheep during his presidency, one of which was a four-horn Shetland ram. Though nameless, said ram soon became famous for killing a young boy on White House grounds.
Rather than immediately destroying the animal, as we'd expect today, Jefferson just had it moved back to Montichello.
It was eventually put down, but only after it single-handedly killed several other rams at the estate, which just goes to show how Jefferson operated.
Random child, not the best optics, but that can be forgiven. But my own property, that's a bridge too far, Rambo. John Quincy Adams wife, Louisa, practiced Serakulture, which is a fun word for silkworm keeping. As a side note, serulture has been going on since at least 3,630 BC, which is kind of nutty cuz that means we domesticated worms to turn their goo into clothes before we figured out how to ride a horse. Jackson had an African gray parrot named Paul, short for Polly, that would apparently curse like a sailor, probably thanks to the teachings of old Hickory himself. Having outlived its owner, Paul ended up being removed from Jackson's funeral service after unleashing so much profanity that guests found it genuinely upsetting. He also kept roosters for [ __ ] fighting, which was acceptable at the time and still far from the worst thing he's done morally.
During Van Beern's term, the Sultan of Oman sent a variety of gifts to the president, among them being a pair of tiger cubs. He was like, "This is badass." and desperately wanted to keep them in the White House. But the [ __ ] in Congress asserted that due to a specific constitutional provision, gifts to the presidential office weren't for the man himself, but for the people.
Van Beern said, "Fuck the people. Them's my tigers." and got into a legal battle with the legislature over the issue which he eventually lost. The tigers were subsequently sent to a zoo and over 20 years later Van Beern died of pneumonia completely unrelated to this incident. Although Andrew Johnson had no dour pets, he did befriend a family of mice he found in his bedroom feeding them flour and grain and referring to them as the little fellows. It's an oddly wholesome thing to hear from someone who essentially set the trajectory for the next 100 years of black disenfranchisement. Mr. Johnson, we still have a uh country to rebuild.
Get out of my room. I'm getting rat pilled. Taft had two cows during his term. The first of them was named Mully Woolly and she died a year and a half in after quote eating too many oats. Mully was promptly replaced by the far more dignified Pauline Wayne. She was a real dime of a heer which led Taft to show her off at the International Dairy Men's Expo in Milwaukee. In order to get her there, she was transported in a private car attached to a train headed for the stockyards in Chicago. But a switch crew mixed up which car was hers, leading to two days of frantic telegraphs asking where the president's cow had gone. She only narrowly avoided the slaughterhouse when a couple of attendants at the stockyard recognized Pauline for what she was, and all was well. This next one requires a little background info. So, the traditional Thanksgiving dinner was and remains a significant yearly ceremony for the first family. For half a century, from 1873 to 1913, the duty of providing the presidential turkey belonged to one Horus Vos, a private turkey farmer based in Rhode Island.
After his death, though, things turned into a free-for-all with numerous farmers sending unsolicited turkeys, both alive and dead, in an attempt to secure a position as the next annual caterer for the White House. Nobody was decided on for a decade and upon assuming office in 1923, Calvin Kulage found the volume of birds showing up at his doorstep alarming and put an end to the tradition that year. Instead, opting to buy his own turkey. But in 1925, after much outside pressure, he caved and was immediately flooded with not only turkey, but a variety of increasingly exotic animals to eat.
Among them was a live raccoon he received the following year. Coolage was at the time blissfully unaware of the intricate dance performed on the palette between forward yet ephemeral gameiness and heady seductive musk when one submits themsself to the experience of a toothome raccoon filt and as such he decided to keep it as a pet instead.
Dubbed Rebecca, the creature soon came to be a core member of the coolage family. She ate as well as any of them being fed things like shrimp and pimmens and she was particularly fond of eggs.
Given free reign over the house, Rebecca's hobbies reportedly included unscrewing light bulbs, uprooting house plants, and playing with wet bars of soap in the bathtub. She was so beloved that she even had her own treehouse built for her in the White House yard.
When the coolages made way for the Hoovers, Rebecca was forced to vacate her post. But the new first family soon found that they had a squatter on their hands. The new tenant of Rebecca's treehouse was a wild apossum who rather than being evicted was adopted by the Hoovers in a similar fashion to Rebecca, albeit from a farther distance. Mostly just saying, "Yeah, that's ours now." He was given the name Billy Pawsum, which is a reference to our old friend Taft.
See, as the man following Teddy Roosevelt in the White House, Taft had some big shoes to fill. So during his term, some enterprising young dumbasses approached Taft with what they claimed would be the sequel to the teddy bear.
They called it Billy Pawsum, which is itself a reference to the president's fondness of possum and ters, a dish he famously requested at a banquet in Atlanta as an act of goodwill towards the South and its culture. Taft found the idea amusing enough that he gave the green light, and many thousands of Billy Psums were produced. Given their total obscurity today, it's clear these toys were a massive flop. And there's a few reasons for that. For one, trying to force fads at all is like trying to push water uphill. But also the story of Roosevelt refusing to shoot a tied up bear has a bit more symbolic poetry to it than it's a possum cuz he like possum. He a fat boy. Eat him up good.
Couple that with the constant character assassination that the apossum as an animal has received from ignorant urbanites and it becomes obvious that this thing was doomed from the start.
But anyway, that's where the Hoover Apossum got his name and his exploits were pretty limited outside of temporarily filling in as a mascot of a local high school. In 1961, Soviet Premier Nikita Kruev gifted a dog to the Kennedys named Pushinka or Fluffy. And while it is normally rude to look a gift dog in the mouth, an exception can be made when the single biggest threat to the free world insists that said dog should live with the president. Pushinka was x-rayed, put through metal detectors, and given ultrasounds out of fear that someone implanted her with a listening device. Fortunately, though, there may be bugs in some of you mugs, there ain't no bugs in she, and Pushinka remained a Kennedy for the rest of her days. While truthfully the gift was likely given as a simple act of good faith designed to reduce cold war tensions, Pushinka was also the daughter of Streulka, who during Sputnik 5 became the first mammal to make it back from space alive. So, I'd like to think of it as more of a passive aggressive space race flex. Like, yeah, our astronals are so alive they're making babies. Even hope looking at this one constantly reminds you of where you stand with that. I hope you found this highlight real enlightening. It feels good to know that while Congress has always been a zoo, so too has the White House at times. That's all for today. Till next time, I'm Salmonella and you make my girlhood tremble.
Hey kids, it's Food Friday. So, today I'm going to cover some of the deadly toxins found in your local produce section. Our first item is rhubarb. Now, the part of the rhubarb that you normally eat, the delicious red stalk, is virtually toxin-free, so no worries there. It's the greenery of the plant that's a cause for concern. The leaves of the rhubarb plant contain small amounts of oxylic acid, which is toxic to humans, and it's not a fun poison either. Not one of those drift off to dreamland types. It will mess your day up, particularly in the digestive and renal areas. Some symptoms include breathing difficulty, burning of the mouth and throat, eye pain, bloody urine, abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, convulsions, coma, and only then will you finally receive the sweet release of death. Of course, you need like a shitload of leaves to actually reach the lethality point. About 11 lbs for a 150 lb person. To put that into perspective, the average person eats around 4 lb of food a day total. So, to eat that weight of anything would be very difficult. Next up are almonds. So, you know how they say cyanide reeks of almonds? Turns out it's actually the other way around. Sweet almonds, the type people normally eat, contain a bit of the toxin, just enough to get a whiff. After eating about a pound of them, you may experience some of the more mild symptoms, which while they're not exactly fun, aren't quite as bad as oxylic acid. In order for the poison to actually be deadly, you would have to eat around 4 lbs of almonds in the course of a couple hours. Considering that's the total food intake daily for an average person and that you would be vomiting, cramping, and hyperventilating the whole time, it'd be hard to pull off. Next are apple seeds. Most of you are probably familiar with this one.
Apple seeds contain cyanogenic glycosides, which are materials that produce cyanide once they enter the digestive system. These chemicals also have a significant presence in a whole menagerie of other produce items. But out of all of these, apple seeds will give you the most bang for your buck as far as potency goes. You would only need around 3.5 ounces of the seeds to do yourself in, which is a lot easier to pull off than the last two. Of course, the whole point of seeds and fruit is so that things will eat them and crap them out elsewhere to spread the plant around, which would be pretty hard to do if the thing carrying your babies keels over and dies. For this reason, the glycosides are only accessible when one crushes the seeds open. Whole seeds are relatively safe, but if you really wanted to off yourself, you could toss 18 apple cores in a blender and drink the whole thing. The most virulent thing you'll find in your entire produce section, however, is none other than the kidney bean. Yes, this innocent looking legume holds some sinister secrets.
Kidney beans contain a toxin known as phytohemoglutin, and as little as four raw beans worth is enough to trigger symptoms. The main sign of kidney bean poisoning is known scientifically as two-tip tummy terrorism. Boiling the beans deactivates the toxin, which is why we can eat them normally. But heating the beans below the boiling point, as in a slow cooker, actually increases the toxin's potency to the point where a single heated bean is enough to get you blasting out of both ends. I couldn't actually find any reports on deaths caused by the toxin, probably because everyone who ingests it ends up propelling it away from them at high velocities. a few hours later, but it'll certainly make you want to die at least. There are a bunch of other minor sources of poison present in your produce section, of course. I just decided to highlight a few. Anyway, I'm Salmonella and thank you for watching.
Hey kids, today I'm going to talk about a few slang words that I never understood. First is chicken legs. Now, if you know me, you know that I'm leaner than lean. So, I've received this insult a couple times. You know, hey, chicken legs. But chicken legs really aren't that skinny. Here's a diagram of my leg, right? And here's the average chicken leg. Look at that. I wish I had that kind of calf definition. That's sexy as [ __ ] There are bodybuilders with less meat on their bones than that. And considering the fact that most people have interacted with the drumstick at some point in their lives. I'm frankly dumbfounded that anyone ever thought to use this to refer to skinny people. Then there's sucking someone. Hey man, I'm trying to think of a new slang word for punching someone in the face really hard. Like just destroying someone with your fists. Got any ideas? How about one of the softest, gentlest, and most unassuming objects found in one's entire house? That's like kicking someone in the dick and being like, "Wo, bro, you just got feathered." [ __ ] you. Don't try to downplay my suffering. If anything, I got shin bashed in the dick bag. That's the proper level of vulgarity relative to the situation. Anyway, it would make a little more sense if you said gloved cuz at least those are socks for your hands. But no, it's nonsense. Next is blow in reference to cocaine. It's a form of air movement, so I guess this one is like half correct, but it could still lead to a lot of confusion. Yo, y'all want to do some blow? Oh, gee whiz. Well, uh, okie dokie.
Oh. Oh, I'm feeling it. It's kicking in.
Oh, doggy. That's some nifty blow you got there, eh? Get out of my house. Next is nuts. When somebody is nuts, it means they're wild. They're crazy. They live life on the edge, right?
What the [ __ ] is so exciting about this?
Finally, box. So, box is a common slang word for one's lady bits. Right now, I've only been around two vaginas in my life. I came out of one of them when I was born, and I spent most of my time around the other one with my eyes closed, so my knowledge on that subject might be a little shaky. However, I have been around hundreds of thousands of boxes in my life. I know those inside and out, so that should make up for it.
And let me tell you, these two things could not be less similar in shape. You see, boxes have corners. If your [ __ ] has corners, you should probably start taking the tampons out of the container before you put them in. Likewise, if you compare the properties of either object, you'll notice that they're basically opposites in every way. So, as a slang word, it's totally unfitting. Anyway, that's all for today. Till next time, I'm Samanella, and thank you for watching.
Hey kids, today I'm going to talk about South Sudan. It's the newest country in the world becoming fully independent just in 2011. So I'm going to explain why the state came into being and what it's like there today. So to understand why South Sudan exists, you kind of have to know a bit about Sudan as a whole. So before 1956, Sudan was under the joint control of Egypt and Britain. At the end of 1955, they gave a declaration of independence and became their own thing.
The independence movement, however, was led by this guy, Ismael Alazari, and he was like, "Hey everybody, we are an Arab oriented Muslim nation." But then like 8 million Sudin black people were like, "Wo, hold your camels, Ishmail. us Africans, we ain't all about your Allah.
He was like, "Yeah, well, who cares?"
Oh, I see. So, they got into a civil war between the primarily Arab Muslim North and the traditionally oriented African South. That went on for 16 years until finally the North's like, "All right, fine. You can do your thing. Like, you're still part of Sudan, but you can govern yourself for the most part. We'll take our falafil elsewhere." And that peace treaty lasted 11 years from 1972 to 1983. Eventually, the South was like, "Well, things aren't that bad now, but the Arabs still technically control us, so it could get worse, and I'm not in the mood for any Sharia law anytime soon, so we should probably go back to fighting." So, then there was another civil war, which was basically a continuation of the first one. And that ran on from 1983 all the way to 2005 when finally the two sides made a comprehensive peace agreement, which led to South Sudan becoming totally self-governing in 2006. Then after five more years of fiddling around with paperwork, South Sudan became a fullyfledged independent nation in 2011.
So notice how there were two civil wars before the South gained independence. I guess you could say two coups make a Sudan. So now that they finally got what they want, it must be great to live in South Sudan now, right? No. No, not really. It's actually just about the worst place you could ever choose to live in. Seriously, if somebody gave me the choice of moving to South Sudan or living the rest of my life with my dick inside an ant anthill, I'd be slathering on the honey before they even finish their sentence. Let me talk about a few reasons South Sudan sucks so bad. First, let me talk about ethnic groups. Europe, as we all know, contains a lot of ethnic groups. Scots, Serbs, Slovak, Slovian, Spaniard, Swedes, and those are just the big ones that start with S. There's like a hundred others. The same is true with Africa. There are thousands of localized ethnic groups sprinkled all over the continent whether or not you could tell from first glance. As such, South Sudan is home to a bunch of different peoples, each with their own languages and customs. And these groups have a long history of disagreeing with each other.
Like, they don't get along much. So, that's one thing. Second, remember how South Sudan was at war with the North for basically all of the past half a century? Well, as a result, the whole place is pretty geared for war and not much else. Their infrastructure is abysmal and they've got all these guns just lying around waiting to be shot at something. Third, South Sudan has a bunch of oil reserves in different locations around the nation. And we all know how much people like oil. Everybody wants control of whatever wells they can get. So between these three things, the whole place is basically one big whirlpool of chaos. At any given time, the South Sudan government is at war with at least seven different armed groups from around the country, each of which is also at war with the other groups. And if that's not enough of a shitstorm, the government ended up basically splitting in two in 2013. This is what happened. So you've got the president, his name is Salvakir, and yes, he does actually wear a hat like this. It was a gift from George Bush.
True story. And then the vice president, his name is Reek Macar. I'm probably saying those wrong, but it's fine. They don't have internet in South Sudan, so nobody can call me out here. So anyway, Salvakir, he's very aware of the fact that the country is in a very precarious spot at the moment. So he starts taking greater control of the government and the military, dismissing old people and installing those that he sees fit. And so Reek Macar, he's like, "Well, gee whiz Salvakir. For someone who calls himself a president, that's pretty dictatory of you." Well, for someone who calls himself the vice president, that's pretty annoying assholey of you, sir.
All I'm saying is, you know, I'm getting pretty sick of you in that gay hat of yours. I I'm not wearing a hat. As president of South Sudan, I order you to put on a hat.
Yeah, see that hat's gay. You're wearing the exact same hat. All right, [ __ ] you.
You're out of a job. Wait, what? Yep, you and your whole cabinet. Get out.
Okay, I made up the part about the hat, but the rest of that is true. Also, I should mention that Kier and Mar come from two different ethnic groups. See, Kier is a dinka, whereas Macar is a newer, which only heightened the tensions between the two. So, after Macar got the boot, he ended up taking a chunk of the military with him, most of which were newers like him. And they started a rebellion against Kier's government. This is known as the South Sudan Civil War, and it's still going on to this day. So yeah, to sum it up, if you looked up cluster [ __ ] in the dictionary, well, you wouldn't find anything because cluster [ __ ] isn't a real word. But if it was, there would probably be a picture of South Sudan next to it. Seriously, this place makes Hotel Rwanda look like Hotel California.
And throughout it all, there's still a bunch of hardworking individuals just trying to make a living, farming or hurting or whatever. But the constant warfare makes it so the average person has to live in virtually stone age conditions, which sucks, but you know, what can you do? So, that's the story of the world's newest nation, kids. Till next time, I'm Salmonella, and thank you for watching.
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