Our society structure. Society is still structured with a few persons living extravagantly like kings on the top, while the masses are mostly content with mediocre scraps.
Leather burnishers have been pretty much unchanged for 50,000 years
I need more of these.
One I’ve heard recently was…the hair styles you see on ancient Roman art look remarkably modern. Art historians got to wondering just how they managed such complex hairstyles without modern hairspray, plastic clips or elastic bands? A hairstylist took one look and said “They’re sewn.” The historians go “NAAAAAH that can’t be it. Whoever heard of sewing hair?” The hairstylist goes “Hairstylists. Watch” and then she replicated the styles on the statues by sewing.
Here’s another one: Marine biologists long struggled to understand/describe the shapes of certain marine life, including corals. They had these weird wavy patterns that didn’t make sense to us rectangle building monkeys. Meanwhile, a mathematician studying hyperbolic geometry realized that crochet patterns that add loops with every row achieve wavy ruffles in a hyperbolic pattern. It took a few others to piece those two ideas together, to recognize the coral structures as having hyperbolic geometry as a means of maximizing surface area while minimizing volume. The Crochet Coral Reef project has been making crocheted models of sea life ever since.
As a woodworker, it amazes me how the mortise and tenon is still hanging on.
If you aren’t familiar, a mortise is a square or rectangular hole in a board, might go all the way through, might not. A tenon is a square peg basically cut on the end of a board to fit into a mortise. This produces a very strong joint.
The very oldest intact wooden structure known on earth - a well head in Germany - is held together with mortise and tenons. We don’t know the name of the man who built it, because written language hadn’t been invented yet.
There is a thing called a floating tenon. Imagine you want to join two boards, but don’t really want to cut a tenon onto either. Make a mortise in each, then make a third smaller board to fill both tenons. Floating tenon, loose tenon, there are many words for it. The Ancient Egyptians held boat hulls together this way, the hull planks were joined edge to edge with loose tenons which were then cross-pinned with dowels. One such boat was found disassembled in a pit next to the Great Pyramid at Giza; the seal on the chamber was so good they said it smelled of cedar when opened. The ship was assembled and is currently on display.
All the way on this end of history, the European tool brand Festool has a tool called a Domino. It has the form factor of a Lamello-type biscuit joiner, but the domino cuts with a wagging router bit to form a wide, short, deep mortise to insert store bought loose tenons into. This tool is so new, it is still protected under patent.
We’ve been making mortise and tenons for tens of thousands of years, and yet we’re still innovating on the concept.
That’s dope af
A 5-day, 40 hour work week “standard”
Somebody saying “bless you” to someone else who sneezes
The president
Bless you is such a weird way to respond to a sneeze though. Fitting for the clusterfuck the english language is tbh.
From ancient Rome when they thought sneezing was an omen and may dislodge and expel the soul from the body (Pliny the Elder, Suetonius, Homer).
We know know sneezing can wake the small elf living in your stomach. According to RFK.
Sure feels like that sometimes.
Still weird that english uses it. Most other languages I k ow just say something about your health.
In Germany we say (literally) “Health” as in “Get better”
Love the joke from (probably not actually) nazi times
“Heil Hitler!” “Seh ich aus wie ein Arzt?” Or " Heil ihn selbst!"
In english: “Heil Hitler” “do i look like a doctor?” Or “heal him yourself”
Love it
I know. We do the same
The english language has a lot of religious language hidden away in expressions
For example, goodbye is just a shortening of “god be with ye”
“langaige”
Seinfeld suggested: “You’re soooo good looking!”
Fax machines.
The amount of “modern” companies I had to fax shit too when my dad died was infuriating! Hyundai, Target, etc etc etc. Email is a thing dumb ass companies! Fuck me.
Many government departments and private companies consider faxed documents as a duplicated “original”, instead of a copy. Because that totally makes sense.
IT MEANS FASCIMILE GOD DAMNIT
Totally… 🤦
Why did target and Hyundai need to know your dad died?
He had accounts with them, that’s part of the probate process. Letting them know.
I can’t exactly recommend the service which can be a bit annoying but clicksend allows you to send faxes and actually letters for pretty cheap. the letter thing is pretty nice when something demands a physical one. you upload a pdf and it gets printed and mailed out. fax works same way. fax is way cheaper obviously.
winfax.exe is looking at you and sneering…
we did all this, in a cave, with a 14.4 baud modem on windows 3.0
Why would someone need that instead of just printing it and mailing it themselves?
just faster. you have to have a printer and paper for it and envelopes and stamps. with the service you just upload the pdf and put in the address and hit send. I mean I think most could see how it can be useful. Bit cheaper to print and fold and seal and stamp and drop in the box but with as unoften as I need to send a physical letter I like it.
Then you need a printer, printer ink, an envelope, and stamps. If you really don’t send mail out that frequently, I can see the appeal of it. Could easily be cheaper. I also imagine it might have some utility to ADHD folks.
It just occurred to me: I doubt my 26 year old son has ever sent anything in the mail himself. If he wants to send a message, it’s email or text, and if he wants to send a gift, he’ll order it on Amazon and have it delivered. I’ll have to ask him if he’s ever actually mailed anything.
Can’t exactly trusr anyone with such sensitive documents that I’d have to print out and mail.
youd be surprised. most required mail stuff is straight up bullshit type stuff and not really that senstitive. its usually just hoops they through up to slow down and stymie anything your entitled to.
Fax may outlast landline telephony.
It already has. Vast majority of companies still handling fax are using VoIP fax modems with digital receivers that turn it into a PDF. I haven’t seen a functioning copper landline probably since 2015…
Did you know that it would have been possible for Abraham Lincoln to send a fax to a samurai?
I think the reason I didn’t know it is because it isn’t true.
Unless you’re a Lincoln truther who thinks he wasn’t killed in 1865 way before fax machines were available in the USA and Japan.
there was a period of around 12 years where it would have been possible, given that they had both been in scotland at the time. between 1853 and 1865 it would have to have been an ex-samurai.
I see the potential for a historical fiction masterpiece here
Erotic Lincoln-Samurai Fax Fiction
The first fax machine was invented in 1843.
But of course they had to wait for the second one to be invented…
They still have some uses (Invidious: mirror selection or Nadeko).
Also maddening and frustratingly!
Faxes are common in healthcare facilities and hospitals. I would imagine that they’re safer when it comes to sensitive data.
comes to sensitive data.
not really. there’s no encryption to faxing, and the software to fax from pc’s directly (enabling faked records for example) has been ubiquitous since the 90s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFax
THANK YOU.
You know another fun thing that can happen? A doctor moves practices and changes fax numbers, and the old number gets assigned to a new, completely unrelated non-medical group. But no one told the medical entity that sends faxes, and no one updated the relevant records. All of a sudden several months worth of PHI has been getting sent to a women’s clothing store.
Fax in the medical field needs to die. Between the possibility of this happening, higher probability of transmission failure, paper (where offices are still using physical faxes) getting misplaced before getting filed in charts, etc., it’s just a plain bad way to send medical information in 2026.
Edit: OH, and don’t get me started on fancy, marketing-designed lab reports that use colored indicators to communicate treatment-critical information that no one checked for legibility in black and white, yet still get sent by fax. Like, fucking WHAT??
on’t get me started on fancy, marketing-designed lab reports that use colored indicators to communicate treatment-critical information that no one checked for legibility in black and white, yet still get sent by fax. Like, fucking WHAT??
holy fuck
They are analog modems on a telephone line. There is no encryption at all, because they still need to be compatible with fax machines from the 1970s.
There was also an exploit where someone sent a manipulated image via fax, which would exploit an old bug in a jpg library that is used in the software stack, so you can run your own code.
Not really safer, they just work with the existing infrastructure. Personally, I think there’s still a place for fax, it’s essentially a convenient way to scan and transmit, and these days you can get them to your email or phone (not in healthcare because that’s not HIPAA compliant). Sure, not anybody’s first choice, but I think it’s still valid.
It’s only convenient if you have access to a fax machine, which the majority of us don’t
My comment was in context of existing business infrastructure. You’re right that most of us don’t have a fax machine, but many organizations still do and therefore it can be very convenient for B2B communication. And in the case of orgs that want faxes but you don’t have one, ifax is a thing as well.
I’m not making an argument for faxes, I’m just saying for an outdated technology it’s stayed quite useful in the modern era.
With a mail-enabled printer, you can send your scan directly to an email address.
I fail to see what you’d need a fax for.
Needed it just yesterday.
Rudy Giuliani
The baths on the Titanic still hold water today
There are more hydrogen atoms in a single water molecule than there are stars in the entire solar system!
That’s good I’ll admit it took awhile.
Did you mean water drop? Because I thought it was precisely two hydrogen and one oxygen atoms that make up a single water molecule…
Take another minute to think about just how many stars are in the solar system…
Whoosh…
Incredible
There’s an even more fucked up joke in there somewhere about the shared bathwater still belonging to the same people
Cashiers not being able to sit down
For real?!? Which inhumane country are you talking about?
America lol
Fascism.
Hey, it’s neo now.
Nothing new under the sun.
less surprised, more disappointed.
Vinyl records. Its a very… space inefficient way to store your music, but they are pretty to look at.
And the dust on the needle sounds pleasing
Also incredibly heavy
David Attenborough, and I hope he’s around for as long as he wants to be.
It’s his hundredth birthday in 2 days!
Can some one ask him how feels without lego?
Patriarchy
Ohhhhh yes
homeopathy. you’d think germ theory would have killed it, but no.
To be fair my old high school acquaintances swear their oils made from magic plants literally healed their child’s cancer and my kid is only autistic because we took her to a doctor one time years ago.
I once told a homeopathy person that my sister had a normal kid, then took the kid to a homeopath and now the kid is badly disabled.
If they can make up shit, we can too.
It’s honestly troubling. I’ve seen homeopathic ‘treatments’ sold right next to real medicine in mainstream stores, with similar packaging, similar pricing, and only tiny fine print on the bottle saying that it’s homeopathic. And you have to know what ‘homeopathic’ means in order for that to have any impact; many don’t. It would be very easy to accidentally buy the homeopathic ‘treatment’ instead of one that actually works. I’ve almost made that mistake before myself, before I read the package more closely.
(For anybody who doesn’t already know ‘homeopathic’ does NOT mean ‘herbal’ or ‘natural’ or anything like that. It’s not alternative medicine – it’s not medicine at all. Homeopathy is old, very debunked, and very bullshit psuedo-science that a traveling conman made up after supposedly having it supernaturally revealed to him in a drunken dream. The idea is that for any ailment, you take what causes that ailment, massively dilute it in water (or another substance) so much that there likely isn’t a single molecule of it left, and then the water will ‘remember’. Homeopathic medication is literally nothing. It’s plain water (or, in stores, often plain sugar pills). It contains no active ingredients of any kind, and it’s – at best – a placebo. It’s always a waste of money and may be dangerous if you fall for it and take it instead of actual, effective medicine.)
Homeopathy is old, but like, not even that old. It was invented in 1796. It’s younger than the united states, and was invented while France was doing their first revolution. They like to frame it as ancient wisdom rather than some German in the late 18th century took one idea off Paracelsus way too far, then retooled it until it stopped actively doing harm (because it did nothing) and came up with some bs to explain why it “works”
Horseshoe crab. These things existed before DINOS! AND ARE STILL AROUND!
Although they’re struggling at the moment, due to their blood being harvested for use in biomedical research.[1]. Although fortunately, there have been synthetic alternatives developed in the last few years, so hopefully their numbers should recover as that is phased in.
Edit: if this makes you feel overly sad, here is a palate cleanser(30 minute long, ideally listened to in one uninterrupted block). It’s one of my favourite things I stumbled across last year, and it makes me feel hopeful about the world. It made me cry, but in a good way.
[1]: Linked article has more info, but the TL;DR is that their blood clots in the presence of bacterial toxins, so it’s super useful in stuff like vaccine development and production. They capture the crabs, harvest the blood and return the crabs alive, and the stats that the system has on this says that only a small percentage of them end up dying as a result of this. However, given that we can’t see how many of them die or fail to reproduce in the weeks and months following their release, we can’t confirm that.
We do know that the numbers of a bird that feasts almost exclusively on horseshoe crab eggs have seen severe reductions over the last 40 or so years, so it seems likely that the impact of this harvesting on horseshoe crab populations is more severe than the official data suggests.
It’s unfortunate because they fall between the cracks when it comes to animal research ethics. For one, the research isn’t being done on them, so they probably wouldn’t be protected under most existing legislation anyway. But also, animal research legislation doesn’t tend to give much protection to invertebrates (with the exception of octopuses, which are smart enough that they get additional protections).
I think it’s a pretty interesting case study of a big gap in the legislation that protects the rights of animals — existing legislation focuses a lot on our duty to individual animals, but here, despite the harm to any one horseshoe crab seeming to be tolerably low, the vast scale at which we have been harvesting them has had an impact on the species as a whole.
My view is that an anthropocentric framework that puts humans above all other animals is probably harmful in general and something we should work to undermine, but that if we are taking that tack (which seems necessary for the utilitarian view of “harvesting these crabs’ blood has saved many human lives” that most people seem to take on this topic), then we must also accept that we have an ethical duty to be good stewards of the natural world. We can’t have it both ways and think of ourselves as so rational and smart, but not accept the responsibility that would come with that.
I find the legislative angle of it especially interesting, because most people I have told this to are shocked to learn of how they’re not protected, and they share at least some of my view that effective animal research ethics legislation should surely account for our duty to ecosystems as a whole. People far more learned than I in legal matters have struggled to think of ways we could effectively legislate this though. It’s possible that additional legislation isn’t the best way to handle this, and that we would be better served to aim to regulate in opposition to the economically extractivist ideology that seems to be the default setting nowadays (because horseshoe crabs are just an illustrative case study of the problem).
I apologise for info dumping in reply to your joyful comment with such downer info. I do feel hopeful about the progress of synthetic alternatives though. I also find it a fascinating topic to learn about, even if it is a bit depressing
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Dude, I live with alligators, actual living dinosaurs. There’s an 8 footer in the pond directly across the street from us. His name is Rocky. He’s always basking on the bank on a sunny day.
Sorry to disappoint but alligators are not closely related to dinosaurs even though they have existed for a long time. Birds on the other hand are dinosaurs.
He looks pretty dinosaury to me.
Because that’s what defines something… A banana can look phallic but that doesn’t make it an “actual living penis”.
How the fuck does someone in 2026 not know that alligators and crocodiles, reptiles, aren’t dinosaurs?
We also look very monkey. We have a comon ancestor with monkeys but arent monkeys ourself. The same thing goes for crocodiles and aligators
The chicken I ate last night is more closely related to dinosaurs then the alligator.
I love them! Little cute babies with their scuttling legs and long spike!!
Litteral little living roombas.
Hmmm if they would get along with cats?
Paper visas. You have my passport number, is it not enough to check if I have valid visa?
Also I’m in the UK, visited the next town over last week and walked past a pub and thought, that looks like a pretty old building… turns out the pub was built and has been running as a pub since the 1500s
