Trivia

• The toxicology hypothesis — Vomiting while motion sick can be traced back to the same sensors for motion sickness being associated with detecting if we are poisoned (since this also causes nausea). Hence, the response is to throw up the poisoned food.

  • Rotten potatoes can produce a lethal gas called Solanine

• Penguin, Depressed. When sad, penguins will just wander on their own willingly — as if starving themselves.

• Chinese Ghost Marriages are marriages in which one or both parties are deceased.

  • People have exploited this practice for profit due to cultural beliefs about having children that are married.
  • Said exploiters perform grave robbery or murder women to then sell — “Fresh Ones” are those recently deceased or about to die; “Wet bodies” are those who have died within a few weeks and “Dried Meat” who have died longer.

• Crowd Crushes are a thing — the crowd becomes so dense that it behaves like a fluid (with deadly consequences).

• Caskets can fail and when they do they leak blood and embalming fluid

• The Dragon Paradox - If Dragon’s aren’t real, then why do many cultures from around the world allude to dragons.

• S Risks — Fate’s Worse than extinction - S risks pertain to events that have astronomically high scope and high severity. They typically share common elements

  • (1) they involve many more beings than currently exist;
  • (2) are brought about by significant technological advancements;
  • (3) involve suffering due to a part of a larger process; and
  • (4) are preventable with foresight

• Functional Fixedness can be overcome as follows:

  • Uncommitting - abstract the problem down to its essential components.
  • Draw inspiration from other places.
  • Draw opinions from other fields

• Our right and left hemispheres of the brain experience consciousness differently. Splitting them apart leads to some weird behaviors. Dissecting the brain reveals that the most predominant aspect of it is involved in justifying and rationalizing our decisions and experiences, even if it is done so incorrectly or irrationally.

• Tautomers are structural isomers of chemical compounds that readily interconvert. That is, through a process called tautomerization, one can convert one into the other and vice versa.

• In Japan, bowing is a sign of respect. The deeper / longer the bow, the more formal and respectful.

• Japanese people avoid physical contact.

• Meishi - business cards exchanged when meeting someone in a business situation for the first time.

• Japanese give their names family name first and given name last. They do not have middle names.

• Poludnitsa - A mythical figure in Slavic mythology associated with heat stroke.

• The Ghost of Kyiv - a flying ace who shot down six Russian planes during the Kyiv offensive

Bottom §

Unstructured exploration goes here