• lohky@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    That my dad cared about or respected me. After a family dinner, my wife asked me if he always talked about me like that and it just kind of clicked. Things like telling my kid, “If you play too many video games, they’ll melt your brain like your dad” or “why would anyone pay you that much” when I told them that I broke a six figure salary. She made me realize that this wasn’t normal and I didn’t have to sit there and listen to it just because of who he is.

    I haven’t spoken to him or really any of my side of the family in almost two years now. Good riddance.

  • LouNeko@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    For the longest time I was under the impression that everybody has unlimited potential, that you can essentially take a homeless junkie of the streets send them through college, give then a job and have a functioning intelligent person come out at the end. That is absolutely not true. based on my own experience we all have limits and glass ceilings. Yes, we all live on the same clock, but some of us have to deal with so much behind the scenes just to stay afloat while others can breeze through life like its nothing. There are people who are incredibly academically gifted but absolutely inept in personal or household stuff, some people are thick as a rock but incredibly charming, etc. We all have our strengths and weaknesses but sometimes of course all the marbles roll into the right holes and you get somebody who’s good at everything they touch and are almost doomed to success.

    There are just things that I will never able to grasp, or habits that I will never able to form because I tried my whole life and it never worked out. I consider myself as a fairly baseline dude, so its safe to say that if I have these experiences the majority of people will have them as well.

    • Akasazh@feddit.nl
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      9 months ago

      For me it was that other people think in the same manner, basically. But it turns out that brain usage is very different for people. So some people use more of their visual cortex for maths, making them see color in numbers.

      In this video Richard Feynman explains it better then I could.

      https://youtu.be/Cj4y0EUlU-Y

    • TriflingToad@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      So you’re telling me we can’t just steal a baby from one of those secluded amazon tribes and force them to learn the quadratic formula so I don’t have to? there go my weekend plans :(

  • hushable@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    As a non American who has never been to the US, but grew up well within its sphere of cultural influence.

    I thought that about half of the population was black, maybe 40% minimum. I was surprised to learn that it was just above 10% in reality.

    • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      They tend to be concentrated in a few areas. There was one place I lived where none of the dudes living there had ever even seen a white dude in person other than cops and social workers.

  • Legge@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    That if you weren’t part of “our” religion (my family’s religion, Catholic), you were basically living your life wrong and were an awful person. When I went to college I met people who believed different things, including in nothing, and I realized they were not, in fact, terrible, almost subhuman, people. I quickly changed for the better and that’s one of the best things to ever happen to me. It’s amazing how accepting you can be when you just accept people for who they are

    • DandomRude@lemmy.worldOP
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      9 months ago

      It could easily have been the same for me, as my father is a Protestant pastor. Fortunately, my family has always been very tolerant and open-minded. That’s how my parents brought me up, for which I’m still very grateful to them today. It’s good to hear that you’ve found your own path, which certainly wasn’t easy. Respect, my friend.

  • MrVilliam@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    I was certain that a gander was a group of geese. Why? Because apparently everybody who has ever used the phrase “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander” around me was using it wrong. I just learned this week that a gander is a male goose. So based on misuse, I thought that the phrase meant that what’s beneficial for one is beneficial for the greater group, but what it really means is that what’s acceptable in the case for one should be equally acceptable for others in the same situation.

    I’m nearly 36 and I would say that I’m smarter than most people, but this was a gaping hole in my knowledge that was pretty damn humbling to learn of and correct.

  • KingJalopy @lemm.ee
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    9 months ago

    Thinking the words, “just calm down” in the heat of an argument with my wife will actually work if I just try it enough times. Mathematically it should but it seems math doesn’t care about that.

    • hakunawazo@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Yes, I’m still learning that. Also giving emotional support instead of trying to fix everything instantly is difficult.

  • witty_username@feddit.nl
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    9 months ago

    Alanis Morisette is not the artist that did the “I’m a bitch I’m a lover” song. Meredith Brooks is the artist.
    I found out because I had the song stuck in my head and I looked it up on yt. The comments section showed me that I wasn’t the only one who thought the song was by Alanis Morisette
    Llllink

    • MIDItheKID@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Alanis Morissette did the song named “Ironic” in which she gave a bunch of examples of things that were not actually ironic, which in itself is ironic.

      • Jarix@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Fun fact. Dave Grohl and Taylor Hawkins met when Foo Fighters were on tour with Alanis Morrissette. Taylor was drumming for alanis at the time.

        I always think of “You Oughta Know” when i think of her.

        I still think/hear “cross eyed bear that you gave to me” instead of “Cross I bare”

  • bstix@feddit.dk
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    9 months ago

    Except for school I never went to any institution as a kid. No nursery, no kindergarten, no after school programs. Both my parents worked part time, so there was always an adult at home. For most my life I felt sorry for the kids who had parents working 9-5 and having to be in institutions and getting institutionalized.

    I was well into my 30s before my wife explained to me why I was wrong. She was studying for these kind of pedagogical jobs, and while following her education on the side line, it really turned on a light bulb in my head: I was wrong.

    While the home-raised method might have worked decently when I was a kid when more people did it, it would absolutely not work today. Most of my own issues throughout childhood and later basically also comes from not socializing enough as a kid. My own kids have been through the whole institution process because both my wife and I have had 9-5 jobs. Due to this, my kids are much better developed to tackle the world that they live in, and they have not lost any off the ability to think freely or anything that I previously believed was the negative effects of being raised in institutions. Of course there are some institutions that are better than others, but overall, their personel are a lot better educated to handle it than someone who has no education on this and only believes in “what was good enough for me…”

    Even today, I sometimes meet people who want to home school their kids and such. While that might be a good idea in certain cases, it’s almost always done for the wrong reasons and without regard to how difficult it actually is if you want the best for your kid.

    • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      I think this is compounded by the fact that many of the social institutions that used to exist are also greatly reduced, and children are expected to be much more structured now than they were. Used to be that kids could reasonably be expected to walk to a library or playground on their own, or play with neighborhood children, without being constantly supervised. (And yes, bullying happened, and yes, so did the Atlanta Child Murders. But the former was a much more realistic problem than the latter.) Kids were also going with parents to church, parents probably had some kind of social outlet, etc. There was, in general, more community. (I’m not bemoaning the loss of religion, since I think religion is trash, but I do miss the community that religion helped build.)

      And yeah, most people I know now that home school kids are doing it to ensure that their kids aren’t exposed to ‘dangerous’ ideas.

  • HootinNHollerin@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Rinsing after brushing teeth. The fluoride in the toothpaste should stay on your teeth for a while to be effective. So you should floss, then brush, and wait to rinse or not rinse

    • garbagebagel@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      I learned last year that you’re supposed to floss BEFORE you brush. I have no idea why no one ever taught me that.

      • phoneymouse@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Yeah you loosen up every thing and then brush it out. Actually, I floss, swish, then brush. I end with brush because the fluoride concentration in toothpaste is much much higher than in most fluoride mouthwash. I’d rather leave that on my teeth after I’m done.

    • phoneymouse@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      I floss, rinse, then brush. The fluoride content of toothpaste is much higher than rinse, so I’d rather end having that on my teeth than a weaker dose from the rinse.

    • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      That’s only true in England, because they don’t flourinate their water. In the US, you get plenty of flouride from tap water.

    • Bruhh@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Throw back to when I was young and naive and considered myself an “independent” who argued both sides. Then I found out who the real snowflakes were

    • hakunawazo@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      My dyslexic ass read librarian and for a whole minute I was confused why this should be connected to reading and sorting books professionally.

  • SolarMonkey@slrpnk.net
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    9 months ago

    As a kid I would hear “save big money” and would often show a person next to oversized money (like cartoon people next to giant dollars and coins).

    I was absolutely under the impression it meant large scale money and found it confusing anyone would want that. It would be so inconvenient!

    I’m not sure when I figured it out but it wasn’t an “a-ha!” moment, it just sort of gradually fell out of my brainmeat.

    • kibiz0r@midwest.social
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      9 months ago

      I thought Menard’s slogan was “save big bunny at Menard’s”.

      The first time I went to one was around Easter, so they had bunny-themed stuff around. And the store’s speakers were shit, so it was hard to understand the ad spots playing over them.

      I wasn’t sure why Big Bunny was in trouble, or what it would take to save him, but I wasn’t too worried.

      Eventually, I saw a commercial for it and figured out I had misheard it. I still like my version better though.

    • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
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      9 months ago

      As a very young kid, I called pizza cutters ‘Steves’ because of some commercials airing in the 90s for… pizza hut? little caesars? … which featured a pizza cutter named Steve.

      Yep, here’s an example:

      https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hSnISEnX2Xw&pp=ygUdcGl6emEgY3V0dGVyIHN0ZXZlIGNvbW1lcmNpYWw%3D

      I had literally never seen a pizza cutter in real life, never heard it called a pizza cutter, and when my family got one, I assumed it was just called ‘a steve’, rofl.

  • 2ugly2live@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Cocoa has an “a” at the end of it. I was in college and was like, “haha, they spelled it weird.” Nope, just a dumbass.

    A BLT is literally just bacon, lettuce, and tomato. I thought it was just the toppings on the base meat (like how a pepperoni pizza inculdes bread, sauce, etc.). I don’t like bacon or raw tomato, so I never had one.

    There is no bone in the penis. I swore there was one until I made it to 3D molding and, as we were going over different body parts and their movement, I asked my male friend “Hey, where’s the penis bone/muscle.” He looked at me like I had two heads. I assumed it could do tricks, like waving and stuff. 🤷🏿‍♀️

    • hakunawazo@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Using my thumbnail on the long thin end and no over-ripe bananas I never had problems with peeling.

  • sodalite@slrpnk.net
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    9 months ago

    only ever read the word cyan and eventually learned I’d been pronouncing it wrong my whole life when i said it out loud in conversation