Mine is that at my age (barely made it into Gen Z on the old end) I just found out today that a Bo Weevil is an insect (beetle) and not some kind of mole or similar rodent.

  • TheFlopster@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    It’s, uh, boll. Boll weevil. So you learned two things!

    While we’re on animals, every time I hear the word mongoose I picture some kind of platypus-like creature. Like, a half goose, half weasel or something. And that’s not what it is at all.

  • maxalmonte14@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    I thought everyone had an internal monologue, now I’m seeing that’s not the case, I’m still processing it.

    • Psythik@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      Speaking of brains, my girlfriend claims that when she imagines something in her head, she sees a detailed image in front of her, as real as real life. Meanwhile thoughts in my head are just concepts and words. I mean I can imagine what something looks like, but it’s an abstract of the basic concept of the thing, not a detailed image in my mind. It takes a strong psychedelic for me to be able to picture something in my head with detail, but according to her apparently I’m the weird one.

      • Waterdoc@lemmy.ca
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        7 days ago

        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia

        My partner has Aphantasia. Brains are strange! She cannot visualize in her mind which makes it very challenging to do certain tasks and many things she does are based on muscle memory. Also interestingly when a song gets stuck in her head it is like she is making all of the sounds with her inner voice. For me, I can hear the song like there is a recording playing in my head.

        • Psythik@lemmy.world
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          7 days ago

          I don’t think I have that because I recall music the same way. Usually it’s just the chorus or a verse playing on loop, though, and the actual song never sounds exactly how I remember it.

          • Waterdoc@lemmy.ca
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            7 days ago

            There are varying levels of Aphantasia, for my partner it is complete but for you if may only be partial. The wiki page I linked discussed it a bit.

        • bitchkat@lemmy.world
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          7 days ago

          Ever still hear the recording even when you are singing along? It sounds so good in my head but I’m a terrible singer. I would threaten my son with singing when he was misbehaving.

      • happydoors@lemm.ee
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        7 days ago

        You can’t picture anything in your mind’s eye? It’s not seeing for real but imagining you are looking at something. Like a memory. When you say abstract of the thing you just think of the words associated with it or along those lines?

        • Psythik@lemmy.world
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          7 days ago

          No I can picture things in my head, just not as a vivid image. Images in my mind are vague and detail-less. Like dreams. Mostly I remember the emotions associated with the memory, not what my surroundings looked like at the time.

          FWIW I have ADHD, so asking me to remember anything with any sort of detail is already a challenge enough as-is.

    • renegadespork@lemmy.jelliefrontier.net
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      7 days ago

      You mean like imagining a voice speak out your thoughts? Thoughts are so much faster than speech, I feel like having to speak out all your thoughts would slow things down significantly.

      The best tip I learned about reading faster is to stop narrating the words in your head, which puts a hard limit on your reading speed.

      • sntx@lemm.ee
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        7 days ago

        I like the reading tip! I think not many people are aware of it.

        My thoughts use meaning, instead a specific words.

        The whole interpreting my thoughts as natural language often takes longer than coming up with the tought itself.

        This results in:

        1. I often use the intersection of the languages I, and the people I speak with know.
        2. When it’s a topic I’m knowledgeable about, I often talk too fast and people find it hard to follow me.
        3. I draw many associations and comprehending the larger picture is easy. Yet I often miss the point in the smaller picture.
  • Akasazh@feddit.nl
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    8 days ago

    The way we use our brain. I thought that everybody’s brain was used similarly to hire I use mine. But I’m fact everybody did it differently.

    For instance, some people use more of their visual cortex to do maths, and assign colors to different numbers. For some maths takes place more in the language part, or timekeeping part.

    Richard Feynman did some experimenting with this: https://youtu.be/lr8sVailoLw ( from 2.08)

    But it makes sense, in school nobody tells you how to use your brain, they just give assignments and look at the outcome, also you don’t really control how your brain works, you can train it to do some things more efficient, but you can’t learn to do maths in your visual cortex.

  • otp@sh.itjust.works
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    8 days ago

    For almost my entire life, I’d been using the word “Apparently” to mean “Allegedly” or “I’d heard/read, but haven’t verified”.

    It actually means “Evidently” or “As can be plainly observed”. So pretty much the opposite connotation.

    I’ve been trying to get myself out of that habit, but even judging from my comment history, it’s apparently pretty hard.

    (I did it right that time!)

    I think the problem was that I’d thought it was being used ironically.

    • ylph@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      I am not sure you were as wrong as you think - see definitions 2 and 3 here

      Usage of words shifts and sometimes expands over time.

      More references here or here

      I would personally definitely interpret “apparently” and “plainly” differently - “apparently” to me is “the evidence so far does seem to point this way, but I am not necessarily convinced, or have strong feelings either way” vs “plainly” is “the evidence is clear, I am convinced, and so should you be” - although obviously context would matter as well and could alter this interpretation.

      Edit: even your example usage “I’ve been trying to get myself out of that habit, but even judging from my comment history, it’s apparently pretty hard” - to me the usage of “apparently” here indicates similar tension and/or contradiction, in this case between belief/intent (I am trying to stop the habit) and evidence (but my comment history shows otherwise) - it wouldn’t work quite as well with “plainly”

      It would work with “evidently” but carry more of a connotation of confirmation and shift the emphasis (I am trying to, but it’s hard as confirmed by evidence) rather than contradiction (I would like to think I am doing it, but evidence shows otherwise) - of course you might have meant it either way (or even neither) - I am just saying how it reads to me.

      • otp@sh.itjust.works
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        7 days ago

        I can understand why it might bother some people, since it’s kind of like “literally”, where the “new” definition is the opposite of the “traditional” definition, and we already have perfectly good words to fill in for the new definition.

        I also dislike how “apparent” means “clear” or “obvious”, but I’d been using “apparentLY” to mean “allegedly”.

        But thank you for the affirmation that I was using it in “one” proper way!

    • IzzyScissor@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      I’ve always understood it as “This is apparent to people who are familiar with the issue, but since I am not, I have to take their word for it. If I looked into the issue, I’m reasonably certain I would come to the same conclusion.”

      Apparently that’s not how other people parse it, though.

    • siliconsulfide8@mander.xyz
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      7 days ago

      This reminds me of “concur”. For so long I have thought it meant “disagree”, but apparently it’s actually the opposite? It still feels like it should be the former

  • Rob Bos@lemmy.ca
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    7 days ago

    “Cake” in “let them eat cake” is “brioche”. I had thought that cake meant cheap chemically leavened bread-ish, but it actually was an out of touch elite being genuinely confused about bread shortages, not someone callously suggesting the peasants eat shittier food.

    Also it probably wasn’t Marie Antoinette.

  • BradleyUffner@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    Value-types in C# can apparently contain reference-type members. I had always thought that they could only contain other value-types. I’ve been using C# since before its official release. It still hurts my head trying to wrap my brain around it.

      • EtnaAtsume@lemmy.world
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        8 days ago

        That’s a direct translation; better English equivalents would be “give it a try” vs. “look forward to it”. They are pronounced similarly (tameshimi/tanoshimi) and either makes sense in context (usually heard at the end of an ad), so “Please look forward to/get excited about X” and “please give X a try” both would make sense.