Interesting
This is a suitable answer to anything, if someone tells you something you
don't understand or something you think is [1]shit and you don't know what
to say, simply reply "interesting".
What following a "constantly [2]work in progress" list of subjectively
selected facts and topics that may be judged interesting, preferably while
also being lesser known:
* Zanclean flood: extremely huge flood that refilled the Mediterranean
sea some 5 million years ago, which must have been a greatly
spectacular event. Other similar mega floods are also discussed, e.g.
that of the Black sea. Some of them are (often controversially)
thought to be the origin of the shared great flood myth that's present
in almost all old religions and cultures. A bit related interesting
topic is the 20th century Atlantropa mega project that planned to
partially dry the Mediterranean to gain more space for Europe.
* [3]Ball lightning: a real weird phenomenon whose existence is not
controversial (it is acknowledged to exist) but which still remains
without exact scientific explanation. You can find some video of it,
descriptions of eye witnesses are also quite fun to read.
* Extinct animals: obviously everyone loves dinosaurs (BTW look up well
preserved fossils of dinosaurs, some are in excellent state, we also
now know for fact the skin color of some dinosaurs), but there are
many underrated extincts animals, e.g. gigantopithecus, the biggest
ape known to have ever existed (estimated weight up to 300 kg), which
we however know almost nothing about (only teeth were found). More
recently extinct species such as mammoth, dodo, moa bird (extremely
big bird), saber-toothed cats, giant sloth, short-faced bear (probably
the biggest bear ever) or Tasmanian tiger (which there still exists a
black and white video footage of) are interesting exactly because they
are closer on the timeline, people may have seen them and even
depicted them somehow (e.g. cave paintings), we have may find much
better preserved bodies of them and also have a bigger chance of
cloning them one day or even discover them still living somewhere (has
happened to several species already).
* [4]UFOs and aliens: ufology is pretty fun when when you dig through
the real retarded cases and ignore soyence fanatics that will stop
being friends with you. Remember, you may enjoy digging into weird,
suspicious cases without starting to wear tinfoil or seeing little
green men behind anything; even if a UFO turns out to be a new, secret
military tech or newly discovered atmospheric phenomenon and not
aliens, it's still pretty damn interesting. Some cases are pretty
solid, e.g. Hangzhou Xiaoshan (China) 2010 sighting of extremely weird
tear in the sky which was scanning the whole city with some kind of
obviously artificial light screen for a very long time, which was seen
by thousands and captured on camera and video by many (e.g.
https://yt.artemislena.eu/watch?v=__9s5chdV7c) and even caused an
airport to shut down -- the real nature of the thing was never
explained and wasn't even much talked about (there also seems to be
another simple-to-debunk cover up UFO sighting under the same
keywords). The Travis Walton abduction case is also quite interesting,
supported by a lot of evidence and has stood for a very long time.
There are also many pretty good footages of weird UFOs, especially
interesting are those captured by multiple people from different
angles, which are extremely hard to fake.
* Known but unexcavated archaeological sites: e.g. the Qin tomb, a
pyramid in China that's a resting place of a great emperor is buried
underground -- historical records say the pyramid contains an
unbelievable wealth, a great palace and models of cities, seas,
waterways of quicksilver and traps protecting against intruders; this
is believable as it is also the place where the astonishing terracota
army was already excavated. However it is quite likely the pyramid
won't be opened during our lifetime, we probably won't ever see it
with our eyes. Also the well known pyramids and sphinx of Giza are
still very mysterious -- e.g. there are holes in the great Sphinx you
can clearly but about which no one ever talks -- you can see they lead
somewhere inside but you never see the actual inside, they let no one
in and photos are nowhere to be found. Historical places of yet
unknown locations, like the hanging gardens of Babylon, are also
pretty interesting.
* Oldest existing [5]photographs, video and audio recordings, and also
old paintings, e.g. cave paintings capturing extinct animals.
* 1816, so called year without summer, probably caused by great volcano
eruption whose effects might have given a glimpse to what it looked
like after the impact of the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs --
however this time many people wrote first hand witness accounts (you
can find many in old books and reports, many times just scanned on
Internet archive).
* Back before [6]reddit became such huge shit interesting stuff could be
discovered e.g. at https://old.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/top/,
however nowadays it seems to be just a propaganda ground -- current
all-time top two posts are both literally uninteresting political
posts about Ukrainian war? :D Use internet archive to try to dig up
the good stuff from the past maybe.
* People with [7]perfect pitch (rare condition that makes one be able to
precisely identify any musical tone) always lose this ability some
time in their 50s.
* [8]North Korea due to its isolation and secrecy, e.g. its own
[9]intranet. Also other secret computer networks like [10]JWICS,
[11]SIPRNet, [12]NIPRNet etc.
* [13]Conspiracy theories: Many are true.
* Hybrids: No, we don't actually know if humans and apes can interbreed
or not, humanzees have been reported, as well as hybrids of humans and
other animals, there exist some real weird photos. Ligers and tigons
are also cool, but there are many other interesting possibilities. See
http://www.macroevolution.net.
* Third man factor: there is a phenomenon which makes people hear some
kind of comforting, guiding voice in long-lasting crisis situations,
described e.g. by people who got lost in mountains etc.
* Weird coincidences: for example the names of all continents start and
end with A (AsiA, AfricA, AmericA, AntracticA, AustraliA) except for
Europe which starts and ends with E. Sun and Moon have the same
apparent size in the sky. And so on.
* [14]Language and translations: translation errors are a rich rabbit
hole, revealing not only bloopers but weird differences and features
of languages themselves. { Start for example here
https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Lost_in_Translation. ~drummyfish }
* ...
Links:
1. shit.md
2. wip.md
3. ball_lightning.md
4. ufo.md
5. photo.md
6. reddit.md
7. perfect_pitch.md
8. north_korea.md
9. kwangmyong.md
10. jqics.md
11. siprnet.md
12. niprnet.md
13. conspiracy.md
14. human_language.md