What do you know today that you didn't know yesterday?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Alice in Wonderland Syndrome is a rare neurological disorder that alters perceptions, including making objects appear larger or smaller than they actually are.

Boru

So, what men tell women is Alice in Wonderland Syndrome?

The phrase ‘Eat Me’ fairly leaps to mind.

Boru

[Rev. Rye]

Something I should have learned DECADES ago: the reason pencil lead keeps snapping even after you’ve just sharpened it is because the sharpeners are poorly designed.





I’ve had enough issues that the second I found out I was allowed to use a mechanical pencil, I never looked back.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

^I've found that an electric sharpener eliminates the breaking issue.

Boru

[Rev. Rye]

^I've found that an electric sharpener eliminates the breaking issue.

Boru

Mine didn’t.

[Angrboda]

Newer hard drives of 6 TB or more do not have the middle screw holes that older hard drives had. I just populated a server with seven 8 TB drives but didn't run into the issue because those specific drives didn't need the middle screw hole removed in their design, so they had the traditional three holes per side. I dodged a bullet there as I spent $600 on those drives and they wouldn't have worked properly in my NAS case if they had the newer hole arrangement.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Ray Bradbury’s first sale as an author was made at age 14. He sold a joke to George Burns which was used on the Burns and Allen show. History does not record what the joke actually was.

Boru

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

France has mandated that large and medium-sized car parks cover at least 50% of their area with solar panels. The government is offering substantial incentives to offset the cost of installation. There are exemptions for environmentally or culturally sensitive areas, which may opt for green canopies (such as ivy or shade trees) instead of solar panels.

This scheme is estimated to add up to 11 gigawatts of solar power to the country’s electricity grid.

Boru

[Rev. Rye]

Robbie Williams has been diagnosed with autism.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Robbie Williams has been diagnosed with autism.

Boasting about having a neurodevelopmental disorder seems like kind of a weird flex.

Boru

[Rev. Rye]

Autism is needlessly stigmatised (to the point where, while looking this up, one of the articles I read described his disclosure as "spine-chilling*") and being open about it helps to dispel myths about it. And if more people who are well-known come out about living with it, we promote understanding. Sort of like what happened with LGBT folks.

In fact, I'd argue that it might actually be more important for one specific reason: anti-vaxxers**. The current backlash against vaccines has its roots in Andrew Wakefield's infamous retracted study claiming that the MMR vaccine causes autism, and specifically two premises:

1) that autism is caused by vaccines. (This has, of course, been studied and rejected countless times by every study that's tried to test that theory.)
2) that autism is bad enough that the many illnesses that had been rendered moot by vaccines are somehow preferable to it.

This created a snowball effect that led to many of said diseases coming back into society, a stupefying number of people deciding the COVID vaccine was political, and RFK Jr as HHS Secretary, and Trump signing an executive order recommending that children get fewer vaccines, further apart. And Trump actually cited the perceived rise in rates of autism as a justification for this. And the reason they're perceived to be higher? It's not because autism is really all that new. It's because we didn't understand it until fairly recently. And I'd argue that the second premise is still lodged in too many neurotypical skulls. Less now than 28 years ago, but clearly still there. And too many are in positions of power.

Robbie is one of many famous people who've come out as autistic in recent years (other examples include Anthony Hopkins, Dan Aykroyd, David Byrne, James Horner, both members of Depeche Mode, and a host of others). And if he had done so a lot earlier (or even been diagnosed earlier), and been more open about it back when Wakefield was starting his anti-MMR grift, we'd probably have far fewer deaths from vaccine-preventable illnesses in the developed world.

* For the record, I'm autistic. I was diagnosed as a child. It's probably the least spine-chilling of my mental problems.
** I suppose that some could argue that LGBT people have their own example with AIDS and HIV. I suppose that would be a good point. Still doesn't invalidate the rest of my argument.