• NounsAndWords@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Not quite recently, but after skating through high school and most of college I learned that if you read through your notes before a test you remember more things. I also learned that this is referred to as “studying”.

    • AbsurdityAccelerator@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      I am convinced that being “smart” in high school and college stunted my career. I didn’t do any work in high school, and had like 2 classes that I’d consider difficult in college. I never learned the value of hard work.

      • Nefara@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        I hear you. Finally ending up in a class that properly challenged me was like roller skating into wet cement.

      • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
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        10 months ago

        Same for me! Everyone told me I was smart, so I never studied in college. Turns out you can still be smart and also fail out of college. Luckily got my act together, but I hold some resentment for my teachers and parents for not teaching m that you can have a knack for things but without follow through it’s worthless

        • roertel@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          I had to check the username on this comment to ensure that it wasn’t me posting this. I’ve said these words verbatim.

    • thisisbutaname@discuss.tchncs.de
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      10 months ago

      Bonus points I discovered after a bachelor’s degree and most of a master’s:

      If you pay attention in class you’ll understand most of the material, and the rest you can ask the professors directly. Truly astounding.

    • paddirn@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      All through high school/college I just always wrote my notes once during class, then almost never referred to them again. For me, just the act of writing out the notes was usually good enough to help me retain the information, for the tests at least. I’ve forgotten most of it, but it was there when I needed it.

      • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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        10 months ago

        You aren’t the only one. I was taking an upgrade class at work and another student saw me taking notes. The instructor told her that a lot of his pupils do something similar.

        I’ve seen several articles that claim that taking notes with pen and paper helps people retain information better than taking notes on a keyboard.

        • paddirn@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          I just saw a paper on that. I think the basic idea is that the reason you remember better from handwritten notes versus typing is that each letterform has a unique shape that you have to write down. So your fingers/hands are following along by some sort of choreographed muscle memory when you’re writing stuff down, it’s like a sort of dance that our hands do, tracing out all these letter forms, there’s more uniqueness and complexity to it that somehow stays with us better. Compare that to typing where you’re literally just doing the same action over and over again, you’re just pushing buttons down. You might be able to focus more on what the professor is saying, but you’re more just passively taking it in and your mind isn’t as engaged in your note-taking.

      • Dark ArcA
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        10 months ago

        I think it’s a focus thing… If you take notes you give yourself a task and force yourself to pay attention rather than zoning out and telling yourself you’re still listening.

      • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
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        10 months ago

        Writing things down does really help with remembering them. A good chunk of my biology class in high-school was spent copying notes in silence then the teacher reading them out loud. It was pretty effective to have to read, write, and hear the same thing.

      • NounsAndWords@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Cramming is a form of studying, and is still significantly better than my original strategy of “I remember what they said in class”.

        • ani@endlesstalk.org
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          10 months ago

          I think part of the problem is that schools don’t actually teach how to learn, study strategies, etc.

  • blunderworld@lemmy.ca
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    10 months ago

    That you aren’t supposed to rinse immediately after brushing your teeth. It’s better to wait 15 minutes to let the fluoride strengthen your enamel.

    Been brushing the wrong way for 30 years, apparently.

      • guyrocket@kbin.social
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        10 months ago

        A dentist said it to me years ago.

        But I suspect that using a Sonicare makes a bigger difference for tooth health than not rinsing.

    • Lifecoach5000@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      So I tried this for a few months last year. Although I didn’t rinse 15 mins afterwards or anything - I just spit as much of the toothpaste out as I could.

      Couldn’t really tell a difference other than it was strange feeling to have all the toothpaste remnants in your mouth. Maybe my teeth were slightly whiter? I eventually went back to my old ways of rinsing. Maybe I’ll try it again though.

    • Evia@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      And if you throw up, don’t brush your teeth as you’re then just scrubbing stomach acid into them. Rinse and gargle with water then brush an hour later

    • chilicheeselies@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      This is also true if you use something like sensodine for sensitivity. If you let it sit on your teeth a bit it works better

    • Crashumbc@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Meh I doubt it makes much difference. Especially if you live somewhere that has fluoride in the water. Most of the US, don’t know about Europe.

    • Semperverus@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Common sense is a fundamentally broken concept.

      It’s not that “few people have common sense” (the fact that this phrase gets tossed around should be clue #1 for you), but that there cannot be such a thing as sense that is common. Every region, every community, every social circle, and every individual have vastly different personal experiences and ways of doing things in life. Some people may have similar experiences to eachother, but thats no guarantee.

      Typically you see the word “common sense” only used as an insult and a way to tear someone else down. You rarely if ever see it used as a complement or an objective fact. “That person has a lot of common sense” sounds wrong the first time you hear it right?

      • Leg@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        You’ve given me unwanted flashbacks to my previous relationship. I felt so stupid around her for this reason.

  • apex32@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    I spent 30+ years thinking that a pony was a baby horse rather than a smaller type of horse. You know how cats have kittens and dogs have puppies? Well I thought horses had ponies.

    Even all the times that Lisa Simpson wanted a pony, I just thought it was similar to how a kid might want a puppy.

    • Jojo@lemm.ee
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      10 months ago

      To be fair:

      The word pony derives from the old French poulenet, meaning foal, a young, immature horse.

      Quoth wikipedia.

    • Dark ArcA
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      10 months ago

      Well this is a TIL moment. You saved me at ~28 years.

  • Skelectus@suppo.fi
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    10 months ago

    I knew about this on some level before, but the recent posts have given me a better understanding on how in some countries people need expensive third party software to pay their taxes.

    • Neato@ttrpg.network
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      10 months ago

      Freetaxusa.com Isn’t expensive. It’s dumb it still costs money for state but the company that lobbies the government to make our tax code complicated costs a lot more.

      You can also do your taxes manually if you know you have a simple return. Or use the expensive software and check it against your manual.

      It all sucks though. It should be dead simple as the government already knows 99% of everyone’s tax info.

    • mommykink@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Yeah, fortunately I live in America where filing taxes is free and takes like five minutes out of the year

      • JoBo@feddit.uk
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        10 months ago

        But why do they make everyone file a tax return? In the UK it’s only necessary if you’re self-employed or very wealthy. Is it because they like auditing poor people so they have an excuse not to audit the rich?

        • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
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          10 months ago

          Politicians decided to use the tax system as an incentive system. The IRS knows roughly how much money you made, there’s a handful of ways you could make money they wouldn’t know about like gambling winnings below $600.

          What the IRS doesn’t know is if you installed new windows, had a child, donated to charity, paid state or local taxes, paid for daycare, went through adoption, paid tuition expenses, and more. All of those things can be used to reduce your tax burden, so you have to file taxes to tell the IRS how much you spent on these things.

          There’s also the standard deduction, which negates most of those deductions and works for about 80% of the country.

        • mommykink@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          DK,DC. The effort needed to file a tax return is negligible. It’s literally as easy as getting a piece of paper in the mail, going to a website, and copying like four numbers and then getting a few hundred dollars in the mail. The only scenarios where this takes more than 5 minutes is if you’re either self-employed or have a lot of wealth in assets you want to claim.

          • I_Fart_Glitter@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            Yeah, fuck everyone else who has multiple jobs, is partially or fully self employed, has taxable assets and isn’t allowed to use the free software.

            • mommykink@lemmy.world
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              10 months ago

              Anyone can file directly to the IRS, point blank, it just might take more than five minutes. I filed for four years when I was self-employed just fine. I filed for multiple jobs this year for free.

  • hushable@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    A pancake is a cake you make in a pan.

    It broke my mind when I learned that one

  • Lath@kbin.social
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    10 months ago

    People know less than they think they do, which is why everyone calling everyone else morons is probably correct.

    • spittingimage@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      ‘Moron’ was (and technically may still be) a clinical term meaning someone of intelligence so low they’re unable to function without supervision. Every time they invent a new non-emotionally-loaded term for low intelligence, we ruin it by using it as an insult.

      It’s a beautiful thing.

  • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    That when cooking anything with leftover grease you should always dispose of the excess grease in an empty container and trash it instead of putting it down a drain.

    Also that it’s best for your pipes to put your used toilet paper in a trash can instead of flushing it.

    • pearsaltchocolatebar@discuss.online
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      10 months ago

      That bit about the toilet paper isn’t true unless you have roots growing through your sewer line. A bit of copper sulfate down the drain will take care of that, though.

    • SanguinePar@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      always dispose of the excess grease in an empty container and trash it instead of putting it down a drain.

      This will likely vary greatly by country, but here in the UK some supermarkets have a section in their recycling centre where used grease and cooking oil can be deposited to be recycled into fuel of some sort.

    • Dark ArcA
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      10 months ago

      There’s nothing wrong with putting toilet paper down your pipes… Please do, having used toilet paper in a bin is nasty and possibly harmful to garbage company employees.

      “Flushable wipes” you probably just shouldn’t use, but if you do use them those are not truly flushable and those unfortunately you do need to put in a bin. They can cause problems for your plumbing, particularly in an older house.

    • Waterdoc@lemmy.ca
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      10 months ago

      Most toilet papers are fine, although some systems struggle with Costco’s stuff. Toilet paper is designed to break apart in water. That said, you shouldn’t flush any other products. Paper towels don’t break down the same way, and wipes will almost certainly cause damage, even if they are marketed as flushable!!

  • leaky_shower_thought@feddit.nl
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    10 months ago

    most are in the past year kind of recent:

    … that there’s a group of people who pronounce “gif” with a “soft g” sound like “jif”

    … that Taylor Swift is that popular, she is seen as a political threat for her influence

    … also armor bags for kids and shooter drills like it is some kind of natural disaster

    • I_Fart_Glitter@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      It fucking broke me when I learned that kids today instead of learning “Stop, Drop and Roll” learn “Run, Hide, Fight.” Fucking kindergartners are being taught, if you see a shooter, Run. If you can’t get away, Hide. If you can’t hide, try to be a hero because you are going to die anyway.

    • conciselyverbose@kbin.social
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      10 months ago

      lol Taylor Swift dating a player and just attending the Super Bowl (not doing anything) might genuinely bring in multiple million extra viewers.

    • Tier 1 Build-A-Bear 🧸@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      To be fair, the guy that invented gifs said it’s pronounced that way. Then again, he’s an inventor and most likely never learned how to read and also he’s wrong.

      • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
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        10 months ago

        It’s mostly just a function of alcohol by volume. It takes a certain amount of alcohol to get you drunk, but you can drink it a lot faster as 80 proof (40%) whiskey than you can 5% beer.

      • Call me Lenny/Leni@lemm.ee
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        10 months ago

        I always thought drunkenness was drunkenness as opposed to it being a spectrum. I had my first drink when I was 21 and hated the experience of being drunk, so I didn’t seek it out after that, but recently I had a situation where the outcome of getting drunk crept on me, except it felt only vaguely similar to what I remember. I actually spent a while debating with myself over if I was drunk or not until I had someone explain.

      • cley_faye@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        They are now, sort of. People are so willing to consider the environmental impact, we actually have a “you consumed X GB this months, this is this amount of CO2eq”. Which is sad when you have even the slightest clue on how network operates.

  • swope@kbin.social
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    10 months ago

    Maybe this more of a misheard lyrics thing, but for a long time I thought “noxious gas” had to do with nitrogen oxides (NOx), and then spread to other metaphorical applications like “noxious weeds” and so on.