TIL thread

[DonaldCengXiongAzuma]

Jun 3, 2020 19:21:29 GMT 5 creature386 said:

Being more specific would be a good idea for your posts on this forum in general.

And how did you think quality art was done before? Did you think that good comics get sketched in a single afternoon?

I always knew it would take some time as good arts take time but I didn’t know it could take longer than a day until someone showed me the process it took.

[Infinity Blade]

If it didn't take any longer than a day to create high quality graphic novel style art, I'd take a drawing class and submit my own drawings on DeviantArt like hell.

[creature386]

Jun 4, 2020 12:08:47 GMT 5 DonaldCengXiongAzuma said:

Jun 3, 2020 19:21:29 GMT 5 creature386 said:

Being more specific would be a good idea for your posts on this forum in general.

And how did you think quality art was done before? Did you think that good comics get sketched in a single afternoon?

I always knew it would take some time as good arts take time but I didn’t know it could take longer than a day until someone showed me the process it took.

Well, we always learn new stuff, don't we? Most art in general takes far longer than what many people think.

Prose works are probably even more underestimated in terms of effort required, as anyone can type stuff. Despite this, most novelists take at least a year to finish a product (comics are drawn on a monthly basis), even though they typically write several thousand words daily. The rough text normally takes a month or two, the rest is all revisions.

[theropod]

Jun 4, 2020 17:07:11 GMT 5 creature386 said:

Jun 4, 2020 12:08:47 GMT 5 DonaldCengXiongAzuma said:

I always knew it would take some time as good arts take time but I didn’t know it could take longer than a day until someone showed me the process it took.

Well, we always learn new stuff, don't we? Most art in general takes far longer than what many people think.

Prose works are probably even more underestimated in terms of effort required, as anyone can type stuff. Despite this, most novelists take at least a year to finish a product (comics are drawn on a monthly basis), even though they typically write several thousand words daily. The rough text normally takes a month or two, the rest is all revisions.

The same btw also applies to scientific publications.
This isn’t really "TIL" but it is certainly something I’ve learned in the last two years, how time consuming the process of getting a paper to publishable state really is, especially when you work with several coauthors and get corrections from each of them.

[creature386]

Certainly. I still remember the day I edited a Wikipedia article for some dinosaur and mixed up its discovery and description date. Then, someone undid the edit with the justification being, "Described in the year it was discovered? Impossible!"

Yeah, good stuff takes time.

[Supercommunist]

TIL, of Chiaraje, a festival where men, women and children will sling stones at each other. Unsurprisingly, people die during these events.

[Infinity Blade]

TIL what is considered the most likely hypothesis for the function of Diplocaulus' "horns". Up until now it wasn't really clear to me what paleontologists now consider most likely.

But it was the head of Diplocaulus that was truly bizarre. It was shaped like a boomerang, with a flattened skull from each side of which extended a large flattened “horn” and eye sockets that pointed straight up. The function of these odd “horns” is still controversial. Some have argued that they were used as a hydrofoil, allowing Diplocaulus to swim smoothly in an up-and-down motion with the boomerang head shape providing lift. But its body was relatively weakly built and did not have the robust bones needed to support strong swimming muscles. Others have suggested that the head shape would have made it difficult for a predator to eat Diplocaulus head first, since the “horns” would have made the head too wide to swallow, even for the largest Early Permian predators. The upward-pointing eyes suggest that Diplocaulus was more of an ambush predator that lay in the bottom of streams and ponds, and then lunged forward and upward to catch its prey with its strong jaws, possibly stunning it with a blow from its “horns.” The most likely hypothesis, however, is that the “horns” were analogous to the horns and antlers of antelope and deer. Males use their horns and antlers primarily as a display structure to advertise their strength and dominance while trying to find mates. That the growth of these “horns” can be traced through their younger stages and that there seem to have been both robust males and smaller-horned females appear to make this hypothesis most likely.

www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/prot17190

^See chapter 11. You can easily view it if you click the "Download PDF" option.

[Infinity Blade]

TIL what a honey possum's skull looks like.


Image source->

The lower jaw sticks out the most. It's basically a thin rod of bone. The teeth are translucent too, and extremely reduced (barring the diprotodont teeth at the front of the lower jaw).

[DonaldCengXiongAzuma]

Today I learn that even female gorillas can be aggressive (read paragraph 2):



Credited to Kodiak.

[creature386]

Better re-size this for the sake of storage space.
And that's not how crediting works at all, unless kodiak wrote that book himself.

Anyway, TIL that humans are intellectually apparently not all that different from apes. There is only one significant difference, but boy is it it significant:

I can't find the original paper (I only know that it was authored by a certain Michael Tomasello and colleagues), but the figure was cited in The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter (2017) by Joseph Henrich.

[Infinity Blade]

Better re-size this for the sake of storage space.

Done.

To avoid this post simply becoming a one-worder, TIL a bit more about the man-eater of Mfuwe.

1.) This was quite a big lion, at 3.2 meters in total length, 1.2 meters tall at the shoulder, and 249 kg. This would make it bigger than the first Tsavo man-eater (FMNH 23970), if Lieutentant-Colonel John Henry Patterson's description of its size is accurate (allegedly 2.95 meters long).
2.) Its last attack involved it entering the hut of its last victim during daylight, taking a bag of her laundry, carrying it around the countryside, and leaving it at different locations, sometimes playing with it, for some reason.
3.) After it was killed, people swarmed out of the village to spit on it and beat it with sticks.

Source: blogs.scientificamerican.com/tetrapod-zoology/man-eater-of-mfuwe/


This is it now (now called FMNH 163109), housed in the Field Museum of Natural History where the Tsavo man-eaters are also displayed (image source->).

[kekistani]

Jun 12, 2020 0:44:27 GMT 5 Infinity Blade said:

Better re-size this for the sake of storage space.

Done.

To avoid this post simply becoming a one-worder, TIL a bit more about the man-eater of Mfuwe.

1.) This was quite a big lion, at 3.2 meters in total length, 1.2 meters tall at the shoulder, and 249 kg. This would make it bigger than the first Tsavo man-eater (FMNH 23970), if Lieutentant-Colonel John Henry Patterson's description of its size is accurate (allegedly 2.95 meters long).
2.) Its last attack involved it entering the hut of its last victim during daylight, taking a bag of her laundry, carrying it around the countryside, and leaving it at different locations, sometimes playing with it, for some reason.
3.) After it was killed, people swarmed out of the village to spit on it and beat it with sticks.

Source: blogs.scientificamerican.com/tetrapod-zoology/man-eater-of-mfuwe/


This is it now (now called FMNH 163109), housed in the Field Museum of Natural History where the Tsavo man-eaters are also displayed (image source->).

I have seen this in person. I can confirm it is gigantic.

[DonaldCengXiongAzuma]

Today I learn that sun bear mothers carry their young while walking on their hind legs.



From Domain of the Bears.

[Infinity Blade]

Once again, that is not how you cite, unless someone on Domain of the Bears actually took that photograph him/herself. I have reverse image searched it, and it's already been reposted several times on Pinterest and on other websites. I seriously doubt it can be credited to Domain of the Bears.

[Infinity Blade]

TIL that the Rabbit of Caerbannog from Monty Python and the Holy Grail was based on a façade of Notre Dame (image down below). It depicted a knight fleeing from a rabbit in cowardice.


Image source->