Ex Astris Scientia

artcoloredpanda

kaijuno

misguided-matchmaker

@aroacedavestrider my dude i cannot in good faith accept these useless geography facts on account of them being iconic, actually

ruffboijuliaburnsides

oh my god nothing in my imagination could've prepared me for market island.

or for this review on google maps:

aroacedavestrider

im glad to know my horrible facts are making their rounds and im here with more horrible facts

- the most secluded inhabited island in the world is a place called tristan da cunha. its in the middle of the atlantic ocean at a whopping fucking 1500 miles away from the closest inhabited location (south africa). people just fucking live out there??

- the oldest lake in the world is (probably) lake zaysan in kazahstan. nobodys entirely certain yet but theres evidence that suggests that this is a 65 million year old body of water, meaning theres a lake that exists and can be looked at today that could have had dinosaurs drinking out of it at one point

-the lake immediately following that is confirmed to be at least 25 million years old and thats lake baikal in siberia russia. the bitch is on a continental fault that expands about 2cm per year and as of right now this lake is over a mile deep. the bottom however is FULL of sediment and the actual rift floor is NINE MILES DOWN. this monstrosity of a lake contains literally 20% of the earths nonfrozen fresh water, it has its own unique species of seal, and eventually in millions of years this thing is gonna be an ocean. lake baikal is a baby fucking ocean. its gonna split russias ass in two. i am 100% certain it is sentient

- there is not a single river in saudi arabia and that blows my mind for some reason

- theres whats now considered a lost “eighth continent” thats submerged in the south pacific ocean. the islands of new zealand are the highest peaks of the chunk of continental crust that we now call zealandia. its about half the size of australia and its also connected to other little archipelagos like new caledonia. we found it. old zealand

- the entrance to this fucking ancient bay lake in venezuela (lake maracaibo, over 20 million years old) is the most likely place to get struck by lightning in the world. it gets around 1.2 million lightning strikes per year

- LAKE HILLIER AUSTRALIA FUCKIGN PINK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

- and finally. more enclave border bullshit. i told yall about baarle hertog. now look at india and pakistan. i present to you the one and only third order enclave

this . this was a piece of india, surrounded by a piece of bangladesh, surrounded.. by a piece of india..... surrounded by bangladesh . it has since been ceded over to bangladesh but the fact that we allowed this to exist is incredible

anyway do with all that what you will. raise your hand if you can tell this is a fixation of mine

Random story of the day:

Mapmakers often put secrets in their maps as copyright traps, to make sure no one copies their maps. For example, some map makers put fake streets in maps, sometimes fake features. If they see a map that has that street, they know it was copied from them.

Similarly, in 2005, the New Oxford American Dictionary published a new word: Esquivalience, meaning “Willful avoidance of one’s official responsibilities”. It was a made up word, a copyright trap to make sure no other dictionaries copied them. If anyone copied their dictionary, the stealer wouldn’t be able to come up with a source except for the New Oxford. (Dictionary.com fell for this trap)

Another example of a copyright trap was when the author of The Trivia Encyclopedia put a false fact in his book, because he was certain that the makers of the game Trivial Pursuit were taking his facts for the game. (The false fact was that “TV detective Columbo’s first name was Phillip” when the show never specified his name. Sure enough, the ‘fact’ showed up in Trivial Pursuit.

misguided-matchmaker

kaijuno

misguided-matchmaker

@aroacedavestrider my dude i cannot in good faith accept these useless geography facts on account of them being iconic, actually

bbulbasaurus-rex

quixoticanarchy

The strange curse of being a geography major and seeing commentary about “shipping” on this site only to realize it has nothing to do with containerization and the transformation of the global supply chain…

quixoticanarchy

YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW PLEASED I AM THAT WE’RE ALL NOW TALKING ABOUT CONTAINER SHIPS

somethingusefulfromflorida

Someone needs to go to Panama, stat! Plug both holes, grind the whole world to a halt!

quousque

#strong contender for most cursed comment I’ve seen on this whole debacle #spitroasting the global trade routes

bagelbarr0n

thelifeofnachos

These shows taught me all about animals, science, math, geography, reading, grammar, kindness and friendship.

This will always be golden

blue-eyed-hanji

aww yissss

I can feel the nostalgia ooze into my bloodstream

fsodancer

keshetchai

So over on Reddit this happened:

And collectively everyone was like: hey we love this tiny child, please do take him to a public candle lighting and show him the Rugrats special and here's our fave chanukah kids books and some songs and play a little dreidel and here's some kindergartner activities you can printout or color, also through the power of Jewish geography here's a potentially nearby Jewish bakery with sufganiyot stocked up for him, and also a recipe for if you want to sneak veggies into some latkes.

He's five and has permission. ADORABLE.

(and don't mind me wanting to cry because this was me at age 5 and now I'm Jewish lol)

anais-ninja-bitch

uh, please let this person know there is also a Hannukah special of "Puppy Dog Pals" where Bingo and Rolly save the day by finding ingredients for latkes.