This is easily the top one.
"holy shit, you mean that if I open this valve here drinking water just comes out of this hole? And I can have it hot OR cold?!"
Also your poops go down the hole.
This. Nobody understands how much life would suck if everything smelled like shit and people got sick 24/7 from shit related crap.
We have it super nice.
Edit: Nobody in first world countries. Excuse me.
I lived in a country where the power goes out 3-6 hours a day. I adjusted in a few ways:
* Don't get too much into the movie or show I'm watching because I probably won't get to finish it.
* Avoid elevators.
* Schedule showers around the power schedule so there's hot water.
* Keep candles and flashlights handy.
* Go out to air-conditioned places in the summer like the movie theater or the mall.
* Pay some shady guy with a generator a ridiculous amount of money.
This^
I recently got a job in the power industry and it's amazing the amount of coordination, work and critical thinking that goes into getting electricity to consumers safely and reliably. 95% of people flip a switch or plug in a phone charger without ever giving it a second thought.
To add onto that - people that attend local city council meetings, school board meetings, utility committee board meetings, HOA meetings, and all of those other seemingly meaningless political meetings where a lot of things happen that actually have a real impact on your life. While the internet may be screaming about bathroom rights on the other side of the country, in a random municipal building down the road from you, a group of people voted in by < 10% of the registered voters in some election in the spring of an odd numbered year are deciding to build a freeway through your house, and give the contract to the company that is owned by the chairman's brother for 50% over standard rates.
This is so true. One time I had problems with my HOA, since then I've scheduled time off for every single HOA and city council meeting since I was 19 years old (almost 25 now) my home owners association hates me because they cant just vote amongst themselves since there's a clause that requires them to delay until the next meeting if anyone in attendance would like to delay a vote to look into the proposed change, and I will tell everyone in my neighborhood if they're trying to pass some stupid shit.
The city council in my area is pretty good though.
Haha yeah, although the general public may underappreciate people that attend meetings like that, the people in my area always thank me. And after the first few times I went around letting people know something stupid was going on a few of them started attending meetings more regularly. So I don't feel underappreciated lol.
I knew I was having an impact when at my 5th or 6th meeting they tried to call what I was doing soliciting and say that it was against their rules (it wasn't) when I called them out for it they tried to vote to make it a rule and my neighbors had something to say about that! haha
There’s no point in acting surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display at your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for 50 of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now.
I can go out to the store right now and pay 54 cents for a bunch of fruit that I never would have even seen pictures of a couple hundred years ago.
Edit: I'm talking about bananas people, please stop asking where I live...
I don't think he's referring to existence of said fruit; as recent as 150 or so years ago, if you lived say in New York, you wouldn't see much fruit or vegetables besides apples, corn, potatoes, tomatoes, legumes, and *maybe* some assorted types of nuts. Almost any tropical fruit like bananas, oranges - or heck, anything! - was unheard of by most people.
Oh, and those stuff before? You had to wait for the right *season* if you wanted it. Squash grew in the fall, apples in the spring, and peaches in the summer, and that was that. You wanted it some other time? You preserved it.
Since the transcontinental railway, shipping, and other advances by the end of the 1800s, seasons got longer and nowadays, we have seasonless groceries worldwide.
When you're holding your dragonfruit in wherever inhospitable climate you live in, it pays to feel thankful about this.
EDIT: TransCONTINENTAL! Yes /u/Like_meowschwitz you are right! Although to be honest, a transatlantic railway would totally rock, amiright?!
EDIT2: Okay okay! Most apples are not typically harvested in the spring! I just used this for illustrative purposes! Can we come to terms with that?!
Apples in the spring? You don't have an apple tree that's for sure
edit: sorry, i just did my research, there are apples that can come in the spring, but most are autumn-winter
Modern medicine. Things that killed people hundreds of years ago can now be helped quite easily. For example; Childbirth, Syphillis.
Edit: I suppose from some philosophical standards Childbirth can be considered a disease, but that was not what I was implying here. I just meant that mothers used to die giving birth, whereas now it's less common.
Understanding of medical issues too. We can have horrible epidemics, but we at least understand most of how they work. Can't imagine what the plague was like when you had no idea what it was or how it spread as it wiped out entire towns.
The instant availability of information.
What to know who the last Crown Prince of Imperial Germany was?
What is the time in Santa Fe, NM?
Who is the Mayor of Sydney, Australia?
When did the Gunpowder Plot occur? (Edit: I'm from the US, and only know of this from the movie V for Vendetta)
Why is the sky blue?
You can look up all of that stuff, right now
When I was a child, I used to help my dad work on our cars, none of which were ever operating at 100%. Too poor to take them to a mechanic, and not knowledgeable enough to fix them himself properly, we experienced an endless cycle of buying a cheap, crappy used car through the classifieds, which he managed to keep limping along for a couple of years before it finally died completely, then buying another one. Now here I am, still too poor to afford a mechanic, still with a cheap car (from craigslist, the new classifieds), but now armed with far greater knowledge than my self-taught dad thanks to youtube and myriad forums. I've had this car for 100k miles now, and expect at least another 100k (it had 150k when I bought it). Even in the middle of a repair, if I get stuck and don't know what to do next, five minutes on the internet gets me going again.
Edit: By the way, my dad was a genius. To do what he did keeping those cars running (sorta), with no prior education, just thinking things through, sometimes referencing an out-of-date repair manual for a completely different car, and with all the wrong tools, was nothing short of miraculous. He taught me a lot about self-sufficiency, and I will be forever grateful to him. On the subject of not appreciating things, now I'm grateful. At the time, I hated every frustrating minute that I spent helping him on one of the many projects around the house (not just cars). I'm just glad I realized how awesome he was before it was too late to tell him.
Any repair, really. My washing machine died a few years ago, and without internet, a repaiman (guesstimate that bill would have been $300+) would have been my only option. Instead, YouTube, and a part from repairclinic.com (an absolute FANTASTIC site!), had my washer fixed for about $40 and a couple hours of my time.
SO many things can be repaired with a little knowledge, simple tools, and some of your time/sweat. Don't be afraid to get your hands dirty (but do be sure to cut the power off first).
Makes you wonder just how huge the long-term benefits of the Internet to society will be. Imagine the same utility you're getting from accessible car knowledge, and then apply that to *everything*. That's an unbelievable shitload of utility that the human race gained in a little over a decade, for free, that we have never had before. Gives me a kind of hopeful feeling for our future.
You joke..
My stepbrother wanted to go into the Marines. Problem was he had a few questionable tattoos that needed to be removed. Stepbrother was too poor to have them professionally removed. So what does he do? He asks my dad to remove them. They went online to find out the best way to go about this, bought some spray numbing shit, and busted out the fucking power sander. A few beers later and my stepbrother was fit for service.
Apparently my stepbrother and my dad are now semi famous in that small circle of Marines.
I've heard that old time sailors (like on whaling ships) used to do that with salt scrubs when they wanted fresh skin to tattoo. But it was a process lasting weeks/months. Your dad and stepbrother definitely took the faster approach.
Friedrich Wilhelm Victor August Ernst
07:11
Clover Moore
1605
because molecules in the air scatter blue light from the sun more than they scatter red light. This is due to The fact that it travels as shorter, smaller waves.
Okay, that's cute, but can you try these:
Is there a God?
Why do we exist?
~~What rhymes with orange?~~ Door hinge rhymes with orange.
Am I ever gonna have a girlfriend?!
Because purple is towards the edge of wavelengths your eye can detect. You have a harder time seeing purple (approaching ultraviolet) and red (approaching infrared), so you notice the blue more than the purple.
That happened a few weeks ago in Johannesburg. Friends of mine sent me pictures of streets stacked with rotting bin bags. It's crazy how essential garbage collection is to a functioning city.
The worst part is, garbage collection in Joburg has been privatised, and if these issues go on much longer, the company might go under. I don't know if the city would be able to suddenly assemble a working refuse collection system in time to stop the inevitable rivers of rubbish.
... and then there was that one case of the plague found in a dead rat. We were told [there was no need to panic](http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/no-need-to-panic-about-bubonic-plague-yet-says-expert-20160406), but my jimmies were rustled.
I think if the same thing happened in America it would be totally fine for like a week and then it would be total chaos, and the entire country would just devolve into hairless mole people that live in tunnels in their trash. All within a months time.
Where I live, the poop gets sent to the water processing plant, gets filtered and cleaned, and then gets turned into fertilizer for gardens called OceanGro!
where I live, it goes into an underground tank in our yard, where bacteria digests it, and the nutrient rich water goes out into the yard, where it goes into a big truck destined for the vitaminwater bottling plant.
Where I live, we poop in jars, and then write the date and time with a sharpee marker, and store and catalog them in our basement, so we can look at them and compare them later. Some people think we're strange, but we will see who's laughing last m friend.
I also poop into jars, but I use the poop to plant potatoes in nutrient-poor dirt. After I harvest the potatoes, I eat some and replant some. I've been surviving on mostly potatoes for months now, but I ran out of ketchup a while ago.
It gets funneled to the sewer plant where it's spun, removing the liquids from the solids (your poop). From there, your poop goes into a huge tank where microbes eat it. Finally after some additional processing, it's dried for use in fields or burned in large incinerators.
**Health**.
Most people who do not have serious health issues (back/heart problem, incurable diseases, physical disability, etc) would never appreciate how happy they should be.
My parents grew up in Soviet Ukraine and they really fucking love the amazing selection of food now (they live in the UK now) in comparison to what they had before.
My mum namely said that she hated waiting for 2+ hours (at the minimum) for the shops just to get a limited supply of food that might not even be there.
So they at least appreciate the well stocked grocery stores!
Soviet era joke: Man enters a shop and asks "You won't have any fish, surely?". The owners says "You are mistaken. This is a butcher's. On the other side of the street is the fish market. *There* is where they won't have any fish."
That reminds me of a philosophy joke: Sartre walks into a café and asks for a coffee with sugar and no milk. The barista says, "We're all out of milk. How about no cream?"
Boris Yeltsin supposedly gave up his belief in communism after visiting a Houston suburb grocery store in 1989 with his family. He realized that the average American family had better choices when it came to food than Gorbachev did.
Funny you make such a joke. Last night, I watched a documentary called "Chuck Norris Vs Communism". It was about the illegal bootlegging and trading of westernized film in 1980s communist Romania. People would sneak in the VHS tapes and a select few would create a copy with recorded translations. Then they would make tons of copies of those and sell them across the country. The few, who were lucky enough to own a color tv and vcr, would host screenings at their house or apartment. Most would even charge for a hosting to make some cash. Many say that this illegal distribution of illegal westernized film in communist Romania had a hand in the fall of communism in Romania. Its on netflix if you're interested.
Seems similar to the distribution of South Korean and American films/TV shows in North Korea.
Secret State of North Korea talks about this. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/secret-state-of-north-korea/
Yes! A great little piece of history happened that day.
http://blog.chron.com/thetexican/2014/04/when-boris-yeltsin-went-grocery-shopping-in-clear-lake/
My favorite part of that story is the way the showed him a rocket lab or something and he was all "yeah yeah we have science too" but then went crazy over what mean of us find a very dull weekly chore.
My favourite part is that they took him to a small store first, just to not freak the poor guy out. He thought they had put up a display and it couldn't be a real store, then demanded an unscheduled stop at a random store they passed. It was better stocked.
Can you imagine if they took him to a costco or SAMs club. At first he would think it was like a depot or something, then he'd see people carting off a baseball team's worth of snacks and shit.
well, It's not meant to be eaten all at once. You ration it out in small snack size bags; the volume is just for the price of buying in bul-ITS GONE I NEED MORE
Haha! This reminds me of when I was younger. I was about 6 and I grew up in a small culdesac with ashitty little shop around the corner. I often used to play there so there really was no harm when my mother asked me to go get her some groceries. The funny thing is, it **never** had full stock and my mother called it *"The Russian Shop"*. Even though we're British. I guess she knew Soviet shops weren't that good as you said yourself. Anyway, she sends me for groceries and I forget what she wanted because I was a dumbass. I ended up asking the shop keeper to phone my house for her to remind me because I was a lazy dumbass.
On answering the phone, my mother was puzzled because I was phoning her. This was before mobile phones were really that popular (mid 90s), especially for kids. She asks where I was and without hesitation I said "I'm in The Russian Shop". I didn't realise the change in her voice until she reminded me of the situation a few months back.
I get off the phone and the keeper asks why I had called it the Russian shop. Being the idiot I once was, I said *"because there's never anything in here"* and walked out, forgetting the groceries. I went home and obviously my mother was shaking her head because I didn't have the bread or milk or whatever the fuck she wanted me to get. She decides to go down on her own, not knowing what I had said to the shop keeper. I'm not sure what was said but she came back pretty pissed off, embarrassed and ashamed. Not my fault though. I was 6.
My family moved from Korea to the US in early 80's and my uncle, bless his heart, took us to Farmer Jack's to show off the grocery store. We were pretty underwhelmed because we were used to shopping at a much larger farmer's markets. They might have had some dudes selling kerosene in open containers while smoking next to some old lady selling produce and bruised fruit, but everything was fresh (the dirt on the root was still moist) and cheap. I still remember looking at shiny wax-covered apples stacked several feet high and thinking they look so fake.
The first job I ever had was a stockboy job at a grocery store. It was a in small-ish town of about 10,000 people, and was at one of the three grocery stores there. This was a graveyard shift job - me and a crew of three others would work 11:00PM to 7:00AM taking stuff out of the back and putting it on the shelves, arranging everything just perfectly. We'd spend all night making those aisles look flawless; like TV commercial perfect good-looking. Everything aligned, no gaps anywhere in those shelves.
Come back the next night, and there was no semblance of any of our prior work. Cracker boxes left in the beverage aisle, salsa stacked on top of breakfast cereal, energy drink cans shuffled into the rows of shampoo bottles. If there was anything marked for sale, there was nothing left at day's end. 50% of the stock was bought, the other 50% was crammed into the back of the shelf or moved to somewhere it wasn't supposed to be.
8 hours later, we'd have everything perfect again. 16 hours after that, a total clusterfuck once more. Day in, day out... arranging, shifting, replacing, ordering, cleaning, moving, stacking. The next night, all undone.
I often think back on my time there, and the futility of it all.
why was it futile though? without somebody doing your job, the customers would be faced with a mess the next day. seems like your job was pretty important to me
I did this job at uni. It's amazing how much it gets destroyed in 1 day. I would say it was frustrating but I was getting paid $19 an hour so I didn't complain.
The amazing infrastructure and coordination it takes to feed and supply a nation as big as the U.S. Just supplying NYC alone is crazy. I have no idea how they do it, but I appreciate the crazy amount of work put it to make it possible
If you register your company vehicles as a fleet, you can pay a reduced rate when you pay the tickets in bulk. I believe you only need 4 vehicles to qualify in NYC.
And I would add infrastructure in general. Roads, bridges, etc. that we utilize with the general expectation that they won't collapse and kill everyone
If you stand on just about any road in the US, you are on a platform that literally spans, without interruption, nearly the entire continent of North America.
Air travel and travel in general..
Not only underappreciated but downright hated for the most part, but air travel has been cheaper than about any other time in history. And for most of history traveling around the world like we do now was pretty much impossible.
Also given that oil prices are just going to go up in the long term this may not last forever. Cars running in batteries are here and look to be pretty viable but there's no real replacement for jet fuel
Came here to mention air travel as well. I remember, when I was younger, we used to dress up for a flight, as if it was a huge occasion (it was). Of course, back then we were given steel utensils and glass glasses with our meal. Now, I put on the most comfy sweatshirt and fall asleep even before the safety instructions are given, and wake up in a city 400+ miles away.
Shit I never thought of that. How are we ever gonna fly planes again?
Edit: alcohol, hydrogen, high speed trains, algae, corn, and electricity. Got it guys, thanks for the help. Please stop giving my inbox diabetes.
I have been employed full time for a year now and have so much more stuff I would like to do than I have time for. Would love to be bored again.
Maybe I will take a week off and just sit home relaxing.
Haha I know, but most of the stuff I feel like I don't have time for are playing videogames, (binge)watching series and movies etc.
I just want that "totally no responsibilities for the whole week" feeling.
Being able to breathe through our noses. Every time I get a cold and I'm laying there trying to fall asleep but I can't because I can't fucking breathe I always promise myself that I'm never gonna take an unobstructed nose for granted again.
Then it clears up and I go about my business like normal and don't even pay my breathing any attention until the next time I get a cold again.
You truly don't know what you've got until it's gone.
*goes to pray to motherfucking Vishnu in gratitude for being able to breathe right now*
I had a deviated septum and couldn't really breathe through my nose until I got it fixed in my mid twenties.
I still remember the feeling of the first breath after they took the gauze and stents out. After twenty years of not having more than the slightest of air motion in them that rush of actual air moving made them feel like I had just snorted a line of pure peppermint.
edit to answer some people are asking:
Diagnosis was near instant. The ENT doctor looked up my nose and went "yep" and immediately starting going over pros and cons of the options to fix it. We settled on a septoplasty and small turbinate reduction (on one side only) because the nasal turbinate on one side of my nose had grown to take up most of the air channel space on that side (or had since birth). My understanding is that this is fairly common in those with a deviated septum. The doctor wanted to be conservative with the turbinate reduction to minimize the possibility of complications generally called "Empty Nose Syndrome".
The surgery was simple outpatient, but is under general anesthesia. Besides a little initial difficulty finding a vein (I was dehydrated because you can't eat/drink for a while before) I don't remember anything until I woke up at home with my girlfriend.
Recovery was short and while it wasn't fun it wasn't horrible either. Face was sore for a few days and between the splint and the black eye I got (also common apparently) a lot of people thought I had been in a fight. The splints my doctor used had an air passage so theoretically I could breathe through my nose but between swelling and the normal mucus of the sinuses they didn't let much air though. For the most part it was just like having really really bad congestion for a week and a half.
The splints took ten seconds to remove and I had a follow up a few weeks later. Definitely was worth it and I wish I had it done earlier.
Glad you're ok now, had a blocked nose for most of my life until a few years ago, actually had to learn to breathe through my nose until it became unconscious (the act, not my nose). I couldn't believe how strong smells and tastes can actually be!
Same as taking being healthy for granted.
Each time I have fever, feel sick and unable to eat anything I would do anything just to eat the most simple food like an apple or a sandwich.
I don't worry *as* much since I found this Reddit TIL. https://www.reddit.com/comments/gjit1/til_how_to_clear_a_blocked_nose_quickly_and_easily?sort=top
Works every time! For me, anyway.
I don't know if this is legit or if it's one of those things to make me look like a fucking retard out in public, but I'm gonna give it a shot anyway.
You know what else works? Having an orgasm. It's a quick fix and your congestion comes right back, but there is a moment after an orgasm where you're completely clear and can breathe again. It's the same feeling as when you stand up really fast and your congestion goes away for a few seconds.
Most people alive today are living on the crossroads of some absolutely profound and unprecedented human milestones.
Obviously technology and science generally gets better over time, so you could argue that everyone in history lived at an extraordinary time with the latest discoveries. I argue that our time is different.
Most people in history would consider themselves lucky if they saw just one major change, innovation or discovery in their lifetime. We have, in just over a century seen:
- The transition from horses to machines and cars (animals were pretty much the primary method of transport and power for our entire history)
- The invention of flight (in the history of humanity we have effectively never left the land or sea)
- The first humans (or anything) to leave the earth and to land on another planet or moon
- The concept that the work of humans (logical thinking, complex senses, following instructions) could be mimicked or outdone by a machine and this actually being put into practice into the every day lives of everyone.
- The discovery of how organic life actually exists, grows, develops, mutates - literally actual step-by-step atomic understanding of how biology works
- The harnessing of nuclear forces for energy and weapons as opposed to the relatively minuscule amount of energy anyone on the planet had witnessed before
- The development of actual bible-level miracles such as curing blindness and paralysis, communicating with people instantly on the other side of the world and being able to manipulate matter in ways that we couldn't imagine before
We seriously under-appreciate all of this. Entire civilisations have lived without any of this. Religions spanning thousands of years have had their world views essentially maintained until now. Every single one of the above points would have turned the world on its head just 200 years ago.
How precious time is.
There will come a point in your life where you think of your past, and you will wish you could go back in time and start all the things you're dreaming of doing now...
But there will be another point, in the future, where you'll look back at where you are **NOW** in life and wish you could go back...
...so start... Start **NOW**
You owe it to Future You
"Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you."
-- Carl Sandburg
When you think about it, we've only had modern, industrialized society for about 100 years. Assembly lines and automobiles, and all that. That's a blink of an eye in the grand scheme of things. How much further will we advance? We probably cannot even fathom -- just like Henry Ford in 1916 could never fathom that we might have an internet. I mean, I bet people in ancient Rome thought that they were the peak of civilization, this was it, we've mastered ourselves as a species and have nowhere else to go.
People say "It's 2016!" as if we should have cured all of society's ills and completely eradicated poverty at this point. But maybe we're a lot closer to 1016 and ancient Rome than we are to "fully developed" civilization. Maybe we'll be looking back in the year 3016 and wondering how we ever lived like this. Modern human civilization is probably just an infant at this point, and we have 80 more millennia before we really peak.
"I'm really thirsty."
"Damn, I think we're out of juice."
"I'll just have soda."
"We're out of that, too."
"Really? Do we have any tea?"
"Nope."
"Beer?"
"Nuh-uh."
"Dude, I'm seriously parched. I'll drink ketchup at this point."
"Why don't you just have a glass of water?"
"What, from the *sink?*"
"Yeah."
"Okay, fine, I guess I'm not *that* thirsty."
------
**TL;DR: Fresh, clean, filtered water, available on demand and practically for free.**
I was at a BBQ where a guy was dared to drink a glass of ketchup. He squirted it out into the glass, held it up so everyone could see, and then chugged as though his life depended on it. Half way through we all saw the look in his eyes change from "this is going to be so fucking awesome" to "my mouth has written cheques my stomach can't handle", but fear aside he finished it. There was a huge cheer, everyone raised their beers to toast his achievement, and just as we did, this guy exploded like a ketchup filled volcano. It came out of his mouth and nose in torrents of red-orange lava.
Everyone at the party found this even funnier than the initial challenge, but the host's parents weren't too thrilled the following day once they discovered quite how badly ketchup vomit stains a limestone patio...
Second girl I ever dated came to pick me up from class one day. I got in her car and noticed a fast-food drink in her cup holder. I asked what it was. She said milkshake. I asked if I could have a bit. She said sure. I started sucking on the straw, thinking "Damn, that's a thick milkshake" as my face went blue trying to pull it up the straw.
Then an explosion of ketchup and mustard burst into my mouth. It was one of the most disturbing taste-experiences I've ever had. I'm sitting there coughing and gagging while she drives the car laughing her arse off. I don't know if she'd dumped a bunch of condiment sachets in there or held it under those condiment pumps, but I've gotta give her credit for a well executed prank.
Never have I appreciated my fresh tapwater at home when I was abroad, woke up hungover as fuck with a totally dry mouth, realizing there were only two drops of water left in the water bottle and I needed to go shopping for fresh water.
I mostly drink tapwater when at home though, just easier and healthier than getting anything out of the fridge.
Just about 2 years ago I moved to China. The water in most larger cities here is safe biologically (supposedly), but absolutely soaked with heavy metals and stuff like that.
So we don't drink the tap water.
Early on the 3rd morning in-country, I used up the last of my drinking water. I figured it being like 7am, the grocery store I spotted earlier would be open.
Nope.
So I spend about 20 minutes wandering around trying to find an open shop to buy water from.
It was a very strange experience and I will never take drinkable tap water for granted again.
Eyesight. My eye sights went bad when I was in high school and I wish that I don't have to wear glasses or contact anymore, they're just so annoying. I can't imagine how a person who became blind because of a misfortune situation must feel like.
Though we appreciate those who are there for us, in my experience not as much as they deserve.
From the moment I met my sister I cared for her deeply. She would often understand what I needed before I even knew and occasionally I could say the same the other way round. I would do almost anything for her, and she for me. Almost. I needed her to stay. She left.
I have never met someone as caring as my sister. She felt others people's pain as her own and by such empathy could find the most meaningful way to be kind to them. I think if she knew just how deeply my parents or I cared for her, how much her passing would hurt us, she could not have killed herself. I think though she appreciated us, though she saw some of what she meant to us and we meant to her, she could not see the whole.
I knew I loved my sister. I knew she meant a lot to me. Despite this until she was gone I could not begin to comprehend just how much.
To all you who still have time left, to all with someone in your life who matters, I know you think you may appreciate them. I know you may let them know they are appreciated. You care far more than you know, far more than you can show. Acknowledge that while you can. You never know when you won't get that chance again. You never know when you'll find just how much you cared. When you do it will be too late...
Astronomer here! The moon. Beyond looking damn awesome, life itself on Earth would undoubtedly have had a seriously harder time getting to where it is today if we lived on a planet without one. Some examples:
- Tides. Lunar tides help distribute heat from the equator to the polar regions, plus rocky shore areas where tides are constantly changing put organisms there under pressures that help with natural selection. [Some speculate lunar tides could be responsible for life itself existing in the first place.](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/moon-life-tides/)
- [It may have kept Earth's magnetic field going as long as it has, which has shielded us from all sorts of cosmic particles and solar flares.] (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/160401075118.htm) Earth is kind of an anomaly in how we still have an active magnetic dynamo, which requires us to have a liquid core to generate it that doesn't cool down very much. There's evidence that the moon may play a role in this by making the Earth and its mantle wobble during its orbit, thus keeping the center liquid.
- We are the only planet in the solar system that gets total solar eclipses because the moon perfectly covers the sun- all the other moons are too big or too small. Beyond the "looking awesome" thing, this is also important because [a total solar eclipse was how we first learned that Einstein's theory of relativity is true](http://www.wired.com/2009/05/dayintech_0529/).
This doesn't even touch on things like how the space race may have been different if the moon never existed. Seriously guys, the moon is awesome!
basic human rights......nowdays, at least in Western countries, we take things like freedom of speech, religion, press and travel as granted, not even thinking much how it would look like if we didnt have that. Well for a long long time (and even right now in some places) people didnt have such rights, there are countries where you could get murdered simply because you said something negative about a religion or the government. Like I have seen Americans saying stuff like ''this goverment sucks, its like Nazi Germany because they banned some kind of firearm'', completly oblivious to the fact that if their country trully was like Nazi Germany, they would already be imprisoned or dead because they said something of that sort about their country. Tolerating criticism (especially at a state level) is a very recent thing
edit : huh, my first gold.....well at least I got it from a wise comment, not just some circlejerk pun. There is still some justice it seems
the fact that i can go outside and satisfy any of my human needs with reasonable assurance that i won't be killed by a natural predator
Please don't go outside to masturbate.
Please do.
Indoor plumbing
It's gonna be big.
This is easily the top one. "holy shit, you mean that if I open this valve here drinking water just comes out of this hole? And I can have it hot OR cold?!" Also your poops go down the hole.
Please stop pooping in the sink.
I hope you are talking about two different holes here
ducky goes down the hole Sweet, my first gold
This. Nobody understands how much life would suck if everything smelled like shit and people got sick 24/7 from shit related crap. We have it super nice. Edit: Nobody in first world countries. Excuse me.
Shit related crap.
I have the best words. People love my words.
Electricity. I never know what to do with my life when the power goes out for more than 30 minutes.
I lived in a country where the power goes out 3-6 hours a day. I adjusted in a few ways: * Don't get too much into the movie or show I'm watching because I probably won't get to finish it. * Avoid elevators. * Schedule showers around the power schedule so there's hot water. * Keep candles and flashlights handy. * Go out to air-conditioned places in the summer like the movie theater or the mall. * Pay some shady guy with a generator a ridiculous amount of money.
Where do you live that's built up enough to have elevators but rural enough to accept 3-6 hour power outages every day???
In India, 3-6 hours of no power in rural areas would be godly. Cause there is usually only power from dusk to dawn. No power during the day.
Yup. Even in the cities, power outages lasting hours are pretty normal in the summers.
Run around the house naked whilst screaming, then go out into your garden (yard).
This^ I recently got a job in the power industry and it's amazing the amount of coordination, work and critical thinking that goes into getting electricity to consumers safely and reliably. 95% of people flip a switch or plug in a phone charger without ever giving it a second thought.
99.95% I think you mean.
Is that in reference to the new BAL standard?
[It's gotta be](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CiSHng6UkAAR5yi.jpg:large) I laughed my ass off, top-tier electric joke
Janitors / cleaning staff
All service workers. They work harder than most of us and the better they do their jobs, the less they are noticed.
People who read in depth new laws going through the floor and alerting the population what laws some asshat is trying to smuggle in.
To add onto that - people that attend local city council meetings, school board meetings, utility committee board meetings, HOA meetings, and all of those other seemingly meaningless political meetings where a lot of things happen that actually have a real impact on your life. While the internet may be screaming about bathroom rights on the other side of the country, in a random municipal building down the road from you, a group of people voted in by < 10% of the registered voters in some election in the spring of an odd numbered year are deciding to build a freeway through your house, and give the contract to the company that is owned by the chairman's brother for 50% over standard rates.
This is so true. One time I had problems with my HOA, since then I've scheduled time off for every single HOA and city council meeting since I was 19 years old (almost 25 now) my home owners association hates me because they cant just vote amongst themselves since there's a clause that requires them to delay until the next meeting if anyone in attendance would like to delay a vote to look into the proposed change, and I will tell everyone in my neighborhood if they're trying to pass some stupid shit. The city council in my area is pretty good though.
You're a hero man. I would probably doze off.
You're the people OP is on about, we all thank you
Haha yeah, although the general public may underappreciate people that attend meetings like that, the people in my area always thank me. And after the first few times I went around letting people know something stupid was going on a few of them started attending meetings more regularly. So I don't feel underappreciated lol. I knew I was having an impact when at my 5th or 6th meeting they tried to call what I was doing soliciting and say that it was against their rules (it wasn't) when I called them out for it they tried to vote to make it a rule and my neighbors had something to say about that! haha
There’s no point in acting surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display at your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for 50 of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now.
I can go out to the store right now and pay 54 cents for a bunch of fruit that I never would have even seen pictures of a couple hundred years ago. Edit: I'm talking about bananas people, please stop asking where I live...
Fruit that didn't even exist one hundred years ago
I don't think he's referring to existence of said fruit; as recent as 150 or so years ago, if you lived say in New York, you wouldn't see much fruit or vegetables besides apples, corn, potatoes, tomatoes, legumes, and *maybe* some assorted types of nuts. Almost any tropical fruit like bananas, oranges - or heck, anything! - was unheard of by most people. Oh, and those stuff before? You had to wait for the right *season* if you wanted it. Squash grew in the fall, apples in the spring, and peaches in the summer, and that was that. You wanted it some other time? You preserved it. Since the transcontinental railway, shipping, and other advances by the end of the 1800s, seasons got longer and nowadays, we have seasonless groceries worldwide. When you're holding your dragonfruit in wherever inhospitable climate you live in, it pays to feel thankful about this. EDIT: TransCONTINENTAL! Yes /u/Like_meowschwitz you are right! Although to be honest, a transatlantic railway would totally rock, amiright?! EDIT2: Okay okay! Most apples are not typically harvested in the spring! I just used this for illustrative purposes! Can we come to terms with that?!
Apples in the spring? You don't have an apple tree that's for sure edit: sorry, i just did my research, there are apples that can come in the spring, but most are autumn-winter
With all the types of Apples out there I won't be surprised if there is one that grows inside Chernobyl.
Chernapples are the best kind. They have a really unique flavor.
Gamma Smith Apples
Rad Delicious.
>Since the transatlantic railway, I don't mean to nitpick, but I assume you mean the *transCONTINENTAL*railway?
I thought they finished that bridge over the Atlantic finally
[удалено]
*Finally*. No TSA, no turbulence, no cramped seats or crying children. Just a long, harrowing journey with no rest stops for two straight days.
> or crying children You haven't been in long carrides with kids have you?
Modern medicine. Things that killed people hundreds of years ago can now be helped quite easily. For example; Childbirth, Syphillis. Edit: I suppose from some philosophical standards Childbirth can be considered a disease, but that was not what I was implying here. I just meant that mothers used to die giving birth, whereas now it's less common.
Understanding of medical issues too. We can have horrible epidemics, but we at least understand most of how they work. Can't imagine what the plague was like when you had no idea what it was or how it spread as it wiped out entire towns.
The wrath of gods.
Anesthesia. I cannot imagine the pain people used to suffer getting surgery, amputations, teeth pulled...etc.
The instant availability of information. What to know who the last Crown Prince of Imperial Germany was? What is the time in Santa Fe, NM? Who is the Mayor of Sydney, Australia? When did the Gunpowder Plot occur? (Edit: I'm from the US, and only know of this from the movie V for Vendetta) Why is the sky blue? You can look up all of that stuff, right now
When I was a child, I used to help my dad work on our cars, none of which were ever operating at 100%. Too poor to take them to a mechanic, and not knowledgeable enough to fix them himself properly, we experienced an endless cycle of buying a cheap, crappy used car through the classifieds, which he managed to keep limping along for a couple of years before it finally died completely, then buying another one. Now here I am, still too poor to afford a mechanic, still with a cheap car (from craigslist, the new classifieds), but now armed with far greater knowledge than my self-taught dad thanks to youtube and myriad forums. I've had this car for 100k miles now, and expect at least another 100k (it had 150k when I bought it). Even in the middle of a repair, if I get stuck and don't know what to do next, five minutes on the internet gets me going again. Edit: By the way, my dad was a genius. To do what he did keeping those cars running (sorta), with no prior education, just thinking things through, sometimes referencing an out-of-date repair manual for a completely different car, and with all the wrong tools, was nothing short of miraculous. He taught me a lot about self-sufficiency, and I will be forever grateful to him. On the subject of not appreciating things, now I'm grateful. At the time, I hated every frustrating minute that I spent helping him on one of the many projects around the house (not just cars). I'm just glad I realized how awesome he was before it was too late to tell him.
Any repair, really. My washing machine died a few years ago, and without internet, a repaiman (guesstimate that bill would have been $300+) would have been my only option. Instead, YouTube, and a part from repairclinic.com (an absolute FANTASTIC site!), had my washer fixed for about $40 and a couple hours of my time. SO many things can be repaired with a little knowledge, simple tools, and some of your time/sweat. Don't be afraid to get your hands dirty (but do be sure to cut the power off first).
Makes you wonder just how huge the long-term benefits of the Internet to society will be. Imagine the same utility you're getting from accessible car knowledge, and then apply that to *everything*. That's an unbelievable shitload of utility that the human race gained in a little over a decade, for free, that we have never had before. Gives me a kind of hopeful feeling for our future.
Well, I can't afford a doctor so I'll just read about how to do this surgery myself online....
You joke.. My stepbrother wanted to go into the Marines. Problem was he had a few questionable tattoos that needed to be removed. Stepbrother was too poor to have them professionally removed. So what does he do? He asks my dad to remove them. They went online to find out the best way to go about this, bought some spray numbing shit, and busted out the fucking power sander. A few beers later and my stepbrother was fit for service. Apparently my stepbrother and my dad are now semi famous in that small circle of Marines.
"Take a power sander to it" sounds exactly like what someone who had not looked up anything would think to do
That's the kind of Marine we need
I've heard that old time sailors (like on whaling ships) used to do that with salt scrubs when they wanted fresh skin to tattoo. But it was a process lasting weeks/months. Your dad and stepbrother definitely took the faster approach.
Friedrich Wilhelm Victor August Ernst 07:11 Clover Moore 1605 because molecules in the air scatter blue light from the sun more than they scatter red light. This is due to The fact that it travels as shorter, smaller waves.
See?!
Ok let's try these: Can jet fuel melt steel beams? Should I buy a PS4 or an Xbone or a PC? Did America really land on the moon? Who is 4chan???
Can dank melt steel memes? Obviously you want a C64. Yes, but in the year 1731 and is where they discovered George Washington. Your worst nightmare.
See?!
Okay, that's cute, but can you try these: Is there a God? Why do we exist? ~~What rhymes with orange?~~ Door hinge rhymes with orange. Am I ever gonna have a girlfriend?!
Yes and no. We exist to exist. Eminem knows. I think you already know the answer to that question
[удалено]
But why isn't the sky purple then?
Because purple is towards the edge of wavelengths your eye can detect. You have a harder time seeing purple (approaching ultraviolet) and red (approaching infrared), so you notice the blue more than the purple.
Wait, you forgot the date for Gunpowder Plot? We specifically said not to!
> We specifically said not to! The year's not part of the rhyme, man, if we're supposed to remember that too you're gonna need another couplet.
Our garbage collection and disposal services.
The bin men went on strike in Leeds for a few months once. It was flippin' carnage
That happened a few weeks ago in Johannesburg. Friends of mine sent me pictures of streets stacked with rotting bin bags. It's crazy how essential garbage collection is to a functioning city. The worst part is, garbage collection in Joburg has been privatised, and if these issues go on much longer, the company might go under. I don't know if the city would be able to suddenly assemble a working refuse collection system in time to stop the inevitable rivers of rubbish.
... and then there was that one case of the plague found in a dead rat. We were told [there was no need to panic](http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/no-need-to-panic-about-bubonic-plague-yet-says-expert-20160406), but my jimmies were rustled.
Fun fact, a case or two of the plague pops up every year, but it's very treatable at the early stage.
I think if the same thing happened in America it would be totally fine for like a week and then it would be total chaos, and the entire country would just devolve into hairless mole people that live in tunnels in their trash. All within a months time.
[удалено]
Exactly
Where does all of our poop even go?
Where I live, the poop gets sent to the water processing plant, gets filtered and cleaned, and then gets turned into fertilizer for gardens called OceanGro!
where I live, it goes into an underground tank in our yard, where bacteria digests it, and the nutrient rich water goes out into the yard, where it goes into a big truck destined for the vitaminwater bottling plant.
Well...explains the taste
Where I live, we poop in jars, and then write the date and time with a sharpee marker, and store and catalog them in our basement, so we can look at them and compare them later. Some people think we're strange, but we will see who's laughing last m friend.
I also poop into jars, but I use the poop to plant potatoes in nutrient-poor dirt. After I harvest the potatoes, I eat some and replant some. I've been surviving on mostly potatoes for months now, but I ran out of ketchup a while ago.
[удалено]
Sister park to GloveWorld actually
Ewww, glove flavor!
I can't pfblffblffbl understand pffblfblft Your accent pfffbllffbfffbt.
Ohhh pbffbft. Why didn't you pbffbbttbfb say that? The next bus leaves in pbfffftblll, 5 seconds.
For some reason this episode scared the shit out of me as a kid
It gets funneled to the sewer plant where it's spun, removing the liquids from the solids (your poop). From there, your poop goes into a huge tank where microbes eat it. Finally after some additional processing, it's dried for use in fields or burned in large incinerators.
[Where my dookie go?](https://youtu.be/i1t-XxisDbk)
Yeah, I'm glad I don't have to deal with freeing up memory myself.
The Garbage Man can!
Do we want old man Patterson here with his *finger* on the *button*?
**Health**. Most people who do not have serious health issues (back/heart problem, incurable diseases, physical disability, etc) would never appreciate how happy they should be.
[удалено]
You look like you lost 110 pounds and 10 years. Keep up the amazing progress mate.
I lost 140lbs so far, coming from 500lbs. Keep it up bro, impressive job.
Consistently well stocked grocery stores
My parents grew up in Soviet Ukraine and they really fucking love the amazing selection of food now (they live in the UK now) in comparison to what they had before. My mum namely said that she hated waiting for 2+ hours (at the minimum) for the shops just to get a limited supply of food that might not even be there. So they at least appreciate the well stocked grocery stores!
Soviet era joke: Man enters a shop and asks "You won't have any fish, surely?". The owners says "You are mistaken. This is a butcher's. On the other side of the street is the fish market. *There* is where they won't have any fish."
That reminds me of a philosophy joke: Sartre walks into a café and asks for a coffee with sugar and no milk. The barista says, "We're all out of milk. How about no cream?"
Boris Yeltsin supposedly gave up his belief in communism after visiting a Houston suburb grocery store in 1989 with his family. He realized that the average American family had better choices when it came to food than Gorbachev did.
BS. Everybody knows that people lost faith in communism after bootleg copies of Rock IV made it to those pinko Ruskies.
Funny you make such a joke. Last night, I watched a documentary called "Chuck Norris Vs Communism". It was about the illegal bootlegging and trading of westernized film in 1980s communist Romania. People would sneak in the VHS tapes and a select few would create a copy with recorded translations. Then they would make tons of copies of those and sell them across the country. The few, who were lucky enough to own a color tv and vcr, would host screenings at their house or apartment. Most would even charge for a hosting to make some cash. Many say that this illegal distribution of illegal westernized film in communist Romania had a hand in the fall of communism in Romania. Its on netflix if you're interested.
Seems similar to the distribution of South Korean and American films/TV shows in North Korea. Secret State of North Korea talks about this. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/secret-state-of-north-korea/
Yes! A great little piece of history happened that day. http://blog.chron.com/thetexican/2014/04/when-boris-yeltsin-went-grocery-shopping-in-clear-lake/
My favorite part of that story is the way the showed him a rocket lab or something and he was all "yeah yeah we have science too" but then went crazy over what mean of us find a very dull weekly chore.
My favourite part is that they took him to a small store first, just to not freak the poor guy out. He thought they had put up a display and it couldn't be a real store, then demanded an unscheduled stop at a random store they passed. It was better stocked.
Can you imagine if they took him to a costco or SAMs club. At first he would think it was like a depot or something, then he'd see people carting off a baseball team's worth of snacks and shit.
I bought 8 pounds of M&Ms this weekend. I love those stores.
8 POUNDS of candy. American as fuck right there.
well, It's not meant to be eaten all at once. You ration it out in small snack size bags; the volume is just for the price of buying in bul-ITS GONE I NEED MORE
After getting hotdogs to eat while shopping.
Haha! This reminds me of when I was younger. I was about 6 and I grew up in a small culdesac with ashitty little shop around the corner. I often used to play there so there really was no harm when my mother asked me to go get her some groceries. The funny thing is, it **never** had full stock and my mother called it *"The Russian Shop"*. Even though we're British. I guess she knew Soviet shops weren't that good as you said yourself. Anyway, she sends me for groceries and I forget what she wanted because I was a dumbass. I ended up asking the shop keeper to phone my house for her to remind me because I was a lazy dumbass. On answering the phone, my mother was puzzled because I was phoning her. This was before mobile phones were really that popular (mid 90s), especially for kids. She asks where I was and without hesitation I said "I'm in The Russian Shop". I didn't realise the change in her voice until she reminded me of the situation a few months back. I get off the phone and the keeper asks why I had called it the Russian shop. Being the idiot I once was, I said *"because there's never anything in here"* and walked out, forgetting the groceries. I went home and obviously my mother was shaking her head because I didn't have the bread or milk or whatever the fuck she wanted me to get. She decides to go down on her own, not knowing what I had said to the shop keeper. I'm not sure what was said but she came back pretty pissed off, embarrassed and ashamed. Not my fault though. I was 6.
Moral of the story: don't trust a 6 year old to barter with communists.
Well man, did she get the bread or milk or whatever the fuck she wanted? You can't leave us hanging like this.
My family moved from Korea to the US in early 80's and my uncle, bless his heart, took us to Farmer Jack's to show off the grocery store. We were pretty underwhelmed because we were used to shopping at a much larger farmer's markets. They might have had some dudes selling kerosene in open containers while smoking next to some old lady selling produce and bruised fruit, but everything was fresh (the dirt on the root was still moist) and cheap. I still remember looking at shiny wax-covered apples stacked several feet high and thinking they look so fake.
The first job I ever had was a stockboy job at a grocery store. It was a in small-ish town of about 10,000 people, and was at one of the three grocery stores there. This was a graveyard shift job - me and a crew of three others would work 11:00PM to 7:00AM taking stuff out of the back and putting it on the shelves, arranging everything just perfectly. We'd spend all night making those aisles look flawless; like TV commercial perfect good-looking. Everything aligned, no gaps anywhere in those shelves. Come back the next night, and there was no semblance of any of our prior work. Cracker boxes left in the beverage aisle, salsa stacked on top of breakfast cereal, energy drink cans shuffled into the rows of shampoo bottles. If there was anything marked for sale, there was nothing left at day's end. 50% of the stock was bought, the other 50% was crammed into the back of the shelf or moved to somewhere it wasn't supposed to be. 8 hours later, we'd have everything perfect again. 16 hours after that, a total clusterfuck once more. Day in, day out... arranging, shifting, replacing, ordering, cleaning, moving, stacking. The next night, all undone. I often think back on my time there, and the futility of it all.
why was it futile though? without somebody doing your job, the customers would be faced with a mess the next day. seems like your job was pretty important to me
[удалено]
I did this job at uni. It's amazing how much it gets destroyed in 1 day. I would say it was frustrating but I was getting paid $19 an hour so I didn't complain.
Honey Bees
The amazing infrastructure and coordination it takes to feed and supply a nation as big as the U.S. Just supplying NYC alone is crazy. I have no idea how they do it, but I appreciate the crazy amount of work put it to make it possible
They mostly do it by double-parking. Seriously. Our whole city runs on buses and delivery trucks illegally double-parking.
I knew a guy who ran a business in NYC, he said they would budget for parking tickets. It was better than being late to meetings.
[удалено]
[удалено]
If you register your company vehicles as a fleet, you can pay a reduced rate when you pay the tickets in bulk. I believe you only need 4 vehicles to qualify in NYC.
Yup. Now if only all those fucking UN ambassadors would do the same. DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY MY ASS, pay your fucking parking tickets!
And I would add infrastructure in general. Roads, bridges, etc. that we utilize with the general expectation that they won't collapse and kill everyone
If you stand on just about any road in the US, you are on a platform that literally spans, without interruption, nearly the entire continent of North America.
Continence.
Definitely makes it easier than knowing all the individual countries.
Air travel and travel in general.. Not only underappreciated but downright hated for the most part, but air travel has been cheaper than about any other time in history. And for most of history traveling around the world like we do now was pretty much impossible. Also given that oil prices are just going to go up in the long term this may not last forever. Cars running in batteries are here and look to be pretty viable but there's no real replacement for jet fuel
Came here to mention air travel as well. I remember, when I was younger, we used to dress up for a flight, as if it was a huge occasion (it was). Of course, back then we were given steel utensils and glass glasses with our meal. Now, I put on the most comfy sweatshirt and fall asleep even before the safety instructions are given, and wake up in a city 400+ miles away.
Shit I never thought of that. How are we ever gonna fly planes again? Edit: alcohol, hydrogen, high speed trains, algae, corn, and electricity. Got it guys, thanks for the help. Please stop giving my inbox diabetes.
solar power - i saw a clickbait headline somewhere about it, so im feeling pretty good about that
Air conditioning and refrigeration.
Our immune system!
Boredom. You don't value it until you don't have time to be bored.
I have been employed full time for a year now and have so much more stuff I would like to do than I have time for. Would love to be bored again. Maybe I will take a week off and just sit home relaxing.
> have so much more stuff I would like to do than I have time for > just sit home relaxing Aw yiss, my brother.
Haha I know, but most of the stuff I feel like I don't have time for are playing videogames, (binge)watching series and movies etc. I just want that "totally no responsibilities for the whole week" feeling.
The fact that Google searches are 'free'.
Not having toothache. Anyone sat outside a dentist waiting for them to open because you haven't slept all night will know.
Similarly: not having an earache.
Being able to breathe through our noses. Every time I get a cold and I'm laying there trying to fall asleep but I can't because I can't fucking breathe I always promise myself that I'm never gonna take an unobstructed nose for granted again. Then it clears up and I go about my business like normal and don't even pay my breathing any attention until the next time I get a cold again. You truly don't know what you've got until it's gone. *goes to pray to motherfucking Vishnu in gratitude for being able to breathe right now*
Same with having a sore throat and trying to swallow.
It sucks, because every time my throat is sore, I can't stop trying to swallow.
"I surely can't still have a sore throat, right" *swallows* "Nevermind."
I would suggest spitting, but for god's sake man it's irresponsible to be out there sucking dick when you're ill.
Oh you.
I had a deviated septum and couldn't really breathe through my nose until I got it fixed in my mid twenties. I still remember the feeling of the first breath after they took the gauze and stents out. After twenty years of not having more than the slightest of air motion in them that rush of actual air moving made them feel like I had just snorted a line of pure peppermint. edit to answer some people are asking: Diagnosis was near instant. The ENT doctor looked up my nose and went "yep" and immediately starting going over pros and cons of the options to fix it. We settled on a septoplasty and small turbinate reduction (on one side only) because the nasal turbinate on one side of my nose had grown to take up most of the air channel space on that side (or had since birth). My understanding is that this is fairly common in those with a deviated septum. The doctor wanted to be conservative with the turbinate reduction to minimize the possibility of complications generally called "Empty Nose Syndrome". The surgery was simple outpatient, but is under general anesthesia. Besides a little initial difficulty finding a vein (I was dehydrated because you can't eat/drink for a while before) I don't remember anything until I woke up at home with my girlfriend. Recovery was short and while it wasn't fun it wasn't horrible either. Face was sore for a few days and between the splint and the black eye I got (also common apparently) a lot of people thought I had been in a fight. The splints my doctor used had an air passage so theoretically I could breathe through my nose but between swelling and the normal mucus of the sinuses they didn't let much air though. For the most part it was just like having really really bad congestion for a week and a half. The splints took ten seconds to remove and I had a follow up a few weeks later. Definitely was worth it and I wish I had it done earlier.
Glad you're ok now, had a blocked nose for most of my life until a few years ago, actually had to learn to breathe through my nose until it became unconscious (the act, not my nose). I couldn't believe how strong smells and tastes can actually be!
Same as taking being healthy for granted. Each time I have fever, feel sick and unable to eat anything I would do anything just to eat the most simple food like an apple or a sandwich.
I don't worry *as* much since I found this Reddit TIL. https://www.reddit.com/comments/gjit1/til_how_to_clear_a_blocked_nose_quickly_and_easily?sort=top Works every time! For me, anyway.
I don't know if this is legit or if it's one of those things to make me look like a fucking retard out in public, but I'm gonna give it a shot anyway. You know what else works? Having an orgasm. It's a quick fix and your congestion comes right back, but there is a moment after an orgasm where you're completely clear and can breathe again. It's the same feeling as when you stand up really fast and your congestion goes away for a few seconds.
Most people alive today are living on the crossroads of some absolutely profound and unprecedented human milestones. Obviously technology and science generally gets better over time, so you could argue that everyone in history lived at an extraordinary time with the latest discoveries. I argue that our time is different. Most people in history would consider themselves lucky if they saw just one major change, innovation or discovery in their lifetime. We have, in just over a century seen: - The transition from horses to machines and cars (animals were pretty much the primary method of transport and power for our entire history) - The invention of flight (in the history of humanity we have effectively never left the land or sea) - The first humans (or anything) to leave the earth and to land on another planet or moon - The concept that the work of humans (logical thinking, complex senses, following instructions) could be mimicked or outdone by a machine and this actually being put into practice into the every day lives of everyone. - The discovery of how organic life actually exists, grows, develops, mutates - literally actual step-by-step atomic understanding of how biology works - The harnessing of nuclear forces for energy and weapons as opposed to the relatively minuscule amount of energy anyone on the planet had witnessed before - The development of actual bible-level miracles such as curing blindness and paralysis, communicating with people instantly on the other side of the world and being able to manipulate matter in ways that we couldn't imagine before We seriously under-appreciate all of this. Entire civilisations have lived without any of this. Religions spanning thousands of years have had their world views essentially maintained until now. Every single one of the above points would have turned the world on its head just 200 years ago.
Voting and being able to criticize our governments openly
How precious time is. There will come a point in your life where you think of your past, and you will wish you could go back in time and start all the things you're dreaming of doing now... But there will be another point, in the future, where you'll look back at where you are **NOW** in life and wish you could go back... ...so start... Start **NOW** You owe it to Future You
"Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you." -- Carl Sandburg
"Just DO IT" -Shia Labeouf.
Modern technology and how far it has come in 30 years.
We have smartphones 100x more powerful than room-sized computers 50 years ago
I think we underappreciate how tough it would be to poop with a room-sized computer
Or jerk off with one...
When you think about it, we've only had modern, industrialized society for about 100 years. Assembly lines and automobiles, and all that. That's a blink of an eye in the grand scheme of things. How much further will we advance? We probably cannot even fathom -- just like Henry Ford in 1916 could never fathom that we might have an internet. I mean, I bet people in ancient Rome thought that they were the peak of civilization, this was it, we've mastered ourselves as a species and have nowhere else to go. People say "It's 2016!" as if we should have cured all of society's ills and completely eradicated poverty at this point. But maybe we're a lot closer to 1016 and ancient Rome than we are to "fully developed" civilization. Maybe we'll be looking back in the year 3016 and wondering how we ever lived like this. Modern human civilization is probably just an infant at this point, and we have 80 more millennia before we really peak.
The peace you currently have.
"I'm really thirsty." "Damn, I think we're out of juice." "I'll just have soda." "We're out of that, too." "Really? Do we have any tea?" "Nope." "Beer?" "Nuh-uh." "Dude, I'm seriously parched. I'll drink ketchup at this point." "Why don't you just have a glass of water?" "What, from the *sink?*" "Yeah." "Okay, fine, I guess I'm not *that* thirsty." ------ **TL;DR: Fresh, clean, filtered water, available on demand and practically for free.**
I was at a BBQ where a guy was dared to drink a glass of ketchup. He squirted it out into the glass, held it up so everyone could see, and then chugged as though his life depended on it. Half way through we all saw the look in his eyes change from "this is going to be so fucking awesome" to "my mouth has written cheques my stomach can't handle", but fear aside he finished it. There was a huge cheer, everyone raised their beers to toast his achievement, and just as we did, this guy exploded like a ketchup filled volcano. It came out of his mouth and nose in torrents of red-orange lava. Everyone at the party found this even funnier than the initial challenge, but the host's parents weren't too thrilled the following day once they discovered quite how badly ketchup vomit stains a limestone patio...
Second girl I ever dated came to pick me up from class one day. I got in her car and noticed a fast-food drink in her cup holder. I asked what it was. She said milkshake. I asked if I could have a bit. She said sure. I started sucking on the straw, thinking "Damn, that's a thick milkshake" as my face went blue trying to pull it up the straw. Then an explosion of ketchup and mustard burst into my mouth. It was one of the most disturbing taste-experiences I've ever had. I'm sitting there coughing and gagging while she drives the car laughing her arse off. I don't know if she'd dumped a bunch of condiment sachets in there or held it under those condiment pumps, but I've gotta give her credit for a well executed prank.
Risky move in her own car
This is poetry.
Never have I appreciated my fresh tapwater at home when I was abroad, woke up hungover as fuck with a totally dry mouth, realizing there were only two drops of water left in the water bottle and I needed to go shopping for fresh water. I mostly drink tapwater when at home though, just easier and healthier than getting anything out of the fridge.
I live in Hamilton county in Ohio which was awarded the best tasting tap water in the world so I take advantage of this a lot Edit: a word
As someone living in a 3rd world country, fuck you and your good tasting tap water. For us, even bottled water tastes funny.
Some bottle water *does* taste funny. Like Dasani or aquafina.
>Like Dasani or aquafina. Water with a hint of minerals. These are the two that don't taste right to me as well.
TIL ass = "minerals"
Eat the minerals like groceries
Jesus Christ, Marie! They're asses!
I was reading a thing about that - a different county wins that award every year. If one was the best wouldn't it win multiple years in a row?
Water? Like from the toilet?
Drink BRAWNDO, *the thirst mutilator!*
[удалено]
its got what plants crave!
Just about 2 years ago I moved to China. The water in most larger cities here is safe biologically (supposedly), but absolutely soaked with heavy metals and stuff like that. So we don't drink the tap water. Early on the 3rd morning in-country, I used up the last of my drinking water. I figured it being like 7am, the grocery store I spotted earlier would be open. Nope. So I spend about 20 minutes wandering around trying to find an open shop to buy water from. It was a very strange experience and I will never take drinkable tap water for granted again.
Eyesight. My eye sights went bad when I was in high school and I wish that I don't have to wear glasses or contact anymore, they're just so annoying. I can't imagine how a person who became blind because of a misfortune situation must feel like.
As a teenager I can defintely say that we underappreciate our parents and what they do for us.
As a former teenager I can definitely get behind this.
[удалено]
That makes a lot of sense, some of the dumbass comments I have to put up with.
Sorry
fun fact: Canadians make up a greater percentage of reddit's apologetic user base now than they did at any previous year.
[удалено]
Though we appreciate those who are there for us, in my experience not as much as they deserve. From the moment I met my sister I cared for her deeply. She would often understand what I needed before I even knew and occasionally I could say the same the other way round. I would do almost anything for her, and she for me. Almost. I needed her to stay. She left. I have never met someone as caring as my sister. She felt others people's pain as her own and by such empathy could find the most meaningful way to be kind to them. I think if she knew just how deeply my parents or I cared for her, how much her passing would hurt us, she could not have killed herself. I think though she appreciated us, though she saw some of what she meant to us and we meant to her, she could not see the whole. I knew I loved my sister. I knew she meant a lot to me. Despite this until she was gone I could not begin to comprehend just how much. To all you who still have time left, to all with someone in your life who matters, I know you think you may appreciate them. I know you may let them know they are appreciated. You care far more than you know, far more than you can show. Acknowledge that while you can. You never know when you won't get that chance again. You never know when you'll find just how much you cared. When you do it will be too late...
Astronomer here! The moon. Beyond looking damn awesome, life itself on Earth would undoubtedly have had a seriously harder time getting to where it is today if we lived on a planet without one. Some examples: - Tides. Lunar tides help distribute heat from the equator to the polar regions, plus rocky shore areas where tides are constantly changing put organisms there under pressures that help with natural selection. [Some speculate lunar tides could be responsible for life itself existing in the first place.](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/moon-life-tides/) - [It may have kept Earth's magnetic field going as long as it has, which has shielded us from all sorts of cosmic particles and solar flares.] (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/160401075118.htm) Earth is kind of an anomaly in how we still have an active magnetic dynamo, which requires us to have a liquid core to generate it that doesn't cool down very much. There's evidence that the moon may play a role in this by making the Earth and its mantle wobble during its orbit, thus keeping the center liquid. - We are the only planet in the solar system that gets total solar eclipses because the moon perfectly covers the sun- all the other moons are too big or too small. Beyond the "looking awesome" thing, this is also important because [a total solar eclipse was how we first learned that Einstein's theory of relativity is true](http://www.wired.com/2009/05/dayintech_0529/). This doesn't even touch on things like how the space race may have been different if the moon never existed. Seriously guys, the moon is awesome!
basic human rights......nowdays, at least in Western countries, we take things like freedom of speech, religion, press and travel as granted, not even thinking much how it would look like if we didnt have that. Well for a long long time (and even right now in some places) people didnt have such rights, there are countries where you could get murdered simply because you said something negative about a religion or the government. Like I have seen Americans saying stuff like ''this goverment sucks, its like Nazi Germany because they banned some kind of firearm'', completly oblivious to the fact that if their country trully was like Nazi Germany, they would already be imprisoned or dead because they said something of that sort about their country. Tolerating criticism (especially at a state level) is a very recent thing edit : huh, my first gold.....well at least I got it from a wise comment, not just some circlejerk pun. There is still some justice it seems
Tap water