#TodayILearned (thanks to the Thomas Pynchon intro in the edition I'm reading) that George Orwell's main aim when writing "1984" was not to criticize Stalinism itself, but rather to criticize the mainstream British liberals in the Labour Party who embraced Stalinism during World War Two.

So Malay (Bahasa Melayu) and Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia) are closely related, mutually intelligible, standard varieties of the Malay language?!

#TodayILearned #LanguageLearning #AsianLanguages #Dictionariez

How to Drain a Water Heater

https://harrisongg.com/how-to-drain-a-water-heater #Todayilearned

Just learnt Mat Damon went to Harvard (but didn't graduate) #TodayILearned

TIL before #AgeVerification #SocialMedia was a public social hub were you could find interresting people, discuss ecological, political or gender queer topics or just enjoy cat content without VPN or ID 🙄
#TodayILearned #TIL

https://noc.social/@todayilearned/115995873341363833

#todayilearned that, in 2010, the colombian army wrote a pop song and concealed a #morsecode message inside it, as a way to communicate with hostages and tell them that they'd be freed soon

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Better_Days_(Natalia_Gutierrez_Y_Angelo_Song)

the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVCE-mH3PdM

visualization of the message: https://youtube.com/shorts/z2MyN0zbWGI

It's the season of Chinese New Year. I live for this time of year!

I was on a video call with some friends back in Hong Kong and saw some decorations behind them. This isn't uncommon. You've probably seen the 'luck/fortune' sigil all your life. It's a red square turned 45⁰ and has a gorgeous character in the middle: 福 fú

Well, this year, they don't have 福; they have Draco Malfoy, the evil Harry Potter character. Why?

Because his name in Chinese is 马尔福 mă ěr fú. His name loosely translates to Lucky Horse Son, or Fortunate Son of Horse.

And, you've guessed it, next year is the year of the Horse.

Yup. Today I learned. I fucking love my friends.

#TodayILearned #CNY #ChineseNewYear #YearOfTheHorse #HarryPotter #DracoMalfoy #马尔福

#TodayILearned that mass-market paperbacks are nearly dead. In fact, they've been dying almost since I began reading, having peaked at 49% of the book market in 1970, and being down to 3% in 2024, with ReaderLink having stopped distributing mass-market paperback books at the end of 2025.

I even looked at some #BookTube videos, and the young hosts referred to trade paperbacks as "traditional" books, and "the usual type" of book, and finding MMPBs odd and old-fashioned. #TIL

#TodayILearned Lukoil est une société russe (le plus grand producteur russe de pétrole).

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lukoil

Évidemment, je suis pas sûr qu’il y ait des pompes à essence éthiques... Pas sûr que Shell, Total ou les autres soient mieux. Mais quand même...

#essence #diesel #carburant #boycott

#TodayILearned about castelvetrano olives which are apparently extra dank

The FSW-0 recoverable satellite used wood as its heat-shield

https://mander.xyz/post/46411023

#TodayILearned #TIL ... that you can use combining accents on the # of a #hashtag! For example #̧Cedilla. Why? Because someone, in a heroic feat of #DefensiveProgramming, thought "I bet some #weirdos will do that, I'd better deal with it sensibly". Why would weirdos like me do that? Because we're weirdos!

Also, you can pile them on top of each other! Therefore the official hashtag of #Zalgo is not #Zalgo, it is #̶̧̼͖̖̦͍͉̝̗͐̈́̏͜Zalgo.

#Unicode

#TodayILearned that the human body has a reflex called RAIR (Rectoanal Inhibitory Reflex) with which the top parts of your anal canal *involuntarily* allows its content to lower just a bit, so that it touches the lower third, wherein cells then SAMPLE the content to tell your brain whether you have poop or fart in there. Once the sampling is done, the content is then raised again. And that’s how you know if it’s safe to relax your sphincter to release a fart, or if you’re going to poop if you do that. This sampling happens a few times an hour.

The only problem is that your cells sometimes cannot tell the difference between liquid and gas, and that’s where sharts come from.

~~The more you know~~

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/poo-or-a-fart-heres-how-your-body-knows_uk_6405cfcee4b0e45e2f8f895d

Addendum to #TodayILearned

Misericords. I’ve known about these for years but I made a link in my head…

Misericords are “cheat seats” that you sort of lean on when you’re meant to be standing.

https://www.misericords.org
https://youtu.be/clPSdvY5GzE?t=1152&si=-iof3DS5b-7CNOYX

#Melbourne public transport users might have seen their modern day descents in the padded “leaning seats” on some trams

#TodayILearned about Pilgrim Badges.

When you’d go on pilgrimage, especially in the medieval period, the church or reliquary shrine (or an opportunistic trader nearby) would sell you a badge indicating you’d been there.

Medieval people did Virtue Signalling.

Alternate take: they’re like modern day tour t-shirts for bands, or a Harrods food hall tote bag, or a tattoo in Sanskrit that you got while backpacking through Asia and finding yourself.

A visible signal of membership in a subculture through presence in a place.

We have been doing this shit a long time, apparently.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilgrim_badge?wprov=sfti1

Hail, sleet, and freezing rain. Until now, I didn't realize these words all have specific, and distinct meanings. I always thought they were sort of haphazard. #todayilearned #Weather #words

https://www.treehugger.com/what-is-the-difference-between-hail-and-sleet-4863819

#TodayILearned that there is "eventually" in Kotest for testing asynchronous code that does not have a callback to rely on in tests: https://kotest.io/docs/assertions/eventually.html
It's very convenient to get this out of the box from a testing framework.

#Kotlin #testing

#TodayILearned from a post by @vjprema that you can post to #Lemmy from your Mastodon account

#EuropeanAlternatives

https://vijayprema.com/using-lemmy-from-my-existing-mastodon/