› added 11 years ago

89

TIL that in Ojibwe (a Native American language), “Kansas” translates to “Little Hell-Hole”.

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JYepB TIL 193km of the Suez Canal was dug partly by hand starting in 1859. Over the span of 10 years, around 1 million took part in the digging and it cost the lives of over 100 thousand Egyptian forced laborers.
X0vbk TIL the city of Los Angeles pays more for parking enforcement/writing tickets than the parking tickets themselves actually generate in revenue for the city.
1anOd TIL that Spanish conquistadors in America didn't realize the true value and rarity of platinum and only cared about gold, but counterfeiters would use platinum to make fake gold and silver, so the Spaniards would dump any confiscated platinum into the sea to try and combat this forging problem
JYMJk TIL the steel man argument (or steelmanning) is the opposite of the straw man argument. The idea is to find the best form of the opponent's argument to test opposing opinions. Steelmanning will make you better at arguing and improve your critical thinking.
rRvXM TIL in 2005, when Steve Jobs began planning the iPhone, he had a choice to either shrink the Mac or enlarge the iPod. Jobs pitted the Macintosh and iPod teams against each other in an internal competition.