less_retarded_wiki

Interesting

This is a suitable answer to anything, if somebody tells you something you don't understand or which you judge to be shit but don't want to give this as a reply, simply say "interesting". In certain discussion groups the word is therefore prohibited exactly because it provides a lazy, nobrainer answer to everything.

What follows is a "constantly work in progress" list of subjectively selected facts and topics that may be seen as interesting, preferably while also being lesser known:

• Obscure Internet communities: for example various wikis or image boards, also darknet, gopher, internet archives, websites in foreign languages and so on. See also netstalking.
• Zanclean flood: gigantic flood that refilled the Mediterranean sea some 5 million years ago, which must have been a greatly spectacular event. Other similar mega floods are also discussed, e.g. that of the Black sea. Some of them are (often controversially) thought to be the origin of the shared great flood myth that's present in almost all old religions and cultures. A bit related interesting topic is the 20th century Atlantropa mega project that planned to partially dry the Mediterranean to gain more space for Europe.
• Ball lightning: a real strange phenomenon whose existence is not controversial (it is acknowledged to exist, unlike various cryptids etc.) but which still remains without exact scientific explanation. You can find videos of it. Descriptions of eye witnesses (even from very old time periods) are also quite fun to read. This is one of very rare remaining cases of something quite tangible being still shrouded in mystery to this day.
• Statistics, world records, numbers, infographics, data and their visualization: there's something wonderful about numbers, and not just to the autistic among us, the success of Guinness World Record book proves that figures are just cool. And computers take number crunching to whole another level, opening the door for quick pattern searches, adventurous exploration of correlations, deriving more and more numbers and especially making spectacular eye-candy visualizations, it's just so pleasant to plot and draw pixels, shapes and colors and glimpse into the abstract worlds the data hide, and sometimes we're even rewarded with very visually pleasant results. Pro tip: try to search for images on OEIS.
• Extinct animals: obviously everyone loves dinosaurs (BTW look up well preserved fossils of dinosaurs, some are in excellent state, we also now know for fact the skin color of some dinosaurs, ALSO there exist MILLIONS years old animals perfectly preserved in amber), but there are many underrated extincts animals, e.g. gigantopithecus, the biggest ape known to have ever existed (estimated weight up to 300 kg), which we however know almost nothing about (only teeth were found). More recently extinct species such as mammoth, dodo (recorded in paintings, there exist some remains of dodos), moa bird (extremely large bird), saber-toothed cats, giant sloth, short-faced bear (probably the biggest bear ever) or Tasmanian tiger (which there still exists a black and white video footage of) are interesting exactly because they are closer on the timeline, people may have seen them and even depicted them somehow (e.g. cave paintings), we have may find much better preserved, mummified bodies of them (often in ice) and also have a bigger chance of cloning them one day or even discover them still living somewhere (has happened to several species already).
• UFOs and aliens: ufology is pretty fun when you dig through the real retarded schizo stuff and ignore soyence fanatics that will of course immediately stop being friends with you. Remember, you may enjoy digging into weird, suspicious cases without starting to wear tinfoil or seeing little green men behind every corner; even if a UFO turns out to be a new, secret military tech or newly discovered atmospheric phenomenon and not aliens, it's still pretty damn interesting. Some cases are quite solid, e.g. Hangzhou Xiaoshan (China) 2010 sighting of extremely weird tear in the sky which was scanning the whole city with some kind of obviously artificial light screen for a very long time, which was seen by thousands and captured on camera and video by many (e.g. https://yt.artemislena.eu/watch?v=__9s5chdV7c) and even caused an airport to shut down -- the real nature of the thing was never explained and wasn't even much talked about (there also seems to be another simple-to-debunk cover up UFO sighting under the same keywords). The Travis Walton abduction case is also quite interesting, supported by a lot of evidence and has stood for a very long time. There are also many pretty good footages of weird UFOs, especially interesting are those captured by multiple people from different angles, which are extremely hard to fake.
• Rabbitholes: something that goes deep and rewards digging deeper, such as stories of various cults, conspiracy theories, serial killers etc.
• Known but unexcavated archaeological sites: e.g. the Qin tomb, a pyramid in China that's a resting place of a great emperor is buried underground -- historical records say the pyramid contains an unbelievable wealth, a great palace and models of cities, seas, waterways of quicksilver and traps protecting against intruders; this is believable as it is also the place where the astonishing terracota army was already excavated. However it is quite likely the pyramid won't be opened during our lifetime, we probably won't ever see it with our eyes. Also the well known pyramids and sphinx of Giza are still very mysterious -- e.g. there are holes in the great Sphinx you can clearly but about which no one ever talks -- you can see they lead somewhere inside but you never see the actual inside, they let no one in and photos are nowhere to be found. Historical places of yet unknown locations, like the hanging gardens of Babylon, are also pretty interesting.
• Oldest existing photographs, video and audio recordings, and also old paintings, e.g. cave paintings capturing extinct animals.
• 1816, so called year without summer, probably caused by great volcano eruption whose effects might have given a glimpse to what it looked like after the impact of the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs -- however this time many people wrote first hand witness accounts (you can find many in old books and reports, many times just scanned on Internet archive).
• Back before reddit became such huge shit interesting stuff could be discovered e.g. at https://old.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/top/, however nowadays it seems to be just a propaganda ground -- current all-time top two posts are both literally uninteresting political posts about Ukrainian war? :D Use internet archive to try to dig up the good stuff from the past maybe.
• People with perfect pitch (rare condition that makes one be able to precisely identify any musical tone) always lose this ability some time in their 50s.
• North Korea due to its isolation and secrecy, e.g. its own intranet. Also other secret computer networks like JWICS, SIPRNet, NIPRNet etc.
• Conspiracy theories: Many are true.
• Hybrids: No, we don't actually know if humans and apes can interbreed or not, humanzees have been reported, as well as hybrids of humans and other animals, there exist some real weird photos. Ligers and tigons are also cool, but there are many other interesting possibilities. See http://www.macroevolution.net.
• Third man factor: there is a phenomenon which makes people hear some kind of comforting, guiding voice in long-lasting crisis situations, described e.g. by people who got lost in mountains etc.
• Morbid events: these satisfy our natural morbid curiosity and may also turn out to be a rabbithole. This may include plane crashes, mysterious murders, terrorist attacks, natural disasters, lost media of bizarre accidents etc. Just a few examples are the following: Timothy Treadwell living with bears who eventually ended up recording himself being eaten by one, the lost footage of Christine Chubbuck committing suicide on live news, the unreleased footage of Steve Irwin's death by stingray, the footage of Tilikum the killer whale killing its trainer etc.
• Weird coincidences: for example the names of all continents start and end with A (AsiA, AfricA, AmericA, AntracticA, AustraliA) except for Europe which starts and ends with E. Sun and Moon have the same apparent size in the sky. And so on.
• Language and translations: translation errors are a rich rabbit hole, revealing not only bloopers but weird differences and features of languages themselves. { Start for example here https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Lost_in_Translation. ~drummyfish }
• Deep sea, Antarctica and other unexplored parts of the world.
• Old books and drawings, first-hand records of history from before photography. There are no photographs from medieval times, but there are paintings, which are sometimes quite realistic and the next best thing to a photograph. First hand witness accounts of historical events ,such as the Krakatoa explosion, famines, black death etc., are indeed very captivating.
• Space, distant past and future: just viewing HD photos from Mars can fill us with awe for hours, and then there are videos of Earth from the ISS (it's surprising how many features can be seen from it, e.g. solar plants reflecting the Sun), videos and photos from the Moon, photos of distant planets (Pluto, ...) etc. Then there are exoplanets, Universe simulators, supernovas, strange formations in distant universe. Another cool pastime is looking into discoveries about distant past such as the Big Bang, formation of the Moon or the Chicxulub impact (also looking up other big craters on Earth), AND possibly researching accurate predictions of the far future (collision of Andromeda galaxy with our Milky Way etc.).
• Historical Jesus (and other similar historical figures such as Muhammad, Moses, Homer, ...) -- new archeological discoveries are being made and it's fascinating how much can be deduced from it when connected to other source. We are still getting closer to the true image of perhaps the most famous man in history.
• ...

TODO: serial killers?

See Also

• fun

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