Mind Blowing Random Thoughts #2

REM sleep should take up about 25% of your sleep. During this time your brain processes information in abstract ways. Consider it the time that your brain does secretarial work, filing things for future use or long term storage. REM stands for Rapid Eye Movement, which is characterized by how the eyes shift around. Recent studies suggest that REM is your eyes visualizing dreams.

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When laborers digging a well in China in 1974 discovered a life-size statue of a soldier, they knew it was something special, but they had no idea what else lay below the surface. Archaeologists started excavating and currently think there are as many as 8,000 clay statues. Most are warriors, each with its own facial expression and weapons, and there are full-size terracotta horses and chariots too. The project was created as a mausoleum for the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang Di, who took the throne in 246 B.C. Qin is buried in a tomb at the site that hasn’t yet been excavated because of concerns about its stability, but explorations around the edge of it have uncovered statues of dancers and acrobats.

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Just looked this thread properly, love it will find some facts

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Doctors that visit the Australian Antarctic Program site are required to have their appendixes out. This is because there is regularly only one doctor on staff.

The appendix is a small dead end projection off the connection of the Ileocecal valve to the Ascending Colon. Scientist are still not certain what the purpose of it is, but it has shown some connections to immune function. There hasn’t been any correlation with decreased immunity and appendectomies however.

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Mali is located in Central Western Africa. The country initially experienced great wealth due to its salt and gold mining, as well as ivory. This wealth was squandered by political leaders. With the global inflation of food, importing became costly to a country already struggling to provide for itself due to civil war, which is ongoing between Northern Mali and Southern Mali. Travel agencies suggest avoiding travel to Mali because of the threat of terrorism, banditry and kidnapping. There are famous landmarks and locations in Mali though, including Timbuktu.

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Here’s a math fact for you. Perhaps not mind blowing, but a good thing for everyone to know (many of you ought to know). Pythagorean Theorem is a fundamental relation in Euclidean Geometry between the three sides of a right triangle. It states that the area of the square whose side is the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the areas of the squares on the other two sides.

This is commonly used in real life in Construction and Architecture, and a variety of other useful instances, such as finding the slope of a mountain, or the shortest distance between two points in a two-dimensional model.

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Phew! Had emergency appendectomy a couple years ago :sweat_smile:

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Did u guys know that sperm whales sleep vertically very close to the surface of the water so that they can sleep longer and more soundly.
They only shut off half of their brains in order to be alert of predators while sleeping and also so thag they won’t drown. Turning only half their brains off helps them remember that they need to occasionally go up to the surface to breathe before going back to sleep!

I’m posting this bc talking about one of my passions helps remind me that I have something to live for! Feeling rely good today and thought I’d practice a skill! I’ll be sharing more of these facts with you guys at some future point! :whale2::whale2::whale2::whale2:

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Here’s another basic fact that everyone ought to know. If you don’t, then this is totally for you.

It’s difficult to achieve financial success in our world. Very few will land a job where they earn sacks of cash that they don’t know what to do with. This is not necessary to set yourself up for a good retirement though. Even if your job doesn’t offer a 401k or some sort of retirement plan, you can do this yourself. Roth IRA’s are set up so that an individual can contribute a set amount annually and invest how one sees fit. The safest and surest method of generating a large retirement this way is by investing in Index Funds (i.e. S&P 500, DOW Jones, etc). These are portfolios of many billion dollar companies. Investing in these Index Funds has an almost guaranteed rate of return, since the chances of all of the companies failing is close to zero. Even in cases of market crashes, a few years is sufficient for the market to recover and come back out on top.

Investing a bit each year for many years has the ability to generate Compound Interest. It’s like this, you invest some on year one and generate interest on it, next year you invest more and then generate interest on all your principle, in addition to the prior interest you accrued. Investing this way has the ability for people even with middle to lower class income to generate a considerable amount come retirement age. You can calculate it yourself with this Compound Interest Calculator.

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I just started a money market account this year and have been watching my interest compound. Any way to put your money where it does the work is a good plan.

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Smart! Money Markets are good, but only as long as they’re being invested in good index funds. I invest in something called a Target Date Index Fund. These portfolios are set to mature by a certain year. There are Target Date Index Funds created for every year for the foreseeable future. So you could pick the year you plan to retire and dump your money into that specific year’s index fund. You are totally right though, Rich people make money work for them, not the other way around.

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My brain fuzzed over when I read most of these words but I appreciate every one of them. I just got started getting smarter about finance last year so I am still an infant here, but growing,

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Sun Tzu’s The Art of War details how,

"Every battle is won before it’s ever fought."

Chapter 13 records how war is won based on the information gained. This is regularly gained from Espionage and Spying. Sun Tzu says that spies should be broken down into five categories:

  1. local spies - citizens of the enemy state
  2. inward spies - enemy operatives working as double agents
  3. converted spies - enemy agents now working against their former ruler
  4. doomed spies - expendable agents fed false information to be shared with the enemy
  5. surviving spies - operatives who gather intelligence and report back.
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According to Diodorus Siculus, the Greek lawgiver Charondas from Sicily issued a law that anyone who brought weapons into the Assembly must be put to death. One day in 612 BC, he arrived at the Assembly seeking help to defeat some brigands in the countryside, but with a knife still attached to his belt. In order to uphold his own law, he committed suicide.

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Gabriella Carter graduated from Princeton University in 2022 debt free by applying for scholarships. Her tenacity and business-minded personality scored her over $2 Million is scholarship funds. She promotes herself now as The Free Money Maven on social media, helping others learn how to win scholarships to help pay for college.

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2 days ago NASA detected a large grouping of sunspots — dark patches on the sun — known as AR3576 which is collectively 15 times the width of Earth. The cluster has increased in size in the last month and could be a risk for strong solar flares. If sunspots are active, more solar flares will result creating an increase in geomagnetic storm activity for Earth. Therefore during sunspot maximums, the Earth will see an increase in the Northern and Southern Lights and a possible disruption in radio transmissions and power grids. Solar Flares are generally considered to be harmless to people.

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Until the wi-fi is knocked out, anyway.

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Did I hear this here?

In the article I read they could not verify that it happened but it makes me smile to think it might have.

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That’s hilarious! Classical Conditioning at its finest!

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