LadyButterfly she/herCan you think of any now?
argh_another_usernameIt’s a collaborative site.
I like it, though there wasn’t a single one of the false facts that I was taught in schools.
“Dinosaurs shed their skin all at once like snakes”
“Girls are naturally not as good at math as boys”
I don’t mean to be rude, but If this was taught in your school, everyone around you is probably a moron.
Yeah, the concept is nice, but it tells me that the Big Bang doesn’t explain what happened before it (the leading hypothesis is that the Big Bang started time, so there is no “before”) and sources a Wikipedia article on spiders. Then, it cites the common myth about Daddy Longlegs being highly venomous, says that that wasn’t dispelled until 2020, and then cites a fucking BuzzFeed listicle.
Yeah, the concept is nice, but it tells me that the Big Bang doesn’t explain what happened before it (the leading hypothesis is that the Big Bang started time, so there is no “before”)
Which is entirely correct. Time as we know it is an “inside” parameter of our universe, and therefor any causality only exists inside our universe, too. Because causality always contains a temporal element as in “Event A happened, which caused Event B later”. We cannot make any assumption of “before the big bang” and therefor no assumption of “what caused the big bang” either.
At least not in any way we could relate to.
the common myth about Daddy Longlegs being highly venomous
Quite a childrens tale, even back then. Two reasons for it: First, the “Daddy Longlegs” has no ability to bite us. Even extreme thin parts of the skin, e.g. the lips, are still way to thick for it to penetrate with its teeth. Second, even if it could inject its venom (which really exists!) it would need to inject about half a cup of it into a grown adult (IIRC about the amount, it could be a quarter cup or a whole cup or something, but still in the range of “thousands of total spider weights”).
I remember an episode of Mythbusters where they tested this, and I found a neat website that claims to have the result of that test. ( mythbusters.fandom.com/wiki/Daddy_Long_Legs_Myth ). The result was that they could bite humans and pierce the skin, but the bite was not especially problematic.
Searching for Mythbusters Daddy Long legs also brought up some YouTube suggestions from the episode, which was called Buried in Concrete. I haven’t watched any yet but maybe the scene is somewhere.
Daddy Long Legs Myth
The Myth A Pholcus phalangioides (Daddy long-legs spider) has the most potent venom of all spiders, but is unable to pierce human skin. Verdict Busted Note A Daddy long-legs was able to bite through the skin of Adam's arm. He reported nothing more than a very mild, short-lived burning sensation. Analysis of the venom proves it does not approach the potency of the Latrodectus (Black widow spider).[1]