25 Disturbing True Facts That Most Of The General Public Aren’t Aware Of

How many times have you heard your stomach growling and assumed it meant you were hungry? In reality, those noises are caused by your intestines contracting. Surprisingly, many important facts like this often go unnoticed. For example, inhaling helium from balloons for a funny voice actually wastes a critical resource—helium, which is vital for MRI machines, plus nobody really needs floating party balloons.

#1

Image source: snizzrizz, Getty Images / unsplash (not the actual photo)

The country that places the tariffs pays the extra tax, not the country we impose a tariff on. The consumer foots the bill.

#2

Image source: PutieTang, Prahant Designing Studio / unsplash (not the actual photo)

Diamonds are worthless. Diamond cartels keep them expensive. Diamonds are literally pure solidified carbon.

Edit: unless obviously in tools. Which aren’t overpriced at all. I was talking about the overpriced diamonds used in jewelry.

#3

Image source: i_am_so_snappy, Getty Images / unsplash (not the actual photo)

We’re running out of helium, it’s essential for MRIs, not essential for birthday balloons.

#4

Image source: allmimsyburogrove, Trust “Tru” Katsande / unsplash (not the actual photo)

There are about 7000 known viruses, but scientists estimate that over a trillion are unknown.

CaramelMartini:
I took pathogens in university, and it was so, so interesting. Our bodies are being bombarded all the time with microorganisms trying to get in. Like, all the time. You have no idea how many different types are being born, trying to take hold, mutating, failing, dying out all around us. And sometimes they succeed, and sometimes they’re helped, and sometimes they combine in the freakiest way into something new. It’s fascinating and terrifying. And this is why I wash my hands all the time and I’m secretly glad for an excuse to still wear a mask in public.

#5

Image source: kevloid, Drew Hays / unsplash (not the actual photo)

Science isn’t scary. people ignoring science is.

#6

Image source: Emotional-Boat7073, obox2358

It’s very difficult and costly to recycle plastic. So difficult and costly, that it is in all likelihood never done. Your rinsed peanut butter container probably goes into landfill, is incinerated, or dumped at sea. Anything that is recycled probably uses more energy than was expended in its original manufacture. I want to live in a world that is less throwaway, but I don’t want to be lied to.
Yeah.

obox2358:
Aluminum is the one exception. It costs a lot to make new aluminum but very little to recycle it. This makes it the winner in the recycling world.

#7

Image source: Not_Montana914, Nigel Hoare / unsplash (not the actual photo)

Jupiter is Earth’s shield. Its gravity pulls away so much space stuff that would constantly hit and destroy our planet. Daddy Jupiter is particularly critical to sustaining life on earth.

#8

Image source: laydlvr, Matt Palmer / unsplash (not the actual photo)

The big fallacy is people believe there’s going to be some earthwide catastrophic event that announces climate change is here.

The truth is climate change is already here and worsening as far as the effects on humans. The cost to humans will be trillions of dollars as in more than the United States national debt today.

The Earth will be just fine; it will take care of itself. The ability of the Earth to support human life is an entirely different subject.

#9

Image source: Minimum_Name9115, Marco Oriolesi / unsplash (not the actual photo)

All we have to do have world peace is in our own power. We turn everything over to greedy sadistic sociopaths, then wonder why is there endless war, racism, sexism, poverty, hunger.

#10

Image source: Disastrous-Ad9618, Jp Valery / unsplash (not the actual photo)

Money only has value because we all agree that it does.

#11

Image source: InverstNoob, G. Marujo / unsplash (not the actual photo)

The ocean is warming up and also becoming more acidic. We are on a fast track to an ecological disaster that will likely cause humanities extinction.

#12

Image source: Resident-Ad-3316, Getty Images / unsplash (not the actual photo)

Our concept of fruits and vegetables are culinary categories, not biological.

#13

Image source: X0AN, Edu Bastidas / unsplash (not the actual photo)

Your eyes don’t technically see.

They just collect light, sends electrical signals to our brain, which then interprets those signals and constructs an image of what it thinks it’s seeing.

So we’re not actually seeing reality, just our brain’s best guess of it.

AlexanderTheBright:
Also iirc:

• You have no blue cone cells in the focal point of your eye.

• You have a “blind spot” with no vision cells at all somewhere in your peripheral vision.

And your brain just kinda ignores both of those.

#14

Image source: whatamifuckindoing, Getty Images / unsplash (not the actual photo)

How truly dangerous antibiotic resistance is. Bacteria are capable of replicating and adapting extremely quickly. Even if you start with a regular non-resistant infection, it can become resistant to multiple d***s in a few short days. Once they give you a last-line-of-defense antibiotic like Colistin or a carbapenem, there is nowhere to go from there.

So make sure you take ALL of your antibiotics and don’t just randomly take them for every little infection. Poor antibiotic stewardship is the reason we’re here in the first place.

someguy14629:
A few points here:

1.) the biggest driver of increasing antibiotic resistance is the use in animal feed. Cows/pigs/chickens grow bigger faster and give a better return on investment than animals not fed antibiotics.

They literally get antibiotics every single day of their lives for no reason than increasing profits. This is far worse for the global health crisis than the occasional prescribing by a PA for a viral infection in a telehealth visit.

2). The reason we don’t have new antibiotics coming is due to profits. If you invent a new drug for erectile dysfunction or heart disease or diabetes you immediately have customers for decades. Each is being charged hundreds per month.

For an antibiotic, you get some customers who get the right infection for 7-10 days once in a while. There is no profit incentive in antibiotics. Unless government explicitly subsidizes research into new antibiotics, research and development dollars and effort are going to go into profit-generating d***s.

In the last, when new antibiotics were invented, there was not regulation and they were used by the agriculture industry so quickly (unregulated by FDA because they are just cows, not people) there was 50% resistance rate in the community by the time human testing had been completed. Thst is a huge turn off when you invest 10 years and a billion dollars into a new drug.

H**h risk of failure, long time line, astronomical cost, low profit margin all add up to drug companies going any other direction but antibiotics. We should not let profitability be the main driving force in pharmaceutical innovation.

#15

Image source: sad8lxxo, A. C. / unsplash (not the actual photo)

That your stomach doesn’t actually growl from being empty. It’s your intestines contracting.

#16

Image source: aNJee4, Curated Lifestyle / unsplash (not the actual photo)

Maps in school were usually distorted — Greenland is not bigger than Africa.

tdomer80:
My 41 year old daughter asked us if we were going to visit Hawaii at the end of our Alaskan cruise last year, “because it’s so close by”.
On a lot of maps of the USA, they just jam Alaska and Hawaii together off to the edge of the map, and that was her point of reference.

#17

Image source: Affectionate-Lime552, Aaron Burden / unsplash (not the actual photo)

If the bees all die, we all die.

#18

Image source: Ok-Stranger-8242, Siednji Leon / unsplash (not the actual photo)

Cleopatra lived closer to our time than to the time when the pyramids were built.

#19

Image source: stryst, Scottsdale Mint / unsplash (not the actual photo)

There is a very good chance that the last silver mine that will be opened, has been opened. Every production metric for silver has fallen short multiple years in a row, and MANY industries use silver in a non-recoverable way. Even the cannabis industry uses about 3 grams of colloidal silver per plant they use to make feminized seeds. Disposable consumer electronics uses a LOT of silver in the form of switch contacts, and basically all of that is going into landfills or getting incinerated.

Platinum and palladium production are also both way down, but since those products were already rare and expensive, there’s less notice.

stryst:
True silver deposits are rare; basically all the known ones are currently being exploited, and the primary mines in Mexico are reporting that the ore they are pulling is less and less pure. Ore grades have fallen 22 percent.

Silver is very reactive, and geological chemistry means that silver gets mixed into and reacts with lots of other ores.

So global demand for silver has mostly been met (to the tune of about 74% of the worlds current supply) from recovery during the processing of copper and lead.

This production fell 7% short of world demand this year. That means that if ANYONE can find a deposit and get an operational mine running, they immediately have more customers than they can serve.

But it’s just not happening.

So while that was kind of long, basically its really hard to find new reserves, and the current reserves aren’t meeting global demand.

#20

Image source: doubl3_hel1x, Getty Images / unsplash (not the actual photo)

Average 17 years for medical research to reach patients. Researchers are working/thinking 2024 but patients are receiving Bush era care.

#21

Image source: dfgyrdfhhrdhfr, HANVIN CHEONG / unsplash (not the actual photo)

Humanity on a geological scale will be about a 500,000 year 2″ layer of compressed rock heavy in plastic, concrete, and refined metals.

#22

Image source: mukn4on, Jarosław Kwoczała / unsplash (not the actual photo)

-40C = -40F

It’s the only place the two scales meet.

Flahdagal:
I was told to remember that 28c = 82F, and this has been very helpful.

Wumpus-Hunter:
Same for 4°C = 40°F; 16°C = 61°F; and 40° C =104 °F

#23

Image source: MrLegendNeo8, Torsten Dederichs / unsplash (not the actual photo)

Ocean circulation collapse
Amoc weakening

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which drives the Gulf Stream and regulates global climate, is weakening and could collapse as early as 2025–2095 (per recent studies in *Nature*).

#24

Image source: Zett_76, Anastasiia Nelen / unsplash (not the actual photo)

That “leaders” control us by SCARING us, all the time.

#25

Image source: immoralwalrus, Getty Images / unsplash (not the actual photo)

Birds don’t breathe in and out. Air just moves through them like it’s an HVAC system. Their respiratory system is a lot more efficient than us, but also makes respiratory diseases very deadly to them.

We expect dinosaurs to have the same thing going on.