5 Things That I Didn’t Know Before (September 2020)
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This is the September 2020 edition of 5 Things That I Didn’t Know Before.
A retweet could mean a felony.
You will often find accounts on Twitter that make it clear that “retweets are not endorsements.” The concept here is simple — the individual might retweet specific tweets that others deem offensive, but that doesn’t mean that that particular individual ENDORSES what is said in the tweet. It’s a pretty simple concept to grasp.
However, four people who retweeted a tweet now face felony charges. Kevin Alfaro, a 21-year-old at a Black Lives Matter protest, tweeted the original tweet. The tweet asked the Internet to identify a police officer and negatively referred to him (calling him a “bitch”, specifically). It might not surprise anyone to find that Alfaro was charged with cyber harassment — but I was stunned to find that three individuals who RETWEETED Alfaro’s tweet also face felony charges.
You can read more about the incident here:
Nostalgia was once considered a disease.
There is a good chance that you have been nostalgic before. You may have been a college freshman nostalgic for home, or you may be lonely and nostalgic of a past relationship with an ex that you still care about. However, I didn’t realize that nostalgia was once considered a disease.
In 1688, Johannes Hofer coined the term as a medical condition, suggesting that nostalgia was not only about homesickness, but also coupled with symptoms like fever, indigestion, and stomach pain. In the 1700s, it was considered an insult for a soldier to be labeled with the condition. One particularly ruthless Russian general actually began burying his soldiers alive to warn them against using “nostalgia” as an excuse of any kind. In retrospect, it is likely that these soldiers were suffering more from PTSD and/or extreme exhaustion.
They discharged soldiers and sent them back home once they were considered to be nostalgic during this time. By the 1850s, the idea that “nostalgia” was an actual disease was less accepted.
The founder of Chicago is black.
One of the great things about growing up in New Orleans is that it taught me about how incredible black culture can be. I grew up listening to black rappers and black jazz musicians. Later on, I was hanging out at bars, dancing to music created by black brass bands. I ate incredible black food, and had conversations with black friends, strangers, and locals.
However, it’s also important to realize that if you were taught American history, in America, you learned about a version of American history that erased and downplayed black people’s accomplishments. I am 34, and completely ashamed to say that I had no idea that the “founder of Chicago” was a black man named Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. Not much is known about the man, except that he was reportedly handsome and well-educated.
If you’re from Chicago, this might not come as a massive surprise considering many local institutions dedicated to du Sable. He also appeared to have married a Native American woman (and had two kids with her) and was also arrested by the British military during the American Revolutionary War. He was the first non-native settler in the area that developed to be modern-day Chicago.
There is a bird that eats crocodiles.
I am aware that there are large birds, and I know that they can be fierce creatures. Hawks eat snakes and mice. Eagles might feast on a prairie dog, squirrel, or fish. I did not, however, know that there is a bird that can actually eat a crocodile.
I am talking about the shoebill stork. It certainly appears more menacing than other birds, and it kind of looks like what a cartoonist would draw up if he or she was asked to draw a “prehistoric bird”. Seriously — this bird looks almost comical. It’s still very real, and it can grow up to five feet tall.
As if the fact that it could kill a crocodile wasn’t insane enough, its mating call sounds like a machine gun.
Your smartphone can tell if you’re drunk.
Your smartphone can do many things, and it’s insane to think about the fact that there are actually more mobile phones in the world now than actual human beings. It also makes a lot of sense, when you consider how “essential” a smartphone has become to anyone who wants to truly live a modern life. However, your smartphone can now tell whether its user is drunk with a 93% accuracy rate.
The concept of watching how someone walks to determine whether they are intoxicated is nothing new, and police officers have been performing the “gait test” for decades. This particular research, from the University of Pittsburgh, is still in “its early stages.”
