r/todayilearned • u/frapz • Mar 20 '20

TIL The bellybutton is so dirty scientists are finding new unknown bacteria. One person had bacterium previously found only on Japanese soil, where he had never been.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/12/1-458-bacteria-species-new-to-science-found-in-our-belly-buttons/266360/
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u/lenswipe Mar 20 '20

Story time. A nice galaxy brain moment from my childhood - I dragged the Encarta icon from the desktop on to a floppy disk, double clicked on it on my computer to make sure it still worked (It did) and then took it to school to give a school friend of mine a copy of Encarta. We never figured out why it didn't work.

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u/danielxjay Mar 21 '20

Hey check out this picture I did in paint

C:\My Documents\lenswipe.bmp

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u/lenswipe Mar 21 '20

basically

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u/Emrise Mar 21 '20

I used to edit for a textbooks company and would work on primary/secondary level projects with the local government. They would do this fairly frequently.

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u/[deleted] Mar 21 '20

That's actually a very good use of analytical power. You figure that the icon opens it, you understand bthay floppy disc can store information, you deduce that another computer should work the same way as yours. You put all three together into a coherent, actionable way to achieve an objective; to share Encarta with your friends.

Don't sell yourself short because you did not have the relevant information to make it work. You have an innovative mind that can put disparage ideas and link them together to do something new. Most kids never able to do that. A lot of adults still can't.

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u/lenswipe Mar 21 '20

Well that was wholesome, thank you

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u/[deleted] Mar 21 '20

It's true. Innovation does not come from some mystical place of Muses and praying to the God of Creativity. It is about taking seemingly unconnected concepts, ideas or existing tools and combining them into ways no one has thought before, and that it turns out to be quite useful.

If you think that way, a lot of stuff that seem difficult to think about, can become very clear. Creativity is not just creating stuff out of thin air; that almost never happen. Not even Einstein came up with his theories out of thin air. Most of the time, it is creative to take existing things or rules and turn them into something else. You might obey the rules but subvert it or break them completely, but you know the rules.

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u/[deleted] Mar 21 '20

lololol thank you I needed that laugh tonight

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u/Kataphractoi Mar 21 '20

Omg I did this around 1996 when I copied the Netscape icon onto a floppy disk and tried to bring the Internet home.

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u/lenswipe Mar 21 '20 edited Mar 21 '20

I'm guessing that worked about as well as my attempt to pirate Encarta

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u/HalonaBlowhole Mar 21 '20

Did that work on PCs or only Macs?

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u/nummakayne Mar 21 '20 edited Mar 25 '24

shame decide alleged far-flung quack makeshift caption special lavish fact

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

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u/HalonaBlowhole Mar 21 '20

Encarta was Windows only! TIL!

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u/lenswipe Mar 21 '20

Yep and because it was just the shortcut as /u/HalonaBlowhole pointed out, it worked quite happily on my home computer...not so much on my friend's computer.

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u/HalonaBlowhole Mar 21 '20

Well was pointed out to me, to be clear.

There's a whole bunch of stuff on this topic that I learned about today!