What if you could use 100% of your brain?

:seizure:

it's one atom away from being a deadly toxin!

"This organism hasn't evolved in millions of years!" has the added bonus of giving (bad) arguments to creationists.

Dopamine does a lot in the brain. Much of its function depends on where it's active. When released in the ventral tegmental area, it causes reward and happiness. In the basal ganglia, dopamine helps us coordinate movement.

Since I'm already on my soapbox, I'd like to point out there's more than 3 neurotransmitters. These are the basic ones:

• Dopamine - reward and muscle movement
• Acetylcholine - motor neurotransmitter
• Glutamate - primary excitation transmitter, important for memory and overall function
• GABA - primary inhibitor transmitter
• Glycine - inhibitor in the spinal cord
• Serotonin - the other happy hormone, involved in a lot of complex stuff like sleep, depression, and hunger
• Norepinephrine - fight or flight, adrenaline
• Epinephrine - the other fight or flight hormone
• Oxytocin - the nipple clamp hormone

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurotransmitter?wprov=sfla1

The one that annoys me is in astronomy when someone describes a star as being X times the size of the Sun. Diameter? Volume? Mass? What's being compared here?

I despise understanding physics. Should have never chosen that shit for my undergrad. Pop science, sci-fi, and most movies are just miserable to watch the moment they bring up physics in any capacity. Granted I do history now and it isn't much better.

I HATE UNDERSTANDING

Scientists don't know how something something

usually they have at least 2-3 plausible theories, and they just can't make or design an experiment which will eliminate the wrong ones. Moreover, even having one theory doesn't mean they know-know (tm) something, at least not in the sense of knowing the truth, they have a model which fits all the currently known outcomes/experiments, which might be the truth. It creates distorted image of scientific knowledge as something absolute, which seemingly implodes every century, instead of a process

(e.g. maxwell derived his equations thinking aether was an actually existing thing (and the equations reflect it), the equations are still fucking stellar 150 years later, aether was thrown out in 50)

*obviously, one can take this to absurdity by saying science doesn't know shit, let me roll coal or whatever the fuck, but i still think nuanced understanding of science would be more positive, with having gradations of "not knowing" and "knowing" over both ontological truth and predictive truth, while the former is elusive and slowly approaching reality (in some philosophies), the latter is likely in firmly "knowing" category

imagine if media's secondary job (after its role in cultural hegemony) was to inform instead of to generate profits via engagement

Any extant remains of any kind of ancient mechanism at all being written about as "did archeologists just find ancient computer???"

“Germ” is also a vague term as it can cover practically any single-celled organism or virus. But all of those aren’t necessarily bad for humans. So a light switch might have as many germs on it as a toilet seat, but they’re not going to be the same kind of germs.

The word "hypersonic" and "hypersonic weapon", or "impossible to intercept hypersonic missiles", used in pop science publications and news reports. No one knows what this means, and just thinks that any ballistic missile is a hypersonic weapon that's impossible to stop, which is not the case. The US and the Soviet Union hit hypersonic speeds with ballistic missiles in the late 1940s based on V-2 missiles captured from Nazi Germany. The Bell X-15 was a manned hypersonic rocket aircraft in the 1960s. The US deployed maneuverable medium range ballistic missiles capable of hypersonic speeds in the Pershing-II in the 1980s. The Soviet Union had mass produced air launched ballistic missiles capable of hypersonic speeds, the Kh-15. None of these were considered hypersonic weapons. And none of their modern day contemporaries, like the Russian Kinzhal or maneuverable Iranian ballistic missiles, are technically hypersonic weapons. That doesn't mean that they're bad weapons systems (in some use cases they are superior to hypersonic weapons), just not in the hypersonic class.

Hypersonic weapons aren't just about speed, but a class of weapon, to do with achieving hypersonic speeds within the earth's atmosphere on a non ballistic trajectory for the majority of their flight. Such as the Russian Zircon hypersonic cruise missile, US Dark Eagle hypersonic glide vehicle, China's DF-17/DF-ZF hypersonic glide vehicle. It's about flying within the atmosphere at hypersonic speeds.

They did the toilet seat one on mythbusters. Iirc a kitchen sink had far more bacteria than a toilet seat, but the sink bacteria was mostly harmless while the toilet had some harmful bacteria.

"most accidents happen within 15 miles from home"

Most people don't drive more than 15 miles in their daily commute.