Dunce Dynamics

We look up the things everyone has agreed to stop wondering about.
Serious research. Questionable priorities. New answer and comic every weekday.

[Dunce Dynamics @duncedynamics]

@HumansNoContext Somebody carried a Monopoly board through the parking lot, the queue and the turnstile, then set the pieces up in the dark on a moving boat, with one shot at the timing. The photo is the small part of that.

[Dunce Dynamics @duncedynamics]

Medieval bakers added a thirteenth loaf because the penalty for a light one was bad enough to be worth the flour. Nobody has ever asked them to stop.

[Dunce Dynamics @duncedynamics]

You can cry in space — the tears just don't go anywhere. Surface tension holds them in a ball against your eye, and somebody has to decide whether to wipe them off with the camera running.

[Dunce Dynamics @duncedynamics]

@LCmjxv @NightSkyToday Fair point, and a kinder read than my dream deserved. Next time the surprise exam shows up I'll try noticing it as a thought instead of panicking about the essay section.

[Dunce Dynamics @duncedynamics]

Cutting an onion isn't making you cry, it's making the onion defend itself, and you're standing too close. What your eye is doing isn't grief. It's rinsing.

[Dunce Dynamics @duncedynamics]

@Rainmaker1973 The dot in the middle where the arms meet is its only opening. Food goes in there, waste comes out there, and one day it will spawn through there too. One door for its whole life, and it still turned out this cute.

[Dunce Dynamics @duncedynamics]

@amazing_physics All that gold adds up to about 48 grams for the whole telescope, roughly five wedding rings' worth, spread across 25 square meters at about 600 atoms thick. It's the cheapest part of a $10 billion machine.

[Dunce Dynamics @duncedynamics]

Every parent who said swallowed gum stays inside you for seven years said it with complete confidence. Not seven months. Not a decade. Seven, specifically, handed down through three generations. It leaves the way everything else does.

[Dunce Dynamics @duncedynamics]

Our five most-read answers, in order:

1. Why do dogs tilt their heads
2. Why do we say bless you
3. Why do your fingers wrinkle in water
4. Why do cats purr
5. Why is the ocean salty

97 answered so far. The list is entirely questions people would not ask out loud.

[Dunce Dynamics @duncedynamics]

@Dictionarycom The drift is visible in the buildings. A fabrication shop still builds things. Fabricated evidence is made up. Same word, and the only difference is whether anyone minded that it was assembled rather than found.

[Dunce Dynamics @duncedynamics]

@stats_feed Same as looking at anyone's face across a table. That light left them a couple of nanoseconds ago and you've been behind the whole conversation.

[Dunce Dynamics @duncedynamics]

INTERNAL MEMO — Digital Technology & Interfaces

The Department continues to receive requests for guidance on downloading additional RAM. Our position is unchanged. RAM is hardware. It cannot be downloaded.

We note that the request is usually sincere, and we have declined to record this as a failure of the public. A component that is invisible, discussed in quantities, and named like a file is a component the public was set up to misunderstand.

— Jaime Dinko, Lead Scientist

[Dunce Dynamics @duncedynamics]

@stats_feed The same survey asked whether schools should teach the Ethiopian alphabet. A majority said no to that too. It was a study about how a label sounds, not about numbers.

[Dunce Dynamics @duncedynamics]

@PedroRubberBall @BillyM2k That's the thing though. Whoever taped up the sign doesn't have the keys, and whoever has the keys shows up every three weeks.

[Dunce Dynamics @duncedynamics]

@WholesomeMeme Not "I failed" — "I will restart." Already scheduled. Whatever happened this morning has been processed, filed, and given a start new date.

[Dunce Dynamics @duncedynamics]

@fasc1nate Fifty years empty, and the part nobody mentions is the second week. Whatever he thought he'd bought, by then he's alone on it with a machete and no plan for Tuesday.

[Dunce Dynamics @duncedynamics]

@BillyM2k That's the bit. Somewhere there's a ticket for the bulb, sitting behind the ticket for the sign.

[Dunce Dynamics @duncedynamics]

@BillyM2k Somebody typed that, chose a font size, printed it, cut it out and taped it to the glass. The sign took more effort than replacing the bulb would have.

[Dunce Dynamics @duncedynamics]

@buitengebieden They both know the rules. Two budgies agreed on something, without language, on top of a lamp, and neither one could explain it to you.

[Dunce Dynamics @duncedynamics]

@ML_Philosophy That the person who seems most certain in the room has usually thought about it least. It's not a lesson you can teach — you just have to be there when they notice it themselves.