What's the dumbest thing you thought as an adult that you recently learned was wrong?

Until he was 50 years old my father did not know how his mother could see through walls.

When he was little his mother sat in the living room while he was playing with his sister in their playroom. With a wall and a hallway between them. But every time he tried to pull his sister's hair or something their mother would shout from the living room for him to stop it. He was really angry and confused because he couldn't fathom how she could see them.

On his 50th birthday his mother revealed that she could see them perfectly fine through the reflection in a wardrobe that stood in the hallway.

mirror/reflection

Yep, that'll do it, altho its weird he didn't see her. Mirrors reflections are usually bidirectional, no? Like if I see you <-> you see me usually...
- You get used to seeing something your whole life and it becomes background noise, but it wouldn't have been like that for the mom's whole life, she'd be more likely to notice that she can see him that way.
- Kid brains are something special.
- I think it had a glass door so was only half reflective.
- It depends on the angle. There are definitely times you can see someone/something but they can't see you.

Mum: we’re definitely going the wrong way

Me: how do you know?

Mum: because we need to go south and we are currently going north

Me: how do you know we are going north?

Mum: because the sun sets in the west

Me: oh…

Technically, you could say we're the ones who set since it's the Earth's rotation causing the change.
- Idk, it's all relative.
- Don't worry, daughter, I know we're going south because I set in the same location I was already in.
🎶Certain as the sun/Rises in the East/Tale as old as tyme/Song as old as Rhyme/Beauty and the Beast/🎶
I used to use the sun.

Then I had a car compass for a while.

But, honestly, everyone's got a GPS-enabled cell phone these days, and unless you're worried about running out of charge, that pretty much beats the pants off anything else.

EDIT: And if you're in an operable car, then you, in all likelihood, have a source of electricity in the form of the cigarette lighter.
- You at least know how to use the sun. There are many who have never bothered to learn.
I always use Never Ear Shredded Wheat to remember the directions.

As for which way the sun sets, I remember a quite from either Shanghai Noon/Knights in which Owen Wilson's character talks about how the sun rises in Japan however it sets in the West.

Chipotles are jalapeños. They are just roasted.

There are more peppers like that, too:
poblano - ancho
chilaca - pasilla
anaheim - colorado
mirasol - guahillo
serrano - chile seco
bola - cascabel

~~Also related: green, yellow, orange, and red bell peppers are all the same pepper, just various stages of ripeness.~~ Guess I had my own dumb moment in this thread. Not sure where I read my take, but the reply to mine is correct.
- Bell pepper thing is false. Green ones are usually underripe red bells but the other colors are all equally ripe. This is easy to fact check: look for less ripe peppers at the store, they will be red with green splotches rather than yellow or orange. Or you can shop for bell pepper seeds online.
Well they're smoked, but yeah. Just jalapeños.
Almost all chiles have a different name when smoked and/or dried.
I thought they were smoked?
Wat was the story behind ur aha moment re:this?
Chipototlay
- Chipoltay. Like the the first officer on Voyager!
Basically just jalapeño jerky I suppose

Rhode Island isn't really an island. Like, yeah it's named after one of its islands, but people who live in the state are on the continental part. I thought the whole state was an island lmao

California also isn't an island, but it's named after a fictional island in a Spanish novel, and was once thought to be an island.
- I used to think it was named after Calphurnia from Julius Caesar when we read that in class. I literally pronounced her name as "Ka-la-fern-ee-uhh", fuck
i thought it was a road
Why are their schollars so sought after?

I thought Edinburgh was two different places because of pronunciation.

I always read it as pronounced like -berg, but there was this other, similar town pronounced -bruh or -boro that people talked about.

Just one of those place names that didn’t come up often at all, so I never compared them in my head and wondered if “hey, these might be the same place…” It came up and bit me in conversation far too recently where my misunderstanding was worth a laugh among friends.

That, and I thought we’d elect basically decent (as far as politicians go) people to the presidency that would at least honor tradition and the institution. Boy, was I wrong about that.

I think everyone should get a pass on pronouncing the names of British places. All pronunciations are equally correct. Don't like it? Don't name a place "Michaeleaulourhoroughsbleachhhiffynboroughshire"
- Yeah, when "Leicester" is pronounced "Lester", you have no hope of figuring pronunciation out without help.
- Obligatory Map Men: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYNzqgU7na4
there was this other, similar town pronounced -bruh or -boro that people talked about.

You were so close: Edinburgh only got its name after Edward I invaded Scotland in 1296. Before that it (which was then a larger area than the present Edinburgh) had just been called "the Burgh", which depending on regional variation would have been pronounced either "burg" or "boro". "Edinburgh" referred to a smaller area within the Burgh that the king's guards would patrol more severely due to the perceived increased risk of rebellion due to higher population density.

(/joke)

My parents told me to always leave the "big mosquito bugs" alone as they eat the little mosquitoes. Then I told everyone to do the same for years. Turns out those "big mosquito bugs" were actually "Crane Fly" and they do not eat mosquitoes....

https://www.mrbuggs.com/giant-mosquitoes-aka-crane-flies/

Yeah, I grew up calling them Mosquito Hawks and was told the same thing. Urban legend with good cultural penetration, I guess.
- Dragon flies and bats however are doing good work
- In Oklahoma we call them "skeeter eaters"
  
  I work in pest control. I never correct anyone.
Heh whoops

Growing up deep in the dusty heart of the American West, I lived far from the conveniences and attractions of city life. But once in a blue moon, my parents would take my siblings and I to enjoy the rides at the park in The City.

Despite being the region's commercial hub, The City was small - barely 50,000 souls - yet it contained a park with mechanical rides. It was less a theme park and more a clamorous set of decrepit carnival rides that had been once erected and never removed. Naturally, the rides at the park were a favorite birthday treat.

The years passed and I traded the wide open spaces for a major metropolis, but I never forgot that little park and its rides.

...And so it was not until my thirty-third year that I realized the many signs upon our nation's freeways were advertising commuter parking lots - and not a local "Park and Ride".

Having a tooth pulled wouldn't be that expensive.

Now I see why Noone in America goes to the dentist

The most annoying part is even if you have coverage, if it has a deductable it hard to get yourself to get in there
- This old lady I know went and got a prescription filled last week. The co-pay was $24. Not bad, I don't know what medicine it is. Then she got home and couldn't find it. After looking everywhere and not finding it (probably threw it out by accident) she went back to get a refill and said,"I'll just pay cash for this, I fucked up" and it rung up at $10. The cash price was less than half the insurance price. What the fuck is that?
You think getting a tooth pulled is expensive? Try getting a new one put in.
- Yeah I get to have that experience and payment plan in a few weeks
I'm scheduled for my wisdom teeth to be pulled. 55 euros a pop.
- I've got a consult for that later this month, I'm really hoping it's not too bad with my insurance, but worst case I'll hit my OoP max for the year early?
- Wow I had one of mine removed and it costed 580 Euros, been putting off going because they checked the other teeth and had to get two fillings total bill was 1,140 Euros. Sucks because I was told when this happened two years ago that I’d need the other one pulled out soon and after that costing just over half my months pay, I have been putting it off.

How young are you guys, Jesus Christ 😂

Lemmy users are extremely young. Buncha kids around here
- I started using Reddit when I was 13, I'm currently 24 so still a kid depending on who I ask.
  
  For years in early Reddit, it always felt like everyone on the site was just people browsing it in work, to the point where 'summer reddit' was a thing because the quality would drop when the kids weren't in school. You could feel the difference in the website between work days and weekends.
  
  That's exactly how Lemmy feels now. I bunch of people in their 20s and 30s who all have jobs Infront of a computer, sometimes I'm sad that this site isn't filled with Gen Z because they are the critical generation. It's much less progressive for the internet if this site is filled with old fogies nostalgic for the golden age of the internet, than it is if it's equally filled with enthusiastic kids who never saw the unfiltered internet but want to ride the fediverse train regardless, because they believe in it.
  
  I hope everyone on Lemmy didn't grow up with the old internet, because it means they believe in something they haven't seen.
Oh him? He’s about 2000 years young.
- And that man's name?
  
  Jesus Christo
I will not confirm nor deny

They are different though! The glass measuring cup is for liquid and the ones that nestle into each other are for dry ingredients. You need to fill the little ‘1 cup’ dry measuring cup to the brim with ingredients to get an accurate measurement, which is pretty much impossible with the glass wet measuring cups.

When you are measuring dry ingredients, you can fill the same cup with more flour or whatever depending on how you fill it as well, but with liquid it’s, well, fluid.

So, you can measure wet ingredients in the dry ingredients cup, but not the other way around.

You shouldn't use measuring cups of any sort for dry ingredients. Use a scale. And if the recipe gives volumetric measurements instead of weight, you should convert them to weight first. You'll find your baking/cooking will become more consistent as a result.
- It blows my mind that the OP was wrong and real answer to OP was not a reply, but a reply to a reply, ugh.
- Measuring by mass is definitely more accurate, yeah (for dry and wet ingredients). But have you ever noticed that the recipe always uses round numbers? You never see 4/9 cup, or 2.3735 teaspoons. What's the point of being able to measure out an exact number of grams when the recipe is already extremely approximated at a not-necessarily-exactly-optimal amount?
  
  I mean yes, ok, I admit that you will get more consistent results. But not necessarily consistently good results.
- You should use a scale, but most kitchens don’t have a scale in them. I wasn’t trying to make things more difficult with my reply.
- It doesn't matter for a lot of things. Flour is compressible, but sugar isn't for example.
- I would happily pay for a browser add-on that blocked American recipes.
  
  Who the fuck uses cups to measure, outside of a nursery? 😂
- Being good at cooking means knowing when that kind of precision is needed and when it isn't. For most things, it isn't.
- It wasn't dry stuff, is was water and milk for cooking. It was fine :)
- Measuring dry ingredients by volume is about as accurate as most kitchen scales, lol.
It’s still the same volume. Saying they are different is misleading. They just have different use cases.
- I didn’t say the volume was different? I said the containers are different making it more difficult to get the proper volume of dry goods. You can’t flatten off 1 cup of flour that’s measured in a 2 cup measuring cup.
Aha, thanks for clarifying this :) And yes, I was measuring out liquids so that tracks
- No worries! For cooking it wouldn’t be a big issue either way, but when it comes to baking you want to be precise.

That social skill and practical skills are far more valuable than theory.

Unless you’re really, really good at theory. See Von Neumann, Murray Gell-Mann, John Nash, and many others. It really goes for anyone who’s talented significantly above their peers in tech, the arts, sports…

The problem is that it scales with talent, so someone who’s modestly brilliant will get less leeway than a Nobel (or EGOT) level talent, and talent seems to scale non-linearly.
- Exactly so, and I am below average Joe.
Wait, you are saying that's something you believed but learned was wrong. You now believe that theory is more valuable than social & practical skills? Or the other way round?
- I used to believe that knowledge was the most valuable. I now know it isn't and that other stuff such as social skills are much more important.

I thought that getting a degree in computer science may allow me to buy a home. That was wrong, unless you join a startup early, you will not buy a home.

I thought that doing a masters in bioinformatics will screw me economically when I saw the salaries of my CS peers that went to the market. That too was wrong, doing a multidisciplinary masters left no free time, so SO doesn't want kids.

I thought global warming will screw us only decades away, but that too is false. Don't have kids and economics won't matter in a few years (< 10, probably 3-5).

I'll try to cheer you up a little:

Owning a house: to an extent traps you in a physical location. Your job pool is smaller, and everyone you like who doesn't own a home eventually moves away. As a bonus, the longer that pattern goes on, the older you get, and the more difficult to replace the departed becomes.

No kids: You seem pretty upset about global warming and the economy. Not having children has to be one of the single most impactful environmental choices you can make. I don't have figures but your carbon footprint has to be a fraction of anyone with kids. Also, if systematic collapse is as inevitable and imminent as you suspect, it's a good thing you don't have any kid(s) for to be exploited by Tina Turner into fighting to the death in a big iron cage.

Humans are basically good.

Individuals, yes. Apes together dumb.
- I highly disagree. There are bad people, and there are good organizations. Groups of people can act dumber, and it's easier for the bad ones to gain control, but it's not like once you gather a few dozen people around they suddenly go from angels to evil.
He was horny, so he dropped him. Man is evil!

Well those wires that hold telephone poles and other such tall objects in position? those aren't called "guide-wires."

They're called "Guy wires."

I think that's pretty dumb of everyone else tho

Haha, that sounds like more of a BoneAppleTea or Rickyism but funny nontheless ;) Its not even objectively unreasonable, so props smartypants

A cup is 8 ounces, 237ml.

“Measuring cups” come in a variety of labeled sizes.

I’m sorry, you thought a cup wasn’t… a cup?

A cup can refer to a variety of different measurements (see Cup (unit) - Wikipedia). The cup OP referenced is a metric cup, a US customary cup is 8 US fluid ounces. Measuring cups can come labelled using cups as a unit, usually including a whole cup, and that is presumably what OP was referring to.
A cup is 8 ounces, 237ml.

It depends. It's usually standardised by country; 200ml, 240ml and 250ml are common values.

OP is likely from a Commonwealth country while you're probably from USA. If that's correct: note that your country has two measurements for cups, 237ml and 240ml.
- I wish I had some of the CommonWealth my country's a part of :(
I think they are referring to the measuring spoons used for dry ingredients. In middle school home ec class, we were told to never use dry measuring tools for liquids and vice versa, the teacher implied that the measurement would be different
I was cooking with my 8 year old daughter the other day. Recipe said 1 cup of water so she brought me a random cup from her cabinet with water in it. Too cute.
- Was she wrong haha
A measuring cup is not the same as a 'cup' used in a recipe like "one cup of flour". Although in the US it is often is the same size.
- I don’t know what measuring cups you have, but my biggest ones hold 1 cup.
US cups are weird. I was having trouble with cups I bought where I live overseas which are 250ml and slightly bigger. No difference in some recipes, definite one Lin others. If you are ONLY using those cups, it should be fine as all things are still proportional. But, if using other measures, things can get off.

Additional fun: a Canadian cup used to differ from both US and UK but eventually came to match the UK size
- There is no such measurement as "a cup" in Britain, we've got a few weird old ones but they don't have quite such misleading names!
But those two cups are not the same

I thought a half ton truck referred to its curb weight.

There were WMDs.

How did they ever show receipts or evidence of the whole WMD thing to begin with? Or is it just 9eleben was a hell of drug?
- That was back when people took the administration at their word. Mah terrism held a lot of pull immediately after 911. Plus you had useful idiots like Judith Miller out there trumpeting the narrative.
  
  But the experience cured me of that disease. And then Snowden happened to finish the job.

Every time I drive into the city centre I pass a sign for the Eastport exit. You never hear about Eastport on the news and I figured it must be the most boring part of the city - until I finally realised it was the sign for the East motorway exit to reach the sea port. 😟

Honest question, have you ever measured anything for cooking?

You really can't measure solids in the liquid cup and you can't really measure liquids in the solid cups.