{"id":5939,"date":"2023-10-23T20:19:09","date_gmt":"2023-10-23T18:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=5939"},"modified":"2023-10-23T20:19:09","modified_gmt":"2023-10-23T18:19:09","slug":"stuff-to-be-terrified-about-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=5939","title":{"rendered":"Stuff to be Terrified about Today"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I normally love writing for kids. It\u2019s a weird turn of events in later years. But one of the byproducts of writing science and history articles for kids is that you learn things you just would have been very happy not learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For instance, climate change is making spiders bigger. Yes, bigger. I\u2019ve always sort of been worried about climate change and the prospect of floating on a door atop the future Mid-European Atlantic that used to be known as \u2018Germany\u2019 but now I have to add big spiders to that nightmare. Enjoyably enough, in future research I learned that spiders can also survive in space. So when global warming does get bad enough and humanity is forced to go live on Mars, spiders can follow us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another scary fact is that there are the frozen bodies on Mount Everest. And they are used as landmarks for people climbing up and down. I\u2019m not so scared of the idea of dead people. I am, however, terrified stiff by the fact that there are people on Earth stupid enough that when they run into a frozen man in a Columbia jacket their only thought is \u2018Oh, I have to make a left at Larry.\u2019 And then off to the \u2018dead zone.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a haunted radio station in Russia that\u2019s been broadcasting a dull monotonous tone for twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for the last three-and-a-half decades. Horrifying. I\u2019d love to visit it, but the most terrifying aspect of that ghost radio station is that it\u2019s in Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can die from holding in a sneeze. This wouldn\u2019t bother me, but it\u2019s also possible to die from sneezing too hard. Sneezing. The function we can\u2019t control can kill you if you don\u2019t do it like fricking Goldilocks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

King Charles II used to drink red wine mixed with cremated skulls. He wasn\u2019t the only one either, as this was a way to be healthier. Also, the barber was where one got bled. If you were sick, you were ordered by the doctor but it was beneath him to make people bleed. This doesn\u2019t terrify me as much as make me sad that I didn\u2019t live then. I bet people almost never had to go to work. Yes, it was because they had died, but still. No work.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My last bit of research dragged out that some ants turn into zombies via parasitic fungus, which \u2013 wait for it \u2013 manipulates their brains. (This is how it starts.) I don\u2019t have any problem with ants, but the fact that they can be killed and then redirected to eat my hotdog. It just seems rude.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I guess it\u2019s good as all my other terrors are real life. A mortgage. A neighbor who sings to his tennis racket. After these daily terrors, what\u2019s a spider with wings or an ant that\u2019s trying to kill Andrew Lincoln? Manageable. Now, I have to get my tennis racket.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I normally love writing for kids. It\u2019s a weird turn of events in later years. But one of the byproducts of writing science and history articles for kids is that you learn things you just would have been very happy not learning. For instance, climate change is making spiders bigger. Yes, bigger. I\u2019ve always sort […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5940,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/damiengaleone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Harpegnathos_saltator_fight.jpg?fit=500%2C547&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EvEu-1xN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5939"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5941,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5939\/revisions\/5941"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}