436
TIL that Indiana’s House of Representatives once unanimously passed a bill to make Pi exactly 3.2
(www.scientificamerican.com)
this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2026
436 points (99.1% liked)
Today I Learned
28757 readers
732 users here now
What did you learn today? Share it with us!
We learn something new every day. This is a community dedicated to informing each other and helping to spread knowledge.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must begin with TIL. Linking to a source of info is optional, but highly recommended as it helps to spark discussion.
** Posts must be about an actual fact that you have learned, but it doesn't matter if you learned it today. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.**
Rule 2- Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding non-TIL posts.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-TIL posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.
If you vocally harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
For further explanation, clarification and feedback about this rule, you may follow this link.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Unless included in our Whitelist for Bots, your bot will not be allowed to participate in this community. To have your bot whitelisted, please contact the moderators for a short review.
Partnered Communities
You can view our partnered communities list by following this link. To partner with our community and be included, you are free to message the moderators or comment on a pinned post.
Community Moderation
For inquiry on becoming a moderator of this community, you may comment on the pinned post of the time, or simply shoot a message to the current moderators.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Agreed re: Solomon. My sense is that a lot of it was compiled during Josiah’s reign but my knowledge of the topic is sparse. Are you familiar with the theory that the David story is post hoc propaganda after David Coup’d Saul, and the David & Bathsheba story was fabricated as propaganda to legitimize Solomon after he coup’d David?
I’m certainly over simplifying.
I mostly came across it all from studying Cyrus the Great, the King of Kings, and then focused on the exile, or captivity or however you want to call it.
The Neo-Babylonians started conquering Judah in about 600BCE, they burned Jerusalem, and destroyed Solomon's Temple in 587.
The Babylonians were pretty thorough in destroying any religious icons or texts of their new slaves, which included priests and nobles who knew how to read, which was useful to the Babylonians.
This is how Babylonian creation myths ended up making cameos in the new Hebrew bible written from scraps and invention after Cyrus freed the slaves of Babylon as a kind of last fuck you to the city as he declared himself King of Babylon. (or a way to make said slaves love him)
I’m really interested in studying Cyrus the Great, I just got distracted by biblical history as a fixation.
Random Cyrus-related fact: David Koresh of the Waco Branch Davidians changed his last name from Howell to Koresh which is the biblical name for Cyrus.
A good intro to Cyrus the Great might be Dan Carlin's Hardcore History. The King of Kings series. It's only, what, 16 hours or so long.
The guy can talk, but he also lists his sources, which are also good jumping off points.
I am a huge fan of Dan and it’s his series that made me feel like I need to learn more about Cyrus.
An interesting feature of growing up an evangelical Christian, at least for me, is the sense that biblical history is somehow walled off from secular history. Obviously places and figures from that time are mentioned, but there is no sense of continuity. I have long been interested in history but since deconstructing I am now almost obsessed with reevaluating my knowledge of what was actually going on in the world, and in greater Canaan during the time of the bible.
Re-reading and actually studying the bible as the library it is, and reading it in its historical context as I gradually plug it in to my existing understanding of history is an incredibly rewarding experience. And I credit Dan Carlin in large part with my persistent fascination with history.
Part of the reason why biblical history and secular history don't line up is that yeah, the biblical history didn't exist before 537BCE. That and religious propaganda.
Yep it makes perfect sense in hindsight. It doesn’t actually hook onto history correctly. When you’re presupposing the the bible is inerrant and univocal, you just avoid reconciling certain things.
I was lucky to not have a religious upbringing despite the efforts of one of my parents. The other was a bit of a self identifying heathen.
It was a point of conflict.