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Friday Fun Thread for January 2, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I suspect there was something stopping a lot of the radiation until pretty recently, I don’t see how European colonization of Africa and Latin America would have been possible otherwise. Maybe the ozone layer.

What does radiation have to do with colonization?

How’s a guy from England going to conquer Africa if standing in the sun for two hours gives him second degree burns, and doing that for a few years gives him cancer?

By wearing a hat.

I guess he could put a shirt on first.

I think he's imagining white people cooking like prawns south of the tropics. Or simply dying of melanoma of the melanoma.

Needless to say, it's not that bad. Sure, it's remarkably unpleasant, but covering up and staying indoors during the worst of the glare goes a long way. Melanin or modern sunscreen goes even further. It was malaria that was the real bottleneck in a lot of places.