TIL: To combat the theft of trees around Christmas time, University of Nebraska-Lincoln used to spray their trees with fox urine. It freezes and has no odor outside, but thaws if taken indoors. The resultant smell is so rancid it is “eye-watering”.

> Call me crazy, but I don't think insulting someone and calling them stupid and dumb is going to cause healthy introspection that changes them for the better.

Why not? To me it says, "you shouldn't voice your opinion if you're not educated enough to speak upon the subject". If everybody shared opinions on things they don't know you'd end up with chaos. My statement simply says, why are you talking if you haven't thought before you did so? Your strategy is just a bit more hand holding and nicer. Some people don't respond well to that and instead respond to my methods.

> If anything, that sounds like an outdated way of thinking that only encourages people to not speak in fear of being called out and shamed for being wrong.

Since when do we celebrate people being wrong? The world is brutal and we do not reward idiocy.

> It's even worse when the topic is something trivial, like a throwaway comment on an online post about tree theft. Still, that's just my opinion.

A) this user is not a throwaway and B) this is a discussion board so who cares what the topic is? We're here to discuss.

> Still, that's just my opinion. I don't expect you to change yours.

I appreciate your perspective but I fully believe that social shaming is a valuable tool that helps society. We live under free speech which means if you want to go out try to convince people of nazi like policies you're free to do so. It's the public's job to shame them and show the rest of us why that's a terrible idea.

/r/todayilearned Thread Parent Link - dailynebraskan.com