Things you were shockingly old when you learned

We used to be 305 area code when I was growing up, then they created 407 due to overflow, which we got, and we had to start dialing the full number in the early 90s.

― linoleum gallagher (Neanderthal), Wednesday, July 26, 2023 10:00 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

At the time the changing area codes were assumed to be necessary due to overflow (fax machines, mainly), but in fact various entities were buying up blocks of numbers, so the "shortage" was largely artificial. At least, that was the case in the late '80s.

At some point in the olden days the number of "clicks" corresponded to population size/density because I grew up in the middle of nowhere with the area code 906, Alaska is 907, Hawaii is 808, the Texas panhandle is 806, etc.

There were times when you decided not to call someone because their number had too many 9s.

Also 844 and any four numbers got you the time lady. "At the tone, the time will be... twelve twenty-five... and forty seconds. BEEP.

Another number got you the weather. Maybe it was 936 and any four numbers?

New York City had a dial-a-joke line. One time I called it and someone said "Kerp New York City clean. Throw all your trash in New Jersey." I never called again.

xxp
I thought it was mostly businesses that had direct dial for their employees' phones, so a company with 1000 employees in one building would buy a block of numbers for them. Also portable phones means two #s per person.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liu6dq9gb2Y

There was a period in the '80s when the UK Speaking Clock became male and had to squeeze "sponsored by Accurist" into his read. And now everything's like that. :(

not your ankle

I still sometimes say "The time sponsored by Accurist is …" when asked for the time (and not inclined to avoid being insufferable)

UK has a bank of numbers "reserved for drama use" too, and another for mobiles. but they aren't as catchy as the us ones.

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-telecoms-and-internet/information-for-industry/numbering/numbers-for-drama

under 'notes'. 01632 for general purpose, but many regions have their own block of 1000 reserved numbers

now wondering where 01632 is...

I had a friend who lived in very rural Northern California and her family had a party line.. they had their own phone number, but the line itself was shared by all her neighbors up and down the road.. if you picked up the phone and heard someone already on there, you were supposed to quietly hang up

yep me too, rural Virginia in the mid-70s

We had one of those too.

My parents ran a corner grocery and bait shop down the road. The store and our house shared the same phone number. There was some weird trick where if you wanted to call home from the store (or vice-versa), you could dial something like 411, hang up, and then both sides of the line would start to ring. We had some sort of "ring twice, pause, ring twice again" code for knowing one side was calling the other.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pSbUEdTyW8

My wife's rural grandparents had free phone service because they kept with the party line long after everyone else in the area had abandoned it.

i'm pretty sure i thought cillian murphy was some waifish u.k. actress best known for being on some prestige streaming series i've never watched or was possibly that chambermaid who ends up marrying steve buscemi in boardwalk empire. but i found out LAST WEEK that he stars in Oppenheimer and was the inspiration for the alt-right Proud Boys and their haircuts due to his role in Poopy Blinkers!

i checked and i have only seen him in: 28 Days Later (no memory of him but i love that movie), Sunshine (no memory of him but i remember some cool unfurling of the spaceship sails in this movie?)...and that's it. no wonder i had no knowledge of his name.

i thought the guy in oppenheimer was engelbert humperdink!

It's the guy who plays Dr. Strangelove in the new Marvel movies.

i think ye have nailed the being shockingly old part anyway, grandad jokes

i learned over the weekend that the cajón is a peruvian invention from the 19th cen.

Budo jeru I have a lot to say about cajon but I am just gonna let this guy say something similar (though I would phrase it with significantly more tact)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KonoCLO4L0

That the part in Culture Club's "The War Song" where someone imitates Clare Torry singing "The Great Gig in the Sky" is actually Clare Torry.

Ciara's "Body Party" is based on Ghost Town DJ's "My Boo"

That there's a part in Culture Club's "The War Song" where someone imitates Clare Torry singing "The Great Gig in the Sky".

Ditto.

xps weird to call the cajón, an afro-peruvian invention, a "slave box" and then close the video by saying, "for those whose masters insist on cajóns ... we will all continue to pray for your emancipation"

but yknow i'm predisposed to hate all youtubers, especially ones who try really hard to be funny

Xps I remember vague details from WH Auden's book about Iceland and how, during the 1930s, there were (something like) 'women of the wires', employees of the phone company who operated a vast signal board for the entire island's phone network and who would listen to all conversations. (Which leads to Cheever's 'The Enormous Radio' and on and on we go.)

budo: Yeah I was not presenting that fellow as an admirable person. Rather, in that moment I was too tired to explain the complexities of my philosophy of how a multi-instrumentalist percussionist should best accompany acoustic musicians.

I do agree with him on precisely two things: (1) the Pearl Short Fuse snare is a delightful little drum, and (2) I don't want to play the cajón.

Personally I live in a world where someone asks me to play the cajón approximately once a week. My hands hurt and my back hurts and I don't think I sound good. For those gigs I prefer to play congas.

To those who like playing and/or listening to a cajón, rock on.

haha -- no worries, and sorry for your pain

That apparently americans play the national anthem before rock gigs?! (re: Sinead/Sinatra beef). Is this really a thing because what is wrong with you people.

i've never been to one where that was played beforehand

I remember a bit in the novel London Belongs To Me where a German spy reports back that the English seem very demoralized, "they hardly stand for the national anthem before cinema sessions anymore". Bring that back imo, I'd rather that than the fucking commercials.

They used to play the anthem before movies at a theater I went to in high school, but it was on a Navy base.

I was maybe in my 30s when I figured out that in a North American elevator, the star next to the level label meant that was the way out to the street or ground level.

americans play the national anthem before rock gigs?

I've never encountered this, it might only be at giant stadiums or something? But they still do it at sporting events which I think is fucking stupid

I do remember as a kid that they would play it late at night when TV stations concluded broadcasting at 2am or whatever it was.. but that doesn't happen anymore

I was maybe in my 30s when I figured out that in a North American elevator, the star next to the level label meant that was the way out to the street or ground level.

― Moritz von Oswald von Wolkenstein (Boring, Maryland), Friday, July 28, 2023 6:52 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Holy shit.

Caer is the Welsh equivalent to cester/caster/chester. So Cardiff would be called Diffchester if it was in England.

Well I never.

wow!

i was worried that niall = neil

It is? Or at least it should be, because that's the Irish pronunciation, compare with Niamh for instance - need gyac or darraghmac to confirm though. Anyway it's how the Niall in Niall Ferguson is pronounced.

― John Donne In Concert (Tom D.), Thursday, 20 July 2023 06:40 (five days ago) bookmarkflaglink

would always default niall to ny-al fwiw

if he was snippy about that id ask him where his fada was

TIL: black bears in the San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountains around Los Angeles aren't native - they were captured in Yosemite in 1933 and then imported by a dumbass fish & game commissioner who owned a hotel, had a bear as a pet, and wanted to boost mountain tourism.

So them and the Okies showed up at the same time.

hread title is unbelievably 100% OTM rn. I'm legit shocked. I mean, I learned all about the California grizzly bear in grade school (it was the Woodsy Owl era) and I still remember the date that the last one was killed: 1908 in Orange County. Still, "watch out for the black bears" was something I learned in early boy scouts (and dgaf after because I was far more a desert wanderer than a mountain one). Never once did any one say where they came from.

Again, another rich man's fucking folly blowback. It's all funny ha-ha when it's the peacocks and parrots, then uh-oh it's eucalyptus cause that shit likes to catch on fire. Now the bears? Rewilding is problematic, but it's shit like this that makes me a full-on Liet Kynes jihadist about native plants and ecology.

TIL that most of the time (in the US) when you think you see a ladybug, it’s actually probably an Asian lady beetle.

The US govt introduced the ALB in the 70s to help agriculture, because they kill a lot of pests (the same pests that LBs feed on). But they’re stronger than LBs, they contain a parasitic fungus, and their larva are poisonous to LBs (who eat the larva). They also emit a chemical when they become defensive that possibly causes breathing problems in humans.

Due to the competition for resources, LBs became endangered.

And now we’re stuck with them. We can’t get rid of them because it would have hugely negative effects on agriculture.

Root beer is sassafras flavored (mostly artificial these days).

xp should probably get some cane toads in to take care of the ALBs

what could go wrong?

not sure if sassafras is legal in the u.s., known carcognogen iirc

There's still root beer made from real sassafras with the carcinogen filtered out or something.

Creedence Clearwater Revival are from northern California?! What??

Born on the Bayou of Berkeley