Things you were shockingly old when you learned

xps yeah i forgot to add millions sorry.

but how is 144.8 53% of 510.1?

I'm guessing the quoted paragraph had a mistake:

Its surface area diameter is 53 percent the size of Earth's, with a diameter of 4,222 miles.

I thought the reason Mars lacks a magnetic field strong enough to spare it from the solar winds is related to its size, like the stored heat and energy at its core created billions of years ago cooled down because the little red fucker is just too small.

That's still the case, but evidence from the InSIGHT lander suggests that the composition of Mars' core (high in sulphur and hydrogen) accelerated the process
https://www.universetoday.com/154461/we-might-know-why-mars-lost-its-magnetic-field/

And speaking of Mercury, I've always wondered if there's a temperate ring around the interface between the blazing hot "always sunny" side and the freezing "always dark" side.

Mercury's a weird case. Everyone thought that Mercury was tidally locked with the Sun in a 1:1 resonance (one rotation per orbit) and just as you wondered - there were dozens and dozens of stories set on a supposed "temperate zone" in between the light and dark sides. (The "Mercury In Fiction" wikipedia entry lists off a bunch). It wasn't until 1965 when one of the first observations made with the then-new Arecibo dish in Puerto Rico showed that Mercury is indeed tidally locked, but in a 3:2 resonance - it axially rotates three times for every two orbits it makes around the sun. Therefore a temperate zone "ring" is impossible

this explains it better

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_msWDG4UDBA

Science fiction adjusted - Kim Stanley Robinson wrote a short story about a Mercurian city that travels around the planet on rails. There's enough stories about traveling cities that "Mercurial Base" (a large installation on a planet extremely close to a star that's also mobile enough to stay in a perpetual temperate zone) has become a trope of sorts

BTW, Mercury's magnetic field? It has a weak one but it's interaction with the solar wind makes for some weird-as-fuck conditions. Magnetic tornadoes for one:
https://www.universetoday.com/31953/how-magnetic-tornadoes-might-regenerate-mercurys-atmosphere/

Fascinating!

The KSR Mercury city on rails also shows up somewhere in his Mars trilogy. IIRC it was very disconnected from the rest of the goings-on, and was mainly used as a novel setting to introduce a new character. Would make sense if it was a concept from a short story he just wanted to use again.

i only found out about this product yesterday but i've been staring at this box of "Mary's Gone Crackers" for a couple days and only just realized that "gone" is supposed to be a verb and that Mary is not saying that her crackers are real gone, daddy-o.

I’ve bought that product for years (a box in the pantry now) and only learned that when you just said it! I always interpreted it as you originally did, although maybe it’s supposed to carry the double meaning.

I think I've only just consciously addressed the fact that the menswear guy's Twitter handle is to be read as "Die, workwear!" and not the analogue of Die Welt.

Bananas taste much better when sliced horizontally through the middle, as opposed to coin-slices.

Never noticed that myself but what I have noticed is that chocolate digestives taste better if you turn them upside down to eat them.

That depends on which way you think is up! Got into a mega family argument about that very subject a few years ago - some think the chocolate is on the top, some think it's on the bottom. I was shockingly old when I realised there are people who think it's on the bottom, but maybe I'm in the minority?

The chocolate is on the top, obvs.

You'd be surprised what some people think

tastes better with the chocolate down because your taste buds are on your tongue, not the roof of your mouth, obv

back when we walked on all fours, your tongue would have been on the top of your mouth as you bent your head down to eat items off the ground. so it makes perfect sense that they originally put the chocolate on the top, they just never got round to updating it

Same thing with crackers that have salt on them. Better to orient them so the tasty bits face your tongue.

It’s weird i chew things and it mixes stuff around pretty good

Both Gary Cooper's parents were English and he went to school (for three years) in Dunstable!

orient them so the tasty bits face your tongue

Was reading the Calvin & Hobbes thread revival and learned this:

Classic Schultz quote:

"We actually had a dog called Snoopy. A real dog. Fans of the strip are not going to like this, but we got rid of him. He fought with other dogs, so we swapped him for a load of gravel."

― MarkH (MarkH), Monday, April 14, 2003 12:42 AM (twenty years ago)

Was Snoopy a real Beagle? Because who would do that to a Beagle?

When a pug cross drastically improves the breed, that’s a beagle. well the offspring is a puggle

that the Christian community in Kerala dates from St Thomas, as in the actual apostle, who came to India?!

i rescind my beagle criticism. it was personal lol.

That Jennifer Jason Leigh’s father was Vic Morrow, notoriously killed while filming ‘The Twilight Zone’ movie.

whoa

Ralph Bates, star of various 70s Hammer movies and well known face on British TV, was the great-great-grandson of Louis Pasteur.

... apt because he played both Victor Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll, slightly less respectable scientists than his great-great-grandfather.

Legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins shot Herbie Hancock's "Rockit" video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHhD4PD75zY

Oooo

It’s not Celcie Ville, it’s Selsey Bill

As noted by Madness in "Driving In My Car".

I have only just now cottoned on to the fact that there are two Wahlbergs, Mark and Donnie, and they're different people. I think that every time I saw the name I thought "oh, that Wahlberg guy" and forgot about it. How wrong I was!

they were in two different musical groups too

one lit a carpet on fire once

Which one did the underwear ads? I'm betting it was Mark.

yup. he was pretty jacked at the time

that the dipper of Big Dipper fame is one of these:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/73/Dipper_%28PSF%29.png/1280px-Dipper_%28PSF%29.png

and not one of these:

https://www.scepter.com/media/rxindyvg/1gal-gas-1003-375_375-px.jpg

TIL that some people call gas cans dippers

not me. i just thought that's what the shape looked like, and i could imagine a "dipping" motion of putting gas in your car with one, so ...

I lit a carpet on fire once. and my real name is one of those. am I secretly a Wahlberg?

TBH until reasonably recently i thought the Big Dipper was based off

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/SLNSW_23962_Hollywood_Hotel_girls_at_Luna_Park_taken_for_Fullers_Theatres_Ltd.jpg

nkotb vs funky bunch in white boy steroid dance off

Donnie Poo doxxed

Today I learned the guitar parts for the Cure’s “Other Voices”. I’m 53. I’ve wanted to play it since I was 16.
Also, now I know why I love the broken chord shapes I typically play, they are all over that album and Seventeen Seconds.

Yes those chords are deliciously weird.

Note that Smith has also known to tune a little bit off, intentionally. Not like tuning everything down a specific amount - he wants it wrong, on purpose.

I've long been perplexed and intrigued by the obscure slur "butterface," but never actually knew what it meant. I enjoyed trying to determine what about someone's face would remind someone of butter. I mentioned this to a female friend recently, in the context of wondering why there's never been a band, to my knowledge, called Butterface, and she incredulously explained the origin of the word and let me tell you a small part of me died right there

Tip, in the sense of a gratuity, was originally an acronym ('to insure promptitude')

The meaning "give a gratuity to" is first attested 1706.

The popularity of the tale of the word's supposed origin as an acronym in mid-18th century English taverns seems to be no older than Frederick W. Hackwood's 1909 book "Inns, Ales and Drinking Customs of Old England," where it was said to stand for To insure promptitude

Don't blame me, blame the New Yorker factcheckers!

Tip, in the sense of a gratuity, was originally an acronym ('to insure promptitude')

I've heard so many fake acronym stories (posh, golf etc) that I'm immediately doubting this. I was once on a pleasure boat on the Thames where the tour guide proudly explained to us that "wharf" was an acronym for "warehouse at riverfront".