Things you were shockingly old when you learned

I think I was like 16 or 17 when I learned that cows and bulls were the male and female versions of the same animal and not two distinct animals.

What sort of seemingly basic facts did it take you a surprisingly long time for you to learn?

How a candle works.

Practically everything.

that SHIFT + 6 = ^. I think I figured it out a month or so ago. I always wondered how people got that character.

DO you have a Mac?

The best things about macs is that making any character is stupid easy.

¢™
øºÖØ°

&¶¶¶¶¶¶

!

That (most) BMWs are named according to engine size (I was a car freak as a child but never knew this until being informed by a German flatmate while I was a PhD student).

i.e. 318 = 3 series 1.8 litre engine etc.

Didn't know that black and green olives are identical, just different stage of maturity, until a few months ago.

Didn't realise that Adam Ant was a pun, until a year or so ago. Likewise Lipps Inc.

I've got a mac and I still don't know how to do any of, um, ^ those ^

I end up going to wikipedia and copy-and-pasting when I want unusual characters

The cows-and-bulls thing, plus Adam Ant, are the only things on this thread that I do know

how to cook an artichoke properly

(a julia child recipe steered me right)

How to tie my shoes (velcro, you see..)

Didn't realise that Adam Ant was a pun, until a year or so ago.

^^^ this. Same with Sandy Shaw.

Fay Fife of the Rezillos.

(i.e. it's a pun on "I am from the town of Fife, my good fellow" in broad scots)

What's the Adam Ant pun? Adam Ant = adamant? If so... pretty lame pun.

That's it.

xpost Tell that to Lai Mpun, the lead singer of Bangkok's Phleng Chat.

I am 33 and didn't know any of these things. Wait - how the hell DOES a candle work?!

Same with Sandy Shaw.

i don't know how to explain it but i used to think chickens had a really weird way of "mating", something to do with the rooster's legs. (!!?!?) :)

I thought penguins were as tall as humans until that march of the penguins movie

"that SHIFT + 6 = ^. I think I figured it out a month or so ago. I always wondered how people got that character."

^^^Dude, you beat me by a month. Thanks!

I once spent a half hour trying to eject a cd from a Mac before someone finally told me there's an eject button on the keyboard. I was going through all these crazy menus and preferences...

I think I was like 16 or 17 when I learned that cows and bulls were the male and female versions of the same animal and not two distinct animals.

What sort of seemingly basic facts did it take you a surprisingly long time for you to learn?

― filthy dylan, Wednesday, November 12, 2008 5:30 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I thought penguins were as tall as humans until that march of the penguins movie

loooool one of my friends thought this and it was since passed into running joke territory.

I think I've done that Mac eject button thing too :(

Pronounced lapels like 'labels' for years until corrected but happily don't dress well enough to use it often

My girlfriend was shocked to learn, at the age of 33, that a 'Flea Circus' is actually a rather charming mechanical toy, and is in no way operated by any parasitic insects.

Ismael, at the age of 32, is shocked to learn the same thing. This thread is getting embarrassing

WAT! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flea_circus

I thought penguins were as tall as humans until that march of the penguins movie

one of my friends thought this and it was since passed into running joke territory

no but seriously, what is this about?

i mean i can see that there's rarely anything to size them against in the big white antarctic, but why would anyone then automatically think okay here's a bird i could play tag with

u could still play tag w/it tho

But you could make the same assumption with ostriches in the big yellow desert (or wherever they live), and in that case you'd be right!

I'm still in touch with several grown adults who genuinely believe there's 'something' to supernatural claims about ouija boards, despite its fairly obvious origins in parlour games / illusions which utilised the (admittedly fucking spooky) ideomotor effect.

aw no-one said 'where babies come from'

I've had a lot of experiences in my adult life with mispronouncing words I understood as part of written text, but hadn't heard aurally in the context of conversation etc. For example, I was well into my twenties before I knew the word "vehement" wasn't pronounced veh-hee-ment. I wish others would politely correct you when you do that instead of letting you blindly sound like an idiot.

I'm a bit like that, but now I'm in the habit of saying works incorrectly, I can't get out of it. Canal is not pronounced can-el, but there's fuck all I can do about it now.

^ This happens to me all the time too - so much so that I actually now find it quite amusing when I realise, midway through a sentence, that a word I've never heard before is looming at the end. I suppose that people who talk a lot, rather than reading, must find the same with spelling. It only annoys me when some moron uses it as an opportunity to score cheap points (sadly fairly often)

I was going to start a thread like this, but it was going to be more about 'life lessons' that took you forever to learn, rather than trivia.

Anyway it's taken me this long to fully realize how unreliable first impressions can be when it comes to people.

but why would anyone then automatically think okay here's a bird i could play tag with

haha

TAL have an episode on this in the "best of" section on their wesite. people who thought unicorns were real, etc., lots of awkward silences at cocktail parties: good stuff.

i like to tag birds. (runs)

There's a penguin here and he wants to say "you didn't touch me ner ner ner"

I thought penguins went "weh weh weh"

I'm still in touch with several grown adults who genuinely believe there's 'something' to supernatural claims about ouija boards, despite its fairly obvious origins in parlour games / illusions which utilised the (admittedly fucking spooky) ideomotor effect.

― Huey in Bristol (Huey in Melbourne), Wednesday, November 12, 2008 7:08 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

you couldnt get me in the same room as a ouija board

I was about 35 when I figured out Open Sesame = Open Says Me.

i used to think HAZCHEM was a foreign word for danger like Achtung

I just figured out, like 2 days ago, that the lyrics are "highway to the danger zone"

(until then, thought they were "I went to to the danger zone")

Online Neds not online nerds.

Yeah that'll be choice if it happens. (Partially because, assuming Argentina also wins and all, that means there'll be at least one other Western Hemisphere team still in the competition.)

― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 7 July 2026 02:09 (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

France and Harry Kane (born Leytonstone, 0.0084° E) the last plucky representatives of the Eastern Hemisphere left in the tournament.

In the 16th century there was a crank theory that American native tribes were descended from a Welsh chieftain and spoke a variety of Welsh.

Wales is in the Western Hemisphere, so...

I kinda think accurately knowing what "Western Hemisphere" means entails also knowing roughly where Greenwich is?

it’s in Connecticut

No, it's a village in New York.

i am surprised at a single person not understanding western hemisphere as shorthand for americas i’m 59 duh

also “third world” is a reggae band, i would say roots but whatever

We know Trump knows what the Western Hemisphere is, because he knows Greenland's in it and it makes him mad he can't have it.

Champs Elysses = Elysian Fields

Palantir UK CEO Louis Mosley is the grandson of British Fascist Oswald Mosley

That the film Accidental Hero was released simply as Hero in the US.

"the apple doesn't fall fa... wait, that's not an apple-- it is an actual piece of shit. road apple, mayyyybe."

https://i.ibb.co/FkmH3Mp2/Screen-Shot-2026-07-18-at-2-09-56-PM.png

Some folks will tell you that those are supposed to be french fries on the roof.

And the red represents ketchup.

there wasnt a band stiltskin as such, Levi's ssked a guy to write them a song for that advert and he wrote it, arranged it and brought in a vocalist to record it

Apparently you can't just go buy a Rolex watch. The stores don't really even have inventory as such. You basically apply to be allowed to.

You have to cultivate a relationship over time, with a history of smaller purchases and frequent meetings; eventually you are deemed worthy and offered the opportunity to buy one.

you buy like a normal person.

off someone who did all the hard work and lost money on it

well I thought I couldn't have any more contempt for people who wear rolexes, guess i was wrong

well i was talking to them about you and they had nothing good to say either

good

Same process for snatching one off someone's wrist I believe

Wait, you can’t just, like, buy a Rolex? Seriously?

this is what i heard about ferraris, like enforced scarcity shit. i rly hate cars as culture, tho i love the mechs and sport enough

by that i mean “what do i know? nuthin.@

My father in law died a few years ago and he was a watch guy, had Rolexes. MIL offered me one and I says “No thanks, I’ve got a phone to tell me the time.” I didn’t realize I could have joined the coolest club ever.

I guess if it was for a sentimental keepsake, sure, pass it to someone else. But that’s like a free $10k minimum right

She sold them off and made some money, so it’s all good.

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=rolex

He also had fancy watch boxes that kept them from winding down.

I knew someone who sold watches for a living - it's an insane industry that's only become more insane with the recent influxes of wealth in our global K shaped economy. Since there's more people with more money, rather than to simply raise the prices on the top of the line exclusive watches or make more of them, there's additional money to be made by gating that behind additional purchases. So you need to buy xyz watch(es) at tiers 1, 2 and 3 and then you'll get access to buy the TOTL stuff.

And yeah same deal with high end cars. There's so much cash in these markets it's just bonkers, and reflects the absurd inequality we are seeing. There's real status with exclusivity, and part of the appeal for these sickos is having something few others can have, even amongst their class.

the watch thing is pretty cool imo, just insanely engineered little devices, especially the self-winding ones, meant to be constant throughout the ages

also, many watch guys are the same as any type of guy that’s very into a thing and the barrier to entry is pretty high to break into the tiers

Handbag. shopping is already there, as I understand it? You can't just buy a Birkin from Hermes, apparently. You take the style and color that you're offered and you grovel and pay for the privilege of being shoveled some entry level clutch in a color no one wants, and after you've suffered/paid enough over the years you might be allowed to drop $50-100,000 on one you actually want.

yeah was gonna say, hasn't that been a thing for a lot of years?

many watch guys are the same as any type of guy that’s very into a thing and the barrier to entry is pretty high to break into the tiers

Guys be shoppin

my younger son is into sports cars and when we go to London together we go car-spotting in Mayfair. honestly have zero interest in this and look forward to him moving on to the next thing.

luxury branded shit is the worst whether it's cars, handbags, clothes, rolexes or £500 vinyl special editions

After circling it in and off for decades I just became a watch guy. Will I sell all my records and synthesizers and printing equipment for this new hobby? Time will tell. But I’m starting an operation called Nice Cheap Watches because that’s what impresses me so much. Beautiful functional Timex and Casio watches that are 100% functionally better than a Rolex.

Watches

"So you need to buy xyz watch(es) at tiers 1, 2 and 3 and then you'll get access to buy the TOTL stuff."

There's a fairly high-voted post on reddit's r/watches subreddit in which a man boasts about owning 22 pairs of watches, plus five pairs of Rolexes. The top comment is something like "why do you say 'pairs'", to which the OP responds that he literally has 22 pairs of watches, that he wears on both wrists simultaneously, complete with photographs. Even the people on r/watches were of the opinion that it was insanity...

... because if you were really hardcore you'd also wear a pair on your ankles, plus one on a fob around your neck, like a nurse.

I am also reminded of this story from 2016, where Syria's deputy foreign minister had a wristwatch with Bashar Al-Assad's face on it. I'm sceptical that the following image will work, but at the same time I have been wrong before:
https://www.thenationalnews.com/resizer/v2/T54GNKTJLKKEUOTZCSW6PEFMXI.jpg?smart=true&auth=23df45cc7f59d3b562b1553b5cde2a4ca979203e12f9d3130f9ef96b2dca4f05&width=400&height=225

That is a thing I was shockingly old before I learned it. Imagine being a diplomat, and having to shake hands with a man who has Bashar Al-Assad's face on his watch. You'd go mad. You'd spent most of your free time in a soundproofed room alternatively laughing and crying. Then you'd have to psyche yourself up for work.

"the watch thing is pretty cool imo, just insanely engineered little devices, especially the self-winding ones, meant to be constant throughout the ages"

I was mesmerised a while back by a series of videos on Youtube in which a chap fixed up old watches. The little jewels and clasps and miniature spinny things are fascinating:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCWJ_GbGEck

I remember wondering how long it would take for the universe to spontaneously create a watch. Presumably somewhere in space there are chunks of aluminium and quartz and so forth drifting weightlessly, grinding against each other, chipping off tiny slices. Given billions upon billions of years, could some of that debris form itself into gears, and then assemble itself into a watch? Or is there simply not enough time in the universe for that to happen? And yet the universe has created watches. Or rather human beings have created watches, but human beings - that's us! - we are products of the universe. Ozzy Osbourne was right all along.

The above made me think of the Richard Scarry character who wore multiple watches. Bananas Gorilla.

https://i.postimg.cc/gXSYtFbN/tumblr-mlgqcxyej-Y1rzo40io2-1280.jpg

the universe has spontaneously created watches

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good

Went to college with a guy who deals in $10k+ watches now. Initially he had a somewhat promising niche standup comedy career.

What I remember most about him was he had the build and general look of a bratty 15 year old. And one spring day, when everyone was leaving town for the summer, someone took his enormous collection of Magic cards and through them out a car window into the middle of the busiest road in our rural college town. Later that night, I gathered the cards from the intersection alongside two hippies, one of whom never wore shoes. The other? He literally rollerbladed everywhere— I think I saw him with the skates off only a few times.

this is the start of a tom robbins novel(complimentary!)

he should give you a fuckin watch for that

it's all timing isn't it

Wow that watch that 15-year-old found in the above youtube - 3:15 - yikes, it's radioactive! I'm really impressed how fast he takes apart the watch movement and then just puts the tiny parts randomly on the table; I'd never remember where each part goes to put it back together.

I just learned what DMT is like 5 min ago

Went to college with a guy who deals in $10k+ watches now ... he had a somewhat promising niche standup comedy career.

Ha, this sounds like an oblique one-liner in a surreal stand up routine.