Things you were shockingly old when you learned

Only disgusting savages don't love cheese and peas.

peas are bad and if u like them u are bad

cheesy beans on the other hand are unimpeachable

cheesy beans are mint, no question

you are v wrong about peas tho, not that I'm advocating cheesing them up

peas are bad and if u like them u are bad

wtf, i thought we were friends :(

i can tolerate peas as an additive to like a curry or whatever but standalone peas, whether mushy or otherwise, are not good

sorry lbi, you and i are done

mushy peas are occasionally done badly but done right they are the best vegetable

that is pure madness

have we done a 'best vegetable' thread? we need to put this issue to bed once and for all

I can only imagine the transatlantic shock and outrage if "mushy peas" was even included as a category

brb gonna start a nominations thread

Hot Peas and Vinegar is one of the human race's greatest achievement. bizarro get out, just get out now, I don't want to look at you.

Cheesy peas for posh folk

believe me i don't wanna be here either, u people are monsters

WHAT IS THE BEST VEGETABLE: nomination thread

Barron Trump was named after one of his dad's pseudonyms. Just heard that 10 minutes ago.

I mean, presumably. It could just as easily be a tribute to Trump's love of Red Baron (sp) frozen pizza.

I'd joke about that being the official pizza of the Trump tower cafeteria, but tbh it's probably some cheaper generic frozen pizza that's rebranded as Trump Pizza and marked up 400%

Shouldn't there also be a worst vvegetable poll?

Just learned today that all North American horses are immigrants (their prehistoric forebears on the continent having been driven to extinction).

i knew that, i win!

this is a spectacularly foolish one: i hadn't realized that the "dye in the pool that activates if you urinate" thing was an urban legend until this week. i am 33. in fairness i had assumed that it was either: a) something that was done in the past but not anymore, or b) something that was done in other countries (like maybe the US where it features as a plot line in movies and tv sometimes) but not in the UK.

3D chess is a real thing not related to Star Trek. 5 boards deep and invented in 1907.
I haven't worked out how the boards are positioned. Would think one needed to see everything at play clearly.
Or is the thing that anybody advanced enough to play it can keep everything in their head at all times anyway.

I don’t really think I had this misconception although I hadn’t thought too hard about it, but it’s come up in conversation: americans conflate the wall separating east/west Germany with the Berlin Wall. Then someone points out Berlin was fully in East Germany, and that the wall went around the entire western half of the city. Then there’s kind of a “hmm, yeah, that makes sense” moment

huh....there ya go!

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

I remember at perhaps nine years old asking my parents, "why don't people just go _around_ the wall?

Well shit, I'd never actually looked at a map of East/West Germany. I guess I thought East Germany was a lot smaller.

Like the sliver of Germany that was East of Berlin, ya know?

Berlin being an island city meant that people who wanted to avoid conscription would move there which fed into the artistic and squatting scenes.
I think otherwise everybody of age in Germany needed to spend a year or 2 in the armed forces.

Just learned today that all North American horses are immigrants (their prehistoric forebears on the continent having been driven to extinction).

― I'm Calling My Loyer! (Old Lunch), Wednesday, August 2, 2017 8:14 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yep, and native American horse culture has only existed since the 18th century.

I thought there were supposed to be dwarf versions of the horse in some parts of the Americas but nothing large enough to prompt the development of the wheel. Though that would be odd if you have the llama etc further south which i would have thought might be a draught animal of a sort, though limited in size much more than a shire horse.

Also interesting to think about non-Western history as a continual flux thing instead of the static continuum that it seems to default to in the Western mind. So the introduction of an element as pervasive as the horse must have really changed things. Like how a tribe would be able to provide for itself and its mobility etc and therefore what areas it would live in. Isn't there an extent to which tribes with horses drove previously predominant tribes back out of what had been their traditional areas?

Yep, Western viewpoints tend to imagine other cultures as having been static and unchanged for as long as they existed, when in fact all cultures are constantly changing and developing. THere's quite a lot about that in Yuval Noah Harari's 'Sapiens' which everyone seems to be reading at the moment

More here: http://www.equitours.com/views-from-the-saddle/article/the-horse-and-native-american-culture/

I remember at perhaps nine years old asking my parents, "why don't people just go _around_ the wall?

Co-sign, I don't know if I asked my parents and I was considerably older than 9! When you look a map and see just far east Berlin is then it's no surprise the Red Army got there first.

was really haunted by the ending of Ivan's Childhood, where it cuts to real Red Army Berlin footage and you see Goebbels + family + kids corpses etc.

the Yuval Noah Harari book looks interesting actually, might check it out.

it's a good fun read. lots of 'I didn't know/didn't think about that' moments

Idk why that would be common knowledge about horses, tbh. On the other hand, I need to admit that I didn't realize that about the Berlin Wall vs Inner German Border, which should be common knowledge, at least for someone who remembers when the wall came down.

xpost It certainly seems to align with my current reading topics. I shall look into it.

Also learned recently that there's apparently no consensus for what caused the extinction of the megafauna (e.g. horses, mammoths, giant sloths, camels (!!!)) in the Americas. I guess I thought they just froze to death or something but nope.

I guess it isn't common knowledge but I am shocked to have only learned about it in my dotage. It seems like the kind of thing that would've come up.

One theory I've read on the Asian/American megafauns extinction is that because they evolved on separate continents to humankind, they didn't learn how dangerous we were quickly enough. Whereas the African megafauns evolved with us, and knew to stay the fuck away.

There's more than one theory but calzino's is one of the most agreed one. Megafauna in Australia, America etc died out pretty much as soon as humans populated the landmass, mostly cos they didn't know to run away. This is why some of the last megafauna to die out were in places like Siberia and Tasmania, which were either too inhospitable or too remote to be reached early on in human prehistory.

Also - people brought alien diseases and other animals (dogs etc) with them from other landmasses that wouldn't have helped

There was a book i read at the start of teh Millenium when i was researching a thesis I never finished that talks about Europeans bringing various environmental things with them when they expanded into the new world. Ecological Imperialism by Alfred Crosby.
Those included various vermin, plants etc. Which themselves reformatted the ecosystem.
I think he also talks about the ancestors of the Australian Aborigines causing extinction with existing eco0system as they arrived how ever many thousand years ago that was. & probably goes into the arrival of teh Native Americans ancestors as they arrived from Asia.
So interesting book but may carry its own prejudices. But what was in it was interesting.

Also (not to turn this thread into Archaeology Corner) just learned that there was a completely random and isolated prehistoric human settlement in Chile which predates mankind's first foray into the Americas via the Bering Strait by at least a thousand years, apparently with little real consensus of how they even got there. I'm guessing...time travelers?

ah that's really interesting. Wouldn't mind hearing more about that. Is there an Archaeology Corner or human migration thread?

I don't know! I'd like to read more from people who know more than I do about this stuff. But this is the place, anyway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Verde

I was always confused about the Berlin Blockade and Gen. Marshall dropping care packages into West Berlin. "What, were there three other walls?"

In a way, yes, I guess.

Add me to the list of people who didn't realize west Berlin was an enclave until well into my 20s. I guess I just assumed that east and west Germany were split right through the middle of Berlin (and never bothered to check that against a map). Pre-wikipedia thinking, I think.

JUst found out that Sonda Andersson bassist with Live Skull and Rat At Rat R is the cousin of Glenn Branca. Have loved at least Positraction for about 28 years so surprised I hadn't heard that before now.

i was pretty old when i learned that too

I too

I envy the fortunate children who are taught such wisdom from birth.

"Timmy, know that mama loves you and will always take care of you. Also, A is for apple. Also, know that bassist Sonda Andersson is Glenn Branca's cousin. Also, a dog says woof."

"What, to everyone? Or just Glenn Branca?"

The Dave Stewart of 'It's my party and I'll cry etc' isn't the Eurythmics Dave Stewart.