Things you were shockingly old when you learned

mention of noah reminds me of THIS, which belongs in this thread even if i learned it a couple of years ago (i was shockingly old a couple of years ago):

Genesis 7

1: And the Lord said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation.
2: Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female.
3: Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth.

well that's just unrealistic

i mean it's like they were lying in bible classes when i was a kid ABOUT WHAT'S ACTUALLY IN THE BIBLE

YOU JUST CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!

The animals went in seven by seven
Hoorah! Hoorah!
The animals went in seven by seven
Hoorah! Hoorah!

The animals went in seven by seven
The little pig thought he was going to heaven
And they all went into the ark
For to get out of the rain.

(little pig v porrly briefed even in this the truthtelling verse -- tho of course he is an unclean animal)

i mean it's like they were lying in bible classes when i was a kid ABOUT WHAT'S ACTUALLY IN THE BIBLE

I asked Sunday School teachers, and later the minister at my confirmation hearings, about things in the bible, and they didn't know they were in there

YOU HAD ONE JOB

And they'll know we are Christians
Cos we're dumb

iswydt

xpoat

Version we used to sing was

The animals went in 2 by 2
The elephant and the kangaroo
And they all went marching down the drain down the lane.

YOU HAD ONE JOB

imo they effectively did their job of showing me young that even genuinely well-meaning religious teachers were absolutely bullshitting it & therefore all speakers on religion should be disregarded

FFS some american evangelicals non-ironically describe Jesus as blonde and blue eyed, so.

seven pairs of each beast could still go in two by two y'know.

Hermaphrodite is a compound name taken from the offspring of Hermes and Aphrodite. Character with both male and female genitals after he was melded with naiad Salmacis.

The two first letters in ISO three-letter international currency codes are the countries' ISO two-letter country codes, also used for top-level domain names and such. Should have been obvious, I guess, but a few distractions (the US not using the .us domain name, the Russian ruble having the code RUB) have kept me from noticing.

well your post made me go look something up and apparently the UK's country codes are GB and GBR, with "UK" reserved from the set of available 2-character codes so nobody else can use it. Contrariwise the .gb TLD is reserved but almost completely disused in deference to .uk

Oh yeah, exactly, that's another one of the high-profile apparent counterexamples that hides the general pattern.

God wiping out all life on earth

O rly? Fish were pretty chill about it, from what I heard.

Fish were like "Cool. More water. Thanks, God!"

I learned today that Jamiroquai is extremely good

in what language

Rigatoni.jpg

“Jamiroquai, it’s delicious”

Only learned last night that you can use headphones as a microphone.

I just learned that a "fathom" is only 6 feet/183cm, not some huge undersea depth as I had imagined.

I can't even begin to six feet why you would think that.

i am just now learning this as well!

They changed the movie title bcz 43,744,532 Fathoms Under The Sea used more digits than most cinemas had for their marquees

Um, literally the distance you can physically fathom or grasp with your arms outstretched? I suppose "fathom" for "grasp" may only be used in the abstract "understand" rather than the literal sense in English now? Norwegian has "fatte" ("understand" nearly always, physically "grasp" in some older literary usage), which may have helped me understand this unit without too much trouble.

The Verne title refers to distance traveled rather than distance from surface.

Uh, that's a league, apparently meaning about an hour's walk, not a fathom.

I think Stevolende knows that, he's just listing something else he realized late. I had the same misconception, "How can you be that deep, the earth isn't even that thick?!!"

It wasn't until I heard my college professor say Friedrich Nietzsche's surname outloud that I realized it wasn't pronounced the same as Green Bay Packers linebacker Ray Nitschke, even though it obviously doesn't have a K in it. This was long after I'd first tried to read him and probably attempted to name-drop him in a few weighty conversations.

That 'perk' is an abbreviation of 'perquisite'.

Good one!

"pox" is just a 15th century re-spelling of "pocks", as in pockmarks

https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=pox

(this dawned on me while reading some twitter discussion abt chickenpox which has now disappeared from my timeline so no link - anyhow there was much talk of "pocks" so I might be the last person alive to have realised this)

I thought standardised spelling was only really happening thanks to the printed word which was only happening around that time, possibly even a little later. Otherwise there was a lot of spelling variation depending on what area you were in or where your education was from etc.

That there is a science fiction element to Dude, Where's My Car?

xpost/eckes poste

this is true, so I guess a better summary might be that in the late 15th century people began to think of "pocks" as a word/condition in its own right rather than a plural of another word, and would sometimes write it down accordingly in a less plural-looking manner, and we've* done so ever since

a bit less snappy though

* I've**
** ok I am not quite that old

high flying birds are on this:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D_6P3K7XUAMd86e.png

that "Avenging Force" with Michael Dudikoff is a sequel to the Chuck Norris classic "Invasion U.S.A."

For some reason i always mistakenly thought Maiden's Number of the Beast was a concept album...until my late 20s

It is one if you want it to be.

Lol true

The Left Bank in Paris is not on the left side of the map but rather on the left side of the river when you're traveling downstream

Just learned at NCT today that “pump and dump” doesn’t in fact mean conscientiously expressing several bottles of milk in advance

I finally figured out today how to lower blinds. You just pull the strings at an angle! Where's my Mensa membership?

a league, apparently meaning about an hour's walk, not a fathom

According to the introduction to my 20,000 Leagues, which I happened to be reading this morning, a league on land ("le plancher des vaches") is about 4 kilometers, but a nautical league is 5.555 kilometers: "la vingtième partie du degré d'un grand cercle de la Terre."

Colin Hay is Scottish by birth, and only moved to Australia at age 14. He has a strong Scottish accent. Hand to heart, I've only ever heard him sing before today. Never heard his speaking voice.

loads of our famous people were born elsewhere, especially those who were famous before 2000

It's just so weird that I've been hearing his music for more than 30 years and it never occurred to me that he sounded like anything but a "typical" Australian, if not Crocodile Dundee. It's like finding out Michael Hutchence was Quebecois or something.

and he’s still got a distinct scots accent!

I think Malcolm Young had traces of a Scottish accent, Angus (and Bon Scott) none at all - George Young was entirely Scottish, from what I've heard.