Things you were shockingly old when you learned

https://pics.me.me/neapolitan-neaneanea-polipolipoli-tantantan-neapolipoli-neaneapoli-politantan-polipolitan-neatantan-neaneatan-46428753.png

I think I saw the first home electric car charger on the street yesterday as opposed to a standing charger that you need to park next to.
Hadn't really thought about how people do this more conveniently. I think there have been few electric cars around Galway so there wasn't much competition. Don't know how long you would need to park at one to charge either.
But it presumably must be quite a drain on the home supply. I guess it compensates for having to pay a separate petrol fee but still presumably mustard a lot to the bill.
& does mean you have to park directly outside your own house which isn't always easy. Also here the lead was on the ground across the pavement so hoping that nobody trips over it.

never mind all this end of the decade stuff, i just figured out that some people reading this today will be alive in the 22nd Century and it's freaking me out

You're freaking out, how do you think I feel about living to be 175 years old

how anchors work.

i suddenly thought "if they are basically barbs stuck in the sea-bottom, how do you dettach them?" but it's basically the weight and friction of the chain more than anything and this and the barbs are less effective when pulled from directly above

Re cilantro/coriander in the US: I believe the difference isn't really fresh vs dried, but rather leaves vs seeds?

'One Night in Bangkok' was written for a musical entitled Chess by Andrew Lloyd Webber's lyricist and half of ABBA.

Sometimes I think I know things but then it turns out I don't know anything at all.

Why... why did you think there was such an immense focus on playing chess in that song?

the great Chess Resurgence of 1985, obviously

I couldn't go down the street as a young lad without some ruffian sizing me up and challenging me to a little black and white. i wasn't allowed to pass on my way to school until the words "checkmate" were uttered by someone.

I like how the first two minutes, the instrumental that usually gets cut to a ten-second intro is technically its own song. Much like "Foreplay/Long Time" or "Sirius/Eye in the Sky", that Murray Head song is "Bangkok/One Night in Bangkok".

Me and my wife found out about the coriander/cilantro thing the hard way a couple of years ago. She's from Costa Rica, where fresh culantro is an essential part of the cuisine, whereas I'd never really used it here in Finland. So when she moved here, at first she was shocked that the local supermarkets didn't seem to sell culantro at all, until a couple of months later she discovered it's called korianteri here.

― Tuomas, Monday, December 30, 2019 8:16 AM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

To make things more confusing, cilantro is different from culantro.

initially read that as cuntlantro. time to sleep.

the root of a celery plant is called celeriac in the UK

the same plant? or are they different cultivars?

The latter - nothing is called both.

thanking jaymc for explaining that!

I realize now I've had culantro and found it tasty but didn't realize what it was.

so:

coriander is korianteri is cilantro

coriander powder is used in some cooking, but if used dried it's usually the seeds (in my apparently limited experience)

fresh cilantro leaves are used as garnish and for flavor in lots of cooking I enjoy. I also found out via a couple recipes I've prepared that the stalks can be part of a curry paste

the stalks have flavor. I throw them in if I want a lil crunch.

Lidl sells coriander as a grow your own plant. Or at least keep it going since its sold as a mature plant.

ime those plants do not thrive outdoors in the ground. they are weakling latte-sippers afaict

all that coriander discussion makes me dizzy. one thing i never understood. why do people eat it? am i the only one who thinks that all food seasoned with coriander - esp. the fresh green leaves which look like parsley - is uneatable. Or would you ever season your dish with soap as that is exactly the taste of coriander for me.

There is a genetic reason why a minority of people taste it that way:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.britannica.com/amp/story/why-does-cilantro-taste-like-soap-to-some-people

(Love it myself)

These people have a variation in a group of olfactory-receptor genes that allows them to strongly perceive the soapy-flavored aldehydes in cilantro leaves.

thanks, so i didn't imagine it!

Nope you’re just a mutant

was wondering how long it'd take before that came up

I feel bad for people who don't enjoy coriander

Man, I call such B.S. on the whole genetic-basis for hating cilantro thing. I know it's a neat piece of internet wisdom to share that some people can smell/taste aldehydes and therefore think that the herb tastes bad, but as a verified OR6A2-receptor-haver, I think cilantro tastes kinda weird and soapy AND it also tastes great. Human taste is a big complex multi-variant thing, not an on/off switch, and the 'genetic basis' reduction drives me banananas. Genetics play a factor, sure, but they're hardly deterministic. It's the 'I like all music but country and rap' argument in food form. Also, FWIW I also love most other aldehyde-heavy foods like vanilla and cinnamon and miso and sauerkraut. But nobody ever says 'I have a genetic basis for disliking cinnamon.'

Ftr, I said, or at least meant, that there is a genetic basis for tasting coriander as soapy, not for disliking it.

I wasn't meaning to have a go at anybody in particular. I just hear this argument a lot (I cook mostly S.E. Asian and Colombian food and host a lot of dinners).

doesn't taste soapy to me at all. I put a shit ton of it on tacos & tuna melts. my favorite herb.

No, not for me either.

Nope you’re just a mutant

I think cilantro tastes kinda weird and soapy AND it also tastes great

Did you swear a lot as a child, Alex?

i get the soapiness from cilantro/coriander, but i am a big fan. i did eat it often as a child though, primarily in the form of the chilean condiment pebre (basically just pico de gallo)

because the tropical fruits i discovered late like papaya, mango (still my fave of these), lychee and especially khaki are not really my cup of tea.

This just hit me the other morning when I was waking up. They commonly sell commercially packaged coffee in awkward weights 2.2 lbs and 12 oz. because 2.2 = 1 kg and 12 oz of coffee lasts a lot of people a little over a week.

We buy a big bushel of fresh cilantro every week because we use it for almost everything (always use the stems) and zhoug sauce!

Zhoug is amazing

Ha, so much stuff seems to come in 454 g packages in Canada.

a pound!

Yep

Speaking of weights, I recently learned that the big lower-case "e" next to the weight on European products means estimated

Did not know that!

That Aimee Mann is 59. Unaware of her until the late 90s, I assumed she was 10 years younger than that.

At least

Her biggest hit was in 1985

Yeah, not in the UK, you see. I'd never heard of Til Tuesday till I looked at her Wikipedia page just now.

When Bob Mortimer and Jim Moir made the first series of Vic Reeves' Big Night Out they had known each other for less than two months. Bob was taken to one of Vic's shows in New Cross by a friend, got talking afterwards, and was invited to participate the following Saturday, which he did: the first time he had ever performed anything in public, at the age of 30. Six weeks later they were filming it for Channel 4.

I only just found out that Aimee Mann is married to Michael Penn of "No Myth" fame, which seems very right.

And I only just found out that Chris Penn died. In 2006.

Bob talks about him and vic meeting (and his legal job, the Cockroach King, prior to this) in his Chain Reaction thing

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b053bq55

i didn't know about the timing of the show though, seems crazy short.