Things you were shockingly old when you learned

I didn’t know until I passed the Hotel Bunga Bunga today that ‘bunga-bunga’ means ‘flowers’ in Malay / Bahasa Indonesia.

Was just watching a 1977 biopic of Muhammad Ali, starring Muhammad Ali, called The Greatest. The theme song starts and it's "The Greatest Love of All" and it's sung by George Benson. I had no idea that song existed before Whitney Houston sang it, nor that it had any connection to Ali.

Wow, you don't (now) think of Muhammad Ali as someone who needed a lot of inspirational balladic help in the self-esteem department.

I did not know that song existed before her version either. "Children are our future" is one of the most frequently-seen sentences in my teaching career.

How useful a wide-mouth funnel is in the kitchen. Why did no one tell me this before.

Never knew the origin of this phrase until just now, but maybe it is not so common so not so shocking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphonse_and_Gaston?wprov=sfti1

From an article on old New York.

Bouwerie is Dutch for “farm”. (This, as you might guess, accounts for how the Bowery — which used to be the road to Peter Stuyvesant’s farm — got its name.)

Strange. Bouwen: build

I could see am overlap between build and grow being possible. Think it turns up in other languages too doesn't it?

Neighbour

Old English nēahgebūr, from nēah ‘nigh, near’ + gebūr ‘inhabitant, peasant, farmer’ (compare with boor).

The bours who say neigh

present-day Dutch: verbouwen = grow (crops)

Recently learned that both 'guest' and 'host' derive from the same (reconstructed) proto-Indo European word '*ghosti-' which was more of a catch-all term for hospitality.

Gives an extra layer to the punchline of Idris Elba’s verse in Boasty

that the original recording of 'The Sun Has Got His Hat On' has these lyrics:

"He's been tanning n*****s out in Timbuktu
Now he's coming back to do the same to you"

Mr. Koch (pronounced coke)

The Deftones are not a Brit guitar band with Paul Weller haircuts.

that some earthworms in optimum conditions can live up to 8 years old. So if your wee nipper is in the garden eating the wirrums, tell them to have some respect for their elders!

When I was a little kid, and I would act hyper or fidgety or just over-energetic, my mother would say that I was acting like what to my tender ears sounded like "a greeny stickumcap." I always assumed it was some quaint West Virginia-ism that she had picked up from her mother, maybe a colloquialism referring to some jumping insect or the like.

I was in my 30s before I discovered she was talking about these: Mattel(TM) Greenie Stick'em Caps, peel-and-stick caps designed to be stuck on the back of realistic looking "bullets" used in their cap pistols. I really honestly just assumed it was some made-up mom thing.

https://vintagetoycapguns.com/images/mattel-5.jpg

https://www.toytent.com/Special/pics/8714-1.jpg

SAFE!

huh wow, never knew that any type of cap gun existed besides the little red plastic ring of dots. the wikipedia entry is obviously written by a toy enthusiast and is kinda messy but helpful.

There were (and surprisingly still are) also the paper rolls

https://www.tintoyarcade.com/image/cache/data/product/Images_3401_3600/TTA3511-Super-Bang-Roll-Caps-1800-Shots-1000x1000.jpg

Used to love going at those things with a hammer and completely ruining our driveway.

scraping a 2p coin quickly across a strip of those was always fun

BRB, going to revert to age eight real quick and add this sadly-absent experience to my childhood memory bank.

i can smell those right now

Srsly, Marcel's madelines ain't got nothing on a cap gun.

otm, i also got a momentary wave of cap gun smell memories earlier. much clearer than any memory of the sound or the appearance of the smoke (was it a faint wisp? a legible trail? a billowing cloud?).

blue wisp

Just been pointed out to me that all of Portugal coast is Atlantic while a lot of Spain is Mediterranean. & the Portuguese guy who was saying that said the sea temperature difference was pretty significant and reflected in the way people behaved accordingly.

Spain's Atlantic coast is longer but then Spain is a lot bigger.

Actually, wiki says Portugal's is longer but, looking at a map, I don't see how that's possible - damn Mercator crap.

Maybe if you included Brazil.

i think you are only looking at Spain's mediterranean coastline and not all its coastlines?

oh wait you are talking only about the atlantic.

North coast of Spain on Bay of Biscay, plus the coastline west of Gibraltar prior to Portugal border. All on the Atlantic.

But not as long as Portugal's coastline, which is all Atlantic.

So Maine has a longer coast than California.

And Chimborazo is the highest mountain in the world, yeah yeah yeah.

Coastline measurement is a notoriously difficult definitional problem.

^ Was going to say.

Mauna loa is the highest mountain in the world!

If you measure from the sea floor

Tallest don't mean highest though!

Coastline measurement is a notoriously difficult definitional problem.

― Natalie Wouldn't (Ye Mad Puffin), Wednesday, February 19, 2020 7:04 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Nah man you just walk along the beach with one of those sticks with a wheel on the end

One thing I remember from James Gleick's book Chaos is that coastlines are kind of like Mandelbrot sets: the closer you look, the more intricate they become. Measuring them accurately is close to impossible.

My embarrassing geography-related example is that Denmark isn't, and has never been, an island. I can't even really remember why I thought it.

Looking at a map, Spain's Atlantic coastline does seem longer than Portugal's (and not even counting the Canarias).

For whatever reason, I have a serious block in my brain when it comes to geography. Like I may have read multiple books about the history of a particular region, all festooned with maps I've pored over extensively, and I will still find myself regularly surprised to (re-)learn, oh, that place is next to that place! Huh!

I mean I have difficulty visualizing the layout of even just the states that circle my own. It's kinda ridiculous.

I'd've done all right generalizing the location of Ukraine, though, fwiw.

Once I had a friend
Who had the knack of tossing
His mind around geography
Boy, you think, you have problems

Looking at a map, Spain's Atlantic coastline does seem longer than Portugal's (and not even counting the Canarias).

― AlXTC from Paris, Thursday, 20 February 2020 12:49 (twenty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

mandelbrot: LOOK CLOSER LOL