Things you were shockingly old when you learned

They’re still a thing

I'm posting from one right now

I was shockingly old (because I didn't have kids until my 30s) that kids these days didn't even get the chicken pox anymore.

Another point for vaccinations.

We don't have those in the UK, my kids caught it last year, and my wife, which was pretty bad.

that the first three numbers in your SSN correspond to a geographic location within the USA

^unless you had one of the earliest ones or was issued one after 2007

it wasn't changed until 2011, apparently:
https://www.ssa.gov/employer/randomization.html

how do u think I learned all of ur SSNs

My social begins with 709 because my parents were hobos.

railroad!

boxcar!

• the paper they use to wrap butter is actually metallic
• microwave ovens are difficult to buy during a lockdown

Trying to think what the desired result would be otherwise gloop contained in a paper wrapper.

Though assume the process was more take frozen butter from freezer realise it won't spread for hours. Light bulb moment .
Later lovely little fire in useful machine.

But maybe that's obvious.

it took a few goes to blow out the fire

I don't know what the resulting substance would be like if it came out without the flames. Would it actually be nice or just a molten mess.
& wouldn't you be better off cutting off a chunk and putting it i a micorwaveable dish. Or did you need the whole stick.
Was wondering why you'd still have the wrapper attached.

there wasn’t enough butter to bother with a separate dish

more convenient to set the kitchen alight

Fela Kuti came from a well-off family of public intellectuals and studied music at one of the most prestigious conservatories in the world. I'd always enjoyed his music but never looked into his biography beyond the basic "they threw his mom out a window you know" stuff

Allspice is just one single spice and not a Five Spice+ mixture

xp
I really liked Michael Veal's biography of Fela back when I was absolutely obsessed with him (so maybe take this rec with a grain of salt). Wole Soyinka is Fela's cousin fyi

that "Sandy" is a shortening of "Alexandria" or "Alexander"

Next you'll be telling me you didn't know Eck is short for Alexander.

Wait huh? Every Alexandra I've know has gone by Alex.

Every Sandy i knew was a Sandra.

I know some Alexandras become Sandys but that's a minority innit?

Used to be more common

Alexander -> Sandy used to be pretty big

I guess Sandra is itself a shortening of Alexandra too?

and Xander = Alexander

and Robin Zander = Cheap Trick

Clover, the band that played on Elvis Costello's My Aim Is True and later mutated into Huey Lewis & the News, was founded by Alex Call, the guy who wrote "867-5309/Jenny" (and Pat Benatar's "Little Too Late").

Assume the Sandy discovery related to Ms Denny?

BUt yeah assumed that Sandra shortened to Sandy too.

also the effect of the presence of silica under certain circumstances.

I didn't know, until I read Dan's post above just now, that they threw Fela Kuti's mum out of a window.

xxp but Sandra is also a shortening of Alexandra, as mentioned

years ago i read that linda came from a shortening of saralinda, which i thought was interesting bcz no one is called saralinda any more

anyway i was shockingly old when i learned this theory is false and saralinda doesn't even appear on the linda wikipedia page (it's still true that no one is called this anymore)

fact: the name wendy was coined by j.m.barrie in peter pan, where it derives from fwendy-wendy (i was shockingly young when i learned this and have not yet recovered from the shock tbqh)

I think Sandy, as a diminuitive of Alexander or Alexandra, could be Scottish in origin? Certainly the name Sandy for a man seems very Scottish, but it could just be more common due to Alexander being, historically, a very popular name in Scotland.

it is thought that Barrie took the name from a phrase used by Margaret Henley, a five-year-old girl whom Barrie befriended in the 1890s, daughter of his friend William Henley. She called Barrie her "friendy-wendy", which she pronounced as "fwendy-wendy". She died at the age of five and was buried, along with her family, in Cockayne Hatley.

:(

the odd phrasing of that last sentence is conjuring some surprising images

Cockayne Hatley

Someone should be called this so I can post it in the Great Real Names thread.

"My name? Oh yes, it's..."

Cockayne Hatley is totally one of the villages in the Midsomer universe

lol to help gussie up an amusing fake MM plot involving the burial alive of 5-yr-old margaret henley's entire family per tracer's post i glanced at the wikipedia entry on actual real MM plots: they cannot in fact be parodied, they are nuts

Knew about the Sandy business because of the film director Alexander 'Sandy' Mackendrick (who was Scottish-American)

I guess you guys missed the right-wing 'AOC used to go by Sandy!' bullshit after the dance video kerfuffle

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kB1d0eey5ho

Knew about the Sandy business because of the film director Alexander 'Sandy' Mackendrick (who was Scottish-American)

When Mackendrick was six, his father died of influenza as a result of a pandemic that swept the world just after World War I.

Was going to say BÖC manager Sandy Pearlman, but it turns out his name is actually Samuel which puts a wrench in that particular wheel

and Xander = Alexander

Lex! And Al/Ally.

Actually I thought Ally McCoist was Alexander but he's actually Alistair, which is, of course, a Gaelic form of Alexander.

There was a saralinda a few years ahead of me in high school - so probably 50ish now - and I thought it was a crazy made up name that no on on earth had but her, like it was some WASPy version of Bobbie Jo or Peggy Sue

the princess in thurber's THE 13 CLOCKS (1950) is called saralinda, which probably ensured a fair few children roughly that age with that name

in fact judging by google ngrams thurber actually invented it and there's a HUGE burst of it on and around 1950