Things you were shockingly old when you learned

i mean tbf i wouldn't have been surprised if i'd died without ever knowing that. pleased i do now though, thanks Dan.

I learned recently that When jewish folks do their bar/bat they read from a page that coordinates with their birthdate, which means that on any given day thousands of kids worldwide are reading the same page, and the page might not be terribly interesting!! Wild!!!

lol amazing, those poor kids

Amazing

"anyway, i got you this discharge CD..."

Now I'm wondering what the Feb. 29 kids read.

Hebrew calendar, no February 29

It's actually a bit different from that, doesn't correspond to birthdate so much as just the date. Every synagogue is reading the same portion of the bible every week, and then whichever week a kid has their bar/bat mitzvah, that's what they read, with b mitzvah dates generally corresponding to birthday. but yes, it is quite a different thing to have to read and give a speech about a portion that's about priestly offerings or sex laws or something vs. the actually accessible narrative stories in Genesis.

while we're on the subject, the Hebrew calendar is lunar with 12 months, but 12 lunar cycles is significantly shorter than 365 days, so while there's no Feb 29, the Hebrew calendar actually has a leap MONTH that shows up -- to make things even more complicated -- every 2-3 years. Whether it is 2-3 depends on where we are in a 19 year cycle before that repeats.

just providing some fodder for being shockingly old to learn something, for those who partake

Have I mentioned this one before? Anyway, Leslie Charteris, author, creator of Simon "The Saint" Templar, was half-Chinese.

The country with the highest rate of home ownership is Romania, where 96% of people own their own homes.

that the lift part of a swivel chair base regulates the height of the chair with a pressurised cylinder of gas. I never thought about how they worked before, but at least now I know why my old knackered chair doesn't rise any more.

See, you manually raise it to the top, sit and commence work. It should very slowly descend through your work. When you reach the bottom, you have completed one seat-session of work. It’s like the worst xkcd comic ever.

brb farting in my old swivel chair

if it raises yr seat u did it right

that's what the Josh Groban song is about iirc

"It should very slowly descend through your work"

if it goes down before you have a completed a work session then you aren't farting hard enough

That the Sinatra song "New York, New York" dates from the late 70s rather than the 40s or 50s, and is from a Scorsese film I've barely heard of. Also really more of a Liza Minelli song.

This is like when Irish people realize that the Fields of Athenry was written in 1979 and not 1879.

or Scots (like me) when they find out Flower of Scotland was written in the 1960s

Good conservatives.

Not long ago I learned that powdered/confectioners sugar is just regular sugar further ground up, and that you can make your own simply by blitzing granular sugar in a food processor.

This is like when Irish people realize that the Fields of Athenry was written in 1979 and not 1879.

Trying not to mention "craic" here.

Everyone knows craic was invented by the CIA.

blaic don't craic

Powdered/confectioners sugar also has corn starch in it, which is useful for certain applications. I guess you could just add that too.

was gonna say, typically an anti-caking agent is added e.g. cornstarch

Did not know this was a thing you could do until recently and finally my curse of floppy backpacks was lifted:
https://www.tasmaniantiger.info/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/tt-website-rucksack-optimal-einstellen-schritt-03-adjust-your-backpack-step-03.jpg

the correct way to wear an airline pillow (opening at the back of your neck, not the front)

my curse of floppy backpacks was lifted

high-quality on-topic thread content

the correct way to wear an airline pillow (opening at the back of your neck, not the front)

This seems completely counterintuitive to me. I'd feel like I was being strangled.

Just now while transcribing the bibliography in Caliban and teh Witch which is providing me with reading for the next 5 years or something . I looked up the name Alfred W. Crosby and found out that the author who coined the term Columbian Exchange was the same guy who wrote Ecological Imperialism which I read about 20 years ago. & tells the story about unintentional spread of weeds and vermin or other small parasites as unintentional; passengers in the ships that colonised other regions .
Also how man's exploration and migration caused extinction events every time they have discovered new lands. I thought it was a really good book, just had no idea it was the same guy which I maybe should have done

& then I find out how many bibliographies of taht book are online already so can just be looked up at any time. But unfortunately not true of all books. & I have just found out a load of books i want to read from looking them up.
BUt yeah Caliban and the Witch is intentionally available from a number of sources. Worth looking through taht bibliography though.
I was just thinking i needed to take the book back and wouldn't have access to the book list again . So could have done that earlier, have a book waiting for me to collect anyway.

Ground stops for flights during thunderstorms aren't due to lightning, because aircraft are built to withstand strikes.

It's actually mostly the wind shear.

Never knew that!

your plane getting struck by lightning sounds like one of the most terrifying things imaginable

Apparently it happens often!

https://wxresearch.org/how-often-do-planes-get-struck-by-lightning/

I can't work out how or why you'd wear the pillow front-facing. I assume we mean those little C-shaped ones yeah? What are you doing if the paddings at the front, under the chin? Letting yr head flop forward somehow?

obv having no path to earth for the current means a plane has to function like a flying Faraday cage - I'm not sure about this and only ever did the basic science of electricity for installation monkeys - but a huge 1 in a million mega strike could potentially arc out or create enough heat to do some damage to the electronics.

I can't work out how or why you'd wear the pillow front-facing. I assume we mean those little C-shaped ones yeah? What are you doing if the paddings at the front, under the chin? Letting yr head flop forward somehow?

“Never look a gift horse in the mouth”

Up until like 10yrs ago I thought a gift-horse was a thing - a horse that has gifts coming out of its mouth. You shouldn’t look in its mouth because you don’t really wanna see where those gifts are coming from. Idk I didn’t give this concept any thought. That was my first interpretation of it and I just never questioned it. I finally had a light bulb moment while reading a novel that was horse-info heavy.

I just can’t believe that everyone just knows the whole checking horses’ mouth thing unless you’re a horse person?!

I thought checking the state of a horse's health by looking at its teeth/tongue etc while assessing whether to buy it was pretty crucial. Meant one saw through whatever jiggerypokery had been done to the rest of the horse to disguise its age. & showed some level of suspicion of the honesty of the deal.
So it would be something you bypassed if a horse was just being given to you. NO money or other form of creditt was being exchanged so one shouldn't be as suspicious. NOt sure what one should be thinking of having to pay for upkeep of an aged nag one had been saddled with. Presumably do need to check health of anything one is acquiring and make sure it has no greeks inside it?

“Never look a gift horse in the mouth”

Up until like 10yrs ago I thought a gift-horse was a thing - a horse that has gifts coming out of its mouth. You shouldn’t look in its mouth because you don’t really wanna see where those gifts are coming from. Idk I didn’t give this concept any thought. That was my first interpretation of it and I just never questioned it. I finally had a light bulb moment while reading a novel that was horse-info heavy.

I just can’t believe that everyone just knows the whole checking horses’ mouth thing unless you’re a horse person?!

like totally assume its based on the idea of gift giving as an act of altruism so the polite response is gratitude.
Whereas I've been coming across the idea of gift giving as a status act, and the gift being given supposed to be responded to by giving a gift of equal or superior worth. & therefore there being a reason for making a gift look more valuable tahn it actually is. Subsequently there being a reason for checking the value of the received gift. & the status of equine overall health supposedly being able to be seen in the state of the mouth. Horses teeth getting annual rings like trees etc

It always takes me a moment to remember that it has nothing to do with fearing Greeks bearing gifts, because that gift was a horse (albeit one that should have been inspected closely)

^this

& gives us the adage beware of Greeks bearing gifts

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/17/Laocoon_Pio-Clementino_Inv1059-1064-1067.jpg/1024px-Laocoon_Pio-Clementino_Inv1059-1064-1067.jpg

shockingly old when i learned that this guy^^^ is the one who coined the adage in question and this^^^ is the thanks he got (being strangled by snakes along with his sons, who did nothing wrong that i can see) (and nor did he! he was right!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jz7u-9ZHOgE

“Never look a gift horse in the mouth”

Up until like 10yrs ago I thought a gift-horse was a thing - a horse that has gifts coming out of its mouth. You shouldn’t look in its mouth because you don’t really wanna see where those gifts are coming from. Idk I didn’t give this concept any thought. That was my first interpretation of it and I just never questioned it. I finally had a light bulb moment while reading a novel that was horse-info heavy.

I just can’t believe that everyone just knows the whole checking horses’ mouth thing unless you’re a horse person?!

― just1n3, Sunday, June 18, 2023 4:00 AM (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

when people make posts like this, they need to explain their understanding of the new, correct interpretation! let's get it together, folks! same goes for the pun thread.

this guy^^^

Laocoön: one of the hardest pronunciations for me to remember. at some point i will be shockingly old when i don't have to look it up for the 80th time.

(it's lay-AHK-uh-wan)

It always takes me a moment to remember that it has nothing to do with fearing Greeks bearing gifts, because that gift was a horse (albeit one that _should_ have been inspected closely)

Dudley Moore's father was from Glasgow.