Things you were shockingly old when you learned

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Captain Nemanderthal

Steely Duran (Ye Mad Puffin), Wednesday, 2 August 2023 17:08 (nine months ago) link

Or maybe: 77 Leagues Under the Sea

DJP Boot

Nemo Raggett

C or Das Boot

The Hunt for Raggettober

Steely Duran (Ye Mad Puffin), Wednesday, 2 August 2023 17:13 (nine months ago) link

just give me a cardboard bix and a sharpie

Deflatormouse, Wednesday, 2 August 2023 17:14 (nine months ago) link

POXtober

Steely Duran (Ye Mad Puffin), Wednesday, 2 August 2023 17:15 (nine months ago) link

i once made a gravity bong out of a bathtub and an office water cooler jug, it felt like a scuba mission. investigative and exploratory.

Deflatormouse, Wednesday, 2 August 2023 17:15 (nine months ago) link

i have seen workers on scaffolds doing insane daredevil acrobatics these last couple of years, it's shocking and horrifying. honestly playing baseball on a scaffold would be way safer.

Deflatormouse, Wednesday, 2 August 2023 17:19 (nine months ago) link

I'm very confused about the baloney/bologna thing upthread. I've got no idea what it actually is, it's just a word I heard in American cartoons and films when I was a kid that seemed to a polite way to say 'bullshit'. Now this thread seems to be telling me that there is no such word as 'baloney', just 'bologna' pronounced very weirdly, but it doesn't mean the Italian city or bolognaise sauce, it means...?

Nasty, Brutish & Short, Wednesday, 2 August 2023 17:27 (nine months ago) link

it's a kind of cured pork and beef sausage -- also called polony and (in parts of australia) "fitz"

mark s, Wednesday, 2 August 2023 17:31 (nine months ago) link

Well, I'm shockingly old to learn that

Nasty, Brutish & Short, Wednesday, 2 August 2023 17:32 (nine months ago) link

It is, or was, also a very popular choice among U.S. parents as a cheap meat to use in school lunch sandwiches.

It's basically floor sweepings.

I can barely stand the smell of it now, it really makes me sick.

immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Wednesday, 2 August 2023 18:22 (nine months ago) link

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

how quickly we forget that oscar meyer has a way with b-o-l-o-g-n-a

mh, Wednesday, 2 August 2023 18:38 (nine months ago) link

I wish I could forget that ad. It's taking up valuable storage space.

immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Wednesday, 2 August 2023 18:39 (nine months ago) link

baloney the food sounds like a more hench version of a frankfurter, but possibly even more indigestible and bad. An old fashioned UK word meaning nonsense/bollox I really like is "tommyrot". A headmaster used it on me once and it seemed hilarious at the time, but I still use it irl.

vodkaitamin effrtvescent (calzino), Wednesday, 2 August 2023 18:51 (nine months ago) link

"What rot!" is also pleasing to say

Alba, Wednesday, 2 August 2023 18:59 (nine months ago) link

tommyrot is another australian name for a cured pork and beef sausage

mark s, Wednesday, 2 August 2023 19:01 (nine months ago) link

It's basically the American version of mortadella. An emulsified beef and pork sausage with no discernible pockets of fat or pistachios or what have you.

BTW, I must thank everyone for all of your posts. This thread is one of the most edifying I've read. Thank you.

righteousmaelstrom, Wednesday, 2 August 2023 19:07 (nine months ago) link

"Can we do an ILX fundraising drive to build our own submarine?"

there was a trend for ppl building DIY subs out of used propane gas tanks in recent history. Obv low depth limited vehicles just done for a laugh or just to get a taste for the underwater experience. Stockton Rush made one and the hack engineer who who designed and wired all the frequently dysfunctional hydraulic and control systems for the Titan submersible said in an interview that the one Rush made actually contained a wooden part, although he didn't specify if it was part of the pressure chamber.

vodkaitamin effrtvescent (calzino), Wednesday, 2 August 2023 19:36 (nine months ago) link

there’s a weird john mayer song about a dude building a submarine in his back yard and hanging out there all the time alone

brimstead, Wednesday, 2 August 2023 20:27 (nine months ago) link

Not sure I believe a word of this, but whatever

https://www.dictionary.com/e/baloney-or-bologna/

immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Wednesday, 2 August 2023 20:29 (nine months ago) link

Influenced by "blarney" they say, but I always assumed it was a euphemism for bullshit. I've heard many an older person say, "oh, bull......loney!"

Josefa, Wednesday, 2 August 2023 20:43 (nine months ago) link

kissing the baloney stone gives endows you with the gift of t'all tastes same to me

vodkaitamin effrtvescent (calzino), Wednesday, 2 August 2023 21:38 (nine months ago) link

Can we do an ILX fundraising drive to build our own submarine?

Thinking 1k should be enough.

― linoleum gallagher (Neanderthal), Wednesday, August 2, 2023 11:54 AM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

i love how this post can mean a sandwich or a watercraft, depending on how you place it in context

budo jeru, Wednesday, 2 August 2023 22:13 (nine months ago) link

I mentioned Mortadella/devon/fritz upthread yesterday, and then 2 ilxors felt free to say the same thing as if I hadn't spoken. What is this, a staff meeting?!

Stoop Crone (Trayce), Wednesday, 2 August 2023 22:57 (nine months ago) link

"In Britain, it goes by Polony."

Hmmm. I've never heard of Polony. We do have mortadella, though.

Nasty, Brutish & Short, Wednesday, 2 August 2023 23:53 (nine months ago) link

I just found out George Davis was not in fact innocent

Colonel Poo, Thursday, 3 August 2023 01:18 (nine months ago) link

I was listening to Duran Duran at the time, not Sham 69 or Patrik Fitzgerald which would've been much cooler

Colonel Poo, Thursday, 3 August 2023 01:22 (nine months ago) link

polony sounds like polari for baloney

Kate (rushomancy), Thursday, 3 August 2023 13:38 (nine months ago) link

It's not so much learning about it just now, but more like I just realized how untethered for me that the letter "W" is from the idea that it is literally double-"U", at least until I saw a video how it's called doble-V in some Spanish-speaking countries.

I blame POTUS#43 for this semantic decoupling. We don't bag on him enough anymore.

Philip Nunez, Thursday, 3 August 2023 16:25 (nine months ago) link

apologies trayce, you did indeed and i didn't spot it

mark s, Thursday, 3 August 2023 16:31 (nine months ago) link

xpost Thought it was cool how they did it on the movie poster

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMTUyNzkwMzAxOF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwMzc1OTk1NjE@._V1_.jpg

Andy the Grasshopper, Thursday, 3 August 2023 17:35 (nine months ago) link

double-V does make more sense. it'd be funny to see it spelled UUitch and aluuays

Philip Nunez, Thursday, 3 August 2023 21:22 (nine months ago) link

'sok Mark all good. I did feel like Invisible Lady from the Fast Show skit though lol.

Stoop Crone (Trayce), Thursday, 3 August 2023 22:37 (nine months ago) link

who weezy is

sarahell, Saturday, 5 August 2023 16:39 (eight months ago) link

an asthma medication delivery service?

vodkaitamin effrtvescent (calzino), Saturday, 5 August 2023 16:52 (eight months ago) link

Lil Wayne

sarahell, Saturday, 5 August 2023 17:22 (eight months ago) link

all I know is he endorsed Trump, can't remember any of his music

vodkaitamin effrtvescent (calzino), Saturday, 5 August 2023 17:38 (eight months ago) link

I first heard the source of the “Amen break” about 90 seconds ago.

Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Sunday, 6 August 2023 12:35 (eight months ago) link

what a kookaburra sounds like.

or rather, that the sound of the "jungle" from old movies and cartoons isn't monkeys, as i had always thought, it's kookaburras!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3puMIfxm9fU

budo jeru, Monday, 7 August 2023 01:05 (eight months ago) link

Sitcom maven Chuck Lorre wrote the theme song to "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles."

Josh in Chicago, Monday, 7 August 2023 12:21 (eight months ago) link

There was television in the 1930's?

Andy the Grasshopper, Monday, 7 August 2023 22:39 (eight months ago) link

There was television in the 1920's.

Continuous Two-Tone Warble (Tom D.), Monday, 7 August 2023 22:58 (eight months ago) link

But not yet broadcasting, right? Just like experimental demonstrations

Andy the Grasshopper, Monday, 7 August 2023 23:00 (eight months ago) link

In 1928, WRGB (then W2XCW) was started as the world's first television station. It broadcast from the General Electric facility in Schenectady, New York. It was popularly known as "WGY Television".

Continuous Two-Tone Warble (Tom D.), Monday, 7 August 2023 23:01 (eight months ago) link

I was just reading about this fluke BBC broadcast that reached New York in 1938, I didn't realize that they were broadcasting TV images that early:

https://archive.org/details/BbcTelevisionReceivedInNewYork-1938

Andy the Grasshopper, Monday, 7 August 2023 23:02 (eight months ago) link

imagine watching TV before the wall st crash

the world is your octopus (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Monday, 7 August 2023 23:03 (eight months ago) link

The BBC started broadcasting in 1936. First outside broadcast, 1937!

Continuous Two-Tone Warble (Tom D.), Monday, 7 August 2023 23:06 (eight months ago) link

Just learned that New York wasn't named after the city of York, but after the Duke of York of the time (later James II).

Zelda Zonk, Tuesday, 8 August 2023 08:29 (eight months ago) link

There's a whole plot point in Carl Sagan's Contact (both novel and movie) that revolves around the true story of Nazi Germany's television broadcast of the opening of the 1936 Berlin Olympics as the first tv transmission that probably cleared the ionosphere and made it into space.

Elvis Telecom, Tuesday, 8 August 2023 09:05 (eight months ago) link

the sound of the "jungle" from old movies and cartoons isn't monkeys, as i had always thought, it's kookaburras!

It is also the sound of Flipper the dolphin - dolphins do not make the noises he did, they were samples of kooka calls sped up.

Stoop Crone (Trayce), Tuesday, 8 August 2023 09:59 (eight months ago) link

In 1928, WRGB (then W2XCW) was started as the world's first television station. It broadcast from the General Electric facility in Schenectady, New York. It was popularly known as "WGY Television".


Still going today — channel 6. Unfortunately, it’s one of those Sinclair-owned stations.

Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Tuesday, 8 August 2023 10:54 (eight months ago) link


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