Things you were shockingly old when you learned

I just found out that Olivia Newton-John was the cousin of Henry Cow's Georgina Born, but this fascinating fact seems to have been mentioned on this very thread not long ago.

Another Cow factoid - not only is Fred Frith the brother of critic Simon Frith (which I knew), he's also called Jeremy and Fred is but a nickname (which I didn't).

The plural of sphinx is sphinges - though sphinxes is also correct.

The great "aha!" for me here re Greek/Latin/etc, when I studied some of it back in the day, was to grok that despite what is the convention in dictionaries of our familiar Western languages, the nominative case is not the basic or default stem that other varieties are inflected from, but itself a derived form with its own case ending, that ending being -s. We think "Rex" is King, as a kind of irreducible thing! but it is "reg..." (with a long "eeeh") that is the thing, and ALL cases had endings added on, such as reeehgis (spelt "regis") in the genitive, reeehgem (spelt "regem") in the accusative, and reeehgs (the expected "regs" parsimoniously spelt "rex") in the nominative.

In Old Norse, where the nominative -s was -r, the word for "man" is really "mann...", but generations of Norwegians have learnt in school that "man" in Old Norse is "maðr", since that is the nominative case, somehow making the other cases (manns, manni, mann) seem irregular (this even thought the modern Scandinavian is "mann"). The fact is of course that the n's of "mannr" are easily lazed into a fluffy dental ð sound.

KISS bass player Gene Simmons was born in Haifa Israel, his mother was a Holocaust survivor

Not sure why I never knew this

I remember reading a teen magazine in the late ‘70s, Tiger Beat or 16 probably, and there was a piece on KISS in which Gene Simmons was asked how old he was, and he responded, “I was hatched in 1776.”

What I’m saying is, for a long time no one knew anything about Gene Simmons’ background

I did a pretty brisk business in 3rd grade... I would trace drawings of them without their makeup, and then charge kids to see what they looked like

lol

it was sliding scale, not trying to rip anyone off

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/55/Kiss_Unmasked_Album_Cover.jpg/220px-Kiss_Unmasked_Album_Cover.jpg

oh dammit

I did a pretty brisk business in 3rd grade... I would trace drawings of them without their makeup, and then charge kids to see what they looked like

I did not know until I heard him interviewed a few years ago that Geddy Lee's parents were also Holocaust survivors. They made it through Auschwitz, Dachau and Bergen-Belsen.

"goody two shoes" is actually the titular character's nickname in The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes, a 1765 English children's novel

She's a poor orphan girl with only one shoe, but gets a new pair when her fortunes improve

omg I just now realized what "Benelux" means after 40+ years

― out-of-print LaserDisc edition (sleeve), Monday, October 9, 2023 10:21 AM

Liverpool as the UK representation point of the Confederacy in America. THink I'm more aware of it as a multicultural place 120 or 30 years later. But seems to have been well known historically.

I only just recently learned that the country code for Switzerland, "CH," stands for "Confoederatio Helvetica."

Lol, and we do not have provinces or regions or departments, we have cantons!

learned today that mules are donkey/horse hybrids and can't mate with each other

learned yesterday that you won't actually get stuck that way if you cross your eyes too long

started believing that probably age 5 and then went 30 years never stumbling onto a situation that would cause me to rethink it

been crossing my eyes all day, lot of lost time to make up for

don't get stuck!

Here's one secret advantage to being able to cross your eyes.

If you're doing one of those "Find 6 differences between these 2 picures" puzzles, cross your eyes until the images merge and the differences almost jump right out.

that the word spelled "indicted" is the same as the word pronounced "indited", & the word spelled "epitome" is the same as the word pronounced "epitomy" - in retrospect it seems odd that it never occurred to me that, ya know, you read those words reasonably often but i'd never once heard anybody say em.

If you're doing one of those "Find 6 differences between these 2 picures" puzzles, cross your eyes until the images merge and the differences almost jump right out.

if you ever practiced doing those magic eye pictures it's easy to do

the guy who portrayed the "indian" in the village people was actually of native american heritage

found that out approx 10 mins ago

learning all the time huh

If you're doing one of those "Find 6 differences between these 2 picures" puzzles, cross your eyes until the images merge and the differences almost jump right out.

wtf

holy crap it really works

Takes the fun out of those puzzles, but ok!

these are two entirely different pictures

Takes the fun out of those puzzles, but ok!

It's how I found the right books to unlock the Ninth Gate.

learned today that mules are donkey/horse hybrids and can't mate with each other

Male donkey with female horse = mule
Male horse with female donkey = hinny (less common, and look different than mules)

I didn't realize miniature donkeys were a distinct mediterranean breed until now!

and can't mate with each other

tbf they can *mate*

they just don't need protection

speak for yourself. those things can kick

Sprinklers are actually timed to go a full rotation in one minute

tbf they can *mate*

things you are shockingly old when you haven’t learned yet

🧉

Male donkey with female horse = mule

Our gut biome is external to our body, total "wait, whut?" moment.

i'm sorry...what?!

I know!!

aiui if we turned ourselves inside out, all that stuff is living separately/symbiotically on the surface of our body?

So...how does it get in there? Is it transmitted from adults to babies (via mother's milk or something)?

Turns out...yes!

Each person has an entirely unique network of microbiota that is originally determined by one’s DNA. A person is first exposed to microorganisms as an infant, during delivery in the birth canal and through the mother’s breast milk. Exactly which microorganisms the infant is exposed to depends solely on the species found in the mother. Later on, environmental exposures and diet can change one’s microbiome to be either beneficial to health or place one at greater risk for disease.

The internal/external is both counter intiuitive and logical — open your mouth wide and it’s obvious the cavity belongs to the outside world and is not a part of your body, that remains the case all down the alimentary canal and beyond

Very true. Also the gut and the inner lung surface is very much the largest surface area exposed to the outside world, each about the size of a tennis court if you flattened them out. The defence systems are pretty remarkable but that’s why most infections get to us via the airways or ingestion of pathogens.

Also despite being a biomed lecturer, one thing I was very late to realise is that the lungs are a pouch which grows off the gut tube during development. It’s why they have a common opening.

And of course now I'm thinking of the Terry Bisson story "They're Made Out of Meat"...

I love the Leonard cohen lyric about being nothing but the brief elaboration of a tube

also thinking of Kristeva's notion of "the abject" - from us, but not us

This is making me think of the idea that in 3d, we'd break in half because of our digestive tube.