Things you were shockingly old when you learned

my partner and I binge-watched Monty Don's "Big Dreams, Small Spaces" in 2019 and "get stuck in" permanently entered our American vocabulary.

Cambridge Dictionary has it as "to start doing something enthusiastically." I don't think I have ever heard it used in that sense.

In U.S. English, I think it would mean nearly the opposite, or at least the phrase "get stuck" would, e.g., "I got stuck with doing the dishes" or "I got stuck in dealing with these asshole customers and was late to dinner."

so a bit like diving in, digging in, or immersing oneself

and likely unrelated, but phonically reminiscent of how a british person might talk about "tucking into" some food -- which always conjures for me a gleeful expression of anticipation before the act of eating, lol

or perhaps a guilty one idk

I've always associated that phrase with someone tucking a napkin into their collar before eating.

In U.S. English, I think it would mean nearly the opposite, or at least the phrase "get stuck" would, e.g., "I got stuck with doing the dishes" or "I got stuck in dealing with these asshole customers and was late to dinner."

"Get stuck in" is really "get stuck into" or "get stuck in to". You can of course get stuck in something - like a traffic jam, or jam (sorry, jelly), or treacle (sorry, molasses) or a lift (sorry, elevator).

That's pretty much what I figured. I had never heard the U.K. usage of "getting stuck into" something.

So, I guess I'm shockingly old to have just learned that.

nah these days it's wise to ignore the UK for as long as possible ;)

used to hear "get stuck into" be used about fighting when I was a kid, "he got stuck right into him"

the names "Eugene" and "Eugenia" ('well-born') rose to popularity during the 20th Century eugenics boom

never made that connection

whoa

Wow. I didn't know the meaning of Eugene, so never made the connection to the name either.

My recent learning was that Judy Garland was only 47 when she died. She looked/seemed about 20 years older than that at the end.

Drugs are bad

Andy, that's an interesting point. My grandfather Eugene was born in 1915.

My sister Eugenia (named after him, obviously) was born in 1970.

I heard it on a BBC podcast series about eugenics

mars is only 53% surface areas if earth that seems so positively teeny. by land now kid, they ain’t making more

area of

yeah, but isn't 70% of the Earth's surface area ocean? Wouldn't that mean there is more land on mars?

Eugene Debs also a likely source of all those Eugenies.

xp Mars is even smaller than that. Per Wikipedia, It's surface area is about 28% of Earth's. (Mars radius is 53% of Earth's)

Land surface area of Earth (149 sq km) is slightly larger than entire Mars surface area (144 sq km).

*Its not it's

Land surface area of Earth (149 sq km) is slightly larger than entire Mars surface area (144 sq km).

― Kim Kimberly

Wait, what?

Oceans

I'm talking about the sizes given.

149 square kilometers is 57.5 square miles. Pretty sure Earth is bigger than that.

Oh, right. There are some zeroes missing probably.

I sometimes wonder how much bigger would Mars have to be to have retained its atmosphere and oceans as long as earth has or if Venus hadn't become hotter than hades, there could have been a scenario with 3 planets containing multicellular life. That would have been pretty wild!

huh i relied on google supplied figure for surface area and it was wrong or i didn’t bother to check too hard— thx for correction

The surface area of Mars is 144.8 million kilometers squared or 55.91 miles squared. In comparison, the surface of the earth is 196.9 million miles squared (510.1 million kilometers squared). Its surface area is 53 percent the size of Earth's, with a diameter of 4,222 miles.

they've missed a million there

but how is 144.8 53% of 510.1?

Ma and Pa Kettle might know

sqrt(144) is 53% of sqrt(510)

roughly

I sometimes wonder how much bigger would Mars have to be to have retained its atmosphere and oceans as long as earth has or if Venus hadn't become hotter than hades, there could have been a scenario with 3 planets containing multicellular life. That would have been pretty wild!

There are a couple of complicating factors... Mars has no magnetic field and Venus' rotation around it's axis is too slow (speculation is that Venus would be tidally locked to the sun if it wasn't for all that atmosphere)

I thought the reason Mars lacks a magnetic field strong enough to spare it from the solar winds is related to its size, like the stored heat and energy at its core created billions of years ago cooled down because the little red fucker is just too small.

being tidally locked to the sun sounds like such a blast!

today i learned that quatermass and the pit lied to me

tidally locked to the sun
that's how it shines down on everyone
and never shines on me

being tidally locked to the sun sounds like such a blast!

― vodkaitamin effrtvescent (calzino)

Tell that to the Mercurians!

And speaking of Mercury, I've always wondered if there's a temperate ring around the interface between the blazing hot "always sunny" side and the freezing "always dark" side.

xps yeah i forgot to add millions sorry.

but how is 144.8 53% of 510.1?

I'm guessing the quoted paragraph had a mistake:

Its surface area diameter is 53 percent the size of Earth's, with a diameter of 4,222 miles.

I thought the reason Mars lacks a magnetic field strong enough to spare it from the solar winds is related to its size, like the stored heat and energy at its core created billions of years ago cooled down because the little red fucker is just too small.

That's still the case, but evidence from the InSIGHT lander suggests that the composition of Mars' core (high in sulphur and hydrogen) accelerated the process
https://www.universetoday.com/154461/we-might-know-why-mars-lost-its-magnetic-field/

And speaking of Mercury, I've always wondered if there's a temperate ring around the interface between the blazing hot "always sunny" side and the freezing "always dark" side.

Mercury's a weird case. Everyone thought that Mercury was tidally locked with the Sun in a 1:1 resonance (one rotation per orbit) and just as you wondered - there were dozens and dozens of stories set on a supposed "temperate zone" in between the light and dark sides. (The "Mercury In Fiction" wikipedia entry lists off a bunch). It wasn't until 1965 when one of the first observations made with the then-new Arecibo dish in Puerto Rico showed that Mercury is indeed tidally locked, but in a 3:2 resonance - it axially rotates three times for every two orbits it makes around the sun. Therefore a temperate zone "ring" is impossible

this explains it better

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_msWDG4UDBA

Science fiction adjusted - Kim Stanley Robinson wrote a short story about a Mercurian city that travels around the planet on rails. There's enough stories about traveling cities that "Mercurial Base" (a large installation on a planet extremely close to a star that's also mobile enough to stay in a perpetual temperate zone) has become a trope of sorts

BTW, Mercury's magnetic field? It has a weak one but it's interaction with the solar wind makes for some weird-as-fuck conditions. Magnetic tornadoes for one:
https://www.universetoday.com/31953/how-magnetic-tornadoes-might-regenerate-mercurys-atmosphere/

Fascinating!

The KSR Mercury city on rails also shows up somewhere in his Mars trilogy. IIRC it was very disconnected from the rest of the goings-on, and was mainly used as a novel setting to introduce a new character. Would make sense if it was a concept from a short story he just wanted to use again.

i only found out about this product yesterday but i've been staring at this box of "Mary's Gone Crackers" for a couple days and only just realized that "gone" is supposed to be a verb and that Mary is not saying that her crackers are real gone, daddy-o.

I’ve bought that product for years (a box in the pantry now) and only learned that when you just said it! I always interpreted it as you originally did, although maybe it’s supposed to carry the double meaning.

I think I've only just consciously addressed the fact that the menswear guy's Twitter handle is to be read as "Die, workwear!" and not the analogue of Die Welt.

Bananas taste much better when sliced horizontally through the middle, as opposed to coin-slices.

Never noticed that myself but what I have noticed is that chocolate digestives taste better if you turn them upside down to eat them.

That depends on which way you think is up! Got into a mega family argument about that very subject a few years ago - some think the chocolate is on the top, some think it's on the bottom. I was shockingly old when I realised there are people who think it's on the bottom, but maybe I'm in the minority?

The chocolate is on the top, obvs.

You'd be surprised what some people think