Things you were shockingly old when you learned

Pete & Jason of Spacemen 3 were born same day, same year. Different hospitals though.

The same day as Superman?

Yes and they also have the same blood type, Type O Superman.

fun fact for all the fucked up children!

Superman’s birthday being the 29th of February was an editorial joke (Schwarz, I think) to explain to letter-writers why he did not age

A random one -- but until I listened to it again today, I was convinced the chorus to The Christians' "Ideal World" goes "In an ideal world, where your shoes don't curl..." Nope. And no idea where that came from.

That there is a Uyghur cuisine that Dubliners have some interest in.

Discovered that there is now a Uyghur restaurant on the continuation of O'Connell street. Didn't get a chance to try anything and prices were in double figures which may be standard for non fast food these days. Am intrigued by it's existence and want to check out what the food's like.
I only heard of the Uyghur people as an oppressed population in China. So glad if some have been able to start a successful business in Ireland.

“I-I-I-I….” in Dee-Lite’s “Groove Is in the Heart” is a sample of Eva Gabor sprechsinging “I get allergic smelling hay!” from the Green Acres theme song.

...learned that from the One Song podcast on Groove? That was a great episode. I was even more delighted to learn the "blblblblblb" blubbering at the drop isn't Miss Kier. It's a punchline from a Moms Mabley type comedy record

Excellent.

Had not heard the One Song pod - I just saw someone on social media point out that factoid so maybe that's where they got it from

Speaking of a sampled "I," the Arby's "We Have the Meats" stab at the end of their commercials clearly includes a bit of the opening "I" in Dave and Ansel Collins' "Double Barrel." I finally searched to see if anyone else had noticed this and found one person on Reddit.

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

wow that's a good catch

the "blblblblblb" blubbering at the drop isn't Miss Kier


I think I always assumed this was Bootsy. Does Bootsy do it in the video?

me too

The tracks, on Blood On The Tracks, are the songs.

Pavement - Slanted and Enchanted (1992)
From the album cover of Ferrante & Teicher's Keyboard Kapers pic.twitter.com/5tQtNgMidV

— Bill Pourquoimec (@BillPourquoimec) March 2, 2024

Esso is an abbreviation for Standard Oil

!!

A while ago now, but I was pretty old when I realized Arby's was an abbreviation of roast beef.

Oh you did it now

they chose the name "Arby's," a phonetic pronunciation of the letters R and B, short for "Raffel brothers".[17][18][19]

I thought I read that here, not that I'm going to open an 11,860 post thread to find it.

The tracks, on Blood On The Tracks, are the songs.

― nate woolls, Tuesday, March 5, 2024 12:17 AM (thirteen hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

my mind is seriously blown by this

That the poor spelling and punctuation in scam emails is there primarily to weed out intelligent people, who are more likely to spot it and less likely to fall for said scam anyway. Also non-native speakers but that's probably just collateral damage for the scammers.

Uhhh, Morton Downey, Jr. was the nephew of Joan and Constance Bennett?! lolwut

And the son of Morton Downey, apparently!

In the Austro-Hungarian Empire, cars drove on the left. After its dissolution, the successor countries gradually switched to the right, the last being Czechoslovakia in 1938 and Hungary in 1941.

Belgium and the Netherlands also used to drive on the left. As did Sweden and Iceland which only changed in the late 60s.

Esso is an abbreviation for Standard Oil

― alpaca lips now (Ye Mad Puffin), Tuesday, March 5, 2024 5:30 AM (eighteen hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Whereas Exxon means absolutely nothing. It's just a word randomly generated by a computer, chosen because it (supposedly) has no meaning or negative connotation in any language.

this isn't anywhere recent, but i was way too old to have caught the "beat" part in the beatles

Yeah further pun on Buddy Holly's backingband the Crickets.
Billy Bragg has a famous artist suggesting the spelling change but I've also seen it credited to Stu Sutcliffe and John Lennon. I think Lennon enjoyed puns anyway.
But have heard initial band name was Silver BeEtles and others Silver BeAtles.

Whereas Exxon means absolutely nothing. It's just a word randomly generated by a computer, chosen because it (supposedly) has no meaning or negative connotation in any language.

The husband was listening to a podcast (maybe some of you also heard it) where they claimed that the word "escalate" derives from "escalator", which is a brand name devised by the Otis lift company. They invented elevators, then they invented "the Escalator moving stairs", and then the word took off from there. I can't get my head around this fact at all.

there's a bunch of words that like metonymically derive from products aren't there. Hoover, google, et al.
Seems like language amorphously adopts things, like folk music adopts tunes from theatrical shows and after a while you can't see the join.
Funny when the word is borrowed from a long defunct product.

Wow @ escalator.

etymonline concurs here: terms like escalation do largely derive from the specific brand name for the type of commercial moving staircase, but it also notes that the french word escalade and the spanish word escalada long pre-existed (and presumably somewhat inspired) this brand name

I thought escalate just felt too much like an old language word with some old Latin shit in there or something, that's how I determine the age of words - I feel them like you would checking the freshness of some veg in a supermarket.

yeah middle school latin always indicated to brain that escalate was a normal natural etymology, not a product. cool.

wait til i tell u abouts kleenex, turns out that’s fake too

xxxxxp during the american occupation of japan following wwii, the americans required that okinawa (but not the japanese mainland) drive on the right. after it reverted to local rule, okinawa switched from right to left overnight in july 1978

730 (transport)

https://img.atlasobscura.com/60rsH48yQ6ZO5lIaLpLG-p72SfF40gfkSKMgRG46ihM/rs:fill:12000:12000/q:81/sm:1/scp:1/ar:1/aHR0cHM6Ly9hdGxh/cy1kZXYuczMuYW1h/em9uYXdzLmNvbS91/cGxvYWRzL2Fzc2V0/cy83YjU5YzBiZi00/YjM4LTQxODQtODBi/YS02ZGI0ZjdjM2Fj/ZjZjMzgzZmFmZTIw/MmRiMWI2ZTRfb2tp/bmF3YW1vbnVtZW50/LmpwZw.jpg

Okinawa is the only place I've driven (an automobile) LHT and it was mostly fine EXCEPT when you have to make a sudden left or right turn, you have to really overcome the muscle memory to turn sharper or shallower than your brane is wired to expect.

xp

l'escalier is staircase en francais, so there's that. also part of one of my favorite terms: l'esprit d'escalier.

Could also be apocryphal but the escalator thing (which is blowing my mind) reminds me that someone once told me that the name Wendy was invented by JM Barrie, the author of Peter Pan, and that there is no record of the name prior to the publishing of the book

i was way too old to have caught the "beat" part in the beatles

We talked about starting a band called The Beetle, to see how long until we got a cease & desist

Still one of my fave “parenting of a young music nerd” experiences was hearing my 8 year old ask me what i thought of macca’s post-beatles band “The Wings.” and amidst larfs, tryna figure out if “Wings” were ever “The Wings.”

I would have told him that if he ever brought up Wings again, he was going to get sent to prison.

sorry for assumed gender of child, apologies

Otis always knew how to brand

.. I thought Wendy is just short for Gwendolyn...

were they the Silver Beatles or the Silver Beetles?

oh, both

> He suggested changing the band's name to Beatals, as a tribute to Buddy Holly and the Crickets. They used this name until May, when they became the Silver Beetles

then the Silver Beatles, then just the Beatles

Otis always knew how to brand

get drunk, stay drunk is very memorable and he executed rly well

Donknotts.jpg