Looks like there’s nothing happening in the back room, and last week’s Fun Facts thread was interesting, so let’s try that again.
From last week:
I was thinking about all the interesting things I learned on the podcast Jack yesterday, and I thought it might be fun to have a thread where we could all share interesting stuff we have learned in the past few days from reading, or videos, conversations, or podcasts.
Anybody know any fun facts? Or dod we spend all of them last week?
Here are *4 fun facts from google to start us off:
- Almonds are a member of the peach family.
- A dime has 118 ridges around the edge.
- Camels and donkeys are related.
- Maine is the only state that has a one-syllable name.
*actually, one of these is totally made up.
Bonus, totally unrelated video, in case anyone needs a good cry.
Be Spider-Man for someone today.pic.twitter.com/tlRWbvUfbD
— Smite ⚡️ (@7Smite4) February 17, 2023
Open thread.
japa21
I really have to get around to dusting this place.
Downpuppy
Nobody has donkey toe.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I don’t know that this is a “fun” fact exactly, but the little theater in my building is running a BBC documentary about the rebuild of Notre Dame, and I found it fascinating. Here it is on You Tube.
WaterGirl
@Dorothy A. Winsor: It’s just fun that you have a fact to share. The fact itself does not need to be fun. :-)
raven
I’m watching Tiger and there was a tot on the course in a full blown tiger suit that was precious !
WaterGirl
@Downpuppy: Prove it.
Uncle Cholmondeley
German chocolate cakes aren’t from Germany.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_chocolate_cake
BlueGuitarist
Fun fact: closest US state to Africa is
CCL
Not a fun fact, but a question.
Is it better to block unwanted musk tweets or mute them? How did he get into my timeline? Don’t answer. I think I know. Jerk.
raven
Bill Murray
That’s a fact Jack!
raven
@BlueGuitarist: North Carolina?
WaterGirl
@Uncle Cholmondeley:
That hardly seems fair! Though french fries aren’t french, so what did I expect?
German chocolate cake used to be my favorite. A friend used to make them for me from scratch for my birthday, cake, frosting and all. That spoiled me. The german chocolate frosting in the can makes me shudder. So I haven’t had that kind of cake for year.
The friend who made them was one of my roommates, and he would never start until I had gone to bed the night before. It was very sweet of him to do that.
BlueGuitarist
@raven:
good guess, but actually Maine
WaterGirl
@raven: That sounds fun.
Kitty update: Hoppie, the “flyer” and caring & sensitive, the “owner to be” are talking, working out the details.
Looking good, fingers crossed for no unexpected hiccups. I will let everyone know once a firm plan is in place.
WaterGirl
@CCL: I don’t know what’s best, but I would say “block” sends a stronger message to the asshole who decided everyone has to see his tweets, whether they like it or not.
John Revolta
Well, I found this tidbit in an AP article about how Microsoft’s newest AI chatbot tends to go all Morton Downey when challenged
At one point, Bing produced a toxic answer and within seconds had erased it, then tried to change the subject with a “fun fact” about how the breakfast cereal mascot Cap’n Crunch’s full name is Horatio Magellan Crunch.
So, there’s that!
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
The rarest allergy is – water !, another rare one is exercise (there are actually people who develop gastrointestinal upset hives, and even anaphylaxis when they exercise), another one is sunlight
skerry
@BlueGuitarist: yep. great circle distance and all that
WaterGirl
@John Revolta: Sounds to me like it has gone rogue!
WaterGirl
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: Water????
VOR
The cult movie “Office Space” used a red Swingline stapler as a key prop. But Swingline didn’t make full size staplers in that color so the prop was a black stapler painted red. After fielding requests from fans of the movie, Swingline began selling red staplers.
Joy in FL
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Oh, thank you. I bookmarked that Notre Dame video and emailed it to myself so I hope I don’t forget to watch it.
Anoniminous
UK Defense Intelligence put out a report saying the Russian Army and Private Military Contractors have taken 175,000 to 200,000 casualties – roughly 100% of Feb 2022 starting personnel – with 40,000 – 60,000 killed, over the last year. “Russian casualties have significantly increased since September 2022 when ‘partial mobilization’ was imposed.”
They go on to estimate 50% of Wagner’s convict recruits have become casualties.
Elsewhere it is being said the Russians are going to launch aerial warfare over Ukraine. Putting a bunch of
targetsairplanes into Ukrainian airspace is so fucking stupid they may actually do it.Downpuppy
@WaterGirl: Midas has asses ears, Equids are not Camelids, and 29 is not 30
https://youtu.be/0fBA7VUZEgY?t=24
FridayNext
The Game Candyland was invented by Eleonor Abbot who found herself in a polio ward full of young children who helped her design and test the game.
The name “March of Dimes” was coined by Eddie Cantor (or a writer for Mr. Cantor) who was making word play on “March of Time” the newsreel that played before his plea for money in the movie theater.
Franklin Mars learned to hand-dip chocolate candy from his mom while he stayed at home with a mild case of polio.
“The Thin Man” in the original book and movie was the VICTIM, Clyde Wynant, not the Detective, Nick Charles. So to answer the question, “Who played The Thin Man” the answer is Edward Ellis, not William Powell. This fact was recently used to good effect in “The Spare Man” by Mary Robinette Kowal
The SS Minnow in Gilligan’s Island was dig at then FCC chairman Newton Minnow who declared television a vast wasteland
There are 11 days missing from the calendar in September 1752
I had the same 1st grade teacher as Frank Zappa, 20 years apart.
narya
Since it’s OT, Charlie Pierce has a nice piece up about Fetterman, pointing out that both Lincoln and Churchill managed to win major wars while battling serious depression.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@WaterGirl: It’s extremely rare and scientists are not sure what the cause is as there is so little research or data about it:
Aquagenic Urticaria
“Diagnosis of aquagenic urticaria is usually based on the reported symptoms by the patient. Confirmation may be done through a water challenge test. This test involves applying a cloth dampened with room temperature water to the skin for about 20 minutes.2 If the patient develops hives, the diagnosis is confirmed.”
Major Major Major Major
This is how marbles are made! https://www.redditmedia.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/114aw0w/hey_kids_wanna_see_how_marbles_are_made/
BellyCat
Of possible interest to Jackals: Building A New Reality
A new project which aims to discuss and disseminate Restorative Justice principles into all walks of life.
Discussions started two days ago and they were FANTASTIC. Folks from all over the world. Well organized, research based, and thought provoking. Smart folks, too. Free brain food!
Parfigliano
@Anoniminous: Not enough Russian casualties. More please. Make them pilots.
raven
@Major Major Major Major: Mibs!’
Ken
@CCL: Un-fun fact: He got into everyone’s timeline by threatening to fire the remaining engineers until they artificially boosted the interest score for his account. Because if you can’t make friends, and you can’t buy friends, you can still force yourself into random people’s lives.
kalakal
The etymology of Naval ranks is based on the Norman Conquest of 1066.
The officers ranks are all derived from Latin via Old French: Captain, Lieutenant etc while the lower orders are Old English: Seaman as well as the now defunct Boatswain, Coxswain etc
Big exception Admiral which is from Arabic: Amir-al-Bahr ( commander of the seas)
Hango Kex
@Major Major Major Major: Impressive, I had no idea.
Baud
Aren’t all living things related?
Delk
Not a fact, but fun: the latest BBC Piano Room video featuring the BBC Orchestra Love Plus One
Roger Moore
Technically, they’re part of the rose family (Rosacea), but almonds are closely related to peaches. The common stone fruits- peaches, nectarines, plums, cherries, and apricots- are all part of the genus Prunus together with almonds. Almonds are unusual in that their seeds are edible. Most seeds from the rose family are mildly to severely toxic from the presence of compounds that generate cyanide when the seeds are chewed.
I was rather surprised to learn that chokecherries were part of the same genus. I had always assumed they were not closely related to sweet and sour cherries, and instead they were something unrelated that was called that because they were seen as similar. It turns out they are closely related, but chokecherries have astringent compounds in their fruit.
Ken
As you probably know, this varies by country; September 1752 is when Britain and its colonies switched.
rikyrah
I went to Early Vote today. From check-in to when I put my ballot in the scanner, I was finished in 8 minutes.
You will never be able to convince me that long lines are nothing but deliberate voter suppression. Had 5 contests on my ballot and three were uncontested.
The lines for the Georgia Senate runoff were deliberate voter suppression.
Baud
I would just like to note that I appreciate having a president that allows us to have a Fun Fact Friday instead of Fear Factor Friday.
People take these sorts of things for granted.
FridayNext
@Ken: Yes, I should have been more specific.
A consolation fun fact: The Caesar Salad was invented in Tijuana
Ken
“Dear animals, we offer fruit to attract you, but don’t touch the seeds or we will rip your guts out. Love, the plant kingdom.”
FastEdD
Harry S Truman did not have a middle name. It is considered bad form to put a period after the S, because it is not an abbreviation. I have heard it stood for “Shippe” but for the most part history records he did not have a middle name.
And
OzarkHillbilly
Matches were invented in 1680 by by British chemist Robert Boyle, but phosphorous was a newly discovered and expensive element. It would be more than a 100 years before the common household match was manufactured in quantity.
The safety match came along in 1844, developed by Swedish Chemist Gustave Pasch.
From An Uncommon History of Common Things It’s good bathroom reading material.
mquirk
DC Comics’ Captain Marvel (aka ‘Shazam’) got his civilian name of ‘Billy Batson’ because the comic was first published by Fawcett Publications, owned by Wilford Hamilton “Captain Billy” Fawcett. Fawcett’s first publishing success was the notorious 1920’s humor magazine “Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang”, a magazine so risque that it was name-dropped in the song, “Ya Got Trouble” from the Music Man.
kalakal
@FridayNext: When Howard Hawks was directing the film of the Raymond Chandler novel The Big Sleep neither he, nor the screen writers, William Faulkner and Leigh Brackett could work out from the book who killed the Sternwoods chauffeur. They rang Chandler for the answer. “I don’t know” he replied
Roger Moore
@FridayNext:
In the Anglosphere. That was the year the UK (and its colonies) switched from the Julian to Gregorian calendars. You’ll sometimes see dates from before then described as “Old Style”. The predominantly Catholic countries switched to the Gregorian calendar as soon as Pope Gregory promulgated it, so there was a long stretch when dates differed between the UK and its nearest neighbors. Dates from that period are often given in both styles for clarity. The UK also switched at the same time from starting the year on March 25th (Lady Day) to January 1st, so for some of those dates the UK date also disagrees on the year!
WaterGirl
@Downpuppy: I should watch that movie. I believe that’s about the White Sox scandal. I grew up in Chicago and I love the white sox.
Major Major Major Major
@Major Major Major Major: Also: glass factories can never stop making glass or they will break!
WaterGirl
@FridayNext: Those are some stellar facts you’ve got there!
Note to self. Do not play trivial pursuit with FridayNext. :-)
FridayNext
@kalakal: That’s why Dashiell Hammett is the superior writer.*
*This is a fun opinion not a fun fact.
Baud
@Major Major Major Major:
That’s some real Sisyphean shit.
WaterGirl
@narya: Thank you for sharing that news.
bjacques
Flemish Baroque giant Peter-Paul Rubens painted muscles for dramatic effect rather than accuracy, sorta like AI. He also had price points depending on whether he did any work on the painting, like Thomas Kincaid.
He had an interesting life.
sab
Equids are not camelids, and regular cupcakes are not sauerkraut cupcakes. Sauerkraut cupcakes are amazing.
I love sauerkraut cupcakes and cakes. Polish sauerkraut is best for cakes, but German sauerkraut best for entrees.
Geminid
A fun L. Louise Lucas fact:
In 1971, the current Democratic majority leader of the Virginia Senate became the first woman at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard to attain the rank of Shipfitter. Lucas started at the yard in 1967 as an engineering draftsman, rank Assistant Shipfitter.
Baud
@sab:
Do your sauerkraut cupcakes bring all the boys to the yard?
kalakal
Potatos have a higher number of chromosomes than humans
sab
@WaterGirl: I very much wish him well. Lots of Senators have had serious heart issues and worked through them. I hope he does, but more I hope he works through to what is best for him.
sab
@Baud: Dunno, but they are amazingly delicious.
Hango Kex
@OzarkHillbilly:
Phosphorous was discovered while experimenting with boiled down urine in an attempt to make gold.
WaterGirl
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: Yikes! When your name is WaterGirl, it’s almost unimaginable to be allergic to water. How sad.
Baud
Something on this webpage is causing my Samsung phone to autoplay media.
Redshift
The reason so many legal definitions in English have two similar words, like “aiding and abetting” or “cease and desist” is because of the Norman Conquest. French-speaking nobles ruled over (Old) English-speaking commoners, and to make the law understandable to everyone, they included the terms from both languages.
suzanne
Knowledge of how to make concrete was lost after the fall of the Roman Empire and was not rediscovered until the 19th century.
schrodingers_cat
@sab:Sorry to hear about your kitty soul mate. I lost mine a year and a half ago and it still hurts. They leave such giant pawprints behind..
Baud
@Baud:
Ok, it seems to have stopped.
Matt McIrvin
If you fold a long strip of paper in half at the middle, then fold it in half again, and do this as many times as you can, then open it out, it creates a particular irregular sequence of up and down creases in the paper. If you then open it out just enough that every crease becomes a 90-degree bend (and do this sufficiently precisely), you get an intricate fractal dragon shape. The further elaborations of it are easier to draw with a computer than to fold with paper, though:
https://www.cutoutfoldup.com/216-dragon-curve.php
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_curve
narya
@FastEdD: One of the things that drives me mildly insane is that the sign at the Wilson CTA stop in Chicago–which is where Truman College (a City College) is–has a period after the S. The college itself spells it correctly, but not the damn CTA sign.
schrodingers_cat
It takes 8 minutes for suns rays to reach earth. So when you see the sun you are looking 8 minutes into the past.
We invented written language to write numbers.
WaterGirl
@Baud: You are correct, sir.
WaterGirl
@rikyrah: No
agreementARGUMENT here.edit: fucking autocorrect.
Anonymous At Work
Fun Fact: I scare people with the amount of inane trivia in my head
Fun Fact: I hope I don’t scare Ken Jennings with the inane trivia I know.
kalakal
William McGonagall was the worst poet ever. He was hilariously awful. Here’s the beginning of The Great Tay Bridge Disaster
“Beautiful railway bridge of the silv’ry Tay
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last sabbath day of 1879
Which will be remembered for a very long time”
His only rule was that it had to rhyme, preferrably in a strong Scottish accent
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_McGonagall
Redshift
@FastEdD:
I was skimming through and immediately made a mental translation of “HST” to Hunter S. Thompson. Who would also be a plausible source.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Ken: This makes practical sense to me. The tree makes the fruit edible/delicious so animals will take and eat it, usually moving it away from the tree (dispersal). But you don’t want the animal to eat the seed, since that’s where the new baby trees come from. Making it not tasty ==> poisonous seems like an efficient way to do this.
WaterGirl
@kalakal:
Wow, that might be the best one yet!
edit: not that these are being evaluated or graded! :-)
FridayNext
@Redshift: Puts me to mind of the famous passage from Ivanhoe where the Jester uses Socratic questioning to teach the herder that pigs are called a good a good Saxon word, “swine,” when tended by Saxon slaves, but a good Norman word, “pork” when it gets eaten.
I have no idea if that’s true. Scott was not the most trustworthy of writers.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@FridayNext: Frank Zappa? Now that is fun
BC in Illinois
@kalakal:
As a former petit officier, I figured that the French had something to do with it.
Ruckus
WaterGirl
That video you put up with that little spiderman makes my day.
And John Fetterman getting help rather than trying to hide his need is one of the best things on the planet today.
As I’ve stated here before I was a mental health counselor for 4 yrs at a city mental health agency. I see nothing but strength in his decision, because I know it’s not easy for many people to do that and because there are times we ALL need help, be it a friend with a strong shoulder or a real professional.
WaterGirl
@Baud: But not on other BJ pages?
Was that happening BEFORE I added the tweet at #53?
edit: i see that you said it stopped doing that. just to be clear, I didn’t change anything.
sab
@schrodingers_cat: Yes they do, and they would give anything not to have so inconvenienced us.
Paul in KY
@Baud: They are not closely related. Camels are in order Artiodactyla and Donkeys/horses are in Perissodactyla.
A camel is more closely related to a sperm whale than to a donkey.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@OzarkHillbilly: That reminds me of when I first learned about Ishi, the last known Yahi Indian in California. He said white people were “clever but not wise”, and the 2 inventions he liked of Western Civilization were glue and matches. Matches, obviously, since using a fire stick is so hard and time-consuming, and glue makes arrows more easily and better.
Tony Jay
@FridayNext:
it’s true. Pork from the French Porc. Swine from the Old German… uh… well… something that sounds like schwein, I suppose.
A lot of English words are like that. The Anglo-Saxon peasants who raised the food called it one thing, the Norman nobles who just ate it called it another.
Splitting Image
The set for the Addams Family TV show was mostly a garish pink. It never mattered because the show was broadcast in black and white.
Paul in KY
@bjacques: Rubens is one of my favourite painters.
Hango Kex
@schrodingers_cat:
I seem to recall that the invention of written language happened at least twice: cuneiform (3500 BC ish in southern Mesopotamia) and linear A (1800 BC ish in Crete), both times the initial use was bookkeeping on clay tablets.
Matt McIrvin
…And in that paper-folding (or “turtle graphics” vein):
One of the greatest unsolved problems in mathematics involves a particular function called the Riemann zeta function. There’s a seemingly straight line of points in the plane of complex numbers where this function has a value of zero.
The unsolved problem is to prove, or disprove, that these points really do all fall in a straight line, that none of them in this strip of the plane out to infinity are even a little bit off the line. If you could prove it, it turns out that a lot of strong theorems about the distribution of prime numbers would follow. But nobody has been able to prove it. Trillions of them have been calculated and no counterexamples have been found either.
In any event, suppose you were to take that straight line and fold it up, with a 90-degree bend in it everywhere the Riemann zeta function goes to zero. The points are in an irregular pattern along the line and you might expect you’d just get a tangled mess of square bends. Instead, it resolves itself into an elegant-looking set of curlicues like a curling vine:
https://mathstodon.xyz/@mattmcirvin/109560276225118739
I spent way too much time trying to figure out why this happens, and I think I’ve got at least a partial handle on it.
sab
My spouse was six years in Coast Guard Reserve, and in retrospect would have given anything to be regular Coast Guard. I think that would have been best for him, but he wouldn’t have met and married me so I say no.
Paul in KY
@suzanne: Also, Roman concrete is much better than ours.
hotshoe
Which of the 4 facts up top is supposedly “made up”?
They are all true:
Peaches and almonds are all in the same family. Taxonomically, google may quarrel with the statement “almonds are members of the peach family” but in common plain English that statement reads as true, and so does the converse “peaches are in the almond family”. NB the family name scientifically is Rosaceae (which we might translate as rose-y kinds); almonds and peaches are much closer siblings than other members of that large clan: almonds and peaches are both genus Prunus subgenus Amygdalus.
The US treasury confirms that US dimes have 118 ridges.
Of course donkeys and camels are related. So are we all related to them. Okay, they are listed in different Families (also different at the next-higher level, they’re different Orders) amongst the Mammalia, but still … related.
And Maine is indeed the only US state with a one-syllable name.
Four fun facts!
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@schrodingers_cat: Yeah, ancient texts (like Sumerian cuniform) were originally hoped to be literature, and almost all of them turned out to be numerical record keeping (tax accounting, basically). Sigh. But it makes sense. People can tell oral stories to each other, but keeping track of how many goats someone has requires inventing written records.
WaterGirl
@Ruckus: Sitting there on the floor, just playing cards. And doing all that other stuff together. What a special day for that kid.
Paul in KY
@kalakal: Dryden didn’t like some guy named ‘MacFlecknoe’
WaterGirl
@Paul in KY: Yes, that’s the one I totally made up.
@hotshoe: I made up the donkeys and camels one. But “related” can be defined very loosely, so I might have to give you “all 4 are true” based on a technicality.
WaterGirl
@Splitting Image: I see pink, but that’s not garish pink.
edit: I know garish pink, and that, sir, is not garish pink.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@FridayNext: That is true. Many types of meat in English use the original Anglo-Saxon (English) word for the animal, and then the Norman French word for the meat on the noble’s table: pig/pork, cow/beef, calf/veal, etc.
Eyeroller
@FridayNext: It’s basically true. Similarly we have beef (boeuf) and cow/cattle and the archaic “kine.”
The Old-French derived names for officers and English names for lower ranks presumably represents the same phenomenon. The Norman upper class spoke French for a few centuries after the Conquest. English (and American) legal language retains some Old French.
arrieve
@Redshift: Yes! I am a language nerd and that is one of my favorites of the many oddities of English. Similar doublets are “new and novel”, “part and parcel” and “safe and sound.”
One more interesting French influence: The words “ward” and “warden” were originally from the French garder, to guard. One common way words beginning with g changed in English was to change the g to a w. Later, the same words were borrowed again, but this time they kept the French g. So we have both “ward” and “guard”, and “warden” and “guardian”. Basically English just sucks up every possible word it can.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Paul in KY: Are camels and llamas closely related to goats? Their upper lips make me think so. It amuses me that camels (and llamas) act so snooty to humans, and yet have that goofy upper split lip.
WaterGirl
@Baud: That’s a good reminder of how filled with dread a lot of Fridays were, under the reign of the orange cloud.
hotshoe
@hotshoe:
sorry, missed the edit window to add Hat Tip to Roger Moore post #37
kalakal
@FridayNext:
There’s an Elizabethan pun that’s still around that use the mixed French/ German roots of English.
The British have had warships named Warspite since at least then.
The French English is War’s Spite (War’s Malice) which sounds suitably badass
German English used the German word for woodpecker: Specht and by Elizabethan times it had morphed to Spight.
So a ship designed to knock holes in big wooden ships was both War’s Spite and War’s Woodpecker
CaseyL
@Redshift:
Rita Mae Brown wrote a writer’s guide, in which she talks about that. The words for certain foods also have that Norman/Saxon division, with the Norman term being for the cooked/served meat, and the Saxon term being the animal the meat came from. E.g., “veal” versus “calf.”
The distinction here had more to do with class: the Normans were the conquerors, and therefore the nobility who did the feasting, while the Saxons were the conquered, and therefore the servants/serfs who did the butchering, cooking, and serving.
Bex
OT but you need to see it. This is what they’re fighting for. Give them whatever they want.
Paul in KY
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): They are both in same order (even toed ungulates). Think they are fairly closely related.
Paul in KY
@kalakal: Cool! I thought ‘Warspite’ was named after some old Earl Warspite or something like that.
Steve in the ATL
@Baud:
I’ll admit that I’ve always had trouble telling you and Omnes apart
hotshoe
@WaterGirl: Well, it’s all in good fun, innit.
Thanks for opening this thread today!
Anoniminous
@Tony Jay:
Proto-Germanic reconstruction: *sūz from Proto-Indo-European *suH-
*Porko is a Proto-Indo-European root meaning “young pig.”
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@arrieve: Being a language nerd, maybe you can answer a question I have. English is VERY into rhyme and alliteration. Are other languages (especially other European languages)? I know alliteration in English goes all the way back to Old English, but am wondering if other languages are as obsessed with it as English.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Paul in KY: Thanks! They look like it. :-)
Ken
Or collected for the forthcoming WaterGirl’s Fun Facts Bathroom Reader, available in bookstores in
fall 2023spring 2024when the publisher gets the paper.CaseyL
Another fun fact, that many of you probably already know but it blew my mind at the time: Tomatoes, potatoes, and eggplants are all part of the nightshade family.
Matt McIrvin
@FridayNext:
I was thinking about that in connection with Netflix branding Glass Onion “A Knives Out Mystery”, which Rian Johnson hated since of course the title Knives Out relates to that movie’s specific plot and has nothing to do with Glass Onion. But it would follow the pattern of some other similar franchises, like The Thin Man and The Pink Panther, where the title came from the first installment even though it had no relevance at all to the plots of most of them.
Bex
@Bex: Sorry. Couldn’t post link.
Hango Kex
Women in ancient Sparta had more liberties than other Greek women at the time (despite things in general being, well, Spartan).
Eyeroller
@arrieve: Etymology.com, at least, says it went the other way–guard was a borrowing from Germanic–it was borrowed into French in a form that turned into garder. Then we borrowed the newer version back from French. The Indo-European root is *wer, to watch out.
The Old French influence is, however, a major reason for so many parallel words in English. Another was a period of intentional construction of Latin/Greek words to replace perfectly cromulent English words that the upper class thought sounded too low class.
Sure Lurkalot
So why was Hera so mad that Tiresias thought women enjoyed sex more? If a woman enjoys sex 10 times more than a man, then a man is justified to have 10 times more sex, to which her consort Zeus very conscientiously applied himself, rapturing both immortals and mortals early and often despite his wife’s jealousy and wrath.
Eyeroller
@CaseyL: Cashews are related to poison ivy.
kalakal
The only triple pun in English that I’ve ever. heard of was by the Earl of Sandwich. On having his bluff called and losing a round of cards to a hand of 3 twos he announced
“Gentlemen, I have been trey deuced”
Three twoed, triple damned, traduced
The only word in English that has 2 meanings directly opposite to each other is cleave
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@CaseyL: I don’t know about the other two, but tomato leaves are poisonous. I think originally Europeans were afraid to eat tomatoes for fear they were poisonous too.
sab
@Eyeroller: NotMax taught me that. I break out when I eat them. Imagine the hands of the women processing them. I had no idea.
Anoniminous
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):
Icelandic poets are gah-gah goo-goo over alliteration. They inherited it from the Old Norse skaldic poetry as preserved in the Eddas and Sagas.
sab
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): Nightshade family. Deadly nightshade, eggplants and augergines, potatoes and tomatoes. Just don’t eat the leaves.
NotMax
@mquirk
Fawcett’s Captain Marvel for some time during the 1940s outsold any other comics titles, including Superman and Batman, and for a while was published fortnightly.
Fawcett was essentially put out of the comics business after being on the losing side of a lawsuit brought against them by the company which later became DC. During the period after that until DC obtained the dormant rights and began publishing the selfsame character, the company which became Marvel had copyrighted the title “Captain Marvel” when the Fawcett copyright was not renewed, so the DC version was titled “SHAZAM!”
More: Captain Marvel Jr. the only superhero who daren’t identify himself out loud when in action as his magical transformation originally happened when he said not “SHAZAM!” but “Captain Marvel!”
Mr. Fawcett was the same fellow who made a name for himself and his company with Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang all the way back in 1919. He died the same year (1940) as the cover date of the comic with the initial appearance of Captain Marvel in the second issue of Whiz comics.
@FridayNext
Pedantry alert.
Single “n.” Minow.
WereBear
I better not risk it.
Matt McIrvin
@CaseyL: Cabbage, broccoli, broccolini, cauliflower, collard greens, kale, kohlrabi, and Brussels sprouts are all the same species of plant.
WereBear
@Matt McIrvin: And as I recall he wasn’t thin.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Anoniminous: Interesting, and also makes sense to me. Since I had originally basically thought English history started with 1066, I was startled to learn that in Anglo-Saxon times, the British Isles were culturally a part of Scandinavia and looked northward. There were even Danish kings who were the king in England (such as it was, since nobody was king of the entire island for a very long time.
NotMax
@kalakal
Sanction.
kalakal
@NotMax: good one
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Matt McIrvin: Then how come I love broccoli and hate Brussels Sprouts?
Eyeroller
@kalakal: Oversight. Ravel. Sanction.
Scout211
Okay, I’ll play. But I apologize in advance . .
This keep popping up on my Chrome home page news feed, so I thought I’d share:
In a new study, researching have found that the average male p*nis size has increased by 24% from 1942 to 2021.
BDE is a real thing, people!
World Journal of Men’s Health
Citizen Alan
@WaterGirl: I am reminded of an anecdote from the nadir of Classic Doctor Who, the Colin Baker era. During the filming of the serial Mindwarp, in a scene where the Doctor is watching footage of himself doing something seemingly evil that he doesn’t remember, Colin Baker asked both the director and the writer “Okay, is the Doctor being mind controlled here, is he pretending to be evil as part of a plan, or has the footage itself been altered when he’s viewing it later?” Neither the writer nor the director had any idea, and the director didn’t even seem to understand the question.
Roger Moore
@Hango Kex:
A lot more than twice. It was fairly common for languages that wanted to record their thoughts to start with some kind of pictogram and work from there. Thus you have, for example, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Chinese characters, and Mayan glyphs. It was fairly common for that to progress to a syllabic writing system, in which each character represents a syllable, like Japanese kana. What seems to have been unique, though, was the invention of a true phonetic alphabet, in which each symbol represents a single sound rather than a syllable. As far as we can tell, every alphabet since the Phoenicians’ is either a direct descendant of it or was inspired by it; the concept of a phonetic writing system doesn’t seem to have been reinvented.
phein63
@rikyrah: I lived next door to the longtime county clerk in a Midwest college town. He used to sit on his patio with his colleagues and discuss excuses to move ballots and machines from the college precincts out to the townie areas.
When we lived on campus, we had to wait in line, always outdoors, sometimes for 20 or 30 minutes or more. When we moved to a townie area on the edge of town, I never had to wait in line, period. Never.
We finally got a Democratic county clerk a few years back, and lo and behold, there aren’t long lines in campus town (or in the black neighborhoods) any longer. Strange how that works.
WaterGirl
What did I miss?
Bex
Link
WaterGirl
@Steve in the ATL:
guffaw
sab
@Steve in the ATL: You are not related to me or my cats. Possibly yes to spouse but he will deny it and withhold his DNA.
ETA My mixed race nephews want our European possibly neanderthal ancestor info collected, but my seriously whacko brother is afraid someone will capture his DNA, so no way will he submit. But he is the only boy in two generations. So much info lost.
WaterGirl
@hotshoe: You are welcome!
I think this thread is a winner. :-) Everyone seems to know something interesting.
kalakal
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): You can tell how far the vikings got in England to a fair degree of accuracy by the place names. If it ends in -by it nearly always means it was a Viking settlement eg Grimsby, Weatherby
WaterGirl
@Ken: Do I hear 2025?
WaterGirl
@CaseyL: Which just seems wrong, because tomatoes are awesome (the real kind, not the crap in the grocery store in the winter) I never met a potato I didn’t like, and eggplant is the devil.
Tony Jay
@Anoniminous:
Another fact (I think it’s a fact) is that around 3 to 4 thousand years ago someone from Western Europe could walk east to roughly the modern Chinese border and stand a good chance of being more or less understood all the way, because the various Indo-European dialects that would become very different languages were still mutually intelligible.
Then the Tower of Babel fell and it all went to merde.
Citizen Alan
@kalakal: I will see your cleave and raise you literally.
WaterGirl
@Bex: IF you give me a hint as to what it is, maybe I can find it and post it?
NotMax
@kalakal
May no longer be the case but if still holds true the only root word in English which contains a triple string of double letters is bookkeeper (applies to its extensions such as bookkeeping, of course).
Ken
And quite a few other things. Yet mathematicians continue to ignore my letters suggesting that they simply adopt it as an axiom.
schrodingers_cat
There are 17 languages on the Indian currency notes (bills)
kalakal
@Eyeroller: Oh, Ravel, of course! kicks self
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: Very interesting!
Roger Moore
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):
Nope. Camels and llamas are not closely related to any other group of ungulates. They are in the same order as other even toed ungulates, but they have a suborder all to themselves. According to Wikipedia, goats are more closely related to whales than to camels.
Ken
@Citizen Alan: @Eyeroller: I wonder if right could be included in that list, since it either means “I agree” or “I very much doubt it” depending on inflection.
Bex
@WaterGirl: I think the link I posted at 142 will work.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@kalakal: I read an article about why English lost so many of its endings (unlike German), and it was basically all the Viking invaders/settlers learning English as adults and only bothering to learn enough to communicate with the natives and to hell with all the endings, and their children grew up hearing the bastardized version, and voila, that was the new English.
Lapassionara
@FridayNext: that calendar thing is a Fun fact, but the wrinkle in that fact is the missing days in that year only applied to the countries governed by England, who had refused to adopt the Gregorian Calendar when Pope Gregory announced that adjustment around 200 years earlier, IIRC.
Brachiator
I was watching some young people on YouTube watch and talk about the movie 42, about how Jackie Robinson became the first black baseball player of the modern era. The film does a great job in showing how a young Robinson endured and overcame the racist bile directed at him.
I knew a bit about his major league baseball career, but I did not know (and the movie really did not deal with) how Robinson and his family were embraced and loved by the people of Montreal, Canada, when he played there before joining the Dodgers. There are stories about how kids would carry the grocery bags for Robinson’s wife, who was then pregnant with their first child. The kindness of the Canadians is a huge contrast with the nonsense he had to endure when playing in the United States.
ETA: The movie also reminds us of what a great talent we lost in the late Chadwick Boseman.
WereBear
@BellyCat: thanks bought the book
Roger Moore
@CaseyL:
As are bell and hot peppers.
Roger Moore
@kalakal:
On the flip side, flammable and inflammable mean the same thing.
NotMax
@Ken
If including slanguage, a nod to “bad” and “sick.”
kalakal
@Citizen Alan: Rats , I didn’t consider modern vernacular 😀😀😀 I’m an old git
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Lapassionara: Of course they did. Pre-Covid, I met a Frenchwoman who lived in England who was not at all surprised about the Brexit vote. She pointed out that in European countries, you would see the country flag, and the EU flag flying together, but would never see the EU flag in England. Apparently, England is England, and Europe is Europe and being part of the EU was practical, but temporary, because.
BigJimSlade
@Major Major Major Major: Dang, they didn’t show how the get the little designs in the middle.
I’ve often thought that an appreciation of our mind-blowing scientific and engineering knowledge can be expressed by observing some simple things. A Bic pen is amazing. Marbles, too – just look at all the machinery that goes into making them!
Baud
@WaterGirl:
It’s back.
ETA: And now it’s not.
Redshift
@Paul in KY:
Yeah, I was just reading recently (maybe a recent discovery?) that Roman concrete was self-healing because it has pockets of unmixed lime in it instead of being smoothly mixed, so if water got into a crack, it would dissolve the lime and seal the crack. (I think that was it.)
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Brachiator: I am always so sad about how short a life Jackie Robinson had. He died young, and I am convinced it is because of all the shit he went through desegregating MLB.
The Moar You Know
@Splitting Image: related: the Gibson guitar color “TV Yellow” is exactly that color for purposes of being televised. White oversaturated the camera tubes of the time, so anything white was usually done in pink or yellow.
If you’ve ever done a black and white publicity photo and you’re white (I have and I am) they make you up in a horrendous color of yellow. Same reason: it photographs better. You walk out looking like you have the world’s worst case of jaundice.
Redshift
@Roger Moore: And terrific originally meant frightening, like terrifying.
kalakal
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): That makes sense
sab
@Brachiator: I remember when about 15 years ago a very young black (possibly student) reporter asked about what it was like when they let whites into the NBA. There was a shocked silence then laughter. I am so very old I remember what it was like before they let blacks into the NBA. Much less interesting.
scav
@Paul in KY: Furthermore, there have been new discoveries concerning that superior Romans self-healing concrete. It’s not just ingredients, it seems to be how they made it.
Roger Moore
@Lapassionara:
The Catholic countries all adopted the Gregorian calendar at the same time, but the non-Catholic countries did it at various different times. The Russians didn’t adopt it as their civil calendar until the Communists took over, which is why the October Revolution took place in November, and they still haven’t adopted it for their liturgical calendar.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Redshift: re. Roman concrete, perhaps you are thinking of
this Science News article
dc
@CCL:
Block him, not just his tweets. Use the following tab not the for you tab so you won’t see tweets from people you don’t follow.
ArchTeryx
Blue whales, elephants and other megafauna are either extremely cancer-resistant or cancer-proof. There are a number of competing theories as to why, but nobody’s found the smoking gun yet.
IMHO, the Occam’s Razor explanation may be they’re just BIG, and cancer genetics is inherently unstable. Most cancer cells only get a certain number of divisions before they self-destruct from their DNA imploding. Unfortunately that’s enough for them to gain metastatic powers and spread in normal-sized organisms like us but in something truly huge, the tumor can’t reach a big enough blood vessel before it goes to pieces.
That’s just one possibility, though.
Geoduck
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): Both potatoes and tomatoes took a long time to be accepted in Europe because of the nightshade connection.
Redshift
@arrieve: As the old joke goes,
scav
@kalakal: I think dust also counts: both removing and adding powdered material.
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
An interesting thing is that 42 actually tones down some of the racial abuse heaped on Robinson. The one I’m sure about is the part where Ben Chapman was calling him racist names. It was an infamous incident that Branch Rickey credited for pulling the team together behind Robinson, since they all knew he had to stand there and take it without responding. The stuff he actually said was far worse than what they had him say in the movie, probably because they would have had a worse rating if they had included anything like his actual language.
Baud
This is the song that’s intermittently auto playing on the mobile site.
Aloha Heja He – Achim Reichel (Lyrics)
https://youtu.be/U-r9FDCgt2k
Redshift
@Mr. Bemused Senior: Ah, that’s it! Calcium, not lime.
Lapassionara
@Lapassionara: or what Roger Moore said.
kalakal
A confusing aspect of English is i-mutation *
from the singular to the plural of a lot of words
mouse, mice. Foot, feet. Blood, bleed
*where the vowel changes to one articulated further forward in the mouth
Hango Kex
@Ken: Also, being “right” and “politically (on the) right” are either mutually exclusive or tautologies depending on your political vantage point? :)
raven
@narya: There was a sign at the local car wash that read “No Loitering/No Hanging Out! There was another that read Down Town!
NotMax
The original recipe for Roman Meal brand bread contained sawdust.
kalakal
@scav: I’d say so,
WaterGirl
@Scout211: what is BDE?
raven
ARKABUTLA, Miss. (AP) — Six people were shot dead Friday in a small town in rural Mississippi near the Tennessee state line, officials said.
Mississippi Department of Public Safety spokesperson Bailey Martin confirmed the killings in Arkabutla, in Tate County, to The Associated Press.
Redshift
@Geoduck: And apparently it’s not apocryphal that Jefferson helped popularize tomatoes by eating them to show that were safe (at least according to the Monticello website.) He also helped popularize ice cream.
Ken
@kalakal: It’s called Germanic umlaut.
(Not to be confused with the other kind of umlaut, which is used a lot in German.)
NotMax
@kalakal
And then there’s sheep.
;)
Scout211
@WaterGirl: Uh, sorry about that fun fact. I will let myself out . . .
To answer your question:
urban dictionary: BDE
BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️
@VOR: I own one!
WaterGirl
@Citizen Alan: Maybe they knew and later forgot?
NotMax
No matter how many times I see it, always do a double take when the word créée pops up in the credits for French productions.
Timill
@Redshift:
James Davis Nicoll says: “Back in 1990, I made this comment:
“The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.”
* Usenet article <[email protected]> (1990),”
https://james-davis-nicoll.dreamwidth.org/profile
Jeffro
That’s very cool and awesome. ;)
Queen of Lurkers
@Ken: Yes, somewhat shy of 200 years after the first switch from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar in Europe.
This is a great explanation, if anyone is interested:
https://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/julian-gregorian-switch.html
NotMax
@Citizen Alan
Even Raymond Chandler could not totally parse the plot of The Big Sleep.
WaterGirl
@Baud: What in particular is autoplaying?
Jeffro
Which is wacky b/c Mrs. Fro loves broccoli and broccolini, but absolutely can’t stand the others. Brussels sprouts, even done right, are like a crucifix to a vampire with her.
Hmm…might have to think about that…
ETA: I see others have the same issue, LOL
JAFD
Someone wiser than I once said “The English language is what resulted when Norman
knights tried to hit on Saxon barmaids.”
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
Yes. Chapman was a nasty piece of work. It was good to know that ultimately he was fired and never worked in baseball again.
WaterGirl
@Baud: But where are you seeing that link on Balloon Juice?
If it’s in this thread, i missed it.
WaterGirl
@NotMax: Ugh.
Queen of Lurkers
@Paul in KY: The poet Dryden was satirizing was actually called Thomas Shadwell.
Math Guy
@Ken: All you have to do is show that it is independent of ZFC.
JustRuss
Raquel Welch auditioned for the role of Mary Ann. Also, “Newton Minnow” is some unfortunate monickering.
WaterGirl
@Scout211: I asked the question because BDE didn’t look like something I want to look up online. :-)
Queen of Lurkers
@kalakal: Sanction? Overlook?
Baud
@WaterGirl: I don’t know where it’s coming from. I did a audio search when the song was playing, and that’s how I found out what song it was. Very weird.
Currently, it’s not playing.
frosty
@VOR:
I had a red Swingline stapler on my last job. It might have been more burgundy, actually. I gave it to a co-worker who was a big fan of Office Space.
Geoduck
@JustRuss: Ms. Welch was evidently also considered for the female lead in the James Coburn spy spoof Our Man Flint. The film turned out pretty well as it was, but it’s a shame we didn’t get see those two actors go at it while at the height of their prowess.
JustRuss
“Drop” means, among other things to quit, desist, abandon. Recently it’s been used to mean to reveal or introduce, much to my chagrin.
Roger Moore
@Redshift:
There’s a famous story about Parmentier having guards around his potato field to make people think the potatoes were really valuable, but having them go home at night so people could sneak in and steal them.
NotMax
@BenCisco
Made me volubly snicker, coming as it did immediately on the heels of what’s in #199.
:)
ian
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):
His life and death were so tragic. He made his few white friends promise not to put him in a museum when he died, and they proceeded to completely ignore his final request and turn him into a tourist attraction.
Geoduck
@Redshift:
“Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.
No one ever said elves are nice.
Elves are bad.”
-Terry Pratchett
frosty
@OzarkHillbilly:
Pedantic Fun Fact: Phophorus is the element, Phosphorous is a compound.
ian
@Hango Kex: I would quibble with this. Spartiate women (maybe 5% of the population) had many liberties. The helot women (45% of the population) had almost no liberties.
hotshoe
@CaseyL:
also more nightshade family: tobacco, jimsonweed, and belladonna.
We are blessed that the lovely fruits of their relatives do not contain concentrations of psychoactive chemicals.
However, potatoes are always close to the unsafe dose of poisonous solanine — most of the solanine is in the outer layer of potato, so peel them and get your nourishment from the “inside” — sadly, fun stuffed potato skins have 7 to 8 times the safe limit per gram.
WaterGirl
@Baud: Do you also hear twilight zone music?
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Ken:
Dear animals, please consume our seeds and give our children extra fertilizer.
cain
Boebert co-sponsoring the bill to eliminate the dept of education. Since Boebert clearly never took advantage of any kind of education but went with the guy who exposed himself to her – her actions are not surprising.
The bill itself is a low effort, one sentence bill. It’s a joke bill. Like grass flavored jelly bellies.
Ken
@frosty: There’s also aluminium and aluminum, which has caused even the IUPAC to throw in the towel. “Yeah, whatever, we’ll call it an acceptable alternative.” (The element is officially aluminium.)
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@hotshoe: The interior of a potato doesn’t offer much in terms of nutrients. The skin may have toxins, but it also has nutrients like potassium.
Ken
The version I heard continued “and is as legitimate as any of the other results.”
kalakal
@kalakal:
Heh. It would appear that this is todays most inaccurate fun fact
😀
arrieve
@Redshift: I love that quote. Also, “English isn’t a language; it’s three languages stacked on top of each other wearing a trenchcoat.”
Baud
@WaterGirl: All the time. This is different.
JDM
Here’s an obscure one: the (optional in the USA) automatic transmissions in the Ferrari 365 2+2 and 365 GTC/4 were the GM Turbo Hydra-Matic as set up for a Buick.
Made more obscure due to many (most) Ferrari fans being unaware that those cars had that option.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@ian: I know. White people fucked up the natives all over what became the United States, but what happened in California was as bad as anywhere. Genocide, basically. And don’t get me started on what we did to the flora and fauna in what was basically a paradise. California supported more native populations for longer than anywhere in the US, as evidenced by the huge number of CA Indian languages there were.
arrieve
@Eyeroller: Thanks for the clarification. That will teach me to rely on my memory without looking it up.
I teach English as a second language, and one of the biggest hurdles students have is the overwhelming size of the English corpus, with multiple words meaning the same thing, or with slight (but sometimes critical) variations in meaning. And the corresponding mess that is our spelling system. Cough, tough, though, through, borough…
japa21
@WaterGirl:
Some people hear voices in their head, Baud hears music.
Redshift
@Ken: Oh, umlaut fun fact! In Finnish, the word for the two-dot diacritical mark that looks like an umlaut (but isn’t the same thing) is pisteet, which means… “dots.” Very Finnish.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@arrieve: I read a couple of fascinating books by John McWhorter who is a linguist. In his history of English, he describes the “meaningless Do” which is part of our grammar. (He says it came from Welsh). The grammatical requirement has dropped from positive statements (you can say “I do love you” or “I love you”) although you can find it in Shakespeare, but the do is still required in negative sentences. I do not (or don’t) want to go to the store. Can’t take out the Do and still have a grammatically correct sentence.
Brachiator
And the trenchcoat is a stylish remnant of World War I, now totally removed from its original function.
From functional to stylish to hip.
ian
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):
Ishi’s return is a great movie, if you haven’t seen it. That link takes you to a trailer for the movie, a different link (kanopy) is found here with the movie but requires a login.
The movie is about the struggles of Californian natives to repatriate Ishi’s body for burial, which they have not yet been able to do because everyone in his tribe is dead so he had no direct descendants. If you can find the movie (it is like 40 minutes long) it is well worth the watch.
zhena gogolia
@Brachiator: Cool.
kalakal
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):
I love the way you can get 4 ‘had’s in a row.
“All the money he had had had had no effect…”
kalakal
@Brachiator: That’s cool. I’ve had one for years and years and never thought about it
hotshoe
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: okay, your choice :)
arrieve
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): Unless the verb is to be, in which case you don’t need “do” for negatives or questions. I am. I am not. I see. I don’t see.
“Do” is another big hurdle for students.
NotMax
@kalakal
That that is is marvelous.
;)
Barbara
@CCL: I blocked. I just don’t want to have to read the world according to Musk on an unsolicited basis.
WaterGirl
@kalakal: hahaha Good discussion, though!
WaterGirl
@Baud: If you close this thread, does the music stop?
karen marie
@sab: Mangoes are also related to poison oak and poison ivy. I break out in hives if the juice touches my skin. I found out the hard way after enjoying an incredibly large, incredibly juicy mango plucked from a tree as a friend and I strolled down a street in Monrovia, Liberia. It was delicious but I never ate one again.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
I haven’t heard it in a bit.
Hango Kex
@ian: Completely different being a Spartan citizen versus a helot, of course. Then again, the helots were better off than other slaves in Greece as they could marry and keep their families together and even have some personal property to the point of some being able to buy their freedom.
Roger Moore
@Ken:
The element really shouldn’t be aluminum or aluminium. Most metals were first discovered as salts or oxides, and the pure metal is named for the salt that contained them, e.g. sodium from soda and magnesium from magnesia. Aluminum was first identified in alum, so it properly ought to be alumium.
Anoniminous
@WaterGirl: I was hearing the music track for the “How Marbles Are Made” video after reloading the page.
Dan B
@CaseyL: And all nightshade foliage has very strong fragrance. MMany are stupendously toxic. Angel’s Trumpet is one example. The flowers are deliciously fragrant and the foliage pungent. It’s surprising we can digest tomatoes, potatoes, and eggplant.
Roger Moore
@kalakal:
Frank, where Joe had had “had had” had had “had”; “had had” had been correct. Also, Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.
Viva BrisVegas
All references to solid human bodily excretions are euphemisms except one, shit.
Toilet, faeces, stool, poo, bathroom, lavatory, WC, water closet, gents, ladies, khazi, jakes, head, latrine, john, crap and crapper, all originally referred to things other than the place where excretions take place or the excretions themselves.
Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride
@kalakal: He ended that poem with the following useful advice: “The stronger we our houses do build,/ The less chance we have of being killed.” He was so proud of that bit of wisdom that he recycled it for the end of another disaster poem (both about bridges, not houses).
He probably wins the “worst poet” sweepstakes, but Julia Moore, “the Sweet Singer of Michigan,” has to be in the running (“While eating dinner, this dear little child/ Was choked on a piece of beef. . . .”).
redoubtagain
@Brachiator:
Lord Kitchener was wearing one when his ship was sunk in 1916. He did not survive.
Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride
@kalakal: He ended that poem with the following useful advice: “The stronger we our houses do build,/ The less chance we have of being killed.” He was so impressed with that bit of wisdom that he recycled it for the end of another disaster poem (both about bridges, not houses).
He probably wins the “worst poet” sweepstakes, but Julia Moore, “the Sweet Singer of Michigan,” has to be in the running (“While eating dinner, this dear little child/ Was choked on a piece of beef. . . .”).
catclub
@kalakal:
‘bookkeeper’ has three consecutive sets of double letters.
why not bookkeepper?
ian
@Hango Kex: This may be the first time I have seen someone argue the helots had it better than other slaves in Greece. Bret Devereaux over at ACOUP disagrees
The Spartiates have a whole force dedicated to killing, terrorizing, and committing eugenic murder of helots. Greek sources like Thucydides and Plutarch concluded that the life of the helots was the worst. No one ever replicated Epaminondas’ march to free the slaves in another Greek society. I have a hard time believing the helots had it easier or better off than others.
Pennsylvanian
Lobster become cannibals if confined in a group. This is why they could never be “raised” for food. They would essentially need lobster condos and they take seven years to reach adulthood.
I learned that yesterday. You’re welcome.
Andrya
@Hango Kex:
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):
Unfair to Sumerians! :-) Sumerian texts include a recipe for beer. They get credit for that!
Linear A has not been deciphered, and the language is unknown, but is not Greek. The successor script, Linear B, is a very early form of Greek and is, indeed, nothing but accounting records.
The Chinese and Egyptians developed ideographic writing (one symbol = 1 word).
The Mayans, in Central America, also developed writing.
Major Major Major Major
@Andrya:
more of a “leave soggy bread out to make a tonic that alleviates depression” recipe, isn’t it?
kalakal
@Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride:
Wordsworth could compete in the bad poetry stakes when he felt like it
And to the left, three yards beyond,
You see a little muddy Pond
Of water, never dry;
I’ve measured it from side to side:
‘Tis three feet long, and two feet wide.
from “The Thorn”
Andrya
@Major Major Major Major: Well yes, but it contains alcohol. A friend of my sister’s caught malaria because he got drunk on “beer” which was basically fermented creamed corn. (He admitted the stuff was totally disgusting except for the alcohol.) He passed out, and spent the night outdoors with no mosquito netting. So similar “beer but not really beer” brews persist even to recent times.
WaterGirl
@WaterGirl: It looks like the marble reddit video was the culprit. Can you confirm that you are no longer hearing
voicesmusic? :-)Baud
@WaterGirl:
All good.
NotMax
@Major Major Major Major
“Hangover remedy on reverse side of tablet.”
:)
Sister Golden Bear
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Also Lucy Worsley is my secret girlfriend. <swoons>
Sister Golden Bear
@FridayNext: As was the Margarita.
Sister Golden Bear
@Splitting Image: The pink of the Addams Family set was intentional because it filmed better in black and white than the normal colors.
Sister Golden Bear
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): Although only small percentage of English vocabulary traces back to Old Norse, Old Norse is at the heart of much of English grammar. So much so that Norwegian have an easy time learning English and rarely make the sort of grammatical mistakes that native speakers of other languages do.
No one really knows why, but my personal guess is that 1) Old Norse was a language of trade (similar to English) today, and it’s comparatively simple grammar worked well in multi-lingual areas, e.g. mixed communities with Norse speakers living in community along with Celtic and Germanic speakers. Kind of the equivalent of how pidgin English functioned, and over time it became the bedrock for the three languages in a trench coat that we now call English.
Sister Golden Bear
@Roger Moore: IIRC the theory is the Canaanites who developed the phonetic alphabet — which both Hebrew and Phoenicin derives from — were foreign workers in Egypt. They saw the usefulness of written language from hieroglyphics, but since they didn’t speak Egyptian, they reused some of the glyphs and instead used them to represent sounds in their native language. E.g. “aleph” which evolved into the letter “a” was the initial sound of the Egyptian word/hieroglyph for “ox” — and even today you can see the correspondence if you look at an “A” upside down.
NotMax
@Sister Golden Bear
For filming of early Superman adventures with George Reeves in black-and-white, the costume IRL was gray, brown and off-white.
Very early color TV programming saw actors in green lipstick and purple rouge, which came out onscreen as close to what one would naturally expect of (Caucasian) lips and skin tone.
Sister Golden Bear
@NotMax:
Not entirely true — although the anecdote is. A close reading of both the novel, and the short stories Chandler used/merged as the basis for much of the novel, shows who killed the chauffeur — although off the top of my head I don’t remember who. Though it may be Brody or Geiger.
Chris T.
@catclub:
Also two other related words, though one makes it 4 instead of 3:
Cephalus Max
@Matt McIrvin: Definitely counts as fun!
And you just got another follower on Mathstodon.
Paul in KY
@Redshift: That is one of the advantages. They also had a special marine concreate that used salt water reactions to make it super hard.
Paul in KY
@scav: They were amazing engineers.
Paul in KY
@Queen of Lurkers: I read that too in wiki. Was too late to update comment.