Things you were shockingly old when you learned

You can get liver anywhere, surely? (Regina, Saskatchewan, had a Liver Lovers' Club.) I honestly thought that, as far as whitebread North American culture goes, tongue and brain were delicacies for fancy people.

liver and onions still an old person staple I think, but it might be dying with the greatest generation

Shame

We ate liver a bunch when I was growing up (my grandparents believed organ meats were somehow important to have every now and then). Brains & eggs was still a regional specialty in my childhood. I don't like tongue but I'm sure I've seen it in stores in recent memory (though I haven't looked).

Fancy grocery stores (Whole Foods or whatev) will surely have liver-based pates and/or foie gras still, right?

We can get liver pate at the non-fancy grocery store near my parrtner's apartment?

Buying foie gras is not the same as buying bloody chunk of raw liver to cook at home.

has anyone pretended it is

that is to say, anything branded as “liver pate”is not buying foie gras because those things are distinct even if one is technically a member of the other

Yeah, no, not talking about foie gras.

That the Modern Brazil - s/d thread isn't about some band I don't know

no one knows what is going on

Oxtail is up there with tongue in the cognitive dissonance stakes.

Is there some "other" thing that you thought oxtail was while eating it?

I was led to believe when I was younger that an American penchant for euphemism led them to call offal 'variety meats'. But I was told all sorts of things back then.

Like the above post about tongue it never occurred to me that the name was literal. Oxtail soup was just a kind of soup.

boy will u be surprised when you read up on spotted dick

The red and green lines on a standard eye chart aren't just dividers, they're for testing color blindness. That one only occurred to me a few years ago.

That SOS isn’t an acronym for Save Our Ship.

I keep forgetting and being reminded that a "401k" is actually a "401(k)" referring to the section of the tax code that defines it

for some reason I thought it was named for the recommended amount you'd want in it by retirement -- $401,000 -- which is wrong in multiple ways

lmao

"sos" stands for "Sink Or Swim" iirc

Nope

It’s just real easy to tap out in Morse code

lol i didn't really think it meant sink or swim, i just made that up. but i like it enough i'm considering making it an official Dad Lie

Wait, it's not "save our souls"?

Huh

That "SOS" is just easy to tap out in Morse, it doesn't stand for "Save Our Souls".

looks ,like Save our souls or whatever is more of a mnemonic though you probably don't need one for a signal that simple 3x3 signal sounds. Or 2x3 of one interspersed by a different set of 3.

It stands for SmayOdayS.

Shit Oh Shit

SmOreS

I don't I knew until I was maybe in my last year of college - and despite spending a very small part of my childhood in New Orleans - that there was a religious component to Mardi Gras.

Well given all the titties and whatnot, one could be somewhat excused there :)

Election Day and Mardi Gras, two Tuesday hiolidays that really should be moved to the weekend,

(Funny enough, Louisiana does hold its state elections on Saturdays.)

Weekend? Do it the australian way mate, holiday on a friday or monday so you can have a 3 day weekend.

Or heck having it on a tues is fine, everyone'd just take monday off anyway.

Samedi Gras

Americans don't get a day off to vote, btw. That would make it much harder to disenfranchise voters.

I guess they only get a day off in Australia cause voting is compulsory there. Would be a bit much to fine people for not voting if they were at work all day.

There you go. Make voting mandatory like in Australia, and then you can fine all the people who have to work/don't have proper ID/convicted of a felony, etc.

I was probably well into high school before I learned that the phrase was "reckless driving" and not "wreckless driving." I couldn't understand how driving that resulted in accidents was "wreckless."

I don't think I knew that Ringo Starr is left-handed. Maybe I heard a long time ago and forgot, or didn't recognize the implications.

Can we just have one thread called “Voting: Down Under Vs. Everywhere Else, Especially USA” and not do this on every thread on ILE

we've moved on Tom

I was shockingly old when I learned how irritated Tombot was by digressive discussions of national voting customs.

don't remember where i was
i realized life was a game
the more seriously i took things
the harder the rules became

I don't think I knew that Ringo Starr is left-handed. Maybe I heard a long time ago and forgot, or didn't recognize the implications.

Learned this in Lewisohn's (most recent) awesome book. I guess like a lot of lefties it was sort of beat out of him by teachers, which yeah definitely affects his playing style.

Well this throws off one of my big points about Paul being dead.

Unless Ringo is dead too... Hang on, this changes everything...

Suicide pact.

Or 'cack-handed" as Quincy Jones puts it.

I guess they only get a day off in Australia cause voting is compulsory there. Would be a bit much to fine people for not voting if they were at work all day.

I think that in India, election days are holidays even though voting is not compulsory.