Things you were shockingly old when you learned

(That logic being that a lot of other elements end -ium so they all have to, which is wrong and bad)

Nevertheless, element names ending in -um were not unknown at the time; for example, platinum (known to Europeans since the 16th century), molybdenum (discovered in 1778), and tantalum (discovered in 1802). The -um suffix is consistent with the universal spelling alumina for the oxide (as opposed to aluminia); compare to lanthana, the oxide of lanthanum, and magnesia, ceria, and thoria, the oxides of magnesium, cerium, and thorium, respectively.

America gets something right :-O

Not sure where I thought it came from but Heineken as a Dutch beer. Just seen a poster linking it to Amsterdam recently.
Possibly had linked it to the Scandinavian stuff that tends to be ok.

probably

there was a jazz club on the street i grew up on, and a hotel where people like, oh idk ella fitzgerald, louis armstrong, and duke ellington stayed.
holy crap! i feel like this is something my dad might have told me when i was too young to get it but now i am shockingly old enough and i get it!

Sir Humphry Davey made a bit of a mess of naming this new element, at first spelling it alumium (this was in 1807) then changing it to aluminum, and finally settling on aluminium in 1812. His classically educated scientific colleagues preferred aluminium right from the start, because it had more of a classical ring, and chimed harmoniously with many other elements whose names ended in -ium, like potassium, sodium, and magnesium, all of which had been named by Davy.

What do you expect from Humphrey "Davey" Davy

ha! that erroneous "e" is my doing, the c+p didn't include his surname.

The correct spelling is with an ‘e’ so

yankee defensiveness aside, sounding out "aluminium" is more satisfying but can't do that in public w/o it sounding like "punch me"

Not sure where I thought it came from but Heineken as a Dutch beer. Just seen a poster linking it to Amsterdam recently.
Possibly had linked it to the Scandinavian stuff that tends to be ok.

― Stevolende, Saturday, March 10, 2018 11:13 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Over there, they pronounce it Heinekenium.

xp lmao

punchime

that Americans drop the first "i" in their pronunciation of aluminium. I thought it was just Trump fucking up the English language again until I looked it up. It was an accident that began with an advertising literature typo in 1892.

― calzino, Saturday, March 10, 2018 6:46 AM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

We don't drop the "i" in pronunciation, we drop it all together and don't spell it with two "i"s at all. It's aluminum here.

do you savages eat Asda brand beans out of a tin with your bare hands as well? Jokes of course, don't want to dig myself in any deeper here.

No, we eat them out of a tn.

Don't know if this exactly belongs here but it only just occurred to me that bars push cocktails because they are higher markup than straight liquor. All the add-ons are much cheaper per ounce than the liquor.

yes and no? if there's a lot of markup, sure, but fancy cocktails have significant prep time

just pouring booze in a glass with little or no garnish is pretty economical

yeah I guess that's true

Doesn't any cocktail still contain at least one shot of liquor? It seems like it would be even more economical to just push people to drink shots. xp

which definitely is a thing

i remember being in my 20s waiting for someone at a very busy bar, and as this was LOL pre-mobile phones i literally had nothing to do other than sit at the end of the bar watching people. this was also when bars generally didn't take cards. the amount of money that i saw being passed over the bar just floored me. hundreds and hundreds of dollars in the space of minutes. i was like man, this is the fuckin racket.

but the joy man the joy

tbh i wanna go back home and run a small pub

That the specials board in a restaurant is mainly leftover food which they need to get rid of.

I've heard that before (I think it entered widespread consciousness through Kitchen Confidential), yet it often seems to me that there's some fish or meat on the "specials" menu that isn't on the regular menu at all.

sometimes that's because the wholesaler had leftover meat and offered the restaurant a discount

i remember being in my 20s waiting for someone at a very busy bar, and as this was LOL pre-mobile phones i literally had nothing to do other than sit at the end of the bar watching people.

apparently you were shockingly old when you learned you should never go to a bar without a book to read

I was in my late teens before I learned that a movie clapboard was not just for effect or some vestige of "Old Hollywood" but was used to synchronize the sound reels with the film during editing. For some reason, since projected film had a soundtrack on the side, I assumed it was just recorded that way as well.

super 8 was!

it was probably 22 before I realized when you pump gas you can put up that little lever to hold the pump in place and let go and let it pump itself until you're done

wasted all that time squeezing the lever

so THAT's why you have one muscular arm

i still squeeze the pump--I don't trust the little lever.

anyone seen these in the uk?

I think they're even illegal in some states.

I don't trust the lever thing either. The one time I tried to use it didn't go very well.

the lever works, trust the lever

lol wait what happened enbb

zoolander

lol I've had it get stuck a few times and pump an extra dollar or so unintentionally

I have never had it fail me, except for one glitchy sensor where it kept popping instantly

if it does fail, that means gas is pouring out the side of the car, right?

lol I think so. I don't think I've ever had it happen though.

the lever on a freezing day when you have no gloves or wanna sit in your car > no lever

sometimes I just start the car and start driving before the gas is done pumping

I have a friend whose scatterbrained mother drove off with the nozzle from the gas pump still attached to her car. Multiple times.

do they charge extra for that

I think you get in some small amount of trouble, but not enough trouble to remember the next time

i have been guilty on a few occasions of wedging gas cap into handle in lieu of lever. I have no illusions that this is safe or anything

I was a busdriver in college and one time drove several blocks from the lot with diesel gushing out (cap was not securely on). A car pulled up beside me and started yelling "you're leaking!"

and then his car exploded

I didn't know about the little lever until today.