Things you were shockingly old when you learned

I thought it was to absolve guilt. So that the would-be executioner can convince themselves that they did not fire the lethal shot?

If they were that concerned would they be on the firing squad in the first place?

Not certain there's a sign-up sheet.

Avoid, yes, sorry. For the reason fionnland says.

nickn has a pretty good point

I understand that having one of the rifles loaded with blanks is a quaint but outdated convention. The well-intentioned idea is to allow each rifleman to think he might not responsible. But in actuality an experienced person would be able to tell the difference between having fired a blank vs. a real cartridge.

I didn't think (on my belated understanding) that it was to do with blanks: the dispersal of responsibility just came from having lots of shooters and no one being quite sure if their shot alone would have been fatal.

Necessarily to do with blanks, I should have said.

Having lots of shooters (with real bullets) is to guarantee the guy ends up dead quickly.

much better to assume that even a skilled marksman might not kill you in one shot. you want at least ten guys, you're gonna get guaranteed dead

Gotta say if I had to get executed I’d want firing squad if guillotine weren’t available.

yeah it’s the only option where you get to look cool and smoke a cig right before you die

plus you get a tombstone pizza iirc

Silby:

"Both King Charles I and Queen Anne Boleyn are reported to both have showed signs of trying to speak following their beheadings (by executioners' swords, rather than by guillotine) [source: Maslin]. When he spoke out against the use of the guillotine in 1795, German researcher S.T. Sommering cited reports of decapitated heads that have ground their teeth and that the face of one decapitated person "grimaced horribly" when a physician inspecting the head poked the spinal canal with his finger [source: Sommering]."

Nooooooope

I hadn't thought about it until a local mexican food chain had "rolled taquitos" on the menu and I thought "wait, what would a non-rolled..."

taquito means, literally, "little taco"

I mean, it's the literal translation, but for some reason I never think of a taquito as a taco, let alone a little one. If someone had ever said "what does the _word" taquito" mean I'd have instantly said it

egg timers are timers for eggs, not necessarily timers shaped like eggs.

lol

ooh that's a good one

Taquito is a good one. But then etymological revelations of the English language still semi-regularly knock me on my ass.

I think of an egg timer as being a little version of an hourglass

Speaking of, I just realized that HOURglass is an inaccurate description of basically every hourglass I've ever encountered.

See? It's troublingly easy to blow my mind.

I'm struggling to imagine an egg timer shaped like an egg

[does one google]

wtf, America

we’re a very literal conglomeration of people from the diaspora

lol

this is an egg timer btw

https://groceries.morrisons.com/productImages/380/380070011_0_640x640.jpg

"Vintage" means the process of making wine (and, by association the year in which that process takes place); from the French, obv. It does not mean "old". When it's used to mean old (vintage cars, vintage clothing) it's being used metaphorically; vintage wine is not simply old wine.

that's good, makes perfect sense but never considered it

Yeah that's a great example

"Unequivocally" does not have the letter "b" in it. Feeling pretty stupid atm

Trying to figure out where a 'b' would even go. 'Unequivocallyb?'

(Not goosing you, btw. I both said and wrote 'unwieldly' well into adulthood.)

thread delivers

guessing "Unequivocably"

Unbequivocally

Suddenly hearing the word as uttered by Mushmouth.

Last night I learned that Thandie Newton, of whom I've ~been aware~ as an actress since Mission: Impossible 2, pronounces her name "Tandy." Boy, would I have had egg on MY face if I ever met her.

woah

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket

Damn that took me 34 years

I found out pretty late in life that "mores" (as in "social mores") is the word that rhymes with "morays," not a word that rhymes with "s'mores."

yeah i think it is often spelt with an acute accent over the e

I'm certain that I only know the correct pronunciation because of an ethics class I took.

Character is the most important thing of all

That's a moray

"when an eel bites your heel and the pain makes you squeal..."

stevolende, I guess that is so, but it isn't strictly speaking correct, is it? The word is an import from latin, not French.

social moires

social moires

blurred lines...

and relevant xkcd is https://xkcd.com/1814/

Perhaps relatedly? A few years ago, there was a news story on the radio about the plight of the cops in Egypt. Sounded like things were pretty bad for Egyptian cops.

I'm like huh? until I realized they were saying Copts.

Earlier today I was on a work conference call with some people in India, and we were discussing a business proposal where everything was expressed in dollars and needed to be changed to rubies.

Rubies? Are we seriously talking about being paid with chests full of gemstones? WTF? Is this like a fairy tale or something?

Then I realized everybody had been saying "rupees."