Things you were shockingly old when you learned

How a candle works.
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Wednesday, 12 November 2008 05:31 (ten years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

wait. how does a candle works

I like to go around London by bus when I get a chance so taht i do see what connects to what.
Have been aware of tubes giving a totally distorted view of what location fits where around the town since my mid teens. & the Tube map isn't based on the geography of the surface to any degree that you would recognise easily. probably at all since it was set up to show the interaction of tube lines.
You could find yourself having to go half way around town by tube to get between 2 points taht wouldn't take long to walk.

I guess buses aren't going to give an ideal picture since they're dictated to by traffic. & other people blocking your view of the streets. & you having to fit in what's out of view. Helps to have some spacial consciousness.

Oh & thinking about buses. I just found out last night that the bus into town ends later than the bus out of town. Worked out that every bus coming out has to return because there isn't a park up on the outskirts of town. So they've decided that they may as well make money out of the fact that the last 2 buses out of town have to go back in anyway.
Not sure how long they've been doing that . I don't remember it being on a timetable I've seen

In his 1995 travel book, Notes From A Small Island, Bill Bryson describes how a stranger to London would get from Bank to Mansion House using the Tube map.

He said he would take the Central Line to Liverpool Street, and then change to the Circle Line for another five stops to Mansion House. He would then emerge to find himself just 200 yards down the street where he had started from.

wait. how does a candle works

― single bed mentality (||||||||), Saturday, December 8, 2018 10:28 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I was also shockingly old when I learned this. The wax or whatever in the candle is fuel that burns. Until adulthood sometime I thought the wick just burned and the wax slowed it down and melted away.

The wex is not just wex. English wex, French wex, domestic wex...

BUSES: I just figured out that my route begins the earliest because it's one of only two that goes past the bus hangar.

The wax or whatever in the candle is fuel that burns.

In a similar vein, I was in my thirties before I discovered that what Americans call "kerosene" is called "paraffin" by the English. I simultaneously discovered that "paraffin wax" was a byproduct of petroleum refining. Until then I just thought it was another name for wax and had no idea where it came from.

Well, I just this minute discovered that myself.

I remember researching and learning that, after I was puzzled as a US child reading about British arsonists always dousing things in paraffin, which would have entailed elaborate melting and dribbling.

I'm not certain why kerosene has the Greek prefix keros, which means wax, same prefix as in e.g. cerumen.

The two locations thing…when I was growing up I’d come into New York City, go record shopping on 8th st off 6th ave in the West village, then walk south into Washington square park, walk around in circles and eventually end up finishing my record shopping on St Marks st in the east Village even though I always got lost and never know how I finally found sr marks.

It was probably ten years before I realiz d it was the same street.

I moved to a totally new and much bigger town last year after living in the previous place for 11 years and seeing how differently my wife learned to get around and how we mapped the place internally was crazy. Completely different landmarks and concepts of direction and distance and everything else. And trying to match the backs of houses on one block with the fronts on another is what I always do while walking the dog.

I also learned the candle thing when I was at least 25 or 30.

And just this week I heard the common basilisk lizard that can walk on water referred to as the jesus lizard and had never once in almost thirty years realized where the band name came from.

ha, were you ogling splashing geckos like I was?

My building is directly adjacent to two sets of elevated train tracks, and the street that my building is on stops abruptly at those tracks, so between that and several one-way streets, the route from my building to anywhere else is always a bit circuitous. There are a few local businesses that I always thought of in terms of being a winding, ten-minute walk from home, but it wasn't until I'd lived here a few years and glanced out a window while taking the side stairs that I realized these businesses were literally across the street (and two sets of train tracks) from me.

I saw a bunch of headlines about Jason Momoa being from Iowa over the last few years but never dug in and figured it was the other side of the state but apparently he’s from the town I’d commute past on my way to high school. Used to be smaller and somewhat of a rural/bedroom community but these days it’s closer to a full-blown developed suburb.

Paul McCartney does not appear on The Beatles' "She Said She Said."

- "haha, macca''s being a square and won't trip with us."

I mean, dudes. Be careful what you wish for. You know '66 Paul would be the " wow, you seeing this? You must be seeing these colors, right? RIGHT? What do you mean I'm talking too much? Maybe I'm just a voice INSIDE YOUR HEAD, RIGHT?" guy.

Apparently they were rushing to get the song done because they were short a track for Revolver and had two leave on tour the next day, and Paul got salty about the number of takes they were doing and walked out. So George played the bass and sang the harmonies on the song.

Ringo doesn't appear on the first two songs on the White Album for a similar reason. Whenever I hear those first two beats of Glass Onion, I remember Marcello Carlin writing that it sounded liking him knocking on the door and asking to be let back in.

It's not unusual for me to have a moment when I finally consolidate two places in my head that are actually the same place, just approached from different directions on a regular journey.

This dis-integration of the head is so common I feel it should have a name. Could be a German name.

This morning (yes, after coffee), Brainpart One, obsessively pondering: "Where did the plastic lid to the cream bottle go? It's not on the floor. Did the kitten grab it? No, she's in the closet. I didn't put it in the cabinet, did I? Nope. Oh well."

Brainpart Two: "This garbage disposal machine sounds awfully clanky today, as though somebody had dropped a little plastic part of something in there that's now getting laboriously chewed up. Could it be a lime rind making that sound? If it was kind of dried out? Yeah, probably."

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2018/dec/11/one-set-twins-two-fathers-how-common-is-superfecundation

moussa sissoko who plays for spurs is thd samd moussa sissoko that won the ballon d'or in 2019

confabulation is your brain making ip fake stories you actually believe for things your brain lacks the data to explain (but yr brain wont even tell u that). i was shockingly old when i made up this concept but it was 20yrs ago.

I knew but had forgotten about "She Said She Said" - it makes me yearn for a Fab Three from that era, that song is insanely high.

If only Paul had died a year earlier.

That The KLF's 'Justified and Ancient' samples Jimi Hendrix's 'Voodoo Child'.

I'd put this on the "Things you were shockingly old when you realized..." thread, but alas, this one will do.

Despite being born American, I do realize that the other 119 countries in the world call soccer by another common name. However, it wasn't until this morning that I realized that when Andy Partridge sings "And all the world is football-shaped..." he's not talking about kicking some sort of oblong planet into space.

haha holy shit

His description of the world as 'biscuit-shaped' however is evidence of his sad mid-song transition into a staunch flat-earther.

(xxp) LOL you goshdarned American you, goldarnit!

I think I assumed the same, tbh. A bit like the use of 'pear-shaped'.

divided by a common language smdh

Is that the US smdh or the UK smdh

Look honestly you should just be grateful we even know who this Partridge guy is in the first place.

He was great on that TV show as David Cassidy's little brother.

i was shockingly old when i learned alan partridge was david cassidy's little brother

A-HAAAA!

No, that's the Nordic guys who live in the cartoon.

3rd Bass!

This is a good one, an Italian guy I'm working with was telling me 'wow' is a Scottish word and, I'm like, "Aye, right!" But...

https://www.etymonline.com/word/wow

... from the 1500s!

Wow!

OED's citations are exquisite

1513 G. Douglas in tr. Virgil Æneid vi. Prol. 19 Out on thir wanderand spiritis, wow! thow cryis.
a1586 Peblis to Play in W. A. Craigie Maitland Folio MS (1919) I. 178 Ane winklot fell and hir taill vp wow quod malkin hyd ȝow.
1721 A. Ramsay Prospect of Plenty 74 Wow! that's braw news.
1793 R. Burns Poems (ed. 2) II. 220 And wow! he has an unco slight O' cauk and keel.
1815 Scott Guy Mannering I. xi. 173 Wow, woman, the Bertrams of Ellangowan are the auld Dingawaies lang syne.
a1840 J. Baillie Fy, let us a' in Poems 16 But wow! he looks dowie and cow'd.
1892 J. Lumsden Sheep-head & Trotters 36 As below the brig we turn—Oh, Wow! the deavin' din there!

Woah

Oh, Wow! the deavin' din there!

https://s3.amazonaws.com/popturf/original_1345832123walking_here2.jpg

LOL

fuck me, had no idea wow was a scotticism

whence came 'big wowsers'?

Rabbie Burns iirc

Or perhaps Rabbie Nesbit, always confuse the two

From 1356 and even previous practice, holy roman emperors elected by participating/assigned states.

i cant believe how little i learned or remember of the 30 years war. gotta think part of this is cause im yank tho