Things you were shockingly old when you learned

didn't realize until last week that the Mercury missions were flown with one astronaut, the Gemini with two astronauts and the Apollo with three

TIL: in ages past, people wore nightcaps not only for warmth but to protect pillowcases from greasy hair.

I didn't know that either but makes sense. What were those things people used to have on the top of chairs and sofas to do the same?

Antimacassars

Ah yep – thanks. Such a Victorian-sounding word.

I've been thinking and reading "Julie" Styne instead of Jule Styne for years

He did pronounce it Julie though

Ah, well that's slightly better. Still had him pictured as a dame.

Stanley Donen directed Saturn 3 and Blame It On Rio.

We don't talk about that.

In the 1970s, fountains were installed inside malls not just to look pretty, but to also mask crowd noise.

(Plumbing and insurance fees pretty much got them removed, and besides, not a whole lot of crowd noise inside malls these days anyway.)

I thought mercury was done with a chimp or john glenn, depending on availability?

Is a chimp really an astronaut, or payload?

to stop dough sticking to your hands/the counter when making bread you don't add flour you add water

― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Friday, 22 February 2019 23:17 (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalin

whaaaaaaat

I knew of this about adding oil to your hands or counter, but i guess water would work.

Things I was really way too old to have learned when I did:

1. One of my dad's grandmothers was originally from Ireland, so Dad could've qualified to get an Irish passport. I didn't learn this until my dad had been dead for a good five years. It's left me with a hilarious image in my head of my dad, who resembled a Native American version of Elvis Presley, wandering the streets of Dublin.
2. That white people call barbacoa tacos "tacos de cabeza" and are under the impression they only contain the meat from the cheeks of cows. Oh my sweet summer children, barbacoa (i.e. a common thing my family and I ate every Sunday morning after Mass while I was growing up) typically contains both cheek AND tongue meats, and the kind that isn't "all meat" often includes all manner of other proteins from the head, including the eyeball. I know this because my late dad would also buy some at our usual place for his mom and that part of his family and get the "regular" kind so my grandma could get the eyeball, which was her favorite part. Oh, and if you slow-cook tongue the way you're supposed to with barbacoa it tastes like really rich pot roast and it's only the poorly cooked tongues that are tough and chewy.
3. How to be both an Anglophile and 100% cognizant of the fact that one is an American and act accordingly.
4. That the frequent crying jags I experienced alone in my bedroom while growing up were in fact my version of panic/anxiety attacks and that my #1 issue all along has been anxiety; I thought it'd always been depression but the depression was in fact a manifestation of my lifelong anxiety issues. (Like, a vivid memory I've held onto since I was two was completely based in anxiety.)
5. I unfortunately learned only too well from my late mother to judge people instead of getting to know them for who they are, and that has tainted my interactions with too many people in the past. Mom was one of those stereotypical catty popular girls all throughout her life and would view people through her own personal prism of what was, to her, socially acceptable, even me. I've learned since then how to divest myself of those toxic thought processes and have been significantly better at interacting with others since then.

Also, I believe my mom's obituary notice cost me about $400 to publish in 2015. It was a longer one with a photo and came with the online Legacy posting/memorial (including guest book I paid a couple extra bucks to keep open permanently) and it was also posted on the funeral home's website.

Green Day's "Basket Case" video was shot in 16mm black-and-white then hand colored in a studio in India.

That the song I Will Always Love You was written by Dolly Parton and was not a Whitney Houston original.

Seems more like one for the 'unusual wiki info' thread tbh. The above isn't in the wiki, it says the bass player did the colouring in xp

Hmmm . . . I was going off an interview the director, Mark Kohr, gave to the author of this book that I recently read.

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51LdDaNr16L.jpg

The "shoes on my feet, I bought em..." aspect of "Independent Women, Pt. 1" is an allusion to the spoken-word declarations from Shirley Brown's "Woman to Woman."

I’m 40 and I would not be shocked in the least if I went to the grave not having learned that or the green day video thing.

I figured it had been colorized, just not by ... Mike Dirnt.

You know those paper coupon mailers from RedPlum that you get in your mailbox every Tuesday? You can unsubscribe yourself from receiving them (it takes about 5-6 weeks):

https://www.redplum.com/tools/direct-mail-preferences

Thanks for reminding me -- the company that does that in my area is called Valpak and I keep forgetting to submit the opt-out form!

we have opted out of redplum more than once and they keep on coming
it has been years

cheers to anyone who successfully manages to stop the flow

Last week I registered with the Direct Marketing Association as a Deceased Do Not Contact person. Hope it works.

I have heard that the pre-sorted (don't call it "junk") mail subsidizes real first class mail. Still a waste of resources, though.

i have used catalog choice with success

at least until i ordered something and the catalogs started up again

I only just realised that it is genealogy, not geneology.

SAME.

I learned about five years ago that Bonnie & Clyde were real people and not just fictional characters from a popular 1960s movie

(update) Got home last night and checked the mail and saw... one of those shitty paper mailers that I'd unsubbed from! Then I take a look at the address, our mailman had put our nextdoor neighbors' mailer in our mailbox.

I only just realised that it is genealogy, not geneology.

― brain (krakow), Wednesday, February 27, 2019 4:12 AM (seven hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i feel like i noticed that for the first time like 10 years ago, and every time i see it, it's like the first time i'm realizing all over again. the information will not stay in my mind.

i've never thought about until just now and i...think i just learned it! had i been asked to spell it i'm quite sure i'd have done it wrong.

Apparently genea -logy
Was wondering if there was a standard difference between an -alogy and an -ology and see that an -alogy is normally an absurdity whereas an -ology is a science/study.

But looks like the word was coined outside of the tradition and might have been an -ology if the coiner was more aware of things. Or something to that effect.

Probably predates the tradition of using -ology for science since it dates back to Old French and late Latin.
So slightly surprising the spelling hasn't been coopted into the pattern sciences follow. I thought language developed more freely and things like that frequently adapted to existing patterns they predated.

I take it most -ology post dates the 18th century and people like Lavoisier trying to move things away from alchemical terms. & actually trying to set things up as a science, a school of understanding based on empirical research rather than something more mystically based.

All very interesting. I was properly shocked when Google asked me "Did you mean: genealogy". I've always pronounced it genie-ology too, which I now assume must also be incorrect.

Yeah kind of interesting. I think its a word taht's been around for long enough that it predates its current meaning. Found out in a Philosophy lecture in the early 00ies that gravity wasa term that far predated Newton, was thought of as a force in nature before it became a force in physics.
Genealogy has been thought of as the study of ancestry etc way before the actual physical processes were understood.

Stevolende, you're doing good work, but getting into the philosophy of the etymology of genealogy is making my brain a bit grogggy.

But what a wonderful world this could be!

the talk on a cereal box iirc

Canirisology is a narrow field of study

the singer from the 90s rock band filter is the actor robert patrick's brother

8 1/2 was the number of films Fellini had completed to that point including the film itself and a collaboratively directed one.

tank from the matrix is the brother of her from commando

their dad is chong from cheech and chong

Ian Dench out of EMF is one of Beyonce's writers, including Beautiful Liar.

A lot of Late Registration, including Gold Digger, is co-produced by Jon Brion (who I'd only known in a Aimee Mann context)

1990s acoustic ska act Venice Shoreline Chris was a pun on Venice Shoreline Crips.

We really need a "today I learned" thread as well as this one, FFS.