Things you were shockingly old when you learned

(Love it myself)

These people have a variation in a group of olfactory-receptor genes that allows them to strongly perceive the soapy-flavored aldehydes in cilantro leaves.

thanks, so i didn't imagine it!

Nope you’re just a mutant

was wondering how long it'd take before that came up

I feel bad for people who don't enjoy coriander

Man, I call such B.S. on the whole genetic-basis for hating cilantro thing. I know it's a neat piece of internet wisdom to share that some people can smell/taste aldehydes and therefore think that the herb tastes bad, but as a verified OR6A2-receptor-haver, I think cilantro tastes kinda weird and soapy AND it also tastes great. Human taste is a big complex multi-variant thing, not an on/off switch, and the 'genetic basis' reduction drives me banananas. Genetics play a factor, sure, but they're hardly deterministic. It's the 'I like all music but country and rap' argument in food form. Also, FWIW I also love most other aldehyde-heavy foods like vanilla and cinnamon and miso and sauerkraut. But nobody ever says 'I have a genetic basis for disliking cinnamon.'

Ftr, I said, or at least meant, that there is a genetic basis for tasting coriander as soapy, not for disliking it.

I wasn't meaning to have a go at anybody in particular. I just hear this argument a lot (I cook mostly S.E. Asian and Colombian food and host a lot of dinners).

doesn't taste soapy to me at all. I put a shit ton of it on tacos & tuna melts. my favorite herb.

No, not for me either.

Nope you’re just a mutant

I think cilantro tastes kinda weird and soapy AND it also tastes great

Did you swear a lot as a child, Alex?

i get the soapiness from cilantro/coriander, but i am a big fan. i did eat it often as a child though, primarily in the form of the chilean condiment pebre (basically just pico de gallo)

because the tropical fruits i discovered late like papaya, mango (still my fave of these), lychee and especially khaki are not really my cup of tea.

This just hit me the other morning when I was waking up. They commonly sell commercially packaged coffee in awkward weights 2.2 lbs and 12 oz. because 2.2 = 1 kg and 12 oz of coffee lasts a lot of people a little over a week.

We buy a big bushel of fresh cilantro every week because we use it for almost everything (always use the stems) and zhoug sauce!

Zhoug is amazing

Ha, so much stuff seems to come in 454 g packages in Canada.

a pound!

Yep

Speaking of weights, I recently learned that the big lower-case "e" next to the weight on European products means estimated

Did not know that!

That Aimee Mann is 59. Unaware of her until the late 90s, I assumed she was 10 years younger than that.

At least

Her biggest hit was in 1985

Yeah, not in the UK, you see. I'd never heard of Til Tuesday till I looked at her Wikipedia page just now.

When Bob Mortimer and Jim Moir made the first series of Vic Reeves' Big Night Out they had known each other for less than two months. Bob was taken to one of Vic's shows in New Cross by a friend, got talking afterwards, and was invited to participate the following Saturday, which he did: the first time he had ever performed anything in public, at the age of 30. Six weeks later they were filming it for Channel 4.

I only just found out that Aimee Mann is married to Michael Penn of "No Myth" fame, which seems very right.

And I only just found out that Chris Penn died. In 2006.

Bob talks about him and vic meeting (and his legal job, the Cockroach King, prior to this) in his Chain Reaction thing

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b053bq55

i didn't know about the timing of the show though, seems crazy short.

I remember being similarly startled when I found out Debby Harry had been in a band that had a record out in 1968.

hush hush
keep it down now
Debbie Harry

In 1986, Mortimer went to the Goldsmith's Tavern in New Cross, London, to see a new show by a comedian called Vic Reeves. Mortimer was impressed by the performance, particularly the character Tappy Lappy, which was Reeves attempting to tap dance while wearing a Bryan Ferry mask and planks on his feet. Mortimer approached Reeves after the show, and the two began writing material for the next week's show together.

^ ie four years later, not six weeks

I guess the confusion arose from the stage show also being called Big Night Out.

For some reason I can imagine Aimee Mann being a guest on Shooting Stars.

Five years prior to shooting down KAL 007, the Soviets had shot down another KAL aircraft that had also entered their airspace due to a major navigation error. In that case, only two people were killed and the plane was landed on a frozen lake.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_902

I don't know about 'shockingly old' but finding out Ezra Koening of Vampire Weekend wrote 'Hold Up' by Beyonce was a real 'O RLY? Ahhh it totally makes sense' moment the other day

Peter Gabriel's fourth album was also released in German

Also his third, for which the backing tracks were completely re-recorded (or so says wikipedia).

I don't know about 'shockingly old' but finding out Ezra Koening of Vampire Weekend wrote 'Hold Up' by Beyonce was a real 'O RLY? Ahhh it totally makes sense' moment the other day

https://pitchfork.com/news/65049-vampire-weekends-ezra-koenig-explains-how-his-tweet-about-the-yeah-yeah-yeahs-became-a-beyonce-song/

you can't make blueberry waffles

My mom wants a word, how dare you

but the blueberries make the waffles stick! is there a way around this??

A hammer

apply more fats to the waffle iron to avoid sticking, or just dgaf about the extra waffle iron cleanup time

alternatively, just throw blueberries on top of the waffles when they're fresh off the griddle

Garret Hardin, the ecologist who wrote "The Tragedy of the Commons," was a white nationalist eugenicist

The artist on “Give Me the Night” was George Benson and the composer was Rod Temperton.

who had you previously thought it was by?

TIL i have been confusing Aimee Man and Amy Grant for like 20 years.

Aimee Mant!

Ennui is pronounced on-wee as opposed to enn-you-ee.