Things you were shockingly old when you learned

who got it from Robert Anton Wilson, who got it from William Burroughs, who ...
it's 23's all the way down!

I forgot Burroughs!

Talent: Burroughs, Genesis steals

the original secret # was 32, but then Burroughs used his cut-up method one wild night, and the mechanizations of chance delivered 23

weird al heads know the real answer is always 27. why? because it's a funny number! not to be confused with "42" references which i think may have faded out a bit since the geek internet of the 90s.

lollll Will

Shuggie Otis, 1971.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbhIZe3smr0

obvious counterpoint to that: the *Ballers* Johnson cover

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0bdLdTJdKI

Trying and failing to find that scene in Quiz Show where Herbert Stempel brags about knowing everything about any two-digit number and waiter says “I dunno… 23?” and then Stempel starts rattling off a dozen random facts about the number 23.

xp
Mostly trying to show an early reference, it pre-dates Michael Jordan (as does the BJ version).

23 is also on the album art of "yellow submarine"!

xp
Mostly trying to show an early reference, it pre-dates Michael Jordan (as does the BJ version).

That Serial podcast is supported by WBEZ of Chicaco, not WB-Easy of Chicago.

Unless I've missed something, Alban Berg predates the ones mentioned on this thread in 23-obsession:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/945968

I put some Northampton based friends who were into Temple of Psychic Youth etc up a couple of times when I was living in London. They were most thrilled to see I lived at number 23 which would be mid to late 80s.
Said it was a number that kept turning up in coincidences and things

Oh God really? I have someone in my family who is 'into' conspiracies and I happened to tell him that the optimum time to get quotes for renewing car insurance is 23 days before your renewal date. Anyway he kept going on about 'noticing the number 23 a lot lately' so I guess he's just read that on some wacky site rather than actually noticing it himself, which is vmic. Not sure he actually got around to comparing car insurance either.

it's a long (and tiresome) theme in the illuminatus! books, tho not (i'm guessing) invented by them

(they also made a fuss abt 19)

i'm also guessing not invented by burroughs actually, tho he's almost certainly the common denominator for all the 70s vectors -- the throbbing gristle mail art expanded universe -- so i wonder if it's a theme waiting to be amplified in other earlier esoteric writing and general dicking about (crowley wrote a poem called "23 skidoo": it forms chapter 23 of his book of lies)

like the blavatsky milieu? vienna round the time the 12-toners were getting into gear was stiff with theosophists -- the mahlers, hugo wolf, the bruckner milieu -- so if 23 mattered to them this stuff was in the air generally really

last paragraph maybe being an organic way of linking alban berg to psychick TV

Would like to see some robust data-led research into the significance of the number 23

if you look at enough data-led research you start seeing it more and more

look, it’s the first prime p for which unique factorization of cyclotomic integers based on the p the root of unity breaks down

Och, tell us something we don't know.

the OG:

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

milieu is a word you can definitely use too often (at all is probably too often)

idk dude within my own milieu it’s pretty common to say milieu tho i guess other milieux cld be less milieu-tolerant

Adrian Belew was a good old southern boy from Kentucky.

was in my 30s or perhaps even 40s when i figgered that the word "epitome" (said like it looked when i read it) is the same word as "epitome" (said like it's actually said)

don't think i ever said it out loud the wrong way, just sort of thought they were 2 difft words

I was the same with "segue".

I hear "seeg" enough in the wild that I thought it was an accepted alternative pronunciation, but after looking at a couple of dictionaries, nope. Give it ten years though.

I heard on a program about soil earlier that in Ancient Egypt there was the death penalty for anyone caught removing a worm from the soil. They didn't mention if it applied to children as well.

isn't sand what happens if soil has no worms? *waves at the natural sciences as they pass me by at a tremendous distance*

anyway you can see why they'd be worried

also where were they putting the worms they'd removed?

Soil is sacred to many cultures but I suppose it will be much more sacred in countries that are 90% + desert.

maybe there was a thriving black-market for wirrums, they wouldn't have the death penalty if people weren't stealing them

and one common occurrence during famines and droughts is people will eat anything before they get to the cannibalism stage and those pharaohs weren't generous with the flax rations.

too right, fuckin flaxitarians

amusingly enough too much water is also very bad for earthworms -- it's like dune out there ppl

don't google this using just the word "worms" btw, the world is full of worms you dont want to know abt

brain control worms that turn you into their helpless puppet slave?

I was the same with "segue".

Mine was "hyperbole". Was well into my thirties when I finally realized the spoken and written words were one and the same

I thought it was a single syllable for a while but that just sounds like it should go with the word Heil dunnit. As commonly said by stereotypical National Socialists

I was 30 before I realized why I got eyebrow raises when I said "banal"

xps Oh yeah, "hyperbole" is another one it took me a long time to figure out.

Lol and that's how i heard "banal" in my mind before ever actually hearing it said.

He pronounced the word 'banal'
While I pronounced it 'banal'
I said it rhymes not with 'canal'
But properly with 'anal'

(from some old New York Magazine competition 30 or more years ago)

yeah had the exact same with "segue" too

segue heil

For some reason it was a word often used by radio one djs in the 80s so I was shockingly young when I learned.

the correct pronunciation annoys me because seeeeg sounds like a smooth transition whereas segway trips itself up in the middle of the word.