Things you were shockingly old when you learned

lol

I have long suspected most of them to be secretly, to use deems' preferred term, Scotch.

After all, as I think (hope) most of us realize, those US Presidents who claim Irish ancestry are usually descended from Scots who were given plantations in Ireland to fuck over the Irish and then exported the family business of fucking people over to Americay.

That Amazon women warriors were not from Brazil.

I mean, sure, there may be some female fighters living on that South American river, but I'm talking about the ones who raised Wonder Woman and went to the Moon.

I'm sure we've had that one before!

"The word Amazon itself may be derived from the Iranian compound *ha-maz-an- "(one) fighting together"[19] or ethnonym *ha-mazan- "warriors", a word attested indirectly through a derivation, a denominal verb in Hesychius of Alexandria's gloss "ἁμαζακάραν· πολεμεῖν. Πέρσαι" ("hamazakaran: 'to make war' in Persian"), where it appears together with the Indo-Iranian root *kar- "make" (from which Sanskrit karma is also derived).[20]" some off-the-pojnt scholarship from the wikipedia entry on the amazon river

(it's called the amazons bcz some 16th-century spanish bloke was attacked by local warriors led by women, and was shook enough to remember his classical education)

Not that this is something I should have known years ago, but it's a question that comes up at least every Easter time.

In a bag of Spice Jelly Beans or Gum Drops, there's usually cinnamon, spearmint, peppermint, wintergreen, licorice and clove (my favorite), but sometimes there's this weird ass 7th flavor that nobody's ever been able to identify. Vaguely medicinal, probably some old flavor like horehound or whatever Moxie is made out of.

Anyway, I finally Googled it, and there's 2 different flavors. Some brands have sassafras, some (Brach's) have ginger.

Okay I don't really know what you're talking about, but I want in.

Also otm about clove.

weird ass flavor that nobody's ever been able to identify: … ginger

you hate 2 read it

irl giggle

my life experience with jazz is highly mediated and/or studio stuff and i totally failed to anticipate immediate applauses during performance after solos. i was able to understand why/what i was seeing, but not having seen it, i was all "is this a thing? like, a not unusual/not rude thing?"

i personally find it rude when people don't whoop "GET IT!!!" after a particularly hard swinging solo

Genius and GZA are the same person and Liquid Swords is not a collab album

We had a mini “fringe festival” here on Sunday and one comedian I saw (who was quite good) had a bit based around how shockingly old she was when she learnt that the numbers on a toaster refer to minutes - this is definitely one of those things that when ppl first hear they say things like “mind blown” and then tell others about it to see if they were alone in not knowing about it, also it is notably not actually really true at all. I had to restrain myself from doing the world’s most irritating heckle

The person who directed "Like Water for Chocolate" and "A Walk in the Clouds" (among others) is the same guy who played Gen. Mapache's "accountant" in "The Wild Bunch," Alfonso Arau.

numbers on toasters don't refer to minutes and also that's the absolute standard extremely common 'what didn't you realise' example, for some reason. along with the petrol cap indicator on cars, which admittedly I hadn't realised and is comparatively interesting.

numbers on toasters don't refer to minutes and also that's the absolute standard extremely common 'what didn't you realise' example, for some reason

Yeah that’s what I’m saying!

I learned numbers on toasters don't refer to minutes just now

I learned some people think the numbers on toasters refer to minutes just now.

it would never have occurred to me

never trust anything that has numbers but not an indicator of the units

Just learned the "Cranes in the Sky" Solange sings about are not the birds.

Otis Redding wrote "Respect"

Genius and GZA are the same person and Liquid Swords is not a collab album

this one is great

Isn't every Wu-Tang production essentially a collab album though, when you really think about it?

Willow and Jaden Smith are named after Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, which seems blindingly obvious written out like that, but stunned a dinner table on Sunday.

That there is an 'l' in the word vulnerable, just now. It still looks wrong. I think autocorrect has been fixing it for me for a decade or more.

vunerabe

Lol

That there is an 'l' in the word vulnerable, just now. It still looks wrong. I think autocorrect has been fixing it for me for a decade or more.

― mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Wednesday, May 29, 2019 3:41 PM (thirty-five minutes ago) Bookmark

wait til you find out you pronounce the first l

This is mystifying to me

Boysenberries are -- to the best of our knowledge -- less than a century old and were first brought to market for commercial sale by William Knott of Knott's Berry Farm.

Pretty cool story actually

The exact origins of the boysenberry are unclear, but the most definite records trace the plant as it is known today back to grower Rudolph Boysen, who obtained the dewberry–loganberry parent from the farm of John Lubben.[5]

In the late 1920s, George M. Darrow of the USDA began tracking down reports of a large, reddish-purple berry that had been grown on Boysen's farm in Anaheim, California.[6] Darrow enlisted the help of Walter Knott, another farmer, who was known as a berry expert. Knott had never heard of the new berry, but he agreed to help Darrow in his search.

Darrow and Knott learned that Boysen had abandoned his growing experiments several years earlier and sold his farm. Undaunted by this news, Darrow and Knott headed out to Boysen's old farm, on which they found several frail vines surviving in a field choked with weeds. They transplanted the vines to Knott's farm in Buena Park, California, where he nurtured them back to fruit-bearing health. Walter Knott was the first to commercially cultivate the berry in Southern California.[6] He began selling the berries at his farm stand in 1932 and soon noticed that people kept returning to buy the large, tasty berries. When asked what they were called, Knott said, "Boysenberries," after their originator.[7] His family's small restaurant and pie business eventually grew into Knott's Berry Farm. As the berry's popularity grew, Mrs. Knott began making preserves, which ultimately made Knott's Berry Farm famous.

The boysenberry is a very recent example but it's amazing how many of our most popular fruits are hybrids, not (originally) wild species, including lemons, key limes/Mexican limes, Valencia oranges, grapefruit, and tangerines just to name a few. And our apples tend to be clones. All Granny Smith apples are clones of the fruit of a single Australian tree from 1868. Navel oranges are all clones too. (I learned all this on the shockingly late side).

I perpetually forget and am reminded by a crop scientist friend that sweet potatoes are naturally transgenic -- the genome of every variety has some agrobacterium dna

nature beat us to genetic editing via bacteria by a long shot

iirc apples will not grow true from seed anyway, is that correct? They have to be grown by splicing?

I learned the boysenberry tidbit from, of all things, a recent book I read on the history of amusement parks.

Assuming that 'realized' is as welcome as 'learned' itt, it occurred to me the other day that some people had a living memory of both the Salem Witch Trials and the Revolutionary War. The two events just seem separated by like a million years in my mind.

re apples, that sounds right, I'll defer to anyone who knows more about this

Old Lunch, are there any documented interviews or published recollections? I'd imagine there were a few, but the span of 1692 and 1775 means anyone who remembered the witch trials would have had to have been pretty young or pretty long-lived

I'm assuming anyone who did witness both wouldn't shut up about it

some people had a living memory of both the Salem Witch Trials and the Revolutionary War

yeah this is daniel day-lewis iirc

Thomas Hutchison comes p close

I guess the example which prompted that realization doesn't quite count (an early Ben Franklin piece where he upbraided a judge who I suddenly realized was the Samuel Sewall) but it's close.

We'll steal a bunch of boysenberries and I'll smear em on your face...

ah yeah, the generational crossover would definitely be there with pre-revolution figures coming up while post-witch trial figures were still around for sure

Surprised to find french speaking Africans in South Africa since it's not one of the 2 European languages that dominate. Watched a film last night set in i think Johannesburg but in the Congolese ex-pat community.
So probably find there are enclaves in other non-French dominant countries around the continent.

Just surprised me when the film started and I recognised the language being spoken.

SA is full of immigrants from other African countries - the cause of a lot of tension and unpleasantness.

That after scooping some sour cream, yogurt or cottage cheese out of a container, you should flatten the top surface of what remains before covering and putting it back in the fridge. That keeps it from separating. I had always assumed that the little watery, kinda gross stuff that accumulates in the hole where you scooped was just an unavoidable residue which you needed to either pour off or stir back in with your next portion.

That seems to make eminent sense and makes me feel dim for not having thought of it. Haven't tried it yet, though.

i like the yogurt water