Things you were shockingly old when you learned

Any Warhol connection?

That "serving suggestion" is a legal disclaimer, not a sincere suggestion for dim people.

Yeah presumably meant the gunk you got out of the packet wasn't going to look exactly like the idealised picture on the packet.

As a kid spending countless hours at the breakfast table staring at cereal boxes, reading everything printed on them no matter how trivial, I assumed that the words in fine print next to the photo on the front were there just to tell customers that if they tried eating their product out of a bowl with milk and maybe some fresh fruit, it might taste better than just reaching into the box and stuffing dry fistfuls into their mouths. "Hey, just a friendly suggestion, folks."

This is more of a TIL than I should have known, and wont mean a thing to anyone under 40 but:

the theme tune to Educating Marmalade was done by Bad Manners!

It’s “she WANTS the young American” not “she WAS the/a young American”??!!??!!
Wut? I looked it up. It’s WANTS?? Wow.

Wow, what?

It's possible to be shadow banned from nearly everywhere on the internet. That'd genuinely shock people like Crowder and company.

Last time I tried to talk shit my WiFi router somehow got installed from my laptop and it took me close to an hour to re-install it. Good times.

USA. USA. USA. Land of freedom, baby.

*uninstalled

I'm aware if I keep speaking my voice in the US I'll get murdered. Hence this Russiagate smokescreen crap where they pin Putin with the shit the USA does to its own citizens.

Whatever. My life is more important than anything else. Whatever. I'm done with politics.

Who knows? If you play your cards right you could get banned from one more place.

Effective wiping technique — reduced smearing — means pushing the remaining poo bits back into the anus.

okay

sorry if that's TMI

what is going on in here

I'm getting things back on their proper course, is what's happening.

I only yesterday made the connection between the term 'knee-jerk' (ie an unthinking and reflexive response) and the thing where a doctor hits your knee with a hammer, thereby inducing an unthinking and reflexive response. Only yesterday, while in my early forties. Yyyyyep.

^ Wondering what flash of recognition at long last led you to make that connection? For the previous 40 odd years had you thought that it had to do with people who are jerks?

By the way, thanks for the course correction.

I dunno, I guess I figured it was like 'apple of my eye'. I know what it connotes and how to use it in a sentence but who even knows how that arrangement of words came to mean that particular thing (someone who bothered to look it up, is who). And like the phenomenon I described somewhere upthread where I know how to get to one place and how to get to one other place and it takes me forever to realize that the two places are actually just like a block away from one another.

whenever i see knee jerk or hear it I've always automatically envisioned someone using a reflex hammer. But I really liked those things as a kid so maybe that's why.

As for idioms, I don't recall how or how shockingly late I learned that "balls out" had nothing to do with male anatomy. I guess I had likened it to "going commando", ie, being so ass-kickingly committed that you disdained any thought of underwear.

wait what does it have to do with??

As for idioms, I don't recall how or how shockingly late I learned that "balls out" had nothing to do with male anatomy. I guess I had likened it to "going commando", ie, being so ass-kickingly committed that you disdained any thought of underwear.

I am, apparently, just learning this right now. Please to explain.

wait all this time i have literally been taking my balls out for "extra effort"

now what?

Someone is very disappointed rn

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/41/6f/9c/416f9c90556aaf8c25cd0e83067dccb6.jpg

Like "balling the jack" and "balls to the wall", it comes from driving a train. It might not be an accurate to say that they have nothing to do with testicles. The Ballin' the Jack dance and song definitely had sexual associations, so it seems fair to hazard that the other two have gained usage from dual interpretations.

From onlineslangdictionary.com:

Possible etymology: The original phrase is actually hinted to in the expression "with a full head of steam". In the earliest days of steam engines, Watt style engines and their successors used a centrifugal governor to control speed. The faster the engine was to run the higher the weighted balls on the governor would rise until at full speed they were at their highest and farthest reach from the center: high or full speed was known as running "balls out".

(tucks balls back in)

Any Warhol connection?

It would've made my entire LIFE had Warhol appeared on an episode of "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood"; I love Andy AND Mr. Rogers so damn much.

Anyway, I was today years old when I learned about the etymology behind "balls out" and "balls to the wall", so thanks ever so for that, punning display.

Not until they released a version with printed lyrics did I find out that Chrissie Hynde doesn't sing "But not me baby, I'm too precious / Fuck off."

It's actually "But not me baby, I'm too precious / I had to fuck off."

https://www.comsol.com/model/image/31011/big.png

With a full head of balls

41: white chocolate is good

It was only a year or two ago that I learned that "jima" is the Japanese word for "island." "Iwo Jima" means "Sulfur Island."

white chocolate has no chocolate solids in so apparently doesn't technically count as chocolate. I like the stuff, was thinking it tended to be more sugar heavy than other forms of supposedly related stuff. It does have cocoa butter in apparently so is somewhat related i guess.
Do tend to get the higher %age dark stuff when I buy chocolate though.

have cocoa butter

That "butter" isn't so much the dairy product than it is the soft, sometimes frothy form that we associate with "butter".

In other words butter, cocoa butter and even "I Can't Believe This Isn't Butter" are all butter.

https://i.imgur.com/GY36hee.png

frustratingly, most of the "white baking chips" you see in Murican supermarkets contain no cocoa whatsoever, since they tend to be made with palm oil rather than cocoa butter. they taste like confectionary butthole and lack the creamy texture you find in real white chocolate. when I make a dessert that calls for white chocolate, I end up buying bars of white chocolate (with "chocolate" in the product name and cocoa butter in the ingredients list) rather than chips, even though it's considerably more expensive that way

I learned that white chocolate is that in name only when I made cappuccino fudge and orange cream fudge. Both recipes are mostly white chocolate with just a bit of orange or coffee extract and coloring mixed and swirled in. Tasted good, but easy to stop after a piece or two, unlike with any form of real chocolate.

My association for coca butter would be to women's cosmetic product. It crops up a lot especially in black women's make up/skincare.
Wasn't thinking dairy.
& now see why its called that for about the first time, it looks somewhat similar in its raw form.

ilxor Burt Stanton took his name from a Simpsons episode (I assume?) I just watched "Bart vs. Australia" last night for the first time in ages, never made the connection.

for some reason i think i actually knew that, and i'm far from a Simpsons geek

While we're on the subject

Stop trying to make "ruby chocolate" happen guys

arianna huffington is greek

(had never heard her talk and then saw her in a commercial last night during the basketball game and was "oh what she's esl?)

Jennifer Aniston is Greek, too. I had thought she must be Jewish. Her godfather was Telly Savalas.

Had to look up ruby chocolate. Sounds disgusting, and most likely evil.

arianna huffington is greek

Or Arianna Stassinopoulos, as some of us still think of her as.

Jennifer Aniston's dad is Victor Kiriakis on Days of our Lives!

poor man's victor newman

Definitely knew Victor Kiriakis was Greek.

I did not know that actor is her father

said soap opera was right after a half hour kids show with a local host in the mid-1980s so I saw that guy a lot!