Things you were shockingly old when you learned

sorry, sorry, wait up

Black holes are named after the Black Hole of Calcutta Kolkata!

whaaaaat

Okay, I might walk that back, the line in Wikipedia is

"According to Hong-Yee Chiu, a long-time astrophysicist at NASA, the Black Hole of Calcutta was the inspiration for the term black hole referring to regions of space-time resulting from the gravitational collapse of very heavy stars. He recalled hearing physicist Robert Dicke in the early 1960s compare such gravitationally collapsed objects to the infamous prison.

But the link is to an article titled "50 years later, it’s hard to say who named black holes" (which isn't there any more).

xp fgti - yeah it's mostly about the a, which dictates how you say the h

xpost, I think the black hole thing might be right. I just asked my spouse (astronomer who used to do most research on black holes) who coined it/why and he said Wheeler, because light doesn't escape blah blah. But we just looked up a bunch of things and he agrees that the above is good enough.

Awesome, thank you!

that 'romeo and juliet' by dire straits is about west side story lol

Penguin meat has just enough vitamin C in it to stave off scurvy

jesus man what kind of a bender are u on exactly

The differences between FAY-hee and FAY-ee are so minimal. A close friend’s last name is Taheny (Sligo stock) and he’s fine with TAHN-ee tho most of us make the effort to respirate a TAH-hen-ee for the boy

― fgti (flamboyant goon tie included), Wednesday, 18 September 2019 18:32 (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

fahey/fahy over here is pronounced fa-hee. there is no fay sound, and in general if the name is irish origin the american predilection to -ay would in fact similarly safely be held to be -ah round these parts

Oh like fah-hee? Interesting! Once a year I fall into Irish vs. English naming conventions and I'm always surprised by something every time. Today it was that Darragh is not the Irish spelling but the Anglicized version of... Dara. Usually I'm scratching my chin over Muircheartach or whatever. I learned basic Gaelic pronunciation in my early 20s but not well-enough to process Irish stuff

are we not pronouncing the -gh with disgust when reading posts now

That nakedness can be referred to as a “birthday suit,” because at birth you’re naked.

to my eternal shame fgti i self-changed to this spelling after meeting a girl that spelled it dara when i was small enough that this was an outrage

William S. Burroughs’ son, of the same name, accidentally shot his best friend in the neck with a rifle when he was fifteen

nobody vaguely related to these people should be allowed near any sort of gun!

Shooting for his Adam's apple?

A charwoman isn't a tealady - it's a different meaning of char, similar to chore.

I could post on this thread 100 times a day, but it would only prove how stupid I am.

Been reading a lot on the Civil War lately, because I'm a middle-aged dad trying not to think about the mortgage payment.

And that's how I finally connected soldiers on the front line, what striking union members do when they protest and these things:

https://i.imgur.com/xujWe4b.jpg

xp yes the addition of a -gh is very manly.

If I was a boy named Fiona I'd def change it to Fionagh

Hughgh.

scooby doo's birthname is scoobert doo

lol, stop

That might be the funniest thing I've read all week.

tbf Scooby-Doo had existed for 19 years before someone said his name was Scoobert, in order to be funny

but do NOT take it too far!:

https://www.mic.com/articles/182603/scooby-doos-real-name-isnt-scoobert-doobert#.PMWlLWCvm

(read to the end)

I used to trollfully insist that Stevie Wonder's real name is Steven Wonderful. This is about that level of stupid.

JUst learned this week that there's a fashion haircut called a combover.
Would have thought the attempted baldness disguise was prevalent enough that they would need to find a new name for something like that.
Its the tall gelled short back and sides thing that has one side combed over. Would have thought it was some kind of variation on a 'Meet me at McDonalds'. I think its popular among footballer types etc.

But really, I would have thought the referent was always going to be the 'I think people will not recognise the bald patch if I grow the sides longer and hide it, or Trump it' thing.

& would therefore think that it would be something that a trendsetter would attempt to avoid naming things after since it is a middle aged folly. But omigosh the youth of today.

We shall overcomb

Steven Wonderful is good, but nothing beats Steveland

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EFkRNH_XoAI-ZVL?format=png

That’s Scrappert Cornelius Doo to you, young man.

el scrapo

Escoobar

https://i.imgur.com/r78g4MI.jpg

Nice

we were talking coffee and wondering if Sanka was still around. it is. and for the first time i wondered about the name and realized it was a portmanteau for sans caffeine. the (american) pronunciation of sank-uh threw me all these many years.

If we used Spanish as our model it’d be Sinca

My new seltzter co must somehow then be named “Conga”

So Sanka rhymes with Tonka.

Also just noticed that I say Sank-uh, but also San-tuh.

The combover

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqhvJrcMV9c

new fella at my barbers seems to be tryin to push me in this or a similar direction i dunno how to break it to him that i had a bald patch before he was born ill be ok like

So apparently disgusting Americans pronounce "flaccid" with a hard C

I've never heard anyone pronounce it like that.

Wtf

Both pronunciations exist on both sides of the pond, it seems. I agree that the hard C is gross.

oh right, looks like the trendy haircut is spelt as 2 words.. Still sounds the same when said though. Foun dit odd when it was said in a class I was in last week as a haircut the teacher was giving people.

https://haircutinspiration.com/comb-over-haircut/

https://media.haircutinspiration.com/photos/20181204005531/comb-over-blackfishbry-500x649.jpg

we were talking coffee and wondering if Sanka was still around. it is. and for the first time i wondered about the name and realized it was a portmanteau for sans caffeine. the (american) pronunciation of sank-uh threw me all these many years.

I never know how to say "sans" as in "sans serif" out loud, like in Comic Sans or whatever. If I (try to) pronounce it in a French manner it sounds kind of like... just a weird meaningless sound in an English sentence. If I say "sanz" I feel like an uncultured barbarian. Help!

Are we counting the x (-ks-, hard then soft) pronunciation of flaccid as hard? It always sounds weird to me because I usually hear it to rhyme with "placid" but iirc it's technically correct and I can't think of any other -cci-/-cce- words which don't use that sound. Well, not since I finally realised how to pronounce e.g. Occitan and occidental a few years ago at an embarrassingly old age.

All the letterpress people I hang about with say sanz, and I just copy them.

Thinking about it, though, comic sans pronounced to rhyme with Fonz would be excellent.

I know one letterpress person and they're the opposite of an uncultured barbarian so I'll go with that, then. Hooray.

Rhymes-with-Fonz seems theoretically more comprehensible than a nasal sound with a silent final s, but I think that's the compromise I've ended up with after chickening out of the silent s at the last moment, and can confirm that nobody has ever known what the hell I've been talking about.

https://forvo.com/word/sans_serif/#en

TopQuark otm

GraB otm

Shit, I pronounce it sonn suh-reef, I am a pretentious twat. Not sure I've ever had cause to say it loud though so I've probably got away with it.