Things you were shockingly old when you learned

it’s French. it means bomb. “peter” the verb means to burst or explode (or fart)

v embarrassing to be killed by your own fart

xp
hence petomane
as in the cabaret artist whose art form was the fart and who was later played by leonard Rossiter in 1970 odd.

& i Think unfortunately that became a derogatory name for gays didn't it?

Probably even more embarrassing to survive being hoist by it

Verily, sirrah, it appears that you have petered into your own leotard.

Count me in as another one who imagined "hoist by your own petard" to be some kind of wedgie situation.

I used to think petard was a kind of sword, and that the phrase meant you had attacked someone who managed to get the sword away from you and attack you with it.

I figured petard was some kind of sailing thing, like you'd be hoisting the mizzen and end up in the crow's nest from some Wiley Coyote rope incident.

so in conclusion hoist by your own petard means being lifted into the air by your own fart right, and being unable to get down when the fart freezes in Minnesota wintertime and your fart is holding you up like an inverted bicycle seat

Totally thought it was a halberd

Rob Halberd of Jubas Briest

Extent of negative effect of grapefruits on the way certain pills work.
As in can pretty much counter teh effect and isn't just a random thing.

In some cases they increase the effect. If you take amlodipine for hypertension grapefruit can somehow increase the concentration and you can pass out with low blood pressure

I can't eat grapefruits and they wuz my fav citrus fruit, bloomin big pharma.
& whatever chemical processes taht is.

I asked my doctor if I could replace the pills with the grapefruit and got a perfectly condescending "it doesn't quite work that way" in response

Hard to swallow... Even with water.

Someone on Star Trek: Enterprise had a grapefruit intolerance. Why do I remember that?

It was pineapple

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Silent_Enemy_(episode)

I've read that grapefruit is helpful for alleviating the effects of tear gas

So there's that

My wife takes quietapine (seroquel) for bipolar and you cant have grapefruit on it because it can cause an increase in the effects or something? It's already a horrendously strong sedative

I think it clashes with a diabetes 2 thing I take.

I've got quite a thread volley going on. Look up Sousa for the instrumental music thread, then learn a bunch of stuff about his hobbies as well as his hatred for recorded music. And it is there I saw:

"canned music", a reference to the early wax cylinder records that came in can-like cylindrical cardboard boxes.

I always thought it meant "canned" as if you got it from a can, like canned soup! I had no idea it was a reference to the original can-shaped cylindars!

Canned laughter is another term for fake studio laughter isn't it?

For sure. "Canned" means "recorded," a la the shape Edison cylinders.

i also had always read "canned music" in "mass-produced, packaged, fake, comes out of a can" rather than "wax cylinders." and i read a whole book on labor and automation that referred a lot to "canned" music. (tbf the author may have actually explained this at some point and my eyes gone past it...)

Whether or not "canned music" referred to wax cylinders in the 1920s or thereabouts, by the 1960s it referred to selections of music to be piped into shopping venues, prepared, packaged and labelled for convenience like canned soup, most famously from the Muzak Corporation.

i'm just wondering whether that meaning and/or the negative connotations came in part because of the use of "canned" in (ultimately unsuccessful) campaigns by unionized live musicians to convince consumers not to settle for the "canned" stuff... this would have been in the 30s iirc, with the end of the silent movie era for one thing being a huge problem for working musicians.... i should dig up the title of this book tomorrow, it had some really good stuff in it. but definitely a lot of the word "canned."

The 1942-1944 musicians' strike

I remember hearing that muzak was based in Seattle so some of the grunge scene musicians were making ends meet by working there.

was about to post something lame like a Canned Heat record sleeve (the band, not the Jamiroquai song), but it turns out the phrase “canned heat” is quite interesting in itself. It refers to “fuel made from denatured and jellied alcohol, designed to be burned directly from its can” (cans sold commercially in stores, that is) and is an early 20th century thing (invented around 1900). During Prohibition and the Great Depression it was widely used as a surrogate (but toxic) alcohol:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHw1ugBLS5g

(otoh, in pro wrestling the term used for pre-recorded booing or cheering)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canned_Heat_(disambiguation)

Sterno-brand canned heat (maybe among others) is still a thing - used it regularly to keep chafing dishes warm when I worked banquet events at the Holiday Inn. I was probably introduced to the concept by The Andromeda Strain, where its consumption as hooch by an alcoholic drifter provides a crucial clue to the titular disease's particular pathology.

Like Sterno Fuel, another form of alcohol that was available legally during Prohibition was called Jake. Jake was a ginger extract from Jamaica that was sold for medicinal purposes but was approximately 70% alcohol. When drank in large quantities, another chemical in Jake caused deterioration of the spinal cord. In the 20s and 30s, Jake drinkers were immediately identifiable when people spotted a telltale shuffle in their walk cause by semi-paralysis in the legs. Many songs were recorded about that Jake walk. Here’s one from the Mississippi Sheiks, “Jake Leg Blues:

http://uncensoredhistoryoftheblues.purplebeech.com/2005/10/show-5-drinking-canned-heat-and-jake.html

He could be named Charley, and he could be named Ned
But if he drank this jake, it will give him the limber leg

This is my new favorite couplet.

xps i think that, since edison cylinders were never ubiquitous like discs were, and since they were largely done by 1910, it's fair to assume the term "canned music" was probably always used by many people only as a metaphor, or perhaps might've even migrated from "in the can" — originally a film term that presumably referred to metal film canisters

https://img.discogs.com/SrTMXhHVxMCP-D9n3n_MmgHS9m8=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-2118164-1266775785.jpeg.jpg

"Flowers is also known for having composed the novelty hit "Grandad" for Clive Dunn in 1970.[1]...

Perhaps Flowers' most famous bass line is the one he created for Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side" from the album Transformer (1972),[1] the only song by Reed to reach the Top 20 in the US."

I didn't know he wrote "Grandad" either. In fact I don't even know what that is.

Read all about it here:

http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2006/11/clive-dunn-grandad/?comment-page-all#comments

needs to be heard to appreciate the gulf between those two things.

B-side is called "I Play the Spoons"...

Bill Wyman's son from his first marriage married the mother of Bill Wyman's second wife.

Herbie Flowers thing reminds me of Ray Russell going from pretty avant guitar playing to writing tv theme tunes.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Pierre_and_Miquelon

There is still French territory in north america, right by Newfoundland

Florida is further west than South America.

Florida is further west than most people think. Miami Beach is west of Pittsburgh (just) and only a little east of Cleveland.

Brazil extends surprisingly far eastward. There are Brazlian islands that, were they located at a more northerly latitude, would be only about 290 miles from Iceland.

Florida is also south of Heaven

tbf most of the usa is south of canada

Yeah, but when you realize part of California isn't, that's when it gets weird.

https://i.imgur.com/X2ueroC.png

https://i.imgur.com/pNNPG3S.png

a few weeks ago I learned that Maine is the U.S. state closest to Africa, and I'm still finding little pieces of my brain in the carpet

xp <3

27 US states have land north of the southernmost point of Canada. That's a famously weird bit of trivia.

That is crazy.

The only part of Iraq that wasn't under a no-fly zone during the 90s was between the 33rd and 36th parallels -- which coincidentally are also the two lines my state is in!