Things you were shockingly old when you learned

what most people don't understand is that january and february were named after jann wenner and diane ferruary

Karl is quite right.

Further, July was named after Miranda July.

August was named after August Busch Jr., who owned the St. Louis Cardinals and the Anheuser-Busch brewery.

it was actually named after Augustus, not sure you realized that

xxxp Teri Garr was also one of the dancers at the TAMI show

lol wait YMP is your contention that the Romans actually used a 10-month calendar for awhile, before realising the seasons didn’t line up? That seems unlikely??

wait until you hear about kalends, ides and nones

Tracer - yes and no. Yes, they started out with a 10-month 304-day calendar and then went to a 355-day calendar.

But they weren't idiots; they knew it would get out of synch. Tgere were two ways of dealing with the problem. For a time, winter days just didn't belong to a month. The days happened, there just wasn't a tidy name for them. Secondly, they could and did add extra days every now and then (intercalation) just as we do in leap years.

For a time, winter days just didn't belong to a month

big mood #2020

lol yes. YMP that is wild.

Highly recommend adding The Oxford Companion to the Year: An Exploration of Calendar Customs and Time-Reckoning to your reference library, as it's absolutely packed to the brim with 15 Things You Never Knew About the Year (And That's Okay) (And Here's Why)!

Is everyone ok with making 2020 an uncountable time, and then starting a new era after trump goes away? It will involve some Y2K—style updates to computers, but other than that we should be set

Old Lunch is that a peel-off desktop calendar? Like the Far Side? Because damn, that’s reminding me that I need to pick up one of those Far Side peel off calendars.

brb

No, it's an actual book! Although Oxford really missed a trick by not releasing a page-a-day calendar version of the book.

Does anyone have the phone number for Oxford?

I had it, but I wrote it down on the back of one of those peel off calendar pages and recycled it. Believe it was on the back of a July page, if that helps!

anno Dummy

*yells in the direction of Oxford, from the front porch*

i just learned that michael keaton is beetlejuice.

holy shit

no you did not

He only played him in the biopic, he's not the real Beetlejuice

youve said it twice now thread dont say it again

https://i.imgur.com/Klpo29d.jpg

Speaking of Beetlejuice.. Sylvia Sidney.

i...

noooooooooooooooooooooo you unbanned him by saying his name 3 times HE WAS SO OFFENSIVE

https://i.imgur.com/Q3Zb54F.jpg

hahahahaha

and now, clearly i know that's michael keaton. who else could that be? why did i never wonder who the actor was? he does a great job, he's fucking michael keaton! but i just thought "yeah, whoever that is, he's pretty good"

wait wait wait

that you can hold the spacebar down on an iPhone to move the cursor?????!

Lol no way

and it is in fact the best way to move the cursor??

Given how much of a fan I've been since I was like ten, it's shocking how old I was when I just now figured out that the full four-member version of the Monkees were only a thing for a little over two years. Between six albums, a tv show, and a movie (not to mention touring, promotional appearances, etc.), I'm not sure when they slept.

Holy shit, the space bar thing, thank you so much TH

it’s insane!

Amazing.

Speaking of months, am I the only one who has to sing "30 days hath September..." in my head EVERY TIME I have to remember which months have 30 days?

You are not the only one, HL.

If it helps: I am 49 years old, I have a degree in English, and I have been a professional writer and editor for 27 years. And yet I sill can't put things in alphabetical order without singing the song in my head.

Try the knuckle trick: press two fists together such that yr thumbs are touching, the knuckles are months containing 31 days, the valleys between are months containing >31 days (the space between your two index knucks do not count as a valley).

also, the milk is the dad and the box is the mom, so milk goeth before cereal

The space bar thing is new in iOS 14

xps i do a similar thing but with fingertips: start with your palms up. ignoring your thumbs, count the months on your fingertips and the gaps between starting from the left. so your left index fingertip is january, the neighboring gap is february, the next fingertip is march, and so on working from left hand to right. months on fingertips have 31 days, months on gaps have 30. learned this as a kid and still use it regularly.

ahhh Ed that explains it :)

No! I've seen it passed around as one weird trick for much longer than that:

https://mashable.com/article/ios-12-precise-text-selection-keyboard/

it works on my Android too, blew my mind

I've never been lost about which month has how many days, etc.

Not bragging because I frequently forget what year it is.

Ha ha - same. Months are internalised but the year sometimes calls for a bit of careful consideration.

I actually thought a colleague was joking when he pulled out the rhyme and then felt bad for calendar-shaming him.

also, the milk is the dad and the box is the mom, so milk goeth before cereal

― Un-fooled and placid (sic)

Oh fuck no, nononono, this video murdered me. I don't know if it got discussed anywhere on ilx, I just saw it on twitter, but it literally made my eyes bleed.

I just watched it. I spent 2 minutes trying to understand the metaphor then threw it on to the mental bonfire.

THought it really weird, was expecting to see the earthen sides of a grave and there's these white tiles going down 6 feet or whatever.
Maybe the soil is wrong to be planted straight into it or at least in a coffin. But it was white tiled like a shower room or something.
I thought poart of the ceremony was normally to thrown the first handful of earth on top of the coffin or at least if you were the spouse or closest kin. Wondered why that wasn't happening.

― Stevolende, Wednesday, April 8, 2020 1:02 PM (six months ago) bookmarkflaglink

Could it be that those are temporary panels for holding the dirt back so the hole maintains its shape, and they are lifted out before the hole is finally filled?

― nickn, Wednesday, April 8, 2020 1:16 PM (six months ago) bookmarkflaglink

I vaguely understood that most USian burials take place in a concrete vault - there is no dirt-to-casket contact. the casket is lowered into the concrete box, a concrete lid goes on top of that, the dirt is filled in around said vault. Surely practices vary by location and region and funereal industry practice

― cuomo money, cuomo problems (Ye Mad Puffin), Wednesday, April 8, 2020 1:55 PM (six months ago) bookmarkflaglink

As a former gravedigger, I can tell you that in the vast majority of cases of in-ground burials in the US, either a tile or concrete vault is made after the initial hole is dug. This is mostly to avoid collapsed grave walls.

What are being sold as "green burials" and also the traditional Muslim burial rites do not include such concrete vaults, and in many cases, the graves are dug by hand rather than machine because wall collapse is much less prevalent in hand-dug graves.

Anyway, I loved digging graves, tbh, and it paid quite well. Sad I can't do it anymore because of my stoma and the threat of hernia.

Months ~feel~ either "short" or "long" to me. Like wrapped up in their name is the essence of their length.

Sure, you can figure it out by counting knuckles or reciting a rhyme

Or you could take out yr phone and look at a frickin calendar