Things you were shockingly old when you learned

The Normans were invited into Scotland, by King David, they didn't conquer it, right?

Kings were often quite fond of their bastard sons, iirc.

Having a few spare sons around is always useful.

especially when one or two die a tragic diarrhea death

It happens to the best of us.

Tom: Normans didn't conquer Scotland but also didn't feel they needed to. In 1072, Malcolm Canmore (under threat of the sword) acknowledged William's overlordship, and became a vassal / client kingdom.

how to properly pronounce Dunedin. sorry estela! i was saying "DUNN-uh-den", but i think it's more like do-NEE-den

for a long time i thought it was just dune-din

its more like duh-NEE-den

Done Eden

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXn7t5iLAbc

My entire family loves Brussels sprouts, including my more veggie averse kid, which I always found surprising, given their reputation ("eat your Brussels sprouts!"). And then I learned that in the 1990s a Dutch scientist identified the chemicals that make Brussels sprouts bitter and cross-bred out the bitterness with a high-yield variety, and after that their popularity skyrocketed.

You'd think the Belgians would be the ones to step up.

Or maybe they should be called Amsterdam sprouts

Nether Sprouts.

Don't know if it is shocking but I finally learned this term for a common phenomenon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merism

Similar to when I learned via ILX the therm "antimetabole."

Man, you want a deep dive? I always knew the (American) use of the term "commode" for "toilet" was pretty regional, largely southern, but looking into it I learned all sorts of (erm) shit:

https://theweek.com/articles/580173/brief-history-lavatory-language

Biggest new term to me was "thunder mug" or "thunder box."

Thunderbox is Australian afaik (specifically an outdoor, wooden loo, for the vibrant resonance).

Done Eden

(two Charlene references in four days, a happy week!)

Thunderbox is Australian afaik (specifically an outdoor, wooden loo, for the vibrant resonance).

https://img.discogs.com/C0hve5Jx-9t3qhjUu3_Cjw_S_Gw=/fit-in/300x300/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(40)/discogs-images/R-5824573-1434025506-3898.jpeg.jpg

... this from the guy who sang about khazis on "Lazy Sunday".

it's possible he'd met an Australian or two during his international rock stardom tbf. iirc a seminal text about scatologically unrestrained oafish Ockers, that took particular delight in euphemistic slang, had been running in a London magazine for a decade by then

he met a bunch of Australians when the Small Faces toured there with The Who in '68

Mark and Luke, Gospel authors, were not in the original twelve apostles. (Matthew and John probably weren't written by Matthew and John but that's another story. Really the quality of Biblical teaching in British schools is appalling but any close reading would probably cause dramatic loss of faith so naturally avoided by C of E schools.)

That they weren't was one of the things I was taught at school. I'm not sure anyone ever told me they were, before that, I guess I just vaguely assumed. John almost certainly was written by a different John (though which one is up for debate iirc)

It's just possible I wasn't paying attention.

Though I'm pretty sure no-one ever said re: the nativity "the census required Joseph to move back to his ancestral home of 40 generations ago".

I was raised areligious and attended American public schools, so finally making a concerted effort to learn more about the varied religions of the world over the last several years has been m/l a daily dose of 'shockingly old when'.

the gospels were written by the primary (competing) sects that had grown in the wake of jesus' death life aiui, or at least that's how an old friend of my dad's from divinity school told me when i was 11 years old, who memorably followed that information up by admonishing me that the idea they were actually written by people named matthew mark luke and john was "horseshit"

I remember that the lost common source for synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, which share the basic story and have many verses in common) was named 'Q', which is funny in the light of QAnon.

"Q's existence has been questioned", lol.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_source#:~:text=The%20Q%20source%20(also%20called,in%20the%20Gospel%20of%20Mark.&text=Q's%20existence%20has%20been%20questioned.

Ah yes. That's short for 'Quelle', right? (German for 'source'.)

i don't know if that's true and i don't care cause lols xp

So, though Mark is synoptic, the Q parts don't feature in his gospel, apparently. Not sure if I was taught this wrong or have just forgotten.

Mark and Luke, Gospel authors, were not in the original twelve apostles.

No. Even though on later reunion tours (like in 57 AD) they were billed as apostles, they weren't in the original lineup.

Mark had first been brought on as a session bassist, then was asked to fill in on keyboards for the European leg of the 45 tour, when Andrew was in rehab. After Andrew's overdose, Mark was invited to become a permanent member of the live band. But he still craved a greater role in songwriting because otherwise he couldn't get in on any of the lucrative publishing rights.

Luke was just a guy in the same scene - playing the same clubs, knowing some of the same people. His solo debut flopped commercially, but he got enough attention from the apostles' producer, Melvin the Arimathean. So when they needed a rhythm guitarist for some dates in Galilee, Luke was the guy to call. He never got along with Simon the Zealot, which led to later tensions both in the studio and on stage.

Meanwhile, original apostles Matthew and James began touring as "The OTHER Apostles," leading to a contentious lawsuit over use of the name. The suit was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount.

Mark had first been brought on as a session bassist, then was asked to fill in on keyboards for the European leg of the 45 tour,

Fake news, there was no 45 AD (nor any of 1 AD through 524 AD)

sic, okay. You got me. I do know that the dating nomenclature is disputed.

Especially if you look at the fine print in the rockism/poptimism decisions made by the First Council of Nicaea. My understanding is that the dating of the 57 reunion tour was reconciled via papal dispensation; cf. the bull De Datum Tourium and its corollaries. Things got even more confused by the shift from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar; and almost none of the literature on early Apostles lineups survives.

I claim no expertise in this area, I'm just going by what the t-shirts said. Some of the bootlegs from that era don't have CE/BCE dates at all; they only express years since the founding of Rome.

This might be clarified when the Gnostic gospels have a one-day-only copyright extension release on Spotify next month.

a 4AD release, I assume

I just learned today that XTC are amazing

I recently (to my shame) got that "Space Oddity" was a play on 2001: A Space Odyssey. Not sure how I missed that one.

Read Marlowe's late-16th century Doctor Faustus yesterday, got a bit of a surprise at the snippet "Che sera sera / What will be, shall be".

Safe Harbour day for the election this year was the day after Pearl Harbour day. Somebody pointed that out on a podcast I was listening to a few days ago. Is that a coincidence or did people think you needed a safe harbour after that attack or the memory of that attack.

I recently (to my shame) got that "Space Oddity" was a play on 2001: A Space Odyssey. Not sure how I missed that one.

Only got this now, thx!

That the it in Hey Jude’s “don’t make it bad” refers to the sad song. I’d inattentively put the phrase down to being a clumsy idiom.

Now doubting myself on this

Well, this is Paul 'in this ever-changing world in which we live in' McCartney we're talking about here.

I’ve always given him the benefit of the doubt on that and had it as “in which we’re living” not that that makes it much better.

Also, it's "If this ever-changing world..." There's nothing wrong with that line, it's just people mishearing it.

Okay, that was my bad, but there's still 'in which we live in' to contend with.

shrug emoji