Things you were shockingly old when you learned

It's esoteric, but I recently bought one of those old rackmount Akai samplers from the 1990s - a big beige box with a jogwheel on the front and 32mb of memory. While looking at old sample libraries I realised that 90% of the non-licensed soundtrack for the first WipeOut game came from a single sample CD, Zero-g Datafile One. In this video the uploader has even used the samples to make a WipeOut-style tune:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msqrVjc-bZQ

And! The backing vocals from Haddaway's "What is Love" come from the same sample CD:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJSHAsmeZBY

The producer didn't even hire a backing vocalist. But of course it would have been nothing without Haddaway's anguished vocal performance. It haunts me still. As a kid I assumed the musicians made those sounds themselves, or scoured their record collections, but they just bought Zero-G Datafile One and Two instead. They still had to go through those discs and find the best samples and use them musically, but it was a lot easier than I expected.

If you listen to the second volume it's like a snapshop of 1990s video game music, particularly Jet Set Radio and Sonic CD:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_68RD0tkQM

It makes sense given that the musicians had a tight deadline to make hours of video game music with a budget of nothing. It's just striking that they all seemed to have the exact same sample CD.

same thing happens when you fire up any classic digital synth and go through the presets, you'll be saying "hey wait a minute, that's ..." a lot. I imagine the same is true with whatever the hot new VST is these days.

just remembered when I first got Ableton in the early 2000s and all the presets on the synths were the same as those used on the Morr records I was into at the time.

Mr. Hooper was a communist.

Women were not allowed to run in the Boston marathon until 1972, and for that matter, before the 1980s, there were no women's distance races in the Olympics at all. The women's marathon was introduced at the 1984 Summer Olympics

Here is Katherine Switzer (trying to) complete her 1967 run while being assaulted by race manager Jock Semple:

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/04/19/sports/18switzer-web/18switzer-web-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale

"The AAU banned women from competing in races against men as a result of her run, and it was not until 1972 that the Boston Marathon established an official women's race."

I mean, until 1974, women were often denied the ability to open their own bank accounts.

I remember comment from the time from people about it being a year of women or something to that effect. Me being like 7 years old.

Wonder how things like taht change in the world of For All Mankind since I've just been watching that era in it.

Iirc in For All Mankind the Equal Rights Amendment is ratified almost immediately, under Nixon.

xpost That I knew already. I guess back then running was considered kind of weird for everyone, period, but in the case of women, people literally believed it was dangerous to run fast for more than two miles at a time! Based on ... I dunno, bullshit? Like, this is so nuts:

When Joan Ullyot, a physician and an accomplished runner, published her book Women's Running in 1976, she took on a daunting set of traditional ideas that boiled down to one admonition: women should not run long distances.

They were not physiologically built for it, women were told. Compared with men, they typically had higher body fat, less muscle bulk and lighter bone structure, factors that should discourage them from engaging in long-distance running – or so it was believed. Moreover, many authorities in the field warned that extended running might harm women’s reproductive organs.

That's downright medieval in its intellectual and scientific dishonesty.

that "cf" is short for the Latin CONFER, which means "compare"

i'm not even going to type what i thought it meant but i feel really dumb

covfefe

In my head "cf" stands for "see, for example"

"SEE For instance" is what i mentally translated it to for a while

cf describes about 28% of all ilx threads.

i used to kind of assume, without putting it to the test, that if you did a poo in the shower it would just sort of disintegrate under the spray & go down the plughole. this is not the case.

STORY TIME

there was a post about this important matter on ilx once. They key is to use your feet like you are treading grapes, apparently.

More like the coming of prince kajapoopoo!

Poo shy shy
Flush flush

Martin Sheen's real name is Ramon Estévez

That's what's on his drivers license to this day, his birth certificate, etc.

Wait'll you see Charlie Sheen's real name

Frasier H. Babalucci

what, didn’t have questions when you saw the name of his son, emiliiiiiliiiiiioooo

maybe he thought Emilio was his stage name and his real name was, like, Kyle Sheen

that "cf" is short for the Latin CONFER, which means "compare"
i'm not even going to type what i thought it meant but i feel really dumb

Today I learned that a “beamer” only refers to a BMW motorcycle. The correct slang term for a BMW car is “bimmer” (which I have never heard before).

Just reading up on that Kathrine Switzer/Jock Semple incident. This was news to me. Good for her for not letting him stop her. She seems like a hero. Apparently, she and Semple became friends in later years.

Buffy Sainte-Marie (co-) wrote "Up Where We Belong"

I'm not buying this beamer thing, according to whom?

beenie man iirc

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beamer_(cricket)

It also means an embarrassed red face in the West of Scotland - as does "riddie".

And! The backing vocals from Haddaway's "What is Love" come from the same sample CD:

Late to the party on this one but :O

Playing that long file is like an hour-long game of Heardle

I watched Last Night In Soho just now and was looking at the song credits at the end and found out Peter and Gordon's "A World Without Love" was written by Lennon-McCartney (wiki clarifies it was just Mac, when he was 16). Paul thought it wasn't good enough for the Beatles to record.

I was listening to Dylan's "Day of the Locusts" recently and suddenly realised there is either a locust which sounds like a Hammond, or a Hammond which sounds like a locust, in the buildup toward the end.

dave van ronk was arrested during the stonewall riots, just on the general principle i guess that if the cops were arresting people he needed to be out there getting arrested too. it's a good principle and it served him well!

xp think i saw recently that martin sheen regrets not using his birth name when he started his career.

i mean, if the professional name i'd picked was _martin sheen_, i'd regret it too. seriously? he got his last name from _Fulton J. Sheen_? Oh you know what my stage name is going to be, _Kate Falwell_, I will NEVER REGRET picking that name.

Phoebe Snow the singer got her stage (last) name from a character in old railroad advertisements.

bought sunflower seeds yesterday, roasted and salted. hadn't realised you're not meant to eat the shells (despite that being where the salt is), just hadn't thought about it before (or bought them unshelled like this). now i've 1 million sunflower seeds to peel and it seems like a lot of work for little reward.

To peel? The general practice is to crack one between your teeth and spit out the hull on the ground in the parking lot next to your Dodge Ram.

Who parks their Dodge Ram in right field?

yeah, if you shell them you're going to miss out on all that delicious salt. one of those snacks that take give you time to ruminate

everyone I know in China can get through 2-3 sunflower seeds per second, cracking them with their teeth and spitting out the shells, they have no interest in pre-shelled seeds

can't find the post at the moment, but I read someone's calculations on whether shelled versus unshelled pistachios are a better deal. somehow, presumably with cheap labor and shipping prices or whatever, they were approximately the same price, which is mildly boggling

sunflower seeds, that's definitely a cultural experience to spit out the shells. there's something less satisfying about the tiny seeds in a jar

plus, you can pretend to be Fox Mulder

y'all reminding me of this classic gag:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyGZAg3lo9A

obviously if you're just going to be eating sunflower seeds you want to crack the shells with your teeth. shelled sunflower seeds are good for putting in salads though, we usually have some in the house

ooh yeah, so good with some spring greens and vinaigrette

I have a buddy who would chew up the seeds, hulls & all... and he got some form of diverticulitis, or perforations in his intestines

(I used to be a total addict, but I would carefully crack & spit the hull)

not something I learned, but a ridiculous sunflower seed story:

I got home from school when I was probably 12 or 13 years old, saw a tupperware container of sunflower seeds on the kitchen table, and had a couple. Later, I was mentioning to my mom, hey, I think these sunflower seeds are stale, why were they on the table?

Readers, my mom had cleaned out a bird feeder from the back yard and, not sure what to do with them yet (whether they'd sprout in the compost pile or if she should just trash them), had left them sitting there. They'd been in the feeder in the back yard all winter.