Things you were shockingly old when you learned

that SHIFT + 6 = ^. I think I figured it out a month or so ago. I always wondered how people got that character.

DO you have a Mac?

The best things about macs is that making any character is stupid easy.

¢™
øºÖØ°

&¶¶¶¶¶¶

!

That (most) BMWs are named according to engine size (I was a car freak as a child but never knew this until being informed by a German flatmate while I was a PhD student).

i.e. 318 = 3 series 1.8 litre engine etc.

Didn't know that black and green olives are identical, just different stage of maturity, until a few months ago.

Didn't realise that Adam Ant was a pun, until a year or so ago. Likewise Lipps Inc.

I've got a mac and I still don't know how to do any of, um, ^ those ^

I end up going to wikipedia and copy-and-pasting when I want unusual characters

The cows-and-bulls thing, plus Adam Ant, are the only things on this thread that I do know

how to cook an artichoke properly

(a julia child recipe steered me right)

How to tie my shoes (velcro, you see..)

Didn't realise that Adam Ant was a pun, until a year or so ago.

^^^ this. Same with Sandy Shaw.

Fay Fife of the Rezillos.

(i.e. it's a pun on "I am from the town of Fife, my good fellow" in broad scots)

What's the Adam Ant pun? Adam Ant = adamant? If so... pretty lame pun.

That's it.

xpost Tell that to Lai Mpun, the lead singer of Bangkok's Phleng Chat.

I am 33 and didn't know any of these things. Wait - how the hell DOES a candle work?!

Same with Sandy Shaw.

i don't know how to explain it but i used to think chickens had a really weird way of "mating", something to do with the rooster's legs. (!!?!?) :)

I thought penguins were as tall as humans until that march of the penguins movie

"that SHIFT + 6 = ^. I think I figured it out a month or so ago. I always wondered how people got that character."

^^^Dude, you beat me by a month. Thanks!

I once spent a half hour trying to eject a cd from a Mac before someone finally told me there's an eject button on the keyboard. I was going through all these crazy menus and preferences...

I think I was like 16 or 17 when I learned that cows and bulls were the male and female versions of the same animal and not two distinct animals.

What sort of seemingly basic facts did it take you a surprisingly long time for you to learn?

― filthy dylan, Wednesday, November 12, 2008 5:30 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I thought penguins were as tall as humans until that march of the penguins movie

loooool one of my friends thought this and it was since passed into running joke territory.

I think I've done that Mac eject button thing too :(

Pronounced lapels like 'labels' for years until corrected but happily don't dress well enough to use it often

My girlfriend was shocked to learn, at the age of 33, that a 'Flea Circus' is actually a rather charming mechanical toy, and is in no way operated by any parasitic insects.

Ismael, at the age of 32, is shocked to learn the same thing. This thread is getting embarrassing

WAT! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flea_circus

I thought penguins were as tall as humans until that march of the penguins movie

one of my friends thought this and it was since passed into running joke territory

no but seriously, what is this about?

i mean i can see that there's rarely anything to size them against in the big white antarctic, but why would anyone then automatically think okay here's a bird i could play tag with

u could still play tag w/it tho

But you could make the same assumption with ostriches in the big yellow desert (or wherever they live), and in that case you'd be right!

I'm still in touch with several grown adults who genuinely believe there's 'something' to supernatural claims about ouija boards, despite its fairly obvious origins in parlour games / illusions which utilised the (admittedly fucking spooky) ideomotor effect.

aw no-one said 'where babies come from'

I've had a lot of experiences in my adult life with mispronouncing words I understood as part of written text, but hadn't heard aurally in the context of conversation etc. For example, I was well into my twenties before I knew the word "vehement" wasn't pronounced veh-hee-ment. I wish others would politely correct you when you do that instead of letting you blindly sound like an idiot.

I'm a bit like that, but now I'm in the habit of saying works incorrectly, I can't get out of it. Canal is not pronounced can-el, but there's fuck all I can do about it now.

^ This happens to me all the time too - so much so that I actually now find it quite amusing when I realise, midway through a sentence, that a word I've never heard before is looming at the end. I suppose that people who talk a lot, rather than reading, must find the same with spelling. It only annoys me when some moron uses it as an opportunity to score cheap points (sadly fairly often)

I was going to start a thread like this, but it was going to be more about 'life lessons' that took you forever to learn, rather than trivia.

Anyway it's taken me this long to fully realize how unreliable first impressions can be when it comes to people.

but why would anyone then automatically think okay here's a bird i could play tag with

haha

TAL have an episode on this in the "best of" section on their wesite. people who thought unicorns were real, etc., lots of awkward silences at cocktail parties: good stuff.

i like to tag birds. (runs)

There's a penguin here and he wants to say "you didn't touch me ner ner ner"

I thought penguins went "weh weh weh"

I'm still in touch with several grown adults who genuinely believe there's 'something' to supernatural claims about ouija boards, despite its fairly obvious origins in parlour games / illusions which utilised the (admittedly fucking spooky) ideomotor effect.

― Huey in Bristol (Huey in Melbourne), Wednesday, November 12, 2008 7:08 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

you couldnt get me in the same room as a ouija board

I was about 35 when I figured out Open Sesame = Open Says Me.

i used to think HAZCHEM was a foreign word for danger like Achtung

I just figured out, like 2 days ago, that the lyrics are "highway to the danger zone"

(until then, thought they were "I went to to the danger zone")

ooh i like that

lol mandee those are even better

Nothing, as I'm not shockingly old.

Slow sure but there is no world in which "More More More" is a ballad!

"rust never sleeps" was a slogan for a rust preventing paint
https://kellyipblog.lexblogplatform.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/551/2018/03/RUST-2.jpg
mark mothersbaugh mentioned it to neil young who made it the album title
for some reason i thought of it is as "i am rust man, i am always awake" like he's tetsuo or something

for some reason i thought of it is as "i am rust man, i am always awake" like he's tetsuo or something

https://images.theconversation.com/files/44518/original/w7qjbkmw-1395629312.jpg

Just learned the phrase “Salad days” comes from Shakespeare and is not a modern American thing (I kind of thought it was a 60s california surfer thing)

I mean, sure — living in England in Shakespeare's time, the day you got to eat a salad was probably the best day of your entire life.

They preferred to go surfing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHuIpse1nM4

the day you got to eat a salad was probably the best day of your entire life.

lol. it's more likely derivation is the metaphoric connection between greenness and youth, but I liked yours better.

A green salad would have killed an Elizabethan child

not paired with a good stout, I bet

Until earlier today I assumed zebra crossings had been invented in the 1920s, when cars were relatively new. It seems like an obvious idea. But no, they were apparently invented in the late 1940s, and the name was coined by James Callaghan:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebra_crossing

The first one was painted on Slough High Street. Until that point there were Belisha Beacons, and studs, but no zebra stripes. For a while crossings just looked like this:
https://i.imgur.com/j0VYbZl.jpeg

You learn something every day.

A green salad would have killed an Elizabethan child

cold roast parsnips and wild fennel with brown sauce, there you go

africa is the 2nd largest continent and larger than north america.

i just now realized that "electric guitar" is a riff on the old show "juke box jury"

(the talking heads song "electric guitar")

innocent is the opposite of nocent

^ I just learned a new word today ;-)

when you piss on someone's chips, you are pissing on their kindling, so it won't light. Not chips from the chippy.

Oh! Still, may as well piss on their chips from the chippy as well.

Yeah I guess once you've got going it's hard to stop

Does this mean the chips in Whizzer and Chips are also wood chips?

that would be a no

I wouldn't know, I was a whizz-kid (death death death to chip-ites)

Sorted out for chips and whizz

forever a Whizzkid!

The Spanish equivalent of "lefty loosey righty tighty" is "La derecha oprime, la izquierda libera" - "the right oppresses, the left liberates" (this may be a load of bollocks as it comes from some rando on the internet)

that the placenta is named after a type of cake.

let them eat placenta does not resonate or whatever

idk about that, it resonates pretty well for some folks

Richard Simmons had a bit part in Fellini's Satyricon.

i feel like such an idiot, but reading Tom Crewe’s The New Life somehow made me aware for the first time that “sod” was a shortened of “sodomite.” I might have known this at some point, but I don’t think so! God, i am such stupid fucking sod.

I thought it was calling someone a lump of grassy dirt!

If I'd thought ever thought about it I probably could have worked it out but I never did so, yeah, I had no idea either.

You can tell who hasn't had enough exposure to traditional British bigotry

I believe the traditional phrasing is "posing somdomite."

“sod” was a shortened of “sodomite.”

I too have never put this together.

You can tell who hasn't had enough exposure to traditional British bigotry

https://i.scdn.co/image/ab67616d0000b2734b15e7fef9e7485811b835d3

"Bugger on, Garth!" "Bugger on, Wayne!"

i thought you were gonna say “traditional british sodomy,” which i dont think is a thing.

Sodomy Manor

pretty sure that's the name of a live Fall album xpost

i thought you were gonna say “traditional british sodomy,” which i dont think is a thing.

― bloozmonica noodling inc. (Hunt3r)

Clearly someone didn't go to public school...

Rum and the lash just feel empty without it.

i thought you were gonna say “traditional british sodomy,” which i dont think is a thing.

Have you never heard of the Royal Navy?

traditional british sodomy

First with the driving on the wrong side of the road...

Rum, bum and concerti a

Concertina even