Things you were shockingly old when you learned

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.

Misheard lyrics are always better. The singer of my old band had this (intentionally) corny line that went "sleep all day til the telephone ring / head to the bar and shake that thing", the latter half of which I always thought was "head to the barber and shave that thing".

My friend always thought that Op Ivy song Take Warning went "skate boarding", which is way better.

Same with Sandy Shaw.

Ok I sounded this out several times in several different ways and I still don't get how this is a pun. Help?

I think that 'Shaw' is meant to sound like 'shore' - I don't hear it either

Sandy Shore.

Shaw is pronounced exactly the same as Shore, in England.

hows it pron in USA?

Well I guess it must be different, if people are having problems hearing it? Dunno.

I didn't even know it was her real name, tho.

wasn't, rather

I knew someone who, if my friend is to believed, is said to have uttered at age 18 "wait, you can't get pregnant if your clothes are on, right" while making out.

'Shore' rhymes with 'oar'. 'Shaw' is the same as the first three letters in 'shopping' xp

i'm loving this thread. so many discoveries!

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

― Øystein, Wednesday, November 12, 2008 1:59 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

http://www.noonco.com/flea/movie.htm

My flabber hasn't been gasted quite like this in a long time :-/

xp I only got that Sandie Shaw pun because I once attended a seminar about legal practice given by an English professor who made a big thing out of the difference between 'law' and 'lore'. I didn't have a clue what he was talking about

Wait - how the hell DOES a candle work?!

I know, right?!!??!

i too only figured out lipps, inc. lately. also, fear's lee ving. it never occurred to me until i was driving in the car one day and bam.

Parmesan is from French.

... early 16th century!

Sorry, I will try to keep up.

In my defense, I have two different kinds of Parmigiano Reggiano in my fridge as I type this.

out there in the hinterlands, I've heard the green tube called par-MEEZ-ian

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQXXb1VXBvg

i'm all wrong apparently. i blame the tri-state area.

i'm all wrong apparently. i blame the tri-state area.

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

lol you're not wrong - the video is! well, not wrong but it's doing the pronunciation BJ is saying he says. I think. It's not doing the parmajohnny thing which is how I think it's most commonly pronounced on the east coast? Who fucking knows.

What is tri-state area to you? To me it's NY, NJ, and CT. Is there another?

i say it like scott and everybody else! the video is saying it like the "correct" Am En pronunciation as in my #2, although i don't actually think people ever say it like that here

a bit like the "correct" pronunciation of "mature" maybe

Parma John, I'm in love with your daughter

sorry the turn of this thread is making me laugh a lot
Parma-Johnny Come Lately

"What is tri-state area to you? To me it's NY, NJ, and CT."

yes, the unholy trinity.

Ah ok - think I thought you were from MA originally so wondered if there was some new England tri state I was unaware of.

Declan Rice played for Ireland three times before he played for England. Turncoat!

The Amen Corner hit, "(If Paradise Is) Half as Nice", was written by Lucio Battisti.

Does everyone know about the simple eBay search filter?

Let's say you're interested in vintage hockey memorabilia (which I'm not) but when you type in 'vintage hockey' you just get tons & tons of trading cards which you don't care about... but if you type in 'vintage hockey -card' it will filter out the cards and just show jerseys and pucks and whatnot

That works for google searches too.

huh good to know.. except these days Google will direct you to whomever paid them the most to do so

BOOLEAN is how data searches were made even before Google (or eBay.)

fyi, there are a few sites with directions on how to add this parameter to your default google searches, including from the address bar, etc:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/google-searchs-udm14-trick-lets-you-kill-ai-search-for-good/

it takes out the gemini results along with a lot of the sponsored results at the top

It's kind of shocking to me that people don't know that!

... I mean the boolean search not that udm thing.

I just found out that "sign of the times", a Post Precious song I've had on a playlist for years, is actually a cover of a Harry Styles song

Actress Dana Wynter pronounced her name Donna or Dah-na or Dar-na (depending on your accent) and not Day-na.

Daniel Barenboim was born in Argentina (and his father gave piano lessons to Lalo Schifrin (though it's not shocking that I didn't know that)).

tangerine: something or someone from Tangiers

!!

In "Bela Lugosi's Dead" by Bauhaus, it's not "I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm dead" but "Undead, undead, undead". Learned this from Jarvis Cocker's book - he also misheard it for a long time.