Today I Learned (TIL)

914Driver said:

In reply to noddaz :

100 pounds, in case they have to be used by the National Guard.

Well then.  If I am ever on Jeopardy I will take "Ammo carrying spec" for $100 please.

In reply to noddaz :

I knew some amount had to be allowed because our high school had a rifle team and we traveled by school bus. 

TIL that Stan Lee was in the Army during WWII in the same regiment as Dr. Seuss, Frank Capra and Charles Addams.

TIL that Quigley does 4x4 conversions on Nissan NV vans.  I'd been kind of curious about what they did now that Ford Econolines aren't available, and Sprinters can be had with factory 4wd.

TIL, after far too  long, that my natural motion when moving from mouse to keyboard moves the cursor down to the bottom right corner of the screen, and when I nudge the mouse with my elbow, it goes a bit further offscreen, which makes the window I'm working on go blank.  I presume that's a Windows mechanism to allow you to hide the GRM page as the boss walks by.

I've spent quite a while trying to figure out what the hell magic power my elbow had.

TIL that there are no skunks in Germany.

TI also L'd that it's very hard to explain the concept of a skunk to a young German couple who moved here one week ago and are convinced that they have an electrical fire in their basement.

Woody (Forum Supportum) said:

TIL that there are no skunks in Germany.

TI also L'd that it's very hard to explain the concept of a skunk to a young German couple who moved here one week ago and are convinced that they have an electrical fire in their basement.

 

Show them some Pepe Le Pew cartoons. 

Their English was only slightly better than my German. I do admit that I tried to find common ground with the name "Le Pew", but that didn't get me any closer.

And I suppose that you can read all that is written about skunks, but until you actually experience one up close, you can't fully appreciate it.

In reply to Woody (Forum Supportum) :

In case it helps, the German word for skunk is "Stinktier" - literally "smelly animal".

And no, there aren't any in Germany, at least not natively.

Woody (Forum Supportum) said:

Their English was only slightly better than my German. I do admit that I tried to find common ground with the name "Le Pew", but that didn't get me any closer.

And I suppose that you can read all that is written about skunks, but until you actually experience one up close, you can't fully appreciate it.

And you won't fully appreciate it until your dog tries to bring one in your house. Why my wife thought it would be a good idea to open the door to yell at him to drop it is beyond me. 

In reply to eastsideTim :

Some days I try to convince myself to go get the whole Quigley enchilada.

Datsun310Guy said:

In reply to eastsideTim :

Some days I try to convince myself to go get the whole Quigley enchilada.

Do you want that enchilada leaving your body sending power to all wheels, though?

TIL that late in the War Between the States, some Confederate surgeons using horsehair for sutures as a substitute for the preferred silk, saw fewer infections than Union surgeons using silk.  Likely reason?  They had to boil the horsehair for it to be pliable enough, which sterilized it.  The silk was normally used as shipped from the far East (not sterile).

Today I learned that there are digital, cloud-based canoes

EDIT: now that the moderators deleted the canoe post, this is much less funny...

today i learned i'm a terrible person

Today I learned where the word posh came from: "The P&O Line has always made much of the fact that it gave the word 'posh' to English idiom. The word began life as a booking clerk's term in the nineteenth century; it meant Port Out-Starboard Home, and a wise traveler of the day stipulated this formula when booking his cabin to the east and back for it put him on the shaded side of the ship both ways." From SUPERSHIP c1974.

TIL that the ship stuck in the Suez Canal sailed in a pattern that describes a giant penis when viewed from above right before they got stuck in the canal. 

In reply to Brett_Murphy (Ex-Patrón) :

TIL that karma is real.   Lol. 

TIL that an oil pump for a NSX has a retail price of $20896.74

Maybe the oil pump comes with a new engine wrapped around it?

NermalSnert (Forum Supporter) said:

Today I learned where the word posh came from: "The P&O Line has always made much of the fact that it gave the word 'posh' to English idiom. The word began life as a booking clerk's term in the nineteenth century; it meant Port Out-Starboard Home, and a wise traveler of the day stipulated this formula when booking his cabin the east and back for it put him on the shaded side of the ship both ways." From SUPERSHIP c1974.

I thought that was a myth?

Pete. (l33t FS) said:

NermalSnert (Forum Supporter) said:

Today I learned where the word posh came from: "The word began life as a booking clerk's term in the nineteenth century; it meant Port Out-Starboard Home, and a wise traveler of the day stipulated this formula when booking his cabin the east and back for it put him on the shaded side of the ship both ways."

I thought that was a myth?

My sister believes that story, which means it is almost certainly a myth.

I don't know one way or another, BUT: if it is true, it only holds for specific ports and specific arrival / departure times.  It physically cannot be a blanket statement.

TIL that houses are now selling for ABOVE listing price in my little city. And that is with house prices already being inflated. A house a few streets down from me that sold for $188k in 2018 just sold for $285k, with zero improvements done between then and now. And it sits on a postage stamp 0.17 acre lot. It listed at $269k and sold within days.

Reading real estate listings they now call my city "hot" and "desirable". I'll be dipped.

TIL, after 6 years of owning my car, that this entire time I could've linked my phone to my stereo to play music via bluetooth instead of using an aux cord.

I only found this out because I had to do a factory reset on my phone, and had to re-pair it with my car, and when doing so, noticed the option for music pairing.

TIL that my '81 RX-7 is a unicorn.

The vast majority of first generation (best generation) RX-7s were built without air conditioning, and A/C was installed at the port or at the dealership, because of some hazmat import tax.

My car has factory A/C.  Installed in Hiroshima by some guy who proabably was drunk on shochu the night before and had some righteous tamagoyaki before getting on the train to the factory.

I figure, the car was sold to Alabama's region, makes sense that the ordering process was all "hell yeah send A/C cars"