The "I learned something today" thread

Snarky Oracle!

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Well, they always said AIDS started in Africa. Now we know how.
 

Long Lashes

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Do females work on takeaway deliveries?
I've never seen one, but yes they do.



I know a student nurse who works part-time delivering for Domino's Pizza. The money she makes keeps her car running and she does fairly well by getting lots of tips.
 

Daniel Avery

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I'm guessing they tend to hire a lot more male drivers because there is a fear that female drivers might get assaulted/robbed/attacked, given the vulnerable position that delivery drivers are often in. As someone who has never had food delivered to my house, I'm not an expert on such things....but I do know that the local news seems to jump on stories like this.

https://munchies.vice.com/en_us/art...-is-one-of-the-most-dangerous-jobs-in-america
 

Ome

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I'm guessing they tend to hire a lot more male drivers because there is a fear that female drivers might get assaulted/robbed/attacked, given the vulnerable position that delivery drivers are often in

That makes a lot of sense and I did wonder if that may be the case. We do have female taxi drivers, so I kinda threw my reasoning out of the window, thinking these could also find themselves in a vulnerable situation.
 

Mel O'Drama

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Today I learnt I've been mispronouncing Roald Dahl's first name all these years.

I've been saying it as somewhere between "rower" and "old"... "rowald". Turns out it's actually meant to be pronounced as "roo-wal".

 

Daniel Avery

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Diana, Princess of Wales was a descendant of (at least) one of Charles II's illegitimate children. Since C2 died without a legitimate heir, the royal line moved to the more Germanic Hanoverians, who eventually became known as the Windsors. When William, the Duke of Cambridge ascends the throne, it will be the first time a descendant of Charles II has reigned as King...it just took a few hundred years to get back around to his side of the family.
 

Richard Channing

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Why Chaucer Said 'Ax' Instead Of 'Ask,' And Why Some Still Do

The most common stereotype of black vernacular is the pronunciation of the word "ask" as "ax." "Ax" has gotten a bad rap for years. Pronounce "ask" as "ax," and immediately many will assume that you're poor, black and uneducated. New York City's first African-American schools chancellor, Dr. Richard R. Green, put it on his list of "speech demons." He insisted that "ax" be eradicated from students' vocabulary.

Garrard McClendon, a professor at Chicago State University, is the author of Ax or Ask? The African American Guide to Better English. He says his parents were well-aware of the stigma attached to "ax" and taught him there's a time and a place to use it.

"When you're with your little friends, you can speak any way you want to speak, all right? But the minute you get in a spelling bee or in a job interview, switch it up quick," McClendon recalls. "I've taught my children to do that as well."

Sketch comedy duo Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele joke that because they're half-white, they're constantly switching back and forth. "If it happens four times in a sentence," Key says, "[you're] probably going to get two axes, two asks."

Talking over each other, they add:

"But when a cop comes up to you, you definitely use a lot of 'asks.'

"Ask away, officer, ask away!"
"Anything you want to ask me, I'll be happy to answer, officer."

Jesse Sheidlower, the president of the American Dialect Society, says "ax" has been used for a thousand years. "It is not a new thing; it is not a mistake," he says. "It is a regular feature of English."

Sheidlower says you can trace "ax" back to the eighth century. The pronunciation derives from the Old English verb "acsian." Chaucer used "ax." It's in the first complete English translation of the Bible (the Coverdale Bible): " 'Axe and it shall be given.'

"So at that point it wasn't a mark of people who weren't highly educated or people who were in the working class," Stanford University linguist John Rickford says. He says it's hard to pinpoint why "ax" stopped being popular but stayed put in the American South and the Caribbean, where he's originally from. But "over time it became a marker of identity," he says.

Indians in South Africa, black Caribbeans, and African-Americans use "ax." Rickford says it's the empire striking back: taking language that has been imposed and making it your own. He adds that eliminating words like "ax" may help one fare better in a job interview, "but not necessarily fare better in terms of the people you hang out with, or not necessarily fare better in asserting your own identity. You got to remember a lot of these language varieties are learned in people's homes. It's how people's mothers spoke, their fathers spoke, their friends spoke. I don't think any linguist is recommending that you get rid of your vernacular, because you need it — in a sense — for your soul."

Linguistic versatility is ideal, says Rickford, interchanging "ax" and "ask" depending on the setting: code switching. But, he adds, there's nothing technically wrong with saying "ax" — it's just no longer considered mainstream English.
 

Mo Mouse

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Today I learned that The Wacky Races was only a cartoon and not an early version of the F.I.A. Formula One grand prix series. I was very disappointed as I reckon that Professor Pat Pending would kick Lewis Hamilton's ass all the way down the street and back again.
 

Daniel Avery

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I learned that there is an actual difference between "special effects" and "visual effects" in film and TV. Special effects refers to techniques and tricks used on set as the scene is performed, while visual effects are classified as all the stuff they do in post-production and editing after the scenes was shot.

For example, on the daytime soap Dark Shadows (infamous for its low budget), they occasionally had a vampire bat appear in the window to scare the crap out of people. Since they had no concept of CGI in 1968 (much less the $$$ for it), they would instead have a rubber bat hanging from a (visible) string, and "squeaking" noises were made off-set to add to the...um, realism. All this would be considered "special effects". When they depicted a character dying from spontaneous combustion, they were not able to hire a proper stunt-person and stage the death on-set, since the fire codes for their tiny studio did not allow a fire any larger than a fireplace (and again, no $$$ for that anyway). So their solution was to have the character on a set screaming and writhing in "pain" as if on fire, and afterwards adding an orange-y glow in an image over the image ("visual effects") for the scene that actually aired. Unfortunately the overall effect was not "catching on fire" so much as being zapped by a laser, and despite her burning up, there was no smoke or a scorch mark on the carpet afterwards. Ah, the good old days.
 

Richard Channing

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Leonardo DaVinci wrote almost everything in 'mirror writing'. He always wrote backwards except when it was something intended for other people to read. Nobody knows for sure why he did this, although there are some theories. Some say it was to keep his hands clean and avoid smudging, but the real reason it's unlikely to be any thing so mundane or practical. It's more likely it was meditative or a tool to train, or access, a different part of the brain.

leonardo-writing.jpg
 
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