Things you didn't know until very recently...

Raspy crickets convergently evolved the ability to make similar silk to silkworms (And are the only orthopterans that can make silk).

Bats have reverse plantigrade legs - they apparently rotated over their evolution until their knees face backwards.

I am reading My Effin' Life, an autobiography of Geddy Lee and a couple of the more interesting things I learned were:

- Geddy's parents were Holocaust survivors who met in a ghetto in Poland - there's a whole chapter early on detailing their experiences based on the information he could get from his mother.

- He went to high school with Rick Moranis - they didn't really interact much, but apparently it helped facilitate his appearance on a novelty single by Bob and Doug McKenzie.

The hilarious Harvey Korman was from Chicago.

Walt Disney himself had a ghostwriter for comics. If you’re curious, said ghostwriter’s name is Carl Barks.

Edited by ChicoTheParakeet on Apr 27th 2024 at 1:48:30 PM

He had a lot of them actually, Carl Barks was just the most famous one.

I frowned when a troper said "That's too obvious!" in response to a post here, but this indeed too obvious I dont anyone ever thought Walt Disney drew every single comic. In fact Carl Barks was ALSO not credited in the beggining but grew popular with people because of the sheer greatness of his stories and eventually got credited.

Yesterday I learned Jamie Simone is a man, not a woman.

Cauliflower can be orange.

I heard of purple ones, but orange? The universe is weird and fun, indeed.

Teens get smelly because the chemical composition of their sweat actually changes (not because they don't wash enough): https://www.sciencenews.org/article/chemicals-teen-body-odor-chemistry

Marvel is going to publish their first Disney comic; the Infinity Dime.

Edited by ChicoTheParakeet on Apr 28th 2024 at 2:15:59 PM

I've long been frustrated by the claim that "blood is thicker than water" actually was originally "blood of the covenant is thicker than water of the womb" and actually means the opposite of what the phrase is used for.

Today I decided to look it up, and yep, the "water of the womb" variant dates back to the 90's, where two authors made the claim that that's the original meaning, while in actual fact every use of the phrase since the 1200's when it was first recorded in German, has always been about birth family.

(I hate fake etymologies, especially ones that claim the "real original" version means the opposite, and that this is supposed to reverse the centuries of use of the original. That's not linguistics, that's mysticism)

Amity Blight from The Owl House has a Wikipedia page, and so does Luz.

Zuni is an Amerind (broadly defined) language. I assumed it was Na-Dené based on geography.

Stevie Wonder started his career when he was only 11, under the name Little Stevie Wonder.

If you don't mind, can I get the source on this? I want to see why they made the claim.

The name of Italy is relatively consistent in many Romance and Germanic languages, having only mild variations to suit the style and pronounciation of each language.... then there's Polish, where the country is named "Wlochy"; or Hungarian, where it's "Olaszország".

No, I don't know where they got the instructions wrong and got their pencils stuck in a toaster. At least there aren't as many wild variations as with Alemania... err, Deutschland... no, Niemcy... AGH! Germany!

Wait, there's more :D The Polish name for "Włochy" shares origin with the English name for... Wales. And the source of these both is an indo-european name for "stranger".

In fairness, Polish is a Slavic language.

Same linguistic root as Wallachia too.

And Hungarian isn’t Indo-European at all.

The saying "This too shall pass" is of Persian origin. I thought it came from the Bible. ^_^;;

Jollibee now has chicken nuggets.

Edited by Ayumi-chan on May 1st 2024 at 3:39:10 AM

@Kinkajou: it's on Wikipedia, there's link to some texts. this one seems to be making the point in justification of Messianic Judaism that people enter into a covenant with god, rather than the established tradition that one is Jewish by birth. This is a messy subject, and I don't know enough about the author to say anything authoritatively, but I will say a lot of Messianics are not of Jewish descent, and break with Jewish religious tradition which doesn't recognize Jesus as a messiah.

The other author seems t just make the point "I like my friends more than my family members" which is, you know, fine. Just, you can make up a new proverb.

Had them a week ago. They're pretty good.

Yeah, I figured the popularity of the quote (and making it seem older than it really is) is because the found family trope has been getting popular lately as well.

The Spanish rock band Los Prisioneros is from Chile.

Raising Cane’s opened up a location where I live.