[HN Gopher] Things I Learnt in 2023
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       Things I Learnt in 2023
        
       Author : valzevul
       Score  : 53 points
       Date   : 2024-01-13 20:55 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (drobinin.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (drobinin.com)
        
       | xz18r wrote:
       | Cool list, some reading material for tonight. This reminds me of
       | a similar thing I did in 2021 which was collecting a tidbit of
       | trivia knowledge every single day:
       | https://www.karelvo.com/blog/2022-01-01-365-thing-i-learned-...
        
         | valzevul wrote:
         | That's pretty cool, thanks for sharing!
         | 
         | (seems like I will be spending tonight learning how to mimic
         | bird sounds)
        
       | throwup238 wrote:
       | _> I wonder what happened though, and how kids managed to study
       | constantly drunk._
       | 
       | They learned early how to be functional alcoholics. Drunk kids
       | these days just don't know how to handle their liquor and society
       | has been going down the drain because of it.
        
         | giantg2 wrote:
         | Upto half a liter isn't much, especially considering that most
         | traditional brews were lower alcohol content than the typical
         | stuff today. So they probably weren't drunk, but who knows how
         | that might have affected them in the future.
        
           | abid786 wrote:
           | Half a liter is  2/3  of a standard bottle of wine. Even if
           | it is only 11% ABV, this still equates to 55 ml of ethanol.
           | An average 14 year old male weighs 112 lbs, about 70% of an
           | adult's size.
           | 
           | So if we extrapolate linearly, 55 ml of ethanol would be
           | equivalent to 78 ml of ethanol for an adult, which is 6.5
           | shots, assuming a 1 oz shot
        
             | giantg2 wrote:
             | Yeah, but the wine was supposedly watered down for the
             | children too. And that would be the maximum limit too.
        
             | maximinus_thrax wrote:
             | Everything you're saying is true, but the wine was watered
             | down. I grew up in (Eastern) Europe and I used to have a
             | glass of wine with my parents at dinner time when I reached
             | my teens pretty much every time they did (we had a small
             | vineyard, like most people, and wine was plentiful).
             | However, I was mixing it with mineral water (50-50) and
             | with a heavy meal, I never got drunk from that.
        
         | fasterik wrote:
         | I wouldn't consider functional alcoholism to be a good thing
         | for anyone. It's especially bad for brain development under age
         | ~25, before the prefrontal cortex is fully developed.
         | 
         | https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/alcohol-and-adolescen...
        
           | bsder wrote:
           | Drinking contaminated water could kill you for most of the
           | first half of the 20th century.
           | 
           | So, it's probably an unclear tradeoff, historically.
        
             | oa335 wrote:
             | I've recently read that the idea that pre moderns drank
             | alcohol as an alternative to contaminated water is a myth.
             | See https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ol1h45/
             | comme...
        
         | singedproxy wrote:
         | This gotta be the most alarmist, out-of-touch with reality
         | comment I've read this year.
        
           | AnimalMuppet wrote:
           | Yeah, but it's only mid January...
        
           | throwup238 wrote:
           | How out of touch with reality do you need to be to take an
           | absurd "kids these days" joke seriously?
           | 
           | You _should_ be alarmed!
        
       | gumby wrote:
       | I believe Belgian schools still serve low-alcohol beer in the
       | canteens.
        
         | LaundroMat wrote:
         | That's the first I hear of this and I've been Belgian for the
         | past 49 years.
        
           | gumby wrote:
           | Well you've been missing out!
           | 
           | I have a small group of Belgian friends and it's quite
           | possible they've been pulling my leg. Sad (for the kids) if
           | so. Belgian beer is great!
        
       | Lukeisun wrote:
       | Spam musubi is so good, the author should try making some :)
        
         | tinycombinator wrote:
         | I loved having spam with kimchi stew too. Growing up, I didn't
         | even realize spam was a brand.
        
       | myrandomcomment wrote:
       | It is not Rugby but American Football you are talking about.
       | 
       | Rashomon is film by Akira Kurosawa from 1950 where the killing of
       | a Samurai is told from various points of view. That is why the
       | story telling you are talking about is called that.
        
         | valzevul wrote:
         | Ah, then today I learnt that rugby and American football are
         | different!
         | 
         | I knew about the Kurosawa's movie though, just didn't mention
         | it in the snippet.
        
         | atom-morgan wrote:
         | I'm surprised anyone thought the line was drawn on the field
         | considering it changes with every first down.
        
       | simonw wrote:
       | A fun note about the multiocular O -  - is that Unicode 15.0.0
       | included an update to it because it didn't have enough eyes:
       | https://twitter.com/jonty/status/1571615998335123457
       | 
       | It should have 10, but many existing fonts only have 7.
       | 
       | Here's "Proposal to revise the glyph of CYRILLIC LETTER
       | MULTIOCULAR O":
       | https://www.unicode.org/wg2/docs/n5170-multiocular-o.pdf
        
         | throwup238 wrote:
         | Also known as the trypophobia character:
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trypophobia
        
         | AndriyKunitsyn wrote:
         | There's that (practically useless) thing, there are all sorts
         | of palm gestures like U+1FAF3 "PALM DOWN HEAD", U+1F91E
         | "CROSSED FINGERS", and of course U+1F595 "MIDDLE FINGER", but
         | there's no fig gesture [deg] in emojis, and proposals to add it
         | were filed and rejected twice [^]. The Unicode consortium
         | priorities are weird.
         | 
         | [deg] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fig_sign
         | 
         | [^] https://www.unicode.org/emoji/emoji-requests.html
        
       | wideopenjake wrote:
       | As far as Spam Musubi - the US military brought Spam to the
       | islands during WWII, and it quickly became available off-base.
       | Combined with wartime fishing restrictions on the islands, the
       | quickly became the easiest meat source available to locals. They
       | made do with what they had, and spam sushi was invented along the
       | way. Eventually, it took on a cult following of its own, and the
       | rest is history - but Spam's place on the Hawaiian Islands
       | originally comes from hardships imposed by the US military
       | occupying the islands during WWII.
        
       | JoachimS wrote:
       | Kaffeost is nice! Here is some more info:
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_cheese
        
       | gweinberg wrote:
       | Spam Musubi isn't that rare, you can get it at any Quickly.
        
       | account-5 wrote:
       | > Conkers... I wonder if there is a winning strategy...
       | 
       | Cook them, just don't get caught having cooked them because then
       | you're going to need to win a fight too.
        
         | paulette449 wrote:
         | I have fond memories of playing conkers in Dublin in the late
         | 70s/early 80s, thanks to a number of horse chestnut trees at
         | the end of our street. We'd "borrow" a knitting needle to piece
         | them.
        
       | oa335 wrote:
       | Falooda is not the only Mughlai dessert with noodles: Doodh
       | Savaiyan is sweet milk with vermicelli noodles.
        
       | gumby wrote:
       | Thing I learnt is that this person says he collates things he
       | finds in RSS feeds but doesn't offer an RSS feed himself.
        
       | o11c wrote:
       | Note that "Stone of Scone" is pronounced "Skoon". Unlike the
       | food, which is pronounced "skon".
        
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       (page generated 2024-01-14 23:01 UTC)