:belt_onion:


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    The British eat more onions than the French.

    More fascinating facts from


  • Fake News

    It would take 23 bales of straw to break a camel’s back.

    Because someone had to test that.

    Your brain dries out as you age.

    So maybe that's part of the reason @PJH is in the pub more often?

    During World War II, British pilots carried chocolate bars infused with garlic in case they were shot down and needed to make their breath smell French.

    I wonder if the French smelled like chocolate back then.

    The Queen bought six Big Mouth Billy Bass singing fish for Balmoral.

    I guess it can get pretty lonely in Scotland if you need a school of them...

    Bonus fact: the singing Big Mouth Billy Bass toy fish apparently earned the guitarist of the song Take Me To The River more in royalties than the actual vinyl releases.



  • The average person has sex 5,778 times

    Well, that's good news. Apparently I'm on pace to live almost forever.



  • Some of these just sound like flat out bullshit.

    15 per cent of the air on the New York subway contains human skin.

    THAT DOESN'T EVEN MAKE SENSE WTF.

    Now, if they meant "15 percent of the air samples taken on the New York subway contained detectable traces of human skin"... that I could believe. Actually, in that case, the percentage would seem kinda low.

    A beer tap on an aeroplane would dispense only foam. As the compressed gas that normally propels keg beer is banned on board, it would just foam up in the cup.

    That's a funny way of saying "keg beer is banned on airplanes". Given that, I think a beer tap on an airplane would dispense nothing.

    A theist is someone who is addicted to tea.

    Oh, come now. That might be one meaning of the word -- I'm not even going to bother fact-checking it -- but it's plain stupid to phrase it as if that's the only meaning of the word.

    The chocolate on a Hobnob is on the bottom of the biscuit, not the top.

    Ok now in English please? (🚎)

    The words ‘girl’ and ‘boy’ appear only once each in the Bible.

    First off, those words might appear in English translations, but they damn sure didn't appear in the original. And secondly, depending on how they are translated, the words may appear more or less. For instance, in the NIV translation:

    Luke 8:41-42, "Then a man named Jairus, a synagogue leader, came and fell at Jesus’ feet, pleading with him to come to his house because his only daughter, a girl of about twelve, was dying."

    Mark 5:41-42, "He took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha koum!” (which means “Little girl, I say to you, get up!”). Immediately the girl stood up and began to walk around (she was twelve years old). At this they were completely astonished."

    That's 3 times.

    British children can be held responsible for crimes from the age of 10, but can’t own a goldfish until they’re 16.

    Bollocks. Clearly that means that they can own goldfish as early as they like, as they can only be held responsible for the crime of owning a goldfish once they've reached the age of 10.



  • Diners spend £2 more per head if a restaurant plays classical music instead of pop.

    So the kind of music that restaurants tend to play correlates with their prices. Big surprise.

    (and, presumably, to their target clientele, and more importantly, their target clientele's income level bracket.)



  • @anotherusername said in :belt_onion::

    15 per cent of the air on the New York subway contains human skin.

    THAT DOESN'T EVEN MAKE SENSE WTF.

    Now, if they meant "15 percent of the air samples taken on the New York subway contained detectable traces of human skin"... that I could believe. Actually, in that case, the percentage would seem kinda low.

    The way it's phrased, it could mean the latter and more; it's pretty much meaningless. Some arbitrary 15% of the air there certainly contains some dust, as does the other 85%.



  • The photons (particles which transmit light) hitting your retina right now were passing the planet Mercury about five minutes ago.

    So I guess fluorescent lights can teleport photons from Mercury's orbit to Earth.


  • Notification Spam Recipient

    Article picture caption @pjh referenced said in :belt_onion::

    Did you know that people who read books live longer than people who don’t? Here are some wonderful facts in a new book, compiled by the team behind the QI TV series.

    Oh? In that case, I will live forever, unless 10k words/day is insufficient...



  • @anotherusername said in :belt_onion::

    The chocolate on a Hobnob is on the bottom of the biscuit, not the top.

    Ok now in English please?

    These are hobnobs:

    The chocolate is applied by moving the biscuits through a shallow bath of melted chocolate on a conveyor, so the bottom is the side that gets dipped into it.

    The pattern of ridges, with those in one direction always going under those in the other, is caused by that same conveyor and isn’t by design.



  • @anotherusername said in :belt_onion::

    Ok now in English please?

    Revenge for all those films/TV shows where they are unable to say 'chocolate bar', 'cake', etc. and have to use a product name that no-one in the civilized world has ever heard of.


  • Considered Harmful

    @coldandtired said in :belt_onion::

    @anotherusername said in :belt_onion::

    Ok now in English please?

    Revenge for all those films/TV shows where they are unable to say 'chocolate bar', 'cake', etc. and have to use a product name that no-one in the civilized world has ever heard of.

    Why are they unable to say those things?



  • @pie_flavor said in :belt_onion::

    Why are they unable to say those things?

    Dunno. I assume it's in the contract that they have to say 'Twinkies' and the like.



  • @coldandtired said in :belt_onion::

    @pie_flavor said in :belt_onion::

    Why are they unable to say those things?

    Dunno. I assume it's in the contract that they have to say 'Twinkies' and the like.

    It used to be (this is the belt-onion thread, after all) that, in the U.S., the amount of advertisements was strictly limited by the FCC. I believe that even a single mention of a product would "charge" them at least 30 seconds (maybe even a minute) of allowable advertising time. Thus in the old days you wouldn't find too many brand names mentioned in context in a TV show. For example, Archie Bunker's beer brand was not a real-world beer brand. When the FCC did away with that regulation, you began to see more context-advertisements. For a while, writers resented this, and so brand-name references tended to make the product the butt of a joke. But as time goes on, you see more positive brand-name references.



  • @gurth said in :belt_onion::

    @anotherusername said in :belt_onion::

    The chocolate on a Hobnob is on the bottom of the biscuit, not the top.

    Ok now in English please?

    These are hobnobs:

    The chocolate is applied by moving the biscuits through a shallow bath of melted chocolate on a conveyor, so the bottom is the side that gets dipped into it.

    The pattern of ridges, with those in one direction always going under those in the other, is caused by that same conveyor and isn’t by design.

    Lots of "toppings" are applied by inverting the item to be topped and dipping it into the topping. While it may be an interesting tidbit of trivia, it really doesn't make the topped side the "bottom".



  • @anotherusername said in :belt_onion::

    @gurth said in :belt_onion::

    @anotherusername said in :belt_onion::

    The chocolate on a Hobnob is on the bottom of the biscuit, not the top.

    Ok now in English please?

    These are hobnobs:

    The chocolate is applied by moving the biscuits through a shallow bath of melted chocolate on a conveyor, so the bottom is the side that gets dipped into it.

    The pattern of ridges, with those in one direction always going under those in the other, is caused by that same conveyor and isn’t by design.

    Lots of "toppings" are applied by inverting the item to be topped and dipping it into the topping. While it may be an interesting tidbit of trivia, it really doesn't make the topped side the "bottom".

    Though I would imagine a lot of people (especially kids) would secretly (or not-so-secretly) turn the biscuit upside-down so as to taste the chocolate more directly. Though I guess that begs the question.



  • @chozang I think the reason the top is the "top" is because when the item is set upright, the "topping" doesn't make a mess on whatever it's sitting upon. (That, and it's also nicer to look at it when the plain side is down.)

    How you orient it to top it, or how you orient it to eat it, isn't really the important factor in calling one side the "top".


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @anotherusername said in :belt_onion::

    How you orient it to top it, or how you orient it to eat it, isn't really the important factor in calling one side the "top".

    Hence the need for a Möbius or Klein confectionary item to be designed and sold?



  • @chozang said in :belt_onion::

    It used to be (this is the onion-belt thread, after all) that, in the U.S., the amount of advertisements was strictly limited by the FCC. I believe that even a single mention of a product would "charge" them at least 30 seconds (maybe even a minute) of allowable advertising time. Thus in the old days you wouldn't find too many brand names mentioned in context in a TV show.

    For (possibly unlikely to be) interesting comparison, on Dutch TV until about the early 1990s, advertising inside programmes wasn’t allowed at all, and naming or showing any brand name was therefore forbidden and heavily fined to the broadcaster in question. This lead to strange/funny situations, such as referring to companies like “a lightbulb manufacturer from the south of the country” — which every viewer or listener could be expected to understand, but it didn’t count as naming a brand and so didn’t result in a fine — and one instance that I remember of an episode of this show that consisted of nothing but the presenter talking about how the crackdown on naming of brand names at the time would mean it’d be just about impossible for him to make the show at all.

    Even more funny is that the rules were relaxed a long time ago, yet there are still people who, when they phone in to a radio show or appear on TV, say things like, “Am I allowed to name the brand?” — as if it’s their concern if the broadcaster gets fined (which they won’t, or if they are, won’t care about).



  • @gurth said in :belt_onion::

    people who, when they phone in to a radio show or appear on TV, say things like, “Am I allowed to name the brand?” — as if it’s their concern if the broadcaster gets fined (which they won’t, or if they are, won’t care about).

    On the Uncle Gus show, when a kid on the show mentioned a brand name, Uncle Gus would correct them. He said that they'd have to charge the company for the advertisement. Even as a kid, I remember thinking there was something faulty about that logic.

    On a tangent: I hadn't realized until just now that Phillips had switched from making light-bulbs to making health technology.



  • @anotherusername said in :belt_onion::

    the item to be topped

    TIL that @anotherusername calls Submissives 'items'. :trollface:



  • @chozang said in :belt_onion::

    On the Uncle Gus show, when a kid on the show mentioned a brand name, Uncle Gus would correct them. He said that they'd have to charge the company for the advertisement. Even as a kid, I remember thinking there was something faulty about that logic.

    But that wouldn’t have occurred to most kids, and so they’d refrain from mentioning the company name.

    On a tangent: I hadn't realized until just now that Phillips had switched from making light-bulbs to making health technology.

    No idea about Phillips, I thought that was a type of screwdriver. :pendant: Philips, though, has largely given up/sold its lightbulb business to focus more on health tech, yes, as well as consumer electronics. The problem with the latter is the usually fairly crappy software that they provide with it, much of it Windows-only as I recall, so I’m kind of hoping that the health technology division is doing a bit better in this regard.



  • @gurth said in :belt_onion::>The problem with the latter is the usually fairly crappy software that they provide with it, much of it Windows-only as I recall, so I’m kind of hoping that the health technology division is doing a bit better in this regard.

    I would be even more surprised if their health technology is OS-neutral. From what I have seen hospitals tend to be Windows-only. I'm not exactly sure how they did it, but I remember getting a .pdf from a hospital that would print in a reasonable time if I printed it from my Windows computer, but would take all night if I did it from my Linux computer.



  • @gurth said in :belt_onion::

    @chozang said in :belt_onion::

    On the Uncle Gus show, when a kid on the show mentioned a brand name, Uncle Gus would correct them. He said that they'd have to charge the company for the advertisement. Even as a kid, I remember thinking there was something faulty about that logic.

    But that wouldn’t have occurred to most kids, and so they’d refrain from mentioning the company name.

    Ignoring the whole business about having to pay fines for it, I think it sounds more like a snarky way of saying "we don't want to give them any free advertising", vs. "now we literally have to charge them for the advertisement".

    Although, my second thought is, could there have been some sort of loophole where a station could offer the company a (really cheap) "ad" to avoid paying a fine? There would have to be something more in it for the company than just buying an "accidental" mention (-- and after the fact), though. Maybe something like "1 'organic' ('whoops') product mention + 1 regular prerecorded ad for 20% the cost of the regular prerecorded ad".



  • @pjh said in :belt_onion::

    Hence the need for a Möbius or Klein confectionary item to be designed and sold?

    That's easy. Just dip it - "Frosting on only one side !!!"



  • @chozang said in :belt_onion::

    I would be even more surprised if their health technology is OS-neutral.

    I was more thinking of the crappiness of the software.



  • @chozang said in :belt_onion::

    @gurth said in :belt_onion::>The problem with the latter is the usually fairly crappy software that they provide with it, much of it Windows-only as I recall, so I’m kind of hoping that the health technology division is doing a bit better in this regard.

    That's an overly optimistic statement, IMAO. Last I checked, most hospitals only used Windows to run a terminal emulator acting as a front end for connecting to an AS/400 or maybe an e-Server (dating back to just 2001! That's practically brand new!) - and that only because they couldn't continue to pay for the power and upkeep on the 3090 they got back in the 1980s.

    And yes, I'm talking about current hospital procedures. Smaller medical offices tend to have a local server, but it is often a Windows 2000 (or even Windows NT 4.0) server running something by a company that is now out of business, or a homebrew mess built by the nephew of one of the original partners circa 2002 and since maintained by whoever they could sucker into working on it.

    I've mentioned my job with Kaiser Permanente and SIAC, and from what I have seen since, things aren't getting better in that arena. OK, so most of the MS-DOS and CP/M (!) crap is long gone, at least, but that has less to do with improving the software than with needing to replace the hardware it ran on.

    Mind you, it could be worse. When I was working at a NPO in 1999 - less than a year after the SIAC debacle collapsed in on itself - they were still running several XT-class DOS boxes, and most of the Windows systems were running 3.1. The few Windows 95 and 98 machines they had ran that only because it was what came with them. A few years later, I worked an internship for a county office (a requirement of a program I was in, I was for the most part already over-qualified for the work) where the majority of the PCs were from 1993 - just shy of ten years old at the time - and they had few if any prospects for replacing them. The mental health clinic I am going to today is mostly running XP, sometimes on machines which were originally configured for ME of all fucking things.

    The private sector must be better, you say? Hah, not always, and not always by very much. At my last job (2013 and 2014), the workstations were indeed newer, but by 'newer' I mean 'Windows 7 systems from 1st quarter 2010'. They were still standardized on IE 8, because they were relying on software that wouldn't run on any other version. This was the development environment for a major electronic stock-trading company, and not because of any 'target low' decisions (which would at least have been justifiable) - it was simply that they saw the software development, one of the core processes of their business model, as a cost center that needed to cut every corner it could.



  • I think I discovered what the biggest problem with the UK is (aside from their awful taste in food):

    The most common job in the UK is ‘manager’.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @abarker said in :belt_onion::

    I think I discovered what the biggest problem with the UK is (aside from their awful taste in food):

    The most common job in the UK is ‘manager’.

    Indeed. I have 4 of them...



  • There are managers here with no one working under them at all, also a director with 2 staff.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @boner said in :belt_onion::

    There are managers here with no one working under them at all

    We've got one of those as well! You lot know him as Munashe.



  • @boner said in :belt_onion::

    There are managers here with no one working under them at all, also a director with 2 staff.

    At a previous company, we had a director with 0 staff. Anyone who worked for him eventually quit or got fired.

    Our group got reorged under him because "rule-of-6". I don't recall anybody quitting or getting fired while I worked under him (the big layoff in which we parted ways was company-wide and due to a merger, and had nothing to do with his management style or competence), but nobody was happy about it.



  • @pjh said in :belt_onion::

    @abarker said in :belt_onion::

    I think I discovered what the biggest problem with the UK is (aside from their awful taste in food):

    The most common job in the UK is ‘manager’.

    Indeed. I have 4 of them...

    I hope you haven't seen Office Space.



  • @gurth said in :belt_onion::

    @anotherusername said in :belt_onion::

    The chocolate on a Hobnob is on the bottom of the biscuit, not the top.

    Ok now in English please?

    These are hobnobs:

    The chocolate is applied by moving the biscuits through a shallow bath of melted chocolate on a conveyor, so the bottom is the side that gets dipped into it.

    The pattern of ridges, with those in one direction always going under those in the other, is caused by that same conveyor and isn’t by design.

    On the contrary, I'm sure the conveyor was designed to have that shape so the cookies wouldn't slide around on it.



  • @anotherusername said in :belt_onion::

    Bollocks. Clearly that means that they can own goldfish as early as they like, as they can only be held responsible for the crime of owning a goldfish once they've reached the age of 10.

    I posit that they were applying the legal term for "ownership" in which case they indeed cannot own anything - everything is owned by their legal guardians instead.



  • @scholrlea said in :belt_onion::

    @anotherusername said in :belt_onion::

    the item to be topped

    TIL that @anotherusername calls Submissives 'items'. :trollface:

    TBF, they'd probably 'relish' that nomenclature. :ba-dum-tiss:

    What's the key for that emoji?



  • @anotherusername said in :belt_onion::

    A theist is someone who is addicted to tea.

    Oh, come now. That might be one meaning of the word -- I'm not even going to bother fact-checking it -- but it's plain stupid to phrase it as if that's the only meaning of the word.

    Yeah, it's not. "Theist" refers only to someone who believes in the existence of at least one god. There's not a specific one-word term for a tea addict*. Tea connoisseur and tea lover are all that there are.

    * Well, maybe "British". 🛒



  • @djls45 said in :belt_onion::

    There's not a specific one-word term for a tea addict

    c.f. theism A morbid condition resulting from excessive consumption of tea.

    also in similar vein, this wonderful evidence for the perils of theism

    Excessive tea-drinkingtheism creates a generation of nervous, hysterical, discontented people, always complaining of the existing order of the universe, scolding their neighbours, and sighing after the impossible. Good cooking of more solid substances would, I firmly believe, enable them to take far happier and more correct views of existence. In fact I suspect that overmuch tea-drinking, by destroying the calmness of the nerves, is acting as a dangerous revolutionary force among us.

    I always knew religion was a bad thing 🚎


  • Notification Spam Recipient

    @djls45 said in :belt_onion::

    @scholrlea said in :belt_onion::

    @anotherusername said in :belt_onion::

    the item to be topped

    TIL that @anotherusername calls Submissives 'items'. :trollface:

    TBF, they'd probably 'relish' that nomenclature. :ba-dum-tiss:

    What's the key for that emoji?

    :rimshot: ?



  • @djls45 said in :belt_onion::

    @gurth said in :belt_onion::

    The pattern of ridges, with those in one direction always going under those in the other, is caused by that same conveyor and isn’t by design.

    On the contrary, I'm sure the conveyor was designed to have that shape so the cookies wouldn't slide around on it.

    You win, I should have said, “… and isn’t by design of the biscuit.” (Though these days, it probably is by design of the biscuit, I’m willing to bet that on the original it was accidental and caused by the design of the conveyor.)


  • Impossible Mission - B

    @pjh said in :belt_onion::

    Hence the need for a Möbius or Klein confectionary item to be designed and sold?

    Good Ideas Thread is :arrows:



  • @djls45 said in :belt_onion::

    There's not a specific one-word term for a tea addict.

    tcatyvinta


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