Today I Learned

[efros]

Malt vinegar can develop a vinegar mother I think, but the white (actually clear) stuff is pretty immune to anything. Good strong straight vinegar should be fine in the long term, stuff that has been adulterated with additives may get funky, I think most US vinegar is like this. Vinegar never lasts long in our house anyway.

[suze]

We only really use brown vinegar on chips, and we don't have chips all that much.  That's how it comes to last so long!  But I have in any case asked the good man to get a new bottle of it when he goes to Tesco tomorrow.

Brown vinegar is cheap enough that I'm not going to lose sleep over throwing half a bottle away, but now that we know that it does degrade over time, maybe get a smaller bottle this time!

[celebaelin]

Pure ethanoic acid is clear and colourless surely?

Since malt vinegar isn't clear and colourless that must mean that there's other stuff in there and over time goodness only knows what might result.  Without spending a lot of time on it (and maybe even if I did) I can't find out exactly what's in there except to say that it's likely a mix of barley-derived fermentation products.

The same is bound to be true of red wine vinegar and to a lesser extent presumably to a lesser extent white vinegar... and rice vinegar as well at a pretty safe bet.

[celebaelin]

37 years on there are still no online versions of the Zodiac Mindwarp & The Love Reaction EP tracks that aren't taken from that one uploaded version which skips a lot.

Occasionally I have a hankering to hear eg Wild Child or Hymn of the Speed Kings and frankly I'd rather it wasn't f**ked up by being a version that some sh*t-tard took a massive dump on before perfunctorily wiping it off with a steel wool scouring pad and then deciding it was good enough to upload to Youtube.

PS Yes I do own it on vinyl but since I'm not currently living in a f**king cave and eating mammoth I no longer have a deck to play it on.

[celebaelin]

I keep posting stuff to the wrong threads; this content was another example of that.

[Bondee]

Oct 1, 2024 0:12:11 GMT celebaelin said:

PS Yes I do own it on vinyl but since I'm not currently living in a f**king cave and eating mammoth I no longer have a deck to play it on.

What are you suggesting, sir!?

: p

[amanda]

Via a book of 'tree stories', I learnt the word tribology that means the slipperiness of things, specifically banana skins and that the 2014 Ig Nobel prize was won for this very thing. 

[celebaelin]

Oct 1, 2024 9:38:35 GMT Bondee said:

Oct 1, 2024 0:12:11 GMT celebaelin said:

PS Yes I do own it on vinyl but since I'm not currently living in a f**king cave and eating mammoth I no longer have a deck to play it on.

What are you suggesting, sir!?

: p

I guess what I'm really suggesting is that someone out there must have a scratch-free copy of the Zodiac Mindwarp EP and the ability to upload it to Youtube and so they should do that forthwith; or seventh or eighthwith at least.

[celebaelin]

This is what's currently available:

Hymn of the Speed Kings (jumps at ~1m:30s)

High Heel Heaven (also jumps at ~1m:30s)

Dangerous

Kickstart Me For Love (jumps at ~1m)

Wild Child (second attempt) (jumps at ~10s, ~55s, ~1m:25)

High Priest of Love - the first track of the 6 on that EP - is available but oddly the best version (only studio version available) is taken from a film soundtrack album (Return of the Living Dead Part II)

[celebaelin]

2000AD's latest edition (dated today - 2nd October 2024) is PROG 2402.

[suze]

This actuallly happened yesterday, but I only saw the memo today and so I learned that President #39 Jimmy Carter was 100 yesterday.

Mr Carter is rather frail and is reported not to get out of bed every day, but he was taken around the garden in a wheelchair to see a flypast.  Every living President bar one (yes, you guessed correctly) sent him a birthday message, as did the King.  He has told his family that he hopes to live long enough to vote for Kamala Harris in November but realistically not much longer, and he has asked Joe Biden to deliver the eulogy at his funeral when the time comes.

[efros]

If I was him I'd be getting a postal ballot, it seems most states count them if they get them and the return envelope has been opened. If it's still in the sealed envelope when they learn about the death then it can be discarded.

[jenny]

I hope he makes it. He wasn't a desperately successful President, but the thing that he is most criticised for (the failure to rescue the hostages from Iran) wasn't really his fault. I'm listening to the audiobook of "The Situation Room" written and read by George Stephanopoulis and I've just heard the bit about that incident. He was basically misled by over-optimistic military men, I think.

[crissdee]

He's been my favourite POTUS ever since I heard he reported a UFO while he was Governor...

[efros]

That CNN has launched a paywall on its online platform,



I forecast it will go down in flames.

[suze]

Oct 2, 2024 18:30:34 GMT efros said:

If I was him I'd be getting a postal ballot, it seems most states count them if they get them and the return envelope has been opened. If it's still in the sealed envelope when they learn about the death then it can be discarded.

He's probably already done it. I discover that absentee voting in Georgia is already open, and I doubt that he's been up to going to a polling station in person for a decade.

There is perhaps a comparison between Jimmy Carter's presidency and John Major's PM-ship in Britain.  The main thing that got him elected was "not being Nixon", just as the main thing that got Major elected was "not being Thatcher".  While he was in the job he was seen as ineffectual, but chances are that no one else at the time could have succeeded where he failed, and he gets a better press now than he ever did while in office.  Carter did win the Nobel Peace Prize, and it wouldn't have been a travesty if Major - and indeed Carter's longstanding friend Senator George Mitchell (D-ME) - had done.

[efros]

That Queen played a concert at Stirling University in 1974 that ended in a riot that sent a couple of them to hospital. Cost of entry was 55p.

[Bondee]

Oct 2, 2024 22:59:47 GMT efros said:

That CNN has launched a paywall on its online platform,

<snip pic>

I forecast it will go down in flames.

I couldn't possibly suggest that anyone should visit 12ft <dot> io to scale said, or indeed any, paywall.

It's not 100% effective but it work's more often than not.

[efros]

Ghostery works on their video ads and X Overlay takes care of the obfuscating overlay.

[suze]

Oct 3, 2024 13:26:13 GMT efros said:

That Queen played a concert at Stirling University in 1974 that ended in a riot that sent a couple of them to hospital. Cost of entry was 55p.

Having not previously encountered the band Nutz, I looked them up.

They were a hard rock band from Liverpool.  They never sold very many records, but became "infamous" for having a bottom (female) on the cover of their first album.  This song was the nearest they ever came to having a hit.  It's not terrible, but there were any number of bands who sounded much like that in the 70s.

They seem to have been a fairly popular live band though, and opened for bands including Queen and Black Sabbath.  It is reported that one member of the band "walked across the stage naked during Queen's encore".  Whether this is what sparked the riot is not recorded.

[efros]

The '74 tour was Queen's graduation, Seven seas of Rhye had just been released and they were no longer a support band as they had been for several years before this. I saw them a few years later on the Night at the Opera tour. It was my first concert and it sort of spoiled me for a few years as no one I saw compared well to that first one. Mercury even then could control a crowd like no one else, well okay Ian Anderson was pretty damn good at it too.

[celebaelin]

I was never a fan of Bowie either personally or in terms of his music so when I say that his was the gratest stage presence I've witnessed to date I'd appreciate it if you considered that.

[efros]

I've never seen Bowie live, but I can certainly believe what you say. Similarly I was never a great fan of Jethro Tull but Anderson onstage is a genius.

[celebaelin]

I'm happy to take your word for it but I've not seen Tull live - if you'd asked me prior to my checking I'd have said I 'must' have 'cos of Broadsword and the Beast but I've checked the gig lists for '82 and the years following and I wasn't at any of those.

Dee Snider (Twisted Sister) made an impression on me more than once for sheer work in winning the crowd over in the first case and awesome vocal power in the second (although I was 'on side' at that point anyway it was still a thing to behold) but as regards other examples I was already a fan of the front men I found myself being impressed by so that's less of an acolade.

[celebaelin]

Cocker Spaniels are named after woodcock - which they were bred to retrieve.

Cocker Spaniels were originally bred as hunting dogs in the UK, with the term "cocker" deriving from their use to hunt the Eurasian woodcock.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocker_Spaniel#External_links

The Papillon is named for the resemblance of its ears to a butterfly and the Airedale is named for a Yorkshire river valley.  Posters can doubtless add considerably to the list of dog breeds with connotations relating to things that fly...

[crissdee]

Handsome doggie!!!

[crissdee]

TIL, that Mitre Square, one of the last Ripper murder sites to look anything like it did at the time of the murders, no longer does. Glancing at a book on the subject in H on W, I saw a picture captioned "Mitre Sq" and thought "That looks nothing like Mitre Sq, unless it has changed vastly since I last saw it!"

According to Google Street View, it has. A quick scan of that resource shows that there is now little point in taking a Ripper walk, since there is nothing to see even vaguely Victorian at any of the sites. The first site has now been subsumed by the rear entrance of the Underground station, now adorned with a Bangladeshi(?) translation of the station name.

i.gyazo.com/5017fb41510fc40d200e780bffae7f2b.png.

This is the first time I have seen such a thing, is it to be the new standard practice?

[suze]

The language seen there is indeed Bengali, which is the first language of the vast majority of people in Bangladesh.

The London Borough of Tower Hamlets paid for the Bengali signage, in recognition of the large number of Bangla people who live in the area.  It is Britain's only railway station sign in Bengali, and there are no plans for others.

Southall station has signage in Punjabi, again reflecting the community that it serves.  There are a few signs in French at airport stations and Eurostar stations, but otherwise only three seemingly random stations have signs in foreign.  Bicester Village has signs in Chinese because lots of Chinese people used to go to the shopping centre (they've mostly not come back since Covid), Moreton in Marsh has signs in Japanese because lots of Japanese tourists go to the Cotswolds (they have come back), and Wallsend station on the Tyne & Wear Metro has signs in Latin because Hadrian's Wall.  

Wikipedia asserts there to be signage in Welsh at Henffordd, but this appears not to be true.  It's been asked for, and so it has at Chester and Gobowen, but the railway folk have said "no".  The only station sign in England to include Welsh is at Knighton.  The town is in Wales but its station is in England by about 20 meters, and there is a (mis-spelled, apparently) station sign in Welsh.  Nantwich station is rumoured to have a No Smoking sign in Welsh which was put there by mistake.

[crissdee]

Colour me not at all surprised that a response concerning foreign languages and railways came from a certain household in Kent.....

[suze]

You were rather playing to our strengths there, as surely as if the subject had been Sherlock Holmes and cricket!

Meanwhile, were any proof needed that there are fan websites for everything, if you click here you can see the Welsh No Smoking sign at Nantwich station.  The out-of-focus plaques next to the sign are awards that the station won for its flowerbeds.