Today I learned...

Til why there are two spellings of the adjective gray/grey in the English language. I knew that it differed between regions, and how we usually spell it in the USA is not how they spell it in the UK, but hadn't thought about why that was before.

The reason is because in Old English they spelled the color as grǣg. The accented character that looks like the letter A and E combined is not in Modern English. So English-speakers learned to spell gray with A, and others made due with an E.

TIL about Waffle House (American diner restaurant place mostly in the southeastern states) in a video I watched earlier. I've seen a few Waffle Houses around but I've never actually been to one. I didn't know there was so much lore about them. Apparently these are used to register the severity of hurricanes and other natural disasters.
https://www.wafflehouse.com/how-to-measure-a-storms-fury-one-breakfast-at-a-time/

Now I feel obligated to go to a Waffle House.

Til the collective noun a conspiracy of ravens. I have heard of a murder of crows, which is great and dramatic enough, but never knew that ravens conspired, and I love it! I have to use that in my writing someday. Conspiracy of ravens just sounds too good to leave alone.

VisionofMilotic said:

Til the collective noun a conspiracy of ravens. I have heard of a murder of crows, which is great and dramatic enough, but never knew that ravens conspired, and I love it! I have to use that in my writing someday. Conspiracy of ravens just sounds too good to leave alone.

Click to expand...

They do. Saw two trying to pull a pizza from a green bin the other day. Obviously took some discussion.

Today I learned about the term typoglycemia. Very interesting term.

There are apparently poisonous species of birds. Naturally, some of them are native to Australia, but not all of them are.

TIL how to add captions to Youtube videos. I was poking around in the settings and found where to add them, so I added captions from a video from a few months go. I want to add captions on some of my other older videos.

So, apparently neoloberalism is older than the 70s. It goes back to the post-WWI era. Liberalism had just died and nationalism was on the rise. The creation of neoliberalism was done in order to replace the former while actively trying to fight back nationalist governments from confiscating private property.

It's kind of ironic that nowadays the people who love neoliberalism are also the ones who are actively funding far-right groups just so they can keep their own interests secured.

Til the word sardoodledom. I heard it for the first time when I came across a video of a spelling bee, and saw the giggles that this long and whimsical-sounding word inspired. I looked up the definition, and in a literary context it means a lack of ideas and using contrived story devices for melodrama. The word was invented by the great George Bernard Shaw. He coined the term after a popular French playwright of the day, Victorien Sardou. His writing did not exactly impress Shaw.

TIL that they added one more click to unsubscribing from Youtube channels. You need to go to that channel, click on the "subscribted" button. But now it has a popup menu where you have to look for the "unsubscribe" option. And of course, you still need to confirm that.

They definitely don't want you to unsubscribe from channels. <_<

TIL you can't redeem anything from the Switch Online App if you don't pay for the service even if you have enough points.
Nintendo doing it again, the gatekeeping. Welp, guess no new fancy icon for my Switch... <_<

Today I learned the shirt I'm wearing is the trans colors. Yes, I am aware of the trans flag but I wear this shirt a lot and it just suddenly hit me today after like I don't know how long I've had it...ten years? Maybe even longer?? That the light blue, white and pink were the trans colors because they're not in the same position as the trans flag.

All this time I basically have had a stealth trans shirt.

I like this shirt even more now.
Horizontal stripes are manly btw.

Today I learned that Vergil (from Devil May Cry)'s voice actor is most famous for having played a Power Ranger more than two decades ago. He's sure aged like fine wine since then, though... 😳

Oh, and this all comes in response to something I learned a few weeks ago; Trey from Pokémon Xenoverse is apparently officially confirmed to be 20 years old. I assumed for a long time that he was around 16, the same age as the player character, but... that never really sat quite right with me. Now a certain someone's appearance in Pass 4 (which had been torturing me for months due to the question of Trey's age) as well as Trey's own appearance in LumenTale (which could have him be anywhere from 20 to 24-25) make a lot more sense. So does him having a voice like Vergil's, as someone suggested in one of the Xenoverse servers I'm in.

Til i learned that on route to the top of Mount Everest there's a section called Rainbow Valley near the northern ridge of the mountain, above the altitude of 8000m. When I first heard the name I thought, hmm that's a beautiful and mysterious term. Maybe this is a part of the Everest where climbers often see rainbow optical illusions from prismatic ice crystals refracting the sunlight. No, if only that were the true...

Unfortunately, Rainbow Valley is a death zone filled with frozen bodies of people who didn't survive the climb to the top of Mt Everest, and couldn't be recovered from the ice. The "rainbow" refers to the long stretch of travelers dressed in brightly-colored outdoor clothes to make them stand out against the snow in case of search and rescue. They die from tragic accidents like falling from the height, or getting buried under avalanches as well other medical complications like altitude sickness because of the low oxygen levels or hypothermia due to the cold. Sad.

TIL drawing water in a digital art project is a very involved process. There are still things I haven't quite figured out. <_<

That landing a new job feels like mission impossible

Til ability Shadow Tag works the way it does as a nod to ninja folklore. There's a legend about a shinobi technique used to prevent your enemy from moving by pinning down their shadow. You might use projectiles to do this, physically pin it down with your body or even manipulate your own shadow to keep pursuing them. The original Japanese name for the ability Shadow Tag is Kage Fumi/ かげふみ and it literally means to step/tread on shadows.

Today I learnt that putting a picture from an attachment in your flair means that people who don't have an account can't see it in your flair.

This had confused me for quite a while until I finally remembered that PC only allows registered users to view attachments. ^^"

Unnaturally breaking a fever with Tylenol/Advil/Whatever will make you sweat like no other.

TIL in order for a bakery to be considered a bakery in France, they have to make and bake their dough from scratch. There's apparently a law that enforces this. (the exact wording might be a bit off, but I learned this in a documentary in my French class)