what I have learned today.

[robgul]

That there is a real place called Skygate. Unfortunately, instead of being a portal into another dimension, it's an East Midlands warehouse for a group of tat-driven debt-mongers.
https://www.business-live.co.uk/retail-consumer/take-exclusive-look-inside-shop-17063309
https://theverygroup.jobs/locations/distribution-centres

Those places are pretty impressive - about 10 years ago I had a tour of a massive M&S logistics warehouse near Nottingham (I think it was managed by DHL) - the amount of automation was stunning with clother orders picked from loads of stock all on hangers and fed around the place and into the packaging line with very little human intervention.   

I suppose nowadays Gregg Wallace would have been saying "Cor, mate, that's the biggest thing I've ever seen" as he seems to have done on all of his factory shows.

Rob

[rafletcher]

That “tentacle porn” is a thing.

[ian]

We once inadvertently wandered into a Hentai gathering. There were tentacles. So many tentacles. An octopus would have felt inadequate. And if you didn't have your own, you could buy them. I generally never felt undertentacled until that point.

It was the sort of day that started with attending a mass dog wedding and ended with an Octoberfest. That would have less odd if it weren't May.

[Kim]

That “tentacle porn” is a thing.

Hence the best "This article is about..." line on Wikipedia:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendril_perversion

[Cudzoziemiec]

That “tentacle porn” is a thing.

Hence the best "This article is about..." line on Wikipedia:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendril_perversion

The Tendril Tendency? Or maybe Tentacles with Testicles (should that be Testicles with Tentacles?)

[Salvatore]

that a second cousin of my father was a mistress (albeit one of many) of the Prince of Wales (the one who became Edward VIII).




Allegedly.

[Mr Larrington]

That “tentacle porn” is a thing.

Hence the best "This article is about..." line on Wikipedia:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendril_perversion

Needs a link saying "For creepy oddballs sexually attracted to squid, see...", though.

[geraldc]

Oedipus has a bad rap, and that seems down to Freud. He didn't mean to shag his mum, he was adopted and thought his adopted parents were his real parents, and killing his dad was just a random act of road rage. He hooked up with his mum as a kind of prize for solving the riddle of the sphinx. For years I thought Oedipus killed his dad to get to his mum, but the 2 events had no relation to each other.

[Mrs Pingu]

Interesting article for those of you suffering with hay fever
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/16/how-urban-planners-preference-for-male-trees-has-made-your-hay-fever-worse

[Ham]

That there is a BBC News service in Pidgin https://www.bbc.com/pidgin

[Mr Larrington]

That the track Sonho Dourado, on the OST album of the 2004 fillum "Friday Night Lights", is not by Explosions In The Sky at all, but rather by Daniel Lanois.  And also that it's deeply earworm-y.

[T42]

You know the wee card US prezzes carry around, the one with a bunch of codes on that identify them for nuclear Armageddon purposes?  Bill Clinton lost his, and Jimmy Carter's supposedly went to the cleaners in a suit pocket.

[Morat]

That you can't paste high ASCII into certain makes of firewall login - which is especially annoying if you've already set such a password through the GUI.
Silly me.

[TheLurker]

You know the wee card US prezzes carry around, the one with a bunch of codes on that identify them for nuclear Armageddon purposes?  Bill Clinton lost his, and Jimmy Carter's supposedly went to the cleaners in a suit pocket.

Doesn't surprise me in the least.  Question is; do the older presidents get large print versions?

[T42]

You know the wee card US prezzes carry around, the one with a bunch of codes on that identify them for nuclear Armageddon purposes?  Bill Clinton lost his, and Jimmy Carter's supposedly went to the cleaners in a suit pocket.

Doesn't surprise me in the least.  Question is; do the older presidents get large print versions?

A flunky with a Teleprompt and a supply of Depends.

[robgul]

Having read Jerome K Jerome's Three Men in a Boat and his Three Men on the Bummel* I finally found out what "Bummel" means (having searched in the past) - it's a derivaton of a German word that means "strolling"

* less well-known of the works, it has some hilarious passages about cycling and in particular saddles during a tour of the Black Forest.

Rob

[T42]

Also the origin of the US word bum for a tramp.

[Mr Larrington]

That the record label run by space fanboi and Amplifier frontman Sel Balamir is called "Rockosmos" as a play on words involving Russian space agencies.

[rower40]

When cutting a length of wood to act as a paint stirrer, with the paint poured into a plastic ice-cream tub, make sure the stirrer is not just longer than the longer edge of the ice-cream tub, but also longer than the diagonal.  Or even the 3-D opposite corner diagonal.  Just to be sure.

[hatler]

When cutting a length of wood to act as a paint stirrer, with the paint poured into a plastic ice-cream tub, make sure the stirrer is not just longer than the longer edge of the ice-cream tub, but also longer than the diagonal.  Or even the 3-D opposite corner diagonal.  Just to be sure.

[Cudzoziemiec]

That an Irish accent pronounces the h in Birmingham, almost like American.

[T42]

Realized why there's a diaeresis or the E in aiguë. It's because the U is pronounced.

Also, that barges pulled by horses often had stables on board. Logical, really.

[The Family Cyclist]

They also had removable barriers till the young horses learnt to stay away from the edge. It stopped them foaling in

[T42]

That's mare than I needed to know.

[citoyen]

Pre-wedding photoshoots are a thing.

Presumably this is a way of getting all those tiresome wedding pics done without having it spoil the day itself.