TIL: Today I Learned

[cybrxkhan]

TIL my 6th grade crush is almost certainly Jewish. I'd suspected for a few years but thought she was French or something like that when I was crushing on her. She was that lovely.

Kind of brings back memories.


I also learned that apparently teachers are very good at picking up on which students crush on who. Though that makes complete sense to me since I don't think kids are good at hiding it anyways.

TIL that women are capable of throat singing, and that they don't sound very different from the men when doing so. I'd only ever heard men throat singing, but apparently women doing it is thought to bring bad luck (in Tuva, at least).

That I find that very interesting for some reason.... especially how they can sound very much like the men.

 

[Kyriakos]

 

[nc-1701]

Today I learned the acronym "FUPA", it's a word I've badly needed to describe this phenomenon but didn't know existed.

 

[SamSniped]

TIL: Robert Downey Jr. can sing. Sounds sorta like Chris Cornell, actually.

Link to video.

 

[Tee Kay]

TIL the leader of the Australia First Party (white nationalist fascists) comes from a Lebanese immigrant family.

 

[cybrxkhan]

TIL the leader of the Australia First Party (white nationalist fascists) comes from a Lebanese immigrant family.

In the states I think Middle Easterners (Arabs, Persians, Turkish, etc.) are usually classified as Caucasian, maybe that has soething to do wth it?

 

[Phrossack]

TIL the leader of the Australia First Party (white nationalist fascists) comes from a Lebanese immigrant family.

The Lebanese, Syrians, and certain other Arab-ish groups have long had a debatable racial status in the US. People from the Middle East and North Africa are officially white, but unofficially it's up in the air. Arabs are pretty diverse, some looking quite dark and others looking like Greeks or Sicilians. Everyone probably thinks of my great-aunt as white, and most thought the same of her brother, my grandfather, although he did get stopped at airports on occasion (their parents were Lebanese). I don't know exactly what the KKK and other groups here think of them.

 

[cybrxkhan]

The Lebanese, Syrians, and certain other Arab-ish groups have long had a debatable racial status in the US. People from the Middle East and North Africa are officially white, but unofficially it's up in the air. Arabs are pretty diverse, some looking quite dark and others looking like Greeks or Sicilians. Everyone probably thinks of my great-aunt as white, and most thought the same of her brother, my grandfather, although he did get stopped at airports on occasion (their parents were Lebanese). I don't know exactly what the KKK and other groups here think of them.

You're part Lebanese? That's cool.

And yeah Middle Easterners have a lot more variety than peple think, especially Persians. I'd say some of them can pass off as an average northern European, while some southern Europeans look close to Indian. I recall one time when an Indian comedian claimed he went to Italy and was mistaken for being Italian a lot of times. I also recall a more unfortnate incident (that I posted about on this very thread, actually, a while back) when some Greek-Americans were assaulted by some racist bigots because they were mistaken for being Arabs or something.

 

[Tee Kay]

In the Australian context: before the 1940s immigration was restricted almost exclusively to White British people and the occasional Northern European. Southern Europeans only started being admitted in significant numbers in the late 1940s, and only because northern European immigration was judged to be insufficient in the face of the Asiatic hordes. The current policy of multiculturalism has its roots in the effort to accommodate Italian and Greek newcomers.

 

[cybrxkhan]

TIL "chancla" is a flip-flop used by Hispanic women to punish their kids (and husbands, if necessary).

Also learned (or realized, perhaps) that my mom knew I was ogling scantily clad women in this Las Vegas magazine-booklet thingy when I was in 2nd/3rd grade and that she didn't buy my lame excuse, but she didn't feel like embarrassing me further. Oddly, I still have that magazine-booklet but haven't looked at it in years.

 

[Tee Kay]

Well yeah, nowadays you have a much wider selection of scantily-clad women (or not clad at all)

 

[cybrxkhan]

Well yeah, nowadays you have a much wider selection of scantily-clad women (or not clad at all)

Kids these days will never understand what it's like to not have the internet!


I think I just keep it for nostalgic value. Also, my taste in women at 8 years old is weird.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

The Russian Black Sea Fleet apparently spent some time moored in US ports during the American Civil War.

 

[Glassfan]

In the Australian context: before the 1940s immigration was restricted almost exclusively to White British people and the occasional Northern European. Southern Europeans only started being admitted in significant numbers in the late 1940s, and only because northern European immigration was judged to be insufficient in the face of the Asiatic hordes. The current policy of multiculturalism has its roots in the effort to accommodate Italian and Greek newcomers.

Much like Canada.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Nasal mucus acquires green and yellow colorations from the body's immune responses to infection (essentially like pus). This also contributes to thickening.

 

[Mango Elephant]

TIL my 6th grade crush is almost certainly Jewish. I'd suspected for a few years but thought she was French or something like that when I was crushing on her. She was that lovely.

Almost certainly? The way you say that is funny.

 

[cybrxkhan]

Almost certainly? The way you say that is funny.

Almost certainly because I don't have 100% proof and since she doesn't really know me (other than what little fame I accumulated as the token "cool smart kid" in middle school) it would be very strange for me to send her a facebook message out of the blue.

I came to the conclusion after I realized that her germanic-sounding surname must have been Jewish, given that 99% of the "white" folks where I grew up were Jewish. I really dunno why I thought French when I was crushing on her, maybe I'm a closet romantic or something.

This is not the first time I thought a crush was the wrong ethnicity at any rate. Tends to only happen with white girls, though.

 

[Goodfella]

What's her last name?

 

[cybrxkhan]

Trupp.

 

[cybrxkhan]

TIL: in some places, in the past and probably now, when security forces have to deal with peaceful protestors, one tactic they use is to pick on the women, hoping that some of the male protestors will start getting rough on the security forces in order to 'protect' the women, thus justifying their arrest.