I used to believe narwhals were a fake internet cryptid, but no, real ass aquatic mammal.
Great, now I have to think about unicorns, dragons, and giraffes as cryptids.
I used to think things mattered but nothing really does.
Not recently, but when I was in High School, we were taught that Shakespeare’s plays weren’t written down until later. They were cobbled together from people who could remember the lines and wrote them down later.
When I went to college I learned a) not even remotely true and b) High School is basically bullshit to keep you busy until you go to college.
Maybe the thought was that even Shakespeare took themes and plots from earlier work and even from stories that come from oral traditions?
The earth is flat. I learn this because I read some book called discworld
NaN == NaNOh there’s a lot.
- When I was a kid, parents and teachers used to teach, if you have sore muscles a day after an extensive workout, you need to work out even more in order to reduce the soreness. In fact, however, you need to rest those muscles.
- I thought, pepperoni was pepper. (Like bell pepper, just smaller; similar to chilli). Then my girlfriend enlightened me after a confusing conversation, that pepperoni was a kind of salami. And then recently, at a company event before ordering pizza and after a very confusing discussion of what toppings we order, it turned out pepperoni was actually a kind of a salami, but not everyone agreed. So by now I’ve learned that pepperoni is neither of them. It doesn’t exist. It’s listed on pizza menus, and when you order it, you’ll get something for sure, but you won’t know in advance what it would be.
- This isn’t new, the realization was several years ago, but fits this list nicely: I thought, perfume was something for women. It turned out, there was perfume for men too.
- Parents used to teach, if you read in the dark (on paper, not on a screen, I must add), you’re ruining your eyes. But if you think about it: wtf does low light do to your eyes? By that logic, you’re constantly ruining your eyes while sleeping.
- For some reason I used to think, you could simply delete related entities bound by foreign key constraints in postgres, if you ran the query in a transaction. Once when I finally needed to do this, I learned the hard way I was wrong.
There’s a lot more than this, probably I’ll update this comment in the future. Or not.
I love how this comment covers super common misconceptions, but then throws a super specific database issue in at the end. Gotta have that cascade on delete, unless you want orphans.
Parents used to teach, if you read in the dark (on paper, not on a screen, I must add), you’re ruining your eyes. But if you think about it: wtf does low light do to your eyes? By that logic, you’re constantly ruining your eyes while sleeping.
The theory is that frequently straining your eyes is an issue, so reading in conditions that are difficult to see in will weaken them, not that dark itself hurts your eyes.
I used to believe that common sense existed. You know, the usual stuff, like water is hot and fire is wet…
But then it occurred to me a few years ago, that what people believe to be ‘common sense’ are actually the things that nobody bothers to teach the next generation.
Meaning that common sense is only as common as one’s elders teach you. So when the elders assume that you automatically know certain things, they won’t bother teaching you.
Hence, common sense does not exist.
Besides all of what you said being wrong…
You think “a few years ago” is recent?
“Common sense” literally just means stuff most people are likely to know.
It used to be common sense to not sneak up behind a horse in the dark. But most people today have no idea why that could literally cost you your life, unless if they watched GoT or something and remember what happened to Hodor.
If horses were still everywhere, it would still be common sense. Because common sense stuff didn’t need to be taught. An average person would have learned that by a certain age regardless of if anyone ever tried to teach them.
Either they’d have been kicked by a horse, or they’d have seen/heard of a person being kicked.
Most of the time when I see people make the complaint you just did, it’s because they’re older and don’t understand information that was important for them, is no longer important for the next generation.
Cute argument. Love it!
I was actually kicked twice by horses when I was a child. Maybe you should pass that information along to the newer generations…
You know, actually teach what you believe should be common sense…
You know, actually teach what you believe should be common sense
…
You completely and utterly missed every point I was making if you still think that’s common sense.
Here’s an example of common sense in 2024, that’s actually relevant to “newer generations” tho:
When someone is that incapable of understanding something, blocking them is better than wasting time repeating yourself.
I used to believe business could claim tax breaks for the money we contribute when they ask “Do you want to donate to XYZ cause?”
I learned today about how businesses can’t actually claim point-of-sale charitable donations that show on a receipt for a tax write-off. Also, I learned about how no one can claim tax write-off for cash donations into a charity jar.
So I was just being a greedy asshole this whole time?
I was always told that the reason you used to see an Olive Garden next to every Red Lobster is because a husband/wife couple owned both chains and wanted the restaurants placed next to each other. Then a decade ago when they kinda stopped doing that it was because they divorced.
I can’t find a single piece of evidence that supports this claim online. The two restaurants were just owned by the same parent company and Red Lobster got sold off in 2014.
Huh, I always assumed it was just because they target the exact same people. The only differentiator is pasta or seafood, in my mind.
This is it. Modern planners use GIS and data analytics to place new stores. In my region Publix and Starbucks are a common thing and usually going for similar demographics, so it’s not unusual to often see them in the same shopping plaza. Similarly dollar stores, Walmarts, and Dunkin’ Donuts always seem to find a place in the same neighborhoods too (in my experience). Those Dollar & Dunkin’ neighborhoods almost never have a decent grocery either.
I’ve heard that Starbucks spends so much doing neighborhood research and real estate trends that if you buy property anywhere near where they are building a new Starbucks, you are likely to see a positive return.
It’s pronounced offen with a silent T. You may think you sound smarter with a hard T, but you’re ignoring the root etymology of the word.
That’s how I feel about helicopter!
You and J live in a bubble in a hyperloop tunnel. You have not invented “oft” as part of any language yet. Or do You and K live in the anthro and say oof… and laugh every time someone trips on a coconut often enough it becomes mean? Either is possible, yet oft misunderstood.
So, the dictionary is not a gold-standard.
It is, in fact, the opposite and in very simplified terms, just a book of how people currently pronounce words and their meaning today. Think of it more as a record book for the time it was printed, rather than a rule book; living languages are funny like that.
If you would like to know more, I highly recommend Word by Word written by Kory Stamper, one of the editors for the Merriam-Websters Dictionary.
The word has always had a t sound since Old English, and it’s part of the reconstructed language Proto-Germanic in the form *ufta. Every other Germanic language displays a t in the corresponding word:
Scots oftin (“often”), North Frisian oftem (“often”), Saterland Frisian oafte (“often”), German oft (“often”), Pennsylvania German oft (“often”), Danish ofte (“often”), Norwegian Bokmål ofte (“often”), Norwegian Nynorsk ofte (“often”), Swedish ofta (“often”), and Icelandic oft (“often”).
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