Things I Learnt in 2023 | Hacker News Reader

Things I Learnt in 2023

drobinin.com

71 pointsvalzevul42 comments

A fun note about the multiocular O - ꙮ - is that Unicode 15.0.0 included an update to it because it didn't have enough eyes: https://twitter.com/jonty/status/1571615998335123457

It should have 10, but many existing fonts only have 7.

Here's "Proposal to revise the glyph of CYRILLIC LETTER MULTIOCULAR O": https://www.unicode.org/wg2/docs/n5170-multiocular-o.pdf

Also known as the trypophobia character: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trypophobia

ꙮꙮꙮꙮꙮꙮ

There's that (practically useless) thing, there are all sorts of palm gestures like U+1FAF3 "PALM DOWN HEAD", U+1F91E "CROSSED FINGERS", and of course U+1F595 "MIDDLE FINGER", but there's no fig gesture [°] in emojis, and proposals to add it were filed and rejected twice [^]. The Unicode consortium priorities are weird.

[°] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fig_sign

[^] https://www.unicode.org/emoji/emoji-requests.html

As far as Spam Musubi - the US military brought Spam to the islands during WWII, and it quickly became available off-base. Combined with wartime fishing restrictions on the islands, the quickly became the easiest meat source available to locals. They made do with what they had, and spam sushi was invented along the way. Eventually, it took on a cult following of its own, and the rest is history - but Spam's place on the Hawaiian Islands originally comes from hardships imposed by the US military occupying the islands during WWII.

It is not Rugby but American Football you are talking about.

Rashomon is film by Akira Kurosawa from 1950 where the killing of a Samurai is told from various points of view. That is why the story telling you are talking about is called that.

Ah, then today I learnt that rugby and American football are different!

I knew about the Kurosawa's movie though, just didn't mention it in the snippet.

I'm surprised anyone thought the line was drawn on the field considering it changes with every first down.

> I wonder what happened though, and how kids managed to study constantly drunk.

They learned early how to be functional alcoholics. Drunk kids these days just don't know how to handle their liquor and society has been going down the drain because of it.

Upto half a liter isn't much, especially considering that most traditional brews were lower alcohol content than the typical stuff today. So they probably weren't drunk, but who knows how that might have affected them in the future.

Half a liter is ⅔ of a standard bottle of wine. Even if it is only 11% ABV, this still equates to 55 ml of ethanol. An average 14 year old male weighs 112 lbs, about 70% of an adult’s size.

So if we extrapolate linearly, 55 ml of ethanol would be equivalent to 78 ml of ethanol for an adult, which is 6.5 shots, assuming a 1 oz shot

Yeah, but the wine was supposedly watered down for the children too. And that would be the maximum limit too.

Everything you're saying is true, but the wine was watered down. I grew up in (Eastern) Europe and I used to have a glass of wine with my parents at dinner time when I reached my teens pretty much every time they did (we had a small vineyard, like most people, and wine was plentiful). However, I was mixing it with mineral water (50-50) and with a heavy meal, I never got drunk from that.

I wouldn't consider functional alcoholism to be a good thing for anyone. It's especially bad for brain development under age ~25, before the prefrontal cortex is fully developed.

https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/alcohol-and-adolescen...

Drinking contaminated water could kill you for most of the first half of the 20th century.

So, it's probably an unclear tradeoff, historically.

I’ve recently read that the idea that pre moderns drank alcohol as an alternative to contaminated water is a myth. See https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ol1h45/comme...

This gotta be the most alarmist, out-of-touch with reality comment I've read this year.

Yeah, but it's only mid January...

How out of touch with reality do you need to be to take an absurd "kids these days" joke seriously?

You should be alarmed!

Literally anything you post on this website someone will take literally. Ask me how I know.

How do you know?

Pickles in Texan movie theaters has been on the decline the last 20 or so years, in my observation. In the 90s, they were available commonly but the younger generation wasn’t eating them very often. Those were my teen years, and I remember occasionally a peer would get one but it wasn’t what I’d say was super common. Our parents generation and older were more likely to buy one. I actually went to the movies today, and I couldn’t think of when the last time I’ve seen a pickle in a theater. I’m sure they still are but I have seen one being sold or eaten in well over a decade.

> Conkers... I wonder if there is a winning strategy...

Cook them, just don't get caught having cooked them because then you're going to need to win a fight too.

I have fond memories of playing conkers in Dublin in the late 70s/early 80s, thanks to a number of horse chestnut trees at the end of our street. We'd "borrow" a knitting needle to piece them.

Cool list, some reading material for tonight. This reminds me of a similar thing I did in 2021 which was collecting a tidbit of trivia knowledge every single day: https://www.karelvo.com/blog/2022-01-01-365-thing-i-learned-...

That's pretty cool, thanks for sharing!

(seems like I will be spending tonight learning how to mimic bird sounds)

Spam Musubi isn't that rare, you can get it at any Quickly.

Kaffeost is nice! Here is some more info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_cheese

Spam musubi is so good, the author should try making some :)

I loved having spam with kimchi stew too. Growing up, I didn't even realize spam was a brand.

Note that "Stone of Scone" is pronounced "Skoon". Unlike the food, which is pronounced "skon".

Thing I learnt is that this person says he collates things he finds in RSS feeds but doesn't offer an RSS feed himself.

Hey, OP here, that’d be sad indeed but the RSS is at https://drobinin.com/feed.xml

Thanks. Unfortunately standard feed auto discovery couldn’t find it.

Falooda is not the only Mughlai dessert with noodles: Doodh Savaiyan is sweet milk with vermicelli noodles.

Off topic, but is that a piece of metal in your Champ?

The picture is from Wikipedia but seems like it's just the bottom of the (probably copper) pan visible through?

Love this, thank you for compiling and sharing this!

I believe Belgian schools still serve low-alcohol beer in the canteens.

That's the first I hear of this and I've been Belgian for the past 49 years.

Well you’ve been missing out!

I have a small group of Belgian friends and it’s quite possible they’ve been pulling my leg. Sad (for the kids) if so. Belgian beer is great!

I did get what we call "table beer" when eating at my grand parents, but never in school.

It must have been a regional thing.

Anyway, you're right that school would have been a lot better :)

Guess I have to find a way to prank these two guys in reverse.

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