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Things you are too embarrassed to admit you don't understand

759 replies

ClassicStripe · 03/08/2023 12:47

I don't think I really understand what a fascist is.

OP posts:
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6
blueshoes · 05/08/2023 12:55

JusthereforXmas · 05/08/2023 11:02

You are Gen X like my mam was... personally I think you where the best generation.

<Bows> Gen X it is.

So very kind of you to say that of your mam. We are a hardworking forgotten bunch who don't ask for much.

Phineyj · 05/08/2023 12:59

I'm no expert but I think camp/metrosexual/not very macho behaviour is more seen among straight men in some quarters nowadays, so gay men who are a little camp seem less conspicuous, perhaps?

RoseslnTheHospital · 05/08/2023 12:59

@JusthereforXmas it's not "faith" in a theory that makes it fact. It's having sufficient direct and indirect evidence that no reasonable rational scientist would dispute it. You are treating theories like hypotheses. Theories are proven, workable explanations for the evidence that has been found. Where there are incomplete explanations then there may be competing theories, but eventually one theory will become more evidenced and be accepted as fact. That is backed up with repeated experimentation and observation that confirms the theory.

blueshoes · 05/08/2023 13:00

Spinninsweetness · 05/08/2023 12:33

You bring a meeting forward I.e. earlier in the day but when clocks change they spring forward ??? to one hour later???

Yeah, adjusting for changes due to daylight savings requires some mental gymnastics.

Also tricky to calculate between 2 time zones with daylight savings where one has swapped over and the other not, when booking virtual calls <looking at you, US of A>

FatCatatPaddingtonStation · 05/08/2023 13:05

TheWorldIsRound · 05/08/2023 12:10

That's interesting. Do you think being camp (for gay men) is the equivalent and has also reduced? I have no idea how you would even measure this, so maybe it's a completely daft question.

I don’t know really because I still see lots of camp men, but maybe not so many. I don’t know many gay men tbh so can’t really answer that.

DomingoinLittleOakley · 05/08/2023 13:27

ImustLearn2Cook · 04/08/2023 02:01

Thank you @DomingoinLittleOakley You have explained it in a much simpler way and it actually makes sense to me now. I get it! 😃

You're welcome - although as someone has already pointed out, there was an error in my second example, so you would actually be earning £4,000 per month, the original £1,000 plus 300% of that.

aoilily · 05/08/2023 13:37

I don't understand how some people are born with the ability to sing well and others can't. My friend had never had any music or voice training but she had an amazing voice, but I can't carry a tune to save my life!

DomingoinLittleOakley · 05/08/2023 13:40

Bleuuuughhh · 04/08/2023 03:44

I’m a university lecturer in English Literature and I still have to Google benevolent and malevolent. 🤦‍♀️

I always try to think back to the likely root of the word, so the 'mal' prefix comes from Latin 'male' which means 'badly', but you don't need to know that - just think about similar words like malformed, maladjusted for example. The 'ben' part of benevolent again comes from the Latin 'bene' for 'well', so I would think beneficial or benefit.

blueshoes · 05/08/2023 13:41

aoilily · 05/08/2023 13:37

I don't understand how some people are born with the ability to sing well and others can't. My friend had never had any music or voice training but she had an amazing voice, but I can't carry a tune to save my life!

I imagine is the way our brains and nervous system are wired and quality 'hardware' like ears and vocal chords to receive and produce the sounds.

Blakes8th · 05/08/2023 14:22

Inextremis · 03/08/2023 12:51

The definitions of insidious and invidious - I've read them so many times, but it just won't stick in my head. See also egregious.

Insidious is hidden nastiness so I use the first three letters and remember it as 'inside'. Invidious is nastiness out in the open so I take the first three letters and remember it as 'in view'.

JusthereforXmas · 05/08/2023 14:31

aoilily · 05/08/2023 13:37

I don't understand how some people are born with the ability to sing well and others can't. My friend had never had any music or voice training but she had an amazing voice, but I can't carry a tune to save my life!

Its unfairness, I would LOVE to sing but I sound like a dying cat. I do have brain damage that effects my breathing and thus voice though.

I think vocal fold caused by accent could play into it. A lot of welsh people can sing wonderfully, seemingly so can many Scousers. Maybe their accent has an effect on the singing voice.

Spinninsweetness · 05/08/2023 14:32

Ahh thank you. Still confuses my little brain tho !

Annemaria · 05/08/2023 15:12

To CapEBarra, I’m with you. The royal family exists because their ancestors were either cleverer, luckier, more ruthless or craftier than ours. They are parasites. Selfish people who will not give up their unearned privileges. The arguments for keeping the in our so-called democracy are ludicrous.

DrSbaitso · 05/08/2023 15:14

JusthereforXmas · 05/08/2023 14:31

Its unfairness, I would LOVE to sing but I sound like a dying cat. I do have brain damage that effects my breathing and thus voice though.

I think vocal fold caused by accent could play into it. A lot of welsh people can sing wonderfully, seemingly so can many Scousers. Maybe their accent has an effect on the singing voice.

People whose first language involves use of inflection are often very good singers.

MallardsMoorhensAndLethe · 05/08/2023 15:19

XMissPlacedX · 05/08/2023 10:16

@RichardsGear I know they don't stand on their heads. What I meant was ( a bit like a bat 🦇) how with their feet on the ground they aren't hanging upside down.

Although I know they aren't hanging like bats either, my head can't get around the logic of why they aren't ifswim.

It's a sort of optical illusion and we're all taking part but none of us knows it.

You look up you see sky, you look down you see ground. The ground looks basically flat, with some hills and valleys, lakes etc as far as the eyes can see. Everyone sees these same things because the world is so huge.

I can totally understand how people used to think the world was flat and not realise it's spherical. They were going by what they could see and feel. If you were in a space ship and moved far enough away from earth, then you can see it looks spherical. If you could see people on it, all their feet would be on the floor but some of them would look upside down. If you turned your spaceship around, the upside down ones would look the right way up and those who had been the right way up would now look upside down.

You think Australians are upside down because you live in the UK on the opposite side of the world and your life naturally revolves around you so that's your starting point. In your mind you're the one who is the "right way up" and others are "upside down".

Your starting point isn't real though, it's just your perception of reality. In actual reality, the universe doesn't centre around you. Nobody is any more "the right way up" or "upside down" than anybody else. We're all the same amount of "right way up", but that's not how you perceive it because we're all in an optical illusion that the bit of earth we stand on is "the right way up". Combine that with the perception of reality that centers ourselves and everyone thinks it's others who are "the wrong way up".

Geography isn't my strong point, but I think if you look at a globe the UK is somewhere on the side. I think a globe has the earth held at the angle it's spinning. So if you're picturing a spherical earth you're not the right way up or upside down, you're actually sideways on @XMissPlacedX 😝

Whoever wanted to know why sky is blue and space is black. Space is a vacuum and black isn't a colour, it's an absence of colour. White isn't a colour either, it's all the colours together at once. Colour is what you see when sunlight hits solid objects like atoms (atoms make up everything, even you are made of atoms) and bounces off and spreads out. The sky is blue because it's not a vacuum like space, it exists within the earth's atmosphere. The atmosphere is a layer of gases surrounding the earth, including oxygen that we breathe. These gases are made of atoms too. So sunlight bounces off everything and you see colours.

You can buy clear crystals to hang in your window. When the sunlight hits them some of the light goes through the crystal because it's clear and because it's a very solid object with a lot of atoms in it, the light gets separated out at certain angles so you see a rainbow coming from the crystal and landing on your wall.

Inextremis · 05/08/2023 15:29

Blakes8th · 05/08/2023 14:22

Insidious is hidden nastiness so I use the first three letters and remember it as 'inside'. Invidious is nastiness out in the open so I take the first three letters and remember it as 'in view'.

Thank you SO much - this might actually stick in my head!

MallardsMoorhensAndLethe · 05/08/2023 16:00

I know how big a centimetre and a foot are but I don't know how big a metre is or how long a yard is.

A yard is 3ft
A foot is 12 inches
A metre is 100cm
A centimetre is 10mm (millimetres)

While we're on the subject people:

Feet and inches are imperial.
Metres and centimetres are metric.
You can't have 2.5ft or 34.5in. It's 2 1/2 ft and 34 1/2 in (fractions are also imperial measurements).

0.5 as a measurement for "half" is a metric measurement.

1/4 one quarter (literally one of four, where 4 is the whole, imagine chopping an apple into 4 pieces, one piece is a quarter)

1/2 half (one of two, or two of four in the apple scenario above, but you don't write 2/4 you reduce the numbers down to 1/2)

3/4 three quarters (three of four)

Then you can break it down further with eg 7/8 seven eights (seven of eight, where 8 is the whole, so imagine you've chopped your apple into 8 pieces instead of 4, each piece is one eighth)
Or 10/16 ten sixteenths. You get the picture.

And the symbols which people also mix up a lot: " means inches. ' means feet

Astonesthrow · 05/08/2023 16:11

They do! They use great circles which gives you the shortest length when flying over a round thing like the earth.

FatOaf · 05/08/2023 16:42

fractions are also imperial measurements

No they aren't. Fractions exist in every measurement system.

BMW6 · 05/08/2023 16:48

As I understand it a yard was originally set as the distance from a person's nose to the tip of his outstretched arm.

A yard is roughly the same as a meter.

Probably a myth though.

Qwerty21 · 05/08/2023 17:28

Pinkflamingopants · 05/08/2023 09:38

@CatMum000 yes, the ant is a different way up when it is at the bottom of the ball than it is when it’s at the top. When it’s at the top the top of its body is facing north, when it’s at the bottom the top of its body is facing south.

@Qwerty21 maybe you missed the title and theme of the thread!!

No I got it, I just can't believe this is something an adult doesn't understand. Do you think Aussies are all walking around with gravity boots on and have blood rushing to their heads? Do you think they think the same about us?

DrSbaitso · 05/08/2023 17:30

Qwerty21 · 05/08/2023 17:28

No I got it, I just can't believe this is something an adult doesn't understand. Do you think Aussies are all walking around with gravity boots on and have blood rushing to their heads? Do you think they think the same about us?

No I got it, I just can't believe this is something an adult doesn't understand.

Do you understand the thread title?

stopbeingacunt · 05/08/2023 18:11

JusthereforXmas · 05/08/2023 10:50

This has to be the biggest stretch to attempt to be offended I have come across.

I mentioned nothing about 'ageism' or 'sterotyping' of ANYTHING, I simply stated an absolute fact about a designated time frame in all of 10 straight foreward words.

Please explain where the 'ageism' or 'sexism' is in my post?

First, I'm not in the slightest but offended. I certainly wouldn't be offended by words on the Internet.

Who mentioned sexism? Not me, sorry, you're mixing me up with someone else.

My comment was to STOKEY, so unless you had a name change fail your message makes no sense.

JusthereforXmas · 05/08/2023 19:05

stopbeingacunt · 05/08/2023 18:11

First, I'm not in the slightest but offended. I certainly wouldn't be offended by words on the Internet.

Who mentioned sexism? Not me, sorry, you're mixing me up with someone else.

My comment was to STOKEY, so unless you had a name change fail your message makes no sense.

Erm... you LITERALLY quoted me, nobody else. Go back and check.

You also clearly couldn't read the correction right below the word 'sexism' before once again rushing in all offended and jumping to a wild and bizarre conclusion.

stopbeingacunt · 05/08/2023 19:49

JusthereforXmas · 05/08/2023 19:05

Erm... you LITERALLY quoted me, nobody else. Go back and check.

You also clearly couldn't read the correction right below the word 'sexism' before once again rushing in all offended and jumping to a wild and bizarre conclusion.

You're so funny.

Someone else commented I was quoting stokey. If you didn't recognise that in my comments I feel for you.

PS. I'm still not offended by anything. It's all just a bunch of pixels made up up of 0s and 1s 😊