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

[ClassicStripe]

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

No they commented that they thought you MEANT to quote Stokey... you quoted ME.

I am not Stokey, I am an entirely different person with a different comment and I quote Stokey not you.

You are clearly incapable of basic reading... a sorry will suffice though.

Calm down dear. Why are you so upset/angry/offended/anything else (delete as necessary). You're, being quite OTT.

Agreed! When I get my annual pension benefit statement with my projected value, is that what I’ll receive per year from 68 or is that the total value of the pot to divide up 🤷🏻‍♀️

There is however a department called Ofgem who are independent of the government and review energy prices to ensure they are fair. The prices should reflect the cost price of energy at the time to ensure energy companies aren’t colluding to maximise profits leaving the customer with no choice. It doesn’t always appear to work in the customer’s favour though 🤔

I can never remember that - or "ible" or "able" at the end of words like invisible. Someone told me it depended on the conjugation of the Latin root of the word. Nice to know, but it doesn't help my spelling (my last brush with Latin grammar was many years ago).

Pensions. I just don't understand it at all but am too embarrassed to ask a real person.

Honestly, do it. Pension rep people love telling you about it. They need something to do.

Mirrors, and how you can look left and right and down and round corners in a big mirror and see more

The Terminator films, still don't get it

I used to work as a physicist at a very large scientific research establishment in the UK. Amongst the various clubs and societies the Christian group was easily the largest - I reckon at least a third of my immediate colleagues were regular church-goers.
I think the more you learn about the universe as a scientist, the more baffling it becomes and, even if you don't think 'god' is behind it, the philosophical questions pile up about the nature of matter, of consciousness etc.

Good example of affect as a verb, BUT it also can be a noun: ‘she has an odd affect’ meaning something like sensibility; people who study ‘affect’ look at the emotional, feeling side of culture and individuals. Prononciation differs as well: as a noun, stress is on first syllable; as a verb the second

Maths and numbers. I did A level psychology and one paper was on statistics. I learned and regurgitated but didn’t understand. 🤷‍♀️

English Grammar... It makes no sense!

You can have a comma after a single word. Sentences so long you HAVE to breathe midway through them.

Obsure rules.. I before e except from after c.. well then it not I before e is it?

Don't even get me started on semicolons...

Singular and plurals A mouse turns into mice, but a house doesn’t turn to hice...

Also evert time I mention this to people I get. Head tilt and some idiot tries to explain it to me..

I have tried for the last 32 years... your 5 minute explanation will NOT suddenly make it all clear....

But yes it embarrasses me.

To the Christian: start reading Darwin, evolutionary theory. The world didn’t just ‘happen’- it took billions of years. Re. monotheistic religions: think about god being made in ‘man’s’ image. Read Durkheim for more on this.

Read ELEMENTS OF STYLE By Strunk and White. Very short and succinct explanation of grammar.

DNA structure is not just a theory. The only structure that can give the famous X ray diffraction pattern from Rosalind Franklin’s X ray crystallography is a double helix. The behaviour of DNA that we know about now is consistent with it being a double helix and nothing has been discovered that suggests it isn’t. There are much better analytical techniques now and none of them suggest anything different. It’s been photographed using an electron microscope. The distance between the subunits has been measured. I’m surprised that on a medical course you were told it’s unproven.

Get this though - it isn’t a double helix all the time! - only at certain stages of a cell’s life and only under certain chemical conditions in the lab.

I did a Master’s in molecular biology and spent a great deal of time studying the structure of DNA and RNA. It’s very, very, very complicated.

I think your husband must just be extremely bad at explaining!

So many things. Like mortgages, and where all the money goes. Say person A buys a house for 300k. They live there for 10 years (for argument's sake) and pay it off. Person B comes along and buys the same house from person A for 400k (as the value has gone up), so over 10 years they pay it back and sell it to person C. Person C lives there for 10 years and pays back 500k. Along comes person D and over 10 years pays back 600k and so-on (I know not all mortgages are for 10 years and I know a house wouldn't necessarily be worth 100k more every ten years but I'm using that as an example).

In total, over the course of 40 years, people A, B, C and D have paid nearly 2 million pounds, for the same house, but way more due to interest. Why is a 'normal' house worth so much money? That will continue for people E, F, G etc until the house no longer exists.

I have a mortgage BUT I don't understand how what I just explained or why.

I also don't understand driving (you'll be glad to know I don't drive despite having had hundreds of lessons and failed my test 3 times). My instructor used to tell me to check all 3 mirrors every few seconds. Why the review mirror so much? Why do I need to know what's going on behind me to such a level, when I have no control over it, when what's going on in front of me is so much more important?

What if I glance in my rear view mirror and see something that catches my attention too much (like witnessing an accident or something unusual) and takes my eyes off the road in front of me for too long?

Why would I spend so much time looking at what's behind me to take my eyes so frequently off the road ahead? If I glance for one second or less it's not enough time for my brain to register whatever I've seen and process it.

So many things baffle me.

The nicest though is breastfeeding. I'm a breastfeeding mum and in the last few months I've discovered that kissing your own baby transfers pathogens from the baby's skin to the mother's body and any bugs or viruses the baby has been exposed to mean the mum's body produces antibodies in her milk to protect her baby against that specific bug. Also, if my baby is hot, sick, constipated or dehydrated, my body will know and produce more watery milk to help them. So many 'secrets' passed between baby and mother and the mother's body responds by making tailor-made medicine milk.

HOW??? And how does kissing my older, non-BF child affect that process with the pathogens?

It's not really the house that's worth all that money (although as with renting, there's an element of paying for somewhere to live rather than the house per se). It's the land, which is scarce.

Also, if all those people could have been cash buyers, without mortgages, no doubt they would. Then you could just look at the demand and supply to work out why the price is what it is e.g. houses of popular types are in demand (4 bed in good repair with a garden and parking; nice area; etc) and the supply of them is limited (not much land available/allowed to build new ones on; owners of existing houses don't want to sell).

But because the would-be buyers have only a fraction of the price as cash (the deposit) they also need to pay the bank for the service of lending them the rest of the money (the mortgage) which is charged for as the bank wants to make a profit (and has their own expenses) and the bank runs the risk also that the borrower might not pay back.

This is perhaps more obvious in countries like Japan where the value resides in the land rather than the house and the house is seen as temporary.

And in the UK is complicated particularly by people buying property as an investment that they don't live in or that they do live in or as an investment that they do live in, but which they hope will increase in value. Which is partly due to government policy and partly due to lack of other types of investment and savings.

The phrases "Stamp Duty Land Tax" and "Land Registry" signal that these transactions are about land.

So the house value/cost is made up of: land that it sits on; the house itself as somewhere to live; the value of the house as an investment; and the charge for lending you the rest of the money you need and the admin and risk of doing that.

Other systems are available but that is ours.

I don’t understand eggs.
Like, how do they know there isn’t a baby chick inside, rather than a yolk?

Because the female chickens that lay the eggs don't ever get to meet a cockerel. So the eggs are most definitely not fertilised and so can't develop.

Why 22 grown men get paid ludicrous amounts of money to kick a bit of leather around a field.

Why we've got the politicians we've got.

Why the royals get that ludicrous amount they do.

Masculine and feminine in French. There's no logic. Who decides if it's masculine or feminine?

Why 22 grown men get paid ludicrous amounts of money to kick a bit of leather around a field.

Same reason people get paid ludicrous amounts of money to wear silly costumes and fly around imaginary universes on a screen while talking utter shit. Because a lot of people are willing to pay a lot of money to watch it.

Some of it I'm with you on, but the Oxford comma is important! Example - what do you enjoy doing in your spare time? An answer like "Eating horses and reading" is very different to "Eating, horses, and reading" 😂😂😂

It still makes no sense. In my native tongue, you can reply "eating horses and reading" and it would not mean " eating horses".

But then I know people who have my native tongue as a second language who comment they struggle with the whole "intent is everything"

Neither I guess makes sense but that doesn't mean the Oxford comma "makes" sense..