Today I Learned

[berkeman]

dime is ten cents

A dime is also an assist in basketball...

https://basketballword.com/in-basketball-what-does-dropping-dimes-mean-explained/#

Many of us know basketball terminology but have no clue where terms may have come from or how they originated. Such is the case with the saying dropping dimes.

What does dropping dimes mean in basketball? In basketball, the term dropping dimes refers to an assist, in which a player will make a pass to a teammate which leads to scoring a basket. The dime we are talking about is the ten-cent coin that was needed to use a payphone. Putting a 10 cent coin into the payphone was known as dropping a dime.

A dime may be an easy or difficult pass that would lead to a score in basketball. The saying would usually come from the player that acquired the assist, or by fans watching the player do so. “He’s dropping dimes”.

 

[JT Smith]

Interesting fact, Cuba actually has notes worth 3 pesos. 1, 3, 5, 10, 20, 50 ... no 30s or 300s, just the 3.

Apparently the U.S. used to have a three cent coin, way back when. Half penny, two cent, and twenty cent coins as well.

 

[rsk]

Hang onto that extra battery. The cr2016 is less than half the capacity of the '32 so you'll be fiddling with it a lot sooner than if you just went to the store and bough the right battery.

Just as soon as it stops raining.

 

[mfb]

A penny is one cent, a nickel is five cents, dime is ten cents, a quarter is 25 cents, and a half dollar is 50 cents vs a US dollar which is 100 cents.

Is the half dollar actually used?
There are 1 dollar coins.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_coin_(United_States)

For some reasons your 5 cent coin is larger than the 10 cent coin, and apparently 50 cent is larger than 1 dollar as well.

 

[JT Smith]

Is the half dollar actually used?

Not very often. Dollar coins are also not seen frequently. For that matter, who uses cash anymore? Since the pandemic shut down I think I've paid in cash about five times.

The $2 paper bill is also kind of rare. You can get them at the bank if you want. A friend owed me a couple hundred dollars and paid me with 100 of them just for fun!

 

[berkeman]

For some reasons your 5 cent coin is larger than the 10 cent coin, and apparently 50 cent is larger than 1 dollar as well.

Well at least we don't have any coins with holes in them...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_yen

 

[rsk]

Oh! There used to be a spanish coin with a hole in it pre €uro days. Maybe the 25 peseta coin, if I remember rightly.

 

[Janus]

Is the half dollar actually used?
There are 1 dollar coins.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_coin_(United_States)

For some reasons your 5 cent coin is larger than the 10 cent coin, and apparently 50 cent is larger than 1 dollar as well.

Historically, the dime, or 10 cent coin, was made of Silver, while the 5 cent coin is made of Copper and Nickel.

Coinage pretty much disappeared during the Civil War, and it wasn't until after it that the US started minting coins again, starting with Bronze 1 and 2 cent coins. They then minted a 3 cent Copper-Nickel coin.
The five cent "nickel" was minted based on the earlier success of the Copper and Nickel 3 cent piece. It ended up replacing the earlier Silver half-dime.

 

[DaveC426913]

Is the half dollar actually used?

Canada has/had a 50 cent coin - but the only time it was ever seen in the wild was at the Canadian National Exposition. All the games cost 50 cents and the barkers would give you back a 50 piece from your dollar.

 

[Keith_McClary]

Like regular cirrus clouds, contrail cirrus clouds have two competing effects on climate. They shade us by reflecting incoming sunlight back into space. But they also trap heat radiating from the earth’s surface, so causing warming in the air below.

During the day, cooling compensates part of the warming. But at night, with no sunlight, only the warming effect operates. Red-eye flights are a red light for climate. That’s the theory, and observational evidence backs it up. Research in the American South and Midwest has concluded that when contrails are around, they raise night-time temperatures sufficiently to reduce the day-night differences by 3 degrees C.

https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-airplane-contrails-are-helping-make-the-planet-warmer

 

[diogenesNY]

A dime is also an assist in basketball...

https://basketballword.com/in-basketball-what-does-dropping-dimes-mean-explained/#

The term dropping the dime, in criminal parlance, has long meant to (usually anonymously) rat out a fellow criminal (whether an accomplice or an enemy). The phrase (most likely) refers to an anonymous tip placed by dropping a dime (as was the cost throughout much of the latter 20th century) into the slot of a payphone, and then making a quick anonymous call to the police, tipline, DA or whomever.

Additionally, a 'dime' is also a ten year prison sentence.

--diogenesNY

 

[epenguin]

Two kinds of things are celebrated in Today I Learnt. One is the striking or curious interesting fact the writer didn't know and probably you didn't either. The other is the more rueful discovery where the surprising fact is that the writer didn't know it. Maybe these need another thread called "Only today I learnt".

I have known something about Whistler since age 9 or 10. This came from one of the phenomenally successful 'William' childrens' books by Richmal Crompton aimed at a readership of about 9 to 12 range. Which sold over 12 million copies and are still in print if rather dated and. The equivocation on which the line of the story where I learned (and of which I don't remember much else) depends is that a very prosperous member of the local community has acquired a Whistler which is the talk of the town, but the anarchic and rather ignorant antihero William supposes that a Whistler is some kind of machine that whistles. Instead it referred to a valuable painting.So thanks to the book I knew what a Whistler was early on, but I didn't know much more for a long time. I don't remember reading about him in books about painting I read, nor in books of reproductions of famous painters I once had. Many decades later I did come directly across some works – Whistler's most famous and striking painting of his mother in the Orsay museum, Paris https://www.wikiart.org/en/james-mcneill-whistler then some other works in the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow. https://www.gla.ac.uk/whistler/ https://www.gla.ac.uk/whistler/thehunterian/ And every now and then in general reading over the years, mostly I guess in cultural pages of newspapers, I stumbled across mentions of Whistler. Yet I often had a uncomfortable feeling, a cognitive dissonance , there was something not quite right I could never put my finger on. Might it be him being called an "American painter"? An American painter? Like there was more than one? Sorry folks, in Europe we hardly know of a single one before about 1930. And the categorisation 'American' is problematic - he was indeed an American citizen but he spent fairly few years in the USA, though he did attend West Point, where he was a total misfit. Most of his painting was done in Britain and France. Unusual but there was still something else uncomfortable though… I was always very uncertain about his dates and things said soeti sounded incongruous (I didn't even know till today much of what I've said or linked to above).

Now, if you haven't heard, there has broken out in Britain over about the past year acutely a massive movement in the arts, museums and heritage curation sector, around public monuments, in culture the arts and in the universities, the sciences by no means exempt, broadcasting, and journalism, to revise, revalue, and change everything in the names of e.g. 'decolonising the curriculum', awareness raising, wokeism, revising, re-relabelling, re-evaluating, BLM, 'culture wars', re-examining our national identity, history, and self image. After this movement has washed over many more obvious targets, in about the last fortnight the immorality of Isaac Newton and George Friedrich Handel who held investments in companies involved in slave trading have in their turn been brought into focus by this movement (it is no merit of Sir Isaac's that he lost a lot of money over it) and it will probably become obligatory to mention this in University lectures when Newton's discoveries are explained. In the very last days another piece of heritage to now give offence after having been in place for about 100 years are the Whistler murals in the Tate gallery in London. To see this sort of discussion Google rex whistler tate mural.

100 years? The Tate? As I said I had been vague about Whistler and vague about dates, but had uncomfortable feelings. So I thought I must look into this at last.

And not before today I learnt that there have been two famous painters called Whistler.

The first was the one discussed above named James Whistler (which is cutting a long story short actually). The second, who occasioned the present furore was Rex Whistler. He "painted many members of London society, including Edith Sitwell, Cecil Beaton and other members of the set to which he belonged that became known as the "Bright Young Things". "

The general idea of Bright Young Things is obvious, and I knew that it was rather attached to the interwar period, but only today I learnt that it originally referred to a very specific group. And there is no doubt that the Whistler of the William story would have been Rex. Williams's older brother and sister, Robert and Ethel who come into the story would surely have wished or affected to be Bright Young Things.

I really do not know why the painting contains the things objected to. I first thought it might be irony, and ironic comment on the sources of wealth of the better off Bright Young Things or perhaps of the philanthropists who financed the Tate. But it is possible that he merely found the fantasy, the conceit, of 'The Expedition in Pursuit of Rare Meats' amusing. The Bright Young Things were fashionable and bohemian, but they were not progressive and were seriously unserious. And snobs. Supercilious and superior, finding everything and everyone perfectly amusing. One can even find much to condemn in them if one wants to take seriousness towards the opposite extreme.

That said one should not forget that Rex Whistler died fighting in the war against Nazism.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-has-the-tate-cancelled-its-own-restaurant-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tate_Britain

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rex_Whistler
https://artuk.org/discover/artists/whistler-rex-19051944

 

[DaveC426913]

Maybe these need another thread called "Only today I learnt".

The standard phrase is "I was today years old..."

 

[Astronuc]

TIL about "Cigar Box Guitars"!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigar_box_guitar
https://www.thaliacapos.com/blogs/blog/cigar-box-guitars-the-history-of-a-folk-instrument-phenomenon
https://www.roadiemusic.com/blog/five-alternate-tunings-for-the-3-string-cigar-box-guitar/

I was listening to a group Misty Blues and one of the guitarists played a 'Cigar Box Guitar'. It has a distinctive tune.

 

[Rive]

Well at least we don't have any coins with holes in them...

Having cash is better

 

[nsaspook]

Vaccines apparently lower the risk of getting a disease the vaccine targets.

https://komonews.com/news/coronavir...s-in-king-county-are-from-unvaccinated-people
Almost all new COVID cases in King Co. are from unvaccinated people, experts say

 

[rsk]

Vaccines apparently lower the risk of getting a disease the vaccine targets.

https://komonews.com/news/coronavir...s-in-king-county-are-from-unvaccinated-people
Almost all new COVID cases in King Co. are from unvaccinated people, experts say

Oh, what a coincidence! The same happened in NW England

 

[kyphysics]

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/known-carcinogen-found-popular-sunscreens-130300895.html

Known carcinogen found in some popular sunscreens, tests show​

Traces of a chemical tied to blood cancers including leukemia have been detected in dozens of popular sunscreens and after-sun products, according to tests conducted by online pharmacy and lab Valisure.

Benzene, a known carcinogen, was found in 78 of nearly 300 sprays and lotions tested — about 27% — including products sold by Banana Boat and CVS, according to Valisure.

In a petition, the company has asked the FDA to recall these contaminated batches. The regulating body is reviewing the claim.

 

[Keith_McClary]

“lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife.” Think about it: You cannot move the order of those adjectives at all without having the sentence seem completely wrong.

I haven't tried all 8! perms.
From "Inc." via Firefox Pocket

 

[Klystron]

TIL that the electronics term wobbulator is spelled with 2 b's. Many years ago I worked with some terrific engineers where security concerns required mainly verbal (even whispered) instructions; so, I did not see the word in print. We modified pulsed radar transmitters to wobbulate output in such a manner to defeat enemy counter-measures (ECM); i.e., ECCM. I meant to study the subject after returning to university but was stymied by lack of information due to my spelling error.

Radar transmit/receiver (TX/RX) tracking devices synchronize operation via common distributed timing pulses. Aggressor aircraft learned to read (clock) the timing pattern and spoof receivers with bogus but powerful returns at critical interval before we locked on weapon systems. Wobbulating the local synchronizer isolated the radar in a sense from the enemy RX/TX spoofers. The radar synced as usual and presumably the enemy recognized an RF source in the vicinity but an attached O'scope and the enemy saw a wicked sliding series of incoherent RF pulses.

I thought of this modified synchronizer circuit as wobbulating time. Different wobbulators alter wavelength and thus bandpass, particularly of klystrons; mentioned in the attached articles.

 

[BillTre]

particularly of klystrons

Gee. And all this time I thought you were a real person.

 

[BillTre]

Forensic facial reconstruction on a skull shaped vodka bottle:
Full sequence here.

Eyes don't come with bottle.

 

[fresh_42]

 

[pbuk]

View attachment 284646

Well that is one theory.

 

[fresh_42]

Well that is one theory.

It made sense to me. We have a similar expression that is used in daily language and almost nobody knows that it stems from the military. We use 08/15 as an adjective with the meaning 'quick and dirty' for any occasion when simple solutions or answers are used that are not necessarily reliable.

There are several explanations of the idiom, which are related to the machine gun 08/15. 08/15 stands for the introductory year of the original model MG 08, 1908, and for 1915, the year of further development. These numbers were slammed into the weapons.

 

[Ibix]

Today I learned the word querulant, meaning someone who persistently complains about minor injustices, often increasing demands as their requests are met so that it is impossible to satisfy them. They are something of a problem for complaints departments, since they suck up time with no possibility of a successful outcome.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Querulant

 

[Klystron]

Today I learned the word querulant, meaning someone who persistently complains about minor injustices, often increasing demands as their requests are met so that it is impossible to satisfy them. They are something of a problem for complaints departments, since they suck up time with no possibility of a successful outcome.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Querulant

While previously familiar with the word querulous, TIL from @Ibix 's reference that paranoia querulans appeared in medical publications as a valid psychiatric diagnosis. Originally restricted to members of Karenus Complainus Americanus, the term now embraces a considerably larger swath of the population. /humor

 

[fresh_42]

Today I learned the word querulant, meaning someone who persistently complains about minor injustices, often increasing demands as their requests are met so that it is impossible to satisfy them. They are something of a problem for complaints departments, since they suck up time with no possibility of a successful outcome.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Querulant

Congrats, you learned a German word.

 

[Ibix]

Originally restricted to members of Karenus Complainus Americanus, the term now embraces a considerably larger swath of the population.

The wiki article actually comments that querulant was retired from official use for some time because the term got broadened to mean "anyone who complained about anything", where it originally meant "someone who obsessively complains far beyond the point a normal person would". The context I learned it in was the same thing happening with "Karen" (with the added bonus of Karen being a gendered term with no male equivalent with anything like the popularity).

Congrats, you learned a German word.

Congrats, you stole a Latin word, I think...

 

[fresh_42]

Congrats, you stole a Latin word, I think...

Yes, but it doesn't feel like it. Queruant is not as exotic as it is in English, it is part of common language. And we also have quer as a regular adjective, meaning: perpendicular to a given direction.

 

[jbriggs444]

Congrats, you stole a Latin word, I think...

I think that there is a rule somewhere that forbids native English-speakers from becoming querulant about any such perceived offense. Something about glass houses.

 

[fresh_42]

A funny word is window. While the English word is from "wind-open" and of Nordic and therewith Germanic origin, we use Fenster which is fully Latin: Fenestra.

 

[Ibix]

Yes, but it doesn't feel like it. Queruant is not as exotic as it is in English, it is part of common language. And we also have quer as a regular adjective, meaning: perpendicular to a given direction.

We have queer, which has its roots in the German quer. It used to mean out-of-kilter or strange before being adopted as a term for homosexuality (it was used as a euphemism of sorts, but got "reclaimed" as an accepted term).

I think that there is a rule somewhere that forbids native English-speakers from becoming querulant about any such perceived offense. Something about glass houses.

Oh sure, English doesn't so much borrow words from other languages as mug them at gunpoint.

 

[Ibix]

Oh sure, English doesn't so much borrow words from other languages as mug them at gunpoint.

I was trying to work a "schadenfreude" gag in there somewhere but I couldn't see it. You may enjoy my discomfort at my failure in any language you please.

 

[Twigg]

My personal favorite is Torpenhow Hill. It's etymology is like all of English history in a nutshell. Kind of like a core sample but for language. Also worth a good laugh!