Yeah, in between the gold rush in San Fransisco, and the gold rush in British Columbia.

Fossicking and skerrig are related to mining activities, so may be more localized to areas were the gold rush was big. I confirmed they’re actual words.

My parents emigrated from Aus/NZ just before I was born, so I inherited a bunch of weird down-under, outdated vocabulary.

“What are you fossicking around in the pantry for?” “Did you find a few skerrigs of chocolate?” “I need to use the dunny.” “That guy in car dealership was apoplectic.”

Lots of other turns of phrase, but - with the possible exception of “dunny” are legit words.

EDIT: OK. A few others, I still use ‘blasted’ as an adjective. If my kids do something ridiculous, “Jesus wept, child,” sometimes comes out of my mouth. Then a bunch of, “running around like a sprayed blowfly,” or, “wandering around like a lost soul.”

Nosing (instead of reversing) into a parking spot. You always pick the conditions of your arrival, but not always your departure. Also, reversing into traffic is ridiculous and illegal in some places. Parking nose-first is dangerous and lazy.

EDIT: Love how you’re all justifying your bad driving habits. Camera? Still can’t scan for incoming traffic. Bad weather only on occasion? It’s more than bad weather that can make reversing out of a door dangerous.

… and I HATE angle parking.

A thumbs down is also non-aggressive. The middle finger is escalating and can be considered provocation. Thumbs down is just an expression of disapproval. It’s less inflammatory and cuts deeper.

I’m totally struggling with the mixed units here: potential energy being compared to power. “How much hp does your car have?” “A tank of gas.” Wut?

This line right here: “battery storage equivalent to the output of 20 nuclear reactors.” I suspect the author has considered GW with GW/hr…

Never trust a Campbell.

“Had a relationship with …”

Sex with a minor. Hmm … sex with a minor. I could swear we had a word for that.

I often cringe a bit at the rhetoric coming out of the men’s rights corner, but the gender bias around sex with minors in so consistent.

Is it? There are plenty of Jews and plenty of Muslims who are not involved in this and see it as wrong. Plus, that’s such a broad statement as to be meaningless. We could equally say government is the problem, but there aren’t many advocating for anarchy. Or people are the problem. I’d be more inclined to say tribalism is the problem, the very foundation of an “us” vs. “them” mentality. Sometimes assholes pick a fight and call it religious. There’s a strong case to be made that war has become much more brutal and far reaching since the Napoleonic wars and the rise of the nation-state. I mean, we can blame religion … that certainly erases the need to look within ourselves and ask why humans do this to each other.

It’s a bit like pretending Nazism was a German problem and pretending like the same dark forces don’t exist now and in many people everywhere.

There are definitely some religious dickheads, but there are dickheads of all stripes.

If religion is so vile, how do we hold in tension the fact that religious people are often behind the most charity towards the marginalised and disempowered? Atheists talk a good game, but rarely leave their armchairs to do anything positive. Religion can become a tribal marker, but it also is one of the main forces working against tribalism.

That’s kind of the point: there isn’t an authority on English. The closest we come is a bunch of English elites making up informal rules on grammar, spelling, and pronunciation and judging everyone else for not using their version. … And a bunch of try-hards who enforce their arbitrary and often nonsensical 'rules '.

If it parses, it rolls.

Yes, the introduction of steel to sail boat construction allowed bullders to blow previous size constraints out of the water. They were considered big and ugly. IRC Windjammer was an insulting name because they didn’t look like elegant craft that rode the wind, but wind jammers.

These are not windjammers though, are they? They look like pretty vanilla, small sail boats (IDK sloops ketches, or yawls… (Wrong … Too many masts. They’re schooners.) Windjammer was a derogatory moniker for the sailing ships built after steel construction became common. Much much taller masts, wire rigging etc.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’d expect a much larger hull and 3 or 4 very tall masts, with something like four square sails per mast.

The Windjammers outcompeted steam vessels for many transoceanic trade routes because they don’t require the constant input of coal to operate.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windjammer

Picture on that article depicts a ship with six square sails.

EDIT: looked at the picture again. I believe they are schooners.

Listen here, Zac. The meme is addressed to “Mom”, a representative parental figure of - let’s assume - Gen X. Now, Gen X was not really into anime, which is the butt of the joke. They weren’t a bunch of weebs and probably also refer to group of the Japanese warrior class as ‘samurais’. HOWEVER, they called lots of little bricks ‘lego’. It was Millennials that started calling them ‘legos’.

So, I’m pointing out the hypocrisy.

Go play with your Legos, child.

Canned tuna fish.

IRC one of mushrooms’ main effects is to increase seratonin levels, so … Yeah, same basic thing.

No. That is not a member of the order of Hemiptera at all. It is an Orthopteran.

IMO it’s tennis for Boomers who can’t hack tennis anymore.

They used a drone to spy on the New Zealand women’s team. That violated fair play. The article mentions the coach (?) saying that drone use was not limited to the women’s team or soccer. I wonder what else will come out?

EDIT: I got a couple things wrong. Here’s the actual quote: The head of Canada soccer has acknowledged the drone use was not limited to the women’s team or to Paris.

Australia: punching way above its weight class.

…

It’s the Vegemite, I’m sure of it.