I just bought one earlier this week and I think I paid a dollar more for it here, if my memory serves me correctly. Pretty sure, but I'm the type of shopper who doesn't look at prices. If I need it, I just buy it. Different from my sister who keeps an app on her phone that shows the prices of various items at different grocery stores and then she gets the lowest price matched where she buys her groceries.
today i learned to "be careful what you wish for..." me: -makes mashed potatoes- Dog: -stands up and eats from the bowl of mashed potatoes on the counter- me: -angrily throws away mashed potatoes- I HOPE YOU GET A STOMACH ACHE! ..... this morning..... awakens to a foul smell in the room. (you know the rest.... except, it was on my bed)
It's also one of the four rivers flowing from the center of paradise. If I remember right one is milk, one is honey, one is oil (like olive oil), and I forget, maybe the other one is water? All considered divine substances.
Which mythology is this part of? If I remember, there are five rivers that flow into Hades. One is Lethe, oblivion, whose waters cause drinkers to forget their past. The others are Acheron (the river of pain and misery), Cocytus (the river of lamentation) and Phlegethon (the river of fire), and Styx (the river of hate, by whose water the gods swear their most binding oath). ========================== Today I learned (again) about probably the most pointless war in history, the War of the Bucket. An estimated 2,000 people died in this 1325 AD war between Italian city-states Modena and Bologna, which began when some Modenese soldiers stole a bucket from a well in Bologna. If it makes a difference: Modena won, and immediately stole another bucket. I don't know if this is hilarious or deeply, deeply depressing. Maybe both. I swear, some people would start a war if someone else pissed in a stinking back alley somewhere.
Oh man, it's hard to say. I've picked up so much weird esoteric stuff from so many different sources, I couldn't begin to remember what came from where exactly. I think I heard that from a guy I was talking to on another message board long ago who was like a library of esoteric knowledge. Here: Rivers of Paradise, the four rivers of Paradise,[2]or "the rivers of[3]/flowing from[4] Eden" are the four rivers described in Genesis 2:10–14,[5] where an unnamed stream flowing out of the Garden of Eden splits into four branches: Pishon, Gihon, Hiddekel (Tigris), and Phrath (Euphrates). These four rivers form a feature of the Garden that is popular in the Abrahamic religions.[6] Judaism The rabbinic tradition does not interpret rivers literally, instead, they are believed to represent honey, milk, balsam, and wine.[15] Genesis Rabbah identifies the rivers as four corners of the world: Pishon as Babylonia, Gihon as Media, Hiddekel as Greece, Euphrates as Rome. It also states that all waters in the world flow from the foot of the Tree of Life.[16] Islam Similarly to Judaism,[17] Islam treats the rivers of Paradise (anhār al-janna) as carrying the honey, milk, water, and wine (cf. Q 47:15[18]).[19] However, Hosseinizadeh[20] remarks that these are not the same rivers as in the Bible, since there are four types of rivers, not four rivers in this verse. From Wikipedia
Rivers of milk, wine and honey. I notice that things are slightly different in the Islamic interpretation, but oh well. I wonder if anyone actually thinks this is literally true, rather than an allegory for something else. I wonder if they realize how physically impossible that would be. I also wonder if they realize that different faiths over different times interpret the same thing differently, so calling for "Biblical inerrancy" or "Biblical literalism" is an impossible quest. (Just my opinion, of course! Not trying to start a debate here). But seeing as the original verse called two of these rivers pishon and gihon, what are we supposed to make of that? What are these rivers? What do they represent? Separated as we are from those words by thousands of years, where should we look? It seems an impossible task to know what the writer meant, alas. But that hasn't stopped people from trying, of course.
Today I learned that it is more correct to say you went over yonder "on foot" than "by foot." "By" is used more with methods of transportation, like "by car" or "by bus."
Last night I learned, Meatloaf's Bat out of hell album was shopped from label to label for about a year, before they found producer Todd Rungren. Who got what they were doing, unlike the other producers. The album got traction in Europe and Australia before the US.
I love these kinds of stories. Somehow, I'd never heard of Todd Rundgren until a few years ago. Something/Anything? has to be in my top 20 of all time, a true 5/5 star record. And it's a double album! Very rare to see one with all killer, no filler. He's a genius. This reminded me of a similar story. Dusty Springfield had worked in the studio with bassist John Paul Jones for some of her records. She recommended to one of her producers, a bigwig at Atlantic Records, to sign this new band Led Zeppelin in 1968. That producer signed them to a massive contract without ever seeing them perform, and the rest is history (though I imagine someone would've been signing them anyway).
I have heard this song a billion times, but I never knew it was Todd Rundgren! Consider my mind blown.
Earlier today I listened to a podcast about the Terracotta Army, in the tomb of Qin Shi Huang (also known as Shi Huangdi). Of course I knew there were figures of warriors and horses, but apparently there were also figures of acrobats, scribes, and even accountants, plus 100 wooden battle chariots. The warriors are armed with fine examples of bronze axes and swords, and as many as 400,000 arrowheads have been found. The weapons are still sharp enough to be deadly. In less welcome news, when the terracotta warriors were created, each was individually painted. But exposure to the elements meant that the paint wore away quickly by oxidization. As many as 2,000 figures have been unearthed since the tomb was found in 1974, and another 5,000 or so remain underground. However, the burial chamber of Shi Huangdi himself has not been opened because of two factors: 1. The fear of damaging the delicate decorations within (as happened to the warriors themselves); 2. The fear (or stories? Or knowledge?) that the tomb is protected by poison gas and automatically-shooting crossbows. (I'm not sure how true those stories are, but I'm not about to test them personally). The entire complex is absolutely huge, as large as 56 square kilometres, which is 200 times the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. Legends say that Shi Huangdi recreated the entire Qin state within, with rivers of quicksilver (mercury) to represent the rivers, with bronze figurines of swans and other birds, and the night sky represented in precious stones, etc. Of course, the whole thing took a long time to build and employed as many as 700,000 workers and craftsmen -- both prisoners-of-war and citizens of the Qin state -- who probably toiled away in miserable conditions ... and were eventually killed. On a slightly happier note, Shi Hunagdi also spent most of his life in search of a mythical elixir of eternal life, and thought he found it when he started drinking quicksilver himself ... which, obviously, killed him. (He was 49). He was apparently touring parts of the Qin state at the time, and the courtiers accompanying his carriage didn't want people to find out that he was dead. So, thinking quickly, they said that he was resting and didn't want to leave the carriage. (To mask the smell of his quickly-rotting corpse, they piled more and more fish on top of it ... ugh). Eventually they reached the tomb, work on which stopped when he died, where they quickly -- and presumably with a sense of relief -- buried him. And that tomb was lost until 1974, when the big hit was "Staying Alive" by the Bee Gees. (Perhaps this is appropriate; he spent so much time in search of eternal life, so maybe Shi Huangdi finally found it).
Today I learned a staggering story, the tale of Ivaylo of Bulgaria. History knows almost nothing about him before 1278. We do know that the Mongol Golden Horde invaded Bulgaria in 1242 and quickly forced the country to become a vassal of the Mongol Khan, and then used it as a base to raid the Byzantines in the south. The Byzantine emperor hated the Bulgarians and had no reason to help them. In 1278, Ivaylo enters the story. He started as nothing more than a peasant pig farmer, stuck in a Bulgaria that was being torn apart by the Byzantines from the south and the Mongol horde in the northeast. Meanwhile, the Bulgarian "emperor" (a Mongol vassal) refused to protect his people, using an old hunting injury as an excuse, and stayed hidden in his city of Tarnovo. But Ivaylo, sick of being harassed etc., raised the standard and called for other people to join him and resist. Surprisingly, more peasants (and even low-level noblemen) rallied to his standard... and when the Mongol raiding party showed up over the horizon, Ivaylo and his gang beat them up. And when the Khan of the Golden Horde sent another raiding party, they beat them up again. By then, the Bulgarian emperor realised this pig farmer guy could be trouble. So he raised a smart army and went out to look for this Ivaylo ... and in a scene right out of a legend, Ivaylo met his useless emperor in battle and killed him. The demoralised army defected to Ivaylo, and even the Empress of Bulgaria, realising where the winds were blowing, decided to marry Ivaylo. For two years, Ivaylo tried to defend Bulgaria. But he couldn't be everywhere at once. The Byzantines in the south were constantly causing trouble and trying to put their own puppet on the throne, and when Ivaylo went south to put them in their place, the Mongol horde invaded in the northeast. Eventually, the noblemen betrayed Ivaylo and put Georgi Terter, their own candidate, on the throne. Ivaylo then took the most stunning gamble of his career, and went east to meet with the Mongol Khan -- who accepted Ivaylo into his army. Pretty smart of him: Ivaylo was obviously a strong fighter and a cunning organiser of men. Better to have him on your side than against you. But within a month or so, Ivaylo was killed by a Byzantine assassin. Today, he is a Bulgarian folk hero. The above is pretty much the bare-bones story, but it's pretty amazing. In an amusing post-script, Georgi Terter ruled for about a dozen years, before the Mongol Khan got tired of him and installed an obscure candidate called Smiletz on the Bulgarian throne. And here is Smiletz's coat of arms ... Why does this, especially the goofy grin on the lion's face, look completely inappropriate?
That was my reaction, too. You'd think a ruler would want to be represented by a more aggressive expression. Here's Canada's coat of arms
The lion and the unicorn Were fighting for the crown The lion beat the unicorn All around the town. Some gave them white bread, And some gave them brown; Some gave them plum cake and drummed them out of town.
Today I learned that there are just as many years between 1916 and 1970 as there are between 1970 and 2024.
Today I learned that there is such a thing as a game called conkers, and it has a professional circuit. In conkers, contestants swing a chestnut attached to a string in a bid to crack their opponent’s nut. The World Conker Championship, recently held in the UK., was thrust into the spotlight over the weekend when the newly crowned men’s world champion was accused by a competitor of using a steel nut in lieu of a real nut. “We think he’s innocent, but we’re just checking,” said a spokesman for the World Conker Championships. Conkers championship caught up in chestnut-of-steel cheating commotion
Conkers has been a traditional schoolyard game for decades, if not longer. About 20 years ago, there was a fake story going round that the Health and Safety Executive, the body that regulates safety regulations in the UK, was going to require schools to make pupils wear safety glasses to play conquers. This was probably put about by publications like the Daily Mail, which specialises in making people splutter over their morning coffee, and it was entirely fallacious, but a lot of primary school headteachers believed it and banned conkers completely. They were afraid of any potential liability in the event that children injured each other with conkeys, or used them as weapons.
That's right. There's even a wikipedia page for it. To quote wiki: Wikipedia is your friend. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conkers
Today I learned that there is an E. coli outbreak stretching across 10 American states, and linked to McDonald's quarter-pounders. 49 illnesses one one death so far. https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/23/health/mcdonalds-e-coli-quarter-pounder-investigation/index.html
Ooh, that supplier is in trouble. https://globalnews.ca/news/10825919/mcdonalds-ecoli-outbreak-share-price/
Onions and lettuce make up probably 90% of the recalls and food safety alerts I receive. If you want to get sick, eat raw vegetables. I haven't had a meat alert in probably 10 years. And people rag on sushi making them sick... never once have I been pinged from DOH by a guest getting sick from sushi. Salads? At least 20. The Chipotle thing was a little different. They were banged for negligence at all levels of their food safety program. Massive criminal fines.
I only eat sushi while I'm in Japan anyway, although I haven't eaten any since I went onto immunosuppressants.
