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My parents emigrated from Aus/NZ just before I was born, so I inherited a bunch of weird down-under, outdated vocabulary.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

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.

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.

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.

I believe that “Indian Giving” is sourced in a cultural misunderstanding between Indigenous and European societies. Indigenous societies were reciprocity based, so giving gifts should be reciprocated with a gift of like value to strengthen relationships, or increase honour (social standing). The Europeans were working in a patron-client system so a gift was seen as a way of purchasing access to power through a patron. The Europeans thought the Indigenous people were paying for access to power (like a tributary), so there’s no expectation of returning a like gift. The indigenous people thought they were entering into a mutual relationship, and when a like gift wasn’t returned that was seen as reneging, so they took back their ‘offer’.

Glad to have an anthropologist kick my ass.

I suspect round one is like eating milk, and round two is a fine cheese. Or eating cabbage, and later experiencing it as a well-aged kimchi. I’m sure it’s full of probiotics.

A longer digestive system is necessary to properly break down plant cellulose. This is why some small herbivores are copraphagic (eat their own shit, like rabbits): it takes two times through to extract adequate nutrients.

I’ve found Bewley’s to be quite good with hard water too.

IMO Yorkshire does well with hard water, and takes milk well.

I’ve been wondering a lot about absurdism in humour. There are people who laugh when they see something disastrous happen, like a man reflexively trying to stop a cement truck from tipping and getting squashed dead. Or a recent news story of the only fatality in a school bus crash: it was an observer who got hit by a vehicle as he ran across the highway to see if the kids were ok. A lot of the time this laughing response to a disaster is interpreted as schadenfreude, but a good portion of the time I believe it’s absurdism.

We try so hard to have agency, to do something, but the World doesn’t give a fuck. You have two choices when shit goes so wrong: you can wail about the unfairness of it all, or you can laugh at the absurdity of our efforts in the face of the colossal chaos of it all. The laughter is stronger.

It’s interesting to me that some cultures seem to have absurd humour baked in. The Aussies and Kiwis seem to have it. They just make jokes about and laugh at the most horrific situations.

I’ve been wondering a lot about absurdist humour. Dan Carlin relates a story of an old Air Force colonel who

It doesn’t.

I mean, Mademoiselle Cochonne would be her own special kind of lady.

Holy shit! This dude’s pluralising in Greek!

“Vamipre”.