things i learned

The English coined "soccer"

2024-03-27

From my friends at Duolingo:

The people that affectionately call their Prince William "Wills" and Ā£5 and Ā£10 notesĀ ~"fivers" and "tenners"~Ā are responsible for shortening "Association Football" to just "Assoc."ā€”which, when written, looks like it might be pronounced "Assock."Ā (This "Association Football" name is the same as the FrenchĀ Football AssociationĀ in FIFA!) In late 1800s England, at Oxford, there was also a fad of addingĀ -erĀ to some words. And thus, "soccer" was born. In England. šŸ“󠁧󠁢󠁄󠁮󠁧ó æ

Quantity precedes quality

2024-03-25

Found via Dynomight:

Quality over quantity.Ā I often worry that I write too much on this blog. After all, the world has aĀ lotĀ of text. Does it need more? Shouldnā€™t I pick some small number of essays and really perfect them?ā€ØArguably, no. Youā€™ve perhaps heard of the pottery class where students graded on quantity produced more quality than thoseĀ gradedĀ on quality. (It was actually aĀ photography class.) For scientists, the best predictor of having a highly cited paper is just writing lots of papers. As I write these words, I have no idea if any of this is good and I try not to think about it.

I hadnā€™t heard this before, but I do find it to be true. Creativity is a habit. The way to quality is through quantity.

JalapeƱos are less spicy

2024-03-11

From D Magazine:

The standardization of the jalapeƱo was rapidly accelerated by the debut, about 20 years ago, of the TAM II jalapeƱo line, a reliably big, shiny, fleshy pepper that can grow up to six inches longā€”with little to no heat. TAM II peppers have become some of the most popular in the processing business.

The driver of the change was the desire for processors to have predictable levels of spiciness.

Hat tip to Mark for sharing this.