Obscure thoughts

Shake

So here's a little sneak peak into the inner workings of how my brain functions. Randomly this morning that song abcdefu pops into my brain, then somehow my thoughts jumped from the chorus to the US grading system. How we go down the alphabet but skip a letter. A's you're ultimate passing grade. B's above average. C is the average. D's below the average. Then we just skip over poor E so that F can represent the Failing grade. I think we all think about it at one point when we're kids, but it's not really significant enough for people to bring up often or talk about.

That wasn't the first & certainly won't be the last obscure thought that's invaded my brain. Another thought recently was how we're all like this web of connections and how these 10 people you've met through this website, aren't going to meet these 10 people from your personal life, but maybe 2 or 3 generations ago their relatives knew each other and had all kinds of adventures together.

The point. No matter how silly, what are some things maybe not alot of people bring up but are something you find yourself thinking about. Here's the place to dump 'em, and/or discuss them. 🙂

SunsetSnuggles

Pickles are cucumbers. 😐

~ Sunset Snuggles

Shake

😂

DaringSprinter

@SunsetSnuggles: Some pickles are plums.

![]https://www.justonecookbook.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Umeboshi-7432-I-1-500x500.jpg "A tray of umeboshi: Japanese pickled plums.")

And some pickles are cabbage!

And some pickles....

(This is a Wikipedia page.)

quixotic_life

Why can I only find wire sold by guage and not by flexibility, strength, melt point, etc?

Why are hole punches set up the way they are? If you want a hole in the middle of the page, it should be easier to do...

Why so many homophones?

MarkBPhx

@Shake49 great thread! Thank you.

achetocuddle

I like this thread and your thoughts @Shake49. I have many obscure thoughts that don't ever find a good place to be discussed. Sometimes my thoughts are too strange or tedious to be interesting or conversation-worthy.

I think about how the harder something is or the more trouble something is, the better it is for you. The food that is best for you tends to be homegrown, preferably by you, and prepared meal by meal to lose less nutrients. The harder it is to eat (due to taste) the better it is for you, often.

The things you do manually offer more exercise and also exercise some muscles that a lot of conventional exercise does not. Sitting on unsupportive, uncomfortable furniture exercises you; comfortable furniture does not.

If you use more effort (time) to drive somewhere, by not going really fast you save gas. Same goes for coasting to stop signs, red lights, etc. when feasible. Saves gas and your brakes wear more gently.

I could go on but you get the idea. Whenever I wonder if something is good for a person, I consider how much trouble it is. The ratio of good to trouble/effort seems to be about the same. Anything good (or the best) is rarely easy. Trying to accomplish as much as possible the easy way is not good for a person.

Shake

@MarkBPhx glad you're enjoying it 😊

@achetocuddle I like your thoughts as well! Especially felt the 1st one. Even as an adult, I still struggle to eat my greens lol

I agree though. The better something is for you, the harder it usually is in the moment. Like when you have to leave a toxic relationship or move away from home. You may lose something in the moment, but it's overall better for you in the long run.

DaringSprinter

@quixotic_life: Do you mind if I answer? (If so, don't open the spoiler.)

Why can I only find wire sold by gauge and not by flexibility, strength, melt point, etc?

Flexibility and strength can be determined by material and gauge—which do you expect to be bendier, a thin copper wire or a thick steel one? Which do you think will be stronger? And melting point is, of course, determined by what the actual metal is.

But for the ultimate answer as to why gauge measurement is so common, I think history is where we need to look. Try this article:

The History of Gauges: From the Beginning of Time Until Right Now

(The short answer is that in medieval times in Europe, wire used to be made by pulling metal through successively smaller holes in metal "draw plates." The number of times the metal went through the draw plate was the thickness of the wire was the gauge, and that's how you knew what you were getting [more or... actually, less]. Fast forward to the age of electricity, when the thickness of the wire was essential to knowing how much power would go through it, and... well, here we are.)

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Why are hole punches set up the way they are? If you want a hole in the middle of the page, it should be easier to do.

In this case, what we have to look at is the actual mechanism of the hole punch.
See how the rod of the punch needs to be guided straight down through the paper, and how the paper has to be supported from below so it doesn't bend and tear?

This means that in order to punch a hole in the middle of a sheet of paper, you need to have a lower support all around exactly where the punch is going to come down, with a hole exactly where the punch actually punches so the rod (and the little circles of paper) can go through.

To get a hole punch that can punch way out in the middle of a page, you need one that can put the punching rod (the head) and the support-with-hole-for-rod (the die) way out in the middle of the page.

Unless and until someone can figure out a better way of making sure the head and the die are always lined up properly for every punch, this is the best we can do.

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Why so many homophones?

The International Phonetic Alphabet consists of, I think, 107 sound symbols, 52 diacritics (accents) and 4 prosodic marks (intonations) encompassing virtually every phoneme used in every language on the earth.

That's a lot, but it's still limited—and no language I know of uses all of them. English has about 44 sounds.

You can see how overlap would occur naturally!

achetocuddle

@DaringSprinter Naturally, of course! Just good-natured teasing. Some of us are busy digesting this and nothing is occurring to us naturally. Lol. You are making it hard for me to read my library books before they are due. I guess I will just have to put off the housekeeping

achetocuddle

@Shake49 Veggies would be easier to eat if someone else cooked/sliced/diced them and they arranged them on your plate attractively. And if someone literally ran with them from the field to my house so they would have a very fresh taste.

DaringSprinter

@achetocuddle: Hahaha! Oh dear.

Hmm. Maybe this will help—think of each sound as a tile in Scrabble. Mix the sounds up and put them together to make words, and there's only so many you can make, right? Plus some combinations of sounds will be easier (and/or more fun) to say.

Context can keep us from confusing two words that are essentially the same but with different meanings, so humanity's favorite sound combinations get doubled and tripled and....

Dear, deer, dir.

Babichev

In my grade school/middle school we did not have the A, B, C, D, F, system. I can’t remember exactly what they all were. E was the highest grade - for “Excellent.” A was “above average.” G was “good.” I don’t recall what the next was but the lowest was U for “Unsatisfactory.” Not sure why we had this other system. Maybe it was a Catholic school thing.

BookishGuy

Some elementary school settings do use different grading systems.... Excellent, Above Average, Good, Poor, etc.

quixotic_life

@DaringSprinter ~ Yay! How fun!! I'll be rabbit holing after work for sure!!
🕳🐇 ~ Thanks!! 🤗

DaringSprinter

@quixotic_life: Yay! You're welcome. 🤗

GreatHornedOwl

@Babichev Between G and U, you most likely had F-fair. Some similar systems had S-superior, before E.

In the UK, (at least when I was doing GCSEs, several years ago) the grading system was:

A* (the best, like an A+ I guess?)
A
B
C
D
E
U (Ungraded, if the student got less than 40% I think)

Now its been changed to numbers, but I don't know if 1 or 9 is the top end. @CuddleDuncan might know

Skinny people are easier to kidnap.

achetocuddle

Lol.

CuddleDuncan

@DeadGirlWalking I certainly do.

The new grading system for the General Certificate of Secondary Education, a set of public examinations taken by most children in England when they about 16 years old and have completed eleven years of formal education and therefore have reached the end of the legal requirement for education, is

9, 8, 7 ... 2, 1, U

With 9 being the highest grade.

The grades were specifically designed not to correlate well with the old A, B, C. The percentage score required to obtain a particular grade varies by year and by subject. Sometimes there are two separate exams on offer: Foundation level, at which the maximum possible grade is 5; and Higher level, at which the lowest possible grade (other than U for unclassified) is usually 3.

Capable students typically attempt about ten subjects. Resists are permitted, as many as you like. There are normally two sittings a year, in May/June (the main one) and about January. Exams are conducted by schools, and the papers are sent all over the country for marking by external examiners (usually teachers). Exam requirments vary by subject but typically there are two 90 minute papers, attempted on different days, with an ungraded requirement to have completed certain coursework (for example, specific experiments in science).

The general syllabus is set by a government agency, and a number of organisations (exam boards) offer exams under that general syllabus. The school chooses which board to use for each subject.

(The grading system was changed because too many people were getting A*, so higher educational institutions were unable to distinguish between them.)

This system differs completely from the USA, which has no equivalent framework. However, the material studied does not differ all that much. (I tutor students in both systems, as well as others.)

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Some football (soccer) supporters use a grading system for opposition teams. Either they sing, "You're shit, and you know you are. You're shit, and you know you are." .... or they don't.

CuddleDuncan

@DaringSprinter that's all very erudite and all that, but I can utter 20 vowel sounds in one go - none of which are in that list - when the zip catches the scrotum. 🤣🤣

Seriously though I loved that post.

Jubal

Letter grades can be very useful in teaching kids to set expectations. I mean, life usually tests us pass/fail - for example, if you're attacked by a a bear, either you pass (survive), or you fail (you're bear food). Or in a more mundane setting, you're in a car crash that you survive or don't.

But, you can also look at the test in grade terms. You escaped the bear, but were badly mauled. Maybe a D or a C-. Or you escaped unscathed, A+. I suppose a "B" would involve you getting away from the bear because you were able to outrun your camping buddy who turned out to be slower than the bear.

I had a recurring dream once.

BashfulLoner

@DaringSprinter i think only cucumbers cans be come pickles everything else is just pickled. As lovely as all pickled things are.

BashfulLoner

I got E’s btw

BashfulLoner

@achetocuddle @Shake49 i think of vegetables like this. I like my nutrients new, rather than eating used nutrients. All the meat you eat are growing to that fleshy delight you see by eating vegetables.

BashfulLoner

Why is it called a knee cap if you can’t take it off?

Random things I occasionally think about:

How I don't like the UK or US flooring naming (ground/2nd/3rd etc vs 1st/2nd/3rd etc) but also that I can't think of a solution for the issue I see with them.

How amazing but also probably incredibly impractical an underground civilisation in a giant cave would be.

Wondering what things like being able to use magic by "sensing mana" and those kinds of things you see often in fantasy media would actually feel like, like would it be some extra sense or would it be some kind of sensation you could detect with regular senses? I feel like it's generally left rather vague to not have to bother explaining that kind of thing.

The mental image of attacking a large chocolate trifle with a big spoon.

ShaneSchrute

Whales have to live in an environment that will kill them if they can’t sometimes leave it lots of times a day. I think their will to live that’s coded on their DNA led to blue whales becoming the largest creature ever recorded.

SunsetSnuggles

Why do they put a ledge on baseboards? If they tapered them, it would be one less thing to dust/vacuum with the hose. 🤦🏻‍♀️

~ Sunset Snuggles