Absinthe makes the head grow funnier.
Sugar packets are just more practical. Cubes can only be used in a hot liquid, but packets can be used on cereal or grapefruit (how we ate them when we were kids.). It makes sense for most restaurants to use packets.
Up until now I had understood that, aside from higher primates, the only animals to make and use tools were corvids (crow family).
On QI last night (T series, ep 1, which I assume will hit the US very soon if it hasn’t already) it was claimed that a particular species of cockatoo also makes and uses tools; and indeed uses a “toolkit” of three different tools in order to open nuts. Well, you gotta double check that sort of claim - right?
Here you go:
j
ETA - parrot family
They were also the conduit used to ingest the Sabin oral polio vaccine. We had to go and get two or three separate doses. Each time we got a sugar cube (with a round yellowish stain) in a little paper cup to eat.
A lot more fun than the injected Salk vaccine.
No doubt, which is why cubes fell out of popularity. However, cubes were a method of convenience long before disposable packets came into being. Cubes are still handier than packets for some things though. For example, they make great horse and mule bribes in a way a packet could not.
Disneyland has put two of the “It’s a Small World” dolls into wheelchairs. I also noticed that the dolls in the final “scene” in the ride are all holding songbooks–not for “It’s a Small World”, but for “Deck the Halls”.
Now there is a word that was perplexing me the other day. We used to use a verb, as in “sashay on outta here”, which sounds exactly like “sachet” but has no cognate relation to it. Naturally, English has an abundance of mutant ferrin words that get re-spellings, for our convenience. But how the hell do you get sashay from sachet?
Of course I went and looked it up, being myself a bit creaky of age and uncertain as to whether we actually ever did use “sashay” the way I thought. Well, it is there, I was not in fact befuddled, and yes, it is from not-English. The origin is “chassé”, which is a ballet/dance term for a shuffling step (toe up to heel, front foot forward, back toe to heel, rinse, repeat).
TIL the last Egyptian pharaoh Cleopatra lived closer in time to us, than she did to the construction of the Great Pyramid.
Meh, when I worked in the office, I would buy sugar cubes for my coffee and tea. I think I was the only one in my department that used sugar. Never had any problem finding it.
The slogan in Germany for the polio vaccination campain from 1962 onwards was “Schluckimpfung ist süß, Kinderlähmung ist grausam (und Post-Polio-Syndrom ist bitter)”: the oral vaccine is sweet, children’s paralysis is cruel (, and post polio syndrome is bitter)). It worked! But it was hard, not uncontroversial, biased by cold war prejudices (the GDR was much faster than the GFR - very suspicious). A very interesting story, here in German, but well translatable with deepl.
The threads about words - double letters, silent letters - got me thinking. Well, that and there was a thread title which included the word “Karabiner” - and I mused: What’s the longest English word with alternating vowels and consonants?
Answer, apparently (starting with the second longest):
Honorificabilitudinitatibus (honōrificābilitūdinitātibus, Latin pronunciation: [hɔnoːrɪfɪkaːbɪlɪtuːdɪnɪˈtaːtɪbʊs]) is the dative and ablative plural of the medieval Latin word honōrificābilitūdinitās, which can be translated as “the state of being able to achieve honours”. It is mentioned by the character Costard in Act V, Scene I of William Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost.
As it appears only once in Shakespeare’s works, it is a hapax legomenon in the Shakespeare canon. At 27 letters, it is the second-longest word in the English language featuring only alternating consonants and vowels. The longest is Honorificicabilitudinitatibus, which has the same meaning.
My bold. Cite
j
I learned a new word today, and I want it to spread.
OK, actually it’s an old word that’s become obsolete, but it’s a word we really need:
snollygoster: A shrewd person not guided by principles, especially a politician.
Semen ejaculatation, even if it moved considerably more slowly than that, might still be frowned upon in most school zones.
And seriously. That was Acid.
In checking out just how autobiographical his latest film is, I found out that Steven Spielberg attended Cal State, Long Beach (couldn’t get into USC Film School) in the mid 60’s, but dropped out.
He went back to CSLB in 2002 and completed his Bachelor’s degree in Film and Electronic Media.
I just imagine the perspective of a professor teaching (and grading) one of his classes. What happens if I make a point and he disagrees with it?
By that time, he had already directed 20 films (including E.T., Raiders of the Lost Ark, Schindler’s List, and Saving Private Ryan), won 2 Directing Oscars and one Best Picture Award, and founded DreamWorks, not to mention his television series and mini-series.
This is what TAs are for. Let the grad student take the heat. 
Besides, picking apart Spielberg is too easy. Make it a class discussion and see how Stevie handles the pressure of undergrads tearing his films apart.
Sort of reminds me of bassist Flea. After being a member of the RHCP for 25 years, he enrolled in music classes at the University of Southern California, where he studied music theory and composition.
We had that acid once, in the late '70s. It was really good.
But then there was that one restaurant that brought us parfait-like desserts that had a brandy-soaked sugar cube in the top, en flambé.
Seriously? You got LSD soaked sugar cubes in restaurants? Or am I being wooshed?
ETA: sorry, I misread, not in restaurants, but I’m still confused. Acid cubes as regular food items?
No, our friend got his hands an a vial of liquid acid and put drops of it on sugar cubes for easy distribution.