Mildly interesting

[Copper]

I have stayed in a couple different hotels in Slough, it is out near Windsor Castle and Heathrow.

[jon-nyc]

Half of the silent generation accomplished all three by age 26 or so. Gen-x still hasn’t quite made half by 40. (I barely made it at 40, three months before turning 41).

(Odd that the graph slopes go negative at points- are they subtracting people out for getting divorced?)

[jon-nyc]

[George K]

Blaine County...

[Mik]

All three residents?

[George K]

@Mik said in Mildly interesting:

All three residents?

7044...

Blaine County has actually voted for the winner in every election since 1916 - except 1988, when they voted Dukakis.

True, but...

Blaine County is the nation's most consistent long-term bellwether county, having voted for the winning presidential candidate in all but two elections held in its history. After backing Theodore Roosevelt against Woodrow Wilson in the county's inaugural 1912 election, Blaine County has been won by the winner of the presidential election in every election except that of 1988, held during the aftermath of a major drought and farm crisis; Michael Dukakis won the county by 58 votes.

[Mik]

The reason why Gene Simmons never drank or did drugs

Simmons has always been firmly against alcohol and drugs because of his mother, a Holocaust survivor who endured the horrors of a concentration camp, where many members of her family perished. “I’m her only child,” the musician shared. “I knew I had no right to hurt my mother. Life had already done enough to her.”

Gene Simmons recounted a memorable and humbling moment during his first major interview with Rolling Stone when his mother interrupted:

“When I met the Rolling Stone writer, I was very careful to cultivate the mystique of the demon. I wore all my spider and silver jewelry and my leather pants. I puffed my hair as big as it could go. With my seven-inch platform boots with silver dollar signs on them and black nail polish, I thought I was ready to project the perfect rock-and-roll image.

Then, at one point, the doorbell rang. I answered it, and there was my mother at the door with enough food to feed the world: fresh soups, veal chops, pancakes, jams, and cakes.

She insisted that the writer and I—whom she referred to as "hungry boys"—stop what we were doing and eat. She kept calling me by my Hebrew name, Chaim, and told the writer that I was a good boy. The big, bad demon was just a mama’s boy."

[Doctor Phibes]

@Copper said in Mildly interesting:

I have stayed in a couple different hotels in Slough, it is out near Windsor Castle and Heathrow.

Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn't fit for humans now,
There isn't grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!
Come, bombs and blow to smithereens
Those air -conditioned, bright canteens,
Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans,
Tinned minds, tinned breath.

Mess up the mess they call a town-
A house for ninety-seven down
And once a week a half a crown
For twenty years.

And get that man with double chin
Who'll always cheat and always win,
Who washes his repulsive skin
In women's tears:

And smash his desk of polished oak
And smash his hands so used to stroke
And stop his boring dirty joke
And make him yell.

But spare the bald young clerks who add
The profits of the stinking cad;
It's not their fault that they are mad,
They've tasted Hell.

It's not their fault they do not know
The birdsong from the radio,
It's not their fault they often go
To Maidenhead

And talk of sport and makes of cars
In various bogus-Tudor bars
And daren't look up and see the stars
But belch instead.

In labour-saving homes, with care
Their wives frizz out peroxide hair
And dry it in synthetic air
And paint their nails.

Come, friendly bombs and fall on Slough
To get it ready for the plough.
The cabbages are coming now;
The earth exhales.

[Mik]

[George K]

@Mik said in Mildly interesting:

Gene Simmons

Link to video

Go to 10:40 where he talks about his mother taking the oath of citizenship.

[George K]

Weird stuff about Maine (and other states)

https://blog.matthewgove.com/2022/04/29/weird-geography-10-bizarre-and-unusual-facts-about-the-united-states/

• Maine is the closest US State to Africa. Quoddy Head, Maine sits just 3,154 miles from El Beddouzza, Morocco. For comparison, Florida is more than 4,000 miles from its nearest point on the African continent.
• If you take a road trip through the Lower 48, passing through each state only once, you always end in Maine. That’s because Maine is the only state in the continental United States that borders only one other state.
• More French is spoken in Maine than any state in the United States. When French explorers landed in eastern Canada back in the 1600’s, many of them settled in what is present-day Maine. Their descendants are still there today. It doesn’t hurt bordering two French-speaking Canadian provinces, either.
• Maine is the single largest producer of blueberries in the United States.
• Nobody knows how Maine got its name. All they know is that the name first appeared in writing in 1622.
• Despite the mystery behind its name, Maine was part of Massachusetts until 1819.
• Maine is larger than the other 5 New England States combined.
  If you visited one island per day, it would take you more than 9 years to visit every island in Maine
• At 3,478 miles, Maine’s coastline is longer than California’s (3,427 miles)
• Maine is home to the only desert in New England (40 acres outside Freeport). It formed 11,000 years ago, when a glacier deposited large amounts of sand on the site.
• Portland, Oregon is named after Portland, Maine. The Oregon city’s name was decided on a coin toss between Portland and Boston.

[George K]

[jon-nyc]

I moved my land line to VOIP in ~2010. Got rid of it altogether when my MIL died in 2017

[George K]

Does VOIP qualify as a landline?

[jon-nyc]

No it’s no longer using POTS and we could remove all the telephone cable in the house and cancel the service.

[George K]

@jon-nyc said in Mildly interesting:

No it’s no longer using POTS

Yeah, I get that, but it's not really wireless (unless you have wireless internet).

I assumed the graph used wireless and "cellular" as the same thing.

[jon-nyc]

(By the way I wonder if the Interesting As Fuck guy would be upset that his work gets downgraded to Mildly Interesting here on TNCR)

[Mik]

Fuck 'im.

[Mik]

Smart bears.

[Mik]