Similarly…Americans size wire carpentry nails as some number followed by a d. 16d nails are most common for nailing together two-by lumber as standard in structures, 8d are used for one-by lumber trim or plywood.

The d is pronounced ‘penny’. And like most of the stupid little stuff we do, it’s the Limeys’ fault.

Back when the UK had three moneys rather than two, they abbreviated pound as L (as above), shilling as S and, for some crumpet eating reason, pence as d. At some point in history, nails were sold in lots of 100, and different sizes at different prices. A box of large framing nails might cost 16 pence, a box of small tacks might cost 4 pence. The terminology has pretty much stuck to this day.

Consider yourself very lucky, they suck out loud.

Brain freeze also called ice cream headaches happen when the roof of the mouth and/or soft palette are rapidly cooled, often by eating frozen food like ice cream, smoothies, slushies etc. The pain gets referred to the entire volume of the head, it can feel like you’ve been hit in the eye or the top of the head with a hammer. Eating warm food can quickly stop it; I personally, if I get fast food with a shake or something I can feel it coming and I’ll eat a french fry or two to stop or prevent it.

Mine is “mmmMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMmmrrrrrrnnnnnnnnnnnn.” but yeah I’m on your team.

Partially because NATO has members that don’t speak English as a first language and how else do you clarify how to pronounce “five” without resorting to IPA? It’s kind of why they insist 4 is pronounced “Fo-wer.”

The v sound is so soft that communication grade radios will sand it off so it sounds like “fie” or “fah” depending. The vowel sound is similar to “nine”, add in some static or pushing the PTT a little too slow and you might mistake “iev” for “ien”, another reason to say niner and to NOT say fiver.

Insisting that you say “Climb and maintain Fife thousand Fife hundred, turn left heading One Fife Niner” makes sure it sounds like words on the far end of the radio.

I’ve also seen some glossaries insist 3 is pronounced “tree” because pronouncing fricatives strong enough to come across on the radio is hard for some NATO member states.

You might be familiar with the radio term “roger.” Per the FAA’s Pilot/Controller Glossary, it means “I have received all of your last transmission. It should not be used to answer a question requiring a yes or no answer.”

They want to make it VERY clear that roger does not mean “yes.” So why do we use the word “roger” to mean “acknowledged”? Because Americans in World War II.

First of all, radio was still a fairly new warfighting tool in the 1940’s. In a lot of cases, they still used Morse code tapped out by telegraphers on straight keys. Morse code was like the SMS of its day, it takes a long time to spell each letter out, so you end up with abbreviations, some of which really only make sense if you’re familiar with Morse. For example, you know the radio practice of saying “over” and “out?” In morse code, you use K (-.-) to mean “over” and KN (-.- -.) to mean “out.” There’s an entire list of “Q codes”, for example, you can tell someone to reduce their transmitter power by simply transmitting QRP (–.- .-. .–.). There’s one that means “what’s your barometric pressure?” because aviation. You’ll still sometimes hear “What’s QNH?” in aviation circles.

Most relevantly, a reply that simply means “I have received all of your last transmission” is simply abbreviated to R (.-.).

They also had AM voice mode radios. And now we get to talk about phonetic alphabets. We’ve all independently invented one at least once, talking to tech support on the phone and reading a serial number “One Three Four D as in Dog, Two, E as in Egg, Seven Eight one.” Because a bunch of letters sound the same when saying them out loud. You might be familiar with the modern one used by NATO, also required by the aviation world via ICAO. Starts out Alpha Bravo Charlie Delta etc. R in the modern one is Romeo. But NATO formed well after WWII.

The phonetic alphabet used during WWII by English speaking nations went Able Baker Charlie Dog Easy Fox etc etc. Peter Queen Roger Sugar etc etc Xray Yoke Zebra.

So we say “Roger” because in WWII the Morse code abbreviation for “received” was R and the letter R would be pronounced “Roger” on an AM transmitter, and even though the phonetic alphabet has moved on, the word remains in use with a specific definition.

“Avocado” is Spanish for “lawyer.” I think it’s where English gets the word “Advocate?” So why do we call that staple of the millennial diet, the gator pear, that? Apparently that’s what the Spanish heard the native Mexicans calling it. But they weren’t saying “Avocado” they were saying “ahohado” or some similar. Which in their native language meant “testicle.”

That is the version of the story I heard from Alton Brown.

Piggybacking off of this one, the reason we say “niner” in the radio to mean “nine” is to prevent it from being mistaken for the German word for no, nein.

The Pilot/Controller Glossary also insists you pronounce “five” as “fife.” Good Luck, With That.

Let’s take the helicotter.

The all-new Ikea Cjardboord.

Prerequisite for divorce.

Cereal! No milk.

Trump’s Third Term

Trump’s President Again.

Which is why I was fine with Google’s usual take, there’s a switch in the options you have to turn off to allow installing software from outside the Play store. Keeps the normies on the rails, anyone who pushes the “I’ll take my chances” button is assuming personal responsibility.

Meanwhile: spoofing telephone numbers. We don’t have the same problem with, say, email, do we? We basically need to tear out the telephone system and replace it with something that works in the modern era, quit barely emulating the form factor of a century old system that basically doesn’t exist anymore.

I’ve been summoned a couple times. Was paid $12 for not being selected to the jury. I think you’re off the roster for awhile? They were about a decade apart.

You can’t say the phone companies should block calls from unverified numbers while at the same time saying Google shouldn’t block download of unverified apps.

Sure you can. There’s a difference: Whether or not the owner of the handset requested the traffic.

A random APK from F-Droid isn’t going to suddenly demand my attention while my phone is sitting on my desk with the screen off. An Indian man threatening to jail me if I don’t mail him Amazon gift cards has and will again.

Ruining it for the rest of us forever.

You’re not going to find an Obama Hope edition firearm out there.

What’s Merrell?

I once named the disease “The Disease From Madagascar” and it started in Madagascar.

I also killed the world with a bacteria called Red Ass.