Nuggets of Truth

[Bill Ryan]

I found this short video fascinating. The narrator is an expert in Old English spoken dialect. He embarks on a simple story about life on a farm, starting in the spoken English of 450 AD, gradually transitioning over 3 minutes to fully modern English.

At the end of the video, he repeats the story, this time with a detailed annotation, a running captioned translation of what he was actually saying.

The interesting challenge is to see at what point in history one can start to understand it all. I made out the word 'chicken' at 800 AD (which hasn't changed in over 1000 years!) but after that I only started to understand the story when he reached the Shakespearean era of 1550-1600.

What was equally fascinating for me was that a modern time traveler returning to the 1700s would be able to converse with the locals of that era very easily. (But definitely not in the 1400s or earlier!)

(A footnote to the time travel question: if some modern-looking humans really are time travelers from a distant future, walking among us, they'd have to learn our language from scratch. How much is it going to change before we get to the year 3000 and beyond??)

From Old English to Modern English in One Monologue. How far back can YOU understand English?

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=842OX2_vCic

[grapevine]

Prototaxities - Prehistoric trees? Think again . . .

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=lWA6KqBpaxo

[Ewan]

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)
I found this short video fascinating. The narrator is an expert in Old English spoken dialect. He embarks on a simple story about life on a farm, starting in the spoken English of 450 AD, gradually transitioning over 3 minutes to fully modern English.

At the end of the video, he repeats the story, this time with a detailed annotation, a running captioned translation of what he was actually saying.

The interesting challenge is to see at what point in history one can start to understand it all. I made out the word 'chicken' at 800 AD (which hasn't changed in over 1000 years!) but after that I only started to understand the story when he reached the Shakespearean era of 1550-1600.



From Old English to Modern English in One Monologue. How far back can YOU understand English?

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=842OX2_vCic

Snap in recognising chicken - like immediately, and overall the Shakespearean era for a greater overall understanding but several other words between. Thanks, I suspect, to my heritage of Scottish Highlanders and so many Gaelic words still used in a modern (1960's) Highland dialect language. There were many people from Scotland who could barely understand the language of the Highlanders, I kind of grew up with a slice of it.

EG: He used nicht for night, that was exactly what the Highlanders would have said also.
"The nichts are fair drawn in." The nights are getting darker - seasonal change.

Example: A drecht day, reet fool. ~ A damp grey (miserable) day, really foul.


That said, not so many words from the highlands would have been in common usage in middle England, more likely Francian , Saxon, and Danish

[grapevine]

"You don't need a house to have a good life"

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=_LzYB06Gg1M

[grapevine]

I never knew this, did you?

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=YR5ine6MdzA

[Bill Ryan]

Posted by grapevine (here)
I never knew this, did you?

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=YR5ine6MdzA

Ha. I had to go try that. I found that it works great for small nails — right, who knew?? — but (alas!) with the large 5 inch and 6 inch nails that I often use to mend my wooden fences the claw divide on my hammer wasn't separated enough to hold them. (But maybe I need a slightly different hammer?)

[AutumnW]

I found this archival film about psychopaths intriguing. I don't think much more has been learned about the condition in the last several decades in terms of their behavior. The brain anomalies of psychopaths are being studied currently.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZEPhUCZnYfM

[AutumnW]

My mother's father was Scottish. His father immigrated from Wick, Scotland, in Caithness. My father is a 1st generation Swede. I grew up listening to my grandmother. I identified the early English as heavily Norse right away, though I understood none of it.

[grapevine]

Karl Bushby - 27 years to walk around the world

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=mtXDt-TJht4

What an extraordinary feat (no pun intended )
"6 Sept 2025 #karlbushby #walkingtheworld #worldwalk
Karl Bushby has been walking for 27 years to become the only person in history to circle the planet entirely on foot. His journey began in 1998 in Chile 🇨🇱 with one rule: no transport of any kind ❌🚗✈️ He crossed the vast landscapes of South America, survived the deadly Darién Gap ⚔️ with its smugglers and wild jungle, and then trekked through Central and North America 🇲🇽🇺🇸 step by step. He even braved the frozen Bering Strait ❄️ with French traveler Dimitri Kieffer, drifting 80 km off course but still making history. In Russia, strict visa rules and brutal Siberian winters dropping to −50°C turned his progress into an exhausting 11-year challenge. Later, when blocked by the Caspian Sea 🌊 with no way around, Karl and Angela Maxwell 🏊‍♂️🏊‍♀️ swam across it in 40 days, becoming the only people ever to achieve such a crossing. After nearly three decades, 27 countries, and 47,000 km through jungles, deserts, mountains and icy wastelands, Karl is now walking across Europe 🇪🇺 and is expected to finally return home 🏠 by 2026."

According to AI, he was in Belgium in July

[grapevine]

Mental Maths

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=AvYStKeRUK8

[grapevine]

How to drink whiskey like a sir

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=YVG1U-faqHY

[Sue (Ayt)]

A silly nugget of my own here.

I made some cupcakes for a party, and was about to make the frosting when I realized I was out of powdered sugar. Stores were closed, and I needed the treats for the morning. I had regular sugar, but no powdered confectioners sugar.

Then it suddenly dawned on me - wait! Sugar is sugar, right? Like Duh, just powder up the regular sugar in a blender on high and it becomes "powdered sugar." Which it did. Made perfect frosting.
Can't believe I didn't know that after all these years!

[grapevine]

A chilling prediction on population from 1967:

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=SXTyN3m4Cb4

[grapevine]

WTF - Chicken heated nuclear landmine

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=_xvALUkU5GI

Probably more suited to the Clown World thread :/

[RunningDeer]

Ancel Keys lied to the world and we all fell for it. (2 min)

Ancel Keys took 21 or 22 countries, then he picked the seven countries where the data fitted the relationship that he wanted to publish, and he excluded the rest of the data. It is an academic misconduct on the highest order. It is not up for debate whether or not - it is a fact.

Twenty+ countries


Seven countries

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=hY1QBTCLA44

[grapevine]

Scientists Discover Alzheimer’s Immunity

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=XRwPwL65ru4

It's always good to keep abreast of the latest treatments and discoveries of this awful and debilitating disease.

[grapevine]

Michelangelo's Creation of Adam -
Once You See It, You'll Never Unsee It!

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=-YZ7sFNm3ak

8.50
Apologies for posting this (slightly) longer video but I was amazed by the content and think it belongs here. Like millions of others, I have seen this painting several times in my lifetime but I never really saw it before.

[Mike Gorman]

If we consider that the Brain is more like a tuning antenna type construction this has an intriguing, additional dimension, you know what I mean?

[grapevine]

"Prisencolinensinainciusol"
One of the strangest but cleverest songs ever written back in 1972 by Adriano Celentano, an Italian. He noticed that his fellow countrymen, who couldn't speak English, nevertheless could recognise English being spoken and so he wrote this song, which is actually nonsense, but the strangest thing is that as an English person myself I can almost understand it.

See if you agree . . .
The song reached No.1 in Italy, France, Germany and Belgium. Celentano, now aged 88, has claimed he invented rapping with this song. which is a bit of a stretch imo.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=fU-wH8SrFro

[Johnnycomelately]

Posted by Mike Gorman (here)
If we consider that the Brain is more like a tuning antenna type construction this has an intriguing, additional dimension, you know what I mean?

I know exactly what you mean. Loud and clear.

You are asserting the value of conversational interaction, demonstrating its superiority to posts that use videos to attract attention.

You are also playing with Poe’s Law, trolling for folks who may not know your mischievous side.

Bravo, sir.