I still sometimes think about the guy in my lower secondary school English class in probably 2016 reading the infobox on the Wikipedia article for Tanzania, and saying out loud, “Official languages: none de jure??”, pronouncing it in a heavy singsongy Norwegian accent like “NOO-nuh duh YEW-ruh??”, apparently believing “None De Jure” to be the name of some sort of obscure African language rather than just meaning “no official language”

And then I remember that this was around the same time that the teacher asked what New York was named after, and I raised my hand and answered “the Dork of York”. And then my soul goes nichijou_pencil_stab.mp4 for a bit

  • Philosoraptor [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    26·
    7 months ago

    I sometimes think about the girl in one of my college classes (which was taught by Ralph Nader’s incredibly insane and rad sister) referring to Evelyn Fox Keller’s book A Feeling For the Organism as “the feeling of the orgasm.”

    An even better one: my PhD focused on the foundations of climate science, and when I was ABD I was teaching a class about it. We had Jim Hansen–extremely famous climatologist–in as a guest lecturer one week. He gave his spiel, and then opened it up to questions. One undergrad raised her hand and said “how did you go from making The Muppets to being a climate researcher?” She thought he was Jim Henson, and apparently had the whole time. It was the reddest I have ever seen a human being turn.

    Not only do I still think about that one, I tell my students about it every year when I talk about Hansen’s work.

    • Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      9·
      7 months ago

      Not gonna lie, if I was completely new to climate science and had never seen nor heard a photo nor video nor drawing nor audio recording nor impression nor Epic Rap Battles of History costume of Jim Henson in my life; and I didn’t know that Jim Henson famously died in 1990 from toxic shock syndrome complete with that little drawing of Mickey Mouse consoling Kermit; and I wasn’t the type of person who hears the difference between Henson and Hansen (met-mat merger is real and valid!); and I wasn’t the type of person to stop and think about how incredibly unlikely it is for one to inexplicably go from puppeteering to climate research… Yeah, that undergrad is literally me though. I 100% read “[…] teaching a class about it. We had Jim Hansen–extremely famous […]” and my brain just stopped for a moment thinking, “Wait, is that a typo of the name of the Muppets guy‽‽ That’s one Hell of a twist right there…”

      We love a bit of “say the first shit that pops into your head” energy sometimes, cheers to that undergrad wherever she is now, and I’m sure Jim Hansen gets things like that all the time.