Things you have just found out

What I knew under the term "zoomies" are more formally referred to as Frenetic random activity periods, or FRAPs. We don't really know what causes them, but at least the feline version of them could be related to hunting behavior.

My cats often have them, but very rarely in the form of tail-chasing or running in circles.

Please tell me I'm not the only person never to have noticed that the Windows mouse cursor is asymmetrical.

I didn't know either, but now that I've seen it I find it slightly distracting. I will, however, survive this ordeal.

Richard the Lionheart apparently wrote this poem during his captivity:

fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Rotrouenge_du_Captif

I'm a bit shocked that I never heard of this earlier, or indeed of the existence of any literary work attributed to him.

Maybe I'm the only one who didn't know that, but Fitz- in the name Fitzgerald for instance is Anglo-Norman for modern French "fils (de)" = son (of). I learned about it while researching patronymic suffixes in French names. I had a conversation with my boss where he reacted to my saying it seemed like French didn't have those, by telling me we had -on, and the example he gave me was "Philippon". I wasn't able to confirm this was a patronymic suffix, but maybe there's something to it. I did read an article that mentioned a few, like -elet, and the French article on patronymic suffixes has an interesting bit on prefixes:



I kept on reading and saw the thing about Fitz in the Anglo-Norman category. It has a "citation needed" note, but the English Wikipedia has a whole article on Fitz, which confirms what the French article says.

Armsünderschmalz. It almost makes me want to find some new message board to post on, so I can use it as a nick.

Olive dust is a thing.