35006 53631538 0.140
June 23, 2024 2:54 AM Subscribe
Words you can spell with a calculator [document updated 18 years ago, on Oct 17, 2005]
Incomplete. In my school the go-to was 55378008.
posted by automatronic at 3:20 AM on June 23 [10 favorites]
posted by automatronic at 3:20 AM on June 23 [10 favorites]
Kids these days will never understand just how low-res naughtiness was back at the birth of the digital age.
posted by srboisvert at 4:13 AM on June 23 [7 favorites]
posted by srboisvert at 4:13 AM on June 23 [7 favorites]
Just this week, my 8 yo had gotten their hands on an old calculator and was playing with it in the backseat as I drove them to day camp. They were asking me for spelling suggestions and it took everything in my power not to tell them the secret of 5,318,008.
Kiddo and their friends are obsessed with some meme song about Ohio (it is too early in the morning for me to look it up now), but I will have to share 0.140.
posted by HeroZero at 5:03 AM on June 23
Kiddo and their friends are obsessed with some meme song about Ohio (it is too early in the morning for me to look it up now), but I will have to share 0.140.
posted by HeroZero at 5:03 AM on June 23
53751 4517734 40
372215 5318008 372215 53705
53751 53631538 705
posted by fairmettle at 5:46 AM on June 23 [1 favorite]
372215 5318008 372215 53705
53751 53631538 705
posted by fairmettle at 5:46 AM on June 23 [1 favorite]
This list was so much longer than I expected. Growing up in more isolated places in a disconnected time meant that I remember that across several different towns we might have had five words tops. But we had other stuff. Like in grade four I was the new kind and had to learn the local rules for playing marbles, which had a decided element of Calvinball.
And nothing could have prepared me for hockey card season. Nearly everyone I knew played and it wasn’t super complicated. When I got a deck of new cards I set aside all the ones I didn’t want. Then at lunch time I would find a spot along the south wall of the school and lay 5 or 6 of these cards against the school wall. There would be around forty kids set up this way. Then all the other kids would come by, stand just off the edge of sidewalk and flick their cards to try and knock down one and then get to claim the rest. If they missed you kept the card. Without years of practice I was terrible at the flicking cards
As for Ohio, my kids took to claiming it doesn’t exist, it’s been a little while now and the bit still entertains them. Sorry Ohio, I don’t get it but I’m willing to indulge them.
posted by zenon at 5:57 AM on June 23 [2 favorites]
And nothing could have prepared me for hockey card season. Nearly everyone I knew played and it wasn’t super complicated. When I got a deck of new cards I set aside all the ones I didn’t want. Then at lunch time I would find a spot along the south wall of the school and lay 5 or 6 of these cards against the school wall. There would be around forty kids set up this way. Then all the other kids would come by, stand just off the edge of sidewalk and flick their cards to try and knock down one and then get to claim the rest. If they missed you kept the card. Without years of practice I was terrible at the flicking cards
As for Ohio, my kids took to claiming it doesn’t exist, it’s been a little while now and the bit still entertains them. Sorry Ohio, I don’t get it but I’m willing to indulge them.
posted by zenon at 5:57 AM on June 23 [2 favorites]
Adjacent. A good few years ago every road in Ireland got a number and the L-for-local roads even got a sign if/where they intersected with a main road. This sign amuses me because County LAOIS is 90km in the opposite direction.
posted by BobTheScientist at 6:19 AM on June 23 [1 favorite]
posted by BobTheScientist at 6:19 AM on June 23 [1 favorite]
Totally remember BOOBIES. That and SHELLOIL and ESSOOIL were the extent of our repertoire.
Haha this list evokes innocent childhood fun—
GOEBBELS
Jesus Christ
posted by chococat at 6:22 AM on June 23 [8 favorites]
Haha this list evokes innocent childhood fun—
GOEBBELS
Jesus Christ
posted by chococat at 6:22 AM on June 23 [8 favorites]
In Twin Peaks, Dale Cooper used a calculator to send a message to the Sheriff.
Dial Master
posted by Ideefixe at 9:27 AM on June 23
Dial Master
posted by Ideefixe at 9:27 AM on June 23
This reminds me of Sexy ASCII Art. Yes, we made our own fun in those days.
posted by SPrintF at 9:44 AM on June 23 [1 favorite]
posted by SPrintF at 9:44 AM on June 23 [1 favorite]
My little fidget on these old calculators was trying to figure out how to get every segment to light up at once (e.g. M-8888888.88E), so you needed something in memory and a negative underflow error.
It usually involved multiplying a large negative number against 9,999,999.98 but every calculator was different. I got pretty good at it.
posted by JoeZydeco at 9:58 AM on June 23 [4 favorites]
It usually involved multiplying a large negative number against 9,999,999.98 but every calculator was different. I got pretty good at it.
posted by JoeZydeco at 9:58 AM on June 23 [4 favorites]
I was a teenage boy and math obsessive in a time before TI-84's, but my first association with this is SHELLOIL. (Hat tip chococat!!) From possibly the most influential book I've ever read, Martin Gardner's aha! Insight (1978):
And, yes, I was a teen boy too and there were teen-boy calculator nonsense similar to 55800103008 or whatever. Meh, had its time and place. Gardner/Knuth/Dad 4eva.
posted by Theophrastus Johnson at 12:03 PM on June 23 [1 favorite]
The first of these [upside-down calculator] stunts, which apparently started the craze, had a story line about the Arab-Israeli war. The following version was devised by Donald E. Knuth, a well-known computer scientist: 337 Arabs and 337 Israelis were fighting over a square of property that is 8424 meters on the side. Who won? To find out, obtain the square of 337 and add it to the square of 8424...""Most influential book" is a bold claim, but it caught my pre-teen self with its presentation of math, logic, and word play in a series of whimsical cartoons & vignettes. It seemed like a 'script' about how to communicate to others about these interesting, novel, clever scenarios that fascinated me. To his credit, Dad encouraged it: before the teen boy in me kicked in gear, he'd ask family and friends at social get-togethers: "You got a calculator? Theo, come tell them about that story about the war in Egpyt..."
And, yes, I was a teen boy too and there were teen-boy calculator nonsense similar to 55800103008 or whatever. Meh, had its time and place. Gardner/Knuth/Dad 4eva.
posted by Theophrastus Johnson at 12:03 PM on June 23 [1 favorite]
Theophrastus Johnson,
I remember my dad showing me one of the SHELL OIL variants in probably 1973 on his Casio that he was very proud of - and that I still own.
posted by unearthed at 3:23 PM on June 23 [1 favorite]
I remember my dad showing me one of the SHELL OIL variants in probably 1973 on his Casio that he was very proud of - and that I still own.
posted by unearthed at 3:23 PM on June 23 [1 favorite]
Wandering around this site, I found this list of 'biographies of people where it's somewhat ambiguous if they're trans or not'. Or at least that's what it was when it was made eleven years ago; in the intervening time, all of the Wikipedia pages these links point to have been updated to unambiguously say they are about a trans lady, with supporting quotes directly from the person in question. I like that.
The person who owns this site describes herself as a "queer trans woman" so she will probably like that to, if she ever runs across that list again.
posted by egypturnash at 3:39 PM on June 23 [2 favorites]
The person who owns this site describes herself as a "queer trans woman" so she will probably like that to, if she ever runs across that list again.
posted by egypturnash at 3:39 PM on June 23 [2 favorites]
Wandering around this site, I found this list of 'biographies of people where it's somewhat ambiguous if they're trans or not'.
It's a list of 5663.
posted by Faint of Butt at 5:26 PM on June 23 [1 favorite]
It's a list of 5663.
posted by Faint of Butt at 5:26 PM on June 23 [1 favorite]
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posted by Wordshore at 3:06 AM on June 23 [4 favorites]