401–410 of 601 posts
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> Or are you expected to have to google it? It's clearly the implication that you shouldn't have to Google for it. That isn't directness, it's passive aggressiveness, which the Dutch are not stereotypically known for.
I live in Belgium, near the Dutch border. I can confirm that the Dutch can be passive-aggressive.
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I used to play conkers at school in England, however my children didn't. The reason? Schools have banned the game of conkers due to health and safety reasons. I asked my 17 year old this morning and he had never even heard of the game of conkers. So I think the age of conkers is passing, alas.
It's much more likely to have died out because of smartphones. The boredom of the pre-smartphone era led to all kinds of ingenuity. Kids were bored so they found ways to not be bored. Nowadays everybody is addicted their phone, simple pleasures such as violently smashing two nuts together no longer have the same pull.
Can confirm that we had very elaborate rules for our conker championships in school in Ireland in the late 90s and early 00s. The lore ran deep too - conkers were varnished in different ways, hardened in front of fireplaces, secret conker trees were coveted, rules were sometimes broken, airplanes were usually not allowed, disputes were not always mitigated, the occasional teacher grumbled. Fun was had.
Wait how do airplanes fit into all this?
> An "airplane" in conkers is when a player swings their conker in a wide, sweeping, horizontal motion, typically at about shoulder height.
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The "legislation against playing conkers" is demonstrably false.
You're writing that as though you're quoting someone. Where are you quoting that from?
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Page 3: "Carly 32D, 21 from Ipswich, thinks EU regulations on conkers is against British traditions"
I'm not sure if that betrays more about your opinion of women than you may have been aware.
Can confirm that we had very elaborate rules for our conker championships in school in Ireland in the late 90s and early 00s. The lore ran deep too - conkers were varnished in different ways, hardened in front of fireplaces, secret conker trees were coveted, rules were sometimes broken, airplanes were usually not allowed, disputes were not always mitigated, the occasional teacher grumbled. Fun was had.
When a player's conker comes off the string but remains whole, the opponent can call "stamps!!" and attempt to stamp it to pieces.
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There's this quote from Andy Warhol that I think has great explanatory power: > What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coca-Cola, Liz Taylor drinks Coca-Cola, and just think, you can drink Coca-Cola, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amo…
> The UK has the exact opposite of this. Everything that's for sale here is finely graded according to the buyer's budget and taste. Where someone chooses to do something as innocuous as their grocery shopping in the UK says an awful lot about them. Just sayin', I went shopping in... Denver? Let's just say that there was a mall with a bunch of shops and further down the street another bunch of shops. The public at No…
In the US class distinction is (almost) entirely down to money. If you’re rich you can buy nicer things than someone poorer and so you can be immediately sorted into a higher social class.
In the UK just because you’re rich that doesn’t make you upper class. British society is riddled with subtle dress coding, language, and social cues designed to trip people up and differentiate the nouveau riche from the real old money aristocracy.
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I’m American and never heard of this sport in my life yet article painted a similar picture in my mind.
It's not a sport, it's something that kids used to do pre 1950s. People were poor, didn't have manufactured "stuff", so they made their own toys out of simple things like stones, sticks, old wheels etc Football was likely popular because a single ball could keep a while bunch of kids happy for an afternoon (if someone could actually afford a ball). I'm almost 50, and to me the image of boys playing conkers only comes…
Also, I think this follows how most sports come to be. They are started as child play, when we have the time/leisure/energy, then they eventually become something some of us want to continue with as adults and the rest of us will pay to watch because we enjoy the sport so much (often fostered during youth play).
There are dozens of sports that I have no interest in simply because I wasn’t exposed to them as a kid. As an older American, we did not play Soccer(football) when I was a kid. It’s pretty popular now and my kid has had me go to professional games and such but I still just don’t really understand the game/rules/strategy or fully appreciate the difficulty of things that occur. I could learn I suppose but I still just have little effort in doing so as a middle aged person. I could say the same about Cricket and a handful of other sports that I never played as a kid but know are popular elsewhere. Likewise, when people move to the US, it usually takes them a while and likely never fully get into American Football and Baseball. Basketball has become more global and so I do expats that follow that sport. More likely than not, they follow the sports that interested them as a kid and just live with the time zone issue.
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Now imagine adding an explanation of american football rules on every article about it, of which there are probably hundreds written a day. I have no clue about american football rules - I barely know the sport exists, the ball has a funny shape, and that it's popular in the states. Still it would be absolute nonsense to explain their basics every time someone talks about them and I won't expect anyone to do so. Expl…
No one said it was true for every game. Conker is more akin to corn hole than football, but maybe even more obscure.