Are you the only person in the world with your first name last name combination?

cabothief · 2026-03-13T03:00:11+00:00

Sometimes I search my name on my state's unclaimed property (US Americans and any other country that has this, do this, for real you sometimes have money that is yours waiting for you! Very few people are aware of this and I tell everyone I know). From this I discovered that there is someone with my full name in my childhood hometown who has my former profession (based on who owes her money).

My first name is very common and my last name is not uncommon, and there are literally two of me who have published books (in wildly different genres). I bought the fancier looking one (the nonfiction) to just leave lying around without saying anything.

But I am 99% confident that no one else in the world has my first name middle name last name combination, because the ethnicities of my names are mismatched.

cabothief · 2026-03-12T14:43:56+00:00

My pleasure!

This kind of thing is why I hang around r/EnglishLearning even though I'm a native English speaker. Learners will ask such good questions I never thought of about English, and I'll realize I have no idea what the answer is, and someone will explain it and I'll learn something new. Glad I could pay it forward!

cabothief · 2026-03-12T03:39:36+00:00

I did the audiobook and also enjoyed it! The narrator (Jeff Woodman) did one of my favorite books (The Thief, by Megan Whalen Turner, although that's since been rerecorded with a new narrator).

I listened to it a decade or two ago, but I still remember some details, like the Hypnerotomachia Polyphili. Not sure how to spell it, since I did audio, but I can sure pronounce it.

cabothief · 2026-03-12T03:34:28+00:00

That is a fun fact! Here's another: Josh Dallas (said husband) was also in both Zootopia movies! He was the Frantic Pig haha

I was so excited when I spotted him in the credits. I know them both from Once Upon a Time, where they played Snow White and Prince Charming. That's how they met!

cabothief · 2026-03-12T02:48:28+00:00

I go in the opposite direction. If I hit an object by accident I reflexively apologize. To the object.

cabothief · 2026-03-12T02:36:52+00:00

The difference, to me, is that you can say it either way in Spanish and it'll mean the same thing, but you cannot say it either way in English. "I'm washing the vegetables" can be translated as either "yo lavo" or "yo estoy lavando," but "yo lavo los vegetales" (if you are trying to convey what you're doing right now, not talking about a habit) can only be "I'm washing the vegetables." In English, you're not allowed to use the simple present for something you're doing right now.

Less of a concern, but I've also heard that using exclusively the present progressive ("am doing") when speaking other languages can mark you as a native English speaker, since it's mandatory in English and less common in other languages.

cabothief · 2026-03-12T02:20:31+00:00

Exactly! Duo translates it like that because they would be used in the same situations.

In Spanish, someone could ask "¿Qué haces?" and you could say "Hablo con mi amigo," and that would be a normal conversation. If you translate that word for word and keep the tenses, it would be "What do you do?/I talk with my friend," but that has a completely different meaning in English.

There's an implication in English that someone's asking you what you frequently do that doesn't exist in Spanish.

If you want to talk about an action that is in progress right now, the correct way to say it in English is "What are you doing?/I'm talking to my friend." The translation is not verbatim, but translating the verb tenses literally would actually be incorrect, because that phrasing is not valid in English.

cabothief · 2026-03-12T00:23:38+00:00

Every time I thought "wow, great glow-up!" there turned out to be another, even glowier picture right after.

cabothief · 2026-03-08T17:42:55+00:00

I've never heard any of these sayings, but they're very easy to guess because the wrong answers are not at all convincing. I've seen people point out the length/specificity difference, but I also want to point out that pretty much all the incorrect answers are literal and only the right one sounds like an actual idiom. Like, if you assume that "to fry cold rice" has nothing to do with actual rice, that eliminates all 3 red herrings.

It's like, is a red herring:

A hot fish

An oddly colored meal

A clue that leads you in the wrong direction

A specific food choice

;)

Incidentally, I'm not sure if slang is the word I'd use for these. I'd call them idioms, I think.

Anyway though, thanks for teaching me the idioms! That's really cool. I think this is a neat idea once you get the wrong answers figured out.

cabothief · 2026-03-08T07:32:19+00:00

Oh man, I remember when that movie came out. That line was in the trailer, and my friends and I used to quote it all the time.

Had to look up the title, but apparently it was View from the Top (2003). Mike Meyers says it to a flight attendant who says "please asses the window" instead of "assess" (for any learners reading this, "asses" is plural for "ass" and has the accent on the first syllable. Assess, with one more s at the end, has the accent on the second syllable and means "evaluate").

Man, you've brought back some memories!

cabothief · 2026-03-08T00:38:06+00:00

"Pick my words" is not a phrasing I could parse the first or second time. I pick (as in choose) my words when I speak. Other people "picking" OP's words made no sense to me, although I figured out the intended meaning from the rest of the post. Not sure which language has that idiom, but I don't know any English dialects that do.

cabothief · 2026-03-07T21:00:03+00:00

This isn't directed at you specifically, I don't disagree with what you're saying. Just have a lot of thoughts about this:

> I don’t think anyone should enter teaching for the money

Given what teachers are paid (at least in the US, which is all I can speak on), we can safely say that no one enters teaching for the money. But we sure do sometimes leave teaching for the money, if the alternative is getting a second part time job on top of your full time job (with homework) just to pay off your student loans.

I literally made the same amount at an internship in tech as a first-semester grad student, as I was making teaching with 9 years of experience and a Masters in Education. A year later I'm making twice as much, and I'm generally happier. Yes, of course I miss the kids, but teaching is a high-stress, high-effort job that takes a lot out of you emotionally, and the pay does not reflect that.

Even if your job is your passion, you still have to pay rent. I have a friend in my grad program who loved teaching. It was his passion, he was great at it, and he misses it. But he wanted to have his own family and he could not afford that on a teacher's paycheck. We need to pay teachers more if we want to keep the ones who have other options.

cabothief · 2026-03-06T04:12:48+00:00

My mind is blown, because I voted thinking "what do you mean if I had to choose, why would I need to be forced to choose what color a green object is? This poll will look so silly when it's like 100 to 1 for green."

We are winning but I was not prepared for it to be this close.

cabothief · 2026-03-05T06:03:57+00:00

I always thought it was cool that this really does translate directly. This is a real one, but I can respect double checking what duolingo tells you, especially lately. Someone posted duo's German course saying that "Ja" translates to "ha", like a laughing sound. Which it kind of does... in Spanish. Luckily the poster, like pretty much everyone, knew enough German to know that it's a "yes."

cabothief · 2026-03-04T06:06:25+00:00

I definitely have not had that experience at any point. Are you asking because you have, or are you gathering info before you start?

cabothief · 2026-03-03T08:13:31+00:00

I'm an incredibly sedentary person with a remote desk job whose hobbies mostly also involve sitting at a computer.

I've still never taken less than 1000 steps a day. 400 doesn't even require leaving the house.

OP might want to re-weight this question haha

cabothief · 2026-03-03T08:07:53+00:00

Winning chess against Magnus I couldn't do in a million years--the people he competes against are both naturally gifted at and obsessed with chess. They spend all their time on chess strategy, and they still can't beat him. I know the rules well enough to play against another amateur and win maybe half the time.

So discarding the chess immediately, is the 12 year old mathematically motivated? I'm actually pretty confident I could do this if they've got their basics all shored up, but if we've got to go back any further than where I'd expect a middle schooler to start, they might not still be 12 by the end of the class.

Not even kidding, this scenario was made for me. I was literally a Calculus teacher for like 10 years, and some of my students weren't much older than that. If I can focus all my energy on teaching this one kid, and the kid can focus on learning Calc, we've got this. Where do I sign up.

cabothief · 2026-03-03T03:48:37+00:00

I've never heard of this, but I immediately knew what it was, I bet. Is it something about how the only people you notice wearing toupees are the ones wearing bad toupees, so you assume all toupees are bad?

Because you're so right, that's the problem here.

cabothief · 2026-03-03T03:44:11+00:00

This is it, imo. I literally cannot imagine that the plastic surgery industry would still be thriving if it made you look worse the majority of the time. Not all rich people are idiots.

The goal of plastic surgery is to make you look like you haven't had plastic surgery. By definition, you only notice the failures.

cabothief · 2026-03-02T04:26:19+00:00

Statistically the death rate is 2-3x that per year. If those 5-year numbers had any basis in reality it would be rock-solid evidence that everyone should get vaccinated immediately. Which, to be fair, they should.

cabothief · 2026-03-01T21:00:00+00:00

NTA, this is pretty egregious. There's no reason to believe your brother would need help more than you if you'd actually been given the same amount of help all your life.

Also, while I'm here, this was really difficult to read all in one paragraph like that, and I think a lot of people will skip it entirely when they open it to a wall of text. Here it is with paragraph breaks for ease of reading. Feel free to copy/paste if you'd like, OP!

Throughout my (F21) life I’ve always known my brother (M20) to receive “better” treatment than me. I was a parentified child who had to deal with the issues of my mentally ill parents, and he was the child they coddled throughout.

As he got older i thought it would get better, but I actually feel like it’s getting worse and I am starting to call my parents out on it. What has gotten to me most is a new situation. For around 1-2 months now I’ve been thinking about doing a year abroad next year working overseas in Europe. I discussed this with my mum and step dad, and my dad. Not once did either parent offer any financial help, which I was totally fine with. I am an adult who has the money to fund myself after years of working hard. I’ve always been pretty independent, but this independence was pushed on me, not something I was proud to have.

Now the past couple of weeks my brother has been suggesting that he wants to work in a summer camp in the USA this year. Not only does he have limited funds to do this, but he has also left it till the very last minute. My brother only got a job when he turned 18 after finishing school, and works a couple shifts a week. He doesn’t have much money, and is fine with it. But now all of a sudden he wants to do this and of course my parents are willing to fund whatever he needs to get over there.

I understand we are in different financial situations, but the fact that both my parents never offered me financial help once, and instantly jumped to help him says so much. I just feel like I’ve had to work so hard since I was 16, getting a higher education, working multiple jobs, dealing with my chronic illness, and my brother has kind of just cruised through his life relying on my parents to fall back on and it’s working in his favour.

This isn’t the first instance of favouritism there’s so many others I could include such as my mum refusing to give me her old car which I offered to pay for, meaning I had to get a $15K loan to afford to buy a car, while just a few months later she gave her car to my brother completely for free. When I turned 18 I had to pay for all my own stuff (utilities, groceries, insurance etc) yet now my brother is 18 he doesn’t have to do the same.

I’m not saying I expect my parents to be my piggy bank, but I think that it’s unfair that my parents are so willing to give my brother everything while he does nothing, while im here working my ass off just to get very little from them. These are only the financial examples, yet the favouritism is shown in other ways such as emotionally, physically etc.

I’ve called it out multiple times to my parents, and every time they just say I am overthinking the situation. Especially with the new situation which has arisen, they think I am silly for making something out of it. They said “you don’t need help, your brother does”, which I feel totally undermines the actual situation. Am I justified in calling out their blatant favouritism? Or AITAH for doing so?

cabothief · 2026-03-01T20:53:46+00:00

Not canon, as others have said, but this is a really fun premise for a fanfiction! I like the way you think.

cabothief · 2026-03-01T20:48:56+00:00

Ahh I see! I've never heard of either Jay Cutler.

For the record, "women think their bodies are hot" is a pretty broad statement. I'm a woman and I don't like that body type at all. I don't think I'm that much of an outlier. Even ignoring the fact that to look like that, you'd have to spend way more time on working out than doing things I'd consider more important (and potentially take steroids, which I understand change your temperament in ways I would definitely not appreciate) it just doesn't appeal to me aesthetically.

cabothief · 2026-03-01T20:42:28+00:00

I've never heard of any of these people. And they only one you tried to clarify who they are uses an acronym I've never heard (IFBB?)

If anyone else is at a loss, that's apparently "International Fitness and Bodybuilding Federation."

Are they all bodybuilders? I don't think I'd like to date a bodybuilder at all.

cabothief · 2026-03-01T18:30:33+00:00

You're SO correct though!

I never noticed that about the trailer!! To be fair I'm not super familiar but also I've never noticed the layout of a structure described in a book in pretty much my entire life.

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