lurts
ScalziJust heard someone on a YouTube video tell viewers to "stay tuned" for something coming up later, and I'm struck by how some phrases outlive their initial context. Literally, it makes no sense to say "stay tuned" on YouTube, but everyone still knows what it means and thinks nothing of it, even people who have probably never actually watched a TV channel via terrestrial transmission.
Viss@scalzi im always amused when kids see diskettes or images of them and ask "huh, someone made the save icon a real thing"
wordcore
David D. Levine@scalzi Consider the word "straw," meaning a plastic or paper tube for drinking.
Chuck Taggart, Private Eye@scalzi Don’t touch that dial!
Also dialing a phone number, for that matter.
st3ph3n@SazeracLA @scalzi hanging up, too.
Cassandrich@SazeracLA @scalzi @st3ph3n Gesture UI Apple needs to add. They could make it enhance the sound transmitted before hanging up, too.
varx/tech
Glenn Fleishman@scalzi Ask a kid for the hand gesture they use to indicate "call me"
elle mundy@exchgr So detailed, it even has the lock switch on it
@glennf fine work from microsoft lol
@exchgr My 16 y.o. and I were watching this amazing early 80s Commodore 64 instructional video—really, truly well done—and the guy pulls out a 5 1/4-inch floppy. I said, “Oh, I used even bigger ones—8 inch!” My 16 y.o. says, “Did they store more data?” Me: “No. Much less.” And we all laughed for about five minutes.
@glennf i remember the first time i saw one of those in person. it was in the overlapping era between 3 1/2” and flash drives, in my middle school’s computer lab. somebody had dragged a computer with an 8” drive one out of some supply closet, i think for data migration. it was, as the kids say, an absolute unit
@exchgr 8-inch chongus
Steven Heywood
Stygian Lizard@Stevenheywood @glennf @exchgr it blows my mind now to think that there were whole games on those 3½ disks. And then some were really data heavy and you had to insert disk B to keep playing.
Greg Pak
deilann v -0.2.1. 
@scalzi clicked the paper clip to attach this
thought about your blog about asking one of your kids if their room had a phone jack after moving when I realized we click a 
symbol to make calls
William Pietri@scalzi
I'm your age and I don't think I've ever tuned a TV channel in the sense of fiddling with a continuous dial to find a station; I only recall channel selectors. So perhaps the phrase is from radio and therefore is doubly archaic?
I'm your age and I don't think I've ever tuned a TV channel in the sense of fiddling with a continuous dial to find a station; I only recall channel selectors. So perhaps the phrase is from radio and therefore is doubly archaic?
Mat Bowles@williampietri @scalzi I'm younger than John and had a TV with a tuner in my room as a kid, my parents old black and white TV
my grandparents also had tunable TVs —possibly they lasted better in the UK/PAL areas because we had fewer channels/a smaller spectrum? we didn't get a fourth channel until the late 80s
Marcos Dione@williampietri @scalzi when I was a kid (~40ya), the two B&W TVs we had had an outer ring around the selector for fine tuning, so there was some fiddling involved.
dr 🛠️🛰️📡🎧
@scalzi I assumed "stay tuned" is actually from radio, not TV...
GAC 
Michael Roberts@scalzi My son noted that when we signed him up for an AT&T account one year. The website said "Stay tuned while we configure some things" and he said, "Like ... like a radio? What an odd way of putting that."
Negative12DollarBill@scalzi
We still "ring up" purchases at the store despite the sad absence of little bells.
We still "ring up" purchases at the store despite the sad absence of little bells.
Mike SmithKind of like to "hang up" a phone. Everyone says it, even people who have never used the old phones that used to hang on walls.
Eric Florenzano@scalzi I think if I were a kid and asked to guess, I'd probably say it's slang for "stay attuned" rather than anything to do with radio frequency. Interesting.
klarth
Justin Hebert 
@scalzi Now I'm tempted to try and revive "Don't touch that dial!"
Avram Grumer@scalzi Do people still talk about “footage” with digital video? Or “splicing” “clips” together?
The word “cliché” ultimately traces back to the clinking sound hot metal type makes when you cast it in a mold.
Chris Murphy
Cassidy Curtis
Petra@scalzi did people ever 'tune' their tv to a new station like they do analogue radios, or was it always a tune- once/recall with number on remote situation?
Graeme K@PetraOleum @scalzi I’m only 39 and my first TV in my room as a kid was full analog tuning.
And grandmother’s was black and white. And you had to adjust the antenna per channel.
@graemek @PetraOleum @scalzi i'm sure you mean you, as the child, had to adjust the antenna per channel because that was child labor when i was growing up. i'm younger than you and mine was too, but it might be a poor thing. our TV was my great-grandpas
@deilann @PetraOleum @scalzi My grandmother only watched General Hospital on that TV, so it was up to us kids to figure out how to find ANYTHING ELSE when we were over there.
Helen Perris@PetraOleum @scalzi When I was a teenager, we had a VHF dial that clunked between preset "notches" for the stations and a UHF dial that was like a radio fine tuner where we had to find the station every time. And yes, it was possible to be slightly off the station.
@PetraOleum @scalzi I didn't have a remote control until I moved out of home and bought my first TV.
Queen of Anxiety@scalzi Idioms long outlive their original meanings. :)
Evan Hunt@scalzi my daughter coined a word for things like that: "dialtones".
Octorine@scalzi I don't remember when the last time I heard "don't touch that dial" was but it was quite a bit after dials.
BoterBug@scalzi I try not to say it when I have the presence of mind about it, and instead subtitute a "stick around", but yeah. "Stay tuned" is "stay here". Heck, even on TV, "stay tuned" was well past its expiration. I'm 38 and have never "tuned" a TV, just changed the channel.
Anyway, let me "roll down" the window in my car for some fresh air...
Rich Wajda@scalzi
Typed that out, did you?
Typed that out, did you?
Noah Cook@scalzi I seem to remember that the placement of the driver and the side of the road to drive on (eg US vs UK) was originally related to the safe use of buggy whips in multi-seat vehicles.
Tony Goins@scalzi or the “rolling up the window” hand motion.
Pete Wright@scalzi wonder if it was a thing radio broadcasters would say before tv even?
Rudy
Zylla Black@scalzi Fossilized phrases and images are so interesting. Imagine the first time a kid notices that there used to be this weird thing called a floppy disk that looks just like the Save icon...!
Tom Chappell@scalzi To “ship” a package.
Larry@scalzi Ships still sail from port to port.