I’m not really sure what that means. But a moment ago you claimed that aluminum was a later introduction and even Davy’s Latin names were still -ium based. Here you see that is wrong; he used aluminum for the metal from alumina along with Latin names like stannum and ferrum. If that isn’t the very evidence you wanted to see, I guess I didn’t understand your question.
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Well, I was just joking. It didn’t occur to me that Japanese cars are designed for left driving but of course they would be. Interesting that Canada drives on the right, I guess due to proximity to the US.
After this discussion, I was curious as to why the sch in “school” and “schedule” would be pronounced differently. School is from middle English scole, while schedule from middle English cedule or sedule. So it makes sense. But I must admit, the alliteration of “skool skedule” seems natural to me.
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You’re focussing on a very short period of time - 1812 and 1813. I was looking at the broader history. There’s an article about it here:
It’s an interesting and convoluted story but the bit I was thinking about was this:
“In the USA, the position was more complicated. Noah Webster’s Dictionary of 1828 has only aluminum, though the standard spelling among US chemists throughout most of the nineteenth century was aluminium; it was the preferred version in The Century Dictionary of 1889 and is the only spelling given in the Webster Unabridged Dictionary of 1913. Searches in an archive of American newspapers show a most interesting shift. Up to the 1890s, both spellings appear in rough parity, though with the –ium version slightly the more common, but after about 1895 that reverses quite substantially, with the decade starting in 1900 having the –um spelling about twice as common as the alternative; in the following decade the –ium spelling crashes to a few hundred compared to half a million examples of –um.”
The article makes the point that until 1855 aluminium had only been made in the sort of quantities we now associate with radioisotopes. At that point the scientific spelling on both sides of the Atlantic had settled on aluminium, but Webster’s spelling was used about half the time in the popular press. But then, while aluminium stayed in Europe, the US switched to aluminum.
Davy’s changes of naming weren’t terribly relevant - just like the early minor fuss over the “neutron” and Fermi’s solving the problem by suggesting neutrino for the light particle. What mattered was what it was called in the wider world and it’s clear that there, Webster’s (probably accidental) mis-spelling of what by then was the usual name confused the popular press while the scientists generally agreed.
The “half out of 5” remark was because of the names by Davy that you cited, the only one that has survived was aluminum - and that is allowed as a variant of aluminium.
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My car’s a Toyota, and once when I was giving someone a lift they pointed out the dashboard is symmetrical – the insets to hold the steering column and the glove box are identical. That is, the car’s been designed to be either left or right hand drive, depending on how the parts are put together.
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Well, yes, think how difficult it would have been in the 1812-14 war if Canada drove* on the left, then the invading armies would have run smack into traffic going the other way.
*“drove” does not imply cars, of course. There are traces of drove roads near here that date back at least 4500 years, though of course we don’t know whether the locals kept to the left.
That’s absolutely true of dashboards, but steering and pedals are another matter. I get the impression that the Japanese, for obvious reasons, pay a lot of attention to being able to switch, whereas European manufacturers are more likely to do LHD as an afterthought as for them it’s a minor market. I’ve seen some really clumsy mechanisms on FIATs, and the A class Merc had to have a convoluted route for the LHD steering wheel. I drove one in France and liked it, then I test drove one in the UK and it was like steering a farm tractor - vague and no feel.
Electric self driving cars are going to make this something our grandchildren will wonder about when they read old books.
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Of course when I was talking about the origin of the spellings, I was talking about the time they originated. There it’s just as I said: lots of metals not ending in -ium, and even the emender only saying it sounded better, not that it was a rule. Even today it’s not required though obviously preferred, with molybdenum, lanthanum, tantalum, and platinum surviving in English.
So, originating as a hypercorrection, unless you’d rather consider it only a preference for euphony. The subsequent history you link agrees substantially with what I said: aluminum being a reintroduction via Webster, which you are only assuming was a mistake rather than copying Davy, with no sign of being a later invention to cut costs like you claimed.
If you think modern use should not be determined by the 1810s, I agree, and even implied as much originally. But I’ll thank you not to claim I have the origin backward, ask for my evidence, and then dismiss it as not what we were talking about. I was, and a moment ago you were too; was I not supposed to answer?
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Getting back on topic, again:
Stuff that really grinds my gears; when companies just arbitrarily decide to discontinue well-liked products.
*pouts
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The Body Shop is the worst for that. Every three months they have a product line turnover where some stuff gets cut and other stuff gets introduced.
And then other stuff gets kept in the lineup, but good luck finding it on the shelves.
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You mean like that one bra style that fits you and is actually comfortable? And what they replace it with is not better in the least?
Nah, I don’t think I know what you mean. 
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I dont usually shop there, but I loved that product; the bastards.
Yes, exactly.
Or when they change the recipe for your favorite treats, and then they don’t taste the same anymore…
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You were right, I was wrong. Satis?
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Hershey is utterly evil.
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I used American Crew shampoo for years. Nice smell, cleaned my hair, didn’t leave a smell. Then they changed the recipe and it smelled awful. Not to mention it went from being a transparent colorless shampoo color to looking like a gender specific reproductive bodily fluid.
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Yes; yes, they are.
Ew.
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Someone revving an even louder leafblower where there aren’t any leaves.
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Corollary: trickle down snowblowing (where you blow the snow from your driveway into the road in the theory that traffic will carry the snow down the hill). Just use a shovel and put it on your lawn!
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That’s a good way to get the snowplow to drive slow as it goes by your driveway.
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Where I used to live, we had to shovel a path around the house from the driveway (at the side) to get to the front door. Of course, the snowplows would leave big banks of ice and snow on the sidewalks, and then the city sidewalk snowblowers would come along and blow all of that mess 20 feet away … right into our path. Nothing quite like shoveling 3 feet of snow only to come back out and find that your path is buried 4 feet deep. 
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To whomever used my driveway as a pick-up/drop-off point for my neighbours (while I was away visiting my mother for Christmas), and packed down the beautiful, light, grainy, easy-to-shovel snow into tire treads that I had to spend an extra half-hour scraping off of my driveway:
Fuck you very much.
That is all.
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