Fun facts!

[The Cunting Death]

Two of the people you can hear speaking in Dark Side of the Moon are Naomi Watts' Parents. Her dad was once the manager for Pink Floyd.

 

[Recoil]

Two of the people you can hear speaking in Dark Side of the Moon are Naomi Watts' Parents. Her dad was once the manager for Pink Floyd.

It's like all the famous people ever are in some sekrit club.

 

[Clockwork_PurBle]

In the opening theme for Adventure Time, you can hear the clacking of someone typing on a keyboard.

That is because the theme they're using is actually the demo; Pendleton Ward recorded it in Derek Drymon's office (?) (he's the one typing) and Ward liked the demo better.

 

[Glad I couldn't help]

The Canadian Constitution has within it the phrase "German Reich".

 

[Burgers in the ass]

It's commonly believed in Australia that it is illegal to walk on the footpath on the right side of the road.
This is actually somewhat opposite.
If there is no footpath that can accessed from a road, then you are generally required to walk on the right side of that road.
You can get hit with fines if you fail to do so.

 

[Recoil]

Turntablists find exact points on a record by drawing a line out from the hole in the center of the record they're using, That line functions like a clock and we can tell ourselves that a particular sample starts "10 rotations in a 3 o clock" and so on.

EDIT - the +/- 8 on a turntable's pitch bend slider serves as an octave's worth of notes in either direction. If you've a constant tone at a fixed note playing on that turntable, it's possible to sight read sheet music and play those notes accordingly.

 

[The Cunting Death]

Andy Dick is a faggot.

That fact is not fun

 

[The Cunting Death]

Slow down the Mario Power Up noise and its the exact same sound you get for clearing a level

 

[Recoil]

Slow down the Mario Power Up noise and its the exact same sound you get for clearing a level

It works like that because the system is actually synthesizing all the sounds it emits, as opposed to using samples.

Edit - the sound is used 2x like this to save space. in both situations, the sound is the same string of instructions to play certain notes. The only added data is a variable for the speed of that playback. How iconic it sounds at both speeds is testament to the intelligence and craft of the designer. Planning sound design like this is far from impossible, it just takes a very deep understanding of the machines at play.

 

[Cheetahman]

During an international conference announcing that HIV was discovered to have mutated from the simian SIV, an American journalist went up to a Zaire doctor to ask if it was true that AIDS originated because Africans had sex with monkeys.
The doctor rejected the claim, and responded that he was made aware that Europeans made films where women fucked dogs, and then implied that millions of US households had dogs and wouldn't even bother filming it.

Finally, Max Essex and his Harvard colleague Phyllis Kanki referred to the
recent discovery of a virus in captive rhesus macaques in U.S. primate centers
that produced an AIDS-like ailment in the monkeys. The virus was dubbed
STLV-III (mac), or simian T-lymphotropic virus type III (macaque). The virus,
they said, grew easily in human T cells. A second virus, dubbed STLV-III (agm),
was announced at the meeting. It was found, Essex said, in half of all tested wild
African green monkeys, or vervets.127 Essex told the gathering that it was
reasonable to assume that AIDS started as an African monkey disease, and only
recently, through an unknown means, entered the human population.
Though the essence of nearly every one of these headline-grabbing reports
would later prove false, they made their impression: the world was convinced
that Africa was witnessing an older, widespread epidemic that originated in
monkeys and spread among humans of all ages on the continent via heterosexual
transmission and some as yet unclear “household” means.
For the three lone Africans present at the “international” meeting—Project
SIDA’s Kapita and Nzila and Pangu Kaza Asila of Zaire’s Ministry of Health—
much of what transpired in Atlanta was deeply offensive. Mann had insisted that
the CDC pay to bring the Zairian scientists to the meeting, but he also worried
that one of them might unwittingly say something to the aggressive North
American press corps that would have dismal repercussions back in Kinshasa.
Because none of the Zairois had ever dealt with Western journalists, Peter Piot
was asked to stay with them at all times.
Though Kapita, Pangu, and Nzila were upset by allegations that AIDS was
Africa’s dubious gift to the rest of the world, they managed to keep their anger to
themselves until approached by an American journalist who said, “We have all
heard what Max Essex said here about AIDS originating as an African monkey
disease. Tell me, Doctor, is it true that Africans have sex with monkeys?”
Kapita seethed. The three Zairois pretended not to understand the question,
though English was one of the four or five languages they spoke with some
degree of facility.
“Peter, s’il vous plait, que est-ce-qu’elle a dit?” Kapita asked Piot, hoping the
journalist would give up trying to get an answer. Piot was enraged. He whispered
a warning in French: “Ne répond pas.” But Kapita told Piot to translate a
response to what he considered an exceedingly rude and demeaning query.
“Madam, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kapita said. “We don’t do
those things. But I believe that in Europe they make movies where women have
sex with dogs. And I’ve also heard that in the U.S. there are all these dogs as
pets at home, and that they sometimes, well, you know what I mean …”

 

[The Cunting Death]

NASA let the crew behind Armageddon use their stuff for filming and had NASA advisers on set.
Even though they warned Michael Bay about how all the stuff in the film could never happen in real life, Bay ignored their suggestions anyways because the stuff looked cool.

NASA now uses the film to recruit people, by having people count how many inaccuracies are in the film

 

[The Cunting Death]

another one

That Hospital Scene in Spider-Man 2? The one where Doc Ock's Tentacles are murdering the Hospital staff?

That scene alone almost got the film an R-rating, specifically a scene (restored in the 2.1 cut) where the tentacle grabs a Doctor and electrocutes him is what got the film in trouble. Cutting that out and a few trims here and there is what got the film its PG-13.

 

[Count groudon]

Hercules was originally going to be the protagonist of God of War. When they first made plans for the game, it was originally conceived as a simple Throwaway action game themed around Greek mythology, and they initially didn’t really have any sort of an idea for what they wanted it to be, So they were going to make it a generic beat em up about Herc completing his tasks from the original myth. Once they started working on the game for a bit, their enthusiasm began to spike and they began to come up with more and more ideas for the plot and the gameplay, and after a while they decided to come up with their own protagonist for the game as they felt it would suit the tone of the game more. This is actually why every game in the original trilogy featured a Hercules costume, supposedly based on the original character design for the game.

The original concept for God of War 3 was to have Zeus join forces with Odin and Ra, with Kratos teaming up with the sons of the two new heads of the other Pantheons to put an end to their tyranny once and for all. The ending would’ve featured Kratos with the sons of Ra and Odin still alive thousands of years after their victory, traveling through the desert to meet Jesus Christ as the three wise men.

You can probably guess why that never happened.

 

[Jmz_33]

In September of 2017, 40+ cats were rescued from a hoarding situation, when their previous owners abandoned them for 8 months.

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

The original concept for God of War 3 was to have Zeus join forces with Odin and Ra, with Kratos teaming up with the sons of the two new heads of the other Pantheons to put an end to their tyranny once and for all. The ending would’ve featured Kratos with the sons of Ra and Odin still alive thousands of years after their victory, traveling through the desert to meet Jesus Christ as the three wise men.

You can still sort of experience this alternate concept with the fan game Bit of War.

 

[PL 001]

Jack Nicholson and Hunter S. Thompson were friends. When Jack's 40th birthday was nearing, Hunter kept asking him what he wanted. Nicholson made the mistake of saying "I dunno, surprise me."

3:00 in the morning, Nicholson and his girlfriend were woken up by Thompson shining flood lights into his window and blaring sounds of pigs being slaughtered on a loudspeaker outside.

 

[betterbullocks]

The worst goddamn unit in somewhat-common use in the US system is the "mil," which is a sort of a metric inch (1/1000 of an inch). I see it commonly used in CNC/machining and to describe sheet thicknesses (plastic bags/sheets are often "1 mil" "5 mil" etc.) This unit infuriated me because, well, if you want the convenience of the metric system, just use the fucking metric system. Not a stupid-ass metric inch, especially when "mil" can get used as a synonym for a millimeter or milliliter.

Another stupid-ass wannabe-metric unit that is far less common is the Rankine, which is basically Fahrenheit adjusted to absolute zero. Absolutely stupid. I've only encountered it in chemical engineering stuffs (hello, 40 different units for pressure and humidity).

Continuing the units-related autism streak here, I'm not particularly fond of the parsec, either. It, the AU on which it is based, and the light-year are all originally defined off of the Earth's orbit (time or radius). Unlike the light-year, however, the definition is far more convoluted:

A parsec is defined as the distance at which one astronomical unit subtends an angle of one arcsecond,[1] which corresponds to 648000/π astronomical units. One parsec is equal to about 3.26 light-years or 31 trillion kilometres (31×1012 km) or 19 trillion miles (19×1012 mi).

The unit is on the same order of magnitude as the light-year, making it really no more useful in my mind. I imagine it makes some calculations more straightforward, but I sure as hell haven't seen why.

Astrofag here, parsecs actually make a good deal of sense. While lightyears can be really helpful doing pen and paper work, parsecs are better for actual observation since raw observation is heavily based on measuring parallax. It might not be as accurate or exact, but in terms of a handy tool for charting the night skying, parsecs are pretty handy tools. Plus the relation between parsecs and AU can conceptually be a bit nicer than measuring everything in lightyears.

TL;DR Atmosphere : Pascal :: Parsec : Lightyear. LYs are cool and scientifically elegant but people suck its dick too much imo.

This one is less stupid and more bizarre, my astro professor used to use Angstroms. Angstroms are 100 picometers/ 0.1 nanometers. No, I'm not approximating, its really just a very specific scaling of SI units for very small distances that fall within a specific range. But he's a dusty old crow and we all love him so it's ok.

I agree about Rankine though, I've only encountered it in fluid dynamics n shit thus far and it seems really stupid. The conversion is brainlet-tier easy so I can't be too mad at it (looking at you, Fahrenheit) but still a useless metric imo.

 

[Dr. Sexbot]

Astrofag here, parsecs actually make a good deal of sense. While lightyears can be really helpful doing pen and paper work, parsecs are better for actual observation since raw observation is heavily based on measuring parallax. It might not be as accurate or exact, but in terms of a handy tool for charting the night skying, parsecs are pretty handy tools. Plus the relation between parsecs and AU can conceptually be a bit nicer than measuring everything in lightyears.

TL;DR Atmosphere : Pascal :: Parsec : Lightyear. LYs are cool and scientifically elegant but people suck its dick too much imo.

This one is less stupid and more bizarre, my astro professor used to use Angstroms. Angstroms are 100 picometers/ 0.1 nanometers. No, I'm not approximating, its really just a very specific scaling of SI units for very small distances that fall within a specific range. But he's a dusty old crow and we all love him so it's ok.

I agree about Rankine though, I've only encountered it in fluid dynamics n shit thus far and it seems really stupid. The conversion is brainlet-tier easy so I can't be too mad at it (looking at you, Fahrenheit) but still a useless metric imo.

Thank you. Yeah, I remember being stuck using angstroms in astronomy and one of my chemistry courses. That's another unit that doesn't make a lot of sense. As far as I remember, it only gets used in spectroscopy really. But it gets that cool 'o' ring over the 'A' from the Swedish alphabet / the Stargate, so, half a point for that.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

In an early draft for the game "Deus Ex", JC Denton was supposed to be the descendant of Jesus, the name JC is a hint at that, since it stands for Jesus Christ. The idea was to bring up some more religious aspects of the Illuminati and the Merowingians, however this was dropped during developement.

Similarly, the Skyline of New York in the game does not feature the WTC, despite being made prior to 2000, since the makers had to mirror the image for the skybox due to size constraints, so they had to choose between a flipped image without the WTC or an image with 2 WTCs. They figured they could use one without, handwaving away its missing as the result of a terror attack.

 

[Noel Edmonds]

There was exactly one accident ever recorded that involved a zeppelin - the Hindenburg disaster, which not only ruined rigid airships' perfect safety record, but resulted in every other zeppelin in the world being dismantled and further models in development being scrapped. To this date, there don't exist any "true" zeppelins - modern models are essentially modified blimps that don't compare to their 80+ year old predecessors, which were frequently likened to flying cruise ships. Had the Hindenburg not crashed, zeppelins likely would have overtaken airplanes as the primary means of consumer air travel. I mean, look at the insides of these things:

The true cause of events leading up to the Hindenburg disaster have never been determined, by the way. Enjoy your SouthWest flight!