Fun facts!

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DrJonesHat said:
I made a Missile Command clone from a magazine. There were also a series of books that had a story but periodically had a program that the main character had to write to overcome an obstacle.
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IIRC: 'Computer Shopper' had a GREAT series of programming tutorials.

BASIC: The People's Language.

edit: Internet Archive has an archive of issues. Ceased publication in 2009. sniff.
 
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horrorfan89 said:
Certain surnames like Miller, Baker and Cooper where originally names that designated ones trade. Eg Someone named Miller was an actual miller by trade.


Interestingly enough, the name Chandler, was originally the name given to a candle maker.
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Fletchers made arrows. Clarks were literally clarks, that is, clerks. Cooks were literally cooks. Bakers were literally bakers. Thatchers literally did whatever it is a thatcher does. A Cheeseman made cheese! A Skinner skinned things. A Dyer dyed things. A Retard acted fucking retarded. Okay, that didn't actually exist but it should have.

Wraith said:
Back in the day when some people programmed with BASIC, they actually had programs in magazines you had to copy to make your own programs. I had a Halloween pumpkin program one year that showed a bright well done pumpkin on your monitor.
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And then you would copy them out to a cassette drive, a literal audio cassette that recorded screeching sounds much like a modem made, like the utter piece of shit the TI99/4A came with, and think you were an absolute genius just for even being able to use it. I miss the days when stuff this basic was so advanced it was like you were trying to explain rocket science when you told people you did it. Good times.
 
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AnOminous said:
Fletchers made arrows. Clarks were literally clarks, that is, clerks. Cooks were literally cooks. Bakers were literally bakers. Thatchers literally did whatever it is a thatcher does. A Cheeseman made cheese! A Skinner skinned things. A Dyer dyed things. A Retard acted fucking retarded. Okay, that didn't actually exist but it should have.


And then you would copy them out to a cassette drive, a literal audio cassette that recorded screeching sounds much like a modem made, like the utter piece of shit the TI99/4A came with, and think you were an absolute genius just for even being able to use it. I miss the days when stuff this basic was so advanced it was like you were trying to explain rocket science when you told people you did it. Good times.
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I had a friend who was the only person around with a Commodore 64. FFS, when we would try to play Spy Hunter he had it on tape, or some game on tape. You'd leave the tape playing and had to go do something for a long ass time before it would load. When he got it running, he actually had a vinyl record with the Spy Hunter theme from Peter Gunn so that was a thing. We'd pretend in the neighborhood the little Volkswagen cars were little old grandmas and shoot them on purpose. ... It was a simpler time.

Okay IDK if I did this one so I'll do two.
Newman from Seinfeld represents all Christians. Remember jerry seinfeld and larry david are jews, and larry did that one episode of his own show pissing on the virgin Mary. Thus the unexplained animosity and caricature of a person Newman was. "New man." ... Yeah I thought it was dumb too, but it's legit.

So here's a fun fact. Back in the day the old board game Battletech had a metric ton of anime and other references in it before the dark times, before the new owners of the IP and past lawsuits. IIRC Wikipedia around 2007 had the Battletech page and someone put a huge list of various references in there from anime and other things. Star Trek, Gundam, porn stars... I think, all sorts of fun stuff, even Buckaroo Banzai was a thing.
 
Ever wondered why it seems like some Canadian geese stick around for the whole year instead of migrating south for the winter as famously portrayed? It's because they are descended from captive-raised flocks that were never taught to migrate from their parents, and due to being big-bodied birds that can easily weather the harsher winter season they've since thrived and multiplied to the point where in some areas, they've displaced "fully wild" populations.
 
Wraith said:
So here's a fun fact. Back in the day the old board game Battletech had a metric ton of anime and other references in it before the dark times, before the new owners of the IP and past lawsuits. IIRC Wikipedia around 2007 had the Battletech page and someone put a huge list of various references in there from anime and other things. Star Trek, Gundam, porn stars... I think, all sorts of fun stuff, even Buckaroo Banzai was a thing.
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FASA literally copied from anime for the first generation of battlemechs. One really good example is the Maruder battlemech being a copy of Robotech's Glaug Battle pod. Perhaps the Atlas was the only original battlemech.

They almost lost their shirt in the resulting copyright lawsuits, and wound up pussyfooting around the issues when developing material. I suspect the Dark Age reboot by Wizkids was an attempt to retcon the universe to distance themselves from the infringing material.

Speaking of copied material, Duke Nukem 1 and 2 borrowed a lot of textures from the Amiga Game Turrican
 
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Goofy Logic said:
FASA literally copied from anime for the first generation of battlemechs. One really good example is the Maruder battlemech being a copy of the Robotech Glaug Battle pod. Perhaps the Atlas was the only original battlemech.

They almost lost their shirt in the resulting copyright lawsuits, and wound up pussyfooting around the issues when developing material. I suspect the Dark Age reboot by Wizkids was an attempt to retcon the universe to distance themselves from the infringing material.

Speaking of copied material, Duke Nukem 1 and 2 borrowed a lot of textures from the Amiga Game Turrican
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I did know that stuff about Battletech. the guys on /tg/ have a running thread (if it's still up), a general for Battletech, and they occasionally have some people who work for Catalyst visit, and do have I think a couple of well known regulars who used to work for the company back in the day. I think I mentioned this before, but /btg/ as the general is called has their own image board in their OP. It's kind of huge but looks like no one has been taking care of it for the last month or two. Don't know what's up.
Anyhow /btg/ actually had some artists from deviantArt and such who did commissions for battletech art. One got hired by the company named Shimmering Sword, who goes on and off with being a complete tool to a minor bro. Another was a dude who did remakes of some of the more autistic designs in the game's past. His name was Bradigus. One of the best mecha sketch artists I have seen. Took ridiculous designs and made something wonderful form them. I think he got hired too. Shimmy (Shimmering Sword) did a lot of revamps of those original anime mechs you mention. Some he did okay with. Some the autism leaked out and there was contentions with. One of his versions (he did several) of that Marauder / Glaug with the dorsal cannon was well received. Another looked retarded but is used more often.

So another fun fact: back in the 80s before MIDI style sound cards, a lot of IBM PC computers and such had terrible sound cards. Some of those old DOS games could pierce your ear drums. However the Tandy 1000 series computers had a real neat sound card for their day. I'm not a tech nut, but I thought it was kind of revolutionary. You would get crap music and sound from some games, and then play the same things like Silpheed, Firehawk, Zeliard, Skate or Die (of all things) and others and that sound card would tremendous. This was in the middle of screechy sound-central.
 
AnOminous said:
And then you would copy them out to a cassette drive, a literal audio cassette that recorded screeching sounds much like a modem made, like the utter piece of shit the TI99/4A came with, and think you were an absolute genius just for even being able to use it. I miss the days when stuff this basic was so advanced it was like you were trying to explain rocket science when you told people you did it. Good times.
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Oh I had a friend who had a TI. It was great. I had a Commodore 64 with an actual disk drive and a 1200 baud modem. I miss BBSes. Since most of the ones you called were in your local area, you could meet the people you talked to. That's how I made a lot of friends in the early 90s. I got a DOS machine in 1992, and played games with my friends over the modem, they were the precursor to today's multiplayer games.
 
The only person accused of witchcraft during the salem witch trials who wasn't executed was shock of shocks...tituba the black house slave who taught magic to the three Parris girls who started the whole thing. Ironically it was probably her status as a slave that spared her life. She remained in jail because her owner John Parris refusing to pay her legal fees and reclaim her, so she was ultimately sold off to another owner at the cost of said fees, her fate following the release from prison remains unknown.
 
Austro-Hungarian military genius Franz Conrad Xaver Graf von Hotzendorf wrote 3000 unsent letters to his lover after WW1. They found the letters in his apartment after he died. The letters mostly centred on his despair and depression while endlessly repeating how much he loved her and that she could solve all his problems. Some letters were more than 60 pages long.

Conrad's wife died in 1905 and he went into depression until he met another woman at a dinner party in 1907. After that, Conrad went to her house to confess his love for her and how he intended to marry her. She said that she already had a husband and six children. Nevertheless, Conrad relentlessly insisted that she divorce her husband and marry him. Eventually she said that she would "be with him" if things changed. They had an affair shortly after.

In 1913 he sent 25 letters to the emperor demanding war with Serbia, again, in 1914, he sent 30 demanding war. Conrad thought that he would win a war against Serbia, come home as a war hero, sweep her off her feet and then get married living happily ever after. The war that Conrad wanted became WW1 and it destroyed Austria-Hungary.
 
Another common reptile misconception:

Contrary to what's depicted in media, chameleons aren't capable of changing their colors to perfectly blend in with their surroundings as octopuses do. What's more, they don't change their colors for camouflage at all, or if they do it's a happenstance benefit rather than a deliberate adaption. What chameleons truly change colors for are instead related to thermoregulation and communication. They lighten or darken their skin to aid in cooling down and warming up respectively, and when they do sport flashy colors it's in order to intimidate rivals and impress potential mates.
 
The fastest accelerating object known to man is the intake valve spring from a Briggs & Stratton I/C engine. One accidentally released the spring accelerates so fast it creates a miniature wormhole and leaves reality never to be seen again.
 
horrorfan89 said:
The only person accused of witchcraft during the salem witch trials who wasn't executed was shock of shocks...tituba the black house slave who taught magic to the three Parris girls who started the whole thing. Ironically it was probably her status as a slave that spared her life. She remained in jail because her owner John Parris refusing to pay her legal fees and reclaim her, so she was ultimately sold off to another owner at the cost of said fees, her fate following the release from prison remains unknown.
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They impounded a witch?


St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C., has a long history. Congress created the hospital as the Government Hospital for the Insane in 1855. During the Civil War, it served as a general hospital, at which time, according to a D.C. government website, "wounded soldiers... were reluctant to admit that they were housed in an insane asyklum, and instead referred to their location as 'St. Elizabeths,'" which was the "name given to the original 600-acre tract of land." Eventually, tenants totally abandoned the West Campus, while a mental hospital remains in the East Campus.

But in recent years, government waste has entered the story. The General Services Administration (GSA) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have been attempting, since 2005, and at a cost of more than $2.1 billion, to establish a headquarters for DHS on parts of the property. This effort includes creating office space for the Office of Secretary of Homeland Security and other crucial senior personnel in the West Campus' main building.

If you want to turn a a historical mental institution into a high-tech and secure government facility, you will face a multitude of problems along the way.

The problems DHS and GSA have faced are particularly fundamental, which raises questions as to why the agencies selected the site in the first place. First - the slope on which they are building the site is unstable. Federal Spending Oversight Subcommittee staff requested information regarding what percentage of the site is unstable. GSA responded that the entirety of the site was not unstable, but up to 30 percent was subject to "anticipated slope instabilities."
Because the entire site is a historical landmark, GSA has had to work around D.C. preservation regulations, including maintaining the exterior facade of key buildings. So when GSA and DHS gutted the interior of the buildings, they kept the exteriors intact to use as shells for newly constructed buildings within the walls of the originals. In 2010, GSA learned the buildings lacked adequate foundations, and some were literally sinking into the ground. In sum, GSA has spent $305 million on "adaptive re-use," or, in other words, maintaining the historical facets of the buildings to conform to historical preservation requirements.

Meanwhile, there are portions of the site which are "restricted for development" due to historical and environmental concerns. GSA and DHS have also agreed other portions of the site - inside the secure perimeter - must remain open to the public. The surrounding community will maintain access to the site, albeit on a limited and supervised basis, to visit a hilltop from which community members traditionally watch Fourth of July fireworks, visit the cemetery on site, and use an auditorium.

If there were not enough problems with the physical site itself, DHS has also spent significant sums recreating the interior architecture down to the crown moldings, carvings, and other intricacies of interior design.

The decision to use St. Elizabeths Hospital, in light of all these concerns, becomes even more starkly acute when one considers DHS and GSA considered roughly 12 other sites for their headquarters, instead choosing a site with historical, environmental, and geological issues.

Even worse? After investing so exorbitant a sum on adaptive re-use, GSA and DHS are reportedly largely chucking the model and "proposing to demolish at least five of the historic buildings."

Though certain components of DHS, such as the Coast Guard's headquarters and the Office of the Secretary of Homeland Security have finally transferred there, the American people are expected to spend millions more in a project that has become a textbook example of poor government planning - and that is now projected to last until 2026.
 
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Steven king threw the manuscript for Carrie in the trash and once considered it the worst thing he ever wrote. it was saved by his wife Tabitha who encouraged him to get it published anyway.q
 
Sorry for the double post but I just bought the last of the monster cereal from target and well....






In 1972 the dye in franken berry cereal caused children's feces to turn pink, though harmless it caused general mills to recall the cereal and change the due to a digestible food coloring
 
The eponym "Death sticks" that was given to cigarettes was during WW1.

In the trenches, soldiers smoked a lot when they were stationed during guard duty and enemy snipers did their best to spot the light of a cigarette or a plume of smoke in order to find easy targets. This meant that lighting a cigarette in the trenches was an easy way of getting your brains blow away.
 
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