Fun Facts

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Mongrel
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Re: Fun Facts

Postby Mongrel » Tue Jul 10, 2018 7:24 pm

Brentai wrote:I just assumed he was named after a tool you use to maintain cars.

I mean, it can be an intentional double entendre.
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mharr
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Re: Fun Facts

Postby mharr » Tue Jul 10, 2018 11:00 pm

I love that the guy was just throwing cool words and concepts together with no thought of any bigger picture and it still somehow coalesced into the Homer's Odyssey of 1980s boys. I wonder if he ever got to read World, Shut Your Mouth.

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Re: Fun Facts

Postby Thad » Wed Jul 11, 2018 3:06 pm

While we're on the subject: Budiansky named Megatron, but not Optimus Prime.

Denny O'Neil named Optimus Prime. (EDIT: Better link; now goes to a Comic Book Legends Revealed column instead of a line on O'Neil's Wikipedia page.)

Those of you who are comics fans know who O'Neil is. Those of you who aren't may not, but you've seen his work in some form or another. O'Neil and artist Neal Adams are probably the most celebrated Batman team of the 1970s, and created Talia and Ra's al Ghul. They also did Green Lantern/Green Arrow, which is still largely considered the high-water mark for both characters and is best remembered for its social conscience. It was often clumsy -- I believe it was Chris Sims who described it as a series about how Green Lantern didn't know racism existed and Green Arrow didn't know drugs existed -- but that they were even trying in a DC comic was a pretty big deal back then.

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Re: Fun Facts

Postby Mongrel » Tue Sep 18, 2018 1:22 pm

When US troops returned from the Spanish American War, the demobilized bands sold their instruments in New Orleans. The glut of brass wind instruments gave rise to the fabled New Orleans brass bands; music bequeathed by war.
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Re: Fun Facts

Postby Mongrel » Mon Oct 01, 2018 2:59 pm

Mummy Brown was a thing.
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Re: Fun Facts

Postby Mongrel » Thu Oct 04, 2018 2:42 am

Captain Crunch is over 600 years old.

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He's also a biracial dropout who succeeded against all odds.

What an inspiration!
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Re: Fun Facts

Postby Mongrel » Thu Oct 11, 2018 9:35 pm

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Re: Fun Facts

Postby Mongrel » Tue Oct 30, 2018 9:31 pm

The oldest known swords in the world (from the Arslantepe finds in 2004) have the Triforce on them.

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Re: Fun Facts

Postby Mongrel » Tue Dec 11, 2018 3:31 pm

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Re: Fun Facts

Postby Thad » Wed Dec 12, 2018 12:23 am

And Paul Winchell invented the artificial heart.

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Re: Fun Facts

Postby Mongrel » Wed Dec 12, 2018 1:29 am

Based on that wiki link, it seems like there's some argument about that?

It's weird that it's disputed though - surely there must be filed patent info for the Jarvik heart versus the Winchell heart which could be compared? And the Jarvik heart at least must have all sorts of documentation on it.
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Re: Fun Facts

Postby Mongrel » Thu Dec 13, 2018 11:56 pm

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Re: Fun Facts

Postby Blossom » Mon Dec 17, 2018 3:50 pm

"While I never say “never,” the likelihood of a transgendered lead character is so slim as to be invisible.
Here is why. I support myself with my writing; I do not have the luxury of writing books for special-interest audiences. In my limited experience, so much of a transgendered person’s life and thought is tied up in their gender difficulties, the ordinary reader would swiftly become bored with such a character; even Vanyel’s whinging grates on some peoples’ nerves. A wider audience wants to see a character with problems that are solvable; in a modern or sf context, a transgendered person could solve the situation with surgery, genetic modification, body-swap, or whatever. Those options are not available to a fantasy author."


So, turns out Mercedes Lackey is a huge fuckin' transphobe. Good to know. This is not a new quote, but I only found out about it today.

She did write one book with a trans villain though. The villain was a trans woman who was motivated entirely by being a trans woman who couldn't get treatment, so she started doing evil magic and kidnapping children in service to an ancient goddess whose male followers all castrated themselves, and as soon as the heroine found out she was trans both the heroine and apparently also the narration started misgendering her constantly? So that's ... fun.
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mharr
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Re: Fun Facts

Postby mharr » Mon Dec 17, 2018 8:00 pm

Mercedes Lackey wrote:Those options are not available to a fantasy author.

Um. Fucking Magic, hello?

Like, magically turning into other things in fantasy is the reason I was immediately comfortable with the discovery that transgender people exist. Oh, your soul's in the wrong body? Fair enough, seems reasonable, happens all the damn time in nerd literature, nature be whack. So what did you want in this sammich?

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Re: Fun Facts

Postby Büge » Mon Dec 17, 2018 9:16 pm

It looks like the quote dates back to at least 2011.

Hopefully she's learned to be more thoughtful and less ignorant in the intervening years.
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Re: Fun Facts

Postby Mongrel » Mon Dec 17, 2018 10:37 pm

Büge wrote:Hopefully she's learned to be more thoughtful and less ignorant in the intervening years.


Can't seem to find any information on this... genuinely curious to see if she's made more recent statements on the issue.
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Re: Fun Facts

Postby Mongrel » Wed Dec 19, 2018 10:00 pm

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Re: Fun Facts

Postby Mongrel » Tue Jan 01, 2019 5:11 pm

Fabio's most recent film or television appearance was in the film Sharknado 5: Global Swarming, in which he played the Pope.
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Re: Fun Facts

Postby Mongrel » Wed Feb 20, 2019 8:12 pm



I'd say "I'm strangely aroused", but would it really be so strange?
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Re: Fun Facts

Postby Mongrel » Tue Mar 26, 2019 11:39 am

While it's true that earth's magnetic field is far too weak to base any sort of in-atmosphere levitation or propulsion on, many satellites use something called a "magnetorquer," which is a device that uses the Earth's magnetic field to control and/or stabilize orientation. It's still not very strong at all, but there's no air friction to overpower it in space.
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