Fun Facts

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Mongrel
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Re: Fun Facts

Postby Mongrel » Sat Jul 08, 2017 9:24 pm

The first long-distance car trip ever undertaken was by Karl Benz's wife, Bertha, who took the kids on a 40-mile jaunt without Karl's knowledge. She also completed the first on-the-fly car repairs during the trip, using a hairpin and a garter.
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Sharkey
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Re: Fun Facts

Postby Sharkey » Mon Jul 10, 2017 6:01 pm

I live around the corner from this monument to inanity:

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Oregon Trail II: Let's Get The Fuck Out of Oregon

I figured that was it in terms of SE Portland landmarks, but I've since come to discover that Woody Guthrie used to lease my apartment here back around 1940. Also, apparently we had basically the same opinion of this place:

"Portland is a place where rich ones run away to settle down and grow flowers and shrubbery to hide them from the massacres they've caused. Portland is the rose garden town where the red, brown, blackshirt cops ride up and down to show you their finest horses and saddles and gunmetal. Mentally Portland is the deadest spot you ever walked through. She's a good 30 years behind Seattle"


A-fucking-men.
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Mongrel
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Re: Fun Facts

Postby Mongrel » Sat Sep 02, 2017 10:50 am



um jammer trans g‏ @joffeorama Aug 29
so just a second ago I learned about how the Greenland shark, a polar bear-eating monster, is poisonous because its body is full of urea

um jammer trans g‏ @joffeorama Aug 29
in other words: this shark's body is full of pee. pee shark.

um jammer trans g‏ @joffeorama Aug 29
anyway, there's more: in iceland they take the pee shark and make it into Kæstur hákarl, a fermented pee shark dish

um jammer trans g‏ @joffeorama Aug 29
evolution gave us a shark made of pee that survives the icy depths of the arctic and eats bears, and we found a way to eat it

um jammer trans g‏ @joffeorama Aug 29
the pee shark also sometimes has glowing copepods eating its eyes in exchange for attracting more prey with their light

um jammer trans g‏ @joffeorama Aug 29
god damn, greenland shark, there had to have been an easier way to survive and eat bears than with pee body and eye-eating symbiotes!

um jammer trans g‏ @joffeorama Aug 29
ALSO THEY CAN LIVE 500 YEARS!

um jammer trans g‏ @joffeorama Aug 29
half a god damn millennium of swimming in darkness, the pee coursing through your flesh, only living for the occasional moment of bear meat

um jammer trans g‏ @joffeorama Aug 29
ALSO ALSO THE REASON THEY FERMENT THEM IN ICELAND IS IF YOU EAT THE PEE SHARK BEFORE DOING SO YOU GET INSTANTLY DRUNK

um jammer trans g‏ @joffeorama Aug 29
how is this shark real? how many ancient icelanders got drunk off their nut eating under-fermented pee shark until they got it right?

um jammer trans g‏ @joffeorama Aug 29
THERE ARE INUIT LEGENDS ABOUT IT BEING A PEE SHARK! It lives in Sedna's urine pot & the first was made from an old woman's pee-soaked cloth
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Mongrel
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Re: Fun Facts

Postby Mongrel » Thu Sep 07, 2017 1:08 pm

The oldest known evidence of human-dog friendship comes from a cave in France, 26,000 years ago, where the foot prints of a roughly ten-year old boy run alongside those of a proto wolf-dog as they explored the locations of cave paintings together.
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Re: Fun Facts

Postby Mongrel » Tue Sep 12, 2017 12:21 pm

So a Nazi Walks Into An Iron Bar: How Meyer Lansky fought the German-American Bund Nazis

I especially appreciate the little side story about LaGuardia's response to the Nazi rallies.
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Re: Fun Facts

Postby Mongrel » Fri Sep 22, 2017 1:31 am

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Re: Fun Facts

Postby Mongrel » Wed Sep 27, 2017 11:34 am

Mongrel wrote:The oldest known evidence of human-dog friendship comes from a cave in France, 26,000 years ago, where the foot prints of a roughly ten-year old boy run alongside those of a proto wolf-dog as they explored the locations of cave paintings together.

A couple friends of mine were really doubting this for *reasons*, joking it was just a wolf following around the kid, but also seriously wondering if the traces were formed at the same time, etc. so I actually went and looked more deeply into and found a lot of really cool info.

- The boy was clearly not running and also stopped to scrape his torch at some point. As well, he slipped (without falling) a couple times on the slick muddy floor, so any predator would have had multiple opportunities for an easy kill
- The cave would have been a protected area (the back of the cave was a shrine, with bear skulls) and it is unlikely that a random predator would sneak deep into the human sanctuary as opposed to doing something far more opportunistic
- In some photos the prints do appear to overlap
- The wolf-dog is clearly walking and not running or stalking (unsurprisingly, stalking hows a different gait)
- The prints survive because they were imprinted at a time when the cave floor was soft clay - this was a temporary event lasting only a short time
- The biggest identifier of the "dog" aspect is a shorter middle finger which normally marks a dog from a wolf (one assumes that this is because dogs are less likely to flip us the bird than wolves are...). So this was a domesticated creature which was already well along the evolutionary path to the modern dog.
- The two sets of prints are clearly closely beside each other, following the same path
- Incidentally these are also the oldest human footsteps, which can be reliably dated.

What's interesting is that based on DNA studies and some additional evidence, scientists were actually already pushing the date of dog domestication back further than 15,000 years ago (which has stood as the commonly-accepted date for decades), and that the old theory of wolves being attracted to humans camps as scavengers is being displaced by a theory that the process began as a far more symbiotic relationship, probably at least 30,000 years ago, and possibly even 40,000 years.

This is important because it means that rather than being attracted to settled or semi-nomadic humans, the relationship instead developed with hunter-gatherer humans. The new theory is that the relationship might've begun as cooperation based on a similar "pack/clan" social structure (remember the notion of the "Alpha wolf" is made-up bullshit) and similar hunting ranges and goals which allowed for mutual cooperation and respect to form. The dogs would have helped to hunt with their tracking skills, and may have even demonstrated new hunting skills the humans could learn - in return they got a more reliable food source (which was already assumed) and protection for their cubs while they hunted (which is new!). The cubs being kept in the human camp also would have increased socialization and trust between the two species. It also means the discovery of the footprints fits with a new narrative already in development, rather than upending everything like science clickbait.

One last thing to note is that previously it was assumed older human tribes did not interact with or even know wolves because they were not depicted in most cave art - however, neither are humans. So speculation has changed to the idea that perhaps humans and proto-dogs both occupied the same mental space as "hunters", equals for whom it was taboo to make images of. Another bit of evidence is that humans of that era apparently prized canid teeth (not just dogs, but foxes, etc. as well) as ornaments - over 90% of the surviving ornaments worn were canid teeth, despite them only being 3% of the fauna (one assumes that early specimens of the three-wolf moon t-shirt did not survive). So there was at minimum some fascination or reverence for wolves and similar creatures.

tl;dr: You could clearly tell from the prints who'd been a good boy. <3
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Re: Fun Facts

Postby Mongrel » Mon Oct 23, 2017 12:48 am

Todd Rundgren funded Meat Loaf's Bat out of Hell album entirely on his own dime, entirely because he thought it would make for a really funny Bruce Springsteen parody.
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Re: Fun Facts

Postby Mongrel » Thu Oct 26, 2017 2:46 pm

Referendums are constitutionally banned in Germany because of Hitler.
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Re: Fun Facts

Postby Thad » Fri Oct 27, 2017 11:52 am

I don't think that any fact which ends with "because of Hitler" qualifies as fun.

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Re: Fun Facts

Postby Mongrel » Tue Oct 31, 2017 11:46 am

Historical tidbit:

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Re: Fun Facts

Postby Mongrel » Tue Nov 14, 2017 4:48 pm

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Büge
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Re: Fun Facts

Postby Büge » Tue Nov 14, 2017 5:00 pm

Horrible creatures. I hear their meat is rather tasty, though.
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Sharkey
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Re: Fun Facts

Postby Sharkey » Wed Nov 15, 2017 8:14 pm

Did a chick? Dad a chum?

For serious, coconut crabs are rad. They're probably terrible pets, though. I kind of want one just to put a little fear into the cats.
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Re: Fun Facts

Postby nosimpleway » Wed Nov 15, 2017 10:14 pm

I'm like 80% certain someone used a coconut crab photo as an avatar at some point in the forums' history.

I'm sure that remebering that dislodged some piece of knowledge that could, in some small way, have actually been important.

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Re: Fun Facts

Postby Mongrel » Wed Nov 15, 2017 10:23 pm

In nearly 39 years I never realized my mom's name is Persian for Venus. Huh.

(This is also interesting because my middle/Persian name is Persian for Mars)
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Re: Fun Facts

Postby Sharkey » Wed Nov 15, 2017 11:01 pm

So, like, Farsi? I don't even know, other than that the grammar is comparatively easy but the pronunciation is a pain in the dick without example. Come on over and whisper your mother's name into my ear or something because that's the only way I'm going to get it.
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Re: Fun Facts

Postby Mongrel » Wed Nov 15, 2017 11:04 pm

Yeah Farsi.

Hers is Nahid (pronounced Na-heed)

Mine is Bharam (pronounced sorrrt of like Bah!-Rom, like you emphasize the Bah! and roll the r ever so slightly) (misspelled on my birth certificate as "Bharum", lol)

My brother's is Aurum (like mine with the slightly rolled r, but pronounced or-rom and the syllables blend more smoothly) (not 100% sure of the spelling there)

Technically I was named after a Sassanid king (as was my brother), but the etymological origin is it being the Persian word for Mars (might be different in modern Farsi, not sure).

Actually it's my granddad on that side who got the coolest name: Asadollah (assa-do-la), which means "Lion of God"
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Re: Fun Facts

Postby Mongrel » Wed Nov 15, 2017 11:28 pm

Something else I learned today: Margaret Atwood completed The Handmaid's Tale while working as a prof at the U of Alabama.

Yow.
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Re: Fun Facts

Postby Thad » Sun Nov 26, 2017 1:26 pm

It really is called "Black Friday" because the crowds are terrible, and not because it's the day retail stores go "into the black" as some would have it.

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