Share/Learn a Random Fact

[ShiraNoMai]

I mean yeah, there's a reason the infant mortality and maternal mortality rates were way higher back in the days (or only isolated to developing countries these days)

Shockingly, like Maniak said, they were way better than c-sections at the time. It's easy to rest and recover after stitching you back up and resetting the bones but c-sections require so much delicate care because they're literally opening your main abdominal cavity, sifting through your organs, and wrestling out what is essentially a large tumor, WITHOUT fucking any of those organs up. It'd be like getting a major organ wound from a battle.

...being a fertile person is a wild experience.

[Moonface]

I mean yeah, there's a reason the infant mortality and maternal mortality rates were way higher back in the days (or only isolated to developing countries these days)

Shockingly, like Maniak said, they were way better than c-sections at the time. It's easy to rest and recover after stitching you back up and resetting the bones but c-sections require so much delicate care because they're literally opening your main abdominal cavity, sifting through your organs, and wrestling out what is essentially a large tumor, WITHOUT fucking any of those organs up. It'd be like getting a major organ wound from a battle.

...being a fertile person is a wild experience.

Hmm, good point on the c-sections. I always forget that despite the outward appearance, it isn't a case of the baby just being behind a couple inches of flesh that you cut open and pull it out of to then close it afterwards. I probably always take that assumption because of how you can feel a baby kicking and I don't consider that maybe that's being felt through any organs because I naively think they just get pushed upwards or they take the back seat while baby rides driver and shotgun simultaneously. If anything I guess it just shows how poorly I was taught about the delicacies of pregnancy in school and just got the standard stuff of "here is how the process works" with none of the effects it has on the rest of the body besides being told milk production happens.


I don't think I shared this before, but I remembered this one when seeing some 18-wheelers today when driving. So in the EU, the sort of semi-truck cabs you see in the US basically don't exist; instead, you'll find that most of the cabs in the EU for semi-trucks feature a flat front, with the engine underneath the driver instead of in front: https://nodum.org/why-semi-trucks-in-us-...different/
The main reason is about halfway down in the linked article, but the short and narrow of it is that the EU restricts the total length of a semi-truck with an attached trailer to 18.75 meters. This means having a longer cab results in a shorter trailer, so steps were made to make the cab as compact as possible to allow as much space as possible for the trailer so more goods can be transported at once. The US used to have this restriction too but revoked it during the 80's, something the EU can't do because the roads aren't as large and some of the trucks are transported by boat, such as between the UK and France, so limiting the length prevents problems of a truck being too large to fit.
Interestingly, I never saw before in that article that it mentions Australia in the very end having cabs pulling up to four trailers at once like some weird road version of a train. The most I've ever witnessed is those two trailer trucks where it tends to just be two smaller trailers linked together, which I normally see for FedEx and such. I guess the post services do that to better organize the mail and/or because those trucks are more likely to go into residential areas that have more turns compared to longer trailers pretty much staying on main roads because they're just going to stores and not houses.

[Moonface]

So I've been watching this video about Scream and while I didn't expect it to have a notable kill count tally, I knew it would cover some interesting stuff about the movie, some of which I actually found so mind blowing to learn I just have to share them:

1. Did you know this movie is not the actual origin of the infamous Ghostface mask? While the movie popularized it, the mask was found in room of a house that was being scouted for on-location filming for the movie and the director loved it so much he wanted to use it for the movie. After some time tracking down the origin of the mask, it was discovered to have been made by a company called Fun World, who agreed to having the mask used in the movie so long as they got credit for it. Pretty crazy that something so iconic was already in existence and may not have ever become so famous if it wasn't in that house at the time.
   
2. One of the scenes at the end of the movie involving an umbrella stabbing actually ended up being a real stabbing. The stabber misses the protective vest on the victim and genuinely stabs them on camera. No idea if any other movies have ever had an on-screen actual stabbing or not but I'm amazed that scene stayed in when the NPAA even had a scene of a victims face removed because their look of shock was too convincing. My guess is they maybe weren't told up front it was real or something.
   

[Maniakkid25]

Time for another history fact with Maniak. This one is actually more personal than general, but we have to lay the foundation to understand what I'm going to say.

On the 30th of April, 1980, six men stormed the Iranian Embassy in London, taking 26 hostages. The next six days would be known as the Iranian Embassy Siege, and famously ended when the SAS were told to enter (live while news casters aired it to the entire country, no less) after a hostage was killed. One other hostage would be killed in the 17 minute engagement, and 5 of the 6 hostage takers would be killed, the last one captured. 2 other hostages were wounded, no one else was harmed. It is a defining moment for the SAS as a counter-terror and armed force unit, and the weapon they predominantly used: the MP5. Simple History has a good recap of the general flow of events if you don't feel like reading.





Now, with that foundation out of the way, the thing I'm going to actually tell you about.

My Dad is from the UK, and happened to be living in London at the time of the Siege. In fact, not only was he living in London, he happened to be living just down the road from the Embassy. So, instead of watching on TV, he got to watch FROM HIS WINDOW the SAS breach into the Embassy!

[Moonface]

@Maniakkid25: Ya know, I've never heard about this incident before at all, which I'm surprised by since it seems like it would be a big enough deal to be talked about or even get a documentary or something on TV for an anniversary thing. I also jumped the gun when reading your last paragraph and was expecting you to say your dad was in the embassy at the time.

Alas, don't think anyone in my family has witnessed anything that crazy with a front row seat so to speak. My parents were present though when Iron Maiden got signed because they would hang out at the bar where they were performing independently on a regular basis.

I can't watch the video right now but I'm guessing this was a notable moment for the MP5 as well as the SAS?


What I have to share isn't as fun as the above post, but I found out today that Spotify doesn't have a genuine shuffle feature. Apparently it used to be entirely random but people complained about songs from the same artist/album playing back to back, so it got changed but now it picks from songs you listen to more often firstly and then rarely throws in a song from the playlist that doesn't fit that criteria. That would explain why my shuffles always tend to feel repetitive and how after recently playing a Linkin Park album suddenly my shuffle will pick songs from that particular album when it wouldn't pick anything from that band at all before that. Pretty stupid way of doing a shuffle though because it's just making a loop of picking songs you listen to a lot which just makes them listened to even more which makes it pick them more.

[ShiraNoMai]

Damn, that's such horseshit. I've been thinking it's just my Spotify getting caught in some internet loop. Lame. Now I gotta go out of my way to listen to the things on my Liked playlist to encourage it more.

Here's my fun fact of the day: The Etymology of "Yogurt" (as Yoghurt)

It is a Turkish-originated word, coming from yog meaning something like "condense" or "intensify," much like yogurt does to curdle into its form from milk. A traveling writer in the early 1600s visiting Turkey noted that citizens didn't "eate much Milke, except it bee made sower, which they call Yoghurd."

At that point, English folk just couldn't get their shit together. By the 1800s, people were writing of "yahourt," "yaghourt," "yaghourt," "yogurd," "yoghourt," "yooghort," and "yughard".

I liked this line from the article, 

Without an Academie Francaise-style language dictatorship to keep English in line, stealing words from non-Latin alphabets inevitably gets kind of messy.

Even worse, the pronunciation of "yoghurt" is more like the French word for it, yaourt, with the "gh" in the middle of the Turkish word just lengthening the vowel before it. It was never a hard "g" like how it is said in spoken English today. Perhaps the traveling writer fucked up a transliteration from Arabic to English. Either way, it really effected the word's history!''

Source

[Maniakkid25]

I can't watch the video right now but I'm guessing this was a notable moment for the MP5 as well as the SAS?

It very much was. Before this point, the SAS wasn't really a household name in the UK, let alone the entire world, and that changed instantaneously on this one day alone. And the MP5 became widely adopted largely because "If one of the best units in the world is using it, there's gotta be a reason, right?" And so it was that if you wanted the best SMG in town, you bought german without exception (Belgian P90 has entered the chat).

To be fair, though, the MP5 is absolutely a beauty of a design. It's basically a G3 rifle scaled down for 9x19 Parabellum (which, considering how old it is, it's actually pretty hot for a pistol cartridge. "Hot" meaning "there's a high amount of energy behind it"), which means it already had about 15 years experience showing itself as a rock solid platform by the time the MP5 came about. That being said, it's the SAS who made the MP5 the legend it is today. It is "The Good Guy" SMG. If there's a firefight in media, and you see the MP5, 19 times out of 20 those are the Good Guys, or at least masquerading as the Good Guys.

See, I knew about the Spotify thing because that's how modern shufflers work. iTunes is exactly the same way: it plays your most common plays, then filters to the rest of the songs. This is because true randomness makes people think that the patterns they see are on purpose. This is the same reason why "Good" AI is predictable; true randomness is too chaotic, and sometimes things you don't expect happen, and you complain about it because "it's not working right", right?

[Moonface]

I can't watch the video right now but I'm guessing this was a notable moment for the MP5 as well as the SAS?

It very much was. Before this point, the SAS wasn't really a household name in the UK, let alone the entire world, and that changed instantaneously on this one day alone. And the MP5 became widely adopted largely because "If one of the best units in the world is using it, there's gotta be a reason, right?" And so it was that if you wanted the best SMG in town, you bought german without exception (Belgian P90 has entered the chat).

To be fair, though, the MP5 is absolutely a beauty of a design. It's basically a G3 rifle scaled down for 9x19 Parabellum (which, considering how old it is, it's actually pretty hot for a pistol cartridge. "Hot" meaning "there's a high amount of energy behind it"), which means it already had about 15 years experience showing itself as a rock solid platform by the time the MP5 came about. That being said, it's the SAS who made the MP5 the legend it is today. It is "The Good Guy" SMG. If there's a firefight in media, and you see the MP5, 19 times out of 20 those are the Good Guys, or at least masquerading as the Good Guys.

I was expecting to discover that the SAS-12 was also related to the SAS because of the obvious name attribution, but from what I can tell there's no connection. According to Wikipedia the UK doesn't even use the gun in any capacity.

I was also surprised to learn that the sole surviving terrorist was allowed parole in 2008 and got given another identity. I never really get why people who do really dangerous shit like that which warrants (and even gets) a life sentence get let out to presumably live a normal life that doesn't ever seem justifiable. Obviously none of them survived but I can't imagine the US letting the terrorists that flew the planes on 9/11 to be released into the US x amount of years later and given new identities because they're no longer a threat to society despite the damage they did in the past.

[Maniakkid25]

I was expecting to discover that the SAS-12 was also related to the SAS because of the obvious name attribution, but from what I can tell there's no connection. According to Wikipedia the UK doesn't even use the gun in any capacity.

You mean the SPAS-12? The shotgun that's both pump action and semi-auto? Yeah, it's a neat gun, but it just didn't find the niche it wanted. The problem is that fitting two different actions meant that it was heavy as hell, and complex to boot. Then the Assault Weapons ban happened, and that pretty much killed the gun entirely in the US. The Assault Weapons ban has a long history of being lambasted by firearms enthusiasts, mainly for banning weapons that looked scary more than actual effective weaponry (It also banned the Tec-9 and Street Sweeper by name, among other specific weapons). I'm not about to be the one who litigates its effectiveness -- both sides have their points and counterpoints, and I don't feel like deciphering the noise at this moment.

I'm not surprised the SAS don't have a use for it; shotguns function much better in a police role, where combat is expected in tight corridors within about 20 meters. A modern military is more geared towards mid-ranged fights, within a couple hundred meters, where the shotgun basically loses all of its effectiveness (the rule of thumb is 1 inch of spread for every yard or meter of distance), and even in a counter-terror role, it's not a great option when you're expected to pull precision shots. In an SAS setting, there's just not a situation that a shotgun does better than a rifle or SMG that is reasonably expected. The US had to learn that lesson the hard way in World War I and II, and especially when you consider the logistics trail and reload? Better to just give everyone a rifle. It makes everything so much simpler. Don't get me wrong, though: you can find them in armed forces hands, but they are specialist weapons for specific roles (Breaching comes up most often).

What makes the SPAS-12 appealing, however, is that two action mechanism that made it so heavy to begin with. Semi-auto guns require a specific loading to be able to cycle the weapon. This can be tuned on a gun-by-gun basis (changing the springs, tuning the amount of gas that is bled off to cycle the action, etc.), but there's no way to do this quickly to match the load of shot you have specifically in the gun at that moment. So, things like less-lethal ammo (e.g. rubber buckshot) or specialist rounds (e.g. Dragon's Breath) cannot be used in a semi-auto shotgun without tuning the system for it (unless you want to manually cycle it or -- god forbid -- jam up the gun), which means that full-power loads (e.g. standard buckshot) will blow the weapon apart from the force. But pump-action doesn't care about that; the cycling action is done by the user, so you don't have to tune it for any rounds. So having a shotgun that does both at the same time means you can save on a logistics train by having one thing that does what you need it to exactly when you need it to. If there's one thing I've learned watching too many war theory-crafting and discussion videos, it's this: "Amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics."

Then again, all this talking might be pointless because for all I know, you mean the USAS-12, instead. *shrug* Still, I got a reason to babble about guns lol.

[Moonface]

@Maniakkid25: No, the SPAS-12 is kinda what I meant, but more specifically the SAS-12 variant of it which has a section on that SPAS-12 Wiki page. I didn't realize when making my last post that one was just a variant of the other and not a notably standalone shotgun; I thought it was however because both guns are featured in the Uncharted games with the SAS-12 being the games basic shotgun and the SPAS-12 being the advanced one that enemies start using later in the games.

I also did not expect that USAS-12 to look like an actual rifle despite being a shotgun and given it starts with USA I was expecting it to be an American model.

[Moonface]

I swear Japan will always have something crazy they do that will blow my mind even though I know they come up with some of the craziest shit. There was a TV show back in 1998 called Susunu! Denpa Shōnen, and it involved having contestants given extreme challenges to complete, such as the one given to Japanese comedian Nasubi, who had to live naked in an apartment with absolutely nothing except whatever he won via sweepstakes, and would only be allowed to leave upon obtaining 1 million yen: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasubi

After winning a set of 4 car tires worth around 84000¥, he closed upon his goal, which he finally achieved with a bag of rice, 335 days after starting. After being informed of his victory, he was given back his clothes, blindfolded and taken to a surprise location. Hamatsu happily went along believing he was going to get a special prize for his year of hard work. After they removed his blindfold, he found himself in South Korea. He was given a day at an amusement park, where he was able to enjoy Korean food and ride on the park's multiple attractions. However, after finishing, he was taken to another apartment. He was once again asked to take off his clothes and challenged to enter sweepstakes.

It just amazes me what ideas Japan comes up with and how many they get away with. If you tried to do this in most other countries you'd probably get charged with human cruelty. XD

[Mr EliteL]

Geez, they made him do it twice (OK, second time he agreed to go along with it after given the option not to), and then almost a third when he believed he was to do it all over again. Surely when he wasn't winning anything to eat first time around they'd have a back up supply of food for him, hopefully they did just in case it became a serious problem. Poor guy having to eat raw rice and dog food for nourishment, plus other stuff he went through being isolated, but damn props to Hamatsu for lasting through that madness.

[ShiraNoMai]

Japan and their fucking television programs man, there is just no limit to their ability to be like "okay this is the line". I'm under the belief no such line exists there.

[Moonface]

Surely when he wasn't winning anything to eat first time around they'd have a back up supply of food for him, hopefully they did just in case it became a serious problem. Poor guy having to eat raw rice and dog food for nourishment, plus other stuff he went through being isolated, but damn props to Hamatsu for lasting through that madness.

I really wouldn't be surprised for an alternate reality version of this story to be the guy never won any food and just straight up starved to death on a TV show.

Didn't watch all of this because I'm too tired to finish it before bed but it seems interesting:



I'm curious to see if the video explains why this ink is used over less costly variants because I really don't know what a $2000 version of this ink could offer over the cheaper options.

[Moonface]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humster

What a terrible day to be literate...
I guess it's at least for a good cause?

Humsters are routinely created mainly for two reasons:

• To avoid legal issues with working with pure human embryonic stem cell lines.
  
• To assess the viability of human sperm for in vitro fertilization