TIL Thread: Today I learned...

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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Octavia (?) » Sun Jan 31, 2021 9:28 am

TIL that more time has passed between my birthday and today than the end of World War II and my birthday. :negative:
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Pocket (?) » Mon Feb 01, 2021 12:44 pm

TIL actor Ed Wynn—yes, that Ed Wynn—once tried to start a new radio network called the Amalgamated Broadcasting System. It launched in 1933, had 15 affiliate stations, and lasted only five weeks before shutting down.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Mon Feb 01, 2021 12:51 pm

Oh wow, that'd be interesting to look up. Seems like it was too ambitious for its own good.

TIL that the old guy in "Here Comes Garfield" was voiced by Henry Corden. He's best known as the second voice of Fred Flintstone after the original actor, Alan Reed, passed away. Corden voiced Fred in a lot of the later media with the Flintstones, including the Pebbles cereal commercials.


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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Pocket (?) » Mon Feb 01, 2021 5:16 pm

TIL a sheet of plain white office paper is conductive enough to activate the capacitive touch sensors in my drawing tablet's surface and make it go nuts. Harder to believe is that this is the first time in over three years that I've set a piece of paper on top of it, given my habit of turning every horizontal surface in my workspace into a shelf.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Tue Feb 09, 2021 6:32 pm

TIL that there was a bootleg Pink Floyd album in 1982 called "The Dark Side of the Moo", containing some of the harder-to-find songs made by the band. It was released anonymously and, to this day, nobody knows the identity of the guy who released it other than that his name is "Richard"

Despite being unauthorized the album actually got good reviews and was sought after by Pink Floyd fans. According to "Richard", copies were being sold well into the 1990s.

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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Fri Feb 12, 2021 1:20 pm

TIL that Ben Shapiro and Mara Wilson are cousins. Not even distant cousins, but maternal cousins.

Unsurprisingly, the two hate each-other.

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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Mon Feb 15, 2021 9:27 pm

While I'm on family relations, TIL that Joe Gran (Flash animator that goes by Ukinojoe) and Meredith Gran (creator of "Octupus Pie") are siblings.

In fact, the Dog of Wisdom was based on Meredith's dog


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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Thu Feb 25, 2021 3:06 pm

TIL that Douglas Adams wrote a few episodes of the "Dr. Snuggles" cartoon



Douglas Adams said later that, in spite of the crappy pay, he enjoyed working on it.

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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by stonecutter (?) » Fri Feb 26, 2021 12:37 am

Mr. Big wrote:
Thu Feb 25, 2021 3:06 pm
TIL that Douglas Adams wrote a few episodes of the "Dr. Snuggles" cartoon



Douglas Adams said later that, in spite of the crappy pay, he enjoyed working on it.
I remember seeing this on HBO ages ago. :ohboy: :anticipation: :scootatrue:

I'm sure I still have drawings I did of that rocket ship somewhere stored away.

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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Sat Mar 06, 2021 4:32 pm

TIL about Mansa Musa, who was the richest person to ever walk the Earth, ever. Some sources estimates he had an equivalent of $400 billion in gold and valuables.

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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Fizzbuzz (?) » Sun Mar 07, 2021 6:57 pm



I learned about this today, the manchineel tree. One of the world's most toxic plants, it feels like one of those sorts of things you'd find in Australia, but it's native to Florida and the Caribbean.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Sun Mar 07, 2021 8:33 pm

Fizzbuzz wrote:
Sun Mar 07, 2021 6:57 pm


I learned about this today, the manchineel tree. One of the world's most toxic plants, it feels like one of those sorts of things you'd find in Australia, but it's native to Florida and the Caribbean.
So does Applejack have a relative that grows these?
And are they in prison for murder?

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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Fizzbuzz (?) » Sun Mar 07, 2021 8:41 pm

If there is an Equestrian equivalent to Florida, I imagine it is a terrible and cursed place, where even villains as mighty as Tirek and Chrysalis dare not tread. (But I bet Cozy Glow was spawned there, considering how insanely racist she is.)
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Adiwan (?) » Mon Mar 08, 2021 2:36 am

Fizzbuzz wrote:
Sun Mar 07, 2021 8:41 pm
If there is an Equestrian equivalent to Florida, I imagine it is a terrible and cursed place, where even villains as mighty as Tirek and Chrysalis dare not tread. (But I bet Cozy Glow was spawned there, considering how insanely racist she is.)
Isn't it called Ponyville?
A place where all the catastrophes happen. A place next to a swampy area with a hydra. A place with a forest that is deemed very dangerous to enter.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Fizzbuzz (?) » Mon Mar 08, 2021 7:11 am

Ponyville's too far inland for that comparison to work, I feel. There's plenty of hills nearby and Canterlot is easily visible on the side of its mountain to the northeast, whereas in Florida, there is basically just one hill.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Pocket (?) » Mon Mar 08, 2021 1:27 pm

I am extremely down for the idea of Florida joining the list of real-life regions that have fantasy counterparts.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Adiwan (?) » Mon Mar 08, 2021 2:17 pm

Florida-Man is already a cryptid of some sort.
"The knack of flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss." - Douglas Adams

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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Fizzbuzz (?) » Mon Mar 08, 2021 3:54 pm

Florida Man is some sort of chaos spirit, always doing crime but rarely succeeding at it.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Mechanical Ape (?) » Mon Mar 08, 2021 5:19 pm

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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Mechanical Ape (?) » Mon Mar 08, 2021 5:28 pm

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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Mechanical Ape (?) » Mon Mar 08, 2021 5:57 pm

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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Mechanical Ape (?) » Mon Mar 08, 2021 6:12 pm

My Florida Pony posts should probably get split off into a separate thread please because good lord, I could mine those headlines for days
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Pocket (?) » Tue Mar 09, 2021 2:55 am

DO IT
Every jumbled pile of person has a thinking part that wonders what the part that isn't thinking isn't thinking of...

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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Pocket (?) » Sun Mar 14, 2021 11:04 pm

You know how Burger King is called Hungry Jack's in Australia? And how Hungry Jack is also an American brand of pancake mix? TIL that's not a coincidence! From 1967 all the way until 2002, Burger King was actually owned by Pillsbury, so when they expanded into Australia (where they were blocked from using their regular name because there was already a restaurant—as in, a single restaurant, whose owner I guess didn't want to sell the rights—there by that name), they presented their franchisee with a list of brand names the parent company already owned and let him pick. As it so happened, the franchisee was named Jack, so the decision was easy.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Tue Mar 16, 2021 8:22 pm

TIL that Chuck Austen, one of the most polarizing comic book writers around, works in animation on shows like "King of the Hill", "She-Ra", and "Steven Universe". He actually has a rather impressive IMDB page dating back to the 1990s.

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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Octavia (?) » Thu Mar 18, 2021 2:09 pm

Today I learned that Natalie Imbruglia's song "Torn" is actually a cover of an EDNASWAP song:

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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Mon Mar 22, 2021 1:52 am

TIL that, during the production of Disney's "Pinocchio", all the animators hated Gepetto's voice actor, Christian Rub. Why? Because he was a Nazi sympathizer and would praise Hitler to their faces whenever he had a chance. :nngh:

The animators got revenge on him when they were shooting a reference footage of him in a boat for the Monstro sequence. They purposely shook it extra hard, throwing him around inside the prop boat.

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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Pocket (?) » Thu Apr 08, 2021 4:03 am

TIL the "How to..." shorts that Goofy is famous for (really, they're the only ones he's remembered as having a starring role in) were originally created because Goofy's voice actor at the time, Pinto Colvig, had (temporarily, as it would turn out) quit. So they made a whole series of cartoons where he didn't have any lines. That also kinda explains why they constantly recycled the one clip of him going "YAAAAAAAAAHOOHOOHOOHOOEY", to the point of it becoming a running gag—it was probably the only clip they had that was versatile enough to reuse.
Every jumbled pile of person has a thinking part that wonders what the part that isn't thinking isn't thinking of...

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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Thu Apr 08, 2021 1:06 pm

Pocket wrote:
Thu Apr 08, 2021 4:03 am
TIL the "How to..." shorts that Goofy is famous for (really, they're the only ones he's remembered as having a starring role in) were originally created because Goofy's voice actor at the time, Pinto Colvig, had (temporarily, as it would turn out) quit. So they made a whole series of cartoons where he didn't have any lines. That also kinda explains why they constantly recycled the one clip of him going "YAAAAAAAAAHOOHOOHOOHOOEY", to the point of it becoming a running gag—it was probably the only clip they had that was versatile enough to reuse.
A lot of those cartoons were directed by Jack Kinney, who was the strongest director Disney had for their shorts.

He was probably the closest Disney had to his own Tex Avery.

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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Pocket (?) » Sat Apr 10, 2021 2:38 am

Lately I've been learning that Unicode is weird. Like, there are some accented Latin characters that virtually every font renders incorrectly because Unicode prioritized supporting similar but distinct versions that only exist in dead languages (e.g. D with a cedilla under it, which was only used in Livonian) over the ones still in common use (e.g. D with a comma under it, which is used in Romanian), so the font makers were like "screw that" and hijacked the slot. And there are dedicated character codes for the ohm symbol (which is literally an omega) and the summation symbol (which is literally a sigma) that are separate from the actual Greek alphabet set, but not one for mathematical pi (which is frustrating for me, as I'm developing a font that for stylistic reasons lacks lowercase letters—subbing in duplicates of the capitals instead for ease of use—and mathematical pi is always lowercase). There's also a whole set for including all the special characters on old computers like the Commodore 64 and the Atari ST that didn't already have equivalents elsewhere.
Every jumbled pile of person has a thinking part that wonders what the part that isn't thinking isn't thinking of...

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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Adiwan (?) » Sat Apr 10, 2021 4:02 am

It's just a guess but I guess they wanted to separate the symbol from the intention. You could make the Omega slightly different from the mathematical/physics use for formulas. I think it makes slightly more sense in Greek to make them visually distinct without the use of another typeface or emphasis.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Scuderia (?) » Mon Apr 12, 2021 1:54 am

https://textfancy.com/font-converter/

somehow the :ohboy: code character set got manhandled into having embedded fonts that are only partially supported. Like you can't use these in your avatar text.
Trust me, I tried :twiright:

but really -
𝓣𝓱𝓲𝓼 𝓼𝓱𝓸𝓾𝓵𝓭 𝓷𝓸𝓽 𝓫𝓮

🆆🅷🆈 🆆🅾🆄🅻🅳 🆈🅾🆄 🅴🆅🅴🆁 🅽🅴🅴🅳 🆃🅷🅸🆂

💲𝓔🌱🕴😀⛎💲👢🏋🔽 🔱♓🅰🍄 🕴💲 🍄♓🕴💲❓

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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Adiwan (?) » Mon Apr 12, 2021 4:45 am

Scuderia wrote:
Mon Apr 12, 2021 1:54 am
🆆🅷🆈 🆆🅾🆄🅻🅳 🆈🅾🆄 🅴🆅🅴🆁 🅽🅴🅴🅳 🆃🅷🅸🆂
:flimflam: ฿Ɇ₵₳Ʉ₴Ɇ ɎØɄ ₵₳₦
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Smoke (?) » Mon Apr 12, 2021 12:12 pm

Z̨̤͎̀̇͋ͤ͡a̭̹̣͙̳ͬͭ͛ͨ̋͢͞l̞̮͈͍̫̺̫ͫ̀g̸̭̞̤͇̪̺̩̹ͣͪ͠o͚͚̬̲͇͓̦̔ͩ̈̊̓͋͊ͣ ̠͔̦̪̳̙ͩ͗ͩͨ̐ͥ́ͅc̸͔̳͙͚̥̪ͬ̕ͅo̵̴̡͕̲̪͍̱̦͚̊m̵̼̖̍ͬ̓͂̆ė̆̆̊̽ͬ̚̚͏҉͈͖̦̲̘̺s̷̞̙͕̯̣̩̼̥͗̋̄̑ͥͮͮ́̚
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Pocket (?) » Mon Apr 12, 2021 10:50 pm

The Unicode Commission is bad at staying in their lane. Watch them come out with dedicated blocks for "the regular alphabet but in bold" and "the regular alphabet but in italics" too, next. And 90% of the rationale for support will end up being "Because sites like Twitter and Facebook still don't support text formatting."

And the next thing you know, all the progress that's been made in moving formatting out of raw HTML and into style sheets is instantly undone and then some.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Wed Apr 14, 2021 5:38 pm

TIL that Dave Thomas, best known for playing Doug in the Bob and Doug segments on SCTV, has an animation studio called Animax Entertainment.

They actually worked on a lot of interesting things. Unsurprisingly, the "Bob & Doug" animated series was produced through this company.

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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Mr. Big (?) » Fri Apr 23, 2021 7:38 pm

TIL that the design of the Hall of Justice in "Super Friends" was based off of Cincinnati Union Terminal.

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This wasn't some random chance. At the time, Hanna-Barbera was owned by Taft Broadcasting Company, which was headquartered in Cincinnati, and they were known to go there for meetings once in a while.

Al Gmuer, the show's background supervisor, hated it. He said in an interview "In the long run, I hated that building. The way it's designed, it was not easy to draw. I had nightmares about that damn building."

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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Pocket (?) » Mon May 03, 2021 1:32 am

TIL saying something "eats" is, in fact, a compliment. The one and only time I heard it before today, I had assumed the exact opposite based on... context, I guess? And the fact that it kind of sounds like you're saying something "bites" but, like, moreso?

So all these years I've been completely 180-degrees wrong about a certain person's opinion of a certain thing, and I have no idea what to do with this information.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by DaikatunaRevengeance (?) » Mon May 03, 2021 5:24 am

never heard of that phrase before

interesting
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...

Post by Pocket (?) » Fri May 14, 2021 2:37 am

TIL the sun has an axis and an equator! It rotates, more or less (it's made of amorphous plasma, so it's more like it twists around, with the matter at the equator moving faster than the poles), about every twenty-some days, in the same direction that the planets move. This is also true of nearly all observed solar systems, but in 2019 a twin-star system was discovered where the planetary disc—the dust cloud that might form into planets someday—rotates perpendicularly to the direction that the stars rotate and orbit each other.
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