TIL Thread: Today I learned...
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- Octavia
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...
TIL that more time has passed between my birthday and today than the end of World War II and my birthday.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...
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.
Every jumbled pile of person has a thinking part that wonders what the part that isn't thinking isn't thinking of...
- Mr. Big
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...
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.
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...
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...
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.
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...
TIL that Ben Shapiro and Mara Wilson are cousins. Not even distant cousins, but maternal cousins.
Unsurprisingly, the two hate each-other.
Unsurprisingly, the two hate each-other.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...
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
In fact, the Dog of Wisdom was based on Meredith's dog
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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.
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...
I remember seeing this on HBO ages ago.
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...
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...
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...
So does Applejack have a relative that grows these?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.
And are they in prison for murder?
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...
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.)
- Adiwan
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...
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.
"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...
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...
I am extremely down for the idea of Florida joining the list of real-life regions that have fantasy counterparts.
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...
Florida-Man is already a cryptid of some sort.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...
Florida Man is some sort of chaos spirit, always doing crime but rarely succeeding at it.
- Mechanical Ape
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- Mechanical Ape
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- Mechanical Ape
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Today I learned that Natalie Imbruglia's song "Torn" is actually a cover of an EDNASWAP song:
- Mr. Big
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...
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.
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.
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...
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...
A lot of those cartoons were directed by Jack Kinney, who was the strongest director Disney had for their shorts.Pocket wrote: ↑Thu Apr 08, 2021 4:03 amTIL 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.
He was probably the closest Disney had to his own Tex Avery.
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...
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...
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...
https://textfancy.com/font-converter/
somehow the 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
but really -
𝓣𝓱𝓲𝓼 𝓼𝓱𝓸𝓾𝓵𝓭 𝓷𝓸𝓽 𝓫𝓮
🆆🅷🆈 🆆🅾🆄🅻🅳 🆈🅾🆄 🅴🆅🅴🆁 🅽🅴🅴🅳 🆃🅷🅸🆂
𝓔🕴🏋 🅰 🕴 🕴
somehow the 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
but really -
𝓣𝓱𝓲𝓼 𝓼𝓱𝓸𝓾𝓵𝓭 𝓷𝓸𝓽 𝓫𝓮
🆆🅷🆈 🆆🅾🆄🅻🅳 🆈🅾🆄 🅴🆅🅴🆁 🅽🅴🅴🅳 🆃🅷🅸🆂
𝓔🕴🏋 🅰 🕴 🕴
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...
"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...
Z̨̤͎̀̇͋ͤ͡a̭̹̣͙̳ͬͭ͛ͨ̋͢͞l̞̮͈͍̫̺̫ͫ̀g̸̭̞̤͇̪̺̩̹ͣͪ͠o͚͚̬̲͇͓̦̔ͩ̈̊̓͋͊ͣ ̠͔̦̪̳̙ͩ͗ͩͨ̐ͥ́ͅc̸͔̳͙͚̥̪ͬ̕ͅo̵̴̡͕̲̪͍̱̦͚̊m̵̼̖̍ͬ̓͂̆ė̆̆̊̽ͬ̚̚͏҉͈͖̦̲̘̺s̷̞̙͕̯̣̩̼̥͗̋̄̑ͥͮͮ́̚
I shall sing you the song of my people
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...
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.
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.
Every jumbled pile of person has a thinking part that wonders what the part that isn't thinking isn't thinking of...
- Mr. Big
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Re: TIL Thread: Today I learned...
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.
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...
TIL that the design of the Hall of Justice in "Super Friends" was based off of Cincinnati Union Terminal.
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."
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...
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.
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.
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...
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.
Every jumbled pile of person has a thinking part that wonders what the part that isn't thinking isn't thinking of...