xkcd

by **phlip** » Thu Mar 08, 2012 12:01 pm UTC

Menacing Spike wrote: "cuz you need one" or "cuz you need to run"

"'Cuz you need one" seems to be missing a syllable... "'Cuz you need to run" kinda fits (it's a stretch, but no more than "Ash'd" => "asked"), but unless I'm missing a reference, isn't much of a joke...

[edit]
Oh wait, the whole thing is one joke... Google tells me the lyrics to the song go:

I'm not gonna write you a love song
'Cause you asked for it
'Cause you need one

So... yeah. "Nidoran" and "Need one" seem to have a fundamentally different syllable count that makes the pun an extreme stretch.

by **meridian** » Thu Mar 08, 2012 2:50 pm UTC

The Scyphozoa wrote:
Amie wrote:TIL: Menacing_Spike's userpic can read "I turn on my charm and 'er pants come right off". Wow, talk about late realizations.

(Thank you Amie for pointing that out to me,~~now I feel stupid.~~ I thought it was just about a Charmander taking its own pants off because its tail made them be on fire.)

FIFM

by **Magnanimous** » Thu Mar 08, 2012 7:34 pm UTC

Charmanders must have a ridiculous metabolic rate in order to have a constant tail flame.

by **clockworkmonk** » Thu Mar 08, 2012 7:41 pm UTC

or the original source of firebending.

by **Djehutynakht** » Fri Mar 09, 2012 3:55 am UTC

Today I learned that Pandora never actually had a box. She actually had a large storage jar, called a Pithos. The term "Box" comes from a mistranslation into the Latin Pyxis, meaning "box", from Pithos.

by **Magnanimous** » Fri Mar 09, 2012 5:01 am UTC

Also it's not her box... It's Prometheus's Box. She just opens it.

by **Ephemeron** » Mon Mar 12, 2012 2:01 am UTC

Today I learned If you put a good quality pencil portrait in front of a camera, the face-detection algorithm will pick it up. I have confirmed this with several examples on DeviantArt, but my picture is the only one I've found so far that works from just an outline.

: Now to show you my exciting discovery with my piss-poor photo of a camera... taken with another camera

by **SecondTalon** » Mon Mar 12, 2012 2:19 am UTC

You know, you'd think I'd remember about * in word filters breaking the forum completely, since I did it last year too.

GUESS NOT!

by **yurell** » Mon Mar 12, 2012 2:22 am UTC

You gave me a bit of a panic there when everything died! Was about to post on site issues

by **SecondTalon** » Mon Mar 12, 2012 2:24 am UTC

And.. uh.. how exactly were you planning on doing that?

:appropriate smiley face for the situation:

by **yurell** » Mon Mar 12, 2012 2:28 am UTC

Yeah, when I hit 'site issues' and it worked was when I realised it was fixed. It's sort of like "well, internet's down, guess I should just go through my backlog of e-mails".

by **Vieto** » Mon Mar 12, 2012 9:16 pm UTC

TIL that you can simulate black holes using superfluids, in the form of a "dumb hole" (or acoustic black hole), because apparently perfect fluids behave like field lines. Apparently they even predict dumb holes to have a form of hawking radiation.

by **AJR** » Sat Mar 17, 2012 5:38 pm UTC

Ephemeron wrote:Today I learned If you put a good quality pencil portrait in front of a camera, the face-detection algorithm will pick it up. I have confirmed this with several examples on DeviantArt, but my picture is the only one I've found so far that works from just an outline.

IMG_20120312_015456.jpg

Related: Face detection algorithms experience pareidolia (seeing faces in random patterns) like people do (and sometimes differently to how people do) http://urbanhonking.com/ideasfordozens/ ... cetracker/

by **Cathy** » Sun Mar 18, 2012 2:34 am UTC

TIL that irish carbombs are pretty freaking delicious. Tipsy now. Nom.

by **F117Landers** » Sun Mar 18, 2012 10:36 am UTC

TIL that one of the control consoles at my workplace has a Line Feed Key.

by **yurell** » Mon Mar 26, 2012 6:44 am UTC

TIL 'coon' is a racist term ... I've only ever heard it as the name for the brand of cheese.

by **farnsworth** » Mon Mar 26, 2012 7:21 am UTC

...and I thought Bimbo Bakeries was bad.

by **I Am Raven** » Mon Mar 26, 2012 7:47 am UTC

yurell wrote:TIL 'coon' is a racist term ... I've only ever heard it as the name for the brand of cheese.

I always thought it was a slang term for "raccoon". I based this on absolutely nothing though, to be honest.

by **Magnanimous** » Mon Mar 26, 2012 8:10 am UTC

I only learned it after watching Forrest Gump... It's kind of outdated.

by **Mumpy** » Mon Mar 26, 2012 10:10 am UTC

Don't worry, my flat mates are trying their hardest to bring it back.

by **yurell** » Mon Mar 26, 2012 10:28 am UTC

farnsworth wrote:...and I thought Bimbo Bakeries was bad.

Coon's a very big brand here.

by **Windowlicker** » Mon Mar 26, 2012 10:33 am UTC

I knew it from Pink Floyd's The Wall:
"That one looks Jewish
And that one's a coon,
Who let all this riff-raff
into the room?"

by **SecondTalon** » Mon Mar 26, 2012 7:06 pm UTC

yurell wrote:TIL 'coon' is a racist term ... I've only ever heard it as the name for the brand of cheese.

Let's .. be completely honest here.

There's lots of words you didn't know were racist terms for people with African ancestry

There's lots of racism, period.

/Trigger Warning - it's the Racial Slur Database. While it's all text and attempts to describe why a certain word refers to a certain group in a completely impartial and detached way, you can imagine what you're going to see there. It's great to read when you're.. you know, happy.. and want a reminder of what pieces of shit people on the whole are.

by **emceng** » Mon Mar 26, 2012 7:12 pm UTC

Yeah, nearby town debated changing their name because Coon Rapids isn't very PC anymore - despite it being named after the many racoons that frolicked in a nearby rapids.

Also reminds me of a time I embarassed my mother when I was in high school. We were talking to a recruiter about college, and somehow brought up that most scholarships we could find were for minorities. I said something like "that or Jews". Didn't know bwing Jewish was a bad thing. Didn't really see a reason to discriminate, or why they would have been. In context, it could easily be construed as racist(or religionist or whatever).

by **yurell** » Tue Mar 27, 2012 5:35 am UTC

Wow, two 'TIL' in as many days ...
TIL that Jackson Classical Electrodynamics is a graduate-level textbook in the US. We've been using it as our undergraduate text. Certainly helps to explain why I often feel like throwing it through a window in frustration.

by **emceng** » Wed Mar 28, 2012 1:56 pm UTC

Oh, and TIL: coonass is a non-racist term for Louisiana rednecks.

by **Menacing Spike** » Wed Mar 28, 2012 2:16 pm UTC

TIL there is pie-throwing porn.

by **SecondTalon** » Wed Mar 28, 2012 2:40 pm UTC

emceng wrote:Oh, and TIL: coonass is a non-racist term for Louisiana rednecks.

You.. uh.. may want to re-check that. It specifically refers to people of Cajun descent, and often not in the highest of contexts, which means it's.... an ethnic slur.

Menacing Spike wrote:TIL there is pie-throwing porn.

How many times do you need to discover this sort of thing before you realize Rule 34 isn't kidding around?

by **Menacing Spike** » Wed Mar 28, 2012 3:17 pm UTC

SexyTalon wrote:How many times do you need to discover this sort of thing before you realize Rule 34 isn't kidding around?

Live action porn, to be specific. Drawn porn of almost everything exists apparently, but the domain is a lot less wide for live action...

But seriously that sounds like a fun job:

"Okay, you'll be bound and gagged and we'll throw pies at you".

by **The Scyphozoa** » Wed Mar 28, 2012 3:42 pm UTC

It's one thing to accept Rule 34. It's another to actually have specific types of porn come to mind.

by **SecondTalon** » Wed Mar 28, 2012 3:49 pm UTC

Perhaps I just run in stranger circles. Nothing in the pornography world surprises me anymore. Don't get me wrong, I hear about new things all the time - like the above Pie Throwing Porn.

But it's not surprising, and (Wikipedia, NSFW) I already know how to classify it.

*edit* Hah! Attack of the Show got WAM mixed up with Vorarephilia. That's hilarious.

by **dhokarena56** » Wed Mar 28, 2012 6:32 pm UTC

Here are the three Prairie Provinces, from biggest to smallest in terms of area:

1. Alberta
2. Saskatchewan
3. Manitoba

Isn't that completely counter-intuitive and backwards from what you'd expect? We're so spoiled by looking at Mercator-like projections that we forget that Manitoba's Hudson Bay coast is smaller than we think, or that southern Alberta is larger than we think.

(Though it should be noted that their areas aren't all that different; Alberta is bigger than Manitoba by about the area of the Bahamas, and Saskatchewan is bigger than Man. by about the area of PEI.)

by **Cathy** » Wed Mar 28, 2012 8:41 pm UTC

TIL that my sex drive scales with the amount of sex I could be having.

I'm having a lot of sex.

Yum.

by **Ephemeron** » Wed Mar 28, 2012 10:09 pm UTC

Today I learned that you can use Tesla coils to create musical lightning! This is incredible!

by **phlip** » Fri Mar 30, 2012 9:01 am UTC

Technically, it's not musical lightning, but rather musical thunder.

by **pseudoidiot** » Fri Mar 30, 2012 1:26 pm UTC

It's really awesome seeing it live.

by **wolfticket** » Fri Mar 30, 2012 5:36 pm UTC

Bjork used one live on her Biophilia tour: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQnFzcuL83o (Although it really shouldn't be a surprise if you know her work)

by **PhoenixEnigma** » Sat Mar 31, 2012 2:40 am UTC

TIL: Visa's datacenter sports a moat. It's there to improve security of vehicular access, apparently - if you are going fast enough to make it past the raising bollards, you are going too fast for the corner and go for a swim.

No word on sharks or alligators.

by **yurell** » Sat Mar 31, 2012 2:53 am UTC

I just want to say that is awesome.

by **Kithplana** » Sat Mar 31, 2012 4:34 am UTC

Security geek here. That is awesome.

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