Shower thoughts

[kerbiloid]

16 hours ago, Maria Sirona said:

You can actually see the border between Russia and Finland from space! The russian side is clearly darker in the winter.

Of course it's visible. They are painted in different colors.

Spoiler

 

[cubinator]

Imagine if the Beatles all had names that started with 'B'.

[adsii1970]

43 minutes ago, cubinator said:

Imagine if the Beatles all had names that started with 'B'.

Or had nicknames that were Beatlized names of actual beetles. 

[StrandedonEarth]

Just now, adsii1970 said:

Or had nicknames that were Beatlized names of actual beetles. 

Dungo? 

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

 

[cubinator]

4 hours ago, adsii1970 said:

Or had nicknames that were Beatlized names of actual beetles. 

like Weavil and Scaerab

[Ben J. Kerman]

It's interesting how red, white, and blue are sometimes viewed as being uniquely 'American' colours, while those colours also belong to the flags of Russia, France, England, The Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, the Dominican Republic, Chile, North Korea, and many, many more. The colours must each signify something...probably.

Oh yeah, Iceland and Norway too.

Edited June 8, 2022 by Ben J. Kerman
So, I used the UK spelling of color. What of it?

[kerbiloid]

33 minutes ago, Ben J. Kerman said:

It's interesting how red, white, and blue are sometimes viewed as being uniquely 'American' colours, while those colours also belong to the flags of Russia, France, England, The Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, the Dominican Republic, Chile, North Korea, and many, many more. The colours must each signify something...probably.

https://starrybull.wordpress.com/2015/06/01/orphic-colours/

Because medieval masonic lodges had a lot of blue color for sale, and the black was looking too grim and got visually lost on black mantles, semi-lol.

Romantic explanations were invented later.

North (and Non-North) Korea just followed the common style, adopting it with local cultural explanations.

The Russian W-B-R was ancested from Netherlands by Peter I and used as a trade flag, and as official flag placeholder.

USA founders were masons every first.

[Maria Sirona]

2 hours ago, Ben J. Kerman said:

uniquely 'American' colours, while

 

2 hours ago, Ben J. Kerman said:

Chile

Only say "american" when you mean it. If you mean the US, then you should've said "US"

[kerbiloid]

As all of the Both-Americans' red-white-blue flags are obviously of European origin and were following local cultural way, the European RWB tracing makes sense only.

***

The Slavic R-W-B flags  are so-called Pan-Slavic colors which were adopted on 1848 congress from the trade flag of Russia.

Spoiler

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  Croatia^[5]

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  Czech Republic,^[3] formerly Czechoslovakia (1918–1993)

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  Russia^[4]

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  Serbia^[4]

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  Slovakia^[6][4]

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  Slovenia^[4]

 

• Former countries
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  Flag of Kingdom of Montenegro (1910–1916)

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  Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1918–1941)^[2]

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  Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (1945–1992)^[2]

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  Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (1992–2003) and Serbia and Montenegro (2003–2006)^[5]

 

• Other entities
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  Republika Srpska^[7]

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  Transnistria^[8][a]

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  Vojvodina

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  The Sorbs^[10]

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  The Rusyns^[11]

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  Crimea

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  Gagauzia (not a Slavic entity)

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  The Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia

The Bulgarian one is the same, but blue is replaced with green, probably due to the local cultural situation.

The Russian one was adopted by Peter I in XVIII from Netherlands, whose big fan he was.
(Probably for pure aesthetic reasons, as a part of his Hollandophilia, but there is no doubt that if he could cosplay a mason, he would do it, just for lulz.)

First used as a Russian trade ship flag, later used as a placeholder of a state flag due to its absence for historical reasons.
(Very early state centralization, all territory belonging to the same royal family, thus no need in heraldic system. So, no official state flag, only personal or situative ones.)
Later became unofficial official, and in late XX was declared official.

So, the East Europe can be excluded from tracing, it's all clear with it.

***

In France the R-W-B was established by the Great French Revolution as a combination of the rebel red and blue insignia with voluntarily added white.
In Netherlands in XVII there was an R-W-B trade flag of uncertain origin, but looking similar to the orange-white-blue royal flag, and having replaced it in XVIII.
In Great Britain there were local white, red, and blue colors, at the same time combined into the modern R-W-B one.

So, all these Western R-W-B flags appear:

• at the same time (the beginning of industrial revoltion, rise of bourgeoisie and fall of feudalism);
• at the same local region (Britain-France-Netherlands triangle);
• with no visible reason, but all same;
• adopting various local reds, blues, and whites, but necessary combining them into red-blue-white tricolor;
• in the situation of political transformation with leading role of the bourgeoisie and suggested by a post-feudal wannabe-bourgeois actor (a revolutionary noble, an advocate, etc).

As then-common trend of urban political activism was to be a member of a dozen of secret societies, with a masonic gameplay scenery (DnD of its time), and all of them knew each other, we can be sure that the R-W-B combination came from the masonic underground as a part of style they were used to.
This is also why they assign various random "meanings" to the colors, like "courage", "stup", "braveness", "purity" and so on. A typical fun of secret societies with secret signs, mottos, etc.

As nobody else cared, and the high-society mom's masons were enjoying it, it stayed and everyone got used to it.
Decades later R-W-B became a tradition as "historically grown" and "was always here".

***

As the real historical masons had grown from the medieval urban professional societies using available materials (including the colors for clothes), and their theoretical part was adopting everything ancient they could find around and declare mystically significant, the actual red, blue, and white colors were the most common colors for good-looking bright things, visible in the greensih-brown world of medieval village, they used these colors with pleasure, amd probably replaced the colors of the Antic mysticism with their more available and better looking analogs.

[Maria Sirona]

False, the flag of Transnistria is the same as the USSR flag but with a green stripe in the middle (same as the Moldavian SSR, one of the Soviet Union's constituent republics and predecessor of modern Moldova)

[kerbiloid]

22 minutes ago, Maria Sirona said:

False, the flag of Transnistria is the same as the USSR flag but with a green stripe in the middle

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

Variant flag of Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic
Use	Co-official national flag
Proportion	1:2
Adopted	12 April 2017
Design	Russian Federation flag, but longer ratio.

Great countries need two flags.

[kerbiloid]

Billions years ago Mars had liquid water, for several hundred million years.

It was not a deep ocean, but a planet-wide system of shallow lakes and rivers.

So, every winter they should freeze down to bottom.

Nothing could survive. No life on Mars.

[ColdJ]

We have found microbes that can survive in a pure arsenic enviroment. Organisims that can stay frozen and dormant indefinitely, I wouldn't say never till we can prove it for sure.

[kerbiloid]

4 hours ago, ColdJ said:

We have found microbes that can survive in a pure arsenic enviroment.

First they needed time to evolve into that.

On the Earth they had a whole stable ocean with underwater volcanoes.

 

[The Laythean]

Why is the letter W pronounced Double U and not Double V? It looks more like 2 V's rather than 2 U's

[kerbiloid]

9 hours ago, The Laythean said:

Why is the letter W pronounced Double U and not Double V? It looks more like 2 V's rather than 2 U's

https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2011/04/double-u.html

[kerbiloid]

The Kerbals are a race of green, short, pop-eyed, funny, and expendable fictional creatures living in a fictional world.

Why are their ears not pointy?

[ColdJ]

6 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Why are their ears not pointy?

Their ears are pointy, that is why they keep their ears in a box. Running around with pointy things is dangerous.

[Lisias]

3 hours ago, ColdJ said:

Their ears are pointy, that is why they keep their ears in a box. Running around with pointy things is dangerous.

What Vulcans use to clean their pointy ears? Pointy cotton swabs?

[cubinator]

Washington AC

[Pthigrivi]

Cont from unrelated thread: I once had 2 Russian roommates. They were brilliant and interesting. We had a lot in common. Then they were like "Well, wait till your empire collapses and your Oligarchs asset strip the population and you're still just a bunch of idiots" and I was like

Edited June 18, 2022 by Pthigrivi

[Maria Sirona]

About Austria.

So, this country is called Österreich in its native german language. It appatently means "southern realm". But Austria has never really been the easternmost edge of the german-speaking portion of Europe... But it has always been the southeenmost edge. Wouldn't "southern realm" (something like "Süderreich"?) make more semse?

[kerbiloid]

According to wiki, it was the Easternmost of Bavaria.

Also, they have oysters.

[Hotel26]

3 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Also, they have oysters.

And its native bird is the Ostrich, which is on the coat of arms.  But not of Austria.

Or maybe I'm getting confused with another national bird.  And another southern country.

What I'd really like to know is which country, or principality, more likely, has oysters octopi on its coat of arms...  (Atlantis, maybe...?)

Edited June 29, 2022 by Hotel26