Fun Fact Thread! (previously fun fact for the day, not limited to 1 per day anymore.)

[kerbiloid]

10 minutes ago, Admiral Fluffy said:

Wouldn't everything alive in Fallout be considered a GMO?

(Takes a phone)
"Hello... Enclave Headquarters? Please, tell the duty officer that I have found one more of them.... Yes, thank you, I'm at the phone...
Yes, on the KSP forum. He said: 'Wouldn't everything alive in Fallout be considered a GMO?'...
Yes, he said exactly that. Idk, maybe he even haven't seen any pure one... Thank you. Always at your service. Good bye."

https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Enclave

Edited November 28, 2022 by kerbiloid

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

This is true.  May not be fun... but it is a fact.

[DDE]

2 hours ago, Admiral Fluffy said:

Edit: Never mind, because they were nuked, not made in a lab.

Fallout excuses the unrealistic mutations with the lore surrounding the Forced Evolutionary Virus. So, labs were involved.

[kerbiloid]

If base on the youtube theory that the whole Vault-Tek project was a preparation to the further post-nuclear escape from the Earth, and its strange shelters were a test prototype of the interstellar ark habitat, then FEV was even not just from lab, but it was a main tool for the further extraterrestrial colonization, allowing the lifeforms from the Earth quickly adapt to any exoplanetary conditions..

[kerbiloid]

The ideal Kerbal snack.

https://pikabu-ru.translate.goog/story/voennaya_shokoladka_othershey_sekretnoe_oruzhie_gitlera_ili_khitryiy_plan_9691268?_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=ru&_x_tr_pto=wapp

As google seems having problem with its translation, a copypaste.

Spoiler

Military chocolate from Hershey: "Hitler's secret weapon" or a cunning plan? ⁠⁠ _

 

In 1937, serious people in US Army uniforms came to Hershey and said, "We want chocolate." Serious people in Willy Wonka costumes were a little dumbfounded, but then everyone understood correctly. A large order from the Ministry of Defense was at stake, which means .... this is good. And such a request was quite understandable and logical. Chocolate has long been known as an excellent source of energy in a fairly dense form. I ate a piece, and now your body received a lot of calories and, therefore, energy. And this very piece takes up much less space than traditional power sources. When the British Empire was at its zenith importing cocoa beans from overseas colonies, half of those imports went solely to make chocolate for the navy. And so all the military have long laid eyes on this product, as an emergency power source for soldiers. And those that "did not go into the series" were then quite actively supplied to the civilian market. What you may not know is that the first M&M's were developed exclusively for the US Army. And their famous caramel coating was created in order to protect chocolate from melting, one of the main problems of this product in warm climates. Yes, and Snickers bars, according to rumors, appeared as a result of attempts to develop a new product for the Department of Defense. However, that's not what we're talking about right now. And about the more strange representatives of this category of products. And their famous caramel coating was created in order to protect chocolate from melting, one of the main problems of this product in warm climates. Yes, and Snickers bars, according to rumors, appeared as a result of attempts to develop a new product for the Department of Defense. However, that's not what we're talking about right now. And about the more strange representatives of this category of products. And their famous caramel coating was created in order to protect chocolate from melting, one of the main problems of this product in warm climates. Yes, and Snickers bars, according to rumors, appeared as a result of attempts to develop a new product for the Department of Defense. However, that's not what we're talking about right now. And about the more strange representatives of this category of products.

That's about this thing.

So, after the military asked for a chocolate bar, Hershey rolled out their solution to the gastronomic problem. They carefully thought about the possible difficulties that their product would face. Then they consulted with chemical technologists and presented the commission with the so-called Logan bar (in honor of the colonel of the quartermaster service, Paul Logan, who, in fact, made the order). Instead of cocoa powder, they added cocoa fat, they took dry and skimmed milk. Topped it all with oatmeal. They even thought about the health of the soldiers, bang there a horse dose of vitamins to prevent diseases and lack of important substances in the body of a soldier. This bar had amazing heat resistance even without caramel coating. Imagine a chocolate which began to attempt to pass into a liquid state only after an hour of lying at a temperature in the region of 50 °. The dream of any caretaker working in a hot climate. But the soldiers had to pay for it with the teeth of the soldiers - it was possible to bite off such a tile by applying significant jaw forces. But even in a tropical climate, the soldiers always had an emergency supply of food on hand - nutritious and tasty ...

Look at this person's face. It is already clear that it is not so tasty ... right?

No, a few words about taste. It... was... terrible... The soldiers didn't call this tile "Hitler's Secret Weapon" for nothing. Firstly, it was frankly bitter, because sugar was in short supply in those days and it was not enough for all types of industry. Therefore, when choosing "spend dear deficit" and "let the soldiers experience the bitterness of chocolate" the option was obvious. Secondly, the gastrointestinal tract of the fighters reacted extremely ambiguously to this tile and could lead to digestive problems, especially for those hurry-ups who ate the entire tile in one sitting (who reads the instructions, right?). Thirdly, soldiers with bad teeth had to either starve or cut off thin pieces of chocolate with a knife and gnaw on them. But even healthy soldiers preferred not to eat this bar. And it was a success, everything as expected. No, Paul Logan, who approved the order, was not a spy and saboteur. There was a clear and thoughtful logic in his actions. After all, judge for yourself. Chocolate belonged to the so-called emergency ration. What does this mean? Only that it was necessary to consume it only when it comes directly to survival. Now imagine a soldier who is sitting in a damp trench, sad, with nothing to do. But he knows that somewhere in the supply of personal rations lies a delicious and sweet chocolate bar. What will he do with her? Naturally, he will eat it to cheer himself up. But what will happen to the fighter later, in an extreme situation, when he will be completely without food? All that is left for him is to sit with an empty belly. So Logan demanded only four items from an army chocolate ration: weight in the region of 100 grams, high nutritional value, ability to withstand heat, and most importantly, to taste “a little better, than boiled potatoes. And the last one was very important. So important that at one time, they tried to add a little kerosene to the experimental samples, so that for sure (True Story). But it already seemed too much, even for the military.

This is how she looks like. Like a bar of soap, right?

And the new ration fully met all the requirements. Especially the last one. Many of the soldiers really claimed that they would prefer to eat only boiled potatoes, and not this muck. And manufacturers had to revise the entire process. Refractory chocolate, surprisingly, refused to melt and had to be literally manually tamped into molds. But the military contract was worth it. Even when confectionery factories closed in the US, Hershey remained afloat precisely because they were churning out rations for the war. In total, more than three billion bars were sent to the fronts in 1941-1945. At the end of World War II, their capacity reached 3 million chocolates per day, and the company received an E award from the army and navy as an outstanding manufacturer. Of the 85 thousand enterprises that worked for the US defense, only about 4 thousand received a similar award. Well, some numbers. The cost of producing such a chocolate bar was around 5 cents. One bar contained 600 calories. In total, ration D contained three bars, which means the soldier received about 1800 calories from them. This was less than the estimated 4,000 calories per day, but enough for a person to last several days.

This one was a little better. But still - far from the standards of a normal person.

Bonus: of the entire diet, this bar was the only army food that dysentery patients could eat. Which, as you understand, was an important advantage during the campaigns. Even if for this you had to dissolve chocolate in boiling water, trying to figure out something like bitter cocoa. That is why many soldiers often deciphered D-bar (the official name of this chocolate bar) as dysentery Bar. In case you're wondering, field rations A and B were similar to garrison rations, requiring the use of cooks and a mobile kitchen to prepare them. C is canned food that a soldier carried with him on a campaign. Well, D is this very chocolate bar. Later, American soldiers discovered another extremely useful property of this thing. If somewhere they were surrounded by annoying local kids and demanded sweets, usually only one such chocolate bar was enough to ward off beggars for a long time. After eating this... let it be, sweets... children usually made the decision never to ask American soldiers for anything again. And in general, in some cases they reconsidered their love for chocolate for many years. Particularly cunning Yankees changed the tiles for ordinary civilian food. And they tried to quickly leave the place of exchange, in order to avoid popular unrest. Later, the composition of "diet D" was slightly modernized and the taste was slightly improved (but not so much that it could be eaten without problems). This was done for a war in a tropical climate - just America fought in the Pacific theater, and there were slightly different temperature conditions, and the soldiers threw ordinary chocolates too often. We had to improve them in some way. And this "tropical version" stayed in service until the mid-sixties and was even sent to the moon with the astronauts of Apollo 15. In short, the moral here is unexpected for a story about an ordinary chocolate bar: the reason for the existence of any object is not always to meet your expectations. You may simply not understand the whole picture.

List of sources:

1. Everything you never wanted to know about this chocolate. Composition, release options, packaging.

2. Information about this "chocolate" on the Hershey website

3. Video with unpacking and eating d-bar.

4. Book On the Chocolate Trail

5. Food Power Book

6. BAYAYAN: American soldiers' diarrhea and Hitler's 'secret weapon' | Throw some more

 

[kerbiloid]

https://t.me/cosmolet2022/1722

or 

https://cs14.pikabu.ru/video/2022/12/01/1669849171233594090_640x352.mp4

American astronaut learns walking after 197 days in zero-g.

***

A flight to Mars takes 8 months every side.
(And 1.5 years in LMO, if not land all together to wait in at least 0.37 g conditions.)

Still believe in chemical flight without a centrifuge (at least a small one for therapy) ?

All these people can't fly together with the crew to teach them walk.

[Admiral Fluffy]

17 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Still believe in chemical flight without a centrifuge (at least a small one for therapy) ?

The only other thing I can think of is Magnetic boots, but I don't think that would work.

[Maria Sirona]

11 hours ago, Admiral Fluffy said:

The only other thing I can think of is Magnetic boots, but I don't think that would work.

It wouldn't, only the boots are attracted to the ground

[steve9728]

Fun fact: in many English-Chinese dictionary, the first word is Abandon (or at least within first three)

-Ha I'm gonna to learn more English today!

*turning pages*

[Abandon]

-OK I got it *close the book*

Edited December 2, 2022 by steve9728

[darthgently]

20 hours ago, Admiral Fluffy said:

The only other thing I can think of is Magnetic boots, but I don't think that would work.

Brachistochrone trajectories at 1 g accel / decel solve part of the problem if en route somewhere and the technology allows

Edited December 2, 2022 by darthgently

[StrandedonEarth]

Cool gif…

 

[StrandedonEarth]

It appears someone in NASA PR is a StarCraft fan…

 

[Maria Sirona]

8 hours ago, StrandedonEarth said:

Cool gif…

 

Truly

[StrandedonEarth]

Gotta love xkcd...

 

[Admiral Fluffy]

12 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

Gotta love xkcd...

A fun fact conveyed with xkcd.

xkcd 1053

[steve9728]

On 11/29/2022 at 2:16 AM, DDE said:

So tasty, it climbs out of the package on its own.

And I saw this today:

Are there any way to make it glow

[Nazalassa]

13 minutes ago, steve9728 said:

Are there any way to make it glow

Genetics

[Fraston]

6 hours ago, Nazalassa said:

Genetics

Spoiler

Californium exposure

 

[TheSaint]

On 11/30/2022 at 11:00 PM, kerbiloid said:

The ideal Kerbal snack.

https://pikabu-ru.translate.goog/story/voennaya_shokoladka_othershey_sekretnoe_oruzhie_gitlera_ili_khitryiy_plan_9691268?_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=ru&_x_tr_pto=wapp

As google seems having problem with its translation, a copypaste.

  Reveal hidden contents

Military chocolate from Hershey: "Hitler's secret weapon" or a cunning plan? ⁠⁠ _

 

In 1937, serious people in US Army uniforms came to Hershey and said, "We want chocolate." Serious people in Willy Wonka costumes were a little dumbfounded, but then everyone understood correctly. A large order from the Ministry of Defense was at stake, which means .... this is good. And such a request was quite understandable and logical. Chocolate has long been known as an excellent source of energy in a fairly dense form. I ate a piece, and now your body received a lot of calories and, therefore, energy. And this very piece takes up much less space than traditional power sources. When the British Empire was at its zenith importing cocoa beans from overseas colonies, half of those imports went solely to make chocolate for the navy. And so all the military have long laid eyes on this product, as an emergency power source for soldiers. And those that "did not go into the series" were then quite actively supplied to the civilian market. What you may not know is that the first M&M's were developed exclusively for the US Army. And their famous caramel coating was created in order to protect chocolate from melting, one of the main problems of this product in warm climates. Yes, and Snickers bars, according to rumors, appeared as a result of attempts to develop a new product for the Department of Defense. However, that's not what we're talking about right now. And about the more strange representatives of this category of products. And their famous caramel coating was created in order to protect chocolate from melting, one of the main problems of this product in warm climates. Yes, and Snickers bars, according to rumors, appeared as a result of attempts to develop a new product for the Department of Defense. However, that's not what we're talking about right now. And about the more strange representatives of this category of products. And their famous caramel coating was created in order to protect chocolate from melting, one of the main problems of this product in warm climates. Yes, and Snickers bars, according to rumors, appeared as a result of attempts to develop a new product for the Department of Defense. However, that's not what we're talking about right now. And about the more strange representatives of this category of products.

That's about this thing.

So, after the military asked for a chocolate bar, Hershey rolled out their solution to the gastronomic problem. They carefully thought about the possible difficulties that their product would face. Then they consulted with chemical technologists and presented the commission with the so-called Logan bar (in honor of the colonel of the quartermaster service, Paul Logan, who, in fact, made the order). Instead of cocoa powder, they added cocoa fat, they took dry and skimmed milk. Topped it all with oatmeal. They even thought about the health of the soldiers, bang there a horse dose of vitamins to prevent diseases and lack of important substances in the body of a soldier. This bar had amazing heat resistance even without caramel coating. Imagine a chocolate which began to attempt to pass into a liquid state only after an hour of lying at a temperature in the region of 50 °. The dream of any caretaker working in a hot climate. But the soldiers had to pay for it with the teeth of the soldiers - it was possible to bite off such a tile by applying significant jaw forces. But even in a tropical climate, the soldiers always had an emergency supply of food on hand - nutritious and tasty ...

Look at this person's face. It is already clear that it is not so tasty ... right?

No, a few words about taste. It... was... terrible... The soldiers didn't call this tile "Hitler's Secret Weapon" for nothing. Firstly, it was frankly bitter, because sugar was in short supply in those days and it was not enough for all types of industry. Therefore, when choosing "spend dear deficit" and "let the soldiers experience the bitterness of chocolate" the option was obvious. Secondly, the gastrointestinal tract of the fighters reacted extremely ambiguously to this tile and could lead to digestive problems, especially for those hurry-ups who ate the entire tile in one sitting (who reads the instructions, right?). Thirdly, soldiers with bad teeth had to either starve or cut off thin pieces of chocolate with a knife and gnaw on them. But even healthy soldiers preferred not to eat this bar. And it was a success, everything as expected. No, Paul Logan, who approved the order, was not a spy and saboteur. There was a clear and thoughtful logic in his actions. After all, judge for yourself. Chocolate belonged to the so-called emergency ration. What does this mean? Only that it was necessary to consume it only when it comes directly to survival. Now imagine a soldier who is sitting in a damp trench, sad, with nothing to do. But he knows that somewhere in the supply of personal rations lies a delicious and sweet chocolate bar. What will he do with her? Naturally, he will eat it to cheer himself up. But what will happen to the fighter later, in an extreme situation, when he will be completely without food? All that is left for him is to sit with an empty belly. So Logan demanded only four items from an army chocolate ration: weight in the region of 100 grams, high nutritional value, ability to withstand heat, and most importantly, to taste “a little better, than boiled potatoes. And the last one was very important. So important that at one time, they tried to add a little kerosene to the experimental samples, so that for sure (True Story). But it already seemed too much, even for the military.

This is how she looks like. Like a bar of soap, right?

And the new ration fully met all the requirements. Especially the last one. Many of the soldiers really claimed that they would prefer to eat only boiled potatoes, and not this muck. And manufacturers had to revise the entire process. Refractory chocolate, surprisingly, refused to melt and had to be literally manually tamped into molds. But the military contract was worth it. Even when confectionery factories closed in the US, Hershey remained afloat precisely because they were churning out rations for the war. In total, more than three billion bars were sent to the fronts in 1941-1945. At the end of World War II, their capacity reached 3 million chocolates per day, and the company received an E award from the army and navy as an outstanding manufacturer. Of the 85 thousand enterprises that worked for the US defense, only about 4 thousand received a similar award. Well, some numbers. The cost of producing such a chocolate bar was around 5 cents. One bar contained 600 calories. In total, ration D contained three bars, which means the soldier received about 1800 calories from them. This was less than the estimated 4,000 calories per day, but enough for a person to last several days.

This one was a little better. But still - far from the standards of a normal person.

Bonus: of the entire diet, this bar was the only army food that dysentery patients could eat. Which, as you understand, was an important advantage during the campaigns. Even if for this you had to dissolve chocolate in boiling water, trying to figure out something like bitter cocoa. That is why many soldiers often deciphered D-bar (the official name of this chocolate bar) as dysentery Bar. In case you're wondering, field rations A and B were similar to garrison rations, requiring the use of cooks and a mobile kitchen to prepare them. C is canned food that a soldier carried with him on a campaign. Well, D is this very chocolate bar. Later, American soldiers discovered another extremely useful property of this thing. If somewhere they were surrounded by annoying local kids and demanded sweets, usually only one such chocolate bar was enough to ward off beggars for a long time. After eating this... let it be, sweets... children usually made the decision never to ask American soldiers for anything again. And in general, in some cases they reconsidered their love for chocolate for many years. Particularly cunning Yankees changed the tiles for ordinary civilian food. And they tried to quickly leave the place of exchange, in order to avoid popular unrest. Later, the composition of "diet D" was slightly modernized and the taste was slightly improved (but not so much that it could be eaten without problems). This was done for a war in a tropical climate - just America fought in the Pacific theater, and there were slightly different temperature conditions, and the soldiers threw ordinary chocolates too often. We had to improve them in some way. And this "tropical version" stayed in service until the mid-sixties and was even sent to the moon with the astronauts of Apollo 15. In short, the moral here is unexpected for a story about an ordinary chocolate bar: the reason for the existence of any object is not always to meet your expectations. You may simply not understand the whole picture.

List of sources:

1. Everything you never wanted to know about this chocolate. Composition, release options, packaging.

2. Information about this "chocolate" on the Hershey website

3. Video with unpacking and eating d-bar.

4. Book On the Chocolate Trail

5. Food Power Book

6. BAYAYAN: American soldiers' diarrhea and Hitler's 'secret weapon' | Throw some more

 

My dad had a lot to say about D-Rations. None of it was good, most of it was unprintable. K-Rations were apparently pretty awful as well. Out of the bunch, they preferred C-Rations, although "preferred" is a misleading word to use in the context.

[kerbiloid]

14 minutes ago, TheSaint said:

unprintable

Kerbal 3d-printable snacks. That's the key.

Out of chocopowder with taste of fish.

[Vanamonde]

As of 2013, the various models of Boeing 737 had collectively performed 184 million flights. (Paragraph 3.) One hundred and eighty four. Million. flights. MILLIONS. One hundred and eighty-four of them.

I've told this to several people and no one finds it as stunning as I do. 

[DDE]

6 minutes ago, Vanamonde said:

As of 2013, the various models of Boeing 737 had collectively performed 184 million flights. (Paragraph 3.) One hundred and eighty four. Million. flights. MILLIONS. One hundred and eighty-four of them.

I've told this to several people and no one finds it as stunning as I do. 

It is, truly, an unimaginable number.

[Maria Sirona]

17 hours ago, DDE said:

It is, truly, an unimaginable number.

17 hours ago, Vanamonde said:

As of 2013, the various models of Boeing 737 had collectively performed 184 million flights. (Paragraph 3.) One hundred and eighty four. Million. flights. MILLIONS. One hundred and eighty-four of them.

I've told this to several people and no one finds it as stunning as I do. 

 

 

Brain.exe has stopped working (why did the quotes go like that)

[kerbiloid]

Soon Boeing software will face the int32 problem while counting the flights.

[Nazalassa]

3 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Soon Boeing software will face the int32 problem while counting the flights.

If it's signed, they need about 12 times as much flights to get to -2147483648 flights.
If it's unsigned, they need about 24 times as much flights to get to... 0 flights.