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

[Nuke]

on one hand if i know doctor who would be were it is now, i would have never binged watched every serial and saved me a lot of time. on the other side of it i got to see the doctor at its best many times and there was more to be seen digging up the old episodes than can be gained with the new ones.

[Jacke]

On 9/30/2024 at 7:04 AM, kerbiloid said:

I still insist that the whole movie/series makes no sense without Tom Bombadil.

Everything in the 3rd epoch biosphere shouts out that he is the main demiurge of the specific MiddleEarthian species since the very first days.

So, without him Him all that skirmish is just a mouse coaster with no aim.

P.S.
Like with Jackson's LOTR, I've never seen Jackson's Hobbit with original text, only parodies.

They are anyway not farther from the book that the Jackson's ecranizations.

To squeeze The Lord of the Rings into even a generous ~14 hours of the 3 extended cut films (haven't seen them yet meself), there had to be a lot of editting down of the material.  I think Peter Jackson made good choices, but also some could have been better.

To really dig into this, there's a series of videos still being made by YouTube channel Fact or Fantasy, "Movies vs. Manuscripts", to cover the differences between LotR on the page versus on the screen.  He's still working through it, but he's also spread out to cover other works.

Spoiler

 

 

[DDE]

Baade 152, GDR's attempt at an airliner. First one crashed, second one was built with a regular undercarriage but the whole project got scrapped.

[darthgently]

1 hour ago, DDE said:

Baade 152, GDR's attempt at an airliner. First one crashed, second one was built with a regular undercarriage but the whole project got scrapped.

It probably needs a version 3 with double the ground tackle and training wheels

[AckSed]

Standardised screw threads for nuts and bolts the secret to Crystal Palace's speedy construction: https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/10/how-londons-crystal-palace-was-built-so-quickly/

[DDE]

Fun with compound interest: the current Russian fine against Google is 42 quintillion times more than the world's combined wealth of $477 trillion, if WaPo's numbers are to be believed

[darthgently]

A technical history of a certain type of pestilence, how the CCP pickpocketed the F35 from the US, and the mess left behind

 

[Codraroll]

11 hours ago, DDE said:

Fun with compound interest: the current Russian fine against Google is 42 quintillion times more than the world's combined wealth of $477 trillion, if WaPo's numbers are to be believed

On the other hand, the fine is specified in Rubles, so give it a couple of years, and it will be something like $15.

[kerbiloid]

18 hours ago, Codraroll said:

On the other hand, the fine is specified in Rubles, so give it a couple of years, and it will be something like $15.

So, the total USA debt will be 2 kopecks?

[DDE]

23 hours ago, Codraroll said:

give it a couple of years

Yes, and Orel will have its first flight in 2018.

[Codraroll]

10 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

So, the total USA debt will be 2 kopecks?

With the ruble worth as little as it is, I don't think it will make any sense to further subdivide it into smaller units. What do you get for a hundreth of a cent these days?

[darthgently]

This is devolving into the economic version of yo mamma jokes: “yo currency is so inflated…”

Let’s not cross the lines, lol 

[kerbiloid]

5 hours ago, Codraroll said:

What do you get for a hundreth of a cent these days?

I didn't ever have smaller US currency unit than 5 cents, occasionally given to me as a change in the Soviet shop, but if the total google costs $15, I will be able to buy a dozen of googles for my current USD banknotes in the bookcase.
Sounds not bad, but excessive. What should I do with more than one google?

10 hours ago, DDE said:

Yes, and Orel will have its first flight in 2018.

And Orion has already studied the asteroid, brought to the Earth orbit.

CST-100 is a witness.

Same result for smaller money. Just one party prefers to flush down paper projects, while another one first tries to make them out of metal.

Edited Monday at 04:13 AM by kerbiloid

[kerbiloid]

https://www.reuters.com/technology/space/worlds-first-wooden-satellite-developed-japan-heads-space-2024-11-05/

The first wooden satellite Lignosat made by Japan is in space.

This inspires further expectations:

1. First wooden orbital station like it was originally planned for Alien 3  (a wooden asteroid with monastery inside).

2a. First eggsat, using a hen egg as a pressurized hull. Preferably with Arduino or so.
Stabilized by attached feathers.

2b. Mass eggsat production by a chickenfarm.

Edited 5 hours ago by kerbiloid