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

[StrandedonEarth]

 

[DDE]

6 hours ago, StrandedonEarth said:

 

3 (три) and 11 (одиннадцать) back here.

[DDE]

John Garand realized he had to clear this up

 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

6 hours ago, DDE said:

John Garand realized he had to clear this up

 

My son stumped me and my dad (who carried one for several years) with this! 

[kerbiloid]

Like gif, wasn't it clear?

P.S.
I was expecting that they say "zharan", and it's in French.

But no. Disappointed.

Edited January 19, 2022 by kerbiloid

[Meecrob]

On 1/8/2022 at 11:39 AM, Hyperspace Industries said:

It was built in 1889 to be an attraction at the world's fair.

As a tourist attraction, I'd say it has vastly over delivered.

The Eiffel Tower has delivered over its lifetime, for sure. However when it was first completed, Parisians allegedly claimed that the best view in all of Paris was atop the Eiffel Tower, simply because you could not see the eyesore that is the Eiffel Tower from there.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

1 hour ago, Meecrob said:

imply because you could not see the eyesore

Very French

 

[DDE]

Remember the StayPut mode fom this mod?

The LK did feature upwards-firing solid-propellant motors so that once it landed on the Moon, it stayed on the Moon.

Edited January 20, 2022 by DDE

[kerbiloid]

It's full of nozzles everywhere,

https://www.flickr.com/photos/9420712@N03/page2

and some of them are attached to nothing.

Spoiler

 

 

(The flickr album of the famous NK member David L. Rickman aka Capt. David, may him stay forever in our memory.)

Edited January 20, 2022 by kerbiloid

[kerbiloid]

(Caution: some animals get eaten)

Spoiler

 

 

[DDE]

 

[jimmymcgoochie]

The most abundant protein on Earth is Ribulose Bisphosphate Carboxylase Oxygenase, or Rubisco for short. It’s main function is to take ribulose bisphosphate and add CO2 to it, the critical step in photosynthesis; however it can also grab O2 instead of CO2 and add that to ribulose bisphosphate, which is wrong and a waste of resources.

Rubisco is also one of the worst enzymes out there- it’s huge, inefficient and also incredibly slow, completing all of 2 reactions per second (most enzymes can do hundreds or thousands per second, a rare few can do hundreds of thousands or even millions per second!), but since it is required for the key step in photosynthesis, plants need A LOT of it- from tiny single-cell algae to the mighty redwood tree- hence it’s the most abundant protein on Earth.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

4 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

(Caution: some animals get eaten)

  Hide contents

 

 

Couple of questions:

The part where the two wind turbines are on fire at the same time - do they explain what happened to cause it?

Also, the 'use a flying torch drone' was ingenious; was it jury-rigged just for that one 'clean up'?

Also - the 'standing wave in the canal' where is that?  I've not seen anything quite as dramatic showing wave action and water.

(The unluckiest rabbit in the world was funny)

1 hour ago, DDE said:

 

Don't know if you RU folks are old enough to remember the Cold-War... but we had regular 'duck and cover' drills in LA when I was a kid.  It was always interesting to see how little the rest of the world appreciated the US/USSR games of the time.

[kerbiloid]

2 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

The part where the two wind turbines are on fire at the same time - do they explain what happened to cause it?

They just say "what happens when the wind is too strong".
So, as the two in the middle aren't rotating, probably they were safely locked, while the two aside either kept rotating, or their locks failed.

7 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

the 'use a flying torch drone' was ingenious; was it jury-rigged just for that one 'clean up'?

They say that the Chinese workers have found a way to remove the garbage from the wires by attaching a flamethrower to the quadro _{actually, octo} copter.

8 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

the 'standing wave in the canal' where is that?  I've not seen anything quite as dramatic showing wave action and water.

Netherlands, a special test stand to generate waves, channel is 300 m long, waves are 5 m high.

[SunlitZelkova]

7 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

It was always interesting to see how little the rest of the world appreciated the US/USSR games of the time.

Comment/fun fact-

I was not alive at the time, but to give an example of a widespread Japanese attitude with a piece of (what to me is) history, the production of an anime film about World War III in the 80s was boycotted by PTAs, teacher unions, and even the union of the animation company itself for "demonizing the Soviet Union" and "warmongering". The script had to be changed as a result.

And this was after the Toshiba-Kongsberg scandal, when the Japanese government was doing things to show the US it was a faithful ally!

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Don't know if you RU folks are old enough to remember the Cold-War... but we had regular 'duck and cover' drills in LA when I was a kid.

In my late70s-80s we were getting theoretical and semi-practical knowledge of gasmasking, onflashfalling, and radmeasuring in classes, but the main idea was the mass evacuation from the city.

The duck-and-cover drills were never a thing in Soviet schools, because it was obvious and written in books to fall under the window or in a trench, far from glasses.

(Due to the WWII films and books, most part of the duck-and-covering was clear from early years and was just freshened.)

***

_{<doesn't matter>}

Edited January 20, 2022 by kerbiloid

[kerbiloid]

Another applied usage of the drones, except the flamethrowers.

https://news.sky.com/story/dog-rescued-from-drowning-after-sausage-dangled-from-drone-in-hampshire-12520987

[benzman]

On 1/19/2022 at 11:43 AM, StrandedonEarth said:

 

40 is the only number in the English language that, when written alphabetically, has all its letters in alphabetical order. 

[cubinator]

13 minutes ago, benzman said:

40 is the only number in the English language that, when written alphabetically, has all its letters in alphabetical order. 

What about e?

[Meecrob]

29 minutes ago, cubinator said:

What about e?

"e" also has its letters in alphabetical order

[DDE]

Some people are aware that Russian/Slavic names are a bit of a nightmare for someone who just needs to name a character, primarily because of the numerous overlapping diminutive forms - some of which overlap full names in other non-Slavic (Anna - Anya, from Hungarian) and even Slavic languages (among some of the Southern Slavs, Nadia is the full form of "Hope", whereas in Russian it acts as a diminutive for Nadezhda). And these diminutives can then be further "enhanced" with a myriad of "standardized" diminutive suffixes.

Some of the diminutive forms have eclipsed full ones among Anglophones - compare the number of times you've heard Aleksandra and Sasha, or Natalia and Natasha. Hence the Serb Suzana Drobnjakovic making her stage name a pun - Sasha Alexander.

However, this merely stractches the surface of what's been done to the most popular, unisex Greek-Russian name:

The following are some of the accepted permutations:

• Oleksandr(a) - Ukrainian spelling
• Alex(a)
• Alik/Alya
• Alix - made famous by the last Russian empress
• Xander/Sandra - the version that's made it into the Anglosphere
• Sanya
• Ksana - as in Oksana, which is the Ukranian version of Xenia
• Ksanya
• Aleksasha
• Sasha
• Sashura (!?)
• Shura
• Iskander - the version used in the Islamic world, probably deserves a tree of its own

Didn't include Ara, Adya and Asya, because maybe I've only ever heard the third one a couple of times, and mostly not to Sashas but to Agnes.

What's interesting is that, despite technically no restrictions on baby names, which led to some dubious creativity during Soviet years ("Nice to meet you, my name's Radium, but you may call me Radik"), these shortened forms have largely stayed out of IDs and therefore official conversation. Jebediah would stay Jebediah, except in the company of fellow pumpkin-suits.

[kerbiloid]

Jebediah in Russian is usually known as Jedediah /ijedidija/. (Never used, of course, but Bibleic).

Ara is Armenian, probably one of them was called so.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

@DDE The Russian proclivity and enjoyment for nicknames is kind of a fun/odd thing from an outside perspective - is it because there are only a certain number of Slavic names? 

Oddly w/r/t 'nicknames' - in America, I don't think of Mike as a nickname for Michael partly because I know both Mike's and Mike's that are actually Michael - while Dick is clearly a diminutive of Richard.  So when I think of the word 'nickname' I envision "The Rock" or "Kid Squeeze" or "Chuckster" (not Chuck, that's his name but Chuckster - that's a nick).  Also in America we have names from everywhere else, and even make up our own...  So there is no way to know that Devonte is 'Te' and Abbo is 'Ab' or 'Bo' (without them telling us) and Binh hates to be called 'Benny' - but will answer to 'Tho' (because that is what his grandmother called him) 

OTOH - 'Elizabeth' seems to have a whole lot of diminutives: 

Most of these, tbh, would not lend themselves to knowing the root was Elizabeth, without a chart like this.

Edited January 26, 2022 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[kerbiloid]

On 1/26/2022 at 5:48 PM, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

I don't think of Mike as a nickname for Michael

+1
It's a diminutive for "microphone".

[DDE]

In apparent continuance of Soviet counter-intel habits, the Russian company Kronstadt

• is named after a naval port outside St Petersburg
• is actually located in the city of Dubna, which is landlocked unless you take the Moscow sea nickname seriously
• its drones fly and are probably a bit hydrophobic