Post a random fact people probably don't know! (And even if they did, they wouldn't care.)

[indigoasis]

In Xenoblade Chronicles 2, there is a rare blade that you can awaken named KOS-MOS, based on a character of the same name from Xenosaga. In XC2, she is notorious for being the most difficult Blade to obtain in the entire game, with a 0.1% chance of awakening her.

Aside from the New Game Plus Blades, she is the only Blade that has a consistent drop rate no matter the save file. XC2 actually has a system that changes the awakening rates of Blades depending on the save file (which is pretty much RNG based). Where one blade may have a probability of, let's say, 1.5% in one case, that same Blade can have a higher or lower chance on another save. XC2 has five probable conditions, which can be seen on a chart in this article.

The highest chance of awakening for any rare Blade belongs to Perun, having a chance of being awakened at 2.44%. 

All of the rates above are just the base rates, however. The chances can be boosted with the Luck stat, idea levels, various booster items, and better Core Crystals (Common Cores have the base chance, Rare Cores boost chances by 1.5, and Legendary Cores boost it by triple).

[ping]

The German city of Aachen would be eligible to change its name to "Bad Aachen", to indicate that they are a officially certified spa town. However, they never even considered doing this - it's generally assumed that they wanted to keep their city at the very top of any alphabetically sorted lists.

[Dragoncat]

The common belief of alpha and omega wolves is false. It resulted from researchers making unrelated wolves live together. In the wild, they are simply families. There are two parents and their offspring. When the offspring reach a certain age, they leave to form their own pack families. But in captivity when they're placed with non relatives, they will form a social system with alphas and omegas.

[Benice]

The country with the lowest crime rate in the world is Liechtenstein.

[ping]

Speaking of Liechtenstein: They participated in the Austro-Prussian war in 1866 and their troops came out of it with a casualty rate of a negative 1.25%: They sent 80 soldiers who didn't see any combat at all, but brought back a friend they made along the way.

[Dragoncat]

11 hours ago, Benice said:

The country with the lowest crime rate in the world is Liechtenstein.

 

7 hours ago, ping said:

Speaking of Liechtenstein: They participated in the Austro-Prussian war in 1866 and their troops came out of it with a casualty rate of a negative 1.25%: They sent 80 soldiers who didn't see any combat at all, but brought back a friend they made along the way.

Wholesomeness every country in the world should aspire for.

[The Roger The Paladin]

8 hours ago, ping said:

Speaking of Liechtenstein: They participated in the Austro-Prussian war in 1866 and their troops came out of it with a casualty rate of a negative 1.25%: They sent 80 soldiers who didn't see any combat at all, but brought back a friend they made along the way.

 

50 minutes ago, Dragoncat said:

Wholesomeness every country in the world should aspire for.

This sounds like it'd be a good Fire Emblem Parody actually. The whole thing's about recruitment and supports, without actually having the battles.

[Dragoncat]

57 minutes ago, The Roger The Paladin said:

 

This sounds like it'd be a good Fire Emblem Parody actually. The whole thing's about recruitment and supports, without actually having the battles.

I can see it being something Claude pulls off. Lol.

[Shrow]

Did you know? There's a skeleton inside all of us.

Okay just kidding here's a little known fact:
The only bone in the human body not connected to another is the hyoid, a V-shaped bone located at the base of the tongue.

[Lightchao42]

King Kong vs. Godzilla started as an idea to have Kong fight a monster made by Dr. Frankenstein. After that there was meant to be a film where Godzilla fought Frankenstein's monster, but it was dropped and Godzilla ended up fighting Mothra instead. Technically Frankenstein vs. Godzilla ended up being made, but with a different monster instead of Godzilla.

[AnonymousSpeed]

On 10/27/2020 at 7:50 AM, ping said:

The original Pledge of Allegiance was written by a socialist.

At least he was a Christian socialist.

On 11/7/2020 at 1:18 PM, ping said:

The German city of Aachen would be eligible to change its name to "Bad Aachen", to indicate that they are a officially certified spa town. However, they never even considered doing this - it's generally assumed that they wanted to keep their city at the very top of any alphabetically sorted lists.

I can think of another reason you wouldn't want to be called "bad."

The "Etymological Fallacy" is a concept in linguistics describing the wrong assumption that a word's meaning reflects its constituent stems. Often, the way such compound words are used mutates over times, giving them distinct meanings from what their components originally meant.

[ping]

2 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

I can think of another reason you wouldn't want to be called "bad."

Oh, I don't think the English language is much of a factor here. There's a ton of Bad XYZs in Germany (and one in the Netherlands, apparently, since 2009).

(also, the pronounciation is closer to "butt")

[Benice]

1 minute ago, ping said:

also, the pronounciation is closer to "butt")

If you ever establish a city, you must name it "Bad Mars."

[Sooks]

“Spider Dance” from Toby Fox’s Undertale can only be played properly as a duet on the piano, as you would need four hands to play it.

On 11/8/2020 at 2:51 AM, ping said:

Speaking of Liechtenstein: They participated in the Austro-Prussian war in 1866 and their troops came out of it with a casualty rate of a negative 1.25%: They sent 80 soldiers who didn't see any combat at all, but brought back a friend they made along the way.

I didn’t know the Austro-Prussian war was a fire emblem game

Edited November 11, 2020 by Sooks

[Shrow]

Did you know?

The BBC played David Bowie's 'Space Oddity' during the Moon landing.
An incredible inappropriate song to play since the song itself ends on sombre note of Major Tom floating away from earth with no control.

The the producer probably thought "But its a space song, so it fits."

[ping]

On 11/11/2020 at 8:27 PM, Shrow said:

The BBC played David Bowie's 'Space Oddity' during the Moon landing.
An incredible inappropriate song to play since the song itself ends on sombre note of Major Tom floating away from earth with no control.

The the producer probably thought "But its a space song, so it fits."

Rage Against the Machine was actually called Rage Against My Mom Who Told Me To Clean My Room for most of their career. They only changed the name last week, when they suddenly decided to be political.

The other big example of people not registering the lyrics is "Bobby Brown" by Frank Zappa, which explicitly talks about gay fetish sex, has the singer contemplating to assault a co-student at school (and has some rather impolite words in it for good measure). The single never was too successful in countries with English as their primary language, but elsewhere in Europe, it's being played fairly commonly on the radio (although it mostly  moved to the Old People Stations, of course) and reached very high chart positions in Austria, West Germany, Switzerland, Norway and Sweden - even reaching top position in both Scandinavian countries.

[Emperor_Siegfried]

Back in the 2010s, archaeologists studying the iconic stone heads of Easter Island discovered that two of them to find they had torsos that measured being as tall as 33 feet.

[indigoasis]

Peanuts are actually legumes.

[ping]

3/4 and 6/8 are not the same, as any musician should know.

[ping]

In his Matthew Passion, J.S. Bach hid some numerology, although there's no consensus on how much exactly was intentional and what is just coincidence. For example:

• After Jesus tells his disciples that one of them will betray him, a very short choir segment follows, only containing 11 "Bin ich's?" ("Is it me?") between the four voices, with the 12th - Judas - following a bit later.
• In the recitative following Jesus' death, the continuo has a sequence of 190 32th, which apparently can be separated in three groups of 18, 68, and 104 notes, which corresponds with three psalms mentioning earthquakes (more accurately: Ps 18,8 - Ps 68,9 - Ps 104,32). I don't see that one, tbh - I can see the 190 notes in the score, but I don't know how you would get to the 18+68+104 and the wikipedia source is behind a paywall.
• Right after that (and this one is more believable, I find), a group of guard acknowledge Jesus as the son of god ("Wahrlich, dieser is Gottes Sohn gewesen."), represented by the choir. In this, the bass is distinguished by joining one beat after the other three voices and sings a total of 14 notes: 14 = 2+1+3+8 = B+A+C+H - you can read this as a personal confession of faith by ol' Johann Sebastian.

In case the third one seems a bit far-fetched: In the Credo of Bach's Mass in B minor, the word "Credo" is sung a total of 43 times: 43 = 3+17+5+4+14 = C+R+E+D+O.
(In the numerical alphabet most commonly used at that time, I+J were considered one (the ninth) letter, so R and O are one lower than they would be today)

[ping]

If you rearrange the letters in "Epstein didn't kill himself", you still have the same number of each letter.

Speaking of conspiracies, General Motors has been conspiring for decades to sabotage public transit (specifically tramways), so that Americans would be incentived to buy cars or at the very least to make (GM-fabricated) busses the dominating form of public transit.

[ping]

In the 30 years old point-and-click adventure video game series Monkey Island, there's usually no way for the main character Guybrush to die. There's one notable exception in the first game - at one point, Guybrush gets thrown into the water with a weight tied to his leg. Now, he can hold his breath for 10 minutes, so you have plenty time to find the (very silly) solution to get him out of this mess, but Guybrush does actually drown if you take longer than 10 minutes.

This scene is actually included as an easter egg in the third game of the series. If I recall correctly, you have to tell Guybrush to "take the ocean" over and over again. He'll call you out for being silly, but will eventually walk into the scene from game one (old graphics included).

There's also a couple fake-outs, which make it look like Guybrush dies:

• In the first game, if you walk too close to a cliff, it'll collapse and Guybrush falls down. You briefly get a "OH NO! You died! Restart? Reload?" screen, but seconds later, Guybrush flies up the cliff again, commenting "Rubber tree."
• In the second game, the villain captures Guybrush and puts him into a very elaborate death trap (the kind that takes five minutes to explain). Similarly to the actual game over in the first game, if you take too long (~20 minutes in this case, iirc), Guybrush will be lowered into a pool of acid and die... except that the framing device of this game is Guybrush telling the whole story to his ex-girlfriend. The game cuts to them and she says something to the effect of "So you're telling me that you died.", which causes Guybrush to backpaddle and the game resumes from before Guybrush died.
• In the third game, you actually have to fake Guybrush's death to advance the plot (at least twice). You do that by drinking a combination of alcohol and medicine, including Guybrush breaking the 4th wall to remind us that he only survives this because he's a lovable cartoon character and the player should NOT try this at home. Still, he falls to the floor seemingly dead, and his body is laid to rest in a crypt. The credits actually start rolling after this, until Guybrush loudly protests and tells them to cut that out.

Oh, by the way, the silly solution:

Spoiler

The game puts a lot of sharp objects - swords, knives, scissors - juuuust outside of Guybrush's reach before he's held back by the rope. A few minutes into the scene, two pirates appear just above him - one of them has killed someone and they discuss if he should just throw the knife into the water. He doesn't.

The solution: You just have to tell Guybrush to take the weight he's bound to. Hammerspace is in full effect in this series, so this allows Guybrush to walk away completely unimpeded.

 

[indigoasis]

19 hours ago, ping said:

In the 30 years old point-and-click adventure video game series Monkey Island, there's usually no way for the main character Guybrush to die. There's one notable exception in the first game - at one point, Guybrush gets thrown into the water with a weight tied to his leg. Now, he can hold his breath for 10 minutes, so you have plenty time to find the (very silly) solution to get him out of this mess, but Guybrush does actually drown if you take longer than 10 minutes.

This scene is actually included as an easter egg in the third game of the series. If I recall correctly, you have to tell Guybrush to "take the ocean" over and over again. He'll call you out for being silly, but will eventually walk into the scene from game one (old graphics included).

There's also a couple fake-outs, which make it look like Guybrush dies:

• In the first game, if you walk too close to a cliff, it'll collapse and Guybrush falls down. You briefly get a "OH NO! You died! Restart? Reload?" screen, but seconds later, Guybrush flies up the cliff again, commenting "Rubber tree."
• In the second game, the villain captures Guybrush and puts him into a very elaborate death trap (the kind that takes five minutes to explain). Similarly to the actual game over in the first game, if you take too long (~20 minutes in this case, iirc), Guybrush will be lowered into a pool of acid and die... except that the framing device of this game is Guybrush telling the whole story to his ex-girlfriend. The game cuts to them and she says something to the effect of "So you're telling me that you died.", which causes Guybrush to backpaddle and the game resumes from before Guybrush died.
• In the third game, you actually have to fake Guybrush's death to advance the plot (at least twice). You do that by drinking a combination of alcohol and medicine, including Guybrush breaking the 4th wall to remind us that he only survives this because he's a lovable cartoon character and the player should NOT try this at home. Still, he falls to the floor seemingly dead, and his body is laid to rest in a crypt. The credits actually start rolling after this, until Guybrush loudly protests and tells them to cut that out.

Oh, by the way, the silly solution:

  Hide contents

The game puts a lot of sharp objects - swords, knives, scissors - juuuust outside of Guybrush's reach before he's held back by the rope. A few minutes into the scene, two pirates appear just above him - one of them has killed someone and they discuss if he should just throw the knife into the water. He doesn't.

The solution: You just have to tell Guybrush to take the weight he's bound to. Hammerspace is in full effect in this series, so this allows Guybrush to walk away completely unimpeded.

 

Holy smokes, that is actually awesome. I kinda wanna play these games now, lol.

[ping]

On 8/26/2020 at 7:50 PM, ping said:

ByuN is back.

Spoiler

The madlad just beat Reynor and Serral, widely considered to be the best two players in the world right now, within two days. ByuN is BACK.

 

Edited November 29, 2020 by ping

[The Roger The Paladin]

Turns out there's a politician in Namibia named after a certain WWII dictator. I imagine the original would be... quite angered at a black man having taken his name.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9013447/Politician-named-Adolf-Hitler-wins-election-Namibia.html