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The Rrrrrrrrrammstein "R" actually isn't how most Germans pronounce the R - not only in terms of intensity, but also where the sound is created. In spoken German, the R is usually formed in the back of the mouth as opposed to the tip-of-the-tongue R present in Italian, Spanish, or Russian. Only a couple of regions (Bavaria, East Frisia) use the latter these days. In fact, a lot of the time, the R even gets glossed over, when it's at the end of a word or syllable.

However, the tip-of-the-tongue R is considered much better for singers, although I lack the English vocabulary to explain why. ("The seat of the voice is supposed to be at the front of your mouth" sounds weird) It's not really present in pop music (other than Till Lindemann) because it sounds very archaic, or even militaristic, though.

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Felis Domesticus Chester Willard, or F. D. C. Willard for short, was the first cat to ever co-author a Physics paper. His owner used "we" throughout his draft despite being the only author - and instead of correcting the text, he decided to add Chester as his co-author. He went with the initials because he was worried someone would recognize his pet's name, added the Latin name for house cats because Americans tend to have multiple given names, and chose the name of the cat's father as the family name.

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The turn based tactical game Power DoLLS: Detachment of Limited Line Service has a major difference in backstories from its Japanese and American release.  In America, all of the characters are explained being female because their home planet Omni is a place where women reproduce asexually.  In the original Japanese version, the playable characters are deliberately advertised by the Omni military as an "idol" unit to further conceal its true role as a special operations unit and the Omni military's practice of segregation between males and females on company level in order to simplify personnel logistics and avoid gender politics.

Edited by Emperor_Siegfried
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Goro Majima of the Yakuza series was defended in court for murder by Phoenix Wright from Ace Attourney!

And yes, that's this Majima:

Spoiler

 

 

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On 5/3/2020 at 10:03 PM, ping said:

A very popular meme in the Civilization community is that Mohandas Gandhi (who is a playable leader in all six Civ games) is actually a bloodthirsty, nuke-happy bastard.

This goes back to the very first game, despite AI Gandhi being one of the most peaceful leaders there with an "Aggressiveness" value of one on a scale from 1 to 10. However, if India adopted Democracy (and they usually would, since Democracy is the best goverment if you don't plan to go to war), their Aggressiveness would be reduced by two points - which would cause an integer underflow, so now Gandhi's Aggressiveness would be two hundred and fifty-five (2^8 - 1). Still on a scale from 1 to 10. The "Nuke" part comes from a hostile Civ1 AI's tendency to tell you that their words are BACKED WITH NUCLEAR WEAPONS.

This meme even found its way into the last two games of the series: In Civ5, Gandhi is the only leader whose willingness both to build and to actually use nukes is always maxed out (this being extra unusual because those values are usually slightly randomized), while Civ6!Gandhi has a 70% chance of having the "Nuke Happy" Agenda (guess what that does). Other than that, he's just as nice and pacifist as you'd expect. He'll just rush to Fission tech as soon as possible, build a million nukes and rain bloody hellfire on you if you declare on him.

On 5/5/2020 at 5:55 AM, AnonymousSpeed said:

I'm pretty sure the Nuclear Warlord Ghandi meme became a feature in each subsequent game, even as early as Civ2. It's a tradition which only the small minded and tasteless wish to change.

It should also be noted that the original Civilization actually had separate "Likeliness to Declare War" and "Likeliness to Use Nukes" values for AI. The exact same underflow error occurred for both.

IT IS TIME THAT WE SETTLED THIS! Wii controllers at dawn!
(because I'm reading Sid Meier's autobiography right now and he's talking about this near the end)

  1. The underflow bug is a myth. Civ1 is written in C where unsigned integers aren't the default, so the whole "Aggressiveness is 255 on a scale between 1 and 10" never was a thing. (also the scale was 1-12, according to Sid)
  2. The first Civ game to reference the Nuclear Gandhi meme was Civ5, so I was at least correct about that. ;):

Weirdly enough, the Underflow myth only came up after the release of Civ5 (2010) - Sid writes that Jon Shafer (Civ5's lead designer) had never heard of it and the oldest mention that Sid was able to find in the internet was somebody on TvTropes adding it as "trivia" in 2012. From there, it found its way into the Civ wikia, which was then accepted by the general public as a sufficiently official source, and at this point, it's basically "common knowledge" in the Civ fandom.

Sid speculates (and I would agree) that the Nuclear Gandhi meme initially came up because the already cheesy line "Our words are backed with NUCLEAR WEAPONS", which is identical for all leaders, is so hilariously out of place for Mahatma Gandhi specifically. And since Gandhi focuses on science fairly heavily, he is more likely to reach Nuke tech than average.

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12 hours ago, ping said:

IT IS TIME THAT WE SETTLED THIS! Wii controllers at dawn!

Well I'll be.

Very cool Kanye, thank you for sharing.

12 hours ago, ping said:

Weirdly enough, the Underflow myth only came up after the release of Civ5 (2010) - Sid writes that Jon Shafer (Civ5's lead designer) had never heard of it and the oldest mention that Sid was able to find in the internet was somebody on TvTropes adding it as "trivia" in 2012. From there, it found its way into the Civ wikia, which was then accepted by the general public as a sufficiently official source, and at this point, it's basically "common knowledge" in the Civ fandom.

Wikia and TV Tropes were the villains all along. We should've known!

Anyway.

Time for more cool facts.

A "rat king" is a group of rats whose tails are knotted together. It is doubted whether this is a natural phenomenon or simply a hoax which originated in Medieval Europe and has inspired people to knot together rats' tails. A "squirrel king" is a real phenomenon where a group of squirrels become stuck together by the tails, usually due to tree sap.

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On 12/5/2020 at 8:17 AM, ping said:

Felis Domesticus Chester Willard, or F. D. C. Willard for short, was the first cat to ever co-author a Physics paper. His owner used "we" throughout his draft despite being the only author - and instead of correcting the text, he decided to add Chester as his co-author. He went with the initials because he was worried someone would recognize his pet's name, added the Latin name for house cats because Americans tend to have multiple given names, and chose the name of the cat's father as the family name.

Wholesome.

The term Hermaphodite comes from the Greek myth about Hermes and Aphrodite's son, that was named a combo of his parents' names because apparently they were hippies. Well the kiddo fell head over heels for a pretty lady and tried to charm her by telling her he wished they could be together forever. The lady turned out to be a tricky nature spirit and she fused his body into hers, making him a male/female combo.

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The Pokémon name "Chimecho" was localized to "Palimpalim" in Germany - onomatopoeia for the sound of a typical door bell in a corner shop. This particular word/phrase was popularized by the comedian (and actor, he is said to be a bit annoyed that he's mostly remembered as the former) Dieter "Didi" Hallervorden in a rather silly sketch about two prisoners who are bored out of their minds and decide to play shop.

--

The objectively funniest (while still fitting) onomatopoeia, however, comes from Akira Toriyama, who once transcribed the sound of a motor boat as BOAAA---T.

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The modern character design of Harley Quinn, from Batman's villain gallery, is based on (or at the very least heavily inspired by) the character Jeanette Voerman from the 2004 PC RPG Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. Harley's original design is much closer to a classic, well, Harlequin, but these days, her twin pigtail look with the heavy make up that she borrowed from Jeanette seems to be much more iconic for her.

In VtMB, Jeanette is a very influential vampire in Los Angeles (or, more specifically, Santa Monica) and part of the Malkavian clan, which is to say that she is completely batshit insane. The player character (a very recently "embraced" vampire) gets caught up in a very nasty conflict between the chaotic, promiscuous Jeanette and her prim and proper (but also Malkavian, i.e. completely batshit insane) sister Therese.

Edited by ping
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In Mother 3, while Lucas noticeably grows in between the time-skip, Kumatora actually grows a little bit taller in between the time-skip as well. It's hard to notice, but she does grow by a few more pixels.

Her sprite sheets are in the spoiler tag below if you want to try and discern the difference. 

Spoiler

Kumatora (Young)Kumatora

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Despite being seemingly nonsensical, Bubble Bass's order can be translated into an actual burger order. While you might get different answers as to which each term means, this is the SpongeBob Wiki's interpretation:

  • Double Triple: six patties
  • Bossy: patties are all-beef
  • Deluxe: all toppings
  • On a raft: toast replaces buns
  • 4x4: four times the patties and cheese (so 24 patties)
  • Animal style: patties are cooked in mustard
  • Extra shingles: extra toast
  • With a shimmy: jelly on the toast
  • And a squeeze: orange juice on the side
  • Light axle grease: lightly buttered
  • Make it cry: extra onions
  • Burn it: patties are well-done
  • Let it swim: extra sauce

Incidentally, the order doesn't specifically ask for pickles.

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The word "ye" has never been a thing in english. The th- sound used to be made by a character named Thorn (þ), which, towards the end of its use, looked more like a Y, hence why we have read signs and books as "Ye" when they say "the".

Thorn was eventually dropped because the printing presses used in england came from france, who had no need for the þ symbol.

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39 minutes ago, Benice said:

The word "ye" has never been a thing in english. The th- sound used to be made by a character named Thorn (þ), which, towards the end of its use, looked more like a Y, hence why we have read signs and books as "Ye" when they say "the".

Kanye would like a word with you.

39 minutes ago, Benice said:

Thorn was eventually dropped because the printing presses used in england came from france, who had no need for the þ symbol.

Fascinating- something similar actually brought about the name MacKenzie.

Spoiler

 

TL;DR, the name was originally "MacKen-ye" but the English printing presses didn't have the Scots letter which made the "y" sound, so they used a Z instead. This stuck.

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Bob Marley was buried with his red Gibson guitar, a Bibleopen to Psalms 23, and a cannabis bud.  For those unfamiliar, the 23rd Psalm begins, "The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.  He makes me lie down in green pastures."

Edited by Emperor_Siegfried
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1 hour ago, Emperor_Siegfried said:

For those unfamiliar, the 23rd Psalm begins, "The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.  He makes me lie down in green pastures."

>tfw Charismatic so you hear this verse like five times a week

You guys know Gothic churches? Did you know many of them have a cross-shaped floor plan? The symbolism is so overbearing it almost works.

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Blooms that are made up of many tiny, individual flowers are called Pseudanthiums. These may sound obscure or alien, but there are some that are quite common-The Peace Lily, Sunflowers and Daisies are all pseudanthiums.

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Despite being mildly infamous for their defeat in WW1 in WW2, France is, in terms of battles won, (1,115) the best military in the world historically. Trailing them are Britain (1,105) and the US (833.)

Additionally, Poland has won more battles than the western Roman empire. (Poland's 344 to Rome's 259).

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Despite the myth that Iceland is the largest exporter of Bananas in Europe, it exports fewer than France, Spain, Portugal, Greece and Italy.

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I didn't even know that was a myth. You just taught me two random facts!

On 6/3/2021 at 3:37 PM, Benice said:

Additionally, Poland has won more battles than the western Roman empire. (Poland's 344 to Rome's 259).

Is this counting battles won before Rome was divided into east and west?

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The VA for Fatman in Metal Gear Solid 2 also voiced Pontius Pilate in Jesus Christ Superstar.

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