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Benice
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Elden Ring has won four awards, including Gamescom's "Best Action/Adventure" game... Despite the fact that it's not going to be released until February, and no gameplay was available to the media at the time of the award being given.

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On 10/30/2021 at 11:24 PM, Benice said:

Elden Ring has won four awards, including Gamescom's "Best Action/Adventure" game... Despite the fact that it's not going to be released until February, and no gameplay was available to the media at the time of the award being given.

This reminds me a bit of the Phil Fish guy. He made this indie game called Fez using more-or-less stolen code, concepts, and assets. He game won a few indie game awards from organizations which had invested money in his studio and whose judges hadn't played any of the games in the competition, and then Fish refused to patch game-breaking bugs. What a guy.

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Bite is the only Pokémon move that switched between "physical" and "special" twice: It started as a normal-type move (which were all physical in the 1st-3rd generation), then became a dark-type move (which were all special in the 2nd and 3rd gen). When the 4th gen assigned every individual move as phys/special, Bite went back to physical.

Related: Every single damaging dark move that existed in the 3rd generation (Bite, Beat Up, Crunch, Faint Attack, Pursuit, and Thief) was assigned as physical in the 4th generation. At the same time, another four physical moves were introduced, with only one single special move in Dark Pulse. Makes it all the weirder that the developers went with "special" Crunch and "physical" Shadow Ball in the 2nd generation.

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Macroeconomists speak of the "Guns and Butter" dilemma, how much of a government's finite budget it should allocate to defense spending versus infrastructure spending but sure as hell never actually decreasing its budget. Less known is the "Blimps and Sausages" dilemma, how much of its finite supply of cow intestines the German government allocated to Zeppelins or sausage casings during the first World War. Gasbags and sausage casings are both made from cow intestines, the former because its very light and strong while not letting out much hydrogen, and the latter probably because it comes with the meat. To facilitate the production of Zeppelins, the German government banned production of sausage. Each Zeppelin took a quarter million cows to make, which could have instead gone into making 30 million sausages.

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It's quite likely that, if you aren't very familiar with their language, you're mispronouncing Korean names a lot of the time. It seems that their spelling in Latin alphabet attempts to emulate existing English words or names at the cost of accurately indicating pronunciation:

  • "Lee" would be more accurately written as "I", "Yi", "Ii", or even "Ee"
  • "Park" sounds more like "Bahk"
  • "Kim" sounds more like "Ghim"

This also means that two Koreans with the same name might use different spellings: Pak or Park; Lee or Ri. In fact "Ri" is the standard transcription of that name in North Korea.

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The difference in time between ourselves and Cleopatra VII (the last ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt before it was absorbed by Rome) is smaller than between Cleopatra and Khufu, for whom the Great Pyramid of Giza was built.

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In the Ace Attorney series, it is canon that whenever Manfred von Karma won a case in court, he would take his family and Edgeworth to sing karaoke: My Way by Frank Sinatra, more specifically.

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Oh, speaking of Ace Attorney, the first case to not have the word "Turnabout" in a case title is the fifth case of the first game on the DS, "Rise from the Ashes," which in turn is a reference the main character's localized name, Phoenix Wright. It was a special case developed and added to the first game of the trilogy that utilized the capabilities of the DS, since the original trilogy was actually on the GBA first in Japan only, and so Rise from the Ashes was a DS exclusive case.

Since I'm here, I also wanted to mention Phoenix's ancestor, Ryunosuke Naruhodo. While they don't share a family name in English releases, Phoenix's Japanese name, Ryuichi Naruhodo, makes the relationship between them much more clear. 

Phoenix is also an only child.

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One very impactful trick in the original StarCraft multiplayer was (and is) stacking air units, especially the Zerg's Mutalisk, by including a single slow-moving unit in the control group. Typically, this is an Overlord (the Zerg's supply provider, in form of a big air baloon), although later, when Overlord speed gets upgraded, a trapped worker can be used instead.

This micro technique means that the Mutalisks can pounce, attack, and retreat very quickly with all of them able to fire their attack, which means that the enemy has very little time to attack the highly mobile Mutalisks in retaliation. As a result, Mutas are heavily used in all three Zerg match-ups, to harrass workers, snipe a Protoss's powerful but fragile High Templars, or to constantly chip at a Terran's swarm of Marines and Medics.

I don't know when this trick was found, but I assume that it was very early in the game's history. The expansion, Brood War, introduced air-to-air units for Terran and Protoss, both of which deal splash damage, most likely to provide a direct counter to a stack of Mutalisks. Notably, there isn't a good Muta counter in Zerg vs. Zerg, which turns this match-up into a very short, high-paced game: Virtually every ZvZ features Zerglings, Mutalisks, the Scourge (kamikazi air unit with the same tech requirement as the Muta), and no other fighting units whatsoever. Investing resources into another tech means fewer mutalisks, which then snowballs quick and hard.

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Pointless fact about myself:

The biggest reason that my LP updates tend to come either  literally months apart or within the next few days is because I typically immeediately get to work on the next update after I post, but then I turn off my computer at some point during the process and therefore delete my progress.

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One of the least used Starcraft units is the Protoss "Scout". Despite its name, it's a very expensive unit and doesn't justify the investment at all. Its main role is air-vs-air combat, but it's largely outclassed by the Corsair, which has the same requirements, is cheaper, moves faster, and builds twice as fast. An unupgraded Scout even has less vision range than a Corsair.

In the last ASL finals however, the Protoss player Byun "Mini" Hyun Je managed to win a map with Scouts as a legitimate, central part of his strategy. Against his Terran opponent Rush, he prepared to tech into Carriers, the Protoss endgame air unit and a terrifying prospect in TvP. This prompted an early attack from Terran, designed to hit when Protoss had sunk a lot of resources into Carrier tech, but before they come online. However, instead of getting the last necessary structure to build Carriers right away, Mini decided to build two Scouts first - because Rush knew that he would hit before any Carrier timing, he didn't bring any anti-air with his initial push (in fact, he didn't even had the tech to start building Goliaths when the Scouts came out), so even with their awful air-to-ground attack, the Scouts were able to slowly whittle down the initial push, which then allowed Mini to safely finish his transition into Carriers.

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How the Konami Code was made:

"The legendary Konami code came about because Gradius was too hard for one of the guys making it. Katsuhisa Hashimoto was on the team of four responsible for the NES port of Gradius, and he recalled adding the code in a 2003 interview just translated by GlitterBerri. "I had one guy under me, and he played through the coin-op version," Hashimoto said. "That one's really tough. I hadn't played that much and obviously couldn't beat it myself, so I put in the Konami Code."

The code uses its familiar, now-iconic pattern for ... convenience. "Because I was the one who was going to be using it," Hashimoto said, "I made sure it was easy to remember. The game took around half a year to develop, and, at the time, putting the code together was like an entertaining puzzle. 'How on earth am I going to be able to fit these passwords into the program?' I'd ask myself." The solution to that puzzle may have led to your successful completion of Gradius, Contra, or countless other Konami games." - J. Fletcher, January 2012
 

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In the Italian localisations of the Astérix comics, Obélix's catchphrase "Ils sont fous ces romains" / "Those Romans are crazy" is translated to "Sono Pazzi Questi Romani", with the initials S.P.Q.R.

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German grammar has a verb form that is, only partially in jest, named after a famous Disney comic translator: The Erikativ, after Dr. Erika Fuchs, whose translations for the German Micky Maus magazine have had a significant impact on German everyday language and pop culture.

The Erikativ is roughly the equivalent of the normal verb without the "to", used as an onomatopoeia for a process that may (Krach! / Crash!) or may not (DenkDenkDenk... / ThinkThinkThink...) cause an actual sound. In German, it's the root of the verb without the -en ending which most verbs have, and which usually changes depending on subject and tense. It has been used long before Walt Disney was even born (according to Wikipedia, as early as Grimm's Hansel and Gretel), but it was hugely popularised by Dr. Fuchs's translation work. In the early days of internet chats, they were used a lot where now emojis would be put.

That said, Erika Fuchs's translations were just incredibly good in every aspect. Full of Germany-specific references ("Nichts als Wirtschaftswunder und Wirtschaftswundermänner, wohin man schaut! Trotzdem muß einer den Schmutz wegkehren, der dabei anfällt." - "Nothing but Wirtschaftswunder and Wirtschaftswunder-men wherever you look! Still, somebody has to clean the dirt that accumulates in the process"), classic literature ("Wir wollen sein ein einig Volk von Brüdern, in keiner Not uns waschen und Gefahr!" - "We want to be a single People of brethren, Never to wash in danger nor distress.") and just great phrases (I personally like "Ohne Saft, ohne Kraft, aber die Haare lang!" - "No juice, no strength, but the hair is long").

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HS3tqCV.jpg

"People who spend money just don't understand the true pleasures of a capitalist." - Elon Musk

(Schnorcheln = snorkle, so note the Erikativ)

Edited by pong
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(Spoilers for Pre-Z Dragon Ball)

Spoiler

When Krillin died at the start the King Piccolo arc, Toriyama had a bad conscience for killing off his VA's only role in the animated adaption. So when he introduced Yajirobe to the manga as a new character, he explicitly had Goku note how similar his voice was to Krillin's, to make sure that Tanaka Mayumi would be cast as Yajirobe's VA once the anime would get to that point.

And while we're on the topic of Dragon Ball: Editorial meddling is often brought up when people talk about the Android and Cell arc(s), as an explaination why the main villains swap from one pair of androids, to another pair/trio of androids, and finally to Cell. However, the funny part about this is that both those villain swaps were caused by Toriyama's former editor, who read the official release like everybody else and then called Toriyama to complain about the villains ("Surely, that fatso and that old geezer aren't the main villains?" - "But those are just a pair of teenagers!" - "That Cell figure transforms, right?"). Apparently, Toriyama either saw the merit in those criticisms, or still held his former editor's opinion in high enough regard to change his plans, which admittedly usually aren't too long-lasting to begin with.

Edited by pong
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Ecuador is the largest producer of Bananas in the world.

 

Benito Mussolini quite liked the comedy duo of Laurel and Hardy, and his daughter even danced with their producer once.

 

I may have posted this one here already, but Hitler loved animals and was a devout vegetarian, therefore banning cooking lobsters by dropping them into a boiling pot while they were still alive. At some point, he also considered attaching bells to his SS guard's boots so that they woudn't trod on animals when traversing forests, although this idea was eventually dropped.

 

A common verse recited during the blitz in England was

Those who have the will to win

Cook potatoes in their skin

Knowing that the sight of peelings

Deeply hurt lord Woolton's feelings.

(Lord Woolton was Britain's minister of food during the war.)

In a much less entertaining manner, the government of Britain also advised their citizens to eat potatoes for all three meals a day.

 

During WWII, there was a woman who performed "The dance of the seven veils",.  She was only able to do it once, because when she threw the veils into the crowd, the people who caught the veils stole them instead of returning them, as silk was really hard to procure during the war and could be sold for high profits.

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There's a story about how Friedrich II. / Frederick the Great tried to popularize the potato in 18th century prussia: He is said to have ordered his soldiers to *wink wink* guard a potato field which was *nudge nudge* supposed to exclusively supply the royal kitchens. Of course, the soldiers were also ordered to pretend to be asleep, to encourage adventurous farmers to steal some potatoes for their own use.

While this story is just a myth that may or may not have some truth in it, old Fritz did try to encourage the cultivation of potatoes - initially with limited success, it seems, because he gave out at least 15 Kartoffelbefehle ("potato orders" here's a wiki article to feed to a translator) over the span of ten years. Friedrich himself probably wasn't particularly fond of potatoes, though - there are no recipes including them among the preserved writs from his kitchens. Still, it's a custom to leave potatoes at Friedrich's grave at Sanssouci.

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The Spanish Flu, which killed somewhere between 20 and 50 million people between 1918 mostly likely had its origin in the USA.

The reason it went into the history books as the "Spanish" Flu was the relatively liberal censorship in Spain, compared to most other countries during WW1, so the sickness's effect in Spain was much more well-recorded than elsewhere. During the war, the press in the allied countries also speculated about German biological warfare, since Germany had been using chemical weapons already. However, these theories died down when German troops were affected by the pandemic a bit later, as well.

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Shaquille O'Neal was famous for his absolutely domineering performance near the basket, but he was also famously bad at scoring free throws, averaging at 52.7% over the coure of his career. For that reason, opposing teams would sometimes use the "Hack-a-Shaq" tactic, trying to make Shaq go to the free throw line as often as possible. The same tactic had previously been used against Wilt Chamberlain, to a degree that the league had to implement a new rule against off-the-ball fouls to prevent Wilt and his opposing player literally play catch while the other eight players were playing basketball.

But back to Shaq - even funnier than Hack-a-Shaq is his 3-point shooting: During his 19-year career, Shaq attempted 22 3-pointer, and made one.

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