This is the thread for unusual details in wikipedia articles.

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Scott had a pronounced limp. He was described in 1820 as "tall, well formed (except for one ankle and foot which made him walk lamely), neither fat nor thin, with forehead very high, nose short, upper lip long and face rather fleshy, complexion fresh and clear, eyes very blue, shrewd and penetrating, with hair now silvery white".

| (Latham Green), Wednesday, 25 October 2023 12:29 (two years ago)

The Chansiri name brings great shame to Sheffield Wednesday and the people of Sheffield.

Kim Kimberly, Friday, 27 October 2023 20:37 (two years ago)

A sequel, Jesus II, was released on the PC-8801, PC-9801, and X68000 in 1991.

Kate (rushomancy), Saturday, 28 October 2023 03:12 (two years ago)

A statement regarding Nancy Benoit's death was added to the Chris Benoit English Wikipedia article 14 hours before police discovered the bodies of Benoit and his family. This seemingly prescient addition was initially reported on Wikinews and later on Fox News. The article originally read: "Chris Benoit was replaced by Johnny Nitro for the ECW World Championship match at Vengeance, as Benoit was not there due to personal issues, stemming from the death of his wife Nancy." The phrase "stemming from the death of his wife Nancy" was added at 4:01 a.m. EDT on June 25, whereas the Fayette County police reportedly discovered the bodies of the Benoit family at 2:30 p.m. EDT (10 hours, 29 minutes later). The IP address of the editor was traced to Stamford, Connecticut, which is also the location of WWE headquarters.[109] After news of the early death notice reached mainstream media, the anonymous poster accessed Wikinews to explain his edit as a "huge coincidence and nothing more."[110][111]

Police detectives "seized computer equipment from the man held responsible for the postings" and called the posting an unbelievable "hindrance" to their investigation, but believed he was otherwise uninvolved, declining to press charges.[112][113] The man had found several rumors online,[114] which supported his theory about the Benoit "family emergency" as reported in wrestling news. The IP from which he made the edit was tentatively traced to vandalizing the Wikipedia entries for African wild ass, The Bronx, The Sopranos, Ron Artest, Stacy Keibler, and Naugatuck, Connecticut.[115] He also reverted vandalism to Chavo Guerrero Jr.[116] and recorded a loss for the Golden State Warriors.[117]

Western® with Bacon Flavor, Sunday, 29 October 2023 05:36 (two years ago)

"Buddha, an orangutan, played Clyde in the Clint Eastwood action-comedy film Any Which Way You Can (1980). Buddha was allegedly beaten to death by his trainer for stealing doughnuts from craft services. The weapon was an axe handle wrapped in newspaper and had been nicknamed a "Buddha club" since it had been previously used to discipline him.[2] This claim has been disputed by the author William Munns."

| (Latham Green), Tuesday, 31 October 2023 13:28 (two years ago)

"During the peak of her career, she was acclaimed as Pennsylvania's top female Jewish rapper."

Judi Dench's Human Hand (methanietanner), Tuesday, 31 October 2023 14:32 (two years ago)

In late December 1992, Coca-Cola Co. president Doug Ivester told a gathering of New York reporters that Tab Clear was being positioned as part of the "mainstream of diet soft drinks" and was "not a new-age beverage".[6] He declared:

Consumers want an alternative new soft drink with a lot of flavor. A new-age label would doom it. It would be aiming too low to go up against Crystal Pepsi and Clearly Canadian.

honestly the whole article reads like it could easily be a sophisticated forgery (i've never heard of this beverage). it's pretty fucking hilarious.

In the US and UK, Coca-Cola launched a heavy ad campaign for TaB clear with Chain of Mystery[10] and Sinister Connections,[11] linking TaB Clear with unintentionally being the cause of various historical events with the slogan "Suddenly everything is clear". Several radio ads were created as well, such as an ad about TaB Clear being an "eternal paradox"[12] and an ad where "Drink TaB Clear" is discovered when a song is played backwards. A very different ad campaign was created in Japan with ads mostly unrelated to each other and either featuring or voiced over by a Japanese spokesman.

Unlike most other "clear" soft drinks, Tab Clear contained caffeine[1] and, according to the company, had the flavor of cola.[3][4]

there's also echoes of the New Coke conspiracy theory:

In his 2011 book, Killing Giants: 10 Strategies to Topple the Goliath in Your Industry, Stephen Denny published an interview with former Coca-Cola Chief Marketing Officer Sergio Zyman that stated the formation and subsequent failure of Tab Clear was a deliberate move to destroy Crystal Pepsi, capitalizing on the public's lack of understanding of Pepsi's heavily marketed product. Tab Clear was marketed as a diet drink, which were less popular than traditional colas, and the Tab brand in general was seen as an inferior product to flagships like Coca-Cola or Pepsi. With Tab Clear being placed in such close proximity to Crystal Pepsi, the image of both brands would be damaged in what Zyman called a "kamikaze" strategy. "This is like a cola," Zyman explained, "but it doesn't have any color. It has all this great taste. And we said, 'No, Crystal Pepsi is actually a diet drink.' Even though it wasn't. Because Tab had the attributes of diet, which was its demise. That was its problem. It was perceived to be a medicinal drink. Within three or five months, Tab Clear was dead. And so was Crystal Pepsi."[18]

good job on Zyman for killing the "goliath" that was Crystal Pepsi, though.

Kate (rushomancy), Tuesday, 31 October 2023 22:19 (two years ago)

ah yes, the Tommy Wiseau strategy ("actually it was a comedy!").

deep wubs and tribral rhythms (Boring, Maryland), Tuesday, 31 October 2023 22:59 (two years ago)

https://i.imgur.com/Lx9ClBx.jpg

I miss those stubby little glass bottles.

pplains, Wednesday, 1 November 2023 14:41 (two years ago)

Inspired by the surprise ending of the supernatural thriller film The Sixth Sense (1999), the strings-led, dramatic contemporary R&B ballad is about a woman who is confused with her partner's recent change in behavior and goes into denial about it.

real warm grandpa (Neanderthal), Thursday, 2 November 2023 13:23 (two years ago)

According to an interview with Yoshimitsu Banno by the Japanese magazine Eiga Hi-Ho, Hedorah's eyes were modeled after vaginas.[2]

Kate (rushomancy), Friday, 3 November 2023 03:19 (two years ago)

Mister Meringue's name comes from mister and meringue, a type of desert.

Kate (rushomancy), Friday, 3 November 2023 03:52 (two years ago)

wow crazy, i have the same origin story

not the one who's tryin' to dub your anime (Doctor Casino), Friday, 3 November 2023 11:37 (two years ago)

"Because Tab had the attributes of diet, which was its demise."

Enjoying this sentence

jmm, Friday, 3 November 2023 12:42 (two years ago)

I still remember the taste of Tab. I would argue that it's one of the reasons anything "diet" was associated with things tasting horrible.

Sam Burnt-Friedman (beard papa), Friday, 3 November 2023 16:06 (two years ago)

It was all my mom drank in the 80s and when I was allowed to have soda that was it so I absolutely love it. I still buy it any time I see it. Would love one right now.

Benson and the Jets (ENBB), Friday, 3 November 2023 16:16 (two years ago)

"casino desert" sounds like a sonic level.

"the attributes of diet" sounds like catholic theology.

the main thing i think of when i think of tab is its use in "back to the future", which almost seems to be a film whose 1985 pop-culture reference points were deliberately designed to be ephemeral and age poorly - stuff that's held up about as well as mrs. wagner's pies. i'm not sure it was deliberate, given that the screenwriter went on to write "tattoo assassins", which was bad, but which i don't think was deliberately designed to be, no matter what sergio zyman says.

Kate (rushomancy), Friday, 3 November 2023 16:21 (two years ago)

I miss those stubby little glass bottles.

― pplains

i talk with my girlfriend sometimes about how actually seeing the past would be so different from what we remember it. like, for instance, when we remember 1982, we tend to think of 1982 stuff, but for me, 1982 involved a lot of leftover 1970s stuff, old bicentennial tat and so forth. and my girlfriend points out, i think she's right, that one of the first things we'd notice about 1982, aside from everything smelling like cigarette smoke, is all the glass bottles. styrofoam, too, i think you'd probably see a lot more styrofoam.

maybe there are some '80s tv shows that are put together like that, but i don't think people would enjoy that aesthetic a lot. strict realism doesn't necessarily translate to media that's enjoyable to experience.

Kate (rushomancy), Friday, 3 November 2023 16:27 (two years ago)

I like seeing 70's shows with brand new cars like Broncos - I was so used to seeing 70's car rusted and falling apart in the late 90's

| (Latham Green), Friday, 3 November 2023 16:59 (two years ago)

Kate, your last point was delved into in this thread:

In every 70s US home ever

If I could quote myself from that...

This is an important point, that the '70s - like any decade - were still heavily characterized by the immediately preceding decades. When I think of the '70s I remember a lot of stuff of a design reflecting the '60s Laugh-In aesthetic of bright Day-Glo colors, flowers, op-art, funny slogans. Also lots of graphic reproductions of Robert Indiana's "LOVE" sculpture. Stuff like this gradually went out of fashion in the early '70s but it didn't all just suddenly disappear, it remained in people's houses for a while. I also remember in the early-to-mid '70s there will still lots of cars with fins on them parked on the street.

Josefa, Friday, 3 November 2023 17:38 (two years ago)

Stranger Things does a pretty decent job of capturing (my recollection of) the mid-80s aesthetic.

immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Friday, 3 November 2023 22:31 (two years ago)

yah, one thing I liked about it was how the Winona Ryder house in particular captured that sense of stuff bought in the 70s and still predominating. very much matched most of the houses i was ever in as a kid in the early/mid 80s.

not the one who's tryin' to dub your anime (Doctor Casino), Friday, 3 November 2023 22:45 (two years ago)

"the attributes of diet" sounds like catholic theology.

Ha, exactly what I was thinking

jmm, Saturday, 4 November 2023 12:09 (two years ago)

Weldon's work designing album art spans over 30 years and several genres including classic rock, 70s funk, and modern cult-indie rock. Weldon designed a large percentage of the album covers released in Canada between 1971 and 1974. Weldon's work includes cover art for the 1972 release of 's . His cover work for 's 1974 would lead, thirty years later, to the Rush-influenced NYC indie-rockers commissioning Weldon to do the cover art for their 2005 eponymous debut LP, which bears a similarity to the original Rush record.

Weldon's designs often incorporates found materials (comic book clippings, dollar bills, science photos).

My Prelapsarian Baby (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 4 November 2023 16:16 (two years ago)

Four Star Playhouse, an anthology series, did not utilize a laugh-track or audience on its occasional comedy episodes, with co-producer David Niven calling the laugh track "wild indiscriminate mirth"

Kate (rushomancy), Monday, 6 November 2023 21:25 (two years ago)

The music on this album is the most overtly Celtic music Mike Oldfield has produced. The album was originally recorded using only acoustic hand-played instruments. After the daughter of a Warner Music exec said it sounded boring, Oldfield added synthesizers and more instruments to the album.[3]

you can see me from westbury white horse, Tuesday, 7 November 2023 00:51 (two years ago)

I'd never looked much into Timothy Leary, so about 3 or so minutes into reading his wiki I started thinking "there's no way the Grateful Dead didn't cross paths with him." Sure enough:

Although he considered her the "great love of his life", Leary and Barbara divorced in 1992; according to friend and collaborator John Perry Barlow, "Tim basically gave me permission to be her lover. He couldn't be for her what she needed sexually, so it made more sense for him to anoint someone to do that for him."

Western® with Bacon Flavor, Tuesday, 7 November 2023 00:57 (two years ago)

classic Tim

Ste, Tuesday, 7 November 2023 13:26 (two years ago)

During an interview with Howard Stern, Martin said that his dislike of "Speed of Sound" stems from the fact that he "forgot the banana lyric for the song. A banana lyric is a staple in every song we've made and somehow I forgot to write one for Speed of Sound."[8]

you can see me from westbury white horse, Wednesday, 8 November 2023 04:58 (two years ago)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/timeline/6wi1wqnnvpbxpcwlqad4tjtzqamo6ku.png

Kate (rushomancy), Thursday, 9 November 2023 14:24 (two years ago)

"Jeff Dahl"

deep wubs and tribral rhythms (Boring, Maryland), Thursday, 9 November 2023 14:39 (two years ago)

opening with a 1944 quote from Joseph Goebbels: "The enemy (invading German territory) will be taken in the rear by the fanatical population, which will ceaselessly worry him, tie down strong forces and allow him no rest

Kate (rushomancy), Thursday, 9 November 2023 18:57 (two years ago)

New Line Cinema rejected this idea due to the film Little Nicky (2000) having been partially set in Hell while also being a box-office bomb, deterring the company from producing another film set in Hell at that time.[22][23]

Number None, Sunday, 12 November 2023 12:43 (two years ago)

Peach is a prominent mango on the social media platform TikTok

vashti funyuns (sic), Sunday, 12 November 2023 19:30 (two years ago)

"Dr. Gay Hitler" redirects here. Not to be confused with Gay Hitler.

silverfish, Monday, 13 November 2023 01:43 (two years ago)

"the attributes of diet" sounds like catholic theology.

Ha, exactly what I was thinking

― jmm, Saturday, November 4, 2023 7:09 AM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

lol, yes, amazing

budo jeru, Monday, 13 November 2023 01:49 (two years ago)

An improperly managed human defecation resulted in a tomato plant taking root, which was also destroyed.

The First Time Ever I Saw Gervais (Tom D.), Monday, 13 November 2023 23:21 (two years ago)

Ed Begley Jr. arrived on set unprepared for his first day of filming as a tennis pro, explaining that he had no idea how to play tennis, resulting in the director shooting around Begley's inability to play the sport, and the actor was also difficult to costume, because, as a dedicated environmentalist, Begley would not wear any animal-based clothing such as leather.

ɥɯ ︵ (°□°) (mh), Wednesday, 15 November 2023 04:11 (two years ago)

She starred in Nazi propaganda films during the Third Reich, which she wrote about in a 1949 memoir I Was Hitler's Mickey Mouse.

Daniel_Rf, Wednesday, 15 November 2023 16:42 (two years ago)

lmao at the Ed Begley Jr bit

a very very unfair (Neanderthal), Wednesday, 15 November 2023 16:47 (two years ago)

Some Dutch fans were forced to take off their trousers branded with the logo of Bavaria beer, as Budweiser was the official beer of the tournament.[44][45] Rather than leave the stadium, they proceeded to watch the match in their underclothes.

a very very unfair (Neanderthal), Friday, 17 November 2023 21:10 (two years ago)

Sidney Edmond Jocelyn Ackland was born in North Kensington, London on 29 February 1928,[3] the son of Major Sydney Norman Ackland (died 1981), an Irish journalist who had been sent to England to live with an aunt by his parents for seducing their maid, but subsequently seduced his aunt's maid, Ruth Izod (died 1957), whom he married.[4][5][6]

sophie glanced up, looking concerned (Matt #2), Sunday, 19 November 2023 21:10 (two years ago)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liam_Kelly_(footballer,_born_1996)

(The unusual detail being that someone called Liam Patrick Kelly played for Rangers for 12 years).

The First Time Ever I Saw Gervais (Tom D.), Monday, 20 November 2023 09:55 (two years ago)

Love how either E.O. Wilson or Stephen Jay Gould has chipped in on the page about the 2000AD character Nemesis the Warlock, with this:

Warlocks are a sexually dimorphic species of aliens who are capable of sorcery. Both males and females are horned, fire-breathing and of demonic appearance; females have a centaur-like quadrupedal morphology while males are bipedal but have unusual combination plantigrade / digitigrade leg joints, somewhat resembling satyrs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemesis_the_Warlock

Grandpont Genie, Thursday, 23 November 2023 09:53 (two years ago)

i was having a friendly argument with friends. i was telling my brother about the truly superb manga Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou (finally being published officially in English), a slice-of-life manga about a lesbian robot running a little country coffee shop after the apocalypse. my brother was disappointed. "that's not a robot," he said. "that's an android."

"wouldn't that be a gynoid?", one of my friends asks. it's true, "android" is a gendered term. "gynoid", though, as a term that's hardly better than "fembot". at best, "gynoid" makes me think of Hajime Sorayama, creator of the "Sexy Robot" series of art books that were all the rage in certain circles when i was younger, and at worst with, well, just plain robot sex dolls.

my argument was that the characters in the novel refer to themselves, and are referred to, as human robots, that this term is perfectly fine, and that using "android" should be deprecated as the default term for a human robot. just out of curiosity i looked up "gynoid".

“Sweetheart”, shown with its creator, Clayton Bailey; the busty feminine robot (also a functional coffee maker) created a controversy after it was displayed at the Lawrence Hall of Science at University of California, Berkeley. The robot's creator, a professor of art at California State University, Hayward called this "censorship" and "next to book burning".

just as heinrich heine said: where they burn books they will, in the end, burn coffee too

Awards and honors
1984 – U.S. Patent #4440390 awarded for a "Novelty Cup for Forcibly Ejecting Liquid."
1998 – Celestial Seasonings, Inc. "A Loose Interpretation III," Boulder, CO, Received Honorable Mention for creation of Celeste, the Robot Teabag

i'm assuming here that celeste, in fact, a robot teabag and not a gynoid teabag

not shown: bailey's truly ludicrous mustache

Kate (rushomancy), Thursday, 23 November 2023 15:50 (two years ago)

Humanoid would suffice surely?

The First Time Ever I Saw Gervais (Tom D.), Thursday, 23 November 2023 21:10 (two years ago)

hmmm, i guess technically... does that mean that the player character in "berzerk" (by the way i've read all 5,632 chapters of the manga and the video game is a _terrible_ adaptation) is a human robot? i guess it's possible... the title character of "humanoid woman" (a terrible dub of the excellent film _per aspera ad astra_ is a robot, right? i did, when i was young, think of the "berzerk" video game as being about robots hunting down the last human or whatever. kinda makes it less dramatic if it's just robots hunting other robots imo.

also, if you're an android or a gynoid or whatever you _are_ a robot, right? so it's just wrong to say "that's not a robot, that's an android".

anyway i have this idea in my head that "humanoid" is also what robots call humans sometimes. i don't know if that's true or not.

one of my friends suggested "enboid" but noted that robots are all technically binary. binary gender, that's, like... dimorphic gender, right? so like even if i was binary i could be non-dimorphic just because i think the gender binary is bullshit. so "non-gender-dimorphic" doesn't really work either. god. language is complicated.

by the way if i search "humanoid woman" i get youtube videos talking about "female humanoid robots". i think that might just be even more degrading than "fembot". maybe it's just because TERFs describe women like we're all robots. ADULT HUMANOID FEMALE ROBOTS. or something.

anyway.

Baba Lamunade (Voiced by Takeshi Kusao): Lamunade bears a good resemblance to his father, since he is his son and the hero of the series. He is different from Ramune as he is less interested in video games than his father, but nevertheless amazed by them. He falls in love with more than one girl; apart from Parfait he develops sentimental feelings for Drum. He has the same catch phrase that his father uses ("I'm feeling incredibly hot blooded!!! RIGHT NOW!!!) and sometimes states a fact by saying that it is written in his DNA.

the whole wikipedia series of entries on this anime is fucking gold, honestly.

Kate (rushomancy), Friday, 24 November 2023 00:38 (two years ago)

fyi while the OP to the anime in question is awesome it is _not_ "baby lemonade" by syd barrett. i'll give them a pass on that though.

Kate (rushomancy), Friday, 24 November 2023 00:39 (two years ago)

Hall is the cousin of U.S. Army officer David N. McKenna. He still owes £700 for a car he bought from his friend, Owen Thomas.

How old Cary Grant? (Tom D.), Saturday, 25 November 2023 00:57 (two years ago)

According to the September 12, 2007, study by the Blacksmith Institute, Dzerzhinsk is one of the worst-polluted cities of the world and has a life expectancy of 42 years for men and 47 for women, with the 2003 death rate exceeding its birth rate by 260%.[12] Environmental action groups such as Greenpeace attribute such low life expectancy to high levels of persistent organic chemicals, particularly dioxins. The Blacksmith Institute also names sarin, lewisite, sulfur mustard, hydrogen cyanide, phosgene, lead, and organic chemicals among the worst pollutants.[12] Parts of Dzerzhinsk's water are contaminated with dioxins and phenol at levels that are reportedly seventeen million times the safe limit.[12]

Dzerzhinsk's environmental agency estimates that almost 300,000 tons of chemical waste were dumped in the city between 1930 and 1998.[citation needed] The Ecology Committee of the Russian State Duma also considers Dzerzhinsk among the top ten cities with disastrous ecological conditions.[13]

Dzerzhinsk's City Administration, however, asserts that the Blacksmith Institute report is false, stating, for example, that since sarin had never been produced in the city (seems to be credible according to Fedorov, p262, Table 7.1),[14] it cannot be one of the major pollutants. Also, according to the city's health department, the average life expectancy in the city was 64 years in 2006. Askhat Kayumkov, the head of the Dront public ecological organization, which was quoted as a source by the Blacksmith Institute, states that his organization never provided the Blacksmith Institute with data of any kind. Furthermore, he does not believe that Dzerzhinsk is one of the most polluted cities in Russia, much less in the whole world.[15]

In the end, however, despite the ecological situation in the city being at its best in the previous 80 years (mostly due to bankruptcies and closures of the polluting factories), several locations in the city pose a tangible ecological risk. These sites include the 110ha Igumnovo landfill, toxic waste burial grounds, and a so-called "White Sea", composed of disposed chemical wastes.[16] These sites are kept under constant ecological monitoring.[citation needed]

seems like a perfectly lovely place to live, i trust entirely the city administration of the town named for the first head of the soviet secret police

Sights

Shukhov Tower on the Oka River, the unique architectural construction—the 128-meter (420 ft) steel lattice hyperboloid tower built by Soviet engineer and scientist Vladimir Shukhov in 1929—is located near Dzerzhinsk on the left bank of the Oka River. There used to be two towers, but one was stolen for scrap metal in 2005.

go see shukhov tower, before the other one gets stolen for scrap metal

Kate (rushomancy), Saturday, 25 November 2023 03:37 (two years ago)


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