yup
― waterface, Friday, 26 July 2013 16:45 (eleven years ago) link
And tbh that's not really "stalking"! That's one awkward series of text message exchanges over the course of a couple hours!
― PJ. Turquoise dealer. Chatroulette addict. Andersonville. (Hurting 2), Friday, 26 July 2013 16:48 (eleven years ago) link
I mean, she gave her number, then didn't respond to one text (or volley of texts?), then they had an exchange where the guy was weird, but once she made it clear she didn't want to see him it seems like it ended at that?
― PJ. Turquoise dealer. Chatroulette addict. Andersonville. (Hurting 2), Friday, 26 July 2013 16:50 (eleven years ago) link
waterface i am impressed with your ready knowledge of ways to get some 1 on 1 time in a confined space with strangers
― Roberto Spiralli, Friday, 26 July 2013 16:51 (eleven years ago) link
Roberto nice try but I enjoy reading and learning about various forms of public transportation.
But again, kudos to you for trying to frame me as a creep.
― waterface, Friday, 26 July 2013 16:56 (eleven years ago) link
didn't hero invent the steam engine?
― sassy, fun, and RELATABLE (forksclovetofu), Friday, July 26, 2013 1:28 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
i think basically? I believe there are also practical issues to building a steam engine in 100 AD or whenever, just because metallurgy is not at the point where you can really construct a boiler capable of containing the required pressures. But I actually don't really know anything about anything so I could be wrong.
― Doctor Casino, Friday, 26 July 2013 17:31 (eleven years ago) link
everything i know about this comes from a single paragraph in the william gibson interview with the paris review:
There’s an idea in the science-fiction community called steam-engine time, which is what people call it when suddenly twenty or thirty different writers produce stories about the same idea. It’s called steam-engine time because nobody knows why the steam engine happened when it did. Ptolemy demonstrated the mechanics of the steam engine, and there was nothing technically stopping the Romans from building big steam engines. They had little toy steam engines, and they had enough metalworking skill to build big steam tractors. It just never occurred to them to do it. When I came up with my cyberspace idea, I thought, I bet it’s steam-engine time for this one, because I can’t be the only person noticing these various things. And I wasn’t. I was just the first person who put it together in that particular way, and I had a logo for it, I had my neologism.
so, ptolemy. according to william gibson.
― Z S, Friday, 26 July 2013 17:46 (eleven years ago) link
Huh!
― Doctor Casino, Friday, 26 July 2013 19:46 (eleven years ago) link
and they had enough metalworking skill to build big steam tractors.
i don't think this is true tbh
they didn't have the metallurgy to make objects both big and strong enough to make a steam engine large enough to do useful work that people or animals were doing
― antoine fuckwant (goole), Friday, 26 July 2013 19:52 (eleven years ago) link
iirc watt was inspired by a principal of planetary movement that ptolemy posited, i think gibson is making a bit of a jump there. hero(n) is really the guy who laid it out. but doctor casino here is essentially correct, the problem is metal. advanced metal working didn't really get going - and like many academic and scientific disciplines it peaked early and tailed off quickly. rome was pretty degenerate after the early empire. i think mental was a PITA for romans because the ores were elsewhere. and crucially they didn't get very far with iron alloys, and that is really the business end of things.
― Roberto Spiralli, Friday, 26 July 2013 20:06 (eleven years ago) link
it likely peaked earlyand metal, not mental
― Roberto Spiralli, Friday, 26 July 2013 20:08 (eleven years ago) link
http://mygeologypage.ucdavis.edu/cowen/~gel115/115CH5.html
ps i love ancient and still-running academic webspaces like this
― antoine fuckwant (goole), Friday, 26 July 2013 20:15 (eleven years ago) link
Great info Roberto, thanks.
goole otm.
― Doctor Casino, Friday, 26 July 2013 20:34 (eleven years ago) link
Ancient smiths had to learn the metallurgy of iron and its alloys, which again is non-intuitive, much more difficult than that of copper and bronze. They solved the problems empirically, of course, but the chemistry and metallurgy involved were not understood at all until modern times. Most important, the smithing of iron demanded much more luck or skill than the well-understood smithing of copper and bronze. Some smiths made tools and armor and weapons that were significantly better than others. The mastery of iron and steel truly was a rather magical process, and it is at this point that legends begin to feature magic swords, produced by smiths who are also wizards.
^^^ the kind of shit i just eat UP. Makes total sense when they put it like that.
― Doctor Casino, Friday, 26 July 2013 20:37 (eleven years ago) link
Bronze Age heroes did not have magic weapons. The heroes of Troy had to use tricks for victory, even when the gods were interfering. (I imagine that the gods would have provided their favorite mortals with magic weapons if they had been available: certainly the Iron Age Norse gods did.) However, Iron Age soldiers had swords that were forged one at a time, and Iron Age gods and heroes often had magic swords such as Fafnir and Excalibur. Legendary Iron Age smiths such as Wayland Smith traditionally possessed great strength for hand-forging weapons, as well as great skill. Ironically, Wayland was lame, but only because he was maimed deliberately by the King: is this a faint echo of the Bronze Age?
― Doctor Casino, Friday, 26 July 2013 20:38 (eleven years ago) link
there is an interesting division between legendary swords that did crazy shit and swords that were just known for being especially hard or sharp, e.g. excalibur or durendal(sp?). the latter seem obviously to be referring to steel swords, most likely accidentally made rather than some particularly talented smith, hence the specialness/rarity.
― Roberto Spiralli, Friday, 26 July 2013 20:47 (eleven years ago) link
also fafnir is a dragon not a sword
― Roberto Spiralli, Friday, 26 July 2013 20:48 (eleven years ago) link
ha, wait, yeah, what is that about?
Agreed about 'magic' versus 'special' swords. On the Gibson tip, there's a great sequence somewhere in Stephenson's Baroque Cycle - probably midway through "The Confusion" where a couple of our heroes, one a warrior, one a seasoned alchemist, get to watch a bunch of metallurgists at work somewhere in the Near East. The alchemist is following the whole process, step by step, focusing on what they're doing with the hammers and the heat and so on, and meanwhile the warrior, who has been carrying around a prized 'watered steel' blade the entire story, gradually has this jaw-drop moment of realizing that this is the place where watered steel comes from, this is the procedure that's created his amazing super-sword that everyone fears. And this is set in the late 17th century!
― Doctor Casino, Friday, 26 July 2013 21:10 (eleven years ago) link
the sword sigurd used to kill fafnir was forged by wayland the smith, which is probably the writer slipped there. it has a more boring name though (gram)
― 1staethyr, Friday, 26 July 2013 21:27 (eleven years ago) link
I remember Gram, it was a sword in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. IIRC the description was the rather underwhelming ''The sword named Gram.''
An actual terrible idea: sitting in the inverse castle library and killing eight million Dodos in the hopes of them dropping a rare Crissaegrim. (I speak from sad experience.)
― Doctor Casino, Friday, 26 July 2013 22:42 (eleven years ago) link
Er...wait. those are Shmoos, I think. The Dodos are in the inverse castle entrance but they also drop something really cool about one in ten thousand times.
― Doctor Casino, Friday, 26 July 2013 22:44 (eleven years ago) link
kill ilxor account
― wolves lacan, Saturday, 27 July 2013 16:57 (eleven years ago) link
a poster that reads
KEEP CALMandSHOW ME THE MONEY!
― PJ. Turquoise dealer. Chatroulette addict. Andersonville. (Hurting 2), Monday, 29 July 2013 21:07 (eleven years ago) link
I had a terrible idea, which was to start a thread called "Describe yourself in the harshest, most uncharitable way possible."
― fervently nice (Treeship), Monday, 29 July 2013 21:10 (eleven years ago) link
omg, it exists already
so does "keep calm and i drink your milkshake"
however
"keep calm and don't taze me bro" is open
― PJ. Turquoise dealer. Chatroulette addict. Andersonville. (Hurting 2), Monday, 29 July 2013 21:16 (eleven years ago) link
i think that's a great idea xp
― Mordy , Monday, 29 July 2013 21:30 (eleven years ago) link
KEEP CALMandDROWN CATS& BLIND PUPPIES
― Ppd. (weatheringdaleson), Monday, 29 July 2013 23:23 (eleven years ago) link
This came to me in a vision on the way home -- it's a movie in which Clint Eastwood plays a truck driver who picks up a hitchhiking Chris Tucker, and the rest of the film is just two hours of them talking in the truck, with Clint Eastwood doing more or less his character from Gran Torino, and every exchange is Chris Tucker doing his stupid schtick and Eastwood responding with his slow, salty barbs. "Yeah so I really appreciate you pickin me up dawg" "I'm not your...dawg." "So what up man you like hip-hop or what?" "No...I don't like...hip - hop."
― HOOS next aka won't get steened again (Hurting 2), Wednesday, 31 July 2013 03:51 (eleven years ago) link
If Chris Tucker hadn't self-imploded that would be available on Netflix right now
― sassy, fun, and RELATABLE (forksclovetofu), Wednesday, 31 July 2013 04:12 (eleven years ago) link
My Drive Wit Dre
― HOOS next aka won't get steened again (Hurting 2), Thursday, 1 August 2013 16:34 (eleven years ago) link
Here's one: a site that's like a "longform" version of buzzfeed -- "576 Cool Things You Didn't Know About European History 1076-1492" "1000 most attractive people of the 20th Century" etc.
― HOOS next aka won't get steened again (Hurting 2), Thursday, 1 August 2013 16:35 (eleven years ago) link
A cover version of King Missile's 'Detachable Penis', but retitled 'Detachable Booster', with new lyrics appropriate to the video game Kerbal Space Progam ("I was orbiting Kerbin, and my booster was missing again. This happens all the time. It's detachable.").
― slamming on the dubstep brakes (snoball), Thursday, 1 August 2013 16:42 (eleven years ago) link
― HOOS next aka won't get steened again (Hurting 2), Thursday, August 1, 2013 4:35 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
buzzfeed actually has a 'longform' section now, i would sort of love if it became this
― BIG HOOS aka the denigrated boogeyman (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Monday, 5 August 2013 19:16 (eleven years ago) link
"Wow, has it been three and a half hours already? Better get back to that spreadsheet"
― HOOS next aka won't get steened again (Hurting 2), Monday, 5 August 2013 19:21 (eleven years ago) link
This would be great if the factoids were in chronological or organized thematic order, so it was basically just every sentence of a high school textbook, rewritten as a dumb heading with a huge picture.
― Doctor Casino, Monday, 5 August 2013 19:42 (eleven years ago) link
an 8+ piece band playing a hybrid of math rock and western swing named "texas instruments"
― R'LIAH (goole), Tuesday, 6 August 2013 00:08 (eleven years ago) link
lol
― set the controls for the heart of the sun (VegemiteGrrl), Tuesday, 6 August 2013 01:26 (eleven years ago) link
the line-dancing would be incredible
― HOOS next aka won't get steened again (Hurting 2), Tuesday, 6 August 2013 01:32 (eleven years ago) link
I guess you don't really line-dance to western swing. Oh well. I like it anyway.
― HOOS next aka won't get steened again (Hurting 2), Tuesday, 6 August 2013 01:33 (eleven years ago) link
DANCING SQUARED
― Our scientists had never looked into the banana before. (weatheringdaleson), Tuesday, 6 August 2013 02:33 (eleven years ago) link
An app solely for sharing pictures of alligators called Instagator
― HOOS next aka won't get steened again (Hurting 2), Tuesday, 6 August 2013 19:35 (eleven years ago) link
an lp of Boris playing music by Carl Orff. Boris Carl Orff.
― koogs, Tuesday, 6 August 2013 19:44 (eleven years ago) link
lol at instagator
Third-party app that gathers up the photos of the angriest and most dangerous specimens: AggroGator
― Doctor Casino, Tuesday, 6 August 2013 22:07 (eleven years ago) link
A cover version of Billy Joel's 'We Didn't Start The Fire', except with new lyrics that reference historical internet memes.
We didn't know what to saywhen Spiderman made you gayBadger badger badger badgerbadger badger badger badger
...or something like that.
― slamming on the dubstep brakes (snoball), Friday, 9 August 2013 11:59 (eleven years ago) link
A t-shirt with a picture of Foghorn Leghorn dressed as Jules from Pulp Fiction, with the words 'BAD MOTHER CLUCKER' at the bottom.
That sounds like a pretty strong money-making idea, even if it would have been more viable 18 years ago when Pulp Fiction and Looney Tune t-shirts were both flying high. I still think you'd move a few at state fairs, etc. If you could get the Foghorn Leghorn to not exactly look like a copyrighted character you could probably get them into Hot Topics or Spencer's or whatever mainstream outlet it is that sells crap like that to 15-year-olds.
― Doctor Casino, Friday, 9 August 2013 14:05 (eleven years ago) link
Foghorn Leghorn/Jackson would definitely be making the Dreamworks Face though.
An ice cream shop called "In The Dessert of the Real"
― HOOS next aka won't get steened again (Hurting 2), Friday, 9 August 2013 18:04 (eleven years ago) link
or maybe an ice cream shop/movie theater called "In The Dessert of the Reel"
Put it in Brooklyn and call it In the Mouth A Dessert
― waterface, Friday, 9 August 2013 18:17 (eleven years ago) link