Below are things I’ve learned, remembered, or found interesting in the past month:
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Courtesy of Astral Codex 10, the Southern Television Broadcast Interruption, where a broadcast was interrupted by a message claiming to be from aliens instructing humanity to put down their weapons and achieve a new ae of peace.
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10 things I learned from 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School (affiliate link).
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Every few years I remember the story of Shane Perez sneaking onto Disney’s abandoned Discovery Park. When looking for it to link here, I found this Reddit post detailing all of the explorers who have come since. Lots of copycats, until it finally got shut down.
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CoolioArt on Youtube remade the kitchen scene from Jurassic Park with scientifically accurate (feathered) dinos!
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The quest to find an unreleased Static Shock GBA game.
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The Liberty Bell is overrated. It cracked the first time it was rung, but that wasn’t that crack. It may have rung when the Declaration of Independence was read out, but only because every available bell was wringing. It just sort of got elevated into a symbol of independence because it had a bible quote about freedom on it.
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This collection of public domain artwork has been going around, and includes some novel ways of exploring the collection.
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I knew Fortnite was big, but I didn’t realize the degree to which it utterly dominated playtime. Baldur’s Gate 3 represented 3.9% of all playtime in 2023. Initial source is worth a read. Overall, the video game market appears to be shrinking, down 13% since 2021. One cause (among many) is adults spending leisure hours each day on TikTok.
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Correction. I prevously noted the renaming of Cleaveland to Cleveland, and suggested that it was due to the name not fitting on a newspaper heading. It seems that is a myth.
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Agony used to be slang in the US for a popular craze or fashion. Seen in an add for “The latest agony”.
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China has been able to create artificial photosynthesis in space. They have ambitious plans, including building a solar array that could annually generate ‘more energy than all the oil on earth’ and a lunar space station by 2035. I’ll believe ‘em when I see ‘em.
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In 1914, archeologists found a dinosaur. It was classified as a Carcharodontosaurus (shark toothed lizard) and forgotten about. The fossil was destroyed in WWII. Recently, photographs of the skeleton have surfaced, indicating that th dinosaur is a new species after all.
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A very simple suggestion from Knight at the Opera to have TTRPG baddies gain the “defeated” condition at 0HP, rather than death. It’s elegant, and I’ll be using it.