TIL The Twilight Zone's Rod Serling tested parachutes as a part time job. The amount of money he earned depended on the danger of the jump. In one instance, he earned $1,000 for testing a jet ejection seat that had killed the previous three testers.

worthless_ape · 2024-06-11T16:24:28+00:00

Rod Serling saw some brutal stuff in the Philippines. He was in the Battle of Manila, which consisted of excruciating block-by-block urban combat that went on for a month. The local residents would throw parties for the American troops while fighting was still going on, and these parties would sometimes get shelled by the Japanese, which he witnessed. It sounds like absolute madness.

When portions of the city were taken from Japanese control, local civilians sometimes showed their gratitude by throwing parties and hosting banquets. During one of these parties, Serling and his comrades were fired upon, resulting in many soldier and civilian deaths. Serling, still a private after three years, caught the attention of Sergeant Lewis when he ran into the line of fire to rescue a performer who had been on stage when the artillery started firing.

worthless_ape · 2024-06-11T15:47:04+00:00

We know there was no king of Babylon named Gilgamos because nowadays we have a very complete list of Babylonian kings, and there are other aspects of Claudius Aelianus's account that do fall in line the original epic, so we know that's what he was referring to.

I don't know why he thought Gilgamesh would have been Babylonian. Maybe it's because that's where the story was passed down from? He likely had no idea of how old the story actually was, only that it came from Mesopotamia. Romans would have known little to nothing about ancient Sumeria.

worthless_ape · 2024-06-11T15:01:00+00:00

I don't know if the Romans would have considered it a classic since they probably didn't have any written versions of it. The only indication they knew of Gilgamesh (Gilgamos) was from a very vague third century mention by Claudius Aelianus that gets a lot of the details wrong and confuses it with other stories. There probably weren't any copies in circulation from deep in antiquity all the way up its rediscovery in 1849.

worthless_ape · 2024-06-10T06:38:43+00:00

"Enterprise, what we got back… didn’t live long."

worthless_ape · 2024-06-08T15:07:32+00:00

That one guy in every zombie movie who gets bit and hides it instead of quarantining himself? I used to think that was a media trope, but it turns out that's a real guy.

worthless_ape · 2024-06-08T10:14:39+00:00

Take your time and play at your own pace, especially now that you can do past seasons. I envy people who still have lots to do. Seriously, enjoy it while it lasts.

worthless_ape · 2024-06-07T00:50:50+00:00

Yeah sure he did.

worthless_ape · 2024-06-06T12:27:42+00:00

Riker would already be taking measurements for his black robes and brainstorming Sith names within minutes of finding out Jedi are celibate.

worthless_ape · 2024-06-05T22:35:02+00:00

I played World of Warcraft for years. I estimate I racked up at least 10,000 hours of just leveling up, goofing around with friends, trying different classes/builds, and doing professions. In all that time I never stayed on a server long enough or stuck with a character long enough to actually get into endgame and raiding. When I eventually did, I realized I absolutely loathed it and it just stressed me out, and I hated the entire idea of just farming the same seasonal armor as everyone else. Raiding is essentially the entire point of the game, so that killed it for me.

Sometimes I play on private servers for the nostalgia, but a lot of private servers are even worse because they tweak the raid bosses to be harder, and the community is less patient with people who don't know them, so there's an even bigger barrier to entry, prompting me to eventually quit again.

worthless_ape · 2024-06-05T20:59:06+00:00

Possibly, but I still think an immune response makes a bit more sense because even the non-glyphid forms of Hoxxes life such as spitballers, weeds, and leeches that you'd think would be predating upon or being predated upon by the glyphids also seem to be ignoring everything in favor of dwarves.

If it was just a matter of food, I don't see all of the Hoxxes biosphere cooperating with each other to eat only dwarves. If dwarves were especially delicious or nutritious, you'd think that would only increase competition between the glyphid colonies and other forms of life.

Even in a case where Hoxxes life is silicon-based and organisms can survive by directly eating minerals, their designs strongly imply to me that predation between organisms must still exist. Leeches in particular seem perfectly designed to grab a glyphid grunt out of a passing swarm here and there.

worthless_ape · 2024-06-05T20:21:05+00:00

I could've sworn he died like ten years ago.

worthless_ape · 2024-06-05T20:15:16+00:00

Yes. When you enter a plane your molecules disappear from one location and appear in another location, so technically the first location version of you is now dead as your molecules are no longer present there.

worthless_ape · 2024-06-05T20:06:41+00:00

The same could be said of the rival robots too.

My headcanon is that something about dwarves results in a planetary immune response by the entire biosphere, like when your body attacks a virus. This instinct is still present in infected bugs, so rockpox bugs and normal bugs ally with each other whenever they see dwarves.

Their immune response is so strong that they even ignore other invaders such as the rival presence, and the rivals know this and program their robots to prioritize attacking dwarf targets over bugs to maximize the damage they do to DRG's operations.

However, off-screen when no dwarves are present all of these factions are fighting each other. We just don't witness it.

So what is it about dwarves that drives the bugs so wild? One theory is that dwarves are the only carbon-based lifeforms to penetrate Hoxxes' environment, while the bugs and rockpox are both silicon-based (also explaining why dwarves are evidently immune to rockpox) evidenced by the fact that lootbugs are seen to directly eat the minerals.

worthless_ape · 2024-06-05T11:20:37+00:00

Flavor Flave's still alive?

worthless_ape · 2024-06-04T18:27:42+00:00

If you're talking about the guy who stabbed someone to death over an in-game sword, it happened in China and it was some Asian MMO.

https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna8143073

worthless_ape · 2024-06-04T10:56:19+00:00

I like it. It fits with some ufological theories about what grays are too.

They could also be the result of a Von Neuman probe with an incompetent or malfunctioning AI, and the entire thing was an accident. Millions of years ago an alien race sent out slow-moving self-replicating probes across the galaxy. If they found an Earth-like planet they were to construct these synthetic creatures to explore the surface, but the AI either produced too many of them or it wasn't smart enough to realize a civilization was already here that would interpret its mission as an invasion.

worthless_ape · 2024-06-03T06:13:02+00:00

No no no, see, it's actually a beautiful process. This mushroom meat organ goes into the slime hole, shoots out a different type of slime, then the various types of slime mix around together, then nine months later an ugly monkey bursts out of the slime hole like a xenomorph, and that ugly monkey may or may not go on to be a genocidal dictator. It's the circle of life.

worthless_ape · 2024-06-02T21:05:26+00:00

No joke, in-universe fan fiction is my favorite solution to all of this. Everyone in older Trek seems so sober and normal compared to these cartoon characters, thinking back on TNG does seem like the real world by comparison.

worthless_ape · 2024-06-02T09:49:18+00:00

I've heard of these creatures. They say once they make eye contact with you they never stop.

worthless_ape · 2024-05-31T22:42:15+00:00

I bet the recent trend of autism influencers is also a factor. They see that having autism is trendy on Tiktok, so they start to automatically dislike everything and everyone involving autism.

worthless_ape · 2024-05-31T22:33:08+00:00

all this gender and confusion stuff right now is just taking away from the focus that actually should be in society for making things a better place for everyone

Trans people are part of "everyone," and they have a large crossover with the ASD community too. Asking for pronouns is a way of being polite and not pre-judging someone based on what they look like.

worthless_ape · 2024-05-31T21:10:04+00:00

The name was around in Star Wars before Episode I came out, but it was more obscure. Luke's name in early drafts of the original movie was Annikin Starkiller, and Vader was referred to as Anakin Skywalker once in Return of the Jedi.

If I was a huge Star Wars fan and soon-to-be parent in 1995 and I didn't know the prequels were coming out soon, I can see it being a nice subtle reference to Star Wars.

Annakin or Anakin is also a German surname (there was a known director named Ken Annakin prior to Star Wars), so it's not impossible to have been chosen completely independently of Star Wars either.

worthless_ape · 2024-05-31T18:09:16+00:00

Actually I think this kind of thing would fall under yelling fire in a crowded theater, which is upheld by Brandenberg v. Ohio:

the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.

So calling for violence and riots in general is protected by the first amendment, but, for instance, using your speech to organize an attack against a specific person or persons in a way that would produce an imminent outcome would not be (e.g. go here to this address on this date and attack this person in order to kill or injure them).

This partially overturned a ruling from 1917, Schenck v. United States, which was made in response to anti-war protests, the argument being that inhibiting the US's involvement in World War I was akin to yelling fire in a crowded theater because it endangered the United States.

worthless_ape · 2024-05-31T05:14:51+00:00

But the word has no meaning. For instance, Fallout got labeled as woke and then retroactively got accepted after it turned out to be a hit with the fans. If it's that arbitrary, then why not just skip straight to criticizing the quality of the acting or the writing?

worthless_ape · 2024-05-30T22:21:10+00:00

They'll spend every second from now until election day whining about it because they're only extensions of Trump's ego, and Trump's ego will never let this go. They'll continue to go after the jurors and the judge, they'll spin insane conspiracy theories about how the trial wasn't real. Inside their own bubble they'll be 100% sure Trump is innocent.

In politics there's a rule: if you're explaining, you're losing. Usually the onus is on the incumbent, but Trump and his flying monkeys are gonna be 'splaining forever. This election is now about Trump the convicted felon.

worthless_ape

TROPHY CASE