Today I Learned #3: There's a wiki for everything!

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Samson said:
I wonder if we are allowed to say a computer is "sick" (as in something is not working right)? Would it be different if something is "sick" as in good?
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When I have to take my computer to be repaired, I refer to it as "taking my laptop to the computer vet".

It's actually not that odd a reference, since the only bag I have that's large enough to tote a laptop in is an old cat carrier my mother gave me and I quit using for the cats because it was too easy for them to escape from it. So there was one time when I picked up my computer from London Drugs and decided to do a little shopping before going home (they sell housewares and groceries there as well)... and next thing I know, people are stopping me and asking to see my cat. They were flabbergasted when I told them I didn't have a cat in the carrier, and what they thought was my cat was really my laptop. I guess it didn't occur to them that it couldn't be my cat anyway, since they're not allowed in that store.


There was one time when I was visiting someone, and noticed that her housemate had left a prescription bottle on top of the computer tower. I couldn't resist saying, "Y'know, that's not really how you fix a computer virus..."


As for what I learned over the past 12 hours... I decided it was time to buckle down and decide on some names for some of the characters in my story who don't have them and will need them at some point, and ended up reading multiple Wikipedia articles about Mercia and Anglo-Saxon architecture (I did figure out a few names to use, though alas, the character whose placeholder is "Count Chocula" still doesn't have a real name).
 
Til about Sancho Panza as (ridiculously) governor of a fief, and a trial taking place there.
There was the law that if you pass the local bridge you have to take a vow to speak only the truth, otherwise you would be hanged from the gallows on the other side of the bridge. If you spoke the truth, you were not hanged.
But one person, after taking the vow and thus being bound by the court, spoke the truth, which was that he wanted to be hanged at the gallows.

It is very similar to a story about Protagoras and one of his orator pupils: the agreement between Protagoras and the boy was that the boy would pay him the rest of his fee upon winning his first trial. But the boy didn't seem to wish to practice and neither felt like paying the rest of the money - so Protagoras was forced to sue him. Protagoras argued to the court that if his pupil lost the case, by the law of the court he should pay Protagoras his money, and if the pupil won the case, by virtue of their agreement he should again pay Protagoras his money. The pupil argued the symmetrical: If Protagoras won the case, the pupil still hadn't won a case and thus shouldn't pay, and if Protagoras lost the case then the court's ruling relieves the pupil from paying.

In both the prototype (Protagoras and his pupil) and the variation (trial at the bridge in Don Quixote), the issue arises from lack of a clear hierarchy (which is above the other; the law or the agreement at some other level).
 
I think that it is easy to write short stories the Borges way; for example some more austere version of the above encyclopedic knowledge would serve as the introduction to the story. Later on... I'd find some far more personalized and miserable fate for the protagonist of the story; perhaps they wanted to play a game utilizing such ambiguities, but ended up obliterated by an indifferent to math logic crowd. Or something darker.
Borges was usually lazy and - more than anything - very distanced from the surface of the story itself.
What do you think, @Ferocitus , could you see some sleepy reference to DeLong with nested Gellius (I think the Protagoras story is in Attic Nights) and Cervantes as in the post above, in a borgesian story? :)
 
Kyriakos said:
Til about Sancho Panza as (ridiculously) governor of a fief, and a trial taking place there.
There was the law that if you pass the local bridge you have to take a vow to speak only the truth, otherwise you would be hanged from the gallows on the other side of the bridge. If you spoke the truth, you were not hanged.
But one person, after taking the vow and thus being bound by the court, spoke the truth, which was that he wanted to be hanged at the gallows.

It is very similar to a story about Protagoras and one of his orator pupils: the agreement between Protagoras and the boy was that the boy would pay him the rest of his fee upon winning his first trial. But the boy didn't seem to wish to practice and neither felt like paying the rest of the money - so Protagoras was forced to sue him. Protagoras argued to the court that if his pupil lost the case, by the law of the court he should pay Protagoras his money, and if the pupil won the case, by virtue of their agreement he should again pay Protagoras his money. The pupil argued the symmetrical: If Protagoras won the case, the pupil still hadn't won a case and thus shouldn't pay, and if Protagoras lost the case then the court's ruling relieves the pupil from paying.

In both the prototype (Protagoras and his pupil) and the variation (trial at the bridge in Don Quixote), the issue arises from lack of a clear hierarchy (which is above the other; the law or the agreement at some other level).
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And the moral is: Sophists have been oppressed since the dawn of civilization. Boo, BOO! :p
 
TIL that in 1985 the police dropped bombs on a house containing a black separative/animal rights activist organisation, killing 6 adults and five children aged 7 to 13, and burning down 65 other houses. The bodies of two of the children, Tree and Delisha Africa, were taken from the house for study by University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and Princeton University without the knowledge or consent of their families. Last month we found this out.
 
Samson said:
TIL that in 1985 the police dropped bombs on a house containing a black separative/animal rights activist organisation, killing 6 adults and five children aged 7 to 13, and burning down 65 other houses. The bodies of two of the children, Tree and Delisha Africa, were taken from the house for study by University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and Princeton University without the knowledge or consent of their families. Last month we found this out.
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Any part of the city is police's Jerusalem :)
 
Samson said:
TIL that in 1985 the police dropped bombs on a house containing a black separative/animal rights activist organisation, killing 6 adults and five children aged 7 to 13, and burning down 65 other houses. The bodies of two of the children, Tree and Delisha Africa, were taken from the house for study by University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and Princeton University without the knowledge or consent of their families. Last month we found this out.
Click to expand...

I was not surprised when I read about most of the examples, but something this recent was surprising.
You'd think there are laws dealing with this.
 
TI also Learned that some people has started to modify Spanish fascist graffitis, previously you could read "Viva Franco" (Long live to Franco) and now you can read Viva Franco Battiato

E16bPFkXoAItEgY-660x439.jpg
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrannosaurus#Brain_and_senses

"A study published by Kent Stevens concluded that Tyrannosaurus had keen vision. By applying modified perimetry to facial reconstructions of several dinosaurs including Tyrannosaurus, the study found that Tyrannosaurus had a binocular range of 55 degrees, surpassing that of modern hawks. Stevens estimated that Tyrannosaurus had 13 times the visual acuity of a human and surpassed the visual acuity of an eagle, which is 3.6 times that of a person. Stevens estimated a limiting far point (that is, the distance at which an object can be seen as separate from the horizon) as far as 6 km (3.7 mi) away, which is greater than the 1.6 km (1 mi) that a human can see."
 
Samson said:
TIL that in 1985 the police dropped bombs on a house containing a black separative/animal rights activist organisation, killing 6 adults and five children aged 7 to 13, and burning down 65 other houses. The bodies of two of the children, Tree and Delisha Africa, were taken from the house for study by University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and Princeton University without the knowledge or consent of their families. Last month we found this out.
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That was mentioned in an episode of The Rookie that I just watched. I hadn't heard about it before, either. The Tulsa Massacre has gotten a lot of attention recently, since we're coming up on the centenary, May 31. I don't think I knew about that one before Watchmen. I haven't heard or read much about the execution of Fred Hampton since Judas and the Black Messiah was on HBO Max (which I missed, unfortunately, still hoping to catch it). I had heard about Hampton's murder, but not about Tulsa or the MOVE bombing, and I make an effort to pay attention. I'm not sure how I knew about Hampton - sure as [heck] I didn't learn about that in elementary or high school, though, and I grew up in a pretty liberal town in a pretty liberal state. I wouldn't be at all surprised if many White Americans (and, heck, maybe a lot of Black Americans too) had never head about this stuff, either. The other week I mentioned Oscar Grant and "Fruitvale Station" to a coworker, and she had no idea what I was talking about. :undecide:
 
I read about the bombing a number of years ago in a Cracked article, of all places. I found it weird then as I do now that the event isn't common knowledge. Maybe because the action was so completely bonkers that it doesn't really get processed. What subsequently happened to the remains of those children does show how little consideration the authorithies had for the lives of those people. It wasn't just a misjudgement.
 
Colon said:
I read about the bombing a number of years ago in a Cracked article, of all places. I found it weird then as I do now that the event isn't common knowledge. Maybe because the action was so completely bonkers that it doesn't really get processed. What subsequently happened to the remains of those children does show how little consideration the authorithies had for the lives of those people. It wasn't just a misjudgement.
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I was a little embarrassed that I'd never heard of it before, but I guess it's not really all that surprising.
 
Kyriakos said:
I think that it is easy to write short stories the Borges way; for example some more austere version of the above encyclopedic knowledge would serve as the introduction to the story. Later on... I'd find some far more personalized and miserable fate for the protagonist of the story; perhaps they wanted to play a game utilizing such ambiguities, but ended up obliterated by an indifferent to math logic crowd. Or something darker.
Borges was usually lazy and - more than anything - very distanced from the surface of the story itself.
What do you think, @Ferocitus , could you see some sleepy reference to DeLong with nested Gellius (I think the Protagoras story is in Attic Nights) and Cervantes as in the post above, in a borgesian story? :)
Click to expand...

Sorry, I haven't met Aulus Gellius.

If it didn't have a double "l", Lithuania would have claimed him as one of their own. :)
 
Sofista said:
I always refer to some friends' pet rabbit as 'the emergency protein source'.
They're not amused. :lol:
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That's probably in response to something else you did.

You can restore your hipster-cred by translating "Thank your mother for the rabbits" into whatever quasi-language they speak and
then use it instead of "Ciao" or "Bon soir, Monsieur" when you leave. :goodjob:
https://wordhistories.net/2020/09/03/thank-mother-rabbit/
 
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