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The WTF? Thread

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  • San Bernardhinault
    replied
    As someone who's never been further on to Long Island than the Target just outside JFK, it's fair to say my knowledge is limited and I'm happy to be corrected.

    Leave a comment:


  • ursus arctos
    replied
    Hedgies don't live in Montauk (which is much too windy anyway)

    Leave a comment:


  • San Bernardhinault
    replied
    Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
    Yes, 400 km is further than NYC to the Poconos or Allentown.

    It is almost exactly NYC to Montauk, but I have never known anyone to do that four times a week (it would also take significantly longer).
    Don't those guys all take their own helicopters?

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  • Patrick Thistle
    replied

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  • S. aureus
    replied
    I've known people who commuted from Sacramento to San Francisco, about 140km each way and the traffic absolutely sucks, at the SF end anyway.

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  • ursus arctos
    replied
    Yes, 400 km is further than NYC to the Poconos or Allentown.

    It is almost exactly NYC to Montauk, but I have never known anyone to do that four times a week (it would also take significantly longer).

    Leave a comment:


  • San Bernardhinault
    replied
    I know a handful people who often spend that long commuting, although none who travel that far, I think.

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  • ursus arctos
    replied
    Absolutely nuts for Europe, though I know several people in the US with longer commutes

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  • Sporting
    replied
    An online student of mine lives in Plasencia and works near Toledo and commutes in his mercedes 400 km per day, 4 hours, 5 days a week.

    Bonkers.

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  • ursus arctos
    replied
    The Philadelphia transit system has had permanently branded stations for several years, and is looking to expand the programme.

    The most recent entry

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  • Evariste Euler Gauss
    replied
    Sorry, this is several weeks old and may have been covered on this board while I was absent from the board in hospital, but I've just learnt that, for a short period recently during "London Fashion Week", Bond Street tube station was briefly renamed "Burberry Street Station", with signage replaced accordingly. I mean, seriously, WT absolute F? Utter fucking loathsome corporate scum.

    Corporation creep: why London’s Bond Street became Burberry Street - and caused outrage | Fashion | The Guardian

    Leave a comment:


  • Patrick Thistle
    replied
    https://twitter.com/WalesOnline/status/1717642253777228003?t=IZv-lIbRXgKVkpwux77UFA&s=19

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  • ad hoc
    replied
    It's an excellent story I think. I've read it a couple of times. Once years ago and then again a few years after I moved here. The second time was better. It's definitely a page turner.

    Stoker (who never came here) used a composite of various characters he read about in the British Library where he did all his writing. The most prominent were Vlad Țepeș and Báthory Erzsébet. In the novel Dracula is actually a Székely (they are the people who live where I am) not a Vlach like Vlad or a Magyar like Báthory.

    (it's a right pain to travel from Transylvania to Whitby by sea mind you, even after you make the trek over the mountains to Galati)

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  • scratchmonkey
    replied
    I really enjoyed it, as gothic page-turners go.

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  • The Awesome Berbaslug!!!
    replied
    It's a ripping yarn.

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  • San Bernardhinault
    replied
    It's perfectly readable dumb schlock. It's like reading a 1890's airport novel, if such a thing had existed in the 1890s.

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  • Hot Pepsi
    replied
    Originally posted by Lang Spoon View Post

    The weirdest thing is a terrible hack writer and his terrible hack tale captured the imagination so much. Carmilla, which he certainly eagerly mined for inspiration, is a far better vampire story.
    I’ve never actually read it.

    Leave a comment:


  • The Awesome Berbaslug!!!
    replied
    Originally posted by Hot Pepsi View Post

    Vampire stories exist in a lot of cultures.
    I don't recall why Stoker chose to attach the vampire lore to Vlad Dracul.
    He thought that dracul was the Romanian for devil, rather than dragon

    Leave a comment:


  • Lang Spoon
    replied
    Originally posted by Hot Pepsi View Post

    Vampire stories exist in a lot of cultures.
    I don't recall why Stoker chose to attach the vampire lore to Vlad Dracul.
    The weirdest thing is a terrible hack writer and his terrible hack tale captured the imagination so much. Carmilla, which he certainly eagerly mined for inspiration, is a far better vampire story.

    Leave a comment:


  • Janik
    replied
    Originally posted by ad hoc View Post
    Vlad the Impaler might have been a vegan
    https://www.newyorker.com/news/lette...a-vegan-really

    (to be honest the wtf part of his story is the scientific ability to analyse his diet from something he wrote)
    Agree about the WTF part - I think the phrases signal-to-noise, vast potential for cross-contamination and wild-overclaiming over jogging merrily up to this fellas claimed techniques.

    That said, most diets of the time probably would have been very substantially vegan. Unlikely for the nobility, though. Eating meat, dairy and sugar would have been obvious status symbols for them.

    Leave a comment:


  • The Awesome Berbaslug!!!
    replied
    Originally posted by ad hoc View Post
    Vlad the Impaler might have been a vegan
    https://www.newyorker.com/news/lette...a-vegan-really

    (to be honest the wtf part of his story is the scientific ability to analyse his diet from something he wrote)
    Well was it a letter to John hunyadi imploring him to give a plant based diet a try?

    Leave a comment:


  • Hot Pepsi
    replied
    Originally posted by ad hoc View Post
    Vlad the Impaler might have been a vegan
    https://www.newyorker.com/news/lette...a-vegan-really

    (to be honest the wtf part of his story is the scientific ability to analyse his diet from something he wrote)
    Vampire stories exist in a lot of cultures.
    I don't recall why Stoker chose to attach the vampire lore to Vlad Dracul.

    Leave a comment:


  • Satchmo Distel
    replied
    My students today told me about someone called Eugenia Cooney who has become an Internet celebrity due to having a body image that celebrates being skeletal; not just Kate Moss thin but with her ribs exposed and barely any flesh on her bones. I won't link because I find her impossible to look at but the phenomenon of her celebrity is disturbing.

    Leave a comment:


  • ad hoc
    replied
    Vlad the Impaler might have been a vegan
    https://www.newyorker.com/news/lette...a-vegan-really

    (to be honest the wtf part of his story is the scientific ability to analyse his diet from something he wrote)

    Leave a comment:


  • Evariste Euler Gauss
    replied
    ha ha, that is hilarious!

    Leave a comment:

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