Real-Life Weirdness

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

The Caisson locks sound like a perfect place to stage a fight or a mystery in an alt-history setting (gaslight fantasy, diesel divergence etc.)

While we're talking about retro-tech (there's probably a better thread than this for it, but I can't find it):

Wintergatan, the marble music machine guy, has a YouTube channel where he visits different old music machines. This 17th century carillon is really interesting, especially from a mechanical computing point of view:
https://youtu.be/6CQgzqYuo04

And this self-playing violin is very clock-punky:
https://youtu.be/xs0mP2cOmJs

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

And the lights suddenly go out! Dun, dun DUUUUN!

And then someone with a fear of drowning or claustrophobia has total hysterics, sounding like they're being actively murdered.

[Flyndaran]

Normally I dislike that cliched jump scare, but I think in that situation, the girly shriek would be coming from me.

[vicky_molokh]

GMing twenty minutes into the future? Throw a curveball during a shootout between people on different sides of a jewelry shop glass.

[dcarson]

A Japanese city has a ninja shortage. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2...ninja-shortage

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by dcarson

A Japanese city has a ninja shortage. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2...ninja-shortage

Using Ninjas to fight depopulation? I thought their purpose was kind of, you know, to cause it.

[William]

In high tech news, the complete connectome of the brain of the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, has been mapped.

Could this be used to simulate a fly brain? Potentially -- this is a map, though, and we still need some information concerning the biochemical reactions between each of the neurons involved.

You're welcome to download the data if you have 12 terabytes of storage available to play around with fly neurons.

Puts a little perspective on how much space would be needed to image a human brain, which has about a million times this number of neurons.

[William]

I just got the August/September 2018 issue of Focus, the magazine of the Mathematical Association of America.

One of the articles is titled "Building Pythonic Pyramids in Nigeria" and that's all I'm going to tell you about that.

[Luke Bunyip]

Originally Posted by William

I just got the August/September 2018 issue of Focus, the magazine of the Mathematical Association of America.

One of the articles is titled "Building Pythonic Pyramids in Nigeria" and that's all I'm going to tell you about that.

Fhtagn! Ai! Ai! Ai!

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by William

"Building Pythonic Pyramids in Nigeria"

Clearly the most appropriate locale to pile up all the unwanted scam emails.