Real-Life Weirdness

[WingedKagouti]

Originally Posted by thorr-kan

Russian scientist claims team battled creature under Antarctic ice

It's a fictional piece from 2012:
https://imgur.com/gallery/K4wXz

[Dr. Beckenstein]

It is possible now to pick a lock by the sound the key makes when you insert it.

https://www.sciencealert.com/researc...being-inserted

This is for your heist-games - as long as the game world not uses electronic locks.

Ideas: - a computer programmer vanished. Turns out he wrote a program that can turn sound from a lock into a 3-d printer program that produces a fitting key. Now who has kidnapped him? An international ring of cat burglars? An intelligence agency? Or has he gone rough, planning to empty the houses of the rich and powerful?

- Somehow, the pc stumble upon a flash drive with sound file. Less than a second long, only the noises of metal on metal. Clearly, it is from a key inserted into a lock. But from which lock? And why are armed goons after the stick?

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by thorr-kan

Russian scientist claims team battled creature under Antarctic ice

The link has an error, and just takes you to the Yahoo front page.

But that's not all. I searched for that story ("russian scientist" is good enough, and also shows you what else those scientists have been up to), and the Yahoo link the Yahoo engine itself gave me also reports that the page is missing.

Obviously a hasty attempt to suppress the story, before the cleaners have properly finished their work.

[Johnny1A.2]

I don't know if they counts as precisely 'weird', but it's definitely interesting, and I could easily imagine throwing animals doing this at a PC party and letting them protest that it's impossible, then showing them this...

Ibex Climb Sheer Dam for Salt

[thorr-kan]

Exploring History with the National Archives Special Media Division

https://unwritten-record.blogs.archives.gov/

[thorr-kan]

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

I don't know if they counts as precisely 'weird', but it's definitely interesting, and I could easily imagine throwing animals doing this at a PC party and letting them protest that it's impossible, then showing them this...

Ibex Climb Sheer Dam for Salt

OK, that was pretty cool. And terrifying. But cool.

[Dr. Beckenstein]

They are not just cool, they can save lives!


A British Rescue Service tests a jet suit in the mountains.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-54331994



Maybe we should start a thread just for jet packs?

[L.J.Steele]

Genuine WWII plan to fight Japan with radioactive foxes.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/histo...xes-180975932/

This has player-character plan writ all over it.

[William]

The Kyprianos Database of Ancient Ritual Texts looks like another nice source for authentic magic and ritual (which could be a bit conflated in the religion of the day) material: Coptic, Greek, and Demotic papyri, and I'm told future updates will include more Egyptian stuff, lead tablet material (which, if I recall correctly, are usually curses), and "medical alchemical, and astrological texts."

Bon appetit!

[Anders]

New mathematical model proves that time travel happen without paradoxes.

I still think the Hawking paradox is the best reply to this. (This is the equivalent of the Fermi paradox's "where are all the aliens?"). There does not seem to be an overabundance of time travelers, although I suppose they could all have moved to California.

Still, if I was interested in a time travel campaign I would probably think about the ramifications of this work.