Facts and Trivia

Anonymous wrote:

When was the Trump candle made? Because Biden’s was made when he was Obama’s VP, so he’d be the first POTUS to have a scented candle with his name before being President. Even if the Trump one was made during his 2016 campaign, Biden would still be the first to have one before his campaign that got him elected POTUS. The only way this could not be true is if there was a Trump candle from his businessman days or as a tie-in to The Apprentice.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 6 months ago by Dave.

Well you’re moving the goalposts now aren’t you.

You said Biden was the first US president to have a scented candle named after him available for sale. This was a

You mean, like, an alternative truth?

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Christian

I love this thread, it’s a huge success on every level.

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njerry, Todd, DavidM, Bruce, Dave

garjones wrote:

We’ll have to go a bit safer with the facts here, that’s the lesson to be learnt.

Fact: The royal family are secretly lizards.

 

That’s outrageous – it’s not a secret.

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njerry

Anders, thank you for finally admitting what many of us have secretly suspected for decades years a few days.

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Todd

DavidM wrote:

garjones wrote:

We’ll have to go a bit safer with the facts here, that’s the lesson to be learnt.

Fact: The royal family are secretly lizards.

 

This is obviously not true, because the corgis wouldn’t stand for being led round by lizards.  Dogs win over conspiracy theory every time.

Fact: Lizard Corgis

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DavidM, Bruce

Fake news!

The Oxford English Dictionary records the first use of the phrase in 1698 in A Discourse of Walking by Faith by John Norris, decades before Nelson was even born.

Trivia literally means “three roads”.

Dave wrote:

But in fairness to him, that gun was loaded.

I forgot it comes up in Shaun (of which I’m not a fan.) I just remember it from the commentary on the Spaced DVDs (of which I am a fan.)

Anonymous wrote:

What about lizard dogs, can they look up?

That’s how you can tell it’s a lizard-dog. So if your dog looks up…

Steve Sensible wrote:

Dave wrote:

But in fairness to him, that gun was loaded.

I forgot it comes up in Shaun (of which I’m not a fan.) I just remember it from the commentary on the Spaced DVDs (of which I am a fan.)

It’s like when “fried gold” became more widely known.

I can look up. I choose to look down on you.

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Todd

Or maybe…

trivial (adj.)
“ordinary” (1580s); “insignificant, trifling” (1590s), from Latin trivialis “common, commonplace, vulgar,” literally “of or belonging to the crossroads,” from trivium “place where three roads meet,” in transferred use, “an open place, a public place,” from tri- “three” (see three) + via “road” (see via). The sense connection is “public,” hence “common, commonplace.”

The earliest use of the word in English was early 15c., a separate borrowing in the academic sense “of the trivium” (the first three liberal arts — grammar, rhetoric, and logic); from Medieval Latin use of trivialis in the sense “of the first three liberal arts,” from trivium, neuter of the Latin adjective trivius “of three roads, of the crossroads.” Related: Trivially. For sense evolution to “pertaining to useless information,” see trivia.

And then…

“trivialities, bits of information of little consequence,” by 1932, from the title of a popular book by U.S.-born British aphorist Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946) first published in 1902 but popularized in 1918 (with “More Trivia” following in 1921 and a collected edition including both in 1933), containing short essays often tied to observation of small things and commonplace moments. Trivia is Latin, plural of trivium “place where three roads meet;” in transferred use, “an open place, a public place.” The adjectival form of this, trivialis, meant “public,” hence “common, commonplace” (see trivial).

The Romans also had trivius dea, the “goddess of three ways,” another name for Hecate, perhaps originally in her triple aspect (Selene/Diana/Proserpine), but also as the especial divinity of crossroads (Virgil has “Nocturnisque hecate triviis ululata per urbes”). John Gay took this arbitrarily as the name of a goddess of streets and roads for his mock Georgic “Trivia: Or, the Art of Walking the Streets of London” (1716); Smith writes in his autobiography that he got the title from Gay.

Huh. Feels like I’ve learned something today.

Steve Sensible wrote:

White men can’t jump.

Outrageous.

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Todd

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5260564/
Effects of ethnicity on the relationship between vertical jump and maximal power on a cycle ergometer

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DavidM, Todd

Anonymous wrote:

Steve Sensible wrote:

They made a WHOLE MOVIE about it, Dave!

Uh, no. Dave is about a president-look-a-like stepping into the role of the actual president for corruption purposes republican reasons. It doesn’t feature much jumping but it’s pretty fun, Kevin Kline, Frank Langella and Sigourney Weaver.

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Rocket

Fact:

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njerry, Todd

Anonymous wrote:

Fact:

That is impossible. I know that that’s true because it said “FACT” in front of Arjan’s statement.

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DavidM

Anonymous wrote:

FACT: writing FACT before some statement makes it impossible to be wrong.

FACT: the above statement is not true.

This is not a pipe:

FACT: The MCU movie franchise, the #1 financial success, has grossed more than double the money of the #2 franchise, Star Wars. This holds true for domestic and worldwide grosses.

FACT: The four Avengers films alone rank #4 in the domestic and worldwide list of successful franchises, behind MCU, Star Wars, and the Harry Potter/Fantastic Beasts films.

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DavidM

FACT: The 10 biggest movies of 2019 included four films about comic book characters, two remakes of Disney cartoons, two Disney sequels, a Star Wars film and a sequel to a reboot of Jumanji.

FACT: the top 28 films of 2019 were either sequels, reboots, adaptations of existing work or dramatisations of well-known historical events.

I wonder what #29 was?

Christian wrote:

So, I think this is another fact that is, uh, not a fact?

Dammit

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Christian

Well, I did include that it was an adaptation of an existing character. But I don’t think you can equate that with a direct adaptation of a specific piece of work. I’d see none of the Marvel movies as adaptations, really. Civil War comes closes, but even there, it only takes hints from a particular book.

I suppose for me, the difference is in the importance of the original work. “Preacher” is an adaptation and it adapts the book it is based on into a new form, preserving the characters and their relationships as well as most of the essential story beats. So there is an original work, and that is adapted. I don’t see that in the Marvel movies.

Put in a different way, would you call Superman: Red Son an original work? Or Dark Knight Returns? Using pre-existing characters does not, to my mind, exclude originality per se, even if on a sliding scale it kinda means that a story has to be less original than one using its own newly created characters.

I also think the situation is confused by two different meanings to the word “original” – one as in, the work that something else is an adaptation of, and the other as the opposite of derivative. “Original” can be used to mean very different things as far as that is concerned. An adaptation of a work can be incredibly original and still completely faithful to the original. And an original work can be incredibly derivative and unoriginal.

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Dave

Christian wrote:

Hm. Also, looking at a randomly found list, if by “top” we mean highest-grossing, it seems there’s “Us” in there and “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” (Okay, you could call that a “dramatisation of historical events”, but you would be wrong) and “Knives Out”.

Also, who cares? That definition is worded to suggest ‘nobody has any new ideas’ but is defined so broadly it would include most of the greatest films ever. In fact if you go back through 60 years of best picture winners and you rule out sequels, adaptations and anything vaguely based on historical events you only get.

1960 – The Apartment

1977 – Annie Hall

1988  – Rain Man

1992 – Unforgiven

1999 – American Beauty

2005 – Crash

2011 – The Artist

2014 – Birdman

2018 – The Shape of Water

2020 – Parasite

So I say thank heaven that in recent years Hollywood is using original new ideas instead of the rip offs of the past 😉

All the derivative stuff like Patton, The Godfather, Midnight Cowboy, Ghandi etc I had to remove.!

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Rocket, Christian, Todd, DavidM

DavidM wrote:

FACT: The mass of the Earth is 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg.

How did they weigh it? It had to be a big-ass scale!!

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Todd

DavidM wrote:

You can reproduce all three of their experiments yourself pretty easily if you want to verify the fact

That’s what flat earthers say, and they always get the wrong result! Check mate, sCiEnCe!

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Todd

DavidM wrote:

To weigh the Earth, you need to know three things: the radius of the Earth (determined by Eratosthenes about 200 BC) the acceleration due to Earth’s gravity (determined by Galileo in the 17th century) and the universal gravitational constant (determined by Cavendish (I think) at the end of the 19th century).

You can reproduce all three of their experiments yourself pretty easily if you want to verify the fact

Or you could count every boulder, rock and pebble that covers the planet, which would give you the weight of the planet in stones, then multiply by 14 to get the weight in pounds.

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garjones, DavidM, Todd

Are we fat-shaming the earth now?

Anonymous wrote:

Are we fat-shaming the earth now?

The Earth is not fat.
.
.
It’s just big-boned.

Elephants are religious.

They bury their dead with tributes like flowers, and they’re aware of the cycles of celestial bodies, engaging in ritual bathing when the moon is full and waving branches at the waxing moon.

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Rocket, Todd

Steve Sensible wrote:

Elephants are religious.

They bury their dead with tributes like flowers, and they’re aware of the cycles of celestial bodies, engaging in ritual bathing when the moon is full and waving branches at the waxing moon.

That is pretty amazing.

Sean Robinson wrote:

When seawater freezes, however, the ice contains very little salt because only the water part freezes. It can be melted down to use as drinking water.

You get a similar effect when whisky freezes. I will leave it as an exercise for the student to determine what is left after you throw the ice away.

This is a simple process that can be carried out in your own domestic freezer…