Weirdness: Round three

[Ellen Kuhfeld]

It's hard to prove a negative, though strong enough laughter will sometimes make it go away. I do come from Minnesota, land of the Kensington Runestone, which provokes all kinds of arguments. But nobody laughs.

[Spica75]

It's hard to prove a negative, though strong enough laughter will sometimes make it go away. I do come from Minnesota, land of the Kensington Runestone, which provokes all kinds of arguments. But nobody laughs.

Impossible to prove a negative much of the time yeah, but the issue is that what little supporting evidence isn't being looked at seriously and confirmed or dismissed, it is simply being arbitrarily dismissed on the basis of "it can't be true, ergo the evidence can't be real either".

In regards to the Kensington runestone, something that is nearly always overlooked is the fact that runes were actually in common use in the Nordic countries up to sometime in the 19th century, and somehow, the official history has mostly missed that and it's only become aknowledged ridiculously recently.
It wasn't considered "proper reading and writing" apparently(only the "real and proper" latin alphabet counted because that's what the bible was written in), so that it continued to be in common use among the common people wasn't seen as important or interesting at all.

So, all that "illiteracy" that was supposedly overcome with the coming of "real" education, wasn't actually true, rather it was a matter of one kind of writing replacing another. Before that, it appears to have been a very common utility for passing messages and making notes that were never supposed to be permanent like books, and as such, was written on wood, bark, wax or clay and then either reused or simply used for kindling.

Meaning that it could certainly be both a hoax or even something unintentional, like someone practising the more formal way of putting down text more permanently.
At the same time, while the dismissals are potentially valid, they are also more or less presumtuous and based more on the assumption of "this cannot be true" than objective analysis.

On the one hand, i consider it more likely to not be authentic, but OTOH, i wouldn't be even the slightest surprised if it turned out to be real.

[Ellen Kuhfeld]

... In regards to the Kensington runestone, something that is nearly always overlooked is the fact that runes were actually in common use in the Nordic countries up to sometime in the 19th century, and somehow, the official history has mostly missed that and it's only become aknowledged ridiculously recently.

It wasn't considered "proper reading and writing" apparently(only the "real and proper" latin alphabet counted because that's what the bible was written in), so that it continued to be in common use among the common people wasn't seen as important or interesting at all.

So, all that "illiteracy" that was supposedly overcome with the coming of "real" education, wasn't actually true, rather it was a matter of one kind of writing replacing another. Before that, it appears to have been a very common utility for passing messages and making notes that were never supposed to be permanent like books, and as such, was written on wood, bark, wax or clay and then either reused or simply used for kindling.

It could be worse. The stone might have been inscribed in Ogham.

On the one hand, i consider it more likely to not be authentic, but OTOH, i wouldn't be even the slightest surprised if it turned out to be real.

That's my feeling too.

[Té Rowan]

IIRC, this was the first Firefox I tried out. IMAO, it was a revolution back then. Felt better to me than IE did.

I recall I had installed a TrueType font that showed later to have quite a few bugs in it. All I knew then was that whenever Firefox (up to version 2, as I recall) was to render text with it, the browser crashed and terminated. Bloody annoying. Later, I compiled and installed Fontforge (a batch-only version) on the Linux box, and managed to fix the bugs in the font. Oddly, Windows's own renderer did not fail.

I kind of miss the Spectrum48-like start-up screen I had, which I found here: https://www.seasip.info/ZX/screens.html.

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The screen made use of Windows 95/98's animation feature which made the blue/yellow border flicker in true "tape loading bars" style just about every ZX Spectrum 16/48/128 owner remembers.

[Spica75]

The screen made use of Windows 95/98's animation feature which made the blue/yellow border flicker in true "tape loading bars" style just about every ZX Spectrum 16/48/128 owner remembers.

*lol*

Nice feature.

Similar/same on Commodore Vic 20/64/128.
https://youtu.be/WrN8717Vo0M?t=631

[Té Rowan]

http://www.tbf-austria.org/hoerfunk.html

I can't remember if I have put this link on before, but here is a rare piece of music named "Internationaler Tonjägermarsch". With that name, I would guess it was dedicated to the amateur sound recordist. Should be an OK addition to someone's Fifties radio playlist.

Incidentally, the site is about amateur sound recordists.

[Té Rowan]

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5554780/1/Poison-Pen — The Quibbler gets a new columnist, one who does ask questions of the world. Contains a Greater-Good-obsessed Dumbledore, Fudge as HWTHCDE (He Who Thinks He Can Do Everything), and QEII off-stage as SWMBO (She Who Must Be Obeyed).

[Ellen Kuhfeld]

I've read Poison Pen, and it was rather good, but this is, after all, the Temple of Ranma's Sailor Senshi Seifuku. Says so right above. So if you are going to plug Harry Potter, how's about Harry Potter, Ranma, and the Sailor Moon crew? And Heather Snape. https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5353683/1/

[Té Rowan]

Already been done, both The Girl Who Loved and its sequel, Violence Inherent in the System.

[Ellen Kuhfeld]

Yes, that was the link to The Girl Who Loved. By the time they get to the end, people should know if they wanted Violence Inherent In The System. So how about some real weirdness: Harry Potter raised by the Addams family. A whole series of it, with the last sadly unfinished. Go to the author's page for the rest.

[Spica75]

I've read Poison Pen, and it was rather good, but this is, after all, the Temple of Ranma's Sailor Senshi Seifuku. Says so right above. So if you are going to plug Harry Potter, how's about Harry Potter, Ranma, and the Sailor Moon crew? And Heather Snape. https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5353683/1/

Ohh, that's a good one yeah. And this made me realise i didn't have it properly marked!

[Té Rowan]

https://web.archive.org/web/20010813181003/http://rkb.home.cern.ch/rkb/PH14pp/node1.html — Particle Detector Briefbook
https://web.archive.org/web/20011031015953/http://rkb.home.cern.ch/rkb/AN16pp/node1.html — Data Analysis Briefbook
Those that do not have these two works on paper can still find the prototypes through the above links. They are pretty much what it says on the label: A collection of brief snippets on the titular subjects.

As far as I can tell, both are intact.

[Té Rowan]

Blue/yellow tablecloth

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Red/white/blue tablecloth

cloth.png (222 Bytes) Viewed 3680 times

Why someone would want this kind of garish, I don't know, but here it is anyway. Utterly and royally free to everybody.

[Té Rowan]

http://www.ganssle.com/ — Jack Ganssle.
This guy does a lot of embedded-computer work. He has also written a lot about it.

https://www.efunda.com/home.cfm — Engineering Fundamentals.
Looks like a good resource if one wants to design/engineer something.

http://www.sosmath.com/ — S.O.S. Mathematics.
For that emergency dose of WD-40 for your rusting mathematics.

[Té Rowan]

http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/2356
Anyone in need of ten thousand e-mail buttons?