You Learn Something New Every Day

[Hugh Akston]

FMF or MFM?

[Dangerman]

It was MFWillemDafoe.

[Hugh Akston]

Talk about a devil's triangle.

[Jennifer]

There is a new or new-ish public park in Atlanta named in honor of Kathryn Johnston. (She was the elderly black lady murdered by cops who broke into her house on a no-knock warrant, then planted drugs on her dead body to try justifying their actions. The park is not far from the house where she lived.)

[Jennifer]

I'd never been entirely sure of the distinction between "shirt" and "blouse" -- I had the idea "a blouse is a type of shirt, but on the 'nicer' or 'fancier' side," and for many of my own top-half garments I might use either word to refer to them -- say, a certain solid-color button-front top might be a "shirt" when I wear it with jeans, but a "blouse" with "good pants" and a blazer or suit jacket -- but there are other, considerably more casual top-half garments which I always referred to as "shirts," including T-shirts and pretty much anything that's pullover rather than button-on.

Finally, I thought to look up the official distinction: the "blouses are fancier than shirts" idea was on the right track, but didn't go all the way to the station. The original difference between a shirt and a blouse was, shirts had pockets but blouses did not (because "pockets" go on practical workaday gear). Which means at least some of the tops I'd previously thought of as "blouses" are actually shirts, regardless of how nice they otherwise are ... and also, every "T-shirt" I own is actually a T-blouse. Jeff has a lot of concert blouses from his younger days; I have only the one Anathema concert blouse, plus a few science-fiction promotional blouses I got from a friend who worked for the SyFy channel.

[Andrew]

This post by dbcooper made me look up who Terry Melcher was:

Guys like Terry Melcher, who would fuck Candice Bergen then go up to Spahn Ranch to get VD from an unbathed Manson girl, were like the heterosexual version of bug chasers

This caused me to learn that the last mega-hit for the remains of the Beach Boys, "Kokomo", was originally written by John Phillips and Scott McKenzie and then rewritten by Melcher and Mike Love. There's something darkly appropriate about that much early 60s songwriting talent producing that song in the late 80s.

[Aresen]

There is a new or new-ish public park in Atlanta named in honor of Kathryn Johnston. (She was the elderly black lady murdered by cops who broke into her house on a no-knock warrant, then planted drugs on her dead body to try justifying their actions. The park is not far from the house where she lived.)

I would like to think that it contains one of those 'public garden' things where people can go to grow their own weed.

[JD]

Everybody knows about the Y2K bug, and some geeks know about the Y2038 issue or the GPS Week Rollover issue, but a lesser-known timekeeping bug crops up when the Japanese imperial era changes:

The Japanese calendar has Japanese era names that changes with the reign of the Japanese emperor. Since most of the modern age of computing has occurred in the Heisei era, much of the software developed in this era only has support for era names during the Heisei era.

A new era name was expected with the forthcoming 2019 Japanese imperial transition. However, since the change of eras is infrequent, most software has not been tested to ensure that it will behave correctly with an additional era.

[Hugh Akston]

The Lost History of L.A.’s Women-Only Hollywood Studio Club

Morgan’s multiarched structure, designed in the Italian Renaissance Revival style, opened to much fanfare in 1926. The first floor featured a spacious lobby, writing rooms, a library, a large dining area, and a stage. The two upper stories consisted of single, double, and triple rooms to house 100 women—each paying 10 to 15 dollars a week for lodging and two meals a day. They were indirectly inspired by Hollywood luminaries such as Gloria Swanson, Jackie Coogan, and Frances Marion, whose names appeared on small brass plaques above the bedroom doors. (Each had donated $1,000 to the club. Norma Talmadge had pitched in $5,000.) The rules of the house were simple: You had to be working or seeking work in show business, be between 18 and 35 years old, and not stay longer than three years. Men were prohibited above the first floor.

To run the HSC, the Y hired the college-educated Marjorie Williams to supervise an all-female administrative staff. There were daily classes, a weekly newsletter, and a bulletin board posting job openings and perks such as free tickets to events. Ayn Rand, then an aspiring writer, arrived from Chicago soon after the new building opened. Cast as an extra in DeMille’s The King of Kings, she was considered so destitute that when a donor offered $50 for the neediest resident, Williams chose Rand to receive it. The story goes that she spent it all on black lingerie and then became one of the first (but far from the last) HSC residents to depart for marriage.

[Warren]

The Lost History of L.A.’s Women-Only Hollywood Studio Club

Morgan’s multiarched structure, designed in the Italian Renaissance Revival style, opened to much fanfare in 1926. The first floor featured a spacious lobby, writing rooms, a library, a large dining area, and a stage. The two upper stories consisted of single, double, and triple rooms to house 100 women—each paying 10 to 15 dollars a week for lodging and two meals a day. They were indirectly inspired by Hollywood luminaries such as Gloria Swanson, Jackie Coogan, and Frances Marion, whose names appeared on small brass plaques above the bedroom doors. (Each had donated $1,000 to the club. Norma Talmadge had pitched in $5,000.) The rules of the house were simple: You had to be working or seeking work in show business, be between 18 and 35 years old, and not stay longer than three years. Men were prohibited above the first floor.

To run the HSC, the Y hired the college-educated Marjorie Williams to supervise an all-female administrative staff. There were daily classes, a weekly newsletter, and a bulletin board posting job openings and perks such as free tickets to events. Ayn Rand, then an aspiring writer, arrived from Chicago soon after the new building opened. Cast as an extra in DeMille’s The King of Kings, she was considered so destitute that when a donor offered $50 for the neediest resident, Williams chose Rand to receive it. The story goes that she spent it all on black lingerie and then became one of the first (but far from the last) HSC residents to depart for marriage.

This made me smile

[JD]

You know how sometimes people say something like, "Instead of having a huge destructive war that kills a ton of people, why don't the two sides just each nominate champions to fight it out?" Something very similar to that actually happened: The Battle of the 300 Champions

546 BC: Argos and Sparta are fighting. They agree to each send 300 champions to the field of battle to fight to the bitter end and the last side remaining gets to claim victory. At nightfall, the only people left standing are two Argives, so they run home yelling that Argos is the winner. Oops! They overlooked a single wounded Spartan, who now declares victory for Sparta since he's the last man left on the field. Argos and Sparta end up fighting it out conventionally anyway.

[Warren]

What a completely unforeseeable outcome. And by unforeseeable I mean predictable.

[Kolohe]

Hey, kids, remember this one?



Well, guess what:

Todd in the Shadows One hit wonderland iirc listed all the samples Dee Lite used in this single.

[Warren]

Hey, kids, remember this one?

YOUTUBE

Well, guess what:

YOUTUBE

Todd in the Shadows One hit wonderland iirc listed all the samples Dee Lite used in this single.

NOPE. He failed to notice any sampling at all. But he did give us this:

I thought groove was in the butt. But here's this group upending everything I thought I knew about groove.

[Kolohe]

The whole era was a golden age for the Butt Sciences.

[Eric the .5b]

I thought groove was in the butt. But here's this group upending everything I thought I knew about groove.

You have to free your mind for your ass to follow, though. It's complicated.

[Warren]

I thought groove was in the butt. But here's this group upending everything I thought I knew about groove.

You have to free your mind for your ass to follow, though. It's complicated.

It really is.

Let this groove set in your shoes

[Eric the .5b]

I thought groove was in the butt. But here's this group upending everything I thought I knew about groove.

You have to free your mind for your ass to follow, though. It's complicated.

It really is.

Let this groove set in your shoes

With the complication that guilty feet have got no rhythm.

[JD]

The Seattle Windshield Pitting Epidemic of 1954: starting in Bellingham, WA, people began reporting that their windshields were pitted. Police figured it might be vandals with BB guns. Then it spread to Seattle, then other areas, clearly too large an area to be the work any gang of vandals. People started speculating: was it fallout from nuclear testing over the Pacific? the Navy's new million-watt radio transmitter? sand fleas? Some people even said they saw bubbles and pits form right before their eyes.

In the end, the police declared that it was "5 per cent hoodlum-ism, and 95 per cent public hysteria", and the "epidemic" ended.

[Warren]

March 12, 1928, at 11:57pm the St. Francis Dam gave way. Over 400 people died in the ensuing flood waters.
It was the biggest man made disaster of the 20th century. It tarnished the reputation and haunted project manager and chief engineer William Mulholland. The subsequent investigation produced conflicting theories as to the the cause. A subject still debated. The most accepted theory is that the dam abutted an ancient landslide and not bedrock. Something impossible for almost any geologists of the 1920s to detect. The failure of the St. Francis dam also gave rise to new safety regulations.

[D.A. Ridgely]

March 12, 1928, at 11:57pm the St. Francis Dam gave way. Over 400 people died in the ensuing flood waters.
It was the biggest man made disaster of the 20th century. It tarnished the reputation and haunted project manager and chief engineer William Mulholland. The subsequent investigation produced conflicting theories as to the the cause. A subject still debated. The most accepted theory is that the dam abutted an ancient landslide and not bedrock. Something impossible for almost any geologists of the 1920s to detect. The failure of the St. Francis dam also gave rise to new safety regulations.

Not to mention Chinatown.

[Aresen]

March 12, 1928, at 11:57pm the St. Francis Dam gave way. Over 400 people died in the ensuing flood waters.
It was the biggest man made disaster of the 20th century.

Captain Edward Smith would disagree with you. (There are probably others as well, but that's the one that first comes to mind.)

[D.A. Ridgely]

The biggest man-made disaster of 20th century America was Donald Trump.

[Warren]

March 12, 1928, at 11:57pm the St. Francis Dam gave way. Over 400 people died in the ensuing flood waters.
It was the biggest man made disaster of the 20th century.

Captain Edward Smith would disagree with you. (There are probably others as well, but that's the one that first comes to mind.)

Yeah, I suppose that infamous designation only works with a narrow definition of "disaster". Or perhaps the iceberg didn't count as "man made".

[Highway]

Probably better to call it a civil engineering disaster.

The time of failure must have been amazingly short given the height of the breach flow, although I wish the article had given an estimate of the flow rate, not just a height.

Currently I'm working on the delegation of "small pond" review authority in our state, but large dams are not involved in that (thank goodness). Ours are only hazard class 'a' dams, failure of which is unlikely to result in loss of life or property damage. But even with that, the scrutiny and oversight of all dams is being increased due to the catastrophic nature of their failure.