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A friend of a friend building an airplane?

How about a flying saucer? https://enjoyer.com/an-alien-cult-built-a-spaceship-in-a-mic...

I first learned about this from a friend in Detroit, MI, who told me about it when he learned my mom grew up in that village. When I asked HER about it, she knew exactly who/what we were talking about. It was an interesting conversation.

Needless to say, this one remains firmly in the "started" category, but looks like it got closer to "finished" than one might likely expect.


Achievement Unlocked: Invent Skynet


Please, please, PLEASE tell us that stands for Peanut Butter and Jelly!

More seriously, how DID you wind up with those call letters? Do applicants get some say in the selection, or is it just whatever they give you?


I'll do you one better.

The first item returned by a search on "couch" is ABC-00927226, which "features a rectangular form resembling a couch, characterized by a solid, box-like structure." In other words: it's a box.

HOWEVER: We KNOW it's a COUCH, because: "One side prominently displays the word "COUCH" vertically, rendered in a bold, modern font."

It's BOLD! It's MODERN! It MUST be a "COUCH!"


In three decades of surfing the web, I've never encountered more than a couple of those error messages. This set of pictures makes me wish I'd run into them more often.


Ah, The Design of Everyday Things is a wonderful book, and the source of one of my favorite epithets:

It probably won an award.


The one I love is Microsoft's project manager, MS...

...wait for it...

...Project.

Was charged with managing a department-wide installation about fifteen years back, now. You want to have fun looking for relevant docs, try a search on "Microsoft Project". Good times!

I think the one exception to Microsoft's generic naming convention is Excel. Visio probably qualifies, too, but they bought that from someone else.

Oh, and I guess PowerPoint, too.


No kidding!

The FIRST thing that came to mind when I read that headline was Hofstadter's Contracrostapunctus in THAT book!

Check it out! Read it! And if you DON'T find the WHOLE hidden message, read it again, because it's spelled out RIGHT in the dialog!

Happy hunting!


Quite right.

An article referring to:

{e ∈ GEB|HN: e := article referring to GEB}

... might be considered rather self referential (especially if I have got my rather dodgy notation right). Note how I leave out several important definitions and leave them to your imagination. I will resort to hand-waving as required.

Hmmm: FIRST, THAT, DON'T, WHOLE, RIGHT. I speak en_GB you monster!


This reminds me SO much of Atari's "Graduate Computer" attachment for the 2600.

Unfortunately, I can't find an accessible link from where I am right now. Maybe when I get back home...



Thank you for stepping in, Evan!

My original post was from work, and when I tried to find a reference, I was blocked from following any links! Think they recently instituted a policy...

So I finally do the lookup from home, and what do I find at the bottom of the first page, but a link to YOUR REPLY!

We're Google famous!


I first read about this back in the 1980s, in an issue of Science Digest. Couldn't find a link or reference on short notice, but here's something from the American Academy of Ophthalmology that explains the phenomenon, with an experiment to see the blood vessels in your eye:

https://www.aao.org/eye-health/tips-prevention/experiment-se...

Apparently, the brain tends to ignore visual stimuli that don't change over a short period of time, which allows you see "around" the blood vessels passing through the middle of your eye. By closing your eye, and moving a penlight around against your eyelid, you can make the vessels cast a shifting shadow on your retina that makes them visible.

The reason you usually see everything out in front of you is that various actions cause your eye to shift about just a little, just enough to cause the image on your retina to shift about enough for the brain to notice.


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