Today I learned +

[overgeeked]

Today I learned...

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

TIL that this existed:

The Pyrophone, also known as the "fire organ" or "fire-explosion organ," is an instrument from the 19th century. It was invented by Georges Frédéric Eugène Kastner, a French physicist and musician, in the mid-1800s. The Pyrophone produces sound by using flames within glass tubes or metal pipes. The heat from the flames causes the air inside the tubes to vibrate, creating musical notes. The intensity and frequency of the sound can be altered by adjusting the size and intensity of the flames.

I’ve seen a few modern ones, but not the original.

It occurs to me, you could assemble an “elemental” ensemble with a pyrophone, a lithophone, a cristal baschet or glass armonica, and any of the myriad wind or bellows instruments. “Earth Wind Fire & Water” as it were.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Today I learned...

Yup!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Today I learned...

BTW, there’s a bunch of videos of bands covering death & black metal songs as surf instrumentals under the conceit of them being “Trve Kvlt Surf” music from the 1960s. Here’s some examples:

 

[HaroldTheHobbit]

Don't let your ducks get indoors when you have fed them too much lettuce, they poop frequently and liquidly and it's really hard to clean your carpets from it.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Don't let your ducks get indoors when you have fed them too much lettuce, they poop frequently and liquidly and it's really hard to clean your carpets from it.

Hope you’re not speaking from personal experience.

 

[Alzrius]

Today (well, yesterday) I learned that some people think that excessive harshness and severity can't be handed out in an impartial and consistent manner, the wrongness of which I'd have thought would have been obvious from even a casual review of history or observing much of the world today, but here we are.

 

[HaroldTheHobbit]

Hope you’re not speaking from personal experience.

I do, we are summer parents for three male ducks. They are incredibly charming, social and fun, but they sure love doing no 2. So they roam our pond and spacey garden where they live, but are currently banned from entering our house.

 

[trappedslider]

TIL: That Ohio is the 2nd youngest state.
7 Aug 1953: Ohio is finally admitted to the Union as President Eisenhower signs a bill to retroactively ratify the state constitution. Congress failed to ratify the state constitution when it passed legislation to admit Ohio to the Union in 1803.

Dang it.. we had a chance to kick ohio out....

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

Weird thing I only realized during a discussion of dramatic titles in pulp fiction: The only verb in any of Robert E. Howard's Conan titles appears in "A Witch Shall Be Born" - lots of nouns and adjectives, no adverbs and almost no verbs.

So if you're going to do a pastiche of REH in general or Conan in particular, following that pattern will make your story feel just that little bit more authentic. "Hewing Heads In Zamora" is not a faithful Conan title.

To be fair, verbs in titles are actually fairly uncommon in general, but REH is somewhat unusually prone to avoiding them.