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Saved by @Mollyycolllinss

I was todays years old when I learned that Final Fantasy VII's Midgar Zolom is an exceptionally badly translated reference to Jörmungandr, the world serpent from Norse mythology.

 The other name for Jörmungandr is Miðgarðsormr, which got rendered into katakana as ミドガルズオルム, or "Midogaruzuorumu".
But when it was translated back into English, the translator didn't get the reference.
So they split that into the city name Midgar and the rest as... "Zolom".
Which is not a word.
It was supposed to be a bit of a pun in Japanese. Midgar, the big city in FF7, is named after Midgard, the Old Norse name for the Earth (as opposed to the other realms of the Nine Worlds)
so obviously a big snake living near the city of Midgar would be the Miðgarðsormr, since that basically translate as "Midgard Serpent"
so "Migar Zolom" is the same kind of "translator ran out of coffee" moment that gave us "Litagano Motscoud" in the Cave Story translation
To explain that one: Cave Story's original title is Dōkutsu Monogatari. At one point in the game you're given a password, which is just the name of the game written backwards in kana
Which comes out something like "ritaganomo tsukuudo".
The translator didn't realize it was the name backwards...
So they tried to translate or at least transliterate it, and ended up with "Litagano Motscoud"
The Nicalis port uses "yrotS evaC"
also, the optional location of the crashed Gelnika?

Gelnika is supposed to be "Guernica", as in the Spanish town bombed by the Nazis.
the remake hasn't gotten to the Gelnika yet, but there's a character who mentions the "Relnikha", so apparently the name is continuing to drift.
This kind of thing is why Aerith/Aeris name changed, but in the other direction: She's supposed to be named by transliterating "Earth" into katakana, resulting in "Earisu".
That then got translated back into english as "Aeris", later corrected to be closer to "earth"
Also the worst naming pun is almost in plain sight:
Barret, the guy with the machine gun arm, is named "Bullet"

Both the given name "Barret" and the projectile are "バレット" in Japanese.
also, Don Corneo's japanese name is ドン・コルネオ, or "Don Koruneo". "Koruneo" is pretty close to how you'd transliterate "Corleone"...
But yeah. it seems the main way characters were named in FF7 was:
1. They came up with a clever multilingual pun or reference
2. They didn't explain it to the translators
the worst one in FF7 is probably the item called a "Vagyrisk Claw"
which drops from an enemy called the "Bagrisk".
BOTH OF THOSE ARE SUPPOSED TO BE BASILISK

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foone
foone
@Foone
It is 2018 and this error message is a mistake from 1974.
This limitation, which is still found in the very latest Windows 10, dates back to BEFORE STAR WARS. This bug is as old as Watergate.


When this was developed, nothing had UPC codes yet because they'd just been invented.
Back when this mistake was made, There was only one Phone Company, because they hadn't been broken up yet. Ted Bundy was still on the loose. Babe Ruth's home run record was about to fall.

When this bug was developed, Wheel of Fortune hadn't yet aired. No one had seen Rocky Horror. Steven Spielberg was still a little-known directory of TV films and one box-office disappointment. SNL hadn't aired yet. The Edmund Fitzgerald was still hauling iron ore.

WHEN THIS STUPID MISFEATURE WAS INVENTED, THE GODFATHER PART II HAD JUST OPENED IN THEATERS.

So, why does this happen? So Unix (which was only 5 years old at this point) had the good idea of "everything is a file" which mean you could do things like write to sockets, pipes, the console, etc with the same commands and instructions.
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foone
foone
@Foone
So I was talking to @gewt about Job: A Comedy of Justice and I came up with a theory that I think explains why Heinlein's late-period work is so kinda-terrible and why I still enjoy it so much


So Heinlein had always been very interesting in the short parts of his novels, like the little snippets inside chapters. He had a very fun writing style, and wrote some fun dialogue with fun characters, right?>
It probably comes from how much of his early stuff was short fiction

And I think what happened with a lot of his longer works is that he'd just start writing fun bits and hope it would end up going somewhere or having a bigger plot by the end. like eventually he'd figure out where this was going, then go back and rewrite it into a cohesive whole

and I'm sure he had editors that'd help this process. No editor would let you publish something as rambly and changing-gears-every-other-chapter as The Number Of The Beast, for example... unless you were God-King Of Science Fiction 1980s Robert Heinlein.

so basically I think what happened is that by the 80s (when he was in his seventies!!) he lost the drive to go back and rewrite and he was too Untouchable for editors to make him.
CULTURE
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foone
@Foone
I went looking for a remote-controlled power switch (the wireless christmas kind, not the modern IoT kind) and didn't find it, but I did find this thing I bought just to figure out why it exists.
It's a timer outlet, but you program it from your phone... but it's not wireless.


Yeah instead it plugs into your phone's HEADPHONE PORT


I got it on sale.
probably because iphone dropped the headphone port and they had to get with the 21st century and make it bluetooth


So inside the box is the device. it's got a little 2-prong polarized outlet with no ground.


on top is the only controls: on/off/timer.
TECH
foone
foone
@Foone
Everyone likes to forget this episode just because it's terrible, but we were really sleeping on inherent comedy in a unfreezing an investor 300 years in the future and having them discover we've transitioned to a moneyless post-scarcity utopia.


it's like a classic twilight zone episode.

in fact, it IS a twilight zone episode.
The Rip Van Winkle Caper, Season 2, episode 24.
Four criminals steal a million dollars of gold bars, then put themselves in suspended animation for a hundred years to hide from the law.

they wake up, then start killing each other from mistrust, then the last one dies in the desert, as he offers a gold bar to the driver of a passing car, asking for water and a ride into town

the confused driver walks back to his car with the bar, and his wife asks what the gold bar is.
he says something like "It's gold... they used to use this for money, before we figured out a way to manufacture it."
He tosses it away, and drives off.
CULTURE
foone
foone
@Foone
love to see a youtube video that references a script that's linked in the comments and it's an obfuscated link to a one-click hoster.

THAT'S DEFINITELY STILL GONNA WORK IN FOUR YEARS

it does still work, but that's because it's only been 2 years.

also, wow, this is horrible.

the script is to generate random kanji/han characters and insert them into minecraft books.
but the video references there being two hotkeys to generate two distinct books, which seemed odd. so I thought I'd check.

it turns out by "random" they mean "pre-randomized and is hardcoded into the 45 kilobyte autohotkey scripot"


I mean, I get it. I don't want to write AutoHotKey scripts either. it's a horrible, horrible language.

BUT STILL
CULTURE

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@retroremakes
I've been banging this drum for years now so do excuse Round 5,796,877 of it but the issue of smaller games only finding a relatively small audience is one the trad games press has been pointing out for a very long time now.

I don't think it hurts to do this one over again but with [whatever media], just it absolutely is a fundamental of the games industry and one an algorithm, sexy presentation or whatever can only ever make a limited change to.

Obviously, this is not a reason to not make that change. Usual Twitter/nuance/context loss disclaimer applies here.

So, anything that can help and doesn't make anyone's life worse in any way, go go go. Fully behind it.

Before everything was "influencer" led (Molyneux save me, I hate that term) - magazine staff knew and dedicating space to indies was something that was done knowing it wasn't what people buying were reading in big numbers.
GAME
Jason Scott
Jason Scott
@textfiles
This was terrible game design. But I squeezed some lemonade out of it. I'll explain


Call of Duty Warzone added a new map, "Rebirth Island". It's a new battle royale island, which is great, but it's very, very small. Super small, actually. They even know this because they currently only have about 50 people on it max.


To "celebrate", they added an "event" with about 15 "achievements" so you could win themed watches, patches, the usual. One of them was that achievement, "BRB", which is "Pilot a Vehicle on the Island for 20 Minutes".

Problems are multiple. First - the island is super small - you have to drive in circles around very tight turns. Also: It's a small space so EVERYBODY shoots at you because they HATE you because you're a jerk in a vehicle on a small island. You're just spreading anger.

So it sucks for everybody.
GAME
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Rilker R. M. \U0001f1e6\U0001f1f9
Rilker R. M. 🇦🇹...
@rilkermm
Thread about THE MOON


So this week I was playing the game 'To The Moon', which is fantastic (later I'll post my review here). The amazing soundtrack was created by @Reives_Freebird and @supershigi.

When the 'Moon' subject shows up, I always think about the mythology of this celestial object, and also about the differences between languages to refer to this object.

To be exact, what I really think is: why the hell "the moon" is a masculine word in German (der Mond)?

On this matter, I also think about the Sun: why is it feminine in German?

Nonetheless, I'll focus on the Moon in this thread.
GAME
polar, but \u2728 depressed \u2728
polar, but ✨ depressed...
@p01arst0rm
So I just watched @Polygon ‘s new video on using videogames and VR as a form of therapy, but this scene in particular seemed a bit off.


specifically, what got me thinking was this bit


As someone who has been diagnosed with ADHD and ASD, these kinds of backhand comments about "treating" me are things I’ve had to put up with all my life.

But this time, instead of dismissing it out of hand, I started to think. This sounded kind of suspicious. There’s no way that scientists could possibly think that creating a ~VR classroom~ is a suitable method for treating children with ADHD/ASD?

Was that even a thing? Well, I wasn’t sure. So I set to finding out.
GAME
Tom James, The Daigo Umehara of Dating Sims
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@iiotenki
Considering this year I don't have much in the way of game translation to discuss, publicly, I'd say this was a productive year for writing threads on largely neglected and forgotten Japanese games. So if you're looking to learn about some, here's what I wrote about in 2020!


2020 was another year where I talked a *lot* of shop about dating sim history. Much of it was actual dating sims, like in some threads below, but sometimes I went on adjacent tangents, like for the cool Kojipro-developed Tokimeki Memorial adventure games:


I also went down a whole new rabbit hole for Fuuraiki, an open-ended PS1/PS2 adventure game with a cult following about traveling around the island of Hokkaido that's set to real world photography. It's a unique tangent in galge well worth exploring:


I also took a quick jaunt into Michinoku Hitou Koi Monogatari, a spiritual predecessor to Fuuraiki that's about traveling around Tohoku against a backdrop of mahjong matches. It's a rough draft that would get much more refined later, but still worthwhile:


In terms of actual dating sims that I covered, the focus was mainly post-Amagami games released by Kadokawa such as Photo Kano. While I think these games have MANY flaws, they do offer key insight into the state of the genre during its decade-long decline:
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Control of the House is useless when it comes to keeping Trump from declassifying all the SpyGate docs. Or stopping an Inspector General from releasing a report.

Trump still gets control of judicial appointments so we can expect another 100 judges over the next two years. This time there’ll be no McCain or Flake playing the Maverick role with their swing vote.

That new margin in the Senate is huge if another Supreme Court seat comes open.

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Seek wealth, not money or status. Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep. Money is how we transfer time and wealth. Status is your place in the social hierarchy.

Understand that ethical wealth creation is possible. If you secretly despise wealth, it will elude you.

Ignore people playing status games. They gain status by attacking people playing wealth creation games.

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Right, screw it. Here's a thread on *that* FBLive by Alex Cairnie about #Govanhill. Lets do a watch-through shall we? (Mind, I'm a resident of Govanhill, and a sociologist. I'm also 5'3, and a visibly queer woman so if half his claims are true I should be living in terror)

00:30: Welcomes viewers and uses points out that his videos are only getting attention b/c they're 'horrific'. Directs folk to his Youtube page. So already clout hunting.

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2:10 "Don't be under any illusion I'm only showing you the bad bits" - only shows you the bad bits.

3:45: He's had offers of help, but hes said no because hes not responsible for 'anybody elses safety' Good lord.

5:01: "Its not that bad. But its not all good either" -Correct

6:00: TW: child abuse - He starts claiming to have been contacted by a health professional and told about child abuse 'in the area'. Huge ethical issues here as the 'professional' who has 'been in the game a long time' is reporting to Facebook Dude and not authorities.
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Master Thread of all my threads!

Hello!! 👋

• I have curated some of the best tweets from the best traders we know of.

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• Go through this for super learning/value totally free of cost! 😃

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Got these scanners from the following accounts:

1. @Pathik_Trader
2. @sanjufunda
3. @sanstocktrader
4. @SouravSenguptaI
5. @Rishikesh_ADX


3. 12 TRADING SETUPS which experts are using.

These setups I found from the following 4 accounts:

1. @Pathik_Trader
2. @sourabhsiso19
3. @ITRADE191
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4. Curated tweets on HOW TO SELL STRADDLES.

Everything covered in this thread.
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