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veni veni veni posted:It's most certainly racist to some extent, but the pyramids do have this other worldly quality that you can't say about say, the Colosseum or something. Like, a lot of ruins of white civilization have some obvious practical function, while so much stuff in Africa, South America, Asia etc. was ceremonial and way more extravagant. I think it's harder for people to grasp why humans would put so much labor into something that is ultimately mostly for show. I have a coworker that's into all the weird ancient alien/super ancient civilization stuff and he likes talking to me about because in my youth like a lot of us I read about the subjects this thread is dedicated to voraciously. The most recent video he sent me (I haven't watched it) repeats the myth about Egyptians spreading their culture to Mesoamerica but it had a Hotep twist I hadn't heard before where the Egyptians were actually Black and originally came from the south of Africa. It's really funny talking to him because I've got him to internalize the reason pyramids show up everywhere - it was the tallest structure you could build with a certain level of technology/knowledge. Thanks to this thread I've been revisiting a lot of cryptid stuff and it's fascinating how much poo poo it was easy to fall for when you had no access to the internet. When you've only got some book or books to go on and you're young you just assume the author is going to be accurate in their retelling and not leave anything out. It's almost a bummer how obvious even the greatest pictorial evidence for cryptids are phony or misidentified mundane items. Groovelord Neato has a new favorite as of 13:57 on Apr 5, 2021 |
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Apr 5, 2021 13:40
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veni veni veni posted:It's most certainly racist to some extent, but the pyramids do have this other worldly quality that you can't say about say, the Colosseum or something. Like, a lot of ruins of white civilization have some obvious practical function, while so much stuff in Africa, South America, Asia etc. was ceremonial and way more extravagant. I think it's harder for people to grasp why humans would put so much labor into something that is ultimately mostly for show. I love how they point to the Moai and go "how could they have used rollers to move these? there are no Trees on Rapa Nui!" when duh, the reason they don't have any trees is because they chopped them all down for the rollers. AA doofs never seem to do anything more than use general knowlage to base their claims on. Anyone with a high school knowlage of history can see through all their bullshit, but they're aiming this at people who don't know anything more than what they've seen in movies and on tv about ancient civilizations and the idea that they are mysterious unknowns is way more common and popular and actual historical, anthropological and archeological surveys of ancient and non white cultures. Knormal posted:To bring in some more questionably-racist claims from Europeans, you guys know who built the biggest pyramid in the world? Why the ancient Bosnians of course! It's just that it's so old and so big it's been covered with dirt and is overgrown with trees so it looks like a mountain, but if you did under that dirt there's stone under there so obviously it's a manmade pyramid. There's a whole bunch of Bosnian Nationalist stuff around these days I'm not sure if its the same guy who people associated with him or people just trying to jump on the band wagon but I've seen claims that both writing and agriculture started in Bosnia. I like how the Pyramid of the Sun guy has both reshaped the hills so they look more like pyramids and also has found ww2/cold war tunnels that prove these are actually ancient.
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Apr 5, 2021 20:39
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twistedmentat posted:I love how they point to the Moai and go "how could they have used rollers to move these? there are no Trees on Rapa Nui!" when duh, the reason they don't have any trees is because they chopped them all down for the rollers. AA doofs never seem to do anything more than use general knowlage to base their claims on. Anyone with a high school knowlage of history can see through all their bullshit, but they're aiming this at people who don't know anything more than what they've seen in movies and on tv about ancient civilizations and the idea that they are mysterious unknowns is way more common and popular and actual historical, anthropological and archeological surveys of ancient and non white cultures. Well, possibly some to help erect the statues, some to build settlements, apparently polynesian rats and historical climate change are also partly responsible, and it doesn't help that the most predominant tree took like 100 years to grow to size. Also, the statues may have actually been "walked" into place with ropes. I don't know if there's any actual evidence that this happened, other than the inhabitants saying the statues "walked" there. But it's possible to teeter a statue from one side to the other, pivoting it forward as it moves. I do the same process writ small with a set of big wooden ramps I have for working on my car, it's way easier than lifting them. What kills me about tv like Ancient Aliens is that they're frequently covering topics I'd love to learn more about, but they poo poo it all up with hogwash.
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Apr 5, 2021 20:54
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Snowglobe of Doom posted:It's pretty evident that the whole "proving the skeptics wrong" aspect of cryptozoology is just as important (if not even more important) than the scientific discovery aspect for most of the people who by into it. There’s no “just as” about it; scientific discovery was never a thing here. Today’s Bigfoot enthusiasts largely ascribe to a sort of “reverse skepticism” where they treat the Patty suit as if it were a cryptid: “If Bigfoot costumes are real, why can’t you produce one? The burden of proof is on you to prove that such costumes exist,” etc.
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Apr 5, 2021 20:57
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Phy posted:Also, the statues may have actually been "walked" into place with ropes. I don't know if there's any actual evidence that this happened, other than the inhabitants saying the statues "walked" there. But it's possible to teeter a statue from one side to the other, pivoting it forward as it moves. I do the same process writ small with a set of big wooden ramps I have for working on my car, it's way easier than lifting them. Wasn't it a thing where they find toppled-over Moai that are almost always lying on their side at an angle from their presumed direction of travel, like it took a "step" too far and overbalanced the ropes and flopped over in transit down a hill or whatever?
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Apr 5, 2021 21:24
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Or they were washed down the hill due to the massive amounts of erosion that plagued Rapa Nui. I do love how all Ancient Aliens stuff both assumes that ancient peoples were too dumb to describe accurate things that they had to use flowery language to describe a silver disk coming down from the sky or green dudes or whatever, and also that every single story is actually true, nothing is made up. Ancient Non White didn't have imagination and they weren't creative! Get out of here! Phy posted:Well, possibly some to help erect the statues, some to build settlements, apparently polynesian rats and historical climate change are also partly responsible, and it doesn't help that the most predominant tree took like 100 years to grow to size. Yea when i actually went to looked into the coffin lid that they say is a space ship I learned a lot about Mayan symbolism and how they saw life and death. I also saw that doc where they walked a statue across the island with just ropes. Pretty neat.
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Apr 5, 2021 21:58
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I just heard from a friend that his 6 yr old daughter recently developed a fascination for cryptids and has started inventing & drawing her own. Her favourite "real world" cryptid is the Mothman, she thinks it got a bad rap and is actually a benevolent creature that tries to warn people about upcoming disasters. I pointed out to him that there's a bunch of plush Mothman toys available online and he immediately ordered one for her birthday.  twistedmentat posted:I also saw that doc where they walked a statue across the island with just ropes. Pretty neat. There's been a whole bunch of similar experiments where they erected huge Egyptian-style obelisks or transported giant blocks of stone using only the materials available in ancient times, once you figure out the trick it's not all that complicated and often takes much less people than they'd previously assumed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgekJnMeNiY There's also Egyptian obelisks and moai on Rapa Nui that are still lying unfinished in the quarries where the workers had abandoned them back in the day for various reasons, their creation is very much non-mysterious. 
Snowglobe of Doom has a new favorite as of 01:16 on Apr 6, 2021 |
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Apr 6, 2021 00:59
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It's the 55th anniversary of the Westall UFO sighting! Around about 11am on April 6 1966 in a suburb of Melbourne Australia a school full of children and teachers watched a silvery object fly over the trees and land in the field next to the school. A bunch of the kids actually jumped the fence and got pretty close to the object, but it soon took off vertically and flew away. Some accounts say there was only the one object, some say there were three and the other two stayed up in the air. Legend says that one of the teachers took photos but her camera & roll of film were confiscated, men in suits warned people not to talk about what they saw, one of the school children was taken away in an ambulance and her classmates never saw her again, and several airplanes were following the UFO even though there are no records of flights in that area for that day. Spooky! The official explanation is that it was a weather balloon which is fairly convincing because a high altitude silver weather balloon was launched that morning and the winds would have blown it approximately in the direction of the school. The local council commemorated the event with a children's playground and one of my friends went and visited it today:   The toilet block is covered in a space-themed mural:   Various informative signs around the playground:   
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Apr 6, 2021 06:40
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Snowglobe of Doom posted:I just heard from a friend that his 6 yr old daughter recently developed a fascination for cryptids and has started inventing & drawing her own. Her favourite "real world" cryptid is the Mothman, she thinks it got a bad rap and is actually a benevolent creature that tries to warn people about upcoming disasters. I pointed out to him that there's a bunch of plush Mothman toys available online and he immediately ordered one for her birthday. Yea, a lot of the answers have just been laying around but these guys have never, ever updated any knowlage so they're still operating as if all this is some big mystery. It's like they also ignore that the pyramids were built where they were because there is a quarry right there and its near the river. I like the theory of the internal ramp for the pyramids, that it was build as part of the pyramid itself rather than external ramps. Anyways, basically anything mysterious from the past can actually be figured out using the materials that they had access too combined with their knowlage at hand. Though when you get down to it, it is sort of a religion with Chariots of the Gods as their text and Von Danniken as their prophet.
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Apr 6, 2021 09:17
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I liked the meme of an Englishman telling his Egyptian girlfriend about Stonehenge and getting told "That's pathetic, and your ancestors were weak."
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Apr 6, 2021 09:26
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On other matters, I saw a talk some years ago from a guy who was studying reports of "megafoot", like bigfoot but much taller, like 12 ft or higher. He had an interesting take, along the lines that megafoot was ridiculous (how could a 15 ft tall ape escape detection, what would it eat, is it even anatomically possible) but there were still a sizeable number of plausible reports by reputable people. So, what does this tell you about observation - are our senses that easily fooled? The Fortean Times sometimes talks about "outer space" and "inner space" explanations, wondering if inner states are a better explanation for a lot of Forteana.
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Apr 6, 2021 11:10
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That is adorable
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Apr 6, 2021 12:59
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I've had an interest in cryptids since elementary school, I thought I knew all there was but you guys have posted so much unfamiliar, interesting stuff! my attempts at obscure contributions: Mysteries Beyond Earth (1975) - great example of 1970s woo-woo. This cheap documentary goes into UFOs, then wanders over to just about every pile of nonsense that was big at the time - witchcraft, talking to plants, ghosts, Bigfoot, Nessie, and lost civilizations. This was on TNT's "100% Weird" feature in the 90s. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUmGyV72B58 *** Now here is a something of a 'white whale' for me. There is a book called The Field Guide to North American Monsters (very tongue-in-cheek) which features a monster called Penelope, basically a person mutated by toxic waste that roams the Sierra Nevada. I am starting to conclude the source of this story is ONLY from that book as a complete troll, but I do wonder if anyone has heard of it elsewhere. http://www.weirdca.com/location.php?location=163
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Apr 6, 2021 15:54
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Mokelumne Trekka posted:
It makes me think Fallout New Vegas.
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Apr 6, 2021 16:30
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Phy posted:Also, the statues may have actually been "walked" into place with ropes. I don't know if there's any actual evidence that this happened, other than the inhabitants saying the statues "walked" there. But it's possible to teeter a statue from one side to the other, pivoting it forward as it moves. I do the same process writ small with a set of big wooden ramps I have for working on my car, it's way easier than lifting them. There's been experiments where people has tried to walk the statues into place with ropes (most famously by Thor Heyerdahl) and it showed that it is totally doable.
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Apr 6, 2021 17:12
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M_Sinistrari posted:It makes me think Fallout New Vegas. 
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Apr 6, 2021 17:27
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veni veni veni posted:It's most certainly racist to some extent, but the pyramids do have this other worldly quality that you can't say about say, the Colosseum or something. Like, a lot of ruins of white civilization have some obvious practical function, while so much stuff in Africa, South America, Asia etc. was ceremonial and way more extravagant. I think it's harder for people to grasp why humans would put so much labor into something that is ultimately mostly for show. That argument doesn't hold up considering no one suggests that the roman triumphal arcs was made by aliens even though there is not a single practical thing about them and that they are extremely extravagant.
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Apr 6, 2021 17:40
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That Australian playground reminds me of one I used to play at here in Texas when I was little. It was an absolutely huge saucer with a ladder running up through it and even in the early/mid eighties had that wonderful smell of rust and hot metal. I took my daughter there not too long ago, and uh...it’s not quite as big as I remember  
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Apr 6, 2021 17:41
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Bulgaroctonus posted:That Australian playground reminds me of one I used to play at here in Texas when I was little. It was an absolutely huge saucer with a ladder running up through it and even in the early/mid eighties had that wonderful smell of rust and hot metal. I took my daughter there not too long ago, and uh...it’s not quite as big as I remember Aliens shrunk it, obviously
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Apr 6, 2021 18:12
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I think you may have a point, there’s no way that thing was that small when I was a four years old. I’m not joking that thing was huge and even when new smelled like it had been wiped down with diesel and and rust, obviously to trick us. Thankfully childhood butt stuff happened elsewhere so it’s still a good memory.
Bulgaroctonus has a new favorite as of 19:10 on Apr 6, 2021 |
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Apr 6, 2021 19:04
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Daughter giant, so what?
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Apr 6, 2021 19:33
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Alhazred posted:That argument doesn't hold up considering no one suggests that the roman triumphal arcs was made by aliens even though there is not a single practical thing about them and that they are extremely extravagant. This isn't a good example because we know exactly who commissioned them, designed them, how they were built, and when they were built. And yes, we know a lot about the pyramids as well, but there is still some gray area where scientists have had to speculate about to some degree, like transportation of the stones. Which is the thing that I think ultimately gets people's imagination going the most. The Roman Arches aren't even that old in the grand scheme of things. The Pyramids predate them by almost 3000 years so information is going to be spottier. I actually regret agreeing that there is probably some racist element, because I really don't think there is. I don't think the stuff that gets AA people worked up is rooted in some racist idea that non-white people can't build amazing things. There are just certain things that have an extra layer of mystery, and my point isn't that white people can't recognize symbolic or decorative things. it's that the things that trigger these AA people have a bit of extra mystique to them that isn't hard to identify. poo poo, Stonehenge is in the UK and is probably the #2 target for speculation by Ancient Alien types after the pyramids. It just feels like people are looking for this nefarious element to it that is either false or being really overstated.
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Apr 6, 2021 20:29
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Obvious photoshop, no child could be that large.
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Apr 6, 2021 20:31
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The Great Pyramid was more ancient to Caesar than he is to us.
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Apr 6, 2021 20:32
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veni veni veni posted:It just feels like people are looking for this nefarious element to it that is either false or being really overstated. It's probably worth saying that most ancient aliens people probably aren't consciously or deliberately being racist, there's no plan in that sense. But devaluing and ignoring the achievements of people from outside Europe has a long history, even in mainstream research - consider the idea that it must have been Phoenicians that built Great Zimbabwe rather than Shona. It can even be argued that attributing Stonehenge to aliens plays into ideas about "primitive" people that are rooted in racism and colonialism. That's why it's worth explicitly pushing back on this stuff.
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Apr 6, 2021 20:53
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It has the potential to reinforce racist ideas i suppose, and if you go outside of the AA stuff yeah, there are legit examples of it throughout history. But I think in this specific case, the relics that the AA people fixate on have some notable element of mystery about them and thats the reason they get targeted. The root of it isn't "aliens built it because whites didn't build it" it's "I don't fully understand how this was built so aliens did it, because I am into aliens". I feel like stonhenge being their #2 favorite "alien" structure kind of kills the idea that it's racially motivated, even subconsciously.
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Apr 6, 2021 21:07
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Spurred on by this conversation, I started listening to the Our Fake History episodes on Easter Island. I'm only through the first one, but very highly recommended. Apparently the first ship that made contact with the Rapa Nui people assumed that the Moai heads were made out of clay because they couldn't imagine these remote indigenous people sculpting monumental statues. They also slaughtered them for no reason then peaced out. It dives pretty deep into the history of the Kon Tiki expedition, the purported ancient lost early (white) civilization that built all the great works of ancient times, and the infamous figure behind the aliens hypothesis. And the fact that yes, all of these ideas are supremely racist. That doesn't mean that every person who believes in these theories is necessarily racist—but they're either racist or so ignorant of the history and figures behind their own beliefs that they're morons. So. Not a great look either way. The episode does look at the history of how the Polynesian people navigated the ocean and how the Rapa Nui people likely ended up on the island so it's full of all sorts of other interesting angles too.
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Apr 6, 2021 21:07
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veni veni veni posted:It just feels like people are looking for this nefarious element to it that is either false or being really overstated. The problem goes all the way back to the source with Erich von Daniken saying stuff like "black people were a failed experiment before the aliens made white people" and the ancient astronauts being blond Nordic aliens who "uplifted" humans through interbreeding. He also sent a crank letter to Gerald Ford iirc claiming his ancient astronaut idea could fight communism and promote "traditional values" - charming dude.
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Apr 6, 2021 21:13
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Don't get me wrong white people are racist as gently caress I'm just hesitant to call this specific breed of nutjob racially motivated. I will not see this man slandered 
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Apr 6, 2021 21:16
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Ancient Astronaut theories seem to be the professional purview of people who: a) Lack a high school level understanding of physics b) Don't have the faintest idea what bored people did before television was invented c) Base their historical and anthropological notions on racist poo poo from 1950s cartoons d) Want to write books and get History Channel interview gigs despite a-c being true.
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Apr 6, 2021 21:35
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veni veni veni posted:I will not see this man slandered Members of the Centauri emperor’s court deal in lies and half-truths all day long.
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Apr 6, 2021 21:54
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Here's a video of researchers walking a replica easter island head:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvvES47OdmY Its smaller than the real heads but the principle will remain the same. I think people are forgetting that what we consider practical and what ancient people consider practical are very different. If you believe, and you entire society is built around the belief, that building these great structures is going to placate your gods or give you a favourable afterlife then it is of immensely practical value to you to build these things. If I as a pharaoh am told from birth that the time I spend alive is only going to be fraction of my actual existence, and that the vast majority of my existences comfort is dependant on building a great tomb or pleasing the gods so they favor me in the afterlife by building massive temples then it's exactly the same value as having vast life savings or other retirement funds are to me today.
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Apr 7, 2021 00:02
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Mokelumne Trekka posted:Now here is a something of a 'white whale' for me. There is a book called The Field Guide to North American Monsters (very tongue-in-cheek) which features a monster called Penelope, basically a person mutated by toxic waste that roams the Sierra Nevada. veni veni veni posted:Don't get me wrong white people are racist as gently caress I'm just hesitant to call this specific breed of nutjob racially motivated.
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Apr 7, 2021 00:36
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Knormal posted:I've never heard of that one before despite growing up in California, but the description sounds an awful lot like the wendigo. The original Native American version, not the modern bigfoot or deer-antler version. It kind of seems like they just moved it west and gave it a "scientific" origin. Speaking of this, Ravenous is on Disney+ Star Service if you're outside the US. That's probably the first place I ever heard of the Wendigo.
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Apr 7, 2021 02:52
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M_Sinistrari posted:It makes me think Fallout New Vegas. Funny you say. I looked up the author of The Field Guide to North American Monsters (where I believe the Penelope cryptid originated) and it turns out this guy Haden Blackman first wrote this book, then went on to work on Star Wars video games, then various comic books and other video games as a writer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haden_Blackman Maybe he has an account here. Not how I imagined who the author would be as a kid. The book kind of freaked me out in parts - another entry included the Cannibal Babe (which cries in the woods at night, luring well-meaning people to their doom). Knormal posted:I've never heard of that one before despite growing up in California, but the description sounds an awful lot like the wendigo. The original Native American version, not the modern bigfoot or deer-antler version. It kind of seems like they just moved it west and gave it a "scientific" origin. This makes a lot of sense too!
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Apr 7, 2021 03:01
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The_Doctor posted:Members of the Centauri emperor’s court deal in lies and half-truths all day long. I would definitely believe that Tsoukalos cheats at cards with his prehensile dick
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Apr 7, 2021 03:07
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Jeff bezos could build a pyramid bigger the great one and use it as his tomb. And pay the guards to stop someone breaking in to steal his crypto currency. Would be a vastly better use for his wealth. Just put it somewhere and buy an area big enough to fit a few more in the future.
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Apr 7, 2021 06:10
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Since we're on the topic of pyramids I might as well point out one of my favorite bits of pyramid triva: Nicolas cage has had one premade for himself for when he dies. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/nicolas-cage-s-pyramid-tomb Anyway, "this ancient civilization was actually built by aliens" conspiracies never sat right with me even as a little kid. As a child I already knew that humans had made airplanes, televisions, and skyscrapers. Making a pyramid didn't seem much harder than making those things. Humans were good at making stuff and figuring out how to make other stuff, they didn't need aliens for that. That was my reasoning as a wee babe, and I gotta say present me agrees with past me on this one. Past me also thought mummies and the mummification process was hella cool, past me was right about that too.
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Apr 7, 2021 06:43
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I don't think a single person here believes the pyramids were built by aliens so I doubt you'll get many arguments on that one. We are just discussing whether or not the people who believe that are racist and dumb or just normal dumb.
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Apr 7, 2021 07:04
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veni veni veni posted:I don't think a single person here believes the pyramids were built by aliens so I doubt you'll get many arguments on that one. We are just discussing whether or not the people who believe that are racist and dumb or just normal dumb. Yeah, I know. I wasn't trying to argue with anyone, just reminiscing on my childhood thought patterns.
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Apr 7, 2021 08:58
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