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Snowglobe of Doom
Mar 30, 2012

sucks to be right
Yeah there's a bunch of ancient cities and peoples that we only know about because they're mentioned in fragments of records from known ancient civilizations, like the Land of Punt which used to export gold, ivory and other such products to Egypt sometime around the 25th century BC.

Certain sub-Saharan African civilizations also went through an iron age at about the same time that Europe did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nok_culture

etc etc

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Randaconda
Jul 3, 2014

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
A lot of the problems with Sub-Saharan Africa, besides the many obvious problems, is the fact it's so damp and rainy in a lot of places that almost everything decayed centuries ago :smith:

twistedmentat
Nov 21, 2003

Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to
Yea that's what I'm talking about. Hell i can even believe that Ice Age Humans may of had impressive civilizations that we will never know about. But people like Hancock go beyond "people in this location figured out how to grow crops and build houses and live in an organized society that was able to concern itself with things beyond day to day survival" to "the myths are real and there were civilizations more advanced that us that existed in the past".

This reminds me of a video i watched about Neolithic Europe. It was interesting, and they talked about how a fairly advanced civilization existed in the Balkins, BUT then it said "Who probably invented writing because they used these pictographs, but mainstream scientists say they're not a written language". Though Isn't language easy to identify? Like You see repeating patterns that you can see even if you don't know the language. Like Conjunctions will stand out because they are some of the most common used things in languages. This is why the Vonyich Manuscript is so interesting because it clearly does have these patterns, but remains unreadable. But then it closed out by uncritically accepted the Bosnian Pyramids and welp, out went all their credibility.

BTW the last 3 Quinten Reviews vids explore the decline of the History Channel and other stuff

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc3vt1Gqrn4

End of the world documentaries
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML5wQsGynQs&t=3s
Get Slack

Bad Nazi Documentaries
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maeO6Isb_So

WITCHCRAFT
Aug 28, 2007

Berries That Burn

Quid posted:

Speaking of Weekly World News, they often mocked up cryptid pictures and Bat Boy had to be my favorite.

He wasn't really that good but my grandmom liked the paper too so we laughed about Bat Boy together a lot and I like the memories associated with it,

I have great memories of Weekly World News as well. When I was a kid, my parents would take us camping basically every weekend during the summer. Rain or shine. When it was raining real hard, we kids would basically be holed up in the tent while mom and dad adjusted the tarp, kept the fire going, dug tiny trenches around the tent, and smoked/drank coffee while reading the newspaper out there under the tarp.

In the tent, we had a deck of cards, paper and pencil, picture ID book of North American flora and fauna, and the freshest issue of Weekly World News snagged at the grocery store before we left town to camp. My brothers and I would fight over who got to read it first. We all knew it was goofy fringe science bunk, but it was lovably absurd. My dad would read it too and at breakfast the next day we would all discuss the possibilities and impracticalities of Bat Boy's existence, etc.

My parents never bought it any other time. It was specifically for camping. It has the same nostalgic value to me as making s'mores or catching that one bullfrog at the swimming hole.



The current Weekly World News website is worth a skim, there are a few good ones now and then (like the pygmy Pygmies, who are 6" descendants of WW2 fighter pilots shot down over the jungle). Going through the PDFs of old print copy World Weekly News.... those have a much better ratio of purestrain goofball to "pop culture pun stretched into a whole article"

Are there any worthwhile sites these days for fortean comedy articles? SA front page will have some good series now and then, like Instruction for A Thing or Lambspoke, or that mars colony where really, nothing is wrong! come join us! there is absolutely no proof of an eldritch cult lead by a hippopotamus! we swear!!!

WITCHCRAFT has a new favorite as of 05:04 on Jun 2, 2020

Captain Hygiene
Sep 17, 2007

You mess with the crabbo...



I think Weekly World News is my first specific memory of finding out that publicly-available "news" sources could be something other than the complete truth, specifically one of the many NOAH'S ARK FOUND IN THE SAHARA DESERT! articles. I mean, it was right there in print, how could it be wrong? :downs:

Melaneus
Aug 24, 2007

Here to make your dreams and nightmares come true.

from that page...

Pharaoh Hatshepsut must have been all like "drat, the Prince of Punt's wife be THICC" - I've never seen ancient Egyptian depictions of people like that before

Safety Biscuits
Oct 21, 2010

twistedmentat posted:

This reminds me of a video i watched about Neolithic Europe. It was interesting, and they talked about how a fairly advanced civilization existed in the Balkins, BUT then it said "Who probably invented writing because they used these pictographs, but mainstream scientists say they're not a written language". Though Isn't language easy to identify? Like You see repeating patterns that you can see even if you don't know the language. Like Conjunctions will stand out because they are some of the most common used things in languages. This is why the Vonyich Manuscript is so interesting because it clearly does have these patterns, but remains unreadable. But then it closed out by uncritically accepted the Bosnian Pyramids and welp, out went all their credibility.

There's a difference between written language and repeated meaningful symbols. Think of numbers, icons on a map, or those little pictures on menus that tell you how spicy something is or whether it's vegetarian. These have specific, easily-interpreted uses, but you can't write a sentence in any of them. You can see this kind of proto-writing on seals from Harappa, for instance, and this is probably how written language evolved.

Fictional example: a king's scribe records how much tribute the vassals need to deliver. Say North province needs to give 50 goats and 400 sacks of grain. The scribe writes: (arrow pointing up) 5 10 (little picture of a goat) 4 100 (picture of sack) (ear of corn). Over time the pictures get simplified, the system gets more complex, someone adds in grammar words, and you've got a writing system. If (arrow pointing up) starts to mean the N sound becaus eit means "north", (goat picture) means a G sound, and so on, you've got something like an alphabet. The issue is that it's very hard to tell which one of those an unknown inscription represents, especially because there might be several different kinds of symbols in the same text.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-writing

Pocket Billiards
Aug 29, 2007
.

Antifa Turkeesian posted:

They're both weird mixes of old hippie anti-establishment spirit and reactionary conservative hatred of science. But Joe loves them because of the drugs.

I don't know the first thing about archaeology and asteroid strikes, but it seems like there's some academic research that supports one particular asteroid strike they go on about. Or at least on the surface level it appears so. Regardless a lot of people take them very seriously because of that. Randall Carlson's background is in 'Sacred Geometry' for gently caress's sake.

Carlson isn't even consistent on climate change. According to him the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by proportion is so small that it can't do anything and climate change is a myth, but it also happens to cause plants to grow faster and 'the man' doesn't want to acknowledge the positive effects rising CO2.

I want to live in an alternate dimension where Joe Rogan went into rockclimbing or paintball instead of BJJ and I could participate in a sport where fringe crackpot bullshit wasn't taken as gospel by 3/4 of the participants.

twistedmentat
Nov 21, 2003

Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to

Safety Biscuits posted:

There's a difference between written language and repeated meaningful symbols. Think of numbers, icons on a map, or those little pictures on menus that tell you how spicy something is or whether it's vegetarian. These have specific, easily-interpreted uses, but you can't write a sentence in any of them. You can see this kind of proto-writing on seals from Harappa, for instance, and this is probably how written language evolved.

Fictional example: a king's scribe records how much tribute the vassals need to deliver. Say North province needs to give 50 goats and 400 sacks of grain. The scribe writes: (arrow pointing up) 5 10 (little picture of a goat) 4 100 (picture of sack) (ear of corn). Over time the pictures get simplified, the system gets more complex, someone adds in grammar words, and you've got a writing system. If (arrow pointing up) starts to mean the N sound becaus eit means "north", (goat picture) means a G sound, and so on, you've got something like an alphabet. The issue is that it's very hard to tell which one of those an unknown inscription represents, especially because there might be several different kinds of symbols in the same text.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-writing

Yea, its not unlike say the symbols used on Board Games like 7 Wonders. Once you know what the symbols mean you can effectively understand what the meaning is. Though this video took the symbols used in this Balkin civ and directly compared them to cuneiform, which is a writing system.

HelloIAmYourHeart
Dec 29, 2008
Fallen Rib

WITCHCRAFT posted:


In the tent, we had a deck of cards, paper and pencil, picture ID book of North American flora and fauna, and the freshest issue of Weekly World News snagged at the grocery store before we left town to camp. My brothers and I would fight over who got to read it first. We all knew it was goofy fringe science bunk, but it was lovably absurd. My dad would read it too and at breakfast the next day we would all discuss the possibilities and impracticalities of Bat Boy's existence, etc.


Y'all should have a movie night and watch Bat Boy the Musical. The whole thing is on youtube.

Safety Biscuits
Oct 21, 2010

twistedmentat posted:

Yea, its not unlike say the symbols used on Board Games like 7 Wonders. Once you know what the symbols mean you can effectively understand what the meaning is. Though this video took the symbols used in this Balkin civ and directly compared them to cuneiform, which is a writing system.

Yeah, just pointing out that deciding what is and isn't writing is harder than it seems.

Rhandhali
Sep 7, 2003

This is Free Trader Beowulf, calling anyone...
Grimey Drawer

Melaneus posted:

from that page...

Pharaoh Hatshepsut must have been all like "drat, the Prince of Punt's wife be THICC" - I've never seen ancient Egyptian depictions of people like that before

Looks like elaphantiasis, also called lymphatic filariasis.

Watermelon Daiquiri
Jul 10, 2010
I TRIED TO BAIT THE TXPOL THREAD WITH THE WORLD'S WORST POSSIBLE TAKE AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS STUPID AVATAR.
Are they sure the pharaoh just didn't hate her an told the priests or whoever scribed it to make her look ugly as hell?

Groke
Jul 27, 2007
New Adventures In Mom Strength

nonathlon posted:



History-goons might clarify, but I dimly recall reading a history of the world book where it talked about there being early civilizations (perhaps in Africa) that we know next to nothing about. As in, our ideas of the first civilizations is just the first ones we've been able to identify.
Yah, there's any number of factors that can make a prehistoric civilization obscure. Certain climates are worse than others for preserving stuff, many areas have poor accessibility for archaeologists due to practical or political reasons, etc.

Pvt.Scott
Feb 16, 2007

What God wants, God gets, God help us all

Groke posted:

Yah, there's any number of factors that can make a prehistoric civilization obscure. Certain climates are worse than others for preserving stuff, many areas have poor accessibility for archaeologists due to practical or political reasons, etc.

Jungle is pretty bad at preservation, isn’t it?

One thing I found interesting was that part of Mali’s gold wealth depended on their salt mines in the north. The southern gold mines were in the jungle, which at least in that location apparently has almost no salt, so workers would die without it.

nonathlon
Jul 9, 2004
And yet, somehow, now it's my fault ...
I hadn't even thought about political accessibility, i.e. if there were signs of an ancient civilization deep in (say) the DRC, would we know if it and could it actually be investigated?

It's actually a wider issue. When I did work in ecology, I noticed just how much work and how many findings were driven by convenience. Places that were easy to get to, that people liked doing research in. Leaves a lot of the world out.

Snowglobe of Doom
Mar 30, 2012

sucks to be right

nonathlon posted:

It's actually a wider issue. When I did work in ecology, I noticed just how much work and how many findings were driven by convenience. Places that were easy to get to, that people liked doing research in. Leaves a lot of the world out.

Yeah the Rio Apaporis Caiman (a big-rear end crocodile) in Colombia was "rediscovered" by a biologist in 2019 after it hadn't been seen since 1952, mostly because the country has been torn apart by civil unrest since the 60s and scientists just weren't able to get out there and do field research until the peace agreement in 2016. FARC guerillas actually kidnapped several teams of scientists who got a little too careless over the decades.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-24/colombia-peace-could-reveal-jungle-species-secrets/7442256

sitnalisa
Dec 16, 2004

stupid virgin

Melaneus posted:

from that page...

Pharaoh Hatshepsut must have been all like "drat, the Prince of Punt's wife be THICC" - I've never seen ancient Egyptian depictions of people like that before

I’ve been trying to learn a bit of Egyptian during the lockdown (partly because I got Egyptian Hieroglyphs for Absolute Beginners out of the library and then the library closed down for the duration and I was stuck with it), and that picture has some good illustrations of how writing systems started out. I can’t understand most of it, being an absolute beginner, but I think I can pick out some words. No doubt when I’m wrong an actual Egyptologist goon will come along to help.

Hieroglyphs sometimes represent one sound, sometimes two, sometimes three. Sometimes they are just pictures which are added in to underline what the word actually is, in case it’s unclear. These are determinatives, and they might get left out if there is not much room. Or they might be used on their own if it’s a long word and there’s even less room. And sometimes a sign can be a determinative in one word and represent letters in another. There are no spaces between words. And you can write from right to left, left to right, or up to down in columns which can also be read right-to-left or vice versa. You can tell by the way the signs are facing. The writing in the picture is right-to-left.

And the vowels are not written at all so only Osiris (wsir+picture of a god) knows how the words were pronounced. And there are four different kinds of h. And one of the important letters is a glottal stop (transliterated 3), and a guttural which is like the Arabic ghayin (the book says), which is a guttural pronounced back in the throat, transliterated ’.

So, beginning in the bottom right-hand corner, here are the signs, written left-to-right as that’s the convention, and separated into words.

𓅪 𓈖 𓊪𓃹𓈖𓏏𓈉 𓅮𓂋𓏤 𓉔𓅱𓌙 𓈞𓇌𓏏𓆑 𓀁 𓏏𓇋 𓅭𓆑𓈖 𓅭𓏏𓆑

and a tentative transliteration and a translation:

wr n pwnt p3rhw ḥm(y)t.f (?mrt) ti s3.f.n s3t.f

The Prince of Punt, Parehu, his (?beloved) wife Ti, his son(s) (?), his daughter.

Now then. The first word, wr, means prince, and the little bird represents those two sounds. Normally there would be a determinative of someone looking princely to follow it, but there’s no space. Then we have /n/, which means ‘of’, and then a stool /p/, /wn/ represented by a hare, then /n/ again to make sure you know that the hare represents sounds and is not just a picture of a hare, which would be sẖ’t. Finally the /t/, which looks like a kind of bun, and a picture of some hills in the desert, so that you can see it’s a foreign country. Pwnt.

The duck on the wing is p3, then we have a mouth which represents /r/ because r means mouth so it can stand for the sound when you need it to, a reed hut and a quail, which are /h/ and /w/ respectively. After a name you would normally get a determinative in the form of a man or a woman, but Parehu gets a weird foreign weapon, a throwing stick or club, to show that he is weird and foreign.

Written next to the picture of his wife we have ḥmt.f, 'his wife', where ḥmt is represented by a well with water in it. Because a vagina is like a well with water in it you see, and then /t/ so you know it’s not a real well but a sign ending in t, and a horned viper, the letter f, which is here a suffix meaning ‘his’. Unfortunately there is also a letter y in the form of a couple of reeds sitting in the middle, which have been scratched out, and I have no idea what they are doing there. It may be explained in a lesson I haven’t got to.

Then a man with his hand to his mouth. It’s a determinative for ‘eat’, but it also develops to be one for ‘enjoy’, ‘feel’, and is used in the word 𓌻𓂋𓀁, ‘love’, so I choose to believe it means ‘beloved’. And her name, Ti. Probably.

Then s3.f (the duck is s3, meaning ‘son’), and the suffix .f meaning ‘his’. The n is a mystery to me. It’s not a plural or dual marker as far as I know (can mean ‘we’, ‘our’), and it’s in the wrong place even if it were. S3t is daughter, with the feminine marker /t/.


Above the donkey we see some more words, which, if you consider them the continuation of the line above, read:

𓂞𓆑 𓉼𓂝𓂸𓄛 𓆑𓄿𓀋 𓈞𓏏𓆑

di.f ’3 f3i ḥmt.f

He gives, or causes, the donkey to carry his wife. I don’t know whether that’s correct or not, but at least it makes sense. I’m pretty sure about the words donkey, carry and wife, at least. You’ll notice that the ‘donkey’ is made up of the letter signs for ’3, which I imagine sound like someone being strangled, followed by a penis because have you ever seen an excited donkey? and a cowskin with a tail to show it’s a mammal. You can also find an actual donkey as a determinative, but it’s more complicated. I leave the rest as an exercise to the reader.


According to the wikipedia article t3 nṯr, the land of the gods, was another name for Punt, and in the main text above

𓊹 𓇾 𓈉
except that literally reads nṯr t3 instead of

𓇾𓊹 𓈉

Because the gods (and kings) are so important they need to come first in writing even if it makes it hard for people trying to read this stuff 3,500 years later.

And also

𓇿𓌻𓂋𓇋𓆵𓊖

t3-mri, the beloved land, meaning Egypt.

English spelling seems a lot more friendly now.

fake edit: if the signs don't show up I'm going to take rather a long time to fix this, but I will do it.

Real edit: it's showing up for me, hope it is for everyone else.

sitnalisa has a new favorite as of 00:14 on Jun 8, 2020

Captain Hygiene
Sep 17, 2007

You mess with the crabbo...



sitnalisa posted:

Egyptian Hieroglyphs

:tviv:
Just had to jump in to say that's one of the most unexpectedly fascinating infoposts I've read in ages, thanks :tipshat:

Facebook Aunt
Oct 4, 2008

wiggle wiggle




sitnalisa posted:


Written next to the picture of his wife we have ḥmt.f, 'his wife', where ḥmt is represented by a well with water in it. Because a vagina is like a well with water in it you see, and then /t/ so you know it’s not a real well but a sign ending in t, and a horned viper, the letter f, which is here a suffix meaning ‘his’. Unfortunately there is also a letter y in the form of a couple of reeds sitting in the middle, which have been scratched out, and I have no idea what they are doing there. It may be explained in a lesson I haven’t got to.

Then a man with his hand to his mouth. It’s a determinative for ‘eat’, but it also develops to be one for ‘enjoy’, ‘feel’, and is used in the word 𓌻𓂋𓀁, ‘love’, so I choose to believe it means ‘beloved’. And her name, Ti. Probably.

It sounds like eat/enjoy could also mean fat. His fat wife. :newlol: But sure, beloved.

sitnalisa
Dec 16, 2004

stupid virgin
Thanks CH! I saw there had been two minor but interesting derails and wondered if I could combine them into some kind of mega-derail.

sitnalisa
Dec 16, 2004

stupid virgin

Facebook Aunt posted:

It sounds like eat/enjoy could also mean fat. His fat wife. :newlol: But sure, beloved.

Well according to the vocabulary list fat = 𓆓𓂧𓄿𓄃, but tbh I wouldn’t rule it out.

twistedmentat
Nov 21, 2003

Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to

Captain Hygiene posted:

:tviv:
Just had to jump in to say that's one of the most unexpectedly fascinating infoposts I've read in ages, thanks :tipshat:

Yea that was fascinating. And when you're writing system is that complex, you can poke rocks in top of each other with out alien help.

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
I do get the idea heiroglyphics were likely a very formalised style of writing, and designed to look good as well as inform. Like calligraphy. The Rosetta Stone does suggest it was used in official announcements, though.

Angry Salami
Jul 27, 2013

Don't trust the skull.

nonathlon posted:

I hadn't even thought about political accessibility, i.e. if there were signs of an ancient civilization deep in (say) the DRC, would we know if it and could it actually be investigated?

There were a few Western archeological teams in Afghanistan when the Soviets invaded who were excavating Greco-Bacrian sites; they've been waiting ever since for the situation to calm down enough for them to resume their work...

Croatoan
Jun 24, 2005

I am inevitable.
ROBBLE GROBBLE
Number stations - Just for spies? I assume basically yeah but what do y'all think?

Also, it's cool and also freaky and scary that when Putin is around GPS systems don't work. I mean the dude is basically a Bond villain but still. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology...er%20locations.

Watermelon Daiquiri
Jul 10, 2010
I TRIED TO BAIT THE TXPOL THREAD WITH THE WORLD'S WORST POSSIBLE TAKE AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS STUPID AVATAR.
if they are jamming things to stop, idk, gps locks for missles or something, wouldnt the area have to be large enough to where he could conceivably be outside the range of damage? I mean, the missile would probably just default to a ballistic profile in the absence of any gps guidance.

twistedmentat
Nov 21, 2003

Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to

Croatoan posted:

Number stations - Just for spies? I assume basically yeah but what do y'all think?

Also, it's cool and also freaky and scary that when Putin is around GPS systems don't work. I mean the dude is basically a Bond villain but still. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology...er%20locations.

Number Stations have also been theorized to be crime related, like Mafia or Cartels running them for some reason. But Numbers Stations are 100% real and are used for the proposed purposes. Shortwave is so broad its hard to track them down and as long as you have a one time decode sheet they can be effective.

I AM GRANDO
Aug 20, 2006

A while ago some Cuban spies were caught with a one-time pad and it was used to decode a bunch of innocuous messages like “celebrate the contributions of female comrades this week because it’s International Woman’s Day on Friday.” Presumably there was spy poo poo that wasn’t revealed, but yeah it’s pretty well agreed that numbers stations are for sending secret messages. Crime would be a good use for them.

Pvt.Scott
Feb 16, 2007

What God wants, God gets, God help us all

Antifa Turkeesian posted:

A while ago some Cuban spies were caught with a one-time pad and it was used to decode a bunch of innocuous messages like “celebrate the contributions of female comrades this week because it’s International Woman’s Day on Friday.” Presumably there was spy poo poo that wasn’t revealed, but yeah it’s pretty well agreed that numbers stations are for sending secret messages. Crime would be a good use for them.

I thought it was that they kept using the same cipher from a one-time pad, negating the point of a one-time pad. Maybe it was a honeypot to see if anyone was still even paying attention?

Puppy Time
Mar 1, 2005


Croatoan posted:

Number stations - Just for spies? I assume basically yeah but what do y'all think?


There are apparently some smaller stations in the southeast coast that are likely to be linked to smuggling (presumably drugs). The big ones are/were probably mostly spy stuff though.

I love how strange they sound-- almost otherworldly with the fuzziness of the radio. It's somehow a lot creepier than their relatively prosaic actual use would merit.

buddhist nudist
May 16, 2019
There's gotta be at least a few of them set up by hobbyists because there's a nerd for everything.

twistedmentat
Nov 21, 2003

Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to

Puppy Time posted:

There are apparently some smaller stations in the southeast coast that are likely to be linked to smuggling (presumably drugs). The big ones are/were probably mostly spy stuff though.

I love how strange they sound-- almost otherworldly with the fuzziness of the radio. It's somehow a lot creepier than their relatively prosaic actual use would merit.

There is speculation that a lot of them have been running so long they're literally just a microphone in front of a speaker because that is the easiest way to transmit. This explains why they're so fuzzy, and sometimes you can hear things off mic.

Speaking of short wave mysteries, during the space race a lot of amateur radio people were listening in, both to US and Soviet space missions. There are claims that Apollo 11 saw aliens on the moon or 13 was really the result of collision with an alien space craft, all heard by short wave nerds. Though no recordings of this occurred, which is odd because these guys recorded a lot of the raw feeds, and they're not much different than the offical transcripts. BUT when talking about Soviets, there are recordings that are said to be of failed soviet missions. Creepy recordings of Cosmonauts going "My air is leaking, I only have 20 minutes left, please advise" or "I am moving away, not stopping, earth is getting smaller, help me" which suggest that the Soviets had more launches than they said but never reported them because it was the soviet union and no mistakes ever happen there. I mean this is totally plausible, that the soviets had failed launches and never told anyone about them.

Speaking of mysteries from the USSR, Dyatlov Pass incident is still trotted out as a mystery even though there was a completely reasonable and logical explanation for everything. They belive that there was a hand made campstove inside the tent and its possible the pipe they used as a chimney had a leak in it causing the tent to fill with smoke causing the hikers to think the tent was on fire, which resulted in panicly trying to get out. It was night and a blizzard and so they quickly became lost and died from exposure. The "weird things" aren't weird. Body parts missing? Uh animals ate them, why is this always a mystery in anything? The soft tissue will be eaten first so eyes and tongues will be eaten by scavengers, either animal or insect. And the radiation on some clothing? It's never brought up that two of the hikers worked in places that involved radioactive material so of course they're going to have clothing that has radiation on it. I think its one of those examples of when you only focus on the details, it becomes a mystery when if you look at the big picture it is actually pretty easy to explain.

Somewhat related, I was watching a spooky youtube vid and the host said "if it looks like an art project it probably is" when seeing weird internet stuff.

buddhist nudist
May 16, 2019
The evidence for Lost Cosmonaut theories aren't very good. Like, voice recordings using google-translate quality Russian and people claiming to pick things up on equipment that just flat out didn't have that kind of range of capability. The massive declassification after the Cold War did confirm a lot of things that we suspected the Soviets covered up but the Lost Cosmonauts were not part of it.

I do fully agree with your assessment of Dyatlov pass though. Based on where the bodies were found and the states they were in, it's pretty easy to recreate what happened after they fled the tent and the only real thing we won't know for sure is why they fled it, since when the camp was found, it was still a Search and Rescue operation so the scene was not left in a state for forensic analysis. Some theories are plausible (Bigfoot, Soviet psychic weapon tests) while others are pure fantasy (jerry-rigged stove malfunctioning, mistaken belief in an avalanche)

buddhist nudist has a new favorite as of 20:37 on Oct 10, 2020

C.M. Kruger
Oct 28, 2013
IIRC the lost cosmonaut recordings all come from two Italian brothers as well.

nonathlon
Jul 9, 2004
And yet, somehow, now it's my fault ...

buddhist nudist posted:

The evidence for Lost Cosmonaut theories aren't very good. Like, voice recordings using google-translate quality Russian and people claiming to pick things up on equipment that just flat out didn't have that kind of range of capability. The massive declassification after the Cold War did confirm a lot of things that we suspected the Soviets covered up but the Lost Cosmonauts were not part of it.

The Lost Cosmonauts is a strange case. The two brothers do genuinely appear to have been technical geniuses who did amazing stuff. So, were they talented and fraudsters or talented and deluded?

Circumcised Elon
Jun 20, 2021

by Shine

Croatoan posted:

Number stations - Just for spies? I assume basically yeah but what do y'all think?

Also, it's cool and also freaky and scary that when Putin is around GPS systems don't work. I mean the dude is basically a Bond villain but still. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology...er%20locations.

Bunch of theme here.
https://archive.org/details/ird059

and here
https://soundcloud.com/the-conet-project/sets/the-conet-project

Seems the Irdial/Conet Project website is gone now
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conet_Project

El Spamo
Aug 21, 2003

Fuss and misery
The spooky thing is that you can find and listen to number stations with pretty much any radio that can receive shortwave signal.

I remember being up late at night in a cabin with a friend's radio and we were chatting and drinking and fooling around with the thing. Found neat stuff like a German news report and Japanese sports broadcast. But we also found odd stations that consisted of regular buzzes, repeating tone sequences that weren't morse code (I think, we only checked one and it didn't match anything), that sort of thing. One of them I recognized because it's a signal that the local airport transmits for pilots to track I think, and maybe we were catching other airport transmitters too but they would have been a long way away since that was the only airport within hundreds of miles.

There's eerie things out there on the radio spectrum.

Puppy Time
Mar 1, 2005


nonathlon posted:

The Lost Cosmonauts is a strange case. The two brothers do genuinely appear to have been technical geniuses who did amazing stuff. So, were they talented and fraudsters or talented and deluded?

Their recordings included things like a heart rate slowing and stopping, which isn't really a thing radio picks up. It's pretty clearly fraud according to anyone with any vague knowledge of the Russian space program. I guess there's some room for someone else fooling the two, but most likely they were faking it all.

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Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.

C.M. Kruger posted:

IIRC the lost cosmonaut recordings all come from two Italian brothers as well.

They didn't happen to also be mushroom enthusiasts as well, did they

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