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Cemetry Gator posted:Wait, it's not common to have your place of residence and office bugged? Three comrades share a hotel room in Novosibirsk. The first two men open a bottle of vodka, while the third is tired and goes straight to bed. He is unable to sleep however, as his increasingly drunk friends tell political jokes loudly. After a while, the tired man gets frustrated and walks downstairs for a smoke. He stops in the lounge and asks the receptionist to bring tea to their room. She says it will be up in ten minutes. The man walks back to the room, joins the table, leans towards the phone, still on hook, and speaks into it: “Comrade major, room sixty-two would like some tea.” His friends laugh on the joke, until there is a knock on the door. The receptionist brings a tea pot. His friends fall silent and pale, horrified of what they just witnessed. The party is dead, and the man goes to sleep. After a good night's rest, the man wakes up, and notices his friends are gone. Surprised, he walks downstairs and asks the receptionist where they went. The receptionist suggests it is best not to ask such questions. The man is horrified. “Why was I spared?” he wonders aloud. This time the receptionist has an answer: “Comrade Major liked your tea gag.”
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Apr 12, 2021 04:02
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The modern equivalent would be to take the battery out of your phone.
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Apr 12, 2021 04:51
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Who these days has a phone with a removable battery?
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Apr 12, 2021 05:05
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Platystemon posted:Who these days has a phone with a removable battery? Everything is removable if you have a screwdriver.
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Apr 12, 2021 05:09
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Chelsea Manning at one point asked the people she met with to put their phones in the microwave—not turning it on, just using it as a Faraday cage. I don’t know that that’s enough. There’s nothing stopping a modern phone from recording now and transmitting later, so all it would really do is muffle the sound. Leave the phone in the car, or do nothing because the agencies already have the place bugged.
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Apr 12, 2021 05:14
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The Lone Badger posted:Everything is removable if you have a screwdriver. I mean, in a modern phone quite often the whole thing is glued together internally as well. It's removable in the 'everything is removable if you have a sledgehammer' sense I guess.
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Apr 12, 2021 10:27
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Guy Axlerod posted:The rotary dial pulses are not audio, they basically are hanging up the phone and picking it up rapidly. You could technically dial by tapping the hook if you were good enough. No kidding eh? It was an older touch tone phone, or whatever the gently caress a non-rotary phone is called and I somehow dialed 911 by hitting the hang up button a whole bunch of times really quickly.
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Apr 12, 2021 10:41
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Wasn't there a blind dude called Joybubbles who became a legend in the Phreaker (like hackers except for with phones) community in the 60s due to his ability to hack phones and get free long distance calls by whistling at the exact correct frequency.
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Apr 12, 2021 11:04
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FreudianSlippers posted:Wasn't there a blind dude called Joybubbles who became a legend in the Phreaker (like hackers except for with phones) community in the 60s due to his ability to hack phones and get free long distance calls by whistling at the exact correct frequency. Yes. There was also John Draper, aka Captain Crunch, who got his name because he discovered that a toy whistle included as a prize in Captain Crunch cereal had a pitch of exactly 2600 hz, which is what the phone companies used.
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Apr 12, 2021 12:48
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Apologies if this has been discussed recently in the thread, but we were watching Looney Tunes just now and I was reminded of how many references there are in it that are so forgotten now that we don't even recognize them as references. For example, anyone watching in the 1940s would've known:Wikipedia posted:Foghorn Leghorn was directly inspired by the character of Senator Claghorn, a blustery Southern politician played by Kenny Delmar on Fred Allen's popular 1940s radio show. Foghorn adopted many of Claghorn's catchphrases, such as "I say.." and "That's a joke, son!" Delmar's inspiration for Claghorn was a Texas rancher who was fond of saying this. Is that the life cycle of most references? To go from topical to obscure to utterly invisible, or even deeper, for the thing that started as a reference to eventually supplant the thing it was referencing, ala Foghorn Leghorn?
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Apr 12, 2021 22:36
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It’s like a game of Telephone!
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Apr 12, 2021 22:44
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Imagined posted:Apologies if this has been discussed recently in the thread, but we were watching Looney Tunes just now and I was reminded of how many references there are in it that are so forgotten now that we don't even recognize them as references. For example, anyone watching in the 1940s would've known: Same with Gilbert & Sullivan operas. Obviously a lot of the jokes and witicisms still hold up, as does a good deal of the general satire aimed at British society and institutions (some of it disturbingly so...) but some of the dialogue and lyrics are densely-packed with little nods and references that only the original audience would even discern as references. Some of the asides rely on the fact that the audience was sat watching an opera in the SavoyTheatre to properly work. Gilbert updated his libretti to keep the references as topical as possible while he was alive. For instance, the Queen of the Fairies line in Iolanthe, "Could thy brigade, with cold cascade, quench my great love, I wonder?" relied on the fact that the head of the London Metropolitan Fire Brigade always attended first nights at the Savoy - in this case the singer sung the line while gesturing to and making eye contact with the man in question. How many references from the Dragoon Colonel's song in Patience actually work still?. They're obviously references, but modern audiences wouldn't have a clue what most of them mean: "The pluck of Lord Nelson on board of the Victory - Genius of Bismarck devising a plan - The humour of Fielding (which sounds contradictory) - Coolness of Paget about to trepan - The science of Jullien, the eminent musico - Wit of Macaulay, who wrote of Queen Anne - The pathos of Paddy, as rendered by Boucicault - Style of the Bishop of Sodor and Man - The dash of a D'Orsay, divested of quackery - Narrative powers of Dickens and Thackeray - Victor Emmanuel - peak-haunting Peveril - Thomas Aquinas, and Doctor Sacheverell - Tupper and Tennyson - Daniel Defoe - Anthony Trollope and Mister Guizot! If you want a receipt for this soldier-like paragon, Get at the wealth of the Czar (if you can) - The family pride of a Spaniard from Aragon - Force of Mephisto pronouncing a ban - A smack of Lord Waterford, reckless and rollicky - Swagger of Roderick, heading his clan - The keen penetration of Paddington Pollaky - Grace of an Odalisque on a divan - The genius strategic of Caesar or Hannibal - Skill of Sir Garnet in thrashing a cannibal - Flavour of Hamlet - the Stranger, a touch of him - Little of Manfred (but not very much of him) - Beadle of Burlington - Richardson's show - Mister Micawber and Madame Tussaud!" (the footnotes explaining all of these are here - https://gsvloc.org/gilbert-sullivan-resources/gilbert-sullivan-glossaries/patience/) And it's not just the lyrics - Sullivan wasn't beyond putting musical references in his scores, either. I doubt many modern viewers realise that the ensemble chorus in Trial By Jury is a deliberate parody of contemporary Italian opera, that it's meant to be overwrought and over-complex and the fact that it grinds the action to a halt right at the climax of the plot while s the entire cast sing two lines of dialogue back and forth for five minutes is the joke.
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Apr 12, 2021 23:12
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Imagined posted:Is that the life cycle of most references? To go from topical to obscure to utterly invisible, or even deeper, for the thing that started as a reference to eventually supplant the thing it was referencing, ala Foghorn Leghorn? * dirty.
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Apr 12, 2021 23:13
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Imagined posted:Apologies if this has been discussed recently in the thread, but we were watching Looney Tunes just now and I was reminded of how many references there are in it that are so forgotten now that we don't even recognize them as references. For example, anyone watching in the 1940s would've known: I listen to some of the olde tymey radio programs on satellite radio, youtube etc and while I like the dramas and westerns and crime/mystery shows, I have a hard time with the comedies because a lot of it seems to be the sort of thing that you had to have lived during that time to really get it. Like if Bob Hope makes some joke about a senator that was caught up in a scandal at the time the show was broadcast, for example, my Dad might laugh about it, but I'm kinda like "uhhhhh what"? Some of it is timeless like Who's On First, but a lot of it seems to be contemporary references.
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Apr 12, 2021 23:32
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Arsenic Lupin posted:This is why Shakespeare needs footnotes. There are many, many * jokes that you don't have the context to get. At the Shakespeare plays I've seen the actors just act out whatever the dirty joke is or just motion to the body parts, so even if the audience doesn't understand the exact reference, they at least know somebody is going to butt-gently caress somebody, and that's good enough for it to be funny.
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Apr 13, 2021 00:10
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Who would have thought that sodomy could be funny if depicted by Shakespeare.
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Apr 13, 2021 00:41
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These are country matters.
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Apr 13, 2021 00:48
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AmbassadorofSodomy posted:I listen to some of the olde tymey radio programs on satellite radio, youtube etc and while I like the dramas and westerns and crime/mystery shows, I have a hard time with the comedies because a lot of it seems to be the sort of thing that you had to have lived during that time to really get it. Like if Bob Hope makes some joke about a senator that was caught up in a scandal at the time the show was broadcast, for example, my Dad might laugh about it, but I'm kinda like "uhhhhh what"? I recently tried listening to some of the 50s and 60s British radio comedies that are supposed to have inspired the likes of Monty Python (e.g. The Goon Show) and found that, despite generally not being the sort of person bewildered by accents, I literally couldn't even understand what they were saying between the speed they were talking, the low quality of the original recording, the low bitrate of the files of that, only having the audio to go off of, and then not recognizing what they were parodying or satirizing.
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Apr 13, 2021 00:54
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One of the odder experiences I had visiting Minneapolis was when chatting with a bus driver - an older African-American gentleman - finding myself in an in-depth discussion of the Goon Show which his dad used to play for him and which he absolutely loved. I did not in any way expect anyone in the US to have heard The Goon Show. I've only heard bits and pieces. He was super nice, I hope he's still about next time I visit.
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Apr 13, 2021 01:00
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And here we are..... Goons ourselves.
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Apr 13, 2021 01:13
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I was just rewatching Arrested Development and I bet there’s a ton of poo poo that would fly over the heads of a 20 year old that watched it now. So much Bush-era stuff that they would have been too young to get constantly slammed by.
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Apr 13, 2021 19:59
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I’d like to believe all the Arrested Development Army jokes would go over the younger generation’s heads except there are Zoomers in Afghanistan. Still they might not get the Popemobile being better armored than Humvees. Isn’t Dante’s Divine Comedy full of gently caress you’s to various political and religious leaders? I think the Canterbury Tales is similar. Shakespeare was a scrub comparatively speaking.
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Apr 13, 2021 21:46
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Dante's filled with them, especially in hell. Nicholas the third and Boniface the VIII are both condemned to hell. Saladin also ends up in the First Circle which isn't all that bad, but nobody wants to hang out with him
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Apr 13, 2021 22:30
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