I Had A Random Thought...

[BobbyBesar]

v0.0.1 of the Wikipedia-powered Cousin Calculator is available for download. It's an executable JAR because I don't know anything about the internet.

 

 

It's already been feature creeped pretty extensively, going from a bare bones command line tool to a having a multi-threaded Swing UI. I did some much needed optimizations, including re-writing my initial search algorithm which was very stupid and took way, way too long to complete (I think I re-traversed every node path for every adjacent node...it was really dumb). It also caches the family tree now so you can query multiple relations to the source person without re-querying wikipedia.

 

There are countless additional features that could be added. I wanted to do a user-name search, for one. On the even more pipe-dream-y features would be a tree visualization and the ability to save / load a tree locally so you could run searches entirely offline if you wanted to. It still takes like 2 minutes to generate a useful sized tree for large families.

 

Gormongous, if you do have an actual use for this, PM me or something and let me know if there's anything that's broken.

 

I guess I should put the code on github or something.

[Ninety-Three]

Guys, Flo Rida is Florida with a space in it. How has it taken me so long to notice this?

 

I had to hear "Anna Anthropy" dozens of times across several years before realizing the name was setting up the stealth pun "Miss Anthropy".

[Badfinger]

This thought was inspired by a comment in one of the other threads where it would have been a horrible.

 

In this day and age, I don't think of Playboy magazine as pornography. I don't know how that reflects on me, society, or pornography.

 

Is Playboy still published? Are magazines still real?

[N1njaSquirrel]

I assume Playboy is still published.

 

I have always viewed it as pornography. In the UK, there were two magazines that cropped up about 8(?) years ago called 'nuts' and 'zoo', which is essentially pictures of naked ladies and then random fluff articles about what's going on in the internet, cars and all that fluff. These became 'Lad Mags', which I guess works, which somehow excused the tits. I always viewed it as pornography though. Maybe I'm just a prude. Or set in the ways. Or both.

 

 

I had to hear "Anna Anthropy" dozens of times across several years before realizing the name was setting up the stealth pun "Miss Anthropy".

 

I uh... don't get it.

 

I also never expect any deeper meaning in names. It's why I never worked out Mewtwo was the second Mew until like 5 years ago. (Something my girlfriend routinely reminds me of)

[Griddlelol]

I always thought of things like Zoo and Nuts to be a lot more softcore, not really porn because they don't contain any nudity. As far as I'm aware, generally just women in skimpy clothes.

 

I've never been exposed to playboy, but I always assumed it was more highbrow than the English versions which are basically tits, cars and beer. 

I recently bought a copy of men's health thinking it might have some good dietary/fitness tips. Lol. It reads like it was written by teenagers, where everything is a hyperbolic cure or cancer. The fitness articles are nicely interspersed with similar ads masquerading as articles, and all of it is based on "bro-science" or things that are so out-dated my dad would find it amusing. How do these magazines last with the internet around? There's way better information, and it's all free.

 

Edit: How do the softcore porn magazines last too? There's anything you could want at the click of a button, and it's all in video form.

[SecretAsianMan]

I would call Playboy porn, but on a relative scale it's pretty softcore by today's standards. 

 

Random aside to that: one of the playmates of the month graduated from my high school.  There was a minor kerfuffle at the time because they wanted to do a shoot where she wore (or rather didn't wear as the case may be) her old cheerleading uniform.  By that time it of course would have been too small, which was probably the point, and the school board didn't like the idea so a generic uniform was used instead.  She also came by and visited the school that year.  I was a teacher's aide running an unrelated errand and ended up being the first person to greet her as she came in.

[Ninety-Three]

I had to hear "Anna Anthropy" dozens of times across several years before realizing the name was setting up the stealth pun "Miss Anthropy".

 

 

I uh... don't get it.

 

A woman named "Anna Anthropy" being referred to by her last name would be "Miss Anthropy": Misanthropy.

 

 

Edit: How do the softcore porn magazines last too? There's anything you could want at the click of a button, and it's all in video form.

 

I guess the same way internet streaming video hasn't replaced TV. It's strictly better, but some people are slow to change and/or technophobes.

[N1njaSquirrel]

Ha! I see! Amazing.

 

How does someone become a playboy model? Does she get scouted? Or is she vein enough to assume that people want to see her with her knockers out?

 

 

I always thought of things like Zoo and Nuts to be a lot more softcore, not really porn because they don't contain any nudity. As far as I'm aware, generally just women in skimpy clothes.

 

From my intensive research, Zoo and Nuts definitely show topless models.

[JonCole]

From my intensive research, Zoo and Nuts definitely show topless models.

 

[N1njaSquirrel]

It was definitely a long, hard night of work.

[BobbyBesar]

UK Lad mags like Zoo and Nuts do feature topless models. Similarly, the UK tabloid The Sun (more or less analogous to the National Enquirer in the US) used to feature a "Page 3 girl", which was just a topless girl on page 3.

 

US versions of these (e.g. Maxim) typically wouldn't feature topless-ness because Americans are prudes. But they would have hilariously airbrushed photo-shoots that would avoid showing nipples by giving the models barbie-anatomy. (Looking back at those photo-shoots and playing "where would her nipples even go?" is fairly entertaining in a hawkeye-project sort of way.)

 

As noted above, Playboy likes to see itself as being relatively sophisticated in comparison. The concept was a gentleman's magazine, including everything a gentleman would find interesting, including naked women, but also including politics, etc. In that regard, it's probably partway between pure titillation and, say, classical appreciation of the beauty of the nude physical form (or at least that's what they would like to think about themselves).

 

Playboy has also historically been relatively, let's say sex-positive? in a 60's sexual revolution kind of way. I believe that Hefner advocated for tolerance with regard to homosexuality going back a ways, although I'm not totally sure about that. He's been relatively in favor of gay marriage recently, but I'm not sure if that's a consistent position or a result of his daughter Christie's PR savvy (as she mostly runs the company now). It is, of course, in the weird position where the 60's era liberal may be somewhat out of step with modern liberalism.

 

As far as I know, Playboy hasn't been particularly guilty of exploiting lesbianism (no more so than other pornography companies, and less so than many), but I don't think that's an especially principled decision (as it doesn't necessarily fit with their aesthetic guidelines). There's probably also a significant distinction between the Playboy empire at large, and the magazine itself (where each shot typically only features a single model).

[Brannigan]

I accidentally put a giant goatse in a painting I'm working on. I think I'm proud?

[Bjorn]

accidentally

[Badfinger]

If something, on its discovery, is instantly recognizably cool and beings to propagate immediately, is it even possible to have liked it before it became cool?

[SecretAsianMan]

You probably did like it before it became cool, you just didn't know you liked it until it was discovered.

[Brannigan]

accidentally

[Dewar]

I always thought of things like Zoo and Nuts to be a lot more softcore, not really porn because they don't contain any nudity. As far as I'm aware, generally just women in skimpy clothes.

 

I've never been exposed to playboy, but I always assumed it was more highbrow than the English versions which are basically tits, cars and beer. 

I recently bought a copy of men's health thinking it might have some good dietary/fitness tips. Lol. It reads like it was written by teenagers, where everything is a hyperbolic cure or cancer. The fitness articles are nicely interspersed with similar ads masquerading as articles, and all of it is based on "bro-science" or things that are so out-dated my dad would find it amusing. How do these magazines last with the internet around? There's way better information, and it's all free.

 

Edit: How do the softcore porn magazines last too? There's anything you could want at the click of a button, and it's all in video form.

 

A store near here sells vintage (60s-80s) Playboys. I pick up about one a year and read through it (yes, actually read along with looking at the pictures.) I find the whole thing fascinating. There's some really interesting articles in there that are casually sexist or racist in uncomfortable ways, but others that are pretty progressive for the time. It definitely has a different feel from the internet, which ends up being rather... to the point I guess?

[Ninety-Three]

If something, on its discovery, is instantly recognizably cool and beings to propagate immediately, is it even possible to have liked it before it became cool?

 

I would say that a thing hasn't "become cool" until at least X people say it's cool, so if you were person number X minus one to discover it, then you liked it before it was cool. X is of course a hazy and undefinable concept in the same way as "How many trees constitute a forest?", but I can say you're person number X times one tenth, and then it's clearly possible to be in before it's cool. That's how it works when a thing propagates slowly (say, a local band which slowly rises to prominence, and you saw on their first gig), so I don't see why it should be any different when the thing propagates quickly.

[Badfinger]

I would say that a thing hasn't "become cool" until at least X people say it's cool, so if you were person number X minus one to discover it, then you liked it before it was cool. X is of course a hazy and undefinable concept in the same way as "How many trees constitute a forest?", but I can say you're person number X times one tenth, and then it's clearly possible to be in before it's cool. That's how it works when a thing propagates slowly (say, a local band which slowly rises to prominence, and you saw on their first gig), so I don't see why it should be any different when the thing propagates quickly.

Is the band not cool until it reaches an arbitrary popularity threshold? If you were the first person to hear the band and instantly thought they were cool, the band is cool right?

 

The "before X was cool" thing is more a comment on how cool it is to like a thing rather than the coolness level of the thing itself, isn't it?

[Ninety-Three]

Is the band not cool until it reaches an arbitrary popularity threshold? If you were the first person to hear the band and instantly thought they were cool, the band is cool right?

 

The "before X was cool" thing is more a comment on how cool it is to like a thing rather than the coolness level of the thing itself, isn't it?

 

You're right, strictly speaking the band was always cool, and it was just that most people didn't think that because they didn't know the band existed, much like how ice cream cake was always an objectively clever idea, but it couldn't be widely recognized as such until the idea itself was widely heard of. However, I think you're being too literal, when people say "I liked X before it was cool", I always interpret it as "I liked X before it was perceived as cool", which in turn expands to "I liked X before it reached certain threshold of people thinking it was cool".

[BobbyBesar]

I typically read it as "I liked x before it was cool [to like x]."

[Zeusthecat]

Two trees constitute a forest. Although I'm a bit drunk so maybe it's three trees?

[Ninety-Three]

I take that to mean that the number of trees that constitutes a forest changes based on how drunk you are.

[Merus]

I always took a forest to be enough trees that when you look through it you can't see the other side.

 

What officially constitutes a forest depends on where you live, though. In finding this out, I saw a definition of a forest as an area with trees that supports its own ecosystem, which is a better answer than mine, to be honest.

[Zeusthecat]

 

Just sitting at the airport waiting for my flight and bored off my ass.