the original secret # was 32, but then Burroughs used his cut-up method one wild night, and the mechanizations of chance delivered 23
― Karl Malone, Friday, 23 September 2022 15:40 (one year ago) link
weird al heads know the real answer is always 27. why? because it's a funny number! not to be confused with "42" references which i think may have faded out a bit since the geek internet of the 90s.
― Doctor Casino, Friday, 23 September 2022 16:07 (one year ago) link
lollll Will
― Vance Vance Devolution (sic), Friday, 23 September 2022 16:25 (one year ago) link
Shuggie Otis, 1971.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbhIZe3smr0
― nickn, Friday, 23 September 2022 16:38 (one year ago) link
obvious counterpoint to that: the *Ballers* Johnson coverhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0bdLdTJdKI
― big movers, hot steppers + long shaker intros (breastcrawl), Friday, 23 September 2022 16:54 (one year ago) link
Trying and failing to find that scene in Quiz Show where Herbert Stempel brags about knowing everything about any two-digit number and waiter says “I dunno… 23?” and then Stempel starts rattling off a dozen random facts about the number 23.
― Mr. Snrub, Friday, 23 September 2022 16:59 (one year ago) link
xp Mostly trying to show an early reference, it pre-dates Michael Jordan (as does the BJ version).
― nickn, Friday, 23 September 2022 17:05 (one year ago) link
23 is also on the album art of "yellow submarine"!
― budo jeru, Friday, 23 September 2022 17:53 (one year ago) link
― big movers, hot steppers + long shaker intros (breastcrawl), Friday, 23 September 2022 18:19 (one year ago) link
That Serial podcast is supported by WBEZ of Chicaco, not WB-Easy of Chicago.
― link.exposing.politically (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Friday, 23 September 2022 18:51 (one year ago) link
Unless I've missed something, Alban Berg predates the ones mentioned on this thread in 23-obsession:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/945968
― anatol_merklich, Saturday, 24 September 2022 17:42 (one year ago) link
I put some Northampton based friends who were into Temple of Psychic Youth etc up a couple of times when I was living in London. They were most thrilled to see I lived at number 23 which would be mid to late 80s. Said it was a number that kept turning up in coincidences and things
― Stevolende, Saturday, 24 September 2022 17:52 (one year ago) link
Oh God really? I have someone in my family who is 'into' conspiracies and I happened to tell him that the optimum time to get quotes for renewing car insurance is 23 days before your renewal date. Anyway he kept going on about 'noticing the number 23 a lot lately' so I guess he's just read that on some wacky site rather than actually noticing it himself, which is vmic. Not sure he actually got around to comparing car insurance either.
― kinder, Saturday, 24 September 2022 18:00 (one year ago) link
it's a long (and tiresome) theme in the illuminatus! books, tho not (i'm guessing) invented by them
(they also made a fuss abt 19)
i'm also guessing not invented by burroughs actually, tho he's almost certainly the common denominator for all the 70s vectors -- the throbbing gristle mail art expanded universe -- so i wonder if it's a theme waiting to be amplified in other earlier esoteric writing and general dicking about (crowley wrote a poem called "23 skidoo": it forms chapter 23 of his book of lies)
like the blavatsky milieu? vienna round the time the 12-toners were getting into gear was stiff with theosophists -- the mahlers, hugo wolf, the bruckner milieu -- so if 23 mattered to them this stuff was in the air generally really
― mark s, Saturday, 24 September 2022 18:21 (one year ago) link
last paragraph maybe being an organic way of linking alban berg to psychick TV
― mark s, Saturday, 24 September 2022 18:22 (one year ago) link
Would like to see some robust data-led research into the significance of the number 23
― I've seen things you people wouldn't belieeeeeeve!!! (Matt #2), Saturday, 24 September 2022 18:23 (one year ago) link
if you look at enough data-led research you start seeing it more and more
― mark s, Saturday, 24 September 2022 18:24 (one year ago) link
look, it’s the first prime p for which unique factorization of cyclotomic integers based on the p the root of unity breaks down
― brimstead, Saturday, 24 September 2022 18:30 (one year ago) link
Och, tell us something we don't know.
― Narada Michael Fagan (Tom D.), Saturday, 24 September 2022 18:31 (one year ago) link
the OG:The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
― big movers, hot steppers + long shaker intros (breastcrawl), Saturday, 24 September 2022 18:47 (one year ago) link
milieu is a word you can definitely use too often (at all is probably too often)
― mark s, Saturday, 24 September 2022 19:01 (one year ago) link
idk dude within my own milieu it’s pretty common to say milieu tho i guess other milieux cld be less milieu-tolerant
― sourselves (cat), Saturday, 24 September 2022 20:10 (one year ago) link
Adrian Belew was a good old southern boy from Kentucky.
― Western® with Bacon Flavor, Sunday, 25 September 2022 06:43 (one year ago) link
was in my 30s or perhaps even 40s when i figgered that the word "epitome" (said like it looked when i read it) is the same word as "epitome" (said like it's actually said)
don't think i ever said it out loud the wrong way, just sort of thought they were 2 difft words
― black ark oakensaw (doo rag), Sunday, 25 September 2022 10:03 (one year ago) link
I was the same with "segue".
― Kim Kimberly, Sunday, 25 September 2022 13:13 (one year ago) link
I hear "seeg" enough in the wild that I thought it was an accepted alternative pronunciation, but after looking at a couple of dictionaries, nope. Give it ten years though.
― link.exposing.politically (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Sunday, 25 September 2022 13:35 (one year ago) link
I heard on a program about soil earlier that in Ancient Egypt there was the death penalty for anyone caught removing a worm from the soil. They didn't mention if it applied to children as well.
― calzino, Sunday, 25 September 2022 13:50 (one year ago) link
isn't sand what happens if soil has no worms? *waves at the natural sciences as they pass me by at a tremendous distance*
anyway you can see why they'd be worried
― mark s, Sunday, 25 September 2022 14:02 (one year ago) link
also where were they putting the worms they'd removed?
― mark s, Sunday, 25 September 2022 14:03 (one year ago) link
Soil is sacred to many cultures but I suppose it will be much more sacred in countries that are 90% + desert.
― calzino, Sunday, 25 September 2022 14:05 (one year ago) link
maybe there was a thriving black-market for wirrums, they wouldn't have the death penalty if people weren't stealing them
― calzino, Sunday, 25 September 2022 14:08 (one year ago) link
and one common occurrence during famines and droughts is people will eat anything before they get to the cannibalism stage and those pharaohs weren't generous with the flax rations.
― calzino, Sunday, 25 September 2022 14:18 (one year ago) link
too right, fuckin flaxitarians
― o shit the sheriff (NickB), Sunday, 25 September 2022 14:20 (one year ago) link
amusingly enough too much water is also very bad for earthworms -- it's like dune out there ppl
― mark s, Sunday, 25 September 2022 14:22 (one year ago) link
don't google this using just the word "worms" btw, the world is full of worms you dont want to know abt
― mark s, Sunday, 25 September 2022 14:23 (one year ago) link
brain control worms that turn you into their helpless puppet slave?
― calzino, Sunday, 25 September 2022 14:27 (one year ago) link
― big movers, hot steppers + long shaker intros (breastcrawl), Sunday, 25 September 2022 14:28 (one year ago) link
Mine was "hyperbole". Was well into my thirties when I finally realized the spoken and written words were one and the same
― doug watson, Sunday, 25 September 2022 14:30 (one year ago) link
I thought it was a single syllable for a while but that just sounds like it should go with the word Heil dunnit. As commonly said by stereotypical National Socialists
― Stevolende, Sunday, 25 September 2022 14:33 (one year ago) link
I was 30 before I realized why I got eyebrow raises when I said "banal"
― i eat ass with a knife and fork (Neanderthal), Sunday, 25 September 2022 15:31 (one year ago) link
xps Oh yeah, "hyperbole" is another one it took me a long time to figure out.
― Kim Kimberly, Sunday, 25 September 2022 15:33 (one year ago) link
Lol and that's how i heard "banal" in my mind before ever actually hearing it said.
― Kim Kimberly, Sunday, 25 September 2022 15:34 (one year ago) link
He pronounced the word 'banal'While I pronounced it 'banal'I said it rhymes not with 'canal'But properly with 'anal'
(from some old New York Magazine competition 30 or more years ago)
― Hideous Lump, Sunday, 25 September 2022 19:06 (one year ago) link
yeah had the exact same with "segue" too
― black ark oakensaw (doo rag), Sunday, 25 September 2022 19:43 (one year ago) link
segue heil
For some reason it was a word often used by radio one djs in the 80s so I was shockingly young when I learned.
― ledge, Sunday, 25 September 2022 20:05 (one year ago) link
the correct pronunciation annoys me because seeeeg sounds like a smooth transition whereas segway trips itself up in the middle of the word.
― assert (matttkkkk), Sunday, 25 September 2022 20:11 (one year ago) link
TIL Godspeed You! Black Emperor took their name from a Japanese biker documentary.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Speed_You!_Black_Emperor
― nickn, Sunday, 25 September 2022 20:21 (one year ago) link
And it's playing on catodetv.com right now.
― nickn, Sunday, 25 September 2022 20:24 (one year ago) link
― big movers, hot steppers + long shaker intros (breastcrawl), Sunday, 25 September 2022 20:45 (one year ago) link