The Origins of the Polandball Language

The origin of the Polandball language lies probably in reverse krautchan. It has long been a habit of krautchan users to translate common English phrases word for word into German without regard for grammar or semantics. “Deal with it” for example becomes “Handle mit es”, which in German makes no sense whatsoever.

The famous “Poland cannot into space” seems to have sprung from the reverse process. It is the word for word translation of a German phrase commonly used if somewhat colloquial.

Later on, however, Polandball language mutated into something more akin to what a Slavic native speaker with poor grasp of English would actually say. Just now I found this phrase on the English FAQ of a Russian site:

“What are you use to made it?”

Polandball lives.

A new flavor of the Nigerian scam

Okay, we’ve all got lots of these. But this one has a few new aspects:

Dear Friend

I know that you might be surprise on this mail, but I am telling you the truth. I know that it is against my official duty to release confidential issue like this to an outsider. There is nothing I can do to help you beside this, I am taking this bold step because of my belief as a Christian.

What I want to tell you is about your contract/inheritance and lottery payments with the Federal Government of Nigeria, there are a lot forces working against you right from the last CBN Governor Chief Sanusi and the immediate past Governor Prof Charles Soludo, they have been frustrating you by demanding upfront payment from you constantly, If I tell you that they are using all these money you sent to them to work against you, you might not believe it. But it is reality.

The rest is business as usual. But I don’t think I’ve ever had “forces working against me” before.

Some vintage Sega ads

Vintage is the big buzzword nowadays…everything is vintage…anyway here are a few Sega ads from around 1990, I guess. One of them promotes the Game Gear, which was released in North America in April 1991.

Facepalm, text mode

You’re familiar with facepalm, I suppose: Posting a picture of someone covering his face with his hand to indicate that you or someone else has done something incredibly stupid.

Captain Picard facepalm is popular facepalm

Now suppose you’re not on an image board, but on some forum where posting images is too much hassle or even impossible, think Facebook. Wat do?

Painting with HTML tables

Here’s a little something that I did long ago, and that has miraculously survived for more than ten years: Painting with HTML tables. This will make HTML purists howl, of course, but so what.

Spam Copypasta

Some of the spam comments I get (all very effectively filtered out by Akismet) are quite funny. Here’s the latest:

I simply wanted to appreciate you again. I do not know what I might have done without those tips discussed by you on such a topic. It seemed to be an absolute frustrating case for me personally, however, spending time with the very skilled form you solved that made me to weep for joy. I’m just happy for the work and expect you find out what an amazing job you are always providing instructing others through the use of your website. More than likely you’ve never come across any of us.

Note how the text is carefully designed to sound flattering, yet be generic enough to fit pretty much any post?

An interesting Ludo – in pewter!

After finishing the last entry, I did some idle googling and came across this interesting Ludo. It was designed by Alberto Tabellini and is made of pewter. I especially liked the pieces, they seem to be made of brass, and since they all have the same color, each player has a shape of his own. You find the same solution in older monochrome computer games, for example H.A.B. Smals’ Mens erger je niet on Hercules and CGA.

And of course, the pun potential of pewter and computer did not completely escape my notice either.

Don’t play NetHack today

Today is a bad day to play NetHack. Real-world time, date and moon phase has some influence on that game, for Friday 13 this means that

your baseline luck is decreased by one. Note that prayers will be rejected while you have negative luck, so until you manage to redress this, dangerous situations will be that much more dangerous.

You could change the computer date of course, but wouldn’t that be cheating?

Hat tip: USA Erklärt.

Heaven, Hell, and Tetris

Just some fun stuff from XKCD: Heaven and Hell in terms of Tetris. As for the comparison with sex (in the alt text of Heaven), well, there’s always this.