#trap street

[faithful-grigori]

Stumbled across recently released podcast Trap Street from Fable and Folly. Liking it so far, interested to see where this mystery goes. There’s a clear theme of location; the show name is a street name (or rather, I learned thanks to the show’s website, a term for fake locations added to a map to discover plagiarists), the first episode is named after the city it’s set in, our hero regularly gets lost even in familiar places ever since his father died (something maps are unable to help with), and one of the two files that will (according to the description) decide the fate of humanity is a town map. Interesting to see if this is an entirely mundane threat being unraveled or if there’s some sort of spacial-related speculative fiction phenomenon going on.

[dougielombax]

I didn’t know that trap streets are a real thing.

Apparently it’s an old technique used in cartography.

It was used to spot potential plagiarists of the map in question. Also something to do with copyright?

Not quite the same as the ones in Dr Who but still.

I thought it was interesting.

[thewordwideweb]

Beware the mountweazel

As the comedian Victor Borge once said, “I normally don’t do requests. Unless, of course, I have been asked to do so.” My friend Michael requested “mountweazel” as the Word of the Day. With a word like “mountweazel,” how can I refuse?

A mountweazel is a fake entry deliberately placed into a reference work, like an encyclopedia or a dictionary. It’s a trap, to prevent (or at least discover) potential copyright infringement. That is, if someone cribs whole sections of your encyclopedia and reprints them, and you find your mountweazel in there….bang, you’ve caught them red-handed and probably red-faced, too! Let the lawsuits begin!

The word originated as a bogus entry in the fourth edition of the New Columbia Encyclopedia in 1975. The entry began: “Mountweazel, Lillian Virginia (1942-1973).” It went on to say that the fictitious Ms. Mountweazel was an American photographer, born in Bangs, Ohio, who turned from designing fountains to taking photos in 1963. She died at the tender age of 31 when, while on assignment for “Combustibles” magazine, there was an explosion. Poor Lillian. It’s enough to make you want to shed crocodile tears.

Sometimes, phony words turn up in dictionaries not as mountweazels, but as “ghost words,” because someone made a mistake and a proofreader or copyeditor simply missed it.

Mapmakers have their own version of moutnweazels to prevent copyright infringement. They call them “trap streets,” which is not as cool as “mountweazel,” but serves the same purpose. In the 1930’s, the mapmaking firm General Drafting Corp. added a whole fake hamlet called “Agloe, New York” (in the Catskills) to one of their road maps. In the 1950’s, some clever souls built the “Agloe General Store” at the intersection shown on the map, and it became a landmark. The Agloe General Store eventually shut down, but if you search for it on Google maps, it’s still there! (As Casey Stengel said, “You could look it up.”)

I’m pretty sure that a few years ago, my GPS accidentally deposited me in a field far from my intended destination because it was reading a trap street. Or else it just had a grudge against me. We’ll never know for sure.

[quantumshade]

girls when. figurative death in doctor who. lost to a parallel world. memory erased. stuck in another time period. in between one heartbeat and the next.

[goryhorroor]

horror sub-genres: slasher

[justdavina]

Bunny Estrada : Oh MY Fu@#$ing HOT! I can't take this any more! I can't breathe! This smoking HOT Transgender, tasty,wonderful delight is to much for me to handle! Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!!!! Someone please help me!!!!!

[gummi-ships]

Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance - The World That Never Was

[kiwikeewan]

Wrestler dragon thing in the NYC subway Street Fighter inspired commission for @naviiiii

[ehlnofay]

how many murder robots can there realistically be in dwemer ruins? I understand it from a game making perspective but like... they're meant to be cities. people lived there. I suppose the animunculi would have some use as an army and maybe as guards but aside from that what's the point?

most of the automatons have to be much more benign. cleaners and errand-runners and assistants in laboratories. I want to see those robots. elder scrolls six get on this

[shittysawtraps]

john kramer gets a cat and it immediately becomes his favorite apprentice

[11oh1]

[sysig]

whoops i asked in the wrong place. would you be willing to do a request of the vargas boys in a SAW trap? thank you in advance <3

Day 2 - Was it not obvious enough

[ruvviks]

THE EVIL WITHIN 2 ➤ scenery [8/?]

[spicynectarines]

Fan art I drew of Thrawn dying in a glue trap

[hansatorium]

There is a lot going on here.

[benitos-bunny]

chambea, ¡jala! cabrón, ya no te quedan bala'