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Capitol Hill's mystery soda machine

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Re: Capitol Hill's mystery soda machine

#141

Post by dhosek »

every wrote: post #32

I lived in a co-op decades ago that had something like this. It was an old, single brand soft drink machine. The co-op however stocked it with cheap bottled beer. You had no idea what would appear in the slot when you fed in your coins. And it was a sad day indeed when Special Export came sliding down the shute...

Most of the dorms at my college had a mystery beer slot in their soda machines (they were stocked by the students). Random soda was also a popular option. After a couple significant alcohol poisoning incidents during my time (late 80s), the college became less willing to turn a blind eye to these sorts of things.

Re: Capitol Hill's mystery soda machine

#142

Post by hammock »

sergiomattei wrote: post #13
futhey wrote: post #3

Background: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/capitol-hills-magi... Restocking: https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2014/05/spoiler-alert-mys... Disappearance: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/seattle-mystery-soda-m...

Not gonna lie, keeping up a machine like this spitting fire drinks for years is a great couple's activity.

Omg it was you!

Re: Capitol Hill's mystery soda machine

#143

Post by atribecalledqst »

kypro wrote: post #52
ComputerGuru wrote: post #2

I feel like we live in a world where it is becoming increasingly impossible for things like this to exist. I don’t have much commentary on the matter other than to say it makes me sad.

Not sure how many people will get the reference, but I was thinking this just yesterday about the Pokémon red and blue games. Back in the nineties many rumours spread about hidden secret in those games, but we didn’t have the internet to verify or debunk them. Like many kids back then me and my friends spent hours trying to move that truck to get a mew, but it was impossible, it was just a rumour that spread because…

I was on the internet back then as a youngster. The Internet helped grow, inflame, and disseminate the rumors more than anything else. So many fake ways of getting a Mew, Togepi, or Pikablu...

If you think about it, how did you and your friends learn about the truck? I'd be willing to bet that at least indirectly somebody found it on the internet (or a friend told them, etc. etc.). It wasn't something you could see in the course of a normal playthrough, you had to use a glitch to see it at all.

Re: Capitol Hill's mystery soda machine

#144

Post by EamonnMR »

lamontcg wrote: post #62
jacurtis wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> true Alternate Reality Games peaked in the mid-to-late 2000s I agree. Early 2000's were the glory years of the internet. The internet was powerful enough to be bringing people together that could have never communicated or met before. It allowed niche interest groups to connect so that these types of stories and mysteries could proliferate and spread, but it was not so widespread and attention-focused that the myst…

> I agree. Early 2000's were the glory years of the internet. You know how every generation thinks that the music they grew up with was the best and its all gone downhill from there? Well, lemme tell you little shits a story about Usenet and Eternal September...

I've been searching for a natural way to browse pre-eternal-september Usenet. Google Groups is less than ideal.

Re: Capitol Hill's mystery soda machine

#145

Post by EamonnMR »

jmcgough wrote: post #29
mintplant wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oddly, true Alternate Reality Games [0] peaked in the mid-to-late 2000s, even as the world has shrunk by orders of magnitude since. Perhaps that's the period when the internet itself was at its most Unknown, before the great silofication of everything. [0] ...as opposed to, say, ads with base64 "puzzles" tacked on or narrative-less viral videos with arbitrary distortion.

ARG for promoting films / games kinda peaked as a guerilla marketing campaign then. Once it became less novel, less money was spent on developing them. But yeah they become a lot less compelling when it's solved so quickly and there's wikis devoted to them.

ARGs for promoting nothing seem to be on the rise (I don't have links to back that up though.)

Re: Capitol Hill's mystery soda machine

#146

Post by nyc_pizzadev »

mindcrime wrote: post #88
xrd wrote: post #47

A "fun fact" my son loves: more people are killed by vending machines than sharks each year [1]. Perhaps it murdered someone and went into hiding? 1. https://medium.com/purple-theory/vending-machines-vs-sharks-...

Another bit of trivia I always found interesting... approximately zero people per year die in elevator crashes. That basically isn't a real thing that happens. Of the very small number of people who are killed by elevators, they are almost all elevator technicians / maintenance people who are in the shaft doing repairs and have some kind of accident.

This elevator crashed down the shaft crushing this poor guy in the door. So sad...

https://nypost.com/2019/08/22/video-shows-moment-man-crushed...

Re: Capitol Hill's mystery soda machine

#147

Post by ALittleLight »

dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #127
ALittleLight wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Soda can make you fat and brown your teeth. It doesn't create addicts who destroy their lives over it. Soda doesn't kill people via Drunk Driving. Soda doesn't contribute to violent crimes and domestic violence.

It’s not fair to write off the harm caused by soda as just causing brown teeth and fatness and to then to juxtapose it with domestic violence and drunk driving. That’s a basic strawman, which I sought to exclude by carving out “alcohol abuse” in my OP. Because alcoholism is terrible, especially when it affects a close loved one, and was not the subject of my comment. Fortunately, the vast majority of people who consu…

Alcohol contributes to obesity as well though. Alcohol, like soda, is unhealthy to drink and it causes the more serious problems I alluded to previously.

Re: Capitol Hill's mystery soda machine

#148

Post by randomswede »

EamonnMR wrote: post #144
lamontcg wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I agree. Early 2000's were the glory years of the internet. You know how every generation thinks that the music they grew up with was the best and its all gone downhill from there? Well, lemme tell you little shits a story about Usenet and Eternal September...

I've been searching for a natural way to browse pre-eternal-september Usenet. Google Groups is less than ideal.

Any "archived" way would require some serious effort to emulate the delay. Especially if you chose to experience it from (say) Australia.

Re: Capitol Hill's mystery soda machine

#150

Post by goldenkey »

ALittleLight wrote: post #147
dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not fair to write off the harm caused by soda as just causing brown teeth and fatness and to then to juxtapose it with domestic violence and drunk driving. That’s a basic strawman, which I sought to exclude by carving out “alcohol abuse” in my OP. Because alcoholism is terrible, especially when it affects a close loved one, and was not the subject of my comment. Fortunately, the vast majority of people who consu…

Alcohol contributes to obesity as well though. Alcohol, like soda, is unhealthy to drink and it causes the more serious problems I alluded to previously.

Indeed but not in children. You're comparison is a red herring. Two things can be bad in different ways.
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