Interesting/Unusual/Boring/Horrible/Other Research

A lot of the characters and events of the Space Captain Smith books were inspired by real things. Particular highlights included: the strange life of Ursula Graham-Bower, anthropologist and guerilla commander; an extremely proper but very brutal ladies' self-defence manual from the 1950s, and an automaton called Tippoo's Tiger, commissioned by a sultan, which makes noises and paws at a British Redcoat when wound up.

Likewise, writing fantasy, I found myself going back to history textbooks and drawings and artwork to get a flavour for it all. I once wrote an entire novel inspired by the painting The Triumph of Death, which I enjoyed (although the characters didn't!).
 
Today I googled "Seaweed with hallucinogenic properties".

Am trying to find out if there are any water plants that could be processed into a drug akin to pot to give folks a high.

The things you have to research when figuring out how your character is going to take revenge on another character...
 
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Today's research search terms (for @Juliana 's amusement):

1. How to kill a banshee
2. Pot brownies recipe

That there are many, MANY recipes for making pot/weed-laced brownies is struck me as rather hilarious (in real life, I make normal squidgy-yet-addictive brownies with no pot/weed in them).
 
I've been trying to look up the striking force and capabilities, and possible fighting behaviors, of Pachycephalosaurus.
Pachycephalosauria_jmallon.jpg


Head-butting, Flank-butting, and the Lock-and-Shove technique.
Pachycephalosaur-combat-mov.jpg


It seems that there is a divide over how they used their domed heads, but for my purposes, they just need to hit things really hard.
 
The Bluestocking said:
Grandpa! *Horrified gasp* YOU BAKE AND EAT WEED BROWNIES ONLY?! Perhaps we should start calling you Cathbad K. Dick...

And yes, brownies without weed are addictive enough (Sugar and Chocolate = Culinary Crack!)...
Click to expand...
Truth be told, I'm a fake. :oops: I've had pot less than a dozen times in my life! :p
 
I did some research into possible biological weapons which are not pathogenic, including bio-lasers and quill type projectiles, along with biological armor structures and engines which would function in space. At the same time, I was looking up various phrases in Latin, centrifugal force equations, and tensile strengths of different construction materials. Oh, and the theorized properties of metallic hydrogen (metallic hydrogen is really interesting stuff, btw).

And people wonder how I spent eight years world building before I started writing...
 
Looked up an ability I'm writing that one of my characters has and ended up in a 2 hour rabbit hole about the entire history of the thing and how it's been used. Oops
 
Today I researched how long you could survive by drinking your own urine. It might not give you an extra day - the answer could depend on how hydrated you were when you started drinking the urine. If you repeatedly drink your own urine without any other liquids in between you may have kidney failure before anything else.

A few weeks ago I had to research pomegranates after an editor pointed out throwing a few pomegranates at someone might knock them out. I always thought pomegranates were just little red berries, but it turns out those little red seeds are inside a larger fruit!
 
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