Laugh links
Some of these are pretty funny. Click a “pic.twitter.com” link to see the Twitter entry, and clicking a picture shows you a somewhat larger and more complete image. Here’s HuffPost’s 2021 list:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/funniest-tweets-cats-dogs-2021_n_61ccf5f9e4b0bb04a6362061
For example, from https://twitter.com/the_shb/status/1443740333041328128: “Today seems as good a day as any to share these pics of the cat done as a Zen garden with the world.”
Too lazy to put up something more useful, but these might make you smile.
xkcd.com is mostly tech- and science-related funnies, but everyone should get this. Note that every xkcd has an extra comment when you hover the mouse over it:
And sometimes a group does something so… wrong… that it makes even a serial killer shake his head. (A little subtle, watch carefully.) It’s an ad, yes, but one of my favorites. (30 seconds)
What? You never realized that states and DOT snowplow drivers and citizens might like to name their plows?
Some of my favorites:
Ctrl Salt Delete
Clearopathtra
Large Marge
Salt Salt Baby
Clearing Present Danger, Fast and Flurryous, The Big LePlowski, Mission Implowsible
Blades of Steel
Dolly Plowton and Snowprah Winfrey
Darth Blader, Han Snow-Lo, Snowba Fett, Snowbegone Kenobi
https://www.michigan.gov/mdot/0,4616,7-151-9615-575096–,00.html
https://www.dot.state.mn.us/news/2021/03/02-snowplow.html
And some discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29883840.
A loon appears on Canada’s one-dollar coin because the original dies, featuring a different design, were lost in transit. (Is this any way to design currency?)
When Canada decided to replace one-dollar bills with one-dollar coins, the 1935 Emanuel Hahn “voyageur” design was adapted for the new coin, but something went awry — the master dies of the new one-dollar coin were lost in transit.
I read The Da Vinci Code and hated the writing. Pedestrian at best, convoluted and clumsy at worst. John Oliver didn’t like it either:
None of this success would really bother me that much if it were not for the fact that the cryptic at the heart of The Da Vinci Code, the puzzle (that) art throb Robert Langdon has to solve involves a poem that begins,
“In London lies a knight a pope interred
His labor’s fruit a holy wrath incurred.”Now we quickly find out the knight in question is Sir Isaac Newton. So Isaac Newton, labor’s fruit, you’re thinking apple, right? Apple. It’s your first guess and it’s also your only guess and you’re right because it’s fucking apple. No one should need Robert Langdon — a Harvard educated puzzle solver who fucks — to get to the bottom of this. A child could solve that puzzle. And yet the poem continues:
“You seek the orb that ought be on the tomb
it speaks of rosy flesh and seeded womb.”So orb, rosy flesh, seeds. It’s fucking apple, is it. It’s apple. Guess how many pages there are between that poem and the solution to the puzzle. I’ll give you a clue. It’s a lot more than one. Both the book and the movie make it seem like only the brilliant Robert Langdon could possibly decode the mystery behind those complex words. Here is the scene in the movie version where he explains the solution like he’s Indiana Jones finding the Ark of the fucking Covenant to a speechless and awestruck Amelie:
(Langdon): “There was every orb conceivable on that tomb except one. The orb which fell from the heavens and inspired Newton’s life’s work. Work that incurred the wrath of the church until his dying day. A-P-P-L-E. Apple.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xX5IV9n223M. 8 min 46 seconds.
Here’s an example from the book:
It takes 830 words — two pages — for everyone to understand that the Super Duper Extra Special Secret Encoding is… it’s mirror writing:
Is there anything positive we can say about 2021?
Yes. We can say that it was marginally better than 2020.
Granted, this is not high praise. It’s like saying that somebody is marginally nicer than Hitler. But it’s something.
What was better about 2021? For one thing, people finally emerged from their isolated pandemic cocoons and started connecting with others. Granted, the vast majority of the people who connected with us this year wanted to discuss our car’s extended warranty. But still.
(…)
March: International shipping is seriously disrupted when the Suez Canal is blocked by a massive container ship that became wedged sideways after the pilot attempted to take a shortcut suggested by Waze.
December: In other economic news, investors are alarmed when the Federal Reserve Board issues a formal statement declaring that it has no earthly idea what a “bitcoin” is, and it’s pretty sure nobody else does either.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2021/12/26/dave-barrys-year-review-2021/
I save interesting sayings that I find on the internet. Here are some from 2014 but which still make me laugh… or learn:
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Metaluna on Ars Technica wrote about a new browser:
The current trend among many companies is to name applications with a pithy, excessively minimalist name that is related to what people do with the program. For example “Word” or “Pages” because people use those apps to write and display words and pages. Or “Numbers” because a spreadsheet is used to crunch and display numbers, etc.
In that spirit, I propose that the new browser be called “Boobs”.
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Lewis’ Law: “The comments on any article about feminism justify feminism.”
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Steampunk: what the past would look like if the future had arrived earlier.
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Derek Lowe writes an occasional blog on chemistry called…
…But I have to admit, I’d never thought much about the next analog of hydrogen peroxide. Instead of having two oxygens in there, why not three: HOOOH? Indeed, why not? This is a general principle that can be extended to many other similar situations. Instead of being locked in a self-storage unit with two rabid wolverines, why not three? Instead of having two liters of pyridine poured down your trousers, why not three?
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/things-i-won-t-work-peroxide-peroxides
And more:
https://www.science.org/topic/blog-category/things-i-wont-work-with
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Terry Pratchett quotes:
“The entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks.” – Equal Rites (1987)
“So much universe, and so little time.” – The Last Hero (2001)
“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.” – A Hat Full of Sky (2004)
“Evolution was far more thrilling to me than the biblical account. Who would not rather be a rising ape than a falling angel?” – in a 2008 interview.
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von Braun reportedly said “Late to bed, early to rise, work like hell – and advertise” so underscoring the importance of PR.
Tracy Ullman does Angela Merkel (one of the outstanding world leaders of the past sixteen years) as Merkel’s assistant tries to get her to not roll her eyes at other politicians. (2 minutes 45 seconds):
Not often I can use both “Politics” and “Funny” tags on the same item.
We examined adherence to international travel advice during the 86 international journeys that James Bond was observed to undertake in feature films spanning 1962–2021. Scrutinizing these missions involved ∼3113 min of evening hours per author that could easily have been spent on more pressing societal issues. We uncovered above-average sexual activity, often without sufficient time for an exchange of sexual history, with a remarkably high mortality among Bond’s sexual partners (27.1; 95% confidence interval 16.4–40.3).
Original article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1477893921002167. It has sections:
1. Nightfall: sexual health
2. The man with the golden gut: food safety and infections
3. A flu to a kill: air and droplet borne diseases
4. The fly who loved me: arthropod-borne diseases
5. Dr nope: other vector borne diseases and neglected tropical diseases
6. Tomorrow in the skies: the problem of poor travel preparation
Also reviewed in Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/10/you-only-live-once-epidemiologists-analyze-health-risks-in-all-the-james-bond-films/.
Funding
There was no specific funding for this project. Given the futility of its academic value, this is deemed entirely appropriate by all authors.
Singapore cleaned up its pollution problems and they get a so-cute reward!
Pollution and deforestation drove away Singapore’s otter population in the 1970s. But as the country cleaned up its waters and reforested land in recent years, otters came back in full force, integrating into urban spaces and learning to navigate one of the world’s most cosmopolitan cities. Today, to the chagrin of some and the joy of others, the island is home to more than 10 otter romps, or families.
Laugh / learn links log 