xkcd

mikrit

The door on the far side is open, and says "CHINA POST / 中国邮政 ", and on the near side "TSOP ANIHC / 政邮国中 ", because in Chinese things on the sides of vehicles are written front-to-back. The logo is reversed but the individual glyphs (Chinese and Roman) are not… That's weird. It ...

mikrit

The sign means: "Store roundabout traffic signs here", but there was an imported ruler-disposing robot that couldn't read protobeanish. The mistake will eventually destroy civilization. By the way, the Wikipedia article on Roundabout is extremely long and detailed, with a cute animated tra...

mikrit

ETA by mscha: I don't understand what the camera is doing. (First moving away from the yellow thingies towards nothing, then reversing course.) And the black-and-white camerabeanie doesn't follow the elevator, but keeps filming the burbulent water. That's ominous, as if something more is waiting to...

mikrit

ggh: Congratulations, New Zealand! SBN: Very cute wolpies. I'm glad you didn't go for the scary Hound of the Baskervilles look with fluorescent fangs and whatnot. The molpiness that wants to be free reminded me of an old limerick by Morris Bishop in the Penguin Book of Limericks , compiled by O. Pa...

mikrit

The robot ONGs suddenly remind me of the end, sorry, the *nd of when Wallace and Gromit go to the moon. I'll spoiler it if you haven't seen that (in which case, do it now!).

Spoiler:

mikrit

When I was a kid in the 1960s and 1970s, Halloween was not a thing in Sweden. All Hallows' Eve, yes, with candles at graveyards, very solemn, but no Halloween stuff. But kids used to dress up like witches on Easter and go around begging for candy or coins. Some years ago, I found an old, Swedish Don...

mikrit

ED: Nope, it's fyrtiotvå in Swedish, although I admit that is is pronounced as if it were spelled førtitvå. That makes everything kristall klear, ja? For decree: In 1926 a group of explorers, with a base camp at 51° 5′ 24″ N, 0° 6′ 25.2″ E, managed to find an important artefact. The one who made the...

mikrit

Førtito is apparently a place in Norway. Ah, yes, there is a Førtito Bar & Bowling in Sarpsborg, Norway. But also, førtito means forty-two in Norwegian , according to Google Translate. So we are both right - the usual outcome in this friendly thread. (Well, Dutch and Norwegian are functionally ...

mikrit

Decree: Obscure book references. Users browsing this forum: Eoink, førtito , mscha, peregrine_crow, ps.02, slinches, Yahoo [Bot] and 29 guests Hm, could førtito be Dutch for fortytwo, the answer to you-know-what in a certain book hexalogy. (Or pentalogy?) Anyway, whoever put the very long yellow ru...

mikrit

Hi Link! I think of you when my computer is compiling and I am staring at the screen. It's when the Incredibuild tool displays a set of parallel progress bars with text, so some of them are labelled "link". Very often, I find myself thinking, "Oh look, a new post from Link! No, wait, ...

mikrit

Thanks for the animations, mscha, I hadn't realized that the Beanies used the rope to pull the elevator closer to the wall. Seems like a dangerous practice. (Well, in comparison with trying to repair a gigantic crumbling dam, maybe not so dangerous.) About the anonymously written web comic at dord.h...

mikrit

Excellent idea. Those people in The Long Now Foundation don't really see the big picture. Five-digit years - bah!

mikrit

Yup, that registered immediately as "what the Time ch*rp!" Indeed. That's unusually RELATED. Maybe it's Down Comer 5. Or Asteroid 4942 Munroe. I was just wondering about the English name for Plockepinn. I noted that Wikipedia writes that one must follow the rules strictly in order to enjo...

mikrit

... although I think the rythm stutters. "BOOK-mak-ER bi-BI" doesn't sound natural I'd normally pronounce it "BI-bi", so don't see an issue. [...] Jose Well yes, me too. But "BI-bi" is a trochee, so pronouncing it like that would wreck the iambic tetrameter. It would j...

mikrit

I think we should do away with months altogether and just use Julian. Today is the 299th day of the year. Yeah, but if we go Julian, we should go all the way. Today is Julian day 2457322 since the epoch start at 12h Jan 1, 4713 BC. What are those things "year" and "month" of whi...

mikrit

I am a knuckle counter. We have the poem in a Swedish version, but with three -embers that fit the rhyme, combined with having Swedish words for June and July that very nearly rhyme, I have never found the poem useful. At my job, we once had an important costumer who wanted an assignment done and de...

mikrit

An evil water spirit with outstretched arms!

What if we tried more glue?

mikrit

The Beanie used speech! Oh, I didn't notice. Sneaky to talk among the ropes. He said: X,c. According to the time wikia, it is believed to mean affirmative/okay. I can't remember if the upperscore above the c means question mark or exklamation mark. So, "okay?" or "okay!", I thin...

mikrit

I had fun with the online password poem generator that DrSamCarter linked to. It took me only a couple of tries to get a poem with coherent meaning: A cabin bookmaker Bibi accepted business guarantee. ... although I think the rythm stutters. "BOOK-mak-ER bi-BI" doesn't sound natural, but m...

mikrit

This stems from people being lazy about conversation, and not paying attention to the word "not" in a sentence. People answer positive and negative questions the same. "Didn't you just do that?" is answered the same as "Did you just do that?", by saying Yes. They mean ...

mikrit

The anemone played vibraphone.

The electric eel was a conductor.

mikrit

Apparently someone dropped a cello in the water in the hiddenONGs. I cannot unsee the cello. Not the best underwater instrument. Yeah, I finally got the bass joke, but it took me a while. Another instrument you could play under water is the submarimba. This calls for a jolly sailor song: What shall...

mikrit

- I think I recognize those two Stoor-hobbits over there, who have just found a golden ring, but I am not sure if I remember their names. Isn't one of them Deagol?
- Deagol shmeagol!
- Yeah, that's right. Thank you.

mikrit

Oh, I do like the word "cromulent". I have seen the episode. Miss Krabappel talks about the Springfield motto: "A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man", and remarks: "I hadn't heard the word 'embiggen' before I moved to Springfield". And Miss Hoover replies: "I ...

mikrit

Oh, the Jabberwocky was burbling? And burble is a real verb? Ah yes, I just looked it up, and it can mean "to make a sound like water flowing". Then water is burbulent! (As is the Jabberwock. I mean was. RIP.) And this is ironic: "to burble" can also mean, "to talk fast abou...

mikrit

Ah. The construction "<some word> shm-<some word>" is an American idiom, I think, possibly originating in Yiddish. Although HES is British, I believe. Anyway: when someone claims something, using <some word>, and you disagree, distrust, or think it is irrelevant, you can reply with "<...

mikrit

Burbulent? No, that must be bermulent water. In the black-and-white frame, I mean. The hiddenONG water looks more like ordinary schmurbulence. (Hope you are impressed by my fluid dynamics knowledge.)

mikrit

I still think that in reality, water coming through a hole in a dam wouldn't have such perfect shape; there would be some droplets, smaller streams spraying in other directions, bubbles, water vapor... Indeed. A rough, irregular hole such as a breach would produce turbulent, not laminar, flow. But ...

mikrit

Thanks for the height estimate, mrob. So, the breach is at most about 30 metres below the Atlantic surface? That doesn't seem too bad. Lucky that there was an elevator at the right position. I predict dialogue: Short-Beanie: Squiggle, squiggle, curl. Translation: We can fix this; we just need someon...

mikrit

Good question. Pretending to be Randall must be heresy, for which the punishment is continued red-hairiness. How about we speculate about what Randall's current superpowers are. But isn't there already an OtherThread for that? Ch*rp, my decreeing power fails me. How about this: calculate the height ...

mikrit

xkcd-related SMBC-comic: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=3900

mikrit

But how could he know that the two dead men were brothers, if he didn't know them? He must have been lying about that - so he was the murderer!

(Sorry, I have been watching Columbo reruns.)

mikrit

keithl wrote:Studies say all sorts of things about people, because there are all sorts of people, and no study looks at every one of them - but most pretend to. The average person has one ovary, one testicle, and is 93% dead.

I'm not dead! I'm getting better! I don't want to go on the cart!

mikrit

Shouldn't there be a sign: "In case of earthquake, do not use elevator".

mikrit

cellocgw wrote:So does this corollary violate the Recognition Law? You know, " Dunno who he was, but his face rings a Bell"
//ducks and runs

That's Pavlov.

mikrit

ggh wrote:Rosetta should get off her butt, eh?

- "Verily, I shall indeed endeavor to get off my ~~arse~~ ~~butt~~ ~~derriere~~ ~~rear end~~ posterior."

ETA:

ggh wrote:and the Americans may not know what I'm talking about, but Yay! On to the semi-finals!

Congratulations! (Cricket? Rugby? Conkers?)

mikrit

Working as a berm guard. Going on down, down. Fixing this is too hard. But Rosetta did frown. Working as a berm guard. Going on down, down. Fixing this is too hard. But Rosetta did frown. Five o'clock in the morning, And the berm is giving way. Lord I am so tired, But it's time to run away. Working ...

mikrit

It's a fish! It's a squid! No, it's Aquaman! He has come to prevent the apocalypse! Or maybe it is just turbulence. The two stories vaguely remind me of a nonsense song we used to sing in Swedish, in mock English, in mock Norwegian and in mock Russian. Here is the mock English version: In Middle Oce...

mikrit

I wonder if the tank scene is apocalypse-causing. Well, I am not the first. But it must take at least some centuries for the Mediterranean (Ha! I finally learned to spell it!) to dry out, so it seems the tank story will be very, very, very long? Or maybe it ends with a quite unexpected apocalypse. R...

mikrit

Every work of fiction is canon unto itself. To argue that one depiction of a character is "more" canon than another shows a frighteningly tenuous grasp on the distinction between fiction and reality. As Sir Terry Pratchett once said*, "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small ...

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