Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Come on, man.

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

The fight for our country is always worth it. ~Kamala Harris

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

We still have time to mess this up!

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Innocent people don’t delay justice.

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

If ‘weird’ was the finish line, they ran through the tape and kept running.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

You are here: Home / Humorous / Because We Haven’t Had An xkcd Open Thread For A While

Reader Interactions

61Comments

  2. 2.

    Barb (formerly Gex)

    I will always think of the Bobby Drop Tables xkcd first when thinking of xkcd.

  3. 3.

    Cat Lady

    “discussants are not holding beers.”

    I can imagine this as Bill James and Nate Silver without beers. Maybe calculators.

  4. 4.

    Linkmeister

    No beer, but that’s because it’s ESPN and Fox Sports studio shows being lampooned. You can’t drink on set, according to company (and possibly FCC) regs.

  5. 5.

    Tom Levenson

    @BGinCHI: Hadn’t seen that one. THANK YOU.

    Must get that up here sometime, though in truth, it would have been appropriate for the thread prior to this one ;)

  8. 8.

    BGinCHI

    @Tom Levenson: I keep it as a little jpeg on my desktop and whenever I’m having a bad day I look over it and it puts me in a better mood.

    It’s not only funny, but manages to capture adolescence in a way I can’t really describe.

  9. 9.

    j

    They are awaiting service, which will never happen because the bagger bartender went Galt.

  11. 11.

    Comrade Javamanphil

    I’m not sure what ESPN show Randall Monroe is listening to / watching but I can assure you, numbers do not ever enter into their commentary. The general measure of sports commentary is “who has the most heart” and “who wants it more”. Otherwise, I love xkcd.

  12. 12.

    Professor

    Tom,do you realise that: honi soit mal y pense’ is the motto of the Order of the Garter in the UK? It is highest exclusive honour of UK monarch.

  14. 14.

    Tom Levenson

    @The Dangerman: As a former teen and the father of an 11 year old, my response to this is …

    …complicated.

    Hell, not really. Terror just about covers it.

  16. 16.

    Tom Levenson

    @Professor: I do, in fact. (The link tells that story.)

    But, small “r” republican as I am, I don’t see that I have to leave it in their exclusive hands.

  18. 18.

    Bill Murray

    I would have guessed the problem was it looks like the narrative comes after the randomly generated numbers, which is backwards — like a drunk’s light pole, stats are for support not illumination

  19. 19.

    JPL

    Since this is an open thread, can I just say that anyone who plants bamboo needs to be tortured. This is the year that I have decided to attack the bamboo and the little b.astards and I are at war. At this point I am not sure who is winning but I’m not quite ready to raise the white flag. So far I have spent 40 hours including the ten hours today. I have a half acre of woods in my backyard and I refuse to secede the territory to those b.astards.
    BTW.. I have spent $200.00 on round-up because the organic ways would kill the soil for decades. (Vinegar and Salt)
    I can’t get a backhoe in my yard because of the fence and I also have some wonderful trees. I refuse to quit.

  27. 27.

    BGinCHI

    @Martin: FYI, went to the Bruery’s tasting room/market in Orange when we were in Cali last week. Really nice. They make great beer and it’s a very cool little shop.

    Give it a try.

  31. 31.

    MikeJ

    @Linda Featheringill:

    If the number generator is weighted, is it truly random?

    Since it’s damned near impossible to generate truly random numnbers, many pseudo[1] random number generators are just called “random number generators”.

    [1] Pseudo, not sudo.

  32. 32.

    Martin

    @BGinCHI: I will. Didn’t know about that place, but it’s over by my aunt’s house. I’ll take any excuse to go visit her.

  33. 33.

    Martin

    @JPL:

    Since this is an open thread, can I just say that anyone who plants bamboo needs to be tortured.

    Fucking pots, how do they work?

  34. 34.

    jenniebee

    @Barb (formerly Gex): I actually used that one to explain to my boss what the auditors meant by “widespread Sql injection vulnerabilities” after he complained that the wiki entry on it was “too technical.”

    I don’t work there anymore, obviously. Good times.

  36. 36.

    Roger Moore

    @Cat Lady:

    I can imagine this as Bill James and Nate Silver without beers.

    Then you don’t know Bill James. From what I’ve seen, he likes to sip a cold one as much as the next guy. One of my favorite baseball geek memories was the last night of a SABR convention, hanging out in a bar with Bill James, Rob Neyer, a couple of James’s current research assistants, and a few other baseball geeks. We sat around drinking, watching the day’s highlights on Sports Center, and talking baseball. James was as happy to partake as the rest of us- though he was still able to discuss baseball coherently even after downing a few.

  41. 41.

    Yutsano

    @Roger Moore: This is very true, although the harvest point for them is rather particular so it may take a little practice. Also they don’t keep long after being picked.

  42. 42.

    Roger Moore

    @Tom Levenson:
    Pandas are kind of expensive; they go for something like $1M/year, though that will get you two. It’s the danger you face when there’s a monopoly provider. I’m sure all the Chinese in the neighborhood would join the feast if you had fresh bamboo shoots.

  43. 43.

    Bill Murray

    @khead: I have quite enjoyed several of OOTPs previous releases, but then I like general manager/coach games more than be the player games.

  44. 44.

    Origuy

    @Tom Levenson:
    There’s a tradition that the garter dropped by Joan of Kent was a symbol that she was head of an order of witches. Edward III was defending not her virtue, but her profession. Here’s a skeptical account by a modern Pagan.

  48. 48.

    JS

    NASA just sent the final commands to Spirit this past week…

    sniff..

    Good rover, good rover.

  52. 52.

    Yutsano

    @Barb (formerly Gex): Don’t bother. He’s not only a blathering idiot he’s a homophobic fuckstain. I just let him talk because soon enough he’ll get the really stupid level and then he’ll be sin binned.

  53. 53.

    Barb (formerly Gex)

    @jenniebee: There’s nothing like working for people who are too dim to learn things by reading. I hope the pretty pictures helped. Good think xkcd uses simple graphics.

    @Yutsano: Ah. Thanks for the tip. I’ll just note that it isn’t a lesbian asking everyone to go ogle the woman.

  54. 54.

    Mo's Bike Shop

    @MikeJ:

    Any one who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin.

    Since you just left that hanging out there…

  56. 56.

    Bill Murray

    @khead: I too started with APBA back before computers, although my favorite tabletop set was probably Sher Co (http://golemuniverse.blogspot.com/2009/03/sherco-grand-slam-baseball.html) you played it on a replica of any real field, positioned the defenders, included the wind and they included the simple rules for rating the players so you could use any player.

    Tony La Russa II and Old Time Baseball (not Conan’s type [http://www.wimp.com/conan/] although that would be cool too) and Baseball Mogul (http://www.sportsmogul.com/games/baseball2k12.html)

  57. 57.

    catclub

    @Linda Featheringill: Well, it could easily BE random. (Whether a computer generated pseudo-random number generator qualifies as random is beyond the scope of this post.)
    The fact that it is weighted is no bar to random. A uniform distribution (any of 1 through 10 is equally likely) and a gaussian distribution (middle is most likely, tails fall off in prescribed manner) are differently weighted but both are random.

  58. 58.

    Spike

    @khead: I still hear my old Amiga’s speech synthesizer droning “Earl’s got…Chief…Bender…warming in the pen” in my dreams occasionally.

  59. 59.

    Spike

    Mouseover text in the original: “Also, all financial analysis. And, more directly, D&D.” For those new to xkcd, the mouseover is often funnier than the comic.

  60. 60.

    divF

    I have long held the view that the only place that deconstructionism works as a theory of literary criticism is in sports commentary. The interpretation of the text (in this case, the actual events of the game) is a completely synthetic and arbitrary construct.

    Also, Davey Johnson (Mets manager in the 1980’s) was quoted by George Will in Men at Work as espousing a theory of large chance deviations in baseball (Johnson had an undergraduate degree in mathematics).

  61. 61.

    Ken

    @54: @Mo’s Bike Shop: He may have meant something like http://www.fourmilab.ch/hotbits/ where you can get real random numbers.

    BTW, I thought the original xkcd was about baseball commentary. You know, the way they fill time with “he’s four for thirteen against left-handed pitchers on days over 75 degrees” and so forth. I assume this is to prevent people from realizing just how much time there is between things happening in a baseball game; and I also wonder what they did before computers were around to come up with these wonderful, meaningless statistics.

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