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Thread: xkcd

  1. - Top - End - #91
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    Quote Originally Posted by halfeye View Post
    That would be evil, and should be punished.
    What.

    That may have been implied, but I don't think it was explicity stated. She was writing code, it was just code that didn't do anything, if she hadn't been writing code she wouldn't have been doing anything, as it was she was doing something, it was just that what she did didn't do anything. I suspect it's a programming joke, not a depiction of depression.
    It's quite obvious that it's both.

  2. - Top - End - #92
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    Quote Originally Posted by AMX View Post
    What.
    It was a joke, you may have heard of them.

    It's quite obvious that it's both.
    Not obvious to me.

    Quote Originally Posted by eschmenk View Post
    It seems very likely to me that the specific comic was inspired by feeling of sadness and unhappiness, either on the part of Randall or those around him. Probably both. Given recent RW events that can't be discussed under forum rules, I would have expected him to be at least somewhat dismayed even if I hadn't seen the comic. There have been other comics in the last few months that have also seemed to hint at Randall being unhappy, too. This one is an example.
    Politics is small beer, compared to, say, cancer.

    Just in case you missed it, the comic's title is "Sad." I think it's intended to be taken in a "what it says on the tin" sort of way.
    Yes, I missed that, it may be significant.
    The end of what Son? The story? There is no end. There's just the point where the storytellers stop talking.

  3. - Top - End - #93
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    Quote Originally Posted by halfeye View Post
    It was a joke, you may have heard of them.
    I'm quite aware of that, thank you very much.
    And I also know that "It was only a joke" is no excuse.

  4. - Top - End - #94
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    Quote Originally Posted by AMX View Post
    I'm quite aware of that, thank you very much.
    And I also know that "It was only a joke" is no excuse.
    No excuse for what?
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  5. - Top - End - #95
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    Quote Originally Posted by Peelee View Post
    No excuse for what?
    For suggesting that sad and depressed and upset and uncooperative people (or possibly women) is evil and should be punished.

    As jokes go, I agree it was in bad taste, smiley or not.

    Context FTR:
    Quote Originally Posted by halfeye View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by eschmenk View Post
    Yes. She's sad and depressed and upset and uncooperative.
    That would be evil, and should be punished.
    GW
    Last edited by Grey_Wolf_c; 2017-02-03 at 01:46 PM.
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    Quote Originally Posted by The Giant View Post
    But really, the important lesson here is this: Rather than making assumptions that don't fit with the text and then complaining about the text being wrong, why not just choose different assumptions that DO fit with the text?
    Ceterum autem censeo Hilgya malefica est

  6. - Top - End - #96
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    Quote Originally Posted by eschmenk View Post
    Yes. She's sad and depressed and upset and uncooperative.
    We will just have to continue the testing until morale improves.
    Not "fire at". I never used the word "at"
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  7. - Top - End - #97
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    Quote Originally Posted by keybounce View Post
    We will just have to continue the testing until morale improves.


    From:

    https://www.amazon.com/Daily-Floggin.../dp/B00A9VLX1K

    There are dozens of others. I think I may have first come across it in Milligan's military memoirs, but there seem to be suggestions on the web today that it's a lot older than that.

    The whole point is that it's completely absurd and nonsensical.
    The end of what Son? The story? There is no end. There's just the point where the storytellers stop talking.

  8. - Top - End - #98
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    Quote Originally Posted by halfeye View Post
    Not obvious to me.
    -Title is "Sad"
    -Responds to "How are you doing" with "Hah."
    -Using video games to hide from the real world.
    -Is ranting in programming comments.
    -Inability to "deal with this" expressed through her code.
    -(Speculative) Lack of effects related to lack of affect.

    I'm not sure what you need to be convinced. 200-foot-tall flaming letters or something?

    Quote Originally Posted by halfeye View Post
    Politics is small beer, compared to, say, cancer.
    If nothing else, then, one should respect the impact politics can have on people with cancer and other life-threatening illnesses. We don't avoid discussing the topic 'round here because of its insignificance.
    Last edited by Lethologica; 2017-02-03 at 02:43 PM.

  9. - Top - End - #99
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    Quote Originally Posted by Grey_Wolf_c View Post
    For suggesting that sad and depressed and upset and uncooperative people (or possibly women) is evil and should be punished.

    As jokes go, I agree it was in bad taste, smiley or not.

    Context FTR:


    GW
    I'm inclined to give halfeye some leeway here. After all, I had just told him rather tactlessly that he misunderstood both the comic and the wikipedia article that he linked to. On top of that, he might prefer a lighthearted humorous comic rather than one with sadness injected into it. I can also read what he said as objecting (in a humorously exaggerated way) to the injection of sadness into the comic, rather than attacking the character per se. The subject of his sentence was "That" not "She." Furthermore, he doesn't read the comic the same way as everyone else, so he wouldn't empathize with her as a depressed person.

    I would not belittle the importance of politics as halfeye did, though. Political leaders can make very important decisions, including life or death ones. For some people it can be more frustrating than something like cancer: after all, you can't blame a cancer for acting cancerous, but you can blame a politician or a voter for doing whatever they did. The reason I said that is to lead into this suggestion: It may be that people may be empathizing with the depressed character to varying degrees based in part on politics. I suggest caution, therefore.

    Lethologica ninja'd my second paragraph. It takes me too long to write such things! I hadn't even seen the couple above his.
    Last edited by eschmenk; 2017-02-03 at 03:02 PM.

  10. - Top - End - #100
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    Quote Originally Posted by halfeye View Post
    Politics is small beer, compared to, say, cancer.
    1) There is no rule that says you can only be upset about one thing at a time

    2) They may not be separate concerns anymore

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    Quote Originally Posted by The Giant View Post
    But really, the important lesson here is this: Rather than making assumptions that don't fit with the text and then complaining about the text being wrong, why not just choose different assumptions that DO fit with the text?
    Ceterum autem censeo Hilgya malefica est

  11. - Top - End - #101
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    Quote Originally Posted by Lethologica View Post
    -Title is "Sad"
    -Responds to "How are you doing" with "Hah."
    Missed sad, not convinced "Hah." can be taken as proof of clinical depression.

    -Using video games to hide from the real world.
    I refuse to see this as significantly a problem, so long as it's on her own time. I get that some psychologists who've never played games would rather people watch TV, but personally I prefer games.

    -Is ranting in programming comments.
    -Inability to "deal with this" expressed through her code.
    See programming joke.

    -(Speculative) Lack of effects related to lack of affect.
    Lack of extreme feelings is proof of having a feeling of extreme sadness? I find that contradictory, I'm sure all the extraverts out there want everybody to be an extravert, but that doesn't make introverts ill.

    I'm not sure what you need to be convinced. 200-foot-tall flaming letters or something?
    Something might be nice. <joke>

    If nothing else, then, one should respect the impact politics can have on people with cancer and other life-threatening illnesses. We don't avoid discussing the topic 'round here because of its insignificance.
    The author dealt with their nearest and dearest having a close encounter with cancer a few years ago, hopefully they will stay clear, I doubt that politics gets close to that for emotional impact.

    Quote Originally Posted by Grey_Wolf_c View Post
    1) There is no rule that says you can only be upset about one thing at a time

    GW
    That's true, I wasn't saying it wasn't, I was merely saying the one you are or were personally directly involved with was probably more intense.
    Last edited by halfeye; 2017-02-03 at 03:54 PM.
    The end of what Son? The story? There is no end. There's just the point where the storytellers stop talking.

  12. - Top - End - #102
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    Quote Originally Posted by halfeye View Post
    Missed sad, not convinced "Hah." can be taken as proof of clinical depression.
    This is a misuse of point-by-point argument. The points on my list are not meant to individually prove that we're talking about depression, such that pointing out that each individual point does not prove depression is a refutation of the list. The points add up to depression. (On the other hand, your objections are individual and distinct replies to my points, not interdependent elements of an argument, so I will go ahead and address them point by point.)

    Quote Originally Posted by halfeye View Post
    I refuse to see this as significantly a problem, so long as it's on her own time. I get that some psychologists who've never played games would rather people watch TV, but personally I prefer games.
    The problem isn't the "video games" part, it's the "hiding from the real world" part, which Ponytail confirms with "Fact check: mostly false."

    Quote Originally Posted by halfeye View Post
    See programming joke.
    Saying it's a programming joke is not an argument that it's not also portraying depression. The comic is an inquiry into Ponytail's emotional state (as evidenced by Cueball inquiring about Ponytail's emotional state). Since Ponytail is a programmer, programming jokes are involved, but that doesn't erase the emotional inquiry aspect of the comic.

    Quote Originally Posted by halfeye View Post
    Lack of extreme feelings is proof of having a feeling of extreme sadness? I find that contradictory, I'm sure all the extraverts out there want everybody to be an extravert, but that doesn't make introverts ill.
    It has nothing to do with extroversion or introversion. Please do some reading on flat affect and anhedonia.

    Quote Originally Posted by halfeye View Post
    The author dealt with their nearest and dearest having a close encounter with cancer a few years ago, hopefully they will stay clear, I doubt that politics gets close to that for emotional impact.
    It's not a competition. For example, let's say you've dealt with a loved one having cancer before and now you're facing a political situation impacting access to care for people with cancer. Rather than saying "This political situation isn't as bad as when my loved one had cancer so I'm not all that impacted by this," you're likely to have strong emotions about the political situation in part because of your previous experience with a loved one having cancer.
    Last edited by Lethologica; 2017-02-03 at 04:28 PM.

  13. - Top - End - #103
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    The new comic has been up for a few hours now. It seems very minimal to me.

  14. - Top - End - #104
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  15. - Top - End - #105
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    Quote Originally Posted by Benthesquid View Post
    Your link just takes me to the comic.
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  16. - Top - End - #106
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    Quote Originally Posted by Douglas View Post
    Your link just takes me to the comic.
    Er... yes! Just as I planned, an elaborate meta commentary on...

    Er...

    I'll just leave this here.
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  17. - Top - End - #107
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    Quote Originally Posted by Benthesquid View Post
    Er... yes! Just as I planned, an elaborate meta commentary on...

    Er...

    I'll just leave this here.
    Huh. It didn't occur to me that the terminology might not be universal.

  18. - Top - End - #108
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    Quote Originally Posted by eschmenk View Post
    Huh. It didn't occur to me that the terminology might not be universal.
    Personally, I'm primarily familiar with it from the metaphorical usage (IE, Four Alarm chili), which is odd, given that my dad was a volunteer fire chief.
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  19. - Top - End - #109
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    Today's XKCD hits a bit close to home:

    https://xkcd.com/1796/
    Quote Originally Posted by Harnel View Post
    where is the atropal? and does it have a listed LA?

  20. - Top - End - #110
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    Quote Originally Posted by Benthesquid View Post
    Er... yes! Just as I planned, an elaborate meta commentary on...

    Er...

    I'll just leave this here.
    That's interesting, I pretty much took the comic at face value, didn't realize there was a commonly used scale of alarm numbers.
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  21. - Top - End - #111
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tetrimino View Post
    That's interesting, I pretty much took the comic at face value, didn't realize there was a commonly used scale of alarm numbers.
    Huh, again. Reporters almost seem incapable of talking about a large urban fire without specifying the number of alarms. Saying the number of alarms doesn't really communicate much information to anyone outside the fire department, but "3-alarm fire" sounds more interesting than "fire," I guess. I think rural fire departments often don't classify fires that way, though. I think for them its a question of "Can we handle this ourselves?" and if not, how much more help do they need? In any case, IIRC the newspaper where I grew up would list which fire departments responded, not the number of alarms, for rural fires. Even so, major urban fires will sometimes get national coverage so the number of alarms winds up on national news sometimes. I guess in addition to whether someone is in a rural or urban area, the fact that people are paying less attention to traditional news media nowadays probably affects the dissemination of the terminology.

  22. - Top - End - #112
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    I get the feeling that you are still misinterpereting what “three-alarm fire“ means. It does not mean three fire alarms went off, but rather that dispatches were sent for three times (because the first two were unable to contain the fire, so they called in for more).

    If you already understood that, then I apologize for misinterpreting what you wrote.
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  23. - Top - End - #113
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    I think https://www.xkcd.com/1797/ is the first time I've seen XKCD do an explicit video-game related comic, something that would be at home in Awkward Zombie or such. Does anyone remember a previous one?

  24. - Top - End - #114
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    Quote Originally Posted by Sermil View Post
    I think https://www.xkcd.com/1797/ is the first time I've seen XKCD do an explicit video-game related comic, something that would be at home in Awkward Zombie or such. Does anyone remember a previous one?
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  25. - Top - End - #115
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    Quote Originally Posted by Peelee View Post
    Kerbal seems to be really popular, not only for Randal... but I'm sure there have been other occasions, too. Though, I'm not sure what to look for and I don't have time to do a proper search right now.


    Today's comic hits kind of close to home. Sadly this mostly occurs when playing games and then I know there are people who suffer from it way worse than me.
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  26. - Top - End - #116
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    Quote Originally Posted by Peelee View Post
    Yeah, they go back quite a ways and even earlier. And going meta, there is even at least one about comics about video games.

  27. - Top - End - #117
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    There's also the one about playing video games on a five year time lag, where the punch line is Portal memes in 2013. Honestly, that seems downright tame now.

  28. - Top - End - #118
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    I kind of hate this comic. It's about how you can sing everything with the right syllable pattern to the melody of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Every so often, I'll get hung up on a sentence or phrase that works with it. So since yesterday, I've been singing "Cuddly Slowtime Monkey People" under my breath after reading a sci Fi novel.
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  29. - Top - End - #119
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    By virtue of living in a media vacuum of my own creation, I don't know the theme song from TMNT.

  30. - Top - End - #120
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    Quote Originally Posted by Eldan View Post
    I kind of hate this comic. It's about how you can sing everything with the right syllable pattern to the melody of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Every so often, I'll get hung up on a sentence or phrase that works with it. So since yesterday, I've been singing "Cuddly Slowtime Monkey People" under my breath after reading a sci Fi novel.
    Out of curiosity, what book?
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