funny

A Stupid Joke About Elephants

Duration 2:48

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You’ve probably been taught that you can tell the difference between African Elephants and Indian Elephants by looking at their head and ears. The larger African Elephants have a rounded cranium and big ears (with a shape somewhat like the continent of Africa itself!), whereas the smaller Indian Elephants have a two-lobed skull and diminutive ears that tuck tidily alongside their heads.

But suppose you don’t manage to get a glimpse at the front end of the elephant as it passes you. What hope is there of identifying the species? Well: you can look at its back!

African Elephants, it turns out, have a concave back, whereas Indian elephants have a convex back (a bit like a hump)!

I was having difficulty sleeping one night during the UK‘s current heatwave, so naturally I opted to practice my newfound ability to distinguish elephant species by their spines. Indian, Indian, African, Indian, African, African… etc.

And then I came across this one:

African Elephant backs are concave. Indian Elephant backs are convex. But what does it mean when you see a flat elephant’s back?

It turns out…

…

…that’s a grey area.

Genderclear

Breakpoint issues always make me feel a bit “genderclear”.

Do-It-Yourself Country & Western Song

I saw a variation of this email back in the day, which provides a Mad Libs style approach to formulating a country & western song. When I was reminded of it today, I adapted it for Perchance. Give it a go!

you are a printer we are all printers

This is a repost promoting content originally published elsewhere. See more things Dan's reposted.

…

Anyway, here’s the best printer for 2024: a Brother laser printer. You can just pick any one you like; I have one with a sheet feeder and one without a sheet feeder. Both of them have reliably printed return labels and random forms and pictures for my kid to color for years now, and I have never purchased replacement toner for either one. Neither has fallen off the WiFi or insisted I sign up for an ink-related hostage situation or required me to consider the ongoing schemes of HP executives who seem determined to make people hate a legendary brand with straightforward cash grabs and weird DRM ideas.

…

Nilay Patel (The Verge)

It’s sort-of alarming that Brother are the only big player in the printer space who subscribe to a philosophy of “don’t treat the customers like livestock”. Presumably all it’d take is a board-level decision to flip the switch from “not evil” to “evil” and we’d lose something valuable. Thankfully, for now at least, they still clearly see the value of the positive marketing the world gives them. Positive marketing like like this article.

The article is excellent, by the way. I know that I’m “supposed” to stir up hatred about the fact that its conclusion is written by an AI but… well, just read it for yourself and you’ll see why I don’t mind even one bit. Top notch reporting. Consider following the links within it to stories about how other printer manufacturers continue to show exactly how shitty they can be.

I recommended a Brother printer to the Vagina Museum the other month. I assume it ‘s still working out fine for them (and not ripping them off, spying on them, and/or contributing to the destruction of the the planet).

A Proper Cup of Tea

This is a repost promoting content originally published elsewhere. See more things Dan's reposted.

Terry Cavanagh

This “choose your own adventure”-style game about making the perfect cup of tea is just… excellent.

If you lack the imagination to understand how a game like this could have dozens of possible endings, you desperately need to play it. My favourite path so far through the game was to add a teabag, then hot water, then remove the teabag, then add some milk, then add a second teabag, then drink it.

Genuinely can’t stop laughing at this masterpiece.

Fedicard

Yeah, that’s about right:

With thanks to Nash and Hexephre, of course.

Young Squirrel Talking About Himself

This is a repost promoting content originally published elsewhere. See more things Dan's reposted.

Parry Gripp

This week, Parry Gripp and Nathan Mazur released Young Squirrel Talking About Himself.

You might recognise the tune (and most of the words) from an earlier Parry Gripp song. The original video for the older version is no longer available on his channel, and that’s probably for the best, but I was really pleased to see the song resurrected in this new form because it’s fabulous. I’ve been singing it all day.

Loud Helpline

I guess installing a sign was cheaper than retraining the helpline operators not to shout at everybody.

Where?

I’m pretty sure that Wally/Waldo, Woof, and Wizard Whitebeard must be out on this mountain somewhere, too.

Installation of Windows has Stalled

I was told Windows installation should take less than 20 minutes, but these ones have been sitting outside my house all day while the builders sit on the roof and listen to the radio. Do I need a faster processor? #TechSupport

Brainfart

Brainfart moment this morning when my password safe prompted me to unlock it with a password, and for a moment I thought to myself “Why am I having to manually type in a password? Don’t I have a password safe to do this for me?” 🤦

[Bloganuary] Paws to Hear my Scents-ible Idea

This post is part of my attempt at Bloganuary 2024. Today’s prompt is:

Come up with a crazy business idea.

Smell-based social networking for dogs.

Hear me out…

I’ve tried to explain to our occasionally-anxious dog that, for example, the dog-and-human shaped blobs at the far end of the field includes a canine with whom she’s friendly and playful. She can’t tell who they are because her long-distance vision’s not as good as mine¹, and we’re too far away for her to be able to smell her friend.

If this were a human meetup and I wasn’t sure who I’d be meeting, I’d look it up online, read the attendees’ names and see their photos, and be reassured. That’s exactly what I do if I’m feeling nervous about a speaking engagement: I look up the other speakers who’ll be there, so I know I can introduce myself to people before or after me. Or if I’m attending a work meet-up with new people: I find their intranet profiles and find out who my new-to-me colleagues are.

Wouldn’t it be great if I could “show” my dog who she was going to meet, in smell-form.

I imagine a USB-C accessory you can attach to your computer or phone which can analyse and produce dogs’ unique scents, storing and transmitting their unique fingerprint in a digital form. Your subscription to the service would cover the rental of the accessory plus refills of the requisite chemicals, and a profile for your pooch on the Web-based service.

Now, you could “show” your dog who you were going to go and meet, by smell. Just look up the profile of the playmate you’re off to see, hold the device to your pupper’s nose, and let them get a whiff of their furry buddy even before you get there. Dogs do pretty well at pattern-matching, and it won’t take them long to learn that your magical device is a predictor of where they’re headed to, and it’ll be an effective anxiety-reducer.

A laptop keyboard with a black man's hand and a cream-coloured dog's paw resting on it, seen from above. (Almost-matching) sleeves can be seen on the limbs of both. — Seeking investors for a genuinely terrible crazy business idea. Photo courtesy SHVETS production.

The only question is what to call my social-network-for-dogs. Facebutt? Pupper? HoundsReunited???

Footnotes

¹ Plus: I get contextual clues like seeing which car the creature and its owner got out of.

[Bloganuary] Mission

This post is part of my attempt at Bloganuary 2024. Today’s prompt is:

What is your mission?

But more seriously, my mission – if I have such a thing, is:

Today’s my first day back at work after an decent length break (if you exclude the Friday after Christmas, when I did a little, I’ve been away from my day job for over a fortnight), and I’ve got a lot to catch up on even before I kick off running a training course I’ve never delivered before, so that’s all you get for today. But so long as my Bloganuary streak (which now almost makes it onto my leaderboard!) continues, I’m counting this as a win.

[Bloganuary] Billboards

This post is part of my attempt at Bloganuary 2024. Today’s prompt is:

If you had a freeway billboard, what would it say?

I always loved it when a book or exam paper or similar contained a page whose only content was the words “this space intentionally left blank”. It tickles a particular part of me: the part that wonders how “keep of the grass” signs get there without anybody treading on the grass, or laughs whenever somebody says something like “nobody drives in Oxford, there’s too much traffic.”

René Magritte's The Treachery of Images. — This is not the famous painting, *The Treachery of Images*.

So yeah, that.

It Is Only Q

The programmers at British Gas are among the many who don’t believe that a surname can be only a single character, and their customer service agents have clearly worked around their validations (or just left a note for themselves in the problematic field!)… leading to hilarious postal mail¹:

Update

This is getting a lot of attention, so I just wanted to add:

Yes, my surname really is just the letter Q, and it has been for most of my adult life. The story about it is less-interesting than the fact of it.
Yes, it causes me problems with online forms and the Passport Office hate it but just sometimes it pays for itself. It’s quick to write out, too (if you don’t count the time I lose having to tell people “no, really…”), and saves me wear-and-tear on my keyboard.
I can help you change your name to something ~~stupid~~ awesome, too. If you’re a British citizen normally-resident in the UK, at least.
I’ve already seen Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names, thanks. I linked it above, but you probably didn’t see the link if you found me via all the Mastodon boosts this post is getting.
Be gay, do crime.

Footnotes

¹ I’m ignoring for the moment that they’re using the wrong title for me.