% I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents. -- Major General Smedley Darlington Butler % Why does everyone here have these incredibly cumbersome ways of sending me messages? Don't you people have e-mail? -- Randy Waterhouse, Cryptonomicon % <sneakums> you can shove your facts <sneakums> right up your fact-hole % T-Rex: Or perhaps I don't want to say "I WANT TO GET MARRIED SOMEDAY" because if I never meet someone then I've FAILED at a life plan. Much better to say "I WANT TO GET INTO A BOAT SOMEDAY" and then just sit in some dude's boat! IN FACT, I'm going down to the docks right now! T-Rex: LATER, suckers! -- Dinosaur Comics % T-Rex: Failure is just success rounded down, my friend! -- Dinosaur Comics % When I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead. True story. -- Neil Patrick Harris as Barney Stinson, How I Met Your Mother % <edlang> that is 100% emad <squinky> Impossible. I have it on good authority that it's at least 5% meat byproducts. % <squinky> yeah, if there was a venn diagram, rap would be almost completely inside of hiphop <yosemite> true <yosemite> but hiphop is more like soul <yosemite> and rap has people rapping % I prefer to think of NASA's budget as a Strategic Awesomeness Reserve. -- Leonard Richardson % I worked a long time ago at a school in a very conservative community, and I was very young and very keen on establishing myself as the rebel. On the first day of school I wore a yellow button on my shirt that said, "Question Authority." The kids literally didn't understand the concept. They misread the syntax of it -- kids were asking me, "Who made you the question authority?" -- Alfie Kohn % G'Kar: I would be dead if not for you. You risked your life to save mine. Londo Mollari: Yes, You would have done the same. G'Kar: Yes, but I am a better person. -- Babylon 5, The Fall of Centauri Prime % * caycos was thinking more of your boss's family's late night orgies <teferi> oh. <teferi> goodness. <teferi> that's a mental image I didn't need. <caycos> Hi! I'm caycos! % It's really something. It's so bad, maybe you should pool your money and draw straws and send one of the guys off to rent it so that in the future, whenever you think you're sitting through a bad comedy, he could shake his head, and chuckle tolerantly, and explain that you don't know what bad is. -- Roger Ebert on Police Academy, failing to anticipate the marvelous advances in making movies suck that have occured since 1984 % <baconite> squinky: did you win yet? <squinky> yeah, once <squinky> I don't remember how % <sneakums> what are you talking about, jp always makes sense % Um, I'm thinking... that a lot of my internal conflict and malaise comes from the tension between the life I ACTUALLY want to live, and the stories I'd love to be able to tell? -- T-Rex, Dinosaur Comics % <Octal> Ever notice how the moonwalk is nothing like the way people walk on the moon? <fxc> holy shit <Dumont> MAN WALKS ON FUCKING MOON % At least when Detroit loses money, we get cars. -- Jon Stewart, comparing the proposed auto industry bailout finance industry bailout % I’ve come to realize that I don’t mind getting older, because my cliched old man speeches are going to be fantastic. -- Scott Meyer, of Basic Instructions % <Dumont> jp: I cannot parse that statement % here i am assuming that the amount of radation needed to kill a human (10 Gy) is the same as the amount needed to kill a dinosaur. IF SCIENCE PROVES ME WRONG I WILL BE THE FIRST TO APOLOGIZE, AND THEN I WILL SAY, HEY WHERE DID YOU GET THAT DINOSAUR -- Ryan North % "But those have holes in them." "Those are colanders, dad." -- A father and son at Target, shopping for mixing bowls % "If you have something that can happen, and something that won't necessarily happen, it's going to either happen or it's going to not happen, and so the best guess is 1 in 2." "I'm not sure that's how probability works, Walter." -- John Oliver interviewing Walter L. Wagner about the dangers of the Large Hadron Collider % Most of the lie detector industry is based on, well, lies. -- Bruce Schneier % <teferi> new york state's still run by three guys in a smoky room <fo0bar> nevada's smoky room is cooler <teferi> well, yes, it has to be air conditioned <teferi> you're in a DESERT. % Exact science, Mr Angier, is not an exact science. -- David Bowie as Nikola Tesla, The Prestige % I have long been impressed with the casino industry's ability to, in the case of blackjack, convince the gambling public that using strategy equals cheating. -- Bruce Schneier % <teferi> also, happy new year and happy mailman day <ckape> and happy oh-shit-I-have-to-pay-my-rent day <fo0bar> I've had better <SpaceHobo> also happy spamassassin decade <teferi> ? <teferi> OH FUCK RENT % People who pay for cryonic freezing are super chumps! All you need to do is go to Anarctica, guys. You can die there for FREE. -- T-Rex, Dinosaur Comics % A decade ago, I observed that commercial certificate authorities protect you from anyone from whom they are unwilling to take money. That turns out to be wrong; they don't even do that much. -- Matt Blaze % This is exactly why babies should not be allowed to dual-wield flintlock pistols. -- MS Paint Adventures % There's a Venn Diagram out there with a huge overlap between Sigularity believers and guys who are just single. -- R Stevens % And some people, look like incredible, dressed-like-Lara-Croft-only-with- chains-on semi-naked babelicious freaks. Not that I stare. Or even look, or think about them, or anything ever. I only know about their existence because when these people walk into a room, all the straight boys nearby give out this universal telepathic deflatory pained sigh. It's like the sound of a wolf-whistle, only backwards, sucked in. Ooohhhhhh. The sigh has a meaning. All my life, it says, I have been told by my superego that dressing like a Marvel superhero will not get me laid. And, here, here and now in this temporary saturnalia, surrounded by other males who are - at best - my equals in the ugly league division table: here is my perfect woman. But the world knows that this mad girl's flickering eyes craves just one thing. A man dressed as Galactus, Eater of Worlds. And not only have I left my Galactus costume at home. I never made it. Worse, I threw those biro drawings of me in the Galactus helmet away the moment I'd drawn them, ashamed to show them even to (say) Dave. And now I know: I'm not a virgin because I'm a geek. I'm a virgin because I have pursued geekdom with a less than pure, directed gaze. I have faltered, and now I'm just another guy at Baycon. And some other guy in front of me will be Galahad with the Holy Grail because he spent two weeks measuring out huge papier-mache clamps to fit on the side of his head. And I did nothing but stare at my Lara Croft pull-out poster, in the belief that she was not real and that I could not ever meet her. Pursue your enthusiasms. Because if you're doing them right, you know exactly where they end. -- Danny O'Brien % Men! Are you looking to "Hack" your life? Too bad that doesn't make any sense! -- T-Rex, Dinosaur Comics % <Zen> you can literally place 360 controllers all over your body % * eythian has quit (Ping timeout) * edlang has quit (Ping timeout) <Octal> The Es are gone! And fo0bar is next! <sneakums> yay! % A bit of background: Japan has 80,000 members belonging to these criminal organizations, which the police label shiteiboryokudan or literally “designated violent groups”; membership is not illegal although the police regulate their activities, much the way the SEC regulates Goldman Sachs. -- Jake Adelstein, Yakuza to the Rescue % <cinerama> yo, i heard you like kaddafy, so i put qaddafi in your gaddafi so you can kaddafi while you kazzafi % "Who are you and how did you get in here?" "I'm a locksmith. And, I'm a locksmith." -- Dutch Gunderson and Frank Drebin, Police Squad % We shoot in HD, but we’re blessed because nobody expects the presenters to look good. -- Andy Wilman, executive producer, Top Gear % <res0> X11R5: you're spewing nonsense % <teferi> man <teferi> the newspaper headlines this morning are all "STOCKS PLUNGE ON US DOWNGRADE" <teferi> except <teferi> the money being taken out of stocks is going...to treasury bills. <teferi> so, um, if it's because investors have lost confidence in the US's credit, their behavior sure isn't showing it <SpaceHobo> story should be all "INVESTORS LOSE FAITH IN CAPITALISM: DECIDE TO BACK BIG GOVERNMENT INSTEAD." % In writing this comic I discovered there are people who have seriously put forward the 'hidden Jesus identical twins' theory, which makes me think that professional religious scholarship is WAY more fun than generally advertised -- Ryan North, Dinosaur Comics % I was going to warn people that this is actually a brand-new comic that just visually resembles the last comic a lot, but then I figured, huh, PROBABLY my readers are used to that by now -- Ryan North, Dinosaur Comics % <Screwtape> sneakums: I see what you did there. <X11R5> But that's trivial enough. % <Randall> people keep telling me I need a hobby, but then they act all disgusted when I get one % Ladies and gentlemen, in order to achieve an "R" rating today, a motion picture must contain full frontal nudity, graphic violence, or an explicit reference to the sex act. Since this film has none of those, and since research has proven that R-rated films are by far the most popular with the moviegoing public, the producers of this motion picture have asked me to take this opportunity to say "Fuck you." -- Student Bodies % There's really no point to being a doctor if you don't have a last name that lends itself to supervillainy. -- David "Walky" Walkerton % A plaintext file requires a special tool, called a text editor, to change its content. I recommend notepad.exe or pico. Linux hackers may use WINE to run notepad.exe -- Raphael Mudge % <SpaceHobo> okay so in the past week I learned that 30 Rock and 3rd Rock are two different shows, and that Kid Rock is not that guy from Kid&Play <SpaceHobo> It seems like if the word "Rock" is involved, I manage to remain subconsciously willfully ignorant. <emad> yeah, it explains why your tour of alcatraz sucked % "Your plan is good," says Hamlet, "though it does lack inaction and needless tragedy." -- To Be or Not To Be by Ryan North % <Octal> The President has been kidnapped by ninjas! <Dumont> ARE YOU A BAD ENOUGH DUDE TO RESCUE THE PRESIDENT? -bit/#tron- YES! % Everyday objects can in fact be made lethal if Jamie builds a gun to shoot them. -- Adam Savage, Mythbusters % * neale (~neale@cloak-EDC6D8E3.hsd1.nm.comcast.net) has joined #tron <neale> sorry guys <neale> my window manager can't move windows yet, and this popped up in front of the editor <neale> l8r * neale has quit (Input/output error) % <neale> stop thrashing! % Every Bitcoin tale Begins with, "Fuck you, got mine!" Ends, "Fuck, you got mine!" -- Purplekeyboard, Reddit % I sure do dislike change. The Sun has moved in the sky and I distrust it completely. -- Leonard Burton, Welcome to Night Vale % <sarah> eat the rich, gain their powers % <X11R5> Man, appparently people pay serious money for solutions. % In this universe of ours, with its wealth of errors and legends, historical data and false information, one absolute truth is the fact that Superman is Clark Kent. All the rest is open to debate. -- Umberto Eco, The Book of Legendary Lands % "Sounds ingenious," Gurgeh said. "Does it work?" "So they'd have us believe. In fact it's used as an excuse for not giving people a proper trial, and anyway the rich just bribe their way out. So yes, as far as the rulers are concerned, it works." -- Iain M Banks, The Player of Games % The world is full of surprises, and I am not in favor of several of them. -- Brain Drain, The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #12 % <fo0bar> great, now I'm a dozen wikipedia levels into the history of AT&T again % Oh no, it turns out puns ARE bad when they happen to me! -- T-Rex, Dinosaur Comics %