Topic: Comedy
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๐ A True Story
A True Story (Ancient Greek: แผฮปฮทฮธแฟ ฮดฮนฮทฮณฮฎฮผฮฑฯฮฑ, Alฤthฤ diฤgฤmata; Latin: Vera Historia or Latin: Verae Historiae) is a novel written in the second century AD by Lucian of Samosata, a Greek-speaking author of Assyrian descent. The novel is a satire of outlandish tales which had been reported in ancient sources, particularly those which presented fantastic or mythical events as if they were true. It is Lucian's best-known work.
It is the earliest known work of fiction to include travel to outer space, alien lifeforms, and interplanetary warfare. As such, A True Story has been described as "the first known text that could be called science fiction". However the work does not fit into typical literary genres: its multilayered plot and characters have been interpreted as science fiction, fantasy, satire or parody, and have been the subject of much scholarly debate.
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- "A True Story" | 2018-10-15 | 525 Upvotes 72 Comments
๐ Today is Everybody Draw Mohammed Day
Everybody Draw Mohammed Day (or Draw Mohammed Day) was a 2010 event in support of artists threatened with violence for drawing representations of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. It stemmed from a protest against censorship of the American television show South Park episode "201", led by the show's distributor Comedy Central, in response to death threats that had been made against some of those responsible for two segments broadcast in April 2010. A drawing representing Mohammed was posted on the Internet on April 20, 2010, with a message suggesting that "everybody" create a drawing depicting Mohammad on May 20 in support of free speech.
U.S. cartoonist Molly Norris of Seattle, Washington created the artwork in reaction to Internet death threats that had been made against animators Trey Parker and Matt Stone for depicting Muhammad in an episode of South Park. Postings on RevolutionMuslim.com (under the pen name Abu Talha al-Amrikee; later identified as Zachary Adam Chesser) had said that Parker and Stone could wind up like Theo van Gogh, a Dutch filmmaker who was stabbed and shot to death.
Norris claimed that, if people draw pictures of Muhammad, radical Islamist terrorists would not be able to murder them all, and threats to do so would become unrealistic. Within a week, Norris' idea became popular on Facebook, was supported by numerous bloggers, and generated coverage on the blog websites of major U.S. newspapers. As the publicity mounted, Norris and the man who created the first Facebook page promoting the May 20 event disassociated themselves from it. Nonetheless, planning for the protest continued with others "taking up the cause". Facebook had an "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" page, which grew to over 100,000 participants (101,870 members by May 20). A protest page on Facebook against the initiative named "Against โEverybody Draw Mohammed Day'" attracted slightly more supporters (106,000 by May 20). Subsequently, Facebook was temporarily blocked by Pakistan; the ban was lifted after Facebook agreed to block the page for users in India and Pakistan.
In the media, Everybody Draw Mohammed Day attracted support from commentators who felt that the campaign represented important issues of freedom of speech, and the need to stand up for this freedom.
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- "Today is Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" | 2010-05-20 | 93 Upvotes 196 Comments
๐ A list of April Fools' Day RFCs
A Request for Comments (RFC), in the context of Internet governance, is a type of publication from the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the Internet Society (ISOC), usually describing methods, behaviors, research, or innovations applicable to the working of the Internet and Internet-connected systems.
Almost every April Fools' Day (1 April) since 1989, the Internet RFC Editor has published one or more humorous Request for Comments (RFC) documents, following in the path blazed by the June 1973 RFC 527 called ARPAWOCKY, a parody of Lewis Carroll's nonsense poem "Jabberwocky". The following list also includes humorous RFCs published on other dates.
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- "April Fools Day Request for Comments" | 2024-04-01 | 16 Upvotes 2 Comments
- "UTF-9 and UTF-18" | 2015-02-05 | 109 Upvotes 11 Comments
- "A list of April Fools' Day RFCs" | 2010-03-31 | 17 Upvotes 2 Comments
๐ Staลczyk
Staลczyk (c. 1480โ1560) (Polish pronunciation:ย [หstaษฒtอกสษจk]) was a Polish court jester, the most famous in Polish history. He was employed by three Polish kings: Alexander, Sigismund the Old and Sigismund Augustus.
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- "Staลczyk" | 2019-10-01 | 142 Upvotes 13 Comments
๐ Dreadnought hoax
The Dreadnought hoax was a practical joke pulled by Horace de Vere Cole in 1910. Cole tricked the Royal Navy into showing their flagship, the battleship HMS Dreadnought, to a fake delegation of Abyssinian royals. The hoax drew attention in Britain to the emergence of the Bloomsbury Group, among whom some of Cole's collaborators numbered. The hoax was a repeat of a similar impersonation which Cole and Adrian Stephen had organised while they were students at Cambridge in 1905.
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- "Dreadnought hoax" | 2014-10-28 | 98 Upvotes 41 Comments
๐ Piet is a programming language, whose programs look like abstract art.
An esoteric programming language (sometimes shortened to esolang) is a programming language designed to test the boundaries of computer programming language design, as a proof of concept, as software art, as a hacking interface to another language (particularly functional programming or procedural programming languages), or as a joke. The use of esoteric distinguishes these languages from programming languages that working developers use to write software. Usually, an esolang's creators do not intend the language to be used for mainstream programming, although some esoteric features, such as visuospatial syntax, have inspired practical applications in the arts. Such languages are often popular among hackers and hobbyists.
Usability is rarely a goal for esoteric programming language designersโoften the design leads to quite the opposite. Their usual aim is to remove or replace conventional language features while still maintaining a language that is Turing-complete, or even one for which the computational class is unknown.
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- "Piet is a programming language, whose programs look like abstract art." | 2010-03-04 | 99 Upvotes 28 Comments
๐ 'No Way to Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens
"'No Way to Prevent This', Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens" is the title of a series of articles perennially published by the American news satire organization The Onion satirizing the frequency of mass shootings in the United States and the lack of action taken in the wake of such incidents.
Each article is about 200 words long, detailing the location of the shooting and the number of victims, but otherwise remaining essentially the same. A fictitious residentโusually of a state in which the shooting did not take placeโis quoted as saying that the shooting was "a terrible tragedy", but "there's nothing anyone can do to stop them." The article ends by saying that the United States is the "only economically advanced nation in the world where roughly two mass shootings have occurred every month for the past eight years," and that Americans view themselves and the situation as "helpless".
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- "'No Way to Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens" | 2023-09-28 | 59 Upvotes 56 Comments
๐ Count Binface
Count Binface is a satirical perennial candidate created by the British comedian Jonathan David Harvey in 2018. He was a candidate for Uxbridge and South Ruislip in the 2019 United Kingdom general election against the then prime minister, Boris Johnson. He also stood in the London Mayoral elections in 2021 and 2024.
In earlier elections, Harvey stood as Lord Buckethead, but was forced to change the character due to a copyright dispute with the American filmmaker Todd Durham, who created Lord Buckethead for his 1984 science fiction film Hyperspace. Since then Harvey has used the forced name change to his advantage by using the platform of Binface to promote electoral participation, with the slogan, "Make your vote COUNT".
In 2019, another individual contested the Uxbridge and South Ruislip seat as Buckethead, representing the Official Monster Raving Loony Party, to which Binface said he "look[s] forward to both the hustings and to challenging [him] to take part in a receptacle-to-receptacle debate".
When Johnson resigned as an MP in 2023, Binface again stood as a candidate in the Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election, finishing eighth of 17. Originally standing as an independent, since 2023 his affiliation has been given as Count Binface Party on ballot papers. Count Binface plans to contest the seat of current UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, in Richmond and Northallerton, in the 2024 general election on 4 July.
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- "Count Binface" | 2024-06-25 | 56 Upvotes 41 Comments
๐ Meta-jokes
Meta-joke refers to several somewhat different, but related categories: joke templates, self-referential jokes, and jokes about jokes (also known as meta-humor).
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- "Meta-jokes" | 2011-09-27 | 63 Upvotes 22 Comments
๐ No Soap, Radio
"No soap radio" is a form of practical joke and an example of surreal comedy. The joke is a prank whereby the punch line has no relation to the body of the joke; but participants in the prank pretend otherwise. The effect is to either trick someone into laughing along as if they "get it" or to ridicule them for not understanding.
The joke became popular in New York in the 1950s. The punch line is known for its use as a basic sociological and psychological experiment, specifically relating to mob mentality and the pressure to conform. The basic setup is similar to the Asch conformity experiments, in which people showed a proclivity to agree with a group despite their own judgments.
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- "No Soap, Radio" | 2022-07-27 | 44 Upvotes 34 Comments