Shared by Boise Ed, enjoyed by this Florida native.
And check out this previous CIDU LOLs post for Ed’s intro to Shrimp and Grits
But TBH the premise is faulty — is she really going to go pick up a book instead, in the moment?
But is that true?? Questions can be raised about the background view.
Or was this an Oy?
This is here as a LOL but almost went into the Oopsies. The “related products” message from Amazon doesn’t ever appear full-screen as drawn here. It was enough to throw Pam off, who sent it in as not-fully-understood.
Here is a picture of the real Erwin S, and I think the cartoon has a pretty good likeness. We should also note a thank-you to contemporary physicist, Twitter celebrity, and YouTube presence Sean M Carroll, who when explaining the famous thought-experiment says there is a vial of fast-acting sleeping-gas, and when we look for the cat’s condition the choices are Asleep and Awake.
Comics I Don't Understand 
I was raised in Florida, and my reaction was, ‘What?”
Florida has lots of canals, lots of picturesque beauty, and way more tourists than Amsterdam. (Granted it’s larger.) And Amsterdam, I guarantee, has plenty of mosquitos in the right season. Makes no sense to me.
And Florida has cannabis now, too, but, sadly, no red-light district.
@ LF – Well, at least not any legal ones.
unfortunately, it turns out Schrodinger was a pedophile.
https://futurism.com/schrodinger-pedophile
Sleeping gas isn’t going to work – based on extensive observation of feline habits I would deduce the cat will be asleep every time you open the box..
I don’t get the Schroediger’s vet one at all — is it that he’s taken the cat to the vet after performing the (thought) experiment, which the cat clearly survived? Why would the cat be angry, it wouldn’t have noticed what was being done (except for being put in a box, and there’s plenty of internet evidence to show cats enjoy that). And what’s funny about a vet being shocked that you put your cat in mortal danger? And why would he admit it to the vet? And again, what would you expect? And it was in any event a thought experiment, adding this bit of pointless verisimilitude does nothing for anything….
The first floor building could be at the top of a steep hill. Architecturally weird to have a ledge 4 feet or so off the ground, but I guess it’s possible.
I agree with dvandom on the first floor building one.
The amazon one seems just fine. There are plenty of details in the cartoon that don’t align with any reality, so why get picky about the actual amazon message not being exactly like that? This makes the joke obvious and not make people think the joke is a prisoner browsing amazon.
For the lousy tv movie, the idea may not have been to push people away once they were already watching, but to keep some people from even wanting to start it and decide to go find something else to do. She just happens to be someone that decided watching the movie was better than reading.
This makes the joke obvious and not make people think the joke is a prisoner browsing amazon.TedD, but I thought the joke mainly is that the prisoner is getting his escape tools from Amazon, instead of the file being baked into a visitor’s cake and the bedsheets pilfered from the prison laundry, as is the traditional plan!
What Mitch said, but additionally that Amazon’s “related products” suggestion algorithm knows that a file goes along with bedsheets.
So the book publishing industry owns Netflix? That explains “The Witcher.”
The Fusco Bro-on-the-ledge is designed so that the artwork can be used with other punch lines. It probably has been.
lark: “I don’t get the Schroediger’s vet one at all — is it that he’s taken the cat to the vet after performing the (thought) experiment, which the cat clearly survived? ”
I assumed the joke was supposed to be about the vet having either neutered or not neutered the cat.
The Amazon one brings up an earworm. “Obie said he was making sure, and friends, Obie was, cause he took out the toilet seat so I couldn’t hit myself over the head and drown, and he took out the toilet paper so I couldn’t bend the bars, roll the toilet paper out the window, slide down the roll and have an ess-cape.”
Shrug: I considered that possibility briefly, but it seemed clear to me the vet was speaking (and then we had the added photo making it clear the vet was speaking), so I couldn’t make that interpretation go anywhere — surely Schrodinger would be the one saying, “you did what?” to whatever uncertainty principle thingy the vet did to his cat (and it would explain the cat’s expression).
dvandom: Where do you get the four feet? I’d say the cartoon is from Europe, where “first floor” means the one above the ground-level floor. If it were four feet, it could be one of those neighborhoods where each house has a “stoop.”
Mitch4 – I agree with Danny Boy – the joke is more that enough people ordered files and bed sheets (presumably prisoners), that that is what Amazon is suggesting as a related product. There could be a side joke of Amazon being completely unconcerned with the obvious implications this pairing represents and simply suggests the most common pairing.
@ BillR – I didn’t care for the style in which that report was written, but the original article in “The Irish Times” is behind a paywall. However, the information seems to be confirmed from a number of other reliable sources, and it is nasty. One problem is that while a university can easily rename a building or a trust fund because of old connections that have recently come into focus (such as Millikan’s involvement with the “eugenics” movement), in this case there isn’t any “owner” or “copyright holder” for all of those references to the cat. I saw a number of sardonic and/or sarcastic proposals (such as replacing “cat” with “pussy“), but to me the levity seems to be out of place, compared to the topic under discussion.
Kilby says
@ BillR – I didn’t care for the style in which that report was written,Just got around to it today to follow that link. Indeed, it’s hard to take something as seriously attempting a factual news report when the text keeps saying disgusting and disgustingly. Those may in the end be appropriate judgements, but it feels like they aren’t up to a news source to articulate for us.
@Kilby – Florida has medical marijuana.
For as long as I have reading I have read books, newspapers, magazines, and even computer websites while watching (or at least listening to ) TV – doing so right now. This was a bone of contention when I was a child and my mom could not understand how I could do both at the same time (dad understood).
Re – can openers and can – what they don’t need the third type of opener. I guess not as there is no pull ring.
Sorry to throw this in but this just annoys the heck out of me. They changed cans to ones with the pull rings on them – allegedly so that stupid people who only have electric can openers will be able to open the cans during a blackout – but I cannot pull the darn tabs open – my hands are too small. Apparently I am not the only one as we were able to buy a hook shaped can opener to help pull the tab open – I still have trouble with the bigger soup cans (Progresso sized instead of Campbells) and can only open them on the table not on a kitchen counter due to the difference in the height at which I would be working. And why do some cans have the ring pull opener and others from the same company do not? So now I have to have 3 can openers instead of 2.
@ LF – I wasn’t talking about the “coffee” shops, but rather the other type of establishment. Meryl A has one right in her neighborhood, but like I said, it’s not legal (outside of Nevada).
It’s an actual cautionary message, because English buildings list the “first floor” as one story up. What most buildings list as the “first floor” is called the ground floor in England. This is also true of Quaker-related retirement homes. So the dude on the ledge could be about 10 feet above the ground. Not sure how dangerous that would be. It kind of spoils the joke because I wouldn’t want someone to jump 10 feet and break their ankle or something. Ah well.
With soup and such, the pull-tops are so that people can bring those in their lunch to work for heating in the microwave and not need a can opener there. The electric can opener thing doesn’t really hold water, as most cans aren’t like that. Looking at a Progresso can, I’d bet you could open one of those with a standard can opener. I’ve opened soda cans in the past that way.
Using the British and/or European meaning of “first floor” being the second storey (on top of a “ground floor”) to explain the buildings in the background just doesn’t hoid up: Duffy is an American cartoonist, and the dialog makes it obvious that the intent of the joke is that the suicide attempt just isn’t going to work. I have no idea whether he re-uses drawings, but I favor the explanation that this scene is occurring near the top of a hill (for instance, such as might occur in San Francisco).
The “first floor” works just fine if you presume that the viewer is kneeling down or crouching a bit. The buildings in the distance might be lower down a hill, but don’t need to be much lower than the viewer if the viewer is looking at the world from a low angle
The cat looks angry. Probably can’t stand being in a superposition.
Kilby – I have one near here and it is illegal – can’t be a home for wayward Teddy Bears, hmmm,
When I was young I read a series of books – “the All of a Kind Family” – which took before and during WWI about a family with a 5 daughters. (Rare to find a book about Jewish family then for me and later in the series they did get a baby brother.)
In one of the books the girls go to their aunt and new uncle’s new apartment (NYC). The relatives live on the second floor. When the girls arrive for dinner there is a note saying “Had to go out, start eating without waiting.” (Or similar) Teh girls go in and start eating dinner. A strange woman arrives and it is her apartment – she had left dinner for family. It turns out tha this building the floor on which one enters the building is the ground floor and is not included in the count of floors – so their aunt lives one more floor up.
So apparently the numbering of floors with floor one as the floor one enters the building or floor one being one flight up in the building occurred in NYC also and was not known to everyone.
(And like much of the books I liked the female author had written in based on her life – something I have realized in the last few years.)
Meryl, the apartment building I live in has ground floor “vestibules” or “foyers” (where our mailboxes and bike storage rooms are), then up a (slightly reduced) flight to get to Apartment 1A and 1B… etc. I live in Apartment 3A, which means walking up three flights of stairs, not two as it might seem from some standard conventions.
One time I bought a window air conditioning unit from Sears. Delivery and installation were handled by an independent local contractor, who I was paying separately, with fee based on weight plus what floor the walk up was. When they showed up, they were mad as hell, saying I was on the fourth floor and should not have said third floor. They demanded (and received!) a cash extra payment for the extra level.
(Subsequently I grew tired of taking the AC out of the window every Fall and putting it back in every Summer, and worrying about it falling out and hitting somebody! — and got one of the kind where the machinery is in a case that sits on your floor on small wheels, and connects to the window by a wide flex tube. I still disconnect and reconnect the tube for the seasons but it is not such a big dangerous task.)
Mitch4 – sorry to take so long to get back. Lived in that type of building when I was young, though no specific bicycle storage (at least not that I knew about)but we did have basement storage and mom had a washing machine in the basement. I was working from memory of that building, as well as that of other family members back in the 1950s.
From the first window a/c’s Robert and I bought when we lived in an apartment through the last window unit we had in our house (all through the wall now) we always left them in. We would not be able to deal with them on our own. (We actually had the last window unit in the house put through the wall some years ago (had to replace it again in the summer 2020 during the earlier part of the pandemic so it was SOME time ago that it was moved to the wall – we really did not want anyone in the house, let alone in the bedroom but R could not deal with the heat and the “put out ice and have a fan blow over it only sort of worked and only for an hour or so,not all night).