What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of Mad Magazine • Hacker News Board

Re: What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of Mad Magazine

#101

Post by jordigh » Tue, Sep 24, 2024, 3:53 PM UTC

mdf wrote: post #17

I remember, as a child, attempting to reproduce the BASIC program in one of the MAD magazine issues. Somewhere, I had made a typo, which completely screwed the output. I guessed that the tediousness of the whole exercise was part of the joke, shrugged, and moved on. Luckily, someone else succeeded: https://meatfighter.com/mad/

A port to GNU Octave...

   x = [
   -27,-11,-23,-6,-28,-13,-22,-6,-20,-5,-12,-5,-27,-14,-26,-13 ...
   -38,-29,-42,-28,-40,-28,-50,-16,-8,13,0,13,-29,4,-29,9 ...
   -50,-17,-41,-28,-49,-17,-50,-8,-8,12,0,12,-28,5,-28,13 ...
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   48,6,49,-11,39,-10,41,-5,18,35,22,35,19,34,23,34 ...
   51,-3,45,8,40,-5,38,-11,23,35,43,17,45,17,27,33 ...
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   38,51,33,48,35,79,35,58,34,79,34,58,34,57,32,56,34,80,32,79 ...
   32,85,30,83,31,83,31,80,30,82,30,79,31,55,29,55,33,49,23,49 ...
   32,48,25,48,24,50,22,50,28,55,17,78,18,79,20,79,20,80,20,84 ...
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   -63,78,-68,56,-69,55,-64,78,-66,49,-72,49,-68,48,-73,48 ...
   -69,55,-73,55,-73,55,-73,48,-74,49,-74,54 ...
   61,71,61,65,60,73,60,63,59,73,59,72,60,65,58,60 ...
   59,61,54,56,59,74,55,78,59,75,54,80,54,80,48,80 ...
   46,79,55,79,54,56,48,56,47,57,46,57,47,78,46,78 ...
   45,78,45,58,7,76,11,66,10,66,6,76,9,66,1,66,0,66,6,75];

   l = reshape(x, 4, 522)';
   [x1, y1, x2, y2] = deal(l(:,1), l(:,2), l(:,3), l(:,4));
   sz = 1.2;
   xc = 140;
   yc = 90;
   fx = x1*sz + xc; fy = 176 - (y1 + yc);
   lx = x2*sz + xc; ly = 176 - (y2 + yc);
   plot([fx+1, lx+1]', [fy, ly]', '-b', [fx, lx]', [fy, ly]', '-b');
   axis tight;
   axis off;
   axis ij;
   h = title('What, me worry?');
   set(h, 'position', [140, 170]);

Re: What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of Mad Magazine

#102

Post by jordigh » Tue, Sep 24, 2024, 4:27 PM UTC

dole wrote: post #56

mdf wrote: post #17

I remember, as a child, attempting to reproduce the BASIC program in one of the MAD magazine issues. Somewhere, I had made a typo, which completely screwed the output. I guessed that the tediousness of the whole exercise was part of the joke, shrugged, and moved on. Luckily, someone else succeeded: https://meatfighter.com/mad/

The Commodore version of the source in the magazine never worked. I probably typed it in at least five times in whole thinking I'd screwed something up. It wasn't until a few years ago (from an HN post, no less) that I found the link above and finally, finally got to see what the code did.

It's a sign error.

https://github.com/asig/MAD_computer_program?tab=readme-ov-f...

Re: What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of Mad Magazine

#103

Post by PhasmaFelis » Tue, Sep 24, 2024, 4:44 PM UTC

Propelloni wrote: post #97

jansan wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a Spy vs. Spy game on the C64: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu2e866bEcM

There were actually two Spy vs. Spy games. The second one was named Spy vs. Spy II. Genius!

Three, actually! They even had a bit of continuity. In the first game you have to escape the embassy by plane before a bomb goes off, in the second your plane crashes on a volcanic island and you have to escape by submarine before it erupts, in the third your sub crashes into a glacier and you have to escape by rocket before you freeze to death.

Or something like that, it's been a while.

Re: What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of Mad Magazine

#104

Post by ttmb » Tue, Sep 24, 2024, 4:46 PM UTC

scottyah wrote: post #98

criddell wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In case you didn't know, The Onion is back in print: https://membership.theonion.com/

It seems to me that the Onion had a schism and split into the Babylon Bee and this new, very political version. I ended up unfollowing them on Instagram when it was (in my opinion) just thinly-veiled hate-based politics. Did anyone experience something similar in the last year or so, or am I the one changing?

I had never heard of the Babylon Bee and I just took a look at it. Are you saying you think The Onion is the very political one, or did I misread your sentence?

Re: What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of Mad Magazine

#105

Post by gosub100 » Tue, Sep 24, 2024, 5:02 PM UTC

webdoodle wrote: post #100

ethbr1 wrote: post #2

Through my childhood, my mother always found a copy of MAD to give me for Christmas. Honestly, it'd be great to have more physical zine-style humor back in the US zeitgeist. It's important to laugh at the issues of the day, while also thinking and doing something about them. Satire and laughter is a critical antidote to the 24/7 BREAKING-NEWS panic-fear response that all-day news so often inspires. PS: Also, long liv…

> It's important to laugh at the issues of the day Is it? In Robert Heilein's Stranger in a Strange Land one of the central conflicts involves the main character who's grown up on Mars, where there are no humans and no humor. He is thrust into Earth, humans and humor and makes a bold observation about humor: We only laugh at things that cause pain. Whether physical, mental or spiritual, all humor is reflecting on pai…

His observation is a work of fiction, not an authoritative or evidence based one.

Re: What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of Mad Magazine

#106

Post by Modified3019 » Tue, Sep 24, 2024, 5:25 PM UTC

My babysitter in the late 90’s had a stack of mad magazines (and possibly other humor type competitor mags, like Cracked or Nuts) I would explore.

The one that lives permanently in my head is a bit where they show off a full page cutaway of a house (and possibly wider social infrastructure) designed for every single person being so fat they use mobility scooters to get around, the tone framed of course an an optimistic advancement for society.

That said, I’m not sure if it was MAD or one of the other copycat humor mags. I’ve never been able to find it again in the MAD archives I’ve seen.

Re: What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of Mad Magazine

#107

Post by ForOldHack » Tue, Sep 24, 2024, 5:59 PM UTC

The first read would be to find all the squggles of Sergio Aragonés...

Brilliant marginalarian.

Re: What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of Mad Magazine

#108

Post by froh » Tue, Sep 24, 2024, 6:15 PM UTC

jordigh wrote: post #101

mdf wrote: post #17

I remember, as a child, attempting to reproduce the BASIC program in one of the MAD magazine issues. Somewhere, I had made a typo, which completely screwed the output. I guessed that the tediousness of the whole exercise was part of the joke, shrugged, and moved on. Luckily, someone else succeeded: https://meatfighter.com/mad/

A port to GNU Octave... x = [ -27,-11,-23,-6,-28,-13,-22,-6,-20,-5,-12,-5,-27,-14,-26,-13 ... -38,-29,-42,-28,-40,-28,-50,-16,-8,13,0,13,-29,4,-29,9 ... -50,-17,-41,-28,-49,-17,-50,-8,-8,12,0,12,-28,5,-28,13 ... -50,-15,-49,-10,40,-26,42,-17,-4,9,-21,14,5,48,2,44 ... -53,-39,-45,-48,-55,-23,-55,-28,-61,-23,-58,-22,-42,-39,-43,-39 ... 36,-52,36,-55,-37,-48,-32,-56,-32,-56,-26,-60,9,-74,33,-55 ... 6,-12,12,-11,14,-8,24…

oh great.

the listing is missing checksums! madness!

we're in 2024, checksums are the least I can expect.

Re: What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of Mad Magazine

#109

Post by mrandish » Tue, Sep 24, 2024, 7:17 PM UTC

pimlottc wrote: post #67

arp242 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was pretty common to distribute code as "listing" like this. Typically it came with a checksum for every line and a small program to compute and print that for your own program that you had typed over, which you could then use to fairly quickly(-ish) spot any typos. All of this is how I learned to program by the way. Kids these days don't know how easy they have it.

Huh, we used to type in BASIC programs from magazines back in the 1980s and I don’t ever recall seeing any kinds of checksum. We would often resort to printing out the code and visually comparing line by line against the magazine.

In the early 80s I never saw checksums on code listings but by the mid-80s it was fairly common, although certainly not universal.

Re: What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of Mad Magazine

#110

Post by scottyah » Tue, Sep 24, 2024, 7:21 PM UTC

ttmb wrote: post #104

scottyah wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that the Onion had a schism and split into the Babylon Bee and this new, very political version. I ended up unfollowing them on Instagram when it was (in my opinion) just thinly-veiled hate-based politics. Did anyone experience something similar in the last year or so, or am I the one changing?

I had never heard of the Babylon Bee and I just took a look at it. Are you saying you think The Onion is the very political one, or did I misread your sentence?

I think the Onion has become very political over the last year or so. When I started following the Babylon Bee, they were already very political to me.