Duane

JACKSON, NH—Drawing tens of thousands of residents out of their homes and businesses to stare upward into the sky, Hillary Clinton’s colossal, floating campaign headquarters reportedly moved into position over New Hampshire this morning, casting the entire state into darkness. “I was just driving down Route 302 when I heard this deep, pulsing drone and saw a dark line of shadow moving down the mountainside toward me—I nearly drove off the road,” said local resident Patrick Schoenberg, who, like hundreds of other motorists, pulled off to the side of the highway and looked up at the 9,500-square-mile Hillary for America campaign vessel as it slowly crawled across the horizon and blotted out all daylight. “It finally came to a stop an hour or so ago. But its engines just keep whirring constantly, rattling the house. My kids won’t stop crying.” At press time, the state ...

FORT WORTH, TX—Smiling softly as he closed the picture book he had been reading and looked down at his young grandson sound asleep, Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush reportedly whispered into the toddler’s ear while tucking him into bed Wednesday night that no one would ever push him into running for president. “My sweet boy, I swear that nobody will ever pressure you to commission polls to test your national electability or keep trying to put you in touch with family members’ old campaign staffers—not ever,” said Bush in a hushed murmur, his eyes reportedly welling with tears as he pulled the covers up to the boy’s chin and vowed to protect him from those who would repeatedly tell him that a path to the presidency would be easy for an establishment candidate with considerable name recognition. “You can grow up to be anything you want ...

GALVESTON, TX—Amid a spate of public health warnings this week regarding the infectious disease’s devastating effects on fetal development, the Zika virus reportedly joined a lack of paid maternity leave and unaffordable child care as reasons why local woman Shannon Kemp is afraid of becoming pregnant. “I was going to hold off getting pregnant for a few years anyway out of fear that my company might let me go when they find out, but this whole Zika scare certainly doesn’t help things either,” said the 26-year-old, explaining that the threat of giving birth to a child with an underdeveloped brain was just one of a litany of reasons behind her dread of becoming pregnant, including the likelihood of being passed over for promotions, the lower salaries received by mothers, the rising cost of prenatal care, the rising cost of postnatal care, the increased difficulty in being hired ...

DES MOINES, IA—Declaring that all voting-age citizens who took the measures would be spared, Hillary Clinton ominously instructed her supporters throughout Iowa to mark their front doors with her campaign logo before sundown, sources confirmed Sunday. “All those residing in Iowa take heed: Your home shall bear the mark of my campaign this eve, or may God help you,” said the Democratic candidate after dispatching a phalanx of campaign staffers to all four corners of the state to spread the message of her directive. “Be within your dwellings with the doors closed and locked before nightfall, and do not cross the threshold before the sun rises again in the sky. The emblem of the red-and-blue H will protect my true voters.” At press time, Clinton issued a statement ordering all Iowan supporters who remain on Monday morning to bring forth their progeny between 18 and 34 years of age ...

WASHINGTON—Leaning in close behind the first lady and softly whispering into her ear, President Obama gently guided Michelle’s hand as she maneuvered a Predator drone joystick control to acquire a high-value overseas target, White House sources confirmed Friday. “Now keep your eyes on the digital-terrain data feed on this monitor as you slowly pull up on the stick—wow, you’re such a natural at this,” said the commander-in-chief as he tenderly led his wife’s hand to the laser designator. “Careful now, not too steep! That’s it—steady, steady. Whenever you’re ready, just aim at your target and discharge the Hellfire missiles.” At press time, sources confirmed that the president and first lady could be seen locking eyes intensely and smiling after they pressed the unmanned aerial vehicle’s launch button in unison.

NASHVILLE, TN—The results of a comprehensive multiyear study charting the educational achievement of children throughout the United States were released Friday, revealing that the nation’s girls are increasingly outperforming their future employers in all subjects. “We looked at test scores from all 50 states and found that, across every demographic group, girls are consistently outscoring those who will someday have the power to hire and fire them,” said the study’s lead author, Jennifer Malone, of Vanderbilt University, who noted that the gap between female students and those who will hold 86 percent of top executive positions at the companies where they work emerges early in elementary school and continues to grow throughout high school, college, and graduate school. “For years, girls have performed better than their future bosses in areas like writing and reading comprehension, but more recently, they’ve started to surpass them in STEM subjects ...

SOCORRO, NM—Initiating emergency procedures and sealing security doors throughout the complex, scientists at Monsanto reportedly placed the agrochemical company’s main laboratory on lockdown Thursday after discovering a shattered, empty tomato containment unit.

According to sources onsite, technicians arrived at the lab’s secure vegetable isolation chamber at 8 a.m. to find the room’s armed guards lying dead on the floor next to what remained of Specimen 323-A’s 6-inch-thick tempered-glass container, which appeared to have been ruptured from the inside.

Officials would not confirm how many employees had been killed, but acknowledged the released tomato variety remained at large within the sprawling crop development facility.

“We have suffered a Code 9 containment breach,” said head biotechnologist Stewart Klein, explaining that he had used a dedicated emergency line to contact Monsanto headquarters in St. Louis, which immediately sent back a directive ordering all laboratory personnel to shelter ...

Hovertext: One day I'll do a comic where the parent just comes in and comforts the kid.

Hovertext: Please stick to the original plan, which you were going to stick to anyway. Amen.

With the new year, tickets are zooming for BAHFest London. If you want a seat, please book in the next two weeks or so. 

Hovertext: The really hard thing is to click the latch into place while the fabric of spacetime is being destroyed.

 Discount BAHFest tickets are selling fast!

Anybody who knows me will tell you the same thing: I get what I want. Whether it’s food, being held, my binky, you name it—if I decide I’d like it, you damn well better believe I don’t rest until I get it, one way or another. And from the very second I saw those blue and red detergent pods come out of that shopping bag last week, I knew immediately that, come hell or high water, I would eat one of those things.

So with God as my witness, I swear to you: I’m going to find that container of multicolored pods, I’m going to take one out, I’m going to shove it in my mouth, and I’m going to chew it up and swallow it down, and nothing and no one is going to stand in my way.

You can’t ...

31p50 is a post from: The Adventures of Dr. McNinja

Ads by Project Wonderful! Your ad could be here, right now.

It's true. Sometimes it's okay for the y-axis to start at a non-zero value, which is why Johnny Harris and Matthew Yglesias for Vox tell people to shut up about the y-axis.

The video might seem contradictory to what I said about bar chart baselines, but we basically say the same thing. The context must match the visual, charts that don't use length as the visual encoding can start at non-zero baselines, and take a second before you sputter a knee-jerk reaction.

Tags: baseline, Vox

Hovertext: C'monnnnn well thought-out hatemail.

Thanks everyone for making that kickstarter our most successful SMBC book launch ever!

If you just missed it and still want in, we will briefly be offering pre-orders.  

OTTUMWA, IA—Vowing to hunt down and destroy every last vestige of the extremist group, Senator Marco Rubio announced Tuesday that his presidential campaign was deploying 6,000 ground troops to the Middle East to combat ISIS militants. “ISIS has shown that it has no respect for the sanctity of human life, which is why this campaign has dispatched troops to Syria to begin a full-scale ground assault against these terrorists,” said the candidate ahead of a voter meet-and-greet at an Iowa senior center, noting that the troop deployment was merely the latest phase of a multi-pronged strategy by the Rubio 2016 campaign that began with the arming of Kurdish militias shortly before the second GOP primary debate. “In addition, the campaign has already launched coordinated missile strikes against ISIS strongholds from our destroyer, the USS New American Century, stationed in the Persian Gulf. And the Conservative Solutions super PAC ...

WASHINGTON—Instructing his colleagues to take a good, long look at what happens to consensus seekers, Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX) publicly displayed the impaled body of a fellow senator at the entrance to the Capitol building Thursday as a warning to anyone thinking about crossing party lines. “You see this? If I even sense so much as a hint of a possibility that you might vote out of lockstep or co-sponsor a centrist bill with the opposition, I swear to God I’ll slice your tongue clean out of your throat right in the middle of the rotunda,” said Cornyn, gesturing to the suit-clad corpse with a bloodied wooden stake protruding from its chest and the word “AISLE-CROSSER” carved into its forehead. “And then I’ll personally see to it that you’re branded, gutted, skewered, and paraded around Capitol Hill like a suckling hog. So ask yourself ...