Explain xkcd Babylon Bee

Most people who are aware of the webcomic xkcd are also aware of explainxkcd, the (biased and crowdsourced) wiki which explains the jokes as they are often specifically geared to those mathematically inclined.

The comics can also be released soon after a news story (often science or technology related), so the joke needs explanation for those who years later may wonder what the hell he's talking about.

I've often thought that the Newspaper of Record, the Babylon Bee, could use a similar feature. One of today's satirical stories is a key example as to why:

SAN FRANCISCO, CA — Citizens braced themselves for yet another heavy crime surge this week after the city of San Francisco fined The Batman for putting a bright, obnoxious "Bat Signal" on the roof of a downtown building.

Now you may be thinking what I was thinking: that the city of San Fransisco either passed an ordinance banning those spotlights that bars and special events use to draw attention to themselves, or else some organization conducted themselves in a way to deter or help solve crime; either way city officials came down on them.

That is what happened, in a way,  however it had nothing to do with searchlights or crimefighting. Instead, the city fined the owner of the building Twitter leases for putting the company's new logo on the building without a permit.

This was obscure enough that I could not know about it now...let alone the poor schmuck in April 2027 going through their archives and reading about a satirical story to a temporary news article of interest. Well, you're welcome yet-to-exist-schmuck: at least one Babylon Bee article in your newsfeed is now easy to understand.

WTF thought of the day

The British have posh terms for everything, except its the Americans who rejigged what sounds like the most rural drawl term ever -- "flapjack" -- into the more refined "pancake"?

They didn't even bother to #LieToTheCensus

Editor's Note: This post was originally written for July of 2021, however got caught up in draft status. As a result, exactly two years later, here is the original post:

Remember how I missed Wimbledon's Saturday matches?

It's all because on Friday July 10th I went to a house party. Well, apartment party anyways, it was in an apartment building (condo complex I believe), which is actually kind of important.

Anyways, July 10th is definitely after May 11th. Yes yes, I know, this is the sort of hard-hitting analysis you can't get anywhere else, but the census was due on May 11th.

Those who do not fill out the census may expect a visit to their door by one of the 31,000 census 2021 enumerators hired this year to conduct person-to-person visits to those who didn’t file by early June in communities across Quinte and beyond.

31,000 enumerators, eh? That sounds like quite a lot. Which seems odd. After all, according to the (always lying, as leftists always lie always) Liberals, the 2016 census saw a 97% compliance in Alberta. Why would there need to be an enumerator for every 1100 people? That's 97% by household mind you, so if we assume 2 people per household that's only 550 houses: 3% of that is 16.5, which means each enumerator presumably only has to harass 17 addresses.

Well, this house party was at an apartment building. And yet, on the single floor we walked down to get to the apartment in question, we saw no less than five notices for failure to complete the census, and I think it was around 15-20 units we passed.

Now I'm sure apartments are of lower percentage compliance than houses, what with unoccupied units and the like. However, still, even if noncompliance was triple the national average we're still looking at some 8% of residences that refused to fill out their census form.

That's a lot higher than the Liberals like to claim. So I guess the lesson for the 2026 census is clear: you can lie to them, as I've often suggested.

Or you can just refuse, tell them to piss off, and you'll just be yet another resident who fails to fill out his census form. One refusenik is a tragedy, if you start making up 5/15ths of the population you become...a statistic.

@redwate03066981 - How many Alberta homes were foreclosed as a result of the National Energy Program?

Petrocan (before it was dismantled) Pemex Aramco BP, Petrobras, PDVSA of Venezuela, NIOC of Iran ,Qatar energy National Oil Corp of Libya

— red water (@redwate03066981) June 30, 2023

There's no proper term beyond "retard who needs to hang himself" to describe somebody who thinks that the National Energy Program worked out well for workers.

NiggerKraut

For some unfathomable reason today, the fans in Hamburg didn't seem too excited when a player born in Reinbek defeated Italian cutie Martina Trevisan (8.5/10) today.

Happy Dominion Day

Remember to shoot off a ton of fireworks to celebrate that the (white) British founded Canada and the childish savages loitering around were already being shunted off to the corner.