Ballmer Peak

(en.wikipedia.org)

87 points | by thunderbong a day ago ago

34 comments

  • fifilura a day ago ago

    There is a danish movie related to maintaining the optimal drunkedness.

    https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10288566/

    • rozab a day ago ago
    • pgsandstrom a day ago ago

      The most danish movie ever made. It gets an extra layer if you are at least somewhat familiar with the hedonistic aspect of danish culture (at least in contrast to swedish culture).

      • pseudohadamard 11 hours ago ago

        "Come to Copenhagen and help carry a drunk Swede to the ferry". This was before the Øresund bridge.

    • PorciiVorbesc a day ago ago

      I felt like there's a seed of truth to that plot, even if it's probably not scientifically proven. I could always get more complex problems solved when I had a slight buzz than without, at least in college. I don't know now.

      • CalRobert 19 hours ago ago

        things don't go so great in the end...

      • adfghiono9i a day ago ago

        That is not actually what the movie's about.

    • dcrazy a day ago ago

      Starring Mads Mikkelsen, no less?

  • bronlund a day ago ago

    I have reference this more times than I'm willing to admit. Usually together with that old rumor; that back in the days, if you went to a computer show, it was pretty obvious that the Apple guys were smoking and the Microsoft guys were drinking :)

    • bitwize a day ago ago

      The high-level Apple guys were tripping balls, especially—in all seriousness—Jobs.

      • hypercube33 10 hours ago ago

        LSD is how we got HyperCard

  • TomMasz a day ago ago

    Back in the '90s I worked for a small consulting company that was conveniently next to a bar that we often went to after work on Friday. One of the other software engineers, who was an exceptionally gifted programmer, would walk back to the office to write some more code. He said he was his most profific/creative after a couple of beers.

  • nraynaud a day ago ago

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balmer_jump I learned just a few days ago of what probably originated the joke.

    • eps a day ago ago

      It's a different Balmer.

      • nraynaud a day ago ago

        Jokes are inspired by taking off from the exact subject at hand, that’s what imagination is about, not staying in the box.

        • eps 17 hours ago ago

          You have a point. It's possible that Munroe being a physist might've known about Balmer Jump... though that's still quite a stretch to assume it was the source of the comic.

    • jibalt a day ago ago

      > probably originated the joke

      A completely baseless claim ... "probably" means > .5 probability, but there is no evidence to support that; it's sheer speculation.

  • solarkraft 16 hours ago ago
  • mitjam 16 hours ago ago

    My definition of luck: No appointments and a little buzz. — Harald Juhnke

  • a day ago ago
    [deleted]
  • Angostura a day ago ago

    See also the Mitchell and Webb ‘inebriati’ sketch - https://youtu.be/-Zj50DmBFp0

  • someonebaggy a day ago ago

    Why does this deserve a Wikipedia article when so many other more important things don't?

    • amclennon a day ago ago

      Be the change you want to see in the world. Submit a Wikipedia article about a subject you truly care about

      • someonebaggy 14 hours ago ago

        Have done, it was deleted because not notable

    • NewJazz 9 hours ago ago

      Usually the bar is "have news sources written about it" for a lot of subjects.

    • bazoom42 19 hours ago ago

      Probably because someone has created the page and nobody has deleted it.

  • burnt-resistor 19 hours ago ago

    Before the advent of the brogrammer, I had a British manager/lead programmer at (big name GPS supplier) who kept a 6-pack of beer in his desk for sipping alone after everyone else went home. I don't know if it was either sad the drinking alone part or concerning that the code would drive one to drinking. Maybe there's something to a beer enabling flow state.

  • taejavu a day ago ago

    I wonder how many other XKCD comics now have Wikipedia articles?

    • someonebaggy a day ago ago

      Hopefully none, since they don't meet Wikipedia's notability requirements and much more important things (such as places with thousands of people, and software with tens of thousands of users) have been rejected for not meeting the same requirements.

    • xeonmc a day ago ago

      citogenesis is the obvious answer

    • zeumo a day ago ago

      Luckily, "xkcd" doesn't refer to anything else than the comic AFAIK, so we can easily search and find that 143 English Wikipedia articles reference the comic. [0] Glossing over the list, I'd count 4 of these are directly referencing a specific comic or a concept invented in one: Time, Ballmer Peak, and Geohashing.

      There are more if you include special pages, like Citogenesis reported by sibling.

      The other way around, folks at the Explain xkcd wiki have categorized the comics and 56 of them reference Wikipedia. [1]

      [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Search&fu...

      [1] https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Category:Wikipedi...

    • Uhhrrr a day ago ago

      I wonder how many Wikipedia articles have XKCD comics?

      Edit: I asked Opus 5.5, medium effort, and got a lame answer. Then asked it for "extra" effort, and the summary of that is:

      WP->xkcd: Ballmer Peak, Geohashing, Time, a few other passing mentions

      xkcd->WP: Missal of Silos, Rolle's Theorem, at least 54 other general references to WP

      • sig-11 a day ago ago

        This obviously calls for a Venn diagram. Wikipedia articles about xkcd strips about wikipedia articles?