• 14th_cylon@lemmy.zip
    147·
    2 days ago

    reminds me of the classic 90s joke “who is this General Failure and why is he reading my drive?”

    • boonhet@sopuli.xyz
      54·
      2 days ago

      I’m not even in the army, much less a squad leader. Who exactly is this Private Parts of mine that you want to see?

      • bold_omi@lemmy.todayEnglish
        51·
        1 day ago

        This is the relevant section of the article:

        “Prawo Jazdy” was an alleged Polish criminal supposedly active in the Republic of Ireland. The name was listed on PULSE, a computer system used by the Garda Síochána, with at least 50 traffic violations, including speeding and parking violations, recorded across the country, but there were suspicious aspects such as each incident being associated with a different address. “Prawo Jazdy” was also listed as a name on the Fixed Charge Processing System (FCPS). An investigation was launched into this person whom the Gardaí considered to be Ireland’s worst traffic violator. An internal Garda memorandum in June 2007 revealed that, upon consultation with an online Polish–English bilingual dictionary, prawo jazdy was not a personal name, but instead the Polish term for ‘driving licence’, misidentified by Garda officers as the traffic violator’s name due to the phrase being printed at the top right-hand corner of Polish driving licences (with the licensee’s name and personal details printed beneath in a smaller text size). The error became public knowledge in February 2009. The Gardaí received the satirical Ig Nobel Prize in literature in 2009 for the mistake, but did not attend the award ceremony. The prize was accepted by Karolina Lewestam, a Polish philosopher and writer, and a “holder of a Polish driver’s licence”. The situation was a source of embarrassment for the Gardaí. It generated discussion on issues such as cultural ignorance or institutional racism within the Gardaí as a result of changing ethnic demography in Ireland due to immigration from other European Union member states. In 2013, a common format for driving licences was implemented for all newly issued documents across the European Economic Area (EEA), of which both Ireland and Poland are part.

  • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    52·
    2 days ago

    Major Major had been born too late and too mediocre. Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. With Major Major it had been all three. Even among men lacking all distinction he inevitably stood out as a man lacking more distinction than all the rest, and people who met him were always impressed by how unimpressive he was.

    • Catch-22

    Edit: man, I just need to reread this book huh? It’s insane that the entire novel reads like this, and it’s hysterical. Joseph Heller was a madman.

    If you haven’t read Catch-22, do yourself a favor. It’s so goddamn funny.

    • Dicska@lemmy.world
      3·
      7 hours ago

      Every page is a masterpiece and I feel so bad for only reading a chapter or two every month. There are so many characters in it that I just lost track of who was who and did what, but I’m also way too deep to start over. But the humour is just classy.

    • EpeeGnome@feddit.onlineEnglish
      18·
      2 days ago

      When I was in school, I was in the habit of reading a novel instead of listening to the teacher whenever I found the lesson boring (as I often did). I attempted this with Catch-22 and was immediately busted because despite my best efforts I laughed out loud halfway through the first page. Decades later it remains one of the funniest books I’ve ever read.

    • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      9·
      2 days ago

      and people who met him were always impressed by how unimpressive he was.

      He also looked so much like Henry Fonda that it was a significant problem:

      " Long before he even suspected who Henry Fonda was, he found himself the subject of unflattering comparisons everywhere he went. Total strangers saw fit to deprecate him, with the result that he was stricken early with a guilty fear of people and an obsequious impulse to apologize to society for the fact that he was not Henry Fonda" 😂

      It’s such a fantastic book! Literally can’t recommend it enough if I live to be 120!

  • JasonDJ@lemmy.zipEnglish
    191·
    2 days ago

    My first thought was, who the fuck names their kid “Data”.

    Then I realized there is a local radio personality named Oedipus, and I always thought what kind of parent names their kid that.

    But then I remembered that that, is in fact, a stage name.

    But I don’t think you can use stage names in the military?

    So maybe they are NB and this was their chosen name? But I don’t think thd military would really go for that, let alone put them on TV (though I have no doubts that the best cyber security researchers out there are, in fact, queer).

    So now I’m just more confused about everything.

    • operationalHazard@lemmy.zip
      31·
      2 days ago

      We don’t know this persons name, the tagline is the news headline not this persons name, it’s about an actual data breach

    • STUNT_GRANNY@lemmy.world
      4·
      2 days ago

      But I don’t think you can use stage names in the military?

      Probably the closest thing to this point that exists, would be callsigns for pilots. But yeah, the image is a joke about a news headline.

  • greybeard@feddit.onlineEnglish
    13·
    2 days ago

    Sheep in the Big City was a great show for puns. There were two Generals in that show. General Specific and General Lee Outrageous.