• ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.orgEnglish
    45·
    2 days ago

    The photos are the contents of the “CV” and “Reports” (basically resume and qualifications) folders she brought.

    Per TV Tropes on Jucika:

    This strip references the comic’s change of ownership [trope page] from Érdekes Újság to Lúdas Matyi, presenting Jucika as a job-seeker trying to prove her qualifications to the titular Matyi and his goose [trope page].

    Looks true, except “change of ownership” is definitely not what happened, Wikipedia says it happened after

    in 1959, Érdekes Újság was merged with the Ország-Világ magazine

    so the party was doing media restructuring, and Lúdas Matyi became the only explicitly satirical periodical allowed (and very popular as a result). This is the first Lúdas Matyi Jucika strip, marking the transition to color. Don’t ask me what kind of contract Pál Pusztai signed or how much say he had, I’m neither Hungarian nor have lived before 2000. And Hungarian is Hungarian to me, the only bits I recognize are új = “new” and ország = “country”, plus Erde is “Earth” in German so perhaps Érdekes Újság is “World News”? (Edit: No, “Interesting Newspaper”) My qualifications are basically just knowing basic research techniques and the xkb Combine key for diacritics.

    See also Wikipedia: Mattie the Goose-boy

    I really like how the boy looks in the third image, reminds me of the 1973 Polish popular math book Przez rozrywkę do wiedzy: Rozmanitości matematyczne (“Science through Fun: Mathematical Curiosities”) by Stanisław Kowal (no illustrator credited so presumably also him), inspired by Martin Gardner, which I’m very nostalgic for as one of my first “nerdy” books.

    I’m sure this was a reasonably common style but I haven’t read that many books from that era that used this kind of printing press so this is the reference you get.

    The book’s not as good as Ian Stewart’s similarly-titled 2008-9 collections, there’s some tedious exercises (optional, obviously, but “here are factorials of 1 to 20, will you please fill out 21-25 if you’re good at calculating” feels like overly cheap content), but the translator did a great job, his notes are like 10% of the text.

    • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
      5·
      2 days ago

      So the CV and example reports she brought are also just her being cute and sexy…

      Good luck goose… I think you’ve got a new office mate.

      • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.orgEnglish
        6·
        2 days ago

        I rushed out the basics, editing the comment now. I’ve already written the ownership part but got distracted with what is now below the line. Come back in a while.

      • JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.socialEnglish
        3·
        2 days ago

        Hungary was indeed behind The Iron Curtain for Jucika’s entire run. In fact, the very year before the strip was founded, the authorities brutally crushed The Hungarian Revolution (1956).

        @chaoticneutralczech@feddit.org

      • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.orgEnglish
        2·
        2 days ago

        RNDr. Jiří Jarník, CSc. is basically a co-author with all these “(pozn. překl.)” and I think they greatly improved it. I don’t think there’s any other translation of the book, so I’d say the ultimate version is Czech. It’s on my bookshelf too, no need to find scans online.

        Here’s a fun question from the book, shortened and adapted for modern typesetting:

        Jméno kterého matematika se skrývá v rébusu?
        ^πr
        Řešení: https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/%4A%6F%68%6E%5F%4E%61%70%69%65%72

  • JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.socialEnglish
    4·
    2 days ago

    Kind of interesting how an artist visually and seamlessly morphs a character from having pretty realistic proportions, all the way to also representing said character as much shorter and more exaggerated, based on the needs of the strip / panel / gag.

    I may have first noticed that in The Flintstones, but you can also see it blatantly in modern manga, sometimes. Meanwhile, the brain and visual cortex do a fabulous job smoothing out such changes, to the point that we mostly don’t notice them, even when they’re pretty dramatic indeed.