prokopetz

I thinks folks expressing incredulity at the quality of the writing and composition in Calvin and Hobbes are often missing the context that Bill Watterson is arguably the most influential sequential artist of his generation. Like, this is a guy who once told the editors of nationally syndicated newspapers to go fuck themselves when they wanted to mess with his panel layouts, and not only did he keep his job, he got his way. He could have had literally any gig he wanted, and he chose to be the Sunday funnies guy because that's what made him happy. He's basically the Weird Al of sequential art.

revelware

Watterson considers comics to be as true an art form as painting and films and literature, capable of reaching just as high as any other medium. Calvin and Hobbes isn't accidentally high art. Watterson made it what it is on purpose. And when he was done, he stopped. No movie, no spinoff, no reboot. He considers the comic to be its completed form, in exactly the medium it is supposed to be. He believed in comics in a way few others ever have, and he fought tooth and nail for the right to take his own work, jokes and all, seriously.

chewbaxter

What I especially love about Watterson is that he consistently refused to do anything commercial with C&H. He fought against Universal Press Syndicate[1]* (which published C&H), which kept trying to push a terrible contract that could've gotten him fired and replaced to continue the strip without him. He even made a strip in the series talking about it:

*This footnote links to an Internet Archive of the above strip with Watterson's words on the matter. It's a brief read, but interesting!

astropithecus

I’ve had an aversion to branded clothing since I was old enough to pick my own outfits and now I’m wondering if that started here.

thunderstruck9

James Lumsden (British, 1964), Contrapuntal (4/13), 2013. Acrylic on canvas, gloss finish, 60 × 60 cm.

un-monstre

Hate it when TikTok farm cosplayers and cottagecore types say stuff like "I'm not going to use modern equipment because my grandmothers could make do without it." Ma'am, your great grandma had eleven children. She would have killed for a slow cooker and a stick blender.

un-monstre

I’ve noticed a sort of implicit belief that people used to do things the hard way in the past because they were tougher or something. In reality, labor-saving devices have historically been adopted by the populace as soon as they were economically feasible. No one stood in front of a smoky fire or a boiling pot of lye soap for hours because they were virtuous, they did it because it was the only way to survive.

jimmythejiver

Taking these screenshots from Facebook because they make you log in and won't let you copy and paste:

astropithecus

The romanticization of pre-industrial life, to me, always seems like astroturfing for right-wing tradwife bullshit.

Modern conveniences give people time to read, think, make art, and form opinions. They’re what enabled women to get an education and work outside the home, and industrialization is what made ideas like social ownership and class mobility possible at all.

So pining for “the good old days” of subsistence farming and manual household labor reeks of putting women “back in the kitchen,” encouraging the working classes to stop trying to better themselves.

Human beings will always enjoy crafting, cooking, knitting, sewing, gardening - it’s part of our DNA. Convenience food, modern appliances, and fast fashion are some of the reasons you had enough time in your life to learn to read, though, so be wary of people painting yesterday’s necessity as today’s virtue.

astropithecus

In November, I queued up a bunch of my favorite photos I've taken over the years. One of them, scheduled for later this week, immediately got flagged for content. I submitted it for review, and six weeks later, it's still flagged, and I've received no response.

This is in line with what I've heard about Tumblr's automatic content flagging.

For the record, there's not even a person in the photo. Inspired by @what-even-is-thiss though, I'm curious which part of the image, specifically, has angered the algorithm.

I'm starting here:

astropithecus

So the top sliver is fine, but the bottom sliver drew the mechanized ire of the nannybot.

My guess is it's the part behind the monkey.

astropithecus

So, if the chin is the problem, what about this?

astropithecus

Call me Icarus.

astropithecus

In November, I queued up a bunch of my favorite photos I've taken over the years. One of them, scheduled for later this week, immediately got flagged for content. I submitted it for review, and six weeks later, it's still flagged, and I've received no response.

This is in line with what I've heard about Tumblr's automatic content flagging.

For the record, there's not even a person in the photo. Inspired by @what-even-is-thiss though, I'm curious which part of the image, specifically, has angered the algorithm.

I'm starting here:

astropithecus

So the top sliver is fine, but the bottom sliver drew the mechanized ire of the nannybot.

My guess is it's the part behind the monkey.

astropithecus

So, if the chin is the problem, what about this?

astropithecus

Call me Icarus.

astropithecus

In November, I queued up a bunch of my favorite photos I've taken over the years. One of them, scheduled for later this week, immediately got flagged for content. I submitted it for review, and six weeks later, it's still flagged, and I've received no response.

This is in line with what I've heard about Tumblr's automatic content flagging.

For the record, there's not even a person in the photo. Inspired by @what-even-is-thiss though, I'm curious which part of the image, specifically, has angered the algorithm.

I'm starting here:

astropithecus

So the top sliver is fine, but the bottom sliver drew the mechanized ire of the nannybot.

My guess is it's the part behind the monkey.

astropithecus

So, if the chin is the problem, what about this?

astropithecus

In November, I queued up a bunch of my favorite photos I've taken over the years. One of them, scheduled for later this week, immediately got flagged for content. I submitted it for review, and six weeks later, it's still flagged, and I've received no response.

This is in line with what I've heard about Tumblr's automatic content flagging.

For the record, there's not even a person in the photo. Inspired by @what-even-is-thiss though, I'm curious which part of the image, specifically, has angered the algorithm.

I'm starting here:

astropithecus

So the top sliver is fine, but the bottom sliver drew the mechanized ire of the nannybot.

My guess is it’s the part behind the monkey.

pangur-and-grim

I feel so insane about ai. I've had face-to-face conversations with people who use it for therapy, who use it to calculate the safety of pill interactions, who use it for all their emails and grant applications and legal documents and academic papers and finance sheets and for every single question they have about the world, and if you tell them about the ecological costs they just laugh and say "I guess I've used a lot of water." and I've been in multiple gatherings of 10+ people where I'm THE ONLY PERSON who doesn't use chatgpt. it's turning me into a ranting raving pariah, because how don't you people see??? why don't you understand??????? this bullshit didn't exist five years ago, you absolutely do not need it, and it is destroying everything

astropithecus

I already lived through this once with iPhones. Back then it was “haha, yeah, sweatshop labor and batteries in landfills.” I held on to my flip phone as long as I could, but once there was “an app for that,” it was only a few years before society was built around everyone having a smartphone and an always-on internet connection. In the blink of an eye, you were required to have a smartphone for banking, going to the doctor, getting on an airplane, seeing the menu in a restaurant, using public transit. While pre-smartphone alternatives survived in some cases, it quickly became the “second class” option - lower priority, less resources, results in a diminished experience. And nefariously, buying a smartphone once wasn’t enough - planned obsolescence now meant if you didn’t start buying a new device every few years, you’d stop being able to run supported versions of the apps you needed to work, pay bills, buy food.

I admire the ideology of “never AI,” but I’ve also seen how quickly dissenters can be pushed to the fringes of a society when the tech billionaires want to milk a cash cow. What’s happening now with AI is what it looks like at first - a bunch of people suddenly acting like they can’t live without something that didn’t exist five years ago and being willfully ignorant about the harm it’s causing. If there’s not some catastrophic blow to shareholder value (an AI bubble burst) then extrapolating from the trajectory of smartphone history, I’d guess we’re roughly 5-7 years from it being impossible to use public services or participate in commerce if you’re not willing to at least interact with AI. A dire warning.

biwarlockofglitter

I heard recently that you can tell a lot about a person by the first movie they know Tim Curry from and I literally can’t stop thinking about it.

so say in the tags what’s the first movie you know Tim Curry from. Mines muppets treasure island

homunculus-argument

Potentially controversial opinion but I don't think old songs should be cleaned up and censored of the worst of their lyrics if the songs are still being played and performed. Like give the whole thing or don't play it, you might not like having to go "yes, it was a different time" when the Oh Fucking Yikes lines come in, but if you don't do that, there's going to be people who weren't there and will confidently go "actually things were never like that at all", because the sources they were being exposed to decided to skip the parts that were nasty.

Like if a song about being a working class youth living an awful life in an awful place requires me to look up up what the fuck a blue shirt is to understand "my daddy was a blue shirt, my mother a madam", I'm going to question why we suddenly decided to chicken out on elaborating what the brother was doing while earning medals in Vietnam.

astropithecus

Patti Smith has entered the chat.

punkenglishnerd

Unpopular opinion: Being intelligent isn’t an excuse for being unkind.

satans-classics

Pretentious asshole is OUT! Pretentious Sweetheart is IN! Wearing dapper clothes and holding the door open for others makes you feel COOL AS H*CK! Glance up from your hefty books to give a stranger a smile!! Quote literature to inspire others! Be presumptuous in the way that you presume that everyone needs their day to be a little brighter!!!

representationthirst

Administration showed us this tweet on day one of grad school and boy did it hit home

biglawbear

“distinguished yourself by being kind” is my literal life motto at work, holy shit

charlesoberonn

My hot take is that being kind is the intelligent thing to do. Trust, mutual aid, and cooperation is how we make society function. Failing to appreciate the contributions of others to your life and how their well-being is the key to your own well-being is very stupid.

astropithecus

Years ago my mother used to say to me, she’d say, “In this world, Elwood, you must be” - she always called me Elwood - “In this world, Elwood, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant.” Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me.

Elwood P. Dowd