Don’t forget pop podcasts hosted by “storytellers” who read one primary source and one outdated secondary source before writing 20 hours of content, mostly about how the generals and kings got ready for the battles.

I feel like some folks are getting the wrong idea about our lovable rageaholic with these recent strips…

LED joysticks that can select from over 16 million color options. This might not be practical, considering only about 25 different color settings would have been sufficient.

So the RGB leds come with 256 levels of brightness for each color. Don’t worry, article-writer, the company wasted zero extra effort on this “feature.”

I consider getting one of these things every once in a while, but then I remember that I’ve pulled my hacked PSP out of the drawer like three times in the last ten years, and I shrug and move on. It’s generally more fun for me to plug a USB controller into my computer for retrogaming.

You need to read it in the context of the other strips. Normally, someone in the first panel defies Everett’s sense of decorum and general decent behavior (e.g. describing a way they took advantage of another person, or being unecessarily), and in the second panel Everett cartoonishly attacks them in a fit of righteous rage. It’s all meant to be a wish fulfillment for someone struggling with the stresses of “modern” urban living. I feel like Larry David would probably have been a fan if he were around during its run, if that helps; just imagine the Seinfeld gang if they looked and acted like Kingpin from the Marvel stuff. I think the audience is invited to sympathize with Everett’s sensibilities and to laugh at the catharsis of someone actually indulging their rage.

This one subverts the trope. It invites the audience to suppose the beggar will be destroyed, especially with the foreshadowing. However, simply existing and hoping for a little generosity does not violate Everett’s personal code, so going against the perceived rational choice, he listens to his better angels, leaves a coin, and moves on. I can almost imagine the cartoonist starting to become a little troubled at how sincerely people, possibly total assholes, professed to admire Everett and so wanted to turn things around a bit.

Opal Lee is single-handedly keeping Texas a place worth making better.

I’m exaggerating, but only a little. She’s a god-damned saint.

Honorable and dishonorable are official designations for the US military, and a dishonorable discharge is tantamount to a criminal conviction for many professional purposes and veterans benefits.

My brother was a huge fuckup in the Marines, but they waited until he sprained his knee and then gave him a medical discharge, which doesn’t carry the same stigma as a dishonorable.

I don’t think I’ve ever had to show my registration card, but both states send them out. Since Voter ID passed in Texas, though, I have had to bring my Drivers License, which given the shitty way the state runs the DL offices is another bullshit voter suppression tactic.

The voter registration card. Here’s a sample from a few years ago in a different county, but the one I had twenty years ago was similar.

It depends on the state. When I lived in Florida, there was a party on my id card. In Texas, there isn’t, though you can only vote in one party’s primary (including any runoffs) per election.

The strip feels like a Larry David wish fulfillment power fantasy. I can imagine it was pretty satisfying to people in growing, modernizing cities.

From the 1950s to the 2010s you could pump out sitcoms like this for a living. At least this particular comic makes it so blunt as to highlight the absurdity, and subverts the expectation a bit by having the stupid dad express some real human emotion.

After World War I, the US Army’s Chemical Warfare Service tried desperately to save their jobs and reputations by trying to find civilian uses for chemical weapons, including shit like killing crows, and booby-trapping bank safes.

In 1924 and 1925 researchers in the CWS used bad science in an attempt to prove war gasses could be used as cures for common respiratory ailments… In May 1924 the CWS sealed President Calvin Coolidge into a gas chamber and pumped in low levels of chlorine gas to cure his cold.

Respirine was, fortunately, a scam. Basically primitive Vick’s Vapo-rub.

Analysis showed that the article consisted principally of calcium compounds incorporated in petrolatum, and that it contained no available chlorine.

Meowchiatto

So maybe we should be kinder to good behaviour from companies, even it it’s for the wrong reasons? We can still ask for more and call them out on shitty stuff they do.

I’ve always thought of more as a a neutral thing on the part of the companies. They’re sort of inherently reactionary to the market. If they’re doing things that are more socially responsible, especially the publicly traded ones, it’s because the market has told them it will be worth it on a timescale that will financially benefit the current management.

So, I tend not to pile on at their cynicism, since I am legitimately glad for the steps they’re taking, but also to be restrained in my praise. If they sense that the winds are blowing the other way, they’re not exactly bold.

It may be because of where you are. Target has been bullied into backing down in “selected markets.”

https://startribune.com/target-roll-back-pride-product-stores-lgbtq/600366674/?clmob=y&c=n&clmob=y&c=n#

Jumblie #240

🔵🟢🔴🟠

7 guesses in 3m 43s

https://jumblie.com

Ha! Fountain pen ink would never adhere to that lens cover! This comic is unrealistic!!!

No worries. I loved the article. Gave great insight into what must be one of the more unusual ways to make a career in TV. Thanks!

Possibly, but parsing the article and listening to the Texas commercial, I don’t think it’s Johnny. I’d be willing to admit he was involved, though. Our bat-wielding friend claims to be named Brent, and the article seems to put the Grand Prairie commercial in the “other pitchmen” section.

I got a few chapters into Master and Commander, I want to say right about the time they first headed out on the Sophie, but can’t for the life of me remember why I stopped. I don’t recall disliking it, and I liked the movie, which I gather to be kid of “impressions of the sort of stuff that happens in the books.” Maybe I’ll pick it back up.