@ZachWeinersmith@mastodon.social
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ZachWeinersmith

@ZachWeinersmith@mastodon.social

The SMBC guy.
New book: A City on Mars (Nov 2)

Co-author of Soonish
Illustrator of Open Borders
Scop of Bea Wolf.

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ZachWeinersmith, to comics
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Full comic here: http://smbc-comics.com/comic/hands-down

ZachWeinersmith, to random
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Longer review of our book, by Carmack. I'm pretty geeked out. Also it's a kind of review I quite like, which is that he seems to be pretty opposed to several of our positions, but still thinks we did a good job: https://x.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1791531987490029864

ZachWeinersmith, to random
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Separate from the meat of this discussion, the opening discussion of what International Law is and means is so excellent: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/17/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-asli-bali.html

With A City on Mars we kept having to say "international law is REAL, but it's not domestic law" to people who insist it doesn't exist.

ZachWeinersmith, to comics
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AI
http://smbc-comics.com/comic/ai-12

ZachWeinersmith, to random
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Something that's new to me in writing Bea Wolf is that the book runs on a long plan I outlined ages ago, and now I'm filling in the pieces stanza by stanza. And often it feels like the stanzas, even if well written, have no emotional oomph. But you just have to trust that if the oomph was in the outline, it'll appear for the reader even if you don't feel it right now. Sort of like making a mosaic and having trouble seeing the design when you're putting in a tiny piece.

ZachWeinersmith, to random
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Weird question:

Why do you think so few artists attempt to create a magnum opus? It really seems most people who are good at something want to just keep making it in various forms, but don't try to make a single lasting great work, even when they're in a position to try.

As an example of what I mean, take Virgil who became well known for pastoral writing, but always had an eye on writing a national epic. A few people still read Georgics and Eclogues, but the Aeneid is the Opus.

ZachWeinersmith,
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Tolkien's another obvious example - lots of little stories and books and things, but his eye was on a grand English epic.

Art Spiegelman - did lots of weird alt comic, but then also made his massive glorious Maus.

Maybe it's always been unusual but I'm somewhat disappointed that you don't see more of this sort of thing. Like, people who make solid sitcoms for years but never even try to make a lasting glorious comedy.

ZachWeinersmith,
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Without saying any names, there are lots of living artists who I adore, and I always want them to stop and take out a few years to focus on create something really hard and strange and at least potentially monumental.

ZachWeinersmith,
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@pyyp I think Virgil would, but that's an excellent point about Tolkien.

ZachWeinersmith, to random
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Working on Bea Wolf. This line is my gift to literature

ZachWeinersmith, to comics
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Readers, you have the feckfulness to go to my website to see the full comic: http://smbc-comics.com/comic/feckful
#smbc #hiveworks #comics #webcomics #language

ZachWeinersmith, to random
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Ethics papers:

Suppose X. Now, consider X is a subcategory of Z which is equivalent to R, which as recently been shown to be comparable to N which is, taken with P2, a type of W, and W is generally agreed to be icky.

ZachWeinersmith, to random
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Stupid econ question:

So it looks like a lot of remaining inflation is rent. In that case, wouldn't you want to lower rates to increase home-building and home-ownership in order to reduce rent pricing?

ZachWeinersmith,
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@proprietous But if we get ENOUGH zoning restrictions maybe can can justify a Mars base!

ZachWeinersmith, to random
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One of the weird things about writing a book called Bea Wolf is you discover the "Be a wolf" hashtag which appears to be a lot of large shaven men posting photos of themselves to each other?

ZachWeinersmith,
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@nadim Thanks enormously. I'm in the final part of Bea Wolf 2 and it's very hard writing, so this is encouraging!

ZachWeinersmith, to comics
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Full comic here: http://smbc-comics.com/comic/automatic

ZachWeinersmith, to random
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I've been working on getting my dialogue more natural

ZachWeinersmith, to random
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So, after putting it down for many years, I'm back to trying to read HG Wells' corpus. Interesting thing: all of his famous, lasting, books were published between 1895-1899, when he was aged 29 to 33. There are other novels, lots of philosophical and political thought, but so far I would say none of it comes close to that first few years.

Having read lots of it my feeling is that he was very smart but used up his original ideas quickly and his political thought verged on silly.

ZachWeinersmith,
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As an example, at one point he proposes a Samurai class of government, which he understands to be a group of people who would forego privileges in exchange for power. He also has "philosophical" books which invariably feel like a sophomore college student paid by the word.

ZachWeinersmith, to random
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How old were you when you realized that when your karate teacher told you not to put your thumb inside your first, it's because he was protecting other people from you having ultimate power punches?

ZachWeinersmith, to random
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I'm offended by this comic idea

ZachWeinersmith, to random
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There should be a version of John Wick where, as in the Iliad, whenever someone is killed for any reason you get a story about where they came from, who their parents are, and how they'll never see their son again.

ZachWeinersmith,
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@boldewyn It always kills me how they wink at the scene too much. Maybe I'm anomalous but it'd be 10x better if they went all in on it being sad.

ZachWeinersmith, to random
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J'apprends la Francais par lire Reddit, et... "gant de toilette" ? Qu'est ce qui passe dans les douches francaises?

ZachWeinersmith,
@ZachWeinersmith@mastodon.social avatar

@Minski It's the glove part that's weird!

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