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

ZachWeinersmith, to random
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Hey language-learners, what's your tip for improving your ear? I can read French pretty well, with a glossary, and I can write it OK, but my hearing is garbage.

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

Try this one weird trick where you support artists whose work you enjoy: https://www.patreon.com/ZachWeinersmith

ZachWeinersmith, to random
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Question whose premise may be faulty:

Why is it that in Chinese calligraphy, it seems to have always been impressionistic, with quick pretty strokes, whereas with Latin scripts the calligraphy, even when it's swoopy and fancy, is highly controlled? Is this inherent to pictographic vs alphabet calligraphy or is it random cultural stuff, or are their actually just forms of calligraphy I haven't found?

ZachWeinersmith, to random
@ZachWeinersmith@mastodon.social avatar

Lot of people telling me we know the Earth is round because the people in space look at it all the time but how do we know it's not just a very cleverly made sprite? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprite_(computer_graphics)

ZachWeinersmith, to random
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Garrison Keillor is really strange to me career wise. He wrote exactly one outstanding novel - his first. Then ever after he wrote the same novel, only worse, and with more weird sex stuff. He also wrote very good (really!) poems early on, and then over time what he counts as poems is just aw-shucks Minnesota stuff. It's like he noped out of a lasting literary career for kitsch.

ZachWeinersmith,
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@Flux But he's rich! He even came out of retirements to do his kitsch show! There are other authors who only produce one good thing, but that's because there other things suck, not because they (as far as I can tell?) chose to do something easier.

ZachWeinersmith, to comics
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Fossils
http://smbc-comics.com/comic/fossils-4 (click for full comic)

ZachWeinersmith, to random
@ZachWeinersmith@mastodon.social avatar

Hey literature people--

So, I was reading HG Wells and I noticed something I hadn't thought about. He writes in a style that's very weird, and but for the Victorian/Edwardian language might even be considered experimental now? Like, in The War in the Air, it regularly alternates between goofy comedic scenes and scenes of horror and violence. And in between THAT there are digressions about economics and engineering technology. (1/n)

ZachWeinersmith,
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But then it occurred to me that Dickens does this all the time! Both the alternation between serious and goofy, and the social level stuff. The closest modern writer I can think of is Steinbeck who in e.g. The Grapes of Wrath talks both about economic conditions, and real people, and is capable of doing silly comedy and reasonably good drama.

ZachWeinersmith,
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I'm sure I don't read enough to have an opinion, but my sense is you don't see a lot of this anymore? It feels very 19th century to me, in that way 19th century novel narrators often feel like some guy with opinions on everything sat down to tell you an anecdote. That is, the narrator often feels closer, more patient, less disembodied, happy to pass through the 4th wall gently than in modern literature.

ZachWeinersmith,
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@Lyle WHALES ARE FISH

ZachWeinersmith, to comics
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Full comic here: http://smbc-comics.com/comic/featherless
Comics early on patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ZachWeinersmith?ty=h
#smbc #hiveworks #comics #webcomics #dinosaurs

ZachWeinersmith, to random
@ZachWeinersmith@mastodon.social avatar

Every Chinese Food Recipe:

Heat wok to 4 billion degrees.
Add one atom of oil, any kind.
Add garlic and onions.
Add black sauce of doom 1.
Black sauce of doom 2.
Chilies.
Black sauce of doom 3.
Protein.
Raise heat to 6 billion degrees.
Plate.
Garnish with scallions.

ZachWeinersmith, to random
@ZachWeinersmith@mastodon.social avatar

Oh god people are fighting about abortion and overpopulation and all I really wanted today was to write "sack-blast" in a comic

ZachWeinersmith,
@ZachWeinersmith@mastodon.social avatar

On a vaguely more serious note, an ethicist friend told me that arguing future lives have at least some moral status brings out a lot of anger, and I didn't believe him! Maybe I'm being naive, but the slope between that claim and some sort of Handmaid's Tale hellscape doesn't seem so slippery to me?

ZachWeinersmith,
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@Phosphenes Yeah, but where it gets interesting is whether we should see added happy people as neutral or not.

ZachWeinersmith, to comics
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Bonus panel, and apparently 7 other trolley comics, here: http://smbc-comics.com/comic/trolley-8

ZachWeinersmith, to random
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Our 10-year-old Greek mythology enthusiast, just now after she said an inch worm was going to bite us and we said it wouldn't:

"I feel like I'm a CASSANDRA here"

flameeyes, to random
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(Nearly) done. The final tray is printed and looks good. Except I screwed up the internal measurement and the two trays of grad students don't fit.

Since the grad students are the cheaper thing to reprint, I'll do that. Alternatively I could also just put them back on the original plastic bag, it should work.

The same tray showing two badly positioned trains of wooden meeples.
The final assembly of the three trays inside the original box of Everyone Else Thinks Thus Game Is Awesome.

ZachWeinersmith,
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@flameeyes WOW, amazing, thanks!

ZachWeinersmith, to random
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So there's a lot of kvetching, from myself included, about how the modern internet has gotten worse, usually due to a combination of SEO, social media gone evil, and the prevalence of money as more and more of a guiding factor in tech.

But of course the old internet had the problem of being fairly boring. The interesting question is how to get a third way. I've heard a few proposals:

ZachWeinersmith,
@ZachWeinersmith@mastodon.social avatar

Anyway, I don't know the solution. Artists can't really unionize en masse because social media could just murder most careers. And anyway, we're too disorganized and dispersed. But as a for instance, if social media networks had to pay 1% of revenue made from ads posted next to artist's creations, on their own sites on the platform, billions would pour into the arts, meaning more full-time careers, more learning, more books.

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