Notices by Zach Weinersmith (zachweinersmith@mastodon.social), page 4

"Electronic communities build nothing. You wind up with nothing. We are dancing animals.

How beautiful it is to get up and go out and do something. We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different."

In other words, the "fart around" quote isn't a sort of broad statement on human existence. It's a particular statement about how constant improvement to efficiency has gotten in the way of community.

Mildly interesting: there's this oft-shared Vonnegut quote, "We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different."

I believe the sense you get from that quote is a kind of hedonic nihilism - there's no point to life but hey, let's fart around. In fact, the quote comes after a long anecdote on how computers broke his connection with his typist, a dear friend who he used to talk to and joke with a lot. The full passage is:

he les francophones, prononcez-vous toutes les lettres dans les mots d'origine grecque ? E.g. le <<s>> in <<Hades>> ?

Flesh

http://smbc-comics.com/comic/flesh (click for bonus panel)

#smbc #hiveworks #comics #webcomics #recipes

Ancestors
http://smbc-comics.com/comic/empirical (click for bonus panel)
#smbc #hiveworks #comics #webcomics #science

Quotation
http://smbc-comics.com/comic/quote-2
#smbc #hiveworks #comics #webcomics #mathematics

Who do you think is the luckiest artist who ever lived, in the since of worst ratio of talent to success?

Offhand theory: part of why the Internet has gotten less fun (for me anyway) over time is that at the beginning a lot of stuff was misvalued. To explain:

I think for instance you could get all sorts of presidential candidates to pop on reddit, in part because they *over*estimated how much it matter. On the other side, and I think this is more important, perpetual branding was undervalued.

The worst consequence of this to me is that it's very hard for artists to have innocent interactions.

Real
http://smbc-comics.com/comic/real-3 (click for full comic)
#smbc #hiveworks #comics #physics #philosophy

So, today I learned in French you can stick with the present tense to describe an ongoing action, e.g. "I'm working there since 2004" rather than "I've been working there since 2004." This is interesting because I'm pretty sure I've heard francophone friends use the slightly incorrect "I'm [habitual action]ing since" ! I wonder what the standard English-to-French screwups are.

Ha. Google autocorrect wants to change "lightning up your ass" to "lightening up your ass."

@ggoodale
Y'all = you people
All y'all = you large group of people
All a-y'all = you large group of people I am mad at

I had several British people request I use "aluminium" instead of "aluminum" for yesterday's comic, so here you go.

That part in an Old English poem where, between banalities, it mentions that you should bury the murdered

Do you have any past behaviors that you understand to be motivated by the opposite of what you would have thought when you did them? E.g. dressing a certain way when you were a teen and saying it was self-expression, but in retrospect it was to impress some person or group.

Been listening to Karl Popper while listening to sentimental podcasts, and this comic idea that only I find funny is the inevitable result

Some of the pushback on A City on Mars has been predictable, but the weirdest thing is the "hey, there's ALREADY a city on Mars" people.

Everything after about 2020 will be suspect. What a strange future. https://www.reddit.com/r/midjourney/comments/18kx2gi/is_walmart_using_ai_art_for_these_christmas/

Enjoying this essay by a very aged Karl Popper, writing against cynicism and despair, but with a level of clear-headedness.

Has there ever been a good movie about Hanukah? Comedy, drama, anything?