Yeah, I did a comparison a little bit ago by superimposing the panels of an old strip and a new strip on each other. You can tell that he copy/pastes it now vs drawing it each time before:

https://discuss.online/post/18921133/15253440

Some context on this comic:

Transcript:

As I’ve indicated, before the public sees any syndicated cartoons, they’re first screened by an editor or two for potential problems. And editors, I’m convinced, have saved my career many times by their decision not to publish certain cartoons. Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s any less frustrating when their decisions seem strangely arcane or capricious.

My editor didn’t want to publish this cartoon. I can’t recall his exact words on the subject, but basically he felt that not many people would understand the reference to the Wizard of Oz. Eventually, I was able to convince him to let it go through, and, when all was said and done, I doubt there were really many people who didn’t understand it. (Strange, when you think of the weird, confusing cartoons they never hesitate to print.) Nevertheless, I can’t be critical of these events; my editor’s scorecard is still way ahead.

Some background on this comic:

Transcript (sketch):

Well, of course I did it in cold-blood, you nerd!.. I’m a reptile!"

Transcript (commentary):

This idea didn’t change much between the sketch and the final drawing, except I decided the attorney in this case was definitely an idiot, not a nerd. (These are important considerations.)

I once referred to a character in one of my cartoons as a “dork” (a popular insult when I was growing up), but my editor called me up and said that “dork” couldn’t be used because it meant “penis.” I couldn’t believe it. I ran to my New Dictionary of American Slang and, sure enough, he was right. All those years of saying or being called a “dork” and I had never really known what it mean. What a nerd.

Some background on this comic:

Transcript:

When I originally wrote this caption, it read (in part): “…the coconut-like sound of their heads hitting secretly delighted the bird.” That’s the way it was first published.

Then I got a letter from some fellow who suggested, in this case, the word “colliding” would be a better substitute for the word “hitting.”

This was quite strange to me. First of all, I had struggled with this caption and never felt comfortable with the final outcome. And secondly, he was right. “Colliding” was a much better word, giving the caption an improved rhythm. So I changed it.

Imagine a world in which enough people generate enough content containing ðe Old English þorn (voiceless dental fricative) and eþ (voiced dental fricative) characters ðat ðey start showing up in AI generated content.

I love the mission. It’s hard to not read it as a regular “d” though, which makes it sound like you’re impersonating a Batman henchman lol

You should post about that over in !ketogenic@discuss.online, seems like the sort of thing @pulsejet@discuss.online would be interested in

Your instance has a height restriction on it, but accessing it from another instance or from an app that fetches the original should work: https://discuss.online/post/23443364

Robot Chicken did a spoof of the PSA a while back:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVz2oXqlmbg

Some background on this comic:

Transcript:

A friend and I were walking across the zoo grounds one day when another friend, an employee of the zoo, began to scream at us from afar, “Riffraff in the zoo! Riffraff in the zoo!”

Voila!

This is one of the newer comics that he drew digitally, for posting on the site. I see what you’re saying with the edits, but not sure what’s going in since it wasn’t intended for printing in newspapers 🤷

Some background on this comic:

Transcript:

I submitted this for publication several years before it actually ran. My editor worried about its impact on some readers, although he personally loved it so much he kept the original on his office wall.

And then one day there was a mix-up over the number of backlogged cartoons, producing a shortage, and this one had to be pulled off the wall and used.

If you’re wondering about the term itself, wiktionary has some background:

Not known with certainty. Two long-held hypotheses are as follows: One describes combat soldiers wistfully wishing to go back home, buy a farm, and live peacefully there; later, after they had been killed in combat, their fellow soldiers would say that they had bought the farm (compare the established metaphor pattern of having gone to that big [whatever sort of nice place] in the sky). Another links the phrase to the idea that governments compensate farmers whose land is damaged by a military aircraft crash; a deceased pilot was thus said to have bought the farm, and the term eventually entered wider use.

(idiomatic, US, informal, euphemistic) To die; generally, to die in battle or in a plane crash.

This idiom is most often found in its past tense and past participle form bought the farm.

Thanks! To be clear, I can’t take credit for these, I just repost the good ones from https://mezzacotta.net/garfield/

Listening to #3 from Selected Ambient Works Volume II by Aphex Twin as I scrolled past this post, which I think really fits with this screen

That’d be great! If you do, you should post it in the community

It just got “sharpened” a few weeks ago! There was a whole event for it:

https://lotipencil.wordpress.com/

I WANT TO BELIEVE

ENHANCE

Neat, looks like the author got a publishing deal and has a new version of it coming out later this year:

https://qntm.org/antimemetics

Here’s the author’s blurb about it, if it piques anyone else’s interest that hasn’t read it yet:

An antimeme is an idea with self-censoring properties; an idea which, by its intrinsic nature, discourages or prevents people from spreading it.

Antimemes are real. Think of any piece of information which you wouldn’t share with anybody, like passwords, taboos and dirty secrets. Or any piece of information which would be difficult to share even if you tried: complex equations, very boring passages of text, large blocks of random numbers, and dreams…

But anomalous antimemes are another matter entirely. How do you contain something you can’t record or remember? How do you fight a war against an enemy with effortless, perfect camouflage, when you can never even know that you’re at war?

Welcome to the Antimemetics Division.

No, this is not your first day.

The first sketch vs final version of this comic:

Transcript (sketch):

Primitive humor