Speaking of speedrunning, meanwhile Joyce has looked up “Places for atheists to hang out”, discovered, and having a mind as impressionable as wet clay is speedrunning that.
She’s already eaten Joe’s entire bottle of vitamin gummies because she’s pro-legalization now, cashed in her next tuition payment to buy crypto, and written a 5000 word dissertation on how Thanos was right.
Censors picked up on it, you aren’t allowed to say here
King Daniel
Well if that’s now picked up by the site autocensor (and since the site autocensor is retroactive–I recall Willis once LOL’d in the comments section when I pointed out that a certain early strip titled simply the “B-word” had been autocorrected to Bongo as a result of the autocensor), I think that might well change the meaning of quite a few comments from a month or so ago regarding certain commenters styling themselves in the manner of a certain site’s subsection. 😛
Michael Haneline
reddit?
Thag Simmons
Dang how’d you get that past the censor
Spencer
Let’s see if Reddit works.
Spencer
Huh, thought for sure that’d work with just the first letter capitalized.
Spriteless Auntie
Good ol’ auto censor. I think it gets the DYW that people used to say whenever Willis did a plot that hurts.
David M Willis
“reddit” is not in the word replacer in any form!
Thag Simmons
Feel like I failed to properly indicate that I was joking about the site censoring the word “Reddit”
Yumi
I figured you were joking to the extent that I didn’t want to risk testing it out, lest I look a fool.
The War On Drugs is just something employed for scared white people and to fill the ranks of the for-profit prison system.
Weed is only illegal because some rich berks in the 30s saw that hemp would cut into their business. In the 60s the word ‘Marijuana’ got bandied around by conservative politicians in charge to ensure that burgeoning social movements would be associated with a drug with a foreign name.
So it’s real fucking funny to me to see a post about drinking the Kool-Aid that actually drank the fucking Kool-Aid.
Daniel M Ball
It’s uglier than that, Spencer, it’s not just the private prisons-they’re more of a symptom than the disease. You see, the Drug War is a multibillion dollar industry employing thousands upon thousands of people so specialized in their craft that they’re effectively unemployable without a black market to work against. And that’s just half of it. The other half, is that you won’t find an international bank that isn’t awash in cocaine and heroin money, it’s involved in your hedge funds too. BOTH sides use armies of accountants to keep track of their accountants, and they often work together. (Witness BATFE’s fantastic and amazing “Operation: Fast and Furious” which the main agency responsible for regulating firearms facilitated arming the Sinaloa Cartel by subverting U.S. Laws and law enforcement mechanisms as part of one of the stupidest ‘sting’ operations in history-they put the guns out there so they could ‘find them’ at crime scenes, without so much as a stripe of radioactive paint to actually trace down the flow of arms from straw buyers to organized criminals. People died from this, but the guys who set it up didn’t even face charges.)
It’s a corruptive system with ‘benefits’ for all the sponsors. People who object to civil liberties get to push restrictive laws because of the terror and violence, the violent criminals get to become millionaires and billionaires, the prosecution gets to use things like ‘civil asset forfieture’ written for the drug war to go after anyone who doesn’t have enough connections to fight back, and law enforcement gets armored vehicles and military grade weapons, along with a license to steal from the citizens (see: Civil Asset Forfieture), further, they get to use the fear to enact more and more restrictions on civil rights, target minorities and break minority communities (great for furthering the Poverty Plantation)…about the only peop[le it DOESN’T benefit, are the regular citizens who aren’t criminals. Hell, even with all the above, drugs (hard drugs) are cheaper and more available now, than they were when the stuff was LEGAL (accounting for inflation).
so, y’know, it’s actually harmful. as Bill Hicks said in 1988, “it’s not a war on drugs, it’s a war on personal freedom.” because it absolutely is. Every negative outcome of Prohibition from the 1920s is amplified geometrically, including the soaking of the taxpayer and the persistence of ‘temporary measures’ that don’t actually do anything to stem the flow of poison into the veins of your kids, friends, and co-workers.
because it’s not MEANT to solv e the problem, it’s meant and structured to exacerbate the problem and make it steadily worse…a bit like the ‘war on poverty’ or the ‘war on terror’ but more profitable for the corrupt on both sides than the second, and easier to maintain ignorant support for via terror tactics than the first.
Hey, my therapist told me I have no hope of ever getting better. It does vary.
Thag Simmons
not an expert but pretty sure that makes them a bad therapist.
Daniel M Ball
Thag, that largely depends on what the problem is. some things people just don’t recover from without surgical intervention-like Gender Dysphoria. (and a lot of those folks don’t recover even with it.) Brain tumours are another one you just ‘don’t recover from’, and nobody’s found a really useful treatment for actual ‘Anti-social personality disorder’ (which is NOT being unsociable, it’s being perfectly okay with murdering other people because you feel like it and then experiencing zero guilt or empathy for your victims). Why? because these are BRAIN things, not mind things.
a Shrink I used to see at the VA put it this way: If nothing’s actually wrong, and you’re depressed, you have a problem. If your life has gone to shit, your body is rotting around you with cancer or some other degenerative disease? or if you’re maimed and horribly crippled? well, depression is pretty normal, it’s not a mental illness at that point, it’s a reaction and response to reality. GD, and other organic damage can’t be cured with therapy-you can learn to live with them, maybe, but they aren’t things you can just talk away. Not at least, any more effectively than trying to pray your way from being gay (which also doesn’t work, because it’s an organic difference in the brain, not a construct of the mind, it’s like being born with brown eyes instead of green, or red hair, or a body that grows parts that don’t feel like they belong).
Spriteless Auntie
I dunno about the brain-mind ditchonomy being used like that. I’d say it’s better to not try to convert the gays because it’s crappy to try to convert gays, rather than because gay brains are different. I mean, all differences from mind come from differences in brains, in a casual universe. It is true that some things can be trained away with exercizes and role play, while others can’t. A sociopath with enough impulse control can learn to look at the long view, and not creep out people who can hurt them back, which is everyone. Impulse control is something there’s strategies to work on. It’s a benefit to society if they do.
Likewise gays can train to be as straight as Ethan’s dad. Not much benefit, and a lot of lost joy. If I am gay because of events in my life, not because of some intrinsic thing, than I still don’t think it’s anyone’s business to change it.
Yumi
Oof. Yeah, I’ve had some shitty therapy experiences too. (Forever a little angry about the one who gave me a packet about “what it means to be a woman” while knowing I was nonbinary.)
And yet more reason for me to be turned off of therapy.
Yumi
There are bad therapists out there, but there are also a lot of good ones. I’d probably be dead by now if I wasn’t seeing my current therapist (who, in a fun upgrade, not only gets nonbinary identities, but is nonbinary themself).
It’s a process to find the right therapist, but I think it’s worth it. Can be a bit easier of a process if you know what you’re looking for going in.
Ahem.
Okay, so what I was trying to do was put a C- stamp on the ‘An Attempt was Made’ line above, but it didn’t follow as clearly as I was hoping.
Like, a C- for the attempt that was made. Cause it was a mediocre attempt at best.
And now I’m explaining the joke.
Amber, I’m confident that refreshing Twitter is easy enough that you can do it without looking at your phone.
I mean. I might be wrong. I basically use Twitter by clicking on links every month or two and reading threads and then getting bored of what passes for content outside that thread.
Joe should have talked to Dina. I actually think that could have been helpful… Or not. Hard to say. But she’s pretty logical about that kind of thing and that might help.
175 thoughts on “Pleasingly”
Ana Chronistic
If this convo doesn’t fit into a tweet, tl;dl
ThunderNight
280 characters or less
Leorale
This comic has a lot of characters, but still fewer than 280. Phew, close call.
Deanatay
True, but some of them are REAL characters, IYKWIM. AITYD.
Drew
Surprise Joe Bob Briggs!
King Daniel
Jeez, is Joe crushing on Joyce actually that obvious?
Thag Simmons
yeah
LiterallyJustSomeGuy
I thought you’d be linking this one: 2021/comic/book-11/05-as-long-as-its-free/colder/
LiterallyJustSomeGuy
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-11/05-as-long-as-its-free/colder/
Doctor_Who
Speaking of speedrunning, meanwhile Joyce has looked up “Places for atheists to hang out”, discovered, and having a mind as impressionable as wet clay is speedrunning that.
She’s already eaten Joe’s entire bottle of vitamin gummies because she’s pro-legalization now, cashed in her next tuition payment to buy crypto, and written a 5000 word dissertation on how Thanos was right.
Somebody stop her before she discovers Joe Rogan.
Doctor_Who
discovered REDDIT, I don’t know how that word got deleted.
Thag Simmons
Censors picked up on it, you aren’t allowed to say here
King Daniel
Well if that’s now picked up by the site autocensor (and since the site autocensor is retroactive–I recall Willis once LOL’d in the comments section when I pointed out that a certain early strip titled simply the “B-word” had been autocorrected to Bongo as a result of the autocensor), I think that might well change the meaning of quite a few comments from a month or so ago regarding certain commenters styling themselves in the manner of a certain site’s subsection. 😛
Michael Haneline
reddit?
Thag Simmons
Dang how’d you get that past the censor
Spencer
Let’s see if Reddit works.
Spencer
Huh, thought for sure that’d work with just the first letter capitalized.
Spriteless Auntie
Good ol’ auto censor. I think it gets the DYW that people used to say whenever Willis did a plot that hurts.
David M Willis
“reddit” is not in the word replacer in any form!
Thag Simmons
Feel like I failed to properly indicate that I was joking about the site censoring the word “Reddit”
Yumi
I figured you were joking to the extent that I didn’t want to risk testing it out, lest I look a fool.
drs
reddit?
Masumi
… It was pretty obvious what you were talking about anyway XD
DrunkenNordmann
So how long before she spontaneously materialises a fedora?
The Wellerman
Nice, but maybe chill with including pro-legalization with all that?
It really doesn’t help this cause to be demoted to a fringe position like this.
Spencer
yeh
The War On Drugs is just something employed for scared white people and to fill the ranks of the for-profit prison system.
Weed is only illegal because some rich berks in the 30s saw that hemp would cut into their business. In the 60s the word ‘Marijuana’ got bandied around by conservative politicians in charge to ensure that burgeoning social movements would be associated with a drug with a foreign name.
So it’s real fucking funny to me to see a post about drinking the Kool-Aid that actually drank the fucking Kool-Aid.
Daniel M Ball
It’s uglier than that, Spencer, it’s not just the private prisons-they’re more of a symptom than the disease. You see, the Drug War is a multibillion dollar industry employing thousands upon thousands of people so specialized in their craft that they’re effectively unemployable without a black market to work against. And that’s just half of it. The other half, is that you won’t find an international bank that isn’t awash in cocaine and heroin money, it’s involved in your hedge funds too. BOTH sides use armies of accountants to keep track of their accountants, and they often work together. (Witness BATFE’s fantastic and amazing “Operation: Fast and Furious” which the main agency responsible for regulating firearms facilitated arming the Sinaloa Cartel by subverting U.S. Laws and law enforcement mechanisms as part of one of the stupidest ‘sting’ operations in history-they put the guns out there so they could ‘find them’ at crime scenes, without so much as a stripe of radioactive paint to actually trace down the flow of arms from straw buyers to organized criminals. People died from this, but the guys who set it up didn’t even face charges.)
It’s a corruptive system with ‘benefits’ for all the sponsors. People who object to civil liberties get to push restrictive laws because of the terror and violence, the violent criminals get to become millionaires and billionaires, the prosecution gets to use things like ‘civil asset forfieture’ written for the drug war to go after anyone who doesn’t have enough connections to fight back, and law enforcement gets armored vehicles and military grade weapons, along with a license to steal from the citizens (see: Civil Asset Forfieture), further, they get to use the fear to enact more and more restrictions on civil rights, target minorities and break minority communities (great for furthering the Poverty Plantation)…about the only peop[le it DOESN’T benefit, are the regular citizens who aren’t criminals. Hell, even with all the above, drugs (hard drugs) are cheaper and more available now, than they were when the stuff was LEGAL (accounting for inflation).
so, y’know, it’s actually harmful. as Bill Hicks said in 1988, “it’s not a war on drugs, it’s a war on personal freedom.” because it absolutely is. Every negative outcome of Prohibition from the 1920s is amplified geometrically, including the soaking of the taxpayer and the persistence of ‘temporary measures’ that don’t actually do anything to stem the flow of poison into the veins of your kids, friends, and co-workers.
because it’s not MEANT to solv e the problem, it’s meant and structured to exacerbate the problem and make it steadily worse…a bit like the ‘war on poverty’ or the ‘war on terror’ but more profitable for the corrupt on both sides than the second, and easier to maintain ignorant support for via terror tactics than the first.
Ray Radlein
Poor Joe could actually use a sister to talk to right now, come to think of it
Yumi
An attempt was made?
The Wellerman
That, and she’s thinking of the positives too, I guess?
What she would have had to pay a therapist to say to her, she’s already doing.
Also, what the hell is a “squint test”?
Robbie
She means he sort of looks like Ethan if she squints
Robbie
And she would rather talk to Ethan
Yumi
I would hope that wouldn’t be what a therapist would say to her, but I guess it varies.
The Wellerman
Any particular reason not to hope so?
Yumi
Because I think that’d be a shitty way to approach therapy, especially with the the conclusion of “having very little room to complain.”
The Wellerman
I’m so glad we’re on the same page ?
Rocket Relm
Hey, my therapist told me I have no hope of ever getting better. It does vary.
Thag Simmons
not an expert but pretty sure that makes them a bad therapist.
Daniel M Ball
Thag, that largely depends on what the problem is. some things people just don’t recover from without surgical intervention-like Gender Dysphoria. (and a lot of those folks don’t recover even with it.) Brain tumours are another one you just ‘don’t recover from’, and nobody’s found a really useful treatment for actual ‘Anti-social personality disorder’ (which is NOT being unsociable, it’s being perfectly okay with murdering other people because you feel like it and then experiencing zero guilt or empathy for your victims). Why? because these are BRAIN things, not mind things.
a Shrink I used to see at the VA put it this way: If nothing’s actually wrong, and you’re depressed, you have a problem. If your life has gone to shit, your body is rotting around you with cancer or some other degenerative disease? or if you’re maimed and horribly crippled? well, depression is pretty normal, it’s not a mental illness at that point, it’s a reaction and response to reality. GD, and other organic damage can’t be cured with therapy-you can learn to live with them, maybe, but they aren’t things you can just talk away. Not at least, any more effectively than trying to pray your way from being gay (which also doesn’t work, because it’s an organic difference in the brain, not a construct of the mind, it’s like being born with brown eyes instead of green, or red hair, or a body that grows parts that don’t feel like they belong).
Spriteless Auntie
I dunno about the brain-mind ditchonomy being used like that. I’d say it’s better to not try to convert the gays because it’s crappy to try to convert gays, rather than because gay brains are different. I mean, all differences from mind come from differences in brains, in a casual universe. It is true that some things can be trained away with exercizes and role play, while others can’t. A sociopath with enough impulse control can learn to look at the long view, and not creep out people who can hurt them back, which is everyone. Impulse control is something there’s strategies to work on. It’s a benefit to society if they do.
Likewise gays can train to be as straight as Ethan’s dad. Not much benefit, and a lot of lost joy. If I am gay because of events in my life, not because of some intrinsic thing, than I still don’t think it’s anyone’s business to change it.
Yumi
Oof. Yeah, I’ve had some shitty therapy experiences too. (Forever a little angry about the one who gave me a packet about “what it means to be a woman” while knowing I was nonbinary.)
The Wellerman
That must have been awful! ?
And yet more reason for me to be turned off of therapy.
Yumi
There are bad therapists out there, but there are also a lot of good ones. I’d probably be dead by now if I wasn’t seeing my current therapist (who, in a fun upgrade, not only gets nonbinary identities, but is nonbinary themself).
It’s a process to find the right therapist, but I think it’s worth it. Can be a bit easier of a process if you know what you’re looking for going in.
The Wellerman
True, I guess?
But of the ones I have tried, even when they weren’t being insensitive or even downright bigoted, just barely helped at all.
At least for now, I am quite reluctant to gamble on a crapshoot unto a tiny island within a sea of punishment.
Various hobbies and Tuca and Berty have been much more calming to me than any therapist I’ve met.
Âmę
On the squint test: https://digitalshiftmedia.com/marketing-term/the-squint-test/
powerpowerpow
As she mentioned previously, both Joe and Ethan are tall and Jewish, so if she stares at Joe squinting she could mistake him for Ethan.
khn0
Well I hope being jewish isn’t what she perceives by squinting, that’d be weird for black jews .
Rose by Any Other Name
C-
Rose by Any Other Name
…
That didn’t come across, did it?
Ahem.
Okay, so what I was trying to do was put a C- stamp on the ‘An Attempt was Made’ line above, but it didn’t follow as clearly as I was hoping.
Like, a C- for the attempt that was made. Cause it was a mediocre attempt at best.
And now I’m explaining the joke.
The Wellerman
What curve was it graded on?
HER curves? ?
The Wellerman
At least your attempt at a joke didn’t fall as flat as mine ?
zee
No it camw across pretty clearly
zee
Barely
BBCC
Amber, you can’t speed run life. 😛
crow
You can if you want the bad ending
Svata
there is no good ending.
Thag Simmons
There’s better endings, at least
bemisawa
…and I’m pretty sure that’s Existentialism in a nutshell? Maybe?
Rocket Relm
She can, it’s just that resetting your game file is unheard of and she’s way too late to even touch the WR anyway.
(alternative answer: Tier Zoo reference goes here)
Lingo
Danny and Ethan kiss.
Suddenly: ticking.
Danny: “oh no–”
BOOM!
King Daniel
Alright, who told them the Steel Glass Test Chamber was a good makeout location?
3oranges
Dina. She tried really hard to think of a more appropriate location, but that was the best she could do.
The Wellerman
Ticking?
King Daniel
tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-ti-
The Wellerman
How did I misread that as tickling and type ticking? ?
Kamino Neko
Danny and Ethan are Lemmings?
Opus the Poet
That’s an old reference. Igetthhatreference dot gif.
crow
B
newlland(Henryvolt)
Wow Amber’s not being helpful at all today.
Jamie
Amber, I’m confident that refreshing Twitter is easy enough that you can do it without looking at your phone.
I mean. I might be wrong. I basically use Twitter by clicking on links every month or two and reading threads and then getting bored of what passes for content outside that thread.
Robbie
Joe should have talked to Dina. I actually think that could have been helpful… Or not. Hard to say. But she’s pretty logical about that kind of thing and that might help.