Dan used to be a VR operator until his brain got fried by malware. Now he's stuck delivering packages in a post-Soviet hellhole all while trying to adjust to his new life and find some answers.
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The end of the world is coming, and Tove doesn't want to be a hero, but SOMEONE has to look after her little brother.
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A superhuman heist involving probably too many pigeons than entirely necessary.
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Experience the queer journey of an upbeat hippie and the friendships she makes along the way! A tale of self-discovery and love of many forms.
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After a case of mistaken identity, will awkward Daisuke find help from excitable Mamo, or will his love life be thrown completely off track?
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Vincent is an unkind man looking to disappear, and finds himself in the care of a vampire and her two wicked children.
Lighter Than Heir
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A young Volant woman joins the military in an effort to upstage her war-hero father.
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Iris Black is a self-proclaimed inventor with the curious ability to bring his drawings to life, and yearns to find a space where he can use his powers freely.
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When Tiara's pyrokinesis is finally noticed, she is captured by a magical research organization for study. If she cooperates, she could be helping to save humanity from a dire threat - but can she trust them?
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A pianist with failing eyesight seeks out a priest with a miraculous healing touch, drawing him deeper into a world of miracles and curses.
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Two days ago I mentioned Rayshard Brooks, and someone replied that he had acted stupid.
What probably happened is that the cuffs were tightened enough to cause excruciating pain, and he started to struggle, and it escalated from there. In the video we hear a click as the cuffs are put on, then a second click, and then he suddenly pulls away. A Black friend of mine, former Special Forces, was cuffed that way for Working Late While Black at the business he was CEO of. He described it as “excruciating pain. Truly intense.” Fortunately, several white employees were there. One called the mayor’s office; it took a call from the mayor to get my Black CEO friend free.
Causing pain to provoke resisting-arrest or assaulting-an-officer is often done deliberately by the police. Here’s a quote from a former police officer, a self-described “bastard cop”: “Police officers will use intentionally extra-painful maneuvers and holds during an arrest to provoke “resistance” so they can further assault the suspect.”
Links to the video and the Bastard Cop article, and analysis of the video, are in this brief article and my followup comments.
Officer Bronsan was clearly trying to de-escalate the situation before Officer Rolfe showed up. After helping Rayshard move to where he can sleep it off, and before Rolfe arrives, Officer Bronsan mutters, “Don’t wanna deal with this dude right now.” Is he talking about Rayshard Brooks, or about Officer Rolfe? I wonder what reputation Rolfe has in his police force? I wonder why the chief of police felt it necessary to resign almost immediately after Rayshard Brooks was killed?
When I think about a man, intoxicated but trying to cooperate – thinking he’d only be arrested – standing calmly while the cuffs click on – for a second he thinks it’s going to be OK, and then with another click pain stabs up his arm and he knows he’s being tortured on purpose but he can’t keep himself from twisting away – he’s wrestled down, he’s fighting for his life against people with a literal monopoly on violence and impunity to kill – he breaks free, he runs, he hears footsteps pounding after and knows he’s probably about to die – and then bang, bang, bang, he’s dead… I’m very tempted to make specific accusations. But watch the video and decide for yourself.
I’ll close with more words from the Bastard Cop: “Many cops fantasize about getting to kill someone in the line of duty, egged on by others that have.”
Speaking as a white man who has accumulated some DUIs in my life, that is not true. It might have been the case back in the days of “Leave it to Beaver” and “Andy Griffith”, but by the mid-1980s and the era of MADD it just didn’t happen any more — if for no other reason than liability. Can you imagine the lawsuit that would have arisen it it had turned out that a well-meaning cop had, instead of arresting an impaired driver, given them a ride home — whereupon the person had gotten into another vehicle and gone out and injured or killed someone??
Willis is exactly on the nose here. Liability and potential litigation have become horrible influences on the behavior and training of police. I’m definitely not saying it’s the only cause of our current crisis, but it’s definitely a factor. The police unions enforce a cops-safety-first behavior, over the lives of the public, and can sue cops if lax actions get another cop injured or killed, even if it was the right thing to do. That’s (one of the reasons) why you see SWAT and anti-riot teams committing brutality on innocent bystanders, they’re trained to see any, even imagined resistance as an attempt on their life and respond with unrelenting force to make an example of them. Imagine if firefighters were told not to risk their lives for civilians? They’d literally never save anyone!
Clarification: not saying all litigation is bad, just saying that the ones protecting bad police and punishing fair ones have warped their training into something that is antithetical to what a police officer should be.
I think (Looking out the window at the distant haze of Seattle) that is simply not the case, DW. Three problems here: The moral problem, the political problem, and the tactical problem.
The Moral problem is: “What should we expect in terms of conduct, behaviour, training and integrity from our police forces?” You can call it the “Defining the difference between a police force and a gang of regime protection thugs” (or, as in the case of Chicago, Los Angeles and so on, just thugs).
The Political Problem: Police are at the beck-and-call of prosecution agencies, and those agencies include district attorneys and their lackeys, often these are elected positions, though sometimes they’re appointed by elected officials instead. DA’s get their brownies not from achieving justice, but by winning convictions. This runs directly counter to the ostensible job of police, which is to keep the peace in stressful situations, deter crime, investigate crime, and yes, arrest criminals in order to protect the public. Note that “arrest”, “Shoot” and other forms of violence are only supposed to be TOOLS for that primary mission of keeping the peace. Unfortunately, PD’s have to answer to DA’s, whose sole mission is to win lots of victories so they can run for mayor, governor, president…
This IS a basic conflict of interest and it’s one that has evolved/mutated from what that relationship is structurally SUPPOSED to be.
On the Tactical problem, we saw that play out. First officer on scene did the right thing; he got the guy to park, and was going to let the guy sleep it off/sober up enough to at least understand what was going on-the first cop’s approach was focused on keeping the peace. The second cop shows up, and HE wants to make brownie points with a hot-hot-DUI bust. This is where the problem began-you can call it an allegiance issue, one officer was more dedicated to the keeping-the-peace approach, while the other had more fealty to the ‘making brownie points with easy busts” approach.
From that point, things escalated and got out of control, with a confused man being assaulted by cops, less than a month after he likely saw a man STRANGLED TO DEATH BY MEN WITH BADGES on television/internet.
Pretty much, the guy had reason to believe he was in a lethal situation facing two cops, and he reacted in a manner that is suitable. Unfortunately, (well for him, anyway) he grabbed the Taser instead of the Service Automatic.
Either way, when you brandish a gun at someone keyed, primed and trained for a gunfight, there’s going to be a gunfight, and if you’re not aware, the gunfighter with the body-armor and the service automatic is likely to win.
Depending on which officer it was, if it was the second officer (the guy who basically turned a de-escalated situation into an existential conflict) who was fired, then the public is slightly safer. If it was the guy who tried to de-escalate at the beginning, not so much-because the police we should WANT are the ones who will use all those OTHER tools in their belt-like minimum force, and reasonable approach, and not-getting-froggy without a damned good reason.
but the root of the problem, and it’s what led to the circumstance of the shooting, is squarely in the Political side. As long as the Police are culturally and semi-unofficially (or even officially) beholden to the Prosecuting arm, and as long as we keep electing and promoting prosecutors who go after ‘low hanging fruit’ with a ‘winning is everything’ approach, we’re going to see repeat performances.
The dependency goes the other way too though: Prosecutors who turn on the cops can face lack of cooperation from police, leading to them not getting those convictions they want. It’s a feedback loop.
And one supported, at least tacitly, by much of the US population. We see some cracks now, at least with the most egregious abuse, but I’m not sure it reaches the level of breaking that cycle – of not preferring DAs who get lots of crooks convicted, for example.
did you seriously fucking answer a sarcastic “yeah it’s better that the cops murder a guy just in case he does crime later” with “actually it’s better that the cops murder a guy just in case it makes their bosses cranky” but in like sixty fucking paragraphs, wtf
I don’t see how you get that Mr. Ball is promoting cops killing people from that essay.
And I for one wholeheartedly agree that DAs are in a conflict of interest position. It has been a concern of mine for several years, and it’s not just in the U.S. Unfortunately Western legal systems seems to be unwilling to admit it’s even a problem, let alone do anything about it.
Daniel you’re extremely uniformed and should sit tf down
DAs are not why cops murder people. DAs are why they so rarely face prosecution. Police Unions are why they get rehired and rarely get fired to begin with. White supremacy is why they murder with impunity. They do it because they WANT TO AND THEY CAN
Fart Captor, it isn’t just white cops who behave badly, and you’re really going to go with black, hispanic, or asian cops being all ‘white power’ you’re frankly a fundamental part of the problem, because you’re excusing inexcusable behavior by claiming mass mental illness.
that’s not only unrealistic, it’s unstable. Are there bullies in uniform? yer godamned right there are. Are some of them racist? again, goddamned right there are, and where are the majority of these incidents happening, Fart?
Yeah, look it up. You can’t swing a dead cat in political circles without hitting someone who got their position by going after poor people using cops to pad their resumes with high conviction numbers, and what kind of person, do you suppose, benefits from, and works as an enabler for, that kind of conflict of interest? Racism is essentially unethical, it is placing blame on some group of ‘others’ for one’s failures and failings, tarring others with one’s own defects and dehumanizing other citizens to elevate oneself.
Do you suppose MAYBE there’s a problem here, where the demand for higher conviction rates meets a lowered ethical standard to create the ideal environment for cultivating unethical, morally weak, status-driven human predators? All racists are bullies, not all bullies are racist, but bullies prey on those who can’t defend themselves or who lack adequate defenses.
does that NOT sound like the situation we’re looking at with that shooting? One officer wanted to let the man sleep it off, the other went for the ‘way easy bust’ that wasn’t.
This issue is a moral one, it is also a political one, and I guarantee if you remove the toxic incentives and cultivating environment for bullies, you’ll push the racists out. OTOH, if you keep obsessign about skin color? they’ll just shift their feathers until you can’t see them anymore and stay right where they’re at, festering and breeding.
Black, Hispanic and Asian cops who unequally enforce the law on Black people (and others who experience unequal enforcement like Hispanic and Indigenous people) are upholding white supremacy because “unequally enforce the law on Black people” is a very large PART of white supremacy. Getting rid of toxic incentives to get convictions will undoubtedly help but tackling white supremacy is also part of the problem – and so are you if you don’t see it.
Bill, what the fuck country do you live in where you think a LAWSUIT impacts police behavior in any meaningful way? WRONGFUL DEATH suits don’t stop them. The CITY pays for it and the cop maybe gets some paid leave.
THIS IS WHAT ALL THOSE INCONVENIENT PROTESTS ARE FOR, IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING
And the wrongful death suits are necessary because they won’t even get charged for killing people unless MASSIVE NATIONAL PROTESTS occur to force the department’s hand. And even then, they will almost certainly be found not guilty, because the standard to determine if the use of force was reasonable is I’m pretty sure based in how THEY PERCEIVED threat levels. It’s also clearly a different standard, in practice if not in writing, to the one black people acting in genuinely life-or-death situations are held to. (Case in point: Marissa Alexander.)
Though the other messed up side of the Marissa Alexander case was the argument that she didn’t really feel threatened because she fired a warning shot, rather than shooting to kill.
I mean, I’m skeptical it would have worked out well for her if she had shot him, but the idea she would have had a better case if she had is scary too.
The lawsuits I’m thinking of are civil suits, not criminal suits, where the victim (or the victim’s family) come lloking for compensation from anyone who had anything to do with the incident in any way, from the mayor to the individual members of the city council to the police/fire commission to the police chief to the shift commander to the cop himself … and most lawsuits like these — a civil case for money damages — would likely NOT fall under a city’s insurance policy.
Not to mention that many of the smaller communities where something like this was more likely to happen are self-insured, which means that yes, the city pays, eventually. But where does the city get that money, and how much do taxes and assessments go up (or what doesn’t get funded any more) because of it?
This is common now in relation to police killings or even injuries. People win civil lawsuits against the police even when there aren’t charges all the time.
None of this seems to have changed policing practices.
That suggests to me that police departments don’t respond to the threat of lawsuits in the way you’re suggesting
National protests have not been enough to make police deescalate and own their shit.
INTERNATIONAL protests have not been enough to make police deescalate and own their shit.
Why the fuck do you think lawsuits are gonna change their behavior? As thejeff says, they have occurred and that has not actually done shit to decrease the number of police killing civilians. For a start, police are still allowed to get away with more violence than civilians are by the courts because of their perception of threats. But even when the police and a family settle out of court, or a court finds in favor of the family, I point you to the following article by the Washington Post, who did a yearlong study of wrongful death claims involving the police over the prior decade, and money awarded to survivors.
Police departments can settle for over a million dollars. On average, those that go to court average more like $500,000 – though that’s probably in large part because a whole lot of cases get dismissed because there was, to cite an early case, ‘no evidence that the police department should have known the officer had a propensity to use excessive violence.’
That article was published in 2015. If million-dollar settlements for clear but-for the officer shooting them, this person would not be dead claims are not making police stop killing people, why the fuck would wrongful death suits with less obvious causation make an impact on them? If million-dollar settlements are not making officers STOP KILLING PEOPLE, then what the fuck WILL?
As a matter of fact, the first cop on-scene just had him drive(!) into a parking space to sleep it off. Then he got some instruction over the radio and muttered “Don’t wanna deal with this dude right now.” I don’t know if he was referring to the victim or to his fellow officer who was about to arrive. Then, said fellow officer shows up, conducts a field sobriety check, and decides to arrest the victim for DUI.
So the first cop on-scene was definitely being chill and apparently was not even going to remove the guy from the parking lot – just let him sleep it off in his car and then drive away.
I didn’t say something when I saw that comment the other day, and I really should have. The onus shouldn’t be on someone who’s drunk and trying to sleep it off – and he’d moved to a parking space from the drive-through, so I’m pretty sure he would’ve responded to reasonable requests* – to not get killed by someone whose job it allegedly is to keep people safe. Rayshard Brooks was one of the people included in that statement. If you must have an armed police force – and situations that are truly life-threatening enough to merit that are pretty rare, especially if we had decent gun control in play – then the BARE MINIMUM should be that those weapons only come out in an actual crisis, with someone actively and seriously dangerous, after every chance at deescalation has been thoroughly exhausted. It’s been very clear, for years, that white people in particular will consistently perceive black people in particular as ‘dangerous’ with no basis whatsoever. There are studies about it, in addition to the obvious trend. Kids get perceived as older than they are, because racism. Hands in pockets get perceived as a threat, because racism. It is not safe to have people be given lethal weapons and license to use them when there is active sociological evidence that their perception of danger is fundamentally skewed to endanger innocent people. And given there are teachers who work with kids with significant developmental and cognitive disabilities – kids who are, sometimes, considered actively dangerous – and don’t escalate to violence, given there are retail workers who deal with belligerent shits on a regular basis and don’t escalate to violence, it is absolutely possible to deescalate nonviolently in most situations.
For fuck’s sake, the white supremacist who committed a mass shooting at a black church was taken in alive and the officers let him get lunch before bringing him in. If an active mass murderer can be subdued safely then why the FUCK is it acceptable that the response to someone sleeping in a parking lot was escalation to lethal force?
* So we’re clear here, though? A reasonable request is ‘stay asleep and don’t drive til you’re sober’, or ‘would you like a ride home?’ And I would not judge any black person who didn’t feel safe accepting a ride home from the police given the track record there. I freely admit I know nothing about Georgia law, but here in Maryland? Not only is it entirely legal to sleep off intoxication in your car parked somewhere safe, it’s encouraged over trying to drive home impaired. We have a pile of case law about how you can leave the car running during that time, even, so people can leave the heat running in the winter and such. (It’s a six-factor test that basically boils down to ‘is it reasonable to think you could actually drive in the position you were found in?’) Asleep in a parking lot – asleep in a drive through, even, and if he managed to fall asleep there I’ve gotta assume that means it was closed so the distinction doesn’t really matter – is basically the safest place someone who’s too drunk to get home safe could be. Or rather, it SHOULD.
He wasn’t actually in the one-lane channel part of the drive through – he was in the parking lot leading up to it, and cars were going around him. So he wasn’t blocking cars but he was in the way and not properly parked. Making him move was reasonable.
I don’t know if he was asleep from extreme intoxication, or maybe from working three jobs, or both. The meter showed 108 which is 5 drinks for a 200 lb person.
I work in a school for children with Social and emotional disorders. Some of those children are habitually violent, and my colleagues and I are exposed to dangerous situations most days. Our training specifically covers de-escalation, with escalation into physical restraint ideally to be used less than 5% of the time. We are also trained to use restraint techniques which, if applied properly, don’t hurt the person restrained. If the child being restrained is hurt or injured, then the immediate response is to investigate whether the staff applied the restraint appropriately, or whether retraining is needed. And we are only teachers. We aren’t law enforcement. So if they can do it for us…
I also live in a country that responded to a mass shooting in a school (almost 25 years ago, now) by BANNING OUTRIGHT all private handgun ownership. Result? Almost no shootings, and no mass shootings at all. Because yes, “if you outlaw guns then only outlaws will have guns,” BUT THAT’S KIND OF THE POINT – and if you outlaw guns AND make them difficult to get hold of, then the number of outlaws who have guns is VERY LOW, and our police are not armed except in rare cases. We also have a legal system that tends NOT to protect police officers who cause death in the line of duty, with said officers facing suspension, investigation, having to produce evidence to justify the death as unavoidable, and the likely possibility of termination of employment and criminal charges in a justice system that often wants to make an example out of police who break the law. None of this is said with the intention of being smug or preachy – we still have massive amounts of institutionalised racism and high (and rising) levels of violent crime in the UK, because people are people, but our biggest problem is knife crime, not gun crime, and it’s less easy to escalate violence with a knife into MASS violence with a knife.
I mean… yeah?
A goodly portion of Americans want some gun control laws that actually do stuff. All studies worldwide prove that the NRA’s claims about gun control laws benefiting criminals are BS. Only people who ignore actual data believe otherwise.
As far as the second amendment, that’s another case of ignorance winning out. That amendment guarantees the right to bear arms to maintain a militia to defend the state. AKA the National Guard. Constitutionally, as long as a state maintains a National Guard, they can ban all other guns, full stop.
Believe me, no one is more frustrated with American politics than Americans.
I’ve had that done to me. I was stopped for speeding in Georgia. They checked every state and found I had an outstanding ticket in Pennsylvania. The cop was pissed off and did everything he could to cause trouble. I had marks around my wrists for some time after they took the cuffs off. On top of everything else, they gave me four tickets, impounded my car, and added 10 mph to my actual speed. They actually did that thing where they counted my money and chose the fine. Cost me $1400. Fortunately, my nerves, for some strange reason, are not as sensitive to direct pressure as the average person’s seem to be. Those nerve holds smart alecks like to demonstrate don’t work on me.
I don’t think there was any need for second guessing. Robin was so concerned that she jumped out of her car and left the door open as she went to investigate. If she was annoyed instead of concerned she would have taken the time to shut her car door.
I don’t think there’s enough detail in that last panel to determine how livid she looks… And I don’t think Robin would be mad at Becky for using the twitter that way. Even a stern talking to seems out of character for her.
Given that her response to Becky’s dad being free was to try to protect her from anxiety by not telling her while also hiring a 24/7 security team to shadow her, I think it’s fair to say that she cares.
She does, yes. She hired Becky’s bodyguards for a reason even if they were terrible. Robin’s issue isn’t that she is outright heartless but that she doesn’t often think many things through or how harmful said actions are or will be most of the time.
*ahem* The purpose of the waffle’s shape is to greatly expand the surface area that’s in direct contact with the hot iron, increasing caramelization and creating a firm, crisp, sweet breakfast confection that is SUPERIOR to all others!!
Dina. I hear you. I fell you. I know your stance on cereal. But please consider this counterpoint: PANCAKES! Small, flat cakes made in a PAN. Put some syrup and some butter on the stack, and you’ve got Heaven on a fork.
The land of Sardines and Hot Sauce Microwaved in the Company Breakroom, next to the Multi-Pot Coffee Maker infested with Cockroaches, the Toaster Oven encrusted with Rancid Butter, and the Snack Machine That Just Takes Your Last Dollar (I used to work there).
I feel like Robin could really use a good long listen to the cast recording of Fun Home (live theater being profoundly dangerous in these times of pandemic.)
I mean ‘Ring of Keys’, obviously, but also the ‘Dad repressed himself to his clear detriment’ part seems relevant. (CW for anyone not familiar with Fun Home for suicide and mentions/implications said dad had sex with underage boys.)
Becky is more than a surrogate kid sister for Robin; she’s a colleague and a friend. Give her credit for rushing over to confirm for herself that she’s alive, safe and as intact as one could be in this situation.
This thread has made me hungry for waffles, and I just realized I haven’t had them since before the coronavirus pandemic. And I don’t know if the restaurant I usually got them at is even open at this point.
Leslie has good technique when she‘s sure about what’s the right thing to do.
I like that she doesn’t buy the act.
Hope Robin doesn’t derail her focus.
Oh, you sweet summer child… :/ It is a tragic reality of life that destroying (either literally or figuratively) one’s enemies invariably creates new ones. Just… don’t let your guard down completely, Becky.
Unrelated to anything, but I’m re-reading some older strips, and dang, people really liked to blame Danny for things he would have no way of knowing about.
For the Amazi-Girl thing maybe, but people were also saying he was “Dannying things up” for talking to Sal in front of Amber, and going with Blaine when he didn’t know about his horribleness.
Battle of the Wannabe Mommies:
Round 1: Pulling hairs and dropping f-bombs
Round 2: …
Round 3: Making out
Round 4: Joining forces against some evil dad
Let’s hope Robin is worried about Becky and is here because she wants to know how she feels and not for compliment her on how many new followers she has thanks to Becky’s new amazing strategy.
If any PoC are reading this who play DnD, how do you feel about the word “race” as it is used in the game’s context?
(Not “how come all the dark-skinned races – minus svirfneblin – are Evil” but on the usage of the word itself to differentiate the category between elves and humand and dwarves and etc.)
The DnD setting is primarily built to be like midevil Europe which largely results in a mostly white population however all the different skin colours exist in the world (including varients for the many humanoid races), they just haven’t mixed together much so unless you go to their native lands you don’t see many of them.
I feel that “race” as used in a D&D setting is a heck of a lot more accurate a term than when used in reality where it is more or less meaningless except as an excuse for treating people badly. Species as a substitute term in D&D wouldn’t be accurate as you have half-elves, half-Orcs, etc. Unless you adopted a rule that such halflings were always sterile without explicit magic tampering, in which case I guess it would work.
How do you feel about the term race being used on medical forms and, if I recall correctly, the census?
Reread the question and I see that answering it implied that I was a person of color, which as it happens is not the case, but if I were I don’t *think* it would change the accuracy of my answer.
Not a POC, per se (2nd gen american/middle-eastern jewish), but a quick look at the etymology of the word “race” brings up some interesting points. It looks to have an original meaning akin to “from a common ancestry or origin” which works in a strict sense for DnD (in most lore) as most races seem to come from some sort of magical source and there is rarely a common ancestry beyond “acts of gods”.
Various D&D based games are actually moving away from “Race” – the new edition of Pathfinder uses “ancestry”, for example. I think I heard some noises about 5E doing something similar, though it’s obviously not in the current rules.
Mostly a slightly confusing anachronism, since it doesn’t really map to either anything real (even as real as species) or to our current real world use of race.
I’m JUST having this argument at the Discord, right now X)
The problem with “ancestry” is that it brings other problems to the yard – if you start defining Elves as being of “Elf ancestry”, where does that leave, say, tieflings, who have “devil ancestry”? They’re not devils.
(this is in no way relevant to my position on whether we should be using the term “race” or not – obviously, if the answer is “no”, then we need to decide on the term that will replace it)
Wouldn’t have been my choice, but to some extent that’s a bonus to the design. It’s defined the other way around, as I understand it. All elves have the Elf Ancestry, but so do others – like Half-Elves. It’s all more codified.
Disclaimer: I haven’t dug too deep into PF2 yet, since my group is still in the middle of a long running PF1 game.
But wouldn’t that mean that you can’t substitute “race” for “ancestry”? If you did, then Elves and Half-Elves would both become “Elf ancestry”, as in, the same thing, which they are not.
I don’t personally mind the word “race” being used, and I use it myself when playing, but also, I grew up with this sort of language in my fantasy resources and that informs my gut reaction. Someone newer to it may have a problem, especially since “race” is inaccurate for what it is describing (more akin to “species”) and so are the related mechanics in DnD.
Like their linked proficiencies and languages, when these things are more related to culture than “race”. Why would an elf raised amongst humans share a language with an elf raised in a forest on the other side of the world? The existence of an “elvish” language needlessly complicates that of a regional tongue. And the flavour text really does not help.
As someone else said, “ancestry” is a lot more useful. Even then, I tend to make a difference between “race” and “culture” in my games. It’s not a great fit either because of the rules as written, but it gives me some wiggle room for better verisimilitude when needed.
And again as a counterpoint to everything else I’ve said, the term “race” even in our world isn’t really a reflection of biology, but more of a social classification. So as an added layer, the term “race” by WotC may itself represent the inherent biases and prejudices of the people of Faerun or whatever other world they set their games in. Maybe the people of fantasyland genuinely don’t see differences in skin colour and other minor physical features as more meaningful than eye colour or height. But they do feel it important to differentiate a dwarf from an elf or a human. And of course, an orc. Because you can kill an orc without feeling bad.
Side-note: My go-to “humanoid you can kill without feeling bad” are gnolls, who are basically mortal demons. In my homebrew, Orcs were lab-engineered by Hobgoblins as soldiers and things got out of hand (two guesses why Hobgoblins ban their spellcasters from Transmutation, on pain of death, and the first one doesn’t count), and, though they still tend towards, shall we say, a physical approach to problem-solving (because that’s what they were literally made for), they’re a fully-fledged people with their own culture which are most definitely not kill-on-sight.
In my setting, there are no humanoids that you can kill without feeling bad. Even a few non-humanoids (medusae being big ones). Orcs take a huge cue from Elder Scrolls (as do Tabaxi, who are basically Khajiit, but with more standard grammar), and are one of the so-called Civilized Peoples (them, Elves, Humans, Dwarves, Gnomes, Halflings, Tabaxi, Tieflings, and Dragonborn – that is, all the playable races). Goblinoids are not considered ‘civilized’, but generally not hostile. Gnolls don’t exist (or at least I haven’t figured out where they might fit in the world). Nor do Drow (…same caveat). But if they did, they’d still probably not be killable with impunity. Because sapient. Demons who’ve ranged out of Hades’ realm, Driders, Undead, and Giants are about the only sapient creatures who are full on kill-or-be-killed types.
(My setting is loosishly based on Greek myth. Medusae are descended from THE Medusa, and generally don’t like followers of the Olympians entering their lands (for extremely obvious reasons), and generally don’t wander into the ‘Civilized’ nations territories, but will not attack if they encounter someone outside their own territory, and generally don’t actually try to kill people encroaching on theirs (luckily for my players who wandered into their territory at level 1). Driders are descendants of Arachne, and…much less forgiving than the Medusae. Giants were created by the Titans to fight their war with the Olympians in the mortal realm, and thus have in-built hostility to…well, basically everybody. But they’re still not actually EVIL, just…impossible to deescalate with. (Or maybe not… We’ll see, if my players actually TRY to deescalate when encountering one… Demons are…demons. But if you find them in their natural habitat, they’re generally restrained, even friendly, unless they’ve been specifically set to torment you (because Hades has rules)…the ones who enter other planes tend to be the ones who chafe against that restraint. Hades hates sapient Undead – Vampires and Ghouls, mostly, since others are super-rare – due to their violation of the cycle of life and death, although he’s fine with non-sapient ones, since the souls are not bound to the bodies. Ghosts are a grey area.)
Bento, that actually hurts me a little (last character was a gnoll druid, fun to roleplay her interactions with people who assumed she was “one of those beasts”).
Jeez, I think I’m pretty much Leslie at this point (minus the ex-husband, and + an ex long-term boyfriend). My wife and I fostered a homeless LGBT teenager a couple years ago, how Leslie is trying to mom is pretty realistic to that experience.
I didn’t see anything wrong with pancakes and cereal when I started reading your comment, but your choices are so obviously better that I’ve completely changed my mind
Troubling thought… I wonder how many of Blaine’s unsavory benefactors have also been major donors to prior DeSanto campaigns. Not that Robin would ever have put much thought into it, but… if her campaign money suddenly dries up, thanks to her staffer’s “indescretions…”
"Calarts Style" is the "woke" of shitty cartoonists
Doesn't really mean anything other than "I don't like it, but I'm going to pretend my objection is moral/cultural to make it feel important"
David M Willis!@damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 8h
i wake up
everything's calarts style
this rug is calarts style
your face is calarts style
the sky is calarts style
the increasing crescendo of calarts style from beneath the floorboards, i can hear its symphony whispering to me its awful refrain:
"get something real to hate"
i wake up
everything's calarts style
this rug is calarts style
your face is calarts style
the sky is calarts style
the increasing crescendo of calarts style from beneath the floorboards, i can hear its symphony whispering to me its awful refrain:
"get something real to hate"
Having left wing beliefs is hard because you have to listen to different types of people and give up saying slurs and read articles all the way through, wouldn’t you rather just watch youtube shorts of bald podcasters and believe any old bullshit
i need money and have a flintstone cel i do not want. if you need a flintsone cel and have money you do not want, please click here, thank you
ebay.us/m/XdPL0q
if you're ever sad alone silently, consider this:
- i hold a copyright on being like that
- you are encroaching on my intellectual property
- i will send you a cease & desist
- i will possibly take you to court
so please make yourself legally distinct by talking to someone about it
Take the fictional character quiz and post the first four you know: openpsychometrics.org/tests/charac...
What this should tell you is that I'm always down to cause chaos and good trouble
Would you like to take a survey? Do you like to eat beans? Do you like George Wendt? Would you like to eat beans with George Wendt? Would you like to watch a movie about George Wendt eating beans?
so i'm thinking, okay, i took some extra photos of this set of doors this year so i could draw some other angles, it's an important set of doors, so let's pull up my new reference photos...
....and do you see a problem, do you see an issue
Well, Lizard is here, and I've been telling myself for... years that I'd take down my Endgame shelf and put up Spider-Man:No Way Home once the final villain was out.
So.
That's a thing I gotta do.
David M Willis! @damnyouwillis.bsky.social ⋅ 8h
cait (and adonis) @cait.bsky.social ⋅ 16h
Alina Pete @alinapete.bsky.social ⋅ 3d
Sean Thomason @seanthomason.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
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Barb O. Saur 
⚧️
“Breakfast. Forever.“
Soggies may rule…*le gasp!*
Dude, don’t even joke about that.
Jokes are best served cold.
And covered in milk.
Hmm… That third panel looks strangely familiar…
Wait! You can’t do that! Now my comment doesn’t make any sense!
My random guess would be that he can.
I choose to believe the third panel was originally Joyce with the lizard on her head.
(For future context, panel three was Ana’s gravatar picture)
(Er, rather, Ana’s gravatar used to be panel three. Damn you lack of edit feature!)
Two days ago I mentioned Rayshard Brooks, and someone replied that he had acted stupid.
What probably happened is that the cuffs were tightened enough to cause excruciating pain, and he started to struggle, and it escalated from there. In the video we hear a click as the cuffs are put on, then a second click, and then he suddenly pulls away. A Black friend of mine, former Special Forces, was cuffed that way for Working Late While Black at the business he was CEO of. He described it as “excruciating pain. Truly intense.” Fortunately, several white employees were there. One called the mayor’s office; it took a call from the mayor to get my Black CEO friend free.
Causing pain to provoke resisting-arrest or assaulting-an-officer is often done deliberately by the police. Here’s a quote from a former police officer, a self-described “bastard cop”: “Police officers will use intentionally extra-painful maneuvers and holds during an arrest to provoke “resistance” so they can further assault the suspect.”
Links to the video and the Bastard Cop article, and analysis of the video, are in this brief article and my followup comments.
Officer Bronsan was clearly trying to de-escalate the situation before Officer Rolfe showed up. After helping Rayshard move to where he can sleep it off, and before Rolfe arrives, Officer Bronsan mutters, “Don’t wanna deal with this dude right now.” Is he talking about Rayshard Brooks, or about Officer Rolfe? I wonder what reputation Rolfe has in his police force? I wonder why the chief of police felt it necessary to resign almost immediately after Rayshard Brooks was killed?
When I think about a man, intoxicated but trying to cooperate – thinking he’d only be arrested – standing calmly while the cuffs click on – for a second he thinks it’s going to be OK, and then with another click pain stabs up his arm and he knows he’s being tortured on purpose but he can’t keep himself from twisting away – he’s wrestled down, he’s fighting for his life against people with a literal monopoly on violence and impunity to kill – he breaks free, he runs, he hears footsteps pounding after and knows he’s probably about to die – and then bang, bang, bang, he’s dead… I’m very tempted to make specific accusations. But watch the video and decide for yourself.
I’ll close with more words from the Bastard Cop: “Many cops fantasize about getting to kill someone in the line of duty, egged on by others that have.”
I’m sorry. I know the words you say are true. I’m just so sorry. This is wrong. It has to change.
If Rayshard Brooks had been white the cops would’ve driven him home.
Speaking as a white man who has accumulated some DUIs in my life, that is not true. It might have been the case back in the days of “Leave it to Beaver” and “Andy Griffith”, but by the mid-1980s and the era of MADD it just didn’t happen any more — if for no other reason than liability. Can you imagine the lawsuit that would have arisen it it had turned out that a well-meaning cop had, instead of arresting an impaired driver, given them a ride home — whereupon the person had gotten into another vehicle and gone out and injured or killed someone??
you’re right, it’s better if the cops just kill the guy
Willis is exactly on the nose here. Liability and potential litigation have become horrible influences on the behavior and training of police. I’m definitely not saying it’s the only cause of our current crisis, but it’s definitely a factor. The police unions enforce a cops-safety-first behavior, over the lives of the public, and can sue cops if lax actions get another cop injured or killed, even if it was the right thing to do. That’s (one of the reasons) why you see SWAT and anti-riot teams committing brutality on innocent bystanders, they’re trained to see any, even imagined resistance as an attempt on their life and respond with unrelenting force to make an example of them. Imagine if firefighters were told not to risk their lives for civilians? They’d literally never save anyone!
Clarification: not saying all litigation is bad, just saying that the ones protecting bad police and punishing fair ones have warped their training into something that is antithetical to what a police officer should be.
I agree. Willis has a good point. With enough nukes we could probably eliminate drunk driving for at least a generation and maybe forever.
And the best part is there’s enough in stock we wouldn’t even have to manufacture new ones to do it.
I think (Looking out the window at the distant haze of Seattle) that is simply not the case, DW. Three problems here: The moral problem, the political problem, and the tactical problem.
The Moral problem is: “What should we expect in terms of conduct, behaviour, training and integrity from our police forces?” You can call it the “Defining the difference between a police force and a gang of regime protection thugs” (or, as in the case of Chicago, Los Angeles and so on, just thugs).
The Political Problem: Police are at the beck-and-call of prosecution agencies, and those agencies include district attorneys and their lackeys, often these are elected positions, though sometimes they’re appointed by elected officials instead. DA’s get their brownies not from achieving justice, but by winning convictions. This runs directly counter to the ostensible job of police, which is to keep the peace in stressful situations, deter crime, investigate crime, and yes, arrest criminals in order to protect the public. Note that “arrest”, “Shoot” and other forms of violence are only supposed to be TOOLS for that primary mission of keeping the peace. Unfortunately, PD’s have to answer to DA’s, whose sole mission is to win lots of victories so they can run for mayor, governor, president…
This IS a basic conflict of interest and it’s one that has evolved/mutated from what that relationship is structurally SUPPOSED to be.
On the Tactical problem, we saw that play out. First officer on scene did the right thing; he got the guy to park, and was going to let the guy sleep it off/sober up enough to at least understand what was going on-the first cop’s approach was focused on keeping the peace. The second cop shows up, and HE wants to make brownie points with a hot-hot-DUI bust. This is where the problem began-you can call it an allegiance issue, one officer was more dedicated to the keeping-the-peace approach, while the other had more fealty to the ‘making brownie points with easy busts” approach.
From that point, things escalated and got out of control, with a confused man being assaulted by cops, less than a month after he likely saw a man STRANGLED TO DEATH BY MEN WITH BADGES on television/internet.
Pretty much, the guy had reason to believe he was in a lethal situation facing two cops, and he reacted in a manner that is suitable. Unfortunately, (well for him, anyway) he grabbed the Taser instead of the Service Automatic.
Either way, when you brandish a gun at someone keyed, primed and trained for a gunfight, there’s going to be a gunfight, and if you’re not aware, the gunfighter with the body-armor and the service automatic is likely to win.
Depending on which officer it was, if it was the second officer (the guy who basically turned a de-escalated situation into an existential conflict) who was fired, then the public is slightly safer. If it was the guy who tried to de-escalate at the beginning, not so much-because the police we should WANT are the ones who will use all those OTHER tools in their belt-like minimum force, and reasonable approach, and not-getting-froggy without a damned good reason.
but the root of the problem, and it’s what led to the circumstance of the shooting, is squarely in the Political side. As long as the Police are culturally and semi-unofficially (or even officially) beholden to the Prosecuting arm, and as long as we keep electing and promoting prosecutors who go after ‘low hanging fruit’ with a ‘winning is everything’ approach, we’re going to see repeat performances.
The dependency goes the other way too though: Prosecutors who turn on the cops can face lack of cooperation from police, leading to them not getting those convictions they want. It’s a feedback loop.
And one supported, at least tacitly, by much of the US population. We see some cracks now, at least with the most egregious abuse, but I’m not sure it reaches the level of breaking that cycle – of not preferring DAs who get lots of crooks convicted, for example.
That’s an insightful point, that is for bringing that up
*thanks for
did you seriously fucking answer a sarcastic “yeah it’s better that the cops murder a guy just in case he does crime later” with “actually it’s better that the cops murder a guy just in case it makes their bosses cranky” but in like sixty fucking paragraphs, wtf
I don’t see how you get that Mr. Ball is promoting cops killing people from that essay.
And I for one wholeheartedly agree that DAs are in a conflict of interest position. It has been a concern of mine for several years, and it’s not just in the U.S. Unfortunately Western legal systems seems to be unwilling to admit it’s even a problem, let alone do anything about it.
Yeah I’m with bathymetheus here, that is not what I got out of this.
Daniel you’re extremely uniformed and should sit tf down
DAs are not why cops murder people. DAs are why they so rarely face prosecution. Police Unions are why they get rehired and rarely get fired to begin with. White supremacy is why they murder with impunity. They do it because they WANT TO AND THEY CAN
Fart Captor, it isn’t just white cops who behave badly, and you’re really going to go with black, hispanic, or asian cops being all ‘white power’ you’re frankly a fundamental part of the problem, because you’re excusing inexcusable behavior by claiming mass mental illness.
that’s not only unrealistic, it’s unstable. Are there bullies in uniform? yer godamned right there are. Are some of them racist? again, goddamned right there are, and where are the majority of these incidents happening, Fart?
Yeah, look it up. You can’t swing a dead cat in political circles without hitting someone who got their position by going after poor people using cops to pad their resumes with high conviction numbers, and what kind of person, do you suppose, benefits from, and works as an enabler for, that kind of conflict of interest? Racism is essentially unethical, it is placing blame on some group of ‘others’ for one’s failures and failings, tarring others with one’s own defects and dehumanizing other citizens to elevate oneself.
Do you suppose MAYBE there’s a problem here, where the demand for higher conviction rates meets a lowered ethical standard to create the ideal environment for cultivating unethical, morally weak, status-driven human predators? All racists are bullies, not all bullies are racist, but bullies prey on those who can’t defend themselves or who lack adequate defenses.
does that NOT sound like the situation we’re looking at with that shooting? One officer wanted to let the man sleep it off, the other went for the ‘way easy bust’ that wasn’t.
This issue is a moral one, it is also a political one, and I guarantee if you remove the toxic incentives and cultivating environment for bullies, you’ll push the racists out. OTOH, if you keep obsessign about skin color? they’ll just shift their feathers until you can’t see them anymore and stay right where they’re at, festering and breeding.
Black, Hispanic and Asian cops who unequally enforce the law on Black people (and others who experience unequal enforcement like Hispanic and Indigenous people) are upholding white supremacy because “unequally enforce the law on Black people” is a very large PART of white supremacy. Getting rid of toxic incentives to get convictions will undoubtedly help but tackling white supremacy is also part of the problem – and so are you if you don’t see it.
Bill, what the fuck country do you live in where you think a LAWSUIT impacts police behavior in any meaningful way? WRONGFUL DEATH suits don’t stop them. The CITY pays for it and the cop maybe gets some paid leave.
THIS IS WHAT ALL THOSE INCONVENIENT PROTESTS ARE FOR, IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING
And the wrongful death suits are necessary because they won’t even get charged for killing people unless MASSIVE NATIONAL PROTESTS occur to force the department’s hand. And even then, they will almost certainly be found not guilty, because the standard to determine if the use of force was reasonable is I’m pretty sure based in how THEY PERCEIVED threat levels. It’s also clearly a different standard, in practice if not in writing, to the one black people acting in genuinely life-or-death situations are held to. (Case in point: Marissa Alexander.)
Though the other messed up side of the Marissa Alexander case was the argument that she didn’t really feel threatened because she fired a warning shot, rather than shooting to kill.
I mean, I’m skeptical it would have worked out well for her if she had shot him, but the idea she would have had a better case if she had is scary too.
The lawsuits I’m thinking of are civil suits, not criminal suits, where the victim (or the victim’s family) come lloking for compensation from anyone who had anything to do with the incident in any way, from the mayor to the individual members of the city council to the police/fire commission to the police chief to the shift commander to the cop himself … and most lawsuits like these — a civil case for money damages — would likely NOT fall under a city’s insurance policy.
Not to mention that many of the smaller communities where something like this was more likely to happen are self-insured, which means that yes, the city pays, eventually. But where does the city get that money, and how much do taxes and assessments go up (or what doesn’t get funded any more) because of it?
This is common now in relation to police killings or even injuries. People win civil lawsuits against the police even when there aren’t charges all the time.
None of this seems to have changed policing practices.
That suggests to me that police departments don’t respond to the threat of lawsuits in the way you’re suggesting
National protests have not been enough to make police deescalate and own their shit.
INTERNATIONAL protests have not been enough to make police deescalate and own their shit.
Why the fuck do you think lawsuits are gonna change their behavior? As thejeff says, they have occurred and that has not actually done shit to decrease the number of police killing civilians. For a start, police are still allowed to get away with more violence than civilians are by the courts because of their perception of threats. But even when the police and a family settle out of court, or a court finds in favor of the family, I point you to the following article by the Washington Post, who did a yearlong study of wrongful death claims involving the police over the prior decade, and money awarded to survivors.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2015/11/03/uneven-justice/
Police departments can settle for over a million dollars. On average, those that go to court average more like $500,000 – though that’s probably in large part because a whole lot of cases get dismissed because there was, to cite an early case, ‘no evidence that the police department should have known the officer had a propensity to use excessive violence.’
That article was published in 2015. If million-dollar settlements for clear but-for the officer shooting them, this person would not be dead claims are not making police stop killing people, why the fuck would wrongful death suits with less obvious causation make an impact on them? If million-dollar settlements are not making officers STOP KILLING PEOPLE, then what the fuck WILL?
As a matter of fact, the first cop on-scene just had him drive(!) into a parking space to sleep it off. Then he got some instruction over the radio and muttered “Don’t wanna deal with this dude right now.” I don’t know if he was referring to the victim or to his fellow officer who was about to arrive. Then, said fellow officer shows up, conducts a field sobriety check, and decides to arrest the victim for DUI.
So the first cop on-scene was definitely being chill and apparently was not even going to remove the guy from the parking lot – just let him sleep it off in his car and then drive away.
By your logic, every drunk person must be arrested on the spot, lest they decide to drive later
I didn’t say something when I saw that comment the other day, and I really should have. The onus shouldn’t be on someone who’s drunk and trying to sleep it off – and he’d moved to a parking space from the drive-through, so I’m pretty sure he would’ve responded to reasonable requests* – to not get killed by someone whose job it allegedly is to keep people safe. Rayshard Brooks was one of the people included in that statement. If you must have an armed police force – and situations that are truly life-threatening enough to merit that are pretty rare, especially if we had decent gun control in play – then the BARE MINIMUM should be that those weapons only come out in an actual crisis, with someone actively and seriously dangerous, after every chance at deescalation has been thoroughly exhausted. It’s been very clear, for years, that white people in particular will consistently perceive black people in particular as ‘dangerous’ with no basis whatsoever. There are studies about it, in addition to the obvious trend. Kids get perceived as older than they are, because racism. Hands in pockets get perceived as a threat, because racism. It is not safe to have people be given lethal weapons and license to use them when there is active sociological evidence that their perception of danger is fundamentally skewed to endanger innocent people. And given there are teachers who work with kids with significant developmental and cognitive disabilities – kids who are, sometimes, considered actively dangerous – and don’t escalate to violence, given there are retail workers who deal with belligerent shits on a regular basis and don’t escalate to violence, it is absolutely possible to deescalate nonviolently in most situations.
For fuck’s sake, the white supremacist who committed a mass shooting at a black church was taken in alive and the officers let him get lunch before bringing him in. If an active mass murderer can be subdued safely then why the FUCK is it acceptable that the response to someone sleeping in a parking lot was escalation to lethal force?
* So we’re clear here, though? A reasonable request is ‘stay asleep and don’t drive til you’re sober’, or ‘would you like a ride home?’ And I would not judge any black person who didn’t feel safe accepting a ride home from the police given the track record there. I freely admit I know nothing about Georgia law, but here in Maryland? Not only is it entirely legal to sleep off intoxication in your car parked somewhere safe, it’s encouraged over trying to drive home impaired. We have a pile of case law about how you can leave the car running during that time, even, so people can leave the heat running in the winter and such. (It’s a six-factor test that basically boils down to ‘is it reasonable to think you could actually drive in the position you were found in?’) Asleep in a parking lot – asleep in a drive through, even, and if he managed to fall asleep there I’ve gotta assume that means it was closed so the distinction doesn’t really matter – is basically the safest place someone who’s too drunk to get home safe could be. Or rather, it SHOULD.
He wasn’t actually in the one-lane channel part of the drive through – he was in the parking lot leading up to it, and cars were going around him. So he wasn’t blocking cars but he was in the way and not properly parked. Making him move was reasonable.
I don’t know if he was asleep from extreme intoxication, or maybe from working three jobs, or both. The meter showed 108 which is 5 drinks for a 200 lb person.
I work in a school for children with Social and emotional disorders. Some of those children are habitually violent, and my colleagues and I are exposed to dangerous situations most days. Our training specifically covers de-escalation, with escalation into physical restraint ideally to be used less than 5% of the time. We are also trained to use restraint techniques which, if applied properly, don’t hurt the person restrained. If the child being restrained is hurt or injured, then the immediate response is to investigate whether the staff applied the restraint appropriately, or whether retraining is needed. And we are only teachers. We aren’t law enforcement. So if they can do it for us…
I also live in a country that responded to a mass shooting in a school (almost 25 years ago, now) by BANNING OUTRIGHT all private handgun ownership. Result? Almost no shootings, and no mass shootings at all. Because yes, “if you outlaw guns then only outlaws will have guns,” BUT THAT’S KIND OF THE POINT – and if you outlaw guns AND make them difficult to get hold of, then the number of outlaws who have guns is VERY LOW, and our police are not armed except in rare cases. We also have a legal system that tends NOT to protect police officers who cause death in the line of duty, with said officers facing suspension, investigation, having to produce evidence to justify the death as unavoidable, and the likely possibility of termination of employment and criminal charges in a justice system that often wants to make an example out of police who break the law. None of this is said with the intention of being smug or preachy – we still have massive amounts of institutionalised racism and high (and rising) levels of violent crime in the UK, because people are people, but our biggest problem is knife crime, not gun crime, and it’s less easy to escalate violence with a knife into MASS violence with a knife.
I mean… yeah?
A goodly portion of Americans want some gun control laws that actually do stuff. All studies worldwide prove that the NRA’s claims about gun control laws benefiting criminals are BS. Only people who ignore actual data believe otherwise.
As far as the second amendment, that’s another case of ignorance winning out. That amendment guarantees the right to bear arms to maintain a militia to defend the state. AKA the National Guard. Constitutionally, as long as a state maintains a National Guard, they can ban all other guns, full stop.
Believe me, no one is more frustrated with American politics than Americans.
I’ve had that done to me. I was stopped for speeding in Georgia. They checked every state and found I had an outstanding ticket in Pennsylvania. The cop was pissed off and did everything he could to cause trouble. I had marks around my wrists for some time after they took the cuffs off. On top of everything else, they gave me four tickets, impounded my car, and added 10 mph to my actual speed. They actually did that thing where they counted my money and chose the fine. Cost me $1400. Fortunately, my nerves, for some strange reason, are not as sensitive to direct pressure as the average person’s seem to be. Those nerve holds smart alecks like to demonstrate don’t work on me.
Someone’s about to be fired.
But she got her so many new followers…
You might be right. Robin looks livid, at least.
Maybe she wanted to crack heads herself?
How can you tell? I kinda thought this was implying Robin was actually worried about Becky and came to check on her.
That was my initial impression, but I’m second-guessing myself now
Heck yeah, finally out of moderation purgatory with my non-deadname email!!!
Nice.
Congrats on freedom from your deadname!!
I don’t think there was any need for second guessing. Robin was so concerned that she jumped out of her car and left the door open as she went to investigate. If she was annoyed instead of concerned she would have taken the time to shut her car door.
Note to self: next time I’m annoyed at someone, leave the car door open so that people can tell.
Not sure, but I think that’s backwards. I believe proper etiquette demands that you slam the car door to signal annoyance.
TWIST:
It’s a different DeSanto
That … would be a twist.
I don’t think there’s enough detail in that last panel to determine how livid she looks… And I don’t think Robin would be mad at Becky for using the twitter that way. Even a stern talking to seems out of character for her.
Is she going to fire Becky for sending out an SOS on her twitter? That’s messed up, Becky was in a real difficult position there.
I don’t think Robin is totally Heartless, just more Thoughtless
Given that her response to Becky’s dad being free was to try to protect her from anxiety by not telling her while also hiring a 24/7 security team to shadow her, I think it’s fair to say that she cares.
And also that she’s bad at stuff.
Becks can run a campaign for her own damn self, then.
She’s too young.
That second panel is powerful stuff…
Yum, pancakes. With butter and syrup on top.
Is Leslie gonna spring for REAL maple syrup?
Does Robin care? Real question cause I’m still on the fence with her.
She can be aggravating, but she is not heartless.
She’s been shown to have a genuine liking for Becky, seemingly.
She does, yes. She hired Becky’s bodyguards for a reason even if they were terrible. Robin’s issue isn’t that she is outright heartless but that she doesn’t often think many things through or how harmful said actions are or will be most of the time.
Becky, no! Waffles are the true option!
Why not both? I want both…
Waffles are just non-skid pancakes.
The divots make little wells for butter and syrup. Another point for waffles!
That’s the best thing about waffles, and definitely one reason why they’re better than pancakes.
Here are two gangster cats who are arguing about this quandary.
https://lackadaisy.foxprints.com/exhibit.php?exhibitid=398
*ahem* The purpose of the waffle’s shape is to greatly expand the surface area that’s in direct contact with the hot iron, increasing caramelization and creating a firm, crisp, sweet breakfast confection that is SUPERIOR to all others!!
(as you may expect, I am biased)
French toast is the true choice. Except French toast, out of all food, gives me heartburn.
Really? It’s just custard cooked in bread, with some added nutmeg. Maybe it’s because it’s so easy to eat too much of the stuff?
Beats me. It’s the only thing that does it. I can eat all the pancakes or waffles I can stuff down, no problem.
What recipe are you using?? For me, it’s usually scrambled eggs and bread, with the possible addition of cinnamon.
All i can think of is this Lackadaisy comic:
https://www.lackadaisy.com/exhibit.php?exhibitid=398
I unno how to link, so, like, enjoy?
Oh, I guess i don’t need to do anything for a link to work?
This will be messy.
Custody battles generally are.
Mmm.
hi robin
Dina. I hear you. I fell you. I know your stance on cereal. But please consider this counterpoint: PANCAKES! Small, flat cakes made in a PAN. Put some syrup and some butter on the stack, and you’ve got Heaven on a fork.
Pancake cereal
Pancake cereal?
Pancake cereal.
Whoa! Genius idea!
Cereal pancakes. Crunchy!
Ooo, now I want to make Fruity Pebbles pancakes.
Cereal pancakes
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10158325057528864&set=gm.1801129430027719
Why would you want to eat Heaven? That’s where Ross thinks he is.
Key Word: “Thinks”. He’s actually in the land of Burnt Popcorn & Microwaved Fish in the Company Breakroom.
The land of Sardines and Hot Sauce Microwaved in the Company Breakroom, next to the Multi-Pot Coffee Maker infested with Cockroaches, the Toaster Oven encrusted with Rancid Butter, and the Snack Machine That Just Takes Your Last Dollar (I used to work there).
Don’t forget the rotating cold food vending machine that’s restocked daily with questionable sandwiches of indeterminate origin.
Ah yes, the Wheel of Death!!
How can he be thinking? His brain got ball-peened.
Waffles are better.
CORRECT
so i guess becky really does prefer pancakes
Billie, of course, is into both
That’s a deep cut, I’m impressed you remembered this.
Better add some Cadbury creme eggs to those pancakes, Leslie, you may have one more for breakfast.
Delicious pancakes
She’s a mom. A good mom.
Good for them
Robin hasn’t looked at her own twitter and no one has phoned her bc Becky was her only remaining staff
LAMP, WE TRUSTED YOU!
Having recently watched a playthrough of Pizza Game, my first thought was the “Warped Lamp” character.
I think she’s hired new people since then, especially since Becky improved her numbers, and therefore probably brought in new campaign donations.
At the same time, i think Robin is pretty ok with just Becky
The 2nd May bonus Patreon strip has Robin being awakened by Twitter notifications and reading Becky’s thread.
Yay yay, Robin and Leslie reunion! Gals who are Pals!
Joyce’s fears have been realized!
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/02-threes-a-crowd/gunshot/
beat you to it
(just like i beat you to the name “butts”, haha, thought i forgot about that? nope)
Technically I beat you by a whole day on Patreon but I got distracted when I went to post here so
wait it was THAT close, seriously??? i don’t even remember when i started using this name
No! I meant the other thing! The callback
oh welp
(i was trying to figure out when i started reading doa, i think it was around 2014? which is wild tbh)
Pancakes are better than waffles for me. They are spongey and buttery.
This is good. Also, what will Robin do?
Stick some chocolate chips in there and I’m with Becky.
Lesbians are doing something, and Robin wants to involve herself for reasons that she can’t fully articulate.
I feel like Robin could really use a good long listen to the cast recording of Fun Home (live theater being profoundly dangerous in these times of pandemic.)
I mean ‘Ring of Keys’, obviously, but also the ‘Dad repressed himself to his clear detriment’ part seems relevant. (CW for anyone not familiar with Fun Home for suicide and mentions/implications said dad had sex with underage boys.)
Personally, I prefer a good french toast for my Syrup Delivery Mechanism. Pancakes are a solid choice, though. As are waffles.
Really, just give me something doughy dipped in butter and syrup and I’m happy.
Oh I wonder if anyone ever released those bodyguards Amazi-Girl tied up.
That’s a real concern
… and Robin and Leslie adopted Becky together, and they all lived happily ever after, The End
AND NOTHING BAD EVER HAPPENED EVER!
and then Becky was the one elected in place of Robin
Becky is more than a surrogate kid sister for Robin; she’s a colleague and a friend. Give her credit for rushing over to confirm for herself that she’s alive, safe and as intact as one could be in this situation.
I haven’t forgotten yesterday’s alt text, still worried about the cat.
Guess Who’s Coming For Breakfast.
Hint – I’m predicting Robin invites herself.
This thread has made me hungry for waffles, and I just realized I haven’t had them since before the coronavirus pandemic. And I don’t know if the restaurant I usually got them at is even open at this point.
They’re pretty easy to make, if you have a waffle iron.
But if Waffle House is closed, you know things are bad.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffle_House_Index
Funny enough, I used to get my favorite waffles at IHOP before the pandemic started.
Leslie has good technique when she‘s sure about what’s the right thing to do.
I like that she doesn’t buy the act.
Hope Robin doesn’t derail her focus.
For I moment I thought that Robin was Faz’s mom instead
“what did you do to my twitter accouuuuuunt”
Leslie is the best person.
That’s it, the opinion desk is closed. Good day.
“There’s no one else out there who can hurt me.”
Oh, you sweet summer child… :/ It is a tragic reality of life that destroying (either literally or figuratively) one’s enemies invariably creates new ones. Just… don’t let your guard down completely, Becky.
Unrelated to anything, but I’m re-reading some older strips, and dang, people really liked to blame Danny for things he would have no way of knowing about.
Well, that in itself was obviously Danny’s fault.
For the Amazi-Girl thing maybe, but people were also saying he was “Dannying things up” for talking to Sal in front of Amber, and going with Blaine when he didn’t know about his horribleness.
I think it’s just leftover feelings from his character in the other universe.
At this point I’m concluding my sarcasm wasn’t apparent.
People were blaming Danny for ridiculous things. That fact they were doing so is obviously Danny’s fault.
I could have used a /sarcasm but I’m not sure it ever really turns off.
Battle of the Wannabe Mommies:
Round 1: Pulling hairs and dropping f-bombs
Round 2: …
Round 3: Making out
Round 4: Joining forces against some evil dad
Let’s hope Robin is worried about Becky and is here because she wants to know how she feels and not for compliment her on how many new followers she has thanks to Becky’s new amazing strategy.
Hope Robin isn’t here to disprove panel 2.
Leslie and breakfast?! If Becky said “waffles”, it would have been one big Parks and Rec reference.
UNRELATED QUESTION TIME:
If any PoC are reading this who play DnD, how do you feel about the word “race” as it is used in the game’s context?
(Not “how come all the dark-skinned races – minus svirfneblin – are Evil” but on the usage of the word itself to differentiate the category between elves and humand and dwarves and etc.)
The DnD setting is primarily built to be like midevil Europe which largely results in a mostly white population however all the different skin colours exist in the world (including varients for the many humanoid races), they just haven’t mixed together much so unless you go to their native lands you don’t see many of them.
Not an answer to your question though.
I feel that “race” as used in a D&D setting is a heck of a lot more accurate a term than when used in reality where it is more or less meaningless except as an excuse for treating people badly. Species as a substitute term in D&D wouldn’t be accurate as you have half-elves, half-Orcs, etc. Unless you adopted a rule that such halflings were always sterile without explicit magic tampering, in which case I guess it would work.
How do you feel about the term race being used on medical forms and, if I recall correctly, the census?
Reread the question and I see that answering it implied that I was a person of color, which as it happens is not the case, but if I were I don’t *think* it would change the accuracy of my answer.
Not a POC, per se (2nd gen american/middle-eastern jewish), but a quick look at the etymology of the word “race” brings up some interesting points. It looks to have an original meaning akin to “from a common ancestry or origin” which works in a strict sense for DnD (in most lore) as most races seem to come from some sort of magical source and there is rarely a common ancestry beyond “acts of gods”.
Various D&D based games are actually moving away from “Race” – the new edition of Pathfinder uses “ancestry”, for example. I think I heard some noises about 5E doing something similar, though it’s obviously not in the current rules.
Mostly a slightly confusing anachronism, since it doesn’t really map to either anything real (even as real as species) or to our current real world use of race.
Yea, but Pathfinder’s use of “ancestry” is just as confusing because it also doesn’t match the current real-world meaning of “ancestry.”
I agree and I’m not real fond of it either, but it does at least avoid the real world racism implications.
I’m JUST having this argument at the Discord, right now X)
The problem with “ancestry” is that it brings other problems to the yard – if you start defining Elves as being of “Elf ancestry”, where does that leave, say, tieflings, who have “devil ancestry”? They’re not devils.
(this is in no way relevant to my position on whether we should be using the term “race” or not – obviously, if the answer is “no”, then we need to decide on the term that will replace it)
Wouldn’t have been my choice, but to some extent that’s a bonus to the design. It’s defined the other way around, as I understand it. All elves have the Elf Ancestry, but so do others – like Half-Elves. It’s all more codified.
Disclaimer: I haven’t dug too deep into PF2 yet, since my group is still in the middle of a long running PF1 game.
But wouldn’t that mean that you can’t substitute “race” for “ancestry”? If you did, then Elves and Half-Elves would both become “Elf ancestry”, as in, the same thing, which they are not.
Black dude speaking.
I don’t personally mind the word “race” being used, and I use it myself when playing, but also, I grew up with this sort of language in my fantasy resources and that informs my gut reaction. Someone newer to it may have a problem, especially since “race” is inaccurate for what it is describing (more akin to “species”) and so are the related mechanics in DnD.
Like their linked proficiencies and languages, when these things are more related to culture than “race”. Why would an elf raised amongst humans share a language with an elf raised in a forest on the other side of the world? The existence of an “elvish” language needlessly complicates that of a regional tongue. And the flavour text really does not help.
As someone else said, “ancestry” is a lot more useful. Even then, I tend to make a difference between “race” and “culture” in my games. It’s not a great fit either because of the rules as written, but it gives me some wiggle room for better verisimilitude when needed.
And again as a counterpoint to everything else I’ve said, the term “race” even in our world isn’t really a reflection of biology, but more of a social classification. So as an added layer, the term “race” by WotC may itself represent the inherent biases and prejudices of the people of Faerun or whatever other world they set their games in. Maybe the people of fantasyland genuinely don’t see differences in skin colour and other minor physical features as more meaningful than eye colour or height. But they do feel it important to differentiate a dwarf from an elf or a human. And of course, an orc. Because you can kill an orc without feeling bad.
Side-note: My go-to “humanoid you can kill without feeling bad” are gnolls, who are basically mortal demons. In my homebrew, Orcs were lab-engineered by Hobgoblins as soldiers and things got out of hand (two guesses why Hobgoblins ban their spellcasters from Transmutation, on pain of death, and the first one doesn’t count), and, though they still tend towards, shall we say, a physical approach to problem-solving (because that’s what they were literally made for), they’re a fully-fledged people with their own culture which are most definitely not kill-on-sight.
In my setting, there are no humanoids that you can kill without feeling bad. Even a few non-humanoids (medusae being big ones). Orcs take a huge cue from Elder Scrolls (as do Tabaxi, who are basically Khajiit, but with more standard grammar), and are one of the so-called Civilized Peoples (them, Elves, Humans, Dwarves, Gnomes, Halflings, Tabaxi, Tieflings, and Dragonborn – that is, all the playable races). Goblinoids are not considered ‘civilized’, but generally not hostile. Gnolls don’t exist (or at least I haven’t figured out where they might fit in the world). Nor do Drow (…same caveat). But if they did, they’d still probably not be killable with impunity. Because sapient. Demons who’ve ranged out of Hades’ realm, Driders, Undead, and Giants are about the only sapient creatures who are full on kill-or-be-killed types.
(My setting is loosishly based on Greek myth. Medusae are descended from THE Medusa, and generally don’t like followers of the Olympians entering their lands (for extremely obvious reasons), and generally don’t wander into the ‘Civilized’ nations territories, but will not attack if they encounter someone outside their own territory, and generally don’t actually try to kill people encroaching on theirs (luckily for my players who wandered into their territory at level 1). Driders are descendants of Arachne, and…much less forgiving than the Medusae. Giants were created by the Titans to fight their war with the Olympians in the mortal realm, and thus have in-built hostility to…well, basically everybody. But they’re still not actually EVIL, just…impossible to deescalate with. (Or maybe not… We’ll see, if my players actually TRY to deescalate when encountering one… Demons are…demons. But if you find them in their natural habitat, they’re generally restrained, even friendly, unless they’ve been specifically set to torment you (because Hades has rules)…the ones who enter other planes tend to be the ones who chafe against that restraint. Hades hates sapient Undead – Vampires and Ghouls, mostly, since others are super-rare – due to their violation of the cycle of life and death, although he’s fine with non-sapient ones, since the souls are not bound to the bodies. Ghosts are a grey area.)
Bento, that actually hurts me a little (last character was a gnoll druid, fun to roleplay her interactions with people who assumed she was “one of those beasts”).
Man, I need to play again instead of DMing.
enter the idiot, stage left.
Jeez, I think I’m pretty much Leslie at this point (minus the ex-husband, and + an ex long-term boyfriend). My wife and I fostered a homeless LGBT teenager a couple years ago, how Leslie is trying to mom is pretty realistic to that experience.
Slinking home because they’ve already mommed up?
Surely you’ve heard of having TWO MOMS!
What is it about webcomic characters and pancakes? That’s all they eat over at “Questionable Content” too.
If I came out the other end of what this cast did, I’d want bacon and cheddar on a toasted asiago & jalapeno bagel. Maybe two.
And bottomless coffee.
Pancakes are good.
I didn’t see anything wrong with pancakes and cereal when I started reading your comment, but your choices are so obviously better that I’ve completely changed my mind
Personally I’m a fan of Breakfast burritos drizzled with Smokey Chipotle sauce and a side of corn relish. Also plenty of hot black coffee.
A wild Congress rep appears
Yes, Becky! GO TO YOUR REAL MOM! GO TO ROBIN!
Taxpayer Mommy
Claiming „there is no one left to hurt me“ is definitely provoking fate.
Ah, to be young again and believing there is actually an end to it.
Troubling thought… I wonder how many of Blaine’s unsavory benefactors have also been major donors to prior DeSanto campaigns. Not that Robin would ever have put much thought into it, but… if her campaign money suddenly dries up, thanks to her staffer’s “indescretions…”
Dina is conributing
So this is how Leslie and Robin get together. Co-moms!