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NEANDERTHAL FINGERPRINT! NEANDERTHAL FINGERPRINT! NEANDERTHAL FINGERPRINT! NEANDERTHAL FINGERPRINT! NEANDERTHAL FINGERPRINT! NEANDERTHAL FINGERPRINT! NEANDERTHAL FINGERPRINT! NEANDERTHAL FINGERPRINT! NEANDERTHAL FINGERPRINT! NEANDERTHAL FINGERPRINT! 🤯
www.theguardian.com/science/2025...
Patrick Willems @patrickhwillems.bsky.social ⋅ 1m
The Verge @theverge.com ⋅ 2d
Transformers Wiki @tfwiki.net ⋅ 2d
Josiah Hawthorne @josiahhawthorne.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
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️𝓝𝓪𝓷𝓲 
optimistic interpretation: Dina has an exhibitionistic element?
Is that optimistic? I assumed it was like an NTR thing. She’s turned on by how much she’s NOT fucking Joe.
I reckon she’s aroused by how much Joe is sexually frustrated / intimidated / envious / dominated.
Wondering if Joe would take that as an insult or a compliment? Girls boning while thinking about how much they don’t want to bone him is a catch 22 scenario.
I am picturing myself in that scenario and I definitely am getting a super conflicted feeling.
Joe would honestly consider it the greater good, perhaps.
In any case, it wouldn’t insult him, especially with his self-loathing he’s kind of had for months now.
The presence of Joe causes women to want to have sex. When it comes to Joe and sex, there’s always a way to frame it in the positive.
For all that he gets a lot of flack for the List he has been portrayed as a generally unselfish lover, so I think he’d see it as Becky and Dina getting to enjoy themselves. If he has to take the hit to make that happen, it seems like he wouldn’t have a problem with it.
Optimistic outcome: More experimentation is required to confirm or reject any further hypotheses. A LOT more experimentation.
What if it’s just that she enjoys when someone meets her where she is and speaks a language that makes sense to her. So we all assume it’s bc Joe is hunky but really it’s about not having to mask. That others are communicating in a way she prefers and allows her to relax a bit and feel safe.
This is an interesting hypothesis that requires further experimentation to confirm or deny. I’m sure this does not bother Becky as the experiments might end up in several variations of Pd and 69 (nice).
Yeah this, if Joe’s doing anything for her arousal, it is absolutely just the usage of “obligatory greeting” and any related language usage
Nah.
She’s a dom and she needs some dom time first.
This followed this (particularly panel 4) and Joe just happened to be in between. I think that’s the core of it.
It’s also possible that “lab partners” may be a requirement of course.
And I suppose you can’t rule out Joe triggering Dina’s dom urges a bit too. “DOWN LARGE ANIMAL.” After all, he is big, like dinosaur.
Maybe Joe asking her about her scientific progress was the spark that got things going.
Scientific progress goes “boink”, after all.
Ah, fantastic. Part 2 of Operation: A.M.A.T.E.R.A.S.U. begins.
*plays “Mystery Kindaichi Band” on hacked muzak*
So, anyone ever see that episode of Black Books where Fran meets a guy she hates but whose voice she finds super sexy, so she phones him up to have a conversation with him while unbeknownst to the guy she’s having…personal time while they talk?
Becky just needs to get Dina a Bluetooth headset and find an excuse to call Joe at opportune moments.
Yes, it’s one of my favourites, the sexy voiced man is played by Peter Serafinowicz, voice of Darth Maul.
Ha! One of my favorites! “This is the Shipping News”
“Do you need me to come, Fran?”
The greetings are obligatory but the pants euphoria is optional.
Dina has updated her terms of service. Pants euphoria is now mandatory.
It’s complimentary.
I do love watching Joe and Dina interact. I dunno if Becky will in a moment buuuuut this is about me.
They have a very Strong Guy and Wolfsbane vibe.
For example:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-12/02-ill-leave-you-a-phantom/ridesdue/
That’s not what I was hoping for at all. Seems Becky feels the same.
Is this what the kids these days call “Cuckqueening”?
Any chance we can get Becky’s face from panel 5 blown up in HD?
IDK, i think it works at this scale
Becky I promise you’re mistaken
I agree, but the reaction…
(related: given all the times we’ve seen Becky poke Joyce to get similar responses for her own entertainment, and the hints at how many other times she’s done it before, I submit that this is entirely deserved.)
It’s a *little* bit funny, honestly.
Yeah that seems like a premature reaction
It does. And yet, Obligatory greeting another variable.
Becky kinda strikes me as insecure with her relationships. she was incredibly threatened by Dorothy and I’ve always kinda suspected that her not wanting Joyce to know that she and Dina went to the bone zone is a mixture of her being scared that Joyce would abandon her, and complicated feelings left over from having an unrequited crush on Joyce.
And with people in general (ie wanting to glue herself to Billie and Ruth when they were in the hospital, leaping to Amber’s side after their dads died).. If I was going to armchair-diagnose (which I wouldn’t IRL but will speculate on a fictional character) I’d blame part of it on her mom’s death and say she’s worried everyone’s going to just disappear on her, without warning or explanation.
I think you’re correct on all counts.
Can I say it? I love the Joe/Dina friendship. One of the cutest things.
Regarding it as a friendship is interesting to me, because I’ve been going back and rereading their interactions and Dina seems pretty cold on him, and vice versa. “Obligatory greetings” seems like a cute affectation on his part, but rereading the strip where he first uses it, I think it’s actually because he genuinely because he doesn’t know her that well and the greeting is, in fact, obligatory. They never interacted on panel before this science class, and in their first two interactions she seems a little reluctant to engage with him.
It’s not until she returns the performative eye contact that they have anything resembling an actual rapport, and it does kinda seem like Dina’s just doing what she feels like she has to be doing because of social norms, rather than any real interest in his well-being. (She also seems to be making fun of him through most of it.)
That said, I do think Joe’s on firmer footing with her in this early stage than he was during the early stages of his relationship with Joyce or Sarah, and I think it’s probably encouraging that Dina’s willing to play along with “obligatory greeting”. There’s the seeds of something there, but I think calling them friends is maybe, to borrow a phrase, a shot in the dark.
I assumed that Joe’s “Obligatory greeting” phrase was his way of letting Dina know that he understands that she finds lots of social cues difficult to parse, and he thinks there’s nothing wrong with that, while also making a very mild joke about it.
If I had to guess I’d say that Dina appreciates that.
But it’s possible that I’m reading too much into it. And I agree, it doesn’t quite qualify them as friends, just friendly.
I’m inclined to have that reading of it.
Like, keep in mind that Joe has also let Dina ride on him like she was Yoda. I don’t think he minds her, and like Sarah, he probably appreciates certain aspects of how low key Dina can be.
Judging by other iterations of Joe, too, he might have Engineer Brain. Which is to say, he genuinely appreciates that Dina says what she means and means what she says. She might be, for him, the easy mode of people. He puts in social interaction, she returns the social interaction, and neither of them has to wonder ‘what does THAT mean’.
>and neither of them has to wonder ‘what does THAT mean’.
And / or neither of them mind clarifying what that means.
Yeah, I mean, he also actively invites her to talk about his shame, so I think he’s definitely warmed up to her a little. (That or it’s another situation like helping Joyce with her folks, where the fact that she’s a stranger makes it easier.) Whether that’s reciprocal, I think, requires more data.
I like to think she’s just rolling with it as an avenue to exploring in-jokes.
I think it’s a reference to Questionable Content.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-11/05-as-long-as-its-free/lunchlunch/
Oh wow, that scene is great. I had forgotten all about it already.
See: https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=3706
I don’t think they’re bosom buddies or anything, but they seem to click with each other on some level; Joe is one of the few people who interacts with her without overwhelming any of her senses or questions any of her behaviour, and Dina is one of the very few women who Joe has never shown any inkling of trying to hit on, so they can just be themselves around each other.
I don’t think it’s necessarily friendship, more like, comfort.
The impression I have is that they have mutually settled into a friendly acquaintances dynamic with a general agreement that neither is interested in nor obligated to push into further closeness
Yeah, that. I wouldn’t call it a friendship. More along the lines of two people who aren’t close, but are comfortable with the way they’ve learned how to interact with one another, when their overlapping friendships bring them together.
I really love how this comic does eyes.
…oh, no.
OH, NO.
(The following is best read in the voice of either Unshō Ishizuka or Richard Epcar, depending on reader preference)
OOOOOOOOOH NOOOOOOOOOO!!!
How about the voice of Joseph Joestar?
The two names I listed are Joseph’s Japanese and English VAs, respectively, so same difference!
well played. or Joed, as the case may be.
“OH YES” on the other hand should always be read in the voice of Paul Bearer.
Or George Takei. “Oh, myyyy… “
(Unshō Ishizuka voice, full-throated) SONAFAbongo
also I really like Joe’s shirt choice today
Joe honestly dresses real nicely. He has a regular colour scheme, and since he let his stubble grow out and his hair get a little wilder, it’s all combining to make him pretty attractive.
Andddd Joe and Dina DO both have that “Dig It” T-shirt.
Dina has (usually) different from Joe fashion, but also good.
It’s probably worth noting that Dina attributed the loss of her pants euphoria the first time to the fact that Joe kept talking.
The question is whether Becky will remember that.
YOU POOR STUPID BABIES
I do think Becky is perhaps misinterpreting the factors for Dina arousal here. Sure Joe was there but they also just finished actively doing science. Standing around saying “lab partners” maybe isn’t her trigger here as much as hands on participation.
Eh, if that were true, she would have been aroused here too —
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-11/05-as-long-as-its-free/lessonplan/
Funny how this doesn’t actually answer the question but makes a punchline about avoiding it. We still don’t know if Dina was aroused, we just know she won’t tell Joe.
Becky may be misinterpreting things, but its not outside the ream of possibility.
Its a pretty safe bet that Dina does love Becky, and that she is somewhere on the asexuality spectrum. But its possible that despite her relationship with Becky, she is actually bisexual and/or heterosexual to some degree. (In which case she’s only “lesbian” because Becky was the first person she had a relationship with.)
Joe is an attractive man, and he seems to treat Dina as an equal (not belittling her as some have), without all the macho overtones of his attempts to be a lady’s man. The combination of attractiveness and his attitude might make him attractive to her to some degree, helping her achieve the “euphoria in her pants”.
Dina is definitely bi/pan – in the walkyverse she dated both Walky and Mike. Of course, this isn’t something that is “known” to her in the dumbiverse, as her first relationship is with Becky, another woman. Hopefully Dina also being attracted to men to some degree doesn’t hurt her relationship with Becky.
I’d like to hope Becky would be more secure in their relationship and open minded enough to except Dina’s sexuality wherever it leads. There’s enough stereotypes around bisexual/pansexual(ity). Just because Dina might have an attraction to Joe which at the moment is still very debatable doesn’t mean it invalidates the attraction and appreciation for Becky, Dina has proven she has.
I would also like to hope, but Becky is already full of insecurities and such and sometimes when you’re very insecure you can be prone to self-sabotage, especially since Dina not being as into Becky as much as Becky is into Dina, sexually, is already a big source of insecurity. If she thinks – I’m going to assume wrongly, since Dina has never given this impression – that Dina gets “pants euphoria” from Joe, it could easily cause problems.
Becky is absolutely, 100%, in *no way, shape, or form*, secure in ANY of her relationships, including the one with Dina, who she already has a boatload of sexual anxieties about because she doesn’t understand asexuality at all and she’s still taking it kinda personally that her asexual girlfriend (who is still interested in having sex with her) doesn’t have a raging lady-boner to match Becky’s own at all times.
None of this is weird, honestly. Nothing in Becky’s life prepared Becky for *this* phase in Becky’s life. She’s winging it, same as all of them. Plus she’s an orphan who lost her parents to suicide and murder, she was a kidnap victim twice over, and her childhood best friend and first love, the person upon whom she has rested the rock of her emotional stability, is now an apostate who’s rejected Christ, which is the same thing as rejecting Becky, obviously!
I do get that Becks has a lot of baggage and hang ups so I don’t want to criticize too much, especially since we don’t know what she’s thinking yet.
That being said it’s not hard to just trust your girlfriend. Dina has been very understanding, patient, and open with communicating her desires with Becky. At some point Becks has got to trust that Dina is into her. Dina has not stated or acted in anyway that conveys anything else.
Oh I agree completely. I’m not enjoying the ways Becky’s anxieties about loss are manifesting, these days (among other things, they’re deeply harmful to Joyce, who I’m partial to). I just try to remind myself that she comes by them honestly, and deserves grace as much as everyone else, even when she annoys the hell out of me.
Aaaah! I think Dina has two thumbs in the first panel!
Nope, thats Becky’s finger! Just in shadow
Now, I recognize intellectually that that’s actually Becky’s middle finger, but that’s not going to stop me from giving you mine (entirely facetiously) for saying that and ruining that panel and my evening.
Hey if Joe’s what gets her gears turning, I don’t see a problem. She’s happy to have sex with Becky once she’s turned on. Well, the logistics might be a problem if she has to talk to Joe every time.
Friggin’ adventure-game-puzzle-ass arousal mechanic.
Sadly there’s no YouTube walkthrough for how to turn on Dina.
there’s not even a paid hint hotline :/
You gotta go to the Usenet newsgroup
You gotta check the Usenet newsgroup
Good luck finding an NNTP server that still carries it.
All too true.
(I miss you, comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.adventure)
It’s like when only one person in the house is good at opening brand new jars and you need to find them whenever you want pickles.
well , maybe for a short term solution but it is a problem if they’re stilll together like 5 years from now and joe is halfway across the country lol
Just gotta get him on facetime.
Or maybe a voice recording would work. Needs rigorous testing.
I mean, clearly not. For one, Joe wasn’t actually in the room at the time for the second one; for another, Joe and Dina have interacted on several other occasions, none of which, to my knowledge, resulted in pants euphoria.
(The actual answer is probably that there are thousands of mostly invisible variables at play – human bodies and brains are nigh-infinitely complex, after all.)
Very true. I guess all we can do for now is wait for better evidence.
Joe had actually had a brief conversation with Becky and Dina and run off seconds before Dina got pants euphoria.
“The actual answer is probably that there are thousands of mostly invisible variables at play – human bodies and brains are nigh-infinitely complex, after all.”
I disagree, it’s obviously some kind of sleeper agent thing where one specific trigger phrase will get Dina hot and bothered. A Moisturian Candidate situation, if you will.
I LOLed at that but only because I Understood The Reference dot GIF.
Well that’s an unexpected aphrodisiac.
mmmmmMMMMMMM M M M M M M
Could be his pheromones.
Believe it or not, it’s scientifically proven humans are one of the few animals that DON’T have pheromones.
Really? Citation, please!
I mean, some people ARE into sweat. to each their own, tho too much sweat or too much cologne/perfume in the other direction would be too much, you never know
humans produce GOBS of pheromones. Clouds of them.
whats questioanble is whether we have the ability to perceive them, supposedly those nerves in our noses dont work.
Argh. I need to go to sleep and not spend half the night coming up with links to keep someone from being wrong on the Internet. Have to get up early in the morning.
… ew.
subjectively gross, but thankfully for you, empirically untrue.
Well, I guess it depends on how far you’re willing to stretch the definition of “pheromone”. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Other than like foods/natural aphrodiasics or drugs to help with ed and such I’d assume even if it’s ‘instinct’ most ppl would be able to ignore it or at least control themselves, asexual or not.
Possibly on-topic, possibly general, depending on where this goes: There’s an irony in that Joe is sometimes the most objectified character in this webcomic, in-universe. A lot of that is his own doing, whether it was his own desire for action meaning he went along with it, and a lot of that is him getting it into his head that he’s doomed to repeat his father’s mistakes and thus he eschews romantic relationships.
It sort of reminds me to a degree of Jacob’s Shortpacked storyline with sex addiction, though there are also significant differences.
See, I don’t see this at all. Penny might’ve objectified him, but for Roz it was all about his stamina, for Malaya it was all about his tendency to piss people off, and for Liz it was all about his experience.
Like, yes, Joe is drawn to be kinda conventionally attractive, I guess? Square jaws, square shoulders, well-built. But I feel like the occasions where people actually remark on that are few and far between.
I think Booster might also have said something alluding to his attractiveness?
Pretty sure they did, yeah. In any case, I am not just talking about looks-wise, since that’d possibly put Jacob in the running.
I mean more that Joe’s basically treated as a sexual object. Sometimes that’s about his looks, but I mean that even the people who AREN’T trying to fuck him often boil him down to “creature who fucks, that’s it, that’s the alpha and omega of what he is”. He has leaned into it, yes, but we’ve also seen he isn’t exactly happy about it.
I wouldn’t call that being objectified. Objectification isn’t just when people think negative thoughts about you or oversimplify you. Objectification is when people take your consent out of it entirely, treating you as something to be owned or possessed, figuratively treating you like an object. If Joe was being objectified, he’d be subject to constant comments about his appearance, sexual propositions or demands, unwanted touching and invasion of personal space, and if he objected he would be ignored or dismissed.
But that’s not what happens–most women actively avoid or scorn him. When he behaves sexually, most people tell him to stop. A small subset reciprocate, and have not (at least that we’ve seen) traipsed over what few boundaries he has in any way, shape, or form.
People do draw conclusions about Joe, but those conclusions are not that they own or are entitled to his body. Those conclusions are that he’s kind of a creep. And in fairness, he was–a lot of his past behavior towards women fits the definition of objectification!
I wouldn’t say Joe is really objectified very much at all.
He may be oversimplified into ‘the list guy’ which is deserved as if you don’t want to be ‘the list guy’ you don’t make a list, but that isn’t viewing him as a sex object. And people that have had casual flings with him, have not acted entitled to him against his will, don’t make unwarranted undesired comments, don’t really think about him later or talk about him to others as if he only existed for sex in a fetishing way. No one minimises his autonomy, treats him as a possession or makes comments that make him uncomfortable despite his protests.
Jacob has been objectified but Joe… isn’t really. No one befriends Joe just to bang him or treats him as if he has no autonomy or tries to force a relationship that he doesn’t want. People don’t SEE Joe for who he is but that is because he has cultivated his own reputation to be the way it is, not because people think sex is all he is good for. The only one who treats him as if that is the case… is himself.
*grabs the spray bottle* No! Bad Becky! Bad! No thinking stuff like that! No paranoia here, trust your girlfriend!
When do we start accusing Becky of freaking out on Dina for actually being attracted to Joe and not her, thus catastrophically ending their tenuous and imperilled relationship forever, for real this time, we swear?
Three days from now, it’s on my calendar. (I kid!)
well, she did tell him and liz that she ‘would’ but doesn’t mean that she’s necessarily gonna get any satisfaction out of him rather than scientific curiosity
Don’t give people ideas, we’ve got more than enough things people are fighting about in the comments to each strip already.
“If what I think is happening is happening, it better not be”
Someone’s feeling horny
Did I miss something that happened in comic, how come everyone is saying that Dina is attracted to Joe? I would like to see where that idea came from, and if I am just forgetful here or totally oblivious.
It’s because of the comic structure. Dina says something is missing for her pants euphoria and in the next panel Joe appears, implying he’s what’s missing
There is also the correlation with earlier events. Joe was there.
Not only that, you have Becky’s eyes in the last panel (drawn as almost round black dots with white pupils), which is often used to denote shock or horror in the comic (like the time Joyce and Becky were talking about breaking into Becky’s house and a waitress overheard the plan). The implication is that Becky came to some sort of shock over sex talk and the arrival of Joe.
(The alt-text for the comic also talks about ‘the eyes’)
Thanks y’all for the responses. I’m still not sure I buy it, since Dina doesn’t react in a way to suggest that she’s attracted to Joe here, it seems more likely to me that Becky is afraid of that, and that’s the function of how Joe’s entrance is framed.
Is Joe the “missing piece”? Dunno, but Becky’s face thinking about the possibility is hilarious! Poor Becky…
She’s not but Becky has a bundle of neuroses.
“Dumbing of Age, the Missing Variable Arc”.
Coming soon on Slipshine for Statisticians.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/tag/dina+joe+becky/
Ohhh…..noooooooo
or
Oh Yes!
maybe it’s the elevator.
dina could just have a secret elevator fetish.
Elevators are known for “going down” on behalf of lesbians everywhere.
(Also for straight people too for that matter.)
Well there was a hit song about the subject:
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=L4KBy0Zro4s
Oh shit I can search multiple characters at once by typing “+”. That is gonna be invaluable knowledge for searching references.
happy to be of service.
DUN DUN DUUUUUUUNNN!!!
Seriously though, I’m curious to see what this will lead to. XD Is Joe going to be needed as some kind of cerebral fluffer for our adorable lesbian pair?
Jos is, if anything, cerebral.
I doubt they will use Joe as a “cerebral fluffer”.
Becky is extremely hardcore lesbian at this point (where even the male nudity at the haunted house evoked outrage, rather than a “meh… those exist who cares” that you might expect from someone more… mature.) She will more likely see any interest that Dina has in Joe as a betrayal rather than an a cerebral sex stimulant.
That kuleshov effect is deadly
Is Joe the missing ingredient.
Possibly his perpetual horniness rubs off on Dina.
Becky, absolutely nothing can possibly go wrong with your plan, and I unreservedly endorse it.
… yes, I know you haven’t actually told us what the plan is that popped into your head, fully-formed, in this instant. But I unreservedly endorse it regardless.
I don’t think that expression indicates “plan”, only “panic”.
I think the plan is to have a breakdown about Dina being attracted to Joe (allegedly).
this not quite how becky envisioned life as a lesbian
Hmm, I need to go back and check the two instances where Dina has had PE and see what may have catalyzed it. We at least know Joe is tangentially involved. Give me a moment…
This one and that one suggests that it is probably the acknowledgement or affirmation of the possessive i.e. ‘girlfriend’ or ‘lab partner’ by someone. Though this page suggests otherwise, it may just be an outlier.
Interesting theory. “I’m yours, you Own me” would seem to be a conclusive test … but I’m not sure that Becky has the knowledge, at this time, to conceive or phrase it thus.
(Like, I strongly doubt she even knows what “top” means, aside from “something you wear.” Likewise “sub” except as “what my employer sells, along with pizza.”)
I’m pretty sure Becky knows Dina owns her, I just don’t think she’s comfortable saying it. And probably feels like putting Dina before God.
Becky.exe stopped responding
Upcoming drama: Dina is actually physically attracted to Joe(or his presence), regardless that she is in lab partners with Becky.
Big fan of obligatory greetings.