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Please, change your avatar. I think this comment is about social bubbles of cult and hate, but with that avatar (and its expression) it looks like what you are saying is something very different.
Joyce: “Boy, I wish my bubble had been poked sooner. Such a firm, resilient bubble, it required a lot of work to penetrate! What? Why are you all laughing at my big bubble?”
I think it’s one of the most fascinating things that Joyce’s big huge revelation of her lack of faith doesn’t bother Carol in the slightest because she’s just “acting out.”
That’s because it was never about faith to begin with. It was just a tribal marker for her.
She’s already decided what their opinions are, and she’s not taking any input from them on the matter.
So long as she remains closed off in her own little, ahem… bubble, at least she won’t be very antagonistic about it all.
For a christian fundamentalist like Carol, the children aren’t people who she raised, but extensions and property of herself. They’re not “allowed” to believe differently than her, because according to her, they ARE hers. If they ever stray from being her property they get cut off entirely, like Jordan apparently was. Boys may have some leeway as long as they return to thinking exactly as they were told, i.s. the Prodigal Son, but girls are not allowed even that; they are property of the parents until sold off in marriage to be property of their husbands.
They also see their children leaving the cult as a huge slight and insult on them. Though from experience with my mom, they can turn any disagreement into what they perceive as an insult on their honor as parents. Hence Jordan apparently being cut off from the family. I expect Jocelyn will likewise be cut off, if she hasn’t already.
I forsee lots of drama when/if Carol ever realizes that Joyce is her own person and did leave the fold entirely. Given that Becky’s coming out led to a violent kidnapping, that Carol facilitated and agreed with…
Reminds me of an article I read where the writer explained that when he says “my kids”, he means the children he is the father of.
But there are other people who say “my kids” and mean is as “these children who belong to me”.
Only as long as he “deserved” her, by thinking and acting in the “right” ways. Once he “lost his way” by daring to disagree with “the truth”, he invalidated his own authority in her eyes.
Carol wants her kids, especially Joyce, to say the right hateful things, in the right subtle way, and to do the right hateful things, in the right subtle way. What Joyce believes inside isn’t important; it’s what Joyce does where everyone can see and hear, that’s important.
Also, Spider-Man is religious in the comics but not super about it like Matt Murdoch as confirmed by the Infinity Crusade recruiting him way back in the Nineties.
Reed Richards notably is an atheist despite meeting God/Jack Kirby and visiting Heaven.
It’s tough to maintain any faith in a universe where you can turn into a giant spider and then give birth to yourself, just to get organic web shooters.
Honestly, that seems nuts to me. TikTok is a skinnerbox style nightmare to begin with, but now that they’ve been pulled out these people want to go right back into a nearly identical one. Then off all the knock-offs they could select, they choose another one run by China – the nation that uses its tax income to support slave labor camps and build nukes to point at their cities? At least with American companies like Youtube you know your taxes are being put to good use – keeping people locked up in private prisons for the benefit of wealthy lobbying groups and building nukes to point at, I guess Greenland now for some insane reason? You may say that makes little difference, but I say here there is at always hope a vote will turn things around – and Greenland is already a frozen hellscape, so how much worse can it really get?
pretty much all commercial social media is a skinnerbox trap,
besides the fact is that banning TikTok here wouldn’t reduce China’s business tax income by even a SMIDGE, on account that they produce over 80% of the worlds consumer electronics
it was never about China, the app was banned because it was one of the biggest platforms with a majorly left-leaning userbase, and as usual China is neo-mercantilists’ go-to for anti-socialist red-baiting (9-9)
There’s extreme-right propoganda on pretty much ALL major social media, sadly
Pew Research revealed that statistically, TikTok was the only major social platform where news influencers didn’t skew overwhelmingly conservative, and also had the highest number of LGBTQ news influencers, which is the REAL reason politicians wanted to ban it
I guess the “real” reason I was referring to was actually two LOL
conservative politician’s alleged motivations for banning apps like TikTok and their other proposed policies constantly contradict each other, since at least the days of so-called “Reaganomics”, central to their strategy has been about getting the vote of bigots without being *openly* hateful, and are often opportunistic in doing so
for instance many conservative politicians don’t know shit about epidemiology, but what they DO know is they don’t wanna blame 1,000,000+ unnecessary COVID deaths on anti-vaxxers/anti-maskers who just so happen to be some of their most ardent supporters they need on their side to get re-elected
thus by calling it the “Chinese Virus”, it’s a mutual benefit both to them, nationalists who use China for red-baiting, and bigots who wanna mainstream Asian Hate
Old news, us leftists are all on Bluesky now where we can filter out the crazies. Its driving them nuts they like to call us “Bluecry” but they are the ones crying because we don’t have to listen to them.
Is that even actually happening? I swear, I’ve seen the phrase “tiktok banned” in my Google suggested searches ever since TikTok got popular, and it hasn’t gone anywhere. Not that anything of value would be lost.
True, but not really the point. Taffy asked if it was actually going to be banned and the answer is yes, it has been (for now). Being able to access it through a VPN doesn’t mean it’s not banned.
VPNs don’t work this time, TikTok banned all accounts created in the US. So you have to not only use a VPN, but create an entirely new account in a different country.
Was back up when I checked at 10. There’s an ass-kissy message thanking the melting Creamsicle for saving them somehow, and one message I saw equated it (as a neuro-spicy person) to that feeling when you enter your bedroom and you are convinced someone had been in there, but you won’t be able to say for certain until you figure out what’s been touched, moved, or taken.
LOL at hoping a vote will turn things around; as if votes will be allowed again in the future. Trump did promise people would never need to vote again if he was re-elected…
“Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.”
Indeed. Google does not forward data to the US government. TikTok must, by law, forward all data to the Chinese government. It’s even got Party representatives in the company – it must, by law.
even if companies like Google aren’t governments on paper, the legitimized coercive power of corporations on our daily lives is one which can rival that of the *official* democratically elected state if unchecked — at which point the capitalist hegemony disrupts the state’s monopoly on the legitimate means of coercion within its territory, at which point “the” state by definition doesn’t exist
TL;DR, if supremely wealthy capital owners are allowed to continue voting with their money as increasingly as they are, we may as well not have a democratic government at all ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Private prisons do offer some perverse incentives, and barring some major reform they should go away. That said, they’re pretty much the least of the US justice system’s problems. Any money their operators spend on lobbying is a drop in the bucket compared to the money spent by police and (public) prison guards’ unions.
You’re right, they should only use apps based in the USA, since the USA would never use nuclear weapons on civilian targets or spend tax money on slave labour camps…
From what I’ve heard from Americans who started using Rednote because of the Tiktok ban, a lot of them are learning, by actually talking with Chinese people on that app, that most of the things they were told about China and Chinese people by the US government and media were lies. So while I think Tiktok ban was stupid, at least there’s one good thing that’s come about as a result of it.
In this picture, there’s a Red Note user from Jiangsu asking: “why do you get both weekend days off and not have to work overtime?” The reply is marked as coming from America.
This has been commented by this picture and the following:
> Ban TikTok
> American users flock to a new Chinese app with users in Mainland China
> Chinese youth get oneshotted by American culture
> Anti-CCP color revolution by end of 2025
strictly speaking, unions and striking by themselves aren’t socialism, at least insofar as the participants’ only intention is to get better working conditions through more immediate reform of the current capitalist social order
socialism is characterized by long-term intention to see to it that the capitalist social order is abolished entirely via social ownership and democratic management of the means of production as opposed to private ownership by a tiny fraction of society with the vast majority of money and stores of value.
It’s entirely possible it won’t stay dead. Depends on how the new admin wants to handle it.
I do find it funny in a frustrating sort of way that Biden’s team didn’t try to stall this though. It’s a policy that’s going to piss a lot of people off that their political enemies proposed, but the Dems decided they just had to get it under the wire so they could take credit for shutting it down and give the Republicans the option to swoop in and fix the problem they caused.
I think the funniest part of the ban is that marvel snap apparently got caught in the crossfire bc it’s owned by a subsidiary of byte dance or something like that
Also like, they only banned it in app storesno? Can’t android users just get an apk of future updates?
It does! Estrogen can increase overall body fat percentage as well as changing the distribution towards a more hourglass silhouette (hips, thighs, boobs and butt) while higher testosterone increases the likelihood of an apple body shape (storing more fat in the waist and belly). I not a doctor and endocrine systems are stupid complicated and I don’t know how much role other hormones and other factors have to play, and I know that with hormones it is often more about levels relative to each other rather than absolute amounts in the body, but…yeah, I think she was talking about butts.
maybe… but the “canon” female body shape is not just a product of fat or bumps distribution. The skeleton below the fat and muscle is there too. The shape of the ribcage for starters. The hipbone do not only widen, it gets a different angle with the spine, and that in return gives a particular angle to the femurs… it really matters when you are in the development of your skeleton for the hormons to have a chance to do their job.
I’m not sure who brought up skeletons, but Estrogen absolutely changes fat distribution and adds curves to your body shape. Your mileage may vary, but some degree of thicc is coming your way.
I feel the context is more like Jocelyne coming to atheism but also to figure herself out after getting poked when she thought she was still a he. So at the time everyone involved thought it was gay. Now the former partners still are gay but she’s not.
When Jocelyne and Ethan meet for the first time, they clearly have eyes for one another, but when Ethan gets a moment to ask her about her sexuality she responds “I’m *not* actually gay…”. She definitely likes guys, from context, and so that response reads to me as if she’s both gently correcting Ethan’s read but also maybe talking about the process of herself coming to understand her gender and identity. I’d hazard a guess that being with various gay masc people happened first and full hatching came later.
At the time that Jocelyne is talking about, Jocelyne was presenting as and believed herself to be a man, and was strictly into men (she’s noted that her interest in women only cropped up after getting on HRT). It makes sense that her early sexual experiences at that time were with gay men, and that does not invalidate her identity.
Joyce has decided that clearly all religion is silly and interpretations of Christianity because she knows all of their beliefs as they are presumably identical to the one type she knows.
As someone who was raised nondenominational Christian and left the religion when I was a teenager, it is VERY hard to put that toothpaste back in the tube.
I respect people who find comfort/community in their faith, so long as they don’t push their beliefs on others or use those beliefs to justify harm. But I can’t see myself aligning with any religious or spiritual tradition (even ones that were different from the one I grew up with) because I do not believe things for which there is no tangible proof, which is a prerequisite to every religious tradition of which I am personally aware.
Then I explained pantheism wrong unless you assume spiritual = supernatural. For me, consciousness is inherently spiritual and if you deny consciousness exists then you are making a possibly true statement but one that is presently ignored by science.
I won’t go as far as “nonsense” but I would say it’s an untestable claim. Because all we have for making claims falsifiable is derived from the natural, and the supernatural is by definition distinct from it.
Eh, philosophically that puts the burden of proof on the religion. Because a scientist claims the supernatural is anything that doesn’t exist when, by definition, religious people believe that what they worship exists.
If you could prove a miracle exists by, say, “Q” or the Cheese or Marvel Thor then the argument would be that it wouldn’t be a miracle. Which i don’t think religious people would ever do.
The burden of proof IS on the religion. Scientists don’t claim anything. The scientific position is “prove it”. Religions are the ones making claims without proof.
Religious people don’t claim they believe in nonprovable things. Many DO and wrong things. But if they believe in a provable thing, it doesn’t magically become non-religious.
I mean they might disagree on some details, but if you find issue with the core premise then it doesn’t matter how many denominations and what their views are because your issue is with the core premise they all have.
Given Willis’ comic is a humanitarian celebration of secular humanism, I’m not trying to deny anyone’s beliefs on this. Also, I haven’t gotten to use “secular humanism” outside of Star Trek forums so +1 for this post thread.
But it seems a lot of definition of religion varies a lot here. Like Buddhist traditions that don’t believe in an afterlife or gods as anything but metaphor. Or the guys who didn’t think Confucianism was a religion.
“woo” as in, to seek someone’s love with false promises.
fitting, given woo-meisters within pseudo-science and religious authoritarianism seek people’s admiration, falsely promising them miraculous and easily understandable knowledge
I would assert that much woo-ing is genuine: to seek to inspire love in one whom one loves. Yes, often with rash or frankly impossible promises, but sincerely given.
I _think_ in this case it’s “a slang term used to describe those who believe in phenomena that lacks substantiated evidence to prove the claim of the phenomena.”
Eh, Einstein and Spinoza didn’t believe in the supernatural but claimed Jewish identity as a religion not just an ethnicity. Because they inherently believed in God=Universe.
Like I said, if you believe religion=stuff that doesn’t exist, you just don’t know actual religion. Non-theistic religions are incredibly common and there are plenty that simply apply the concept of the divine to reality or the consciousness.
Einstein’s religious views are basically summarized as an impersonal God that is indistinguishable from the universe’s laws and natural inclination as I understand it.
Which is to say that God=evolution, gravity, math, and so on.
basically yee, the only discrepancy being that God / The Divine as a concept is something humans will never be able to fully grasp,
modern physicists refer to scientific “laws” as “principles” now, if only to better reflect the epistemology of science, i.e. the nature, origins and limits as human knowledge which are basically but human-made tools for understanding our world, which are always subject to falsification and improvement
Newtonian “Laws” of Motion like F = MA are ultimately descriptors, not controllers (same goes for pretty much all scientific knowledge), as much as they retain their usefulness for predicting the motion of everyday objects, they break down once we approach reference frames near the speed of light, hence Einstein’s pioneering of the Theories of Relativity to better understand what was happening in these situations
that being said, advancement of scientific knowledge and personal development of one’s spirituality are tasks which require rather different modes of thinking, at least in my experience and that of scientists I’m friends with from all kinds of faiths, mono/theistic or not
Einstein quote, “The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.”
Letter to philosopher Eric Gutkind, January 3, 1954.
She is very clear about why “Because magic is silly” and it is. The idea that she just has “the wrong religion” and that somebody else’s (nicer) one would bring her back in the fold is just slamming on atheists.
The most bizarre thing about having been an atheist as long as I have is this idea that something happened to make me wanna be atheist. Like I had some negative experience with Christianity or organized religion or grew up in a conservative environment and naw.
I just sorta realized one day I don’t believe in this stuff. Like how I don’t believe in Santa or Super Mario. So in a funny way I find it hard to relate to a lot of other atheists and agnostics. Sometimes I even wish I DID believe in an afterlife cuz at least it would give me comfort that I, and everyone I love, aren’t heading towards a cold empty cessation of consciousness.
I’m a lifelong agnostic. Religion was never a factor in my upbringing beyond basic cultural background radiation stuff, so yeah, I’m kinda there with you.
Same. I realised in primary school (been to Catholic schools all my life. That’s not a big deal in Britain though) that I didn’t believe any of the god stuff.
Honestly I don’t think I ever really believed in it. I went to sunday school and read the bible but it never once felt real to me, it was always just a bunch of dubious stories. The only thing that changed is that when I was about 17, my parents stopped making me go.
That is not to say I don’t get religion. I just think the goddess is a mercurial bongo, and she most certainly ain’t YHWH
My family wasn’t very religious when I was growing up and we only went to church on major holidays like Easter and Christmas, so while I believed in a god for a few years as a kid, I rarely prayed to it and was very apathetic about it. When I learned at the age of 14 that atheism was a thing, it made perfect sense to me and I stopped believing in any gods. Other atheists became atheists because of negative experiences with the religions they were raised in, but for me it was just realizing that there were others who didn’t believe in gods and saw how silly it all was.
Theoretical because she’s fictional, she only exists in this webcomic (unless Jeph Jacques decides she needs to visit Coffee of Doom, or maybe do an internship at Cubetown for some reason).
man, I really don’t get the last panel. The bubble metaphor is extremely straight forward, there’s no need for Dorothy to try to clarify what “bubble” stands for; it’s not a literal bubble! It’s a metaphor to say that both Joyce and her sister were raised in a cult-like environment where their social interactions and education were purposefully kept stunted to make sure they acquiesce to the fucked-up rules of their church.
The metaphorical bubble burst when both of them got exposed to people outside their church, particularly queer people and realized they were lied to.
But Jocelyn’s last sentence makes it sound like her bubble is her chest, something physical that people can literally poke. So she left the church and came out as trans because…gay people literally poked her boobs? Like in a sexual way? What the hell does this mean?
yeah it’s almost like I keep saying I don’t understand the last panel at all. I’m not making a disingenuous argument, I genuinely do not understand what the heck is happening in the last panel in terms of the metaphor.
I think you give them too much benefit of doubt, they don’t actually wanna understand what they claim to be confused about, they just wanna complain and make it up to be a bad thing when it’s been explained to them.
But its a common one, the entire time I transitioned NOBODY would believe I wasn’t doing that, my own doctor included. I wanted to give pre-need blood for my now partner for her surgery, (O Neg universal donor) and I was blocked becose nobody would believe I wasn’t sleeping with men.
Each event that Joyce went through was more bitter than the other, her decision was understandable, but in part it is sad that they killed her faith in that way.
I confess that even with those tragedies, Joyce’s faith would be preserved but with a more flexible approach, but surprisingly it would be Becky who would show that.
Firstly, it’s a bit weird to talk about a fictional character like that, but secondly, why exactly would it have been good for ”Joyce’s faith to have been preserved”?
She was raised to pretend she heard the voice of god, and to believe insane things about the natural world. Why would keeping her superstitious world view have been something good?
Joyce wasn’t traumatized out of it, she just pulled the thread of her mother’s rationalizations and realized there was nothing there but control and hatred.
By contrast, God is there as a comfort for Becky during her persecution and thus her ordeal increased her faith.
I doubt it, that’s not usually how it goes. That’s more of a Hollywood / Christian apologist explanation. Religious people going through a traumatic event tend to stick with their religion.
It’s usually what Joe and Joyce describe. Something mundane causes someone to want to question what they’d been trying to keep from questioning. Then once they’re questioning, they can realize we live in a non-supernatural world.
Not directly related to what you said, but it’s worth adding, it’s counter-productive to try to use a traumatic event to try to change someone’s worldview, and extremely callous.
From what I can tell (without going back through and rereading nearly everything), questioning the morals came first. Both Becky being gay and the reaction of those in her community to it, especially Ross and Carol
Hell, making friends with an atheist over her parents objections was a crack even before that.
She lost faith in her religious community and then in God. It was only well after that we saw her say anything about supernatural elements being a problem. If that was part of her journey, we never saw her struggle with it. Other than afterwards in a “Wait, I don’t have to believe this anymore” kind of way.
But my main point was really the first bit. That generic traumatic events often push people deeper into religion. Trauma caused by the religion itself, much less so, at least outside of a trapped in abuse religious context.
Joyce correcting the reason she became atheist in panel three is such an autistic response. I couldn’t begin to count the number of conversations where I reacted like that – correcting something that was slightly off – because it felt like a normal next thing to say and the whole conversation went
I mean, yes, but I think on some level Joyce feels the need to correct this because the way Joss put it sounds … kind of gay? And while she’s totally cool with that, it just happens that she also totally isn’t, and that should probably be clarified?
I think it actually is important to distinguish that she became atheist for HER OWN reasons, and Dorothy had nothing to do with them. Joyce’s atheism would have happened, all other things being equal, with or without Dorothy.
It’s not fair to credit Dorothy with Joyce’s accomplishments.
Not remotely a medical expert, but I would suppose it would depend on how large it was to start. My understanding is that too small a prostrate increases your chances of a more aggressive prostate cancer.
My avatar suddenly changes to Sal when I had Jason since I get in here (which I believe fitted much better with my incredible levels of lameness. I am not remotely cool enough to be Sal)
Man the way estradiol is spelled as fucked up. Somehow in all of my conversations with my trans friends I never actually saw the way it was spelled and just kind of assumed it was spelled like crocodile. My brain wants to pronounce the correct spelling es-tro-dee-all.
Please ignore from here down. I am playing mass Gravatar Roulette here in the past where it is less likely to annoy people. If you skip these posts you will miss nothing of substance. I mean, check at the very end in case someone added something post-comic.
Dunno. The different Lucy problem went away or was a figment of my imagination. One or the other. The other thing I was wrong about was that Amazigirl *is* in the rotation. I just haven’t managed to find her yet.
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Gotta pop ’em all!!!
POKING ON!!!
Please, change your avatar. I think this comment is about social bubbles of cult and hate, but with that avatar (and its expression) it looks like what you are saying is something very different.
bonk bonk
Social bubbles and buttsex. It can be both.
If you think it’s only about one, reread the comic.
Reminder that “buttsex” is an anagram of “subtext”.
Becky says not to make the buttsex text.
Holy shit…it is.
Fucking brilliant!
It’s both. Innuendo at its finest.
Pop bubbles, crack eggs, etc 8D;
dos huevos, ammi right? XD
Joyce: “Boy, I wish my bubble had been poked sooner. Such a firm, resilient bubble, it required a lot of work to penetrate! What? Why are you all laughing at my big bubble?”
Cue Scandalised Joyce Face in three…two…one…
Or, possibly three years our time in the future, when someone explains a bubble butt to her and she flashes back on this conversation.
As she looks slyly at Joe.
Ass Joycy glances coyly at Dotty.
God, Jocelyne is reminding me so much of my sister (this is a high compliment)
Jocelyne: “Gonna get some enormous jugs like my little sister.”
She should ask Carla how she got hers.
…
What? They’re wonderful little shoes!
Shit, that’s good.
Thank you. That entendre just fell into my lap.
Jocelyne: Carla, can you tell me where you get those wonderful juggs?
Carla: Hm? Oh, these? I made ‘em myself!
J: That’s… actually, very inspiring! Thank you!
C: Yeah, that’s what I do. You’re welcome! *clomps off*
Oh pretty sure she didn’t mean those.
Becoming best friends with an Athiest certainly didn’t hurt though
I think it’s one of the most fascinating things that Joyce’s big huge revelation of her lack of faith doesn’t bother Carol in the slightest because she’s just “acting out.”
That’s because it was never about faith to begin with. It was just a tribal marker for her.
I figured it was more it doesn’t matter what her kids say since she’s already decided their opinions.
She’s already decided what their opinions are, and she’s not taking any input from them on the matter.
So long as she remains closed off in her own little, ahem… bubble, at least she won’t be very antagonistic about it all.
It’s about obedience and falling in line, as far as Carol really cares.
For a christian fundamentalist like Carol, the children aren’t people who she raised, but extensions and property of herself. They’re not “allowed” to believe differently than her, because according to her, they ARE hers. If they ever stray from being her property they get cut off entirely, like Jordan apparently was. Boys may have some leeway as long as they return to thinking exactly as they were told, i.s. the Prodigal Son, but girls are not allowed even that; they are property of the parents until sold off in marriage to be property of their husbands.
They also see their children leaving the cult as a huge slight and insult on them. Though from experience with my mom, they can turn any disagreement into what they perceive as an insult on their honor as parents. Hence Jordan apparently being cut off from the family. I expect Jocelyn will likewise be cut off, if she hasn’t already.
I forsee lots of drama when/if Carol ever realizes that Joyce is her own person and did leave the fold entirely. Given that Becky’s coming out led to a violent kidnapping, that Carol facilitated and agreed with…
Reminds me of an article I read where the writer explained that when he says “my kids”, he means the children he is the father of.
But there are other people who say “my kids” and mean is as “these children who belong to me”.
Thanks for the explanation. That is very frightening but believable.
Does Carol follow that logic through and see herself as the property of Hank? Or does it only apply to her children?
Only as long as he “deserved” her, by thinking and acting in the “right” ways. Once he “lost his way” by daring to disagree with “the truth”, he invalidated his own authority in her eyes.
Carol wants her kids, especially Joyce, to say the right hateful things, in the right subtle way, and to do the right hateful things, in the right subtle way. What Joyce believes inside isn’t important; it’s what Joyce does where everyone can see and hear, that’s important.
Yeah. Her treatment of Becky when she visited said everything.
I am very glad jocelyne and Dorothy went there because if they hadn’t, I was going to.
Hehe. Bubble.
Jocelyne’s absolutely shameless joy in herself is infectious. Thank you so much for writing this.
Ah, confirmation that Jocelyn is one of them a-theist types too.
She’s a theist?
The opposite, actually.
No, there’s a – between the a and theism. Like Spider-Man.
Wait, I’m confused. Are you saying Spider-Man is a theist or an atheist?
To clarify, my post was saying this is confirming that Jocelyn was an atheist/
I said, a-theist to simulate my RL Southern drawl.
Also, Spider-Man is religious in the comics but not super about it like Matt Murdoch as confirmed by the Infinity Crusade recruiting him way back in the Nineties.
Reed Richards notably is an atheist despite meeting God/Jack Kirby and visiting Heaven.
Comics.
You drawl a Southern web comic in Real Life with a simulated a-theist. . Got it.
No, no, Peter is neither Theist nor A-Theist. He’s Spiderist.
It’s tough to maintain any faith in a universe where you can turn into a giant spider and then give birth to yourself, just to get organic web shooters.
That’s the joke.
It was a very funny joke.
Joss knows what’s up.
r.i.p. joyce’s budding tiktok career, press f to pay respects
US TikTok users are all going to RedNote now, thus the equivalent of Re-Animator serum ;)
Honestly, that seems nuts to me. TikTok is a skinnerbox style nightmare to begin with, but now that they’ve been pulled out these people want to go right back into a nearly identical one. Then off all the knock-offs they could select, they choose another one run by China – the nation that uses its tax income to support slave labor camps and build nukes to point at their cities? At least with American companies like Youtube you know your taxes are being put to good use – keeping people locked up in private prisons for the benefit of wealthy lobbying groups and building nukes to point at, I guess Greenland now for some insane reason? You may say that makes little difference, but I say here there is at always hope a vote will turn things around – and Greenland is already a frozen hellscape, so how much worse can it really get?
Part of the issue is all the people who would buy TikTok are ones who would run it into the ground.
Musk: I know how to save the TikToks! Sell it to me!
Everyone else: HAHAHA!
LOL, Poe’s Law aside,
pretty much all commercial social media is a skinnerbox trap,
besides the fact is that banning TikTok here wouldn’t reduce China’s business tax income by even a SMIDGE, on account that they produce over 80% of the worlds consumer electronics
it was never about China, the app was banned because it was one of the biggest platforms with a majorly left-leaning userbase, and as usual China is neo-mercantilists’ go-to for anti-socialist red-baiting (9-9)
If it’s got a left-leaning userbase, why is there so much extreme-right and Islamist propaganda on it?
But none of this is the point. This is about China – about the fact that not Zuckerberg or Musk, but the Chinese government collects data here.
There’s extreme-right propoganda on pretty much ALL major social media, sadly
Pew Research revealed that statistically, TikTok was the only major social platform where news influencers didn’t skew overwhelmingly conservative, and also had the highest number of LGBTQ news influencers, which is the REAL reason politicians wanted to ban it
https://www.usermag.co/p/the-majority-of-news-influencers
I think saying that there was any single “real” reason they wanted tiktok banned is short sighted, there were several motives and they all sucked.
I guess the “real” reason I was referring to was actually two LOL
conservative politician’s alleged motivations for banning apps like TikTok and their other proposed policies constantly contradict each other, since at least the days of so-called “Reaganomics”, central to their strategy has been about getting the vote of bigots without being *openly* hateful, and are often opportunistic in doing so
for instance many conservative politicians don’t know shit about epidemiology, but what they DO know is they don’t wanna blame 1,000,000+ unnecessary COVID deaths on anti-vaxxers/anti-maskers who just so happen to be some of their most ardent supporters they need on their side to get re-elected
thus by calling it the “Chinese Virus”, it’s a mutual benefit both to them, nationalists who use China for red-baiting, and bigots who wanna mainstream Asian Hate
Again, I think you’re needlessly narrowing focus onto a few issues when there were many. Have a good night though.
I mean as much as them politicians CLAIM there are multiple reasons for wanting to ban the app, since when are we taking them at their word anyway? XD
Old news, us leftists are all on Bluesky now where we can filter out the crazies. Its driving them nuts they like to call us “Bluecry” but they are the ones crying because we don’t have to listen to them.
They’re moving to another Chinese app specifically to spite the TikTok ban.
Is that even actually happening? I swear, I’ve seen the phrase “tiktok banned” in my Google suggested searches ever since TikTok got popular, and it hasn’t gone anywhere. Not that anything of value would be lost.
A few of my American friends got a message when they tried to use the app a few hours ago which confirmed that it has, indeed, been banned.
The message also praises Trump’s presumed future efforts to unban it, so maybe not a permanent situation, who the hell even knows anymore.
It’s current down in the states, so something is happening at least. Whether it goes down long term, who knows at this point.
There are such things as proxy servers and VPNs. Just saying.
True, but not really the point. Taffy asked if it was actually going to be banned and the answer is yes, it has been (for now). Being able to access it through a VPN doesn’t mean it’s not banned.
VPNs don’t work this time, TikTok banned all accounts created in the US. So you have to not only use a VPN, but create an entirely new account in a different country.
I’m pretty sure that it wasn’t TikTok who did the banning.
Was back up when I checked at 10. There’s an ass-kissy message thanking the melting Creamsicle for saving them somehow, and one message I saw equated it (as a neuro-spicy person) to that feeling when you enter your bedroom and you are convinced someone had been in there, but you won’t be able to say for certain until you figure out what’s been touched, moved, or taken.
LOL at hoping a vote will turn things around; as if votes will be allowed again in the future. Trump did promise people would never need to vote again if he was re-elected…
Preemptively accepting the end of democracy just makes it more likely.
Don’t do this. There will be elections and they will matter, whatever Trump wants.
THIS
DO NOT OBEY IN ADVANCE
“Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.”
— On Tyranny
Stop whining, ya quitter.
I don’t think avoiding putting all your personal data and tracking into a Chinese – owned app is about boycotting their labour practices.
It’s about not having your every move and thought in a foreign governments database.
Same reason China doesn’t use Google or Facebook.
I thought China didn’t use Google because it kept claiming there was such a thing as a Free Tibet movement?
Indeed. Google does not forward data to the US government. TikTok must, by law, forward all data to the Chinese government. It’s even got Party representatives in the company – it must, by law.
even if companies like Google aren’t governments on paper, the legitimized coercive power of corporations on our daily lives is one which can rival that of the *official* democratically elected state if unchecked — at which point the capitalist hegemony disrupts the state’s monopoly on the legitimate means of coercion within its territory, at which point “the” state by definition doesn’t exist
TL;DR, if supremely wealthy capital owners are allowed to continue voting with their money as increasingly as they are, we may as well not have a democratic government at all ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Well, more like it’s about putting fewer moves and thoughts into various foreign governments’ databases. Or any governments, including domestic.
Just as with corps, the govs will collect a lot on you, by default. But we shouldn’t actively help them with it all.
Wait??? Is that why I’m seeing so many jokes about “my chinese spy” online these days?
Private prisons do offer some perverse incentives, and barring some major reform they should go away. That said, they’re pretty much the least of the US justice system’s problems. Any money their operators spend on lobbying is a drop in the bucket compared to the money spent by police and (public) prison guards’ unions.
You’re right, they should only use apps based in the USA, since the USA would never use nuclear weapons on civilian targets or spend tax money on slave labour camps…
I don’t make video content, and I don’t watch Tik Tok, so I don’t have a dog in this fight but, what “other” sources are there out there?
Which is, I am just saying, hilarious.
From what I’ve heard from Americans who started using Rednote because of the Tiktok ban, a lot of them are learning, by actually talking with Chinese people on that app, that most of the things they were told about China and Chinese people by the US government and media were lies. So while I think Tiktok ban was stupid, at least there’s one good thing that’s come about as a result of it.
once again, bigoted buffoons’ attempts at information control backfires XD
Ya can fool some people sometimes,
but ya can’t fool all the people all the time!
I wonder what the Chinese Rednoters are learning.
They ran tanks over their own citizens in Tiananmen Square a few years back?
And what were those citizens doing?
Protesting an authoritarian regime.
Funnily enough, they’re learning socialism.
In this picture, there’s a Red Note user from Jiangsu asking: “why do you get both weekend days off and not have to work overtime?” The reply is marked as coming from America.
This has been commented by this picture and the following:
strictly speaking, unions and striking by themselves aren’t socialism, at least insofar as the participants’ only intention is to get better working conditions through more immediate reform of the current capitalist social order
socialism is characterized by long-term intention to see to it that the capitalist social order is abolished entirely via social ownership and democratic management of the means of production as opposed to private ownership by a tiny fraction of society with the vast majority of money and stores of value.
The Chinese people are discovering that the things they heard about the US, that they THOUGHT were Chinese propaganda, seem to be mostly true!
I Tried Rednote, it deletes LGBT content. Pretty much Bluesky is all that’s left.
It’s entirely possible it won’t stay dead. Depends on how the new admin wants to handle it.
I do find it funny in a frustrating sort of way that Biden’s team didn’t try to stall this though. It’s a policy that’s going to piss a lot of people off that their political enemies proposed, but the Dems decided they just had to get it under the wire so they could take credit for shutting it down and give the Republicans the option to swoop in and fix the problem they caused.
It was bipartisan, even up to the vote. When Trump was in office he hated it because it was full of people who mocked him and he wanted it gone.
Oh no!
Anyway.
I think the funniest part of the ban is that marvel snap apparently got caught in the crossfire bc it’s owned by a subsidiary of byte dance or something like that
Also like, they only banned it in app storesno? Can’t android users just get an apk of future updates?
The Evil One has paused the ban.
Now he’s unfortunately getting a lot of support for it.
It took me longer to figure out what she meant more than I care to admit.
If she was an android then I’d send her to Faye… well I’d send her to Bubbles.
Reference missed.
Faye (human) and Bubbles (droid) are a couple in Questionable Content. They are really cute together, and good for each other.
I did not realise I had Danny, this has to change.
And they run a machine shop for repair and modification of AI-persons.
Specifically they’ve upgraded robot butts at least once.
Oh here I thought bubble meant butt, because…bubble-butt. And was like ‘estradiol doesn’t help you with that?’.
It doesn’t? I’m admittedly cis and ignorant, but I’d think it would sorta make you curvier all over.
It does, and honestly I still assume the meaning here is “butt.”
It absolutely does mean butt, and estradiol absolutely does help over time, y’all are just second-guessing yourselves lol
Well, like… one person was? That’s what makes sense here.
Oh i thought she was talking about the p-spot specifically and was wondering why it would grow on hrt and if that would even be a good thing
it shrinks to the point where you don’t even have to worry about cancer after long enough
It is best to weight cycle to help fat distribution. Losing fat in “male” areas and gaining fat in “female” ones.
It does! Estrogen can increase overall body fat percentage as well as changing the distribution towards a more hourglass silhouette (hips, thighs, boobs and butt) while higher testosterone increases the likelihood of an apple body shape (storing more fat in the waist and belly). I not a doctor and endocrine systems are stupid complicated and I don’t know how much role other hormones and other factors have to play, and I know that with hormones it is often more about levels relative to each other rather than absolute amounts in the body, but…yeah, I think she was talking about butts.
maybe… but the “canon” female body shape is not just a product of fat or bumps distribution. The skeleton below the fat and muscle is there too. The shape of the ribcage for starters. The hipbone do not only widen, it gets a different angle with the spine, and that in return gives a particular angle to the femurs… it really matters when you are in the development of your skeleton for the hormons to have a chance to do their job.
Not “just”, but partly. Estradiol will change the fat distribution and thus the appearance of the butt, even without making skeletal changes.
Slowly, there will be decreasing visceral fat (mostly around the belly) and increasing subcutaneous fat (hips, legs).
I’m not sure who brought up skeletons, but Estrogen absolutely changes fat distribution and adds curves to your body shape. Your mileage may vary, but some degree of thicc is coming your way.
accidentally running into things for a few months while I got used to it was Fun XD
I don’t get it
She is talking about butts.
Ah, other comments made me think the butt approach wasn’t the one meant
Look at that smile on Dorothy
wait did Jocelyne assume Joyce—
This is the one bubble that won’t burst! …wait does that mean Jocelyne is a—
Wait, did Joyrcelyne assume that Joyce and Dorothy were dating? (I mean, it might be a QPR? not sure.)
Assume: no. Hope (and thus try to encourage): yes.
Dorothy retains the ability to understand.
Try two: Dorothy retains the ability to understand what isn’t being said.
Dorothy would’ve understood your first comment
<3
She probably didn’t pick up on Jocelyn’s matchmaking tease, or Joyce (who did) denying it.
Jocelyn’s cute as hell, so I mean, I doubt she had much trouble finding help with that one.
Come on, you’re blurring the line between gay and transgender. I thought you didn’t want that
I am assuming you are being sarcastic or joking, if that is the case Iwould recommend putting on a tone indicator because it is kind of hard to tell.
I feel the context is more like Jocelyne coming to atheism but also to figure herself out after getting poked when she thought she was still a he. So at the time everyone involved thought it was gay. Now the former partners still are gay but she’s not.
So a couple things here:
– Trans people can be gay.
– You don’t have to be a guy to poke someone’s bubble.
Conclusion: Jocelyne could absolutely have had her bubble poked by gay people without doing whatever you’re complaining about.
u can be two (or more) things
Jocelyn is bi, and clearly had a preference for men. She’s not gay, and suggesting trans women doing anal is gay is kinda transphobic.
I’m not assuming Plaaaaa’s comment was in good faith, but it doesn’t seem likee they’re doing that. No one here is.
When Jocelyne and Ethan meet for the first time, they clearly have eyes for one another, but when Ethan gets a moment to ask her about her sexuality she responds “I’m *not* actually gay…”. She definitely likes guys, from context, and so that response reads to me as if she’s both gently correcting Ethan’s read but also maybe talking about the process of herself coming to understand her gender and identity. I’d hazard a guess that being with various gay masc people happened first and full hatching came later.
At the time that Jocelyne is talking about, Jocelyne was presenting as and believed herself to be a man, and was strictly into men (she’s noted that her interest in women only cropped up after getting on HRT). It makes sense that her early sexual experiences at that time were with gay men, and that does not invalidate her identity.
Joyce has decided that clearly all religion is silly and interpretations of Christianity because she knows all of their beliefs as they are presumably identical to the one type she knows.
As someone who was raised nondenominational Christian and left the religion when I was a teenager, it is VERY hard to put that toothpaste back in the tube.
I respect people who find comfort/community in their faith, so long as they don’t push their beliefs on others or use those beliefs to justify harm. But I can’t see myself aligning with any religious or spiritual tradition (even ones that were different from the one I grew up with) because I do not believe things for which there is no tangible proof, which is a prerequisite to every religious tradition of which I am personally aware.
I thought that except there’s quite a few religions that don’t have supernatural elements at all.
See pantheism for example.
“I am spiritually aware and communing with the universe around me.”
If you’re calling yourself “spiritually aware” then you’re making a supernatural claim. It’s woo nonsense.
Then I explained pantheism wrong unless you assume spiritual = supernatural. For me, consciousness is inherently spiritual and if you deny consciousness exists then you are making a possibly true statement but one that is presently ignored by science.
Yeah, sorry, that’s a religious statement.
Compare: “mind is what the brain does”.
The aim isn’t to say it’s not religious, though.
The aim is to point out that the religion is about something real.
I won’t go as far as “nonsense” but I would say it’s an untestable claim. Because all we have for making claims falsifiable is derived from the natural, and the supernatural is by definition distinct from it.
Eh, philosophically that puts the burden of proof on the religion. Because a scientist claims the supernatural is anything that doesn’t exist when, by definition, religious people believe that what they worship exists.
If you could prove a miracle exists by, say, “Q” or the Cheese or Marvel Thor then the argument would be that it wouldn’t be a miracle. Which i don’t think religious people would ever do.
The burden of proof IS on the religion. Scientists don’t claim anything. The scientific position is “prove it”. Religions are the ones making claims without proof.
That’s…the point, isn’t it?
Religious people don’t claim they believe in nonprovable things. Many DO and wrong things. But if they believe in a provable thing, it doesn’t magically become non-religious.
“I refuse to prove that I exist,” says God. “For proof denies faith, and without faith, I am nothing.”
“Ah!” says Man. “But the babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn’t it? I proves you exist, and so, therefore, you don’t. Q.E.D.”
“Oh dear,” says God. “I hadn’t thought of that.” And promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
“Oh, that was easy.” says Man. And for his next trick, goes on to prove that black is white, and gets killed at the next zebra crossing.
I mean they might disagree on some details, but if you find issue with the core premise then it doesn’t matter how many denominations and what their views are because your issue is with the core premise they all have.
All religion IS silly. Sure, some of them are more harmful than others, but the silly supernatural woo nonsense factor is there for all of them.
What the fuck is “woo nonsense”? I get the “nonsense”, but what’s the “woo” attachment?
Religion is like a rollercoaster and you’re expected to say “woo” occasionally.
I bet roller coasters are more fun than church, when you’re stoned.
Depends which church. If you go to Our Lady of the Screaming Tracks there’s a rollercoaster inside the church. Two for one kinda deal.
Given Willis’ comic is a humanitarian celebration of secular humanism, I’m not trying to deny anyone’s beliefs on this. Also, I haven’t gotten to use “secular humanism” outside of Star Trek forums so +1 for this post thread.
But it seems a lot of definition of religion varies a lot here. Like Buddhist traditions that don’t believe in an afterlife or gods as anything but metaphor. Or the guys who didn’t think Confucianism was a religion.
My bad for getting into the weeds.
“woo” as in, to seek someone’s love with false promises.
fitting, given woo-meisters within pseudo-science and religious authoritarianism seek people’s admiration, falsely promising them miraculous and easily understandable knowledge
I would assert that much woo-ing is genuine: to seek to inspire love in one whom one loves. Yes, often with rash or frankly impossible promises, but sincerely given.
Like when you’re telling ghost stories, and sometimes make scary ghost noises: wooooOOOO!
It’s double; “woowoo” already means “nonsense”.
I _think_ in this case it’s “a slang term used to describe those who believe in phenomena that lacks substantiated evidence to prove the claim of the phenomena.”
Eh, Einstein and Spinoza didn’t believe in the supernatural but claimed Jewish identity as a religion not just an ethnicity. Because they inherently believed in God=Universe.
Like I said, if you believe religion=stuff that doesn’t exist, you just don’t know actual religion. Non-theistic religions are incredibly common and there are plenty that simply apply the concept of the divine to reality or the consciousness.
Heresy! Science will smite you for that.
Though if she did take to those beliefs, Joyce could still consider herself atheist.
This is true.
wait, if Einstein believed God=Universe, then why did he say,
“God does not play dice with the universe”
but you’re right about there being non-theistic religions, Buddhism and Japanese Shinto being very famous examples ^^
Einstein’s religious views are basically summarized as an impersonal God that is indistinguishable from the universe’s laws and natural inclination as I understand it.
Which is to say that God=evolution, gravity, math, and so on.
basically yee, the only discrepancy being that God / The Divine as a concept is something humans will never be able to fully grasp,
modern physicists refer to scientific “laws” as “principles” now, if only to better reflect the epistemology of science, i.e. the nature, origins and limits as human knowledge which are basically but human-made tools for understanding our world, which are always subject to falsification and improvement
Newtonian “Laws” of Motion like F = MA are ultimately descriptors, not controllers (same goes for pretty much all scientific knowledge), as much as they retain their usefulness for predicting the motion of everyday objects, they break down once we approach reference frames near the speed of light, hence Einstein’s pioneering of the Theories of Relativity to better understand what was happening in these situations
that being said, advancement of scientific knowledge and personal development of one’s spirituality are tasks which require rather different modes of thinking, at least in my experience and that of scientists I’m friends with from all kinds of faiths, mono/theistic or not
Einstein quote, “The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.”
Letter to philosopher Eric Gutkind, January 3, 1954.
She is very clear about why “Because magic is silly” and it is. The idea that she just has “the wrong religion” and that somebody else’s (nicer) one would bring her back in the fold is just slamming on atheists.
I feel like Jocelyne is the horniest character here.
Just because Joyce isn’t acting as much – yet – doesn’t mean she’s less horny than her older sister.
But yeah Jocelyne is … I really want to say pegging the meter, but that’s backwards. Somebody figure the joke out for me, I know it’s there somewhere.
Well, from what she says, she’s pretty new to this. Didn’t really feel one way or the other until starting the medication.
As an eighth level wizard with a level in artificer, I feel like Joyce could have been a little more inclusive with panel 3.
Our cleric can hush up, though; his god *is* rather silly.
The most bizarre thing about having been an atheist as long as I have is this idea that something happened to make me wanna be atheist. Like I had some negative experience with Christianity or organized religion or grew up in a conservative environment and naw.
I just sorta realized one day I don’t believe in this stuff. Like how I don’t believe in Santa or Super Mario. So in a funny way I find it hard to relate to a lot of other atheists and agnostics. Sometimes I even wish I DID believe in an afterlife cuz at least it would give me comfort that I, and everyone I love, aren’t heading towards a cold empty cessation of consciousness.
I’m a lifelong agnostic. Religion was never a factor in my upbringing beyond basic cultural background radiation stuff, so yeah, I’m kinda there with you.
Same. I realised in primary school (been to Catholic schools all my life. That’s not a big deal in Britain though) that I didn’t believe any of the god stuff.
Honestly I don’t think I ever really believed in it. I went to sunday school and read the bible but it never once felt real to me, it was always just a bunch of dubious stories. The only thing that changed is that when I was about 17, my parents stopped making me go.
That is not to say I don’t get religion. I just think the goddess is a mercurial bongo, and she most certainly ain’t YHWH
My family wasn’t very religious when I was growing up and we only went to church on major holidays like Easter and Christmas, so while I believed in a god for a few years as a kid, I rarely prayed to it and was very apathetic about it. When I learned at the age of 14 that atheism was a thing, it made perfect sense to me and I stopped believing in any gods. Other atheists became atheists because of negative experiences with the religions they were raised in, but for me it was just realizing that there were others who didn’t believe in gods and saw how silly it all was.
Oh my god, fine, I’ll talk to my doctor about HRT.
Yay!
The marketing really should emphasize butt enhancement more.
*cheers!*
It’s great, you’ll love it!
Hava nagila! ^^ <3
I celebrate Jocelynn’s theoretical existence.
Theoretical because she’s fictional, she only exists in this webcomic (unless Jeph Jacques decides she needs to visit Coffee of Doom, or maybe do an internship at Cubetown for some reason).
man, I really don’t get the last panel. The bubble metaphor is extremely straight forward, there’s no need for Dorothy to try to clarify what “bubble” stands for; it’s not a literal bubble! It’s a metaphor to say that both Joyce and her sister were raised in a cult-like environment where their social interactions and education were purposefully kept stunted to make sure they acquiesce to the fucked-up rules of their church.
The metaphorical bubble burst when both of them got exposed to people outside their church, particularly queer people and realized they were lied to.
But Jocelyn’s last sentence makes it sound like her bubble is her chest, something physical that people can literally poke. So she left the church and came out as trans because…gay people literally poked her boobs? Like in a sexual way? What the hell does this mean?
The bubble that both Jocelyne and Dorothy are making innuendos about in the final panel is Jocelyne’s butt. Which has been poked by gay people.
IOW Jocelyne is turning it into a pun by replacing the first metaphor with another.
so the implication here is that Jocelyn got butt-fucked until she changed her gender? …isn’t that like a highly offensive stereotype?
Yeah it is almost like, that is not at all and only a someone making a disingenuous argument would think. You weirdo.
yeah it’s almost like I keep saying I don’t understand the last panel at all. I’m not making a disingenuous argument, I genuinely do not understand what the heck is happening in the last panel in terms of the metaphor.
So in the metaphor she’s saying that getting poked (in the butt!) by gay people is part of what made her an atheist.
It has nothing to do with her gender. They aren’t talking about that at all in this moment.
Hope that helps! I did explain lower down but you might not have seen.
I think you give them too much benefit of doubt, they don’t actually wanna understand what they claim to be confused about, they just wanna complain and make it up to be a bad thing when it’s been explained to them.
No. That was part of what led to her becoming godless
She wasn’t talking about what made her transition at all though? You conflated atheism and being trans together there.
But its a common one, the entire time I transitioned NOBODY would believe I wasn’t doing that, my own doctor included. I wanted to give pre-need blood for my now partner for her surgery, (O Neg universal donor) and I was blocked becose nobody would believe I wasn’t sleeping with men.
ANAL SEX.
ANNUAL SEX.
Yeesh. Imagine only getting to have sex once a year for some reason, and then it’s not even good.
I feel somewhat safe in predicting it would be the best you’ve ever had.
To be fair it’ll also be the worst I’ve ever had.
Also the furthest from the Sahara that you’ve ever had.
From “Zorro: The Gay Blade”:
Florinda : [regarding Esteban] Do you know he only makes love to me 12 times a year?
Don Diego : Well, once a month is not so bad.
Florinda : No, he makes love to me 12 times in one night and then, zip, nothing!
Don Diego : Tell me, on that one night, does he eat anything special? Oysters? Raw eggs?
Florinda : Garlic. A lot of garlic.
I love that movie!
Reminds me of the Steve Carrel and Tina Fey movie, Night Out.
Neighbor: My husband and I only make love twice a week. Can you believe that?
Tina Fey: Oh..uh, that’s terrible. Really? Twice a week?
ANNAL SEX
(So good you have to write about it afterward)
That has happened, but not very often. I have done short essays about the subject. Both for the subject in general, and with specific people.
This is hilarious.
I’m also sure that the attempted murder of your friends and the literal death of one of them helped a bit in the whole becoming atheist thing.
Each event that Joyce went through was more bitter than the other, her decision was understandable, but in part it is sad that they killed her faith in that way.
I confess that even with those tragedies, Joyce’s faith would be preserved but with a more flexible approach, but surprisingly it would be Becky who would show that.
… what?
Firstly, it’s a bit weird to talk about a fictional character like that, but secondly, why exactly would it have been good for ”Joyce’s faith to have been preserved”?
She was raised to pretend she heard the voice of god, and to believe insane things about the natural world. Why would keeping her superstitious world view have been something good?
1) Joyce was raised in a cult.
2) Becky is not doing that great. At all.
I’m not sure it did.
Joyce wasn’t traumatized out of it, she just pulled the thread of her mother’s rationalizations and realized there was nothing there but control and hatred.
By contrast, God is there as a comfort for Becky during her persecution and thus her ordeal increased her faith.
I doubt it, that’s not usually how it goes. That’s more of a Hollywood / Christian apologist explanation. Religious people going through a traumatic event tend to stick with their religion.
It’s usually what Joe and Joyce describe. Something mundane causes someone to want to question what they’d been trying to keep from questioning. Then once they’re questioning, they can realize we live in a non-supernatural world.
Not directly related to what you said, but it’s worth adding, it’s counter-productive to try to use a traumatic event to try to change someone’s worldview, and extremely callous.
Though the fact that the traumatic events in her cases were directly supported by her church changes that equation.
Joyce broke with her church’s teachings over gay rights long before she broke with them over anything related to the “non-supernatural” world
Finding out that Becky was gay is the mundane event that caused her to ask the questions. Not the traumatic events.
I don’t understand your point maybe. Or maybe you don’t understand mine.
From what I can tell (without going back through and rereading nearly everything), questioning the morals came first. Both Becky being gay and the reaction of those in her community to it, especially Ross and Carol
Hell, making friends with an atheist over her parents objections was a crack even before that.
She lost faith in her religious community and then in God. It was only well after that we saw her say anything about supernatural elements being a problem. If that was part of her journey, we never saw her struggle with it. Other than afterwards in a “Wait, I don’t have to believe this anymore” kind of way.
But my main point was really the first bit. That generic traumatic events often push people deeper into religion. Trauma caused by the religion itself, much less so, at least outside of a trapped in abuse religious context.
I adore Dorothy’s smile in panel two. Goddamn, she’s in love.
Also:
“If there’s heart room, there’s butt room.”
I was told this was a Swedish saying buuuuuut I’m thinking it’s applicable here. Somehow. We’ll figure it out..
Dorothy’s smile always captivates
I’ve never seen that phrase double entendre’d before but I support it lmao
The big sister dorothy never knew she needed
The big sister in law, especially since she’s clearly playing matchmaker with Joyce and Dorothy.
I think she got bubbles disease
*cues up “Together We Ride Dat Booty” mashup on youtube*
(I’unno why, the Fire Emblem just makes it catchier imo)
Bubbly personality masking bossy control freak!
In case it’s not clear, Jocelyn’s bubble is her butt!
Someday there will be cartoonists that suffer from Bubble’s disease.
OMFG I fucking love Jocelyne. ~<3
Wait a minute, she’s talking about… SAY GEX?
I thought it was GAZE EGGS.
Quick, trademark it and resell eggs with eyeballs painted on them.
Joyce correcting the reason she became atheist in panel three is such an autistic response. I couldn’t begin to count the number of conversations where I reacted like that – correcting something that was slightly off – because it felt like a normal next thing to say and the whole conversation went
I mean, yes, but I think on some level Joyce feels the need to correct this because the way Joss put it sounds … kind of gay? And while she’s totally cool with that, it just happens that she also totally isn’t, and that should probably be clarified?
I feel that you two are saying the same thing, differently?
Yes.
to reverse a popular meme, to be technically incorrect is the worst kind of incorrect.
I mean, Dorothy is also asserting a very real thing about her religious lack of belief.
“I was not traumatized out of religion. This is not an emotional knee jerk thing. I came to this point through rationality.”
Which is an important distinction.
I mean Joyce. Damn you no edit button!
I think it actually is important to distinguish that she became atheist for HER OWN reasons, and Dorothy had nothing to do with them. Joyce’s atheism would have happened, all other things being equal, with or without Dorothy.
It’s not fair to credit Dorothy with Joyce’s accomplishments.
So this is Dorothy’s way of having sex with Joyce while still being straight? (YES, I know I’m over-anticipating.)
I don’t understand what you mean “while still being straight”? Sleeping with Jocelyne would be lesbian sex, because Jocelyne is a woman.
Joyce is in the Bubble.
THAT MEANS SHE HAS THE GAYS!
Not because of Dorothy, because of Becky
Kinda both.
I too am awaiting the estradiol increasing the size of my bubbles
Prostate
I don’t think you want your prostate to get bigger
Not remotely a medical expert, but I would suppose it would depend on how large it was to start. My understanding is that too small a prostrate increases your chances of a more aggressive prostate cancer.
Transhumanism in the best way!
To be trans and humanist!
My avatar suddenly changes to Sal when I had Jason since I get in here (which I believe fitted much better with my incredible levels of lameness. I am not remotely cool enough to be Sal)
Listen, since this is the Willis-Verse, does this mean Joyce becoming an atheist is her canon event.
Will alternate Joyces be able to stop her world being undone!
I’m not sure I understand the question.
Trying to make a Spider-verse reference and failing.
avatar shuffle check once more.
Hrm.
oops, that last one was meant to be a reply to the first.
Last one for now.
I see it’s time once again to play Gravatar Roulette!
and ya got Fuckface, yippee!! ^^
What is Gravatar roulette? I had heard about it constantly but I never got what it was or how to do it.
if you change the capitalization of your email, like this for instance:
Bubble69@gmail.com -> bubBle69@gmail.com
then the site will give you a new Gravatar at random (“roulette”) from a pool of about 30 last time i checked
I’m happy with my default Carla, but I should give it a spin at least once.
Maybe. Probably not.
Man the way estradiol is spelled as fucked up. Somehow in all of my conversations with my trans friends I never actually saw the way it was spelled and just kind of assumed it was spelled like crocodile. My brain wants to pronounce the correct spelling es-tro-dee-all.
Oh, new gravatar. Wonder when that happened.
Oh hey, new default Gravatars just dropped.
Now I have to find Daisy again, dangit.
Did they really? I assume from the addition of Jocelyn to the line up.
I think the Joyce one changed too.
I really hope Jocelyne gets more screentime. I think she’s become my 2nd favorite character after Sal.
terrified about tomorrow
oh god have to fix this grav sitch
Yeah, I feel you on that.
still fixin’
Estradiol is good, but for the titty fairy to visit. Add Estriol. It works, oh hell does it work.
Please ignore from here down. I am playing mass Gravatar Roulette here in the past where it is less likely to annoy people. If you skip these posts you will miss nothing of substance. I mean, check at the very end in case someone added something post-comic.
Have her already.
Am missing Robin.
Was missing Ruth!
Am missing Becky.
Also missing Ethan.
So three missing in all.
Well, missing Amazigirl, but she seems to be not in the rotation in favor of Lucy’s brother, Sal’s sister and other minor characters.
Okay, out of mildly interesting things to say.
clif
next is Clif
Then cLif.
Yay! Robin.
clIf is next.
Annoyingly each post has to be different because if I just post ClIf it ignores capitalization and says it’s a duplicate post.
Now cLIf
or CLIf
a cliF
b CliF
c cLiF
d CLiF
e clIF
g ClIF
h cLIF
And that’s about enough
Hm. It looks like I have Mary listed. Can that be right?
Ah, Marcy instead of Marcie. Can’t read my own writing
Coming back to find two different avatars I labeled Lucy. They can’t both be right.
But I can’t tell which is which without recreating them.
Okay that was a mistype.
Still the same to here?
Dunno. The different Lucy problem went away or was a figment of my imagination. One or the other. The other thing I was wrong about was that Amazigirl *is* in the rotation. I just haven’t managed to find her yet.
Also I’ve found Ethan since yesterday.
Finding Ethan is nothing like finding the Cheese.
So at this point, I’m looking for Becky and Amazigirl.
I don’t think either of them resembles the Cheese either.
Well, with Amazigirl, you can’t really tell for sure.
And there she is.
It’s the mask.
Behind the mask you would never guess she’s Sal.
Now if we can just find Becky, I’m out of here.
which I’m sure will be a great relief to anyone actually reading this.
If talking about Amazigirl helped me find her will talking about Becky help find Becky?
Of course not. That’s magical thinking.
On the other hand, it’s not going to hurt either.
So we might as well.
So what do we know about Becky?
She has a cute girlfriend.
She’s probably not Sal behind her mask.
For a brief period of time she owned her own home.
She probably approves of Joe more than Dorothy.
She has suffers from ADO.
ADO = Acquired Dinosaur Obsession
Though suffers may not be the correct term. It’s not clear much suffering is involved.
It took forever to find Ethan, but now he’s popping up all the time.
Several of them have been like that.
Takes forever to pop up and then they recur constantly. Liz was like that too.
Leslie was the exact opposite. She was the second one I got and then it was forever before I saw her again.
Jason was the first one, with no caps needed, and has been reasonably frequent thereafter.
If this isn’t Becky, I’m giving up for awhile. Well, if it is Becky, the same applies.