m_f

Some background on this comic:

Before I start work on any cartoon, I usually have a fairly good idea what the caption is going to say.

In this instance, and in the last few moments of my deadline, I uncharacteristically made a sweeping change of the entire thing. Originally, the caption read, "Look, but don't touch―or the mother will throw it out."

I still have no idea what came over me that made me suddenly see it another way, but when the cartoon was published it seemed to generate a favorable response from more than a few people. And I always found that to be sort of interesting. Does this mean we all have a latest desire to stuff worms into a baby―or is it just me?

My read is that it's a low-effort "She's so ugly even the predators don't want to eat her". Maybe it was a reference to some current event?

Some background on this comic:

Transcript:

After completing this cartoon in the "deer" version, it just didn't click with me, humorwise. I tried it again with bears, and I suppose, because of their ability to stand on their hind legs, they more closely approximate a group of guys standing around doing the same thing―and, to my eye, making it more effective.

Some background on this comic:

Transcript:

The submitted version of this cartoon is seen here on the left. My editor, however, believed something more was needed to clarify why this guy coming out of the house is so mad―so he changed the caption to the version on the right. I acquiesced on this one, but always felt like it was redundant and too leading. I later restored my preferred version for inclusion in a book.

That's a great site! Posted over to !internetisbeautiful@piefed.social:

https://discuss.online/post/32591126

I read it as the spider having a fly call, not a rifle. It's trying to lure the flies into the web. Could be wrong though, hard to see exactly

Some background on this comic:

Transcript:

Sometimes, when you stay up too late at night trying to think of something funny, these things happen. Except to say that it's obviously inspired by "Ghost Riders in the Sky," I haven't the slightest idea what "Ghost Riders in the Kitchen" means. I'll figure it out one day. (I should have followed up the next day with "Ghost Riders in the Living Room.")

Also, mildly interesting to note that the original doesn't depict the ghosts as transparent, but somebody colored it in at some point and added that. Probably easier to do with colors vs B&W.

Some background on this comic:

Transcript:

My editor balked at this cartoon initially, not because of the somewhat unsavory suggestion that Warren was choking on the cat, but because he feared not enough people would know what the Heimlich maneuver was.

I think the joke here is just that she's warning her kids to stay away from the weird old man's house, which is kind of a trope on its own, and then merged with the nursery rhyme. The house she's warning the kids to stay away from is a squalid, rundown house as you might expect, but it's funny (presumably, ymmv) to think about what that would look like as a shoe.

I think the Archie references in the Disqus link are just amused by the coincidence that the random name Larson picked is close to the Archie principal, but that probably wasn't intentional.

Some background on this comic:

Transcript:

I don't think this ever really worked. The title on the dog's book is a well-known phrase, but I couldn't recall any expressions that would similarly reflect a cat's reading interests. In cases like this, I usually sit on the idea with the hope that someday I'll stumble across it in my sketchbook and immediately know how to handle it. This time, unfortunately, I think I forced it.

To be clear, I'm not finding fault with you specifically, I think most people use terms like conscious/aware/etc the way you do.

The way of thinking about it that I find useful is defining "consciousness" to be the same as "world model". YMMV on if you agree with that or find it useful. It leads to some results that seem absurd at first, like in another comment someone pointing out that it means that a thermometer is "conscious" of the temperature. But really, why not? It's only a base definition, a way to find some objective foundation. Clearly, humans have a lot more going on than a thermometer, and that definition lets us focus on the more interesting bits.

As stated, I'm not much into the qualia hype, but this part is I think an interesting avenue of thought:

it likely won’t be possible to directly compare raw experiences because the required hardware to process a specific experience for one individual might not exist in the other individual’s mind.

That seems unlikely if you think the human brain is equivalent to a Turing machine. If you could prove that the human brain isn't equivalent, that would be super interesting. Maybe it's a hypercomputer for reasons we can't explain yet.

Your project sounds interesting, if you ever publish it or a paper about it, I'd love to see it! I can't judge about hobby projects being messy lol.

That's on me tbh. I have a script that munges the image and text together into a single image (since it's plain text on the website), and the library I'm using occasionally lays out text in a weird way like this. I've been meaning to fix that, and the fact that it doesn't handle italicized text properly.