Even if safety reflectors become widely adopted- let’s suppose that workers leaving the office at 5pm put one on, clubbers at midnight have them, whatever - then won’t motorists come to expect to see them? And if they hit someone, people might say, “Well, she wasn’t wearing safety reflectors - what do you expect?”

Yeah, the idea of policing pedestrian outfits irks me. You don’t need a license to walk. You don’t need training, or to pass a test. There are no regulations written about what equipment a person must wear out in public to avoid collisions.

Operating a motor vehicle does come with those rules and responsibilities. Including headlights!

Besides, a lot of winter coats are mostly available in dark colours. They are fashionable, practical, and show stains less. Is someone supposed to buy an expensive second coat for walking around at night in? Stash a high-vis vest in their purse for when night falls at 5pm, and they are still out, on their way home from work?

When I have these discussions in-person, sometimes they say, “Oh but when they dash out across the middle of a highway and they’re wearing all black, even headlights don’t help!” Well, of course if they are suddenly darting across the road, crossing mid-block, of course that’s dangerous! It wouldn’t be okay if they were wearing a suit of glowsticks! There are rules against “jaywalking,” but not against wearing navy blue!

Good point. I will have to explore this distinction in future Telepathy Snub comics.

I promise you, I’m not.

I’ve been accused of “being AI” before, but I hate AI and never use it if I can avoid it.

I write in a dorky, earnest style with big words. A lot of early Internet users write that way. AI was probably trained on such writings. Therefore, people who write like old internet nerds tend to sound like the AI that scoured their forum postings for inspiration. That is my theory, at least.

Also, I went to art school, so I can talk about shit in a pretentious way.

It makes me sad that people are accused of using AI when in reality they are just mega dorks like me.

And if you don’t believe me about beinf human, check out my recent posts I guess.

Because this comic combines the cynical semi-randomness of Gen X with the Hate-My-Wife humour of the Boomer generation?

Fantastic. I like the way you took advantage of the comic strip medium to turn a quirky cat thing into an interdimensional revelation.

Thanks. With telepathy, I do sometimes wonder if the telepaths see no point in making external facial expressions for the benefit of their fellow telepaths. It may be that on the inside, in their own telepathic group chat, they are joking and singing and laughing and having fun.

I recall a scene in Gunnerkrigg Court along these lines (don’t ask me to find it) and I also wonder if it’s the case in Pluribus.

Maybe it’s similar to when you text someone, “ROFLMAO” but you aren’t actually smiling in real life.

I like that idea. Maybe I’ll make a sequel where someone asks to join, and they delve into that person’s deepest memories. Examples: childhood sibling rivalry, first kiss, being fired from a job, etc. All is good, and they will probably be accepted. Then, they see a memory where the person did something slightly embarrassing (saying, “thanks, you too!” to a server telling them to enjoy their meal). And they get rejected based on that.

Thanks for your feedback. Here is a walkthrough of what I intended for the reader to experience. Perhaps it falls short.

First, she asks a group of five people if she can join their telepathy club.

At first they are all looking at each other, as if to gauge each others’ willingness to accept her into the group. You may assume they are looking at each others’ facial expressions to see what the other people think about her request.

However, then it shows seemingly random people in other places, doing other activities: swimming, business deals, hair salon, working on telephone wires.

Then it switches back to the first group, who have come to a decision. You realize that the random people were all part of the telepathy club too, and they were communicating telepathically to consider her request. It turns out that after long consideration, and perhaps many debates between them all that the reader doesn’t get to see, the answer is a simple “no.”

Here is the initial sketch of the same comic:

For the final version, I tried a new watercolour strategy this time: colouring in all the blue shadows first, then adding other colours for the areas in light. It helped make the whole thing less clashing and muddy compared to my usual approach. I like the businessman panel where the colours are minimal. Other panels may be a little overwhelming.

This could have even been a one-panel comic.

This is the appeal of Halloween for society.

You are allowed, and encouraged, to go knock on a stranger’s or neighbour’s door and talk to them. . Most of the year, that would be an intrusive faux-pas. (And yes, as you say, kids can roam around in packs misbehaving.) Halloween is very community-oriented in thay way.

At the same time, it is individualistic. You dress up as something that expresses your personal whim, not a mandatory group tradition.

It is a holiday explicitly centered around negative things like fear and gruesome monsters. It’s not a supposedly-wholesome holiday with problematic undertones, like many others. At the same time, you can avoid the scary elements and dress up as a cute puppy dog if you want.

At least by redrawing it, the tattoo artist is injecting (pun intended) some of the human skill and decision-making into it?

But, ugh! Who would get an AI tattoo?

And what’s the point? Let’s say I have an idea of a tattoo I want (Jack Sparrow, dressed in a McDonald’s uniform, fighting off a rabid poodle, in the style of Baroque painting), but I cannot draw. So I use AI to render it, how clever!

But wait - a tattoo artist will be physically drawing it anyway. They know how to develop concepts into sketches, don’t they?

Just get them to do it! Skip the pointless AI step!

I think it references the term “sealioning,” which means: someone on the internet who pops up, like a sealion, into an argument. He says, “BUT WHAT ABOUT XYZ?” which starts everyone responding and debating. But the sealion never continues the conversation. He was just there to disrupt.

Yes, as long as the bottle is hermetically sealed.

I bet there are hermit influencers who post videos where they hold the latest chamberpot up to the camera and extol its virtues. Then they post a shelfie that shows their latest book haul about transcendental meditation and bushcrafting.

The Crow Has An Eye

I agree. I hate Trump as much as anyone else, but if a President I liked did this, it wouldn’t be the end of the world.

In principle, I don’t mind if a space mainly used for events, with chairs placed there often, should be hardscape. It’s not as if lawn can’t be put back there in the future. Lawn isn’t a heritage tree or rose shrub.

To be fair though, the photo makes it look pretty huge as an expanse of paved area.

Saying, “Both these things are bad, and one is worse,” is not the same as saying, “One of these things is more okay than the other.” Neither one is okay.

If we cannot compare bad things without that comparison implying, “one of them is more GOOD than the other,” then all bad things are equally bad. If I said that committing pedophilia is worse than beating your wife, am I now saying that beating your wife is better? What about stealing from the cash register at work, or jaywalking? Are all bad things just equally bad, with no comparison possible, or else we’re praising the virtues of crime?

To your first point, in that sentence I wasn’t talking about actually dating or having sex with the 15 year old. I was talking about looking at them, and thinking they are attractive. So no, nobody would say that the “relationship” was okay, but they wouldn’t roundly condemn someone for being attracted to them, or having the urge to look at them sexually, in their own head.

It used to be relatively acceptable to say something like, “Man, I sure think that 15 year old looks hot, but of course I won’t go anywhere near her, because she is too young,” but never, ever, to say the same about a 5 year old. That first sentiment is the basis of many distasteful songs and jokes and movies. The second one would be met with confusion and revulsion for even thinking it.

And once again, I am not saying that is right. I am just saying how attitudes have changed. For the better. Now we say that even looking at a teenager is wrong. That looking at their body is as bad as looking at a very young child’s body. Because in both cases, it’s not how messed-up you are in the head to even think about it. It’s about how it would harm them to go through with it. And that’s a better attitude.

I think that back then, people defined pedophilia in terms of the perpetrator’s attraction, not in terms of impact to the victim. Essentially, “is it weird for the adult to be attracted to their body?” more than, “would the young person be harmed, physically or emotionally, by sex?” Now we are more evolved.

Back when I was a kid, pedophilia meant what she said - attraction to a prepubescent child. If someone was an adult who thought a physically developed 15-year-old was sexy, that was just logical. Because their bodies had secondary sex characteristics. (It wasn’t considered a good idea to actually have sex with them, at least from what I could see. Maybe in Azalia’s experience it was considered OK.)

But if an adult thought that a flat and hairless child was attractive, that was messed up on their part. The same way people think that furries or scat play or other fetishes were messed up. But even more so. There was just nothing to consider sexy about an actual child.

Now, we consider the impact to the victim. Pedophilia is defined as attraction to a victim under the age of consent. Because their brain is not fully developed, their body can’t handle pregnancy, they are socially able to be manipulated, and a host of other reasons.

I am not trying to be accused of being an apologist, but from someone who grew up in the 90s, I find it strange that we use the same word for someone who rapes a toddler, as someone who “statutory rapes” (as it would be called) a 15-year-old. They are both wrong, but it seems to me that one is much worse than the other. Both because of the attraction (or I guess power fantasy) on the part of the adult, and the impact to the victim.

I think Azalia is wrong to say it was always totally fine. But she is right that it was considered right or wrong for a different reason back then. The definition was different.