First of all, if you have any young ones in your life who may be interested in comics, tomorrow is (potentially the last) Free Comic Book Day. Go ahead and get your childish taunts out of the way, the day has been special to me for many years now, as my (now teenage) nephews still want to go to it with me. If you’re an adult who’s at least willing to give graphic novels a chance (either comics written to book length to begin with, or collections of linked stories),here are a couple of my favorites and a brief synopsis of the story.
Fables – Modern fantasy story with the hook that all of the characters from fantasy and fairy tales are real. They were in another world that was attacked by the Adversary years ago. Many escaped to the real world (referred to as Mundy for mundane world), and are living in a hidden enclave in New York City.
Transmetropolitan – Sci-fi tale set in the far future (so far that no one knows what year it is anymore) about a gonzo journalist (modeled after Hunter S. Thompson) who gets embroiled in the presidential race in the City.
Preacher – This is a tough one to recommend, because it’s very much a product of its time. Set in the 90’s, it’s about an alcoholic preacher who gets imbued with the Voice of God. Quite literally, he can command anyone (who can hear and understand him) to do anything he wants. He finds out that God has left Heaven, and goes on a quest to find him and ask why.
Sin City – A collection of stories (referred to as yarns) set in the mythical Basin City, a hive of villainy and scum. Mostly done in black and white, and very evocative of noir. The best the good guys can generally get is a noble and honorable death.
Y: The Last Man – Follows the story of Yorick (his father was an English professor) and Ampersand (his pet monkey) who for some reason appear to be the only males of any species to survive a plague that kills every other male on Earth.
With that out of the way, lets get you some links to talk about:
Wait, doesn’t this mean the FCC is undermining democracy?
Not the most pressing matter, but I don’t have a problem with slapping down Live Nation/Ticket Master.
The timing of these two stories entertains me.
I remember the rumors and tales of this happening.
JFC, stop trying to repurpose words like this.
[This link intentionally left blank]
Did your home team make the White House press briefing?
Yes. Encourage people to use smart phones during a movie in the theater, it will end well.
For the cocktail this week, I’m using cocktail very loosely.
Whisky Highball
- 1 part (2 oz) Scotch
- 3 part (6 oz) seltzer
Add the liquor to a highball glass, add some ice, and give a quick stir to chill the whisky. Top with seltzer, and give one brief stir. Garnish with a lemon wedge if you want. This is a drink that I’ve been becoming a larger fan of making at home, especially with the Japanese whiskeys that have been hitting the market. Culturally, from all that I have heard and read, Japan is crazy for any and all highballs. To the point they have entire bars specializing in them. If you’ve heard Swiss or I talk about Japanese whiskeys, you’ve probably heard us say they come across as technically perfect but soulless. That’s if you’re drinking them neat or chilled. Make up a highball with one, and see the difference.
I know I said I would go for a theme each month, but these current theme isn’t over (it’ll finish next week, and I’ll give the reveal then).
With all of that, I hope you enjoy your weekend, and potentially get some free comics and a new graphic novel to read.
So ‘in’ gets to be part of the acronym but not ‘for’?
Technically not novels, but two of Bryan Caplan’s recent books are in “graphic novel” format.
Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration
and
Build, Baby, Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation
The former was illustrated by Zach Weinersmith, best known for “Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal”.
Curiously dubbed “barebacking,” the NSFW-sounding practice involves forgoing all tech and either gazing into space or — even worse — making repeated, awkward eye contact with other passengers like some kind of subterranean serial killer, Fortune reported.
STEVE SMITH HAPPY TO BAREBACK! NO NEED LOOK AT HIM WHILE HE DOES!
Oh no, they’re putting down their phones! They might actually improve their mental health! Please don’t throw me in that briar patch!
ONLY THE TRULY PARANOID SEE STEVE SMITH WHEN HE IS BAREBACKING — AS IF THEY HAVE EYES IN THE BACK OF THEIR HEAD!
Next thing you know people will be striking up conversations. The horror.
Wait until you hear about this one weird trick!
I don’t know, I am pretty busy RawDoggin’ the air.
I can’t help but think of Asimov’s Naked Sun novel, where the perp kills himself rather than face the horror actually meeting a person face-to-face (not knowing he was about to meet a robot).
I can’t help but think of Asimov’s Naked Sun novel, where the perp kills himself rather than face the horror of actually meeting a person face-to-face (not knowing he was about to meet a robot).
There’s probably a few lines where making repeated, awkward eye contact is not a good survival strategy.
So now somebody needs to hire the consultants and create a language service that is “AI-Free, all human”
I was thinking “Cut to the chase — just let the AIs entertain each other and leave Humanity out of it” instead.
It’s been done.
OFFS, bullshit.
Neph or others:
If I wanted to make a virgin Mojito, for whatever crazy reason someone would want to do that, what would I replace the Rum with?
First question would be no alcohol or low/minimal alcohol? If the second, a drop or two of rum extract would probably work. You could go with a zero proof spirit, but the very concept of those irritates me.
So to start, I’d just leave the rum out and see how that tastes, most likely it’ll be close enough.
You need to replace the volume of the rum, like with sparkling water or club soda or sprite or something.
robc:
Not if you’re going with a ratio recipe instead of volume. But you could probably find some sparkling seltzer that would work as well.
I’d try making a weak mint tea (mint tea, not mint-flavored black tea) and add sugar and lime juice to suit.
Since you got a serious reponse, I can now give my initial reaction.
Rum. Replace the Rum with Rum.
You’re not going to swap the rum for rhum?
No, that reminds me of this awful Haitian Rhum I still have.
Doesn’t the alcohol also help extract from the mint?
I read that as “vegan” and thought, “What the hell are they screwing up now?”
Isn’t a Mojito naturally vegan?
I’ve been a bit of an Adam Warren fan for some time, partly because he’s from NH. His art style hasn’t always appealed to me, but there are certainly worse who are more famous. He just wrapped up Empowered, which was birthed from him basically doing damsel-in-distress illustrations to pay the bills and turned into “imagine being a superheroine who had to deal with getting tied up by bad guys all the time”. It was pretty good.
https://www.empoweredcomic.com/comic/volume-1-page-1
I just wish you could find his Dirty Pair work reasonably in digital format (as far as I can tell it isn’t out there — likely for legal rights battles, I expect). I think I have his Bubblegum Crisis: Grand Mal is a longbox somewhere….
Yes, I’m glad I have his Dirty Pair books. Great stories and you can see the evolution of his artwork from the first book to the last.
Podcaster Curtis Morton, who coined the term, recently slammed straphangers who engage in the questionable practice in a TikTok video with 100,000 views.
“You’ve commuted enough times,” the Brit, who co-hosts the “Behind The Screens” podcast, ranted in the clip. “Why are you sitting there without a phone, without a book, just looking at me, looking at what’s going on? Just do something!”
Barebacking, which experts feel has been on the rise with commuters returning to the subway post-pandemic, is essentially the terrestrial equivalent of rawdogging flights — another baffling Gen Z behavior.
What a petulant childish culture we live in.
I think rawdogging on a flight has a different meaning to other generations.
SKY SMITH FREQUENT RAWDOG FLYER!
SKY SMITH ALREADY MILE HIGH, NO NEED JOIN CLUB.
Regardless of whether Kiper’s commentary is accurate (it seemed to stray at times beyond the hyperbolic), the non-stop Shedeur Sanders talk underscores the fact that the Browns are welcoming the circus to town.
Same thing happened (in a different way) when the Broncos drafted Tebow. We would’ve had a similar situation if anyone had signed Kaepernick after he began his “social justice” shenanigans.
First, contrary to his genetics he is not an Elite Physical Talent at the quarterback position. He’s a couple inches short slow and lacks top-tier arm strength which the NFL craves.
Second, despite some gaudy yardage and touchdown numbers his decision making from a pro perspective was not good in college. Most importantly he hung on to the ball too long.
Third, NFL offenses have three and in some cases four options on passing plays that a quarterback has to work through in about 2 seconds. In college he would bail out and run.
The number of sacks he took in college which was crazy high (35 and 42 at Colorado) shows impatience and an inability to work through those progressions or throw the ball away. I suspect we will find out he has some wear and tear injuries that scared teams and Colorado didn’t/wouldn’t disclose due to his father.
Finally, the first round for QB’s is where teams are looking for an immediate starter and someone who can change the trajectory of the organization. If he had the talent, and all the measurables, he would have been drafted in the first round even with his father’s baggage. The short answer is he’s a project mid-level pick.
On the bright side for him like many quarterbacks in his situation, he could go to a really good team and play for a really good quarterback coach and offensive coordinator, develop his skills and become an everyday starter. Every level is a filter and Shedeur has always been the best player in the room since he was a kid, but he’s now in the room with his equals and it’s going to be up to him to show that he’s more than an athlete.
At the end of the day the only reason he was in the first round discussion was because of his father. Teams were right to be intrigued and wanted to take a hard look and they did. What they found was a mid-round QB Talent with potential.
It’s a mixed bag. He had the highest completion rate in college football last year at 74%, and he has a very accurate throw. He held onto the ball way too long and took some terrible sacks. I think he fractured a vertebrae in 2023. He got the crap beat out of him because his Oline was pretty bad, and when he would get to scrambling they didn’t know which way to block defenders. Scuttlebutt is he didn’t take the draft evaluation process very seriously, including a rumor that he took a personal facetime interview during a meeting with one NFL team. Also, dad was talking about keeping him away from certain teams, and I’m sure a lot of teams didn’t want to deal with the circus that came along with drafting him.
Disclosure: I was at all of his home games for the last two seasons. He made some really amazing throws.
Isn’t part of the issue that his completion percentage is inflated because he refused to throw the ball away to avoid sacks, which reduces his incompletions and attempts while probably improving his completion numbers by stretching out the time per drop back to find a receiver?
The Highball has a special place in my family history. All of my grandparents were straight off the boat from Slovakia, and that was their preferred drink. They are long gone, but my siblings and I will still break out the Eastern European accent and ask “you want em dat highball”.
What no slivovica? Have some! It’s healthy!
Do you know where in Slovakia they were from? I’ll be there next month. I assume they were from the central or eastern part because that’s where most of the immigrants were from. Winters were longer and the land was harder to farm in those regions.
My grandmother was from the Eastern part (Metzenseifen is what I was told as a kid, and mocked for as people said it wasn’t a real place).
I don’t know. My Dad at one point told me where his parents were from, but I forgot. I’ll have to ask him again. I think he said mountains?
I’ve never been there, but it would be interesting to visit. In the US there are less than 20 of us with my last name, and that number’s shrinking because there’s only my nephew left to possibly have a son to pass on the name. In fact, I own the domain name (.com) and it’s fun to see how many people notice that when I give out my email. Back in the old country, the name’s pretty common based on online phone books.
Huh. I have a family name on our tree like that.
Enterkin.
It is one of the more colorful and interesting of family origins. Think: Troll under the bridge.
My great-great grandfather was from the Bohemian square, a Jew from Praha to be exact.
However, experts believe that the uptick in barebacking could be, among other things, a way of hitting back at demanding bosses in the wake of the pandemic as working from home once again becomes something of a luxury.
Of course it is. That’ll show those top-hatted robber barons who’s boss.
The boss isn’t on the train, but they’ll creep out random people they don’t work with.
3. Profit!
Exactly.
The only thought process to tie not looking at your phone on the commute to sticking it to the bosses is that they’re not looking at work e-mails and chats before they’re in the office.
Which is what quite a few of us old techs do as well. Screw you, I’ve got a shift, and I’m not on call.
Mind you in Manhattan there is no signal underground between stations. So you try to grab something to read between stations.
I never bother as it is too much of a PITA.
See I hadn’t thought of that, but I guess I am an old tech.
I used to work with an old timer who always said “It’ll be here tomorrow”.
Technology makes people antisocial!
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F9h8mr8q7q4iz.jpg
Freaks! Just endlessly scroll on your phone for dopamine hits like a healthy adult!
Whoops, deadthreaded this:
It turns out that House Of Lies, um, lied to us and you don’t get to bang the bejeezus out of your consulting clients.
https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/business/2025/05/01/chandra-holt-romantic-partner-of-ex-kohls-ceo-fired-as-consultant/83394918007/
Gee, with a track record like that, she was bound to help Kohl’s rule the retail world! 🙄
Ron, this just hit my inbox:
https://bringatrailer.com/listing/2007-saab-9-5-9/
Lotta miles, tho.
145k for an ’07 is a lot? (I know… I’m weird — just recently broke half a million on my ’03….)
I had 240K on my 07 before I retired it.. It now sits at the airport with a solar charger. 95K on my 17… should go to the same miles.. It isn’t the miles, it is the age of the accessories. replacing flexible brake lines, engine hoses, air suspension parts.
Wasn’t one of those insufferable twats at Salon bitching about people not wearing masks, and referring to it as “rawdogging the air”?
Man, talk about living on the edge.
That was Taylor Lorenz.
Well, he got the “insufferable twat” part right.
There’s something wrong with the world today…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nqcL0mjMjw
Does he strenuously object?
Harvard President Says Any Move to Revoke Tax-Exempt Status Would Be ‘Highly Illegal’
https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/trump-harvard-tax-exempt-status-3b114fb7?st=yVVfRJ&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
Not just illegal, but highly illegal!
lulz
It’s highly likely “many” universities would lose their tax-exempt status based-on the actual IRS rules…Trump is just the first to call it out.
Isn’t there a concept called “siloing” that allows for taxation of a non-profit’s “for profit” activities?
“This is highly irregular!”
“Have you tried Ex Lax?”
/80’s sitcom
He added: “Tax exempt status is granted to educational institutions to enable them to successfully carry out their mission of education and, for research universities, of research. Obviously that would be severely impaired if we were to lose our tax exempt status.”
So shouldn’t there also be a tax-exempt status for the private-sector counterparts of colleges, R & D firms, biotech labs, etc?
No, we should reduce the number of tax-exempt institutions. Remove more categories.
Harvard is sitting on a $53 billion endowment. Go piss up a rope. (That guy, not you Akira).
I’d go the other way with it and just give tax exempt status to everything.
The solution is to get rid of the income tax, not to play around with exemptions. The worst aspect of the income tax is the degree of control and right to private information it gives the government.
Considering what you commie shitbirds have been up to I think that is the point. GFY.
Bob Jones University says hi.
Smart place.
A lot of them are a bit unique.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C5%ABhai
Shochu is good stuff. I get a bottle from the Japanese store once in a while.
I tried mixing it with Calpico one time, which was not a good idea. The lemon + seltzer is probably a better fit.
In Korea the new hot drink is <a href="https://www.nikankitchen.com/en/Recipies/Cookbook/25/beer-and-soju-=-somaek-your-new-favorite-summer-refresher"somaek (a combination of soju and maekjo aka beer). Basically a Korean boiler maker.
About 3 parts soju to 7 parts beer. The soju doesn’t taste like much of anything. It just turbo-boosts your beer.
I loved it in Korea, but seeing how much they want for soju here in the states, I will be passing it up.
In Korea a bottle of soju was about $1.25. Here in the states it is nearly $8. The money just doesn’t work.
Fucking Japan and their weird booze.
I can’t remember the name of the cheap ass highball in a can, but I do know that their #1 selling point was a pint of of it for $1.50 @ 9% booze. Tasted like shit, but not so bad that you would swear off it.
My favorites:
4L bottles of Jim Beam and local Japanese whiskey sold in cardboard milk cartons. I didn’t see as many sake juice boxes as previous trips.
I’ve been impressed by the differences between languages on Duolingo.
The Japanese course is pretty good, but it so fucking woke it is silly. Every character/persona in the conversations is Indian for some reason. And it seems like every conversation ends up with boys taking dance classes – and that is A-OK.
Like I said, the course is still pretty good because it teaches some basic vocab and helps with writing. It is just silly to try to wokify shit for a very insular culture.
The Korean course on the other hand, is not wokified at all. However, it skips straight from baby steps to expecting you to know entire phrases. It is much harder to get started than the Japanese course.
Anyone doing other languages notice similar stuff?
I tried the AI Google one for Japanese. The grammar is generally ok, but it doesn’t use the appropriate level politeness in casual situations.
I tried Duolingo in Japanese years ago and didn’t like it. Many, many errors. I’m assuming with more users and training it got better, but similar to machine translation of Japanese at the time it completely fucked up kanji and or homonyms with hiragana.
I can barely read English. I gave up on even attempting to read Japanese decades ago.
I seem to recall Duolingo offering romaji. The issue was its backend misreading non romaji normal Japanese.
I’ll admit that I’m being a bit hyperbolic.
I can sort of hack my way through hiragana and katagane. Kanji is right out, though.
Chiun is very woke, always trying to improve worthless white pale piece of pig’s ear by teaching him the evil of racism!
Whatever Little Father.
Racist hamburger eater! Go fetch my trunks, we are returning to Sinanju!
I used to use Rosetta Stone for Mandarin. It is very good but of course not cheap.
I switched from French to Portuguese a few weeks ago (important note: it’s Brazilian Portuguese, significantly different than European Portuguese).
The characters are all the same (Vikram, Bea, Junior, Eddy, etc.) as are most (all?) of the scenarios (Bea picks up Vikram in a taxi but doesn’t know her way around, Junior warns a new videogame while Eddy is distracted by a soccer game, etc).
It’s a bit woke (“her wife”, “his husband”) but nothing egregious.
I don’t know if all the Romance languages are similar or if they use the characters and stories for all courses.
I hope Neph and the rest of the Ohio Glibs are OK.
Rookies.
I remember two instances while on vacation in Miami, where the person who missed their exit not only stopped, but backed up on the freeway to get off on the exit they wanted.
Never seen such bad driving as Miami. And I lived in Memphis!
I’ve driven in 8 countries on three continents. Two places Ill never, ever, operate a car again:
Montreal
Miami
Oh lordy.
I used to take I-75 South and then get onto US-35 West to get to my job… I swear, at least every other day, some moron would miss the ramp to get into 35, try to swerve across the stripey section at the last second, and either hit the guardrail or another vehicle and cause a big pileup that would make me late.
I don’t miss commuting at all.
Threw me off for a sec…my current commute is I-75 south to US-635 west…thought you were talking about my neck of the woods.
At least 2 hours north of there myself. But we have plenty of our own idiot drivers up here.
I wish I had known about this rawdogging trend earlier.
Mrs. Holiness and I would ride various trains and subways in Japan and Korea. All the natives were absolutely spending 100% of their time staring at their phones.
Mrs. Holiness and I had questionable internet on our phones – and coupled with the fact that most of the time we weren’t really sure where we were going – so we’d spend all our time not looking at our phones and staring around the car.
Mrs. Holiness tended to spend most of her time looking at the route map and where we were. I spent most of my time in more anthropological observations. I was interested in the habits of the young females and what they were up to. Purely for SCIENCE. Mrs. Holiness questioned my academic interests several times.
If I had this story, I would have been able to rebut her baseless accusations.
I’m not sure bringing up the term “rawdogging” in that situation would have been a good move.
Why does Mrs. Holiness hate Science?
Religious zealot.
I’ve been in and out the last few weeks…has Kristen not been around?
I was wondering the same thing. She was worried that her job was being cut, and I think that happened and she was unhappy about that, and maybe about the rest of us cheering DOGE?
I have not seen her in the comments, but I believe she’s still joining the Zooms (which I haven’t in a while).
I guess I did some “rawdogging” at the doctor’s office yesterday; I was waiting for a long time and decided to just sit there instead of looking at my phone. I can’t find the exact video now, but there was some video where a guy made a pretty good case that boredom is good for you in some amounts. It’s when your mind wanders and a lot of good thinking happens, perhaps on very important life matters that you’ve been avoiding. It’s when you have no choice but to deal with your thoughts and your emotions, and you can figure out what kind of person you are, what you truly want, and what you truly need.
If you’re stimulated and distracted for every waking second, that type of thinking never occurs. Anecdotally, I will say that people who are addicted to their cellphones never seem to fix any problems in their lives. They just complain about the negative effects, then zone out watching 7-second clips of bullshit until they forget what they were worried about. The “smart” phone has really turned into a drug for some people. It’s a way to forget about your problems and put off dealing with them.
I’ve been trying to be very low-tech lately – or rather, bring the tech into a healthier balance. A balance where it’s enriching and entertaining but not addictive, and not comprising a majority of my time.
Rawdogging in the doctor’s office is pretty smart. You can get your penicillin prescription right away.
https://pjmedia.com/sarah-anderson/2025/05/02/kids-rescued-from-covid-house-of-horrors-n4939445
Holy shit!
OMG, this is awful! How dare the State forcibly expose those poor kids to COVID!
Holy crap they made those kids wear Crocs! Monsters!
A couple years ago they probably would have given the parents medals.
Very mentally ill parents
So before I left town Monday, I was tipped off that our Kroger had marked down (substantially) whole beef loin. I got 2.
Im going to slice some nice ribeyes (duh doi). And likely a roast or two. What else can I do with it?
*I meant filet
Did they peel it?
Yes, peeled.
Marinade and grill the tails. Do a stir fry with the scraps, after you trim it.
Eggs were down to $3.49/dozen today.
Is that good or bad? I can’t even remember
Last time I bought eggs it was $4/dozen.
Still $3.99 here.
Swinging that purse in the sky.
Ruth Buzzi, the Lady With the Handbag on ‘Laugh-In,’ Dies at 88