Zach Weinersmith

The SMBC guy.
New book: A City on Mars (Nov 2)

Co-author of Soonish
Illustrator of Open Borders
Scop of Bea Wolf.

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npub1q9np7h6t2e4vwdp9wg8q76fpg7879qgzuvszu7rnyn57casdy3sq6s709x

NIP-05 Address

[email protected]

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsqzeslta94v6k8xsjhyrs0dys50rlzsypwxgpw0pejf60vwcxjgcqpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerfw36x7tnsw43qayxhlj

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relay.ditto.pub

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npub1q9np7h6t2e4vwdp9wg8q76fpg7879qgzuvszu7rnyn57casdy3sq6s709x

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Last Notes

2026-05-16 12:34:37 GMT

Which is closest to your view?
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/584/273/703/009/784/original/4b259f968de7edcd.png

2026-04-11 12:30:25 GMT

Kinda funny, I was thinking about the idea of explaining imaginary numbers to high school students by saying "actually, there's no magic. You can do the whole thing using only reals." But then basically you have to be like "x^2+1=0" doesn't appear to have a solution until POOF, a rotation matrix appears. Which is maybe more confusing?

2026-04-10 15:57:51 GMT

Bonus panel here: http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/log #smbc #religion #comics
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/381/230/431/646/377/original/d1211a83b8304743.png

2026-04-09 15:26:48 GMT

So this happened
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/spheres-part-1
#smbc #comics #math
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/375/446/607/658/672/original/ce3fe1325e3237c2.png

2026-04-07 22:19:00 GMT

Hey cybersecurity geeks-- so it seems like anthropic now has really good exploit detection ability. Do you think this makes offense or defense harder? Like, seems like everyone might have to go through a battery of automated checks before deploying stuff into the world.

2026-04-06 13:55:11 GMT

Trying to become more unrelatable with this punchline.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/358/100/130/061/089/original/52a950ae402b5e15.png

2026-04-05 18:20:25 GMT

Bonus panel here: http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/hi #smbc #comics
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/353/480/327/309/036/original/b393a284192cb512.png

2026-04-03 14:26:17 GMT

Have I mentioned here that I have a new book coming out in June? You can see a pretty substantial excerpt here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374393496/sawyerleeandthequesttojuststayhome/
I guarantee at least three laughs, even if you are not in the target audience of young people.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/341/235/147/430/176/original/628fdf310d0f4c48.png

2026-04-02 15:44:06 GMT

Hey geeks! We're ordering extra blank mugs for the upcoming Mother's Day, but if you want one of our statistical parent mugs, please get your order in. https://smbc-store.myshopify.com/products/good-parent-mug
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/335/879/085/891/485/original/44283287dba55b17.png

2026-03-31 16:54:34 GMT

One of the weirdest things to me about the tech scene for AI is you regularly hear variants on "Super-human intelligence is coming next year and will permanently alter life as we know it. Prepare your business and finances accordingly." Setting aside what you think about the first half, how does the second half make any sense? Like... what would you do differently, other than move to the woods?

2026-03-31 11:52:55 GMT

Since Mastodon is for nerds, I'm here to share a nerd thing. I'm interested in rose breeding, and one thing you have to account for there is ploidy, which can determine whether species can cross. There's a type of rose called dogroses (Rosa canina), often used in cooking, which has its own, unique and bizarre, pentaploid meiosis.
28 mom chromosomes, 7 dad chomosomes. The dad part is shuffled like normal. The mom part is only partially shuffled.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09171-z
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/323/636/397/044/639/original/012aba8f0d8644e6.png

2026-03-30 20:06:54 GMT

Oh the humanities...
Full comic here: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/humanities-2
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/319/923/994/937/651/original/9ffd611f82515599.png

2026-03-30 12:47:13 GMT

Something I love about engineering/physics/CS culture is that almost every intellectual resource is available for free. There's a real presumption of non-gatekeeping that is, in my experience, not present in other fields.

2026-03-30 12:00:59 GMT

Ohmygod, is quote-tweeting forbidden on Mastodon. This is Shangri-La.

2026-03-29 17:45:46 GMT

Some day, I'm gonna turn in a manuscript and think "I did a great job!" Today is not that day.

2026-03-29 10:15:00 GMT

Found this on my todo list. Not sure what it meant but it seems like a good task.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/311/935/569/681/313/original/ab6e11c0f34e40db.png

2026-03-28 22:06:29 GMT

OK, this convinced me I should be here more: https://bsky.app/profile/dubikan.bsky.social/post/3mi5ncilczk23
How's it going?

2025-02-21 19:29:58 GMT

Hey all, I have enjoyed mastodon but after a lot of thought I've decided to centralize my twitter-style stuff on bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/zachweinersmith.bsky.social
It seems to have the best combination of non-evil and user-friendly for the moment.

2024-11-23 01:52:28 GMT

- reply

Put another way, if a person is born today, and the "slow" rate holds for 75 years, when they are 75, a single hour of labor is triple the output of when they were born.

2024-11-23 01:51:24 GMT

Kinda mindblowing:
So the slowdown in productivity growth from 2007-2019 refers to a growth rate of about 1.5% a year. From 1945-1973 it was around 2.8%.
But like, 1.5% a year still means that in a single generation, an hour of work produces 45% more stuff! In 50 years it's more than double the stuff.
2.8% *is* much faster (double per generation) but still! By historical standards, 1.5% is zany fast.

2024-11-22 21:41:06 GMT

For reasons I don't quite understand, A City on Mars did OK to good on sales in the first year, but in the second year is getting a resurgence in media? Theories:
1) Looked like a generic book, so people had to read it and THEN spread the word?
2) Media thought it had been done before
3) We won some prizes
4) Elon Musk suddenly a major political figure

2024-11-21 18:24:29 GMT

Oh god, this is the sort of thing that keeps me from wanting to try French in France!
https://www.reddit.com/r/banalgens/comments/1gwf21i/kyle_24_ans_%C3%A9tudiant_am%C3%A9ricain_en_france/
It's funny, being in Switzerland made me realize it's probably the best country on Earth to learn French, Italian, English, or German, because *everyone* is struggling with some language, and you never know which combination you're about to encounter.

2024-11-15 23:07:09 GMT

I hadn't known much about de Gaulle and am finally reading a biography. Among the major non-evil leaders during WWII, he really seems like the one who is just certifiably bonkers. The right guy at the right time if you're France, but wow.

2024-11-11 18:39:33 GMT

So, it seems like at a policy level the US basically accepted somewhat higher inflation than other developed countries in exchange for a thriving economy. Successful according to most economists, but it may have cost the administration a second term. Do you agree, and how do you think it'll affect future decisions?

2024-11-06 17:59:10 GMT

https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/437/307/605/881/953/original/9a1edc54786064f7.png

2024-11-01 10:34:42 GMT

Anyone read Bostrom's new book? I thought "Superintelligence" was a bit out there, but it was a pretty straightforward book about philosophy of AI. "Deep Utopia" feels like a philosopher having a stroke. I don't know that I've ever read a more confusing and repetitive book.

2024-10-15 14:49:50 GMT

Hey PG Wodehouse fans. Weird question. When you say you're a fan of his work, what are you referring to in particular?
Ideally, mention a specific book, story, poem, or play. If not that, mention a character.
October 15, 2024 at 10:48 AM
Ev

2024-10-11 11:51:03 GMT

Years ago a friend of mine who works in a pro-immigration think-tank told me that a big mistake people on the left make is that in wondering why people are often anti-immigrant they overrate racism and deeply underrated straight-up anti-immigrant sentiment. It's clearly a mixture, but I think "anti-immigrants as immigrants" isn't on a lot of people's radars. Maybe this election cycle is shifting that a bit?
Not a white dude, for what it's worth.

2024-10-10 15:21:34 GMT

So, our autistic 7 year old (mostly non-verbal) rarely plays with any particular thing for a long time, but the teachers at school put him in a VR set and he watched water for 45+ minutes.
We're thinking of getting one for his birthday. He hardly wants anything, so it'd be nice to do something special. Any recommendations? Thinking a meta quest 2?

2024-10-08 17:58:07 GMT

Could be wrong, but feels like in the last few years I've gotten a better response off jokes mocking social media. Maybe I've just gotten less bad at making the jokes, but I do feel there's been more groundswell around *some* form of pushback against the whole Internet, and much of human experience, being controlled by two and a half corporations that classify Yeats poetry and farting dogs under the same banner as "Engagement."

2024-09-18 16:16:36 GMT

Anyone miss the yearly fights about pumpkin spice lattes? One casualty of genuinely terrifying political movements has been tiny asinine Internet fights. Remember pre-Trump when the whole net was mad about that couple who have a 24/7 Victorian cosplay thing going?

2024-09-15 16:52:37 GMT

Full comic here: http://smbc-comics.com/comic/brown
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/142/604/778/561/015/original/c6ac74f7f9d53efe.png

2024-08-26 16:38:25 GMT

Bonus panel here: http://smbc-comics.com/comic/blink
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/029/300/901/567/896/original/a8ec2d27a1b9db19.png

2024-08-14 15:06:46 GMT

Victor Frankl is maybe the ultimate example of "this is great but it's not science, stop calling it science." All the great psychoanalysts should've just written novels.

2024-08-08 20:16:22 GMT

Stupid question, related to the successful incursion by Ukraine... how do you take over a town? I mean like... you go in, I guess you take over city hall or find the mayor? But for a big town, how does it actually work? This is a stupid way to say it, but I feel like there's a kind of awkward phase where you're just a guy driving through neighborhoods with a gun?

2024-08-05 13:48:47 GMT

Today the stock market has crashed... down to the level it was at 2 months ago.

2024-08-03 16:28:16 GMT

Have you noticed that the entire premise of Pinocchio is impossible because it'd allow you to solve the Halting Problem?

2024-08-02 17:42:33 GMT

Vice
Full comic here: http://smbc-comics.com/comic/vice
#smbc #hiveworks #comics #webcomics #VicePresident
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/893/651/310/236/110/original/1eb9d91c643d95b5.png

2024-07-30 00:59:01 GMT

Reading the comments here has convinced me a lot of people either don't know what circumference is or find it counterintuitive: https://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/1ef98oc/comment/lfkrcbr/?context=3

2024-07-29 19:40:21 GMT

Wow, I was reading a book from the 1940s that referred to a blind and deaf person in the 1890s as "the village idiot." And, it turns out the original meaning of the term is not the modern "stupid guy from a small town" but... handicapped people from small towns?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Village_idiot
YEESH

2024-07-27 14:37:01 GMT

Are there any LLMs yet that are able to kick questions over to a physics model? Like, it seems that at least for some questions, the way we get an answer isn't by thinking about what we've seen or learned or said before, but literally imagining the world. For kids, this seems to include things like finger counting for addition.

2024-07-23 21:10:35 GMT

Top 3 fruits:
1) Watermelon
2) Lychee
3) Mango
Nothing else comes close. Worst fruit is durian.

2024-07-23 15:16:35 GMT

Today you will learn: http://smbc-comics.com/comic/eat-4
#smbc #hiveworks #comics #webcomics #animals
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/836/458/938/113/163/original/886aa9d031b33b68.png

2024-07-22 12:59:50 GMT

Full comic here: http://smbc-comics.com/comic/investment-2
#smbc #hiveworks #comics #webcomics #ai
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/830/256/389/521/040/original/3572971ce558d7c2.png

2024-07-21 13:25:12 GMT

This makes me laugh every time I read it, but no clue how it turns into a comic
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/824/700/789/854/903/original/1294ca48064aef41.png

2024-07-14 14:32:53 GMT

Most people: I'm uncomfortable with talking about political implications of public violence directed at leaders.
Betting markets: kaching kaching kaching: https://www.electionbettingodds.com/

2024-07-12 10:54:19 GMT

Amazing passage from "The Material World" by Conway:
But what about the fact that there are only about thirty to forty years worth of copper reserves left in the ground. This, it turns out, is one of those statistics that is invariably misunderstood and misinterpreted, so it’s time for a brief lesson.

2024-07-10 15:16:55 GMT

I wonder if some of the recent "maybe Hitler wasn't so bad" stuff is surfacing now because there are fewer and fewer WWII soldiers remaining alive and most of them are elderly. So, it no longer feels to some of these people like you're shit-talking the greatest generation?

2024-07-03 16:12:10 GMT

Buns
Full comic here: http://smbc-comics.com/comic/bun
#smbc #hiveworks #comics #webcomics #parenting
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/723/434/929/965/585/original/0b2988944c03f1eb.png

2024-07-02 16:56:18 GMT

Full comic here: http://smbc-comics.com/comic/ants-2
#smbc #hiveworks #comics #webcomics #prayer
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/717/943/848/465/282/original/419994e31131be6c.png

2024-07-01 16:18:36 GMT

Moderately interesting: I just noticed there's no single word in English that refers to baby non-human animals as a category. Do other languages have one?

2024-06-28 23:26:40 GMT

Suppose AI really is quite transformative in the next 10 years. Maybe not all brains in the cloud, but like... robotaxis being common, domestic robots, personal AI assistants... what's your best case scenario for humanity?

2024-06-27 15:48:27 GMT

So I've been listening to a number of musical comedy acts lately, and it's maybe just my personal taste, but I feel like Flight of the Conchords isn't just a head of everyone else, but nobody comes close. Like, Lonely Island is funny but usually it's just a goofy/gross concept and then the lyrics just emphasize without building much, e.g. "Dick in a Box." (1/n)

2024-06-25 17:52:22 GMT

So Toys R Us is running an AI generated video: https://www.toysrus.com/pages/studios
It looks... bad? But I can't tell if that's just because I'm interested in AI so I can see all the cheats and problems. Presumably most people don't even realize it's AI?

2024-06-21 19:06:20 GMT

Well this is bonkers?
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-says-foreign-college-graduates-should-automatically-get-green-cards-2024-06-20/
Like, that would be an insanely more liberal immigration policy than the US has had in a century. I honestly can't figure what's going on here - is he just saying it situationally? I certainly don't believe he will even try to enact this if elect president, but wow.

2024-06-20 23:10:14 GMT

So, 10-year-old is super into mythology, especially epic, especially Iliad and Ramayana. She wants the Jewish version of this stuff, and I'm not sure what it is. Any recommendations?

2024-06-18 17:34:20 GMT

I got a (polite) email recently suggesting that a comic of mine might be antisemitic, and I thought it'd be nice to hear other opinions. For the record, I am Jewish, and thus liable to be antisemitic, however the claim was that by presenting Jesus as supplanting "original God" I was participating in a long-standing claim that Judaism is incomplete.
I can see how that might annoy a Jewish person, but not how it'd be antisemitic? If that's the standard, everyone's antisemitic.

2024-06-17 22:11:20 GMT

How is it that Google has 4 trillion employees and I can't sign documents in Gmail?

2024-06-17 17:00:16 GMT

Weird thing: with the expected caveats, if you took the 3 largest companies by market cap (Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple), they have a higher value than the Dutch East India Company at its peak. That's a company with a legally enforced monopoly and something like sovereign territory. If any of those three companies gets 3-4x bigger, it'll be the largest market cap in history.

2024-06-17 13:44:57 GMT

Bonus panel here: http://smbc-comics.com/comic/algorithm
#smbc #hiveworks #comics #webcomics #love
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/632/258/692/944/518/original/b29c96262d1ffad2.png

2024-06-16 12:49:15 GMT

Man, dudes are out here all day long sending dick pix nobody wants when they should've been doing boudoir shots of their knuckles
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/626/378/326/393/307/original/c425741de66457e3.png

2024-06-16 00:13:08 GMT

So to improve my French I follow a bunch of French language subreddits, and... in this one for questions posed to women, one of the top male body parts women say they're attracted to is... hands? https://www.reddit.com/r/AskMeuf/comments/1dgj791/a_part_le_visage_quelles_sont_les_parties_du/
Is this a French thing? I'm gonna start being self-conscious about my hands when I talk to French women from now on.

2024-06-15 23:09:01 GMT

Kinda crazy: I was just reading that China drops in population ~2M people per year now. It's a huge country, but jeez, that's a Chicago per year. US by contrast puts on about 1.5M per year, majority from immigration.

2024-06-15 21:09:04 GMT

How do we know the arc of history isn't going in an ellipse, orbiting justice, getting closer then farther, never quite impacting?

2024-06-15 15:54:35 GMT

So I'm reading a book I find frustrating because it's trying to argue consciousness isn't in the brain because a lot of stuff your brain does is automatic and in a kind of dance with environmental queues. That seems to me like a sleight of hand, where you define consciousness to be something like "all human behavior" and note that it doesn't exist inside the head.
Personally, I'm in favor of defining consciousness pretty narrowly, and as lying on a spectrum.

2024-06-15 15:46:31 GMT

One thing I kinda understand but kinda don't about the newer right wing movements is why they like each other so much? Like, the shared view is "our country first," but of course they're each referring to their own country. To the extent they're opposed to so-called globalists, it makes sense, but it doesn't seem overly consistent to me.

2024-06-14 16:24:44 GMT

- reply

This is a longer rant, but I do feel like there's a severe downside in the longtime shift from local to mass media, where you get the best of media at the expense of the best experience. I remember Steinbeck writing in the 40s of how he remembered all the war songs from WWI, e.g. Waltzing Matilda, but that WWII hadn't yet produced the same thing. In fact, he hadn't realized radio had won.

2024-06-14 16:22:57 GMT

One of the secrets of the book-writing business is how few people read books. This is especially true of literary books. Like, if the NYT bestseller list were stripped of celeb books, self-help books, and "beach reads," I bet you could get on with fewer than 500 sales per week. Maybe fewer than 300. It's astonishing to read what publishing was like about 100 years ago before mass media, when regular people would buy the Saturday Evening Post for original short stories.

2024-06-14 15:15:21 GMT

I wonder if we'll start to see a bunch of these new data centers going to low-population places where wind power is cheap, e.g. Nebraska? Like I assume for a lot of this stuff distance from population isn't a huge deal?

2024-06-10 00:58:05 GMT

hmm
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/589/608/334/862/538/original/dd7c3a260802a24e.png

2024-06-08 15:37:28 GMT

Suppose you cut Wolverine in half, top to bottom. What happens:
A) Half dies, other half lives
B) Both regenerate into new Wolverine
C) Half dies, other half lives, but the regenerated Wolverine has problems related to having two right or two left hemphispheres
D) Both regenerate, but with the problem described in C.

2024-06-07 14:27:58 GMT

Crazy. Highest prime age labor force participation rate in a generation. Too bad nobody wants to work and immigrants took all the jobs.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/575/805/877/908/178/original/9a8163beccbe4367.png

2024-06-03 13:33:27 GMT

One of the weirdest things from doing A City on Mars is the people who do some version of "actually it'll be cheap" and then explain that you could get a huge Mars base for just, like, 1% of Earth's GDP. Or, if you took everyone's budget for entertainment and put it into space, you could do amazing stuff.

2024-06-03 12:28:26 GMT

Was it always the case that memorial day was commemorated by discount products? Like, if I weren't so used to it, it'd seem really weird, no? Do all countries do this?

2024-05-31 17:02:06 GMT

Pro-tip: corporate AI can't do any sexy stuff, so if you want to be camouflaged to AI, just wear a suit with a pattern made entirely of huge dicks.

2024-05-30 16:16:20 GMT

This is drastically oversimplified, but one thing that really helped me understand international law, and why it's worth defending, is if you stop thinking of it as trying to fix any particular current situation and focus on the goal of preventing a nuclear Great Power war.

2024-05-29 17:44:05 GMT

Bonus panel here: http://smbc-comics.com/comic/vidjagames
#smbc #hiveworks #comics #webcomics #videogames
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/525/600/899/780/938/original/0a9b4f5ef0f9dbab.png

2024-05-28 16:57:19 GMT

Humanness
Full comic here: http://smbc-comics.com/comic/humanness
#smbc #hiveworks #comics #webcomics #ai
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/519/767/266/530/983/original/04ea20c11fd4de2e.png

2024-05-26 14:03:45 GMT

So, one lens on the weird direction of the modern Internet is that entities created to route you to cool stuff, e.g. search, social media, have especially in the last 5-10 years been taking an ever larger part of the pie via having giant networks. Google can now control whether a news site lives or dies. Meta can take 99.5% of all ad revenue displayed next to an artist's work and they have no power.
Long-term effect? Damage to the creative class.

2024-05-25 16:28:19 GMT

Wake
Horrifying bonus panel here: http://smbc-comics.com/comic/energy-2
#smbc #hiveworks #comics #webcomics #love #fantasy
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/502/668/093/741/892/original/dca13b79dab51f1d.png

2024-05-25 10:41:16 GMT

Could just be my weird local cohort, but have you noticed this linguistic thing with youngish kids where they preface statements, almost like a comic header? E.g. instead of "I think [explanation about thing]" it's "What I think about [thing]: [explanation]." So, like, instead of "I think what's going on is that the cat is shy because she lived in the wild" you hear "What I think about the cat: she's shy because she lived in the wild."

2024-05-23 16:30:07 GMT

Ethics
Bonus panel here: http://smbc-comics.com/comic/ethics-5 #smbc #hiveworks #comics #webcomics #graph
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/491/351/577/912/080/original/a7f904a3b7c95130.png

2024-05-22 17:50:38 GMT

Consciousness
Full comic here: http://smbc-comics.com/comic/consciousness-5
#smbc #hiveworks #comics #webcomics #ai
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/486/001/101/635/476/original/f704809bf28c16c0.png

2024-05-21 19:31:32 GMT

The rant nobody asked for.
Full comic here: http://smbc-comics.com/comic/myth-2
#smbc #hiveworks #comics #webcomics #superhero #myth
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/480/739/083/844/595/original/df8bd9348b33865e.png

2024-05-21 13:09:11 GMT

10-year-old told me today that chanting things, e.g. "eat the worm!" or whatever was a distinctly boy activity.
What are weird some things your kids have perceived as gendered?

2024-05-20 16:57:44 GMT

I solved ethics. Full comic here: http://smbc-comics.com/comic/consequent
#smbc #hiveworks #comics #webcomics #philosophy
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/474/472/479/859/827/original/f31660882b4eb74c.png

2024-05-19 21:56:26 GMT

Full comic here: http://smbc-comics.com/comic/sum
#smbc #hiveworks #comics #webcomics #philosophy
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/469/978/014/040/751/original/62a1d8561b537e3a.png

2024-05-18 22:52:04 GMT

For Bea Wolf 2 I converted the "this is the song that never ends" song to Old English style verse. Don't think I'll end up using it, so I give it to you:
This song is unstopping, ceases never
Ongoing my friends, onward always,
Some sang it, seeing not its nature
So too I sing, senseless of how
This song is unstopping...

2024-05-18 13:57:10 GMT

Full comic here: http://smbc-comics.com/comic/hands-down
#smbc #hiveworks #comics #webcomics #ai
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2024-05-16 15:20:37 GMT

Something that's new to me in writing Bea Wolf is that the book runs on a long plan I outlined ages ago, and now I'm filling in the pieces stanza by stanza. And often it feels like the stanzas, even if well written, have no emotional oomph. But you just have to trust that if the oomph was in the outline, it'll appear for the reader even if you don't feel it right now. Sort of like making a mosaic and having trouble seeing the design when you're putting in a tiny piece.

2024-05-16 13:24:21 GMT

Weird question:
Why do you think so few artists attempt to create a magnum opus? It really seems most people who are good at something want to just keep making it in various forms, but don't try to make a single lasting great work, even when they're in a position to try.
As an example of what I mean, take Virgil who became well known for pastoral writing, but always had an eye on writing a national epic. A few people still read Georgics and Eclogues, but the Aeneid is the Opus.

2024-05-15 12:35:54 GMT

Ethics papers:
Suppose X. Now, consider X is a subcategory of Z which is equivalent to R, which as recently been shown to be comparable to N which is, taken with P2, a type of W, and W is generally agreed to be icky.

2024-05-12 21:41:14 GMT

Full comic here: http://smbc-comics.com/comic/automatic
#smbc #hiveworks #comics #webcomics #religion

2024-05-12 13:01:33 GMT

So, after putting it down for many years, I'm back to trying to read HG Wells' corpus. Interesting thing: all of his famous, lasting, books were published between 1895-1899, when he was aged 29 to 33. There are other novels, lots of philosophical and political thought, but so far I would say none of it comes close to that first few years.
Having read lots of it my feeling is that he was very smart but used up his original ideas quickly and his political thought verged on silly.

2024-05-10 11:18:59 GMT

There should be a version of John Wick where, as in the Iliad, whenever someone is killed for any reason you get a story about where they came from, who their parents are, and how they'll never see their son again.

2024-05-09 23:39:15 GMT

J'apprends la Francais par lire Reddit, et... "gant de toilette" ? Qu'est ce qui passe dans les douches francaises?

2024-05-09 17:12:44 GMT

Full comic here: http://smbc-comics.com/comic/frank
Try this one weird trick where you support artists whose work you enjoy: https://www.patreon.com/ZachWeinersmith
#smbc #hiveworks #comics #webcomics #nature
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2024-05-09 12:41:07 GMT

- reply

@npub1ptn…q4c8 Wow! Where's this from?

2024-05-09 12:33:53 GMT

Question whose premise may be faulty:
Why is it that in Chinese calligraphy, it seems to have always been impressionistic, with quick pretty strokes, whereas with Latin scripts the calligraphy, even when it's swoopy and fancy, is highly controlled? Is this inherent to pictographic vs alphabet calligraphy or is it random cultural stuff, or are their actually just forms of calligraphy I haven't found?

2024-05-08 20:52:46 GMT

Lot of people telling me we know the Earth is round because the people in space look at it all the time but how do we know it's not just a very cleverly made sprite? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprite_(computer_graphics)