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1. about 8 hours ago on Crankshaft

   The small newsroom smelled faintly of old paper and ink, though the presses had long since gone quiet. Mr. Rawlings leaned back in his chair, his suspenders slack against his chest. He watched Emily as she scrawled in her notebook, her youthful determination sparking something inside him—something almost forgotten.

   “You’re sharp,” he said. “That’s good. Sharp gets you in the door, but it’s curiosity and grit that keep you there. Journalism isn’t about clever headlines, Emily. It’s about the truth.”

   He gestured around the room, his hand sweeping toward the few empty desks and the aging filing cabinets. “This place—this paper—wasn’t built on speed or spectacle. It was built on asking questions. Who, what, when, where, how, and why? People trusted us to tell them what was real, not what was loudest.”

   Emily looked up from her notes. “But does it matter anymore? I mean, with everything online, everything so instant—does the truth even have a chance?”

   Rawlings nodded slowly, his eyes narrowing as if he were looking into a far-off storm. “That’s the fight, isn’t it? The paper doesn’t matter, Emily. The ink, the presses—they’re just tools. The truth is what matters. And the truth is under attack. It always has been. But now? It’s worse. People don’t want the truth—they want the story that makes them feel right, makes them feel comfortable. And there’s a lot of money in feeding them what they want.”

   He leaned forward, his voice low but firm. “But here’s the thing: The truth doesn’t care what people want. It just is. And it’s our job—your job—to dig it up, hold it high, and make them see it. Even when they don’t want to.”

   The room fell silent except for the faint hum of a fluorescent light. Emily felt the weight of his words, the responsibility they carried. She nodded, her pencil poised over her notebook, ready to carry forward the work of a world that still needed the truth, no matter where or how it was told.

2. 1 day ago on Crankshaft

   What a sad life you must live if your only reason for doing something is based on receiving praise or acknowledgment and not just for the joy of doing it. Or what joy can be derived from criticizing or tearing down someone just to make yourself feel more important? It makes you very small in what is a very large world.

3. 1 day ago on Crankshaft

   Are you sad or happy about that?

4. 1 day ago on Crankshaft

   Emily sat quietly, her notebook balanced on her knee, listening to Mr. Rawlings talk about the town, the newspaper, and the joke he delivered with a crooked smile. “In Centerville,” he said, “everyone already knows what everyone else is doing. The job of the newspaper is to let them know if anyone gets caught.” He chuckled softly, but Emily saw the glint of something deeper in his eyes. Experience. Wisdom. Maybe a touch of sadness.

   She scribbled the line down, not because it was funny, but because it captured something raw about this place and maybe even the world. Centerville was small, but the stories here weren’t. They were human stories—of people and the things they did when they thought no one was watching. Stories of truth and lies, of heartbreak and triumph, of the choices that shaped lives in ways big and small.

   As Mr. Rawlings spoke, Emily began to understand the weight of the work he had done for decades. This wasn’t just about reporting facts; it was about finding the thread of meaning in a tangle of events and weaving it into something that mattered. Something that made people stop and think, maybe even feel.

   “You know,” Rawlings said, leaning back in his chair, “this job—it’s not about the headlines. It’s not about getting your name in print or chasing fame. It’s about looking at the world as it is, with all its flaws and beauty, and telling the truth about it. Not everyone wants the truth. But the ones who do? They’re worth writing for.”

   Emily nodded, her pen hovering over the page. She could feel it now, the calling she hadn’t fully realized before. The urge to write not just for herself, but for something larger. To capture the stories that mattered, the ones that revealed what it meant to be human.

   As the afternoon light slanted through the window, Emily made a decision. She would do this. She would write. Because in a world filled with noise, someone had to find the meaning and give it voice. And maybe, just maybe, that someone could be her.

5. 2 days ago on Crankshaft

   Mr. Rawlings leaned back in his chair, the sunlight filtering through the dusty blinds of the Centerville Sentinel office. His voice was steady, measured, like the ticking of a clock that knew its time was almost up.

   “There was a time,” he said, “when this place hummed with life. The newsroom was loud—typewriters clattering, phones ringing, people shouting over one another. Stories came in fast, sometimes too fast, and we chased them down like wild dogs. The urgency, the weight of it. Every word mattered.”

   He paused, looking at the empty desks, their surfaces long cleared of the clutter that once defined them. “Now, it’s quiet. Too quiet. News doesn’t have to be chased anymore; it’s shoveled in front of you by an algorithm, regurgitated for clicks and outrage. And here we are, a handful of us still clinging to the old ways, thinking maybe there’s a place for paper in a world that’s moved on.”

   Emily listened, notebook in hand, her eyes wide. He could see the questions she wanted to ask but didn’t, the hunger to understand.

   “This business,” he continued, “used to be about digging deep, finding the truth, and printing it for the world to see. Not for clicks, not for ratings, but because it mattered. Now it feels like a relic, doesn’t it? A newspaper. Ink on paper. Words that don’t vanish with a swipe of your finger.”

   Rawlings looked out the window, watching the slow drift of a few autumn leaves. “I guess we’re still here for the people who want to hold something real in their hands, who want to sit at their kitchen table with a cup of coffee and read something that doesn’t blink or scroll or refresh itself.”

   He turned back to Emily. “I don’t know how much longer this place will last. But as long as it does, I’ll keep writing. Because there’s still a story to tell. And I think maybe you’re the one who’ll tell the next one.”

   It was quiet for a moment, the kind of silence that wasn’t empty but full, heavy with meaning. Then Emily nodded, and Rawlings smiled.

6. 3 days ago on Crankshaft

   Mr. Rawlings was taken aback when Emily Reynolds walked through the door of the Centerville Sentinel with a notebook in hand and determination in her eyes. She wasn’t there to chase likes or clicks; she wanted to shadow him, to learn the craft of journalism from a man who still believed in its soul. It surprised him—this day and age of blaring headlines and instant outrage wasn’t built for reporters like him, relics of a slower, more deliberate time.

   He thought back to his life after the war, to the day he left his arm behind in Europe. He’d learned something on that battlefield: truth was often buried deep, hidden beneath rubble, blood, and fear. That lesson carried him through the decades as a war correspondent, from the war-torn streets of Korea to the jungles of Vietnam, and now, here in Centerville, through a world that seemed to spin faster than ever. The horrors of war had shaped him, but they hadn’t broken him. Instead, they forged a man who understood that freedom wasn’t a gift—it was a fight. And the front line of that fight was the truth.

   As Emily stood before him, Rawlings couldn’t help but think of the world she was inheriting. Nations teetered on the brink of conflict, democracy itself seemed under siege, and the clamor of biased media drowned out voices of reason. He wondered if she realized the weight of what she was asking to learn—not just the art of reporting, but the responsibility of it.

   “Yes,” he said finally, his voice gravelly but steady. “I’ll teach you. But there’s one thing you need to understand: Integrity isn’t given, and it can’t be bought. You earn it with every word you write.”

   Emily nodded, her young face serious. He saw in her the glimmer of hope, the kind that refuses to die even in the darkest times. And as he welcomed her into the newsroom, he knew this was his last great story to write—not on paper, but in the heart and mind of the next generation.

7. 7 days ago on Doonesbury

   Here’s a little secret about life: the struggle between Good and Evil is actually an inner struggle we all face. It’s not some grand battle between deities but a deeply human challenge within each of us. The Book of Revelation, with its talk of the Apocalypse, was written by a person who was trying to make sense of signs and endings. And while some believe we’re living in those “end times” right now, shaped by chaos and flawed leaders, the truth is, we can’t know when—or if—that final end will come. What matters is what we do here and now: the actions we take, the karma we build. It’s our responsibility to shape our own soul because those choices will echo for all eternity.

8. 9 days ago on Non Sequitur

   If Musk intended to crash the U.S. stock market, it could benefit him and other wealthy investors by allowing them to buy assets at low prices. For the wealthy, a deep recession is manageable, but for average Americans, it could mean extreme hardship, possibly worse than the Great Depression. If another pandemic were to arise, targeting marginalized communities with limited access to healthcare, the resulting population reduction would make the country more “manageable” for the elite, who could then consolidate power and wealth. Meanwhile, Americans can also expect the retirement age for Social Security to increase without a rise in benefits, alongside cuts to social services like housing, fuel assistance, food stamps, and education. These changes would primarily serve the wealthy and politicians supporting them, leaving average citizens to shoulder the burden of an economy that increasingly caters to those at the top.

9. 16 days ago on Ripley's Believe It or Not

   You are not understanding the statement. The comic states that the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election will be the first in 48 years without a Bush, Biden, or Clinton on the ballot. This would imply that, starting in 1976, there has been consistent representation from at least one member of the Bush, Biden, or Clinton families in U.S. presidential elections (either on the ballot or as significant candidates).

   However, this isn’t quite accurate. As we previously discussed, none of these families were actually involved in the 1976 election in any official capacity.

10. 16 days ago on Ripley's Believe It or Not

    Well it doesn’t make sense.