Recent Comments

1. 2 days ago on Frazz

   Does anyone here play free rice? It’s great fun for people who like expanding their vocabularies.

2. 2 days ago on Frazz

   500 seems awfully low! I looked it up and different estimates suggest the average American native speaker knows between 20k and 35k words, some studies have concluded as high as 42k.

3. 2 days ago on Frazz

   You obviously don’t have butterflies in your back yard! Or people who reemerge into your life after a period of being away, but with a startling transformation!

4. 2 days ago on Luann

   Hotels do it over, so I’m going to say that over is the “official” way. Unless you have cats who unroll it. In which case shut the bathroom door so the cat can’t get in, still over, but make sure visitors know to shut the door. I remember the pain of being a college student with barely a dime and seeing an entire new roll which the cat had shredded in ten seconds after my boyfriend left the door open.

5. 2 days ago on Arlo and Janis

   These two will appeciate that when they get older and need to live near someone

6. 4 days ago on Luann

   Meanwhile I’m stuck wondering what flavor “red” is supposed to be.

7. 4 days ago on Breaking Cat News

   I have yet to see any AI art published in the New Yorker.

   Conventional Illustrators are going to see less work, just as I’m seeing less work for low-poly background objects now that AI can generate those. But if an illustration exists, it’s still because a human made it. Maybe not a human who has entire cabinets full of derwent pencils, but still a human. And the humans creating AI engines are real people who are passionate about art.

   This cat isn’t going back in the bag. There used to be painters who traveled to small towns painting mediocre paintings of rural people. Those ceased to exist when the camera was invented. At the time people said the camera meant the death of art. Now everyone agrees photography is art – the conventional way to make that poster would be to hire a studio and a model and take a photograph of the model. Art is not going anywhere.

8. 4 days ago on Frazz

   At some point you have to decide what your priorities are. It’s easiest if you can find a way to be happy doing the things that give you long life, but it looks like she enjoys eating high calorie foods and reading. Giving up those things for long healthy hikes and lots of whole foods wouldn’t necessarily be worth it to her.

   And life comes with no guarantees. I had a dear friend who lost more than a hundred pounds, discovered he loved distance running and was good at it, good enough to qualify and run several Boston marathons. There’s a last photo of him smiling at mile 13 of a marathon. At mile 14 he collapsed from a blood clot in his calf which had traveled to his lungs, and despite the EMTs being right there was dead before he reached the hospital. He had been having a crampy calf for a week, and did all the right things, went to the doctor to be sure it wasn’t anything more serious than a strain. Doctor missed it for some reason.

   In the case of my friend, I think he would say he died doing what he loved. But not everyone does love running. If you don’t, try to find something else active that you do love. Because doing things you hate just to stay alive longer so you can keep hating your life is a bad bargain.

9. 4 days ago on Green Humour

   A good reason for me to look forward to summer. I miss all the insects during the winter. Well, not all, you can keep the mosquitoes, I know bats and frogs need them but I’m not a fan.

10. 4 days ago on Breaking Cat News

    Did you miss the part where I’ve been paid for conventionally created art for three decades now? I make a living exclusively as an artist, I have no day job.