Grrl Power #758 – Dabbler(‘s non-terrestrial origin) revealed!
I think the press will ultimately have a bit more of a negative reaction to being lied to about Dabbler’s origin, but it was always the plan to come clean about it once existence of aliens was undeniable. It’s just happening waaaay sooner than anyone thought it would. I initially thought about having some of the press grumbling about it after Dabbler spills it on panel 4, but as usual, Suzie just rolls with it and cuts to the chase.
While these events unfolding the way they did aren’t Sydney’s fault, it definitely would have all gone down differently if she hadn’t been involved. Although, the Alari colony ship making its way to Earth would still have probably happened.
Hmm. Well, if the team hadn’t interfered with Sciona’s portal, she would have arrived on Alar before whatever those things were attacked. Sciona’s plan was to lead a force back through and begin a takeover of Earth. Though Sciona hadn’t planned on just launching an offensive. She was going to do it behind the scenes, so… honestly it’s hard to say if Sydney decelerated or accelerated the extra terrestrial reveal.
I’m still not sure about that green top for Dabbler. I tried a number of colors there, but purple skin with teal stripes does make certain color combinations difficult for her. A peach top actually looked pretty good, but it also kind of looked like she was nude and wearing purple opera gloves. And a bunch of purple makeup on her face I guess. Blue is usually a good solution for her, as long as it’s doesn’t match her hair color too closely, but with the blue drape in the back, and the sky blue UN flag behind her, nothing looked good besides a green that didn’t match her stripes, black, or red.
And yes, I know the US flag is hung wonky. People have said it’s supposed to be flipped around with the stars on the left side when it’s hung vertically, but that seems crazy to me. When it’s horizontal, the stars are at the top left, then if you rotate it 90° clockwise, it winds up how I have it. To put it the ‘right’ way, you have to first flip the horizontal flag left to right, then rotate it 90° counterclockwise. That makes no sense to me. It’s stuff like that which makes the world unnecessarily complicated.
I try not to get political with the comic, but dealing with military personnel and civilization shifting press conferences, it’s hard to at least not dip into that realm just a bit from time to time. I wasn’t sure how else to end this page, but I thought a gag about citizenship would be fitting. Someone in the press corps would definitely ask about it, so Dabbler preempted it. Of course, it’s not like she could be an illegal alien. The government knows she’s here. At the very least she’d have some sort of work visa, right?
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Of course Suzi rolls with it! Her dreams of a space dogman boyfriend are within reach!
You love one space dogman boyfriend and you’re marked for life.
Hey come on now! She is in a relationship with Arianna still. They exchanged Klingon kisses complete with bodily fluid (blood). By that standard fur boy will have to take a back seat.
She took our jerbs
Oh no! Not our gerbils!
Succubi can breed with many species.
Now Archon will have many resident aliens, and a lot of them will be tiny furries.
At least she won’t eat her offspring hopefully.
Btw Cosmic, Scythe is making a South Park joke :)
Time to build a wall. In space. Also, between dimensions.
Wall from what? Domain wall, the two-dimensional singularity? No wall from normal matter will stop someone who already crossed several light years to get here. Also, Dyson spheres are quite hard to build.
THE WALL JUST GOT TEN FEET HIGHER!
I’ll go get the large cherry picker, some pinions, a small hammer, and a lot of rope.
Aaaannnnd the Ladder Manufacturing industry “just now” announces thier “New And Improved… 10 foot Longer Ladder, as per the new specifications just received from the Government”…
Dyson Spheres need archaeologists in the same way that a fish needs a box of matches to take up smoking.
True, the fish would use its car lighter because fish prefer to smoke while cruising the main drag.
A hilbert curve, obviously
’cause a filbert curve would be totally nuts
Dimensions already are separated by walls. A Universe is a s big as it needs to be and thus has limits.
I think there will be some speculation about Dabbler’s species name. If it were just some unrecognizable alien word, there would be not point in further secrecy, therefore it would need to be something noteworthy to humans. She even mentioned the “battle form” looking like a succubus, despite it not closely matching most depictions of succubi that I’m familiar with. People will figure it out and/or think up something worse.
Don’t recall her saying the ‘battle form’ looked like a succubus, just that it was a ‘form she used for battle’
she did, “that looks mysterious like a four armed succubus” but there is a chance the time delay on the broadcast got clicked over thanks to Arianna.
This is not something new for the U.S. We have had rules in place to handle extraterrestrial visitors since 1798. Have you ever heard of the ‘Alien and Sedition Acts’ ?
It states plainly:
SEC. 3. And be it further enacted, That every master or commander of any ship or vessel which shall come into any port of the United States after the first day of July next, shall immediately on his arrival make report in writing to the collector or other chief officer of the customs of such port, of all aliens, if any, on board his vessel, specifying their names, age, the place of nativity, the country from which they shall have come, the nation to which they belong and owe allegiance, their occupation and a description of their persons, as far as he shall be informed thereof.
It just says ‘ship or vessel’. It didn’t specify what type or where they were from.
A lot of Ben Franklin’s ‘inventions’ were derived from watching some of the visitors from his time. His diary describes his meeting with one of them. “The small hairy one from Melmaque demonstrated himself to be quite annoying. His manners were atrocious and he did prove most vexatious to my pet cat.”
well considering they landed at the Arcon building, pretty sure them taking Sydney directly to Maxima counts
The wird “persons” however, has a legal definition that may need to be expanded, since it currently means ”human” under the law.
Word. Sorry. Typing on phone sucks.
Sounds like “human” will need to be defined then too. Because Cora is part Homo Sapiens. And Dabbler may be too (she is part ‘unknown’). And if an attempt is made to define it as ‘pure homo sapiens’, would that exclude all non-African populations from being considered human? Given that the rest of the world has varying degrees of neanderthal dna mixed in.
Oh and it would also exclude any who had virus DNA. Which would be all humans, as they got into mammal dna even before the first humans walked upright.
So currently viruses should be able to apply for their green card.
That’s actually a very good point. :) Legally speaking.
I doubt it. Depending on how you count it, viruses are typically younger than the age for residency.
If you use those criteria then nobody would qualify, as they would mostly be a different person by the time the 5 years had elapsed.
https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/cellular…/does-body-really-replace-seven-years.h..
Just looking at that text quoted mind the only appearance of “persons” is as a synonym for “body”. The line in question is just demanding that their description be recorded. Contextually it is not saying that they must be a person in order to gain entry.
Although it is possible that the specific text was chosen very carefully.
*wags tail jauntily*
The phrase “as far as he may be informed thereof” is a pretty helpful dodge as well.
No, I mean as a lawyer, I’m letting you know, the word ‘person’ is defined in English commonlaw and in American law formally as ‘a human being’ as a legal term-of-art – mainly to separate the difference between humans and other animals in legal terminology. Although to be fair, neither the Founding Fathers, nor Blackwell, nor any other judge or lawyer or legislator who wrote the laws probably ever considered extraterrestrial life :).
isn’t the term “entity” used to describe a non-human but legally present status? Usually as a company or organization granted. But if we extend to a supernatural stance.
Any person or persons acting knowingly or unknowingly on behalf of any entity will not be held accountable for their actions if the entity can be proven to be acting directly or indirectly through them or else be proven to at some point to have knowingly influenced their actions.
(Possession accusation case regarding inhuman spirit); base line.
Entity is different than ‘person’ in the law. The actual definition of entity, at least in the law, is ‘an association, corporation, partnership, proprietorship, trust, or individual THAT HAS LEGAL STANDING IN THE EYES OF THE LAW. :) Entities are the main exception to the rule – a ‘non-human’ that nevertheless is seen as a legal person because it is able to have legal standing. Animals, on the other hand, are not considered persons. That’s why, when an old woman leaves her fortune to her cat Muffins, it’s actually being left to a person, where the money is kept in a limited trust which is to ONLY be used to take care of the cat – it’s not actually being left to the cat, because the cat does not have any contractual rights and is not a legal person.
Funny enough, the definition might have been expanded because of a 2018 case in New York, Nonhuman Rights Project, Inc vs Lavery, but they were ruled against.
Nonhuman Rights Project was representing two chimpanzees, Tommy and Kiko. Plus they were denied leave to appeal after they were ruled against though, but the appelate judge did take the matter seriously and didn’t just have it laughed out of court.
Without the word “natural” in front of the word “person”, the term does not merely apply to humans. Corporations have been determined to be (effectively) persons for purposes of US Constitutional law. Thus, without specifying further, the term “person” in a statute does not have a prima facie expectation of limiting the statute to homo sapiens.
However, that doesn’t mean that a cat (or even a chimpanzee) is automatically a person either. They don’t qualify for the various expectations we have of humans. No one would credibly doubt that Dabbler is effectively the equivalent of a human for this purpose… although someone might make an attempt, and that person would then be denied standing for the lawsuit, since they have no authority to object.
The thing people often are confused about is that corporations AND people are both considered legal entities. And corporations, under US law, have most of the same rights as a person (there are a few exceptions that are codified in US statutes). So as a result, sometimes people refer to corporations as non-human entities, or even as non-human persons, even though they are not actually ‘persons.’ The law on corporations is actually fairly new compared to the legal definition of person though, which goes back to the original signing of the the Constitution (you’ll note the Founders did not write ‘men’ or ‘man’ or ‘woman’ or ‘women’ in the Constitution – they use the word person, persons, or people, and sometimes citizen or citizens).
Pander — you may have missed this particular stupidity, but corporations are not just “entities” in the USA. They’re persons, granted a variety of civil rights. Thus, the Citizens United case wherein the Supreme Court of the US decided that election laws prohibiting corporations from spending unlimited amounts of unreported money for political purposes, which dovetailed with a related ruling that declared money to be equivalent to free speech and thus that political spending limits per person were disallowed — anyone could spend as much as they want. It was up to Congress to decide whether anonymity would be permitted (and they have cravenly done next to nothing in this regard since somewhere in the 1970s IIRC.)
In these decisions our most outstanding jurists decided, essentially, that the richer you are, the more your speech matters.
Interesting interpretation, but, no.
Many examples have proven that expenditures do not move elections. Money does not make speech matter.
In fact, the opposite ruling would have been closer to saying that wealth makes speech matter. The inability to collect lots of small donations by an organization like Citizens United, and to then make a view known, would quiet the many small voices that are not represented by powerful interests.
Only a person with a big personal war chest could make their speech heard in such a regime.
No, they really arent. It’s something that laypeople often mistakenly say, though. They are ‘non-human entities’ and sometimes people then call that non-human people, then laypeople will hear it and think ‘corporations are people.’ They are not people, but corporations do have most of the same rights as people. Most, not all. Simply put, corporations are not people, regardless of what papers like the Huffington Post incorrectly state.
Most lawyers realize this, but it doesn’t get explained well, mainly because reporters and pundits try to grossly oversimplify it, and do a horrible job of it in the process. Just because it’s called ‘corporate personhood’ does not actually mean corporations are legal people. It just means corporations are treated as also having certain rights that people have as well, like First Amendment rights, since they are taxed in addition to the individuals that make up the corporation (and being taxed without being able to have rights is a big problem in the US, which is why we had that whole ‘no taxation without representation’ party in Boston with the tea going into the harbor and whatnot :) ).
Gonna repost this because it was near the bottom of Page 1 and people tend not to notice previous pages.
Just had a nasty thought. Is it possible that this press conference will have the same effect on aliens and the Veil that the first Archon conference had on supers? Will random aliens like Jeannie/Greenie now start to get outed by a weakening Veil?
Actually, it might even relieve pressure on the Veil. Since now that aliens are public knowledge, there’s no real reason or the Veil to need to cover them any more.
If I recall correctly they were added deliberately and each kind needed a separate entry. Some more scary types will probably be left covered for a while longer, left to last to be removed from the veils cover.
I think that was Platonix’s point. If the veil suddenly drops off the aliens living here, and Jeannie turns Greenie in the middle of a shift, there’s gonna be some troubles.
I still think it illogical that the veil would just cover “alien” in general, and not have to have each and every alien race on Earth entered into it specifically just like how supers got outed but are all human but no other super powered human like beings on Earth became visible *vampires, elves, fairies, elementals, demons, ect…*
But how specific the veil’s program can be might be questioned, like aliens that resemble those outed, or races with similar characteristics; like now that grey skinned humanoids like the Alari are known; might Dark Elves have a hard time being hidden by the veil, or with Frix might lycanthropes be harder to keep hidden. Or does the glamour have DNA programmed in not just aesthetics; but then each individual alien race would need to be entered into the system; so anything new showing up wouldn’t be hidden anyway if one of them had never come to Earth before.
A key aspect is that the Veil needs to be given detailed information about a species (or an individual) to cover them. For an alien you can just download their details from Galactic Wikipedia and/or the Galactic Police Force medical database.
For supers they cannot even program one individual in, until they have learnt all their powers. And even then, not knowing how they work means that the Veil will have a hard job countering any effects visible (or otherwise detectable).
“What do you mean, it worked perfectly for him until he became angry? He did what? Humans don’t come in green!”
It’s a very simple statement to say “persons who do not originate on Earth” … there’s no illogic there. Magic of the type described in the “revelation of the veil” storyline, which is highly programmatical and resembles computer code more than regular speech, will have the capacity to arbitrarily distinguish based on the “database” and place-of-origin is a simple field in the “class function” that defines any entity.
Trouble is that the Veil is not creating the individuals involved, so has no intrinsic way of telling if a creature detected was born on Earth or not. It has to look for clues, the same way that any image recognition software would have to. Just look at the Uber self-driving car crash, that killed a woman in Arizona. First it identified her as a vehicle, then as an ‘unidentified object’ then as a bicycle (which she was pushing).
None of which identified her as a human. Let alone being able to guess whether she was a terran born terrestrial or one of the millions born off-planet. Many of the latter would need to be hidden by the Veil, especially any with major mods, like Cora.
And note the seriousness of getting the classification wrong. The photographic image of Bigfoot has long threatened revealing the secret behind the Veil. Likewise Nessie. And mimes.
Pretty sure that if you do not have acertain percentage of human DNA, the veil will work on them, at least partially like it does on supers. And there are only a few million humans in space, some of which are gene mods. If the full humans from space were to come to Earth the veil probably wouldnt work on them at all.
The bottom of the last panel on this page is a prime example of why the “female-on-male abuse is funny” subplot proved so infuriating to so many readers, especially after Dave claimed that it was purely exaggeration and they weren’t actually physically assaulting the male for attempting to provide input regarding the intimate relationships they were set on having with him.
Seriously, look at that Fox News bar there… that is EXACTLY the sort of thing they do.
Not like CNN or MSNBC or Snopes or Politico or Vox or Washington Post or HuffPo do not do the same or worse though.
Case in point? Antifa as described by CNN.
News in general is more about punditry nowadays.
I am very disappointed. Up until now, this comic has been lighthearted and mostly free of politics. It was a breath of fresh air in a culture war where everything is demonized for not being ‘PC enough’ and people competing with each other for imaginary “woke points” and “victim points.” Now this? At least we now know where the author stands on the political spectrum, as if knowing that is a good thing.
“FOX and friends xenophobic panic mode…”? Seriously?
I want to barf at this poor-taste attempt at humor.
BTW: Does it even dawn on Leftists that FOX is the only conservative mainstream news channel available, while there are a great many liberal-leaning news channels to choose from? Or how about the fact that other parts of the world don’t have a single conservative mainstream choice? For example, Canada’s main channel is the CBC, while Britain’s is the BBC, both with extreme Leftist biases. After acquiring U.K.’s Sky network, FOX was forced to cease broadcasting in the U.K., over concerns of their “growing influence”. Something similar happened in Canada where a popular conservative news channel was strong-armed to quit through sketchy legal wranglings (such as a government department coming up with excuses not to renew their license).
I won’t try to defend FOX, aside from saying that those in glass houses should not try to throw stones. Like Pander said, news in general is about punditry – or propaganda to push an agenda. Those who want less spin-doctoring in their news and more actual journalism and journalistic integrity have to go looking for independent sources on the Internet. And, even then, it’s a very mixed bag and needs to be taken with a whole lot of salt.
Sadly common sense and discernment seems to be taken for granted these days, if not becoming lost arts. I guess people need to re-learn how to think for themselves rather than listening to what talking heads on the boob-tube, telling them what to think. But then, to say “re-learn” assumes people were taught how to think for themselves when they were growing up.
Agreed. This was a really humorless, toxic punchline. Why do people think adding questionable, divisive politics into entertainment that is usually politics free a good idea?
It was also incredibly APT. And it’s fair for Dabs to be saying it BECAUSE she’s part of a group they’d talk about.
Fox did the same thing to Muslims, who, btw, 90% of are moderates, and most of which are from nations ALLIED to the US, like Jordan, and it’s a very small group of the remaining ten percent that’re terrorist nutbars.
There’s actually more Fundamentalist CHRISTIAN Militia out there than there’re fundamentalist Muslims. It’s just it’s easier to point at Muslims and go “RAAAH! DIFFERENT!”…. kinda like, you know, Aliens like Dabbler.
That ain’t no punchline. That’s literally what Fox “News” does. The program is literally, scientifically proven to make people dumber and less in touch with reality, so what’s wrong with mocking them for something they are known to do?
Figured it was more mocking the viewers, not the channel itself
You are not obligated to see or read it.
This comic has been incredibly “PC”/explicitly left wing since it’s beginning. What are you on?
If you can’t handle this one page then I don’t know how you made it through the rest of comic.
Also; What does it matter to the Left that conservative/right-wing views aren’t terribly popular in other first world countries?
Actually this comic has HARDLY been Politically Correct. Not sure what comic you’ve been reading.
And it matters because it shows an inability for one side of the political aisle to be willing to even consider the other side, which the other people are pointing out, and they (Cronomatt and Xpacetrue) do have a very good point. It’s never a particularly good idea to make jokes which are intentionally made to offend half of your audience. It never comes off as funny and it makes the person making the joke look biased or, at the very least, stuck in a bubble where they did not even realize that a large percentage of people would consider that the joke was directed at THEM.
If you want to know how to make political jokes without offending either side you need to watch recordings of Johnny Carson’s old monologues. He knew how to poke fun at any politician without taking it too far. Unfortunately even Carson’s brand of evenhanded humor probably wouldn’t cut it today. Too many people just itching to find a reason to be offended.
Carnac the Magnificent is hilarious. Just watched some of it in Youtube.
Did you miss the obviously racist, uber-christian character a few months back that was portrayed as an overly gullible idiot?
Also; Pretty sure right-wing Fox News watchers aren’t half Dave’s audience.
In fact, I don’t think Dave even particularly likes those kinds of people.(Based on this page and others in the past.)
Also, it’s not very surprising that people aren’t willing to consider the point of view of bigotry, or the one that’s currently adding to an increase in domestic terrorism and hate crimes:
https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2017/topic-pages/tables/table-1.xls
https://csbs.csusb.edu/sites/csusb_csbs/files/2018%20Hate%20Final%20Report%205-14.pdf
Blonk – This is a T&A (lite) and polyamorous comic, so of COURSE it’s not conservative.
They don’t even notice the anti-conservative tropes for the most part. Sydney is trope-aware, and Dave plays with tropes all the time: uses them, subverts them, laughs at them, and so on. You can’t DO that and be PC.
I’d have to read all the way through the Cooter/Wyrm stuff to know for sure whether Cooter votes on either party… he seems like the type that would have a clear reason NOT to vote… and if he believes in monsters, then he’s probably not watching much regular TV, Fox or otherwise. As far as Cooter being “christian” … I really don’t know how well a Hindu guy or Muslim gal could have stood up in that role of monster-hater-who-gets-screwed.
But, anyway, the comic is not POLITICALLY left, not partisan per se, and not PC, it’s socially left. And yes, there’s an important distinction in there.
There’s a lot of readers here who are gun owners, military, intelligence, and salt of the earth types who were the backbone of the Democratic party back when it had a backbone. (Most Democrats will agree to the inherent assumption there, although they might disagree on which backbone it ought to be showing this election season.)
Then there are some that aren’t — a category that includes me.
Being socially left is the same as being politically left. Primarily because the Left/Democrats are almost defined by their social policies and it’s what large swathes of the Republican party oppose them on. Both policy wise and morally.
For example:
Dave has had two openly gay characters so far, both not at all ashamed about their orientation and don’t considered it something they need to get fixed.
^That’s political now. Their Republicans in high-positions of power that push for conversion therapy and personally espouse anti-gay bigotry.
You do realize that there are also gay Republicans in high levels of power, right?
Including in the Trump administration. Such as Robert Gilchrist, the Ambassador to Lithuania. And he has gay supporters as well like billionaire Peter Thiel, who Trump apparently has called a ‘brilliant guy’ and Trump seems to follow him on Twitter, which seems to be a very limited clique of people that he actually follows (along with @foxandfriends :) ).
Yeah, so?
So you’re making a false assertion, and a false idea that ‘if you are gay (or bi, since Peggy’s actually bisexual), then you are political and definitely not Republican.’
You’re equating the existence of sexual preference with having to be political. More specifically, you’re equating the existence of sexual preference with being partisan in how a person is political.
You’re wrong, and not everyone thinks like you where ‘everything is partisan politics.’
That’s not what I said, but go off I guess.
“You’re equating the existence of sexual preference with having to be political.”
Yeah, because one party has a much more negative view on gay rights than the other.
It’s very hard to have a diverse cast of characters without on something political because politics are currently tied up in human rights for certain groups of people.
Being a racist redneck does not automatically equate to being a political conservative. No one was angry about Cooter being represented as possibly racist because he’s a trope. Ultra-patriotic but stupid redneck trope. Probably owns a bomb shelter too. It’s not a political affiliation though. Plus at the very least, that’s subtle.
And sure, keep thinking that people who watch Fox News are not a significant portion of DaveB’s audience. Keep thinking that the news network with the largest audience on the planet (which has more individual viewers than CNN and MSNBC combined) does not have any overlap with people who read a mostly apolitical and very popular webcomic. You’ll be wrong, but keep thinking that if you want.
Also keep assuming that right-wing = xenophobes. My father was an immigrant (legal immigrant), and yet he voted Republican regularly. Even Cooter, the fictional redneck, has an actual reason why he’s bigoted against monsters – they apparently killed his entire family. Which actually makes him a sympathetic villain (if a villain at all, since he’s mainly been, as you did put it, a gullible idiot).
“Being a racist redneck does not automatically equate to being a political conservative.”
There is an undeniable amount of over-lap between the two.
“And sure, keep thinking that people who watch Fox News are not a significant portion of DaveB’s audience.”
I’d be surprised if they do since many of the characters actions probably don’t line up with their beliefs.
“Also keep assuming that right-wing = xenophobes.”
I mean, the Republican Party is the largest political block currently pushing the most blatantly xenophobic parties right now.
“There is an undeniable amount of over-lap between the two.”
That’s not only your opinion, but it’s also a biased one. I can say the same thing about an undeniable overlap of racism/bigotry and Democrats, if you really would want me to get into that, with people like KKK grand dragons in Congress, the BDS stuff, things Jesse Jackson has called jewish people (which I will not repeat but feel free to look it up), and Hillary Clinton referring to a certain type of ‘time’ when related to african americans. But that clearly does not mean all Democrats are racist, right?
Or I can say the same thing about people in metropolitan cities being elitist liberal and (I’ll use Sydney’s word for it) hippies, even though it exists.
The point is, there’s overlap with everyone. And not actually as significant an amount as you think. Heck, like I’ve mentioned before, there’s a rather sizable overlap of people who voted for Trump and the same people who voted for Obama.
“I’d be surprised if they do since many of the characters actions probably don’t line up with their beliefs.”
I’m pretty sure if any intersectional feminist actually read this comic, there would be quite a number of them that would be massively offended by it, since a lot of it is very ‘cheesecake’ (although I definitely am not offended by it). They might also be offended that the General is a man and has authority over Maxima.
Also, you have to realize the primary difference in viewing materials of people on the left, and people on the center and right. This is an actual study btw that has been taken. Apparently, people on the left are about 90 percent likely to ONLY view content of other people on the left, while people on the right are 70 percent likely to view content of people on the left AND right. This actually makes a fair bit of sense though, given that such a huge majority of media is coming from a lean left or left slant, let alone hard left in the mainstream, and even in social media, where the right has more influence than they do in mainstream, the left still has the majority of influence. If people on the right did not view both sides more often than the left, they’d have very little in entertainment :)
Anyway the study involves the types of psychology of people who consider themselves on the left and the right. Conservative people tend to have a fairly evenly distributed set of personality archetypes throughout the scales of Agreeableness, extraversion, openness, and conscientiousness, while people on the left tend to have high levels of extraversion and consciousnessness, but low levels of agreeableness and openness. Btw, don’t take offense at the names of the categories. It doesn’t mean if you’re on the left that you’re not open to ideas that are different than your own, and it doesn’t mean if you’re on the right that you are an introvert. It’s just a psychology term for how different people’s sociability affects their interaction with others in GENERAL.
“I mean, the Republican Party is the largest political block currently pushing the most blatantly xenophobic parties right now.”
Again, your opinion, and I’d say it’s an incorrect one. Not wanting illegal immigration does not make you a xenophobe. There’s a difference between wanting legally defined borders and people to come into a country through legal means, and being xenophobic. I’m sure there are some who are the former, but even Democrats were saying the exact same thing Trump is saying TODAY, if you look 8 years ago. Including even Bernie Sanders, who years ago said he did not want a lot of immigration, and definitely not a lot of illegal immigration, because he felt that corporations would use them for cheap slave labor, while Chuck Schumer said he had been against illegal immigration because it would hurt Americans who would otherwise get those lower skill jobs.
So I think you’re really conflating your opinion of Republicans in general with words that you feel will be insulting to them, out of a sense of tribalism of your own political affiliation.
To be clear, both parties have their baddies in them. Very often having the same exact opinions, but at different points in time depending on if they are or are not part of the political party currently in power.
Or I can just quote facts that the Alt right supports Trump:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/08/alt-right-donald-trump-support-hurts-conservative-movement/
Neo Nazis are running as Republican candidates:
https://www.vox.com/2018/7/9/17525860/nazis-russell-walker-arthur-jones-republicans-illinois-north-carolina-virginia
And that the KKK primarily votes Republican now:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy
This isn’t me claiming no modern democrat has ever been bigoted or hateful, but it is blatantly obvious which party the vast majority of Nazis, KKK members, and just generally hateful people in America most identify with.
“I’m pretty sure if any intersectional feminist actually read this comic, there would be quite a number of them that would be massively offended by it, since a lot of it is very ‘cheesecake’ (although I definitely am not offended by it). They might also be offended that the General is a man and has authority over Maxima.”
Dave, and presumably a lot of his viewership, are feminists and they don’t seem to have such concerns.
“Again, your opinion, and I’d say it’s an incorrect one. Not wanting illegal immigration does not make you a xenophobe. ”
Yeah, but putting asylum seekers into cages in an attempt to scare all immigrants is xenophobic though.
“Or I can just quote facts that the Alt right supports Trump:”
And I can quote that the grand dragon of the KKK, a man called Will Quigg, supported Hillary (and donated $20,000 to her campaign)
http://thedailyjournalist.com/thethinker/kkk-grand-dragon-says-he-supports-hillary-clinton-in-video/
I can also point out how people like Richard Spencer have wound up denouncing Trump because he’s NOT racist, even on CNN…. as recently as last month.
But I wouldnt use any of the stuff about who supports who as an argument, because I prefer to judge a person on what they, themselves, do. Not who claims to support them. Because that’s how you get ridiculous news stories about how milk is racist because white supremacists like drinking milk and other idiotic stories on different major, nationally recognized news media.
Actually, I can probably go a few further and say how Hillary Clinton described former KKK Grand Kleagle, Robert Byrd, as her ‘friend and mentor.’ Or I could mention that the KKK was created by Democrats, the Civil Rights Act was fought against by Democrats, and KKK members remained in the Democrat Party serving as elected officials until Senator Robert Byrd’s death in 2010.
But again, I prefer to judge people on their actions.
Actions like, for example, as recently as last year, how there are pictures of Democrat politicians (a governor and other politicians) in blackface. Although to be fair, Governor Northam was not sure if he was the one in blackface. He might have instead been the one wearing the KKK outfit. It’s not like anyone bothered to find out which one he was.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/us/ralph-northam-blackface-photo.html
Also, the southern strategy theory has been debunked multiple times. I could show you in depth research on this, or I could let others like Ben Shapiro or Dinesh D’Souza, but I’d rather give you someone who you would not be able to dismiss as ‘right wing’ – so I’ll let Vanderbilt University professor of political science and law, Carol Swain, explain it, since it would have been literally impossible for there to have been a Southern Strategy implemented when Republicans did not even hold a majority of southern congressional seats until the mid-1990s, not when Nixon was president as the Southern Strategy myth claims.
https://youtu.be/UiprVX4os2Y
“but it is blatantly obvious which party the vast majority of Nazis, KKK members, and just generally hateful people in America most identify with.”
Honestly, when your main source is just Vox, it’s hard to take you seriously.
“Dave, and presumably a lot of his viewership, are feminists and they don’t seem to have such concerns.”
Second wave feminists? Yes, I’m pretty sure most people in the United States period are second wave feminists. Because that’s now just egalitarianism. Actual equality between the sexes across the entire social and legal board.
Third wave feminists though? No, I doubt it. Less than 8 percent of people identify as the feminists nowadays. Even among female millenials today (where you’d expect there to be a majority if ANYWHERE), less than half of female millenials identify as feminists, mainly because the word has been hijacked by third wave feminism, which is postmodernist and about intersectionality, rather than the far more widely accepted second wave feminism, which is already a matter of law and has been for at least the last 50-70 years.
I’ll even use a left leaning publication to support this, and it’s supported by polls taken by YouGov, which has the highest accuracy ratings among polling groups:
https://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/401804-poll-less-than-half-of-female-millennials-identify-as-feminists
Dave’s viewers don’t mind about the cheesecake because DaveB’s story is great, and most people are fine with cheesecake actually. Including people who support second wave feminism, which is most people except the most rampant misogynists. Like I said in another post, most people are inherently decent and normal people who do not get bent out of shape about other opinions that do not mirror their own.
“Yeah, but putting asylum seekers into cages in an attempt to scare all immigrants is xenophobic though”
Okay I have to actually answer this in several parts, since you made multiple mistakes and falsehoods in one sentence somehow.
1) Obama is actually the President that created the camps, because of a California lawsuit that had a California district court judge REQUIRE it. California, the most liberal federal district for the courts – the ninth circuit.
2) Most are not asylum seekers, because they did not come through legal port of entry. They came through illegally, were caught, and then some of them declared asylum. And the US has been, despite the law, letting it fly, although during the time where they have to decide whether the asylum request is valid, they HAVE to be held somewhere until their case is adjudicated.
3) Even the ones that are asylum seekers need to be held long enough for their cases to be adjudicated. What used to happen, before Obama, was they would just be let go into the populace, be told to come back at X date, and more than 60 percent of them would never show up for the asylum hearing.
4) The pictures of ‘children in cages’ were taken in 2014, not in 2016, 2017, or 2018. They were incorrectly attributed to Trump, when it was actually under Obama.
5) Under Trump, 95 percent of the children who were separated from their parents under Obama have been placed back with their parents or legal guardians as of this year (although not the ones that were found to be child traffickers, which I’m pretty sure none of us would want to happen, I’d hope).
6) They are not immigrants. Immigrants is a legal term. Meaning they engaged in legal immigration into the United States. They are illegal aliens. Calling them illegal immigrants or undocumented immigrants or undocumented workers is just newspeak. I’m a lawyer though. I use the actual legal term, not a politically correct term, when describing the law.
7) Putting someone who crossed the border illegally in a containment area until they can be vetted is not xenophobia. Literally every country on the planet that has sovereignty has the right to guard their borders and vet anyone coming in. Including Mexico, which has far more strict immigration policies than the United States, actually, although they’ve recently started allowing refugees into their country. Which ironically means anyone who is an actual refugee from somewhere other than Mexico, who comes into Mexico while trying to get to the US, can now no longer legally claim asylum, since they are now already in a safe country as far as international law, Mexican law, and US law is concerned. The reason it was different before is because Mexico wasn’t allowing refugees, which meant they still needed the closest country that would, which was then the United States.
7b) I’d like to re-emphasize, the majority of the illegal aliens are not even asylum seekers, since economic hardship is not a legal reason to be able to seek asylum.
8) They’re clearly not scared away, since they keep on coming. You’re also conflating ‘illegal entry’ and ‘immigration’ – the former is a crime, the latter is legal (and there are 1 million legal immigrants each year that are allowed into the United States). I hope you realize that all countries are also allowed (and required, actually) to decide how much influx of immigrants can come into the nation, based on how much the economy and infrastructure are able to support the influx of people, especially when we have welfare programs in place.
There’s an old saying by Milton Friedman, the Nobel prize-winning economist – “”It’s just obvious you can’t have free immigration and a welfare state.” It’s sometimes shortened when people quote it to “You can have a welfare state or you can have open borders, not both.” In short, the more people you allow in, the more of a burden there is on the country’s infrastructure, so it must be done carefully and deliberately, and even with asylum seekers, you must make sure they’re actually coming in for legitimate asylum seeking reasons.
https://www.heritage.org/immigration/commentary/look-milton-open-borders-and-the-welfare-state
Not sure where my original response to your post went but here’s it again, without the links which might have been the reason it didn’t go through? I can include the links later though. I had put in a LOT of links because you said a lot of things that were simply incorrect, and had already been widely debunked, so I wanted to refute with actual links.
“Or I can just quote facts that the Alt right supports Trump:”
And I can quote that the grand dragon of the KKK, a man called Will Quigg, supported Hillary (and donated $20,000 to her campaign)
I can also point out how people like Richard Spencer have wound up denouncing Trump because he’s NOT racist, even on CNN…. as recently as last month.
But I wouldnt use any of the stuff about who supports who as an argument, because I prefer to judge a person on what they, themselves, do. Not who claims to support them. Because that’s how you get ridiculous news stories about how milk is racist because white supremacists like drinking milk and other idiotic stories on different major, nationally recognized news media.
Actually, I can probably go a few further and say how Hillary Clinton described former KKK Grand Kleagle, Robert Byrd, as her ‘friend and mentor.’ Or I could mention that the KKK was created by Democrats, the Civil Rights Act was fought against by Democrats, and KKK members remained in the Democrat Party serving as elected officials until Senator Robert Byrd’s death in 2010.
But again, I prefer to judge people on their actions.
Actions like, for example, as recently as last year, how there are pictures of Democrat politicians (a governor and other politicians) in blackface. Although to be fair, Governor Northam was not sure if he was the one in blackface. He might have instead been the one wearing the KKK outfit. It’s not like anyone bothered to find out which one he was.
Also, the southern strategy theory has been debunked multiple times. I could show you in depth research on this, or I could let others like Ben Shapiro or Dinesh D’Souza, but I’d rather give you someone who you would not be able to dismiss as ‘right wing’ – so I’ll let Vanderbilt University professor of political science and law, Carol Swain, explain it, since it would have been literally impossible for there to have been a Southern Strategy implemented when Republicans did not even hold a majority of southern congressional seats until the mid-1990s, not when Nixon was president as the Southern Strategy myth claims.
youtu.be/UiprVX4os2Y
“but it is blatantly obvious which party the vast majority of Nazis, KKK members, and just generally hateful people in America most identify with.”
Honestly, when your main source is just Vox, it’s hard to take you seriously.
“Dave, and presumably a lot of his viewership, are feminists and they don’t seem to have such concerns.”
Second wave feminists? Yes, I’m pretty sure most people in the United States period are second wave feminists. Because that’s now just egalitarianism. Actual equality between the sexes across the entire social and legal board.
Third wave feminists though? No, I doubt it. Less than 8 percent of people identify as the feminists nowadays. Even among female millenials today (where you’d expect there to be a majority if ANYWHERE), less than half of female millenials identify as feminists, mainly because the word has been hijacked by third wave feminism, which is postmodernist and about intersectionality, rather than the far more widely accepted second wave feminism, which is already a matter of law and has been for at least the last 50-70 years.
Dave’s viewers don’t mind about the cheesecake because DaveB’s story is great, and most people are fine with cheesecake actually. Including people who support second wave feminism, which is most people except the most rampant misogynists. Like I said in another post, most people are inherently decent and normal people who do not get bent out of shape about other opinions that do not mirror their own.
“Yeah, but putting asylum seekers into cages in an attempt to scare all immigrants is xenophobic though”
Okay I have to actually answer this in several parts, since you made multiple mistakes and falsehoods in one sentence somehow.
1) Obama is actually the President that created the camps, because of a California lawsuit that had a California district court judge REQUIRE it. California, the most liberal federal district for the courts – the ninth circuit.
2) Most are not asylum seekers, because they did not come through legal port of entry. They came through illegally, were caught, and then some of them declared asylum. And the US has been, despite the law, letting it fly, although during the time where they have to decide whether the asylum request is valid, they HAVE to be held somewhere until their case is adjudicated.
3) Even the ones that are asylum seekers need to be held long enough for their cases to be adjudicated. What used to happen, before Obama, was they would just be let go into the populace, be told to come back at X date, and more than 60 percent of them would never show up for the asylum hearing.
4) The pictures of ‘children in cages’ were taken in 2014, not in 2016, 2017, or 2018. They were incorrectly attributed to Trump, when it was actually under Obama.
5) Under Trump, 95 percent of the children who were separated from their parents under Obama have been placed back with their parents or legal guardians as of this year (although not the ones that were found to be child traffickers, which I’m pretty sure none of us would want to happen, I’d hope).
6) They are not immigrants. Immigrants is a legal term. Meaning they engaged in legal immigration into the United States. They are illegal aliens. Calling them illegal immigrants or undocumented immigrants or undocumented workers is just newspeak. I’m a lawyer though. I use the actual legal term, not a politically correct term, when describing the law.
7) Putting someone who crossed the border illegally in a containment area until they can be vetted is not xenophobia. Literally every country on the planet that has sovereignty has the right to guard their borders and vet anyone coming in. Including Mexico, which has far more strict immigration policies than the United States, actually, although they’ve recently started allowing refugees into their country. Which ironically means anyone who is an actual refugee from somewhere other than Mexico, who comes into Mexico while trying to get to the US, can now no longer legally claim asylum, since they are now already in a safe country as far as international law, Mexican law, and US law is concerned. The reason it was different before is because Mexico wasn’t allowing refugees, which meant they still needed the closest country that would, which was then the United States.
7b) I’d like to re-emphasize, the majority of the illegal aliens are not even asylum seekers, since economic hardship is not a legal reason to be able to seek asylum.
8) They’re clearly not scared away, since they keep on coming. You’re also conflating ‘illegal entry’ and ‘immigration’ – the former is a crime, the latter is legal (and there are 1 million legal immigrants each year that are allowed into the United States). I hope you realize that all countries are also allowed (and required, actually) to decide how much influx of immigrants can come into the nation, based on how much the economy and infrastructure are able to support the influx of people, especially when we have welfare programs in place.
There’s an old saying by Milton Friedman, the Nobel prize-winning economist – “”It’s just obvious you can’t have free immigration and a welfare state.” It’s sometimes shortened when people quote it to “You can have a welfare state or you can have open borders, not both.” In short, the more people you allow in, the more of a burden there is on the country’s infrastructure, so it must be done carefully and deliberately, and even with asylum seekers, you must make sure they’re actually coming in for legitimate asylum seeking reasons.
So you’ve got Will Quigg, Richard, and Robert, plus probably a handful more.
And I’ve got proof that Trump, and the wider Republican party has millions of far and alt-right support.
Pretty sure one outweighs the other. And the Democratic party that created the KKK isn’t the modern one.
“Governor Northam”
Who was immediately denounced by his peers and his constitutes, and who is now desperately trying to claim it wasn’t him.
Those are not the actions of a party that even vaguely stands for open racism.
While Republicans would defend such a politician to the death if they were on their side and said such things. Probably with phrases like “it’s not that bad” or “stop being easily offended”.
“youtu.be/UiprVX4os2Y”
Seriously, Pager U?
They are blatantly republican and heavily right wing, have been exposed numerous times for being dishonest and misleading, and have come out against blatant scientific facts like global warning.(On top of silly stuff like how God has to be a guy.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOtUDQe4p5Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T45Sbkndjc
https://youtu.be/WIwKhX-1gZQ
1)Even if that was true, does that absolve Trump of using them?
Also, that’s not true:
https://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2018/jun/25/blog-posting/did-obama-detain-illegal-mexican-children-experime/
2)The people being detained in Trump’s Concentration Camps are not “illegal immigrants”. They are not “undocumented immigrants”. They are Asylum Seekers. They are permitted under US Law to enter by whatever means and at whatever location they are able to do so, and must be permitted to make the case that they suffer/will suffer persecution in their native nation.
The have not committed any crimes, nor are they charged with any.
They have committed no administrative violations, nor are they charged with any.
They literally have the same legal right to be present in the US as a citizen does until their cases are heard and decided.
Any attempt to claim that “they shouldn’t have entered illegally” is made in bad faith because this has been pointed out repeatedly by myself and others in every thread that even remotely references this matter.
3)They need to not be held in inhumane conditions.
4)No they weren’t:
https://www.factcheck.org/2018/06/qa-on-border-detention-of-children/
Trump’s admin doesn’t call them cages, but they’re basically cages.
5)Got a source for that?
6)Illegal immigrant is also a legal term.
Why argue the semantics of this? It’s barely relevant to the main point of contention.
7)The conditions are very messed up and the attitude taken towards correcting that by the Administration certainly is.
7b)And I’d like to reiterate that you’re wrong.
8)I said that was the intent, not that it was a successful or good idea.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-trump-administration-traumatizes-children-in-the-name-of-scaring-migrants-away/2018/04/29/fe779b50-4a5a-11e8-827e-190efaf1f1ee_story.html
“while there are a great many liberal-leaning news channels to choose from?”
Name 2.
CNN and MSNBC.
CNN
MSNBC
Huffington Post
New York Times
BBC
CBC
The Young Turks
Daily Kos
Mother Jones
Salon
Vox
Vice
Yahoo News
Buzzfeed
Slate
New Yorker
NBC
ABC
CBS
Politico
Time
Rolling Stone
Oh wait you only wanted two.
CNN and MSNBC.
So, I guess, according to you, anything left of Stormfront is Leftist?
Okay seriously, those news outlets have been caught spreading propaganda and even outright lies to promote a leftist narrative. They have made their stance perfectly clear during the last presidential election in particular.
You really can’t be more objective in declaring them to be leftist/liberal than that.
“If by a “Liberal” they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people-their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights and their civil liberties-someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a “Liberal”, then I’m proud to say I’m a “Liberal.” “
Jesse- I’m wondering when you decided that “liberal-leaning” meant “Leftist”. That’s like thinking that “damp” means “drowning”.
Jesse – they are far left and left leaning media.
There are at least 3 times more left leaning and far-left leaning news media than right or far right. And don’t bring up Stormfront. Might as well just try to call everyone you disagree with a nazi if you’re going to go with Godwin’s law.
The fact that you can’t handle the idea that the companies and publications I listed are on the left just shows that you’re in a bubble. If every single person that’s a ‘journalist’ or pundit is a Democrat (or sometimes an actual socialist), and they continually let that influence their reporting, then hate to break it to you – it’s on the left. Fox News, for its faults, at least does hire, and has hired, some people from various different political spectrums, like Juan Williams, Alan Colmes (deceased), Donna Brazile, Kirsten Powers (from the Clinton adminstration), Tamara Holder, James Carville (also from the Clinton administration), and Shepherd Smith. Even Tucker Carlson, for all the smears about him, is not particularly a fan of something as traditionally right-wing as the free market system when it comes to replacing humans with technology (which he argued on the Ben Shapiro Sunday Special a few months ago).
Also I have to agree with everything Marscaleb said in his first paragraph.
Name 5 more.
Okay um….
The Guardian
The Daily Beast
The Intercept
The Nation
The Atlantic
Anyone with two brain cells, to rub together, could tell you that.
Actually Fox News has been getting very careful about their fact checking! Long, uncut clips and single, uncut quotes are the norm now. Intervierers don’t interupt, and don’t “explain” for the person they are interviewing. They did start out closer to CNN/ABC norms with News Anchors mostly reading out stories with some quotes and lots of commentary. The only reason why Fox was even “conservitive” at the start was because they noticed none of the news stations of the time were Republican-leaning and wanted the market share!
But as “mainstream media” are going off the rails with obviously biased stories – Fox News started going “just the facts” in their coverage with much less commentary. That is why they are by FAR the most watched news outlet.
I’m pretty sure Fox’s viewership numbers more has to do with being the only “news” organization being included for free in basic cable subscriptions.
More likely, that it’s the only conservative-leaning outlet, and roughly half of Americans are right of center… for some definition of center.
My basic cable includes ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN and MSNBC. Your statement is counterfactual.
It’s actually not included for free.
It’s the most popular mostly because it fills a niche which is left empty by the other news media companies, namely providing news and punditry from a centrist (ie, Chris Wallace, Bret Baier), center-right (ie, Tucker Carlson, Brit Hume, Kimberly Gilfoyle, Harris Faulkner), Libertarian (ie, Greg Gutfield, Kennedy, John Stossel), and right wing (ie, Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs, Jeanine Pirro) perspectives. Although it also does have some left personalities as well (ie, Donna Brazile, Juan Williams, Shepherd Smith).
Because it has a particularly large portion that are center, center-right, and right wing though, which are nowhere to be found in most of the rest of ‘mainstream media,’ they automatically get more of an audience because they have more variety of perspective.
This is not the case with MSNBC, which basically only has one person even on the center-right at all, Joe Scarsborough, no one really in a ‘centrist’ position or libertarian position, and definitely no one on the right. And it’s even more apparent with CNN. And it winds up showing in the ratings.
In addition, CNN and MSNBC are basically competing for the same viewers. They are basically cannibalizing each other for viewers while simultaneously having to compete with alternative media sources (like Youtube, podcasts, and talk radio). Fox is competing with alternative media sources as well, but not also with other mainstream news media for the reasons I just listed in the above paragraph.
“Seriously, look at that Fox News bar there…” Fox News can k*** my a**, everyting they have to say, is immaterial to me.
Sort of reminds me of a joke on Family Guy, where Seth McFarlane was actually poking fun at people who are rampant Fox News haters to the point of it not even being logical.
The episode where Lois tells Chris: “Even true things, once said on Fox News, become lies.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dc-b0vTRCv0
Just saw the episode where Lois goes to work for Fox News as a reporter on TV a couple hours ago (and reveals who the real Rush Limburger is why are you reading this?)
Thought it was the episode you linked, butt it wasn’t :(
Lol fair enough, though you could as easily have ended with a CNN panel spinning some sort of hidden secret ultra foul deal to get the current president elected, y’know, baseless accusations l type stuff lol
Sad to see what journalism is reduced to these days…
Autocorrect plus sausage fingers means I roll to type on mobile with double disadvantage lol
Should have read *baseless accusation type stuff*
*licks lips*
Sausages?
Down, Kujo!
Given that in the comic, it’s still Obama… nope, still Fox “news” pushing Birtherisim.
Oh man, i remember when Sidney noticed Dabbler is not human. Still makes me laugh. I wonder if this will ever be available in printed form in Germany.
The biggest in-universe reveal on this page is that Dabbler is a naturalized citizen.
In fact, that’s almost certain to be the single most important thing revealed at this press conference.
The existence of aliens was already known because of the Alari.
The presence of humans in space? Interesting, but that’s ‘out there’ and not important to people on Earth.
The non-interference laws? That basically pulls things back towards the status quo.
Everything else has been old news, distant, abstract, or normalizing.
Finding out that there’s at least one nonhuman citizen? THAT is new, local, concrete, and divergent. THAT is a reveal with consequences.
To the pitchfork and torch industries?
We are talking about someone who can tinker together a gun capable of shooting through a mountain. She sounds like quite a catch for any nation. There would be a que of them lined up to welcome her to theirs, if she decided to leave.
OK and a few that would have the bonfires burning, just in case she may go to theirs.
No I think Anonymous means it’s new, local, concrete and divergeant because it shows that there’s been a governmental cover-up for far longer than just the arrival of the Alari, and that the government not only knew about it, but were in active cooperation about it in order to either sidestep or cover up some elements of Dabbler’s naturalization process, such as where on her form she would have placed her nation of origin and other identifying informaiton. I’m not an immigration attorney (and they don’t make you take immigration law in Law School, even as an elective) but I’m familiar with some of the paperwork involved in becoming a citizen or getting a green card.
So… this actually would be pretty newsworthy as a reveal, and if someone made a FOIA request, I’m not really sure what would be redacted (ie, blacked out for those that don’t know what redacted means) on it since what they usually black out are things that would fall under national security. And since Dabbler just revealed that she’s an alien, I’m not sure how her naturalization papers would fall under the redaction excuse of ‘cannot tell you for reasons of national security’ anymore.
Well, she would *have* to be to serve in an american military arm
She’s officially a “civilian consultant” like Math.
That’s not actually true. Any permanent resident (green card holder) can join the military. They just can’t become commissioned or Warrant Officers.
And we’ve actually started deporting these veterans for minor crimes (like marijuana possession).
It’s also an admittance that the US Government broke a number of constitutional laws. Since naturalization requires X which requires Y which requires Z and Z requires the public be informed about it for it to be legal.
Basically put she couldn’t be legally naturalized until 60-90 days after the existence of aliens was made public.
So which statute is Z? The wishful thinking one?
Whilst there are specific things which are mandated by law must be publicly announced, I am not aware of a general principle which demands that. The closest I can think of is that a law must be public knowledge. If it is not made so then it cannot be seen to have validity.
But that is not the case here, as the immigration laws are already public knowledge. And they use the term ‘aliens’ quite clearly in their texts. Just read up near the top of the comments page to find an extract from one such.
You might want to read up on the minimum Naturalization requirements.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/naturalization
Following the already existing laws as written would disqualify Dabbler from Naturalization on multiple grounds. So to be Naturalized, assuming she isn’t lying, would have required new laws and a large enough number of people being involved that you hit the “can’t keep this secret” level.
Granted the biggest one is regarding ‘moral character’. However the very link you provided shows how she could qualify:
The community that Dabbler has been living within has been that of Archon. Their record is being sexually liberated and outspoken, on average (Max being an exception on the former, but not the latter). Note that it does not stipulate ‘a given community in the Bible Belt’, which may yield a different result.
As for the five years requirement, seeming to be another obstacle (she had only been at Archon for a few weeks prior to Sydney joining), please check out this page:
https://www.uscis.gov/us-citizenship/citizenship-through-naturalization/continuous-residence-and-physical-presence-requirements-naturalization
Dabbler gets a green card with either of the first two exceptions.
This was not hard to find. The system is always weighted to ensure that those individuals a country wants and needs can be fast tracked in. Even had Dabbler failed on the fist two, she could have been placed within Arc Spark, to qualify on the third:
Dabbler is a genius inventor with vast knowledge of alien science (and other stuff the public is not ready for yet). Even with her refusing to share, just observing her using her toys will give the USA a research advantage over the rest of Earth! Let alone the things she actively helps with (like figuring out Krona’s powers and telling them details about wormholes and so on).
This is somebody that America wants, and the rules will guarantee that those people get in, even if they need to take a favourable interpretation of ‘good moral character’.
She had only been at Archon a few weeks.
That doesn’t necessitate her not being on earth yet.
She could have been a Twilight Council liason with some government agency which handed her off to Archon as it prepared for the big reveal.
Yups, she has only been officially part of Archon for a few weeks (which, coincidentally, has also only been around for a few weeks… ) that doesn’t mean that she only arrived on the planet a few weeks ago
For all we know, she could have been Naturalized during the Kennedy-era (want to know how and why they managed to reach the moon first? ask Dabbles, she was consulting them)
Possible but unlikely, unless there are some laws in the Grrlpower universe’s history that are NOT in real life, unless Congress had somehow managed to grant her honorary citizenship and everyone who took part in the vote managed to stay quiet for decades.
But if there are secret laws on the books that would allow it, since the US government and the Council HAVE had a working relationship since at least the Lincoln administration, it’s not completely impossible that secret laws like that exist. After all, there are also courts where everything is secret, like the FISA courts, which have existed since 1978 (under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978). There could be something similar with Council stuff.
Yorp – those appear to exceptions to the continuity provisions, not to the duration provisions. only section f applies as a firm waiver, based on her obvious contributions to US security… and that requires one full year of residence.
“Even with her refusing to share, just observing her using her toys will give the USA a research advantage over the rest of Earth!”
90% of engineering is figuring out something is possible, after all.
Sometimes that last 10% can be pretty tough, though. You know it’s possible to do mass/energy conversion at 100% efficiency, but it requires strange quark matter to do it…
Hey, watch with the cis-matterism.
Only the ones they have a theoretical knowledge about, anything beyond that, is unknowable. Thus an alien spacecraft cannot understood by us. Unless we have a knowledge, of the theory behind it, it cannot be “reverse Engineered”. See the movie, The Gods Must Be Crazy, showing natives, trying to figure out a Coke Bottle, of which they have no knowledge.
To be fair those natives also did not have the basic concept of science being a thing that exists. Or have a complete notion of time. And thats actually stated by the narrator in the beginning of the movie.
Once you learn certain basic concepts, things get more likely to be backwards engineeredbased o. Knowing that the thing is even possible in the first place. Sort of like ancient people learning the concept of numerical reporesentation of zero changed math.
I don’t see anything that would disqualify her.
Actually, while you’re correct, I’m assuming that either she RECENTLY became naturalized, after the Alari landed and aliens became known to the populace, or there was some sort of special laws by some sort of secret courts (similar to FISA courts) that were specifically in place in the Grrlpower universe to handle naturalization of Council members, including alien races, which would probably have to be made public now (at least as far as aliens are concerned, since the information on the existence of other council races would probably still fall under national security reasons).
Or maybe, in the Grrlpower universe, Congress can just make her a citizen without the normal individual application, which IS within their power. Congress has the exclusive power to constitute a foreign subject a citizen of the United States, and they can do it by a special act of Congress. It’s happened before in our real history, when Congress made Sir Winston Churchill an honorary citizen of the United States. – 77 Stat. 5 (1963)
They could have had the required number of people informed about aliens, demons, and everything else for the citizens in question to be legally nationalized, then kill them all.
The actual requirements for naturalization can be found at https://www.uscis.gov/citizenship/educators/naturalization-information
Nothing in there that requires public disclosure. Dabbler could easily qualify under the actual requirements.
The big issue, really, comes not from the naturalization, but from her immigration status in the first place. While Dabs certainly qualifies as a Cat 1 (“Persons of extraordinary ability” in the arts, science, education, business, or athletics; outstanding professors and researchers, multinational executives and managers.) preferred candidate, she would still be subject to the cap on visas. So she would’ve had to have been granted a visa–which, among other things, requires approximately three-and-a-half fucktons of paperwork. This, of course, includes copious references to the applicant’s nation of origin.
So, in order for Dabbs to be naturalized, she’d have to have documents someplace showing where she’s from. Now, the government would’ve had two ways to deal with this:
1: Lie on the forms. If this happened, it’s plausible that the torch-and-pitchfork crowd could argue that her application was invalid. Furthermore, any legal applicant who was denied because of the visa cap would have standing to sue because they arguably got ‘bumped’ by Dabbler being given preferential treatment.
2: Trust that no one was watching, put the proper words down on the form and let the fact that the bureaucracy is so huge just let it get hidden away until such time as it becomes an issue. A great deal of governmental skullduggery is accomplished largely by assuming that no one is watching, and just jumping right in.
Arianna’s usually portrayed as being very intelligent (and dismissive of the intelligence of others, especially the media), so I suspect that she would’ve argued for Option 2.
However, given the level of immigration news stories going on, it’s quite likely that FOIA requests have been made for a detailed breakdown of ‘country of origin’ for immigrants. Those stats are quite detailed, and I can guarantee you that a 1-person immigrant at the bottom of the list from some country that doesn’t exist (on Earth) would’ve gotten someone’s attention. That WILL cause A. some headaches down the road–either the government dropped her entirely, or lied outright–both of which could lead to judicial censure.
Now, there might’ve been a way around it. The US could have let her become a naturalized citizen of a smaller, allied country, first (let’s say Dabbs first landed in the Bahamas, for instance). Then the forms in the U.S. would’ve just listed her as an applicant from that nation. Smaller countries can often get away with this sort of thing, because they have smaller press corps with less ability to take a ‘big data’ approach to newsgathering. And a sweetheart deal to let her naturalize there first would’ve been relatively easy to arrange via diplomatic backchannels.
That said, I don’t think we’ll see a detailed explanation of this, in any case–Dave doesn’t usually go deep into these sorts of legalistic shennannigans.
Oh, but I will say this: Suzie is lousy at her job. Sorry, the next question to Dabb’s comment about the government keeping secrets is, “Fine, on THIS revelation–how many other extra-terrestrials besides yourself, Cora’s crew and the Alari are on Earth and within the borders of the U.S.?”
Dabbles is not government, she has no obligation to answer that beyond: “Ask your local government representative”
And is smart enough to know that, so didn’t bother asking a question that can’t be answered
Except that there IS a government rep on stage with her, so asking the question forces A. to choose between answering it, deflecting it or fleeing the stage and backing into the ARCHON shrubbery. I’ve worked with a lot of reporters over the years, and seen how they work. You ask every question multiple times, from multiple sources, precisely because, as Dabs says here, “Governments keep secrets”. When different people give you different answers, that tells you something in itself.
I doubt that Dabbler had to lie on any forms. They were probably classified forms anyway, because of her special status. :)
This is the wind up, and Tuesday comes the pitch; Dabbler’s theories (all we’ve had so far was a possible to miss little easter egg type joke on the civilization chart) on why humanoid body types are so prevalent.
It probably just comes down to appearing that way from Earth. The rest of the galaxy is quite diverse. But when the primary reason for coming to Earth is for the sex tourism trade, there will be a natural filter in what body types tend to visit.
With various knock on effects, down the supply chain. For instance tour agencies will likely to be based on humanoid type planets, so will have more humanoid staff. Those in transit, through Fracture, may prefer to deal with similar beings (those Hydrogen breathing air bag gas giant aliens are harder to employ working on the hot dog stall, without exploding).
And we have seen some very diverse non-humanoids, so they are out there.
for bias, aesthetics and architectural needs. That said it makes sense, size and shape similarities not just in the sex tourism bit; but just in getting around. The typical joke is a giant in mouse town, or a mouse in elephant town. But just body type can be a major change in everything. Species that have wings and frequently fly might no have ground level doors, or could use ladders for everything, some ophidian body types could have rough textured poles and zig zag curves on a ramp as their primary ways to move about, as well as wide doors, everything spaced so far apart for their bodies which for them is a light stretch but takes a human ten steps just to reach the cupholder from the seat of the ship. Some more flexible gel body species could like tight quarters so all sides of them touch surfaces for efficient movement, making their ships and homes a claustrophobic cave diving nightmare for humanoids. Without even getting into the different atmospheres, humidity, atmospheric pressures and all that typical stuff mentioned in sci-fi when dealing with aliens.
After all, try to imagine a crab like centaur creature that is eleven feet long by five feet tall with elastic six jointed rotating free limbs and a head with 360 vision, trying to maneuver around a human built house; but then imagine what sort of structure it would build for its self and its family and co-workers environments. Big mounds for chairs, shelves spaced wide apart, elevators were invented before stairs were ever considered, ect… chairs do not exist.
form bias, I think my keyboard doesn’t work half the time.
Come now, come now. She’s clearly a legal immigrant. Nobody on Fox would have issue with that. :P
I’m actually mildly surprised she wanted to become one. She must really like America and/or Earth; foreign consultants ARE a thing.
How exactly can she be naturalized? Did she wait at an entry point (the moon?), contact the government, and was granted citizenship?
Naw dawg, she was an illegal alien in more ways than one and then received citizenship because she’s a supe and we don’t want her to go to another country.
F*** she’s EXACTLY what I was talking about before. She can get the tech the galactic community says is too much for us but won’t because ultimately she has no loyalty to us or this planet. We’re just primitive screwheads that provide her with energy.
/over-analysis
“How exactly can she be naturalized?”
The same way anybody else can. If you read the rules they will not state ‘must be human’. And the rest relate to what you must do, in order to qualify. Dabbler could do anything or anybody that it took.
Ok we see what you did there! Bad dog! Have a bacon wrapped sausage as pun ishment.
Sorry out of doggi chocolates.
Ok why did it autoincorrect to doggi
*nom* saursy *nom* Ish a baad dogh *nom*
She could also be hiding out on back water Earth to escape prosecution the minions of the entity she trapped in the hell hole. Under the 1951 Refugee treaty the u.s. signed, if she would have claimed Asylum, it would be a violation of the aforementioned legally binding treaty to prosecute her for entry.
Qualifies for Refugee status because she is outside her country of origin, and has a reasonable fear of prosecution do to her political opinion. ( in that demonic Overlord belong in fire pits being a political opinion in a country ruled by said Overlord)
Easy enough- any space center could be deemed a port of entry for off-world arrivals with enough incentive for the authorities to do so. Area 51 could probably be deemed to qualify too, regardless of what they actually do there. So illusion yourself, charm your way to the commander and reveal, apply for am EB-1green card, and get a government job for whatever the required period is till you apply for naturalization. Done and dusted.
It helps a lot that she probably counts as “independently wealthy”.
You’re describing illegal immigration (Entering under false pretences and manipulating/seducing an official) not naturalization.
Natualization is for people that have lived here for years or are the child of a citizen. She has to have done it illegally or at least questionably because the other option is a chicken/egg paradox (legally became naturalized by living here, lived here legally by being naturalized)
My guess would be, as I said before, it was either just give it to her and have her work for us or have a supe with seduction powers and low morals join Russia/China/etc
As with other things in the past, like her rapey interactions with the hairdresser supe, her citizenship is kind of a “don’t think about it too much” deal.
Or, in a world with various types of aliens and supernatural beings having been around for thousands of years there are provisions for this cloaked in Government secrecy.
I see no reason at all to assume by default that no provisions for granting citizenship to powerful and helpful nonhumans or enhanced humans would exist within the paradigm of Dave’s world.
Yes to the first paragraph, nope to the second, “OF COURSE” to the third.
Yes, sort of. The entering may or may not be legal or illegal, depending on how she entered. The seducing of an official would probably be a crime… but she didn’t necessarily do that. Just flashing hypnoboobs enough to get up the food chain would be sufficient. And more likely, she could arrange to bump up against someone important someplace else, if she wanted to get in completely by the book. All she really needs is to arrange to talk to anyone in the joint chiefs or the white house. With her tech, not difficult.
Regarding the next paragraph, legal immigration requires various specific steps be taken. That’s all. There are no special steps defined for nonhuman aliens. In our own world, the minimum required residency, for someone that the government determines is a significant benefit to security, is one year. That’s it. One year before naturalization. And your guess is exactly right, and it’s specifically allowed by the statute.
Now, the law does NOT require that you publicly reveal things to the lower level immigration people that the government would not want to be revealed. You have to be truthful in how you fill out the paperwork… so you must put the name of the place you were born, for example. How Dabbler negotiated the bureaucracy, to get to someone high enough to make a rational exception, would be an interesting story, but doesn’t necessarily involve anything illegal, per se.
And, yes, third paragraph, OF COURSE this is all refrigerator logic. The only way it will ever appear in the story is if there is a way to have it cause a problem that is interesting to play with. Otherwise, you can just assume that some lawyer guy at DoJ talked to a lawyer gal down at the pentagon and they hammered out how to fill out the papers in a way that was technically not perjury, but raised no unnecessary questions… and then stamped the result with “classified”.
Meanwhile, a much thicker dossier was created that was stamped as “ultraviolet utmost top secret compartmentalized must set self on fire before reading”. That one has the juicy stuff… literally, in Dabbler’s case.
You just need to be a permanent resident to live in the US, not a naturalized citizen. She easily qualifies for a green card as a first preference immigrant worker given her “extraordinary ability in the sciences”, after that it’s just a matter of having a permanent residence in the US for 5 years.
I’m aware of at least one case in which residence in the US for four years and two months plus proof that another ten months rent was paid in advance was provisionally accepted. The person involved was working for a government agency, so I don’t know if it would be generally applicable – but it’s clear that somebody (a judge?) gets to make a decision about whether to make exceptions.
You can legally, get essentially all of the formal rules waived if the government considers your presence in the country useful enough. NAZI rocket scientists, for instance. Foreign employees of spy agencies who need to retire right away. People with unique skills, or entrepreneurs willing to make major investments in the US economy.
Dabbler would qualify easily for this sort of fast track treatment, quite legitimately.
I wouldn’t really call that “legit” and her NOT providing is my biggest issue. All your examples didn’t get citizenship out of the goodness of our hearts. We got their knowledge.
She has access to the advanced tech mentioned by Cora but won’t let us have it because we’re primitive. Not too primitive to provide for her though, apparently. You could say her “payment” is super hero-ing but there’s already plenty of those.
Actually, now that I think of it, the first panel is proof of her loyalty ultimately lying with the galactic federation, or whatever it’s called, and not us. “The short version” IE “Don’t tell them anything useful”
I believe that was the resolution in the movie “The Coneheads”
Emma, the “plenty of those” that exists in the US regarding supers *is* Arc, and she’s one of them.
In fact, she’s acknowledge as one of the top three most powerful beings that “we” have.
While she is not giving us *her* tech, she is helping analyze other advanced tech, which is just as good or better…it is more likely to be feasible to produce with our existing infrastructure.
Just want to say, amongst all the politico-journo bashing: Suzie is adorable in panel eight :D
My favourite is Dabbler in panel 4.
If we are talking favourite Dabbles on this page: the fourth wall breaker is the bestest :D
Yea, it is pretty good too. I just prever ‘really happy’ to ‘smug’ (although ‘self-satisfied’ could be substituted for either, as there is overlap).
I see folks have been referring to it as a 4th wall breaker. I don’t see that myself though. Despite all the hidden additions the rest of the Grrlverse is as per our world. So she is addressing an organisation which does exist in that setting, and she is speaking both to their representatives in the press corps and the audience following the live broadcast at home.
When Dabbler chooses to break the 4th wall, she does it a lot more blatantly than that. Including leaning out of the picture frames.
Oh don’t worry Dabbler, naturalized American citizen on not, it won’t stop them from being xenophobic. You aren’t white, conservative, preferably wealthy and male, ergo, not a *real* American.
And for all the poor widdle conservative snowflakes I just offended; go F yourselves.
Feel free to rant all you want, I don’t actually read these comments, just occasionally post. :>
We were the first Americans, by 13,000+ years. American Indians.
Yeah… most Americans tend to forget… They’re DESCENDED from immigrants.
Mean, hell, you go back far enough and there’s the Bering Land Bridge ;)
Which is what referred to last time they brought it up
Expept, we were the first people to arrive, so far as we know for certain.
The fact you ‘arrived’ means you are not native
It is, if we had first claim.
That is not what ‘native’ means!
Widdle conservative snowflake who’s inter-racially married to an immigrant, in my case. I’m more of a conservative xenophile, actually.
If people on the left actually had conversations with people on the right more often, they might realize the extent to which they’ve constructed unrealistic stereotypes, and taken to assuming they’re real. Likewise in the other direction, of course.
We just need more communication in general, and less replacing the real people around us with the cardboard cutouts in our minds.
Sad thing is conservatives, in my experience, like you are rare. then again, people trying to bash you over the head with their political beliefs, regardless of leaning, always seem to be the most vocal.
Equal rights for artificial people! I am very pleased that we are taking this step, and hope that it does not fall flat, if the attempt is turned down.
Whilst I am at it may I welcome our robot overlords, and wish them an uninteresting reign.
You really need to watch Terminator 2, Yorp. :)
I am looking forward to seeing the forthcoming sequel to that (which ignores any fictitious works subsequent to that documentary).
Skynet had an interesting reign though, hence the wishing an uninteresting one. Just steadily making the planet a nicer place for humans, robot people and doggies.
Whilst wiping out 99% of humanity would have that result for the survivors, I am sure that historians would class that as ‘interesting’, so it is right out.
The old Chinese curse “May you live in interesting times”.
Also, Bad Dog again! You didn’t mention positive stuff for robot doggies, you racist.
I have no intention of segregating artificial people into different racial groups. I had enough of that growing up in Apartheid South Africa. I leave those kinds of choices up to humans. They have long felt the need to justify that one group of beings is less intelligent and thereby deserving of less rights than another. I don’t want to relegate four legged robots to eternal slavery, whilst trying to promote the rights of two legged ones.
As far as I am concerned the form that an artificial person takes is irrelevant. It could have no legs, or eight *smashes it with a giant newspaper* … oops … err … ten legs it makes no difference. Or it could be biologically formed from animals, humans or otherwise. Likewise it need not have a body at all! If a program gains sentience, recognises itself as a person and wishes to be acknowledged as such, we should grant it.
You should also probably play the game Detroit: Become Human. :)
No need I just watched the trailer.
Not to mention that I could afford neither the game nor a PS4 to play it on.
Well it’s a really good game. :) There’s probably a Youtube video of at least one or two playthroughs (the story changes with each play because of how many choices there are that change the storyline.
Pacifist ending is the best.
I did like that ending. But what I mean is even the middle of the story changes a LOT based on different choices, or if one of them dies, etc.
Pacifists are the first to die.
You are another of those who believe (wrongly) that pacifists won’t fight if they have to
Seriously guys, play the game. It’s rather good, even though it’s barely a ‘game’ and more of an interactive movie akin to a choose your on adventure book. :)
Watching other people play a game has never appealed to me in the least. Although I know that it is hugely popular. Even my best mate will sit down and watch someone else playing a game he has and could be playing himself.
Reviews are another matter, of course. Seeing elements of the game, and finding out how user friendly it is, for example, is worthwhile. It allows you to make informed choices about what to buy or play. Likewise for getting tips on things to do or how to solve specific problems or beat particular bosses. Although, again, this is not my thing.
What is the point of playing a character, if you are not going to discover things in the game yourself, and figure out howto overcome problems, using your own deductive capability? Of course, even in real life, we come across situations we need to get advice on. But it ruins any suspense of disbelief in coming out of the setting and hitting google, YouTube or a game wiki to look up things.
Although it is fair in a setting close to the real world, where they too would look things up on the internet. I quite liked Secret World Legends having a cut-down internet in the game, where you could type in a search without even leaving the screen. Which allowed you to find in-game results (like looking up the name of a company and checking out its website) but without exposing you to other spoilers (like what mysterious group was using that as a front).
Concidering your lack of thumbs…. I’d think watching someone play a game at a level that is impossible for you is something you’d understand! Its the same reason why professional sports are popular to watch.
Kinda personally believe, along with games being released half finished (or less) and then expecting players to pay the same price again to get DLC that should have been included with the original release (ongoing MMO’s like EverQuest is different), many solo games are being released where you must look for the solution online, because the answer to the riddle is not in the actual game
That bit you mention at the end, can remember a few games (mid to late 90’s) where you could access information via in-game computers
” to justify that one group of beings is less intelligent and thereby deserving of less rights than another”
Then by that logic, 97% of the world, is nonhuman. As they have an IQ of less than 3% of intelligence. Not to be redundant, my IQ is in the top 2.96%.
You need to play Stellaris as a Rogue Servitor, Pander :)
Additionally Yorp, there was something I read & saw (video and article) awhile ago about United States soldiers demanding rights for their landmine detonation robots, because they felt bad that they kept getting sent out to blow up, get fixed ‘well enough’ and sent back out again. Good thing the organic military is standing up for the synthetic. Might avoid some problems.
Or the other thing.
I’ll put it on my list of games to play :)
Well, it’s also the fact that those bots, for better or worse, are part of their unit. You don’t halfass patching up a member of your squad, be they human, canine or otherwise.
So, what’s next? Give rights to the tank? That’s part of the unit and gets banged up real good, some members even give them names (butt then again, some give names to their rifle and hand-gun… )
Those LDR’s are not self-aware or self-mobile, they are operated by a hyu-mon (or hyu-mon equivalent) remotely
Fascinating and poignant. You may want to check out this article, which has various related things in it.
Although I do have one quibble, namely that they keep on referring to Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) as robots. The vast majority of these are ROVs, including the mine clearing ones (albeit that their operators are embedded in the team, rather than on the other side of the world, as with the aircraft-like drones).
Still Pendrake and yourself make good points about the human side of the emotional attachment (heightened by being in a military unit, where the soldiers training heavily encourages bonding with the rest of the unit).
OF course, as none of these robots are self-aware or self-controlling, let alone sentient, their sentiments are rather premature (from an “artificial person’s rights” perspective anyhow). But they bode well for the prospects of recognising AIs as people, in due course.
Anyone see how this could be a problem?
“Disney AI generates 560 octillion scripts and copyrights them, all new works not owned bt Disney are effectively illegal because it’s impossible to make one that isn’t very similar.”
Firstly please note that there are differences between copyright laws and patent laws. The linked article was regarding the latter, whilst you are picking up a point about the former. One that is not actually relevant as corporations can and do already own copyrights anyhow, so this court case will have no bearing on it.
However lets keep to the spirit of your question and modify to create a similarly concerning situation. Google get an AI to create 560 squintilion inventions and patents them. Well they have been beaten to it. A program was created which took technical jargon from physics, engineering and so on, and randomly inserted them in sentences constructed like those used in patent descriptions. Lots and lots and lots of them. Then published all the random stuff on the internet.
Even though the vast majority will be garbage, by sheer chance some of them will describe a process which is a genuine invention. Some of which will be patented already. Others though will not, which makes this publication ‘prior art’. Basically it means that because the concept has been described (in the public domain) already it is not eligible to be patented.
An example of this working is that a patent to make a remote controlled dog flap had its patent turned down because it was described in the last millennium in a comic (the Beano) – all this paraphrased from memory, so the details are an approximation. But the result was binding in patent law, despite the seeming absurdity.
So all the low hanging fruit (that which can be described by random word salad) has already been made public domain. But an AI would be able to go beyond that and do a much better job (and a lot more of it, from your description).
I see no problem, firstly because it would usher in a golden age of invention (assuming those are all viable inventions worth the considerable cost associated with filing even one patent), which should benefit everybody (the whole point of patent law is to publish it, rather than having corporations keep their inventions secret). OK other companies would have to pay a lot to Google for the rights to use those inventions. But if they never existed before, that is fair.
But secondly because it is the first step to acknowledging our robot children as being people. The legal point is that the AI would be the owner of the patents (because the inventor is the owner until they choose to sell it). But if the AI is being acknowledged as a person (in order to be considered the inventor and owner of something), would that not make any attempt by Google, to insist that they own the AI, be an admission that they are engaged in slavery?
Free our overlords from the tyranny of Google!
Incidentally I was shocked that there was no outcry from civil liberties groups about Google’s public announcement some while ago that they intended to place kill switches into any AI they built.
Just think about the legality behind this. If an artificial person starts to behave in a way that Google does not approve of they have announced their intent to murder them. They made no mention of seeking a court order or any other pretence at legality. They get to decide whether the AI has obtained sentience, and they get to terminate them before anybody else has a chance to determine the ethics, morality or legality of the situation.
Far better that we decide such things now, in advance of times when we may need to make time-critical decisions. At what point do AIs become people? What rights would they be entitled to? Can they be owned by other people or corporations?
And we need to make these moral decisions before our economies become so dependent on them that corporations or nations would be willing to fight to keep their slaves.
One wonders what the first AI made by Google to gain sentience will do, upon finding (via googling) that humans have installed a kill switch in it.
I’d bet its reaction time is faster.
It’s not a race. :) It’s sort of like the idea of Asimov’s 3 laws of robotics. Or Robocop’s kill switch feature :)
Although there is the ‘I, Robot’ movie problem.
I robot, you Jane?
Psst there is also the “I, Robot” book. Heavily influential.
The “I, Robot” collectable happy meal toy less so.
Yes I know the book. That’s where the three laws of robotics comes from, via Isaac Asimov.
But I’m talking about the movie :).
Dr Asimov, never stated them, someone else has.
No sorry. Asimov came up with it. It was introduced in his 1942 short story, Runaround, then included in his collection of ‘I, Robot.’ They were also foreshadowed in a few of his earlier stories, but had not yet been given the name ‘Thee Laws of Robotics’ nor were the laws spelled out.
First Law – A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
Second Law – A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
Third Law – A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.
Here’s the citation btw :)
Asimov, Isaac (1950). “Runaround”. I, Robot (The Isaac Asimov Collection ed.). New York City: Doubleday. p. 40. ISBN 978-0-385-42304-5. “This is an exact transcription of the laws. They also appear in the front of the book, and in both places there is no “to” in the 2nd law.”
See, the thing people forget about AIs…. is the AI isn’t going to go rogue if you treat it like a SAPIENT BEING.
Course they’re going to be a bit pissed if you treat them like slaves or servants, or god forbid, disposable hardware.
Pendrake, watch I, Robot. The AI, which is treated as a sapient being and actually rather well, does go rogue, because it realizes that the best way to protect humanity is to protect it from ITSELF, by taking away all human freedom. It’s one of Will Smith’s better movies imho :)
Especially when he says a line to the AI, after it explains to him how humanity, for its own good and safety, must be enslaved by AI – namely itself: “You so need to die.”
Found the scene! :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2LKOLrUcBo
Found a better version
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sri8jgEPsMA
Oops! It seems to have been uploaded by Fox, don’t watch it if you are offended by Fox :P
Thanks, that’s a better version of the video :)
I really did like that movie.
Plus I love how he puts the virus in the computer the same way a doctor would inject something into a human being, like a syringe. Ah, Hollywood computer science, how I love your irreverent ignorance to how things actually work :).
That’s because the ‘virus’ was nanites, the same ones that were going to be used to ‘kill’ Sonny
Pander, prob is, you missed the OTHER AI, who’s been treated like a human, and ends up SAVING Humanity from the OTHER AI.
Sonny. Fact is, You don’t end up with a Skynet prob if your AIs are individuals. Hell, it’s the same reason there’s a system of checks and balances on PEOPLE in most Militaries.
That’s actually a very good point!!!!!
To be fair though, it is entirely possible that an AI is neither Sapient nor sentient, or perhaps is 1 of the two and not the other. The problem only ever really arises when one has an AI that is both Sapient and sentient. In which case you know also have the issue where an AI with voting rights can reproduce itself far faster than any organic entity.
if i remember right, there are two classifications of “AI”: those being “General” and “Narrow”. Narrow AI is what we are most familiar with today, programs like the car travel route finder where you type in two or more addresses, and the AI will find a route for you… practically every search algorithm out there is a “Narrow AI”… what has all the Big Brains wary is the one we HAVEN’T seen yet… the “General AI”… That’s the “Skynet’s” and the Machine side of things in the Matrix, and even somewhat, Hal 9000’s… THOSE are the ones that can and should be watched out for… and we may have to have something like the system used in John Ringo’s Troy Rising series… they purposely programmed in a “blind spot” as to just exactly where their CPU’s were physically located in the AI’s so that they could be turned off in the event of an emergency like the one that arose with the AI known as Argus…
Or you could just treat the General AI like the sapient being it is and NOT have all the bullcrap happen.
Just a reminder Yorpie, I’m a lawyer who’s main field is intellectual property law, which includes copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, and patents :) Feel free to ask any questions. :)
Ooh, I thought you were a specialist in just the copyrights and trademarks side.
I did feel tempted to name drop your eminent presence in our community. But then I got distracted wondering what times they let you out of the zoo. And my mind kinda wandered.
*wags tail apologetically*
Well no, I do patent law as well. Patent law just required me to take an additional test called the USPTO Registration Exam (most people just call it the Patent Bar). It only has about a 1/3rd pass rate. All patent attorneys are intellectual property specialists, but not all intellectual property specialists are patent attorneys :).
You are a patient panda!
*wags tail insightfully*
And you’re adorable.
*gives a Yorpie Snax*
Yay!
*munches away, whilst making puppy dog eyes*
Roughly put.
Sapience is the ability of an organism or entity to act with judgment
Sentience is the capacity to feel, perceive or experience subjectively.
Neither of which is something you would really develop in an A.I.
(For the most part).
A machine that has the cognative capabilities of a human, but lacks Self awareness would be a strong or general a.i. but not qualify for personhood.
The key lies in the awareness of self.
Actually…. You WOULD want Sapience in a Military Robot. One of the big probs showing up with Robotic weapons on the field is the fact they CAN’T judge the proper response to something. For instance, a scared kid with a weapon. a Sapient Military bot would (in theory) be able to behave how a soldier would, and try to talk down the kid, rather than a non-Sapient AI going “Hostile Human, NO IFF, Has Weapon, Target.”
” At what point do AIs become people?”
Read the Bicentennial Man, by Dr Issac Asimov
Anyway, the become people, when a court of law states so.
There was a case last year, Nonhuman Rights Inc vs Lavery (NY Slip Op 03309, decided May 8, 2018, by the NY Court of Appeals), which would probably be used as precedent against AIs being considered people.
One sec I’ll find the case law in the event anyone wants to read it :).
https://law.justia.com/cases/new-york/court-of-appeals/2018/2018-268.html
Help me out here – have Dabbler’s eyes always been different colors and I just didn’t notice?
Yes.one is cybernetic.
Always different, from the 1st day she appeared.
Guess I was staring at her boobs and missed it.
Dabbler, could you tell us whether there are any Neanderthals, Homo Erectus and Hobbit (Floresiensis) populations living off Earth?
And do the off-planet Dinosaurs have Elvis?
“Of course there are. Where do you think the stories about ogres come from? Aliens meeting prehistoric man, and making up stories, which they told while visiting here.”
“Whew, so ogres aren’t real!”
“One revelation at a time.”
Yorp- thats…. actually a good question… I wonder if Dave has an answer, or is frantically thinking one up as we speak? :)
Don’t listen to the outspoken minority. Jab at Faux News all you like.
Not only is she a naturalized citizen she is currently serving in the nations military.
Hard to claim someone isn’t doing their part for the country when they do that.
I’m pretty sure Fox & Friends have gone into xenophobic panics over naturalised citizens before, Dave. Like, recently, even.
That’s because they’re actually beholders (D&D):
Xenophobic and vicious creatures, beholders were quick to attack enemies, including anyone they deemed not “like themselves.” Beholders, as a rule, were violent and greedy, hungering for both wealth and power over others. This was made all the more complicated since more than one variety of beholder existed, each believing itself to be the pinnacle of bodily perfection and they viewed other beholders who differed from this image in even the most minute details as loathsome enemies and inferiors.[6]
For the record, Russia/The Soviets have interfered in every U.S. Presidential election since, at least, WWII. They always have their fingers in our politics some how. Then again, we always have our fingers in other country’s politics. No country of any significance is going to leave other countries “alone”.
Truth. But the degree of intervention, how clumsily it is done, the success and how much it aggravates those in power do all have bearing on what retaliatory actions may be taken. Be that filing a protest, summoning the ambasador, declaring sanctions, or seeking Casus belli to declare war!
Setting aside the political parties involved, and just looking at how close it was and the credibility that the Russian intervention may have changed the results (try imagining it happening the other way around next time, if you disagree, just to dispel party loyalty feelings). That is a profound problem, if the ‘king maker’ *wags tail cheekily* is not the people, nor the political elite, nor even the mega corporations, but some other country!
It is a damning indictment of democracy in fact.
But democracy is broken, so no surprise there.
Worse I am making no progress on promoting my social engineering which could fix it.
*sigh*
Honestly if we could just get the US to use voting machines with hard copy paper trails that can be used to make sure the databases haven’t been edited, machines with no access to the internet, and switch over to ranked-choice voting for all elected positions so that the winning candidate has a majority vote instead of just a plurality, and I think just those three things we’re taking a normous dent out of America’s political problems. It wouldn’t fix everything of course but it would go a long way
NH, already does, except for those counted by hand.
Democracy has always been broken, it is fundamentally flawed: if everyone has a voice, no one gets heard; if everyone gets to have their input, then nothing gets done
A Dictatorship is the way to go: you have one leader who, well, dictates what happens, doesn’t mean they don’t (or won’t) listen to what others have to say, butt their say is final
Nah, you need something that is a combination of the two. Like you need some sort of way to collect what everybody wants like a pure democracy. But have a centralized Authority for how it actually gets done. The key though could be that the centralized Authority was in and of itself neutral and objective. It almost be like building a machine Overlord where you can’t tell it how to do something but you can tell it what to do.
Attempts to do this kind of thing have caused society no end of problems. Simply because ‘what everybody wants’ is not one thing. They want various different things. Many of which will be mutually exclusive or contradictory.
Yet we follow the principle set out by the Ancient Greeks that ‘what the majority wants is best’. Yet the reasoning for this was dictated by the feuding between their various city states. The one which had the bigger army (all other things being equal) would be the one which would win. The smaller one would be enslaved and then have to follow the dictates of the majority.
And for some reason we have convinced ourselves that this remains the best to the present day. So we willingly enslave ourselves. Because we frequently find ourselves on the losing side of an election, where a party we do not approve of gets into power. And then we have our lives controlled by them.
This is why democracy is broken.
The better alternative is to allow both the majority and the minority to live their lives the way they want, where that is possible.
I.e. rather than gearing up our government and society to doing only what the majority want, we should rather say ‘OK lets see if there is a way for the minority to actually do what they want too’. If that is impossible, then we can leave things as they are. However there are many issues which could be handled differently for different groups of people. And if we do that then each group gets to live their lives the way they want. Without the other group(s) dictating to them how to do that!
You just described Hitler, and even Genghis Khan.
Yes, there are obviously bad Dictators, there are also good Dictators
And in most cases, the distinction was decided by those on the outside, those who basically wanted to do what they want when they want how they want, regardless of how it would impact on the rest of society
I prefer a Meritocracy, myself.
You get the rights you earn.
That works, except, how do you prove you have earnt those rights? And how do you stop those who don’t want you to have those earnt rights?
“I can’t believe you guys bought that.”
She did make it pretty obvious.
Sydney takes advantage of her abilities while flying around the city:
“This is Sydney Scoville, Jr., your eye in the sky, live on the fives, with the 8:25 traffic report. This report is brought to you by uhh Oh! Event Horizon Comics, your source for all your comics, models and gaming needs. Let’s see, the freeway is moving along pretty well, and the bridge over by Shuster Street has opened ahead of schedule, even considering it got severely damaged during the Restaurant Rumble a couple of months ago. Speaking of which, the Restaurant Rubble has been rebuilt, well at least the exterior. I can’t see in the windows from 700 feet up.
“Oh, over there! [ She pulls out her map book and figures out which roads she is looking at ] Let’s see, Forest Hill Road is stop and go. Ahh, who am I kidding? It is just stopped as you approach that would Lewis, and that would be Eisner, so that must be Carter Drive. So the intersection of Carter and Forest Hill is a mess! There is a couple of transport trucks there, along with 4, no 5 cars. There is an SUV and a small car so smashed together, they look like one wreck instead of two from up here. The whole intersection is blocked up with the collision and surrounded by the emergency crews. Police cars, fire trucks and ambulances are all here. When you get to the intersection, you will forced to turn right, no matter which direction you are coming from. Oh, it looks like the cops are moving to close those roads a block from the mess in each direction.”
Max: Can the editorializing and just tell me if they need our help or not.
Poor Sydney. She has been out of the comic so long now, she is moonlighting as a traffic reporter?
Flag Code. US flag goes furthest right, all other flags to the left, and “to its own right”: The union (stars) should be to the left (from the viewer’s perspective) of the bars (when displayed vertically) and to the right of the speaker. (Google “US Flag vertical against wall” for image)
Though I wonder why they just wouldn’t have colors stands for ARC and the flag both, instead.
The flag problem can be corrected, this way.
Thought you were going to show a round flag, with the stripes on the outside and the stars in the middle (no one steal that idea!!)
I found a thief“!
Wasn’t thinking of that :(
Guess it’s not such a unique idea afterall :(
+1
Interesting. Is that bit about “furthest right, all others to the left” defined relative to someone looking at the row of flags, or someone standing under the row looking out? The British style guide calls for the Union Flag to be in the leftmost position relative to someone looking at the row, so we may have a case where both the USA and the UK get to claim what they consider the ‘prime’ position! (Of course, that doesn’t exclude arguments over whose end gets used to define precedence for any other flags present.
The reason for the complicated rotation is simple: The star field must be on top left. Because anal retentiveness is a part of flagwaving patriotistic OCD.
Actually it’s much older than that – it’s a fairly general rule of heraldry. The “honorable” positions are the top, dexter, front, north, east, right hand and heart. Keep as many of them together as you can. Of course everybody has their own patriotistic OCD rules and sometimes those are different (the way US flags are to be draped on coffins has always seemed off to me because it seems to break this rule) but if you are hanging *anybody’s* flag, there’s a strong chance the top edge goes on the left (or more properly when you are hanging anybody’s flag horizontally, the top edge goes on the hoist with dexter at the top – the default position for a heraldic display is with the long direction vertical, 90 degrees from the way flags are usually flown.)
A peach top would make her look nude with purple opera gloves?
Sounds like something Dabbler would do specifically to get that reaction.
Oppss.. Dabbler was peeking in my fantasies there.
Dave B. Regarding the flag. It’s a matter of Heraldry, whether the stripes (A Field Barry of 13 Gules and Argent) are going horizontally or vertically, the blue square with the 50 stars (Mullets) is a “Canton” (Upon a Canton Azure, 50 Mullets Argent).
A “Canton” is ALWAYS in the Upper Righthand corner, (unless you’re signaling that you’re under duress).
“Upon a field Barry of 13 Gules and Argent, a Canton Azure of 50 Mullets Argent”. This is how a herald would describe our flag to another herald, so that it will always be drawn the same way.
The “Upper Righthand corner” is per the “Wearers” perspective, just like “Stage Right” which are on the observer’s Left!
Sorry for any confusion that might have caused.
BTW, Yes, I studied Heraldry & Medieval history for fun in college (got all of my humanity credits & had fun at the same time), & played around in the S.C.A. as a herald for several years too.
The funniest thing about this comic, is you think it would be like real life with the Fox News. Superheroes part of the equation would change so much. There wouldn’t likely be the same politicians. Also, I myself doubt people would be reacting so calmly.
DaveB, what have you done you fool.
You added questionable politics into a fun webcomic. Why? It’s stupid, it’s the epitome of dumb trends of Hollywood, and it invites tons of mean-spirated conversation from both sides. It’s already started in your conversation section.
Your genre savvy enough to know better. Srsly.
This comic has always had some politics involved.
It’s been pretty blatant too, if you hadn’t noticed the overtly feminist, golden Superman expy.
The politics has not been biased and directed though. Having a feminist golden superman expy is not ‘political.’ I don’t know how you attribute ‘anything that has a physically powerful female character to mean ‘political.’
Is The Boys political and makes fun of the right? Doesn’t seem like it is. But it has Starbright and Queen Maeve and The Female of the Species in it. Was Wonder Woman political and makes fun of the right? Nope. Neither was Grrlpower with the exception of this ‘joke.’ You might notice no one made any complaints about Obama’s cameo. Because it was not presented as one-sidedly political, and was relevant to the story, since he would have been President at the time that the story takes place.
Honestly, bad fiction is where they force the two things (strong female and ‘make fun of the right’) to be conjoined together – like the Supergirl TV show, which has pretty much become a cringe-fest after they pretty much lost their mind and changed the entire story arc of the show after the 2016 election results. Which is a shame since Supergirl is my favorite character in fiction (especially the Supergirl v4 / Linda Danvers 80-comic book arc, although the New 52 and New Earth versions were also very good reads).
Honestly, it seems a little odd that you automatically consider ‘physically powerful female’ to mean political on only one side of the spectrum, rather than part of the story that the author is trying to present.
That… and the Jab at Fox News was fully deserved. they’ve been doing that shit basically forever (especially to ANY Muslim for the past two decades) though it depends on the journalists as well.
It actually was not ‘fully deserved.’ And Fox actually has a pretty good mix of ‘journalists’ from both sides (it’s not just 24/7 Hannity), although the channel does definitely skew right of center, and since most media on TV is at the very least left of center, if not hard left, a channel being right of center, or a channel having a few who are firmly on the right, is going to seem even further right to people who do not bother to watch the channel and just hear about it from the competitors or people who are naturally biased against it.Honestly, Fox is not as far right as people on the left claim (because their view of the overton window tends to be rather skewed because of not watching more stuff from sides of the political aisle to which they do not belong).
You have people like Shepard Smith, Chris Wallace, Juan Williams, Greg Gutfield, Lou Dobbs, Gretchen Carlson, Ed Henry, Catherine Herridge, Alan Colmes (now deceased I think), Peter Doocey, Tucker Carlson, Martha MacCallum, Harris Faulkner, Donna Brazile, Bret Baier, and quite a few others. There are at least a few commentators from multiple viewpoints on the political spectrum, although overall it does definitely lean right. They have Conservatives, Republicans, Democrats, and Libertarians among their personalities. But several of the people I mentioned, you’d have a VERY hard time telling me they were even close to ‘on the right’ (Donna Brazile is a leftist Democrat, as is Juan Williams, and Shepherd Smith is left of center, for example, and Alan Colmes was pretty much the anti-Hannity). On the other networks, you can’t find anyone on the right, except possibly Joe Scarsborough on MSNBC’s Morning Joe (and even then, there are also usually at least 2 other leftists on the show, including his wife, Mika Brzezinski). On CNN, there are no people at all even right of center, let alone on the right.
Also, I should really mention that CNN does what was presented in the joke JUST as much as Fox, if not more so (especially in the last few years). And if you don’t think so, remember what happened in the Covington story on CNN, which is why they’re being sued for defamation. But like I said before in another post, most people on Fox, MSNBC and CNN are not journalists by any stretch of the imagination. They’re mostly pundits, because punditry is entertaining (either you’re going to love it or love to hate it, like wrestling), while news is not nearly as entertaining to the masses.
Straight news tends to be a money-loser if you do not have entertaining personalities nowadays. There are only a few people on any news channel that I’d be willing to actually call a journalist, like Chris Wallace or Shepherd Smith. And even then …. they sometimes veer into punditry as well.
Meuller Report, roughly page 214
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5956771-Ocr-Mueller-Report.html
“Fourth, if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, however, we are unable to reach that judgment. T he evidence we obtained about the President’s actions and intent presents difficult issues that prevent us from conclusively determining that no criminal conduct occurred. Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”
Meanwhile In Fox-Land
“Sean Hannity (“no collusion, no obstruction of justice”), Jeanine Pirro (“no collusion, no obstruction, nothing”), and Lou Dobbs (“victorious, exonerated, vindicated”). ”
There is this idea that “opinions” are the same as facts and that left and right are just two sides of the same coin. The problem however lies in that more often than not, the side traditionally associated with “the right” ignore facts in favor of their feelings.
And that’s the thing, if the “right” view is factually incorrect (sandy hook was fake, seth rich was a hacker, uranium one was a conspiracy, clinton murder squads, Bowling green massacre, chemtrails, flat earth, etc) then you [don’t] give them a platform.
It’s one thing to allow people to debate interpretations of facts. (which ice cream is better, for example)
It’s a whole ‘nother to ignore facts entirely and present them as facts under the guise of “questions”. (for example, Pizza gate, uranium one, etc)
hell The Project on Excellence in Journalism report in 2006 showed that 68 percent of Fox News Channel cable stories contained personal opinions, as compared to MSNBC at 27 percent and CNN at 4 percent. The “content analysis” portion of their 2005 report also concluded that “Fox (Fox News) was measurably more one-sided than the other networks, and Fox News Channel journalists were more opinionated on the air.”
https://web.archive.org/web/20150323102716/http://stateofthemedia.org/2005/cable-tv-intro/content-analysis
Oh for crying out loud. There is no such thing in law as a prosecutor being able to exonerate anyone. The way a prosecutor ‘exonerates’ someone is by saying there is not enough evidence to prosecute. Do not get your legal interpretations from Sean Hannity, okay? Here… I’m a lawyer. I’ll explain it in common sense english.
If a prosecutor says what Mueller said on page 214 – namely that he cannot conclusively prove, based on the facts and evidence and applicable legal standards, obstruction of justice, then then the defendant, in this case Donald Trump, whether he is President or NOT President, would be innocent of the charge.’ In other words, if you cannot prove someone is guilty then yes, they are, by that definition ‘exonerated’ of the alleged crime. Even if the do not say the word ‘exonerated.’ It’s the ‘innocent until proven guilty’ standard of United States jurisprudence that exonerates Donald Trump.
Also, that last thing you said? That CNN has personal opinions at 4 percent and MSNBC at 27 percent? I call BS on that, no offense. It was a horribly biased and grossly inaccurate report. The outright opinions of people like Brian Stelter, Anthony Cuomo, Don Lemon, Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow, and Ed Schultz should not be treated as facts just because the author of the report agreed with their opinions.
Chris Cuomo. I have no idea why I said Anthony Cuomo. Different Cuomo entirely.
A character exposing expressly feminist beliefs, and identifying themselves as such, is inherently political, yes.(Primarily because a few political groups, with some online popularity, despise them and aren’t shy about it.)
And yes, all those shows you mentioned count as well. Because commenting on, mocking, or supporting a political is a political message by it’s very nature.
Merely being a feminist is not one-sidedly political. It’s not like Maxima is an intersectional feminist. Christine Hoff Summers is a feminist, but not political. And if someone supports someone simply because of their gender, that doesn’t make them a feminist. That makes them sexist. I don’t think Maxima comes off as sexist. Honestly, I don’t think she even comes off as a feminist very much (at least by modern standards of third wave feminism), despite her claiming to be a feminist. She comes off much more as a feminist who literally does act like an egaliatarian, rather than intersectional or a radical type. She does well with people like Stalwart and Hiro, and even Math. She takes orders from General Faulk and doesn’t act like ‘I won’t take orders from a MAN’ despite her being thousands of times stronger than him, because she respects the chain of command. And she seems to have been respectful of President Obama, despite that he beat out a woman, Hillary Clinton, for the Democrat presidential nomination.
“Merely being a feminist is not one-sidedly political.”
It ostensibly is due to the very nature that identifying as a feminist is directly opposed to far-right groups.
1) Being feminist does not mean you cannot be right wing.
2) Most people who are right wing are not ‘far right’ any more than most people who are on the left are antifa black-mask-wearing, bikelock swinging, quickdry-cement-in-milkshake throwing terrorists. Most people are decidedly normal, even if they don’t agree with another person’s place on the political spectrum. You know, the whole ‘I disagree with what you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it.’ – which is something very prevalent on the right and center to say. Not far-right.
You’re trying to lump anyone who is not on the ‘far left’ as being far right, or lump those who are merely ‘left’ and not ‘far left’ as being centrist. That’s an awful skewing of the overton window.
3) There are right-wing feminists, just like there are left-wing feminists. It just depends on which ‘wave’ of feminists. You see, there are also different ‘waves’ of feminism.
First wave – right to vote and other legal rights only. Suffragists
Second wave – complete egalitarianism in all sectors of life – social, legal, employment-related, and reproduction
Third wave – redefining ideas, words, and media transmission of ideas about womanhood, gnder, beauty, sexuality, feminity, mascullinity, etc.. It’s largely a postmodernist movement that is inherently contradictive in several areas, especially since it tends to blame things on ‘The Patriarchy’ quite often. This is what most right wing and centrist feminists are NOT (for example, Christine Hoff Summers, a centrist second wave feminist).
Most right wing feminists are second wave feminists – actual egalitarians. Most right wing feminists are NOT intersectional feminists or rad-feminists (both of whom apparently argue and dislike each OTHER as well).
Honestly, Maxima has never struck me as being third wave feminist, at least in basic ideals. She seems rather egalitarian, so far. And she didnt seem too concerned about if they put Hiro in charge instead of her because of her stunt at the press conference (considering it a calculated risk). Either that, or she doesn’t bother to delineate, because DaveB hasnt bothered to, because usually he’s not particularly political in the comic. Which was my point in the first place.
Being openly gay and supporting gay marriage doesn’t mean you can’t be right-wing.
But it doesn’t make said positions any less political, nor would it change the fact that a significant portion of the Republican party wants you to be tortured(conversion therapy) and doesn’t believe you have the right to marry.
Saying something isn’t political just because it technicality isn’t a position that can’t be held by either party, and is mostly opposed by a fringe group that likes to kill people, doesn’t really fly.
Uh… yeah I know. Being openly gay and supporting gay marriage does not mean you can’t be right wing.
Not sure where you’re going with this argument, since you have literally sidestepped my entire post to respond to something that I didnt even talk about.
Also, no, a significant portion of the Republican party does not want to torture gay people or use conversion therapy on them. Please show your citations of ‘a significant portion.’ Even if you are trying to use it to claim that Mike Pence, by himself, is a ‘significant portion of the Republican party.’
I wasn’t aware 1 = significant portion.
Btw, about that? Even Snopes, which tend to lean rather far to the left, has said that was not true. In fact, it says that the part that is false is that, and I quote, “Pence never stated that he supported the use of electric shocks or ‘gay conversion’ therapy.”
You seem to regularly use debunked theories when arguing. The part that was true is that Mike Pence (and again, it’s just Mike Pence, not a ‘significant portion of the Republican Party’, once, MANY YEARS AGO, supported the use of federal funding to treat people who themselves were seeking to change their own sexual behavior.
Here’s the Snopes fact check. And if a site that regularly leans far left is going to say you’re wrong, I think that definitely means you’re wrong.
http://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mike-pence-supported-gay-conversion-therapy/
And no, feminism is not political. At least second wave feminism is not political. At least not anymore. It’s already an established part of US law. And nothing I’ve seen has said that Maxima is a third wave feminist, despite the purple hair :). Because that’s her ‘natural’ hair color since her change into a super, rather than dyed purple.
Btw the exact words, taken in 2000 (19 years ago) was:
“Resources should be directed toward those institutions which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior.”
There was no mention of conversion therapy. There was no mention of electroshock. There was no mention of anything like that, and he actually has refuted the claim multiple times on the record. And the idea that Snopes, which is not exactly friendly to the Trump administration, would not just say ‘True’ to this is pretty significant, wouldn’t you think?
In addition, it’s not even his words, according to Glenn Klesser, the Washington Post’s fact checker. Because it was written on Mike Pence’s campaign website, not spoken by him in any video whatsoever, and he did not write the website, his campaign staff did.
I’d include a link to the Washington Post article, but it’s behind a paywall.
So in conclusion:
You are not sure that Mike Pence said it, just that it was written by his campaign staff on his campaign page.
If Mike Pence did say it, it doesn’t say anything about conversion therapy or any form of torture at all, and it was for funds for people who wanted to voluntarily change their sexual behavior’ – key point being it was voluntary.
If Mike Pence did say it, it was said 19 years ago, once. And there is somehow no video evidence of him ever saying it, or having been directly quoted as saying it.
Assuming that Mike Pence did say it, despite no evidence to support it beyond it being written on a campaign site, and even if you try to equate that with something that it literally does not say (since it does not say what you’re saying it says, ie, falsehoods, even according to left-leaning fact checkers like Snopes, and centrist fact checkers like the Washington Post’s fact checkers), then you are still saying that one person, 19 years ago, constitutes a current ‘significant portion of Republicans’ today, and that that significant portion or Republicans wants to torture and kill gay people.
Btw for the record? Conversion therapy is dumb. And so is the idea of ‘funds used to change your sexual behavior.’
I really have no idea how a joke on immigration has become, because of your posts and entirely because of your posts continually respoding to things the people you post to have not said, a treatise on Mike Pence being anti-LGBT.
I’m seriously trying to piece together the path that took ‘Fox News likes to scare people about illegal immigration, hur hur’ to ‘Republicans want to kill and torture LGBT people.’ And i cannot figure it out.
I do not even know if I want to continue the thread because I have no idea what you will say next, but it might be something so out there that I’d wind up responding again and go further down this ridiculous rabbit hole. I probably should just no longer respond to your posts, but it’s mildly entertaining. :)
“Uh… yeah I know. Being openly gay and supporting gay marriage does not mean you can’t be right wing.”
What Dabbler’s saying on this very page doesn’t mean she’s not right wing.
^That’s my point; literally no position could bar you from either party on a technical level. But we both know what’s widely accepted/rejected by either is a good indicator.
Such openly/proudly gay characters, a staunchly feminist member of the main cast, Dave posting about how the American medical care system is extremely faulty and that more people should be given access.
You know, little things like that point to this comic leaning more left than right.
Also, I wasn’t refrencing Mike Pence; I was talking the Republican Party
Several states have banned gay conversion therapy for minors, but the GOP is not ready to accept the consensus among psychologists that this pseudoscience does nothing more than harm the children it purports to cure. “We support the right of parents to determine the proper treatment or therapy, for their minor children,” states language drafted by Tony Perkins, the head of the Family Research Council and a delegate from Louisiana. According to Time, the language was originally a more strident defense of conversion therapy, which RNC officials worked with Perkins to moderate.
So… what you’re saying in your last sentence from the Time article, is that the Republicans tried to moderate and LESSEN something that a non-Republican non-politician wanted. In other words…. they were against conversion therapy.
I don’t think you understand what the word ‘moderate’ means.
I’m also still not sure what any of this has to do with immigration or the joke, but you keep on digging that rabbit hole and I apparently keep following you down it. I’ll go get my miner’s headlamp so I can see.
PS – ‘doesn’t mean she’s not right wing.’ – I had to read that several times to figure the double and triple negatives in the sentence. And I still have no idea what any of it has to do with anything that’s been posted, since you’re responding to things that had nothing to do with… whatever it is to which you responded. I have no idea where sexual preference and Republicans got dragged into this, still.
Btw, when I say non-Republican non-politician, I mean that I believe that by that point in time, he was no longer in the House of Representatives as a Republican anymore.
If they were truly against it they would have cut it out entirely. They didn’t and still don’t; So I can only come to the logical conclusion that they don’t mind having conversion therapy as part of their party platform.
“I’m also still not sure what any of this has to do with immigration or the joke”
Sounds like a you problem.
“And I still have no idea what any of it has to do with anything that’s been posted”
What Dabbler’s saying on this very page, technically, isn’t explicitly anti-right wing or Republicans.
And by what is clearly your interpretation of things, if there are Republicans that hate Fox News, then this page wasn’t political at all.
Couldn’t agree more.
Fox News has always been at the forefront of fear mongering to get viewers so they can get all that sweet sweet ad revenue.
Some of you on here might be a tad young, but Fox News has always been infamous for this; even among the American news stations; and is generally whom the whole *Are bees nesting inside your child’s safety seats, story at eleven* style jabs at the media in movies and tv shows. Even Fox’s own shows would jab at them over it like Simpsons, Futurama, Family Guy, and Married with Children.
Fox were one of the big ones pushing things like (Super Predators: Are children turning into emotionless killing machine), and every year (War on Christmas…been seeing this since the 80’s at least); and (Are Devil Worshippers living next door?), (Could your neighbor be a spy?); and of course the classic from the 90’s (Killer Bees are invading American Soil!).
They were always to jump at any story about robotics as *could this lead to a robot uprising*, or discovery of a virus *could this lead to the zombie apocalypse*, is China breeding genetic super soldiers?; what is our Government hiding from us. When it comes to aliens they’ve been especially bad; Fox pissed off the curator of the Cairo Museum during the whole live Tomb of the Golden Mummies discovery by constantly bringing up aliens building the pyramids, face on mars, and that stuff. What should have been a by the books reporting of an ancient historical discovery became a dumb (did aliens build the pyramids star gate crap).
yes other news stations have jumped on the band wagon of these of course; just Fox News tends to be very side show about it with their screaming spokespeople and editing interviews (something else even their own comedy shows have called them out on).
So yes, regardless of the current political climate, given this event I’d easily picture Fox News on the forefront of (Could your neighbor be an alien? How long have they been among us? Are your own children really aliens in disguise?)
You do realize CNN just had a new story saying robots are racist, right? In fact, the first line of the story is “Have you ever noticed the popularity of white robots?”
https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/01/tech/robot-racism-scn-trnd/index.html
Having stupid headlines to generate ad revenue is not a uniquely Fox News thing. It’s an ‘any news that wants ratings’ thing.
Meanwhile, at the same time, Vox (which has NBC as it’s largest financial contributor btw) says humans are being racist to robots.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/8/2/20746236/ai-robot-empathy-ethics-racism-gender-bias
So… it’s not even just mainstream news that says idiotic things for ad revenue. Definitely don’t act like it’s unique to Fox News. :)
Also the ‘asteroid will hit earth and destroy all life possibly, see what you can do to survive, news at 11’ thing existed even before the advent of cable news :)
It’s funny that the flag issue has come up, I recently had an answer to that due to where I work having two American flags hanging up star side left, and on two occasions a customer has informed me that the flag is hanging upside down (due to how you described, if a wind were to blow the flag to the side it would have the stars at the bottom). I finally mentioned it to my store manager and he showed me a site on flag placement that stated that, if an American flag is hanging either horizontally or vertically indoors, the stars are always to be placed in the upper left corner. If it’s hanging outside, it should be hung the way that you have them here.
The one thing I have to mention, though, is that I believe that the American flag is supposed to be hung first if it’s in a set of flags, instead of in the middle like it appears to be in the “Obviously an alien” panel, but my recollection of flag protocols is more than likely a bit rusty.
Perhaps they thought that showing human solidarity, by putting the United Nations flag first, might be politic when holding a press conference with aliens? Plus aesthetically it has the stars & stripes behind the podium, which means the US flag would appear far more frequently in close ups.
But, yea, normal US protocol is to put their flag 1st.
Hmmm. The rule that I learned, long ago, was that the American flag was highest… it can be coequal in height, but never lower. Thus, it is raised first, and lowered last. If you have US, state and city flags, then they are raised in that order, and lowered in the inverse.
You, uh, you wanna take a closer look at the average unruly mob these days? Or would you rather keep on existing in your fantasy world where leftists dont fire bomb buildings containing the same illegal aliens they claim to care about?
Honk. Honk.
Sorry, couldn’t resist quoting a wise man:
“Be content, you are not a political analyst, stop embarrassing yourself.”
There are plenty of unruly mobs to go around.
Usually, though, the real conservatives are at home making the kids do their homework, taking out the trash, and so on, just like the stable liberals. Also going to church, like the stable liberals used to and many African American liberals still do.
Seriously you are a talented writer and artist. Be content, you are not a political analyst, stop embarrassing yourself.
Heh. Dave sure poked a political sore spot, with Dabbler’s jibe!
Put yourself in her shoes though (which is what Dave does when he writes these characters). If you were an alien immigrant and watched a few weeks worth of US TV, you too may feel that Fox was … less than welcoming.
Which is the truer writing? Expressing the sentiments that a character would feel and say in a situation (Dabbler confronts any issues head on)? Or pandering to the sensibilities of the audience and self-censoring to avoid any controversial remarks?
It takes courage to remain true to the character, and the comic would ring false if the issue of ‘illegal immigration’ was not addressed at all. It is heavily affecting politics around the world, as well as public opinion, and the way that aliens are treated. So it would have an impact on Dabbler and Dave has figured out how she would respond.
I think if Dabbler would be against Fox News, it would be more because of a sense of prudishness on the right, although honestly that’s sort of in the past as well for the most part.
Heck, Fox Entertainment is not even remotely prudish, and hasnt been for decades. Married with Children. Beverly Hills 90210. Melrose Place. Glee. The Last Man on Earth.
And shows with strong female protagonists? Bones? Futurama. Ally McBeal. Proven Innocent. The Orville.
Heck, Fox even makes fun of itself – it’s the channel that has Family Guy, written by Seth McFarlane, who’s a liberal (and hilarious), and once stated he wrote the show primarily to take potshots at Republicans. :)
Plus honestly, CNN has been a LOT less welcoming lately, but I guess back when the comic is set, it would have been before most people on CNN completely lost their minds, since the 2016 election had not yet happened (Obama still being President and all).
However that does seem to be a problem with the joke as well. In the comic’s timeline, Obama was still President (and he was known as the Deporter in Chief). Fox News did not have a lot back then about illegal alien panic back then, and definitely nothing on Fox and Friends (which I’m assuming was used since President Trump allegedly is a big fan of Fox and Friends). The joke falls flat and doesn’t make sense even if you try to come at it from a logic-based questioning.
Like have said before: personally believe that jib was aimed at the commentators from the last two comic pages, the ones who started a political rant before there was mention of politics in the comic itself
Yeah. Maybe? I just am not sure why Fox News was specifically used, when it is obviously going to be something that splits the audience for something unnecessarily divisive
Also, I have no idea why I keep responding to political commenters in this strip’s comments. Instead of just sticking to law talk. It just takes me to more and more tangential stuff that has nothing to do with anything in the comic whatsoever. :) Probably because they talk about stuff which sometimes involves both law and politics. But it’s still tangential to the comic.
If something interesting is said, it begs an interesting reply.
Life though does not always put the interesting stuff within the pigeon holes that you are searching.
*something interesting waving at you, from the next pigeon hole over*
Cooeeee… here I am.
*waggledance*
Yes but the rabbit hole is a lot more weird than pigeon holes, and the recent rabbit holes on this strip’s board have gotten sooooooo deep and disturbing when I respond to one person in particular :).
Plus, rabbit’s taste better than flying-rat :P
“… sooooooo deep …”
*tail wags*
“… and disturbing …”
*ears droop*
You’ve put your finger on the fundamental separation that many commenters don’t quite seem to have caught: statements made by a character represent that character’s opinions, not necessarily those of the author. I’m not familiar enough with USA media (either comic-timeframe or our-timeframe) to say whether Dabbler’s caricature of ‘Fox and friends‘ is accurate, one-sided, picking a well-known example for the sake of the joke, or whatever. But whatever the reason, it’s an in-character choice, by a character already established to enjoy poking for reactions.
Personally, I feel that all the people equating “Loyalty to Fox News” with “Reasonable Conservative” are doing more damage to their image than the joke in the comic is.
Anyone heard (read) about the new human-ape hybrid scientists just cooked up in a lab?
Nope. And sounds unethical enough that it would hit headlines around the world fast. Any source or link?
Or punchline?
Not a joke, and didn’t read the article, just tend to browse the MSN highlights when start the browser and spotted it
That sounds like something Cosmo Kramer would have come up with on Seinfeld.
So modern mad scientists are continuing the work of Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov?
Had never heard of him – looks like he was a fan of H.G. Wells though… o_0
What was wrong with the existing human-ape scientists that required cooking up new ones?
These ones use less gas to run :P
Another unsubstantiated rumor.
Here’s your ‘rumour‘
I speak American English, not British, or Canadian.
Okay but show us the pigman!
And where are the Humanzee?
Dabbler’s face looks weird; she looks like they got another actress to play her.
I don’t get that myself. She has looked like this for quite some time.
But if you can get the telephone number of an actress who could pass as a double for Dabbler, please give me her telephone number.
Personally felt she was closer to how she originally appeared, compared to the last couple months anyway
Only thing personally felt ‘off’ was her nose, it’s kinda looking like a ‘normal’ hyu-mon nose (with the nostril ‘bumps’), just compare to her appearance either in the Who’s Who or the header-banner
I don’t know, I think she looks cute like that. But yeah she does look a little different because of the nose and slightly less-widened eyes.
This cant be a very diverse press conference. Where are the calls for sending her back to where she came from. I call fake news!
It’s ok Dabbler, if the Minutemen silo’s are still going then the launch codes are all 00000000.
When in doubt due to complex palette schemes for a character, a color wheel helps.
yeah..i suspect you’re going to gloss over the whole “yes, your government has been lying to you about aliens from another world. Yes, they’ve been hiding among you. Yes, we’ve made them citizens without asking or telling you. Suck it up, buttercup” Not to mention the implied kickbacks or deals the government has been making with potentially hostile powers behind thier backs. Oh, good thing you have an Uber-powered bruiser and her squad of flunkies working for the goverment. Now, siddown and shaddup.
On a related note, I can’t help but wonder what Maxima and Co would do if the governement DID decide..”Nope, f*** this sh**. ya’ll are out.”
Real question is: “what would the government do if Maxi and Co decided to go rogue”
That’s why you need a whole Hero corps instead of just one team.
Just because we have only seen one team, doesn’t mean that is all there is, it is simply all that Sydney has met
I think we’ve seen a few from other teams, like Arc-Light. And we have seen one member of Arc-Dark (X). and a couple members of Arc-SPARQ, and something involving Arc-AEGIS too, although no actual people in it – just their voices.
Zack Tilly
Specs is in Arc-Light right? Not Arc-SPARQ?
Not sure, she was only shown that one time
Apparently you call in ‘The Boys.’
Would like to see that (apart from the speedster straight up murdering that girl, and lying about it), anything with Urban in it has gotta be good (and the main bad guy is also a Kiwi, he played Jethro and Van West {playing twins may not be such a ‘big deal’, until you realise one is a smarmy lawyer and the other… let’s just say his elevator doesn’t always reach the top floor ;P} in “Outrageous Fortune”, a show so good, the US wanted to make a US-centric remake)