CSotD: Potpourri for 60, Art

That headline: “Potpourri” used to be a category in Jeopardy which I think was a chance to use questions that hadn’t been chosen in previous games. I haven’t seen it in a long time (hence “Art”) but, then, it’s been awhile since I’ve watched Jeopardy, which brings us to Non Sequitur (AMS) and some suppressed memories of my first, brief work in radio.

I was given a one-hour folk show on the campus FM station Friday evening, for which my instructions were “Here’s the studio.” A group of my close friends tried listening, but had to keep jumping up to change the volume, since I had no idea how to work those twisty knobs in front of me.

I used to come in half an hour before air time to pull records for the show, but one week I decided to run the Smithsonian’s Woody Guthrie interviews, so I came in at the top of the hour, planning to go on-air after the newsbreak.

There I found a note saying, “Had a date. Please switch to news.” And an LP well past its end, just broadcasting “thwip-pip-thwip-pip” out into the ether.

And not a single phone call. It was comforting to know that nobody was listening to his show, either.

A few weeks later, I forgot it was Friday and didn’t show up. I never went back, nobody ever said anything about it, and the world continued to rotate on its axis.

I suspect a lot of podcasters could tell similar stories, but who would hear them?

 

On a somewhat related note, Joy of Tech is predicting the demise of Facebook, and they have a fair amount of backup, including a plummet in stock price and market value of some $500 billion, or, as this gamer site explains it,

If you somehow earned a million dollars a year, it’d take you five thousand working years to get the amount of money that has leaked out of this company over the past five months.

The problems are larger than simple stock price, though I got a good laugh out of this headline from the Motley Fools:

“Never” is a long time, given that you can’t buy a loaf of bread with stock you haven’t sold, regardless of its purported value. You could end up like one of those wretched people who die alone and unmourned in a tiny cabin, with a fortune unspent in their mattress.

But I digress.

Apple dealt a blow to Facebook by adding some privacy restrictions to their platform, as did Google, which makes it harder for Facebook (or “Meta”) to track you and sell ads based on things you wish they didn’t know.

Also, it’s just not hip anymore, and it’s starting to look like one of those Progressive ads where they try to keep you from becoming  your parents. I’d delete my page, but then how would I know what food looks like, or how well people are doing on Wordle?

 

Juxtaposition of the Day

(Matt Davies – AMS)

(Andy Marlette)

Speaking of falls in market value, Russia has been taking a pummeling from investors who actually do believe sanctions would matter, even before they have been imposed. Assuming Putin doesn’t back down, and that the West does follow through on their threats, we’re going to find out how Russians feel about standing in long lines for basic groceries again.

However, I’m more interested, at the moment, in how Americans feel about a political party deciding to ally itself with the Russians in order to oppose the current American administration. If it were just Tucker and Hannity, I suppose you could chalk it up to Fox’s war on facts, but we’re hearing Republican politicians take up the cry and insist that Biden is wrong and that Putin is right.

Even Lindbergh and the American Firsters shut up once Germany launched its blitzkrieg on Poland. I guess we’ll see how these folks react when the tanks roll into Ukraine.

But if you need proof that some people will believe anything, Marlette notes that the same people who feel that feeding children and giving them healthcare is godless “communism” are embracing Tuckyo Rose’s love for Vladimir Putin and his support for Russian foreign policy.

You cannot argue with people who place clan loyalty above common sense, and it’s not a matter of whether you spell it “clan” or “klan,” because they don’t care, as long as they have a flag to wave and a team to belong to.

 

And Mike Luckovich (AMS) can celebrate the fact that the legal walls are closing in on this band of grifters, but even if both Tish James and the Jan 6 Committee prove their graft and malfeasance beyond a reasonable doubt, the concept of “reasonable” isn’t in play.

After Nixon’s fall, there was a substantial group that said he and his gang were being prosecuted for things “everybody does.” They even made a folk hero of Gordon Liddy, who was convicted of conspiracy, burglary, and illegal wiretapping in Watergate.

That’s nothing compared to how the MAGAts will rally around Trump and his crew, regardless of how plain the proof of their con job.

Sic’em, anyway. Fiat justitiam ruat caelum.

 

Something to watch

I don’t know where Ben (MWAM) is headed this week, but it looks like we’re about to get heavy.

The strip is an odd mixture of funny jokes about an older couple and insightful arcs with the kids, but this looks like it’s headed into some deeper insights than usual. You may want to tune in.

 

Something you can’t watch

Comics Kingdom has once again lost a week of Judge Parker Vintage strips. However, nothing is really ever lost if you simply look around.

She chews gum and he has a beard. This looks bad!!

 

But not as bad as trying to get a bunch of Super Philosophers to rescue people from a burning building.

Existential Comics is often pretty deep into jokes only a philosophy major would get, but this one is good for anybody who took even a freshman survey course in the subject. And perhaps even better for them than for the true believers.

Go have a read.