I don't know if this is from a specific series, or if it's just a one-off.

Why don't you search around and see if you can find such a collection and let us know..?

We learned FORTRAN on punch cards that we would send off to the regional office for them to run.

Hah, I must have just caught the tail end of that course in HS. Except, maybe midway through the term, they installed a modem that a telephone handset could be placed in to, such that we could run programs remotely on a mainframe.

@anonymous_leaker@lemmy.world,

do you miss these days?

Actually I remember earlier screensavers those were based on; I believe add-ons like "Flying Toasters" for Mac & PC. Trust Bill Gates' ripoff crew to make a less-robust version, as always.

I miss their work on the OOCC comics sublemmy.

As usual, I'm listening to audio of the Apollo missions. Right at the moment, it's A16.

https://somafm.com/missioncontrol/

Not sure what that Apple hostility is about. Those 2-series machines were a blast, with loads of great software & hardware available for them.

From what I've seen, IBM's took some time to match all that, and IIRC were pricey as hell, to boot.

I wonder if a stream / small river like that could create that canyon all by itself in friable rock, or whether it needed to swell considerably at times.

I don't know how much the term is used outside the States, but traditionally over here, it means a woman whose main quality is being sexually attractive in a showy way.

So in the original cartoon Velma is the brains of the outfit, but in fan-made art and cartoons, she usually seems to be reimagined as little more than a sex object, pretty much the same as Daphne.

Haha, Ebert's definitely coming at it from a grumpy angle. OTOH, he's not talking about simply having a shared passion, but moreso about becoming totally obsessed with hobby trivia to the point of barely being able to face reality outside of those narrow confines. It's really just a case of taking fandom too far as I see it.

I also have to admit that when I was growing up, I was somewhat guilty of this kind of thing. I had trouble making small-talk, trouble talking to the opposite sex, and difficulties just hanging out and chilling with others. I turned to stuff like D&D, comics & videogames, and could relate pretty easily to people in the same boat. But I truly did use it as a way of walling off various worldly realities, using those things as a crutch until various social skills later started to improve. I have to agree with Ebert's final point though, especially if it relates to middle-aged people-- if the only thing they're able to talk about is their hobby trivia, then it pretty quickly turns in to a painful conversation IME.

Btw, "Triumph" famously does a pretty good send-up here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKT7bx-fmtk

That guy's face alone deserves its own graphic novel series. Maybe "Columbo" set in the Assyrian world...

For my part, I've seen her turned in to a 'cheesecake' character so often, totally minimizing her mental talents, that I'm enjoying this one.

Or, "what's good for the goose is good for the gander."

Thanks for the shares!
I do recall the clover lawn looking a bit patchy like yours, with some grass and whatever else mixing amongst the clover. I suppose that was partly what annoyed the later caretaker, as there's something of a tradition in American suburbia (or suburban hell) to have flat, featureless, green lawns, something which might go back to traditional 'English turf,' I suppose.

the last 10 or 15 volumes were OK at best.

I've read that Leloup's age (92yo now) has had an impact on how he draws the comic. Evidently he doesn't see very well, so draws very close to the paper these days, and that seems to have a pretty strong impact on how he draws the figures and does perspective. Anyway... just something I read, FWIW.

Thanks to you and @state_electrician@discuss.tchncs.de for mentioning some favorites. I'll see what I can get my hands on to read... maybe share some sequences here in future.

Bats are so utterly adorable to me.
Altho at the same time, being disease-vectors to some degree. Still, I kinda love 'em no matter what.

Also, it's kind of heart-breaking to me that when they get grounded, it can be tremendously hard work for them to get themselves up and flying again. It seems they need constant, sustained energy from insect diets to fly, and get up when grounded.

Some years back I was bicycling the paths of Chautauqua Institute in NY state, and stopped near a post lamp. It became one of the most magical moments of all time for me, as a species called "little brown bats" were actively hunting that night. The fluttering sounds of their wings was adorable, and I didn't get pooped on, either!

Unlike this poor bloke:
https://piefed.social/...

My mom was a well-trained gardener who volunteered hours at the local "extension" (university dept that answers any & all gardening Q's). At some point she converted her big lawn in to a clover lawn, with the benefits being that it could feed pollinators and didn't need to be mowed, since that type of clover only grew to a certain height.

Soon after she passed, the person in charge of the lawn decided to wipe out the clover and reinstall some type of lawn grass. I couldn't believe it. They even explained to me that it was necessary, because mowing a clover lawn could be dangerous due to rocks potentially being kicked up...

Wow, what a creature. oO
I don't think we had any when I worked at the zoo, and I don't remember seeing any animal docus about them, either. So many of the Carnivorans are friend-shaped, and yet even if homed from birth, I think most wouldn't make good pets due to a variety of reasons. Foxes for example, with their stinky urine, high motors and shrieky voices, perhaps. (lookin' at you, Fennec Foxes)

I imagine you might have seen some egregious cases over the years of negligent ownership of exotic or illegal species...

Great Caniform-Feliform chart!

I also get a kick out of how a couple members of each branch evolved to be their opposites, so to speak. For example, hyenas are unusually 'dog-like' cat-forms, while red pandas are unusually 'cat-like' dog-forms.

It's something of a convergent evolution thing, not unlike Australasia's marsupials evolving to take on roles that we see in placental mammals. So they devolved their own 'versions' of cats, lions, dogs, rodents and that sort of thing.

Clean their pens and they’re reaching through when you back up too close and they pinch your ass and search through all your pockets.

😄

That reminds me of what a raccoon-handler once said, which was that you never want to intentionally or unintentionally piss off a raccoon. That evidently unlocks a whole different, savage, vengeful side of them that would make even an elephant blush, lol.

In his defense, I suppose a certain amount of small material (including a few little rocks) would probably accumulate over time, hidden by the clover. So that part's kind of fair, I guess.

Just that, if you don't need to actually mow it, then what matters it? If I had to speculate, I'd guess that he was used to a lifetime of grass lawns, felt a comfort zone there, and was always a bit uneasy about the clover lawn. And yet, didn't feel up to arguing that with a certified Master Gardener while she was still alive.

To add on to that, most modern livestock live absolutely miserable lives.

I was going to add a separate comment, but in the interests of brevity, I think I'll just put it here:

I find that in order to answer questions like OP's, it's helpful to remember who we are and how we lived for the ~2.5Myrs total of humanity's (i.e. genus Homo) existence. So in terms of our diet, we've been opportunistic omnivores (heavy on plants) for the vast majority of that time, much like our fellow apes. It's a completely sustainable way of living, and our bodies are perfectly engineered for that.

At the other end of the spectrum would be a pure carnivore diet, which science studies consistently find to cause increased cardiovascular disease and cancer rates. On top of all the enormous waste, expenditure, and utter cruelty towards livestock.

Point is-- if you consider all that, I think you can find some pretty decisive answers about the "morality" of one's diet.

By magic, of course!