Recent Comments

1. 3 days ago on Breaking Cat News

   I’ll dunk my chips/fries in a condiment once in a while, but I prefer their crispy-mealy goodness unadulterated. Now that I think about it, that’s also true of chips/crisps. Potato + salt + fat + heat = complete. If you don’t get that equation just right, all the flavoring in the world won’t help.

2. 3 days ago on Breaking Cat News

   Yes, sometimes you have to detach to survive. I don’t know this from personal experience, but I’ve seen it.

3. about 2 months ago on Breaking Cat News

   As Ani DiFranco said, “Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right.”

4. about 2 months ago on Breaking Cat News

   Bill Watterson has said that the two different versions of Hobbes represent the way Calvin sees Hobbes vs how everyone else sees Hobbes. Hobbes doesn’t magically come to life when only Calvin is around.

5. 2 months ago on Breaking Cat News

   Premium member on Firefox for Mac (for now, I’m usually on a Linux machine). uBlock Origin with some very well trained element blockers (the ones you add yourself with the element picker function) The gray box pops up for an instant and then disappears.

   On my phone, Firefox for Android and not signed in. uBlock Origin with less well trained element blockers. The gray box is there at the top, but it scrolls out of view when I scroll down the page. The element picker gets rid of it altogether.

   uBlock Origin’s element picker is great. Among many other things, I use it to get rid of the video suggestions on the right side of a YouTube page, as well as the comments. The former removes of the algorithm-generated, outrage-feeding suggestions that I’m unable to resist even though I should know better. The latter removes a thing that sends me into a state of despair over the future of humanity (that I’m also unable to resist even though I should know better).

6. 2 months ago on Breaking Cat News

   P.S. Yesterday, I was thinking, “The noise can’t be the window, because the window was on a Sunday, and that would mean [see above comment about synchronizing Sundays and dailies], and that NEVER happens. So I wonder what the noise will turn out to be?”

   Bravo Georgia—you fooled me!

7. 2 months ago on Breaking Cat News

   I’m going to be a comics nerd and and comment on how Georgia synchronized her Sunday strip with her daily strip. They have two different lead times, so it takes some planning ahead. Also, some newspapers don’t run the Sunday strips, or they only run the Sunday strips. So the story arc has to make sense without the Sunday installment, and the Sunday installment has to fit with the arc but also make sense on its own.

   To quote Bill Watterson in The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book, “For these reasons, it’s rarely worth the trouble to coordinate Sundays and dailies.”

8. 3 months ago on Breaking Cat News

   Mosquitoes aren’t a problem if you keep the water moving with a bubbler, or if you change the water every 48 hours. They can’t lay on moving water, and if you replace the water every 2 days, eggs don’t have time to develop into anything that flies or bites.

9. 3 months ago on Breaking Cat News

   Thank you so much for your advice, I’m so glad to hear that worked for you! My apartment is EXTREMELY dusty, and I am EXTREMELY lazy about routine housecleaning. I’ve been thinking for a while I need to get in there and clean up. I even gave a passing thought to the dust when things started going wrong a couple days ago. I decided dust wouldn’t cause that kind of problem. (I don’t know what I was basing that on and why I was so confident about it.)

10. 3 months ago on Breaking Cat News

    You’re here on your Fire, I’m here on my old laptop that goes through a full charge in less than 2 hours if I don’t keep it plugged in. Hardware problem on my regular computer—repeated clicky noises lead me to suspect a failing hard drive. The thing isn’t even that old.