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Cake day: December 11th, 2024

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  • Yeah, wonder if they’re confusing it with something else. Here’s more info for anyone unaware:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core

    The demon core was a sphere of plutonium–gallium alloy that was involved in two fatal radiation accidents when scientists tested it as a fissile core of an early atomic bomb. It was manufactured in 1945 by the Manhattan Project, the U.S. nuclear weapon development effort during World War II.

    It’s weird that they made it look like the Demon core, but not behave like it.


  • m_‮f@discuss.onlineOPtoThe Far Side@sh.itjust.works2026-02-18
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    6 days ago

    Some background on this comic:

    Transcript:

    The Los Angeles Times, which carries The Far Side, has taken umbrage with my cartoon on several occasions. (Apparently, someone there actually reads the comics beforehand.) These three, as I recall, created some conflicts with the “good taste” standards of that paper, and I believe all three were deleted from their comic page back in the early eighties.

    The first two I suppose are subjective, although I don’t remember other papers censoring them. Their rejection of the elephant cartoon, however, had me baffled. I’ve always found it appalling that the demand for ivory has caused these magnificent animals to be continuously poached—but the ultimate act of contempt for the rights of wildlife has got to be represented by the elephant’s foot wastebasket. And that’s the point I was striving for in this cartoon—not that I was hoping to make a profound comment of any sort (the cartoon is really pretty inane, I think), but just who wouldn’t be upset to find out something like this had been done to a former part of their anatomy?




  • m_‮f@discuss.onlineOPMtoPeanuts@discuss.online1952-02-16
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    7 days ago

    Yeah, I think those senses are where we got the one above from. Wiktionary has these two before that one:

    A labourer on an oil rig or in the oilpatch, either skilled or semiskilled.

    A dirty or low-paid worker, a labourer; an ironworker in an ironworks or a steelworker in a steelworks




  • Some background on this comic:

    Transcript:

    My publisher’s gift and stationery division decided one day they wanted to make this and a few other Far Side cartoons into posters. The problem was this one particular cartoon featured nothing but penguins and ice, which didn’t lend itself to color.

    When the finished posters show up, I was interested to see they had indeed found a use for color in this cartoon―they made the one penguin (who’s singing “I Gotta Be Me”) yellow―the others remained in black and white.

    In other words, the entire point of the cartoon had been reversed. In the original version, I was being cynical about the futility of trying to be unique in a sea of commonality. But by making just the singing penguin yellow, the publisher made him stand out, and the cartoon then made the same point the song originally intended.

    At least that’s what I feared. I was really worried someone might actually think I was being sensitive for a moment. That would make me sick.









  • m_‮f@discuss.onlineOPtoThe Far Side@sh.itjust.works2026-02-14
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    10 days ago

    Some background on this comic:

    Transcript:

    Originally, the title I intended for this cartoon was, simply, “Predator/prey relationships.” But when I finished the drawing, something about the way the wolf was looking back over his shoulder evoked a need in me to probe their relationship a little deeper.