The old phrase, “You’re Never Alone” is supposedly comforting, right?
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Comic
2374 comics.
Why teddy bears, anyhow? I mean, I’ve heard the stories about Roosevelt and whatever, but… Bears. Man, those things are dangerous!
I got one of those audiobooks of the year’s best science fiction. It had a story in it I liked a lot. Now that I look at this cartoon, I think I liked it more than I realized.
In it, a computer programmer had given her sister a beta-version language translation software suite that was ramped up to account for the fact that her sister communicated in a couple of different Sign Languages. The software would translate sign, and whatever other languages it could recognize, or learn, and display a CGI avatar of the person with a synth voice as though it were speaking American English aloud.
All well and good until, through a series of domestic vagaries, the woman’s daughter finds herself going through interminable conversations with someone while the computer flounders to understand the language of the caller involved. The avatar would repeat “Hello” and “I’m hungry”, but the caller never seemed to understand the responses.
Finally over days, the computer breaks the language and conversations get a little better. And, in the end, as you’ve possibly guessed, the avatar had been randomly assigned to a pet crow. The augmented and advanced language software worked like crazy to understand and translate a language, but the avatar imaging software was only concerned with making lips match American English words, and didn’t have a setting for ‘non-human’ face.
Good story.
Welcome back, Mr. Stuffins!
I’m on that No Call list, but I don’t think that “Bill from Microsoft” (I don’t think his name is really Bill.) has access to that list. Him, or that robot lady who keeps calling saying that she’s with my credit card company. Robot ladies apparently don’t know the name of my actual credit card company.
If you like to invent games of the sort that people seem to like these days- objective card games where the rules seem more implied than enforced- maybe you’d like to invent one called ‘wolves and weasels’. It seems to be the sort of thing that could go over pretty well. Maybe include an exploding kitten or some cards that seem to be against humanity.
What do you suppose Mal’s best event would be?
You can read people’s minds in comic strips. We’re accustomed to it. We know that when words are contained within lumpy clouds that the words aren’t spoken aloud.
I watched ‘Young Frankenstein’ with my youngest kid yesterday. It was his first time seeing it, and I became more attentive to what was onscreen knowing that. I was pretty amazed at how much dialogue could be cut from that film because you could read the thoughts of the actors written, not in floating bubbles over their heads, but right there on their faces. It was great.
And then there’s Bob. I like Bob, but I’m thinking there may not be as much thinking going on as those around him might suppose.
We’ll see.
The ladder of success is one thing…
The climbing wall of success is a whole other thing.
I can see how architects and interior designers would really like the opportunity to just noodle around on rooms as though they had all the time in the world.
That first panel was kinda fun.
