Possible obscure theatre reference: One of my favorite spit take jokes is from the musical The Drowsy Chaperone, which is set up as if the audience is listening to the musical along with the narrator who’s playing it on his record player. At the time of the spit take the “record” starts to skip so that the spit take happens again and again and again.
I was on tech crew for the musical in high school, and I had a crush on the girl doing the spitting, which may have added to my overall high ranking of the scene.
I was a community ringer in the pit for one of the local high school’s production of the Drowsy Chaperone. That scene, ha! I also played alto clarinet on all the alto sax parts and it was great.
My little brother was in a production of that recently. The girl doing the spit-takes would always break during that scene and have to frantically work to keep spitting between laughs, and the boy getting spat on was somehow able to keep still as a statue throughout. Killed every night.
Step 1) Grab a drink. Step 2) Watch a South Park marathon. Step 3) Get ready to do some shopping. Whether you’ve reacted with disgust or laughter, eventually you’ll find an episode that ruins your keyboard.
1) Some people were being right jackasses in the thread for yesterday’s strip, and Willis locked this one to play it safe until civility reigned again.
2) Danny describes his beverage as “pop”. The “soda” crowd were ready to descend upon this comments section like locusts to battle their ancient enemies, the “pop” people, and the Blood War would begin anew.
Did your theory involve people being jackasses or was that something that actually happened? Because yesterday’s strip didn’t exactly seem the type to get people all angry to me, but if they did I’m… kinda curious.
Although I feel like I shouldn’t be?
Schroedinger’s jackasses? Some kind of time traveler killing their grandfather event? Frye going back in time and boinking his grandmother? Non-recoverable history that may not have happened?
The “soda” crowd were ready to descend upon this comments section like locusts to battle their ancient enemies, the “pop” people, and the Blood War would begin anew
Man, the Planescape setting completely glossed over that backstory.
Well, soda was the original term (so soda didn’t actually come from soda pop, but rather, the opposite), with it referring to early examples of carbonated water. Later, as carbonation became a facet of manufacturing and the term became used for beverages, flavored carbonated beverages became known as soda pop, with the pop taking on the meaning of referring to the flavored elements within the soda.
Ergo, “soda pop”, being the only term to have distinct meaning to flavored carbonated beverages, would be the only correct term, as you indicate.
Soda, on the other hand, wins on historical primacy, but loses on the grounds of already having a distinct, slightly different utilization.
Pop never really had any meaning outside of beverage flavoring, and noone refers to the flavored ingredients themselves, ergo it becoming claimed for use as a shorthand for flavored beverage is completely meritous, and helps keep soda distinct in its own meaning. Likewise, since soda specifically refers to carbonated water (and the usage thereof), pop allows us to include non-carbonated flavored beverages under the label as well, without confusing our ability to reference carbonation at all.
Thus, under modern terminology, we’d have Soda->Carbonated Water, Pop->Flavored Beverage, and Soda Pop->Carbonated Flavored Beverage.
In short, pop is the “correct” term to use. Well, that or “soft drink”, which definitely wins out on how prevalent its use is by companies.
..I’ll still be using ‘soda’ myself, though. Alas for woes of habituation. :X
Long story short as I understand it, Patreon is massively hiking the individual fees for Patreon supporters (and pocketing the extra for themselves), which is forcing many to give up their pledges to many of their creators as a result of no longer being able to afford them.
IIRC the latest info is that they’re not necessarily pocketing it for themselves (though, they’re probably pocketing a lot of it for themselves), they’re switching to billing individually for each pledge (which means a lot more fees than before that go to the credit card companies) rather than once a month – which for some people is even more annoying than the extra money itself.
Which essentially means that even if (and it’s clearly a big if – the fees they’re charging for $1 patrons are *huge* – by comparison, a vending machine I sometimes use only charges a 10 cent credit card fee for similar sized transactions) they’re not pocketing any of it for themselves, they’re completely destroying the economy of scale that gives them any competitive advantage over just using Paypal/Stripe/etc directly.
Patreon changed their policies so now the various processing fees are on the patrons, not the creators. 2.9% + $0.35 a pledge. So now a dollar pledge actually costs $1.38. They claimed this was a good thing because it used to be that the creators had to cover this stuff (on top of the 5% Patreon itself takes), so now they will get more money.
But they are ignoring the fact that A) this puts an unfair burden on patrons who support multiple patrons, as they get charged these fees for every creator they support, and B) This won’t affect bigger patrons as much, but many creators get the bulk of their contributions from many people who only give a dollar or so, who are likely strapped for cash, and thus are very adversely affected by the price going up by 38%.
The reaction has been universally negative. Got a ton of emails from creators today, and not one of them is happy.
Drip (Kickstarter’s version of Patreon) is in an invite-only beta now…should be opening up in the next month or two, the venture capital types who own Patreon right now are likely just trying to squeeze as much as they can out of it before everyone jumps ship.
That’s utterly stupid though. Patreon is well established and trusted- or was. All they had to do to ensure they had an edge over the competition was NOT FUCK UP. Maybe there’s something I don’t know that would make a decent amount of people jump ship? But this has turned it from having to keep up with competition to actively giving competition an advantage. It’s a ludicrous business decision that I can only assume was made by someone completely out of touch.
…But again I admit I don’t have all the information.
That sounds like standard Capitalism, as it is usually practiced in the US of A. Unbelievably stupid and nigh-infinitely short-sighted. Just like with Climate Change, just like the current Lead Capitalist’s impulsive decision to declare Jerusalem to be Israel’s capital, despite the reasons this was never done before…
yeah… *all* my pledges are $1, and I was planning to have over a dozen of them. now… well… it’d probably be about the same amount of fees if I sent each webcomic a $1.38 credit card payment.
As if my bank didn’t already charge me per pledge because they are separate transactions. I’d be much happier if I could pledge a lump sum once or twice a year, that would save transaction costs on both sides (also, I rather like deciding about money I already have than pledging future income I might not have).
What I thought would be really cool is if you could say, “Okay, I want to pay $XX into Patreon each month, and have it split equally between everyone I support.” And it would have a list of everyone that was, and how much that would come to each (Like, “You support 13 creators! They get $xx each!” and the list of who those thirteen were, sort of thing), and Patreon would take out the one payment and divvy it up for me. Ideally it would round the amount down to the nearest penny that could be divided that many ways, and the change would be carried over to next month’s total; but that’s a programming detail and irrelevant.
I’d love to support several different creators; but I also know my own limitations, and while I am perfectly capable of tracking “so much to Patreon each month,” if it was to each creator separately, even if it was being billed to me as one chunk, I know perfectly well that I would just be going, “Oh! I love this! Sure, let’s give you some money, too!” and end up nickel-and-dime-ing myself into (further) insolvency. :/ It’s the only reason I haven’t subscribed to it yet.
And now they’ve managed to completely remove any lingering incentive I might have felt to do so, and I’m so sorry to everyone whose work I get to enjoy for free without financially supporting it. 🙁
I’m still not sure I get it. If the issue is that Patreon doesn’t want to eat the cost of $0.35 transaction fees on $1 pledges, surely this solution is better than the alternative of just paying the creators $0.65 for each of the pledges instead. I’ve read some stuff about lumping transactions together, is Patreon not actually charged $0.35 per transaction by credit card companies and are just lying and claiming they are as a cash grab?
The pledges come out as a single charge in the current method. In other words, $1 each to 5 creators would be a single $5 credit card charge to the customer. It looks like maybe Patreon wants to disaggregate the pledges, though, and make it 5 payments of $1.38 each. They have their reasons, but it’s a mess. There’s some pretty good explanation/discussion going on on Jeph Jacques’ Twitter feed (twitter.com/jephjacques)
Yeah that makes more sense. I was thinking that the current status quo was either that creators were getting $0.65 for $1 pledges, and thus would have to lose 33% of their $1 tier patrons to actually lose money, or that Patreon just charged a flat % to everyone despite having a $0.35 fee per transaction, and thus was actually losing money on $1 pledges. If they can just run pledges to 10 different creators at once for one fee of $0.35, but then go and charge $0.35 ten times, that’s an enormous cash grab.
I just read something that seemed to suggest they’re going to start doing separate charges for every pledge, which (if true) defeats most of the point of Patreon existing at all.
It’s supposed to be a platform where you can pay one monthly fee and gave the money split over several artists. Without that it’s just a way to get small bonuses for your contribution.
Also, it just occurred to me that they’re doing this to the creators right before *Christmas*. What a lovely gift – everyone needs more stress for the holidays right? :p
he gives patreon way too much credit imho, but if there’s regulatory issues discouraging the payment bundling, well, fuck. depending on how those regulations actually work, that could make it more expensive or just impossible to get payment bundling elsewhere. and payment bundling was the whole reason I signed up.
oh, and since it’s easy to lose things on twitter, here’s the open letter that I think was mentioned here at some point: https://kav2k.github.io/patreon_letter/
If that’s *really* their motive, then why not just say it? If they’re being legally forced to change their payment structure, why would they willingly make themselves the scapegoats? All the BS they’re spouting makes it look like they’ve got something to hide.
Also, most of the creators were fine with paying those fees because it’s what they signed up for. Patrons did not sign up to pay those fees. A lot of creators are losing their patrons.
Under the old structure, the creators got $.85 on each $1 pledge. Under the new one, they get $.95…which looks better when phrased like that. BUT.
Under the old structure, that $1 pledge was actually $1. Under the new structure, it’s $1.38. Meaning that:
a) The creator goes from getting 85% of the actual money pledged, to ~65%. (According to the chart Jeph posted, I have not done the math myself.) It’s not until $10 that the two versions start to even out.
b) A lot of patrons can no longer afford to support after this, and others are refusing to because they don’t want to pay more, without good reason. So, there are fewer dollars coming their way, so, for example, instead of getting, 85% of $100, they’re getting 95% of $80.
So, this is bad for both creators and patrons (and ultimately for Patreon).
if I wasn’t sick I would be all over trying to hack together some kind of alternative. … although probably I’d discover mountains of red tape to drown in because moving money’s not nearly as simple as updating a database, but, it’d be fun to try. my brain already hurts just from trying to understand someone’s open letter about the issue 🙂
hopefully creators will find such an alternative (it probably already exists right?) and then loads of people can jump ship.. after christmas.
but since JJ says he’s lost several hundred patrons already, I’m a bit concerned that this is going to do a lot of damage regardless. :/
I’ve heard Joey Chestnut referred to as “Jaws”, which is pretty supervillainy – I mean a mean henchman in two Bond movies, and a killer shark movie series? I think pretty supervillainous a nickname.
Wait I didn’t intend to be a buzzkill! I think your joke is quite funny. Except, you know, they kinda did that.
Anyway Joe asking Danny for tips on nerdspeak is in-character, because even though he plays video games like a total nerd, he does not, of course, consider himself to have any nerdy aspects. He might see video gaming to be more of a ‘bro’ thing. Which it is, sometimes, depending on the game. Mario games are nerdy though.
Nonono. Mario is mainstream. Almost won Game of the Year not too long ago.
Shin Megami Tensei and Persona are nerdy. EarthBound and the Mother series are nerdy. Phoenix Wright and Ghost Trick and Xenoblade and Undertale and Ogre Battle and Cave Story and Stardew Valley are nerdy. And awesome.
Yeah it’s mainstream, but I guess I was also thinking cute and quirky. Which is not characteristic of ‘bro-ness’ (meaning overexaggerated masculinity i guess). So I’m saying Mario games are not dudebro games, because they’re too cute and quirky for most dudebros who aren’t also game nerds.
A dudebro game would be something like… Counter-Strike or FIFA.
True. I feel like Joe and Danny had a Nintendo Switch Commercial moment when they sat down to play the Switch (which is undoubtedly Danny’s) Saturday night. Which honestly, just seems like a growing moment for him. Understanding that it’s more important to just have fun with your best friend than worry about doing something that might make him look less attractive to a particular type of vain person.
And dangit, I just turned what should have been a perfectly good video game comment into a comment praising a character for their internal personal development. Blah!
It is worth at least trying but don’t try to hunt it down like it is the Holy Grail. It is the only fizzy drink I usually genuinely struggle to finish drinking (except for some reason that one time they were in larger cans for a while, that was wild) not because it is bad, but it just doesn’t instill cravings for more for me usually. It is orange, both in can and colour.
Don’t trust snowmen that can fly with it either, they will fucking rob you and drop you like a hot potato from the sky.
For coke, anyway. I don’t think anyone gets to complain unless they make a point of avoiding all brand names being used to refer to the item regardless of brand. That includes vacuum cleaners (also U.K.), small adhesive bandages (not U.K. afaik), painkillers, etc.
And if you ARE the sort of person who complains about that you need to recognise that language evolves, you’re being absurd, and move on. In my opinion.
Though in Coke’s case, it’s particularly awkward since you regularly have to clarify which kind of coke you want. Especially if you want a Coke coke.
It’s rare that any one really cares when asking for a band-aid whether it’s a Band-Aid or not.
I’ve literally never known it to be a problem in the U.K. At all. That doesn’t mean it’s not but it’s outside of my personal experience.
I don’t perceive it as being an issue either because you could clarify “I would like Coca-Cola” or “I would like Pepsi”, so… I dunno, that’s one that doesn’t seem like a big deal to me at all? Although that is based on my own experience so. *shrug*
It’s a classic linguistic cultural marker, and, precisely because the subject is so innocuous, arguments about soda/pop/coke are seen as benign and/or fun.
See also grinder/hoagie/po’boy/hero/sub. (As in, “Galasso’s Pizza (and Subs).”)
There are two entities involved both sharing the name Amber: the ‘regular’ alter who is supposed to carry all the scary capacity for knife violence, and Amber the whole system, the brain in the body. And while the former Amber is distinct from Amazi-girl, it’s still fair enough to say “Amber is Amazi-girl” meaning the latter and for the value of ‘is’ that actually means ‘includes’.
However, I’m not sure that Danny knows just how complex and pathological Amber’s mental health situation is. Because of that, he’s always assumed that ‘Amber’ and ‘Amazi-Girl’ are essentially the same person.
The Governor-General signed the Marriage Amendment (Definition and Religious Freedoms) Act 2017 this morning: it comes into force at midnight. From midnight the law of Australia will recognise same-sex marriages and the marriages of transsexual and intersexed people. Same-sex couples and couples including an intersexed or transsexual person will be able to notify their intention to marry from tomorrow, and marry from the 9th of January 2018.
The New South Wales Registry of Births Deaths and Marriages, which is normally closed on Saturdays, has made a special point of opening today so that same-sex couples and couples including an intersexed or transgender person can lodge their notice of intention to marry on the earliest possible date.
I so envy you, all the people who can laugh this easily. Really. I do see it’s funny, but my threshold is so high, comics rarely make me smile. The only thing that does the trick for me is a big dose of terrible real estate agent photographs.
I choose to see this as an alien symbiote, having watched for a long time and having had enough of Danny’s shit, choosing this exact moment to leap into the boy’s body in order to possess him.
I feel like I just recognized that look in panel 3… Danny is trying to figure out if Joe’s confessing he slept with Amber. Maybe I’m projecting or something but that blank transition totally reads like a stomach drop.
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Possible obscure theatre reference: One of my favorite spit take jokes is from the musical The Drowsy Chaperone, which is set up as if the audience is listening to the musical along with the narrator who’s playing it on his record player. At the time of the spit take the “record” starts to skip so that the spit take happens again and again and again.
I was on tech crew for the musical in high school, and I had a crush on the girl doing the spitting, which may have added to my overall high ranking of the scene.
I was a community ringer in the pit for one of the local high school’s production of the Drowsy Chaperone. That scene, ha! I also played alto clarinet on all the alto sax parts and it was great.
Dang, that takes some chops. Mad props.
Sick drops?
My little brother was in a production of that recently. The girl doing the spit-takes would always break during that scene and have to frantically work to keep spitting between laughs, and the boy getting spat on was somehow able to keep still as a statue throughout. Killed every night.
Your gravatar combined with your comment is making me read it in Iroh’s voice, and now I’m imagining Ozai in the situation you described.
Joke enhanced!
Man I don’t even know how to do spittakes normally.
One doesn’t learn to spittake. It just happens naturally.
Step 1) Grab a drink. Step 2) Watch a South Park marathon. Step 3) Get ready to do some shopping. Whether you’ve reacted with disgust or laughter, eventually you’ll find an episode that ruins your keyboard.
Oh cool, I can make my vomit-take joke now.
HA that was more like a VOMIT-take…
No.
No, the moment passed.
Just like that pop passed out of his stomach, eh?
Yeah, I bet that for all the work it’d done on that soda, his bladder would be pissed at losing it.
It was a great visual gag while it lasted.
The moment hasn’t passed. When you “spit-take” something you drank two hours ago, that is a vomit-take.
Oh okay. Thought comments were closed for unknown reasons. Neat.
I had two theories.
1) Some people were being right jackasses in the thread for yesterday’s strip, and Willis locked this one to play it safe until civility reigned again.
2) Danny describes his beverage as “pop”. The “soda” crowd were ready to descend upon this comments section like locusts to battle their ancient enemies, the “pop” people, and the Blood War would begin anew.
Did your theory involve people being jackasses or was that something that actually happened? Because yesterday’s strip didn’t exactly seem the type to get people all angry to me, but if they did I’m… kinda curious.
Although I feel like I shouldn’t be?
I didn’t see anyone causing trouble, but if it had happened, the comments could have been deleted.
Schroedinger’s jackasses? Some kind of time traveler killing their grandfather event? Frye going back in time and boinking his grandmother? Non-recoverable history that may not have happened?
Man, the Planescape setting completely glossed over that backstory.
How about the two crowds spit the difference and we start calling the stuff “sop”?
How can anyone get worked up over the sod vs pop debate when both terms come from, well, soda pop.
..oh right, humans are dumb
Well, soda was the original term (so soda didn’t actually come from soda pop, but rather, the opposite), with it referring to early examples of carbonated water. Later, as carbonation became a facet of manufacturing and the term became used for beverages, flavored carbonated beverages became known as soda pop, with the pop taking on the meaning of referring to the flavored elements within the soda.
Ergo, “soda pop”, being the only term to have distinct meaning to flavored carbonated beverages, would be the only correct term, as you indicate.
Soda, on the other hand, wins on historical primacy, but loses on the grounds of already having a distinct, slightly different utilization.
Pop never really had any meaning outside of beverage flavoring, and noone refers to the flavored ingredients themselves, ergo it becoming claimed for use as a shorthand for flavored beverage is completely meritous, and helps keep soda distinct in its own meaning. Likewise, since soda specifically refers to carbonated water (and the usage thereof), pop allows us to include non-carbonated flavored beverages under the label as well, without confusing our ability to reference carbonation at all.
Thus, under modern terminology, we’d have Soda->Carbonated Water, Pop->Flavored Beverage, and Soda Pop->Carbonated Flavored Beverage.
In short, pop is the “correct” term to use. Well, that or “soft drink”, which definitely wins out on how prevalent its use is by companies.
..I’ll still be using ‘soda’ myself, though. Alas for woes of habituation. :X
Had me kinda worried that some shit had happened for a while there with the comments closed.
I’d wondered whether Willis had gotten so enraged at the Patreon situation that he’d decided to take it all down with him, Viking funeral style.
What Patreon situation?
Long story short as I understand it, Patreon is massively hiking the individual fees for Patreon supporters (and pocketing the extra for themselves), which is forcing many to give up their pledges to many of their creators as a result of no longer being able to afford them.
IIRC the latest info is that they’re not necessarily pocketing it for themselves (though, they’re probably pocketing a lot of it for themselves), they’re switching to billing individually for each pledge (which means a lot more fees than before that go to the credit card companies) rather than once a month – which for some people is even more annoying than the extra money itself.
Which essentially means that even if (and it’s clearly a big if – the fees they’re charging for $1 patrons are *huge* – by comparison, a vending machine I sometimes use only charges a 10 cent credit card fee for similar sized transactions) they’re not pocketing any of it for themselves, they’re completely destroying the economy of scale that gives them any competitive advantage over just using Paypal/Stripe/etc directly.
I am a patreon supporter of several webcomics. Patreon got an earful from me about this blatant cash grab of theirs.
Patreon changed their policies so now the various processing fees are on the patrons, not the creators. 2.9% + $0.35 a pledge. So now a dollar pledge actually costs $1.38. They claimed this was a good thing because it used to be that the creators had to cover this stuff (on top of the 5% Patreon itself takes), so now they will get more money.
But they are ignoring the fact that A) this puts an unfair burden on patrons who support multiple patrons, as they get charged these fees for every creator they support, and B) This won’t affect bigger patrons as much, but many creators get the bulk of their contributions from many people who only give a dollar or so, who are likely strapped for cash, and thus are very adversely affected by the price going up by 38%.
The reaction has been universally negative. Got a ton of emails from creators today, and not one of them is happy.
Maybe people should switch to Tipeee.
Drip (Kickstarter’s version of Patreon) is in an invite-only beta now…should be opening up in the next month or two, the venture capital types who own Patreon right now are likely just trying to squeeze as much as they can out of it before everyone jumps ship.
That’s utterly stupid though. Patreon is well established and trusted- or was. All they had to do to ensure they had an edge over the competition was NOT FUCK UP. Maybe there’s something I don’t know that would make a decent amount of people jump ship? But this has turned it from having to keep up with competition to actively giving competition an advantage. It’s a ludicrous business decision that I can only assume was made by someone completely out of touch.
…But again I admit I don’t have all the information.
That sounds like standard Capitalism, as it is usually practiced in the US of A. Unbelievably stupid and nigh-infinitely short-sighted. Just like with Climate Change, just like the current Lead Capitalist’s impulsive decision to declare Jerusalem to be Israel’s capital, despite the reasons this was never done before…
yeah… *all* my pledges are $1, and I was planning to have over a dozen of them. now… well… it’d probably be about the same amount of fees if I sent each webcomic a $1.38 credit card payment.
As if my bank didn’t already charge me per pledge because they are separate transactions. I’d be much happier if I could pledge a lump sum once or twice a year, that would save transaction costs on both sides (also, I rather like deciding about money I already have than pledging future income I might not have).
What I thought would be really cool is if you could say, “Okay, I want to pay $XX into Patreon each month, and have it split equally between everyone I support.” And it would have a list of everyone that was, and how much that would come to each (Like, “You support 13 creators! They get $xx each!” and the list of who those thirteen were, sort of thing), and Patreon would take out the one payment and divvy it up for me. Ideally it would round the amount down to the nearest penny that could be divided that many ways, and the change would be carried over to next month’s total; but that’s a programming detail and irrelevant.
I’d love to support several different creators; but I also know my own limitations, and while I am perfectly capable of tracking “so much to Patreon each month,” if it was to each creator separately, even if it was being billed to me as one chunk, I know perfectly well that I would just be going, “Oh! I love this! Sure, let’s give you some money, too!” and end up nickel-and-dime-ing myself into (further) insolvency. :/ It’s the only reason I haven’t subscribed to it yet.
And now they’ve managed to completely remove any lingering incentive I might have felt to do so, and I’m so sorry to everyone whose work I get to enjoy for free without financially supporting it. 🙁
I’m still not sure I get it. If the issue is that Patreon doesn’t want to eat the cost of $0.35 transaction fees on $1 pledges, surely this solution is better than the alternative of just paying the creators $0.65 for each of the pledges instead. I’ve read some stuff about lumping transactions together, is Patreon not actually charged $0.35 per transaction by credit card companies and are just lying and claiming they are as a cash grab?
The pledges come out as a single charge in the current method. In other words, $1 each to 5 creators would be a single $5 credit card charge to the customer. It looks like maybe Patreon wants to disaggregate the pledges, though, and make it 5 payments of $1.38 each. They have their reasons, but it’s a mess. There’s some pretty good explanation/discussion going on on Jeph Jacques’ Twitter feed (twitter.com/jephjacques)
Yeah that makes more sense. I was thinking that the current status quo was either that creators were getting $0.65 for $1 pledges, and thus would have to lose 33% of their $1 tier patrons to actually lose money, or that Patreon just charged a flat % to everyone despite having a $0.35 fee per transaction, and thus was actually losing money on $1 pledges. If they can just run pledges to 10 different creators at once for one fee of $0.35, but then go and charge $0.35 ten times, that’s an enormous cash grab.
I just read something that seemed to suggest they’re going to start doing separate charges for every pledge, which (if true) defeats most of the point of Patreon existing at all.
It’s supposed to be a platform where you can pay one monthly fee and gave the money split over several artists. Without that it’s just a way to get small bonuses for your contribution.
Also, it just occurred to me that they’re doing this to the creators right before *Christmas*. What a lovely gift – everyone needs more stress for the holidays right? :p
well shit. someone found a plausible explanation for this madness. https://subfictional.com/my-theory-patreon-doesnt-want-to-be-a-money-services-business/
he gives patreon way too much credit imho, but if there’s regulatory issues discouraging the payment bundling, well, fuck. depending on how those regulations actually work, that could make it more expensive or just impossible to get payment bundling elsewhere. and payment bundling was the whole reason I signed up.
oh, and since it’s easy to lose things on twitter, here’s the open letter that I think was mentioned here at some point: https://kav2k.github.io/patreon_letter/
If that’s *really* their motive, then why not just say it? If they’re being legally forced to change their payment structure, why would they willingly make themselves the scapegoats? All the BS they’re spouting makes it look like they’ve got something to hide.
there’s a certain culture that strongly discourages such honesty. :/
Also, most of the creators were fine with paying those fees because it’s what they signed up for. Patrons did not sign up to pay those fees. A lot of creators are losing their patrons.
Under the old structure, the creators got $.85 on each $1 pledge. Under the new one, they get $.95…which looks better when phrased like that. BUT.
Under the old structure, that $1 pledge was actually $1. Under the new structure, it’s $1.38. Meaning that:
a) The creator goes from getting 85% of the actual money pledged, to ~65%. (According to the chart Jeph posted, I have not done the math myself.) It’s not until $10 that the two versions start to even out.
b) A lot of patrons can no longer afford to support after this, and others are refusing to because they don’t want to pay more, without good reason. So, there are fewer dollars coming their way, so, for example, instead of getting, 85% of $100, they’re getting 95% of $80.
So, this is bad for both creators and patrons (and ultimately for Patreon).
if I wasn’t sick I would be all over trying to hack together some kind of alternative. … although probably I’d discover mountains of red tape to drown in because moving money’s not nearly as simple as updating a database, but, it’d be fun to try. my brain already hurts just from trying to understand someone’s open letter about the issue 🙂
hopefully creators will find such an alternative (it probably already exists right?) and then loads of people can jump ship.. after christmas.
but since JJ says he’s lost several hundred patrons already, I’m a bit concerned that this is going to do a lot of damage regardless. :/
Willis has already lost over a hundred bucks as well. It went from $5008 to $4898 in a couple of days.
it started at about $5050
but other folks have been hit harder so i don’t feel like i have room to tummyache
The rarely-seen time-reverse spittake!
It’s been unpopular ever since Bush Sr, but it seems to be coming up again in the polls.
Danny discovers his superpower, and becomes Amazi-girl’s new sidekick, Regurgitator Boy.
You just can’t keep The Regurgitator down.
The World is his Nemesis!
Actually, Sonya “The Black Widow” Thomas is his nemesis. Or maybe Joey Chestnut or Takeru Kobayashi, but those two don’t have supervillain nicknames.
But anyway, the nemesis of a regurgitator just has to be a gurgitator. Duh.
I think you mean DEgurgitator.
Or maybe not, it’s a weird word.
I’ve heard Joey Chestnut referred to as “Jaws”, which is pretty supervillainy – I mean a mean henchman in two Bond movies, and a killer shark movie series? I think pretty supervillainous a nickname.
Isn’t that the guy who invented the electric potato, and the catgirl who plays video games
*ominous thunderclap*
Don’t you mean “ominous rumble”?
Justice always comes back up!
Zero calories, twice the justice!
This adds a whole new meaning to the term ‘comeuppance’.
I’d go with Lad. Regurgitator Lad rolls off the tongue better
I like: The Spew!
“So I need you to teach me how to speak to nerds.”
“Joe, you have to start playing Mario Cart.”
Well they were playing some Mario game (probably Mario Odyssey?) on the Switch the other day.
Wait I didn’t intend to be a buzzkill! I think your joke is quite funny. Except, you know, they kinda did that.
Anyway Joe asking Danny for tips on nerdspeak is in-character, because even though he plays video games like a total nerd, he does not, of course, consider himself to have any nerdy aspects. He might see video gaming to be more of a ‘bro’ thing. Which it is, sometimes, depending on the game. Mario games are nerdy though.
Nonono. Mario is mainstream. Almost won Game of the Year not too long ago.
Shin Megami Tensei and Persona are nerdy. EarthBound and the Mother series are nerdy. Phoenix Wright and Ghost Trick and Xenoblade and Undertale and Ogre Battle and Cave Story and Stardew Valley are nerdy. And awesome.
Mario just got his own friggin’ breakfast cereal.
There was Mario cereal 30 years ago.
God, I feel old.
Yeah it’s mainstream, but I guess I was also thinking cute and quirky. Which is not characteristic of ‘bro-ness’ (meaning overexaggerated masculinity i guess). So I’m saying Mario games are not dudebro games, because they’re too cute and quirky for most dudebros who aren’t also game nerds.
A dudebro game would be something like… Counter-Strike or FIFA.
True. I feel like Joe and Danny had a Nintendo Switch Commercial moment when they sat down to play the Switch (which is undoubtedly Danny’s) Saturday night. Which honestly, just seems like a growing moment for him. Understanding that it’s more important to just have fun with your best friend than worry about doing something that might make him look less attractive to a particular type of vain person.
And dangit, I just turned what should have been a perfectly good video game comment into a comment praising a character for their internal personal development. Blah!
Awwww, Pl0x, I make dumb jokes all the time. You are most certainly allowed to call me out on them when they don’t make sense. 🙂
who the hell says pop
Quite a lot of people, actually.
That is not accurate.
True. Those who say “pop” aren’t people.
Strange Maps concurs about Mishawaka.
http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/308-the-pop-vs-soda-map
I wonder what they call it in those counties listed as “other”
New Danny uses lots of hip jive, ain’t his fault you can’t dig it, square.
Criminy. This could get worse than the grape Juice/wine/bread/wafer discussions.
Would you like a Coke? And if so, what brand?
Also, which is weirder: for your iced tea to be sweetened, or for your iced tea to not be sweetened?
i don’t know whats going on but i do prefer my tea to be sweetened ?
You’re from Atlanta, aren’t you?
(Only place I ever heard that question.)
I mean…
they’re in Indiana, so…
I like to say that they say pop in civilized parts of North America and in Indiana.
YOU DO!
No really. You said it when you asked the question.
Me. And I’m right.
…i live in finland and i didn’t realize… sorry willis…
Pop v. Soda is a very heated debate in the States.
But we can agree that the folks who say Coke are absolutely wrong.
I’m probably betraying my ignorance of cultural gastronomy, but…
…. who heats soda/pop?
Should probably avoid the UK then, we’re predominantly on the “coke” side in my experience.
Not ALL of the UK….
But even Scotland has an East/West divide.
East – “Juice” (or “Fizzy Juice” We’re a literal people!) 🙂 )
West – “Ginger” (Extra SHINYJOEPOINTS if you can figure out WHY!)
My favorite Scottish team, Dunfermline, is often involved in something called the Irn-Bru Cup.
Can you describe Irn-Bru, and, since I’m an American, is it worth seeking out to try?
It is worth at least trying but don’t try to hunt it down like it is the Holy Grail. It is the only fizzy drink I usually genuinely struggle to finish drinking (except for some reason that one time they were in larger cans for a while, that was wild) not because it is bad, but it just doesn’t instill cravings for more for me usually. It is orange, both in can and colour.
Don’t trust snowmen that can fly with it either, they will fucking rob you and drop you like a hot potato from the sky.
For coke, anyway. I don’t think anyone gets to complain unless they make a point of avoiding all brand names being used to refer to the item regardless of brand. That includes vacuum cleaners (also U.K.), small adhesive bandages (not U.K. afaik), painkillers, etc.
And if you ARE the sort of person who complains about that you need to recognise that language evolves, you’re being absurd, and move on. In my opinion.
Though in Coke’s case, it’s particularly awkward since you regularly have to clarify which kind of coke you want. Especially if you want a Coke coke.
It’s rare that any one really cares when asking for a band-aid whether it’s a Band-Aid or not.
I’ve literally never known it to be a problem in the U.K. At all. That doesn’t mean it’s not but it’s outside of my personal experience.
I don’t perceive it as being an issue either because you could clarify “I would like Coca-Cola” or “I would like Pepsi”, so… I dunno, that’s one that doesn’t seem like a big deal to me at all? Although that is based on my own experience so. *shrug*
It’s a classic linguistic cultural marker, and, precisely because the subject is so innocuous, arguments about soda/pop/coke are seen as benign and/or fun.
See also grinder/hoagie/po’boy/hero/sub. (As in, “Galasso’s Pizza (and Subs).”)
Still better than a shittake.
Otherwise known as a shart.
Not to be confused with a shiitake.
Oh!
Whew!
Also not to be confused with a sheetcake.
I thought that was a hipster mushroom?
I’m concerned for Danny; he should take an antacid or a Tums, stat.
That gag is basically the physical representation of my acid reflux.
That bad? Oh my. Is it stress? My last case of reflux was stress-related.
In a twist, Danny turns out to be 70% cola instead of water.
So still about 65% water, then?
But with alarmingly high quantities of carbonic acid.
And phosphoric acid.
And sugar.
That *would* explain why new danny is so sweet.
I’ve forgotten — Danny knows that Amazi-Girl is Amber, right?
Yes
The eternal dating-a-masked-superhero question:
Mask or no mask?
Technically, it has been implied that Amber is in fact NOT Amazigirl. Anymore.
Whether it’s true is unrelated to whether Danny knows it.
But he “knows” that she is. Which…. was an aspect of what led to their breakup.
There are two entities involved both sharing the name Amber: the ‘regular’ alter who is supposed to carry all the scary capacity for knife violence, and Amber the whole system, the brain in the body. And while the former Amber is distinct from Amazi-girl, it’s still fair enough to say “Amber is Amazi-girl” meaning the latter and for the value of ‘is’ that actually means ‘includes’.
Inappropriate avatar is amusing.
However, I’m not sure that Danny knows just how complex and pathological Amber’s mental health situation is. Because of that, he’s always assumed that ‘Amber’ and ‘Amazi-Girl’ are essentially the same person.
Danny thinks Amazi-Girl is Amber in a mask.
Amber no longer experiences Amazi-Girl as herself in a mask, or an integrated part of her personality at all. It’s a problem.
I think in their last couple encounters, Danny’s been starting to realize just how complex the situation is.
Yeah, in this encounter he’s clearly starting to pick up on it, and Amber’s remarks here would be hard to ignore as well.
The Governor-General signed the Marriage Amendment (Definition and Religious Freedoms) Act 2017 this morning: it comes into force at midnight. From midnight the law of Australia will recognise same-sex marriages and the marriages of transsexual and intersexed people. Same-sex couples and couples including an intersexed or transsexual person will be able to notify their intention to marry from tomorrow, and marry from the 9th of January 2018.
Congrats!
High five!
Nonono.
Down-under five!
:0D
Huzzah!
*Plays “A Red Letter Day” by the Pet Shop Boys on the hacked Muzak*
LOVE WINS!
The New South Wales Registry of Births Deaths and Marriages, which is normally closed on Saturdays, has made a special point of opening today so that same-sex couples and couples including an intersexed or transgender person can lodge their notice of intention to marry on the earliest possible date.
There is a large queue.
That punchline made me laugh out loud, genuinely. Or rather, genuinely made me laugh out loud.
Me too. I usually just smirk at them, but I was so caught off guard by this joke that I had a small outburst.
I so envy you, all the people who can laugh this easily. Really. I do see it’s funny, but my threshold is so high, comics rarely make me smile. The only thing that does the trick for me is a big dose of terrible real estate agent photographs.
Of RE agents, or by them?
[easily confused]
Maybe Danny has discovered one of the shittier super powers in the world- time traveling spit.
NO power that you can make a perpetual motion machine out of is a shitty super power.
…..
…. I, um, put way too much thought into perpetual motion machines.
He’s a perpetual-motion machine until he dies of dehydration.
It’s kinda like “The Red Shoes”.
I choose to see this as an alien symbiote, having watched for a long time and having had enough of Danny’s shit, choosing this exact moment to leap into the boy’s body in order to possess him.
The symbiote name? Spittake!
That’s quite an accomplishment. Being able to cause someone to projectile vomit something they had hours ago with only a single sentence…
At least Danny has his priorities straight.
Danny, sometimes the circumstances demands a spit-take, no matter how difficult that is!
That’s not a spit-take, that’s projectile vomiting.
Gross, danny.
You might want to see a doctor about that, Danny.
Lol Willis man I thought you took down comments to prevent me from making fun of this particularly absurd comic
I was wondering if Danny kept Amber’s secret identity secret from the friend he shared a dragon ride with. Now we know.
Two hours later?
Pretty sure thats just puking.
Lunar orbits? Is Joe a secret space geek? (Crosses fingers)
No, I think that spit take joke might be the peak.
It’s my birthday and the comic of the day got Danny in it. That makes me happy 🙂
Happy birthday, Dan fan.
Danfanenja!
…That sounds like a Pokemon.
Happy Birthday!
This increases my collection of novelty spit take jokes to two
https://youtu.be/sUaTJCgi6_o
Wait, wait. WAIT.
Amber and Joe become step-sibs.
Danny and Amber get hitched.
BEST BROS FOREVER!
*Danny and Joe hop onto unicorn*
This comic made my day! laughing in the airport like a crazy man
I feel like I just recognized that look in panel 3… Danny is trying to figure out if Joe’s confessing he slept with Amber. Maybe I’m projecting or something but that blank transition totally reads like a stomach drop.
I think it’s a stomach drop of a more general variety–“Joe has something heavy to tell me about Amber, oh shit, what’s happened to her NOW?!”
omfg
Cosplayer? Did i miss something???
Scratch that. I just realized Joe is still talking about Amber. Lol
He says Pop? He really IS a hipster now!
No, he’s a normal person, who uses normal person words, not one of those ‘Soda’ weirdos.
The other meta spittake joke comes up when you read spittake as rhyming with bukakke
And now I wanna be called ‘Turbo Nerd’.
Perfect avatar for that comment.
Spittake is what Shittake mushrooms become if you grind them down enough
I think I’ve had those