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The Dumbing of Age Book 12 Kickstarter is live!
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One of the only Dina strips this storyline, and I’m loving every word of it!!!
YIPEEE!!! 🥰🦖♾🌈🧠🌌
*plays “First Staffs” from Rayman Origins CD*
Dina’s always great
Sorry, my mind went blank after “Dina strips”
“To where did Joyce suddenly disappear” is quite charming
DINA!!
…
she’s in the laundry room
Today’s class is about bird migratory patterns. Brock just wanted to open with something depressing.
“Today’s lesson is actually kinda nice and wholesome and I won’t stand for it.”
Professor Brock is an evolutionary biologist and he believes very steongly in the principle of weeding out the weak
“If this depresses you, you are anthropomorphizing grass. You are also anthropomorphizing yourself.”
This doesn’t depress me…does that mean I’m NOT anthropomorphising myself? Ô_o
Not intending to be annoying here, but that’s a common logic error, akin to reading the statement “If you have red hair, you have hair.” and interpreting it to imply “If you don’t have red hair, you don’t have hair.”
“if A then B” doesn’t mean “if not A then not B”, though it does mean “if not B then not A”.
<3 the concept of anthropomorphizing yourself
Professor Brock’s a bit of a pizza cutter, huh?
WaIt, is there a new autoswitch like “boingo” which i haven’t heard about?
No.
I should elaborate, it’s a euphemism for someone who is extremely edgy all the time in every direction. All edge, no point.
Testing: edgelord?
Besides, there’s arguably a better autoswitch option for that word:
https://xkcd.com/2036/
I hope there’s a How To 2 and there’s an entire chapter dedicated to these strips. https://xkcd.com/2744/
Oh, wow, how had I completely forgotten about “edgelord”?
She needs to work on those teleport reaction skills.
In the future Joyce clones is used by inter-stellar societies for super-luminal communication. Unfortunately, they can only be used to transmit erotic material and embarrassing photos from high school proms.
This sounds like a DoA huest strip by Zach Weiner where all social information gradually becomes coded in sexy semaphore.
They’re also only one way, as the clones can only travel to the specific tree
No, just superspeed powers. Fortunately, she isn’t dragging her sorta-boyfriend along, unlike Yuki in Megatokyo.
I feel bad for Professor Brock as he is clearly going through something and no-body at all seems to care.
Yeah he’s a college professor. I’d be bitter and vindictive too.
All my professor seemed to be fairly happy in life. Well, except my Mitochondrial Shaping Professor as she was very busy and very stressed all the time, and my advisor had a rough go of it during my final year or so there, but his wife of something like 40 years had just passed away so that’s to be expected.
I had the entire gamut of Professors. A happy sunshiney one, a brutal severe one, a sarcastic and over it professor, and a professional but chill one.
Pretty much all of my professors were lovely, happy people. One of my professors (Graph Theory, I think) was such a jolly old fellow we affectionately nicknamed him Santa (he really looked like Father Christmas), and he appreciated the nick. 🙂
I went to see my personal tutor once to ask for a reference for my first job…unfortunately for me I’d never been to see him while I was actually AT university, and his only response was a kind but blank “…and who are you?” xD VISIT YOUR PERSONAL TUTORS OFTEN, even if you don’t actually need help with your studies!
I guess “personal tutor” would be kinda like “faculty advisor” in the US?
But if he’s tenured, he’s set for life.
My college professors in the sciences just loved word puns, giving cellular sex Ed talks, and other such things.
Who are you calling bitter and vindictive? The only part of the job that I’m not keen on is the administration. Teaching undergrads is mostly fun, sometimes games.
Teaching grad students is all the good parts of teaching undergrads, plus a lot more of them actually care about the subject, and are willing to put in the work to get the most out of the courses. Oh, and a few of the brave ones are willing to challenge you – good times!
Advising doctoral students is, almost always, the bomb. Most are super keen and really smart, and you’re basically creating the best future colleague possible by working close with them on interesting problems.
Then there’s the research. It’s what many, of not most, professors take the job to be able to do – all the teaching is, to many, just one of the chores you have to do to get to research. And yeah, research is what I got my PhD to be able to do, but since I’ve enjoyed teaching since long before I got accepted into my doctoral program, teaching isn’t a chore to me.
So as a professor, I end up getting to mostly do two different things that I both love doing, neither feeling like a chore or something I’d prefer not to be doing. So I don’t have much to feel bitter or vindictive about, doing my job.
Just the admin stuff.
This made me happy.
Yeah it’s called being a Tenured Professor
I like to think he’s actually super well-adjusted outside of work, a model citizen, volunteers his time to do charity work, has an herb garden he’s very proud of, etc.
He’s just got a super weird teaching style.
might be weirder if he acted like a kindergarten/first grade teacher that’s all smiles and giving away cutesy stickers and snacks though i can imagine some college classes might need that as a break lol
i imagine aging makes most ppl grumpy but if someone like robin can get a job after butchering her last one i imagine the job is decent if not stable lol
I think he’s just Like That. He revels in his intellectual superiority and he thinks thinking about the misery and meaninglessness of existence that natural science can reveal is the mark of a clever person. Probably he’s liked everything Neil deGrasse Tyson has ever tweeted.
That’s my read anyway.
Or maybe he enjoys knowing weird and wonderful stuff, and loves to share it. Maybe he thinks thinking about the beauty and connectedness that natural science can reveal is just, well, natural.
I’m not seeing a lot of wonder in those statements he makes along the lines of “Life is a fake idea” and “This thing that makes you feel nice is caused by someone else’s agony”, but maybe I’m forgetting something. . .there was also the time he had planned his lesson around baiting the students to make presentations to answer a trick question, but that may be more of an indication of him being an asshole than an insight in his philosophies.
The specific way he was being an asshole would be very consistent with being motivated by enjoying his supposed intellectual superiority.
It was based around getting them to say something he could then declare stupid/ignorant
What makes you think he’s going through something? He doesn’t seem to be particularly upset or anything that I’ve noticed.
He always seems utterly apathetic or perpetually annoyed or angry. His dialogue is often nihilistic or full of semi-depressing facts presented with the purposeful bluntness of a sledge-hammer to the head. Seems like a cry for help to me – but its hard to judge what’s going on with comic characters.
I think he just seems unusual for being too normal in a comic full of … well, comic characters. Everyone else is some kind of over the top, but he’s just … a dude. Acting like a normal dude. Doc Brock and Asma are weird for being the normal ones.
Maybe it’s the permanent scowl.
I also enjoy the smell of a freshly roasted chicken, and I don’t think that can come without a little distress so NYEH.
Mmmm…. me too bruh… 🤤
I love that this strip references a disturbing fact I love telling people.
I mean, if the death was immediate and painless…
Dina is the voice of the comments
We don’t see Joe’s hand after panel 2 so my going theory is Joyce literally ripped it off as she fled.
Mowing lawns is stupid. Let actual plants grow and screw the grass.
Moving lawns is stupid, invest in goats
Forget grass. Just get sedge, which only grows to a specific height, are normally native to the area in the US, and are less likely to produce allergens.
I prefer planting landmines over grass myself. Really does a good job keeping kids out of my yard.
If you plant them over the grass, they’re too easy to spot.
But it still reached the objective while minimizing unwanted consequences, no?
I know. Trees are so much better for cities (they trap more carbon, help support more wildlife, and keep the urban landscape cool). Grass yawns are just water guzzling, herbicide demanding vanity projects – though I guess they are good for kids and dogs to have fun in.
Most lawngrass ends up having very shallow roots, but grasslands can be a carbon sink than forests because they put most of it underground.
Buffalo grass is very short native north american grass, drought resistant and has deep roots. It’s mowed 0-1 times a year, and you do not water it once it’s established.
So many native plants for lawns are much better than the introduced varieties, but people tend to prefer the appearance of introduced varieties.
That’s because the introduced varieties are what they had at Versailles and all of Capability Brown’s copy-pasted gardens, so they’re what set the trend of having a monoculture in your garden
The introduced varies are also specifically bred to have desirable characteristics–e.g. wear tolerance of foot traffic, sun or shade tolerance, and softness.
It’s a lot more complicated than “that one landscape architect set a precedent two hundred years ago”
Downsides of buffalo grass: because it is a warm weather grass, it doesn’t green until relatively late in the year and browns early in the fall. It requires full sun. It does not handle wet areas well. The lowest growing varieties are still taller than people mow their lawns (about 6 inches). That’s great for fireflies. But you’ll have more ticks on your ankles too.
It’s work looking into, but I haven’t switched yet, for the yard I take care of.
You seriously use herbicide on lawns kids are going to play on? No wonder America is going to hell. *Hands you a hand basket.*
I’ve certainly never met anybody that used any kind of -cide on grass, or watered it for that matter. All anybody does is cut it before the city fines them and complain about the necessity of doing so.
Whut? News flash: grass is an actual plant.
More to the point, it’s only one plant. Lawns are basically the poor man’s version of keeping a full-grown tiger in the living room.
My yard is a patchwork of whatever wound up dominant in any given spot. Various types of grass, a bunch of crabgrass, dandelions, whatever. As long as it’s green but not noxious or thorny I just let it be.
It still needs to be mowed.
In Maine, we has a lot of moss growing instead of grass in our yard due to how wet and acidic it was.
I personally like the look (and smell) of moss more. 🥰
Yeah, moss is nature’s carpet.
It’s nice, but it tends to be a lot more fragile than grass. Grows slower, doesn’t root as deep. Easy to tear up and leave dirt/mud behind.
Or at least that’s how the moss in my yard tends to be.
Me too. My family’s back yard is moss. It’s beautiful.
I’m loving the many ecologically advanced (and sound!) responses you’re getting. I agree with all of them.
Native grass doesn’t need to be fertilized, watered, pampered, or meticulously maintained like fancy grass does. Stays green all through the dry season, too. I’ve never aerated or dethatched it either.
I still put down lime and the basic fertilizer mix every couple years; that helps keep the dirt from getting too acidic from all the oak and pine trees.
God, I wish I could just let it go, but alas, I’ll get fined. And the fines cost more than the price of paying someone to mow it, so…. mowed it gets.
Homeowner’s associations are their own level of Hell.
So I hear. Thankfully, I’m not trapped in one of those existential nightmares, I just have city regulations to deal with, which can be managed with having a kid drag a lawnmower carelessly around every other week. I know a guy who lives in an HOA-controlled neighborhood, and the stories he has to tell are nearly as upsetting as the nurse I used to game with.
Lawns in general suck. They were invented by upper-class British folks a few centuries ago so they could show off how wealthy they were that they could afford to have an open area of plain grass and hired servants to cut it for them. Later the idea spread and became some bizarre middle-class American ideal. More native and variety of plants would be a better alternative to a grass lawn.
Have an upvote, fellow Marxist! 😊
Lawns are also much less cover for animals that we don’t want coming into the house. Think of it as a defensive perimeter.
I house sat for the past 2 weeks and spent a lot of time hanging out in a disused paddock totally overgrown with wild flowers and edible weed (dock, brassica, wild onions, thistle etc). I was horrified to learn they were planning on mowing it all down when the got back so I spent the last day foraging for what I can use and digging up what I can pot.
Awwww.
Not if it’s being urinated on by a man who’s explaining something to me that I already understand, and I can’t get him to stop.
The smell of fresh-cut grass also signals MY distress, as it makes it difficult for me to breathe.
N95s were a life-changer. The last three years have been my easiest allergy seasons since I was a kid.
[Like] 《– Button
Yep, Dina’s the best.
Kinda surprised Becky’s reaction to this is so positive, since I… vaguely remembered her not really liking him, but upon searching past strips they interacted in, I’m… not really finding what I remembered? I think my memory’s acting up.
IIRC, Becky mostly finds Joe irrelevant, because he’s not female. She was just aggressively unimpressed by him (which is also how Dina seems to feel).
Dina knows feelings-Joe. There’s a comfort in how they interact.
Becky just knows horndog-Joe but since he doesn’t hit on her, and since Joyce has been friends with Joe, they’re on ok terms.
Dina and Joe are able to talk about sex in a way that makes the entire surrounding campus blush. He helped a little bit when she and Becky was figuring out the pants euphoria thing (and he wasn’t super inappropriate about it) which I figure has put him solidly in Becky’s good books.
Hmm, when i think about it, Becky came around campus after Joe already started to turn himself around, so maybe that makes sense–she doesn’t have as big of a bad history with him
You aren’t the only one. I think a lot of people read into Becky’s reaction to Joe asking her for Joyce advice back on her mom’s deathiversary as huge dislike, as opposed to her having a bad day and snarking at the straight dude who Solid Snake’d his way into gender studies.
I think Becky is honestly pretty cool with Joyce getting laid in general. She’s getting laid and she loves it, why wouldn’t she want Joyce to get her some?
*deathiversary = dead mom’s birthday. Fuck. Goddamnit. Look at me, all smug about reading comprehension, like an idiot.
You’re not an idiot at all. You are very smart.
Enjoy the smell of a freshly mowed lawn? No
I enjoy the smell of grass’ screams of unbridled terror.
I would signal distress if I get mowed too, yanno.
You’ve seen puppy Dorothy, now please don’t vote for kitty Joyce. Maybe an Anti-Joyce, but not the pet version!
it’s a nicer smell without allergy but yeah i suppose it is distressing to be cut in half or more lol
I’m wondering now what purpose it serves for grass to signal distress. Is it trying to give other nearby grass a chance to flee?
In some plant species it signals certain predators to come and defend it from herbivores.
In some grasses, this would be a signal to start generating chemicals toxic to predators. Lawns are not made of these grasses, but some genetic habits stick around, and the smell seems to make humans cultivate them for reproduction, so they’ve taken an Aztec approach to life.
it can chemically trigger nearby plants of the same species to store sugars in the roots instead of using it to make flowers/fruit/leaves. resulting in those plants more suited for recovering if they are also damaged/grazed/mowed.
If that was 100% joking instead of half-joking, sorry. I have like a “hey, can anybody tell me some obscure facts?” reflex.
It’s to signal for them to activate their Electric shocks.
that’s PIKACHU
And Pikachu live in tall grass. Checkmate.
I don’t think you’re usually supposed to go at Pikachu with a lawnmower.
Then again, Rotom exists.
Gotta mow ’em all!
PIKACHUUU! 😊
While it is always a good idea to look for the effect on survival chances when studying plant or animal traits, in the case of domesticated species you must always consider the explanation “because humans like it”.
“Humans like it” has become a survival trait.
“I don’t crave it deeply!” Joyce wails from her tree. “Who keeps spreading rumors about me?” She shakes her fist at the heavens. “Damn that hussified b-word Anti-Joyce!!!”
It ain’t that. Dina’s Dino Senses just let her sense horny energy with ease. ✌️😈
It’s an ability mostly used to detect ceratopsians.
So what you’re saying is I should state my favorite scent on my dating profile as “Distress”?
D I N A
she’s the GOAT, there’s no competition, I love her and this deadpan quip so much
That’s rude. She may be small like a goat, but she’s way too cute and well-groomed to be one of those gross little bastards.
Besides, she’s clearly a reincarnated Dinosaur.
She probably would pick being fed to a T. Rex if given it as a choice of how to die though.
Nailed it, Dina
I have to remember that, while it seems like this has been a development long-time coming, it’s really not.
So the fresh-cut grass smell is the smell of victory!
She’s like batman I swear
I can imagine Joyce running faster than Usain Bolt yelling “I AM NOT A HUSSYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY”
I wonder if this is an oblique Critical Role reference, or if I’m reading too much into it? One of the characters is named Fresh Cut Grass. Not trying to be off topic, though.
Critical Role is a little obscure, as D&D-related content goes.
Critical Role is probably the *least” obscure D&D related content. Outside the new movie, I guess.
But I don’t think it’s a reference either
Wait, it is? I only ever heard about it when people got mad at them for playing that Wendy’s game, and then never again.
Is it really that well known?
I can’t say for sure since I engage with related content, but it seems to be referenced a llot amongst the art, gaming, etc youtubers and streamers I watch, and some of my podcasts
It’s popular, I was just havin’ a giggle.
This is the grass’ blood you are smelling ! You monsters !
It’s pollen time where I live. Actually its usually allergy time where I live–that’s just me.
So I’ll take a pass on the scent of freshly mown grass.
Silly professor. That smell is absolutely vile. Why would anybody enjoy something like that?
It is like the people who are vegetarians not because they love animals, but because they hate plants.
I will grind their abominable cell walls between my molars and rejoice.
I feel like Prof Brocke got beat in a contest tying animal balloons and has been mad at the world ever since.
I like telling my students weird shit like that. They probably all think I’m daft.
re: alt text oh id let Professor Brock edge me alright
HOLY SHIT https://twitter.com/damnyouwillis/status/1646876460940947457?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Eembeddedtimeline%7Ctwterm%5Escreen-name%3Adamnyouwillis%7Ctwcon%5Es1
You got famous
What is even the point of Professor Brock’s “fact” here? Grass doesn’t have a conscious experience. It’s not necessarily WRONG to label any biological reaction in response to physical trauma as “distress” but you’re just playing stupid word games if you try to relate that to what humans usually understand the word to mean.
Everything that lives responds to damage in SOME way. When that response happens to a human we call it “pain”. But, if we don’t acknowledge that there’s a qualitative difference between human pain and the trauma response of a plant, then the basic necessities of life have made irredeemable monsters of us all.
The point is that everyone was being all cute and then he said something distressing. I do find your clarification interesting though.
If he’s a good educator he might segue into that.
From a purely moral perspective though, is harming a plant truly any different from harming an animal? In both cases, you’re still killing and eating a living organism that does not want to die. It’s also worth pointing out that, up until only a few decades ago, people were ABSOLUTELY convinced that animals, fish, crustaceans and even BABIES did not feel pain (circumcisions were routinely performed without anesthesia, for instance). It may turn out that even though plants lack a nervous system like we do, they ARE aware, on some fundamental level, that they are being hurt. We simply lack the technology or understanding to properly comprehend it.
I am, of course, not advocating that we should all just sit around and starve to death. Rather, we need to come to terms with the fact that simply by existing, we will inevitably bring harm and death to others, and that it is therefore by conscious choice and effort that we must attempt to MINIMIZE the suffering that we cause. It is, after all, through that choice that we can exercise our capacity to be good.
yes, there is truly a moral difference between causing an animal to suffer and physically damaging a plant. Any inner-life you want to say a Walnut tree has is imaginary, it is something that you have imagined.
Chainsawing a branch off of a living walnut tree for aesthetics is not immoral. Chainsawing a leg off of a cow for aesthetics is immoral.
Citation?
“Purely moral perspective”? What does that even mean?
I don’t believe scientific data carries much weight when it comes to animal well-being. The way communities think of non-human beings (and even *what* counts as beings, like say a river, a forest) and how we may or may not think of their emotions or pain is socially constructed. It’s not scientific ignorance that make/made some people not care about the pain of slaves, or babies, or yemenis or ukrainians or trans people. It’s the way the social community is conceived of, who is included (this includes many non-humans in many cultures) and who is excluded.
And because that boundary of empathy is a political fiction anyway, moving it is a political act. Science might (though i would argue shouldn’t) be weaponized in support of that political aim, but by itself it doesn’t make a dent, because science does not produce moral claims.
Oh yeah i got carried away but initially i just meant to quip that the word “want” in
you’re still killing and eating a living organism that does not want to die
does some impressive work ^^
It is an undeniable fact that plants do not want to die though. Else they would not have evolved things like thorns, toxic sap, or as the professor says in this strip, the ability to release stress scent molecules that warn nearby plants of the danger (and in some cases, can actually cause them to begin production of defensive compounds against pests). The ultimate goal of every living thing is to survive and reproduce; that includes plants and other non-sentient life.
I also think about this. Often when we remove parts of plants it doesn’t kill them (like cutting flowers, mowing the lawn, picking fruit) and we often do those things to maintain their health or to propagate them. Most plants rely on animals to spread seeds including through digesting and they rely on their own corpses (mulch) for nourishment. I’d see it as akin to blood donation when we’re alive or organ transplants when dead.
Cutting a limb off an animal or caging them for their lifespan to use as meat is morally unright because it harms them with no benefit to the animal.
I also think the moral value would vary depending on the plant. I will happily uproot and destroy invasive species that strangle native trees or upset water systems because the harm those plants cause the ecosystem outweighs their benefits. Lawns hold little benefit compared to wild flowers and native grasses. I’d rather encourage weeds to grow because they benefit bees, butterflies, the soil quality and I can eat them.
You could argue that destroying some plants which are endangered or culturally significant, like the sacred 800 yoDjab Wurrang birthing tree, is more morally wrong than slaughtering an animal for food, like my grandparents who kept chickens and would eat them when they stopped laying. Basically, I guess I think like all ethical questions it’s quite contextual.
We need to respect that which we consume.
honestly I do not get this punchline?? oh lord
I think it’s a parallel between the grass’ involuntary reaction to physical distress (strain from being torn apart) and Joyce’s reflexive reaction to social distress (of other people knowing about her horniness).
Dumbing of Age book 13: Ooh, holding hands I see.
Dumbing of Age book 13: Joe is experienced sexually, and it is my understanding that Joyce deeply craves carnal release.
Dumbing of Age book 13: Dammit, Dina, I bet she’s up that tree again.
Dumbing of Age book 13: Surprise, that’s how grass signals distress.
the first one would be pretty cute
…wait, is that true about grass?
Now I’m sad, because I love this smell…
Grass is evil. Take pleasure in its suffering.