I wonder who’s leaking this. Probably someone near the top. There seems to be a schism in the administration between the absolute Trump supporters and the people who actually care about what they say they care about. Is it someone in the latter group?

Actually a pretty weak comeback, IMO. Just generically dismissive and rude with neither cleverness nor specificity. About the same level of sophistication as telling someone to shut up. There are better ways to be patronizing.

I’ve dated one person who could not bear to be touched at all in her sleep (but she insisted on sharing the same bed, which made things awkward for me) and another person who snored, but I think that humans probably generally sleep better together. It isn’t a sexual thing - look at non-human animals and how they often sleep cuddled up together. As a kid, I shared a bed with my grandfather (we lived in a small apartment) and I would fall asleep hugging him, and as an adult I slept better when I could cuddle up with my dog.

Sexual attraction does play a role - I’m not aroused by playing a game, but attractiveness is a type of beauty and I enjoy looking at beauty. I also think that women are just prettier than men even in an entirely non-sexual way, but I wonder how much of that is simply a reflection of being taught that women are the beautiful gender rather than an innate aesthetic preference. That segues into an interest in traditionally feminine social roles. I admit that I’m a bit envious of women, not because I consider myself a woman or want to become a woman, but because women get to be beautiful, delicate, desirable, etc. and men generally don’t.

Poignant. I’m a naturalized citizen myself and I’m worried in a way I never was before. I don’t want to end up in South Sudan. So far, I have been expressing myself as if there were no danger, at least because I think that if they ever come for me, they can find plenty of what they object to in what I’ve written years ago. My father tells me that I’m a fool and I mourn that we live in an America where he’s probably right. It turns out that they really do hate our freedom. Just not the “they” I expected.

No I think they want to keep the under-age girls too.

Meanwhile in China…

I don’t know, the USA does seem to be hurting itself in its confusion quite a bit lately, and I think the widespread belief that maintaining the institutions of American power and prosperity is less important than punishing political enemies could be called “decadence”. Becoming the world’s unquestioned single superpower seems to be a “good time” which has caused the American people to worry less about self-preservation than they reasonably ought to, but I wouldn’t go on to say that that’s a historical pattern.

The funny thing to me is that the reckless destruction of institutions is being carried out primarily by the same people who spread the meme this comic is making fun of.

This has killed the lobster.

No, but your question reminds me of how before puberty, I wanted to play video games as a male character (girls had cooties) but after puberty I often prefer to play as a female character. I still play RPGs as a male (I suppose it helps me get in character, plus romance subplots feel weird otherwise) but in other games I usually choose female characters because they’re prettier (not necessarily in a sexual way). I liked paying Guild Wars because many of the women’s outfits were just gorgeous. One character class went into battle wearing my choice of fancy dress. That was fun.

(The Guild Wars graphics look a lot worse than I remembered. They seemed really good back then.)

Not my dog but I was the one walking him.

Sorry, but my answer is going to be boring. This happened before transgender issues started getting a lot of attention, so I just thought it was funny and naughty. I wasn’t thinking about gender identity. Now I don’t feel like my gender is a big part of who I am, so I also don’t feel a strong reaction (either positive or negative) to the idea of having a different gender. I do think I would look terrible dressed as a woman - I don’t have the elegant androgynous sort of male body.

At one point the girls (or should I say “the other girls”) were holding me down and trying to put makeup on me, but I wriggled loose. I do regret that a little, not because I wish I had had makeup on but because I think that if I had been less self-conscious back then, I would have had more fun and better stories to tell too. I was so self-conscious that it overwhelmed even my teenage hormonal desire to let a bunch of women holding me down do whatever they wanted to do to me.

I don’t think it works out that way. Hitting someone else with a club is a lot less painful than being the one hit by a club.

I’m a guy but I was made an honorary girl once, way back in high school, so that I could attend an all-girls sleepover party. I was assigned the name “Isabelle”.

(No, we didn’t do anything inappropriate.)

There’s a general concept in civil law that the plaintiff has an obligation to minimize damages, and therefore that he can’t sue for costs incurred due to his failure to minimize damages.

For example, consider a tenant who signs an agreement to rent a house for a year, but moves out (and stops paying rent) after only one month. The landlord may be able to sue the tenant for breach of contract: however, the landlord must mitigate damages by making a reasonable attempt to find a replacement tenant for the remainder of the year. The landlord may not simply let the house lie empty for eleven months and then sue the tenant for eleven months’ rent.

I’m far from a legal expert, so I don’t know if that principle doesn’t apply in cases like this or if the borrowers simply don’t have the resources to defend themselves in court.

$500 isn’t exactly much, given how long art takes to produce, how relatively infrequently that art will be bought, and how many extra expenses a “self-employed” artist has. I expect that most people selling art for $500 are hobbyists with some other means of financial support, because they’re not going to earn enough to live on by selling art. Portraying them as corporate sellouts is just silly.

(The exception might be some digital artists working on commission. But they’re probably drawing furry porn rather than something you might see in a gallery.)

I just meant that the libel suit was predictable. Trump does seem shaken. I suppose that’s because this time the most fanatical of his followers are the outraged ones.

I wish this wasn’t relevant as often as it is. It’s bizarre how so many Americans want to destroy America, meaning the present-day USA as opposed to some fantasy with the same name. They think they’ll be able to replace it with something more to their liking but they’re going to see that what they had was actually pretty good (amazingly good!) and that fixing things is a lot harder than breaking them was.

I think even China would prefer to see the USA not making climate change worse for everyone.

Maybe they intend to discourage it via red tape?