Importantly, that’s a report from 2020 of their recollection of the events of 1995, not a contemporaneous report. But I’m sure the events described could be verified and cross referenced to check it. I’m also thrown by that last bit, someone tried to set this person up as the OKC bomber?
I’d completely forgotten about Soonish, never read it but I’d bet you’re right and that’s a more accurate start to his trajectory
That’s basically been my trajectory! When I was a kid I had dozens of bookmarks organized by update day, then I learned about RSS. But now I’m down to maybe 10 comics still in my reader, the ones that survived my political awakening and, frankly, just my expectations of narrative and comedy changing. Half of what’s left barely updates. It’s very sad. xkcd wins by doing nothing.
In the interest of sharing, I’ll leave you with a rec to my current favorite narrative web comic, Runaway to the Stars. Spec bio sci fi, very queer, can be a bit lib at times but nothing egregious and you can tell their heart is in the right place. Still somewhat early days of it so it’s a little slow but the creator’s been world building for years
Zach was a lot funnier before he thought he was qualified to have thoughts on anything. I understand he did a bunch of research for his book on Mars that I’m told isn’t too bazinga brained, but I think him getting into that mindset combined with the rise of AI (and it being the only other thing he seems to think about) aligns perfectly with SMBC going to shit over the last couple years.
He strikes me as one of those guys who assumes he can’t possibly be falling for propaganda (political, tech hype, you name it) because he knows how to spell it, so you couple that with a smug belief I can only describe as “if you’re making any kind of definitive statement about history you must be oversimplifying”, a belief that we can’t simply “know” things, I think that’s how you get to where he is now.
Which is mostly sad bc he put out a lot of bangers in the past and now he’s boring
It’s this apparently
https://xcancel.com/headquarters_67/status/2019404025507225735#m