Kilby comments: This Macanudo isn’t really “laugh out loud” funny (it’s closer to an “Awww”), but I found the diagonal framing (and the “lensing” effect in the title panel) so impressive that wanted to share it with everyone:
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The strip is even better if you open the image in a new tab (or window), and let it fill the screen.
P.S. As long as we are reminiscing about summer, here’s how Calvin & Hobbes spent a similar day (three decades ago):
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P.S. The fact that Bil Keane drew a few of his own “grown up children” strips doesn’t make that Ink Pen any less funny.
Danny Boy was kind enough to send in these LOLs.
Nancy Classics this week gave us this comic from 1955. Half dollars almost call for a geezer alert. Relatively few of them are still made in the U.S.
Dollar coins are no longer minted after multiple failures to gain acceptance (Susan B. Anthony, Sakagawea, U.S. Presidents). The U.S. Mint does produce some American Innovation Dollars, but these are not intended for circulation and are sold at a premium.
From 2001-2020, the U.S. Mint produced half dollars only for collectors because the Federal Reserve already had plenty, but limited production has now resumed.
In 2023, the United States Mint produced a total of 11.38 billion coins for circulation. Here’s the breakdown by denomination:
- Pennies (1 cent): 6.58 billion
- Nickels (5 cents): 1.24 billion
- Dimes (10 cents): 2.37 billion
- Quarters (25 cents): 1.15 billion
- Half dollars (50 cents): 40.2 million
Comics I Don't Understand 
“M.F.A.” could mean a lot of things. Which of them is something that could be given out?
Powers, why not the bog-standard meaning, “Master of Fine Arts”? Degrees are sometimes said to be ‘given out’ by institutions, so why not at homes being trick-or-treated?
Oh, exactly! One way of saying some college is a diploma mill is that “they hand out those degrees like candy”.
Currency if I were king:
Eliminate the penny. Credit card transactions would still use cents, but cash transactions would be rounded up or down to $.05. Alternatively, eliminate both the penny and the nickel.
Bring back the dollar coin. Hold a lottery and pull out the name of one registered voter who voted in the last congressional election. Put their face on the back for 1 year. Then replace the back with another citizen — we change the back of quarters periodically, so this shouldn’t be a big problem. Put my face on the front. :)
Eliminate the $2 bill. (Nobody will notice this.) Same with the half dollar coin, which is too big anyway.
Paper bills should have different colors to distinguish them (currently the reason Harriet Tubman hasn’t made it onto the $20 in years is because there’s a court case that decided US currency should be more accessible to the visually handicapped). Make them more durable, too.
Fully legitimize the ability of businesses to charge cash transactions less, credit card / debit card transactions more.
Deety, what makes “Master of Fine Arts” a “bog-standard” over all of the other possible expansions?
Powers, I’m not sure what you’re asking. All I was saying is that “Master of Fine Arts” is, for me, the 95% most obvious and familiar expansion of MFA. I’m not denying that one can track down others from some special field, or of course make up a witty one. To me, they aren’t at all prominent — that may be my failing, but I can’t much help it.
Or maybe that wasn’t ALL I was saying, as I guess I was also saying that meaning works pretty well in the cartoon, so I didn’t feel there was much need to seek out others.
I googled around for a satisfying expansion of MFA and also concluded that Master of Fine Arts was the intended punchline: (a) I saw nothing else that made even vague sense to hand out and (b) this is the New Yorker, part of a culture that’s obsessed with people’s educational background as status symbols.
It wasn’t obvious to me. That’s why I was asking what you meant by “bog-standard”.
You might be in IT if “MFA” means “Multi-Factor Authentication” before “Master of Fine Arts”. It does for me! But obviously it’s not that one this time.
It seems to me a Masters of Fine Arts might be considered a less-than-useful degree. People used to make fun of Art History majors as well.
The dollar coin will never be accepted until the dollar bill is eliminated. In general, people are satisfied with the current system, so why worry about it?
Fully legitimize the ability of businesses to charge cash transactions less, credit card / debit card transactions more.
Retailers always could charge a discount for cash, and some did. With the passage of the CARD act, the CC companies can’t have rules preventing retailers from charging a fee for card use.
My auto shop does that, so I have to remember to bring a check or pay an extra 3%. Even then it’s not that bad, as my credit card gives me 1.75% back for regular purchases. That includes my 75% rewards bonus for being a Platinum Honors level Preferred Rewards member.
The legal situation on credit card surcharges is still complex, and varies by state. See Credit Card Surcharge Laws by State (Updated For 2024)
Illinois, where I am “Illinois limits credit card surcharges to 1% of the transaction or the credit processing fees associated with the transition, whichever is less. This applies to all in-person, online, and telephone transactions in Illinois. Notice must be given to consumers if surcharges are imposed on credit card transactions. “
Whichever is LESS? But that’s not the way some (non-chain) restaurants near me do it. It’s more like 3%, which is probably what they have to pay the banks. So they are violating the law, although if they make a good omelet I’m not going to complain, just bring cash.
I know of one rich MFA recipient.
Brandon Sanderson, who among other money-earning ventures had the single largest dollar value Kickstarter ever. (I was a backer.)
States can enact their own laws, of course. Some have outlawed card-only establishments too. But I don’t know what could be done about that other than overriding federal law, and that would be a hard sell. The CC companies are not able to prevent the extra fees any longer.
My classification apologies, I should have submitted the “Deadbeats” Shoe as OY rather than LOL.
@zbicyclist: clearly you admire Canadian currency! (We have no more pennies, but we do have dollar coins, and coloured money.)
American coin trivia: The “penny” is a British coin, plural “pence.” The U.S. coin is the cent, and says “one cent” on it. The “nickel” is a five-cent piece and says “five cents” on it. The dime says “one dime.” The quarter says “quarter dollar.” If there were a coin for a tenth of a cent, it would be called a “mill.”
As I carry cash but rarely use it, I prefer to have several dollar bills folded in with other currency. Carrying four or five dollar coins in my pocket would be annoying.
In NYS it is illegal (and has been for a LONG time) to post a price and then charge a fee for paying with a credit card, but it is legal to post a price and then discount it for paying with cash.
I wish they would enforce this law as there are so many places (especially gas stations) which post their cash price and charge extra for using a credit card. I always want to report them – but Robert says not to do so.
Carry credit cards and a small amount of cash each. Prefer in most cases to use the credit card as we pay in full every time and get cash back – and easier to find the receipts filed with credit card statements. When traveling we carry more cash than day to day.
Meryl, re card surcharges, you can call 1-800-VISA-911 or 1-800-MC-ASSIST or 1-800-528-4800 for AmEx and call in an airstrike. OK, not actually an airstrike, but that’s how you report a violation of a merchant agreement. One would assume a violation of the actual law would be covered by that! Point is, you’re talking to a company, not John Law. They’re not going to be interested in who YOU are per se, I don’t think. Discover will have a number too, but nobody cares /s
phsiii_ Thank you.
As I often do, I do not express my thought clearly. It is NYS I want to contact about the stores breaking state law about it being legal to discount for cash, but illegal to post a price and then charge more for using a credit card.