Author / zbicyclist

by zbicyclist

Comment allez vous?

Getting access to the comments on the GoComics website is confusing. This is a CIDU, not so much a Comic I Don’t Understand as Commenting I Don’t Understand.

I see this at the bottom of all the comics I follow: an icon with zero comments indicated:

When I click on that icon, I get junk:

This occurs for me on all comics, and I am a GoComics subscriber. I just figured that the “new, improved” GoComics website has somehow messed up commenting.

BUT:

Dirk the Daring sent me a couple of links from GoComics, one of which is below. In both of these cases, I’m seeing lots of comments (and I’m still signed in to my account; you can see the “Follow” indicator and my alias below the comic).

and, yet, when I pull up the Wizard of Id page via my favorites, I once again get zero comments.

DIFFERENCE IN LINKS:

It’s important for this discussion that I mention I am writing this 2025/08/23, although you are reading this a few days later.

https://www.gocomics.com/wizardofid/2025/08/23 is Dirk the Daring’s link, which gives comments.

https://www.gocomics.com/wizardofid is the link that connects via my favorites, which does not give comments. But if I hit the “previous” button, I get the previous day’s comic, with a link of https://www.gocomics.com/wizardofid/2025/08/22, which again has no comments.

But if I change that “22” at the end to “23”, then I do get comments on the 8/23 comic, and if I now hit the “previous” button to get the previous day’s comic, the comic comes with comments, even though the URL of https://www.gocomics.com/wizardofid/2025/08/22 is the same!

NET:

All of this is partly a rant, and partly information that might, or might not, be helpful to those looking for comments on the GoComics website.

But this is a CIDU site, this Wizard of Id provides a few confusing aspects. He’s dreaming of laptops? He’s tapping into the Sydnew Sweeney jeans “controversy” (hard to take seriously a “controversy” that, IMO, mainly exists in order to provide more publicity to the manufacturer).

by zbicyclist

What animals and plants get reported?

Not a CIDU; just a map I found fascinating.

iNaturalist is a social network of biologists and fellow travellers. On their app, you can report sightings. I’m using their Seek app, which is an amateur plant identification app but isn’t tied into this database. (It will identify birds and insects if you can get them to stand still and pose well enough.)

The map varies between the banal (bumblebees and milkweed for Illinois) to the inappropriate (the invasive garlic mustard in PA) to the more seriously invasive (spotted lanternflies in NJ).

Unlike my Nextdoor feed, which tends to breathlessly report each siting of a coyote as if we should barricade ourselves inside, coyote is not mentioned on this map.

More info explaining this comic is here.

by zbicyclist

Sunday Funnies – LOLs – August 17, 2025

Boise Ed sends this in: “Absurd … Perhaps the category should be “Heaping scorn.” I can see no way they would both be on the hammock in the first place without serious cooperation.”

Remy’s vocabulary needs a little explanation: Strava is a free/paid app that is used by runners/cyclists/walkers to record time and distance. This is usually posted to Strava friends for kudos.

BQ in that last panel is Boston Qualifier, a time which would qualify you for the Boston Marathon. Women aged 18-34 need a time of 3 hours, 25 minutes or less.

Usual John sends this in: “I can’t help thinking of Idiot Bill Bickel, and the name Bilden Bickworm makes me think that may not be just coincidence. FYI for those who have not been following CIDU for years: Idiot Bill Bickel was (and presumably still is) a real estate agent who had the same name as CIDU Bill (the original moderator of this website) and inexplicably sometimes gave people CIDU Bill’s email address instead of his own.”