by zbicyclist

Existential Comics: Wagers

In today’s highlight of relatively obscure webcomics, we’re highlighting Existential Comics, possibly one of the nerdiest comics around. It’s a once a week exploration of concepts of philosophy, often with an explanation. Here Corey is contrasting Pascal’s wager (arguably the beginning of decision theory) with Augustine.

Here’s the explanation under this comic:

“Pascal’s Wager” is the idea that you should rationally believe in God even if you don’t (how??). Because apparently God punishes those who don’t believe in him, and rewards those who do. And presumably you also have to live a certain kind of life, even if you don’t believe in God too.

Augustine had his own sort of “wager”, although it was never phrased that way, where he basically believed in God the whole time, but lived a sinful life until he God older, and repented. He even had the great phrase “Lord, make me good, but not yet”. Risky, because if you die halfway through you are tormented for all eternity for stealing pears or whatever. But then again God is all knowing so maybe he knows you are going to and you still get credit for that, so all you really have to do us genuinely intend to repent. Hard to say.

Alt-text: “‘Lord, make me good, but not yet’ is one of the funniest lines in the history of theology. Augustine was such a baller.”

Reminder: if you see hard-to-understand comics happen, notify us here at CIDU. If you see something, say something!

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.