The Adventures of Captain Kit.

Atheist girl: I'm so glad science and engineering have progressed to the point where we can manufacture vibrators

Liberal girl: thank you free market for creating the supply to meet the demand for vibrators

Feminist girl: the vibrator has freed us from the need for men

Radical feminist girl: the vibrator is still a phallic implement

Marxist girl: actually it was historical forces that freed women

Marxist feminist girl: the vibrator serves as synecdoche for the entire process of industrialisation and proletarianisation that has laid the groundwork for the liberation of women

Reactionary girl: the vibrator was created to destroy traditional heterosexual relations

Idealist girl: the vibrator was invented because of feminism

Anarchist girl: I have no idea how the vibrator fits into a schema of history

Primitivist girl: I masturbate with a smooth river stone

Lesbian girl: hey while we're all in the same room I have a suggestion

@vividaway​ Randall Munroe is an internet cartoonist who runs the ‘xkcd’ online comic series, which has run from 2006 up to today, with new comics every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Xkcd isn’t an ongoing story, just a series of funny, wholesome, depressing, or oddly scientifically informative comics.

In 2010, Randall’s fiance was diagnosed with stage III breast cancer. He didn’t share too many details at first, but things tended to bleed into his comics: sometimes funny, sometimes sad.

Often in this time, other cartoonists would write in guest comics for Randall, or he’d put in short filler pieces, to try and fill space while nonstop cancer treatments took up most of his time.

In 2012, he posted a comic called ‘Two Years’, about the time since the diagnosis. It’s the one that hasn’t yet been posted here (although parts of it are included in the other comics), and it commemorates some of the things that had happened in the two years since the diagnosis.

There are representations of Randall and his fiance being together for her treatment, worrying together, traveling the world, and getting married. It’s still depressing, but it’s a lot more hopeful, showing how they’ve still managed to have happy moments together, and things will still get better.

Themes of cancer continued in xkcd, but they increasingly became less about fear and nihilism, and more about hope, or just cool facts related to cancer.

At the top of this post is the comic posted in 2017: Seven Years. In it, Randall and his wife are traveling more, trying to have fun and continue old and new hobbies, with cancer ever-present in the background of it all. At the end, the two of them observe the 2017 solar eclipse, and despite all the uncertainty that comes with the thought of another seven years, agree to watch the 2024 eclipse together too.

There are just about no cancer comics between that one and the most recent comic, the one I posted: Ten Years, written in 2020. It’s by far the most hopeful of the three in the little series: the two of them are happy, they’re playing with rabbits and riding on handcarts and going out hiking and stargazing, together. At the end, Ten Years breaks the format with a conversation in which they talk about how unbelievable it is that it’s been so long, and share their worries as well as their hopes. It even ends on a much more lighthearted joke about immortality.

It’s a good comic. Definitely in my top two comics wherein internet cartoonists express emotions about an illness suffered by their wife.

The first time I reblogged this it was three years after large bastard's heart attack and quad bypass and one year after his transplant.

Now it has been five years since his transplant, and seven years since his bypass.

everything is more expensive than it used to be. even disregarding trumps horrific tariffs (which you shouldn’t do), inflation will always make things more expensive and in particular the lasting effects of COVID pricing are still ongoing. everything got more expensive, from food to replacement parts for machinery to cotton to lumber to metals that go into making needles and zippers, and so on and that means making things got more expensive.

the only reason you’re not noticing that rising cost in your fast fashion clothing is because shein clothes are made by people being paid pennies per garment, if they’re paid at all, using materials that contain lead and formaldehyde. labor is almost always your highest cost when making clothing unless you’re working with incredibly costly materials or you’re not paying your workers properly.

a single piece of ethically made clothing represents so many materials and so many types of labor. there’s the plant that had to be grown and harvested and then turned into fibers that could then be woven into fabric. the thread, elastic, and any fixings like zippers or buttons or hooks and eyes all have to be made from materials that are mined or grown or made. pigment has to be mined and processed or synthesized for the garment to be dyed or printed and that fabric has to be sewn by humans. not machines. there are many machines involved, from fabric printers to sewing machines to cotton gins to garment presses and more, all of which have to be human operated and/or maintained/inspected/overseen. and most of which have annoying fiddly bits that need to be replaced over and over and over again. all the facilities involved in making the clothing and clothing materials have to be cleaned and maintained and inspected. nearly every time a material or garment changes locations the terms and prices have to be negotiated.

nearly all of this is human work.

Mangrove forests used to be considered one of the world's most threatened ecosystems. However, recent analysis of satellite data shows that mangrove forests are no longer in decline and in fact the global coverage of mangrove forests has been increasing over the last 16 years due to restoration and natural habitat expansion.