The bigger shock is that by 2155 they’re still using the smartphone form factor.

My 20th century brain is too limited to conceive of what might exist by then but that seems like an anachronism in waiting.

Brain implants might seem a likely avenue, but body modification and/or surgery isn’t going to be cheap.

And if it’s enforced by the state, well then, we’ll be Borg by 2155.

Yeah, yeah, Shen didn’t have time to invent and introduce new tech for the sake of a four panel comic. I get it. And yet…

Mostly no. Currently the only time I put it on is when I’m away from the computer for a length of time doing something quiet.

And I’d probably not even do so then if I had a tablet or smartphone to cue something up from the Internet instead.

(I’m basically stuck in the '90s here. Largely by choice, but money is a factor.)

Yes, you do still have to remember a handful of passwords, but remembering three or four is a much smaller burden than remembering upwards of 50 or 100. (This might seem excessive, but my password manager tells me I have at least that many.)

If that opens up brain space, make those three or four as long and complicated as possible.

String together things only you know and will always remember, but throw in a few random symbols to make the job harder if you accidentally let any of the regular facts and figures slip.

You might also be interested in something like https://www.passwordcard.org/.

Edit to be an unpaid shill for say I’m a happy user of Password Safe, too: https://www.pwsafe.org/

Too expensive. No government would use a cyborg when a bullet or even “re-education” will suffice.

I mean, I know the rich and powerful love AI, but not to that degree. They’d put the cyborgs in charge of firing the bullets and running the "school"s instead.

I’d like to believe that this means that these three pieces of software actually work and that someone in high office has decided that that is unacceptable.

Paranoid authoritarians really do not like ordinary people having access to secure communications and personal privacy. That might be an avenue they can use to organise and elect someone who isn’t a paranoid authoritarian, and that won’t do.

On the other hand, these pieces of software might already be compromised and this is all an elaborate double-bluff.

In which case it’s time for a few well placed communications over purportedly secure channels that would be guaranteed to generate an authoritarian response. Which they’ll then have to pretend they didn’t read until it’s too late.

I’m talking organising - horrors - peaceful protests. They really don’t like those. They have to use their brains, or someone else’s, in order to find a good excuse to stick the boot in.

I can’t imagine I’m the first to ever say this: Those who say they do not poop are full of it.

That’s the thing. Your memory only works one way. You’re incapable of perceiving time running in the opposite direction.

Every time you’ve pooped both in the past and the future*, it’s both going in and coming out, entirely dependent on the frame of reference.

*Yes, I did just refer to the future in the past tense. Because if time’s running backwards to how we perceive it, that’s actually the past.

The only way to win this game is not to poop. And good luck with that.

This may be a fleeting fancy, but at time of writing: «Merde»

Hello. As a former consumer of cheese, yes.

If it helps, think of it as a very unique form of cocoa-free chocolate, or better, a solid form of yoghurt.

(I developed a dairy intolerance a decade ago. I miss cheese.)

Neat. Don’t give them the ability to self-replicate and we’re golden.

There’s something about the mouth on this character that reminds me of this ancient GIF: https://tenor.com/view/cereal-funny-laugh-explode-milk-gif-7566949

Might be nothing there. A skeleton held together by hopes and dreams (or ill will and nightmares) is already pretty creepy as it is.

If Death’s got a prosthesis or a baculum in there, it goes from creepy to, frankly, curious.

At a guess, the counter goes up by fractions of a day internally, but it’s reset by subtracting the integer part, rounded.

The original version wouldn’t have had the rounding but they “fixed” that after the first time they did a reset and it went to 1 not 0.

As to why they wouldn’t just set it to zero, well here we have the joke under a microscope and it’s struggling to stay alive. Put the scalpel down.

About 20 years ago, there were two or three comics wherein, for the first one at least, Wally and Carmen were a visual-only punchline after a newborn vanishes mysteriously from the delivery room at a hospital. The other two follow the child. With variable success.

Fans were shipping them before that one comic and have done so since. I base this on the fact there are a couple of lines about the ship on TV Tropes which don’t otherwise mention the comics.

So if TMZ covered it, which is somewhat doubtful(!), it would have been one of their earlier stories.

Finding the aforementioned comics is left as a - deeply fitting - exercise.

TV Tropes is a well-known black hole time sink, so I won’t link that either.

Unless he split from Carmen Sandiego, he’s spoken for.

Easy: House cat.

One of the well-looked-after, non-abused ones, naturally.

I already know about the monkey’s paw curses for that.

You have the constant recurrent belief that your owners are not pampering you at all times on purpose. And that they’re basically stupid big kittens who meow all the time and are terrible hunters. And that they control the rain but won’t turn it off for you. And also I don’t like this brand of food any more.

And hairballs.

I suppose it’s time I had another nap.

… but I think I can live with all that.

Man called Cissé cracks down on homosexuals.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he was compensating for something.

Maybe it’s because of recent viewing habits, but I seem to recall a few Doctor Who episodes that get uncomfortably close to this.

Sub in Doctor and Master, Doctor and (other incarnation of) Doctor and Master (other incarnation of) Master as necessary.

Considering there’s rarely anyone around for me to say anything to, I’d probably let fly a few choice words and then start trying to work out where the next one was going to land and try to be under it.

That’s assuming you mean nuclear mushroom cloud anyway.

Other, sufficiently large ordnance also generates mushroom clouds and we’ve recovered from a handful of those before.

So any research would be trying to find out whether it was nuclear or not.

I’ve seen Threads. And a whole heap of post-apocalypse stories. I do not want to live in those worlds.

This is the sort of thing that would make the I’m Sorry Jon Eldritch Garfield move between dimensions to teach this cat a lesson.

You harmlessly kick the dog into next week.

O͋_r̗̭͡ m̮ak̟̑͝e̊ͦ hi͙̹̙m̫̹ joͫi͖n͉ y̌͡ouͤ a͗s̯̫ ä̷͟ s_̩e̟r̵͑v̷̦͑a̟̣n͢t of̷̼ tẖ̆e da͜rk̷͊͠ l̬͘͝o̬͆r̉dͦ

You don’t maim him.