PencilSketchy
brainspore.bsky.social
PencilSketchy
@brainspore.bsky.social
Visual designer, slayer of tacos.
We are probably only weeks away from Trump confidently proclaiming that no one knows where the sun goes at night.
Trump: "Nobody knows what magnets are."
November 11, 2025 at 4:30 PM
Because individuals bargaining with giant corporate entities famously experience better outcomes than collective bargaining efforts against giant corporate entities.
Trump: "I want the money to go into an account for people where they buy their own health insurance. It's so good. The insurance will be better. It'll cost less. Everybody is gonna be happy. They're gonna feel like entrepreneurs. They're actually able to go out & negotiate their own insurance"
November 11, 2025 at 4:31 AM
Reposted by PencilSketchy
American politics makes a lot more sense when you realize that the GOP is afraid of pissing off the GOP base, and the Dems are afraid of pissing off the GOP base, but neither party is afraid of pissing off the Dem base.
March 14, 2025 at 10:24 PM
@padilla.senate.gov please tell us that you aren’t considering voting in favor of any deal to reopen the government that doesn’t include an iron-clad guarantee of continued funding for the ACA.
November 9, 2025 at 11:41 PM
@schiff.senate.gov I hope very much that the rumors you are currently in negotiation to reopen the government in exchange for “a promise of a vote” on the ACA are false.

Democrats need to hold the line on protecting the ACA. We will remember what our leaders did during this moment in history.
November 9, 2025 at 10:47 PM
For the life of me I don't understand how Tesla thinks keeping Elon around is a net benefit at all, let alone a benefit worth more than the entire Gross Domestic Product of Switzerland.
With Elon Musk’s new $1 trillion contract, he could make $11.4 MILLION per HOUR for the next 10 years.

He’s not creating his profits, working people are!

The “Four Comma Club” shouldn’t exist. A union contract is how we start to level the playing field. https://wapo.st/47O88M4
November 8, 2025 at 1:36 AM
One of the reasons this is such a funny cover from the New York Post is that they've been simultaneously trying to frame Mamdani as both a "Jihadi" and a Soviet-style communist even though those groups were mortal enemies (and neither was known to march in Pride parades).
I'm mad. Please put in the newspaper that I'm mad.
November 5, 2025 at 8:57 PM
The big downside of tonight's elections is that having a progressive mayor running New York City is going to mean that none of the storylines in the second season of "Daredevil: Born Again" are going to make sense anymore.

Did you even CONSIDER the harm that your votes might do to MCU continuity?
November 5, 2025 at 6:21 AM
My kiddo went all in with her Halloween costume this year: Vi from “Arcane: League of Legends.” (I may have helped a bit with the jacket and gauntlets)

#Arcane #Vi #Cosplay
October 31, 2025 at 2:47 PM
Someone watched the 2008 sci-fi dystopian film "Sleep Dealer" and said to themselves "exploiting poor people to remotely operate robots? BRILLIANT!"

("I wrote the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale," etc…)
October 29, 2025 at 7:42 PM
“The Imperial Senate will no longer be of any concern to us. I have just received word that the Emperor has dissolved the council permanently. The last remnants of the Old Republic have been swept away.”

—Tarkin, in a line letting the audience know that the galaxy is ruled by an evil emperor
Mike Johnson: "If the president was a king, then the government would be open." (Trump yesterday said he no longer has a need for Congress.)
October 29, 2025 at 2:45 PM
Republicans get livid when we suggest that all jobs should pay a living wage and then act surprised to learn that many American workers are living in poverty.
SNAP isn't about "people who don't work." It's about people who don't get paid enough to live.

Of the 40 or so million people who rely on food stamps:

* Two-thirds are children, seniors, or disabled

* Most working-age adults who receive SNAP are employed—but in jobs that pay poverty wages
October 27, 2025 at 3:53 AM
Uh-oh, if Canada runs any more ads using Reagan's words to embarrass Trump they might hurt their chance to become the 51st state!
October 26, 2025 at 4:33 PM
Keeping a human being alive outside of the biosphere we evolved to exist in is kind of like keeping an organ alive outside of the body. You can do it for a little while, but unless it’s going back where it came from or transplanted into a compatible recipient it’s not going to last long.
October 25, 2025 at 3:34 PM
Work in progress: Atlas power gauntlets as worn by Vi in “Arcane: League of Legends” for my daughter’s Halloween costume.

#Arcane #Cosplay
October 24, 2025 at 10:44 PM
Reposted by PencilSketchy
With the AWS outage, now‘s as good a time as any to post this old strip.
October 20, 2025 at 10:18 AM
The Amazon Web Services outage means that my institution's entire learning platform is offline today (amongst countless other sites and services worldwide).

Starting to think that letting a single company control so much of the basic infrastructure the internet depends on might have been a mistake.
October 20, 2025 at 7:18 PM
Healthcare in the USA remains so bad compared to the rest of the developed world that it's easy for some to imagine the ACA was a failure, but that completely ignores how much *worse* it was before. Yes, let's continue the reform (I'd love single payer) but the ACA was a *major* step forward.
this dickhead didn’t post this to bsky, but fuck you @talsmith.bsky.social . this legislation saved my life. condescending piece of shit.
October 20, 2025 at 1:39 PM
Pretty sure “we’ll have no more paychecks!” wasn’t the takeaway from that Schoolhouse Rock song about “No More Kings.”
Bessent: "This crazy No Kings rally this weekend, which is gonna be the farthest left, the hardest core, the most unhinged in the Democratic Party, which is a big title. No Kings equals no paychecks."
October 15, 2025 at 1:45 PM
This is good. I actually subscribed to the Atlantic specifically because they DID publish that story about Hegseth accidentally including them in that Signal chat. If they abided by this new Pentagon directive they wouldn't be worthy of being called "journalists."
The Atlantic’s journalists will not sign the Pentagon’s press policy. Statement here from editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg:
October 13, 2025 at 8:15 PM
The funniest part is that he decided to deliver this monologue to America’s highest ranking military leaders while standing in front of a giant American flag like he’s doing the opening scene from “Patton.”
Trump: "I'm very careful when I walk down stairs, like I'm on stairs, I walk very slowly. Nobody has to set a record. Just try not to fall because it doesn't work out well."
September 30, 2025 at 6:24 PM
I've always wondered: when the robots from the "Alien" universe blush, does that mean their faces go paler instead of turning red?
PSA
September 29, 2025 at 10:22 PM
This is like if some 1930s Energy Secretary announced new programs to help the struggling whale oil industry. It’s not just an unsustainable business model that ravages our planet, it’s also not even profitable anymore!
Energy Secretary Chris Wright on Fox: "We're announcing today expanded programs to help the American coal industry. We're helping it because for years it has been under assault. It was out of fashion with the chardonnay set in San Francisco, Boulder, and NYC ... coal just makes the world go round."
September 29, 2025 at 2:22 PM
Hot Take: #StarWars made more sense when only a translator like C-3PO or a text interface like the one in Luke's X-wing allowed humans to understand the bleeps and bloops of an astromech droid.

Understanding unaided would be akin to being able to decode the whine of a fax machine or dial-up modem.
September 17, 2025 at 3:55 PM
AMERICANS: It is horrific an unacceptable that guns continue to be the leading cause of death for American children. We need serious change!

RFK JR.: I’m bringing back deadly childhood diseases!

AMERICANS: No not like that
September 4, 2025 at 6:44 PM