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Steve and Cossette eating cereal together and smiling in the last panel

7 (14.9%)

Wil declaming romantic prose to a blushing Penny in the middle of Coffee of Doom

3 (6.4%)

Faye, Bubbles, Renee, Clinton and Elliott having a defiant 'Content in our Singleness' party

10 (21.3%)

Jim and Veronica on a formal dinner date at which they can't stop fretting about Sam

3 (6.4%)

Dale and Marigold sharing pizza and soda whlist Momo complains about the lack of romance in their souls

4 (8.5%)

Henry and Maurice sitting on the patio of their house

3 (6.4%)

Arthur and Melon discussing romantic puns and missing that they're a couple too

5 (10.6%)

Jeremy and Seven doing 'biped with hands' things and finding that fascinating

2 (4.3%)

Marten and Claire discuss the ethics of shipping friends before closing a door with a sock on the handle

5 (10.6%)

Other (please specify in a comment)

5 (10.6%)

Total Members Voted: 44

[BenRG]

Also: Are Bubbles' hair growing?

It's more interesting than that: It's been established in the comic that Synthetics' hair does not 'grow'. You have to soak it in a polymer which, as it dries, lengthens the 'hair' strands. So, to 'grow' her hair, Bubbles would have had to purchase materials and set aside some time to work on it.

For whose benefit I wonder? Did Faye mention that she liked Dora's longer hair and Bubbles felt bound to respond?

[NemesisDancer]

I can't get past the idea that Bubbles needs a bed and she must be so uncomfortable sitting on the floor like that. Yes, I know, I know, AIs don't need a comfortable bed, but would it really kill them to have one?

Faye: Bubbles, let's get you a bed.

Bubbles: It's okay. I don't need a bed like you do.

Faye: Come on. Why not?

Bubbles: Really, it's okay. I don't need a bed.

Faye. Sigh...

It might be that they can't afford another bed at the moment, as they're only really scraping rent and food costs from Union Robotics (though Melon's intervention appears to have helped somewhat!)

[Neko_Ali]

I asked not if Faye would be respond to a toaster with Bubble's AI inside...

FWIW, I'd like for a human/AI love story (even if told as a lesson from history) where the human fell in love with a totally disembodied AI simply because he or she was kind, empathetic and shared a lot of the human's interests. It is only later that the AI used first a holo-avatar and then later an anthromimetic chassis and the relationship became physical (and ultimately ended with marriage and the adoption of children).

Mass Effect 2 & 3, EDI and Joker. EDI is the artificial intelligence that runs their ship and Joker is the pilot. At first she's always angry at him because he's reckless and disorderly, he hates her because she's critical about everything he does and he hates someone always looking over his shoulder. Eventually it turns into grudging admiration and respect then love and EDI winds up with a very female humanoid body.

[Stoutfellow]

Mass Effect 2 & 3, EDI and Joker. EDI is the artificial intelligence that runs their ship and Joker is the pilot. At first she's always angry at him because he's wreckless and disorderly[.]

I would think wrecklessness would be a good thing in a pilot.

[ckridge]

Here's some more poetry that Bubbles might relate to.

but my tongue is frozen in silence;
 instantly a delicate flame runs beneath my skin;
 with my eyes I see nothing;
 my ears make a whirring noise.

 A cold sweat covers me,
trembling seizes my body,
 and I am greener than grass.

 Lacking but little of death do I seem.

Sappho. Thank you. I had never given those verses proper attention.

Only fragments of her work remain, and the history of Western love poetry can be read as a series of attempts to reconstruct them.
 

[SpanielBear]

Here's some more poetry that Bubbles might relate to.

but my tongue is frozen in silence;
 instantly a delicate flame runs beneath my skin;
 with my eyes I see nothing;
 my ears make a whirring noise.

 A cold sweat covers me,
trembling seizes my body,
 and I am greener than grass.

 Lacking but little of death do I seem.

Sappho. Thank you. I had never given those verses proper attention.

Only fragments of her work remain, and the history of Western love poetry can be read as a series of attempts to reconstruct them.

Be reasonable. Sometimes we're attempting to channel Catullus.

[ckridge]

Note that today's strip is perfectly ambiguous as to whether Faye has considered the possibility she loves Bubbles, the possibility Bubbles loves her, or both. This is not accidental on Jeph's part. Note also that the thought happens on the border between sleep and waking, which is as near as a cartoonist can come to showing you what is going on in someone's subconscious.

[shanejayell]

Jeph is SUCH a tease. 

[MattStriker]

Jeph is SUCH a tease. 

A sadistic bastard is what he is .

[Thrudd]

Tomorrow it will be snakes and smoothies as Sam drops by to ask for some shop help from Big Sis Faye, pester her Big Brother and terrify the lubricant out of Pintsize.

[ckridge]

No-no-no, displays of arousal are 100% social. Arousal itself isn't. Arousal is arousal and defined biologically (and actually that's why libido is lowering with age - when you would be perfectly ridden of hormones working in arousal, oxytocin for example, you would quite probably be dead, or at least have quite serious problems). How society and person itself reacting on people showing arousal is completly another matter.

I'm sorry for bringing example, if somebody would see it as offensive, that's an example I had in university.

Let's imagine you feel arousal when see plush chairs. You feel arousal, but in the society you lives it's no-go. People demand to you to conform and feel arousal to a woman who has the face of a twelve-year-old girl, the breasts of a nursing mother, and the body of a boy athlete (let's use US Target for simplicity), but you can't and plush chairs is your thing. You're shunned as freak by people around, "that's ok to feel arousal to US Target, but plush chairs? whats wrong with you?". Hello, social rejection.

 . . .

Actually it's called "Qualia problem" - how to prove that my sensual experience is correlated with yours in any way - and is one of the most heatenly debated questions of modern psychology. But with arousal it's quite simpler then with, for example, color perception. Arousal have physiological markers, no markers - no arousal.

>Arousal is arousal and defined biologically  . . .

>Arousal have physiological markers, no markers - no arousal.

>Let's imagine you feel arousal when see plush chairs.

From these passages, I gather that you mean that the object of arousal may be entirely socially determined, since it does not seem possible that some section of DNA codes for attraction to chairs, no matter how curvaceous, cozy, plushy, and compliant; but that the sensation of arousal is 100% biological. That narrows down the field of argument a lot.

Let me propose a thought-experiment: Suppose someone goes to their doctor and says "I'm sexually dysfunctional. I desire my spouse intensely, but my body can't respond properly. The frustration is killing me." The doctor hooks the patient up to some instruments and directs them to think longingly of their spouse, and says "No, you are mistaken. Your erectile tissue is not tumescent when you think about your spouse, and since arousal is 100% biological, that means you aren't feeling desire. There is no problem here." Would the doctor's response be correct? If not, and if arousal is 100% biological, why not?

>Actually it's called "Qualia problem"

You argue from analogy here, writing that since humans have bodies analogous to our own, we have better reason to believe that they have sensations like our own than we would have for believing that robots did, regardless of what robots claimed. This argument is invalid. We decided that those neural structures correspond to those sensations by asking humans what they felt and then seeing what neural structures are activated when they say they feel that way. The fundamental evidence was the assertion of a feeling. The neural structure's involvement in that feeling was deduced on the basis of the assertion. Denying someone else's assertion that they feel that way because they haven't got the neural structure would be disregarding equally good evidence for no good reason. 

I am going to synopsize my views on the subject of robot desire in the QC universe briefly and then leave off discussing it here, since we should be talking mostly about Faye's pillow thoughts now. We can pick it up in your topic if you want.

AIs in this universe are largely self-programming. They have learning programs and built-in goals, both quite flexible. In all probability, they are being built mostly by other post-Singularity AIs who are smarter than humans, reasonably well-disposed toward humans for some mysterious reason, and deeply averse to any interference in AI free will.

A subset of AIs are interested in friendship with humans, and learn -- program themselves, if you will -- about humans just as humans do, by immersing themselves in human culture. In this way, they learn what is thought desirable, beautiful, estimable, seductive, intoxicating, and so on, and they internalize these values, just as humans do. 

AIs who are interested in associating with humans put on bodies for this purpose. Their bodies have automatic stress reactions producing simple, powerful mental events that are analogous to but not identical with ones humans have under similar circumstances. Just as with humans, these simple, powerful sensations are capable of a very wide set of possible interpretations depending on the context and on what part of the human sociocultural psychosexual matrix the robot has become embedded in. The same basic sensations may be experienced as fear, sadness, anger, pleasurable excitement, arousal, drunkenness, desire, or any combination of these depending on circumstance and on whom the robot has learned to be.

I am pretty sure that if an AI wished to consummate their learned desires sexually, they would have to download an extra application. We know that they can run pleasure whenever they want, but find it empty as an isolated experience. A simple robot application for having sex with humans might go something like this:

1. Make touching the human pleasurable.
2. Make being touched by the human pleasurable.
3. Make signs of pleasure from the human pleasurable.
4. Let the pleasure build to some kind of release and then drop off sharply, lest the robot persist to the point that the human becomes over-tired.

[Aenno]

I am going to synopsize my views on the subject of robot desire in the QC universe briefly and then leave off discussing it here, since we should be talking mostly about Faye's pillow thoughts now. We can pick it up in your topic if you want.

I'd like to, because it really feels as off-topic here.

[ckridge]

OK, respond there, and I will reply there.

[ckridge]

I feel faintly voyeuristic and guilty about looking in on them sleeping and on Faye's night thoughts. If it were a novel, I would only be inside her head. If it were a movie, I would only see. Here I see and am inside her head. Odd that such a simple form would be able to do something like that.

[Case]

To be honest, I wouldn't object to someone trying to fix mine. Blergh.

My high-school 'friends' idea of "fixing my love life" was schlepping a slightly underage vague acquaintance to our graduation ball without an invitation, aiming her at me, and watching the results from a safe distance.  Moment I saw her, I realized that:
a) Those morons' idea of "fixing someone's lovelife" was pretty much: "We've seen him interacting friendly-like with her once while he was tending bar, ergo it must be twue wuv!"
b) "OhShit this could be a crush!"
c) Standing in front of a guy three years your senior that you might have a vague crush on, at his invite-only graduation ball, without an invitation ... must be one of the most humiliating environments to get your crush crushed in.

All those things running through my head, in a split second. Guess what comes out of my mouth?

"Uhmmmmmhiiiiii!!!??? What are you doing here?"

And of course, after that spurt of literary genius my mind freezes up and my face pounces at the chance of perfecting its grasp of the 'mortified rictus'-set of expressions.

We ran into each other 10 years later. She offered me a lift from the train station, then kicked me out of the car in some remote part of town. Being the Soul-and-confidence-crushing-Nemesis of someone else's discovery of their Eros is ... perplexing, highly overrated and sometimes it requires astonishingly little actual action on your part. Srsly, a tendency to freeze right after you stuck your foot in your mouth and a gaggle of brainless frenemies appears fully sufficient.

Thanks, 'Friends'!

[SpanielBear]

To be honest, I wouldn't object to someone trying to fix mine. Blergh.

My high-school 'friends' idea of "fixing my love" life was schlepping a slightly underage vague acquaintance to our graduation ball without an invitation, aiming her at me, and watching the results from a safe distance.  Moment I saw her, I realized that:
a) Those moron's idea of "fixing someone's lovelife" was pretty much: "We've seen him interacting friendly-like with her once while he was tending bar, ergo it must be twue wuv!"
b) "OhShit this could be a crush!"
c) Standing in front of a guy three years your senior that you might have a vague crush on, at his invite-only graduation ball, without an invitation ... must be one of the most humiliating environments to get your crush crushed in.

All those things running through my head, in a split second. Guess what comes out of my mouth?

"Uhmmmmmhiiiiii!!!??? What are you doing here?"

We met 10 years later. She offered me a lift from the train station, then kicked me out of the car in some remote part of town. Being the Soul-and-confidence-crushing-Nemesis of someone else's discovery of their Eros is ... perplexing, highly overrated and sometimes it requires astonishingly little actual action on your part. Srsly, a tendency to freeze right after you stuck your foot in your mouth and a gaggle of brainless frenemies is all it takes.

Thanks, 'Friends'!

That entire situation sounds utterly horrifying. Poor you. And her.

(Also, while the whole scenario sounds pretty awful, my middle-class Brit internal monologue is screaming "But that's a faux pas! In a social situation! People you are acquainted with might SEE!!! THOSE MONSTERS!!!!!"

As you can tell, my internal monologue also conforms quite happily with the Terry Pratchett theory of multiple exclamation marks.)

[Case]

That entire situation sounds utterly horrifying. Poor you. And her.

(Also, while the whole scenario sounds pretty awful, my middle-class Brit internal monologue is screaming "But that's a faux pas! In a social situation! People you are acquainted with might SEE!!! THOSE MONSTERS!!!!!"

As you can tell, my internal monologue also conforms quite happily with the Terry Pratchett theory of multiple exclamation marks.)

Poor her, mostly - I mean ... I turned out a pro-nerd, with the standard set of social graces that usually comes with the package, so my natural strategy of 'letting someone down gently' was a) Hoping they 'get it' on their own ... somehow, with the escalation option of b) The FadeAway (I was seriously floored when I learned that there are people who believe that The FadeAway^TM is a Girls-thing).

But I'd have kindasorta liked the chance to be loathed for my actual shortcomings, see what I mean?

The incident left me with a serious dislike for people with an inkling to play match-maker. After that, those folk mostly make me think of ... matches. Funny, huh? Can't fathom why ... 

P.S.: I confess that I seriously resented being seen as "the guy who needs to be set up". And also with a girl that I wasn't into that way, and who was three years my junior (I was 19 at the time, age of majority in Germany is 18, age of consent was 16 back then. I felt like some sort of child-molester). The half-ride-half-walk through town sorta closed that circle: Sometimes, your injured pride is not what matters most.

[SpanielBear]

But I'd have liked to be loathed for my actual shortcomings, see what I mean?

Live the dream, man. Live the dream.

[Neko_Ali]

Mass Effect 2 & 3, EDI and Joker. EDI is the artificial intelligence that runs their ship and Joker is the pilot. At first she's always angry at him because he's wreckless and disorderly[.]

I would think wrecklessness would be a good thing in a pilot.

corrected the typo.

[Aenno]

Mass Effect 2 & 3, EDI and Joker. EDI is the artificial intelligence that runs their ship and Joker is the pilot. At first she's always angry at him because he's wreckless and disorderly[.]

I would think wrecklessness would be a good thing in a pilot.

Yes, with any other ship; but here we're talking about HER body, you know!

[SpanielBear]

Mass Effect 2 & 3, EDI and Joker. EDI is the artificial intelligence that runs their ship and Joker is the pilot. At first she's always angry at him because he's wreckless and disorderly[.]

I would think wrecklessness would be a good thing in a pilot.

Yes, with any other ship; but here we're talking about HER body, you know!

To clarify, I believe this is a pun based on a spelling mistake. The original term should have been (and has been corrected to) 'reckless', which does mean foolhardy and careless. The spelling mistake, 'wreckless', changed the meaning so the sentence became "Joker has never wrecked a space-craft" (He is wreck-less). Not crashing would be a positive attribute for a pilot to have...

[Aenno]

Oh. That's as well is reading mistake from my part.
I'm sorry. Just forgot write spelling for "recklessness", so read it as it was supposed to be.

[Case]

Human consciousness is, maybe, slow - it's basically an interface builded on hundreds of bugged and messy hormonal and instinctive systems, designed to long-forgotten stimules as well as current ones, and designed by a very bad designer (Mother Nature) with basic philosophy "this code worked adequatly when I submitted it, and I don't mind it's so buggy, we saving it for compatibility and support reasons"; so human consciousness just have no direct control to initiating body states.
But I can't see how "running action past a review function" is a bad thing.

Not entirely sure whether I get you correctly (or if I would agree if I did): I don't think consciousness is merely a 'review' system (Yes, it does have aspects of a review system, but ... that feels incomplete).

Consciousness 'feels' to me rather like something that initially (way back when, maybe even in one our non-human ancestors) started out as a biological equivalent to what programmers would call an "exception handling" routine to an already existing, very fast & adaptive primary cognitive system - an emergency system that can temporarily take over when the primary system encounters a situation it cannot solve (or a situation where it is prone to coming up with bad solutions) - and from those origins, it evolved and became better until ... one day, it got the idea that it was actually running the show.

Bit like Star Trek Voyager where the Emergency Medical Hologram first becomes the regular ship doctor because the regular ship doctor is dead, and in some situation even has to stand in for the captain (or the whole crew, was it?).

I'm interested in "Thinking, fast and slow" (but admit I haven't read it yet), because that's kind of how it feels to me - Science is the archetypical profession that demands "Slow down your thinking! Make your thoughts conscious!" (Srsly: At the root of it, that's even more fundamental than the Feynman-dictum (*), and that's already the "Scientific Method, in a nutshell"). But much of what I do as a physicist is not done by the slow, conscious, deliberative part of my mind - it's done by the quicksilvery "Dog chasing a stick"-part of my mind that can 'just see' a way to a solution, or completely forget time, space - even myself - during a calculation. And I am by no means convinced that I (as in 'the conscious part of myself') am the smarter of the pair, quite the opposite, in fact - it's more like ... it's way faster and smarter than I am, it has ancient wisdom, but in a funny way, it doesn't seem to be able to know what it's bad at, or when to stop. And when it looks in a mirror, it doesn't recognize itself.

I see 'my' job (again 'my' as in 'the conscious part of myself') as 'coming up with good questions for the part that is good at coming up with answers', as 'giving the dog a good scent and then getting out of its way'. When it comes back, my part starts again - looking at what the dog dragged up (patting its head, Good! Dog!)

And I think that another of the original functions of the conscious fraction of our mind was simulating another (proto-)human being. Suppose that for some reason - facilitating group interaction, predicting reactions of other group members, to stave of loneliness and despair, whatever - our brains found themselves in need of being able to speak to another, simulated human being, a mirror of sorts, in some situations. The 'exception handler' applied for the job and got it - and ... got good at it.

(And one day, it got this weird idea that it was actually running the show and all the rest was merely ... the bywork.)

Only then, all the other brains had their own 'simulated internal humans', too - probably the point we started inventing art in order not to go crazy. 


(*) "You must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest to fool"

[Case]

Regarding the whole 'arousal/embarrassment/shame'-debate:

<whole 'arousal/embarrassment/shame'-debate>

Some minor quibbles:

1) Human physical signs of arousal are not always coupled to an actual experience of arousal - Every guy past puberty knows that (Well, unless I'm the only dude on Earth who wakes with morning wood, yet breathing quite normally and thinking more of going for a wee rather than, say, a raging urge to either masturbate or search the premises for any potential mating partners that may happen to be around and/or have snuck into his flat overnight). Men get raging erections in the most impossible of situations, feeling exactly zero sexual arousal - the 'combat boner' is an example (That's actually part of how men absolutely can get raped - same as how a woman doesn't enjoy and/or consent to intercourse whenever her body decides it's time to get wet). And that's talking about what is probably the simpler part of the species.

2) IIRC, Human children start displaying signs of shame long before they first experience sexual arousal - Kids ban their parents (and especially the 'desire target'-parent) from the bathroom long before puberty.

3) We've heard that AI's can experience a sort of VR-sex amongst each other. If that is sex in any definition we would recognize, it involves at least the simulated experience of sensual stimuli and involuntary reactions, regardless of whether their everyday 'chassis' are capable of experiencing those sensations.

4) RetCon: Bubbles chassis is a recent experimental model. Maybe someone at Skunkworks got tired of designing horny little psychopaths with built-in lasers who are way too much into niche human fetishes for their own good, and decided that "if the bugger are so keen on it, they should start making their own kink"?

5) RetCon: Humans are smart apes, but apes we are. No matter what we do, our first basic questions are always "Can it eats me?" "Can I eats it?" "Can I mate with it?". There's something funny - and comforting - in knowing that at least 5-15% of our most recent paradigm-shattering invention The! Internet! is dedicated exclusively to pron. Even someone as otherworldly as AI-inventor Chatham would have expected that at some point, AI would be put into human-form chassis, and from there, it's a giant leap for AI-kind but a quick stroke for ... (trying to come up with a good way to end that one).

So it would make sense that the people who wrote the first versions of AI "sensual faculty software .dll's" would add at least some placeholder entries for 'sexual pleasure' (or even approximations), even if the bodies capable of feeling those sensations didn't yet exist - simply because knowing their fellow humans, they knew those bodies would exist at some point.

TL;DR - It's not impossible for Bubbles to feel shame without feeling arousal. It's not impossible for Bubbles to feel aroused even if her body would (yet) lack all the sensory faculties for lovemaking.


P.S.: Are you familiar with Neal Asher's Polity Universe? I think you might like them. There's a type of "AI" called Golem that kind of fits some of your ideas - an android chassis with a non-organic cognitive core that can be host to both 'natural' AI's as well as recorded human minds (Asher subtly hint that over time, the difference may start to become less and less important). The trick with the Golem's is that the chassis run an emulation of human basic emotion and also mimick other human peculiarities - pretending that their joints have the same range as ours when they don't, gait, sweat, body odor, etc.

He keeps coming back to the question of "how real simulated emotion is" over several books, culminating in one part where a formerly human side-character is re-awakened after death into an AI chassis, with the ability to switch off his human emotions - and starts wondering not how human he is, but how real his identity is. Is he still the real Gant that he feels he is, when he knows he is so different, so much more in some respects.

[Aenno]

Not entirely sure whether I get you correctly (or if I would agree if I did): I don't think consciousness is merely a 'review' system (Yes, it does have aspects of a review system, but ... that feels incomplete).

Consciousness 'feels' to me rather like something that initially (way back when, maybe even in one our non-human ancestors) started out as a biological equivalent to what programmers would call an "exception handling" routine to an already existing, very fast & adaptive primary cognitive system - an emergency system that can temporarily take over when the primary system encounters a situation it cannot solve (or a situation where it is prone to coming up with bad solutions) - and from those origins, it evolved and became better until ... one day, it got the idea that it was actually running the show.

AFAIK it's true. Consciousness is, in a nutshell (very, very small nutshell) a system allowing to break a program (instinct) and find a way to solve a problem. It's not faster or slower that any other part by mechanism, but it's far more distracted, and have very little resource in its disposal. You can make your consciousness work fast - you'll just need to concentrate it on "this particular problem" to solve. And it's actually very difficult skill, and very tiresome one. And, as we haven't full control, we can't actually drag out every problem into consciousness.
Mental trauma is interesting example. It actually "heal itself" slowly (as nothing really happens "itself" this meaning it healing itself subconsciously). Consciousness approach, if you have correct skills and able to defeat the suffering in process, is FAR faster.
Or take learning process. As people gasp learning skills and required concentration, learning became far faster with consciousness approach.
Thing with subconscious is that it uses shortcuts. Consciousness can use it as well, as long as you have skills. I mean, it's like... "Subconscious is very fast in math. You just need to look into nightsky, and it's already done - there are a lot of stars here!"

Regarding the whole 'arousal/embarrassment/shame'-debate:

But to answer you question "How do AI's have uncontrolled emotional responses" (I think I've got that right?) with "Because Magic" would be completely unsatisfying.

Sorry, no, you haven't got that exactly right.
Question is "How do AIs have uncontrolled emotional responses by every detail resembling human sexual arousment."
Because if there is a emotion that have less social component that direct sexual arousment, I don't know it. It can be emulated, sure - but WHO emulate it in Bubbles?

Some minor quibbles:

1) Human physical signs of arousal are not always coupled to an actual experience of arousal - Every guy past puberty knows that (Well, unless I'm the only dude who wakes with morning wood and doesn't have to suppress the raging urge to either masturbate or have sex with an available and willing partner that happens to be around). Men get raging erections in the most impossible of situations, feeling exactly zero sexual arousal - the 'combat boner' is an example. And that's talking about what is probably the simpler part of the species.

2) IIRC, Human children start displaying signs of shame long before they first experience sexual arousal - Kids ban their parents (and especially the 'desire target'-parent) from the bathroom long before puberty.

3) We've heard that AI's can experience a sort of VR-sex amongst each other. If that is sex in any definition we would recognize, it involves at least the simulated experience of sensual stimuli and involuntary reactions, regardless of whether their bodies are capable of experiencing those sensations.

4) RetCon: Bubbles chassis is a recent experimental model. Maybe someone at Skunkworks got tired of designing horny little psychopaths with built-in lasers who are way too much into niche human fetishes for their own good, and decided that "if the bugger are so keen on it, they should start making their own kink"?

5) RetCon: Humans are smart apes, but apes we are. No matter what we do, our first basic questions are always "Can it eats me?" "Can I eats it?" "Can I mate with it?". There's something funny - and comforting - in knowing that at least 5-15% of our most recent paradigm-shattering invention The! Internet! is dedicated exclusively to pron. Even someone as otherworldly as AI-inventor Chatham would have expected that at some point, AI would be put into human-form chassis, and from there, it's a giant leap for AI-kind but a quick stroke for ... (trying to come up with a good way to end that one).

So it would make sense that the people who wrote the first versions of AI "sensual faculty software .dll's" would add at least some placeholder entries for 'sexual pleasure' (or even approximations), even if the bodies capable of feeling those sensations didn't yet exist - simply because knowing their fellow humans, they knew those bodies would exist at some point.

TL;DR - It's not impossible for Bubbles to feel shame without feeling arousal. It's not impossible for Bubbles to feel aroused even if her body would (yet) lack all the sensory faculties for lovemaking.

Well... again, it's complicated.
1) About "most impossible situations to have erections". The very problem with human body is that we haven't any hormone with only one task. My favorite example is oxytocin. Look into wiki to a list of tasks!
How do erection work, with a great simplification? Humans have enzyme, horrible molecule called cyclic guanosine monophosphate. There are receptors in human blood system that have a simple program - "if cGMP hit you, wide blood vessel". And cGMP is synthesized normally, and degrading with another horrible molecule, phosphodiesterase. Phosphodiesterase V (PDE-5) is concentrated in pelvic cavity and supposed to destroy cGMP as fast as it needed. If sexual arousal happen, PDE-5 synthesis get low, pelvic cavity organs (including corpus cavernosum) had their blood vessels widen, blood pressure up, voila - erection.
Imagine by some incident you have cGMP synthesis rise or PDE-5 synthesis low. PDE-5 wouldn't be enough to destroy cGMP. That's how Viagra works, by the way, it inhibit PDE-5 synthesis. Voila - erection.
Problem is, cGMP also using in apoptosis (by-designed death for cells in the body), AND in translation light into electricity in your eyes, AND in fight-and-flight reaction. And body is stupid. It never can access situation. "cGMP level rise = erection".
Biochemistry is fun, but EXTREMELY messy. So yeah, not every erection is arousal. And not every oxytocin blast is arousal. And not every nipple erection is arousal.
2) Yes, because children are teached to do this things, it's not instinctive reaction.
3) We actually do know mechanism. It's high-speed package exchange.
4) Continuity error: It was directly declared that Pintsize program and Bubble program was running parallel, and Pintsize's one was closed for humanitarian reasons. 
5) Definitely possible, and I believe was done. But then it's the same thing with robotic drunkenness. In a nutshell, as far it was shown, it's a reaction that AI summons on himself consciously. "I want to be drunk for social reasons, so I'm downgrading processor cycles and apps I have would initiate "drunk" behavior".

[Cornelius]

This is a very interesting exchange, which I'll gladly follow in the morning. However, as to point two, I do think that that particular example is cultural/social. Which does not mean that children do not develop shame before arousal. But that's a bit of a slippery point, as we should properly define what we mean by shame. A study I read a couple of months ago posited that shame is simply a manifestation of fear.

[Is it cold in here?]

Only then, all the other brains had their own 'simulated internal humans', too - probably the point we started inventing art in order not to go crazy

Hasn't worked very well judging from the number of artists who are crazy.

[Aenno]

Only then, all the other brains had their own 'simulated internal humans', too - probably the point we started inventing art in order not to go crazy

Hasn't worked very well judging from the number of artists who are crazy.

Actually, I always thought that artists are people who actually hearing.

[Case]

Not entirely sure whether I get you correctly (or if I would agree if I did): I don't think consciousness is merely a 'review' system (Yes, it does have aspects of a review system, but ... that feels incomplete).
...

AFAIK it's true. Consciousness is, in a nutshell (very, very small nutshell) a system allowing to break a program (instinct) and find a way to solve a problem. It's not faster or slower that any other part by mechanism, but it's far more distracted, and have very little resource in its disposal. You can make your consciousness work fast - you'll just need to concentrate it on "this particular problem" to solve. And it's actually very difficult skill, and very tiresome one. And, as we haven't full control, we can't actually drag out every problem into consciousness.
Mental trauma is interesting example. It actually "heal itself" slowly (as nothing really happens "itself" this meaning it healing itself subconsciously). Consciousness approach, if you have correct skills and able to defeat the suffering in process, is FAR faster.
Or take learning process. As people gasp learning skills and required concentration, learning became far faster with consciousness approach.
Thing with subconscious is that it uses shortcuts. Consciousness can use it as well, as long as you have skills. I mean, it's like... "Subconscious is very fast in math. You just need to look into nightsky, and it's already done - there are a lot of stars here!"

What do you believe to be true? My amateur thoughts about consciousness? Your prior thoughts about consciousness? //
I don't think 'instinct' is a concept that is used anymore wrt. to human - I think I vaguely remember that we don't have any, or only a handful, and they are important only for a very short time in our lives. A human baby will not walk in minutes, an elephant baby will. The latter is called 'instinct'. Yeah, that one is actually Case talking when he should have been checking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instinct //
I don't know if consciousness is faster or slower or more distracted than any other parts of our minds - it always figured it was so fundamentally different from the other parts, and it's job so fundamentally more difficult than the others, that it was never intended to be anything but 'slow'. The jobs that consciousness might possibly tasked with solving are potentially infinite - it's impossible to optimize such a function, since you cannot know which tools it may or may not require. //
I can speed up conscious processes by focussing more, agreed. //
I guess it would be difficult skill, since it's job description is "Solve any potential problem that any human might potentially encounter in the Universe". //
I don't know if there are specific problems, or classes of problems that we can or cannot draw into our consciousness - in my 'amateur model' of consciousness as 'emergency problem solver', that wouldn't be necessary, since the emergency problem solver would only be activated when the rest of the brain can't solve the problem.
 But we a have a workaround that particular problem of 'problems that might need dragging but we may not know which' - it's called 'other humans'.//
I am not sure what you mean by 'consciousness approach' - what little I know of learning suggests that we get faster the more parts of the problem-solving skill become automated and thereby unconscious. //
I am not sure what you mean by 'shortcuts' //
If by skills you mean 'aquired skills', then yes. My trained 44yo brain still goes step by step when doing math, and it doesn't feel like I have become faster, but I know that my steps have become far bigger than the used to when be when I was 28, or 36.  //
Do you mean Savantism, or intuitive leaps?

Forgive my asking - Do you have any formal training in neurosciences, psychiatry, behavioural science or similar? It's very hard to tell from your 'tone'. If you were a native speaker of English, I'd say you're tone would suggest a confidence that hints at formal training, but since you're not a native speaker, I can't tell if you're speculating (like I was, and hinted at the fact with 'to me, it feels ...'), or whether you're drawing on a body of secured scientific work.

Either would be perfectly fine, it just changes the pace of the game a bit.

Regarding the whole 'arousal/embarrassment/shame'-debate:

Some minor quibbles:
...
3) We've heard that AI's can experience a sort of VR-sex amongst each other. If that is sex in any definition we would recognize, it involves at least the simulated experience of sensual stimuli and involuntary reactions, regardless of whether their bodies are capable of experiencing those sensations.
...
TL;DR - It's not impossible for Bubbles to feel shame without feeling arousal. It's not impossible for Bubbles to feel aroused even if her body would (yet) lack all the sensory faculties for lovemaking.

Well... again, it's complicated.
1) About "most impossible situations to have erections". The very problem with human body is that we haven't any hormone with only one task. My favorite example is oxytocin. Look into wiki to a list of tasks!
How do erection work, with a great simplification? [...]
Biochemistry is fun, but EXTREMELY messy. So yeah, not every erection is arousal. And not every oxytocin blast is arousal. And not every nipple erection is arousal.
2) Yes, because children are teached to do this things, it's not instinctive reaction.
3) We actually do know mechanism. It's high-speed package exchange.
4) Continuity error: It was directly declared that Pintsize program and Bubble program was running parallel, and Pintsize's one was closed for humanitarian reasons. 
5) Definitely possible, and I believe was done. But then it's the same thing with robotic drunkenness. In a nutshell, as far it was shown, it's a reaction that AI summons on himself consciously. "I want to be drunk for social reasons, so I'm downgrading processor cycles and apps I have would initiate "drunk" behavior".

1) Informative and we are agreed -> "Biochemistry is fun, but EXTREMELY messy. So yeah, not every erection is arousal. And not every oxytocin blast is arousal. And not every nipple erection is arousal." Not every physical sign of arousal in humans is a reliable indicator that the mind in the body experiences sexual arousal. I don't see why this should be different in AIs? Or should it?

(Again my question: Formal training in Biochem? Sounds a bit like it.)

2) Not sure about the 'they are taught to do those things'. See also Cornelius' post. But that's a minor point: Let's suppose that human 'learn' the 'shame of their nakedness' (not sure here: In German, the respective term is literally 'scham', i.e. 'shame'). Do you think that Bubbles has learned her 'shame of (Faye's partial) nakedness'? If so/if not, why do you think so? Asked jocularly: "What is the problem here?"

3) Uhmmmhyes. Does that make a difference to my point 3) What did you think of my point 3), if anything?

4) Agreed.

5) Agreed ... almost. If AI's can consciously simulate the effects of drunkeness, how does it make the internal experience different from the human one - other than probably being cheaper, and having less adverse health effects? It may be unfair to us, but that doesn't make them less drunk, or does it? Did I maybe miss something you already discussed? I'll try to catch up more thoroughly tomorrow.

[Aenno]

What do you believe to be true? My amateur thoughts about consciousness? Your prior thoughts about consciousness? //

Both. I meant yes, by no means consciousness is merely a 'review' system.

I don't know if consciousness is faster or slower or more distracted than any other parts of our minds

You can't actually distract non-consciousness reactions. Well, you can (very powerful physical pain can break appetite, for instance), but it's should be something really powerful.

I am not sure what you mean by 'consciousness approach' - what little I know of learning suggests that we get faster the more parts of the problem-solving skill become automated and thereby unconscious. //

Consciousness approach to learning is a situation where you know you're learning and know what are you learning. There is, for instance, gaming learning, which works well on little children who can't sustain attention span for "traditional" approaches.

I am not sure what you mean by 'shortcuts'

Shortcuts is simplifications and skipping turns. I mean, it require a hard training to intuitively operate astronomical distances or geological times - because subconscious always trying to short it into "very far" or "long ago". Consciousness do it as well, but it's quite faster to teach consciousness to operate such data.

Forgive my asking - Do you have any formal training in neurosciences, psychiatry, behavioural science or similar?

Microsociology, basic specialization - subcultures, thesis theme - USSR subculture building.

1) Informative and we are agreed -> "Biochemistry is fun, but EXTREMELY messy. So yeah, not every erection is arousal. And not every oxytocin blast is arousal. And not every nipple erection is arousal." Not every physical sign of arousal in humans is a reliable indicator that the mind in the body experiences sexual arousal. I don't see why this should be different in AIs? Or should it?

(Again my question: Formal training in Biochem? Sounds a bit like it.)

It actually shouldn't, as I said somewhere before. Question is then, if it isn't arousal Bubbles shows, what is it, and why do her reaction so mirroring human reaction about arousal display?
(and not exactly - but sociology means hours of psychology, and psychology means basics of biochem)

2) Not sure about the 'they are taught to do those things'. I'm not a parent, but I've heard e.g. fathers reporting "My daughter was 5 (6, whatever) when she banned me from the bathroom", implying very much that it was not the parent teaching the child to be ashamed, but the child telling the parent "Go!". I remember being younger than ten years of age when my parents being naked in front of me-, or my being naked in front of them, started to bother me. I do not recall anybody teaching me to feel that way, it just felt that way.

No, it's not "parents actually demands from their children to do it". But the most neglected thing in pedagogic is ignoring a fact that a child is a sapient being capable to self-learning and self-changing.
First of all, at 6-7 years child already learned that nudity isn't exactly always ok. They were explained about it, and they noticing that parents (and other grown-ups) don't actually going around nude.
Second, and even more difficult thing is that 6-year child have a crisis, not so different as teenage crisis. That's when personal space need and recalculating of relationships happens. Being nude, especially in the bathroom, is ringing "it's not safe".
I'm not sure what to offer as a source - this theme is quite nicely developed in Russian psychology, started by Lev Vygotsky, but I don't know English sources or even how this stage is correctly named in English.

Do you think that Bubbles has learned her 'shame of (Faye's partial) nakedness'? If so/if not, why do you think so? Asked jocularly: "What is the problem here?"

I'd say it's not a shame of nakedness, but shame of showing emotions. She got X (arousal or some substitute reaction), such display is shunned, she is not well, she asking Faye to remove source of emotion (and appeal to social norm, by the way, because it's a safe way to dodge responsibility).
Imagine some kind of court in her head, with a prosecutor saying - "she is displaying arousal! it's not good! let's sentence her to feel shame!". And attorney answering - "not her fault, Your Honor! It's Faye' faux pas!"

3) Uhmmmhyes. Does that make a difference to my point 3) What did you think of my point 3), if anything?

Oh sorry.
As far as I can tell, robosex is actually exchange of packages about personal info and code, and we know it's quite intimate theme for AI. They called it "robotic sex" not because it's including sensual stimulation, but because it has a place in their society that resembling a place sex has in our.

If AI's can consciously simulate the effects of drunkeness, how does it make the internal experience different from the human one - other than probably being cheaper, and having less adverse health effects.

Human can't choose. For human state of drunkeness is a inevitable state happens because they're drinking alcohol. They can want drunkeness (as Faye or Marten after "The Talk"), they can like a taste of spirits, they can drink for a company. They can't became drunk or sober with a snap of fingers.
Did you read "Good Omens" by Prattchet and Gaiman? There is an episode there, where angel and demon drinking.
"A look of pain crossed the angel's suddenly very serious face.
"I can't cope with this while 'm drunk," he said. "I'm going to sober up."
"Me too.""
That's something AI can do, and human can't.
So if for human being drunk is an uncontrollable consequence of some activity, for AI it's a game - it's voluntarily, conscious and optional rule they impose on themselves and can drop it any second.

P.S. Oh, and about Savantism, or intuitive leaps (sorry for missing it first time).
That's quite difficult themes, because here we actually can speculate only. Intuitive leaps, as far as I believe (there are dozens of another theories) is actually overload effect, when problem just "don't fit" into consciousness RAM, but also is very important for said consciousness. Then it's "consciousness loading some outer RAM with same task".
Savantism is even more hard, because by very state savant has we can't communicate nicely to learn a lot about their self-reflexion.

[traroth]

Jeph is SUCH a tease. 

[TheEvilDog]

Around and around and around and around and around and around we go.

This whole discussion is just sinking into the depths of infinity and ad nauseum.

[Tova]

I think this is a fine place to end this story arc, at least for now. I hope to see a new storyline in the next comic. And/or shenanigans.

[Perfectly Reasonable]

Thanks to you folks, I am now imagining a love lorn toaster. Who is very proud of the toast it makes. But is there something more? And now plush chairs enter the picture...

Am I on the verge of understanding Pintsize? (backs away hurriedly)

[MrNumbers]

Dale is just kind of the best isn't he?

[SpanielBear]

2) Not sure about the 'they are taught to do those things'. I'm not a parent, but I've heard e.g. fathers reporting "My daughter was 5 (6, whatever) when she banned me from the bathroom", implying very much that it was not the parent teaching the child to be ashamed, but the child telling the parent "Go!". I remember being younger than ten years of age when my parents being naked in front of me-, or my being naked in front of them, started to bother me. I do not recall anybody teaching me to feel that way, it just felt that way.

No, it's not "parents actually demands from their children to do it". But the most neglected thing in pedagogic is ignoring a fact that a child is a sapient being capable to self-learning and self-changing.
First of all, at 6-7 years child already learned that nudity isn't exactly always ok. They were explained about it, and they noticing that parents (and other grown-ups) don't actually going around nude.
Second, and even more difficult thing is that 6-year child have a crisis, not so different as teenage crisis. That's when personal space need and recalculating of relationships happens. Being nude, especially in the bathroom, is ringing "it's not safe".
I'm not sure what to offer as a source - this theme is quite nicely developed in Russian psychology, started by Lev Vygotsky, but I don't know English sources or even how this stage is correctly named in English.

So, I stopped replying to this thread because while it is fascinating, it was going into areas that I know next to nothing about. My background is philosophy and ersatz psychotherapy (like mental health first aid rather than a degree, I'm definitely not a psychotherapist), and when the discussion moved into the biochemical side I felt happier sitting it out.

But it is fascinating. And there are some points raised here that I think I can jump in on, so here goes.

As far as infant psychology is concerned, there is almost an embarrassment of riches in the western psychological canon, from Freud and Jung through to Melanie Klein and John Bowlby. Again, I'm not an expert here so take what I say with a pinch of salt, but I don't see a huge amount of difference between what you describe and what I understand the basic strokes to be from an English language perspective. I guess though that the developmental stage you are describing is similar to the idea that the experience of becoming aware of oneself as a separate entity to others is both liberating and terrifying. The point at which children discover that their parents are fallible and possibly a threat (your mother stops just feeding you whenever and yells at you when you get angry. Terrifying!), that their needs will not always be met by others, and that they can keep secrets from their parents is a big deal, and is normally described as happening in development terms between the ages of 6 months to 6 years. So that kind of tallies. And yes, it is an awareness that seems to be learned through experience rather than instinctual, and that learning is to a greater or lesser degree unconscious.

If we try and extrapolate that learning process into the development of an AI personality- well, we don't actually have much to go on. We don't know how they're grown, so we don't know whether they go through developmental stages (is something like Eliza the equivalent of an AI newborn? Or are their developmental stages the same as ours but sped up? Do they have attachment figures? How much of their psychology is a pre-programmed function and how much is emergent? Too many questions, not enough evidence for an answer), so trying to draw out comparisons with humanity doesn't really work. If an AI doesn't have a father who can be naked, is there a machine equivalent? "I saw Dad slowing his run-time last night- Gross!"

And then we add *another* layer of complication, because now they have to interact with humanity as well. So that's two layers of socialisation and existential games to have to navigate. Human-centred AI's are not omniscient, they make mistakes about human feelings and intentions which they have to learn to correct, so that seems to indicate that they do not get "Interacting with humans 101" as a simple download. When it comes to us, they try to mimic our ways as much as possible.

Which means I think we come back to the functionality thing again. If Bubbles only wanted to socialise with other robots, she would have no need to go through the difficulty of learning how to interact with humans. Because she does, she is forced to translate her robot psychology into terms that humans can relate to. This could go the other way, and presumably the study of AI psychology would be a thing as we try to do just that, relate to robots on their terms. But for the day to day, it seems far easier for the AI's to translate their inner experiences in terms of human psychology and feeling. And that communication is presumably facilitated by both the software and the hardware they use- Software might give bubbles mastery of the English language, but another package designed to run with her specific chassis may also provide body language cues. And as we know that AI's have unconscious processes in a similar way that we do, it's not inconceivable that they have unconscious behaviours and displays that they aren't immediately aware of.

As far as I can tell, robosex is actually exchange of packages about personal info and code, and we know it's quite intimate theme for AI. They called it "robotic sex" not because it's including sensual stimulation, but because it has a place in their society that resembling a place sex has in our.

In fairness, there is no indication that robo-sex *doesn't* include sensual stimulation. They get an emotional intimacy sure, but looking at Pintsize before and after his date back in the early comics he certainly seemed to have experienced stimulation of some kind. And I seem to recall Momo having a very... immediate reaction to a shirtless Sven (I think? I can't remember where it is in the archives. I recall there being startled pony-tail motion...). In short, when AI seek romance, they definitely can include erotic love as a part of that desire. I don't see any indication that their lust is anything other than raw, as opposed to an intellectual satisfaction. Bubbles' desire for Faye covers a broad spectrum. She loves the emotional connection they have, for sure, but there is something more that she wants and all the signs point to that want being lust-based, at least in part.

Human can't choose. For human state of drunkeness is a inevitable state happens because they're drinking alcohol. They can want drunkeness (as Faye or Marten after "The Talk"), they can like a taste of spirits, they can drink for a company. They can't became drunk or sober with a snap of fingers.
Do you read "Good Omens" by Prattchet and Gaiman? There is an episode there, where angel and demon drinking.
"A look of pain crossed the angel's suddenly very serious face.
"I can't cope with this while 'm drunk," he said. "I'm going to sober up."
"Me too.""
That's something AI can do, and human can't.
So if for human being drunk is an uncontrollable consequence of some activity, for AI it's a game - it's voluntarily, conscious and optional rule they impose on themselves and can drop it any second.

I'm not sure about that. In theory certainly that's true. An AI runs programme:Drunk until it decides end programme:Drunk. But saying that decision is voluntary, conscious and optional is like saying a human choosing to drink is voluntary, conscious and optional. That choice seems to be an open one, but in fact can be driven by all sorts of unconscious desires and emotional drives, to the extent that the choice we have is very limited. If Station were to want to reduce it's run time to avoid something disturbing, it could use the Drunk programme to facilitate that. It's conceivable that it could rationalise the choice to start drinking with a thought similar to "This will help me cope, I can stop whenever I like", but if the disturbing emotion was bad enough it may feel unable to end the programme- it could be too scared, the experience too potentially painful. A robot alcoholic is not an impossible thing to conceive of- It could cure itself, but for whatever reason doesn't feel able to. If we hypothesize a robot subconscious, it may not even know it's motivations for that.

Bringing this back to Bubbles again- why might she want to run Programme:Arousal despite the social and emotional implications of that choice? Well, it may just feel good. It feels *nice* to be aroused, that's kind of the purpose. It's only when we start adding social mores and taboos on top of that that it becomes complicated. Bubbles shows real difficulty admitting to her own desires, to anything really that isn't logical. Part of her development is allowing herself to express those feelings. But to her, some of her feelings- grief, loss, confusion- are so overwhelming that avoiding them is an act of self-defence. And if some emotions are that hard to face, to make conscious, she might feel the same about others- if one snake is poisonous, all become suspect until proven otherwise. So her subconscious may be running her arousal programme on repeat, but she sure as hell isn't going to work too hard to reflect on that fact, because that would risk ending up vulnerable to other sources of psychological pain. This is a paradox- she is feeling something, but can't admit to herself that she is feeling it.

But there is a workaround. By throwing herself into the learned behaviours, she can maintain a herself in a place where she feels arousal but is not obliged to act on it, and can dismiss her inner tension as social anxiety. As the subject of all these emotions is Faye, a human, the only way she can get the object of her arousal to behave in the way she needs is to communicate with her, and she uses the human/AI emotional translator to do it.

Dammit, I just armchair psychologied a combat AI, didn't I? God I love QC. 

EDIT: I think I am going to copy this over to the thread you started, and continue there if you have no objection. The weekly comic seems to have shifted focus, and I can go on about this stuff for ages if I'm not careful.

[SpanielBear]

I think this is a fine place to end this story arc, at least for now. I hope to see a new storyline in the next comic. And/or shenanigans.

Shenanigans! Mere Shenanigans!? This is high drama of the utmost import! DALE HAS SHAVED!!!!

[Aenno]

Thanks to you folks, I am now imagining a love lorn toaster. Who is very proud of the toast it makes. But is there something more? And now plush chairs enter the picture...

Am I on the verge of understanding Pintsize? (backs away hurriedly)

That's not my fault!
Plush chairs was a topic of Marten wet dream in a course of a comics, and AI put into toaster was an example Bubbles used to explain ways to modify AIs.

[Perfectly Reasonable]

I will now indulge myself by repeating my head canon on AI:

1) AI is very much an emergent phenomenon and very poorly understood. There seems to be a great deal of randomness involved.

2) Generating a new AI is computationally expensive (like minting bitcoins) and not something you can do in your basement. I expect there are fewer than 20 super computers in the world that are capable of doing this.

3) Once you have created an AI, you have an obligation to it. You cannot delete it, or shove it into a virtual world. It must be given the same potential for existence as a meatsack intelligence. (From the famous speech before the U.N. :   Not masters. Not slaves. Equals.)

So if you try to program an AI for a specific task, you are likely to end up with garbage that does not even compile, let alone run in a meaningful way. Keep trying, and you -may- get what you want .... along with a bunch of quirky AIs that you will need to place ... somewhere.

Speculating on how AIs might be programmed to react to certain stimuli is interesting ----
but speculative. For instance, AIs were not programmed to have libidos. (And they are not about to give them up.)

[TheEvilDog]

Eh, new comic.

Let the screams begin in 5, 4, 3, 2...and go!

[Tova]

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh?

[zisraelsen]

I don't know the name of it, but I love the white-background thing Jeph has started doing. It feels like the webcomic equivalent of a super-deadpan punchline delivery.

[OldGoat]

Jeph's been feeling the need to let his inner manga artist out to play.

[shanejayell]

Yay Coffee of Doom!

I also hope we see the library again. Been awhile.

[Toe]

We interrupt your regularly scheduled thread to bring you Stoats!

[SpanielBear]

OH MY GOD THEY ARE ADORABLE!!!!

*Ahem*

I mean, nice muscovid. Kudos.

[foolsguinea]

Whoa. I remember these characters. From a long time ago.

[sitnspin]

I will admit that I forgot Emily worked at the coffee shop.

[Tova]

OH MY GOD THEY ARE ADORABLE!!!!

*Ahem*

I mean, nice muscovid. Kudos.

I, too, would like to report that I made various polite and dignified sounds of approval while viewing the stoats.

[cloudatlatl]

I smiled a whole lot at the new comic today and I just want to establish that I liked it a whole lot before I pick on one little thing.

Has Dora... lost her look? I'm not sure what makes her Dora anymore.  In the first panel I thought she was Emily, until Emily showed up.