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Bradley, Chadley, and Thadley

Bradwick, Chadwick, and Thadwick

Braddeus, Chaddeus, and Thaddeus

Eric, you fool, the bros are not of House Bros, they are mere pretenders!

Purple Monkey Hamwasher for Space Dishes

[Method of Madness]

I should probably think of a better poll, maybe I'll try to do a better one mid-week. Should be an interesting week!

[jwhouk]

(looks at watch)
(looks at calendar)
(looks at most recent comic)

May I suggest a slight change of Thread Title?

(points to Subject Line)

[shanejayell]

Dates are wrong.

Wonder if we'll get a Mother's Day strip? We haven't seen the cast Moms in awhile.

[blt]

I could see Marten and Claire's moms being good friends.

[Kugai]

Dates are wrong

[cesium133]

Raisins are right, though.

[Kugai]

That's a Plum pun

[brasca]

I could see Marten and Claire's moms being good friends.

I could see them having some past meeting.

[Tova]

Raisins aren't right. Obviously. The problem is that it's not currants.   

[TheEvilDog]

Oh my god, we've gone back in time...

Quick! Someone get the lottery numbers! We can become millionaires!

[Method of Madness]

My bad, I copied the title intending to change the details and...

Fixed now though.

[blt]

Early comic and we finally have a shop name.

It would have probably been easier for people to guess it back in whatever old thread if it hadn't involved the street the shop is on.

[Method of Madness]

Are the two non-Papyrus fonts real?

[cesium133]

Curlz MT is a real font that's supposed to resemble a stereotypical teenage girl's handwriting. I don't know about the other one but it's probably real.

[mercykills]

Papyrus Font? What are you opening a restaurant for hipster vegans*? Come on, Faye.

*with love to my hipster vegans

Are the two non-Papyrus fonts real?

I've seen fonts meant to resemble marker felt but not actually named 'Marker Felt'.

[Method of Madness]

Maybe she just likes Undertale.

[mercykills]

Maybe she just likes Undertale.

Lol. A distinct possibility.

Therefore, I have elected to grant pity. XD

[A small perverse otter]

Yes, unfortunately, all the fonts are real. Bubbles, as usual, recognizes that they are suboptimal...

[Mehre]

Nah, i believe Faye was just making fun. Does anyone else feel a little bit played by that name? After all those names here on forums and to have it named after a street. Trolling par excellance.

[foolsguinea]

Are the two non-Papyrus fonts real?

I hope so, I just downloaded one of them.

[Geezergeek]

No. 3481:  This is what Jeph has been aiming at for all these years -- from now on, we'll get a revised version of Gasoline Alley. 

[jheartney]

Marker Felt
Curls MT

(Both would be hideous choices for their logo.)

Bubbles is my kind of client. Interesting that in QC Land, we have AIs doing traditionally human work like accounting and graphic design.

Bubbles and Faye should incorporate an LLC for Union Robotics ASAP. They should also make any clients sign a waiver to prevent their being sued frivolously.

[Tova]

Nah, i believe Faye was just making fun. Does anyone else feel a little bit played by that name? After all those names here on forums and to have it named after a street. Trolling par excellance.

I think it's a pretty solid name, myself. No, I don't think there's any trolling there.

On the other hand, I think Jeph may well indirectly be poking fun at some of the suggested business names via Faye's terrible font choices.

[jheartney]

The name has more than one layer. Yes, Union Street, but it also is a union of a human and AI giving the equivalent of healthcare to AIs.

I'm wondering how many other AI-based clinics there are in QC world. From May's previous predicament, it doesn't sound like it's a common type of service. I wonder how far it will go in replicating human health care; will there eventually be insurance policies Ais can buy to help out with unexpected catastrophic care? Would Faye and Bubbles be equipped to handle such care?

[sitnspin]

Since they can purchase new chassis, and those chassis can quite expensive, I'd think there would be insurance policies for them not unlike auto insurance.

[Toe]

Needs more Bleeding Cowboys.

[shanejayell]

'Robot Ass Repair' sadly ALSO has a nice ring. Oh well.

[BenRG]

Okay, I've checked out all of those fonts and, frankly, the only problem with them is that they're the sort of fonts that you would expect to be on signs outside shops with small budgets and few prospects. There are several in my local market that glory in such names as: "Fresh Fruit's and Veg's" and "Cheap Value £1! £1! £1!" Maybe it's just that Bubbles is smart enough to know that Faye has a mischievous streak and automatically distrusts everything she says when she grins like that!

I may be guilty of over-reading this, but Bubbles looks a little surprised in Panel 3. Her expression seems to say to me: "What...? Faye made a sensible suggestion? What Bizarro alternate universe is this?"

That said... I've got an odd feeling that I'm missing a reference here. Who or what are Union Robotics and why do I feel that Faye using the name is either inviting a lawsuit or giving the impression that she and Bubbles are the seed to something far bigger?

Additionally: Seriously, Jeph, did you see the poll I put up and decide that you definitely did not want us to think that you were taking our suggestions?


[EDIT]
Thanks to the hard work of someone on the Subreddit and the magic that is Google Maps, I think that I may have found the real-world location: 3 Union Street. Check it out and tell me what you think!

[jwhouk]

US Robotics, perhaps?

Sent from my NXA8QC116 using Tapatalk

[Case]

Oh my god, we've gone back in time...

Quick! Someone get the lottery numbers! We can become millionaires!

Somebody called for The News?

[Zebediah]

Thanks to the hard work of someone on the Subreddit and the magic that is Google Maps, I think that I may have found the real-world location: 3 Union Street. Check it out and tell me what you think!

Where "Spirit of the Heart Wellness" is currently located IRL. And which, technically, is on Market Street.

I was a little surprised - Union Street is a residential street. But yeah, alternate universe and all that.

[Tova]

I had a peek. Yep, looks like a real life location to me. Checks out.

[pwhodges]

Apologies to old hands, but it occurred to me that newer members might not be aware that at one time (though it seems to have been revamped recently) this web site had a contribution from Jeph in the form of this image.

Jeph was railing against Comic Sans twelve years ago (the dead link was to the image above) - he also mentions Papyrus there if you scroll down.

Here's a nice typographic explanation of what's wrong with Comic Sans.

[SubaruStephen]

At least she didn't suggest Wingdings...

[blt]

You'd figure that an AI, with access to all that computing power and probably a font database, would find wingdings just as intelligible as normal text.

[Neko_Ali]

Early comic and we finally have a shop name.

It would have probably been easier for people to guess it back in whatever old thread if it hadn't involved the street the shop is on.

And my dream of Assbutts, Inc has been shot down before even being suggested.

Ah well. Maybe Gorillaz can make it into a new song.

[brasca]

The name has more than one layer. Yes, Union Street, but it also is a union of a human and AI giving the equivalent of healthcare to AIs.

I'm wondering how many other AI-based clinics there are in QC world. From May's previous predicament, it doesn't sound like it's a common type of service. I wonder how far it will go in replicating human health care; will there eventually be insurance policies Ais can buy to help out with unexpected catastrophic care? Would Faye and Bubbles be equipped to handle such care?

I hope not because they'd be getting involved with something more corrupt than Corpse Witch and more powerful than Spooky Bot...  The insurance industry!

[Is it cold in here?]

AIs are full citizens and QC Massachusetts has good health care availability, so much so that coffee shop employees have group coverage.

Yet May couldn't get her chassis breakdown covered.

Perhaps the law simply hasn't caught up yet.

Maybe the AIs opted out! Being in a health insurance pool with organics would be hella expensive for limited benefit.

[TheEvilDog]

Yet May couldn't get her chassis breakdown covered.

Perhaps the law simply hasn't caught up yet.

Less that she couldn't get chassis coverage and more to do with the fact that she is still a recent parolee and therefore low on the list of AI the government is willing to get a more advanced chassis to. At this stage, an RC car would have been a step up over what May was given.

[Nycticoraci]

Faye's box has changed in the final panel! It's no longer a font message. I wonder why it changed?

[TheEvilDog]

Faye's box has changed in the final panel! It's no longer a font message. I wonder why it changed?

Eh, maybe Jeph just didn't like the original punchline. Alas we do not know, for we are not fonts of knowledge.

[pwhodges]

That's a shame - I guess Jeph thought it was too nerdish, perhaps?

[cesium133]

He wanted to make us look dumb. 

[BenRG]

I've still got the old speech bubble; maybe my cache isn't clearing out. Could someone tell me what are Faye's new lines in panel 4?

*Manually Clears Cache* Oh! I see! Yeah, I think I see Jeph's reason for doing this; he probably thought the original punchline was too 'techy' for a general audience. It also relates to a flash-in-the-pan Internet meme that sort of died out about five years ago which, again, he may have felt made it somewhat inaccessible.

[dna_level_c]

Faye's box has changed in the final panel! It's no longer a font message. I wonder why it changed?

Clearly, the Comic Sans advisory board got to him.

[Case]

Maybe the AIs opted out! Being in a health insurance pool with organics would be hella expensive for limited benefit.

Uhmmmmh - Given that QC-verse AI chassis do not come with self-repair capabilities, I'd say the opposite could very well be true (Meaning that humans are probably significantly less likely to have issues due to normal wear & tear, but when we have issues, they are likely to be more costly to treat).

May's chassis showed critical material-fatigue in a joint in under a year - ever heard of a human whose arms fell off simply due to use?

[BenRG]

This is another area in which the culture of government in the US is essentially incomprehensible to the European mind. To public agencies in the US, a parolee is sort of an unclean untouchable who is not really considered worthy of any public services. If May's chassis is defective at the time she received it (which appears to be the case, given her complaints about uneven leg length), well that's her fault for committing a crime. She needs to suck it up and not use up more precious taxpayer's resources by her whining for repairs.

This is ridiculous in fiction. In real life, it becomes a serious driver for recidivism. No-one (at least no-one with the power to do anything about it) seems to care. Jeph made this point by showing how this situation basically forced May into going to a criminal's body-shop and later being forced into prostitution to pay for cosmetic work to make her face match the rest of her body (again a service that she was forced to buy from a serious criminal). This was something that, if Officer Basilisk hadn't been a nice 'bot, would probably have led to her parole being cancelled and her being sent back to Robot Jail (a nightmare for her, from all accounts).

[Morituri]

People really, really hate comic sans.

I don't particularly like it myself.  I would greatly prefer a 'condensed' font that gets about 1.5x as many letters per inch on a line, and Comic Sans looks HORRIBLE - I mean, even more horrible than the other hand-lettering fonts I have available - if you do any kind of scripted conversion to make a condensed font out of it.

But if you asked me the name of a font that mimics printed hand-lettering, and you did it (as most people would) without even telling me what kind of computer or operating system you're using or what your font resources are or whether you're willing to pay money for a font and what language you're writing in and whether you want most of the printable Unicode repertoire and whether you need bold or italic effects and whether you're willing to go download something from a website you've never heard of and install it on your machine, or where to go to get it, or whether  you're relying on it to already be installed on the machines of the people reading the stuff you want to appear in it ...

I would say Comic Sans.

It's available everywhere.  It's free.  It's got a truly extensive character repertoire.  Its character repertoire is available in bold and italic (though not in condensed).  And if someone is looking for a hand-lettering effect, it's really and truly the only thing I know to recommend to them, that I can recommend without getting into a long-winded discussion of what conditions they have and where and in what context they want to use it and what effects they need and so on.  And I don't want to get into that discussion, because I'm not a graphic designer and it's a boring conversation to me.  This only ever comes up when someone is talking about what  web interface they want to hang in front of the code that I wrote and care about, and they have missed the fact that what I do doesn't have jack to do with web interfaces and that I don't give a crap about web interfaces.

Seriously.  I don't want to go on recommending a font people hate so horribly.  Tell me something else - ANYTHING else - that meets universal-use conditions as well as comic sans does.

[TheEvilDog]

May's chassis showed critical material-fatigue in a joint in under a year - ever heard of a human whose arms fell off simply due to use?

If May's chassis is defective at the time she received it (which appears to be the case, given her complaints about uneven leg length),

The impression given in the comic is that the chassis wasn't defective, but rather it was so ridiculously old (by AI standards) that it was out of warranty and thus just falling apart.

It's quite possible that the US government in the QC-verse maintains an AI version of the aircraft boneyard, not for military purposes but for the fact that governments never throw anything away and uses the first generation models for parolees because its cheaper than giving them a more up to date body.

[jheartney]

Faye's box has changed in the final panel! It's no longer a font message. I wonder why it changed?

The wacky-font punchline was too obscure. Also a bit implausible that Bubbles is familiar enough with typography to know that Faye's font recommendations were crappy just from the font names.