Sam Davies

I dare you to eat the most dare-able thing from the concessions stand. I’ll wait…

I’d personally go farther, and say that policy should be that any employee that chose to refer to any student as Student [Surname] should do so for all of their students for consistency. But I’m a bit of a hard ass.

“Student [Surname]” seems like a reasonable accommodation to me! And “your student” during a parent conference is perfectly fine. How often do you use third-person pronouns, really?

Whatever the right wording is, something like, “employees are prohibited from using pronouns for a student that do not match those in guidelines [references a, b, c, etc]” but the policy *only* covers what they are prohibited from doing, and compels them to do nothing.

*incorrect pronouns. They can choose to use correct pronouns, or continue to follow the policy and abstain from incorrect pronouns and stop using all pronouns. If ”they” is not an incorrect pronoun, they can use it.

Right, I’m not saying mandating the use of correct pronouns, but prohibiting the use of incorrect ones. If the policy only says “don’t use incorrect pronouns” and only talks about the negative case, nothing is compelled. That employee no longer gets to use pronouns.

Couldn’t you invert it and prohibit the use incorrect pronouns? Either the employee uses the correct pronouns, or they always refer to the student as “Student [Surname]” and never use pronouns. No speech is compelled.

Sam holds a clipboard.

Out at early voting advocating for UpVote Virginia! Rank choice voting for everyone!

I’m going to vote for the Virginia AG candidate who didn’t accuse me of mutilating my kid.

How to eat with others This is the last painting I did at my old studio. I left it behind. You can support my shenanigans for a mere $2/mo. This week’s question comes to us from...

"If you had dinner with a trans friend on Tuesday, and dinner with fascists on Thursday, your trans friend had dinner with a fascist on Tuesday."

Mike Montero, “How to eat with others”

I like the Phantom fight in Silksong. It was several extended moments of pure video game joy.

I like the Snoopy Apple Watch face. It’s a source of whimsy in my life.

The Touch Bar has returned after a full Shutdown/Restart cycle. We’ll see if it sticks.

Looks like version .0 of macOS Tahoe has completed killed the Touch Bar on my M1 MacBook Pro.

That show was sheer elegance in its simplicity.

Silksong: A Brief Diary

Go north: brutal boss fight, die
Go east: brutal gauntlet fight, die
Go west: brutal platforming with no checkpoint, die and respawn far away
Go south: find some money, exits are north, east and west.

Hot Take: Silksong is really dang fun.

Cleaning up their room after sending my firstborn off to college I now know where all the lightning cables went.

Two questions: 1. Is there a young girl with her little sister asleep on her back waiting for a bus next to you? and 2. Have you been a secret Totoro this whole time?

If the mnemonic for a corporate compliance exercise is going to be “SMART”, the R can’t be “Remember”. If I could remember, I wouldn’t need a mnemonic!

Radiobread

Atomic Robo and the Peril of Prometheus + Dr Dino's Cookbook Robo has to solve a murder while adrift on the high seas as a new Helsingard imperils millions of lives in Los Angeles!

Give us some earth dollars please so that we can continue making comics about this sweet robot dad

www.kickstarter.com/projects/tes...

If you are looking for a good cause, Safe Harbor provides services to sex and labor trafficking survivors in Henrico County and throughout Virginia.

Please donate through my wife’s fundraising page!

Here goes one of my five posts for the year, and the only one asking for money. If you 1) are not a fan of human trafficking and 2) would like to support an organization helping survivors, please donate to Safe Harbor’s Walk To End It! give.safeharborshelter.com/kzarfas

“Now with less lying!” seems like an odd sales pitch for a software service.

It’s 3:50, the time of day I always think I’ve left the oven on.

@gamechangershow.bsky.social If the Hot Dog Boys are willing to share, I’m quite curious about their Constitution.

Please tell me that you had a stone-fruit-based cocktail.

More Cowardice from VCU Health Leadership: https://samdavies.me/2025/07/30/more-cowardice-from-vcu-health.html

VCU Health has halted gender-affirming care for trans youth and young adults, prompting anger and disappointment over perceived discrimination and lack of accountability.