Jess Wayde

I'm curious if Jessy has numbers to show how AI is increasing efficiency. The only numbers I've seen on that front tend to state AI doesn't increase efficiency at all--but I also tend to hang out in the AI-skeptical areas.

Katamari is my favourite series of all time but the problem with making a new katamari is that a) keita takahashi doesn’t get paid and b) nobody can ever improve upon we <3 katamari!! there’s nowhre to go but down

There's a specific passage that basically all online discourse about IT has centered on. I don't even care. I really don't. I feel that I get the intent of that bit, the symbolism, and I never thought of it until the new movie's trailer dropped and a comment asked if the "child orgy" would feature.

The feeling that the world is both more beautiful and fantastical as well as more dangerous and sinister than anyone lets on, that belief itself is a force like gravity or magnetism. The terror that some day you will lose and forget your best (fifth grade) friends. Hmmmmm. Chicken soup.

I'm rereading IT, sort of because it's October and sort of because the themes struck me and sort of because it is, truly, one of my comfort books. Few books make me feel as warm and happy, or make me smile and laugh, as IT. It makes me nostalgic for childhood like nothing else.

Grief is Like Falling on Your Butt, Over and Over On the stupidity of brains and their expectations.

I wrote a long-ish essay about what it feels like to mourn someone you were close to. It’s entirely off-the-cuff and I have no idea if it’s contributing anything important to any kind of conversation, but hey, here it is.

Just had a flashback to pulling my shirt collar down around my shoulders because I wanted to look like Jasmine. I thought she was awesome.

"No signs" my ass.

It's funny because I feel like I'm very good at predicting human behavior, but I have no capability to predict/understand what compels a human to think in the necessary manner to produce that behavior.

It is always nice hearing a customer service agent go from "I can't believe this person thinks there's a bug in our system" to "goddamnit there's a bug in our system and this person is rightfully annoyed."

I read way too much into people's textual tones, when they're probably just being neutral and brief. That reads to me as "annoyed", "disinterested", or "trying way too hard to be laconic and witty".

There's something extremely frustrating to be specifically brought onto a project as the "frontend expert" and then be sent a heck of a lot of backend tasks.

I would feel differently about it if they had been upfront about it being a full-stack job.

Maybe Tide Pods shouldn't have gone with "New Look, Same Great Taste".

Panel 1: A woman, Jess, lays in a tattoo artist’s chair while a tattoo artist gives her a fresh tattoo of vines and leaves. Caption: 2024. Tattoos ARE painful, of course—everyone asks—but that only lasts a few hours. Artist: You doing alright? Jess: Oh sure. Caption: To me it’s like undergoing a difficult but wonderful transformation: the process of making my body beautiful in a way that it isn’t by default, making it uniquely mine. It’s a concept that scared me for most of my life. Panel 2: Jess, now a young girl, peels stickers off of an otherwise clean door. Her mother watches and shakes a finger. Caption: 1996. In second grade I got in trouble for putting stickers on my bedroom door. Mom: Stickers ruin what they’re stuck to. Peel them off before they become permanent. Caption: Just as Mom predicted, there’d be sticker ghosts stuck to the door for years to come, a constant reminder of how permanence can mar otherwise perfect surfaces. Panel 3: A young man, Jess’s brother, poses to show off his tattoos. Behind him are other very basic tattoos. Caption: When my brother turned 18 and started getting tattoos, they struck me as just like those stickers: one-time mistakes that you’re then reminded of every day. Bad bumper stickers that reduce you to the symbols you’ve covered yourself in. Panel 4: Three arms sporting different tattoos are backed by several other abstract organic designs. Caption: After moving to Portland and seeing FAR more tattoos I saw them as opportunities to display beautiful art, to add character to otherwise featureless skin, to remind yourself of who you are, what your history is, and what you believe in. Panel 5: Jess stands in shorts and a sports bra with glowing white eyes in a reference or parody of De Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man”, half of her body covered in more leaves, vines, and shapes. Caption: 203X? It was my body before, but now it can be mine by choice, how I want it to be. Why wouldn’t I want that to be permanent?

Here's all four panels if you like that! Why not?

If you have an Instagram account (and really I don't blame you for not) you can get these when I post them at instagram.com/littlepilescomic

A woman, Jess, lays in a tattoo artist’s chair, her eyes closed and body relaxed, while a tattoo artist gives her a fresh tattoo of vines and leaves. Caption: 2024. Tattoos ARE painful, of course—everyone asks—but that only lasts a few hours. Artist: You doing alright? Jess: Oh sure. Caption: To me it’s like undergoing a difficult but wonderful transformation: the process of making my body beautiful in a way that it isn’t by default, making it uniquely mine. It’s a concept that scared me for most of my life.

Jess, now a young girl, peels stickers off of an otherwise clean door. Her mother watches and shakes a finger. Caption: 1996. In second grade I got in trouble for putting stickers on my bedroom door. Mom: Stickers ruin what they’re stuck to. Peel them off before they become permanent. Caption: Just as Mom predicted, there’d be sticker ghosts stuck to the door for years to come, a constant reminder of how permanence can mar otherwise perfect surfaces.

Panel 1: A young man, Jess’s brother, poses to show off his tattoos: two stars on his shoulders, and “aquitas veritas” across his chest. Behind him are other very basic tattoos: “no ragrets”, a “mom” heart with an arrow through it, a Triforce, and an embossed star. Caption: When my brother turned 18 and started getting tattoos, they struck me as just like those stickers: one-time mistakes that you’re then reminded of every day. Bad bumper stickers that reduce you to the symbols you’ve covered yourself in. Panel 2: Three arms sporting different tattoos (a pair of blacksmith tongs, abstract leaves and swirls, and a simple dot-and-bar tattoo) are backed by several other abstract organic designs. Caption: After moving to Portland and seeing FAR more tattoos I saw them as opportunities to display beautiful art, to add character to otherwise featureless skin, to remind yourself of who you are, what your history is, and what you believe in.

Jess, once more an adult, stands in shorts and a sports bra with glowing white eyes in a reference or parody of De Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man”, half of her body covered in more leaves, vines, and shapes, along with the dot-and-line tattoo from the previous panel. Caption: 203X? It was my body before, but now it can be mine by choice, how I want it to be. Why wouldn’t I want that to be permanent?

Two weeks ago I posted this comic to Instagram, and now you, my loyal follower(s?) can see it. It's about tattoos, ragrets, and life in the time before Goo Gone.

Luckily my spouse is AWESOME and our disagreement turned into research which turned into both of us marveling at how complex the world is and how difficult it is to get the complete picture on your own. Isn't that FUCKING AWESOME? (5/5)

The goal is to learn. That should always be the goal.

When I do this with anyone but my spouse, they just think I want to win the argument. Maybe I want to at the exact moment of the argument, but later all I care about is how to be correct the next time. I want to know how the world works, because it helps me make correct decisions. (4/5)

In this case my research revealed to me that both me and my spouse only have part of the picture, which is, otherwise, huge and complicated and full of unknowns. That's almost always where this research leads, and I LOVE IT. The world is BIG and VAST and ENDLESS and CONFUSING. (3/5)

This is something I've done my entire life, and after a certain point I learned not to actually share my research with the other party, because they would think that I just wanted to "win". Maybe that's why I started doing this, but eventually I learned that, well, I'm often wrong. (2/5)

This might be a topic for a future journal comic, but recently I got into a "disagreement" with my spouse over something. Once we both cooled off and spoke more openly about it, we realized we both had some assumptions about how humans work, so I dove into research on the topic. (1/5)

If I could, I'd respond to 99.9% of Twitch/Youtube Live/any kind of streaming's chatroom: "WHO CARES"

Also lol I wonder what the "1996" caption means and if it has anything to do with the horse sketch preceding it???????

These are beautiful and thank you so much for your rant. I'd 100 percent read the entire thing (and not just because I'm another queer kid who escaped Boise), because you are hitting something real here: it's the journey that makes stories have impact, that makes them make sense. The little details.

At this point I can buy six full price games on day one instead of an annual subscription.

I had to drop it, alas. It feels like way too much and made me question it all. Cancelled my whole subscription as thanks.

Praying for guidance makes sense to me. You have an all-powerful deity, they'll know what the best thing for you to do is.

Praying for the deity to intercede on your behalf, though, is probably the most self-centered thing you can do.

My favorite part about reading updates on the Portland ICE protests in @theguardian.com is the very clear disdain they have for the fact they even have to report on it. It is *chef's kiss*.

Anyway, Portland remains beautiful and autumny! I never want to live anywhere else. Please leave, haters.

Re-reading Bone and realizing a character I wrote years ago was basically Gran'ma Ben. There are worse accidentally homages to make.

Oh thank god Kit Kittredge's real first name is "Margaret". I was worried that some parent, even a fictional one in the American Girl universe, had named their daughter "Kit Kittredge".

My favorite Jane Goodall fact is that, as a child, she raced snails with her friends.

I have arguments in my head constantly, and the really big problem is that the people I argue with are super good at making their arguments. Not enough to convince ME, but at least enough to convince THEMSELVES.