this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2026
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Comic Strips

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Comic Strips is a community for those who love comic stories.

Rules
  1. πŸ˜‡ Be Nice!

    • Treat others with respect and dignity. Friendly banter is okay, as long as it is mutual; keyword: friendly.
  2. 🏘️ Community Standards

    • Comics should be a full story, from start to finish, in one post.
    • Posts should be safe and enjoyable by the majority of community members, both here on lemmy.world and other instances.
    • Any comic that would qualify as raunchy, lewd, or otherwise draw unwanted attention by nosy coworkers, spouses, or family members should be tagged as NSFW.
    • Moderators have final say on what and what does not qualify as appropriate. Use common sense, and if need be, err on the side of caution.
  3. 🧬 Keep it Real

    • Comics should be made and posted by real human beans, not by automated means like bots or AI. This is not the community for that sort of thing.
  4. πŸ“½οΈ Credit Where Credit is Due

    • Comics should include the original attribution to the artist(s) involved, and be unmodified. Bonus points if you include a link back to their website. When in doubt, use a reverse image search to try to find the original version. Repeat offenders will have their posts removed, be temporarily banned from posting, or if all else fails, be permanently banned from posting.
    • Attributions include, but are not limited to, watermarks, links, or other text or imagery that artists add to their comics to use for identification purposes. If you find a comic without any such markings, it would be a good idea to see if you can find an original version. If one cannot be found, say so and ask the community for help!
  5. πŸ“‹ Post Formatting

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    • Meta posts about the community should be tagged with [Meta] either at the beginning or the end of the post title.
    • When linking to a comic hosted on another site, ensure the link is to the comic itself and not just to the website; e.g.,
      βœ… Correct: https://xkcd.com/386/
      ❌ Incorrect: https://xkcd.com/
  6. πŸ“¬ Post Frequency/SPAM

    • Each user (regardless of instance) may post up to five (5 πŸ–) comics a day. This can be any combination of personal comics you have written yourself, or other author's comics. Any comics exceeding five (5 πŸ–) will be removed.
  7. πŸ΄β€β˜ οΈ Internationalization (i18n)

    • Non-English posts are welcome. Please tag the post title with the original language, and include an English translation in the body of the post; e.g.,
      SΓ­, por favor [Spanish/EspaΓ±ol]
  8. 🍿 Moderation

    • We are human, just like most everybody else on Lemmy. If you feel a moderation decision was made in error, you are welcome to reach out to anybody on the moderation team for clarification. Keep in mind that moderation decisions may be final.
    • When reporting posts and/or comments, quote which rule is being broken, and why you feel it broke the rules.
Banned Artists

The following artists are banned from the community.

  1. Jago
  2. Stonetoss

It should be noted that when you make reports, it is your responsibility to provide rational reasoning why something should be removed. Saying it simply breaks community rules is not always good enough.

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Note: This is not a rule, but a helpful suggestion.

When posting images, you should strive to add alt-text for screen readers to use to describe the image you're posting:

Another helpful thing to do is to provide a transcription of the text in your images, as well as brief descriptions of what's going on. (example)

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[–] TheBlackLounge@lemmy.zip 117 points 4 months ago (26 children)

The pyramids were not built by slaves. They were built by farmers during downtime, they were treated well. Pharaohs were living gods, so building for them and getting paid for it mustn't have been that different from building a cathedral.

[–] nexguy@lemmy.world 17 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Yes guys it was fine. You just pretend that you are a god through threat of violence and having an uneducated population then get them to do things for you. It's great!

[–] ameancow@lemmy.world 48 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (8 children)

It was a vastly better situation than a lot of wandering tribes had it back then.

We can analyze history without trying to judge it by modern ideals or values, it's a lot better that way, trust me. You learn more.

[–] msage@programming.dev 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Isn't it like working for Amazon today?

You work for some pay and all the value goes to the rich person on top.

[–] ameancow@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

It makes less sense today, in the modern age we have the capability to provide for people in mass-scale, and today we have more alternatives for different lifestyles. Like, if you can't stand working for Amazon, there are ways you can go live off the land if you know your agriculture and farming. Or you can self-employ, you can gamble on all kinds of things if you're good at navigating the system, you can save money and change your location or your career. Not always easy but for a lot of people the option is there.

In around 4000 BC your options were either getting work stacking giant rocks for a living God, or go out to the wilderness and pray to whatever gods you believe in that you don't grow enough crops or build a large enough family that it attracts the attention of another tribe with no qualms about murdering everyone and taking your stockpiles.

Not exactly the best options either way, but it gets even worse the further back you go.

[–] msage@programming.dev 2 points 4 months ago

We are going backwards, I see.

If Bezos had his way, it would be the same today.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

It was a vastly better situation than a lot of wandering tribes had it back then.

No it wasn't. Life expectancy was shorter. They had higher instances of domestic violence and stunted growth from disease and malnutrition. The process of sustaining an agricultural economy is grueling, the labor monotonous, and the results of months of labor can be as fickle as the wind. And grain-based diets are fucking horrible for your health - particularly with respect to your teeth and your weight.

Wandering tribes had it significantly better. That's why migrant civilizations - from the Hittites to the Persians to the Mongols to the Apache - were such a terror for agricultural communities. They were more fit, often more intelligent (or at least more educated), and because they were more mobile they could outrun regional catastrophes and pounce upon underdeveloped unprepared sedentary populations hundreds of miles away.

Large agricultural societies were good at one thing and that was getting large numbers of people in a dense community to fuck out kids at a rapid rate. And eventually these large populations developed the industries capable of winning wars of attrition against migrant raiders.

But this process took millennia. It was iterative and routinely prone to failure. And absent membership in the rarefied elite - the planter class, the aristocracy, the theocracy - you were much better off as a nomad than a serf until perhaps 80-150 years ago, depending on where you were living.

Depending on how you want to view the world, nomadic peoples are still at the forefront of human civilization. We've congealed this cohort of people into institutions we call corporations and militaries. But you better believe the overseas contractor driving a truck or piloting a drone in Iraq is doing way better than the fertile crescent farmers who have been tilling the soil for the last 10,000 years.

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[–] SLVRDRGN@lemmy.world 7 points 4 months ago (3 children)

But we know they weren't living gods, so what does that make this system really?

The workers quarters at the Giza necropolis have been excavated, and they found evidence that the work crews lived a pretty high standard of life. Yes, as far as I know other than transporting stones via the Nile they were built with human muscle power, but the men cutting and moving the stones were fed an extremely luxurious diet for the time. Huge numbers of bakeries were found, along with evidence of vegetables, fish, beef...my personal hypothesis is this is a requirement; the Great Pyramid is probably the greatest feat of athleticism ever performed, and you had to feed the men lots of calories, protein, vitamins and minerals to get it done.

They got healthcare, too. There have been bodies found that showed healed amputations. People got hurt on the job but were cared for as best as they knew how 4,000 years ago.

Now imagine you're a young man living in some village in lower Egypt in the 4th dynasty, and a royal messenger shows up recruiting workers to build some big triangle in the West for the king, and they promise wages along with all the beer, bread and steak you can eat made and served by more young women than you knew existed, plus medical and dental. You'd probably go check out the king's big triangle thing. I've taken worse jobs than that.

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[–] einkorn@feddit.org 7 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Well, building cathedrals wasn't fun either unless you were the guy in charge.

[–] TheBlackLounge@lemmy.zip 10 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Who says it wasn't? Probably shorter days than us, more community, satisfaction of serving god...

Also allowed for artists to do some kick ass art with restrictions of course

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

They were built by farmers during downtime, they were treated well.

The Pharaoh's government would take a tithe of the farmer's crops during the growing season and hold it in reserve. Farmers then got a share of their deposits back in exchange for doing this backbreaking work in pursuit of the vanity projects of the wealthiest merchant and priest families (of which the Pharaoh's was the pinnacle).

Idk what "treated well" is supposed to mean in this context. They were treated about as well as any other laboring people. But the average life expectancy of an Egyptian laborer was late-30s to early-40s. They worked until their bodies gave out and then their kids took over.

I wouldn't call any kind of Bronze Age agricultural society benevolent to its working class.

[–] TheBlackLounge@lemmy.zip 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

You're generalizing a few millennia of civilization. That doesn't really make sense.

The low life expectancy in Egypt seems cherry picked from one search result you found? Seems to be about a single village with data from about a century? Might as well have been disease. For all its fertility, farming in water comes with big downsides.

And Egypt has always been surrounded by nomadic tribes. Leaving the kingdom must have been so much easier than leaving capitalism today. But people chose for stability which the pharaoh provided. They weren't slaves, unlike the actual slaves which they did own.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago

The low life expectancy in Egypt seems cherry picked from one search result you found? Seems to be about a single village with data from about a century?

A bit more than that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_the_Grain:_A_Deep_History_of_the_Earliest_States

Might as well have been disease.

Animal husbandry is the root cause of a host of common diseases.

And Egypt has always been surrounded by nomadic tribes. Leaving the kingdom must have been so much easier than leaving capitalism today.

Traveling by foot across the wilderness into a civilization you know nothing about - not the language nor the customs nor anyone eager to accept you as a foreign migrant?

Trivial, really. They just used Egypt GPS.

[–] AceBonobo@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago (9 children)

Why's that guy holding a whip?

[–] zout@fedia.io 35 points 4 months ago (1 children)
[–] athatet@lemmy.zip 4 points 4 months ago

β€œI’m not really bad. I’m just drawn that way.”

[–] n3cr0@lemmy.world 28 points 4 months ago

He's a motivation coach and this is motivation tool.

[–] PlaidBaron@lemmy.world 15 points 4 months ago

I cant tell if this is a joke or serious anymore.

[–] Franconian_Nomad@feddit.org 15 points 4 months ago

He’s into some kinky stuff.

[–] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 14 points 4 months ago (1 children)

He dangles that little frayed part in front of them and they get so distracted chasing it they forget they’re working

[–] Kirp123@lemmy.world 3 points 4 months ago

The ancient equivalent of key jingling.

[–] Kirp123@lemmy.world 8 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I think that's a fishing pole, he's going fishing and stopped to check on his friends.

[–] PlaidBaron@lemmy.world 3 points 4 months ago

So actually the labourers on the pyramid got rations of dried fish as part of their payment so this is topical.

[–] Bhaelfur@lemmy.world 5 points 4 months ago

He's ever vigilant for scorpions.

[–] ameancow@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago

I'm not sure if that photo is real, it might be AI.

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