Annotated 39-14
Shanna has done a few interviews via Skype, but she’s never been in a situation where it was urgent to unmute someone who’d muted themselves. So in those first few frames she’s yelling to the others, asking them how to do that, and they’re stammering because they don’t quite understand the urgency, and then everyone goes numb once the mustachio appears in the frame.
(We’d be using Zoom if this were written today, of course.)
Note how the cat is hiding in panel 3 but peeking out just a bit, trying to assess the threat that’s already turned its little world upside down.
Seems risky on Betram’s part. How does he know this isn’t being recorded? I would don a ski mask before talking if it were me.
If I recall correctly, he will answer exactly to that in the next strips.
Yes. How plausible that answer is was a fairly big kerfluffle in the comments the first time around, as I recall. But in any event, he’s not concerned about his victims seeing his face at this level.
My personal theory has been that he could have always changed his appearance (shave the ‘stash, haircut, glasses) though we don’t see that in this story.
Shouldn’t he be tagged?
Yes!
Does the cat have a name? What happened to it after this?
We did not name the cat, though I imagine Kaye would name her something like Breaker, and I speculate elsewhere that said cat was rehomed after police found her at the crime scene.
Is the cat Payet Best’s alt?
I’ve always enjoyed dark comedy insertion of the mundane into a fantastical situation, and JJ pausing in his murder-shtick to figure out how to unmute the call is right in that sweet spot.
It also shows just how cold he is, this is all casual to him.
Hey, yo.
Thanks for the annotation. Any chance JJ can pop by and explain his thoughts behind “escalating the situation somewhat”?
Thanks in advance
I’ll see if I can swing this later. Still a bit tired and busy after a weekend with family.
Much thanks. Looking forward to it.
Whaaaa…unmute *other people*? I think I’M glad I never used Sykpe.
Not that Teams or Zoom were so much better but … gee. If I mute myself or turn off my camera, it’s because I *want* the microphone to be muted and the camera to not film me. Nobody else should be permitted to change that setting.
And on that note, a PSA:
Please, people, don’t use Teams or Zoom. There’s Jitsi and BigBlueButton (and Signal and Threema and a few others for 1:1 communication), both of which have a concept of privacy, are open source, self-hostable, and there are a bunch of companies out there who will gladly host a server for you if you like to, instead of using a service run by a company who’s currently making only a fraction of the money needed to keep the servers running but is valuated at 60 times their yearly turnover — thus economically forced to either make money off the data they extract from users, or to get into a position where it can’t be easily replaced, and then sell out to MAGAF, who will then “keep it as an independent unit”, i.e. cross-correlate any data point they can lay their hands on with any other data point they already have to try and get you to hitch up to the matrix or sell you shit, or flood you with propaganda, or rat you out to the authorities, depending on what country you live in and what the service happens to believe you happen think of its government.
Sorry, I had to get that out of my system. Private communication is only private if no megacorporation keeps a record of everything you say. Ask Xan, he knows I’m right.
I’ve been saying all that for literal decades, but unfortunately network effects are unavoidable. Sure, anyone can host their own Jabber server, but if all your friends only use MSN Messenger, then that’s what you have to use to talk to them. Same with Zoom: there’ve been SIP-based solutions for ages, but even my technophobe mum can use Zoom, and so do all the people she wants to talk to.
TBH I’ve never been all that concerned about Zoom/Microsoft keeping a record of video conversations because a) that would be highly illegal, and b) there’s no way they have that much storage.
On another note, I think JJ made a blunder there.
Had he not get carried away, he could have used Kaye as a hostage to pressure the others into doing what he wants them to. Now, he’s left himself no option but to kill them all. Shanna and Xan don’t know Kaye, but they still wouldn’t be able to just shrug it off and do their thing.