Grrl Power #411 – Tete-a-Tet Offensive
Deus actually isn’t too bad at this. Maxima gets paid well, but not that well. But still he knows just dropping a check on her by itself isn’t going to move the needle.
After I wrote this page I looked up Tiger Woods’s Nike contract, and apparently I thought he was getting paid quite a bit more than he actually was. His contract was a 5 year contract for $40 million in total, then another $100M over 5 years, not per year, so Deus’s offer is… pretty good. I think I was thrown off when I heard estimations of Woods’s total net worth during the whole divorce kerfuffle. Obviously he had more revenue streams than just the one endorsement. Anyway, a quarter billion isn’t nothing to Deus, but then he would be getting value for it, and if nothing else, Maxima would be tantalized by the idea of a generation of little girls growing up eschewing heels for combat boots.
I think putting 80 year old scotch on a $3000 suit might actually make the suit more valuable, given what that stuff must go for per bottle.
Now, while I do normally stick a lot of pop culture references there in the background, I should say than the stuff in panel 2 is… well, I’ll just tell you this time. There’s the Maltese Falcon and the shard from the Dark Crystal on the shelf. The rest is either nonsense or stuff that’s actually there for a reason. I thought I should call out the two actual refs before someone sprains something trying to identify “…that key is the one Buffy used to open the crypt in episode…” no, it’s just a fancy bottle opener.
I am working on a new vote incentive. It’s about half penciled, hope to have it up maybe by Thursday’s comic, if not then next Monday’s by the latest.
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you know i kind of have a hard time tellling if he is evil or just a bit rule the world but keep the damages low as can be
mmmm, just part of Evil Geniuses For a Better Tomorrow, “to rule the world it must survive, and be orderly enough to manage with a minimum of effort.” ….
Apologies if anyone has asked this before, but is the leftmost item on the top shelf in panel #2 a narwhal tusk? (I’m just curious, since they’ve been passed off as unicorn horns in the past…)
Aged alcohol is… well. Some of the weirdest stuff you could possibly want to drink.
You can literally copy the “aging effect” in a lab, and produce new bottles that are identical to the 100+ year variety. So it’s kind of pointless if you need a forensics team to tell you how much radioactive material is in the bottle, just so you can tell if it’s “real” alcohol or not.
Not only that, but it’s literally a poison, that can permanently damage your brain’s connections.
I’m thankful I don’t drink, cause as messed up as my logic process is… it’d be even more messed up afterwards.
Alcohol doesn’t directly kill brain cells. Instead, it cordons them off a few connections at a time. Like Neuron bridges into a brain-cell city, until the cell can no longer send signals out properly, and the brain prunes the “inactive” ones. Long term alcoholics are proof of this process. Most lose about 10-20% of their brain mass.
As long as you give your brain time to recover and repair the connections between cells, alcohol is OK. Passing out, and getting a hangover the next day? Well that’s what happens when the neuron bridges get shut down, and the body is trying to figure out which ones need to be reconnected.
Bad news for your IQ, but good news for me. Cause that means I’m one neuron closer to being smarter than you! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! aaah… ahaaaahh..
oh… I think I pulled a muscle in my side…. Ow…
*stop talking to yourself idiot*
NO!
Some people just can’t help talking to themselves, huh?
*wanders off muttering to no one in particular*
You don’t need to be that rich to buy politicians. I saw a leak of how much they were bribed with. It’s pretty demeaning how cheaply they’re willing to sell people off for, actually. I expected tens of millions per politicians. For some, it was often as low as a couple thousand.
Yeah, I know. It’s depressing, actually.
My own proposal for fixing the “I can bribe a politician to do ANYTHING” is universally met with either horror or “that’s weird”.
Simply pay anyone elected to national office a million bucks a year for the rest of their lives, as long as they commit no crimes whatsoever. They can have no other income or gifts from anyone else, not from books, not from speeches, not from work, not from investment, nothing, zero, nada, zilch. Any money from those goes straight to the Treasury, a 100% tax on anything over that million a year.
If they can’t live on a million a year, I don’t want them representing me anyhow.
PS – no, in the context of the US budget, 3000 or so active and retired national scale politicians is a three billion a year charge. You’d save more than that in gifts to billionaires (you supported me, so I’m gonna make it rain for you) in the first month of every year. IOW, it’d not only pay for itself, it’d be a vast savings over time.
PPS: Upon election, they pass off everything they own to their kids or to the Treasury, just as if they’d died. If they want to stay in their current home, they have to pay rent.
The details are pretty obvious. And if they don’t like the deal, they don’t have to run.
Heck, you sold me on the crazy plan.
Of course, I am mildly eccentric myself.
My girlfriend has an idea that’s almost the exact opposite- she wants the president to be essentially a sacrifice to the state, on-camera 24/7 with no breaks, they essentially don’t get a personal life- the idea is to ensure that being the president is somethig that nobody driven by self-interest would want, as well as making it difficult to corrupt them while they’re in office.
It’s fun seeing two things that are completely crazy but also entirely opposite to each other.
That would filter out the saner candidates.
How would top-secret briefings work? Sharing e.g. war plans, military and nuclear deterrent readiness issues, intelligence gathering (if you e.g. have agents infiltrated into foreign governments and secrets show up in these briefings that only a few people knew about, you may have just gotten them identified, tortured and killed, lost that source of information, made it more difficult to get anyone to take such assignments, to get agents into place and in contact via the same pathways, etc.)
The current incumbent is sloppy with such information anyway, however this approach would make it worse.
no, no. It’s tens of millions “to buy a senate seat” (to be ELECTED).
Its not so much just to buy a vote one time.
:-P
problem: women aren’t interested in STEM
solution A: treat women like adult human beings, let them make their own decisions about what to be interested in
solution B: treat women like children, remind them that you don’t believe they’re capable of determining what’s best for themselves, force them to do what you think they should want to do
OBVIOUSLY solution B is better, it’s not even a question
You think offering a scholarship, just offering it, is equivalent to forcing someone to do something they don’t want to do?
I can see bank robbers taking hostages by pointing scholarships at them. “Back off coppers, or I’m sending this woman to MIT! Full ride! Mwoo hah hah!”
I guess it might work if the cops are especially sexist, until they realize the only way the bank robber can actually enforce the threat is if he follows the hostage around and forces her to go to class by threatening to pay for her post-graduate studies.
If you have to bribe someone to take STEM classes, they’re not interested in STEM.
So if you loved working with computers, or design, or tinkering, and you couldn’t afford even to go to a state school out of pocket, but someone offered you a full ride to MIT or Carnegie Mellon or Rice, you would consider that patronizing instead a godsend?
Of course it would be patronizing. I will achieve success by own labor or not at all.
It has occurred to me that you don’t even know what STEM stands for: Science Technology Engineering Mathematics. So, instead of a Liberal Arts degree which you can use to help people decide if they want fries with that, you could end up with a degree in real-world career opportunities.
Nobody achieves success via their own labour unless they were dropped in the forest immediately after being born. We live in a broad community, don’t we?
Actually, hell, even if they did achieve success purely in nature, without a single human being, they’d achieve it thanks to the plants and animals providing nutrients for them, and the sun providing heat and light to those, and the earth providing the plants with minerals. We all live in a community, which lives in an ecosystem, which lives on the Earth, which spins around the sun, which floats through our universe.
You are not a singular being, and you are not independent. Every cell in our body, both the human cells and the microbes living within us, work together to form us, to fuel our brains- said brains then provide the convenient illusion of “self”- of some disconnect from the rest of the universe.
There is not even a single cell alive on Earth today that is here without being made by another being, and without being controlled by another being.
Therefore, I don’t really care what methods are used to complete a goal, as long as said methods are conducive to said goal. Personally, the “goal” my system of morality has, is raised quality of life for all sapient beings; if any method is proven to accomplish that, I will support it.
Of course, I don’t believe scholarships based on any social divide other than economic class are an efficient way to achieve that goal, but they’re better than nothing, and I’m not going to pretend at being independent from all else, either.
I am a White, Heterosexual male, who could not afford to go to a STEM school. I would love to take that scholarship.
Unfortunately, because I am somehow “privileged”, I was not offered much in the way of Scholarships. At one point, I considered claiming to be transgender but I could never bring myself to lie like that (I would have to constantly live that lie, or lose the money).
I have heard of these STEM scholarship programs begging people to sign-up, but because of my gender, my sexual orientation, and my race I do not qualify.
Terrible being the dominant race, gender and sex you get none of the breaks the poor oppressed people do.
“Somehow privileged”: look up “redlining”. You are like a fish not being aware of water because of growing up in it; it’s “always” been there, and you can’t imagine a different state of affairs.
When was the last time you:
– saw almost all TV shows that didn’t have anyone who looks or talks like you? (Look at older shows; this has been changing.)
– saw corporate boards who weren’t all white males, maybe with a token minority?
– were denied entry into college or a job or passed over for promotion because of your race, gender or sexual orientation?
– had someone refuse to serve or rent to “your kind”?
– had to worry because an organization like the KKK was active in your area?
– worried about being shot by a cop pulling you over for a routine traffic stop?
– questioned whether it was safe to ask a cop for help, and couldn’t assume that they would actually try to help you?
– saw national legislation being pushed that would outlaw you e.g. getting married?
– had to hide who you were, for fear of assault, rejection, your car or home being vandalized, ‘mysteriously’ being excluded socially, etc.?
Next, consider the household you grew up in. Were your parents or grandparents impacted by these things, or were they affluent and educated? Was it relatively impoverished and uneducated because e.g. your ancestors had been slaves, who were abused, sold, raped, denied good (or any) schooling, not paid for their labor, denied medical care? Hunted down if they escaped? Or was it assumed that you could go to college and there was someone to help you with your homework?
Everyone has issues and difficulties in life. Some have had additional difficulties added (discrimination), due to the human tendency to fear and hate anyone different, perhaps reinforced by stories, and to desperately want to have someone else to feel superior to — preferably, due to some factor that doesn’t take any effort on their part and that cannot be taken away, such as skin color or country of origin.
Some of us believe that everyone should have equal opportunities in life, and rather strongly dislike discrimination. So far, the best approach we know to compensate for what has been done to those discriminated against is to give a certain amount of preferential treatment to them. Have any better ideas for giving people more equal opportunities? We’d love to have a way to be completely fair.
So, are all scholarships bribes? Or is it just the ones aimed at a particular group? Should the NAACP scholarships be shut down because they are blatant and patronizing bribes aimed at the black community? Bloody troll.
Honestly? A $3,000 suit would be something off the rack from Tom Ford. I assume he’s the kind of guy that flies Timothy Everest into his office from London and drops $6,000 on a bespoke suit.
Yeah I guess I kind of lowballed that. Might edit it up a bit in the future. $3,000 still sounds like an absurd amount to spend on any clothing that doesn’t allow you to fly.
I typically drop 3 to 4 on a suit when I genuinely need to look good; I could easily see this guys doin 40 or more
For him a 3000 or 6000 $ suit would be like a 3 or 6 $ shirt for an average person. If even that. A person that rich does not fall in panic over that price. It is not even worth mentioning.
So, I realize this comic was posted years ago, and I am probably wrong, but the green melted thing looks like the stub of the green flame candle from Power Rangers to me. What is it, if I may ask? Love the comic, btw.
Her face in that last panel. You can tell she threw out the invisible jet line just to make him do a spit take.
Yes!
Counter offer: You spend those fifty million a year yourself on charity work I’ll direct for you, and I tell people what a nice guy you are who’s willing to spend a tiny bit of your billions of income to make a lot of people’s lives a lot better without benefiting you more than them.
The suit price seems a little low. From his size alone I’m assuming it’s bespoke.
There’s some off-the-rack suits (admittedly famous brands) that are in that price range.
“Somehow privileged”: a fish is not aware of water; it’s “always” been there.
When was the last time you:
– saw TV shows that didn’t have anyone reputable who looks or talks like you?
– saw corporate boards who weren’t mostly white males?
– were denied entry into college or a job because of your race, gender or sexuality?
– had someone refuse to serve or rent to “your kind”?
– worried about being shot by a cop pulling you over for a routine traffic stop?
– questioned whether it was safe to ask a cop for help, and couldn’t assume that they would actually try to help you?
– hid who you were, for fear of assault, rejection, etc.?