Grrl Power #1027 – 1:1 Scale
Yeah, dams and giant shipping container boats don’t really mix. It’s not like you have to get the boats into the middle of a country for them to be useful, but the closer you can get to where you want them before you have to start relying on trains and mac trucks, the faster and cheaper it’s going to be. I don’t think anyone’s ever created a boat lock that can handle one of those mega shipping container boats, but then our world doesn’t have super powers either.
While it’s initially tempting to want to print out an entire jet fighter in one go, there are actually a lot of reasons not to. You still need separate parts and lots of hatches and panels for maintenance. If it’s all one piece, or if the frame is all one piece or something, if it takes significant damage to one wing, then you kind of have to scrap the whole thing. I think there’s a considerable leap between a matter replicator and a handheld “wave it at a broken part and fix it” repair module. The repairer would need to be able to de-replicate broken bits and edges (without causing a fission explosion) and then seamlessly integrate new matter into existing structure. So you still build larger things in parts and assemble them. And honestly, if printing out a jet fighter wing only takes 90 seconds, then it’s probably not too hard to have a stack of spares laying around. Assuming you have a few hundred kilowatt hours to spare.
The answer to “How many replicators could a replicator replicate if a replicator could replicate replicators.” will always either be zero or infinity. Although it the question itself qualifies “if a replicator could replicate replicators,” then the answer is always going to be infinity. Yes, assuming there’s not some dick move software preventing the unit from duplicating itself, but honestly, once you reach a tech level where you have matter replicators, all it takes is one open source project and then all the companies trying to monopolize the technology are donezo. And of course the answer isn’t actually infinity, partially because infinity is not actually a number, but also just general wear and tear means you’ll only get so many out of each unit, even with maintenance, before you’re better off replacing the thing. So I guess the answer is… 42.
Tamer: Enhancer 2 – Progress Update: It’s done!
210K words of weapon building, dinosaur fighting, harem satisfying, lumberjacking, moderate diplomacing, bad guy chopping action. Also some humor.
The new vote incentive is up! Lorlara is attempting to break office harassment rules.
Patreon includes some increasingly aggressive fashion choices. Bonus comic page is posted and she no longer has two left feet. Oops.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
That can’t be an Energy To Matter Replicator. Too much energy would be required.
It would also have to be 99.99% efficient or there would be too much waste heat.
It has to be a Matter Converter type with raw materials put in and finished goods coming out.
{Disintegrators and atom sorting then atomic level 3D printing.}
50 billion dots per inch resolution? I’m not sure if that’s good enough for an i7 CPU.
Replicators making replicators? Sure, except they’re replicator kits.
Either boxes of parts or snap together modules.
{Who wrote the files for printing objects? Are they just recordings of high resolution scans?}
We do sort of have replicators that can make replicator kits today. For a loose enough definition of “replicator” and “kit” that is. A good 3D printer can print about 80% of the parts for another 3D printer. Of course most the important parts are the ones you can’t 3D print, so, you know.
And ReDeTech has a 3d printer that has an attached recycling system. Expensive filament? Try free discarded plastic water bottles.
Yes I’ve talked to these people and given them more ideas. But they said it was futuretech, beyond what they can do right now. :(
Add a CNC machine and there’s the next 10% main boards, hotends, and stepper motors are cheap and easy to get…
It is hard to say, the Xevoarchy look like a mix of tier 1 through tier 2.5 or so civilizations, and the shop keeper did say he was selling some top of the lin stuff…of course factor 1 there is every shop keep is going to say something like this especially if they think the customer won’t know better, and frankly Deus might not have cared because line up a hundred home edition matter replicators from a tier 2 civilization and you will out pace every factory on a less than 1 planet like Earth anyway.
but even if they are energy to matter, that doesn’t mean he has the energy they need to both run and to convert to mass, more likely its a more standard design where he has to feed in raw material. even then though depending on the type this can be just as good if not better *same results less energy usage* if they are molecular reassemblers able to move and reconfigure molecules *and higher end particles…but that is edging on tier 3 tech*, to convert any old junk matter into what you want *given equivalent mass and possible loss of mass during conversion due to entropic loss.*, but hey get one efficient enough that one two tons of clay being converted into 1.6 tons of titanium is still heaps better than anything Earth can compete with.
Given that alchemy is what powers the sun, I would say that a genuine type II civilization is going to be quite adept at it. Sure, the power losses or gains are going to play merry hell with our 0.7 gear, but you really need to assume that advances are happening on all fronts.
on the scale to be fair I am not using the Kardashev scale (I try not to because I find the idea of measuring the advancement level of a civilization by how many megavolts of energy they use regularly to be asinine; and he was a soviet scientist in the 1960s so some time period and cultural influence likely there as well; but it does make for a good spring board). although other scales used in sci-fi do tend to line up *mostly with 1-2, 3 and above differs wildly from series to series.
I try not to use my own civilization scale here too much but my own doesn’t seem to differ from DaveB’s too much, for reference here.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-690-gotterdammermcguffins/
that right side of the FTL line in the green block is most of tier 1,
blue and purple are the tier sections, purple verging around 2.6 or so to be galactic empires *I imagine the Jurai from Tenchi Muyo and the Galaxy Police, as examples above the likes the Star Wars Empire or Star Trek federation of planets.
and the ascended ones as tier 3 *maybe not galactic levels of power but still advanced enough they don’t need to)
which is the main issue with megavolts or energy consumption as a metric, beyond a certain point you are forgetting advanced in energy efficiency, other technology advancing as well, and the general idea that just because a civilization could theoretically do something doesn’t mean they will. So blanking out entire galaxies to harvest power has that same type of “why”” as building flying cars or robot houses that can transform into humanoid robots and dance…like…why would you build this?
The Kardashev scale is based on use of all available power in a given area without wasting that power output. The larger the area, and more efficient the use of accessing the power output, the higher tier the civilization.
DaveB’s scale seems based primarily on one primary factor – whether the civilization has or has not yet achieved FTL technology. aka a ‘Great Galactic Barrier’ if we’re going to use a RL theory on space-faring civilization progress. :)
I’m not sure what Rhuen’s civilization tier system is based on, but from what I’ve seen so far it’s also a ‘level of technology’ based system, but more involved than just ‘FTL’ or ‘no FTL.’ I remember that Rhuen once posted a link to something about how his system is designed but I don’t remember the link. I’d really like to see it again, out of pure curiosity.
in addition to my other post,
when trying to imagine ultra advanced aliens I give myself a mental exercise/note for them.
When trying to imagine a new cosmic being or ultra advanced alien I practice a little mental exercise, which can be challenging. Keeping in mind these are beings beyond human comprehension, alien, operating a scales of space and time with minds made for these scales. Then the first hurdle is that we are trying to imagine something like this using a human brain, which means the first impressions, expectations, and common assertions are most likely wrong. There is the human filter and then the specific cultural filters to acknowledge and work around, heck even NASA is working with anthropologists to work out these inherit issues when programing AI to look for signs of alien life, because human and cultural centric ideas are limiting what could be possible. So I try this too when imagining aliens, and amplifying that the higher out.
-it is for this reason I so often wholesale reject the common view that because they are so advanced and humans so far beneath them that they would just ignore humanity.
this is an idea based on human ego and self image projection and a flawed idea that humans would be a 1-1 relation to them that insects would be to humans for example even though while an ant can’t tell if it is inside or outside a house, it also doesn’t question or ponder what being human is like, a human in this comparison does try to learn the differences between different spaces and imagine what it might be like to be the giant incomprehensible entities. even if the difference in complexity is still there.
You can imagine a mind that is more than your own. You can imagine infinity. You can even imagine things like “this statement is false” or Moebius strips and Klein bottles. Some of them are every bit as practical as they are absurd, like the square root of minus one.
There’s a limit to the fidelity of your fantasy, but you can do it. A cartoonist evokes perspective and qualities of light with a flat piece of paper and a pencil. He may capture a mood with eyebrows and a quirked mouth
I dont think I can imagine infinity. :)
I can just imagine an representation of infinity as a generalized mathematical concept.
you really can’t, even scientists make models. I could do a whole rant here about how asinine it is to take fiction too seriously with cosmic scale feats due to the rule of cool and the creators not taking it seriously or even knowing the scales and thus why so many episodes of death battle are eye rolls, but there the abridged version of that rant LoL.
but even in reality we have “lies to children” even for those working with these concepts it is foreign to the human brain so models are used to help visualize it even if they aren’t that accurate but help. even for massive sizes of things it is nearly impossible to truly imagine the scale from a human perspective, you always have to do a top down look and just make the previous thing smaller with the larger one in that size frame of a map, or do a smaller scale comparison like if the sun were this piece of lint this other sun would be manhatten or something. This is reframing the scale to human conception rather than the absolute true scale of it,
same with quantum foam, dimensions, quanta, strange matter, or any other such concept, you have to visualize and describe but in a way that is grossly over simplifying so the reader has some idea what is going on. Hence doing things like describing extra-universal entities as manipulating the quantum foam directly as if it were clay; this is a gross over simplification to the point of not really describing the actual interaction, but gives a nice visual frame of reference.
and again if you want more fantasy than sci-fi or just whatever Dragon ball is these days say screw physics or scaling, rule of cool, even if feats contradict themselves in pretty much the next arc anyway, it is just entertainment and a character driven story not a pondering the universe sci-fi story.
yea definitly dont go into trying to image infinity or immortality its actually scary. once go into that rabbit hole its its like you start questiong reality in it self and existance. of course my mind goes deep end fast in that thought process XD
Stuff like ‘planck length’ or ‘planck time’ is at least something the human mind can perceive as being possible, even if it’s such a small number that it’s practically zero. Because it’s actually measurable in some fashion, even if the mind can’t quite grasp just how small it is.
Infinity though. Woah. It’s simply not something I can conceive. You can have the smallest possible number because it’s just ‘some number that’s more than nothing.’ But to have the biggest possible number is just not something that I think can be conceived of, and I have to trick myself to even try to conceive of a REPRESENTATION of that idea because otherwise I’m pretty sure my mind would turn into warm tapioca pudding in the attempt. :)
@Pander
one of the cosmic being thought experiments was the fun idea of cosmic necklace based life, wormhole lifeforms, mixed reality singularity life forms, and other extreme exotics for whom gravity is either not a factor or non existent and evolved or manifested among the ultra massive black holes or SLABS or whatever in the depths of the fark dark of an old universe or inside of massive stars and their bodies were in relation to these many times larger than the Earth or even the sun, and how tiny the Earth would be to them, let alone these even smaller scale things like molecules and atoms *keeping in mind these are extreme-exotic life forms that aren’t atom based but monopole-1D threads, interwoven time/space bridges, or multiverse mixed quantum foam reality data codes,* just how much tinier to their scale these are by magnitudes of trillions of times more.
I suddenly feel extremely lost because I only understood about every 4th or 5th word.
@Pander,
hypothetical forms of life,
cosmic necklace is the term used by scientists to describe a hypothetical possibility of one dimensional strings intersection monopoles that then weave with other one dimensional strings with counterpart monopoles to form data and an equivalent of DNA.
wormhole life is much the same only using einstein-rosen bridges interescting space time and disruption points in folded space acting as data, the wormholes intersect the data points behave much like proteins *severely over simplifying for visualization purposes*, and bam wormholes serving the same purpose as DNA for a “folded space based life form”.
the singularity based life form is even crazier, you basically take two different realities with differing physics, both have their own equivalents of black holes that distort their own equivalents of space time. Normally when a black hole impacts another black hole they simply form a bigger singularity as their physics match, the concept here being if two universes collided and their equivalents of black holes collided due to their extreme disruptions of their equivalent space/time and holding compressed data of their own laws of physics rather than just making a new black hole would instead form a singularity spiral *as contradictory as that sounds* of time and space distortions and counter part reality data points…basically a quanta based life form in a sense where the reality codes act as counter parts of exotic data resulting in something made of both universes and neither at the same time, an extra-universal “life form”
note the first two are hypothetical, the last one is speculative given we haven’t seen other universes with differing physics and how two different kinds of physics react to one another when meeting. *keeping in mind matter and anti-matter are from the same laws of physics as each other, the same quantum field/foam*.
the point being such life forms likely wouldn’t interact with gravity or mass the same way atom based life does *basically the most exotic form of life imaginable, even beyond not organic or made of plasma, the not even made of atoms* so if we assume life like this can exist, their size scale could be all over the place, from tiny pixels to enveloping whole worlds and stars due to no confinement on size other than perhaps their own evolution and fuel supply (or some data lock equivalent to genetic code determining their potential sizes, but even that could run more extreme than organic life given the looser potential limitations.
“DaveB’s scale seems based primarily on one primary factor – whether the civilization has or has not yet achieved FTL technology.”
Probably a very sensible tipping point.
I’m trying to think of… similar… tipping ponts in our past. Staying in the realms of sanity, we could try our “descent from the trees”, and perhaps our “mastery of fire”. Both of those definitely stretched the hominin brain. We perhaps could define them as “unthinkable”, as FTL is now, however there is some doubt about the actual intent to take such a huge adventure even if the risks could have been enumerated.
However, I do think the “mastery of fire” was more of an intentional step than was leaving the comfort of the forest for the near-certainty of destruction on the savannah.
But that’s as far as I would go. Things like the invention of the sail I feel were fairly inevitable, since nothing more complex than simple observation is needed to bridge the gap. The lodestone, thus the compass, possibly less intuitive, but once the magnetic properties of certain stones were seen, it too was only a matter of time. I cannot even accept the manipulation of metals as a tipping point: once the melted metal is found under a fire, and the ease with which the softer metals could be shaped with suitable stones, then the giant mines of the future were almost predestined.
Faster-than-Light travel is probably the last tipping point needed by Man on the journey to the Stars. And yes, it must NOT be gifted to us, or we die.
Looks like I put too many companion links to what you requested before and didn’t post. I did post what you requested but it looks like it didn’t post.
so abridged, the specific starter article that gives a general feel for the civilization tier list patterm.
https://www.deviantart.com/rhuen1/art/Civilization-tier-list-in-relation-to-Earth-899666074
and one companion follow up, trying to apply a civilization tier to a high end species that fragments its self into multiple tiers, does the tier apply to the entire species or be sub-divided amongst splinter groups. as well as the masquerade as a lower tier types.
https://www.deviantart.com/rhuen1/art/Civilization-tier-of-the-Amana-901335083
When you made up your civilization tier system, what was it for? Stories you were writing? A role playing game system?
eh mostly A but parts of B *remnants of one from long ago*, as well as a thought experiment, contemplating different ways to look at the universe and concepts from different angles.
“Given that alchemy is what powers the sun,”
Alchemy does not power the sun. Nuclear fusion powers the sun, constrained by gravitational forces of the mass of the sun itself. It’s called nucleosynthesis. Specifically, the sun’s energy comes from nuclear fusion of hydrogen nuclei into helium. There is no chemistry-based transmutation involved. :)
Alchemy is the art of turning one element into another element. Not all Alchemy was focused on chemistry. Which is exactly what powers the sun. Turning Hydrogen in to Helium, and then eventually heavier elements.
From Meriam-Webster:
Alchemy – a medieval chemical science and speculative philosophy aiming to achieve the transmutation of the base metals into gold, the discovery of a universal cure for disease, and the discovery of a means of indefinitely prolonging life
Chemistry – the branch of science that deals with the identification of the substances of which matter is composed; the investigation of their properties and the ways in which they interact, combine, and change; and the use of these processes to form new substances.
Stars create elements via fusion. Specifically fusion based on the intense heat that’s a result of the insane amounts of gravity found in the center of a star due to it’s absurd amount of mass. This isnt from mixing different elements together to create new elements. It’s from ramming them together so hard that they FUSE into new, heavier elements. At least until you get to Iron (the 26th element), at which point fusion starts becoming impossible and the star begins to die via a massive explosion.
Fusion is not chemistry, and is not alchemy. It is physics. There is no chemical (or alchemical) reaction that CAUSES fusion. Alchemy was entirely focused on what eventually became chemistry. It’s common knowledge that it’s the direct predecessor to chemistry.
Funny enough, modern physics are probably actually able to do what they WANTED to do with alchemy (turn base metals like lead into gold, but they used a completely different process than alchemy uses).
This does not mean alchemy was physics though. Just because both alchemy and physics might be used to attempt to create heavier elements, they are not related as sciences in any way, any more than a horses/animal husbandry, email/computers, and prayer/telepathy are related because all three might be attempted to be used to send a message from one person to another. They don’t actually have anything in common as a general study.
It’s not like you to be so unpoetic. His point is quite obviously that fusion does what alchemists sought to do. It’s just that alchemists mostly manage to turn gold into less gold. (Pratchett)
I take your prayer/telepathy point though.
“It’s not like you to be so unpoetic.”
I appreciate the compliment that you think I’m usually poetic. Thank you. :)
“His point is quite obviously that fusion does what alchemists sought to do. ”
I understand. But that doesn’t mean that alchemy is a primitive form of physics – it’s a primitive form of chemistry. :) Physics is a very all-encompassing field though, so it probably does a lot of things that other science pursues. It’s like saying alchemy is an early form of biology because it seeks immortality and healing oneself via the philosopher’s stone (transmuting the body via alchemical processes), and biology involves, among other things, science which can be used to extend a lifespan. But alchemy is not a predecessor of biology any more than it’s a predecessor of physics, because the process used to DO the result in alchemy is different than in physics or biology, but very similar to the processes taught in chemistry.
Clay contains aluminum not titanium. I don’t know what proportion per ton.
To get titanium out of clay would require transmutation or mass to energy to mass conversion.
Aluminum atomic number is 13. Titanium atomic number is 22.
They’re not even adjoining elements on the Periodic Table.
I picked the materials at random, a molecular reassembler could theoretically take the molecules of a ceramic cup and reshape them into gold or a tuna salad of equal or near equal mass (taking entropic loss from the process into account).
it is taking apart the matter at the molecular or even atomic level and then moving the atoms or molecules into the desired arrangement to make what you want.
Taking apart matter at the atomic level will not turn a ceramic cup into gold. You need subatomic (dis)assembly for that, the ability to combine protons and neutrons in order to generate new elements. Atomic level would only let you generate new chemicals.
you get the general idea, and this goes into the levels of advanced technology, the ones that can only use the specific materials given, those able to filter through material, those able to rearrange molecules for alloys and chemical combinations, those able to rearrange the atoms, and those able to rearrange sub-atomic particles to change the elements.
guess it depends on how advanced of a civilization’s replicators he bought.
” a molecular reassembler could theoretically take the molecules of a ceramic cup and reshape them into gold or a tuna salad of equal or near equal mass (taking entropic loss from the process into account).”
That’s not accurate either. Reassembling molecules does not mean ADDING to the atomic structure – it means reconfiguring the existing atomic structure. That would require fusion of additional atoms that are not initially present, not just reconfiguring existing atoms. You’d need a certain amount of atoms to begin with to be capable of forming the heavier element.
Although technically, that does mean that you could alter atoms in lead to become gold since lead has an atomic number of 82, and gold has an atomic number of 79. So you could, if the technology existed, make a matter reconfiguring device which takes lead, reconfigures the atoms into gold, with leftover atoms, probably lithium, helium, or hydrogen. (atomic numbers for 3, 2, and 1 respectively)
I believe it also might cause an explosion that would kill everyone in the area, from what I remember from a ‘kurzgesagt in a nutshell’ video. :)
Get enough waste heat and you can just run another heat based generator off of it and throw that power back in the replicator!
You could use a secondary generator to reclaim some of the energy lost to heat, but that generator will also generate waste heat. There’s no perfectly efficient energy recovery mechanism possible under physics. If there was, it would be a perpetual motion machine.
Heat is just another energy source and these are not replicators they are matter printers a few steps below a replicator Mass Fabs print a line of atoms just like a 3D printer while a replicator creates the entire part at once.
To be honest, if he wants to ensure a healthy environment / ecology for everyone under his governance, he WILL have to build in fish ladders along the river, so why not fish ladders AND transport locks? Maybe not the mega ships, but that’s simply a case of building gantries that can take the containers off one ship and move them over to another (smaller) ship at the city ports. It can be done for cargo intended to go through the Panama Canal, and we do it all the time in major import port cities, such as Seattle. (Fun fact, Everett, the city just to the north of Seattle, is in the top 5 port cities of the West Coast, and is the only one to make more money in exports than imports…but surprisingly, their biggest export isn’t airplane parts, despite being next door to Boeing. The city’s biggest export is gold excavation equipment, who knew??)
Anyway, if Deus there has a super whose only power is digging canals and throwing up embankments with all the spare dirt, then that seriously takes care of most of the problem of shipping locks on a river (and fish ladders!). Sure, that power set could be used to dig military fortificatoins, but honestly, infrastructure is going to be far, far more important…and Deus is clearly smart enough to KNOW it.
I lived within the Everet city limits for a while, which meant I got the public utility brochures for the Port of Everett, and I can still remember reading that particular factoid article. Everett was the only port city of the top 5 that didn’t have a trade deficit, and its biggest export is…gold excavation equipment. Like, it’s a worldwide export, the vast majority of it exits through my former hometown, lol. Crazy stuff, lol.
I’ve looked into their financials. While they might not have a *trade* deficit, their neglect of their physical plant means that they are AmTrack by the sea. The whole thing feels like a way to get cheap docks for the lower-end yacht folks.
Clearly she has never met the very European invention of “Locks” at which point you can easily use both mechanisms. In fact if you want to get really… ott about it, you can just create a lift mechanism using a system of pulleys and hoist the boat (plus water it is sitting in) up and over.
How else do you think Canalboats get around?
Locks combined with large scale hydroelectric power generation has three problems: a. Locks do still lower the pressure behind the dam just less extreme, b. locks get harder to operate the bigger the pressure differential and c. the better the hydroelectric dam does their job the lower the water at the other side is, so the less water there is to transport your ship to.
The pressure differential can be got around by using boat lifts rather than locks. The engineering isn’t quite as easy to scale up, but they’re a lot more flexible in course height and carrying capacity.
As the height gets larger, you are better off with multiple locks. If your boats are exactly standardized in their hulls, they fit the lock very closely, and the amount of water you use can be greatly reduced
Canals like the Panama canal use locks to change the elevation of the ships. Practical engineering has a great video on strategies mitigate the amount of water lost when using a lock, but it should be completely feasible to use a dam both for large scale shipping and hydro power.
You use a canal model with locks to control water levels, and when you’re equalizing the water levels (or just letting it flow ‘pass-through’ as needed to maintain your desired water levels) then the water which moved from higher to lower spins a turbine. This isn’t as efficient for power production as a damn because you don’t have the larger height differential of a damn giving you more potential energy, but you will indeed be using the same river for shipping and power generation.
The Suez canal can take the largest vessels. Panama canal can take 365 meter vessels. The ten largest container ships are around 400 meters in length, so not quite the largest, but close.
I think the limiter on the Panama canal is more the width than the length, and its a LOT harder to widen the canal than to lengthen a lock. Pretty sure the new lock length was based how how long you can build a practical sea-worthy freighter with a beam that will fit in the canal. (currently 51 meters.) To take the largest current ships they would have to widen the canal by at least 20% along its entire length (to accomodate the 60 meter width of those ships), which is both a massive and expensive undertaking, and would close the canal for the duration of the expansion with the resultant disruption of world shipping in the region. Its not a technically challenging project to widen the canal, but the side-effects are a bitch.
The Suez is sea level all the way. No locks because there is no need for locks. Panama can handle anything up to the “Neo Panamax” as of June 2016.
Details are available on Wikipedia.
So… question for the room from a lurker over here that reads this comic. I’m getting the feeling that Dues here is a very savvy villian, if that, but so far I’ve just see a bunch of arguments here about how he’s a benevolent despot with this sort of stuff; he can produce goods cheaply, he leaves local culture there, gets the military to surrender without a fight, fights against despotic regimes, and improves the local economy and standard of living.
I may not be reading this as closely as I should, but I’d love to see some counter arguments. Certainly here from readers, but also in the comic, because (and I’m probably overreacting here), I always fear that I’ll end up reading something that is trending toward a ‘well, authoritarianism does have it’s uses if we just had a savvy, benevolent tyrant.’ Just had to get that off of my chest.
Deus is all about the ‘Great Reset’.
The biggest counter is the old colonial empires.
Explanation:
Many colonization attempts actually did increase the standard of living of the local populace significantly(such as introducing new revenue streams, protecting the local populace, making internal commuting easier and industrialized farming, etc), did so with superior energy based tech(steam machines, trains, guns) and overthrew a few tirants, while replacing them with people less likely to act tyranic(hard to explain to your boss if those tons of money in steam trains just disapeared) just like Deus, but they lacked the ability to address a lot of things a. people don’t like being bossed around by total strangers with no other authority than the blade, b. due to a total lack of connection to the culture those new people got very good in destroying the actual culture for reasons that would have sounded logical to all the leaders with power, c. the new people in power tried to fix local problems with solutions that worked at home and d. when you combine greed and charity greed always wins(for Deus this has yet to show, because currently they’ve not taken different paths, but that is for later).
That’s an argument against specific examples, not against the principle itself. And while the reasons given may have been valid to at least some extent in those historical cases, they are not necessarily relevant to Galytn: they generally assume an imposed outsider class with no feedback up and down the power structure, rather than putting a new head on existing structures and improving that feedback. Everything that’s caused problems in the past can be a lesson for the future!
Actually they only assume an imposed outsider without power backed outside input. The english had a full counsil of locals for advice and ruled through local rulers, just like the dutch and the french ruled through local rulers.
The colonials only chose to everthrew the existing structures when direct rule became more profitable.
Sure learning from the past is an option, but one important thing to learn from the past is that people tend to repeat past mistakes like Napoleon and Hitler’s seperate attempts to invade Russia in the winter.
I found a really interesting Youtube the other day, it took me completely by surprise. Just ignore the goons with semi-autos standing behind the speaker…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofijY6M-OA8
The only thing wrong with that is his framing doesn’t wholly reject the Russian propaganda version of their reasons for invading Ukraine. He should call that out for the palingenetic ultranationalist line of bullshit that it is. Russian backed “separatists” are not the people of Ukraine yearning to go back to the fictional good ol’ days. They’re Russian terrorists.
Пу́тін — хуйло́
Every tyrant is benevolent toward their friends, and merciless towards their opponents. It doesn’t matter if the tyrant is an individual, a political party, or a democratic majority. It doesn’t matter if their opponent is another country, another political/racial/ethnic group, or the tyrant’s own mother or child.
The only way to make the world work the way you think it should work is to have power. The necessity of power to make the world work the way you think it should work is used to rationalize gaining and holding power at all costs. That end is used to justify the means used to achieve and hold power. Valid cultures and philosophies recognize that the end does not justify the means. Ever. But especially since the way you think the world should work (your desired end) is wrong. How do I know the way you think the world should work is wrong? Because you believe, with all your soul, that the only way to make the world work the way you think it should work is to have power.
Ooh, circular logic there. “I know you’re wrong because you think you’re right”? Said with a straight face while thinking YOU are right.
You claim that valid cultures and philosophies recognize that the ends dont justify the means, without proving or justifying that claim.
Why did you put, “I know you’re wrong because you think you’re right” in quotes? Quotes in such a context are used to indicate something a person said, verbatim. It is inappropriate to use them when you are attempting to paraphrase, because paraphrasing usually adds or removes context which may be crucial to understanding the intent of the original.
Setting aside your paraphrase, though, my statement does seem circular, doesn’t it? It isn’t though.
I start with something pretty straight forward:
A tyrant seeks power because they believe that the only way to make the world work the way they think it should work is to have power, and with that power they impose their way upon the world.
I end with something a little more nuanced, so I’ll break it down a little:
Imposing your way upon the world through power is not the only way to make the world work in a way that, perhaps, it should work. If you believe it is, then you are not a person to be given power over any other person, because you would abuse them as soon as they disagree with you. That doesn’t have to be the end of the story though. Beliefs can change once a person becomes willing to meaningfully challenge them.
Also, merely the fact that any person would claim to have godlike perfect knowledge of what’s best for humanity disqualifies them from a position of power, because they are wrong. They don’t have perfect knowledge of, quite literally, anything, and certainly not what’s best for humanity. They probably do have an absolute fear of being wrong though, and so will tend to stay the course, insisting they are right, no matter how many people are getting hurt.
As for my statement that, “valid cultures and philosophies recognize that the end does not justify the means”. You are correct that I have not supported that statement, but of course to do so would be a trivial task. I originally wrote, “ALL valid cultures and philosophies …”, but decided to leave room for the possibility that one or more valid cultures or philosophies might actually exist, which I am unaware of, and which teaches the opposite. Of course, if we were to actually debate that point, we might have to agree on a definition of “valid culture or philosophy” first, wouldn’t we? Not necessarily a simple task in itself.
Keep in mind a couple things. 1) pretty much the only source that he is being a benevolent dictator is himself (we haven’t actually seen what gatlyn civilians are like, and by his own admission he is running the country as his own personal sweatshop). 2) he has worked with at least one faction that wanted to violently conquer and enslave humanity. 3) he worked with another faction that wants to do the same but also with powerpoints.
which isn’t even getting into the other things he did like robbing the vault and selling evil artifacts to anyone who can foot the bill, as well as also using the evil artifacts for himself.
seriously the only reason why Deus wasn’t more or less singlehandedly responsible for a *multiple* alien invasion by the alari and presumably the squidwards is because archon managed to do its job, both finding and destabilizing the portal before Sciona could unleash hordes of alari.
And secondly, no he did not get the enemy army to surrender without a fight. He got them to surrender after a curbstomp battle that slaughtered their heavy and elite units.
That is a weirdly specific fear. But what concerns me is that your objections don’t appear to be based on the quality of the argument, but on the position being argued.
Really, it’s not all that hard to make a series of locks to move ships up and down a dam. It’s not like a flume ride where the ship slides down a ramp. Depending on how big you make the locks, you could even exceed Panamax standards.
Of course, it would probably be cheaper to build a railway for freight hauling and use the rivers just for hydro power, but Deux doesn’t think small.
It’s not. Not even *close*. The carrying capacity of even riverine cargo ships are staggering compared to a paltry 200-250 40′ containers for your average freight rail system. And ocean-going ships outclass even that. Nothing beats cargo ships in terms of efficiency. They just can’t go where water doesn’t.
I was talking about the initial outlay. Railroad tracks are cheaper than massive stair locks to move ships up and down a dam. As for train capacity vs ship capacity, it depends on the size of the train. You could upscale the train, and make them very long, particularly if you have fusion power plants to power them.
The practical limit for a train is still under 1000 TEU, (the limit is more the couplers than the motive power).
A single Panamax container ship carries 5000 TEU, NeoPanamax hits 13,000.
Note that a NeoPanamax ship is actually too long to transit the Straits of Malacca and the creation of the NeoPanamax standard required many major ocean ports to be modified in order to handle them.
Individual trains, perhaps, but what if you have 4 tracks (2 going each way) and run more trains. trains are a lot faster than ships, particularly if the ships have to stop to use locks. And make them Maglev, and you lower the stress on the couplers due to a lack of wheel friction. 2 trains per hour per track VS a ship that takes 4 hours to go up or down the locks (Per dam…how many dams do you have between your capital and the port along that river? You can only fill or empty a lock so fast after all.)
That “so fast” is still less than 10 minutes. A full passage of the Panama Canal is under 10 hours¹ and that’s three sets of locks, (plus traveling time between them). Ships can also travel much closer together than trains, (you can have a ship in every other basin of a set of locks).
Assuming one ship passing per hour in each direction means 24 ships per day. Also note that the larger the ship, the less water that is used in the locks.
1: The record is under three hours by a Pegasus-class hydrofoil, showing that most of that 10 hours is going between the three sets of locks.
Note that a train track can handle more than 1 train per day. make 4 tracks so you can have 2 trains at a time going in each direction, and run 2 trains per hour on each track. That’s 96 trains per day in each direction. If it takes a ship only 1 hour to traverse the locks to get down the dam (That’s pretty fast, and uses a LOT of water) That’s still a maximum of 12 ships per day (remember that they have to go back UP too) so compare 96,000 TEU for trains to 60,000 in your Panamax ships (and all that water being passed the dam not generating power), and you’re still way ahead.
“Infinity isn’t a number” is a lie told by elementary-school math teachers to simplify the world. Depending on context it can refer to a number in the extended real numbers (or the extended complex numbers), any member of an infinite family of cardinal numbers, or any member of an infinite family of ordinal numbers.
No. It’s not a lie, or even an untruth. A basic understanding of the English language is all that is needed.
“Finite” = “Can be measured” so, YES a number.
“In” + “finite” = “Not” + “Can be measured” so, NOT a number.
Infinity will not, is not, and never has been a number, quantity, length, mass, charge, whatever. Infinity means that the something cannot be measured because it is either too large (the Universe) or too small (Quantum particles).
Except in certain high level mathematics, infinity is a point that can be reached. The Riemann Sphere, for example, is a sphere that sits on your typical Cartesian graph with its bottom at 0,0 and its apex at infinity. You can also do things like divide by zero and infinity and multiply by infinity to get specific results, which is rotating the sphere.
Infinity is also used to solve several mathematic issues, like Zeno’s paradoxes.
In astrophysics, one of the hard caps about going as fast as the speed of light is that the mass of the object hits infinity.
“Except in certain high level mathematics, infinity is a point that can be reached.”
OK, so… x/0=∞
Therefore, mutiplying through by 0…
(x/0)·0=∞·0 ==> x=0
Which is now fully defined, and ridiculous.
Yes?
The math that I had to study indicates very clearly (and I should have made it clear in my original) that “∞”=”undefined”, although “undefined” is semantically equivalent to “unmeasurable”.
The word “infinity” is the noun formed from the adjective “infinite”.
“… also used to solve several mathematic issues, like Zeno’s paradoxes.”
Frankly, I wouldn’t touch these even with your fingers, even if we DID have his original writings. Zeno obviously did have some mathematical ability, but anyone who could take (for example) the Dichotomy Paradox seriously does need psychiatric help. You do not need “infinity as a number” to understand the weaknesses in Zeno’s thinking and thereby “solve” them.
“OK, so… x/0=∞”
Nope, x/0 is undefined because 0 is neither negative nor positive¹. At best you can say that x/0 = ±∞, (assuming x is real and non-zero), or x/0 = ±∞, ±∞i, or ±∞ + ±∞i, (assuming x is complex and non-zero).
Treating infinity as a non-number is a simplification used at lower levels of mathematics, similar to how you may be told that you can’t take the square root of a negative number. Infinity is a number, it’s just not within the set of real or even complex numbers. There are even numbers larger than infinity, such as the number of real numbers.
1: And then there’s your whole unstated assumption that x is a positive real.
“… how you may be told that you can’t take the square root of a negative number.”
Let me put it this way. Even in 3rd year High School in a backward English colony over 60 years ago, we were NEVER told we could not take the square root of a negative number. We WERE told about the use of i, and the peculiarities of 0. We learned that π is a ratio and how to use it. And we learnt that “infinite” means “so large you cannot measure it, it is — as far as we can see — without limit.”
“Infinity is NOT a number and for the most part doesn’t behave like a number. … Infinity simply isn’t a number and because there are different kinds of infinity it generally doesn’t behave as a number does. Be careful when dealing with infinity.” (Paul’s Online Notes https://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/Classes/CalcI/TypesOfInfinity.aspx )
You are now about to repeat to me that the “number ∞” exists. To which I say: “Show me. But first, tell me which type of Number it is, and if that Number Type is in the list below. How do I write the number ∞ so i can perform arithmetic on it and obtain meaningful results?”
Number types: Natural, Whole, Integer, Real, Rational, Irrational, Complex, Imaginary. (Byju’s https://byjus.com/maths/types-of-numbers/ )
Vedantu gives us some more: Hypercomplex Numbers, P-adic Numbers, Computable Numbers, and Definable Numbers, but he does not — immediately — define them. ( https://www.vedantu.com/maths/types-of-numbers )
I don’t normally attack persons in a forum. It reflects badly on me, and gains nobody anything. There are six respondents in this thread who either do not have anything beyond primary school arithmetic or have forgotten what they were taught in High School. @Bikkie is not one of them.
PUT UP OR SHUT UP. Show me the number ∞.
Your whining about a “may” not happening to apply to you is noted and dismissed as the whine it is. (Of course, when first exposed to square roots you were likely told you could only apply it to non-negative numbers. Third year in high school would be rather late to first encounter them.)
∞ is a transfinite number, specifically it is the cardinality of the natural numbers, (i.e. how many natural numbers there are¹). There are larger numbers, such as the continuum, (the cardinality of real numbers).
Now, this isn’t the thing you cover at the high school level beyond being a bit of trivia, you are only just brushing up against this stuff if you start doing calculus, (TBH, you generally don’t spend much time with it even at the post-secondary level unless you’re doing something like a BMath).
1: It is also the number of whole numbers, integers and rationals.
English? Those interpretations are colloquial misinterpretations of the word, or specialist appropriations. Finite, from Latin finitum, means “limited [in space or time]” past participle of finire, “to limit, set bounds; come to an end”. Infinite: not limited.
Your zero divisor argument is not compelling; if we examine the forms we have
0/a = 0
a/a = 1
a/0 = ∞
but of course for a = 0 this gives us 0 = 1 = ∞
This is a documented bug in arithmetic.
Plotting hyperbolic curves or tangents gives us asymptotes to positive and negative infinities. Since the distance between the top and the bottom of the discontinuity is obviously 2∞ it would appear that some infinities are larger than others. Enter Cantor, who realised that while you cannot count to infinity you don’t need to do so to compare things.
I suspect that those whose work was apocryphally presented as Zeno’s were more concerned with the apparent failure of reason. They knew the paradoxes were silly, but they were also perfectly reasonable.
Are you replying to me, or to Altima? Or both of us?
The reason I ask is that *I* knew perfectly well that my zero divisor argument is not compelling, but it *does* address the claim that “infinity is a point that can be reached” as against “Infinite: not limited”, an unknowable point, which Altima was not addressing.
I did want to look more closely at the Riemann sphere, as certain aspects looked very interesting, but that is a level of math that I never reached. Untangling the logic would have taken most of tomorrow, but I suspect it would have proved quite pointless anyway.
So–what about i? For that matter, pi? Or hey, what about 2^0.5? Nah, it’s easier to kill that guy.
If you want to define numbers to exclude entities you don’t like, you may do so. Just don’t demand that the OED change to match you.
Let’s also not confuse the masses with the number epsilon, defined as 0<epsilon<all real numbers, and how 1/epsilon therefore is devices as the largest non infinite number…
Words are not reality and the map is not the territory
… And I thought the neighbour’s cat was smart.
There are, however, countable infinities, and uncountable infinities.
Hey! I just came here to post a correction on the subject of hydro electric power and dams and waterlocks and the big locks they have in the Panama Canal that I’m SURE no one else has commented ANYTHING on so far.
…. oh, also, you can get hydro-power without damming a river. Basically with high-tech waterwheels. You don’t get as much, but the infrastructure builds cheaper and faster and you also don’t have to dam up the river to get it, which can be a dammed inconvenience. I’m so positive no one’s mentioned that either that I’m not going to bother to check.
I hope you’re being sarcastic.
He very clearly is being sarcastic. And with monumental flair and showmanship. :)
And also a pun.
Pander has been showing more tolerance for puns lately. perhaps the punishment has gotten to her.
I’ve been dealing with a very nasty bout of viral bronchitis for the last few weeks (felt so much worse than covid) and so it totally flew over my head that there was a pun here.
I feel so ashamed that I missed this this particular crime against humanity.
I’m thinking of a ship elevator now. It’ll use the waterfall to mitigate energy requirements through a series of giant buckets.
First, that’s a lock, and the only power you need is to open and close valves.
Second, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boat_lift because of displacement, the two sides of a boat lift will always perfectly counterbalance each other. The power requirements are comparatively small, but the structural requirements are… titanic.
There are places that use a river for hydroelectric and shipping. You split the river and one split has a dam and the other has a lock. It’s tricky and it takes a lot of space, but it can be done
I don’t think those production rates are actually all that impressive. Modern F-35 production using conventional technology puts out 3 every 7 days (one every 2.33 days). Conventional factories and assembly lines are astoundingly effective once they’re up to speed.
You can argue for the space efficiency and for the flexibility, but it’s coming at a cost of energy efficiency and the incredible upfront cost of, you know, exotic alien technology.
I think you’re missing the fact that while they are indeed producing F-35s at approximately the rate you mention, theyre using multiple facilities in multiple locations to do it, whereas Deus is achieving that rate in a single, smaller facility. (The production line for the Dallas-Fort Worth facility for the F-35 is a mile long and only produces the front section of the plane) Its almost certain that his assembly time is faster too.
Seperate note for the cockpit thoughts some have commented on- Thats almost certainly an engine intake/housing, not a cockpit.
Side note, while fighters are larger than most people think, judging from the scale of the fabber line shown in the previous strip, the wing shown in this strip is far too large for a fighter, or even a heavy bomber. (To the extent that heavy bombers are even a thing anymore, of course)
American military production is deliberately inefficient. Contractors spread production out over multiple sites and subcontractors with little regard for efficiency. Why? It’s called “political engineering”. Not many congresscritters are willing to vote against any project that promises JOBS! for their constituents. That’s why military contracts rarely get cancelled, no matter how badly they perform or how far over budget they go.
You can’t concentrate aircraft production in one place because no one company can produce all the parts needed for a military aircraft, or a civilian one. Note that Boeing and Airbus, with the need to provide minimum overhead for shareholders rather than maximise employment for politicians also have production subcontracted world-wide for their civil aircraft and fly or ship the parts to their assembly lines no matter the size. Boeing even sold off their Wichita airframe facility, creating Spirit Aerosystems, even though that meant they’d be paying Spirit a premium for ever 737 fuselage built rather than getting them at cost from Boeing Wichita.
If you want the best, sometimes you have to go to a different continent to find it. That’s why I have significant time booked to F-22 and 777 development work without ever having set foot in the States.
You can, and it has been done. In world war 2, there was literally a single building that raw materials went in one end and finished bombers came out the other.
It’s just not being done any more.
Note the time period of your example, and compare the complexity of that period’s aircraft against the complexity of front-line aircraft in our own time. Check also for ‘incorporated-as-is’ components: did the one-line factory you’re thinking of include all the manufacturing of instruments and engines in its operations, or did it buy in those complex and largely self-contained parts from external specialist producers?
It’s actually the majority of the right wing. I didn’t fully design the plane before drawing this though, so I suppose I can see why there’s some confusion.
It doesn’t surprise me that Deus favors the right wing.
Current military production rates are actually a fraction of what was achieved at the peak of the Cold War in the mid-80s when the production rate for the F-16 was 30 a month.
Looking at civil aircraft production, 737 and A320 production rates were reliably in the 30-40 a month range pre-Covid and the MAX crashes, and Airbus have asked suppliers to look at the feasibility of 75 a month by 2025.
The problem of the five hundred and seventy-eight thousand million Lintilla clones is very simple to explain, rather harder to solve.
Cloning machines have, of course, been around for a long time and have proved very useful in reproducing particularly talented or attractive – in response to pressure from the Sirius Cybernetics marketing lobby – particularly gullible people and this was all very fine and splendid and only occasionally terribly confusing.
And then one particular cloning machine got badly out of sync with itself. Asked to produce six copies of a wonderfully talented and attractive girl called “Lintilla” for a Bratis-Vogen escort agency, whilst another machine was busy creating five-hundred lonely business executives in order to keep the laws of supply and demand operating profitably, the machine went to work.
Unfortunately, it malfunctioned in such a way that it got halfway through creating each new Lintilla before the previous one was actually completed. Which meant, quite simply, that it was impossible ever to turn it off – without committing murder.
That’s almost as bad as the Gavs.
To me, the flying ship is just one of Sydney’s nerd fantasies and not how Deus plans to move cargo.
Yeah specially since all you need to use the river for both energy and shipping is a fork – one side with a canel lock for the ships and one for the dam with the generators. Also if the lock is not in use you can increase the yield of the generators. you can eithe reroute the water back into the riverbed sothe freight ships have still enough water under the keel getting towards the lock or if the river is deep enough anyway use it for other stuff. Might also serve as a protection from flooding – though admittedly in Africa the risk is relatively low.
Why would you think flooding risk is lower in Africa? Monsoon storms can be pretty nasty.
I admit I am not that well versed with the Monsoon, but I had asumed that the water can either distribute over a wider river system or seep away relatively quickly depending on region?
Look up the Columbia River system. Lots of dams but you still see barges upriver.
Or the Nile. Or the Panama Canal. If you have Simcity terraforming technology at your disposal, it’s just a question of finding the space for the locks.
Don’t remember seeing dams on the Panama Canal…
As for the Columbia, how many of those barges travel over a dam?
All of them. Every dam, up to Tri-Cities at least, has a lock on one side that allows the barges to travel past the dams. If you don’t know what a lock for a dam looks like or how it works, I suggest you look up McNary Dam.
“Can he print thermonuclear weapons?” That’s the question that’s about to be asked many, many, MANY times over.
Ah, but this is Deus. He is perfect and while everyone will scowl at him, no one will do anything to him.
Probably depends on whether his fabbers can handle highly fissile materials, and whether he has sufficient stockpiles of those to use for that purpose (as opposed to electricity generation). I suspect it would require a different and specialist type of fabber as well – not necessarily for anything unusual at the printing end, but you do not want those materials to be kept in the usual type of storage hopper, i.e. one big pile (pun not intended, but I’ll claim it!) in a semi-contained box.
That is certainly *a* question, but the key question is, “Can he refine or manufacture fissile isotopes?” Making simple, but deadly, nuclear weapons is certainly within an industrialized country’s capacity, but getting the raw materials is one of the most teeth-grindingly frustrating processes known to humanity. Shortcut *that*, and you get into some very scary territory.
In *theory*, granite has enough fissile and fertile elements in it to supply the energy necessary to refine it to purified elements with plenty of energy left over. Most of what you get out of it is common elements like oxygen, of course, and you get a LOT of silicon by the time you’ve accumulated enough U235 for a bomb, (Fortunately silica is a great structural material if properly organized!) but nobody with genuinely advanced technology is short on materials as long as they’re living on a big rock.
Half the sophistication of a good fabber is a library of alternate technologies so that you can make efficient use of whatever elements are on hand; You can achieve roughly the same results with a lot of different materials.
The ONLY reason I can imagine Deus would ever show these fabbers is so Dabbler can confirm they can’t produce transuranic elements. Otherwise this is stupidity that is only possible because of Gary Stu plot armor.
That doesn’t really matter.
With the Alari he has orbital capabilities and all he needs are some big chunks of metal in orbit.
It’s much cleaner that way and as soon as the dust settles he can start rebuilding if he wants to.
Why would they do something to him? What justification would they have? What is he doing that is wrong?
It isn’t what he’s doing. It’s what he’s capable of doing. For example… he is capable of invading a country and defeating its admittedly weak military. Most businesses can’t DO that. Historically, the ones that could and did have some very dark chapters that I’m sure Dave will skip because Deus can do no wrong. But more over, he demonstrated he was capable and willing to invade a country. If he is capable of manufacturing nuclear materials and delivery systems then he is going to cause every first world strategic and economic planner to shit fucking bricks. Because there are a lot of people that will pay for those weapons too. And Deus may not have any interest in making them! But he has underlings. Underlings that may be stupid enough or greedy enough to print out refrigerator nuke. And there will be international players pressuring every crack of Deus’s organization to try to access it. Normally, a potential rogue nuclear power would be economically sanctioned into the ground. But if Deus is CAPABLE of ignoring economic sanctions, that makes him an even bigger threat. The western hegemony didn’t get where it is today by allowing third world nations to become powerful without their permission. They act. They will manufacture an excuse simply because Deus is CAPABLE of being a threat to them.
And what is Max capable of? Core to the whole setting is the notion that what people do matters, not what they’re capable of. That society must cope with people vastly more powerful than the average person, without attempting to kill or control them. It’s a very optimistic view. It places a lot of trust in people, this idea that they don’t need to proactively defend against an apocalyptic first strike.
No super we have seen, with the *possible* exception of Max, comes anywhere close to the raw destructive ability of a nuke. Also, supers are a new thing that people are still adapting to and they are people, not devices, so they activate empathy circuits in our monkey brains. Nukes are something that everyone understands, they are objects so they get no unearned sympathy, and they have been scaring people for sixty years.
Granted, some of the supers we’ve seen are capable of ridiculous amounts of destruction if they use their powers effectively. As a couple of easy examples, read ‘Saga of Soul’ for how to weaponize the Earth’s rotation via Opal’s portals, or imagine Harem’s capabilities as an assassin.
The principle is the same, even if the scale is different. The average person would be utterly helpless against many of the supers, both unable to harm them, and unable to defend themselves against an attack. They have to trust those supers not to attack them, because they, individually, couldn’t do anything about it.
It turns out you CAN print an entire moving-parts mechanism all at once. I went to a fair once and the thing that amazed me the most wasn’t even part of the fair: it was a 4- or 5-part mechanism that had been 3D printed all in one go. The moving parts were impossible to assemble, so they were just printed all at the same time. All they needed to do to get it moving was remove the supporting material. Of course you want something to be assemble-able if you plan on repairing it, but the only problems you’ll run into printing an entire jet with a mass fab are power, the size of the fab, and the intelligence of the engineers. You don’t even need supporting material if you have sufficiently accurate and strong anti-gravity tweezers (which seems like a really reasonable limitation now that I think about it).
I don’t know how big a boat would have to be for you to consider it a “giant shipping container boat”, but I do know that some very large shipping container boats go through locks to get through the Panama canal. One problem is that locks are effectively hydro power in reverse. I don’t think they preclude the use of hydro power, but they might complicate it enough for Deus’ idea here to be justified.
Also, if you’ve got fabbers then why bother repairing things? If it breaks, throw the pieces in the hopper and get a brand new plane out. It fixes the issue and also cleans up all those unsightly dings and dents.
Now I want to make a boat in Battletech with jump jets.
Well, I mean who doesnt? :)
Locks can’t handle container ships?
I think the Panama canal wants a word…..
Yeah… don’t recall many dams on the Panama canal
Plenty of locks, though.
To G’s point though, the thing about locks is that they no longer work if you’re continuously draining them to produce power. Even if you use some of that power to pump more water back in, it’s a net loss.
I’ve got my annoyances with Deus on his own but I do enjoy his dynamic with Sydney, where they’re both genre-savvy enough to know that they’ll probably have to throw down EVENTUALLY, but he’s gonna ride that line for fun and profit and she’s not a psycho who’ll attack someone over him “setting off her genre-savvy sense.”
It’s like if Clark and Lex from the end of the latest Superman comics got transported back to TV-version Smallville and both were trying to just enjoy the time when they were still friends, knowing what’s coming.
You might want to look at the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway between the USA and Canada. Water is raised to the highest level by weather patterns. You then have to decide how much water to pass through each system. For example, water can either go through the Sir Adam Beck hydroelectric plants or Niagara Falls. They actually shut off part of the flow at Niagara Falls at night so that they can generate more power. Passing water through the locks will change the water level at both ends but that is something that you have to have people agree on. https://www.greatlakesports.org/industry-overview/the-great-lakes-seaway-navigation-system/ (Or in this case, have Deus agree on.) You can also run the water though generators when emptying the locks to make the system more efficient. Water is diverted from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River, and there are massive fights between the people who want the water level higher in the Great Lakes and those who want it higher in the Mississippi River.
Or as they say in the western United States: whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting over.
Its also taken to the lowest levels by weather. Lake Erie has a wind driven seiche. Anytime the wind blows from the West for a long. Of time more water piles up at the East End of the lake and water around Cleveland can drop the point shipping channels only have 16 or 18 in of clearance. Once the wind changes Direction all of that water sloshes back to the West End of the lake causing flooding. Just like pushing water around in a bathtub. Lake Ontario does this too, but to a lesser extent because its so deep. There the thermocline does the sloshing and the deep water just stays deep and oxygen free like the deep ocean.
I don’t know that any of the lakes near Galytn (much less on the path to the sea) have the requisite size for an effect this large, but this is a pretty intriguing idea. You’d probably have to build/isolate a reservoir near the lock system, with a one-way flow check… ultimately though I think the effect wouldn’t be big enough, and the long refill timeframe and lack of control wouldn’t be sufficient for consistent, predictable waterway traffic.
Deus and Halo…… anyone get the weird feeling those two are like mirror opposites of each other?
So Dues is making what are arguably the best Air Superiority Fighters in the world… Of course the U.S. and everyone else is going to buy them. Because Gatlyn and Mozambique will have them and they can’t be put to shame.
But… A huge part of the U.S. military system is the fact that the U.S. produce the military hardware for themselves and their allies. It’s not just a case of big money for the U.S. it’s what enables them to spend big on their military since they know that most of that money is going straight back to them through various taxes.
Challenging the U.S. military producers is likely the biggest issue they’re likely to have here. For comic reason’s I’m sure Deus’ influence will make sure Senators listen to him over the military producer lobbyists, but much more than the idea of Gatlyn as a military power is the idea of Gatlyn as the primary producer of military hardware likely to stir trouble.
The part that’s bugging me is that looks like a bomber, not a fighter. I’m far from an expert, but nearly all of the images I see for ‘air superiority fighter’ on Google are built like needles with small wings strapped on.
One thing that has been bothering me.
Dues’ smile.
Is he one of those chad assholes who thinks showing his teeth in his smile is a bad thing?
Or is there a reason he isn’t showing his teeth during the conversations? Because it just… looks wrong.
This is a condition of the art style, and isn’t particular to this character. Dave doesn’t like to draw teeth unless he means for the smile to be cartoony.
Maybe he eats too much sugar and his teeth are horrible. We’re seeing them, but we’re wishing really hard that that’s not what we see.
Locks are easy to make and use very little power.
A dam is a it too tall for a lock, which isn’t to say you couldn’t build what is effectively a salmon ladder composed of locks. Or you could build a mobile lock and run it up an inclined plane into a notch in the top of the dam (basically a tramway for ships).
If he’s got the tech, use a tractor beam to lift the ships out of the water, and put them back in further up/down stream.
SmugD is building these ‘cardboard machines’ (the replicators, the canals and the hydro-dams) to hide his true source of power: the stargate and the power-towers
As long as he has something that looks like it is doing the job, 95%+ of people won’t look closer at the actual output numbers
The thermal updraft towers aren’t a secret. They’re conspicuously tall. Satellites would have definitely spotted them, as would any plane passing with twenty miles. The (definitely not a) stargate is definitely a secret though.
Oh, there’s a few methods, Sydney.
Water wheels/turbines, that don’t run the entire width of the river, but are only mounted on one side or the other (or both) leaving a significant center lane for ships to pass (probably boats smaller than that supertanker; this is a RIVER after all).
If you find water isn’t moving fast enough to spin your power-wheels usefully, gradually narrow the wide river into one half as wide, and the water pressure will accelerate the flow. Don’t need water tearing past the local fishing village at dangerous speeds? Widen the river again to slow it down.
You don’t need the rivers for generation-you use them for COOLING your power source. ]
Unless he wants some people to underestimate him.
No nuclear power plants can trick people into thinking he don’t have access to nuclear material.
Not that he needs it with access to orbit and some chunks of metal. But hydroelectric power sources do keep him off the map of some people.
Unless he made a lot of extra trips it seems he had some help making bigger models, or used smaller ones to make larger components to put together larger replicators.
because his first trip at least was all on a hiver dolley (barring the aliens having capsule corp tech)
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-700-too-bad-hes-not-getting-miles-on-that-trip/
Deus has his very own private stargate of course he made several trips plus I have no doubt we didn’t see where he went the entire time or which venders he visited who knows how many upgrades to the mass fab he carted off there.
A simple book/data chip/flash drive could contain all the necessary info on service and repair of mass fabs which would be the holy grail for reverse engineering them.
I’m still not convinced. Saying that “all this poor african country needed was a single guy planning for them what to do, telling them what to do, and now they are happily building the advanced infrastructure (roads, railroads, electricity, water, educated workforce) necessary for this to happen” is just racist.
Deus mentioned “multiple teams”, where did he get them? He can’t mass-fab education and qualification.
1. If you had said that it needed a single ‘white’ guy it would have been racist ;-)
But the fact is, if people pulled together, they could achieve a lot more than they do right now. And not just in Africa or the Near East. All over the world.
But we prefer to squabble over stuff we could make superfluous.
2. He has the Alari working for him. There you have your ‘multiple teams’.
I don’t get the impression that Deus has imposed some kind of command economy or central planning. Removing the parasites like the warlord is half the battle, and the rest is just investment and directing how the government spends its money. Building infrastructure and providing education and good jobs allows people to participate in the economy.
It didn’t require a white man. Just someone obscenely wealthy, patient, and motivated. Most people fail those qualifications, regardless of race.
“Saying that “all this poor african country needed was a single guy planning for them what to do, telling them what to do, and now they are happily building the advanced infrastructure (roads, railroads, electricity, water, educated workforce) necessary for this to happen” is just racist.”
1) Deus is not your typical guy. Most guys who come into the area tend to try to exploit at the expense of the inhabitants, rather ths. Actually making their lives better before turning a profit.
2) Geographic location and politics of the area and its neighbors were key features, not racial makeup of the region.
3) Deus’ goals go far beyong just sub Saharan Africa. Its not about race. Its about wealth, will, and wanting win-win outcomes.
4) Most people of Deus’ means, regardless of their race or ethnicity, think in shorter term goals where profit is concerned. The next fiscal quarter, not the next 2 decades.
“Deus mentioned “multiple teams”, where did he get them?”
He has had a decade+ to create the educational and skill based infrastructure among the people of Galytn. Not to mention he owns and runs a multi-billion dollar multinational corporation. Not to mention alliances with a space-faring FTL capable highly advanced alien race. He didnt need to mass fab them. He already has trained people working for him and loyal to his vision for the future. A better future for all, thanks to the pinnacle of win, the paragon of humanity, the savior of the downtrodden.
All praise Deus, amen.
i was going to comment that many place in the world use river for power AND shipping, but many comments already raised the issue, there are many ways to take a cargo down a dam without relying on scifi airlift
Yeah, the port of Lewiston freaking IDAHO would like a word…
I can’t see a flying battleship and not jump right to Space Battleship Yamato. And its theme song.
so, what star is burning tonight?
Hopefully… all of them? Otherwise they would be a dead star
You can generate hydroelectric power by a pair of locks side by side. The water flows at a steady and predictable rate; set hydro turbines at the base of each lock and have the flow divert into both locks. When the locks are not needed both sets of flow can be at 50% of the river’s flow rate. When a ship needs to go upstream or downstream, the lock to be raised closes off and the lock to be lowered opens to 100% of the river’s flow rate, thus ensuring that no interruption to power generation occurs while still permitting shipping along the river. This has the added benefit of being able to shut off a set of turbines completely without halting power generation, making maintenance easier and not an inconvenience to the population drawing power from the system, and providing redundancy in case of damage to one part of the system or another.
If that containership in the last panel is Panamax*, then each of those helicopters is lifting somewhere around 4000-5000t ….
* That looks like about 5000 TEU (c50x10x5, then double because the typical container is 40′ not the 20′ of a TEU), which makes it Panamax and 65,000-80,000DWT + the weight of the ship.
Not helicopters. UAP antigrav courtesy of the Alari.
Those not helicopters appear to have twin rotors.
For a panamax, the river needs to be appreciably deeper than 50 feet and much wider than the ship.
You CAN use a river for energy producing and shipping and WITHOUT relying on absurd flying boats (if your technology allows you to move by air the same cargo you move by sea, then you do it all the way: it’s quicker).
You “simply” need to dig a sluices system to allow boats to bypass the dam. First problem is, we use to build dams in mountainous regions because it’s easier to enclose an artificial lake when topography is on our side – but the very same topography is NOT on our side if we try to dig sluices. Second problem is, going through sluices takes an awful lot of time especially for container ships (Panama dampen this with its lake), hence a hard hit to this trade route.
So yes, as Deus says, it’s possible but you’ll have to try really hard and I’m not sure it will be worth the efforts. Better build a port on the sea-line and connect it to your railroad infrastructure, I’d say.
on a totally separate note, is there an actual necktie knot that looks anything like the one Deus is wearing?
Yes. It’s called the Eldredge knot. https://www.101knots.com/eldredge-knot.html
It’s a trinity knot. I believe the author mentioned it during one of Deus’ earliest appearances, but can’t find it. Plenty of other people in the comments have, however.
I’m starting to think the author is a little too invested in his villain’s success.
What villain? :)
Sydney, as a nerd/geek/knowledgeable person, should be aware of hydroelectric dams such as those on the Columbia and other rivers of the world. They have locks. I strongly suggest altering her comment, and Deus’ response.
I’m not convinced she would be more than vaguely aware of either, actually. Civil (and other hard-science) engineering is an entirely different segment of geekdom, almost entirely isolated from pop culture, computers, or even general-education science. She and Leon have argued video games, superhero genre, movies, and even some tech, but in spite of civil works coming a couple other times in-comic (when the bridge/overpass/city streets were destroyed*), neither Sydney nor anyone else on the team had the slightest clue how to assess or deal with it. Except to move some heavy things by way of apology, or slap some space duct tape on the pieces and leave it for someone else to deal with.
* Because of course they were, it’s a superhero comic. Also, “aerospace engineers build weapons, civil engineers build targets.”
Good points. It occurs to me that I may be biased since I live near a river with hydroelectric dams, locks, and fish ladders. heh
Surprising how it’s so easy to be blinded by what one is used to. “What? I thought everyone knew at least something about this, that, and the other thing!”
I could see the hydro electric dam putting out the generator-turning water into a lift-lock to lift the ship into a channel that can go around/above the dam, or have a mechanism that temporarily bypasses the generators to fill the lift lock much faster. actually with his access to higher tech, he might have access to generators that can deal with a cargo-ship floating gush of water and make electricity out of it then return to normal levels