Grrl Power #1034 – Rationym
Getting to dunk on your super smart friend is always gratifying. At least Dabbler isn’t usually a know it all, unlike that one friend most people have had at one point in their lives who is convinced they’re an expert at everything and pronounces it “kara-TAY,” and whose dad was supposedly an Air Force mechanic and bragged about flying in a C-130 gunship and they even let him fire the minigun at tree out in the middle of a field in Afghanistan (this is all while still in high school) and swears he knows how to do Dim Mak but is sworn to never use it and also his grandfather invented Fritos. You know the type.
Discovering that your perfectly balanced equation is incomplete would be disturbing I’d think, because you’d never have confidence that you next perfectly balanced equation is actually complete.
Dabbler’s comment about the Thaumion Field requiring sentient intent is kind of a quick drive by on a much larger subject, and I don’t know how much detail I’ll get into about that in the comic. Basically though, mana (comprised of thaumions) is a force out there, some types of crystals can accumulate mana, certain plants can produce fruit that is high in mana, but in order to actually make the mana do something, there needs to be intent or at least some kind of guidance, usually in the form of sigils, runes, etc. Notice she said “sentient” not “sapient,” meaning animals and some lower life forms can use magic in innate ways even if they’re just squeaking by in the IQ department. The collection of particles that comprise “magic” are definitely different from the other fundamental ones in this way. No one really knows why, possibly except really old proto-gods, and they’re not usually real forthcoming about that sort of stuff, and that’s assuming you can find them, they’re awake, and they realize you exist and communicate with you without being instantly destroyed by their reality warping words, and you have a “scary ancient uber being to English” dictionary handy.
New incentive is up! Dabbler decided to get out of the pool, in slow motion (see the bonus comic at Patreon), possibly with added “physics.”
Cue Mele Kalikimaka.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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So, something along the lines of Shadowrun’s 4th dimensional astral shadows explanation.
Why does everyone want to find some sort of golden ratio?
Because everyone wants the “Ooooh that’s how/why (insert effect here)” moment nothing is ever that simple or easy to understand on a cosmic level.
And because that kind of stuff actually happens in nature / reality. That’s WHY we use math to describe the physical world. (And I suspect that, if we knew what we were doing, the ‘soft’ sciences have similar mathematical structures concealed within them.)
They totally do. Population distributions on various topics end up following the logistic map which is also highly related to the mandlebrot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovJcsL7vyrk
On one hand, there are only a handful of math formulae to describe changes of one number in reaction to changes in another number, on the other hand humans just like finding patterns even if they don’t add anything to their understanding.
Phi strikes again. It’s everywhere. Seriously, those Russian tanks getting blown up in the Ukraine right now? Their length to width ratio is Phi. Really.
Also, this website was 30 minutes late.
Amusing that you claim it was 30 minutes late, when there are 2 comments ahead of you on the page that were posted during those 30 minutes.
Looks like the page was on time, but the delay was further downstream…
Does this make Joe a re-φ guy?
It would seem the caching system is either on a long delay (most likely) or has some activity algorithm (very unlikely due to complexity). My test posts down the page a bit show a 15-minute refresh, which is absurdly inefficient, to point of taking conservatism stupidly too far. Maybe a 60-second refresh rate would be better?
It seems to be getting progressively worse too. I wonder if the back end is constantly regenerating the entire comments section (or similar processing) instead of just what’s needed for the latest page.
“I wonder if the back end is constantly regenerating …”
You may be correct. I was staring at your post, and suddenly realised that my word processor doesn’t regenerate the document every time I edit, it simply makes the correction in situ, then repaints for the screen. OK, OK, there’s no way even on this Sandy Bridge i5 4GB the editing delays will be visible to me, but I AM pretty sure that a complete regeneration will be noticeable*, even if I have nothing else open at the time. Hell, even Paint Shop Pro v6 (February 2000) only just begins to stress when doing a complete colour inversion on a 10MB image, even a jpg!
* Noticeable: mouse and keyboard delays, screen flickering, etc
“… it simply makes the correction in situ, …”
I phrased that badly. The word processor takes what I am typing, does something, puts the characters on the screen, repainting as I type. Even if I drop a lump of preprepared text in, it swallows bravely, repaints the screen and burps gently. I don’t even have time to think about recaffeination. There are no (visible) editing delays.
Exactly, a word processor splices new text in memory instead of writing to disk and then throwing out the working memory and reloading the entire document.
The comments system should be doing the same thing, making small tweaks to insert each new comment instead of rebuilding everything. But it may instead be re-generating the HTML for *all* the pages each time a comment is made, instead of just the current page. Or if it’s generating the page dynamically, it could be filtering through all the comments *ever* to find just the ones related to the current page (which could be mitigated with a DB index). Given that the pages always load fast though and are just missing new content, I’m betting on either page prerendering or a queue/pre-filter that has a delay in storing the comments. We know there’s a spam filter, maybe that approval process is what’s lagging.
D’you think we should encourage DaveB to set up a fundraiser to pay for some better equipment?
I’m speaking in ignorance here, as I have very little information about his actual setup. However I can make an educated guess that changing it could be… expensive.
“We know there’s a spam filter …”
And rightly so. OTOH, a spam filter can operate much more quickly, usually by inserting a place-keeper along the lines of “Post awaiting moderation”, which in itself would allow for speedy insertion of the post if it is approved. Or deletion if it’s not.
I’ve checked the publicly-visible basics of the existing setup, in theory it’s not a bad setup* – ComicPress theme over WordPress, hosted on DreamHost. Bumping a hosting tier might help, but in practice for anything but a tiny site the plugin configuration probably makes a much bigger difference than the raw processing power available. But realistically, the comment forum is the only part of the site that’s lagging, and it’s probably not a significant factor in Dave’s funding (other than drawing fans in and hopefully converting them to Patreon), so I’m not sure how good the value proposition is for him to spend a lot of resources on it. Which is sad for us, but understandable.
* other than WordPress and PHP themselves both being steaming piles of garbage cobbled together by committee. Which doesn’t prevent them from being popular or even useful, they’re the VW Bug of programming – fun for starting out or hobbyists, but a pain for regular or large-scale use..
“… checked the publicly-visible basics of the existing setup …”
Hmmm. Um. Hmmm. That is… complex. And very economical. Hmmm. Detailed Technology > Hide Removed.
>90% of the things listed there are run by the WordPress host (especially the multitude of analytics junk), Dave’s probably only managing a few choices like the theme and some plugins.
In software, as with many other things, there is an inverse relationship between quality and popularity.
The problem is that people focused on quality often aren’t equally focused on ease of use. Access is the key to popularity. How quickly can it be gotten up and running, how easy is it to write for. Will it accept garbage input, and try to make the best of it, or does it demand quality from the user?
I’m gonna be honest:
I’m normally not a fan of stories that try to science the fantasy too much, because they typically fail.
But I’ll keep watching to see how this progresses.
Also, can’t believe I’m first.
“can’t believe I’m first”
Sorry to break it to you….
However, I AM the first to reply to your comment. :)
So the reason it happens only to earthlings, is because of the way our DNA is shaped? On top of it’s contents?
More likely the order that some human’s DNA is ordered causes them to create the receiver that allows them to access the “magic” fields that gives them the super powers. Sydney seems to have the exact opposite DNA since Vera wasn’t able to use contact with her to form a gestalt power… which could be another reason the orbs “liked” her.
You must check that comic again.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-324-she-should-put-all-those-answers-on-a-shirt/
(HINT: Look at the orbs)
Huh didn’t notice that before so they encircled both of them well so much for that theory lol
I’ll have to re-read the entire comic again only take a week lol
She did gestalt with her, the gestalt had the orbs thinking she was also Sidney so could have used an orb in her free hand.
I don’t think that was confirmed, just the best guess we have. In-universe they didn’t notice the orbs’ rotation changing so they just agreed that whatever it was must be non-obvious and they didn’t have time to play around and figure it out.
We don’t know whether Varia would be able to use the orbs, or how many. Presumably, since she can gestalt with someone with a butt-bump — see the dancing scene — she should be able to use two hands while Halo uses two, as long as skin contact is maintained somehow.
Have we ever seen Varia contacting two people at once?
The Orbs “liking” her *is* the Gestalt.
Makes me wonder if she could of used them as well… that’s a scary thought… or a really good one!
They could hook legs and then they could use 4 orbs at once! (plot line forming… OW! My brain!) lol
The gestalt power works even when touching non supers to give a unique power or power set. That means Halo being able to use the orbs is actually a superpower.
We know that Varia’s gestalts are related to DNA, as close family members give similar powers, which implies that if Sydney’s gestalt involves the orbs, then so does her genes.
So perhaps the orbs rewrote her DNA as part of the bonding process so they can recognize her as user.
one of the theories is a Grandma Verdona scenario,
only even higher up.
like Sidney’s grandmother or something was a space wizard on holiday as a human (or one or both of her parents is/are), so she inherited a quirk allowing her to access the tech of their kind…or the orbs were sat down in front of her by said alien ancestor as a learning tool for her innate powers *a power medium as the natural power could be dangerous to her physiology if she lensed her higher form’s power through her biological body instead of a tool*, like training wheels for the soul.
the baby Nth theory is basically like that as well, although it can have incarnated without a parent or whatever, same with avatar and incarnation *same concept just moving the qualifiers around*.
Not a given.
Varia gets superpowers from gestalting with non-supers.
Varia able to emulate Halo and potentially control the orbs is VARIA’s superpower.
Surely I’m not the first to comment? Anyway, love Sydney’s face in panel 2. That just perfectly expresses “I’m messing with you, and can barely keep a straight face”.
I would also imagine that if their equations are already balanced, and a new field would throw them off, then that suggests there’s yet another unknown factor that would account for the disparity.
Dabbler saying she’s “not much of a geneticist” is like me saying I’m “not much of a linguist” to my linguistics-obsessed friends. I just have a master’s degree in the field, that’s nothing. She only published two perspective-shattering research papers on the subject, and can perform “cursory glances” at the human genome and see if anything jumps out, that’s not like, impressive or anything :p
TL/DR: It’s all about the orbs (and a science experiment gone horrible wrong, and completely right).
Wild very late at night theory: One of the elder/precursor/first ones type species found Sydney’s orbs much like she did, but were higher up the tech tree and managed to do some very simple reverse engineering on them, discovering the superion field in the process. As a test one of them used the orbs to go to an utterly insignificant little blue green planet far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy and decided to tweak the life there to be more sensitive to the superion field. It worked, but caused a massive explosion (and a large amount of iridium for some reason). It’s even possible that the orbs were used to make this tweak, and were needed to keep it running long enough to become stable and self sustaining. It explains much (and keeps the origins of the orbs mysterious), and is no stupider than a “mutant Gene”, and Marvel used that excuse for yonks! :-)
I can see the orbs’ influence altering the human genome over millions of years, and aligning our DNA structure with the superion field. It would also explain why Terrans are the only known supers – maybe superions are the reverse-polarity equivalent of thaumions.
I actually came up with a psuedoscientific explanation a couple years ago that attempts to fix the problems with a “mutant gene” explanation for superpowers that was much like this “Superion field” discussed in the comic right now. Basically there was an energy field that was difficult to detect and the mutant gene was just a y/n switch for whether you would be able to interact with it, if you have the gene you can, if you don’t then you can’t, the variance for the powers you develop is explained via epigenetics, where factors like environment, diet, etc. as you develop impact what powers you get when you go through puberty, thus explaining why power types cans sometimes run in families but don’t always, and are rarely perfectly identical.
the comics themselves said that, not that the writer in-fighting can ever keep it consistent. The X-gene was put in humanity by Celestials and apparently links humans to the Phoenix force somehow, accessing the same life force of the universe.
there was also the F4 comic that tried to unify ALL super powers as accessing the same super particle extra dimensional field but that the power acts like a grid system and didn’t receptions of said power affected how it manifested in physical space. of course other writers ignored this and we have like a dozen different explanations for how magic works, super powers, etc… (too many chefs in the kitchen).
Copying my response to a comment above you regarding DNS and Varia’s powers
>We know that Varia’s gestalts are related to DNA, as close family members give similar powers, which implies that if Sydney’s gestalt involves the orbs, then so does her genes.
So perhaps the orbs rewrote her DNA as part of the bonding process so they can recognize her as user.
So maybe the orb were slowly influencing the DNA of the planet, and when someone came in actual physical contact with them I’d was able to actually rewrite theirs on the fly.
well we knew that already. it canceled out her vertigo right? there are a few orbs that we know are passives. meaning it is constantly affecting her body.
Ok the spacing between those dots is a special ratio, but you drew those dots on yourself. Why are those dots specifically there?
Bloody good question. On first glance, it looks a bit… irrational.
Hokay, we’ll set some boundaries. The helix has been squished FLAT onto the panel, so Left and Right are as we see them on a flat sheet of paper.
So, on second looksee… The first dot is on the 2nd strip up from the bottom, Pale Green to Lavender (L to R). Then Red to Blue, and Blue to Red, 3rd and 5th stripes, 8, 11, 15, 20 … No, it’s still irrational.
I hate to say this, but Xuriel is almost certainly correct. It’s the Infernal Ratio.
Posted at 19:58 WAST
Seen at 20:14 WAST
are the lines of DNA code the same colour as Sydney’s orbs?
The whole point of this scene is to compare 2 different DNA maps, not a single one. The line and dots are where the super’s DNA is different than the normal’s, they aren’t drawn randomly.
I’ll go with this scenario, but I will say Deus could have put the two helices beside each other, then just drawn lines to join the differences.
I’ve used those colour pictures. They’re not DNA exactly, but rather an expression pattern. Each block corresponds to a specific gene (or more accurately, mRNA, which is another processing step down the ladder), and the colour difference between the 2 pictures indicates relative level of expression.
It’s easy to remember the difference between sentience and sapience.
Just recognise that humans are all Saps.
I’ve met more than a few people that are barely sentience “hold my beer!” or “Hey guys check this out!” is the battle cry of those types LOL
Just before you start dialing 911…
BABYMETAL Karate is best karate https://youtu.be/qXF94RGYEmw (2016 Download festival).
Dabbler’s look is a great Maxima “dread”/”you dared say that?”
But was it intentional?
Science mode for Dabbler ,but no one turned chibi…
Is there a super with the power to turn enemies into chili versions of themselves? / “I thought it was great, but darn does it make them annoying. “
Maybe Sentience itself is the missing field.
Actually Gödel’s incompleteness theorems say no math is complete within its own framework, so…
Yeah, it’s pretty much elephants/turtles all the way down.
… I read that as “Gödel’s incompetence theorem”
The rule that when your surround incompetent people with more incompetent people, they’ll start causing additional layers of incompetency.
that… explains so much.
I need to go escape from reality again. or recite dad jokes.
Don’t tell them too much about the “awareness” and “intent” fields…it might mess with their quanta….
The date in the image’s filename is off; it is “2022-03-27-GP1034.jpg” but that’s this coming Sunday.
I told him not to park it in fort worth…. just my luck he parks the thing in front of Dave’s house. unfortunately because of chronotron scattering and uncertainty Lotto numbers and stock prices change after the return trip. it was very frustrating figuring this out.
“Discovering that your perfectly balanced equation is incomplete would be disturbing I’d think, because you’d never have confidence that you next perfectly balanced equation is actually complete.”
And that is why I hated (and dropped) my p-chem class. I like hard numbers, not symbols. I especially couldn’t handle the instructor giving a long eye watering lecture and then conclude it by saying: “Everything I just told you is wrong. But it is the best explanation we have, so we will go with that.”
“We actually do have a really good theory, but the math is impossibly hard for anything more complicated than an isolated hydrogen molecule.”
That’s why they use umpteen known to be wrong, but actually useable, theories.
“All models are wrong, but some are useful”
The model of light as a two-wheeled Segway where each wheel is independently powered is very useful for determining which way light will bend when it changes mediums from fast to slow or vice versa.
It’s useless for anything else, but it’s really good for that.
My grandfather invented scoffing at Fritos.
and I bet he would’ve gone further with it if he’d had some good seven layer dip
Can I just say how impressed I am that you are keeping track of the projector overlay on the characters, I would of lost track of that nine times by now
Meanwhile, Anvil is arm wrestling with Benoît Brisefer (a Belgian comic character created by Peyo,the same man who created the Smurfs)…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beno%C3%AEt_Brisefer
There’s a much simpler explanation for all of this and it’s been right in front of our noses the whole time.
I’m not saying it’s aliens, but it’s aliens.
Ancient aliens messed with human DNA and this happened. But why didn’t they use it on themselves? Because they’re not aliens to themselves, obviously. The only way that would work is if humans went and messed with their DNA because the humans would of course be the aliens there.
If the History Channel has taught me anything it’s that aliens are responsible for anything we don’t understand.
I do not think the history channel has taught you anything.
Architects of psionics and Architects of Magic enter the desiigner room for the Architects of Super skills.
“Hey, um, sisters, its been millions of years and well, not only has nothing in the test range figured out how to use this super cool powers field you made, but as far as we can tell it doesn’t seem like even the most advanced of them has even discovered it exists yet*
-celestial *eye* twitching, “very well then, we shall shove a receiver for it into the DNA of amalgam modifications planet 12*
It’s most commonly called the golden ratio AFAIK. Don’t think I’ve heard anyone call it the divine ratio, but wikipedia does confirm “divine proportion” as one of it’s names.
There seems to be a slight problem with this explanation. Or at least, we’re not hearing the whole story.
First, we know that the emergence of supers is a relatively recent phenomenon. But the fact that it’s happening globally, and at about the same time everywhere, seems to indicate that some other external factor has “come online” to enable supers.
Second, from previous comics we know that thanks to alien abduction there’s a sizeable population of off-world humans, at least some of which have had their DNA tinkered with to varying degrees. It seems… unlikely, that something like this would have been missed during the research which would enable that.
Define “relatively recent”? Because there have been indications in the comic that supers have been around since before they became common knowledge.
Yea. It’s mentioned Abe Lincoln was one.
I mean, even being able to pull off that beard is a super-power in its own right.
Well, a quick google search tells me that estimates put the existence of modern humans at around 300,000 years, while more complex cultures have existed for some 50,000 years. So, 200 years is well within the limits of recency (although I don’t recall the mention that Abe was one).
Harmony is probably thinking of this page back during the press conference at which ARC was unveiled. Someone who looks rather like the Lincoln stereotype is indeed seen facing off against some nefarious-looking characters, but that is in Sydney’s imagination rather than a ‘proper’ flashback. The page does, however, establish that there have been “private citizens assisting the Government” at least as far back as Lincoln – even if, in hindsight, it is only implied that these were what we’d now call ‘Supers’, as opposed to members of the various ‘non-Super’ Council factions.
From what I recall of that strip it isn’t so much that supers themselves are very recent, but the amount of them emerging is growing in relative recent years. What exactly is causing this is still unknown, and it apparently is more than just DNA otherwise it would be happening with the non-Earth humans too.
Which is why it would have been missed during extraterrestrial research on humans, they didn’t have unexplained super powers and the superion field is unknown to them so they have nothing to compare oddities to.
That raises a number of different questions. The powers work off-planet (we know from the field trip to the Alari Homeworld), so if some sort of field is enabling it said field is quite wide in scope.
We could take the view that the field merely enables the development of superpowers (so once in place they could work anywhere), but then supers would have “structures” within them which granted their abilities, and those structures could be studied / duplicated. Given the positioning of supers as strategic assets, one imagines that no small amount of research would already have been done.
So many questions. Why is this thread even happening? Why would military representatives from a potentially hostile nation be participating in such a conversation, as opposed to merely listening? Why would a person obsessed with global domination share such information with anybody from another, potentially hostile, nation, unless that person was convinced his audience ultimately shared his global world vision and would join him? There isn’t a globalist on Earth (other than the unwashed masses who merely want to always remain in the “majority” so they don’t get killed outright (e.g. placed in a tank to face down supers and infernals), by volunteering their children (though preferably someone else’s children) to serve their masters (e.g. by placing them in a tank to face down supers and infernals)) who doesn’t want to either be on the global ruling committee (their public vision of the perfect world order), or be world emperor (their true vision of the perfect world order), and Deus clearly wants to be world emperor, so why would he share any insights whatsoever with others who share his vision of a new world order but also ultimately want the title “World Emperor, Leader of the Global Ruling Committee”, and would have no more qualms about killing him to achieve that goal by than he has of killing anyone and everyone who stands in his own way? But most importantly, why is Sydney even in the room?
OMG! I just figured out what the unknown orb is! It’s the MacGuffin orb! The orb which ensures the orb bearer is always present whenever it is useful to advance the plot! And which ensures the plot does not advance without the orb bearer present (unless necessary for the plot to advance)! It’s what powers that air ship that always travels at the speed of plot! OH! EM! GEE! I just figured out the missing universal force! PLOT!
math, math, math … tedious details skipped to advance plot … 42! Holy crap! Everything balances!
As for the “why would a person obsessed with global domination share…”
It’s very consistent with his character. He sees himself as a the good guy, improving the overall state of humanity, and he values improving the knowledge of humanity in that goal.
I’m with you on the tedium of this diversion from the plot though. Though for me it’s tedious because I actually understand the subjects he’s trying to invoke, which makes it quite frustrating because there’s nothing special to Phi (the divine/golden ratio). People who see it in nature are mostly committing the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy.
So if the thaum required intent and is from external, and the psi requires intent but comes from the internal. So to balance the other two effect require no intent but are manifestations of this outer field with super dealing with the internal with no intent but effect so what would cause no intent but effect the external…. chaos?
Oh… yay… divine/golden ratio… While it does show up in nature on occasion, when people link it to nature like it’s some kind of underlying fundamental underpinning to nature are committing Texas sharpshooter fallacy. Here’s a PBS video on the subject. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jj-sJ78O6M
And to show that I’m not entirely negative… and it might be an idea for (once it gets back to their superiors) to have called it the phimion field might than superion given the ratio involved in the DNA there, the golden ratio, also known as the golden section, golden mean, or divine proportion, in mathematics is often denoted by the Greek letter ϕ (phi) or τ (tau). Since tau is pretty close to thau, phi would be a the go to choice here.
Also tau is lately being repurposed by some mavericks in the math community to replace pi with a variable that’s exactly double pi. There are some very good reasons for it, namely in that 2π (2 times pi) shows up more often in math and physics than does just π on its own. The argument is that the constant is thus double the value of π; and it’s rather redundant to just keep going 2π, 2π, 2π…
I don’t advocate for keeping pi nor replacing it with tau (and using tau/2 when it’s just pi on its own). I don’t really care that much because while I understand the arguments both sides present, I mostly work with math in higher levels ways where I don’t have to touch the actual low level formulas since I mostly use math in video game programming where I’ve got a ton of pre-written helper functions I use to handle all the low level number crunching for me. That’s the great thing about programming… while it’s all math, if you know what you’re doing you can basically just gesticulate in the general direction of the formula you want to use rather than having to directly punch it out every single time.
Anyway, yeah, since the rest of the world is unlikely to want to indulge Deus in his self agrandizing, I might suggest having them call it the “phimion field”. It could be a good moment for to get a funny reaction shot from Deus.
If divine is racist than wouldn’t infernal be racist too.
I am so glad that DaveB made a distinction between sapient and sentient after all the posts anout that a few weeks ago on the forum. :) or there would have been a lot more posts about the same exact thing again.
Forum? All I could find was this https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/331/
But the forum linked there has a most recent post date of 2 years ago. Is there another forum? Or are you talking about Patreon?
@Pander
Is there a forum other than the (apparently defunct) 910CMX one I found via googling “grrlpowercomic forum”? Or are you referring to Patreon? (Repost because link in original got nuked)
When I say forum, I mean the comment boards. Sorry. :)
> just squeaking by in the IQ department.
Is this a GURPS reference here?
Getting to dunk on your super smart friend is always gratifying. At least Dabbler isn’t usually a know it all, unlike that one friend most people have had at one point in their lives who is convinced they’re an expert at everything and pronounces it “kara-TAY,” and whose dad was supposedly an Air Force mechanic and bragged about flying in a C-130 gunship and they even let him fire the minigun at tree out in the middle of a field in Afghanistan (this is all while still in high school) and swears he knows how to do Dim Mak but is sworn to never use it and also his grandfather invented Fritos. You know the type.
To be fair, if someone’s Dad is an air-force mechanic, that’s not far-fetched at all. If they were born abroad (not uncommon because guys meet exotic foreign women), a kid getting a ride on one of the gunships on a ride back is pretty normal, and gives the crew something to distract them (good for moral). It’s very common for one of the operators to sit the kid in their lap and give them a few seconds (military’s a bit more lax around kids than your typical airliner crew; having a kid touch the controls of your gunship for three seconds isn’t much of a risk when you’re use to dodging AA weapons). And the kid shooting the gun at a tree, it’d just make the gunner smile and make him stop thinking about the war and think for a moment, “Yea, this actually is a little fun when you take the death out of it.”
And when you’re a kid on a military base, there’s actually not tons of “normal kid stuff” to do. There is, however, civilian-friendly instructors for various things on base, meaning early introduction to martial arts (which also frequently includes instructions not to use it on people not in the class unless it’s a life or death emergency), and if his dad is inclined to be an aircraft mechanic, he’s obviously got a knack for tech, so a grandfather being an inventor of some kind is just finding a tech-career kid had a tech-career parent. It’s like the opposite of a surprise.
So… honestly, yea. Dad being a military aircraft mechanic, all the rest checks out as distinctly more likely than not.
As a Cold War Military Brat I find some of this to be true to my experience, but my childhood is more than a half-century past. My Dad was a Navy CT, assigned to the Navy spook squad, NavSecGru, SupRad where everything in his workspace was Classified Secret or Higher and dependents were prohibited, however the next door neighbor when we were stationed in Hawaii was an armorer and I used to get these comic books from him on how to maintain weapon systems… And there is a picture somewhere in the archives of the Army Times of me field stripping and reassembling an M60 at Armed Forces Day at Schofield Barracks when I was 7 in 1966.
I haven’t seen anyone mention it so I will. I wonder if this is where Krona’s abilities come from.
It’s been established that what she does is similar to magic, but not actually magic. If magic comes from the Thaumion field, what if Krona is a ‘mage’ who is tapping into the Superion field instead?
Sydney’s orbs are able to recognize magic (seeing auras, shielding her from the effects) but are otherwise closer to the abilities of supers, what if they work on the Superion field as well, and with Krona tapping into this field as well it is the reason why she could see the ‘gears’ behind it when no one else could.
The equations don’t have to be unbalanced…
Just in need of an extension.
Take E=mc² for example. It’s only true when the system is at rest.
You can see some other forms on the Wikipedia page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass%E2%80%93energy_equivalence
“Discovering that your perfectly balanced equation is incomplete would be disturbing I’d think, because you’d never have confidence that you next perfectly balanced equation is actually complete.”
Some people see this as the heart of actual Science….
And honestly.. Mother Nature doesn’t do anything “elegant and balanced”. It’s all Haxx and Pulling-the-Sheet-Real Fast that actually makes us tick.
But that notion seems to …disturb… some people.
The theme of today’s SMBC is a nice coincidence. https://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/1648133575-20220324.png
Or maybe it’s NOT a coincidence (Twilight Zone theme plays in background).
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
…Eh? What? Oh, sorry, it’s just that this is at least the third multi-page info dump within the last 100 pages (possibly more, depending on what you choose to count), and the justification for burying us in them has been feeling more and more contrived as they continue to roll in. More, this one is coming from a character who should be being placed under arrest right now, but instead is allowed to continue prattling because he’s ALWAYS successful, ALWAYS on top of things, and ALWAYS “right” so far as the story universe is concerned.
If I am understanding your point correctly you are claiming “Danny Phantom is a magical girl anime”
Never heard of it called the “Devine” ratio, it is normally called the Golden Ratio or the Fibonacci Sequence, Fibonacci-like sequence.
Lesson Five! The shortest route was the detour!
Hmmm,
so it seems this universe’s equivalent(s) to the chousin, lord of nightmares, architects of magic, grand administrators, etc… created these super quantum field overlays for various effects and got so sick of no one in this galaxy figuring out how to use this one really cool field, let alone discovering that it even exists; so stuck an antenna up the proverbial ass of humanity’s DNA so they could indirectly point and say, “See…there is this really cool field and it does really cool things, now play with it, us damn it”
PS: Sidney there adding more points for the suspicion on her for the later, “No I am not a Nth tier alien” conversation.
PSS: “possibly except really old proto-gods, and they’re not usually real forthcoming about that sort of stuff, and that’s assuming you can find them, they’re awake, and they realize you exist and communicate with you without being instantly destroyed by their reality warping words, and you have a “scary ancient uber being to English” dictionary handy.”
yeah, that’s accurate. Even when you do figure out some way to identify them when they are in “interactive mode” its usually some avatar or incarnation with limitations on their memory and/or power so you end up with a *shrug* or “Yeah I’m trying to figure that out myself” response…imagining Dabbler at the Misaki household trying to have a conversation with Washu. LoL. or finding Lina Inverse (who while never confirmed that I know of, big hints fan theory she was an avatar of the Lord of Nightmares the whole time, same with the girl whose name I forget from Lost Universe whose very presence causes random chaotic events.) among other “I am the dreamer and the dream” type scenario.
try to work your way up that ladder with their not as proto-god offspring/administrator and moderator level creations and who knows what might happen, ignored, annihilated, agreed to be taught but they Isekai you to a magic school as a student, think you look cute so turn you into a doll, painting, tattoo on one of their avatars, a pet, etc… hmm, yeah probably best to just figure these things out without trying to contact beings that can treat the fabric of reality as a play doh set or anything in that same ball park.
getting buried on first page anyway, but thought on the subject of higher dimension beings, I actually am looking forward to DaveB’s cosmology, usually the cosmology is the part I dread the most in a series due to how wonky it can be or feels like it skips over simplifies what should have a lot more moving parts to it. Top Cow ended up with a really weak cosmology for instance with its 13 Artifacts event. and Dragon Ball (honestly it was done gradually, and feel its not done yet, there is one Zeno per timeline so something above him may exist.
but on this feel I could share my latest attempt to work out some kinks of my own cosmology, mainly giving a rough idea of where in the time line some big events take place relative to each other as it can feel like there are multiple origins…its a rough summary done as a first person chat, stuff is skipped over (the war that never was) for instance is skipped over, and other events have their own papers…and not mentioned is that some things repeat (as in one or more of the seven sisters access a related timeline and do the same things again but differently…current stories have this element as well going to different Earths for different reasons under different forms.
-but yes this covers roughly a trillion years or more…in less than 4000 words according to one site I posted this to, so some leeway.
the origin of the seven sisters.
https://www.deviantart.com/rhuen1/art/Rhulan-s-confession-2-the-origins-of-the-sisters-910853193