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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I love the fact that Dabbler (must have) teleported a lab coat to her specifically so she could look smart while doing science stuff. Although it looks more like a ‘boyfriend dress shirt’ than a jacket, but maybe it was what she had on hand.
glamor.
Pretty sure her glamor just does clothes on its own, no teleporting clothing required.
If you look at panel 4, you’ll see she changed the glamor around her, rather than teleporting a physical object.
Though the effect is probably the same.
Dabber’s clothes are an illusion. She fits it to whatever the relevant fetish is.
She nekid all the time fits for her best.
Dabbler has also been know to glamorize physical clothes that she’s wearing as well.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-473-exiguous-couture/
Nah, it looks like a “Sexy Doctor” costume to me.
And wireless-top glasses. And her hair in a bun.
It’s the trifecta of intellectualism. No clothes underneath required, according to many many pornographic movies.
and fits her constantly some form of sexy personality. because some find people in labcoats and glasses to be attractive. at least according to movie and tv show fiction
Non-English native speaker here. What’s so wrong about pronouncing Karate as “Kara-TAY” ? Isn’t that the correct Japanese pronunciation? How the hell do you even pronounce it in English? Care-at? Or is that less an issue with the sound of the vowel and more about the position of the emphasis?
ka-ROT-ty
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/pronunciation/english/karate
“Way of the carrot”, eh?
Wherein the highest belt ought to be orange.
Because even though you are technically correct it comes off as annoying and makes you sound like a know-it-all
Like this:
https://youtu.be/fKGoVefhtMQ
This is entirely dependent on point of view. Americans think I’m an annoying pedant when I pointedly pronounce soldering “sOHL-der-ing” instead of “soddering”. Hilariously both “pedant” and “soddering” sound like perversions involving children.
English is Kara-Tee
Karate tends to get pronounced as “ka-rah-tee” by English speakers, but whether that’s related to how it sounds in Japan is another thing entirely.
Most English speakers say ‘kuh-rah-tee’, we have a habit of forcing our own interpretation on other cultures.
Thanks guys! I had no idea it’s pronounced “tee”. That sounds ridiculous to me, but hey, cultural differences. Gotta respect them. And to be fair, in French, we also use a French “r” rather than a Japanese one. But at least our vowels are correct lol.
I remember this CH skit. I also remember, when it came out, all the non-Americans in the comments being confused (“why… why do you think it would be racist to make the slightest effort to say the word correctly? No, we’re not going to be offended if you pronounce it the way we do.”)
You’re all soooooooooooooo wrong. It’s pronounced Car-Ate. (*sydney smile suppression activated*)
Like you ate a car. Car Ate. Definitely, for sure. 100% sure of it. Such a common misconception that everyone is pronouncing it wrong. According to all the ninja I employ for the hit squads, that’s how it’s actually pronounced.
And that’s what I will say to anyone who ever tells me Karate is pronounced Kara-TAY if I say Kara-tee. Just to irritate them. I’ll be super-sure of myself when saying it also.
Because if I watch an old movie and the guy says he’s wearing ‘high karate,’ he definitely doesn’t say high kara-TAY. :)
*eye twitch*
That might explain why all your ninja hit squads are so ineffective.
the employees are all recruited from local malls
They just need to practice their Car Ate more.
No amount of practice eating cars is going to make them more effective assassins, unless you’re sending them against sentient cars.
Well, I guess there’s some transmissible skill between “Car Ate” and “Human Ate”, if that’s their approach to assassination.
depends on your target,
car eating ninja hit squad in action.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ek5CaJAy9_g
Their car ate is strong!
reminds me of part of a Robot Chicken Street Fighter sketch where Ken is like, “Ryu, there is a car here, I thought I was fighting E Honda?”
and Ryu is like, “no, not E Honda, A Honda.”
“What’s so wrong about pronouncing Karate as “Kara-TAY” ?”
Nothing, really. Except. The “English”, which includes real Poms in the UK, Australians, Kiwis, Canucks aaaand our beloved friends in the Lower 48 plus Alaska and Hawaiʻi, are the most xenophobic culture on Earth. This means — among other things — that their pronounciation is the ONLY CORRECT pronunciation. For example, there was a German lass in the Winter Olympics some decades ago, with the family name of Schiess. Every commentator in the world got her name right. Except the English-speaking idiots, who re-christened her to “Scheiss”…
Odd information: In English pronounciation, “ei” is supposed to be treated as “ay” (hAY, dead dried grass) or “eye” (as in the thing that you see with), and “ie” is to be treated as “ee” (shEEt” bedding). And that is NOT “gr[ARSE]s”, it’s “gr[ASS]” (the multiple trailing consonants rule).
There are those of us who hold the 99% in deepest contempt, however the opportunity of taking up the White Man’s Burden to remedy the deficiency is now denied to us by very restrictive laws in almost every part of the planet.
Most ‘xenophobic’, eh? The Sentinelese would like a word with you.
Not sure if you’re trolling or just astoundingly prejudiced, but actually too tired of and disgusted by obnoxious shitheads with garbage opinions on the internet to have that discussion.
“Not sure if you’re trolling …” I’m astoundingly prejudiced.
Find an athlete competing in elite competition, with the surname “Shoot” or very similar. Now go on air on a national broadcaster and call the athlete “Shit”. And if there are complaints — which there would have been — simply ignore them and continue with the insult.
But it’s not merely Fraülein Schiess being insulted by every English language commentary in the world. (I actually made a point of finding every English language commentary I could.)
While England holds a proud place in history for its stand on slavery, and for standing up to Hitler’s Germany when no others could or dared, it also holds a dismal place in the treatment of lesser humans. Not simple beatings and physical denigration, but by the ordinary English-speaker’s complete unwillingness to address the complexities of a foreign language, the difficulties inherent in trying to pronounce a non-English word. Wherever England went, the local language was trampled in the dirt. But we must give the Poms some fairness: they did the same to the Welsh, the Scots and the Irish. Those tongues were… rigorously… discouraged, with public beatings, exile, prison, land degradation, the list is long.
Yes, I am proud to be an obnoxious shithead.
You meant “shoothead”, didn’t you?
No.
The “Kara-TAY” thing is more talking about correcting others not out of a wish to educate but out of a wish to sound smarter then they actually are. Or at least for other words, the “Kara-TAY” thing is more of a media meme, and has very little to actually do with the pronunciation and far more to do with the joke its in reference to. People in general, regardless of location, culture, nationality or background, tend to link their regional accent and local language to how they choose to pronounce things, so naturally in Poland for example, you’d be hard pressed to find someone able to pronounce Chinagorom, a Nigerian name correctly, for example, or at least not on their first few tries, even if they have the name told to them. The languages are so different and outside the typical experience of someone from Poland that they simply wouldn’t know how to combine the letters right without practice. Same for the other way around if a Nigerian was asked to say Dobieslaw.
For someone who claims to actually care about the cultures and history of nations, and shows a strong dislike for xenophobia, you seem to be peppering down a lot of needless xenophobia upon a bunch of cultures and nations.
Almost as if you are trying to present yourself as smarter then you actually are.
Japanese words have no accents, so TAY is still wrong.
How on earth are you so good at drawing the interruption of the projection??? What drawing software do you use like oh my god it looks so CLEAN
(hi yes long time reader first time commenter)
I would imagine that they just drew the whole thing out beforehand, and then made copies of it as a shape with transparency and deformed it to their liking.
I took my “DNA slide projection” and slapped it on the whiteboard. Then I added a multiply layer between the foreground and the background and put the shadows there. Then I selected all the pixels on that layer (CTRL+Click on the layer thumbnail – at least in Clip Studio Paint, but I think that also works in Photoshop) then I switched to the DNA layer and cut, removing all the DNA from within the shadow. Then I pasted that above the foreground layer and I think I set it to about 60% opaque, then used the liquify brush to make it look like it contoured to their bodies a little.
I’d like to say that stuff like that is why it takes me so long to draw the comic, but mostly I’m just really slow with penciling faces.
Non-English native speaker here. What’s so wrong about pronouncing Karate as “Kara-TAY” ? Isn’t that the correct Japanese pronunciation? How the hell do you even pronounce it in English? Care-at? Or is that less an issue with the sound of the vowel and more about the position of the emphasis?
Ka-RAH-tee or Ko-RAH-tee are ones that I usually hear, even from my sensei when I was taking karate
It’s usually pronounced kah-RA-tee
Car-Ate
What have we done to deserve this kind of punishm- …never mind.
Yes you know full well what you’ve done to deserve this payback.
shot fired.
fortunately I have a well of return shots.
There are 3 guys on a boat with 4 cigarettes, but nothing to light them with.
So they throw a cigarette overboard and the boat becomes a cigarette lighter
man talking to woman(foolish enough to marry him):
“Technically you’re iron man”
woman: “is this going to descend into something about me doing the ironing?” (sorting laundry at the time)
Him: “you’re female. Fe is Iron, male is man, therefore you’re iron man”
its too bad I’m bilateral or I’d try to trick a doctor into this…
Doctor: “So, you’re telling me that you have a problem with one of your ears. Are you sure?”
Me: “Yes doctor. I am definite.”
Actually I think that joke is brilliant
Most people in the USA/English tend to pronounce it: Ka-ra-tee, not Ka-ra-tay, even though the latter is more accurate.
Sorry for the double posting, and thanks for the answers.
Some people being a douche actually pronounce the gap in the middle and the caps. Other than that it’s normal here. Other countries that are also English speaking might pronounce and / or spell it differently.
Q. What’s the fastest way to tell that someone has read too many pop-science articles?
A. They elevate the golden ratio to some sort of cosmic significance.
The golden ratio may be cosmic, but it’s not significant.
And what’s the point of the dots? If you space them out according to the Fibonacci sequence, then – big shock – they’ll be spaced out according to the Fibonacci sequence. What’s the correlation to the DNA helix? You could draw the same dots on a long stretch of highway or a strand of linguini. Or you could just write them down on paper.
The golden / Fibonacci ratio shows up everywhere in seemingly unrelated fields – natural biological structure, math, geometry, physics… and the shape of DNA. Which is why analysis of it goes back thousands of years.
Phi is so prevalent and seemingly improbable that it seems like a cosmic easter egg, which is why modern pop sci has sometimes adopted it as such, but that’s far from a recent development. Galileo is credited with saying “Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe.” Which is probably a paraphased version of a line from The Assayer, but the scope is accurate and the sentiment has driven centuries of scientific advancement.
I remember reading a research paper awhile ago (please don’t ask me to find it, I’d be hunting for hours), and they found the reason the Fibonacci ratio is everywhere isn’t because it’s some underlying secret of the universe, but that it could simply be applied to nearly anything that isn’t relatively balanced. You have something that isn’t homogeneous? It’s going to have a side different than the other. And one of those side’s sides will be different than the other. And since it’s not homogeneous, one of those side’s side’s sides will be different than the other. It’s basically a ruler that says, “This thing is not homogeneous” and effectively can be used to measure how non-homogenous a thing is. The question really isn’t if something fits the golden ratio, the question is how *much* it fits the golden ratio.
TL;DR: Saying something fits the golden ratio is like saying, “Hey, this thing fits next to a ruler!”
Now, THAT said, since the Golden Ratio can be used to measure non-conformity is really weird in a regular system like DNA if it goes on for any stretch of time. Remember, the golden ratio is considered congruent with a spiral. Working from inward to outward, that means we are likely tighting winding something in DNA that looks like a Conch shell.
In other words, something that would be reactive to something *very* small having that effect translated to something *much* larger (on a cellular level, anyway). Or, if the gene was transcribed in the other direction, focusing something very large into something very small.
Hypothetically, if a quantumly reactive molecule (say, for example, water, which ‘bounces’ in response to quantum stimuli) were locked in the center of a spiral, quantum noise could be escalated to a higher level, meaning the system could be making after use of quantum randomness or may sense quantum entanglement or superposition.
Now, if in Grrlverse the Superion field interacts with quantum forces, that means that super-humans have a unique evolved trait that does just that.
Okay, that evolved from lazy to a “Yea, I can see the mechanics for this.”
Ooh, and fun result from that.
If the reason this works is that genes following the golden ratio cause a spiral protein that can lock for connecting to quantum state (which would mean the protein is spread throughout the whole body, more than likely) to then extrapolate into macro effects, then this ALSO means that CRISPR could be used to inject that sequence into (specifically Human) DNA.
Future opportunity for artificially created super powers confirmed. (Artificials likely having the advantage of getting more control over what their power *is* while naturals, having it from birth, would get the advantage of instinctive minute control instead of having to learn when there’s less neuroplasticity.)
All this spiral talk is making Spiral Power from Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann come to mind.
It’s implied that something is different in Super’s DNA at the dots.
Thus setting aside the fact that Baseline Human DNA is a fuzzy concept. There is no set sequence that we can point to and say “that much is the instructions for building a template Human*, and those bits are the customisation that define exactly which Human you have”. It’s very similar to that concept, but everyone has deviations from the average even within the ‘how to build a Human’ bits – with billions on the planet and millions of generations for variation, there will be many Humans with whom you the reader share not a single allele.
*Hence the stats about Humans sharing 90% of their genes with Chimpanzees, or 50% with Bananas, or whatever. A lot of the “this is how to build a Human” code is actually “this is how to build life-as-we-know it … this is how to make it multicellular … this is how to customise your life form to be a vertebrate … a mammal … an ape …”.
In math I believe it is called the golden ratio, or I might be thinking of another ratio, or both are called the golden ratio… in math people use the same terms and symbols for completely different equations and variables.
No, but it tried to be. The Fibonacci series came first and is just 1+1=2, 1+2 = 3 infinitum and mathematically creates a perfect spiral, the same kind seen reflected in nature all the time. They created the golden ratio to try and make a rule that explains fibonacci in higher math; using a rule of division (A+B/A = A/B = phi) but it doesn’t work. If you look them up they outwardly look similar but as you get higher up in numbers the golden ratio goes weird.
Er… no. What came first was the (A+B)/A=A/B idea, discovered in ancient Greece.
And the golden ratio does perfectly explain the Fibonacci series, which is equal to ((phi)^n+(-phi)^n)/sqrt(5)
Rilmani are the True Neutral version of celestials. Archons and eladrin and demons and devils and modrons and slaad … and rilmani, who live under the Spire and watch everything.
And I’m the only one who cares.
Did Dabbles ‘forget’ to glamour pants (again)?
i’d say it’s in the same vein of ‘forgetting’ as that Bingo card she has where she ‘forgets’ the correct word and tricks Maxima into saying a naughty word
Touché Sydney, touché.
*wags tail approvingly*
I like how well Dabbler and Sidney get along, their amusing little interactions add so much to the story.
I love that smile in the third panel. I really like Dabbler when she is not really vamping it up as hard. That smile was adorable.
This is most interesting, but does it mean you can tap multiple fields, or not? I.e. can you be a super that casts spells? Asking for a friend that likes to collect powers.
Well if being a were-creature taps into one field then that one were-cat qualifies, as she’s uniquely a super in her hybrid forms.
Maybe were-shifting includes reshuffeling your dna – the were form is some dormant fragments that get inserted into the code when shifting or something gets swapped with free RNA (the virus is RNA, that’s why they are contagious, it floats everywhere).
That reshuffle changes the lenght of the DNA, and in at least one case, it means that when transformed, the DNA matches the necessary sequence to activate superpowers.
Either there is a sequence of base pairs necessary at the points, or each base pair has a slightly different width…. Probably the later – and the sequence of base pairs (and perhaps the neigbor pairs) determines your power.
Would explain hereditary powers – if one of your parents has powers, your dna is 50% theirs – so if the other is complementary, you are also a super, and your powers would be similar to the super parent.
Dabbler can use magic and benefit from astral seepage(see Tamara story arc, the finale exposition.)
If Deus is right this is combining two fields
Is it just me or is Dabbler only wearing the labcoat? It looks like she might not be wearing pants underneath the labcoat and definitely isn’t wearing a shirt.
Yes, it does look as though Dabbler is wearing her lab shirt with nothing underneath it. If you’re doing the same, as implied, then it’s not just you.
Im confused. Dabbler is under Alien Non-Interference Clause or not? Previous strip she Goes tee-hee you will find out and now she is uuu infernal ratio let me tell about space demons. at this point she can tell everything about space sciene and in front of Deus because why not
On a subject that based on what she is saying the Xevoarchy knows nothing about and this is no more ahead than Earth is. No jurisdiction.
Hmmm. I really really like the comic. The current pages are rather something I will skip.
As a physicist playing around with established models is always kind of painful. Get me right – I like a fantastic explaination (otherwise I would not read super hero comics), but I prefer it to stay completely fantastic/unexplained. Dabblers thaumaturgical field / astral plane – entirely fine.
So for me, I will replace the last few pages with a cut and everyone leaving saying: “Ah, human DNA is special and thus generates super powers.”
Still, great comic.
“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.”
Cixin Liu could write a few words about this one :)
Hold on, is this going where I think it is? Basically, humans are so slutty and have interbred with demons, aliens and other semi celestial beings so often, that we back doored our way into a part of the magic system other species require permission and years of training to access??? COOL!
It’s like we’re accessing another plain of existence using keys we stole from the cleaner!
that or some high tier civilization mad scientist shoved a genetic antenna in the code of Earth’s humans.
Across a lot of fantasy/sci-fi, that is indeed often the Humans’ defining characteristic. Nearly every other People tend to be effectively described as ‘Humans plus a trick’ – Vulcans with their logic and minor mind powers, Elves with their grace and longevity, etc. Humans seldom if ever have any comparable ‘trick’, but they sure have a lot of half-breeds…
If we got it via the back door that would explain all the anal probing by visiting aliens
Page #139 is coming back to mind. XD
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-139-safety-pins-almost-as-good-as-unstable-molecules/
Yep, so given all that it does and varies in those conditions possibly relative to the expectations of the individual super then it is likely an artificial feature inserted into the genome like a genetic antenna for this field inserted in the sequence possibly with buffer code that accounts for some odds and ends.
you know looking at the vote incentive, Dabbler would have some real problems going up human stairs with those Digitigrade legs. Going up would not be just walking, she would have to pull her thigh back, then place her foot, move her hips over her new position, and then do it all again. It would be a nightmare to do under any kind of stress.
They’re goat hooves, something tells me she is better at climbing than humans
climbing sure, but stairs are a whole different animal. it’s not a matter of footing, it’s leg morphology.
lean forward or climb the stairs on all four.
I think she’d bang her knees on most ladders, yeah.
But that’s okay. Her knees are tough.
Implied fellatio humor! Woo!
Dabbler as a SJW. Sigh.
can someone explain sydneys reaction to me i dont get what she sees
I suspect she’s simply enjoying setting Xuriel up with the same words she’d used herself earlier, and doesn’t actually know what the answer will be. She’s willing to bet that the step from ‘Xuriel-tier’ to ‘Author-tier’ physics is just as obvious in hindsight as the step from ‘Earth-tier’ to ‘Xuriel-tier’.
Balanced equations? The uncertainty principle introduces greater-than and less-than signs into the mathematical models of the universe. The universe only approximates a balanced equation.