Grrl Power #1039 – High Int, middling comedy stat
Yes, they’re drinking Louis XIII cognac over ice. I guess Deus is actually evil.
Look, I’ve never been a big drinker. I didn’t know that was bad. I like my drinks cold unless I’m specifically after something hot on a cold day like cider/tea/hot chocolate. I basically never drink anything that’s room temperature if I can avoid it. I know, the ice dilutes the booze. I’m tempted to fire back with “ice dilutes everything except water and also hydrochloric and sulfuric acid where it actually makes it into stronger acid, at least temporarily” but I get there’s a difference between $1.25 worth of soda and $4,000 cognac. Maybe the ice cubes pictured are actually cognac colored cold glass or something. Like they have liquid nitrogen in them? That’d probably be too cold and would also fuck up the alcohol. To which I’m tempted to say that I would never personally be inclined to spend $4,000 on something so delicate there’s no way I wouldn’t fuck it up somewhere between the bottle and my mouth. Even if someone just handed me a glass, I’d drink it and be like “Congratulations, it tastes like booze. I’d rather have the money and glass of tea.”
Now what was I… oh, right, the comic.
This reveal is hardly a big twist. A lot of people were speculating that Deus was a super of some sort.
I’ve got another book series to recommend, which someone pitched a page or two ago. One of my favorite stories is “Upon a Savage Shore” (NSFW link to Literotica, BTW) which unfortunately isn’t available in novel form anywhere for some reason. But I’m a sucker for xenoanthropology for some reason. This one I’m recommending is… not that, but it’s slightly reminiscent of UaSS. I guess because it’s third person and switches PoV from the humans to the aliens and half the time they’re all thinking “they’re so odd.”
Anyway, it’s called The Vixen War Bride, and it takes place after a human/alien war, and the humans won and are occupying the alien planet in a “let’s rebuild Japan” sort of way, not a “keep the alien scum down” sort of way. Well, results vary depending on where you are on the world, but at the base that deals with the primary characters in the series, there’s a solid attempt at diplomacy. Not to spoil anything, but nobody speaks the other side’s language particularly skillfully, and… well, read the title of the book there.
I’m slightly miffed that the aliens in the series are just humans with fox ears and tails, I think most of you know that I like my aliens slightly more alien than that, but reading between the lines of the novel, I’m guessing there might be a reason for it? Dunno. Speculation on my part. Anyway, I went through the three available novels in 4 days, and I think the 4th novel is no more than a month or two out, based on the release schedule of the prior books. I wouldn’t categorize these as action thrillers exactly, but there is more going on in them than just talking and people being diplomatic. Just FYI. Check out Dungeon Crawler Carl or Star Justice if you need something more punchy shooty.
April Vote Incentive is up! Looks like someone had better make sure their life insurance includes acts of Snu Snu.
Alternate versions over at Patreon include less cloth-y versions as usual, but also some of those color changing chokers.
Her shirt, since no one has figured out the kanji yet, says “I ahegao you. (As long as you ahegao me.)”
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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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.
*SNAP*
(Dr Who joke)
Just put the bottle in the freezer. You can also use the plastic ice cubes that don’t melt but have ice inside them. Or my favorite solution don’t spend $4000 on a bottle of booze and drink what you like rather than trying to drink to impress others. I have had $1800 whiskey and while it was nice it wasn’t any better to me than $20 whiskey. Granted some brands are like mouthwash but that is why you look around until you find a fav.
That… exactly that. I actually detested all hard alcohols since my early days in the army. They were all too harsh, and for someone who hadn’t drunk any alcohol before joining the military, way too intoxicating for a young dumbass like I was back then.
Cue 24 years later, I found Skrewball Peanut Butter Whiskey. That stuff is awesome.
Too bad I’m diabetic now, and shouldn’t be drinking at all.
Or you can use Whiskey Stones, put them in the freezer and use as ice cubes, doesn’t dilute the whiskey/bourbon but gives you that nice chill.
Was given some back in the day, never actually used them before losing them in a move. But they looked very nifty at least!
OR…. and I just thought of this…
Ice cubes which have more whiskey IN the ice cubes. So when it melts, it just releases more whiskey into the whiskey.
Hey do they make that for real? I’m curious now.
I’m not a big drinker and I’m talking with complete inexperience on this.
The problem with that thought is that alcohol has a decidedly different freezing temperature, and will separate out to freeze at its own temperature. Thus, there’s a process called “freeze distillation” which is used some places where cold temperatures are abundant enough it’s easier to freeze water than it is to boil alcohol.
Though, to be clear, it’s not *technically* distillation, as that specifically includes boiling in its definition. Also, it’s a little more complicated, as it requires something to remove the ice that forms, unlike true distillation where the material with the lower boiling point separates itself out from the rest of the solution.
For the non-drinkers, this is akin to how ice in milk tends to be mostly water, and so many foods in the freezer will get covered in ice even inside water-proof bags, especially if the door is opened frequently.
I suppose it’d be possible to make hollow ice cubes, fill them with whiskey, then mumble mumble to fill the sixth face with ice. However, you *still* have extra water you’re adding, so the filling would need to be extra concentrated to work like you’re wanting it to. Also, it probably wouldn’t mix smoothly unless one provided extra agitation. I feel like whiskey rocks are probably a better plan.
(One could also just freeze pure alcohol, but it only has about half the heat capacity of water, so wouldn’t work as well.)
I understand that (despite my general lack of knowledge about alcohol, I still do know chemstry:) ). But what I’m asking is what if they made some sort of…. hollow ice as you put it, which has some of the whiskey IN the ice cube, in liquid form. And when the ice melts, it releases that whiskey into the glass, countering the diluting effect of the ice. :)
I admit myidea could be completely stupid, which apparently you explained in the 4th paragraph because it wouldnt mix smoothly. I appreciate the education. :)
My posts tend to make the most sense when I’m talking about law or pop culture. :) Or of course, praise for the paragon of humanity, savior of the helpless, hope for a brighter tomorrow, Dr. Deus Superion. All praise Deus, amen. :)
Also not knowledgeable about alcohol, but it seems like a delayed infusion of a different drink / syrup could make for an interesting cocktail. Possibly 2-3 different components which would combine at different rates every time.
Probably lots harder to prepare though, and just as effective to just get a 2nd drink.
That would probably give a ratcheting variation in concentration, due to the gradual dilution by melting water interspersed with re-dosing from the cores. Whether that fluctuation is detectable probably depends on many variables of the drink, the drinker, and the environment.
But note that you would need to use a concentrated version of the drink in the cores, to compensate for the ice water. That concentrated version may be even more difficult to get hold of than the main drink itself, and the degree of concentration available will limit the amount of ice that can be used.
Let’s take whisky as an example. Largely because I know that the concentrated version does exist, and also know the concentrations offhand: usually about 40% as-sold, diluted from about 60-70%% cask strength. Call it 40% and 66% to make the maths easier, which makes bottle-strength three parts water to two parts ethanol, and cask-strength one part water to two parts ethanol. So two parts ice to three parts cask-strength, when it melts, would give you bottle-strength.
Running the geometry (of a sphere, for best volume/area ratio) on those numbers, you’d need the core to have a diameter about ten times the wall thickness. Probably not unfeasibly fragile, as long as you’re careful. But there’s a very good chance that it’ll melt quite unevenly, so the core will be released while most of the shell is still solid.
Someone with the resources of Deus might think they can trick their way around two problems at once, by freezing globules of bottle-strength in microgravity. In theory, the ice would form a seamless crust around a core whose concentration is limited only by the physics involved. Unfortunately, although the eutectic point of an ethanol-water mix is heavily on the ethanol side, it takes some seriously sub-zero temperatures to get anywhere near it – bottle-strength whisky only starts to freeze around -30’C, and that figure only gets lower as the core concentrates.
You Sir, were obviously not drinking true Water of Life, aka Uisge-Beatha, aka SCOTCH! ;-)
You should’ve just said the ice cubes were reusable whiskey rocks kept in the freezer. Then the cringeworthy gatekeepers would leave you alone.
“Super intelligence” a threat? Really? Now I’m insulted, I’ve never threatened anybody.
Let’s be serious though: The greater threat is super ignorance. Super ignorance has decided elections.
I see where you’re going here, but could you better define it by saying “super ignorance of the masses” is what has decided elections?
The only issue with super ignorance being this great threat is that everybody has that super power. There’s literally too much information for any one person to know even 0.01% of everything. One could add more zeros to that, but I don’t know how many.
Apart from that, you’re right. But all of these super ignorant people are naturally terrified of anyone who doesn’t have it. Also, more significantly, most of these super ignorant people are naturally terrified of anyone who is more capable of managing with their super ignorance.
To clarify, super ignorance isn’t mutually exclusive of super intelligence. Some of the most intelligent people I’ve known are also among the most ignorant, because they’ve focused their intellect on a relatively narrow range of subjects to increase the impact that they could have with their advantage. However, they tend to not be the problematic sort of super-ignorant, because they also do their best to not engage in any activities in the realms of their ignorance. For example, there’s a physicist I used to work with who never voted because they were too focused on their work to pay attention to politics and understood that they didn’t know who to vote for. Also going to the polls would have been time they were awake but weren’t working.
Super ignorance regularly decides who are the candidates in US elections.
On both sides.
You can’t tell me that either candidate was “the most qualified person for the job” in 2020.
Yeah, pretty much every election since I’ve been old enough to care has been a matter of deciding the lesser of two evils, and I fully expect that trend to continue for the foreseeable future, sadly.
Or, for that matter, any US Presidential election ever.
Don’t get me wrong. There have been a few presidents who weren’t horrible. There have been a few times in my lifetime in which someone who might have been decent was actually nominated by a party. But the decent candidates tend to get weeded out very early in the primary process for those parties with primaries, and the other parties unfortunately don’t really matter. Also note that they also get weeded out early enough in the process that most of us don’t actually learn enough about them to tell if they might have been decent.
I think most presidents turn out to be not completely horrible because they’re concerned that everybody will hate them. That doesn’t stop all of them from being completely horrible though, because understanding how to avoid everybody hating you isn’t obvious.
Has decided? Do you mean… Regularly decides?
Honestly, elections are just popularity contests. The times when a president is elected on strong policy rather than strong personality are extremely rare. Elections as we have them are just a terrible way to pick our leaders. Particularly since politicians are for some reason allowed to lie about what policies they will be supporting or not. So many things could be done to improve elections to give the people better control over who their leadership is, and what they will be doing, but it doesn’t benefit either political party to enact those changes so… They don’t happen.
You missed why people get offended about putting ice in expensive booze. It’s not that it waters down the booze. It’s that drinks taste different – specifically muted – when they’re cold. And if you’re drinking a $4000 booze, be it whiskey, wine, cognac, absinth, whatever – then presumably you should want to taste it.
Not that I necessarily agree with that viewpoint mind you. If you pay $4000 for a bottle of booze then drink it however the hell you want. Though if I pay $4000 for a bottle of booze – which I wouldn’t even if I had that kind of money to literally piss away, but if I did – and decide to share it with you then you’re gonna be drinking it straight just like I do.
That’s kinda why I don’t share my Scotch with my friends actually. They all want to mix it with cola. I don’t care how you drink what I’m sharing if it’s a $20 or $30 bottle, but I’m not going to share my $90 bottle of Laphroaig with someone who’s just going to dump Diet Pepsi on top of it.
Something along these lines is why I was going to comment. Things at temperature extremes are harder to taste. Its why cheep drinks need to be cold. Rven Ice Wine is ment to be drunk not cold. The ice in the name references how its made, not the serving temperature. The other thing, water has minerals and its own flavor. Purified and then distilled water tastes like ass because its missing most of the minerals present in spring water that give it flavor. Missing minerals is also why that water is used in medical and other diagnostic tests (though some use ²H2O which needs to be distilled from regular water if its not made in a reactor), is recommended for in a car radiator, and several other places where mineral buildup is bad. incidentally ²H2O (phone only has superscrpts) eg lab grade Deuterium is quite expensive stuff. The last time I priced it, around $1000/litre.
Dia Jinka saki drinkers have a different point of view…
Personally, I dislike all the minerals and such in water. I find the closer it is to pure water the better it tastes, hence why I’ve invested in some really good quality filtered water pitchers to filter my drinking water that get out most of that stuff. If I had the equipment to have a mostly automated titration system to fully separate the water I would, but the stuff I’ve seen is not automated and I don’t have time to be doing all that manually just to drink water.
If you’re drinking scotch without adding a small amount of water, then you’re not tasting the scotch. Try a couple of drops and see what happens.
(slowly puts away her diet Pepsi)…
super intelligence is a threat? I find that insulting.
I have a new favorite vanishing double-post. :D
ACTUALLY there are liquours like some japanese whiskeys and some cognacs that expect you to water them down with ice, and they tend to be on the high end of proof (~45%). Drinking those liquours undiluted is like saying “I just want to get drunk fast” which obviously is not the point of drinking something like this.
So is perfectly fine to use ice. If you want to be particularly pedantic, you can use mineral water for the ice, and use a special ice press to mold the ice cube into an ice ball of the perfect size for your drink. If you don’t want them cold, you can water them down with soda or plain water.
And there was this whole ritual for diluting Absinthe with ice, which was considered to be an essential part of drinking it.
There is a Highland saying of “never whisky without water, never water without whisky” – I believe it dates from a time before reliable fresh water supplies, when the alcohol would help with avoiding waterborne illnesses. And apparently the water helps change the solubility profile, so you get more of the aromas on the nose. But that’s with liquid water, not frozen water – that won’t do a thing for those aromas, except deaden them as they can’t evaporate as easily.
I actually know someone, who drinks Sake, as is, straight!
There are sakes that are brewed to be consumed cold or at room temperature, and other sakes brewed to be consumed warm (and others that can only be used for cooking and trying to drink them is a waste of good time). Usually you want sake to be consumed straight, it doesn’t have enough proofing to dilute it; they have other liquours to do that like genshu, sochu or awamorichu.
There is also the confusion that japanese call sake to all alcohol (what we call sake they call in that context nihonshu) so if a japanese says he likes to consume his “sake” straight… ask which kind of sake likes :)
There are two issues with ice in drinks. One is that it gradually dilutes the drink as the ice melts. The other, more significant issue is that it does actively change the flavour – part of taste comes from volatile chemicals being processed by the nose, and which chemicals evaporate depends a lot on the temperature, quite apart from various chemical interactions.
Of course, which temperature is best for a given drink is going to vary, based both on the drink and on the personal preferences of the person drinking it. Telling someone that they’re serving a drink “wrong” for their own use is, at best, arrogance – the most you can tell someone is that they might want to try a different approach to see if they like it.
On the subject of whiskey stones. Most of the good ones are made of soapstone (magnesium stearate). Soapstone has been used for decades in chemistry labs for countertops because it is, for all practical purposes, inert. It has a high thermal index, so they work pretty well.
If you want your whiskey rocks to be clear you can use transparant aluminium, i.e. an artificial and colorless ruby. Or if the drink is red, just use actual rubies.
… Dammit now I want to be so filthy rich I can afford to use rubies to cool my drink.
Wait… lab created rubies aren’t that expensive. Like $60 for a 30mm by 20mm ruby. I want slightly bigger to cool my drinks (don’t want to accidentally swallow one) Still, it shouldn’t be unbearably expensive, just a completely stupid thing to spend money on.
Oh, and I see there are youtube tutorials for making your own!
I thought Deus was talking about a AI of some sort, not a ‘Intelligence’ super, though the comments seem to disagree with me.
Right? Dito
Thoigh with the right tech the difference become academical, of course
That could be a serious threat if you’re right.
An intelligence super would be restricted by the lack of knowledge and resources on earth compared to the rest of the galaxy.
A super intelligence could be spun up anywhere in the galaxy and would be more likely to be spun up in the dangerous places.
Unless DD purchased a nonfiction e book library when off planet.
He may have made multiple small purchases of trivial concern and value elsewhere like this.
Really, his being generically attractive with no signs of body hair below the neck line ought to have been a dead giveaway.
I hope Halo gives Harem a hard time for not raising an eyebrow at the lack of pubes.
I about died seeing the look on Deus’ face in the sixth panel. He was possessed by his inner child and loving it.
So is Deus a mentat?
I agree 100% with Dave on this. Years back a friend of mine was all set to be married, so his father (not SUPER rich, but very well to do.) took the groomsmen (myself being the best man) out on his boat. During this trip, dad breaks out a 40 year old bottle of Glenfiddich and starts pouring. I’m a Jack Daniels man. This is not to say I can’t appreciate good scotch/whisky, but I prefer simple. 3/4000 dollar bottles of booze are wasted on me. I’d say keep the money, buy/invest in nice things, and give me a 20-30 dollar bottle EVERY time. Also, if you’re going to drink scotch/whiskey/whisky, I always advise doing it in three ways. Neat (no ice), mixed with a touch of water, and with ice.
So there are these things called Whiskey Rocks which are basically polished granite cubes you put in the freezer then put in your drink to chill your Whiskey/Cognac/Boozeohol with that won’t dilute the whiskey or change the flavor. They’re pretty cool (pun intended).
That face xD He lives for this shit hehehe
Okay, the return of the ‘Bring the Thunder’ clicker, but… What is that sparking device in the upper right corner of the last panel?
Never mind, blew up the image on the Patreon site. Machina Industries Surface Projector.
So the lightning was projected w/ sound, not an actual strike.
After seeing it on this page, I propose that the projector was developed in anticipation of this exact scenario, and that the internal acronym during R&D stood for ‘Maxima Is So Predictable’.
The Surface projector was there on the glass back in the first appearance of the remote.
Is Deus just trolling everyone?
Like the entire multiverse in some type of 4D xanatoes gambit chess troll that in the end has him laughing his butt off at everyone’s confused dumb expressions.
He has been waiting so long to use that thing XD
If you haven’t read them yet, you might enjoy Tanya Huff’s books about Torin Kerr. The first series starts with ‘Valor’s Choice’. If you’re a history buff, the events of the book are based off the battle of Rorke’s Drift. I like the first series, and am working on the second series.
Nice comment about the gluten-free bread there. In reality it makes no sense as to why people would suddenly be allergic to bread products. We’ve been making bread that naturally has gluten in it for thousands of years, yet only now (in the last twenty years or so that I can remember) are people now getting sick from gluten. In conclusion it’s not the gluten, it’s the preservatives that we use. Never had a problem before until we started using chemicals to prolong our foods.
Hate to busy your bubble, but coeliac disease had been known since at least ancient Greece. They finally were able to prove it’s caused by gluten in 1952. This condition can kill you ( it almost killed my wife until it was identified as the cause of her illnesses)
I frankly don’t care that gluten free had also become a great, makes products now accessable to those who have to avoid gluten to live
^^^
By the original reasoning, humans also shouldn’t be allergic to any common food like cow’s milk, eggs, nuts, shellfish, soy, or fish.
So…you’re correct that it doesn’t make sense that people would suddenly be allergic to bread products. You just reached the wrong conclusion, which is that people had issues with it for a while. Same thing as with milk. We didn’t “never have a problem”, we just didn’t know enough or communicate enough for it to become obvious, or marketed for.
There’s an awful lot of this attitude going around. Just about anything that isn’t technological that some conservatives are complaining “we didn’t used to have to deal with this”, it was, *you* didn’t have to deal with it, but *people* did. Autism might be on the rise, but the biggest factor in rising autism is rising diagnosis rates, because lots of people like me weren’t diagnosed until we were in our 40s and 50s, and when I was finally diagnosed, I recognized that the things they were triggering on with me would also have my dad diagnosed, most of my uncles, at least one great uncle, and just all over in my family.
We’re now showing up at around 1 out of 44 people. But before the Internet let us connect in places without bullies abusing us for being weird, we had no idea we were even 1 in 1000.
Speaking of attitudes…
I knew several people whom were like this (autistic) back when I was a kid in elementary school (1980s). Also being born learning disabled didn’t help my life become any easier as I had to go through a system that was poorly equipped to deal with it. And it was even worse for them.
Back to the other topic: It’s true that we’ve had food allergies for eons but only in recent times has it escalated to unnaturally high levels. THAT is caused by introducing chemicals (preservatives) into our foods. Corporations are to blame for this considering that’s where we get most of our foods from. Stuff that’s been processed unnecessarily. Things like pesticides are just one of these harmful chemicals that are used in the foods we eat. And it should also be noted that many out there might not realize; almost all of our food has been genetically altered. This in itself is another problem. It’s perfectly fine if no one believes me, but before any of you go on the torch & pitchfork warpath (which is extremely juvenile by the way), please do your research if you’ve not done so already.
Unless you’re out there foraging wild-strain crops, everything you eat will be ‘genetically modified’. Yes, even in countries that have taken a paranoid instead of gung-ho approach to more recent techniques. The only difference is that the modern ones have some idea of what they’re doing and how, whereas the ancient techniques just took their chances on what random variations they could breed in.
Yep!!!
If you ever ate bananas, corn, tomatoes, carrots, peaches, eggplants, watermelons, cabbage, lettuce, brocolli, peas, beans, cucumbers, water chestnuts, most beef, most veal, most pork, any chicken, anything made from wheat, and technically speaking, anything grown or raised via selective breeding farming techniques (both plants and animals), you have eaten genetically modified food. Selective breeding IS genetic modification. :)
Plus pretty sure that certain fatm animals no longer exist in their wild original state at all, like aurochs. And from what my uncle, who has eaten all sorts of unusual (to me) food, has told me, rams taste terrible. He said he said antellope tastes like goat though.
Also according to binging with babish, bear meat tastes very greasy.
I will go with the modified food because I am a fan of roumainian steak. :)
Other aspects to account for include: prevalence of potential ‘natural’ allergens, medical training to recognise severe allergic reactions, reporting systems to recognise and categorise such rare events, and general mortality rates. If your bane is peanuts, but you live in a Victorian mill-town where the nearest peanut is fifty miles away, then you could live a long life and never know about the allergy. If you do meet your bane and have a severe reaction, any doctor you can afford to see may not know anything about it either. Or maybe something else just gets you first.
I read an old Star Trek novel – don’t remember the title, but it was the original series crew and the main antagonist was a rogue Klingon admiral with an experimental remote-controlled warbird that he was using to attack frontier outposts. Anyway, during his villain intro scene, he monologues about how the human preference for beverages that are either ice cold or dangerously hot is one of the most barbaric and alien attitudes in the galaxy, and emblematic of a species that can’t stop meddling with anything and everything, while the Klingon preference for drinks that are ‘blood warm’ (Klingon body temperature, I assume) is much more natural and illustrates Klingon cultural superiority. Ever since then I’ve been taken with the idea that, of all the possible shapes and forms that alien intelligence might take, it’s our preference for iced beverages that makes humanity truly unique in the universe.
more unique than you think, its almost entirely a western thing….and even then was popularized in the 1800s by an American company whose PR was so good it spread from there.
-ice had to be cultivated and carefully stored, and was more used for storing than used in drinks. So these ice sellers bragging about their storage techniques and to sell more ice started up a cold drink campaigne, which enter a few wealthy and famous iced drink drinkers and bam, spread like wild fire.
(even after ice production became a thing this preference stuck)
in fact: while many countries today have ice in your drink as an option, it isn’t the default option and you have to ask for it. It is actually seen as one of those American things that surprise people from other countries. That when in America you have to ask to not have ice in your drink…and even then places mess that up because the process becomes a little too automated, but I digress.
Think the defailt ice in us drinks is more a business way of cheating you out of actual product anymore. Eg ice water cheaper by volume than drink.
Eg water does not have to be delivered or ordered, it’s a standard utility. Also does not hurt that warer is one of the few things thst expand when frozen either.
Besides ice is also instrumrntal in ways to cheat you at those sleaszy bars as well
It’s also much faster for the server to fill the cup with ice and not wait so long for the fountain pump, and that speed savings multiplies quickly when filling drinks for table after table. Even so, I tend to ask for no ice when I eat out because I’d like to get (and taste) more of the actual drink, as well as not get chilled drinking from a mini-glacier.
Same for me, pretty much. I also find that the drinks are cold enough already without the ice, and I’m gonna finish it before it gets too warm.
I do the same… never ask for ice in my drinks. Aside from it watering it down, you wind up getting almost no soda or whatever you’re drinking. I’ll get ice on the side of I need ice and put in as needed.
yeah I also usually ask for no ice; why I kind of ranted a bit at the end of my bit on ice in American drinks LoL, because sometimes they’ll put it in anyway because some places have a system set up like that, or employees out of habit.
Popsicles! The Earth sensation that is taking the Universe by storm!
Could guess over the different subtypes of super intellect in media over the centuries (concept well predates super genre), although comics and such tend to specialize for some balance, math expert, geometric super sense (fancy version of sniper eye basically), language decipher, and other that come down to sees patterns quickly and decodes them just as quickly, only very specific about it. But you can have some jack of all trades quantum mind that what ever grabs their interest they start running hundreds if not many times more simulations and equations and such in their head to learn and predict everything they can on the subject and expand beyond what researchers could have imagined, see the patterns they don’t see and follow those threads to see what they make
I mean, heck, in this comic alone, Dabbler’s some kind of super-genius already (although lacking a bit in the wisdom department), and Harem can literally think and learn five times more effectively than anyone else, including actual five-fold multitasking, which is literally impossible for an ordinary person to even approach. I doubt even Deus can match that kind of thinking ability, because his brain structure would have to be fundamentally different to support it.
Harem would be akin to a multi-core processor + RAID array; great when you have multiple things you all need done in parallel but not so great when a task requires 10000 IQ singular genius.
Super intelligence is a threat because such people can literally change the world if they’re not controlled. And governments tend to take a dim view of such shenanigans.
Is Deus supposed to look like he has a third eye in the second to last frame?
’cause I’ll have you know, I have copyrighted “Guy named Deus who has three eyes” and I don’t appreciate you doing the character I designed way better than me!
(I kid, but there is a lot of overlap)
Also the fourth frame. He’s looking the other way, but we get to see his reflection.
I notice that Deus hasn’t actually come out and said to Maxima that Super Intelligence is his ‘trick’. It’s one of the many potential threats being monitored for, but he’s said nothing about whether he’s the potential threat or a freelance monitor. Or even a ‘threat’ of some other flavour, steering the conversation towards intelligence as misdirection.
Not that intelligence is a threat per se, anyway. Like any other Power it’s a multiplier, but whether for good or ill depends entirely on how its possessor chooses to use it. A choice which may well be influenced by the attitudes of those watching for great potential!
There does exist things known as “whiskey stones”. They’re polished rock that you put in your freezer to become cold, then put into your whiskey. It cools down the whiskey while not diluting the taste.
as an aside, “whiskey stones” sounds so much like a medical condition. Its like sir…you have whiskey stones, its like kidney stones but it will burn like pouring whiskey down your urethra at the same time.
This is the funniest thing I’ve read in a while. :D
on the conversation about over priced alcoholic beverages, and overpriced anything.
I will preface this by saying there are things that are worth their price tag. Foods that required special ingredients that had to be meticulously grown, prepared, and presented that have some of the most otherworldly flavors. Many of which are local delicacies from families, someone of which descended from monks, mystery cult priests, and so on who passed down what used to be sacred wines, or amazing mushroom meals that rival any steak and so on. There of course others not so esoteric, but they end up with this high price tag (originally) to dissuade foreign tourists from gobbling it all up, but some local fish farmer, herdsman, or whatnot sees that some rich tourists end up seeing at a clout thing so sell to them to the point many locals can’t even get it anymore and it just cascades from there.
-and in the non-food category, items with expensive components that were hard to assemble, local craftsman, made to last, and so forth.
which brings us to the main point…there are far more items with these price tags that are NOT worth them than there fitting into the above categories. and the people who buy expensive just because it is expensive who won’t or can’t appreciate the above items because that cheap stuff they bought was ten times the price tag.
so be specific, you have.
-genuinely believe it is better because it is more expensive: You can see the logic here and the above examples that would justify it, however supply and demand, or just price gauging and intentionally restricting the supply or just *we have a reputation at this establishment going back to someone famous coming here who overpaid once*, and people can convince themselves so hard that the super streak served on a gold plate with genuine silverware, prepared at the 10,000 dollars just to sit in the lobby even before eating establishment, HAS to be better than…bought at wal-mart and threw on the grill.
-in fact this category and the next often will never have tasted the cheaper foods, or even if they have never acknowledge they are just as good and insist the price tag automatically makes the one better than the other regardless of skill and ingredients.
Clout: this is the second one, the “our family has a reputation to uphold” types who will only eat at the fancy Italian restaurant, or that upscale club with their VIP booths, and wine that has be flown in under guard and locked cases hidden under floor boards in a back room *even if it does taste like vinegar because it is so rarely drank it has over aged and gone bad* All because of clout. Even those who aren’t that wealthy will overspend just to brag they were there, they tried it, and perpetuate the lie of it being better because *holy crap I spend twice the value of my car on swill that tasted like someone spit their gum into a bud light* is not something they care to admit to somethings or anyone else.
-and the final category is just the (never has had cheaper stuff), maybe their family fell into the above categories, and they were raised rich so have no real head for the value of things and would look at a banana and think it cost 50 dollars each, or exaggerate the other directions and think anything not delivered and prepared by their cooks must only cost some cents *the types who don’t know tax structures or think raises are outrageous while not actually knowing any of the cost of living figures and just…assuming…and assuming their assumptions must be right*, but I digress; they simply have no exposure, and can honestly say some of these may try and much cheaper burger and be like…this can’t only cost five dollars…it tastes just like that 20,000 dollar steak I had in Japan they said was from beef raised only on this one farm and prepared by specially trained chefs.
I think the “more expensive must be better” attitude can translate to “I realize I’m not smart enough to properly evaluate the quality of this, but there must be some reason people pay more for this stuff, so I’ll pay more for it also.”
But I’d think most people in that category would really not want to admit to that translation. Or, for that matter, that they believe that it’s better because it’s more expensive. Rather, they’ll insist that it’s more expensive because it *is* better.
A polite super at least. he’s been on cordial if “Deus keeps annoying me” terms
I wouldn’t have gotten from this page that Deus was implying HE was a super intelligence if it weren’t for the author’s note. Like… at all. Even knowing that that’s what he was implying I just don’t see it at all.
How did you interpret the last two panels, then?
Even I’m confused. 2 panels of “I’m trying not to laugh but I need to make this weird anime hahahhaa fooled you face”
The whole conversation is him leading Max to a particular conclusion. He’s answering her question of “Why are you sharing this information” in a “roundabout manner”. His expression of glee is the indication that he knows she’s figured it out, and the lightning is him confirming that she’s correct.
I think you misinterpreted. I’m confused by Lord Faet’s confusion
In a world with technologically superior aliens super intelligence is actually not that threatening.
The scary part of intetelligence is that the primary distinction that helps law enforcement and the strong win from the weak on that front, knowledge, is comparatively fairly distributed and hard to stack and thus less effective, but in a world where there are aliens with millennia in knowledge stacked somewhere it’s inaccessible to the super intelligent being it doesn’t really affect the threat level.
Deus is lucky he stumbled upon a new field of study, but unless he has like “super massive black hole powered computer” super intelligence I don’t think he will be able to kick the current rulers in the general field of intelligence based actions from their throne.
Just the look on the bad doctors face before he hit the Button of Doom™ had me cracking up.
If you want to actually taste scotch, you have to dilute it. So “scotch neat, water back” gives you room temperature scotch and a small glass of water on the side you can use to dilute it to your preference to bring out the flavors.
If you want it chilled with a slight amount of water, then “scotch straight up” is scotch, shaken with ice, then strained to remove the ice. It adds a small amount of water which will make the flavors come out.
Order stuff how you like, but do ask people who seem to know things — and aren’t jerks — to set you up with examples of “how it’s supposed to be” and see if there’s a positive difference for you.
Oddly enough, I don’t think Deus is a jerk. Well, any more than Max is. Between them, I know which one I’d rather discuss Math, Sociology, or food.
Honestly, Super Intelligence would absolutely be the BEST super power.
1) Make a ton of money (because insane amounts of money is also the best super power…. second best…… kinda equal?).
2) Make any gizmo or super toy you want. Mostly for fun.
3) YOU COULD DO ANYTHING YOU WANT WITH THAT MUCH MONEY AND BRAIN POWER!!!! DEATH IS A MILD ANNOYANCE THAT I HAVE ALREADY BEATEN, YOU HALF-WIT!!!
cue dramatic lighting.
I would probably buy DC comics and hire a bunch of skilled fan-fic/writing club members/webcomic artists and do what the Japanese Light Novel, Manga, and Anime industries have been doing for years now. I HAVE NEAR INFINATE WEALTH, I DON’T NEED TO WORRY ABOUT PROFIT MARGINS! I WILL JUST MANIPULATE THE STOCK MARKET IF I NEED MORE MONEY!!!! (Just like the main protagonist of Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear did before getting Isekaied.)
Whenever I’ve been asked if I could have one superpower, what would it be, I always answer “super intelligence”, because with that, I could get any other superpower I wanted.
I am picturing more super villain origins.
be born with super intellect, but poor, due to no family connections in money no one is willing to support your invention ideas, and you can’t be a janitor at a college and discovered by rewriting formulas on chalk boards because the situation just never arrives. So you scrounge for scrap and invent robotic laser minions and junk metal armor to rob banks and make fake ghosts to scare people away from your hideout, eventually gaining the money needed to create better inventions, get noticed…but its from crime syndicates and only get into the field you wanted to be in at the start as punishment when the government captures you and puts you to work in their programs.
Funny thing…. the two richest men on the planet all became rich while starting out poor and NOT born into wealth at all.
Elon Musk – entirely built himself up from his own innovations
Jeff Bezos – born to a teen mother and his father had abandoned them
The third was born into wealth already (Bernard Arnault) and the fourth (Bill Gates) was not born into wealth per se, but his family was upper middle class. with multiple homes and his father was a ‘wealthy’ corporate lawyer who was a named partner at Preston, Gates & Ellis. Although technically Gates made most of his money without a ton of assistance from his family. I think they did give him startup seed money though, which Bezos and Musk did NOT get.
Bezos definitely feels like someone who could have been a supervillain, but isn’t. Sort of like the Samuel L Jackson villain in the movie Kingsmen. Actually Bill Gates probably fits that persona better. :)
I just did a little googling and Bezos’ parents (I’m including Miguel/Mike Bezos as a parent because he acted as one) put ~$300,000 into amazon when he was starting it up. A poor family can’t afford that.
Elon Musk’s dad owned half an emerald mine. That’s not exactly poor.
Of course pretty much every obscenely wealthy person will insist they were more disadvantaged than they were.
Most of this is from an interview I read. So I suppose it can be a fabrication, but I havent seen ANY proof that it is, so I’m going to assume it’s accurate:
Jeff Bezos’s father left his mother and him when he was born and his mother was 16 years old. Mike Bezos (Jeff Bezos’s adoptive father, who married his mother when he was 5 years old and she was 21) put $245,573 into Amazon after Jeff Bezos had already started it up. This was not a pittance for him to invest in Amazon – it was a LOT of money for him to spend, because he was NOT wealthy. It was also not a gift – it was a literal investment. Mortgaging of the house was involved, from an article I read. He was not wealthy – he was middle class, possibly upper-middle class – he was a Cuban immigrant who became an engineer at Exxon after moving to the US.
That $245,000 investment is now worth $30 billion though. So NOW he is wealthy. He wasnt when Amazon started.
Elon Musk’s dad did not own an emerald mine. That was a false rumor (started apparently by Errol Musk). Errol never had an emerald mine. Errol did not financially help his family in any way, let alone help Elon. Elon Musk and his siblings reportedly do not have much good to say about their father at all.
Not to mention Elon Musk’s parents divorced in 1979, and the rumored emerald mine did not start up until the mid-1980s.
Also, Errol Musk was an abusive SOB apparently, and that’s why his mother divorced him, and he did not help his family financially after the marriage in the first place, even if he had ownership of an emerald mine. Which he did not. Elon has described his father in an interview with Rolling Stone as “a terrible human being […] you have no idea… My dad will have a carefully thought-out plan of evil … He will plan evil.”
So no… Errol Musk did not own an emerald mine and help Elon start up his financial empire. Not at all. Elon went to college with school loans like most people, went into school loan debt like many people.
All 3 of your rags-to-riches examples grew up in wealthy families, and were given money to start their companies. Bezos’s parents invested $300K for him to start Amazon. Musk started an online yellow pages which survived mainly due to a pile of angel investor money (including from his parents) and the dotcom craze. Gates as a teenager was one of the only people in the world with access to a mainframe (or computer of any kind really), through the private prep school he attended courtesy of his wealthy parents, and leveraged that experience (and his Harvard connections) into a contract he and his partner were underqualified for.
All 3 of them played their hands extremely well, and I admire their accomplishments, but like many high achievers they all had a hand up and huge opportunities to exploit that most people do not, at moments in history that were bursting with change. As for villain potential, there’s good evidence that all 3 of them stepped on a lot of more competent people on the way up.
“Bezos’s parents invested $300K for him to start Amazon.”
It was between $225,000-$245,572, and it required taking out a loan to make that investment. Mike Bezos was an engineer at Exxon, not obscenely wealthy. His mother was 16 when he was born and for the first 5 years before marrying Mike Bezos, they were quite poor. After the marriage, they were middle class. Not wealthy.
“Musk started an online yellow pages which survived mainly due to a pile of angel investor money (including from his parents) and the dotcom craze.”
Elon Musk wasn’t born into wealth. There have been rumors that Musk’s father owned an emerald mine, but those rumor are false, and Musk has benefited from his father in no way, according to everything I’ve been able to find on the subject. It’s a rumor that was disproven a while ago.
Elon did not benefit in ANY way from his parents, including that he did not even get help with college. He worked his way through college and ended up $100k in student loan debt, just like a lot of people. Most of the rumors about Elon Musk’s father came from a British tabloid called ‘Mail on Sunday.’
https://www.insidehook.com/article/history/errol-musk-elon-father-myths
As for Bill Gates, like I said he wasnt ‘wealthy per se’ but his parents WERE upper-middle class. I’m not giving him the same credit I give to Musk or Bezos in rising up from far more humble beginnings.
And while Gates definitely stepped on a lot of more competent people (he stole from Xerox and from Steve Wozniak), Musk literally built himself up based on his innovations and inventions more than anything else. I’m not sure about Bezos though. I’ll check if there are any lawsuits against Amazon in its earlier days. I know there were a bunch against Microsoft because I did legal papers on a few of them in law school, and Gates is shady AF.
neither of these men were ever (poor),
*I wrote out a whole rant here and deleted it, because, NO, these men were not poor for the time, and they have both added to the growing filter environment that makes it harder for intellegence to be the deciding factor in a education instead of having the money.
yes there are plenty of intelligent people working these fields, because they were educated in them, bur there are plenty of other people you can tell by their hobbies and their interests who had they been able to afford that education could be in those same fields today instead of the barely getting by places they are now…usually in debt for even trying to reach beyond their financial means.
always remember that Da Vinci only became who he is because of very unusual circumstances resulting in royalty paying for his education as a favor.
I’m having a little trouble understanding what you are saying in your post.
And that is why you need to Manipulate the Stock Market.
Even starting with cheap “Penney stocks”, someone with Super Intelligence could easily turn that into thousands. Then Tens-of-Thousands………….. THEN ALL THE MONEY!!!! MUHAHAHAHAHHAHHAHAHAHAHHAH
With all the money, you can invest in your own projects and companies.
Yep. Or just being able to short-sell stocks. That doesnt require a lot of money if you pick the right stocks to sell short. Although it will leave you in the poor house if you choose wrong.
Deus became a billionaire (multi-billionaire actually), making $7 billion by shorting the market before the financial crash, according to the interview on Macroeconomics. :)
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-386-aggrandizer-x/
I would’ve said ‘Artificial Intelligence’, if only because it works a lot like Super Intelligence, except generally a lot less stable, and that’s saying something given some of the unstable super intelligences that have been written about.
i love how Deus practically reveals himself as having super intelligence powers then proceeds to do something that makes Max question his intelligence.
As much as he’s taking some kind of childish joy in playing up the villainy motif, I could easily imagine it’s purposely done to disarm some of the concern, not unlike Dabbler may suddenly seem threateningly intelligent until you realise she’s telling a boob joke.
Actually Dabbler almost certainly has a threatening amount of intelligence, but I suspect her easily distracted nature gives everyone a degree of comfort. Failing that they just call Hiro in and Harem removes his shirt. Dabbler neutralised.
being super smart doesn’t mean being super stoic.
Its actually the kind of thing that can make someone underestimate you, they think you a childish idiot until your froggy back pack turns into a mech suit with laser chainsaws.
I need to see this fan art, even if it’s of some other universe and not Deus wearing it over his $3k suit.
I don’t know if DaveB takes art commissions, probably plenty of people on Deviantart and such who will, although not sure of the legal but probably would fall under fair use parody even if paid for.
Pardon me if I consider page #1023-one-nation-under-new-administration to be evidence of Deus *not* having “super intelligence”:
“I don’t care what the regions are called. I just love administration.”
A phrase that immediately came to mind originates from chapter 5 of “Xander Mercenary”;
“Take over the world? I have enough headaches being the president of this company and we don’t actually do anything here. All I do is act nice when the other companies come drooling over our latest designs, and sign off on the business reports Miss Calendar sends me every month. Even then, the paperwork is ridiculous and at least I don’t have the problem of some overachiever deciding he wants my position.”
If Deus has “super intelligence” then he has the Girl Genius version of it; INT 20, WIS 1. Possibly INT 30, WIS -5.
Last panel, what’s top right?
That’s the Bring the Thunder receiver device. It’s what’s connected to the remote control that brings the thunder, perfect for when you want dramatic effect or an evil laugh.
Oh man, the look on his face in those last two panels, it’s just like a mischievous little kid pulling a prank on their parents! :D
People can not look at facts unemotionally and give in to peer-pressure too easily plus they tend to have short memories. Anyone with a knack of spotting patterns in data can see the truth if they ignore the hype and the easily panicked ideas that come from ignorance and fear.
Anyone who has both of the abilities to see patterns and a clear understanding of the data could be considered a “super intelligence” Deus does seem to have those requirements in spades the only other downside is if he was a sociopath then yes he would kill a million to benefit billions so far he’s only showed megalomania that is something shared by most politicians lol
Money is a form of mind control for some people.