Grrl Power #1156 – Mundanity insanity
I spent about 30 second deciding what kind of car Max has. It had to be something with a fair bit of horsepower, but nothing too froo-froo, so it kind of locked her into muscle cars, and the Shelby GT-500 seemed like a pretty good fit. Considering how often she actually drives it (i.e., from the dealer’s lot to the Archon parking garage, and probably less than 100 miles on the odometer since) she wouldn’t spend a hellacious amount on a car. I think the 2010 she’s got is in the $90-100K range. She actually lets the Arc-SPARQ gear heads take it out every so often because otherwise the battery would die and the gas would break down into whatever gas breaks down into when it goes bad. That’s one thing post-apocalypse movies never address. All the gasoline left sitting in cars would be useless in a few months. Apparently it can last longer with some additives, but best case you might get a few years out of specially treated and contained gas. Yes, diesel lasts longer, but my point is that in Fallout, when it’s 20 or 40 or 100 years after you went into the shelter/cryosleep, there wouldn’t be anything running on gas, including flamethrowers. High-octane vodka, sure, but not gas. And let’s not forget most canned food only lasts a few years at best as well, so picking up a 100 year old can of beans that’s somehow not corroded through? Hell, I don’t even think the botulism in there would still be alive.
So anyway, yeah, Max owns a purple Shelby GT500 that she’s driven about 4 times.
The new vote incentive is coming along. Unfortunately I did buy Zelda, TotK, and while I partially got it because I’ve had a Switch since launch, I only have like 6-8 games for it. (If you must know, Zelda BotW, Metroid Dread, some game that’s like part Dig-Dug and part Terraria whose name I don’t recall, Cadence of Hyrule, and the rest are Jackbox games.) My point is that TotK is fun and has been taking up my evenings, but I’ll get the incentive done in time for the Monday comic.
The April vote incentive is up! As promised, it’s a Sydney pinup. Not airplane bathroom selfies, but hopefully her cuteness will satisfy.
Variant outfits and lack thereof over at Patreon, as well as the semi-usual bonus incentive related comic.
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Dabbler and the engineering crew actually changed out all the systems in the car, the power steering system is actually not designed to make it easier to turn the car… its designed to stop Max ripping the steering rack out of its bolts as she makes a normal turn.
The internal structures of the steering wheel, horn and gear systems have also been reinforced to stop breakage and then they tuned and turbo charged it into a 220mhp monster.
I wonder if they called in Rally Vincent from Chicago to do the test driving…
There’s a reference I haven’t seen in ages.
GSC.
Nah, they got… The Stig!
I think what Max is about to discover is that, at this point in the story, she doesn’t look like a fitness model–she looks like a super. It might be easier to pretend to be a lesser empowered than a total normal.
Eh….maybe?
More interestingly, if she’s going with “fitness model,” she’d better actually have some things to say about a theoretical routine she uses to get those results. Which she legitimately might not have, owing to the fact that – apparently – supers just get to be amazingly fit with zero effort.
No Thor, Bod of Thunder in the Grrlverse, sadly.
It was mentioned way back that she did workout for her physique since she can adjust her strength.
That reminds me — why was Superman always so chiseled and buff? It’s not like he needed to work out to lift, well, anything, and for that matter what could he possibly use for sufficient resistance training?
Superman isn’t human, so maybe he doesn’t need to. Gorillas are buff without working out, so why not Kryptonians?
Gorillas climb trees. Clark has an office job, and even stopping a train doesn’t require his actual physical exertion.
was going to mention…wild critters work out literally all the time.
A human living a similar lifestyle to a gorilla would be much less built.
How much muscles grow with use and atrophy with disuse is not constant, merely a biological tradeoff.
So Superman, with his completely alien biology might well have his build as a default.
Per current comic book lore, Superman’s strength is basically telekinetic, not muscular, and he can turn it off pretty much at will. He can thus work out just as easily as any other person by turning it off, and his flexibility and precision are probably even aided by the workout, so it’s not even a pure vanity project (okay, any weightlifting basically is unless he gets depowered…which does happen).
No, bodybuilding is pure vanity, weightlifting helps with muscle building and strength, which is the complete opposite of bodybuilding
“Per current comic book lore, Superman’s strength is basically telekinetic, not muscular, and he can turn it off pretty much at will.”
It’s actually biological, not technically telekinetic. It’s called the Kryptonian biomatrix, and he can NOT turn it off at will. He can, however, redirect certain outputs of the excess solar radiation that the biomatrix absorbs for different purposes. The biomatrix causes their powers, including strength (which basically is a mulitplicative factor, which is theoretically one reason why Supergirl is seen in many instances as being more powerful than Superman (she was raised on Krypton so her muscles had to actually work out for most of her teenage life (Krypton’s star, Rao, was a red star and gave no powers beyond that of a peak human being at best), while Kal had FAR less resistance for his muscles except as a baby before the biomatrix started aborbing yellow solar radiation (although there were alternate scenarios where 1) Supergirl doesnt know how to ever hold back her powers while Superman does, 2) Supergirl’s cells absorb solar radiation BETTER than Superman’s, explaining her increased power levels compared to him (while also explaining how Superman can resist kryptonite longer than Supergirl can), 3) Supergirl was genetically altered on Krypton since she was to be Kal’s protector on Earth to be stronger and faster than other Kryptonians would be under a yellow sun), and 4) Supergirl was basically solar dipped for about 30+ years during either her time in her ship which had artificial yellow solar radiation lamps or, in New 52, she was in close orbit to the sun for 30+ years before her ship landed on Earth.
The only ones that were literally telekinetic are Kon-El (Superboy), and Linda Danvers and Matrix (post-Crisis on Infinite Earths, pre-Candor story arc). In both cases, this variant of Superboy and both variants of Supergirl were using telekinesis or psi-powers to ‘simulate’ the kryptonian biomatrix, since neither of them actually possessed biomatrix (as neither were full Kryptonians).
Kon-El was a human/Kryptonian hybrid, and since they could not duplicate the biomatrix – the only one who had been able to do that was Dr. Sivana when he cloned Power Girl (Divine) – they developed a tactile telekinesis instead. And Matrix (the protoplasmic alien that had assumed Supergirl’s image) used psionic powers to do pretty much the same thing). Linda Danvers did as well after she was separated from Matrix, until she was basically transformed into a Kryptonian by God (or Wally the God Boy at least) after her fight with the Carnivore.
“He can thus work out just as easily as any other person by turning it off, and his flexibility and precision are probably even aided by the workout,”
Clark literally was not able to turn off his powers as a child. They just started increasing over time as he absorbed more and more yellow solar radiation through the Earth’s atmosphere and he actually found it MORE difficult, not less, to handle his powers. When Supergirl (Kara Zor-El) came to Earth in most instances (except for in silver age), she was likewise unable to control her powers at all, and definitely was not able to shut them off by force of will. The best they were able to do was basically ‘hold back’ their strength.
But they couldnt become not-invulnerable by willing it. When Superman was shot by a kryptonite bullet by Metallo, the problem was his body did still heal the wound around his skin before the kryptonite started taking effect (the kryptonite radiation from the bullet was not extending out to his skin, which was still invulnerable after the bullet had lodged near his heart) so the problem was being able to remove the bullet. To quote the comic: “Superman’s invulnerable flesh has thus far resisted all attempts to cut through his skin to remove the bullet.” In the comic, Batman had a kryptonite scalpel which was used to accomplish this instead. In the animated movie, Justice League: Doom, Martian Manhunter had to phase his hand into Superman’s chest in order to physically remove the bullet. What did NOT happen was Superman did not get to will himself to no longer have his powers.
When Superman and Supergirl are asleep, even when Supergirl is having a dream (or nightmare) of being back on Krypton where she has NO powers, in the ‘real DC’ world, she has powers even when asleep – including sometimes winding up flying while asleep, or heat visioning the ceiling of her bedroom during a nightmare. She also had one incident where someone tried to budge her while she was asleep/catatonic and… they couldnt move her at all.
” and his flexibility and precision are probably even aided by the workout,”
The reason that Superman, and other Kryptonians, have a chiseled, physically perfect physique, even on Krypton where they have NO powers, is Krypton was a eugenic society, where they were genetically altered to have that type of physique in vitro, then were usually transferred from the mother to what’s called the Kryptonian Gestation Chambers (although in the Man of Steel movie, they did alter this canon history to say that Kal El was born the natural way, in defiance of how Kryptonains are usually born).
The only way in which Superman would be able to build muscle the ‘normal’ way would be, as you state at the end of your post, to have him be depowered first). Even his physique is NORMALLY going to be chiseled because it’s simply the product of, as Lex Luthor puts it in All-Star Superman, ‘the gift of alien biochemstry’ rather than ‘the product of hard work.’
https://youtu.be/MZCNDwKgi7o?t=66
Superman and Supergirl and Power Girl can basically not help but look like bodybuilders and fitness models :) Their bodies were genetically programmed to achieve a physical masculine or feminine ‘perfect figure.’ :) Long story short, there are no overweight or scrawny kryptonians, barring an absence of any solar radiation, or other effects which would drain the kryptonian biomatrix.
Superman, like all Kryptonians, gain their physique from solar radiation if they do not get normal exercise for their body, just like they do their powers, when in the presence of an orange, yellow, or blue star, or white dwarfs. They have something called a Kryptonian Biomatrix which does this for them. In Flashpoint when Superman was contained underground since he was a baby, never being able to absorb solar radiation, his physique instead became scrawny, thin, and gaunt as he grew up.
I find it amusing that she’s so focused on trying out her new appearance vs her usual experience, it apparently doesn’t even cross her mind while unwrapping her gorgeous car that just maybe it might draw some attention to her as well.
220 milli-horsepower? That would 0.22 HP. The stock vehicle has 760 HP, so do you want that engine to jump up to 220 Mega-horsepower? Yikes! I’m not sure it would fit under that hood.
If it’s advanced alien tech under that hood, then yes it could! I see the Cobra GT symbol on it, that’s no sports car, that’s a street drag racer! What? No! I’m green with envy, I’m not an alien…
Alien tech. The 220 MHp engine is the size of a grapefruit, the rest of the space under the hood is the resonators and sound generators to make it howl.
Also enertial dampeners and brakes.
That would be a 220 MartianHorsePower engine, those buggers are HUGE !!! ;)
In Fallout the cars are atomic powered. But would even that kind of system last 100-200 years? They can somehow survive the decay of the car it’s built into, yet blow up in seconds once someone shoots the car a couple times.
The fuel rods would DEFINITELY still be good, the question would be how quickly the containment would fail. Being American I’ll wager the first atomic cars had insanely overbuilt containment systems, but as time went on they got weaker and cheaper as fears died down until they were barely sufficient for the life of the car. That would mean that the newest cars likely went up at the same time the bombs dropped or shortly after, and as time has gone on older and older cars have finally been having containment failures, so now it’s only the oldest cars that still have solid containment and most that are left are literal timebombs.
Not just barely sufficient for the life of the car, but also that’s after the regulations were worn down over time by the car manufacturers’ lobbiests, to the point where the containment on brand new cars would be so weak that a Geiger counter would be able to detect cars at a significant distance away.
“What’s that?” the car salesman asks. “You’re concerned about the radiation level around the car? But once you get away from the dealership, the radiation level next to the car drops to only about double background radiation. It’s fine. Nothing to worry about. A little radiation is good for you.”
“In fact, next month we’re going to start charging more because a study we commissioned shows that our cars may induce super powers. You should get locking in now while we still have some on the lot and you end up on a waiting list.”
The nuclear cars are fusion-powered, not fission, so there shouldn’t be any rods. The Chryslus Highwayman is described as an electric vehicle powered by microfusion cells. Said cells were invented only 10 years before the war, so the vehicles that were around when the bombs fell were probably a mix of fossil-fuel vehicles and fairly new fusion-powered vehicles. (And for them to be radioactive, all I can handwave is that the cells have been generating a very low amount of power continuously all this time, gradually rendering the coolant and other materials around them radioactive.
Of course, that doesn’t change the problem all that much, since we now have the question of why the fuel for the cells hasn’t leaked away over time, but since microfusion cells are also used as ammo, we have to assume that that problem was somehow solved. Maybe that’s why they explode–lots of hydrogen compressed almost into degenerate matter. O.O
Naa they just need a ZPM from SG-1, I can just imagine the raw pow a car would have with one of them! Warp-speed at an idle!
And the rust! How do you polish RUST?!
Refactor as necessary, or convert to Swift or Python.
I wondered if someone would Go there.
Well played, I didn’t C that coming.
Fallout cars explode for the same reason most cars in video games explode – rule of cool. There’s no real way to build a nuclear reactor that would cause it to explode into miniature mushroom clouds when damaged.
That and they are filled with H3 for reaction mass, WAY more volatile than normal hydrogen. If you shoot a car that don’t “go boom” then it’s leaked out. H3 is ionized hydrogen from the sun, the moon’s surface is coated with it. It can’t get through the magnetosphere around our planet.
is her car one of the Autobots? It looks like one.
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/e2QAAOSwzh9gh1GK/s-l500.jpg
nope, I was wrong
It’s a classic second-generation mustang. Looks like circa 2009.
You might be thinking of bumblebee from the movies, that was a Cameo when all the big 3 were doing a retro thing with body styles. they all wound up looking pretty much the same save the logos and the grill/tail lights. Now GM and Ford are sort of coping the Dodge Viper…
Canned food actually lasts a lot longer (decades) if it’s not something that attacks the liner. The few years on the can is just a best before date. If it’s boiled at the point of canning, it may break down into something less than nutritionally optimal but it’s generally safe to eat if it’s not rusted.
YES!!! Someone who understands cans!
Most times, the date is the manufacture date, not even a BBD, and most modern cans have rust-proofing on the inside, but not the outside (who cares if the outside rusts, unless you are the type who licks old cans… )
Well-preserved food can be edible (if not always tasty) for a surprisingly long time. There’s a guy on YouTube whose schtick is that he eats old military ration packs. Some of them have been VERY old, and he hasn’t died… yet.
Steve1989MREInfo!
Now let’s get this out on to a tray…
Exact a ssample first canned food made by Nicolas Appert circa 1806 had been opened in 1989 in France the sample was free of bacterial contamination even if the taste had faded.
Similarly, canned or bottled beer is good way, way beyond the “use by” date. The alcohol helps preserve it, and even aside from that properly sealed food or beverages should remain free of bacteria or mold almost indefinitely.
I’ve had a bunch of 5+ year old craft beers thanks to a friend’s “I collect it faster than I drink it” stash. It’s fine.
I’ve read that at worst old beer shifts a bit in flavor, and picks up a note often described as “paper” or “popcorn”, but I didn’t notice that in the ones I’ve had (maybe because they tended to be very bold beers like Russian Imperial Stouts and so on).
Additionally, in Fallout, the food is apparently treated in a way that makes it even slower to go bad (my understandingis that its done with radiation, but of how crazy widespread the use of nuclear power is). That’s why in addition to cans, you find things like boxes of cereal and snack cakes and such that are apparently a bit stale but still fine if the box is mostly intact to shield it from the elements.
This is why New Game+ was invented.
Sure, starting an alt sounds great…until you remember what a grind the lower levels is.
Tell me about it, I re-ran the game 18 times! It was Fallout 4 after all :). I lost track of how many abandoned towns I scrapped out to build walls around my towns… Not to mention how many scrap stations I had to help with that… The last few times I played I used mods to help speed up that process.
What mods has arclight arctech and golem friends put in this gt?
Golems turned it into a transformer so they could date the car?
Biofeedback to calm driver before tensile module of various parts exceeded due to the drivers?
Protip: Normal women seldom lean against walls in elevators, Maxima, and especially not like that – excepting certain very special occasions involving company.
As a woman who leans on elevator walls all the time I have no idea what you’re on about
Interesting. Cultural difference, I guess.
Where I live leaning against elevator walls and more generally touching them is considered unhygienic and hence something discouraged. If you need to touch anything but the floor, touch the handbar (if any) which gets cleaned frequently.
Yes, the handbars get cleaned frequently… like once a year, when an inspector is planning a visit
I live in a relatively tall apartment building. Seeing a woman leaning against the elevator wall like that is not something I experience it every day, but it doesn’t feel like it’s that uncommon either.
This is some of the weirdest gatekeeping I’ve ever seen.
“This POSTURE is NOT FOR WOMEN. Except in SPECIAL CIRCUMSTANCES that I will not NAME.”
Krona, watching Max pull out of the garage from the roof (because Sydney’s not there) : “That Max’s car?”
Kenya: ” Yup.”
“She has no idea how to drive it, does she?”
“Max doesn’t exactly drive anywhere. She knows how to of course, but…”
“Should I call Sydney, let her know about this disaster waiting to happen?”
Anvil and the rest turn to look at Krona.
“Max probably has no idea how to Clark Kent. Driving around in a muscle car like that?”
“Point.”
In the military, everyone knows how to drive. People who drive stick are rare but everything is getting converted to automatic.
I’ve always enjoyed watching people squirm when I offer them the use of my car, and then they discover it’s a manual.
Buuuut I’m kind of an evil bitch. ^_^
then you hear the grind of an ex-friend who hasn’t driven a stick in 20 years and has too much ego to admit it.
I learned to drive in a stick, got my DL in a stick shift, it’s second nature to me. I’ll never forget, my youngest was trying to buy his first car, a Mazda MX3 I think, dinky sports car thing. It was in the dead of winter after a heavy snow and he couldn’t for the life of him to get it moving much less test drive it! I offered to test it for him, got in, dropped it in gear and tore out of there like a bat outta hell! I could see him gripping the door and OH S**T handle while on a slippery street as I went through the gears, only slowing down when a stop sign came up. All the guy selling it said “DAMN can you drive!” i just chuckled and said it’s a bit laggy but I think it’ll do him. I grew up in the Gary, IND area, lots of lake effect snow, where we live now is lucky to get 6-8 inches a year.
Practical experience here. My mom’s car had sat unused for two years after she passed before I got around to getting it ready to sell. Of course the battery was dead, but after taking care of that it started right up and ran just fine on the 2+ year old normal gas-station gas in it. Eventually it does break down, but everybody who says ‘gas only lasts six months’ is way exaggerating the process.
I’ve had to use old gas before, for the same reason. Sure it will run ok, but the varnish builds up on everything and when it starts to break loose there will be problems with clogging etc. I put in injection cleaner and octane booster before I ran the engine just to be safe, and filled it with high octane fuel.
Sure. How long it takes before it won’t start depends on the engine, how much fuel’s in the tank, lots of stuff. I had a motorcycle with a decent 1100 cc, but not high-performance, carburated engine. It ran just as well on regular as higher octane. Long story short, after a winter sitting with half a tank, it wouldn’t start when I got it back. All it needed was fresh gas in the tank.
My brother-in-law had a disabled friend from the military give him a late 80s corvette simply because he couldn’t drive any more and the interior was unfinished. It sat 10 years with a half a tank. Even with flushing it out and running I don’t know how many bottles of cleaner through plus 2 filters, it still keeps having the injectors plug up. New lines and tank plus the entire injection system is major $$$$… Which is mostly likely why it was free I guess…
Same thing here. When my destroyer squadron was being moved from Long Beach to Pearl Harbor I stored my MGC/GT in Mom’s garage. It sat there until my discharge around 2.5 years later. Other than having to recharge the batteries (Weird car used two 6V batteries in series instead of a 12V battery.) it started and ran fine on the gas that was in the tank without having to do any additional service.
OTOH, there’s been a couple of times when a motorcycle didn’t get ridden often enough and the jets in the carbs had to be degunked. A costly operation to disassemble, clean and rebuild them.
Gas for combustion purposes is even more durable. My camp stove runs just fine on a ten-year-old can of gas.
Fun fact: The danger of Botulism isn’t the bacteria, but their waste products. It’s literally “food poisoning”. So a theoretical can of 100+ year old beans may well be biologically inert, but will be toxic as all get out.
….
I know it’s just an idiom at this point, but I spent WAY too long trying to figure out how that fact was fun.
Depends on how much you hate the characters … or the players …
Bo-Tox is just purified botulum toxin with all the other “stuff” removed and diluted to a standard dose.
Going out for a *drink*, and *driving*. What’s her plan for getting back? Is it allowed to drink and drive in the states? Is she gonna call the Archon version of a drink-n-drive service?
Would alcohol even affect her?
Does drink even affect her? She is probably immune to (most) poisons and technically alcohol is a poison, (that why is called ‘intoxication’).
She was seen in a flashback inverted drinking straight from a keg with her squad cheering her on so drinking I doubt is an issue for her. And she could easily fly home if too drunk to drive (cue another destroyed billboard flashback) provided she doesn’t bury herself on the landing lol!
She could carry her car as she flies back, negating the biggest drawback to not driving home.
And wreck the car because she’s too drunk to judge the distance to the ground? That’s why I said she might bury herself when she lands. I’ve watched people so drunk they slowly lower themselves down until they fall over. Or stagger at an angle from where they were going. YouTube, TikTok, and so on are flooded with fail videos just like that. With Max, she could snap off several telephone poles or street signs like that alone, while “norms” face-plant and fall back. I seen a buddy of mine suffer the “tap the beer bottle” trick done to him and he was so drunk he tried to stop the fountain of beer with his mouth, 2 gushes of beer foam out his nose! Then he promptly puked on the floor. I was the DD that night, it wasn’t fun getting him home…. Next day he kept whining about why his face/nose felt like he snorted a candle LOL! With a silly grin I told him “Naw… but you did chug 2 of them before we stopped you!” (evil grin) He was a goof when drunk.
Why would calling a taxi be such an odd thing to do? o_O
If she had the presence of mind to do so while drunk, that’s absolutely a sound plan.
But try putting yourself in her position. It’s not something that would really occur to her, because “calling a taxi” isn’t something she does ever. She flies. Many of her coworkers fly. Some of them can transport people when they fly, apart from just by carrying them.
Now consider her in an inebriated state. Is she going to come up with the taxi idea while drunk? Probably only if somebody suggests it to her. Will she know how to? Will she be wanting to ask someone how to, considering that would expose how common not even thinking about the taxi option is for her?
If she’s too drunk to drive, she’d probably forget she drove and just fly home. (If she can get drunk)
It absolutely isn’t, but then why even bother going with your own car in the first place. Is it a common thing to just drive somewhere, drink and then leave you car and come back to it another time? Did Dave just forget that cars and alcohol don’t mix? =D
In any case, all of the other options you guys listed for her as a super work anyway. But I could also see Arianna giving a spiel about ‘setting an example’.
Lots of options depending on mood.
Turn up her speed and burn it off in 95 seconds?
Leave it parked and come back later?
Switch to hero mode and fly the car home?
Wouldn’t that also imply that she’ll have to eat every 2 minutes, if that’s the way her metabolism works at high speeds?
Must be nice to have ARCSWAT level disposable income.
Considering cans: the stated expiration date is heavily erring on the safe side so that almost no can goes bad before that date. Canned glass jars can last even longer as there is no risk of the food reacting with the container as it can happen over time in a metal can. Some of the IIWW canned food (in glass jars) was pretty recently tested to be still fully safe to eat. Granted, not every can will survive, but there will be quite a lot of good ones even after such a time.
Also: who bets that Max will earn a speeding ticked this evening? ;)
You are a military officer, Max. Of course, you are in good shape. Before you go into the bar, check the cover identity on your ID. “Hmm, Lenore Gerber, 37. Could be worse. The rest looks okay. What did they do to that picture?”
This reminds me of when Astra was keeping her identity a secret in the Wearing The Cape series. “What other hero has to deal with traffic?” “I could have flown home by now!” lol
Wait until some citizen cuts her off to slam on his brakes to make a right hand turn.
Diesel should last a couple of years untreated. The problem with diesel is less breakdown and more algae. If you can protect it from oxygen, say with a layer of propane, it will last decades. Propane lasts forever, it basically came out of the ground that way. Of the three, diesel generates the most energy per unit.
Maybe consider it a training exercise in patience? And given how she’s reacting to a single red traffic light, she could probably use the practice.
I give it one year (in comic time) until there’s a movie directly targeted at superheroes, about a speedster going back to her old home town and trying to relearn enjoying taking time to do stuff. “It’s about the journey, Sarey Jane, not the destination,” says Morgan Freeman’s character as if it was the first time anyone had ever had the thought. Twelve incognito supers in the audience start sobbing.
Fingers crossed that Max runs into her high school crush who is now a widower, rugged tradesman, and runs the local non-profit Christmas events.
I, too, have seen the Hallmark Channel.
Yeah y’all got it.
Given Max’s capabilities, she could just have the engine taken out and put in a heavy-duty version of a bicycle drivetrain. Probably geared down so she doesn’t go over 100 mph when she gets excited . . .
Given Max’s capabilities, the only reason for her to actually even own a car, that I can think of, is for someone else to borrow it.
Sometimes you need to make an entrance in restricted airspace.
What if she wants to transport passengers, or lots and lots of cargo?
That’s what Private Scoville is for.
Or because she’s always wanted one, and now she can afford one with the money she dug out of the couch cushions.
People aren’t entirely rational. Lots of people, I’d even go as far as to say most people, don’t reevaluate their wants when the details of their lives change.
This is truth. Sometimes you just have to scratch that itch.
While she can carry a backpack the size of a steamer trunk, and weight is not an issue, it would be unwieldly. What if she’s bringing a cake to her niece’s birthday?
Maybe she could want or need to carry someone somewhere without having them in a bridal carry, like bringing her parents to lunch at a restaurant, for example.
Or… Flintstones car.
Couldn’t she, I don’t know, ‘tie’ herself to the chassis and propel the car by ‘flying’ at ground level?
When gasoline breaks down it basically turns into varnish (like on wood furniture) which then coats the inner surfaces of everything it’s touching. so if you leave a car long enough for the gasoline to break down not only will the gas be useless, so will the entire fuel system!
Yep, there are the fractions of the fuel that polymerize and all the additives that are supposed to make it burn cleaner. Ethanol additives don’t help engine durability either. 10% ethanol is just enough to give you most of the negative effects without many of the benefits (but hey, you gotta do something with all that high fructose corn syrup). Interestingly, race fuel, even in its unleaded low octane flavors, has good shelf life and leaves behind very little residue as compared to pump gas.
Don’t get me started on the unbelievable stupidity of ethanol.
I have actually tested this in vehicles that I own, and I would happily purchase the gasoline at the normal price and *give the ethanol back for free*, if I could. It would result in a slight increase in the number of miles driven for the money spent, without even mentioning the engine benefits.
And even with the official numbers, it’s a net loss of energy – more energy is spent growing the corn and making the ethanol than even the *completely dishonest* claims of how much we get out of it.
It’s almost as dumb as Daylight Stupid Time.
Blame corn subsidies. They distort the market, so we produce more corn than we need, and so they try to find some way to use it up. That’s how we ended up with ethanol in our gasoline and high-fructose corn syrup as a sugar substitute.
Eh, don’t have to worry about the 50. She’ll be calling AAA soon enough…it’s a ford. Pushed more than drive ime.
Fix Or Repair Daily
Alternately, Found On Road Dead.
F’ing Old Rebuilt Dodge
Your telling me that ride is not pimped out with a hilarious amount of functions and gadgets? Nobody has touched her car? Put machine guns under the headlights, magic flying wheels, self healing, dosent need gas, and other assorted super-mods?
Who said it wasn’t?
This would absolutely happen if left in the hands of the Arc-geeks, playing Q and building out a gadget car would be almost as high on their hobby list as wargaming a Galatyn takeover.
What does Maxima need a machine gun for? If she’s driving and wants to destroy or kill something, she can just get out of the rolling car, fly over, punch it, and fly back in, before the car had time to go off course. Possibly it would even be faster than waiting for the bullets to travel over. Or hold her hand out of the window and finger blast it.
I feel like Goose’s car would more likely be modded like that. We do know Shawn had grenades in his trunk.
If the battery had gone dead due to inattention (Hey! She’s busy!) She would have had to
Uber. Or taxi.
Where’s Rule Of Funny when you need it?
Oops. I forgot that Trickle Chargers are a thing.
Can they use the cigarette lighter socket or are auto electrical systems too smart for that now?
Also…. She should have a Dashcam.
DaveB explained that she let’s Arc-SPARQ take it out every now and then to ensure it’s always in running condition, and do you think they wouldn’t make ‘adjustments’ to basically every part of it (including a vibrating seat {Dabbles’ suggestion})
…. which means that SOMEBODY installed some unauthorized, undocumented harpoon stabilizers.
Well yeah, can’t use a tripod for a moving vehicle.
Along those lines….check out Corridor Crew’s Youtube of an ultra precise camera drone.
It can do repeatable camera movements like a gigantic robot arm.
In 8K.
That reminded me the Mill Blackbird car rig for shooting live AR car footage.
I nod my head to her tastes in vehicles and how she looks normal.
I think i know why she’s bothering with a seat belt, she won’t want to total her own car by smashing her whole body through it.
To be fair it is hard to remember to drive when you are easily noticed, can fly, and tend to want to make sure that if something does happen then you have a big vehicle that can survive a fight or at worse be used as an improvised weapon or something if a fight did break out.
Especially if you had the legal ability to be allowed to fly to practically wherever you want faster than a personal jet.
Er, old gasoline doesn’t stop becoming flammable. Rather, it polymerizes (it reacts with the oxygen in the air space above it and the resultant reactive fractions stick to each other) creating larger molecules which aren’t as liquid as octane and instead stick to things. Things like carburetor and fuel injector nozzles.
The resultant “varnish” stops your engine working, but it’s not like the gasoline becomes non-flammable.
Also, the amount of this which can happen in a sealed container (i.e. one which hasn’t let the gasoline evaporate away) is limited by the amount of oxygen present. So the process stops after a while.
It does so being flammable of left for long enough. Remember, the liquid isn’t what catches fire. It’s volatile, which does not mean unstable, nor does it mean it can explode, nor does it mean it can catch fire. Volatile means it gives off vapors easily. Anything you can smell is volatile. It’s the volatile compounds in gasoline that are flammable. After a while it loses all of its volatile compounds to evaporation and what’s left is what forms the varnish. So you’re half right.
It also depends on how it’s stored, and gasoline stored in a sealed container absolutely can go bad, and it doesn’t take very long for it to do so. Ask any fair weather rider about winterizing their motorcycle. I have no first hand experience there because I ride in all seasons and all weather.
“it doesn’t take very long for it to do so”
I have personally left gasoline in a sealed container through 2 winters without any special additives, then used it without any problems at all.
Oh, and I used some of it in between, so it even got opened a couple of times along the way. The whole “it goes bad so fast” thing is, at best, extremely overblown.
Now, that said, I would not at all be surprised if leaving it *in the tank* was still a bad idea. But that’s a different issue.
Meanwhile I’ve had a bike refuse to start on 6 month old gas because I was riding a different bike. It’d try, but it’d start blowing black smoke out when trying to start. I couldn’t get the bike to start until I refilled the tank.
It’s not overblown, it’s your mileage may vary. It depends on where the vehicle is stored and how. In my case it was stored in a hot shed. It goes bad faster at higher temperatures.
Bought a brand new bike in 2000 or 2001, has less than 100 on the odometer (and most of that was the delivery and nephew trying it out), hasn’t been touched since (can’t remember if it still had gas in the tank, but at least took the battery out… )
Shoulda got a ‘normal’ bike instead of a ‘crotch rocket’ :(
This would probably feel a lot like being a safe and polite driver in GTA.
The car turned out really great. Good model choice, too.
We know Shawn had a Caddy, I want to see everyone else’s personal vehicle is. I can easily see an Archon car club getting started, they all have plenty of money for interesting choices.
Max was a young teen girl when she got her powers, I doubt she sent much time driving once she knew she could fly. Not to mention she could carry an entire shopping cart with her and then return it later. If you cloud fly at Mach 7 all day long the mundane task of driving across town would feel like a chore and then some! I grew up in a large town, walking was faster during certain times of the day.
To be honest? I feel bad for the first “Chad” that hits on her. Although, he might learn a lesson! And flying across the room is fun, until you land….
A “Chad” might not fare so well but a civilian super might be just the ticket. Someone in another comment noted that she still has a super physique. She just doesn’t look like “Maxima” as seen in various media. Now I have an image in my head of some guy sauntering up with the line, “Hey baby, what’s your superpower?”. Even though they are uncommon by nature I would bet that the super community has a means of establishing social contacts. Maybe a quiet little bar with a bouncer to discourage groupies.
Chad: “What’s your superpower?”
Max: *thinking* *smirks* “Paralytic cunnilingus.”
Chad: *bluescreen* …uh…
They are all celebrities, even if they don’t work for Archon, people will think that. It’s a pity that the veil doesn’t cover them, or something like that could be created to hide their IDs. Think Keeno Reaves going to a local bar to have a quiet drink. Now insert Max who isn’t as patient as him!
Or Sydney for that matter, I could see her holding “Chad” with one litehook by the leg while “spanking” him with the other, while she takes a sip, completely indifferent… Hmmmm… On second thought she and every gal in the bar would be laughing and pointing at him!
Max does not do indecision well. That was almost Sydney level second-guessing herself.
Max hasn’t been able to have a “normal” relationship since she got her powers, any date-ables would be easily intimidated by her. I doubt she had much contact with other supers until the military. Add in the “Chads” and it’s little wonder why she’s a feminist. She’s doubting it’ll be fun and whether or not the collar will do the trick etc…
Who wants to see Max become more like…Ziggy(the comic stirp)?!?
Ziggy would tell there was a 28.3% chance that the car gets to the bar intact. A 17.2% chance that it gets back to Archon intact, and a whopping 82.8% chance that she’ll have to use it, destructively, to stop a Crime in Progress.
“part Dig-Dug and part Terraria”
Color me curious… Anyone gave any ideas?
part among us, part minecraft?
Go on Max, enjoy yourself for a change. You have been nothing but “by the book” and “duty first”.
Dave, you were doing so well up until you said high octane vodka. Octane was originally a specific compound added to gasoline for the purpose of making it less likely to detonate. It did not make the gains contain more energy. These days, octane in fuel refers to it’s resistance to detonation regardless of what compound is added.
If a fuel is high octane, it is harder to get it to explode. High octane fuel is used in high performance vehicles not because it delivers more energy because it doesn’t, but rather because those vehicles have engines that are higher compression, which happens when the tolerances sand therefore the precision of the manufacturing process is greater.
So I’m sure you know about something called predetonation, also known as engine knocking. That happens when the fuel donates from compression alone, and does so too soon. That’s what octane does. It prevents knocking.
Tetraethyllead also known as TEL was an octane additive for vehicles that helped protect the valves in engines back when leaded gasoline was still a thing (it still is but only for airplanes) and was the lead in question. It want sold as octane though, but rather as an anti knock additive.
TL;DR
High octane doesn’t actually mean fuel is more explosive, it means it’s more resistant to exploding, a feature more desired in high precision engines to prevent engine knocking.
This feels… off. Octane is C8H18, or CH3(CH2)6CH3. It’s a petroleum molecule. As with all light weight hydrocarbons, it’s volatile and highly flammable.
Feels does not necessarily mean is. Looking into the detail, traditionally gasoline was a mix of heptane and octane. Heptane is *more* flammable, so relative to that base, yes, octane does indeed “resist” detonation. It’s just not much resistance.
This does explain how ethanol fuels can be “higher” octane, and even be over 100%, while still delivering less energy per fluid ounce. It’s not actually counter-intuitive, it’s expected, once you understand how it works.
TIL. Thank you. :)
“High octant” is also a colloquialism for high-proof alcoholic drinks, referencing the fact that they are pure enough to be flammable.
That’s colloquialism stretches quite a lot, and it only really works because ethanol is the most common “octane” booster in commercially available gasoline in North America.
My experience with ethanol as a motor fuel is it has an octane rating of 105-115 depending on the test cycle, so vodka does have an octane rating, depending on the remainder contaminants after distillation. As most vodkas sold in the US are 80 proof (40% alcohol) assuming the rest is pure water the mixture is roughly 110 octane but has to be run very rich to combust with all the water (60%).
Random Thought: Would you rather have food that never goes bad or food-in-pill-form that you put your ingredients into a machine and it spits out a few compact pills that have the nutrients we use and turns the rest into yard waste/fertilizer?
The former. For one thing, I don’t think the latter is possible. A multi-vitamin is not a meal, or even a replacement for a meal. For another, I’d not want to subsist on multi-vitamins.
Definitely the first, if only for the mouth feel. But even if vitamin-only meals were perfected, the digestive system needs bulk (fiber etc) to function properly.
In theory, if you lived on such pills, your digestive system would and safely *could* largely shut down, as there would be essentially zero “digesting” going on, only absorption.
I used to have some survival rations that were basically malted milk balls without the chocolate coating and had some added protein from soy. I thought they were tasty, but apparently I was the only one because the last order I bought was 10 pounds for the price of a couple of ounces at the regular price. Then again I actually LIKED the taste of baby vitamin drops.
I look forward to “Enhancer 3”. To anyone who hasn’t read the first two, I recommend them as a good fun read, especially if you commute by train or bus.
I didn’t remark on it at first, but Max’s use of the Chroma-choker here is somewhat interesting. Under her current settings, she looks “normal” but not like herself pre-geode juice (I think I recall her as a sandy blonde in the flashback comics, though I could certainly be wrong). While I suppose it could just be a limitation on the available settings of the choker (or just a stylistic choice on DaveB’s part), it does seemingly reinforce that her current attire is a disguise of sorts.
“That’s one thing post-apocalypse movies never address.”
I’m looking at you, The Walking Dead.
Also, how long until tyres ‘go bad’, and are only useful for a coupla miles?
It depends on the environmental conditions. If it’s in dry air with fluctuating temperatures (and especially if exposed to direct sunlight), I think it’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 5-7 years. If they’re in a moderately-humid environment and stable temperatures, twice that.
Alcohol and bad decisions time !!!
The most stoic and responsible ‘adults’ are the most fun to watch when the safeties come off :)