Grrl Power #1256 – Antici… pation
Sydney’s comment about bisexting was legitimately a typo, then instead of fixing it, I was like, “No, I can totally see Sydney saying that. No idea what she was thinking about at the time, or what bisexting might actually be, but yeah, I’m going to write around it.”
Assuming it’s a portmanteau, bisexting would just be… well, normal sexting that a bisexual person would do. Or sexting, but at least one party is a hermaphrodite? But if it’s more of a descriptive word, then… maybe it what you’d call a guy banging a girl so hard that she’s walking around bow legged the next day. Like he was trying to bisect her, but, get this… with his dick.
Detla somehow hasn’t heard the expression “I’m afraid [blah blah blah]” but she’s familiar with “two for flinching.” Then again, she’s been hanging out with a bunch of military types, mostly non-coms and civilian specialists… Well, specialist. Really just Math. She doesn’t hang out with Dabbler all that much other than to eat the occasional lunch together so they can commiserate on missing out on their favorite space foods that aren’t readily available on Earth. Detla also hangs out with Jabberwokky to form an occasional thrupple along with Math. So non-coms, Math and ex-reprobate Jabberwokky, a group of people about as likely to look for an excuse to punch each other in the arms as any Frat house or a bus full of middle schoolers playing punch buggy.
Max doesn’t have any specific phobias. Like she never going to be all “Why did it have to be snakes/balloons/a bar of soap with a bite taken out of it?” Certainly she has a concern that one day she’ll either lose her powers or her golden skin will… consume her. There’s some evidence that some of her internal workings aren’t completely human anymore, but it’s a difficult proposition to prove as she can’t be x-rayed and she’s never been cut badly enough for someone to get a good look in there. Though her blue blood is probably indicative that something is going on in there. Certainly there are some people in the government concerned that if her internals are slowly being replaced that it could eventually impact her personality, or even supplant her consciousness with an alien one, and there are some very secretive plans to mitigate that potential threat. Fortunately, in another bout of me flirting with utter fiction, the government of Grrl-verse USA didn’t appoint a panicky racist to that position, so no Henry Peter Gyrich’s or Amanda Waller’s. At least not yet.
The new vote incentive is up!
Every so often I get the urge to try and draw Maxima all properly shiny, and this… isn’t my favorite attempt if I’m honest. I’ve been sitting on this for a little while doing little tweaks, and decided to finally publish it cause I’m already behind on these. The next one will (almost definitely) resume the trend of including a little mini comic to extend the scene a bit.
As usual, Patreon has some outfit variations as well as sans flagrante.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
Bisexting is when both sexual partners are sexting while fucking — but not to each other. The “bi” is for 2 different text messages conversations in this context.
Which is something Sydney would imagine these 2 doing. In part because of the “I’m OK with that” aura effect is still lingering some, and not only Sydney feels OK with that but she imagines others would be OK with sharing leading to the bisexting about it to be infinitely recursive.
This makes it rule 34/99 for an infinitely repeating of 34 as more and more people imagine doing inception of the concept further.
Bisexting sounds more like sexting two people at the same time.
Exactly! It’s a polycule group chat, so Sydney and Detla would both be familiar with it
“But not to each other” reminds me of an old[*] joke:
Young man to his more worldly friend: “Is it okay to talk to your wife while having sex?” Friend’s reply: “Well I suppose, if there’s a phone handy.”
[*] Not only is this joke “old” because I first heard it many decades ago, but the punchline also clearly was crafted in the landline era when not everyone had a phone usable at every moment at every location.
I can never remember if bisexting is sexting twice a year or every two years.
O it’s when younsexting two people at the same time one guy and one gal
Bisexting is every two years. Semisexting is twice a year.
reminds me of “the slap” in how I met your mother lmao
Here’s an idea. Make Detla, Lapha’s control oficer.
Detla will be far more familiar with Lapha’s capabilities than any earth born human, she is honorable to a falt and she is just looking for a reason to kick Lapha’s now permanently taild ass for making her brake her honer.
Oooh! I’m liking this idea! :D
Bonus, more Detla.
I’m still rooting for a Detla spin-off comic.
Headpats? Two headpats?
Noogies? Wet Willie’s? Hornsteering? (Grabbing someone’s horns and jerking them around with them – considered a deep violation of personal space among adult demons, but classified as ‘roughhousing’ among juveniles.)
Two BOOT TO HEAD’s
(And one to Jenny and The Wimp )
Another fan of The Frantics. Whee!
It would be fun if Maxima did the whole “Tai Kwon Leap” routine during training.
…also frequently used during oral sex between demons
The Disney film “Atlantis” referenced this, in that case Milo showed up the mechanic Audrey by fixing the boiler in Mole’s drill machine, she acted like she was going to slug him, he flinched, then she said the same thing and slugged his arm twice. Although, I doubt Delta is talking about an arm slug!
She could be talking about a carnivorous slug which is implanted in your arm, which then eats your arm from the inside out. Since Lapha has two arms.
(I think that was actually an SCP btw)
Re: “hornsteering”; it’s actually called “bulldogging”, a regular feature at rodeos nationwide.
Wedgies.
Max’s symbiote seems to be a fairly benign one as these things go, no particular behavioral changes, and it’s given her some advantages.
I would guess that, at some point, she’s going to start giving birth to space geodes, though. Probably only after she’s accumulated enough of the “unusual isotopes” Deus mentioned to make one. At that point she might feel an uncontrollable urge to fling them into space, so they can continue their lifecycle.
In theory anyway, the doctors SHOULD have been able to determine if her reproductive system has been altered. (Into a geode factory?) After all, topologically it’s all on the outside…
Wouldn’t surprise me if Deus is cloning more symbiotes for fun and profit. Its gonna be venom all over again.
No behavioral changes that we know of. Remember, she acquired the symbiote as a teenager, so we can’t really separate normal maturation from any effects of the symbiote. For all we know, it may cause the host to crave a place in a hierarchical power structure. If the host were engineered to create super-soldiers, that would definitely be something you’d want to include.
“Yes, I feel there should be a hierarchy. But I think I need to be closer to the top.”
Uh oh.
That’s like… Half the planet. Maybe only a third, if we’re lucky.
We’re not that lucky.
What symbiote? Did I miss something?
Maxima’s powers are the result of a combination of natural Super properties and coming into contact with an unknown substance from beyond Earth. The retelling of it begins on Page 414, which coincidentally was published on 4/14/2016.
I guess. As a teen she accidentally imbibed liquid from a mysterious space geode, and turned gold. Among other things.
I got that part, but I never considered that as a symbiote possessing her. I took it more as a chemical transformation on a genetic level from the geode water. I was starting to fear, I missed something with everybody suddenly talking about symbiote.
My thoughts mirrored yours, and I was also confused about the symbiote discussion.
Word of God is that it’s a symbiote, though it’s possible that he only meant that the characters suspect that she has a symbiote.
“has some sort of symbiote (?)”
“All guesswork by both of them, and probably impossible to determine at this point.”
Seems pretty clear to me that it’s the latter and WoG only describes the characters’ theories.
But this definitely shows where the symbiote theory comes from: It’s Max’ working hypthesis.
I’ve never thought of the geode as having been a carrier for a symbiote (unless the supers all have such a symbiote, Worm-style), but rather as it having been a trigger for her own latent powers to awaken. And maybe the reason why she’s so powerful is because said trigger was far more effective than the partial decryption key that is human DNA. But we’ll have to wait and maybe see.
Heads up, “hermaphrodite” when referring to humans is considered offensive and stigmatizing these days. It’s an outdated medical term for the “intersex”
Yes and no. It is still a useful and descriptive term for an organism which has both male and female primary sexual characteristics or chimerical fusions like the (striking) birds which are male on one side, female on the other. But used as a general term for all intersex individuals, yes.
Hermaphrodite refers to a human born with both sexes, I knew one, “she” acted and looked like a man, but had (mostly) female bits. From what they told me, one part was quite large, but was they were infertile. Their DNA had both X and Y chromosomes. They had many, many health issues that ultimately caused their death at a young age (34).
My wife and I were close friends with them and even attended their second marriage to a sweet girl, plus I had spoke with their father to get through the stubborn retired black-op mind that not right to treat them that way because mother nature decided to make their life odd to “normals”. It’s a condition that’s fairly normal for all animals.
“intersex” is any condition related to sex that makes it less-than-fully-determinate. “hermaphrodite” is “both sexes”.
All hermaphrodites are intersex, but not all intersex individuals are hermaphrodites.
In humans, hermaphrodites are generally sterile, and most intersex conditions have similar problems (though not always complete sterility).
The most common intersex conditions, by a LOT (together, they are the large majority of all intersex cases), are two different conditions that present (physically) as entirely female – one is a genetic mistake (XXY, if I recall correctly), the other is a strong resistance (or possibly immunity) to testosterone (so, XY but with no male traits, either the direct and obvious sexual ones or any of the secondary ones, like increased muscle mass and such). Both have very high rates of sterility and nigh-universal low fecundity in all other cases.
Sorry, I don’t remember the names of either condition at the moment, but they shouldn’t be hard to find if one is interested.
XXY is Kleinfelter syndrome; these are physically male, but tend to have undersized testes, resulting in reduced testosterone production and thus lower muscle mass, sperm counts, etc. I believe you can actually have several additional X chromosomes (the cellular machinery basically shuts all the extra ones down, leaving you with only one functional in each cell, so you don’t have the same issues having multiple chromosomes normally causes); I could see someone with a lot of X’s and one Y presenting as female. The other one you’re probably thinking of is androgen resistance, originally called testicular feminization. These individuals are physically female… well, “neuter” is probably the better term. They look outwardly female, but typically develop little to no body hair when they go through puberty and do not have menses. Their genitals are largely unformed – they have normal labia, clitoris, and vagina, but instead of a womb the vaginal canal ends with a lump of partially-differentiated (having partially tried to form testes, but largely failing) tissue.
The one I spoke of was mostly female in form (pancake breasts, no body hair to speak of), but they admitted to me that her clitoris was very large. Even though they looked similar to a “she” their behavure and sex drive was closer to the male side. Their wife overheard us and she giggled and said “You got that right!”
I wasn’t being morbid, I was curious and the more info I had meeting their father gave me more ammo to win the “fight”, he refused to believe it wasn’t their choice about being “queer”, his words…
“XXY is Kleinfelter syndrome”
Ah yes, you are clearly correct and my memory was faulty. I believe it was Trisomy X (XXX, not XXY) that I was thinking of. Sorry for the error on my part.
Bisexting is when you’re sexting two people of different genders simultaneously. The difficult part is making it so the acts you describe could apply either one, and they both find it sexy.
Atlantis reference. Love that one, one of the forgotten disney films.
A really good often forgotten Disney film, no less.
Detla: … do you want to tal-
Max: NO.
D: Yes, ma’am.
Concerning Max: There are even now some ways to see inside a body such as a small camera and other sensors in a capsule like a pill you can swallow. Not to mention probes they use to look at your bowels or throat. I’m sure Dabbler could come up with a better version.
I’m fairly sure Max would be more than a little wary of any suggestions of “probing” from Dabbler.
Will be a good idea to keep Delta and Lapha separated so they don’t kill each other?!?
Or keep them close so Lapha remember to behave.
“no Henry Peter Gyrich’s” Reminds me: are there any Reverend Stryker types running around? I remember the “cleansing at hand” dude, but with the revelations of supers, aliens, and demons in a relatively short time span I’d imagine that there’d be some religious extremism to deal with.
We met her, she attempted to abduct a young succubus.
I figured bisecting would be sending a sexy pic to two people at once, perhaps one by mistake. Like you include your mom or ex wife in a group chat by mistake. Nightmare fuel.
Bisexting – when you suck at using a phone and you start a group sext chat by mistake.
Or when Sydney starts…
um…
No. Not going there on a public forum.
Is there a lawyer here that can confirm if “two for flinching” is legally enforceable?
I don’t need to be lawyer to tell you it depends on jurisdiction.
How did Detla go from a hefty double D down to just a B or so?
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-936-whats-blue-horny-and-wet-all-over/
Well she is a alien so its possible her boobs have more functions than feeding babies.
lol, they detach and can clamp onto another’s body, like parasites, but they cause the body they’re on to grow them (and the flesh underneath) bigger
Nah, it’s an angle thing. https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-939-i-double-dog-promise-to-be-good/
I’m more puzzled by how tiny Dabbler’s booty is on this page. It almost compares to Sydney’s. :)
Oh wow, yeah. That ain’t right!
Granted that Sydney got to see Dabbler sans glamour at her first Archon meeting we can still wonder if if there isn’t a base line level of glamour that is inherent to a succubus. Dabbler may be be about as buxom as Olive Oyl under it all but since it is inherent to being a succubus even truesight would perceive Dabbler as we see her unless Sydney pushes it. Actually, it’s probably just Dave squeezing her into the panel but it’s fun to think about.
I would presume Detla’s wearing a sports bra here or something like that…that plus specific angles probably explains most of that. And Dabbler is a shapeshifter.
Actually, I believe you are incorrect: Dabbler is NOT a shapeshifter; she’s just very good with a glamour (personal illusion).
angle thing, but also maybe her bra is nanotech like her forearm wraps, so it could be more or less padded according to her needs/preferences.
I completely approve of Max’s list of fears. That last one, in particular.
And yes, in a somewhat related comment, your last bit about “utter fiction” is unfortunately SPOT ON, in multiple ways.
I kinda love that the “freudian slip” was just a legit typo you left in.
Who wants to tell Max? I mean…
Max may be opaque to X-rays, but she clearly isn’t opaque to sound waves (if she were, she’d be deaf), so they should be able to use a modified sonogram to get an idea of her internal structure.
Her annual checkup requires deep diving in to the ocean and several submarines with recently updated sonar systems.
Well, her EAR CANALS aren’t opaque to sound waves. That doesn’t mean the rest of her isn’t. Good luck getting a good detailed image of her torso by aiming a sonogram down through her ears…
With her luck, it’ll turn out she’d impervious to sonograms, as well as x-rays. I know she’s not actually made of metal, but I do have to wonder what would happen if they tried giving her an MRI. Then again, they might have already tried that, back when she was initially changing.
You CAN test if someone is magnetic without risking destroying expensive MRI machine.
I’m starting to feel that Detla is the Batman we need, and deserve.
Oh come on! That was practically an attempted headbutt. That doesn’t count.
“Update your translator” sounds like it’d be a pretty common figure of speech in cosmic society, like “make with the space lobster.”
if only someone had said that to Yoda
You were wondering in your mains what Sidney was thinking about to say that by accident. My guess is that she was thinking about her boyfriend. Then her memory boyfriend (Garram). Then she was mad at Lapha for giving her a memory boyfriend. Then she thought of her and Lapha with the boyfriends. Then she panicked and reflexively thought “I would never!”. But then her irrational guilt kicked in and she backpedaled to nobody that she isn’t homophobic or intolerant and would totally be willing to participate in a non-heteronormative sexual activity under the right circumstances but that she doesn’t like Lapha or Garram. Then she started down a rabbit hole of who and how. Thenshe started wondering if she is bi. And it is at that point that she was saved from her own brain by the conversation happening around her.
I’d imagine she went off on a mental tangent when Detla asked “So that’s a no on the bisection?” as that last word would have sounded like “bisexion,” and she was still stuck on that when she made her comment. Or she wouldn’t necessarily need a mental tangent, just having last heard “bisect” sounding like “bisex.”
Incidentally, that might also be a big part of the reason why the author accidentally wrote it that way.
I feel for Sydney, she’s gone in a short time from a sexually shy person (in her time with Archon) to a somewhat open-minded one, having contact with Dabbler, Cora, Flix, and now having Lapha’s memories to open her mind to a galactic point of view. Max will at some point learn the same thing, but she hasn’t has Syd’s experiences! Yet…
It’s all fun until you run across that one thing for which there isn’t enough mind bleach.
*Bisexting* if bisecting was done by Dabbler multitasking.
As someone who truly only knows about “two for flinching” because of Disney’s Atlantis*, this page made me smile…a lot.
*I have no siblings and didn’t have friends or acquaintances who ever used the term. The people in my life who wanted an excuse to slug someone played slug bug or spadidle. Also, I’m aware that many variations of spadidle do not involve punching someone. It’s just that the variation I grew up with did…or if you liked the person sitting next to you, claiming a kiss instead.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Bisext
sending sexts to both genders, according to the urban dictionnary.
That’s a rather troubling fear for Max to have, considering her role as someone who is under the command of the government. Additionally, since she’s apparently the preeminent super power of the setting, what she might decide to do about that fear could have rather dire consequences.
We’ll see, I guess.
“That’s a rather troubling fear for Max to have, considering her role as someone who is under the command of the government.”
The least-bad solution to a problem can still be a bad solution. That doesn’t magically make an actually good solution appear.
If it did, the world would be a MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH better place.
You’ll forgive me, I hope, but I don’t follow the connection between your statement and mine. Can you elaborate?
“Can you elaborate?”
Max fears the inevitable failure of government (unless it fails some other way first). That does not mean that the government is not the least-bad option.
All systems fail, including government. Knowing how the system you are a part of is likely to fail doesn’t make some other choice of system any better, though it can sometimes help prevent (*delay*, actually) the failure in the system.
Max being aware of the weakness of the system she serves is a good thing. Knowing that weakness does not mean any other choice of system is magically better, lasts longer before failing, or has better failure modes when it does fail.
That help?
Funny, that’s what a lot of people have been saying about capitalism for a long time. Just because it’s the least-bad economic system yet to be put into widespread practice doesn’t make it a good economic system.
“Just because it’s the least-bad economic system yet to be put into widespread practice doesn’t make it a good economic system.”
And I agree with that. “Least bad” does not necessarily mean “good”. It still does mean “least bad”, and in this case, it’s “least bad” by a large margin.
Also, the classic joke says it better:
It’s the worst possibly system… except for all the other ones we’ve tried.
Well, as long as she is consistent in applying that fear to anything she might attempt to do to address it, that should make her extremely cautious about doing anything drastic.
Possibly. Just to explore the argument, I’m going to split some hairs – she fears that systems will erode, which means that new systems would be better. That could be an impetus for overthrowing the status quo (which she is more capable than most of doing), so long as she believed that whatever she replaced it with (or helped replace it with) could also be replaced somewhere down the line.
Consider the pitch that Deus made to her. She might not be that against it, so long as she was certain that whatever Deus was cooking up could also be replaced.
Overthrowing the status quo? Not really.
Sure, she likely could kill everyone in the US government and say “I’m Queen-Empress now.”
Would it change the way people interact? I suppose they might act differently when going to whatever replaces the DMV. Although I think their behavior would have more to do with whoever now staffs that equivalent, than the fact that now you have a Queen-Empress instead of a President.
And yes, she would have to decide on a replacement for the DMV. Even “no, there won’t be one” has consequences, and you have to deal with those when you try to change things.
I have a background in software development. Writing code is the easy part of the job; what’s hard is changing the way people do things. Even something as simple as “You don’t write this down anymore, instead you put it in this online form.”
As a system keeps running it develops more rules about interactions. Some of them are the result of unanticipated edge cases; others are from people not liking the existing system and trying to implement changes that they like better. So you get accumulated encrustations, which often slow things down or make processes more difficult to complete.
Which leads people to think that it would be better to blow up the encrusted system and start fresh. So now you have simple rules. But the rules don’t deal with any of the edge cases (because you haven’t bumped against them yet). You may have looked up the old edge cases and designed your new system to deal with them, but I guarantee there will be other edge cases your system doesn’t deal with.
Rinse and repeat. At most you may have a reprieve from edge case city.
“she fears that systems will erode, which means that new systems would be better.”
No, it absolutely does not mean that.
New systems *MIGHT* be better. Going on historical track record of humanity, that’s not the way to bet.
Eh, given the choice, I’d rather the leader of a government super-team with a terrifying authority and monopoly on force above and beyond traditional government had a healthy fear of corruption and running concern of “are we the baddies in this situation?”
All Systems Are Corrupt
A corollary of the second law of thermodynamics. Entropy increases in any closed system. They only way to lower the entropy is to open that system up to outside influences.
What are we doing at only 22nd? We need more votes.
Not all government systems are doomed to erode to corruption and oligarchy. Some of them start with corruption and oligarchy from the start.
then there’s the one where sheer incompetence takes the place of corruption.
Remember, never attribute to evil that which can adequately be explained by stupidity.
“then there’s the one where sheer incompetence takes the place of corruption.”
“takes the place of” is so optimistic!
Embrace the healing power of “and”.
“Some of them start with corruption and oligarchy from the start.”
Can that even be said to be “corrupt”, though? I am reminded of Chinese period pieces (based on actual history, as best I can tell) where high government positions are held by the person who paid the most for it – it is not secret, no attempts to hide it are made, and no one is surprised. It’s not “corrupt”, it’s “this is how it works”.
(Goodness, I almost put something here about socialism… good thing I resisted.)
Reminds me of “Cordwainer Smith” (Paul Linebarger) and his “Instrumentality of Mankind” stories. In at least one of them, the Lords of the Instrumentality are meeting and they report the bribes they received prior to going on to make an important decision. As I Recall, as long as they were reported and did not influence the decisions made, accepting bribes was fine, even encouraged – and used as a starting point for investigating those who attempted bribery.
From what I remember, he had grown up in the Philippines and China during the years between the world wars and was very conversant with the realities of power and politics in that time and place.
” As I Recall, as long as they were reported and did not influence the decisions made, accepting bribes was fine, even encouraged – and used as a starting point for investigating those who attempted bribery.”
While conceptually, I completely agree with that, there are 2 very distinct problems that manifest quickly and easily:
1) “did not influence the decisions” – we know this HOW?
2) If the money does not influence decisions and DOES lead to investigation (and some form of punishment, even if it’s just public exposure of the bribery), no one will bribe any further (which is good, of course)… unless the bribe also includes some kind of assurance that the two conditions (not influencing, reporting) are ignored.
Bribes are currently illegal and (theoretically) result in the punishment of the bribe taker, but people still take bribes and do the bidding of those that bribe them (or the bribery would stop).
See the vast millions paid to the family members of various prominent politicians (at least some from the other party, even) for the efficacy of outlawing bribes. Oh, and “book deals” for books that everyone knows won’t sell, speeches for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and recently, “art”.
I wondered about that too. I wasn’t advocating it as a way to run a government, just commenting on the similarities between his stories and the way things worked in the far east during his formative years.
He was extremely aware of the politics of the time (I believe that Dr. Sun Yat-Sen was his godfather) and held a Ph.D in political science, so even his most fantastical stories had unexpected resonance with the real world.
I’d like to try a system where your voting clout is proportional to how much you pay in taxes — if Peter pays ten times as much in taxes as Paul, he gets to cast 10x more votes (but people who pay no taxes should still get one vote).
Not because I think the wealthy automatically deserve more clout, but because:
1. Fairness. If you’re contributing a lot more to the public funds, you should have a bigger stake in how it’s being spent/wasted.
2. Checks and balances. Under most current systems, there’s a massive incentive for everyone to try to milk the system for maximum benefits for themselves and their cronies, while burdening other people (not themselves) with the costs, which is not only unfair, it encourages unlimited spending since you’re sending the bill to “the other guys”. Under this new proposal, that dynamic quickly reaches a point of diminishing returns — the more you shift the costs onto other people, the more political power you’re giving those other people (and the more you’re taking away from yourself), and it won’t be long before those other people gain enough sway to tap the brakes. Ultimately, everyone has an incentive to share the burden more equitably, and also will more equally feel the consequences of profligate government spending.
[Sidebar: To deter deficit spending, at the end of each year any annual deficit would automatically be divided by the number of taxpayers and they’d all receive a bill for their portion of the shortfall to make up the difference. After the first year of overspending, the Congressional (probably literal) bloodbath would serve as a lesson to their successors.]
I’d be willing to try that. Extra bonus points if a line of gibbets was permanently set up across from the houses of congress.
Or we could try the system that H. Beam Piper had in one of his lighter-hearted SF novels, “Lone Star Planet” – if you killed a working politican, their recent actions would be immediately put on trial. If it was determined that their recent actions were in violation of the constitution or the rights of citizens (an instance in the story was proposing an income tax) their killer would be released, their weapons would be ceremoniously returned, and they’d receive the thanks of the people.
Politicians were allowed to defend themselves, but hiding away from frequent interactions with the voters would generally result in them failing reelection.
I rather suspect that our current crop of politicos would undergo a rapid culling under such conditions.
I can think of so many ways that would go horribly, horribly wrong. Very quickly. First, unless you have some mechanism to put that system beyond the ability of voters to change — making it far more durable than simply “trying it out” — the wealthy could immediately vote to replace it with a system that preserves their newfound voting power without tying it to taxes paid. Even if you did enshrine it, you’ve still placed more than 50% of the voting power in only the top 10% of the population. They could destroy economic mobility through regulatory capture, effectively installing themselves as permanent dictators. And if they could dictate government policy, they’d effectively erase the distinction between their private funds and government funds, eliminating any pressure to reduce their own taxes. If you get to determine how it’s spent, why quibble over whether it’s yours or the government’s? And they could easily funnel taxes back into their own pockets through directing government spending to entities they control.
Congratulations on speedrunning corruption. You just reinvented plutoarchy.
IF (big “if”, I know) it was enshrined in the Constitution and required a constitutional amendment to change that, you might be able to make it work. Especially as the bulk of the tax money comes from the middle and upper-middle class, not the wealthiest – let’s just say the interests of the top 10% or even the top 5% of taxpayers are rather different from those of the top 1% or 0.1%.
Not guaranteed, of course. But combine that with the massive inertia in adopting new Constitutional amendments in the US system, there’s hope. It’s not impossible to amend the Constitution – we’ve done it over a dozen times in the last couple of centuries – but it takes a widespread consensus in its favor and approval by a 2/3 majority of the states.
Bisexting is definitely a Lapha thing. I think this is just the start for Sydney. Unless Lapha got into your noggin’, Dave?¢
“All governments systems are doomed to decay into oligarchy and corruption.”
Well, ant-like hive mind intelligences don’t have that problem. But oddly enough people still resist being absorbed by the Borg. :)
Because such a system has the same problems as a corrupt one: loss of individual rights, agency, and self-determination.
Comments like this from you, along with your positions relating to socialism, suggest we could have **really** great conversations, and even in good faith on both sides (which I have a hard time finding on political topics).
Getting insights and honest commentary from someone who actually looks at the facts, thinks about second and higher order effects, and disagrees with my position in good faith is something I enjoy very much but can seldom find.
(People who “argue” like Bharda are a much more common find. Very frustrating. Nothing useful or intelligent going on there at all. I LIKE fixing any errors I have, but blind regurgitation of talking points from decades ago is utterly unhelpful in finding any.)
“Well, ant-like hive mind intelligences don’t have that problem.”
Of course they don’t have that “problem” – they renamed it “feature”.
Completely unrelated, I would like to start a list with loose ends in this web comic. Here’s what I currently have off the top of my head:
– orbs origin
– seventh orb function
– what’s powering the orbs
– orb sharing with Varia
– When and how will Halo become a corporal (mentioned in page #1)
– What happened to Hench Wench
– What happened to Sciona/Escorpia
– What happened to the Ascenders
Sciona/Escorpia made her way into the US government, as an aide to a senator (who is also probably possessed by an Alari).
Is today’s alt text a Tom Cardy reference? xD
In french” un portemanteau” is “a coat hanger” , in french the translation of the word portemanteau is “mot-valise” literally “luggage word” , and in English a portmanteau is a type of luggage usually made of leather and opening into two equal parts.
This word had a odd meaning for a french even if it’s had a French origin.
it’s a few words hanging on to each other, cluttered together, stuffed in a valise, and all interconnected so that it’s difficult to pull them apart. So, both definitions work at the same time.
“so no Henry Peter Gyrich’s or Amanda Waller’s. At least not yet.” Unless I missed a major time jump, Grrlverse is still in the Obama administration, which is probably the least likely Whitehouse to put a xenophobe/racist/etc in that position of any administration in our history.
“which is probably the least likely Whitehouse to put a xenophobe/racist/etc in that position of any administration in our history.”
No, they just changed which races are favored/disfavored. There have definitely been administrations that were better about getting actual NONracists in official positions.
‘..and there are some very secretive plans to mitigate that potential threat’
Max is powerful, and /currently/ on a government leash, but governments are notoriously uncomfortable with the idea of power blocks (And lets face it, Max is a power block all on her own. Sydney now, too, but between mittens, being riddled with bullets, and knowing where her family lives they think they got that one pretty well covered) that they have no leverage with.
I expect in some alphabet sub-department in one or more alphabet agencies there are folders containing Batmanesque contingency plans for neutralizing Max using the research done on her so far.