Grrl Power #1268 – Mozambican, or mozambican’t?
Being recognized by the United Nations and the Olympic governing body are two separate things. If you want to know how many countries there are, well, the two organizations don’t always agree. Also there are factors like The Vatican is a country, but isn’t a member of the U.N., and given the demographics of the City/Nation, they don’t exactly have a lot of Speed Skaters on hand or guys that do whatever that Ice Sweeping one is, and Altar Boy Molestation hasn’t been accepted into the Olympic catalog yet.
The hardest disses when someone attacks you are along the lines of looking up and going, “Oh, did we start? I hadn’t noticed.” “Hey, do you have any bug spray? I think a mosquito is buzzing around me.” “Was that a punch or are you establishing credentials for when you apply for disability benefits?”
And then there’s just browsing on your phone while people flail helplessly against it.
This sequence is another short one. One more page and we’re back to Sydney doing her usual shenanigans. (<– A word I never spell correctly on the first try.) I, too, prefer shenanigans to evil plotting, but it’s a superhero comic, bad guys have to set up future conflict now and then.
The new vote incentive is up!
Oh no! Superheroines in a deathtrap! Well… a tickle trap. Okay, not trapped, trapped, but… look, three of the girls are getting tickled. Actually, in a way, seven girls are getting tickled since the other four Harems will feel this as well, but technically it’s only the three shown in the picture since Harem insists there’s only one of her – it’s just confusing since she can be in 5 places at once.
As you can probably imagine, Patreon shows what happens if they laugh, and also has a comic revealing who is behind this nefarious situation.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like.
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"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.
Bullets in effective against forcefields sort of reminds me of the sort of s***You need to pull for faster than light travel in Shows like star trek. Cause if you’re travelling at the speed of light and you hit a rock.That’s no different from a rock travelling at the speed of light hitting you. So you need to constantly have Shields up capable of dealing with that kind of kinetic impact.
That kind of extreme mechanic can result in the opposing failings such as the slow knife penetrates the shield.
Cue the original Stargate TV series, where they try to shoot one of the bad guys (haven’t watched it in forever… what were they called?) with a bow after observing, that he doesn’t take down the shield when letting his soldiers throw him a weapon.
Except… The arrow is probably much faster than the energy balls they are shooting.
Gua’uld were the main bad guys
1) The bad guys were called the Goa’uld. And I’m pretty sure the one you are referencing with throwing a weapon to them which gets past the shield was Horus.
2) I don’t think they used a bow. O’Neill saw that the staff weapon passed through Apophis’s personal defense shield in a previous battle (I think on the Nox planet) when tossed over at Apophis. So in a later episode, when he was later fighting Horus and Horus was using HIS personal defense shield and was going to use his hand weapon against O’Neill, Colonel O’Neill took out his knife and threw it to disable Horus’s hand (and the hand weapon).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWFjzcjTRoY
Thus showing that Colonel Jack O’Neill both respects the lessons from Dune (the slow blade penetrates the shield) AND Starship Troopers (The enemy cannot push a button if you disable his hand. MEDIC!).
They did try a bow (and a spear) on the Nox planet, but the Nox stepped in before you found out if it would work.
Yes. But I just mean they found out if the idea works with Heru’ur/Horus. Before that it was just theory – they didn’t actually get to use the bow that O’Neill made. They all sorta “died” after the first attack against Apophis with P-90s and were brought back to life by the Nox. :) Then the Nox kept preventing them from being able to fight each other after they made makeshift weapons (ie, bows, etc). Because Armin Shimerman plays just as good an alien hippie as he does an alien capitalist. Season 1, episode 8 (“The Nox”)
O’Neill didn’t get to actually try it out successfully until season 2, episode 9 (Secrets) – I think on Abydos.
PS – I’m always surprised that with how meta the characters on Stargate sometimes got, none of them ever actually said ‘The slow blade penetrates the shield.’ Then again, Teal’c is into Star Wars, and O’Neill is into Star Trek (he wanted to name the first spaceship Earth built the Enterprise instead of the Prometheus and was told no by Carter) and Simpsons (and thinks Burns would be a Goa’uld).
PPS – Rodney McKay also wanted a ship to be the Enterprise (the Ancients Warship under the supervolcano, that I think Sheppard wound up naming the Orion).
Dune comes to mind too. They would train to fight with knifes with deliberately slow motions to get through the force fields.
You mean he is vulnerable to the eventual eviscreator? https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-319-armored-with-advice
No, that was just the stupidity of the Dune series and the writers guess on force fields. Most force fields would stop almost everything, depending on power.
the slow blade passing through the force shield is pretty close to how oobleck works
In Star Trek the Deflector Dish projects a beam into the ship’s path at warp that deflects small debris out of the ship’s path, hence it’s name.
Because at FTL even hitting a dust cloud would be very bad.
The ships also have Deflector Shields on in case of side impacts. They’re not the full shields you see in combat as that would be a waste of energy.
Well, Dave already invoked that trope here with the oobtek ;) :
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-319-armored-with-advice/
i thought they all had “navigational” shields which were a separate thing from the combat shields.
I was just thinking about that, and I realized that a ship travelling faster than light that moves something out of the way is… effectively giving it infinite acceleration, right? They have to move a particle several hundred feet in… however long the time difference is between the deflector’s first impulse and when the ship passes through that space. So every time a ship travels at warp and moves through a dust cloud or micrometeorite swarm, they create a bunch of particles travelling at high fractions of C in random directions?
I don’t know if anyone’s brought that up–probably somewhere–but that seems a little dangerous.
Anything that has a finite speed (even if its a very very very fast speed) cannot have infinite energy.
Or more exactly according to Michio Kaku, nothing can have infinite energy unless it has infinite speed.
(The reason he puts it like that is because of the expansion period of the first moments of the universe after the big bang – i will find the video for it later when I am home)
One of the theories about ST’s Warp Drive is that the subspace field allows it to alter physics within it so that the energy requirements to hit FTL are vastly reduced.
Back to the topic; at sublight speeds the Deflector Dish and Naivigational Deflector shields are on maximum reach, yet at warp I think they only effect anything that passes into the ships Warp field. So anything knocked outside of the Warp field by Deflectors should just drop back down to sublight speeds.
Yeah I think they mentioned what you said in the first paragraph in one of the Wesley Crusher episodes on TNG.
No, that’s not how warp works. Space stretches/compresses so that you are “travelling” at multiple times the speed of light, but your actual velocity within that space stays low. Any object that is in your path would be affected by the same fields and the impact speed would only be the relative speed you had if the warp drive was off.
Yeah, a rock “at” the speed of light would have infinite energy, and we’re actually talking 10,000,000 the speed of light. And I think the deflectors don’t even reach outside the warp bubble, because they’d have to propagate faster than light to do that. They’re only shoving aside anything that makes it through the bubble.
If it’s anything like an Alcubierre warp drive, (The sort that’s actually gotten serious theoretical analysis, and was inspired by Star Trek to begin with.) not much is going to penetrate the bubble intact, because there’s going to be an absolutely huge gravitational field confined to the thickness of the bubble tearing apart any matter that tries to penetrate it. A rock might get in the way, but the deflectors only have to deal with a cloud of plasma.
I don’t think infinite energy is right. Only photons and other massless particles travel at c. The “rock” would be a bundle of photons with energy equal to its rest mass times c-squared, I think.
According to physics as currently understood, tardyonic matter can not reach the speed of light. However, it can approach the speed of light arbitrarily close, with kinetic energy growing beyond all bounds.
So, infinite energy at c is a natural continuation of this, whereas mc^2 would involve a jump downwards.
A rock at the speed of light would not have infinite energy. The speed of light is a finite speed.
According to the Special Theory of Relativity, as the speed of an object approaches the speed of light, as measured by an external observer, its kinetic energy approaches infinity and its internal time flow decreases, thanks to the Lorenz transform.
If a rock hits your warp-drive-equipped ship, the relative kinetic energy would likely disrupt the rock and the rock would instantly become plasma.
Universe Sandbox is fun to watch :)
Enjoy watching this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sF8_-iWhF50
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sF8_-iWhF50
It’s all fictitious “rubber science”, but this is the answer here. It’s also how shows gets around time dilation and crew deaths due to rapid acceleration/deceleration. The ship and passengers aren’t moving very fast, if at all; the warp drives are bending (“warping”… hence the name) space which flows around the ship. Any objects in the path would be bent around the ship along with the rest of space.
This is opposed to “hyperspace” or similar where the ship/crew jumps or slips into another dimension where objects are closer and relativity rules are different. Here the ship *is* moving, but still not that fast (again, time dilation & accel/decel). The fictitious “rubber science” here is that there are no objects in the other dimention to hit.
Hyperspace is actually a lot more interesting in the SF stories where there ARE objects in the other dimension to hit, and you have to navigate around them, sometimes violently, while trying to get to the location in hyperspace that corresponds to the location in ‘real’ space you’re trying to reach.
Real physics gives us no particular reason to think that there actually is any sort of accessible “hyperspace”, or any way to travel FTL. People have wasted an enormous amount of thought trying to work out a way to do something in the real world that was just invented as a plot convenience in fiction.
Real physics you say? Go back three hundred years ago and tell someone, even someone with scientific knowledge, that in three hundred years you will be able to pull a device out of your pocket, enter in details about who you want to contact, and then be able to see a live image of them and talk with them, where you will be told real physics (at that level of knowledge) says you are stupid and unrealistic. Jump to today, 300 years later and think about how many people have smart phones and video call others.
It is gross stupidity to think humans know every possible fact, and have explored all branches of science to perfect understanding. How many inventions were accidents that no one had ever thought to explore in that direction. The modern world was build on people doing something, that others who knew what could and could not be done, said was impossible. I will take a dreamer’s search for the impossible over someone who know real physics, and has stopped thinking for themselves, since they have the facts as given them by others who don’t think anymore.
Understand the distinction between, “says it doesn’t exist”, and “provides no reason to think it does exist”.
For all I know tomorrow we’ll have a physics breakthrough that demonstrates the existence of an accessible hyperspace usable for FTL travel. Nothing in physics that I’m presently aware of says that’s likely. But, yeah, it could happen.
And for all I know a distant uncle is going to give me $10M in his will tomorrow, too. I’ve got no reason to rule that out, but I’d be stupid to plan on it.
We can colonize the entire galaxy in under a million years at 10% of the speed of light, and we know in general terms how to go THAT fast, it’s just a big engineering challenge. I find that a lot more interesting than pursuing FTL dreams.
Ahem. Brane theory. Ahem.
– Go back three hundred years ago
300 years? Try 70 years.
ST:ToS was total futurism, and they didn’t have tablet computers.
– It is gross stupidity to think humans know every possible fact, and have explored all branches of science to perfect understanding.
I won’t clog the comments here, but go read the foreword to Issac Azimov’s “The Relativity of Wrong”
We have most of the basics mostly right and have ruled a lot of things out.
ToS had tablet computers. The “PADDs” in ToS were pretty ropey props (often adapted from child toys according to the dude giving the tour at the Star Trek: Original Series Set Tour) but they were there.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Personal_Access_Display_Device
Plus those other datapads that Kirk would always sign from the ensign while he was sitting in the captain’s chair. :)
ToS did have tablet computers.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Personal_Access_Display_Device?file=Starfleet_PADD%2C_2260s.jpg
https://img.trekmovie.com/images/links/ipadd-tos.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d9/Star_Trek_Spock.jpg
Cool, so do you jump off buildings because you’re sure gravity doesn’t exist?
There’s a hell of a lot of research and experimental results that backs up relativity
There’s no evidence of a hyperspace or warp field actually being possible (there’s some maths that suggests it could be but it requires some completely unknown types of matter)
It’s possible that we’ll find something but it’s not really where to bet
– Hyperspace is actually a lot more interesting in the SF stories where there ARE objects in the other dimension to hit
You mean Babylon 5, the best sci-fi series of the 90s? (And is still prophetic and relevent political commentary today)
Or Warhammer 40K
Or Mass Effect or Star Control or Andromeda (Slipstream is hyperspace basically) or Firefly/Serenity or Stargate SG1/Atlantis/Movie or BattleTech or Starfinder or Halo or Wing Commander :)
Yes, and that’s why any ship in Trek that loses power to its warp drive (or deliberately turns it off) basically stops without having to spend energy to do so.
Star Trek starships have “navigational shields” which are basically low-power shields designed to prevent damage from micrometeorites and the like.
Hey wait, is that Deus’ bodyguard?!!
Pretty certain that is Sciona’s uber golem.
Yeah thats what i was thinking as well, that little broken bit of it that crept away after the battle?
I thought the way the tentacle design looked familiar, but couldn’t place them.
Looks more like an Uber Driver.
Yeah I think so too, and something about him is also making me think of the things Sidney fought on Alari prime. Which they also made me at the time think of the I’m not a robot guy as well between the tentacles and glowing eyes with the adapting to their opponent.
I think so too
His arm/tentacle hand does remind me a lot of the hand of the Super Mannekiller that Sydney faced near the Mars factory, yep.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-513-robo-regen/
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-514-concrete-knuckles/
Plus the lettering font when he talks is the same as the Super Mannekiller’s font.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-516-between-the-anvil-and-the-roof/
My preferred diss is “Have you started yet?”
I’m trying to make a joke about the Mozambique Drill, but I can’t get a hit with it.
Old guy is just about to do something cool I bet.
Radioactive Snail Attack!
“But that takes half an hour to get to him!”
Yes, i did it 35 minutes ago.
“Whu… AAAAH!”
or something.
When you’re old you can be patient and very tricky and have references in abundance.
It might be a racing snail
Or the 7.62mm FN E-ScarGo with full housing.
Still fires naked snails at a rate of 0,6 slugs a minute.
There was an RPG system (GURPS? Hero? There are so many…) where you could buy “takes extra time” to make spells or powers cheaper, or to represent those ritual spells that take hours to do.
But I suppose you could put several levels of “takes extra time” on your punch (zero-range energy blast that does physical damage or similar cheese), then buy the damage up to ungodly levels. Add in armor-piercing…
The Dragonball Z method
@dave I’m getting a weird effect from the website. If I go to the previous page the link to the current (next/last) page isn’t available. If I go to the page before that they are available. You can still get to the current page too by just loading the main website.
This is normal. Just wait for some time, the new page has just been up for only a few moments, and apparently Dave still does not have full automation scripts for adding pages.
Hmm. It should be fully automated. The only thing I do manually is add the link to the patreon 2x version of the page once I get up. I wasn’t aware of a delay in the next/last links though.
Caching. It’s probably caching, and a hard refresh should solve the problem.
I personally like “Now that you’ve gotten that out of your system…” Like taking to a toddler post-tantrum
Urination: recognition by the U.N.
“I’m impressed. You actually managed to singe my fingernails with that attack”
So, where’s that duffel full of heads gotten off to in panels 6? That spatial deformation thing from the teleport must be an ongoing effect. This whole sequence has given me a positional awareness headache.
An intelligently designed version of that force field wouldn’t provide convenient aiming points for follow up shots that might very well manage a localized breach by concentrating to much energy in one spot. A REALLY intelligently designed force field would provide false aiming points that show the impacts with a randomly varied displacement from where they actually hit, making accurate shooting of any kind more difficult and concentration of fire nigh-impossible.
Also, which of the shotgunners tried to put a shell in his groin, and which one was gut-shooting with slug? Alas, we may never know.
You seen how they were holding their guns? Really think they were aiming?
Anyone else thinking one of the Triad leaders is going to bust out the ‘Super’ and this devolves into a regular throw-down?
At some point you get bored watching people waste their ammo and you need to do something while waiting for them to finish unloading their bullets.
Fun the first time, boring the 92nd time.
Okay, I’m impressed that the Russian enforcer is packing an RSh-12 [I still want one…]
TIL the RSh-12 exists. I though it was a poorly drawn Chiappa Rhino, but it’s definitely a RSh-12.
The Ice Sweeping sport is called Curling. They sweep to get ice debris out the way for a smoother throw. Its kinda like Shuffleboard but on ice.
And traditionally it starts with a glass of scotch, my kind of sport!
The possibility of debris on the ice is a very minor thing in curling. Sweeping actually alters the trajectory of the rock, (it goes farther and straighter), and at the top levels can adjust the final position by a couple _metres_.
Generally speaking, the Olympics are determined quite a few years in advance. Right now they’ve got the next four hosts listed on their website.
https://olympics.com/ioc/faq/future-olympic-games/where-will-the-next-olympic-games-be-held
So I don’t really think Galytn would be able to bid on the next one. The one after that maybe.
but then, accidents and world events happen, and the prior winning bidder might suddenly not be able to support the games so a backup bidder might be required.
Not that anyone would ever to that intentionally…
That was a nice little bit of villain posturing, right there.
And we once again get reconfirmation of which criminal boss is actually educated.
Or secretly replaced by a shapeshifter.
i dunno dave, these guys dont seem all that “bad” for bad guys. perhaps just setting up their creds for super heroism! merc style…?
I didn’t want to dive into an arc that establishes them doing genuinely terrible stuff like human trafficking or beating a kindly old shopkeep half to death for mission a “protection” payment or anything like that. Let’s just assume that they deserve bad things to happen to them.
its the BLOOD ROBOT
At least two of the bodyguards do not appear to have done anything. Smart guy’s male guard may or may not have fired.
The dude with two “Golden Guns” in Panel one is pretty cool. One more than 007’s enemy Scaramanga. BTW the thugs seem to be aiming to me … they all hit their target … sort of.
You’re making people look at me funny, because I’m laughing too hard. Straight and uncaring answer to the question. And a guy with actual good plated guns???
I’m impressed that anyone can even carry on a conversation at this point. I cant speak for the Hagfish but everyone else would be pretty deaf after that fusillade. Young Dr. Zin must have augmented hearing.
While these goons seem to be more about the filing the air with lead school of marksmanship, it is possible with practice to be a fairly proficient “point shooter”.
Isn’t shenanigans the restaurant from Office Space?
Shouldn’t organized crime families have supers?
Shot groupings are all over the place unless you assume they are shooting to wound. At least it is better than stormtrooper aim, but that’s not saying much.
I missed out on the Monday name-a-thon for the villain. My suggestion since he/she/it is tentacle based is Kraken.
His actual name according to comic book rules (I’m looking at you Batman) will need to be something fitting, like Cal La Maray.
And is the octopus picture on the wall supposed to be an oblique reference to Hydra?
His supervillain name should be Paul. It would throw everyone off as to his powers.
Now face the wrath of PAUL!
That’s a Pauling. I see what you did there!
You have taken my funny-ish idea and turned it into a pun. Has you evilness no bounds?
no it does not. this is what happens when you hook up too many randomizers to a car AI. (also giv it really cheeky responses.)
Of course it has bounds, leaps and bounds.
Out of all the projectiles that impacted on their visitor, I might have expected at least a few to have fallen to the carpet, but NOTHING! Is he absorbing them?
Can supes compete in the Olympics?
The last panel on page 147 suggests that there will be a separate Super Olympics.
Umm…How could the Tiny-Mustache-reasonable-Asian-Gangster-Guy possibly hear the intruder after all of the gunfire in that enclosed space? Wouldn’t it take some time for all of the gangsters to regain their hearing? Or are they supes?
This comic has full-on Attention Deficit Disorder.
My favorite ADD cup says I came, I saw, I forgot what I was doing
went back, got distracted, have no Idea whats going on, is this
my cup? I have to pee. (I can do this because I’m ADD AND an
old fart. So no cancelling can work on me)
Have you seen the main protagonist?
Probably because the author does as well.
Is the Douche with the Golden Gun holding one of his guns upside-down with his pinky on the trigger like Death the Kid in the second to last panel?
He pulled the clip out and is examining it, apparently to make sure there was real ammo inside. Presumably due to a lack of understanding as to why his overly blinged-out guns failed to do what he wanted them to do.
Looks to me like he flipped it over to load a new clip, which is in his other hand (you can see that shotgun-guy is also reloading in that frame) – but not sure where his other gun went.
Are we really sure that his guns are gold? or are they tan cerakote (or whatever that stuff is called.) I guess Dave could tell us. They look like the sort of gun that usually has a polymer lower half.
While I agree with several comments that I too am getting a vibe of the “I am not a robot” guy that Sciona had enthralled who escaped as a tentacle around a broken piece at the end. I am also getting the bio-mech kaiju that attacked Alari prime vibes from this guy.
which to be fair I think I did say back in those pages that my theory was Sciona/the Alari who have “battle thralls” had enslaved either this one guy or a colony of these adaptoid aliens, and after this one got loose called their home world or cosmic benefactors *gods or whatever*, who proceeded to then exterminate the Alari homeworld as retribution.
fan theory aside, definitely still getting a there may be a relation between them feel as he stands there like the tripod cthulhu mech, only more talkative.
CGP Grey has a fantastic video about “How many countries are there?” on YouTube.
I am waiting for them to throw their now empty guns at him, and he ducks.
There are more countries in FIFA than the UN and potentially the Olympics. The CIA Factbook might count the countries of the world.
I’m pretty sure that FIFA has more ability to change worldwide relations than the U.N.
Sorry but how do you pronounce Galytn?
Am I the only one bothered by the lack of shadows on the floor in panel 6?
Shoulda used a flamethrower.
…Dresden Files reference… Uh, Harry lost a hand for half the series because force fields don’t stop convection. Also wanna make a John Wu reference but literally the only thing I know about those movies is they involve people flying through the power of firearm recoil and near infinite munitions while occasionally moving in slow motion while everything is constantly nonstop exploding.
And let’s not forget the Miss Universe pageant!
It’s not clear that red housecoat gentleman or oddly dressed young lady did anything.
He seems very confident.