Grrl Power #344 – A few things may have been skipped when she was hired
It’s probably obvious what the knowing glances are about, but I won’t spell it out here since it comes up on the next page. Also I reserve the right to change the title of this page, but I sat around for well over an hour trying to think of something clever and my brain was like “nope.”
I don’t know why the locker room has that many lockers. Arc-SWAT doesn’t have that many women in it… well I guess including the non SWAT Archon personnel there are plenty of both gender at the base. I’m not sure how often the Arc-Light personnel use the showers though. They don’t have the same rigorous physical routine as the SWAT folks. The SWAT branch is generally assumed to be on call most of the time unless they’re doing a press event somewhere, and they have rooms on the upper level, like we saw part of Peggy’s a while back. In truth a lot of the personnel from all the branches spend most of their time at the base, it’s just the nature of the job.
How sweet does Harem have it? Being able to stand behind herself to fix up her own hair? The only other way to do that is with a portal gun. Looking at the way Harem is dressed, she’s less Goth and more Harley Quinn fan club today. That’s fine by me, it’s a lot easier to draw than gothic lolita with all the lace and ruffles. How that became a popular thing I don’t quite understand. Not that the style doesn’t have a certain appeal, but there are genuinely few things more tedious to draw than ruffles and lace. Fortunately “goth” in the context of fashion is vague enough that it really means whatever you want. Gothic lolita, evil clown, vampire assassin, or just lots of black clothes and a large eyeliner budget. Also looking at her here it’s obvious I need to make her freckles bigger. They all but disappear when I shrink the page down to web size.
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I was going to jump in first with “Sydney’s a tombuoy!”, but it wasn’t that funny.
I chuckled
Yeah, might have bobbed around waiting for a reply to a bad joke like that. That said, someone’s already comfirmed they found it funny, so your attempt wasn’t completely sunk…
Doesn’t really matter if they are payed very well, Sidneys point still stands: 40 dollars are a ridiculous amount to spend on lunch.
depends upon the quality of the food and the ingredients used to make it.
for a $40 Lunch I’m thinking gold plated Faberge egg sandwiches prepared by Gordon Ramsay.
or more likely $2 worth of ingredients with $38 worth of fancy plating in the name of luxury.
Usually lunch is cheaper in a staff canteen due to it being subsidized.
Could it be more hazing and she paid for everyone’s lunch?
No, they wouldn’t have to be having two different conversations with two different people, unless it’s a secret group within Archon that Maxi doesn’t know about
Or she needs to talk to the Colonel and a different person on the administrative side as well.
As we’ve seen before it is not a staff canteen, but several private restaurants inside Archon buildings. That looked rather exotic and expensive as far as I could tell.
And, like airports, the restaurant’s location costs would be higher.
Could be both: fairly sure breakfast was in the mess
$40 at a good sushi place isn’t that hard to do.
Appetizer + Entree + Drink + Tip = ~$40 easily
I remember a time, when I didn’t regret money being spent, that I went out for sushi. Had a light meal, then the sushi, and stayed for a few hours drinking tea and reading a book.
I tipped the entire cost of the meal, and gave another large tip to the sushi chef.
The meal, not including tip, was about what SSjr paid.
Tipping the cost of the meal is pretty cool if you plan to regularly sit in a place and read a book. Unless you’re poor, thne you have to find a tolerant place and hope they like you!
I’d intended to, but where I lived at the time was hard on sushi resteraunts. The small ones always faded out rapidly, and there was a large one, but it was … insane price.
I was never able to return there.
Now that I’m quite a bit broker, yha, I depend on good will.
Considering the source of the original conversation, it’s possible they’re talking about an $8 lunch, which at military dining facility prices is a LOT of food.
Reeeeaaallly?
How might a civilian con himself a seat at that table?
swing by a recruitment offer, tell them you’re there for the canteen discount. There will be a little paperwork, but you don’t have to sweat the details. Just sign on the dotted line.
LOL
Outstanding.
Yep…that’s what got me in…the “discount.
“snerk”
There’s also the calorie-conversion factor – early on it was discussed that Supers can put away a lot of food in a sitting
Would really depend on their power
And Peggy should be agreeing. Remember, she had Max’s expense card and was treating Sydney to lunch yesterday. “LobsterBurger, here I come!”
Peggy isn’t powered. Bet they have a different pay scale.
It’s normal, and happens all the time with military spending, for example:
“A U.S. contractor in Iraq overbilled the Pentagon by at least $4.4 million for spare parts and equipment, including $900 for an electronic control switch valued at $7.05, according to a new audit.
[…]
Among the “egregious examples of overbilling” by Anham were $4,500 for a circuit breaker valued at $183.30, $3,000 for a $94.47 circuit breaker and $80 for a small segment of drain pipe valued at $1.41.”
Supposedly, a lot of the overprice of military items is creative accounting, and is actually money going to the black budget. More of it comes from the enormous degree of ruggedization that the military requires, which enormously increases the cost of some things.
I sneaked a peek at the supply office catalog once and $25,000 for a window air conditioner caught my eye plus the circuit cards that we just pulled and replaced were $10,000 a piece. The aluminum ashtrays really did cost $600 a piece.
As I was told about it once, military spending is so high because is basically HAS to be. The budgetary allotment for the military is ridiculously high (because Congress remains convinced that problems are solved with more money, not better thinking) and due to weird legal loopholes, they are forbidden to not use the entirety of what’s alloted to them, so basically they have gigantic markups of costs just to serve as financial padding to make sure it all gets spent… and since it all gets spent, Congress gives them more, thinking them spending it all means they need more, and the vicious cycle just bloats further with every $500 toilet seat and $1700 screwdriver.
Haha, bet Syd will be all like, ‘Wait, we get PAID to be superheroes?’
Best.
Thing.
Ever.
Well, she already knows that Archon covers her insurance. That can’t be cheap. And she also knows that Archon is a branch of the military. That means it comes with a paycheck, including hazardous duty pay and pretty much every other bonus when appropriate. Probably someone just forgot to mention that they get reimbursed for food (while they’re on-duty, anyway).
How long till Archon wises up and gets insurance against “Acts of Syd” ? anyone got a list of things she’s damaged thus far? that ceiling in the doctors office…. the cracked fancy windows in the conference room… that one forest…. the tank doesn’t count she was supposed to destroy that…hmm…weird feels like there should be more…
The cracked window was from maxima punching dabbler’s shield after one comment too many. Not an act of syd. She honestly doesnt destroy that much, and dont forget, when it comes to the forest fire, that was her activating her powers for the first time, as you recall, maxima blew out the wall of her own house when she first learned she could shoot explody beams. Probably did more damage than just that as well. I wouldnt be surprised if pretty much every super with an offensive ability did something along those lines. I dont even want to guess what a guy who can make himself weigh as much as a space station might have done the first time that activated.
The cracked window was INDIRECTLY caused by Sydney’s comments. Also she broke the billboard on her way home last night (tr/eat her right). How long until Ariana start SELLING “Acts of Syd” supplemental insurance to the general public. A couple hundred thousand people paying $10-$20 dollars a month would cover her damage with a health profit margin.
But directly caused by the shockwave from Maxima her punch
Poor Sydney being blamed unfairly! It was Dabbler’s taunting of Maxima that caused the window to break in the end.
Oh, and he weighed as much as a space SHUTTLE, not station. Space stations are built outside the gravity well and so have mass, but not weight.
Technically, they still have a certain weight, since they need to keep orbit or they fall. And on earth, they’d still have their weight at 1g.
Gravity on ISS is almost fully compensated by (as muggles call it) Centrifugal force.
Weight is a force=> weight on ISS and weight of ISS is negligibly small.
That being said, Hiro wasn’t technical, it was just a form of speech.
Actually, the ISS is well inside Earth’s gravity well. You can confirm this because the ISS is in orbit around the planet. The reason everything weighs so little on the ISS is that everything is falling at the same rate; there is no significant difference in acceleration for anything in the space station and the ISS itself. This results in a micro-gravity situation. The reason we usually don’t pull this off inside the Earth’s atmosphere (or lower) is that 1) we would run into the planet’s surface after a few minutes and 2) other things around us are accelerating and moving at different rates, so negating the effect.
This last one can be done inside an airplane that follows a particular diving flight-plan. The “Vomit Comet” gives you about 25 seconds of micro-gravity at a time. In fact, the filming of weightless scenes in the movie Apollo 13 was done on just such an aircraft; they built the entire connected space-craft set inside a KC-135 and flew in parabolic arcs for several days to get all the shots. There are active astronauts with less reduced-gravity parabolic flight time than the cast and crew of that film.
Randall Munroe wrote a good explanation of where exactly the ISS is. Relevant quote: “The Space Station hasn’t escaped Earth’s gravity at all; it’s experiencing about 90% the pull that we feel on the surface.”
The ISS is always falling towards the ground, but because of it’s horizontal velocity, it keeps missing. Flying in orbit is exactly as described in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”
That’s like flying: you launch yourself at the ground, and miss
I can do that too X). Yaay vehicle mode…
Alright, I’m getting poked by Daniel the Human & I apparently owe him, so I’ll ‘elaborate’ as he puts it… *sigh*
Yaay remote controlled plane mode…
“everything is falling at the same rate; there is no significant difference in acceleration for anything in the space station and the ISS itself. This results in a micro-gravity situation”
Eh, I never really understood the explanation. I prefer “the ISS is within Earth’s gravity well, but centripetal force is acting on it the other way to the same degree so the gravity isn’t effective.”
Even the moon is WELL inside Earth’s gravity well. Otherwise it wouldn’t be in orbit. You are in orbit of something exactly BECAUSE of it’s gravity
True, true. In fact, a body in orbit around something else just means that it’s always falling into that thing…It just keeps missing. It’s because of its lateral vector & speed of movement.
Gravity is what keeps it in orbit, it’s speed & direction are what keeps it from actually hitting the target.
so… the moon holds the record for the longest free fall? …huh…
Kind of, but the Moon is actually receding from Earth, so technically it is no longer falling, but flying.
sneaky moon is trying to escape!
Yep, it’s getting further & further out at about 1″ per year, if I remember the NASA data right. when it finally does fly out of orbit, imagine the effects that’ll have on our Earthly tidal patterns.
The gosh-durn “global climate alarmists” will probably blame humanity for that too, along with the cycling sunspot activity of Sol & anything else on the geological/atmospheric/celestial levels that have the most impact on our climate & would completely overwhelm anything mankind could do (or avoid doing)…
Interestingly, the Sun exerts about twice as much gravitational force on the Moon as Earth does. When viewed from above the Sun’s north pole, the Moon traces out a rounded, regular 13-sided polygonal orbit around the Sun. By that definition, the Moon is technically no longer a ‘moon’ but a co-orbital minor planet.
Don’t get the “Pluto is a planet” mob started on the Moon as well :p
MDS: the Moon will not fly out of orbit, the force that accelerates it will stop once the Earth has slowed down to match it (ie. rotating once a month). But that’s of academic interest only, since the Sun will become a red giant first, and swallow the Earth and Moon.
YuffieK: interesting, I didn’t know that about the Moon. But it does not alter the fact that it orbits the Earth.
Hey, if the scientists are still officially labeling Pluto as a Dwarf Planet, then it’s a planet.
If it’s not a planet, then they need to label it with something that doesn’t include the word “planet.”
Earth is a dwarf planet due to not having cleared its orbit of moons and other such things.
What is the current definition of a moon now? Are we now using the one theory, two theory, or about 20,000 theory?
On the path to Political Correctness, they must’ve forgotten how to Science…
Scientists who self-contradict lose credibility; those who discoverer & define of facts of the universe can’t afford to lose credibility.
A lot of the reason scientists why scientists lose credibility is because of their credo “publish or perish.” the problem is that no publisher wants to print out the 90% or so of experiment that have negative results, so the scientist will start to write with “publishing bias.” By this, they use various methods of making the data fit the hypothesis instead of adjusting or modifying the hypothesis until it fits the data.
This is when they actually start lying to us:
https://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2014/p-hacking.shtml
If that’s the case, then Jupiter has to be called a Dwarf Planet as well
Actually, I heard one TV science show call Jupiter a failed star, saying that it might have become one if it had gotten much bigger. They also said that the Earth and it’s moon are practically a double planet system when you consider just how big the thing is in comparison to our planet. No other world in our solar system has such a relatively large satellite. Finally, even as our moon as sneaking away, the moons of Mars are sneaking in. They are dipping lower and lower and will eventually crash into Mars.
Or at least so says the television.
^
|
That’s why I don’t watch television anymore…and haven’t for the past 5 years at least.
MDS: I agree, it’s a poor name. Unfortunately, we’re all now stuck with it. I blame “committees of astronomers”, not “science”.
Wiki sez:
Whatever you think of the term “dwarf planet”, it’s no reason to ignore the concept. The International Astronomical Union decided (for the first time) to attempt a clear definition of “planet”, and objects that fail to fit that definition need other names.
It seems to me that there’s a stronger & more prevalent history of science actually changing their definitions & classifications for something, as new info comes along. In short, IAW Rule #3 is now responsible for the obvious self-contradiction about Pluto being a Dwarf Planet.
For example, when they originally called a certain dinosaur “brontosaurus,” further research showed that good ‘ol Bronty was an overall classification, not a specific species.
In this case, by clinging to Rule #3, they’re creating the controversy instead of solving it. And they’re messing up the whole concept of accurate & concise use of the language in order to communicate with everybody else.
I don’t think it is obvious what the knowing glances are about. Forty bucks is a lot to pay for lunch.
Yep, totally not getting it either. All Will Become Clear with the next instalment, allegedly.
They’re superheroes working an incredibly dangerous job. I’m sure they’re compensated better than those guys from The Most Dangerous Catch… or whatever that fishing show is called.
Unless they don’t get paid in money, a forty dollar lunch is still expensive.
Just because one makes a generous amount of money, and I have no doubt they’re being paid enough to keep them enticed away from other businesses/opportunities (so way above standard military) but let’s say even if one makes 100,000 a year, one still doesn’t want to pay 40 dollars a meal. :p
They wouldn’t be paid in “generous” amounts of money, they would be paid in “make your problems go away” kind of money. You don’t want Supers to have outside-the-job stresses or enticements.
(Unless it’s the US infrastructure)
I would go with Harem answer. It was expensive because the food was that good. Base personnel knows that, Sydney doesn’t.
I haven’t read through all of the comments yet, but I have to say, for Harem a $40 meal would be quite normal, feeding those five bodies of hers. It only takes $8 meals to rack up a $40 meal for five.
For general purposes I do agree with the math that a moderately expensive meal ($20 – 30) plus drink, tax, and tip can very easily add up to around $40, but that’s still expensive for middle/lower-middle class citizens.
For $40, I can go to Taco Bell for 5 days in a row for lunch…or McDonalds for a whole week…and eat like a king.
They must be making six figures if $40 for lunch is nothing to them.
“McDonalds”
“Eat like a king”
…
Right?
The King of Obesity?
To eat like a king, screw McDonald’s…go to Burger King. Even has “king” right in the name!
If you’re going to eat like a king wouldn’t eating
outat Dairy Queen be more appropriate?Point to Miller; besides, the King is pretty creepy these days.
The King has ALWAYS been creepy.
+1 indeed
Wouldn’t eating out a Dairy Queen be more Dabblers dinner choice?:P
That would be eat OUT like a King
Technically, it would be more to your liking for women to eat at Burger King while guys would eat at Dairy Queen. I would tend to agree on that point.
:P
I’ve always been partial to Wendy’s hot-n-juicy too…
Sounds yum!
. . . or did you mean the fast food place?
Take that how you wish, but it’s not a complete meal without a side-order of thighs…
Is she having to cover her aborted meal from last night as well? With a tip to cover the rebuilding costs?
Wouldn’t just be Sydney footing that bill, if at all
40 bucks is easily a weeks worth of food at taco bell. Get me two cheese and potato burritos a day for 5 bucks a pop. Or one and a soda for those not scarfing down massively unhealthy amounts of food.
Or about a month’s worth of raw ingredients for someone who knows how to cook. Rice and chicken and veggies are pretty cheap in bulk.
But seriously even at a fancy sit-down restaurant $20 without drinks is a normal price range.
They’re being paid to be super celebrities, it’s probably really damn high. I mean, if pro baseball players make millions, what would a high-tier superpowered combat team get? Besides superpowers being rare in general, everyone on the team has powers that are far better than average.
That said, 40 dollars is pretty ridiculous for lunch.
Yeah, 40 bucks for a normal-every day lunch is a lot of money.
But supers probably get a budget for A LOT of stuff. I would guess free food, free clothes, free medical care (by a medic with super healing powers, no less). All payed for by the goverment.
On the other hand, supers in privately owned bussines probably earn even more.
Which brings up an interesting point.. why would any super want to be a villain for profit.. If your particular skillset is useful enough to steal stuff, chances are it’s useful enough to make lots of money legally.
Because work is… well, work. Why work for stuff when you have the power to steal it? Sell what you don’t want to keep for yourself (believe me, there’s a black market for everything) to pay rent, electric, etc., and spend the rest of the day playing video games.
Though I guess it would depend in large part on your set of powers. It would have to be conducive to a criminal lifestyle, or you’d end up working just as hard. For example, if your only super power was being able to heal anything, probably the only type of crime you could use that for is extortion. “I just cured your terminal cancer. That’ll be $15,000 please.” (Although if you also had the power to undo the healing, extortion becomes even easier… “If you can’t come up with the money, I could always put your cancer back.”)
But if you had Maxima’s power set… well, let’s just say I’m sure that law-abiding people everywhere are grateful that she’s not a criminal.
No need for extortion; you make it part of a medical treatment contract. “You pay $1000 for each treatment and upon confirmation that the cancer is in full remission, you pay the balance of the $15,000. This may need multiple treatments depending on how aggressive your cancer, but usually no more than 10, and there is no guarantee that this will cure you, and other methods will need to be used. In that case, you still pay for the treatments, but you do pay the remission fee.”
And if you didn’t have the formal education & license to practice medicine, the AMA’s lawyers would be all over your @$$ in a heartbeat…
I doubt super power healing would fall under practicing medicine. You would probably need some kind of permit and formal medical education would be a plus, but what you’re doing is not in any way connected to medical practice.
I don’t see why. I am Canadian; I’m out of their jurisdiction. Mind you, Health Canada, on the other hand, …
Mutter something about crystals and toxins, that should cover all the legal aspects. Or rather it shouldn’t but seems to work fine for too many people.
Try to talk common sense to the US government & they’ll tell you about how they’re trying to push regulations that would include warmed rocks used for massage therapy to be labeled (& regulated) as “medical equipment.”
Easy, you just call it “healing” instead of medicine. It is a service, not a medical practice. When word gets out that you can cure cancer pain free in a week, you can charge anything you want and enough people will pay it.
Right, but that’s assuming that the healer is trying to make an honest living. (Cancer treatment is expensive… I have firsthand experience with that.) A criminal healer would demand the money up front, or if you missed a payment he might give your cancer back, or whatever.
you do not have to pay the remission fee.
It’s almost like they made the newby pay everything and forgot to tell her
that seems a more reasonable explanation if that’s not actually what was planned I hope that gets panned in place of this explanation.
No, they wouldn’t have to get clearance to explain that to her
It’s often impolite to talk about wages, saleries, and compensation with coworkers.
Or so every employer will try to make you believe. As comparing salaries can lead to people wanting to unionize. And, for very good and understandable reasons, employers would prefer less unions, generally speaking anyway. Now, that is not something military branches worry about at all, but on the other hand, unless you’re in some kind of special branch or something, the payscale is set, and usually public as well.
+1
Yup! It’s impolite to discuss how the company you work for is screwing people over by paying different people different amounts based on how little they figure they can get away with.
Where I work, it’s so impolite that it can reportedly lead to disciplinary action or outright dismissal if the bosses catch you having such a discussion.
That sounds like the kind of horrible place where its most important to discus your wages, but i understand its something thats really bad right now in the states.
Ugh, sounds like a really crappy workplace.
No, it’s almost all workplaces in the U.S.
Doesn’t mean it’s not crappy.
It is crappy, and “Don’t talk about it or you’re fired” has been said in my presence a few times. I’ve always been lucky, every time I hear wage speak at a non-union place I’m doing okay.
At union shops the contract generally says “Base minimum pay for job X will be: Y” but most bosses treat it like the word “minimum” isn’t in there, until they find someone who’ll rat the others out, then there’s a dollar an hour for a few weeks, until the information runs out or the other workers figure it out and stop doing things around the rat.
How is “don’t talk about your wages or you are fired” not a !st amendment issue? (assuming this is happening in the US) I ask because I am union, and not only do we discuss our pay openly, we discuss the payscale of other contracts in the local. If any management even tried to suggest firing for that, they would have a union business agent at their desk within the hour.
Honestly, after working union for the last decade, I don’t understand why most large company salary workers don’t unionize.
Yes, it’s crappy, but in fairness I’ve never actually heard of anyone being fired from where I work for it. That’s why I used the word “reportedly.” There’s plenty of other crappy stuff going on that I get far more worked over, but I won’t bore you with all of it here.
First amendment limits rathe government, not private entities. Note the starting words ‘CONGRESS shall make no …’
It’s impolite to complain that you are being screwed over?
Sure, why not
Actually, that’s straight up illegal — i can’t remember the law in question, but there is law stating that workplaces must allow people to discuss their wages with each other.
In the USA, it looks like this refers to it.
There are various types of food allowances available. When I was stationed in Washington (the state, not DC), I was on Commuted Rations…Food at the Galley was reduced to almost no out-of pocket cost & a small stipend on my paycheck for food purchases.
The cook is actually pastakinetic.
And catering to supers now creates high insurance premiums.
Don’t forget to tip the staff, or expect to be tied up with tagliatelle and riddled with uncooked penne.
If they’re charging 40$ for lunch, they can forget about tip.
Tee heee, noodlebender
Shh! Careful, Trudar! One of my roleplaying friends reads this site now, and he’s the kind of guy who always tries to play a cyborg, or something totally out of left field. He comes up with some weird character concepts unless you “steer” him towards a character that can work well with the rest of the group while still playing to his strengths. Give him the right character and he can roleplay it so well that he scares people.
If he reads this, I guarantee the next time I run a superhero RPG, he’s going to want to play a noodlebender (or at least some kind of super with food powers). My saving grace is that he reads pretty slowly, so he probably doesn’t spend a lot of time reading the comments… *fingers crossed*
The noodlebender can be a powerful character, (if a little silly) For an example look at the anime one piece. in the water 7 arc, (episodes around the 250 mark I don’t remember the number exactly.)
Wasn’t that the ugly guy sanji beat pretty, then beat ugly again?
Beat him to the punch. write up a noodle bender as an NPC for your campaign and give his the disadvantage “Last of His Race”
The question really is where, precisely, the ability to manipulate noodles comes from.
If it’s Magical in nature, and therefore confined purely to ‘noodles’ and ‘pasta’ (that is, things that have the mystical signature of pasta), then they have some limitations. Granted, a ton of pasta is still going to hit like a ton of, well, anything, and spaghetti senbon could be pretty terrifying. Plus, oddball things like shells stuffed with C4 and detonators or nitroglycerin raviolis.
If it’s the ability to psychokinetically manipulate starches, water, or food, and they just focus on Pasta… Much more of a danger, since they have so much more variety they can use. Paper is a starch, there’s some pretty dangerous foods out there, and waterbending, well…
Sure, he gets to play Sydney before she found her orbs, or did they find her? Small, weak, uncoordinated, bad decisions (so low strength, dexterity, wisdom), nerd (slightly increased intelligence), but with an amazing ability to withstand the effects high concentrations of capsicum (insanely high constitution, not quite at the regeneration-level). Superpower: She has a chemical breath weapon, usable about once a minute for about 1 hour after most meals. Fire-breathing diner, indeed.
She also can cast zero-level Confuse on people with moderate intelligence, effectively temporarily reducing her target’s wisdom to lower than her own. Oh, yeah, because she is small, her hit points are lower than most. Mind you, compared to Maxima and Anvil, most people have very low hit points.
But playing as a combat chef is much more versatile than you’d think, especially if the character has more of an evil bend to them.
Killing a foe by slipping a poison/venom/toxin into food is simple and far too easily detected. The real art is killing without such obvious means. Thus the assassin-chef. Nobody expects the cook – he is too easily trusted, for he brings health and sustenance to all through his dishes. And therein lies his cunning. A stab through the chest with chopsticks, disguised as a strike from a once-trusted bowman’s arrow; slitting a throat with the keen edge of a spatula, masqueraded as a rival’s dagger; even simply bludgeoning one’s victim with a heavy skillet.
Even ingredients could be used in their own right – flour smokescreens, crafting explosives by igniting the fine dust of ground meal, or even turning a batter recipe into a resilient glue to snare foes. Do not underestimate a true master of the culinary martial arts.
Poisons might be simple to administer and easy to obtain, but it is far too obvious and well-known a method, and one’s target inevitably expects it and likely has prepared countermeasures for it accordingly. Any idiot with a shiv and a vial of snake spit can backstab or poison somebody, but it takes a truly cunning and clever assassin to bump off his target right under a guard’s nose. And it is easily done when that nose is distracted by the rich scent of a good meal.
Or perhaps even more subtle means of death. Serving fish? Don’t you just hate getting a fishbone caught in your throat. Especially if it stabs through & causes fatal bleeding. In fact choking on food in general can be pretty dangerous for you meat sack Humans, right? Learn to rig the food itself into a weapon…
Noodle Bender is Dabbler’s nemesis.
https://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/Pastamancer
“With his mastery of the arcane secrets of Noodlecraft, the Pastamancer is a force to be reckoned with.”
The other caster class is the Sauceror. I find the humour in that game immeasurably entertaining, but the actual gameplay quite a bit less so. Pity.
Enlisted eat at the chow hall for free. Officers pay, but get a living allowance that more than covers for it, plus the chow hall has very reasonable prices. Of course, if you don’t eat at the chow hall, you pay, and you pay the going price. Now, if Archon doesn’t have a chow hall, then they have to have something set up to pay the enlisteds’ tab. Them’s the rules.
Not a chow hall, and not all enlisted are on a mean plan, only if you are in the barracks.
Supers are probably on every military bonus in the world (everywhere is a combat zone, etc.) and there’s the kicker…
Most military don’t have a marketing department.
ArcSwat would probably only get a specific hazard-bonus if they actually engage in combat. On normal everyday status, they would get regular pay. There’s a limit to how a “combat zone” can be classified, ya’ know.
@Midnight
True, but they can get hazardous duty pay because their duty has a higher-than-average (by a lot) of putting them in extremely hazardous situations.
While there’s bound to be an initial “surge” of super-villain actions so soon after Archon came out to public attention (last night’s mob-brawl, for example), soon the “hazardous” amount of time on the job will decline…Probably to a point that occurs no more frequently than for Police or Fire Fighters, quite probably less often.
Sure, just being on a “swat” team should earn more on a regular basis than the ordinary beat-cop, but the frequency of being called for specific Swat-Duty purposes doesn’t happen as often.
Aaaactually… the military does have a marketing arm, and a solid one at that. See JAMRS (Joint Advertising, Market Research, and Studies).
They even made a Video Game!
When I was in, if you were enlisted, in uniform, and on post you ate for free at the chow hall unless you went through the “cooked to order” line, then you paid a nominal fee.
every one pays to eat at the DFac just the unmarried enlisted are given the money as food allotment and its taken back the same pay check as meal card /DFac fee because the military expects them to eat at the cheap priced DFac
I remember one sergeant who sometimes asked someone who screwed up “Think of how that would look on the news!” Thankfully I don’t remember him tell me that often. Now that I think about it, that is more like P.R. rather than Marketing.
The military does have marketing departments; they are usually focused on recruitment messages. Other kinds of marketing is left to other departments of the government.
I’m in love with this instance of Harem, although I find other-her pretty scary!
You mean Gothamer?
Wait, which one do you find scary? o_O
You know, that one. No, not that one, that one!
:P
I would say I’ll take a threesome with the “hot topic twins” myself, but my wife (who actually cosplays as Harley Quinn) would likely take offense ….
And since I have a wife that cosplays as Harley Quinn. I’ll just leave it there.
Ah, you are just some kind of Joker, aren’t you?
Well they ain’t much of a Riddler, if that’s what you mean…
$40 would want to be a pretty awesome lunch.
Im talking prime rib and lobster awesome for that price.
I feel sort of weird that I have had $40 lunches before (though usually my lunch costs more like $10-$20 depending on where I go). But I also live in New York and everything’s too expensive here.
Daniel the Human here. You want too expensive, try living in the most isolated capitol city on Earth in the largest island on Earth – Perth, Australia. Because Australia is an island, things are already a bit pricey to get from overseas, then add the fact it has to cross to the other side of the country (everything hits the East Coast first, then gets trucked/trained/flown over West) that adds more $$.
…That said, it does teach us to be more self sufficient…
It’ also a (failed) attempt to show that Supers can eat out without it degenerating into a super-brawl, after the previous night.
(Didn’t she want an excuse to peek into the bouy’s changing room?)
Maybe they have more then one locker each
Or they’re just planning ahead. More lockers means they don’t have to renovate if they add a few team members in the future (unless they hire more members than they have lockers for, obviously).
It’s possible that Supers are going to start showing up exponentially, depending on where the origin actually comes from and what their breeding habits are.
Fairly sure Dabbles would like to be involved in further ‘breeding’ habits ;)
Where DID the blonde Harem Vorrp off to?
To get permission to let Sydney in to the exclusive “No Maxi-Club”
I’m guessing to provide 1 link in the chain of conversation she mentions towards the end. Probably at 1 of the 2 locations talking to 1 of the 2 parties involved…
When I was on active duty in the USArmy, for breakfast I would have 2 large glasses of juice, 2 pieces of toast with butter and jam, a large ham steak as thick as my thumb, two bowls of cereal with whole milk, two more large glasses of whole milk, a sweet roll with butter, a three-egg omelet with ham and cheese, 4 strips of bacon, a short stack of pancakes with butter and syrup, and hashbrowns. I would eat all of that in 15 minutes, and nab a couple pieces of fruit and a couple of small boxes of sweet cereal on my way out of the door. The reason? By 10:30 a.m. I would be starving again. I burned so many calories that there was no way to gain excess weight. While I was enlisted, I didn’t pay, and I ate that heavy at every meal. Once I became an officer, I still ate like that, but I paid a very reasonable price at the chow hall. It used to shock me, when I would get the same order at a civilian restaurant, as to how much more I had to pay. Of course, the civilians were pretty shocked at how much I ordered and put away, and how fast I made all of that food disappear.
II’ve never been military but at one of my jobs where I burned loadd of calories I got banned by one of the local pubs from doing their 1kg steak challenge
1kg rump steak with probably half a kilo of chips and a side salad the size of most mains $60 for it all if you didny finish it.
Btw I’m from Australia so $20 for a quick lunch is reasonable although $10 would be more common.
Wooow that’s bullshit. I mean the pub thing. Pretty sure that’s illegal, and if not, should be. Sue their asses?
Actually it probably ought to be in the challenge rules that if you win the challenge you can’t do it again for X amount of time. Because those challenge meals aren’t cheap to make, either, and if they get a couple customers who can do it every day the restaurant may be in trouble.
Heh, I love the speed eating. The first time I saw my family after basic we went to burger king and got some food. We all sat down and by the time they had their burgers unwrapped and fries salted I was finished eating and sipping my soda wondering why they were looking at me like that. You just dont even notice the fast eating after awhile.
When I went through boot you had 10 min to eat from the moment you left the serving line. So any time spent trying to find a seat in the chow hall took away from that.
Only four strips of bacon? YOU WERE DOING IT WRONG!!! :P
The guy handing out bacon had more rank, and a gun, otherwise I heartily agree with you. Bacon is the Snickers of the meat world. I love to go down to “Big Steer” (St. Paul), pick up some thick cut and bake a couple of pounds in the oven, then bring it to gaming sessions. My friends accuse me of being the crack dealer of our group, cuz I’m always introducing them to new addictives.
Any idea how comparable too “Van Hansen’s”? Hell if your packing bacon to gaming sessions, I think that I may be in the wrong groups!
Definitely better. You have to ask to see the side of bacon, so you can see the fat vs. meat ratio. I like it when it is only 30%-50% fat, as opposed to the 50%-75% you get in the super markets. And since I saw the “Good Eats” episode for baking bacon as opposed to frying it, it is much easier to prepare large batches of bacon.
Ever tried homemade back jerky?
Don’t go for the beef jerky…Too much, going too fast & quickly you’ll wind up with creamed beef.
Puns intended.
I may have to try making my own jerky, since the store-bought stuff usually has MSG and loads of sodium, both which are bad for me.
Can I just say how much I appreciate the fact that “off-camera” conversations take actual time to conduct? One of the most annoyong things about phone conversations in film and TV is that it is OBVIOUS that the other party couldn’t possibly have had time enough to say more than a few syllables, before the person on-camera replies.
Most of the time, it goes like this:
*picks up phone*
“Hello?”
*five-second pause*
“Okay.”
*puts down phone*
“That was Doctor X. He wants us to know that .”
Or they repeat the other half of the conversation back to the person on the other end of the phone.
“they have found the secret base”
[pause]
“and they are coming here now”
[pause]
“in 5 minutes you say”
Actually, some people do do that, it helps to make sure they have the information correct
In the military that makes sense, repeating orders back is a standard thing.
“they have found the secret base”
[pause]
“and they are coming here now”
[pause]
“in 5 minutes you say”
Doesn’t help the other person doesn’t get time to actually SAY what the person we see just said. Pauses for 3 seconds, then “repeats it back”, taking about 10 seconds to do so…
As for the repeating back thing, Daniel the Human does do that time to time, to make sure he got the message right…
Bob Newhart was the master of “answering the phone” in his comedy bits. Realistic pauses and great timing. Check out his work, probably on YouTube.
Refer – https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1206
(Ah, that failed — I shouldn’t use those brackets in text, I guess it interferes with the tags. Here’s what the last line should look like:)
“That was Doctor X. He wants us to know that {MASSIVE EXPOSITORY INFORMATION DUMP}.”
Now now there are exceptions like this onehttps://www.schlockmercenary.com/2002-06-16
With prior setup, complex information can be conveyed fairly quickly. “John was right, our guy is doing X. Go on Suzy’s plan.” {click} For someone who was in on the prior conversation, that’s quite a lot of information – which could take several minutes to explain to anyone else.
Hmmm you know Sydney buoy, now there’s a thought, might save lives though?
Technically, Sydney is more like a hot air balloon rather than a buoy.
That depends on how the orb works, there are no doubt other theories as well.
Although if she told the orbs to remain put, so to speak, I wonder if she could render herself unmovable.
Only so far as someone might be strong enough to get her hand off the orb & drag her out to the range-limit before the orb stops her.
With forcefield- yes.
Without- Sydney herself is too squishy to withstand any reasonably major application of force.
Sydney’s force field didn’t prevent vehemence from dragging her along by the lighthook last night…
Next page isn’t gonna be what you’re thinking. We’ll find out instead that hero duty at Arc is basically volunteer work and that they’re all terribly poor. Maxima has to work at the local Walmart to supplement her income. Harem? world’s most successful pizza delivery girl. Sydney’s comic book job makes more than all of them.
Hah! Perfect turnaround!
That’ll be an interesting twist…
This is what is called “not really reading a contract”. She flipped through what looked like a 300-400 page employment contract and signed on the barrel-head.
Still depends on what her condition was
Oh, I don’t think the gov’t would screw over a resource that could easily walk (meaning “fly”) away and go anywhere else in the world and get a job. There’s little chance of even successfully pressing a lawsuit as any gov’t would go out of their way to protect such precious resources.
…Never underestimate the vindictiveness of government…
Yup. Not as if veterans never end up broken, penniless, and on the street. Oh wait…
Heck, I work for the state of Oregon, and my boss had me written up for refusing to remove my sunglasses. I have an eye condition, but she rejected my doctor’s note. So I supplied a second one from an optometrist… AND I WAS STILL REPRIMANDED. Yeah, I bet Central is spinning it that it’s not the sunglasses that were the problem, it was the fact I was refusing to remove them…
Imagine someone being reprimanded for refusing to get up out of their wheelchair. Yeah. Fuck the government.
What makes government vindictiveness even worse is the YOU (the taxpayer) are subsidizing it & they have been known to spare NO expense just to make their point (even if it’s wrong).
Least they won’t blow your head off if you “fail them for the last time”, & that’s only if what you did was worthy of such a line, otherwise it just Energon canon to the face/torso/Spark. Sure, it had benefits (unrestricted access for repair work, all the system hacks I could slip in without Soundy finding them), but after a few mates got scrambled & I found this Internet thing, I took that armour & went AWOL… :)
We’re talking about people who can level a city block (or even a whole city), if you really piss them off.
As well being a rare and precious resource. You want them HAPPY with their terms of employment. There is very little to gain and huge possible losses, if you try to give a super a bad deal.
Exactly, Andarvi. This is not the PS238 universe where they have 84 F.I.S.S. (Flight, Invulnerability, Strength, Speed) in the USA alone, plus oodles of other varieties. The mundane gov’t has little ability to enforce its will except via other supers, whom they most likely screwed over and who are unlikely to cooperate. Nope. Don’t screw with the lady who makes nuclear level blasts for shits and grins, nor her compatriots. The best outcome is that they simply take their business elsewhere, the worst is they get a wee bit vindictive…
Looks like one of the Harems is out of uniform…!?
Only one has to be in uniform at all times, and today it is Blondini (who did a Houdini)
Did Gothamer move her hairclips to her ears? Or are those simply matching earrings?
Also, we have learnt that information between Daphne’s is not instantaneous, specially if she is talking to other people
Actually, it is instantaneous… her brain(s) are quantum-entangled. Anyone with at least a basic understanding of quantum physics (which I do), would know that she has instantaneous communication regardless of distance. One of them could be at one edge of the observable universe and another could be all the way at the opposite edge (that’s roughly 91 billion light years, and still expanding), and they would still have instant communication.
But, when she’s relaying what other people are saying, she has to wait for one of her to finish listening to what someone else is saying, and then another one of her has to repeat it to the recipient, then wait for the recipient to reply, etc. So communication when she’s relaying what someone else is saying is not instantaneous.
Oh, and btw, on close examination, it looks like those are matching earrings.
Archon seems to be using the various Harems as glorified carrier pigeons to relay messages. Have they heard of these things we mere humans use to do that, known as ‘cell phones’?
Cell phones can be intercepted, their location can be triangulated, the courts can subpoena a customer’s phone call records, etc. The Harem Messenger Service is more reliable in the sense that you can’t intercept it unless you have a microphone in the room. Quantum communications are strictly point-to-point.
Anyone with at least a basic understanding of quantum physics (which I do), would know that she has instantaneous communication regardless of distance.
No, as per our world physics, she hasn’t. “Transmitting information at speed 20c” is similar to “Living on latitude 127 degrees” – impossible statement (at least, as long as space-time metric can be considered flat, and present day understanding is that it’s true on large scale). See “no-communication theorem” for more information.
Of course, “our world physics” and “superpowers” don’t fit in the same setting easy, so in “Grrl Power” it can be possible to have instantaneous communication.
You said it yourself… based on our present day understanding, instantaneous communication is impossible. But think about this:
(1) The smallest unit of quantum information is the qubit, which is continuous-valued (unlike digital bits, which have only two values… 1 or 0). Due to the Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle, it is impossible to measure the precise value.
(2) Qubits can be changed, by applying linear transformations or quantum gates to them.
(3) Quantum information, and changes in quantum information, can be quantitatively measured by using an analogue of Shannon entropy, called the von Neumann entropy.
So while you cannot precisely measure the value of a qubit, you can still measure quantitative changes in its value. You could therefore transmit a message in encoded binary, even without needing to measure the precise value of the qubit. If each increase in value is a “1” and each decrease in value is a “0”…
increase, decrease, decrease, increase, decrease, decrease, decrease, increase, increase, decrease, increase, decrease, decrease, decrease, increase, increase, decrease, increase, increase, decrease, decrease, increase, increase, decrease, increase, increase, decrease, decrease, increase, increase, decrease, increase, increase, increase, increase
1001000 1100101 1101100 1101100 1101111 = Hello (assuming 7-bit ASCII)
Bottom line: I think we will someday discover that it is possible to send a message via quantum entanglement, without needing to be able to read the precise value of the quantum particle… you just need to be able to measure the quantitative increase or decrease of the value of the qubit from its previous state.
I did obviously oversimplify things. If you *did* send a message via digital->qubit->digital conversion, there would be a bandwidth limitation (and the conversion would take time on each end), so it wouldn’t truly be instantaneous… but at least you wouldn’t have to wait years (or decades or centuries or millenia) for the transmission to start to arrive.
Also, you’d *probably* want to add some sort of error detection and correction, just to ensure reliability (which of course requires more bandwidth). For example, you could apply Extended Binary Golay code to it, allowing correction of up to 3 bits (per byte transmitted), and detection of errors as large as 7 bits.
1) There is a fundamental problem: if you (no matter how – via quantum mechanics, gravity waves, magic, etc.) send some information “faster than light”, then there is a reference frame where your information is sent from future to the past. Which raises a lot of complications, obviously.
2) Currently established laws of quantum physics explicitly prohibit faster-than-light communication, that’s what “no-communication” theorem is about. If Alice changes her part of entangled state, Bob won’t be able to tell the difference between one change and another by observing another part. This theorem may ‘become’ false if and only if we find that currently known laws of quantum physics are wrong.
3) FYI, there is a way to send two ‘classical’ bits by sending one qubit and there is (with some complications) a way to transmit exact state of a single qubit by sending two ‘classical’ bits.
#1: True, but we’re talking about quantum mechanics, not classical mechanics. As the LiveScience website points out, at the scale of atoms and electrons, many of the equations of classical mechanics cease to be useful.
#2: Just a reminder that the ‘no-communication theorem’ is a THEOREM, not a law. Not yet, anyway. We have no way of actually testing it yet (as far as I know), only mathematics that seem to support that conclusion.
#3: Yup, I knew that. I didn’t want to overcomplicate things for the less scientific-minded readers who might’ve been following this thread.
P.S., yes, I know I’m being obstinate. I’m optimistic that some day we’ll figure it all out… it’d be kind of depressing to live in a completely Einsteinian universe. Even Einstein knew there might be exceptions… that’s why it’s called the General Theory of Relativity.
incorrect, it’s the general theory of relativity as opposed to special theory of relativity.
There is a difference between “Information” and “Communication”: she has to process it in the Daphne who got the information before passing it on to the Harem-Mind
It’s like having five conversations happening at the same time: if there was not some sort of buffer there would be complete chaos and the information would be junk
Actually, we know that it is instantaneous. There is only one mind.
What isn’t instantaneous is speech, so if anothers self is having a conversation, this self won’t know all the details until that conversation is over.
Ninja’d by 3 hours? Dem sneaky. Dem really sneaky.
Instantaneous here means zero ping. There is still the issue of bandwidth.
Lolita Fashion is one of the more interesting trends to arise out of Japan.
Inspired by Victorian and Rococo fashion the hyper femininity and extreme modesty was a turn off within the cultural context of Japan. At the time the culture was very focused on young women getting married early and giving up their lives/careers in order to take care of their families. Presenting themselves in a way men found repelling allowed women to put off marriage and focus on themselves/their careers. So wearing Lolita fashion was done as a sign of empowerment for young women.
But of course trends evolve over time and Lolita fashion has branched into several sub-groups of fashion, including the ever-popular Gothic Lolita.
Wait. Lolita was Japan’s version of Power Suits and shoulderpads? Dang.
Oh… OH SNAP! Why have I not thought about this!? If it had been me, I would have rejected Arianna’s contract on the grounds I would lose some control in my life, but THE RIDICULOUS AMOUNT OF MONEY The Mighty Halo will be earning is going to be ludicrous!!
That almost makes it all worth it!
Im honestly not sure what this is about. I mean, if its just to inform her that yeah, they get paid very well considering they are an elite group of specialists in life threatening scenarios all the time, you wouldnt think that would require some sort of in depth conversation. Just a. “Umm, sydney, we get paid plenty of money to do this job, 40 bucks is probably closer to 4 of what you would spend while working at the comic shop” On the other hand, there may be extenuating circumstances like, everyone gets paid differing amounts and harem doesnt want to get too specific or else halo could get pissed when she finds out harem gets 5 paychecks and experienced heroes like maxima get an extra digit on her own or whatever.
But you know what? I dont care if they get paid a thousand bucks a day, a 40 dollar lunch is just price gouging unless there is something really special about the food. So maybe the meals have all sorts of super special chemicals and nutrients to help the team members grow up big and strong and healthy? Kind of like how going to their doctor could cost more because she can heal your illness or injury like 10x faster than a normal doctor could with medication. Maybe the local chef has the super power where one meal from him is equal in nutritional content to a full days worth of meals for incredibly active supers so its like eating 3 large meals at once?
DaveB, just want to say that the freckles look perfectly fine on my screen. Clearly visible but not too heavily pronounced. Natural, even. Unless Harem are meant to be in summer bloom, then my vote is for keeping them as they are.
+1
I second this. As is the freckles look like freckles. If they were larger or more pronounced one might confuse them for Acne.
Agrecian, while there is nothing wrong with full facial freckles (where it’s easier to count the parts that aren’t freckled) Daphne just has a light ‘sprinkling’, and, like with a real person, they won’t be visible in all lights or all distances
I also want to point out that I like how the clothes look on these women. For some reason most comics, mangas, and anime have the breasts separated. Here it looks natural, and realistic.
The following applies to the US Army: Not all enlisted, usually just the junior enlisted (E1-E4) who lives in the barracks. NCOs and Officers get something called “Basic Allowance for Subsistence” (BAS). The Army has gone back to deducting the cost of field chow from BAS (MREs, etc) from NCO and Officer pay since purse strings are tightening. Occasionally, NCOs and Officers will get a meal plan, with reduced BAH, if they’re living in temporary barracks due to schooling or a shortage of housing on a particular base.
You know, I never really bothered to do the math on my officer paychecks. The last time I saw one was in ’92. I do know that I was paid well above the average officer of my rank, as I was a 1st Lieutenant with 10 years in, virtually unheard of as the USArmy is an “Advance or Get Out” type of business. My CO did complain, at the time, about my checks being larger than his. I’m really not sure why, but I have a feeling it had something to do with the Spec-Ops missions I did in the late 80’s and very early 90’s. All I know, is that I could afford to get my various uniforms tailored from scratch (important if you are 5’4″ and 175 lbs. of muscle, and need to conceal a 9mm + holdout + misc. toys upon one’s person as per orders), and I could easily have afforded $50 for breakfast, lunch, and dinner whilst I lived in the BOQ’s, which I never minded. I was just too busy doing my duty to look into the matter.
It’s not a case of being able to afford it or not, but charging $40 per person for lunch
Agreed. That is pricey.
Yeah, in the Navy, I was on Commuted Rations because I was renting an apartment off-base. That just meant that I got a small amount for food added to my paycheck, but I also had to pay a low amount at the on-base Galley, instead of eating there for free. I was also E-4 at the time.
I have to admit that if I had an orb that let me fly, I’d be floating around all the time too. That said, I can also see myself getting a cramp in my hand from holding onto that sphere all the time, trying to adjust to relieve the pain, losing the orb and crash landing.
Careful, Sydney! You don’t want to add to your collection of bruises.
I think just touch is enough, as long as it is her hand.
I’m not so sure about that. Remember that she had to touch a special part of her shield orb to use the “embiggener” and protect the press during the demonstration. Also, she had to poke at different parts of her truesight orb before she could see Vehemence’s aggro aura. Finally, when DaveB gives us close ups of the various orbs as she uses them, you can sometimes see little glyphs that activate the various effects she’s trying to use.
I can only assume the flight orb works the same way.
The glyphs activate special effects beyond the basic function. For basic flight, floating, etc. simply being in her hand should be enough. Just keep your thumb off the warp speed glyph, Sydney!
I know it’s been established that the orbs only work when in Syd’s hands.
But does she *have* to be grasping them? Or can she just be touching them with fingertips or palms or whatever? Because if the latter, I can definitely see some kind of cradle which holds the orbs for her while still maintaining the required contact.
Not only would it prevent hand fatigue, it would also be a nice safeguard to prevent accidental orb loss in case of being stunned.
Yeah, a special strap, but not too tight that she couldn’t swap out as needed
HEY SIS!! I didn’t know you were a Grrl Power reader too!!
There was a Teen Titans Go episode about superpowered Titans abusing their power too much.
Raven in particular, was constantly using telekinesis to do all the stuff and float around.
If I could, I would do the same damn thing.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/398
Arianna may have gotten wind of Sydney’s idea for ARC-Burgers. If so, maybe she rushed to get them into one of the restaurants in the Archon building. With it being Sydney’s idea and all, maybe she is allowed to get them for free . . . or maybe she gets a little cash for every burger sold . . .
Or maybe both!
And yes, I do remember that Syd’s a vegetarian. They probably are some kind of veggie burger.
I would assume scale pay for supers is pretty dam good. The greater good is on thing but the construction industry would pay well for a man or woman that can replace a million dollars in hardware and have less transport and safety issues.
…But the unions would hate someone like that…
Unless they could get him to agree signing up with the union, of course.
Unions, or union bosses, tend to be the evil!!
Nope, that’s just the kool-aid the executive class has been slipping you. I’ve worked the same job both union and non-union. When I was non-union I lived in the bad parts of town and once refused to get into an ambulance after getting hit by a cab because I had no insurance and couldn’t afford any medical bills. Now I’m union, I make twice as much plus heath insurance and a pension. Now I can support a family. The people who employ me are still making a 75% to 115% mark-up on my labor even figuring in payroll costs. I’ve seen the books at the last contract negotiation. Unions just keep labor from thinking like and being treated like serfs.
Unions are great, when the union is run right and the members are willing to work. They’re terrible if mis-managed, corrupt, or run like a monopoly of their particular labour pool.
It’s all just people, man.
Unions come in both flavors. The majority are truly working for there members a few have gone dark side now and again. Personally I have some issues with the local port union who appear “I have learned never to 100% trust the media” to be holding up systems to speed up processing of cargo to “save jobs” but the fact is the backlog issues in the ports cost jobs elsewhere.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some sort of intentional slow down as part of a bargaining tactic against the port owners push to “cut jobs by 20% but maintain equal output, turn the rest to executive bonuses and shareholder profits” Slowdowns are not a tactic I like, but “do more work for the same pay, so we can lay-off other working people” is also not something I like.
Speaking as a union worker: If the super signed on to the union, and paid their dues (4% in my union), the union would welcome them with open arms and full support. They would go a long way to improving the healthcare and pension plans of the rest of the local.
One thing that hasn’t rally ben covered yet is how many new applicants have turned up to join Archon. I know that if I were a super living in the US wondering what the best application of my abilities was, and I saw that there was a super “team” that could act almost globally with government level resources, I would probably be lining up the next day to join.
Don’t just look at the benefits & perks to make such a decision…Also consider that, once you sign that dotted line, they own you.
Well, this is still just the day after officially announcing that Supers are for reals, not even a full day
Sydney is gonna go nuts when she figures it out…(again)
Its not like sysney read the long contract that she signed to know that she was going to get paid an insane amount of money :)
Figures out what? o_O
That she’s rich. She’s wealthy. She’s financially well off. She’s a happy miser.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YZNXwjfq6g
If it’s applicable, please, please make this Sydney’s mental reaction: https://youtu.be/Rs6kT_0H1MI
Or at least she will be until she realizes she can clear out her own stash at the shop, buy a bunch of wargaming minis, any of those new Star Wars miniatures games, a merkin bald-cap, etc.
Speaking of money, I wonder if the heroes get a portion of the proceeds on merchandising? Like, does halo get a penny for every nerf orb sold? Does maxima get royalties for creating the fem oscar series of statues? or does all that roll right back into the archon budget coffers?
I suspect the locker rooms are built to some standardized plan, which deliberately includes more lockers than they need, just so they don’t have to worry about running out. The government does stuff like that a lot.
That, and plan for future swelling of the ranks…
Depending upon where they are in the building, they probably have at least one locker for every person, plus all future employees and visitors. All buildings that operate high security areas will have a place for people to store their stuff, since they won’t be allowed to bring most of it into the secure areas.
Many office buildings, at least in the UK will have showers for employees that cycle to work, even if they don’t have a gym on site, and it makes sense to put all the lockers in one place anyway.
That’s going to be at the door to the classified conference room/office/archive/whatever. It doesn’t make any sense to centralize storage for stuff that people carry around inside the building. And people are carrying stuff like that inside the building; one of the big things you can’t bring into classified areas is your cell phone.
Is it just me or does Harem Looks a lot Like Harley Quinn?
Read the authors’ notes under the comic concerning that…
Saw it. Thanks.
I really don’t care what the pay scale of a super is; $40 is a lot of money for 1 lunch. If it turned out that the chefs, servers, and maitre d’ all needed secret clearance thus driving up their pay scale, and the restaurant was bug sweated every 4 hours driving up costs, and other things like that, I could sort of buy it.
Agrecian about the cost, but if they had to do all that for the support staff, then either they need to recruit them or do away with them altogether