Grrl Power #402 – Montage attained!
During the future course of the comic, I imagine I will have other montages in order to move story forward, but before I get to those, I thought I would have a little fun with the trope.
People with ADD/ADHD don’t have bad memory, in fact most of us can recite the entire works of Monty Python by heart. The issue is when we’re not focusing on something, it never gets passed to long term memory before we’re wondering why Star Fleet didn’t use a replicator to make more Datas. Ok, arguably the transporter accident that made another Riker would be difficult and nebulously ethical to try and recreate, but Data is just parts. If they can replicate a phaser then they could replicate Data. Even if Data wasn’t copacetic with it, didn’t he have Lor in a bin in his room for like 3 seasons? Couldn’t Section 31 have snuck into his room and swapped out the parts with reasonable facsimiles while they made a master replica? Wait, what was I doing? Oh, re-reading a paragraph from this history textbook for the 6th time because I don’t remember a single thing from it.
Honestly I don’t know how I made it through school. Book learning is not how I roll, for the exact reason above.
There were all sorts of things I was considering putting in the classroom dialog bubbles, including an excerpt from “Lurking on Rooftops 101” about hiding in the shadows of gargoyles and bringing your own inflatable gargoyle in case you’re not lurking in Gotham, but I thought I’d keep it a little more vanilla as whoever is teaching the courses is probably not a prime motivator for humor.
I recently went to a gun range just to get the experience of actually firing a gun, plus it was something new to do with the wife. I’ve shot a shotgun before at skeet, but this was my first time with pistols. I definitely learned a few things. One, man those things kick. I mean, obviously they do, we’ve all seen videos of people whacking themselves in the face with the butt or barrel of their gun, I was just surprised at how much, even on the small caliber guns. I never lost control of any of the pistols I fired, but by the time the evening was done, my 1st dorsal interosseus was sore. That’s the meaty bit between the thumb and palm. Two, I has always wondered why in crime procedurals, bad guys didn’t always police their brass, assuming they’re not doing a drive by or something. Well it turns out when the case gets ejected, it goes fucking flying. It can wind up like 50 feet away if you’re on a smooth floor, and ladies, if you’re at a firing range, don’t wear a V-neck. There’s a better than zero chance it will bounce off the partition and you’ll wind up with hot brass down your top. It happened twice in the class I took. Three, I learned that after a very short class, I am pretty terrible shot. My problem comes from anticipating the kick so I squeeze down on the gun right before I fire to counteract it, so 2/3 of my shots wind up South West of where I was aiming, which is what’s happening to Sydney there on the range. Peggy will help her correct that eventually. Also the bit where she squeaks every time she fires.
I remember a long time ago reading some list written by Schwarzenegger about how to act tough. The only thing I remember from it was “don’t blink when you fire a gun.” That’s stuck with me ever since, and to this day I watch for it in TV shows and movies. Most people blink or flinch significantly, even people playing stone killers. It’s a tough reflex to fight, but I found at the firing range, when I tried to not flinch and keeping both eyes open, my aim improved considerably. Probably cause I was concentrating on that and not clamping down on the gun.
This page colored by Keith.
Patreon supporters can view this page at twice the size! (as soon as I wake up and post it then immediately go back to sleep since Patreon doesn’t have a way to schedule posts yet.) $1 and up, but feel free to contribute as much as you like :)
Here’s the link to the new comments highlighter for chrome, and the GitHub link which you can use to install on FireFox via Greasemonkey.
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
I gotta say, I suspect that Sydney’s diet is going to have to undergo serious modification here. There are good reasons why very few military personnel are vegetarians–simply put, they need the protein, and that’s extremely hard to get in sufficient quantities without meat. For civilian types, a vegetarian diet is more feasible, but I’ve never heard of anybody in the military who was able to keep in training and maintain a strict vegan diet.
Well, while personally, I’m not a vegetarian (what in the world would I do without bacon!?) I had this discussion once. The reply I got was ‘black beans’. Beans, in general, give out a sufficient amount of protein. I’m not sure if it’s enough to counteract vigorous training the likes of Basic, but it is what some consider the replicant of meat protien
See, I’d always heard that soy was what you needed to accomplish that objective. I do know that I have read that beans were the preferred form of rations (among the generals, anyway–I doubt the troops always agreed) for armies years and years back, but I do not know how long ago that was…and I suspect that there was a reason why that is no longer true.
I’ve always heard soy too. Since soy is a bean, I guess it’s just an uber example of eating beans for protein.
Mushrooms, such as the portobello, can also be a capable and satiating substitute. I’m not vegan or vegetarian, but I read a book on mushrooms that got me kinda hooked on them and funnily enough that was one of the things I learned: it’s actually MORE satiating than meat,at smaller amounts, Plus they have a lot of protein, due to the fact that they are biologically closer to animals than plants (they don’t have cellulose, they have chitin, for instance, like crabs do).
Biology is weird and wonderful.
Not just biologically closer to animals, but gene-sequencing proved that the Fungus and Animal Kingdows diverged from each other well after the Vegetable and Animal Kingdoms diverged. So mushrooms are literally more closely related to us than vegetables.
Yeah beans are great if your body can actually process plant protein. Me, though, my body looks at plant protein and goes “Seriously? What the fuck is this shit?” Took me ten whole years to figure out that no combination of foods was going to make up for the fact that my body basically ignores plant protein the same way it ignores insoluble fiber.
It is possible to stay in military shape on a vegan diet, at least in certain specialities. A friend of mine works in Army aircraft maintenance, had been vegan for a while before she joined up, and was able to maintain the diet in service. I’m not sure whether the requirements for condition and training are easier for that sort of second-line role than they are for front-line troops, but it’s unlikely to be by much if so.
Combining meds and therapy helps TREMENDOUSLY for pretty much any psychological disorder that can be treated with pharmaceuticals (neurological disorders are a completely different story).
thanks to doing that throughout childhood and my teens, I can manage my ADD pretty well most days without meds. That said, off days still happen and can be pretty bad. It’s like watching a Vsauce video about 50% of the time (which are easy to follow if you’re ADD).
Why aren’t there generic non-stimulant ADD meds yet? I’m pretty sure it’s been 10 years and the name brand stuff is absurdly expensive (not Shkreli levels, but still expensive).
Ohh, so true! I have severe clinical depression, so once I found the right antidepressant I was able to function a lot better than I could without, but a year of therapy helped as well. Even though I can’t hold down a job anymore (SSI disability payments are a must!), I can still participate in society pretty well for the most part.
Of course, it REALLY pisses me off whenever I watch the news and the talking heads mention “so-and-so went off on a shooting rampage, killing a dozen people, and he had mental illness“. Why do they have to emphasize that? It makes it sound like everyone who has any kind of problem, from ADD to PTSD, is a ticking time bomb waiting to go off! They really need to emphasize untreated mental illness, so that there’s more pressure on legislatures and insurance companies to encourage and help people get the treatment they need so that the few who would become violent don’t, rather than making an entire segment of society look bad.
As for why there aren’t more generic mental health drugs when there should be is simple: corporate greed. The longer a drug company can keep renewing their patents, the longer they can keep lining their pockets with greenbacks at our expense. Just look at the fiasco about EpiPens lately. I swear to every god, goddess, and semi-divine spirit ever worshiped that the [CENSORED] that deliberately jacked the price up to $600+ for a $20 lifesaving device needs medical care and can’t get it because of price gouging!
Okay, okay, I’m getting down off my soapbox now…
It was well established in Star Trek lore that replicators could not make certain super complex materials.
Bio-nural gel packs (voyager) could not be replicated. I just assumed that Data’s positronic systems could not either.
They needed to have some sort of scarcity in Voyager so they picked “bio-neural gel packs” but I have trouble believing that replicators couldn’t do anything a transporter could. If they can transport Data’s brain or even a human brain, then replicators should be able to make things that complex as well.
Sure maybe replicators are like a budget flip phone compared to a top of the line desktop PC in terms of processing power, after all, it seemed like every crew cabin had a replicator in it, but when you’re stuck in deep space, I’d think someone could figure out a way to tie those systems together.
You can make as many replacement parts as you’d like for Data, but that wouldn’t make a new “Data”. For that you need a postronic brain. That was the major lesson when Data created Lal. He made a positronic brain that was -almost- good enough to procreate his species. Almost, but not quite.
I always find it funny that (thanks to Hollywood) everyone thinks you should keep both eyes open when you take aim.
Well that is not what i learned in the German military, and were told to disable 20 enemies with one mag. American soldiers usually do it the other way around.
I mean, seriously! When you leave both eyes open, your brain will make it look like you aim over two barrels. Yea, that´ll make your bullet surely fly true!
Everyone knows that snipers use binoculars mounted on their rifles, right?
“By Sydney’s logic, my whole life has been one big montage.”
Wow. That’s such a perfect way to describe my life. (I also have ADD.) It’s like a really long montage.
The thing about egg yolks being unhealthy is a myth. What happened was, someone tested egg yolks and only the yolks and discovered they were high in ‘bad’ fats and cholesterol. The study threw out the egg whites, which turned out to be a mistake. Egg whites essentially neutralize the ‘bad’ stuff. So as long as you eat the whole egg, you break even on anything bad for you. And the yolk is where you find the majority of the good stuff in eggs.
Plus, it came out a few years after that ‘egg yolks are bad for you’ study that one of the fundamental assumptions behind the study — that dietary cholesterol increases serum cholesterol and in turn heart disease — was flat out wrong. The guy who pioneered the serum cholesterol theory the egg yolk study was based on falsified his research. He REALLY wanted his hypothesis to be true, so when something like 28 out of 31 test sites disproved his hypothesis completely, he threw out all but the three that agreed with his hypothesis, and got his face on the cover of Time magazine for his ‘breakthrough’.
His theory was that eating lots of cholesterol-rich fatty food caused heart disease. The problem was, that while some areas of the country saw that happen, they were in the minority. Severely so. In the majority of his test data, there was either no link detectable between a high fat diet and a high rate of heart disease, or there were high heart disease rates in populations that ate low fat/low cholesterol diets, or even populations that ate LOTS of high cholesterol/high fat food yet had very low heart disease rates. But 90% of his data disproving his pet theory didn’t deter him, he just erased all but the 10% that agreed with his preconceived notions, and published.
It turns out that carbs in general and white sugar in particular is what actually causes heart disease. About the same time the fat == heart disease fake study was being published, the FDA classified a report finding solid links between sugar and heart attacks Top Secret for no apparent reason, though the extremely well funded sugar lobby looks like a likely suspect in hindsight. So for the last 50 years, we’ve been avoiding fat and eating lots of carbs, with the result that we’re dying like flies of heart disease now. It was only when the report hit its declassification time limit that it came to light at all.
And the reason for the lack of link between dietary cholesterol and blood cholesterol levels was so obvious in 20/20 hindsight – We digest the fats and make our own from scratch. Any fats we don’t break down get excreted much the same as insoluble fibre. Pity no one figured that out before the whole artificial fat fiasco. (New Olestra Supreme – now with 10% less anal leakage!)
They couldn’t replicate Data because A. That would require disassembling him, and as I recall from that episode where his personhood was contested, they couldn’t guarantee they’d be able to put him back together properly which would mean he would die. B. Positronic brains are notoriously difficult to create, as seen in the Laal episode. C. There’s probably some kind of quantum whatsamajiggy going on that makes his brain difficult to copy. Remember that the information to store the patterns of like, four people in DS9 took deleting every spare bit of computer storage in the entire station to achieve, so that pretty much the only things running were the holodecks and life support. And the only reason the holodecks were running was because it was being used to store some of that data.
Oh also: egg whites are gross. There’s no point eating eggs without the yolk. Might as well be eating solidified snot.
““Lurking on Rooftops 101” about hiding in the shadows of gargoyles and bringing your own inflatable gargoyle in case you’re not lurking in Gotham” – Terry Pratchett’s Discworld again, the final exam for student assassin Pteppic!
One thing I was never taught but figured out on my own was not to clamp down on the gun and don’t lock your elbows. Just steady your breath and let your aim track and drift, track and drift, get a rhythm of drifting and correcting your aim so it’s just a matter of timing when to squeeze the trigger. Doesn’t matter if you blink after you caught the target in your sights. A flexible hand makes it a lot easier to compensate for kick and track right back, easier to transfer from one target to the next, and easier to strafe and use your whole body to track a target.
I don’t think trainers ever caught on to me doing that, but I always did well enough that they never felt the need to devote personal attention to me.
And the reason for the lack of link between dietary cholesterol and blood cholesterol levels was so obvious in 20/20 hindsight – We digest the fats and make our own from scratch. Any fats we don’t break down get excreted much the same as insoluble fibre. Pity no one figured that out before the whole artificial fat fiasco. (New Olestra Supreme – now with 10% less anal leakage!)
IMO, eggs should count as vegan (assuming that you are the type of vegan that drinks milk and eats cheese).
After all, they are unfertilized and would never develop as an embryo anyway. They are essentially Chicken periods.
Of course, I might be a biased source since I eat anything that is (legally) edible. Everyone has to make their own choices on how to eat.