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.
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Super cops….
Police cops.
No, Super Cops
And, there is the Jackie Chan movie: Police Story 3
Oh right, from The Simpsons, the episode where we saw Homer change his name to “Max Powers”
Naw, , dammit!
“Super Super….”
A film so bad, its good.
Sorry-html failure– “Super Fuzz”, dammit!” (with Terence Hill and Ernest Borgnine).
There is also “Miami Supercops” with Terrence Hill and Bud Spence
“Is it be a diversion” in panel 3. Might wanna re-type that one. Aside from that, hilarious page.
I laughed at “Is it be a diversion?”
I pictured that guy from Freakazoid giving the lecture.
Yarr! Stay sharp, lads, cause it be indeed a diversion!
It be a diversion all right. Now all your base belong to us.
Or Bizarro
For Bizarro it would be “it AM diversion”.
Whoops, that’s fixed now. It used to say “could it be a diversion” but I had to edit it slightly to make it fit nicer in the bubble.
awesome strip/webbic/epic webcomic…wemmic? as usual, Dave! loving loving loving that very last panel today, as Sydney’s lips look so kissable! , as always, everything looks great, of course, (just would love to get that last panelface on a t-shirt!)
I hope you enjoy making Grrlpower for a long time to come!
I thought they were only going to give her live ammo if Sydney had figured out how to completely assemble the her gun and name all the parts.
Are you saying she did that in a single day?
Might be they meant they won’t give her live ammo to take outside of the gun range until she can assemble her own gun, but they will allow her to practise with a gun range gun loaded by Peggy.
Makes a lot of sense to me.
Gun training is something they would tackle early – not only to know how to use a or handle them, but also about understanding such weapons when The Other Guy has one.
With the instruction manual, it does not take that long how to assemble a pistol. She spent yesterday afternoon doing that. In the military or police, you are not just given ammunition. You will be assigned some when the situation calls for it, such as at the gun range. Before you start firing, you have to give a declaration that you have no ammunition on you and that you will only use the ammunition that you are going to be assigned. At the end of the firing range session, you have to give a declaration that you have no live rounds nor empty casings. Even if you are expected to police your own brass on that particular range, you have to turn them into the range officer before stating the declaration and leaving the range.
Hmm… would blanks have enough punch to go through paper? I understand that while they’re not “real bullets”, they still have some kinetic energy, and people can be injured by blanks…
[reads wikipedia]
Ah. While they do have paper wadding or a plastic plug, it shouldn’t be enough material to punch a hole in something *at the distances used* for target practice.
Sydney could be using wooden blanks.
Now I don’t know how widely used a blank like that is used worldwide, but the army here in Finland uses them to train recruits how to shoot.
To prevent the wooden bullet from leaving the gun, a stopper is placed at the tip of the barrel that breaks the bullet into mere splinters.
Wooden bullets . . .
Am I the only one who starts thinking about that classic British TV series Allo Allo when they hear that?
They’ve used them in a few movies, too. In Aliens, for example, they were firing balsa bullets. The main reason for doing this is because most automatic and semi-automatic firearms require a Blank Firing Adapter (BFA) when firing blanks.
The problem is back pressure. Semi-auto and automatic weapons work by using the gas produced from firing the round to cycle the bolt and eject the round. When firing blanks, there is no back pressure because there’s no bullet in the barrel. The BFA is basically a plug that blocks the end of the barrel to provide enough gas pressure for the gun to cycle properly. Without it, the gun would fire one bullet and then stop. A BFA is pretty obvious; only a handful of guns (such the M4, M14, AR15, and M16, to name four) have a “hidden” BFA available for them that fits between the end of the barrel and the flash hider.
Balsa bullets provide enough back pressure for the guns to fire full-auto without a special BFA; the “stopper” which Jespe94 mentioned is easily hidden; and the bullets fragment into splinters so tiny they can’t even penetrate a plastic soda bottle, which makes them extremely useful when you’re filming a movie that doesn’t use guns with hidden BFAs. (Aliens was using heavily-disguised Thompson sub-machineguns.) Balsa blanks are also cheap, about half the price of real bullets.
I didn’t know that about Aliens using heavily modified Tommy Guns, but the Internet Movie Firearms Database agrees with you.
https://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Aliens
I have one of those in my collection right alongside my Kryptonite bullet. I tell people it’s for shooting Vampires.
Need Ash or Rowan wood for that.
At close range, the blast from a blank can be just as dangerous as one that is pushing a round down the bullet. Several actors have been injured or killed from blanks fired too close. Weapons-masters and stunt co-coordinators have been convicted of criminal negligence causing death or the like in several of these cases.
Jon Erik Hexum comes to mind.
Brandon Lee comes to mind.
In this case, the gun was not cleaned properly between uses. It was ruled an accident, but some of the crew were brought up for not following proper safety procedures. Again, new safety procedures were implemented to help prevent this kind of incident from happening again.
It was a little more than just that. Instead of purchasing commercial dummy cartridges, the film’s prop crew created their own by pulling the bullets from live rounds, dumping the powder charge then reinserting the bullets. However, they unknowingly or unintentionally left the live percussion primer in place at the rear of the cartridge. At some point during filming the revolver was discharged with one of these improperly-deactivated cartridges in the chamber, setting off the primer with enough force to drive the bullet partway into the barrel, where it became stuck (a condition known as a squib load).
In the fatal scene, the dummy cartridges were exchanged with blank rounds, which feature a live powder charge and primer, but no bullet, thus allowing the gun to be fired without the risk of an actual projectile. But since the bullet from the dummy round was already trapped in the barrel, this caused the .44 Magnum bullet to be fired out of the barrel with virtually the same force as if the gun had been loaded with a live round.
However, David is not wrong. If the crew had actually stopped to try to clean the gun between takes, they surely would have noticed the dummy round stuck in the barrel.
So, I simplified. I thought we did not need all the extra detail, but yeah, I knew that.
That one was an unintentional suicide. Several on-set safety rules were tightened because of this case, to prevent a repeat.
Fun thing about ADD and ADHD is that when the person who has it is VERY interested in something they become laser focused. Give me a puzzle like that and you might be surprised just how quickly I do figure it out especially if you give me an exploded view diagram. Not only will I take it fully apart but I will have it back together and working perfectly. Mostly because guns are made to be taken apart for cleaning and maintenance (actually firing a gun puts a lot of wear and tear on it),
That’s how I was supplementing my allowance as a kid. I’d take things apart, give the broken parts to an adult, they’d get the replacement parts, I’d put it back together, they’d slip me a couple of bucks. Radios, lamps, vacuum cleaners, lawn mowers, etc. I got a ham license before I got my driver’s license, there wasn’t an age limit.
You had to have a license to eat ham? o_O
H.A.M. is a type of radio, close cousin to the C.B.. (Like truckers use). You do need a license to operate those. FCC regulations and all that.
Ham radio is also known as shortwave radio, and differs from CB in that CB only has 40 fixed channels, and ham radio has 100’s of frequencies and sub-frequencies.Also CB is limited to line-of-sight (maybe 60 miles depending on terrain) , while ham bounces of the ionosphere adding hundreds to thousands of mile depending on the time of day.
Since CB has limited range and limited frequencies anyone can use it. Ham radio due to the fact it has such range, and can easily be adjusted to interfere with other forms of radio, must be licenced insure users know how not to cause problems.
One of my best friends when I was in high school had a father with a ham radio set. He had run the antenna up to the top of a tall tree in the backyard and had ‘ham pals’ (my own label, taken from ‘pen pals’, I have no idea if there is a ham term for such long distance friendships) he would chat with who were in Europe and even further away from our East Coast USA location.
Yeah, was just messing with you :D
She hasn’t been issued ammunition, just the pile of parts that may one day be a gun.
She still needs training. A LOT of training. And fast, considering she’s probably one of the more personally dangerous people on Earth.
Quite possibly the MOST dangerous once she figures out how to really use the orbs. She’s already shown an inherent grasp of Small-Unit Tactics (when she can get her brain on track with the problem).
We also still have no idea what the Maximum power of the PPO actually is or how much her Shield can actually take. That’s not mentioning the two mystery Orbs.
if you ask me she deserves a sticky star for staying awake during presentations hehe
nope you need your mind to be quiet to sleep. as an add sufferer she is less likly to fall asleep than to start wondering how meany sides a 4 dimensional cube has
(raises hand)
Ooo! Ooo! I know that one!
All of them.
Let’s see, extrapolating the relationship between a square and a cube: A square (hypocube) has 4 sides (edges), 4 corners and 1 face. A cube (hypersquare) has 8 corners, 12 edges and 6 faces. A hypercube (4D cube) has 16 corners (doubled), 32 edges (doubled+corners), 24 faces (doubled+edges). Arg! I should be working, not working out math problems! Stupid ADD.
now you know why that one kept me awake for 2 days strate
You forgot to include one small detail: much like a line is made of 2 points, a square is made of 4 lines and a cube is made of 6 squares, a hypercube is made of 8 cubic cells, each folded perpendicularly against 6 others and facing the last.
technically, a square still has 6 sides, as it has to exist upon a 3-dimensional surface, and that surface, even as thin as paper, still has 6 sides itself.(top, bottom, left, right, face, back) if you decide that because the drawing of a square isn’t supposed to be visible/existent from the back, it then has 5 sides, if you count the face of the square as a side. (that is, each face visible being also called a side)
*giggles insanely*
By definition, a square is a 2-dimensional figure.
A CUBE is defined as a 3-dimensional figure, with six sides each of which is composed of a square of equal size to the other five squares.
What we generally refer to as squares in real life are by definition not actually squares, but are typically rectangular prisms which are square on two sides out of six.
These are the kinds of things you remember when you keep getting called in to substitute for geometry teachers.
sorry, David Nuttall, i was just being silly :)
Do you have ADD yourself? In my case at least, I have complete focus on something when I’m interested, but once I’m not participating I easily fall asleep (especially if I didn’t get much sleep the previous night, which Sydney didn’t). Also interesting is that I’m instantly awake if someone addresses me. I wish this ability carried over to when I’m TRYING to fall asleep, but oh well.
i strongly suspect i do but it is un diagnosed
This from the tool who claimed ADD in order to try to excuse their horrible spelling and grammar a couple comics ago. You really can’t sink much lower than you already have, you know? Now it’s ‘undiagnosed’, which really mean that you just use it as a convenient excuse to cover your fully diagnosed idiocy.
No I have diagnosed dyslexia and dyspraxia it is the dyslexia that afects my spelling. I suspect I have mild add but that is as I said unconfirmed. I have never out right claimed to have add on ever said I suspect I do in responds to direct question’s. So if you are going to act like a prik at least get what I said right
I apologize for getting your non-excuse wrong. And it’s spelled “prick.” Learn to use a spell check.
Congratulations for priding yourself with spelling your insults correctly!
He’s said that he has dyslexia before, but that should be obvious even if you never saw it. You’d hardly see an idiot grasping the concept of a tesseract, or contemplating its number of sides.
A spellchecker only goes so far, and they are notorious for “correcting” words wrong. I suspect that for many of his posts, that is precisely what happened. Yes, it can be quite a challenge to read sometimes. Just consider this: As difficult as it is for you to read his posts, it is far more difficult for him to deal with *all* writing, all the time. That is the nature of dyslexia. If it bothers you that much, I suggest that you just ignore him.
If you think dyslexia is a non excuse for spelling problems my spelling is not the dumbest thing in this thread.
:P
Perhaps not the dumbest, but possibly the most lazy. And also the most pathetic.
As I mentioned previously, I am dyslexic. And yet I manage to use a spell check to correct my frequent spelling errors. I almost always manage to type the word ‘to’ as ‘ot’, for example, and that is only one of my very frequent typos. And yet the people who might read my posts will only infrequently see such errors, because I do not use my dyslexia as a crutch, I do not use it as an excuse for horrible spelling and grammar. In short, I do not allow it to define me, as you have chosen to do.
So yeah, fuck off a lot. You suck. It is beyond pathetic to try to explain away your inability to communicate via the written word as being because you have the exact same issue which many others who manage to communicate have. And yet for you this is somehow an insurmountable disability, why? Because you suck, that’s why.
With dyslexia it is a gradient of severity just brcose you have the same problem dusent mean you have it as bad. My case is so bad I needed outher people to wright my exams for me in school/collage just so it could be read this is were I am now after anther decade of working on this almost every day. And dispute the fact that I work at it every day and only ask that people understand the source of my problem and not act like prick’s you think I see it as insurmountable. Well sorry some of us just have a bigger mountain to climb
It’s ok,
SisyphusLOwten, it’s ok.A spell check would prevent you from looking like an illiterate idiot, but it’s your choice so it must be right in our culture of allowing any disability, no matter how surmountable, to be allowed to be a crutch for the helpless.
But keep on crying in your Rice Crispies, the rest of us will overcome instead of giving up and making excuses about it. At least you’ll have that lovely Snap, Crackle, Pop sound activated by your tears to console you as you continue to feel sorry for yourself.
If you wish to comment on my intelligence you should look up the meaning of the words you use. An illiterate person can not read as well as wright I seam too have demonstrated I can read
I was diagnosed once, but it WAS during the time when diagnosing ADD was popular. I had medication but it didn’t seem to do much so I stopped it after a few months. However, what I said is apparently a common symptom. Basically if you get distracted, it’s because you’ve already lost interest in the thing anyway and your mind is trying to distract itself to the best of its ability. I find my mind deciding that I know what’s being talked about or that it doesn’t pertain to me, and it just stops paying attention completely. If I get mentioned or involved in discussion again, I’ll be right back in it.
Yh doctors are sometimes to quick to diegnose a problem that I sent their. When I was a kid my parents were told I had hyper actively disorder. It terned out a decade later hyper activity disorder was just young kids with to much energy from their diet.
Nah what they are talking about is really dry and boring I used to stand in the back of lectures while in Basic. Even then I would start to nod off took to the habit of self medicating with lots of caffeine didn’t matter how much sleep i got the night before. Military lectures are really boring I could read on how to do something then practice it a couple times and have it down pat but they teach so the folks that don’t pick out every little detail can understand it.
Since I have bad ADD and I went through U.S.M.C. bootcamp, I can absolutely confirm that it’s a fight not to fall asleep in those lecture classes no matter how noisy they are…
Air force is the same. Its hot, you are physically exhausted, and the guy at the front of the room is droning on about stuff directly from the book you were given to study anyways. We are told specifically that if we need to we can get up and stand at the back of the room if we need to avoid falling asleep. Because falling asleep in a lecture during basic is a really bad idea.
i will admit i did not factor in exhaustion
There isn’t a single answer to “how many sides does a four dimensional cube have?” A three dimensional square isn’t necessarily a cube. It CAN be a cylinder, a pyramid, etc.
A tesseract SPECIFICALLY has 24 planar sides, by definition. Wiki it!
No, you really do not. I nearly fell asleep in basic during lectures and speeches and other times when I wasn’t doing anything except supposed to be sitting quietly and listening. We were told to stand up and go stand at the back of the room if we were in danger of falling asleep, because it is more difficult but still not impossible to fall asleep while standing up, and I had to do that a few times.
Being Sydney’s first day of actual training she hasn’t yet built up the sleep deficit that you get in basic, but it will come. Oh, it will come!
Ha! Trick question! I happen to know all the sides of a hypercube are very nice! NONE of them are meany!
I’d be willing to bet that those lectures are the part she’s most awake and paying attention to. These aren’t your standard “article 15 dot b of the employee handbook states that all uniform hems must be at least a half-inch wide, but no more than 3/4 of an inch wide…”
This is “And BlastoMan, in 1970, was foiled in his attempt to ransom Times Square because he was wearing sequined bell-bottoms.”= the sort of stuff that Sydney probably always has conversations about at the store and with others- this is Superhero stuff.
Syd totally killed that target’s elbow!
And the “EEK!” after each shot is such a nice touch!
Peggy ought to put some dud rounds in Syd’s magazines, once in a while. I used to, when I was a rifle coach. Wonderful teaching tool, when it comes to flinching, jerking the trigger, or saying “eek” every time she shoots.
Doing a great job, Dave. Thanks! : )
Well, for teaching how to handle a misfire, anyway.
I’m curious – how exactly does that help? I have a few ideas but I’m not sure.
If you’re doing things like flinching or anticipating the shot or such like, suddenly pulling the trigger on a dud will dramatically show you all of that.
If your muzzle jerks around when there’s no “bang”, you know why your live rounds are not going where you want them to.
Interesting. I don’t think her training will go into that much detail, but I’ll keep it in mind for the movie. :)
It helps because a dud round won’t have the kick, or the loud bang. If someone is flinching when firing, it will magnify the flinch, thus making it obvious to the shooter. Once it’s obvious, it can be corrected.
And it’s very entertaining for everyone else on the firing line. The laughter of peers can be quite motivating.
And it`s carotid artery. That paper silhouette will bleed out in 5 seconds.
I wonder how long it will be before she’s able to make smiley faces like Mel Gibson did in the first Lethal Weapon.
i dont know when you over lay a face i think the jaw took most of it. still really fucking bad if its your jaw not shour if you bleed out in seconds though
Telling Sydney to think about possible consequences isn’t going to work I think…
Not… necessarily: people with AD(H)D tend to run through various scenarios much quicker than ‘normal’ people, it’s just ensuring they don’t get sidetracked chasing… ooo, shiny rainbow fairies
Keep in mind that ADD isn’t so much “distracted by everything”, it’s more “bipolar attention”. It’s common to either be paying full attention to something, or be completely disinterested. Once the disinterested kicks in, it’s obviously easy to be distracted. Something you’re actively participating in, such as chasing someone, is much easier to keep your focus on.
It has already been seen that she has no problem grasping consequences that are obvious and/or specific. Such as not necessarily punching out EVERYBODY who surprises her, or not barging into a certain room uninvited. It’s the more generic/generalized stuff that may take time for her to learn.
I would disagree with you there… I mean, just 1-3 days ago (my timeline following is atrocious) she attacked 2 ‘bank robbers’ who had guns and could have (and would have) killed her if it had not been staged.
No, she only attacked one bank robber, and that was because he hit her in the head with his gun: her nerd rage took over and the legend of Tongue-Fu was born
“…whoever is teaching the courses is probably not a prime motivator for humor.”
When I was going through the Navy A School for my technical field, our instructor let out with a little-admitted secret to teaching…Make everything relate with humor or sex & students are more likely to remember, because either topic is good for focusing their attention.
Humor would probably be the best lure for Sydney’s attention…Dabbler would pay attention for sex.
Dabbler out on patrol: Pardon me, is that a gun in your pocket or…. Damn, it is just a gun in your pocket.
Reminds me of a story from the Australian Army, during the Vietnam War.. As the first contingent was being shipped there, someone had the bright idea of organizing language lessons for the troops.
As it turned out, a lot of Aussie troops were uninterested in learning Vietnamese. This changed radically when the guys running the lessons thought to include hpw tp speak certain phrases – eg. “I want a beer.”; “How much for one hour?”; and (especially popular), “My American friend is paying.”
So… has Sydney been using some of her fancy new salary for lip-plumping treatments? LOL
Loving the comic! :) I honestly wonder if Syd’s really EVER going to fit into a rigorous lifestyle like this. Is she really cut out for para-military training? Time will tell!
Nope, if you mean panel nine, that’s just her pouting (even people with no lips can make that face)
Ah, but it’s not just panel nine – I can see she’s pouting. But look at panel 3, also – which seems to be more of a “resting face.” Much fuller lips. I’m not complaining – just thought it was interesting – fun to see the artist’s style evolve with the characters. That’s what I LOVE about webcomics, actually – you can see an artist in the process of artistic evolution, all while telling the same story and developing the same characters :) Love this comic! My shortcut is called “Nerd plus floaty things” LOL.
Sorry Sydney, it only counts as a Montage if you’re the best around a different nothing can.ever keep you down at the end.
Another mistake people make with pistols is fully gripping the trigger. I only use the very tip of my index finger when shooting. If you fully grip, the squeeze motion will pull the pistol in toward you. Left if righty, right if lefty. Using just the tip keeps the weapon on target.
That is what she said, and it was a good tip.
Danger zone
Actually, in some researched cases of extreme ADHD, memory dysfunction can occur. It’s a hypothesized reason for my own memory issues, but until I can afford to have my brain scanned or get more tests done, I can’t say with certainty. Who knows… Maybe I just got hit on the head and forgot? Ha ha.
Man, I identify with that description a lot…well, my diagnosis was “just about not quite severe enough to require meds”, but I still space out a lot, and I suddenly realise I’ve missed ten minutes of the lecture or been staring at the textbook page not absorbing anything for the same, but hey, I’ve just mentally mapped out the Joestar family tree and come up with the plot for an Ultraman/DC crossover, so…there’s that.
I was on a lot of meds, until I decided that if I’m going to live with this for the rest of my life, I ought to learn to use it (or at least control it) without relying in pills.
Lesson one: Quit signing up for University classes that I’m not really interested in.
Good start.
The really bad one is when you start doodling 10 minutes into a physics exam and the next thing you realize is the announcement in the gym, “There are 5 minutes remaining in the exam.”
I would watch an Ultraman/DC crossover…
Like in Ultraklutz!
“You guys don’t have supervillains? who do you fight?”
“Mostly giant monsters.”
I only remember 10% of my day too, but when you sleep for 12 hours of it and the other 12 is taken up by mundane work, food, and scrolling through Facebook and YouTube (along with the occasional comic/game), there isn’t much of the day you want to remember.
Sounds like you need to get out more. Maybe put on your stocking cap, grab your cane, and go somewhere where nobody can find you…
Actually, going out alone isn’t really much better than staying cooped up alone. Waldo needs to socialize with people while being out-and-about. Maybe even keep an eye out for where Carmen Sandiego might be…
I’m surprised that no one thought that Sydney should forget her meds and would have had the doc have some on hand for such things.
I know if I was running something requiring a trained softer to be on hand I whoyld at least try to make shour they keep all long term persecutions in stock.
It’s possible that next page will have Peggy telling Sydney to report to the Doc for some emergency meds, or order one of the Harem to travel with her to pick them up (or, more likely, *vorp* to Sydney’s place and pick them up)
haerim has never bean to sydney’s place so she can’t vorp there
Hmm, was sure Harem had been there, or was that just the comic store? o_O
just the comic stor and she could only go there because it was live on the news
don’t forget she was out clubbing until late last night, never went HOME to GET her meds and slept in the equivalent of a barracks room there AT Archon HQ… it’s not so much that she “forgot to take them”, but more of a “why the heck should i have expected the need to take them WITH ME when she left her house yesterday morning!”
i’ll give you that. but i think that makes a point in my favour that the doc should have them on hand for her
Got a feeling Doc will have them on hand from now on, given her day today. :)
I’m not on ADHD meds, so I don’t know if one day off them actually has that profound an effect for a single day. I do know that I’ve got a backlog of what *I* have taken for several years, so having a spare bottle at her ARCHON quarters will probably be a thing.
Actually, the stimulant medications like RItalin or Adderall wear off pretty fast. I often start noticing at between 4 and 5 hours with Adderall or Dexedrine. By 7 or 8 hours I think it’s mostly gone. I understand that Ritalin has a nasty rebound effect. So perhaps that’s what Sydney is on. Or perhaps just part of the mix.
I suspect Strattera hangs on a lot longer, but it’s not officially a stimulant.
Also, why is there no music? You can’t have a training montage without music. Is the law!
“Your not ready, for the world outside!…”
Hey Dave. Could you link to that list by Schwarzenegger please?
I searched for it last night but didn’t have any luck finding it. I might have actually seen that list in a magazine. Pre-internet if you can imagine such a thing.
What?
WHAT?!
Can it be? Is it even possible? Something that actually exists in the real world without also existing on the internet? But how? That’s so indescribably incredulous as to break the boundaries of the Unthinkable!
*goes into total meltdown mode*
just try to find a clip of porky pig dressed as the eager young space cadet, but all femmed out like an alien girl, saying ‘I’m a hot tomater’, anywhere on the net. for free. without finding 1000 links to porn sites first.
New super villain “Montage man”. A reality warper whose localised time compression field turns all action nearby into a training/action montage. Naturally all his henchmen are brilliantly trained and ultra fit as a result. :-)
That.. is actually a neat idea. Sort of like Taskmaster from Marvel.
Robot Chicken did it best:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2Ca9cQ3GV4
Oce again, enjoying Sydney’s face in panel nine :D
Was that Sydney or her balls ‘talking’ in panel two?
And it seems her “eek”s are louder than the gun-pow :P (what is that yellow globe near the barrel? at first thought she may have been using the Tru-Sight Orb to help with aiming, but that is orbiting her head with the rest, so was thinking maybe it was the ‘muzzle flash’ and the reason she is missing the target is because of ‘kickback’)
I think it is indeed the muzzle flash, and as the author stated she is missing mostly because of anticipating the recoil and flinching just BEFORE she fires. That will push your shots low and to either side depending on your strong hand.
Panel two has much doge-ness indeed. very calorie!
No idea what that means…
It’s a kind of internet meme.
For instance.
I’d be worried about them giving Sydney a gun when she may be off her meds.
But she’s perfectly capable of destroying the building and everyone (herself included) in it without a gun anyway.
They didn’t know she was off her meds (or at least her meds were wearing off and she forgot the rest of the bottle at home)
Hmm… Sydney’s ADD med issue may be an interesting thing for them to handle, both as an organization and legal matter when deployed.
About Data and replicators:
I’ve noticed that people in Star Trek use their replicators to whip up food and drink, spare parts, and little trinkets like flutes. Maybe the replicator is really only good for smaller, simpler things then.
One or other of the Technical Manuals says that they only work at molecular resolution, not quantum and so you cannot have it create a cat or a person or anything – or at least not one that’s actually alive. It also said that the reason you see starships and shuttle being constructed and not just coming out of gigantic replicators is because the power demands would be too huge.
Somewhere inside all of that technobabble is the excuse they use to not replicate Data.
If I remember the writers guide correctly the reason for not having a replicator big enough to manufacture starships, from the standpoint of writing, is that if you can push a button and make a starship, you probably don’t need starships anyway.
they do have larger replicators that could handle something data size. however the problem is replicating his neural-net. they often replicate parts for data did you think they just grew back when he got damaged
It is the same technology as the transporter though.
I think the energy requirement for creating a duplicate is the issue, or you could just disable the part of the transporter software that flushes the transporter buffer once transport is complete. Then when you transport Data once, you could decouple the Heisenberg Compensator, jump in to the sequence mid way and throw another shape on the transport pad.
But the energy requirements is the sticky part. For mater/energy conversion think about the Hiroshima bomb. It converted a gram of mater in to energy, and the equation runs the same forward or backwards. How many grams to make a new Data, or at least his brain?
Human brains weigh about 1.4kg and guessing his isn’t too different. That’s 1400 times the energy released in Hiroshima.
More than your warp core could spit out.
That’s why you build a Dyson’s sphere around a star, and connect that to your starship sized replicator. 1400 times Hirosima? Try 14,000,000 per second.
There actually was a Dyson’s sphere in one of the episodes, and Scotty used it in just that manner. He kept his “pattern” in a teleport buffer for decades if not centuries when his ship crashed there. While the trick worked for him, the rest of his crew wasn’t that lucky.
The problem is not the size, but the fact that transporters and replicators have something called “pattern degradation.” It’s not just converting mass to energy, but making a “blueprint” to change it back, and that blueprint gets a little bit “blurry” over time. For a person, losing a bit of gut flora or a few random cells is not that big a deal.
For something as big and complicated as a starship, a module in the wrong place, or the wrong size can be catastrophic the moment someone tries to apply power to it.
As for Data, yes, his neural net is irreplaceable, intractable, and the only guy who fully understood it, his creator, is dead. Replicators can’t replicate something they don’t have a blueprint for. And his last transporter pattern buffer has degraded to the point that it’s no longer usable.
I’m pretty sure the transporter was being powered by the Genolen’s auxiliary powerplant (nuclear reactor). The plan with the transporter was a way around running out of supplies while waiting for rescue which wasn’t expected to take decades.
But, back to Data. The issue with building more Soung type androids appears to be software. Data built one and tried copying his operating system over to her but her neural net self destructed by the end of the episode as a combination of errors in the copying process and stress from Starfleet wanting to take her to a Starbase overloaded her positronic net.
I think the implication is that the self arranging structure of positronic brains has something of a butterfly effect and no one not even Dr. Soung really understands how to make one that’s stable. After all the colonists called him “often wrong Soung” and he went back to the drawing board at least once after building Lore.
It’s likely that a “working” positronic brain is too fiddly for a replicator to reproduce without errors, and replicating a “blank” one would leave you with useless circuits as you need the software that makes it go.
“…Scotty used it in just that manner.”
If memory serves me correctly, Scotty set the pattern buffer into a constant-loop diagnostic mode, to keep the pattern refreshing continuously.
what you need is a replicator that can make replicators and solar panels and let it construct a Dyson’s sphere on its own. that way once its big enough you can just plug a ship replicator in to it.
Just be carefull you don’t get a Von Neumann monster machine…
Even worse, you could wind up with an Alfred E. Neuman ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_E._Neuman ) monster…
Totally reasonable, as anyone that’s seen early results of 3D printers and what’s coming out of the recent, expensive models.
My understanding of Replicator technology is that while it’s able to reproduce a lot of stuff, it can’t reproduce everything. I remember reading a book where attempts to replicate Latinum (used as currency in DS9) actually resulted in a completely different, useless material. The implication here is that the Replicator is useful for stuff where precision isn’t too important. However, the more precision you need to make what you want, the harder it is to replicate, until it can’t be done. Presumably there’s something in Data’s brain that requires so much precision that the Replicator isn’t capable of pulling it off.
Of course, the problem is that I have no idea if the book I read was considered canon, but it has always influenced how I view the shows. When someone says that they can’t replicate something, I always just assume that it’s something that requires a much higher degree of precision than the Replicator can achieve.
I can easily see that.
Let’s suppose (no evidence as far as I know) that Replicators have a 1% error rate (probably a LOT better than modern mass production routinely achieves). For something like a chicken sandwich, that probably measn a small possibility that a tiny part of it tastes “funny”, or it is arranged asymmetrically on the plate, or maybe one of the condiments is incorrect. Unless the eater has Sheldon Cooper levels of OCD, probably not a big deal – it’s very probably still an OK sandwich.
Now let’s scale up. Imagine we are replicating, say, an entire ‘Galaxy’ class cruiser all in one go. What’s it mean if a random 1% of THAT isn’t up to proper spec. Scary thought.
I recall there was an Old West gunfighter who agreed with Arnie about shooting guns, though I don’t recall exactly which one it was. It was mentioned in a TV documentary that I saw ages ago. Basically, the guy being quoted was bragging that he was deadlier than all the other shootists because he didn’t blink or flinch or have any other “tells” that he was about to pump some lead into you.
Personally, the only shooting this Texan has done is with air guns.
Let’s see, I remember being kicked in the shoulder by FN-C1-A1 7.62 mm semi-automatic rifle. My understanding is that those have been retired in favour of newer weapons. I also remember being told to tighten up my grouping as I don’t think I ever had every bullet hit the target.
I remember firing the FN in basic, kicked like a mule, and humping it around sucked, it was a heavy beast. I couldn’t hit shit with it either, I much prefer the C7.
If I ever did get a real gun, it would probably be a shotgun. With a rifle and a pistol, you actually have to aim at that burglar coming at you with a knife. You’ll be in a world of trouble if your panicky, rushed shot happens to miss. A shotgun is more forgiving and can just about clear a room with one blast.
https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2014/07/04/myth-busting-1-per-yard-shotgun-pattern-spreads/
Next up,I hope,is the media prep course that Sydney was supposed to have done yesterday,no thanks to either Harem or Maxima…!
Ugh i can relate to Sydney here, maybe I should be listening to the milecular biotehnology instead of writing thus comment.
Actually someone give her a notepad, at least she will write stuff down when she isn’t doodling.
Sounds like your flinch factor may be from too much anticipating. Concentrate on holding the pistol steady on target, take up the slack in the trigger, then gently squeeze as you exhale. The gun discharging should almost be a surprise. (I’ve been shooting for over 40 years, including working with friends at the police department)
I took my wife shooting for the first time a couple of years ago (she’s anti-handgun but writes about them in fanfic quite a bit): the night before I gave her over an hour of safety training and made her handle all of the guns that she was going to shoot, demonstrating how to grip them properly and how much trigger slack each one had.
She actually turned out to be a credible shot, though she never wants to do it again.
I recall watching one documentary where they hooked up monitors to a college rifle team. The entire team knew they were firing between breaths. None of them realized they were also firing between heartbeats. Be still, grasshopper. :) That might be something a super would be aware of.
The FN Five Seven doesn’t have severe recoil, but it is a loud little bastard. I’m sort of surprised they didn’t start Sydney off on a .22 handgun for training since she’s never fired a gun before. But the the Army threw all of us off.The deep.end and had us firing M-16 rifles the third or fourth week of basic training. When I decided to buy a gun, I was enamored with revolvers and.ended up buying a single.action Ruger Blackhawk in .357 Magnum. Any revolver that shoots .357 Magnum will also chamber and fire .38 Special, so I bought a box of each with the gun. I remember the first time I shot it the .38s weren’t bad but the .357s left me with the adrenaline shakes after shooting a couple of cylinders. I also developed a severe case of “Magnum flinch” I had to.train myself out of later. I’d advise anyone shooting a pistol for the first time to find a range that rents guns and rent a .22. You can learn everything you need to know.about shooting with a .22 and move up to larger calibers later.
Agreed – the few times I’ve fired a pistol, it has been a .22. Manageable, and still gave me the idea.
Or you could use the “poor man’s FiveSeven”, the Kel-Tec PMR-30. It’s got almost no recoil at all but is still a fair bit of kinetic energy.
Flinching is terrrible, but it can be practiced out. I have a .357 Bodyguard that kicks like a mule, so I usually fire .38 low-recoil from it to keep from training in a flinch.
A good round that has enough energy to be a reasonable defensive round but almost no recoil is the .32 H&R Magnum. It’s a revolver round, but someone might have made a semi-auto for it by now. I usually train people with either my Ruger .22 or a S&W Model 1 with a 5″ pencil barrel. You have to use good discipline but the kick is very manageable.
Kel Tec is sort of weird about how the distribute their guns to dealers. More common .380 and 9mm pocket pistols are usually easy to find but more innovative guns like the PRM30 are kind of scarce. I got over my flinch and developed a fondness for Magnum caliber handguns myself. I have a permit to carry a concealed pistol and usually carry a Ruger SP101 in .357 Magnum. Lots of power in a tiny package. As far as the ARCSWAT sidearms, Maxima’s single shot hand cannon may be almost perfunctory, but some of the team members with superstrength but without a ranged attack could easily handle some of the big bore Magnum handguns. I could see Hiro carrying a .50AE Desert Eagle while Stalwart seems more like a revolver kind of guy. Maybe a S&W .500 Magnum would be more his speed.
ok,, as a cook i c an tell you i dont like second panel,, the thing about only hvaing egg whites since they need to eat well!
THATS NOT TRUE!
while its true egg yolk containcholesterol, its ostly good cholesterol and its also where 95% of the eggs nutritional value is, egg white has almost no nutritional value beside a little protein!
Even the USDA has backed off on the whole egg thing. They’re considered okay now. The “bad cholesterol” (actually a lipoprotein that CARRIES cholesterol around the body) comes mostly from carbohydrates, because there’s multiple types of LDL, large fluffy and benign types from saturated fat, and small dense and bad types from carbs, mainly sugar. The small dense kinds easily get oxidized and cause problems. They get wedged in fissures and cracks in the arteries and cause plaques. The fluffy ones just do the normal function of carrying cholesterol to cells to use, while HDL (“good cholesterol”) carry cholesterol BACK to the liver for reprocessing.
The cholesterol you get from meat or eggs doesn’t do you any damage, and doesn’t cause heart disease.
Tinfoil conspiracy time. It’s interesting that a cholesterol level of 250 was considered healthy but now the AMA advises a level of 100 or less. It probably has nothing to do with the drop in cholesterol medication sales in the last decade.
If all you want is protein, and none of the fat in the egg (not that there’s much, but there is some), then the whites are all you would want to eat.
They couldn’t just replicate more Data’s because a replicator isn’t a perfect scanning engine, it’s a 3D printer that prints stuff from autocad. Replicated meals are created from templates deliberately coded into the system, and replicated phasers are built similarly- in addition, not all materials are able to be replicated, which is why they can’t just replicate entire starships- size limitations aside, the requirement for those materials which can’t be replicated means that some assembly in required.
In Data’s case, if they couldn’t just casually build another Data, they wouldn’t be able to replicate one either- I mean, ostensibly yes, they could create the physical parts but the big problem with duplicating Soong type androids wasn’t the parts, it was getting the positronic net to stabilize. Lal suffered a neural cascade failure that led to the termination of her positronic net, and she was something Data created based on his own specifications.
Trying to get that bit right is quite the ethical quandry, because really, is it moral to create dozens- or hundreds- of new life forms, knowing they will be fully human adult intelligent, but will die before a reasonable span and you want to study that death to cure it? It’s like experimenting on five year olds. Way out there in the boonies as far as ethics go.
In the book continuity someone *did* steel Lal’s pieces out of Data’s room- IIRC the book was ‘Immortal Coil’ as part of the TNG relaunch continuity. If you’re a fan of Trek and like books you should definitely check it out.
That’s basically the plot of Blade Runner, fully human adult intelligences with terribly short lifespans.
FYI, “Immortal Coil” by Jeffrey Lang was such a popular book that, very recently, David Mack wrote a three-book sequel trilogy called Cold Equations. Then Lang followed that trilogy up with another Data-centered book named “The Light Fantastic”, guest-starring their old adversary, Professor Moriarty.
(Data had this Sherlock Holmes thing going in TNG.)
All five books are very well written.
Not related to the current comic, so maybe of topics, but I was looking at the cast page and noticed the rank devices in the upper right corner of each profile pic. The officers have the same rank devices as the rest of the military, but I see Archon has it’s own enlisted rank devices. Any chance we’ll get a chart showing rank and insignia for Archon?
Believe DaveB still has to work on that
Well, this does make some kind of sense…First you have to do something all the way through before you can “unlock” an Achievement, right? Sydney had to full play out her first exercise session in order unlock the Achievement for inducing “Montage Mode.”
However, to mentally retain as much as possible, it’s well-known fact that she has to be able to apply her new knowledge, or else it will atrophy. She’ll have to occasionally induce “Refresher Course Montages” just to keep up to date…
Dave, is your life a Montage… or a Clip Show?
I love the Doge meme in panel 2.
for more Doge :p
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjqXh12kFfY
I’m very disappointed that google doesn’t turn up “Lurking on Rooftops 101” as an actual book.
Indeed.
I must remember to begin writing that book.
I don’t see why they’d just have egg whites. :p
Because the government, some decades ago, decided to base dietary advice on a single study that was regarded as speculative at the time and later turned out to be seriously incorrect (of course this doesn’t mean the government changes its advice). This study said you should consume less fat – the less the better – and more carbohydrates. Your body NEEDS for you to eat some fat – roughly the same amount as protein – but does not NEED for you to eat any carbohydrates at all. Additional calorie requirements can be met with more protein and/or fat.
The result of this recommendation of a low-fat, high-carb diet to fight obesity was a huge upswing in obesity… and type 2 diabetes… and atherosclerosis, strokes, and heart disease.
And to this day, if you find a product in the supermarket labeled “Healthy”, the odds are that it’s reduced-fat and higher-carb compared to non-“Healthy” near competitors.
Carbs are too needed! Especially if you have a history (or family history) of trouble regulating blood sugar. (Like Diabetes and other, lesser problems too) A “no carb” or “low carb” diet may work well for many people…. but not all.
And while a high protein diet can exacerbate kidney issues – a NO protein diet is really, really dangerous. And some people can’t digest plant protein properly. So if they ever try to go Vegan? Welp… sucks to be them.
“how can you recite the entire plot of a fantasy/scifi novel or movie down to every detail but you can never remember your homework?” <- this is why i passed high school with a D average. ADD i has it.
I've also noticed stuff linked to strong emotions easier to remember.
“stuff linked to strong emotions easier to remember” is true for everyone, which is why you remember movies and stories better than a dry lecture.
I had a no-meds day today. It’s fun, and necessary, but I’m damn near useless! So distractible.
Do your coworkers entertain themselves by throwing pennies past you? ;)
Not since highschool. I’m careful to schedule my off days.
I have many amusing stories of experiences I’ve had while off meds, most especially the time I ran out the day before a training course; full day of lectures and paper tests. I passed. I did let the teacher know I was unmedicated, and I did have to do a lot of stretching and re-focusing.
The next day, I was high as a kite. Giggling every half hour, and actually hallucinated penguins running around the house at one point! It was in this state that a friend helped me get to the chemist and pick up a refill.
I should clarify that I was high -because- I was off my meds, and the intense focus from the previous day. I do not use recreational drugs.
That’s interesting that Arnold said that about closing your eyes when firing a gun. Way back when Terminator 2 was first released on DVD in the commentary track it was said Robert Patrick (the T-1000) actually practiced firing his pistol with his eyes open because that made him seem more inhuman. After watching it again and again I noticed that he does keep both eyes wide open every time, which does seem quite creepy.
I have noticed in several TV shows they don’t even use blanks or even working prop guns. The report is added later and a flash is added digitally. You can tell by the fact that whatever they’re shooting doesn’t cycle at all and the actors never react to shooting, not even to the tiny amount of recoil a movie blank has. I suppose it’s a lot better from a liability standpoint as you don’t need hearing protection and there is no chance of injury unless you drop the thing on your foot this way. I do wish they would at least use working props that at least cycle the action then the trigger is pulled. It would really help OCD types like myself that look for things like that.
“such hungry” “very calorie” “much nom”
SO. MUCH. WIN.
While I didn’t laugh, I did revisit panel 2 at least three times. It’s so so so SO good, so very very enjoyably true. Funny, yes, but in a much deeper way than just a gag laugh line.
Since ARCSWAT has their own Dr and infirmary, they should be able to have Sydney’s ADHD Medication added to their dispensary for her. However since this is only her second “Official” day, they would probably want to do a full work up first as there might be a better longer acting medication to treat her.
On firearms training, both for her and for you Dave, when I instruct new shooters, I use a LOT of dry fire training with snap caps, before taking someone to the range for live fire. A lot of the excessive recoil isn’t really recoil. It is flinch as you have found out yourself, or improper holds on the weapon. Watch this video by Jerry Miculek to get many of the basics and a few of the advanced techniques.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChSazF41q-s
It would make more sense to me for the infirmary to have a stock of Sydney’s current medications on hand until the workup you mention is done.
And I bet they do… but nobody has told Syd that yet, and it didn’t occur to Peggy to ask Syd if she had her meds and send her to the infirmary for them. There may (or may not) also be an issue of knowing what dosage is called for. Syd might have the actual dosages memorized, or she might just know “one of those and two of these”.
I grew up hunting for food when we were poor and lived in the back woods where it was nearly our only option. I used to flinch like crazy when I was first learning at about 6. Dad handed me an empty rifle, had me get into a prone firing position, balanced a dime on the barrel, and made me practice dry firing until the dime stayed on the barrel when I pulled the trigger. It’s surprising how much that actually helps.
Sydney is trying to break the 4th wall…
i don’t know if its not giving in (Peggy’s response makes me doubt the wall’s integrity), but damn, she sure IS trying.
For a complete novice, Syd’s shooting is not too bad. She missed only two shots out of 6, and the other four would certainly disable an approaching attacker. One of those shots, if left untreated, would certainly be fatal as she’s striking a pulmonary artery.
i am fairly certain there were 8 shots, at least based on the holes in the paper, few might have gone completely wide.
– 2 next to the right arm.
– 3 in line, seem to have hit his right arm.
– 1 in or below heart
– 1 on the left side of the chin
– 1 something like 15 centimeters to the left of the head, at the eye height.
am i misinterpreting something here?
oh yes! there was at least 1 after.
More likely to be 10 rounds (empty the clip) for accuracy. She may have already done 5 for grouping (used to adjust sights if she has adjustable sights) on another sheet.
they’re magazines, not clips. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clip_(firearms)
and arcswat only using 10 round magazines when most plausible handgun designs in our world come standard with larger ones would require more suspension of disbelief than the superpowers.
The FN 57, which is the firearm Sydney was issued, comes with a 20 round capacity magazine as standard. Although some jurisdictions require a lesser capacity. ARCSWAT being a military/law enforcement organization is exempt from those laws. FN Does make a 30 round extended magazine for it and there are a few aftermarket 50 round magazines, however their reliability isn’t 100% as of yet.
Peggy might have deliberately only loaded 10 rounds in Sydney’s magazines to keep the weight of the pistol down until Sydney is able to properly shoot. The added weight of a full magazine is actually surprisingly heavy at the end of the fulcrum of your arms.
Plus there is the possibility with all firearms that a new shooter might not hold the weapons properly and recoil can cause a doubling. A woman was killed by that because two idiots fully loaded a .500 S&W and handed it to an inexperienced shooter, the force of the recoil caused her to accidentally shoot herself in the head because of doubling.
One of the ways to start a “spirited discussion” among firearms nerds is to call a magazine a “clip”. Which is funny, since I know a Vietnam combat vet who uses “clip” for “magazine”. Some of the other ways to start a fight among firearms nerds. AR15 vs. AK47, 9mm vs. .45acp, Glock vs. 1911, revolver vs. semiautomatic and Fudds vs. Mall Ninjas. This is by no means an exhaustive list.