Grrl Power #718 – Mundane majesty
Well this hopefully answers the question from the previous page as to who was already here. Or whom was already here. (Honestly, why do we even have the word who?)
I guess to be fair to the Alari, there are probably places in the world where you could land a huge spaceship without anyone noticing. Assuming you could beat electronic surveillance and negotiate your way through all the crap orbiting the planet. Granted, the quantity and quality of cameras in the world would make it difficult, but there are plenty of places sparsely populated enough to get away with it. At least initially. A satellite would probably eventually spot anything of sufficient size, but maybe anything from a Firefly to Defiant sized ship could evade detection for a few days even if it was sitting right out in the open. Probably in Antarctica or some BFE part of Africa, or some island in the middle of the ocean probably, but it could still be done.
An Alari colony ship is not the size of Firefly. It’s just shy of a kilometer long and many decks deep. Chances are, someone noticed it landing.
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They’re HEEEERREEE – Looks like the rampaging idiot was right about something…
Well, they have a lot of refugees on board. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
Yearning to breathe nitrogen, anyway.
Maybe even learning to breathe nitrogen? Or oxigen? We assume they breath something in the mix of gasses humans like
Sciona lived on Earth with no visible breathing gear (whilst noting that she could have used either magic or some discreet technology, like nanites). Likewise Sydney and the rest of the team had no immediate problems breathing on the Alari world.
Yeah, the USA has pretty much done a 180 on that ‘huddled masses’ thing in the last 2-3 years. Still, any country that isn’t completely idiotic would open its doors wide to aliens with advanced technology, even if there were a few million of them.
Actually, as far as I know, most of us yanks are still OK on the huddled masses. It’s the child slavers and murderous thug drug dealers we have a problem with.
We need to make it easier to get a work visa for legitimate non-criminals, both those who want to get jobs and those with legitimate refugee needs (You know, people who will have their heads chopped off in their home countries because they aren’t on the popular side of the local dictators or theocracies) and enforce the existing laws on the aforementioned scum and villainy.
The USA has done a complete 180 of its incredibly generous immigration in recent years by keeping it exactly the same as it’s been for the last 50…
God I fucking hate lying pieces of shit.
Grind your axe a little harder there, chief.
Immigration is still pretty generous…as long as people go through the proper channels with the INS. The Mark W. Michael Unit (the prison where I used to work up until last week) has more than its share of incarcerated Mexicans who can barely speak a lick of English (if even that), some of whom worked for the Zetas or other Mexican drug cartels. Those people are the reason WHY everyone who comes in here must be documented; otherwise, it becomes a bit harder to arrest them and incarcerate them whenever we catch them committing crimes. Some of those inmates are in there for multiple homicides. Are you sure you want THOSE guys running around all loose, unaccountable and untrackable?
That’s what someGuy was saying: they were disputing eaglejarl‘s claim that Shtrump has reversed the US Immigration policy, when all he has done is attempted to reinforce a wall that was erected decades ago
I work for the DHS, three things stand out from looking at the data available to me. Crime commited per capita for immigrants (legal or otherwise) is generally less than nativeborn. Illegal immigration is at a near all time low (less than 100k per year down from about 1.6 million a year in the early 2000’s. Asylum seekers are at an all time high (from roughly 20k a year up to 200+k a year.
My “boss” is playing word games to make the problem seem worse than it is. For example mentioning a drug bust (at a port of entry, but not mentioning that) then immediately bringing up a number composed of all applicants turned away at the border + asylum seekers + Illegal immigrants as a single unit (“inadmissibles”) in order to connect the two things together. Then only using data from 2012-2018 to make it look like we are at an all time “high” while ignoring the fact that even combining illegal + asylum together we are at roughly 18% of our previous “peak” border crossings (in 1999/2000 i believe, working from memory), or put another way the actual number of illegal immigrants is at 6-7% of it’s former peak, (since asylum seekers are different classification under the law). However since they canceled the effective (and cheaper) Family Case Management Program (36$ a day vs 150$+ for incarceration) and had a 99+% effective rate at getting the asylum seekers in court and processed through the system they instead shifted to the “everyone’s an Illegal and is incarcerated” methodology which the system is [not] designed to handle. (again a system designed to handle single individuals crossing the border illegally is not designed to handle families seeking asylum, even through by law we are supposed to process them. the program was canceled because it “wasn’t removing enough people” and was “too expensive”.
yeah being inside the system looking at the data that crops up on our internal “news” pages. it’s various shades of “not good” and it’s been getting worse.
Given that every single Illegal Immigrant is by definition guilty of at least one Felony (crossing a national border without a proper visa) I am skeptical of your claim. I doubt very much that 100% is somehow less than the percentage of the general population guilty of some crime.
No, illegal entry (first offense) into the U.S. is a misdemeanor, not a felony. Punishable by not more than 6 months in jail.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1325
An Anti-immigrant, wave has overtaken the government. Ipso Facto
Nope. The word “Illegal” goes after your hyphen there, Sasha. Get it right. We’re a country of immigrants, but those who sneak in, whether they’re Italian mobsters (Look up the term “WOP” and compare it to “Undocumented”) or Irish Stowaways or border runners being brought in by Coyotes, are criminals.
If you are referring to the myth that “WOP” was an acronym for “without papers,” it is just that, a myth. See the section on false Etymologies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wop
Yup. Right out in the open even…….in Africa.
They properly like rains there.
well, another act of genocide/ethnic cleansing or mass enslavement isnt going to be all that remarkable in africa.
which, if the ship is in zambia, as those pointers indicate, they went genocidal on their own people in 2016.
as much as that could be used for an “evil aliens arrived in 2016” story to reference irl, i dont think dave wants to be quite that dark with the comic.
Plus, the webic is still set in 2011
The inspection/registration sticker on Sydney’s windshield was for 2010 back at the beginning of the comic, which takes place after this event.
Ticket says “05-11” (which was the future at the time of that pages posting)
I would have said Somalia
That was my estimation, just eyballing it, rather than getting the maps out.
somalia is right beside the sea that goes to the suez canal south of saudi. hence somali pirates being so common right on top of a major shipping route.
…. oooohh. right ok, i was basing the ships location of the red lines bracketing it, and assumed the blue circle was something else.
like a resource scan, since there are enormous amounts of uranium in that region which is why the chinese are crawling over the place.
googling it in reference to someone pointing out the 2011 timscale, i guess dave could be referencing the famine the area had then.
All of those thing are occurring on a daily basis so, yeah chances are no one would notice the difference.
Though you could pull of areas of central or South America, lot of unpopulated jungle down there.
Considering that those thing are all still occurring on a daily basis over there I agree no one would notice.
You are aware that there are still huge areas of Africa largely unpopulated, right?
Heck, there are huge parts of USA that a big ship could be left out in the open and be largely unnoticed
I know! The area around Roswell and the Southwest is just desert, even!
Having driven across the Nevada desert dozens of times on almost all reasonable routes, I can vouch for almost the entire state being very, very empty. As is most of the West once you get away from the major population centers.
And other countries have even more unused space.
Actually, most of Africa is significantly more populated per sq km than the US is. The US is on the low end of population densities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population_density
Lot of cities in Sahara and Kalahari?
Are we doing a District 9?
The question is , did it just get there or is it one of Deus’s secret sources for tech and information. After all it’s not likely he had the location of a giant space station strictly by accident.
Since it was Vale who actually dialed up The Fracture it is likely that she’s the reason Deus knew about it.
Deux “has an annoying knack for knowing things he shouldn’t.” Ignoring whether that is a superpower of his or not, and how accidental it was that he learned it, the giant space station is very likely not a surprise to him.
Time to say goodbye to Frix Sydney, your planet needs you.
Don’t worry about him leaving Sydney, you will be able to find another doggy to stroke and pet and cuddle.
*looks adoring*
ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES
ACCEPT ONLY YORP!
*wags tail appreciatively*
Down Boy!
To be fair, how often does a human get to say that? So Sydney will propably take the once in a lifetime chance.
“I have to go, my planet needs me.”
I got to say that is a relatively good way to get dumped.
Don’t say that! It’ll increase the chance of her hurt really bad, seeing that she does have plot armor enough that she won’t die, but still…..
Just in case, here’s an actual map of all the crap currently orbiting Earth.
http://stuffin.space/
Wow, awesome, thanks!
Found Cora’s ship!
http://stuffin.space/?intldes=2018-094C
Cool, real time tracking of it.
Ooh, Halo flew off too fast for me to click on her and make a link!
It looks like the Earth has dandruff.
That’s kind of terrifying.
Oh I love how interactive that is! Complexity shown with simplicity.
If Cora warned us that there was an exterminator ship making its rounds, looking for advanced races to destroy, I wonder how long it would take us to get all that junk out of orbit, and make our society look more Victorian, than space-age? Advanced enough to have messed up our own atmosphere, but not so advanced as to pose an immediate threat.
Oh my god, it is full off stuff!
Little known fact – NASA actually uses this and Kerbal to check their mission plans.
First: BFE is part of Africa. Second: “who” is for owls, the have trouble with “M” sounds.
Last: There is a LOT of empty space on Dirts surface! Even if you exclude the seas, almost all of Antartica, central and south America, central Africa, almost the entirety of Canada’s northern
regions ect.
If I were going to land a colony sized ship – and I was sure the “lower decks” were water-tight I would land it just on the edge in international waters – then preferable somewhere where I could pretend the ship was an island with a little bit of terraforming or holographic trickery. But I suppose it depends on what the ship looks like as to what it most easily passes as.
a new island showing up in the ocean would attract eh attention of every earth monitoring satellite, geologist and local nation very fast. just look at the drama between china and japan over a few volcanic rocks a few years back.
You would be surprised. Even today, there’s all sorts of ‘new’ islands popping up, or ancient islands being wiped off the map, because people back in the Age of Sail weren’t that good at mapping them accurately.
modern maps are satellite generated and accurate enough to track continental drift.
thats part of why we know about islands appearing and disappearing.
And how the sunken continent of Zealandia was discovered
Ther are only 7 continents. There has never been an eighth, in a human’s lifetime.
This is were research is a good thing: the name and concept for Zealandia was proposed in 1995
How many atmospheres of pressure can the ship withstand professor?
Well it’s a space ship so I’d say anywhere between one and zero
*ship starts imploding*
Actually, “who” is the subject form, and “whom” is the predicate form. “Who” does things, while “whom” has things done to it. Compare “Who was at the door?” (where the unknown person in question was doing something…namely, being at the door) to “For Whom the Death Tolls” (where “the Death” is the subject, and the death is tolling for the predicate, that being the nebulous person refered to as “Whom”).
(Clever Grrl Power reference is clever, right? ;-) )
Or if that was just a joke, then “Oops”. :-p
The funniest thing about the name “For Whom the Death Tolls” is that changing “Bell” to “Death” potentially reversed the meaning of “toll”.
A bell “tolls” when it rings or sounds. (Death is silent.)
A law or contract “tolls” when its due date is automatically extended. Thus, Death is delayed in its effect for the “whom”.
Of course a “death toll” is a thing as well.
All told, heh, the name is a disaster.
Ha ha…”disaster.” :-D
Well, like Vektor acknowledged, For Whom the Death Tolls was lousy at coming up with names (as phrasic portmanteaus probably don’t make for very good names), but he was awesome in a fight (as long as he doesn’t have to attack first). He probably should have accepted Maxima’s suggestion of “Death Toll” as a name and left it at that. :-)
What ever did happen with Vektor and Death Toll, I wonder? We got to see both Opal and Vehemence post-incarceration, but I kind of got to enjoy Death Toll and his pompous theatrics.
It’s a useful trick to insert “him” into the sentence (because it also has an “m” in it, so it’s helpful for memorizing). If the new sentence works, use whom, if it doesn’t, use who. “For whom the bell tolls, it tolls for him.” It works. “You wouldn’t say it tolls for he.” So in the sentence above, we can test it: “Him is already here.” Doesn’t work (unless you are referring to the Powerpuff Girls villian), so the initial “who” was correct.
I’ve always liked the he/him trick to remember this. “Who’s over there? He’s over there.”; “Sydney arrived with whom?” ” Sydney arrived with him”
Exactly! It works because “he” and “who” are both Predicate forms, while “him” and “whom” are both Subject forms. That’s a handy way for the less language-savvy to differentiate between the two, like you said.
It never gets any simpler does it…
Oy vey…
That… Is going to very coincidentally be the exact location of a small sliver of territory, isn’t it?
You betcha.
Unless of course it’s location is in the next country, as a red herring.
That would be my guess as well. Deus’s ‘host country’ offered them sanctuary, and in exchange Deus gets a plausible way to explain an influx of nextgen technologies (after he slaps terran copyrights on them) ‘and’ the nucleus of a labor pool that is familiar with those technologies.
All probably on the QT, but I would love to see the storyline surrounding the official ‘we are not alone’ reveal.
No, it gets even better:
Deus was on Fracture getting replacement parts for the ship, not stuff for himself.
Which he will then sell to the colonists at a modest mark-up…
So, that looks to be somewhere around Botswana / Zimbabwe, maybe Mozambique. Deus’s base in ‘Galytin’ is somewhere in the territory of the Democratic Republic of Congo… a big country, but if he’s in the south of the DRC, it’s certainly not far away… maybe 1000km?
To me it that little (i) looks like in in Etheopia somewhere. That’s what we’re supposed to take as the ship right?
I guess that’s ambiguous, but I took that as just an info panel on the screen, whereas the red lines at the bottom indicate that this is a scaled-up image of something located at the bottom where the lines converge. That’s how these movie-style displays usually work…
Isn’t that Wakanda?
Wakanda could be a good guess. But – https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ethiopia/@9.8357916,29.8320919,4.75z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x1635d0cedd6cfd2b:0x7bf6a67f5348c55a!8m2!3d9.145!4d40.489673
Dudes and huns compare a map please.
I thought it was Bangalla.
[sigh] Lemme guess. The colony ship is either ARCON HQ or it belongs to the rich guy who’s name I forget and it’s basically pretending to be modern architecture!
Also it looks to Me that the pin (i) is somewhere in Etheopia ???
Ethiopia is the north east of the continent. That colony ship, if not mistaken is Mozambique or Malawi.
No no – I think you’re reading the image wrong. Look for the little (i) icon on the map. I think that’s the location of the ship.
I mean I could also be wrong…. But the (i) seams the key part to me so ….
No, the (I) is pointing to the ship shape, butt the actual location of the ship is indicated by where the two red lines converge
I was reading this as two things… The ship is pointed at by the two red lines, the red is a blowup of the cross-section.
I believe the information “i” is pointing at something else, although it might be pointing at the ship expansion.
Interesting. I was taking the ship as being where the “i” is pointing at, as it has a dialogue box with lots of info (and nothing else on the planet warranted such treatment. Hence taking it as being somewhere in or near to Somalia.
The entire red thing I was just taking as a graphic of the ship (and thereby ignored the red lines as just being something associated with the graphic, as opposed to pointing it out).
ARC-HQ is in North America, always has been
Yeah I kudos that – although who says since they’re a military organisation that they don’t have divisions internationally.
Presently they only canonically have Archon HQ ‘somewhere in the middle’ of the USA. Although they may have branches on the East and West coast, those have not been mentioned in the comic yet. Although he may have made some other comment more recently, the last I heard was that he was undecided on that point.
If Archon does not have branches within the USA, then it is less likely to have ones elsewhere. If it does I doubt they would be in a remote location in a minor country. I would expect London, Brussels, Moscow or Bejing maybe.
Perhaps one in that remote place, in the middle of Australia, where the Ausies decided to put their capital.
So that it would not fall off, presumably. They can probably get more grip in the middle of the continent.
It’s by the giant letter ‘E’ in the word ‘States’, where first contact was made when aliens tried to buy Earth from the Supreme Potentate. Area 51 is just a red herring.
Pretty much the same problems Sydney faced, in similar circumstances.
Good for her for opting to declare war though, rather than selling the Earth!
Yes I Grok.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ethiopia/@9.8357916,29.8320919,4.75z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x1635d0cedd6cfd2b:0x7bf6a67f5348c55a!8m2!3d9.145!4d40.489673
Dudes and huns compare a map please.
Looks like the Ethiopia-Somalia border. Can’t tell without a closer look.
For one thing, when it comes to visual detection upon approach (& landing) there is a LOT of room for an alien ship to slip through unnoticed.
For another thing, any spacecraft capable of even planet-to-planet transport has a lot of electronically active systems that emit a LOT of signals just as a normal consequence. However, as Cora has just pointed out, electronic cloaking is by far the most effective means of avoiding detection by human-level technological means.
One other factor is a vessel’s infrared signature as venting off extra heat in open space is harder than you would think…They would have to rely on heat convection to vent off their thermal signature, not heat conduction. Sloughing off heat takes much longer this way & it’s more difficult to “cloak” thermal energy than it would be to cloak elctromagnetic energy.
Considering that detection of thermals relies on a visually-based sensor, someone on Earth would have to just happen to be looking at the right area of the sky at just the right time to catch it. As it was pointed out in the movie Armageddon, most government-subsidized telescopes are given enough budget to scan about 1% of the sky & “if you’ll pardon my language, that’s one big @$$ sky.”
In general, extraterrestrial “stealth” during Earth Approach is not likely to be much of an issue.
Don’t a lot of the launch warning sats rely on IR bloom detection?
Indeed. Then again, they tend to be looking down.
Agreed, IR is a right bugger to obfuscate. Tougher still that most every writer, movie, conspiracy theorist etc. Get wrong, don’t have a clue about the difficulty dealing with (Mr. Lucas, your death star don’t work). IS, mass matter when you get inside the solar system..those monster, planet sized ships? You can’t even get near a system without a shipload of computing to no wreck the system just by showing up. UHG, I don’t even have the maths for it and I understand the issue.
Planet-sized starships don’t necessarily have planetary MASS to go with their bulk. Gravity is determined by mass rather than size; a Death Star may be the size of a moon, but an actual moon is a moon sized-hunk of outrageously heavy solid rock. A Death Star is a moon-sized hunk of honeycombed alloys and lightweight electronics, a whole lot of empty space and stuff that masses a lot less than solid rock. Absolutely, gravitational disturbance for hypermassive starships is something that should be taken into account, but the issue isn’t quite so severe as all that. At least for planets. Something that size would ABSOLUTELY have issues with negotiating around asteroids and the like, but those don’t tend to be quite as catastrophic as gravity tugging planets off course.
Although the Star Wars setting clearly has some kind of gravity control, as we see the heroes walking around the Millenium Falcon.
Turning the gravity up by 10 would have been a good tactic, just as the X-wing fighters were flying along the trench.
OK it would squish a few hundred thousand personnel, in that area, but the Empire has spares.
Nah, reverse the gravity, a few personnel (who didn’t clear the area in time) might bunch off the walls butt the pesky little gnats would go shooting out into space :D
Well, we know what next adventure thread is for our band of super heroes, which may include Cora’s crew. Then were likely (possibly) to get tearful good by to Sidney’s would-be boyfriend.
Wellllll, question is, is this a refugee, or soul battery equipped (filled with rulling class) Alari colony ship. Anyway, guess humanity as a whole is getting a less than optimal introduction to the galactic community. This might turn into a mayans vs conquistador scenario too…
I guess they are part of those that had contact with Sciona.
They could still be refugees.
Mayans vs conquistador scenario?
Well, I suppose the ship landed in Africa, and ARCHON is based in the US. They probably can’t get involved unless the Alari start a war.
If this is a fully equipped ship with all the Alari tech, Humanity is in trouble. When a culture with superior technologies encounter another that is inferior to them, even if they have the best of intention, they will eventually assimilate the natives, suppressing their culture. That happened all over the Americas.
And here we are looking at a Type 0 civilization (Humanity) vs a Type I or Type II on the Kardashev scale. And if Sciona is a good example of the Alari ruling class then its not looking good.
Honestly? District 9 is more likely. But at the same time, alien refugees might be the BEST case scenario for a First Contact. We’re unlikely to turn them down, since they’re fully alien we’re probably more likely to put up a good unified face and actually make sure they get what they need (show the best face forwards, you know?), we’re less likely to get people going “Exterminate them!” or the widespread fear that military contact would bring, and they’re less likely to be exploited (though it’ll still happen) for their technologies, since they’re ‘poor’.
I would say that having Alari refugees onboard could help with any discussions what that ship is doing on Earth. If it is full of Alari people like Sciona then it surely will prove a point against “dominating” earth, if they even had a chance.
Also, this is not the page we are looking for… Joking aside, but i am still waiting for the REUNION page… Sometime next week i guess, unless there will be more talk and decision making, then i guess a few more pages in line.
So, Tete Province, northeast of Cahora Bassa?
“What about the astronauts?”
“What..”
*space station. suited man attached to the station. staring in dazed wonderment at the giant ship*
“blah blah, weggle”
“Captian Franks.. could you please speak clearly”
“Moon’s Haunted.”
Is it just me that thinks BFE (which is an acronym/phrase I haven’t heard before) is racist as fuck?
Yes, it is just you
Everything is racist to somebody these days.
Or it would be, if race wasn’t a myth, it was created to separate US from THEM!
Race IS a myth. At least as defining it by skintone, as skintone has little to do with your ethnic group’s evolutionary origins as it’s one of the easiest things to change via evolution, and generally has more to do with where that evolution is taking place. Most people don’t even know that the Icelanders are more related to the Chinese than to the French, and that the Greeks are more related to the Aborigines than the British. (Northern Europe was originally settled by people coming west from Russia, while Southern Europe was originally settled by people coming up out of the fertile crescent.) Not to mention, the genetics that separate the Spanish from the Native Americans is less than what separates the Hutus and the Tootzies (90% of humanity’s ethnic diversity is in Africa!)
As such, racists ticks me off, because the racists are willing to screw people’s lives over with their prejudices but aren’t even willing to bother to go through the effort to get their races right! And -nowhere- can you draw the lines of genetic distance to make it separate people cleanly by skin color.
As someone who studied bioinformatics and genetics, it ticks me off a LOT.
*grumble grumble*
It quite amuses me that white folks may have gained some of their pigmentation alleles from breeding with Neanderthals. So if my (unproven but possible) speculation is right, then white supremacists should be trying to restore their original overhanging eyebrows, and other pure Neanderthal characteristics, which have been lost by inbreeding with Homo Sapiens.
Although that tickles me, we must not let the extremists taint our discussions overly. Whilst we must be ever vigilant against the discrimination, violence and eventual genocide that can follow from racism, we must not let that cloud the disquiet of more average people who become distressed at social norms changing dramatically within their lifetime.
Be that characterised by being surrounded by people of a different skin tone, or religion or simply the erosion of cultural traditions, all of those can cause people to become unhappy. People like to hang out with folks who are to them.
Living in Bulgaria I found I tended to hang out more with ex-pats than others. Language being the most significant difference. With only relatively minor cultural differences, and the religious ones having no impact on daily life (Soviet era politics discouraged religion, so culturally all Bulgarians I knew, regardless of ethnicity, tend to be quite discreet about their religion).
Meanwhile, at village social events, the gypsies would all hang about at one set of tables, the ethnic Bulgarians at another and those of Turkish descent (and still also speaking Turkish) sat at a third. With us ex-pats choosing to deliberately break through the barriers and mingle amongst all of them indiscriminately. Despite us (heavily) tending to socialise with Brits more outside such events.
We must recognise that people do prefer the familiar, whilst feeling disquiet at the unfamiliar. Whilst multiculturalism tries to counter this with making everyone familiar with other cultures (et al), which is an effective tactic, it is not necessarily the ideal solution in every situation. Especially with groups who actively do not want such integration (along with the inevitable erosion of cultural distinctiveness).
And if we look at European politics, at the moment (as one example) we can see the rise of far-right politics being supported by the disquiet of those in the middle who are not being listened to by the left (or are simply too cowed to speak out in the first place). The fear of being branded a racist, for listening to complaints about immigration, does harm both our political process and the politics which flow from them.
But that is as far as I choose to go down the line of politics, as that is one area that we should avoid in this comic, due to its inflammatory nature.
“Whilst we must be ever vigilant against the discrimination, violence and eventual genocide that can follow from racism,”
“Be that characterised by being surrounded by people of a different skin tone, or religion or simply the erosion of cultural traditions, all of those can cause people to become unhappy.”
Which is why I said, that humans are extremely Xenophobic.
Urban Dictionary entry:
A term used to describe any middle-of-nowhere, backwoods area, particularly one that is a long distance away. Derived from bumfuck, also used to describe a similar location. The addition of “egypt” originated in the Midwest, describing the “Little Egypt” region of Illinois, an extremely rural area compared to the urban Northern Illinois. See also BFE.
And when I was in the service in the 1980’s, a buddy claimed that there was a small village near a remote (military term for ain’t no civilian infrastructure {ie bars or companionship} for 200 miles), base in Egypt who’s written name in Arabic script looked like BumFuck to western’s eyes, though that is just hearsay.
Although not spelled the same way, there actually IS a place in Egypt with that name. Used to be a major trading hub a long time ago, if memory serves…
Although it would not be a popular shipping address for international deliveries, to English-speaking countries.
“Honey, why have you ordered something from ‘Bumfuck’? You know I don’t like things like that!”
Google’s definition is rather more terse and profane. And racist, as it uses “Egypt”.
So you take your chances with a term like that, as it depends on the definition people come across when they look it up (assuming that they are unfamiliar with one version or another).
Personally I would avoid one that is open to accusations of using a racist term. If I wanted to convey the same degree of punch, I would probably opt for “arse end of nowhere”. Although I can see that Americans would probably not pick that one.
Still not RACIST no race is named. Just a location.
Sheesh. You kids try to redefine everything so that labels apply these days.
It just means Middle of Nowhere.
Applying labels so everything fits into preconceptions is the basis of prejudice not racism.
Racism applies to people of a certain race by other races.
Religious disdain is not Racism. Ie muslims suck. To say so is to say that all muslims are one race and boy would they have a problem with you saying so.
And pointing this out is not racism either.
Labeling and othering is a tool of the weak minded.
There is a close enough association between “Egypt” and “Egyptians” that your pedantism does not pass common sense checking.
If I said something offensive about America, Americans would take offence. And maybe Canadians too. Likewise England and the English, France and the French.
Mind you I am working on breaking the automatic association between the land and the people. But at the moment people do heavily identify themselves with their country. Insulting people of a distinctive cultural identity is racist. Egyptians deserve just as much protection as any other cultural group (ignoring any laws which only afford protections to chosen named groups).
you proved my point for me. America isn’t a race. It’s a country. None of your examples are either. All are amalgamations of various races living under various laws and blend of cultures.
Your argument is assuming the people of a land are of one race. They rarely are .
My point stands.
Fair enough, perhaps “racism” is not the most appropriate term. Shall we compromise with “grossly offensive, especially to the inhabitants of the country”. A bit of a mouthful, but being offensive to people of assorted races and religions, in a particular geographic area (plus anybody who may have sympathy with them at such offence) is still not a wise thing to do.
By the way, as an English person I do associate “English” with my racial identity. As do French friends of mine, with “French”. Just because others choose to identify with “Caucasian” or “White” does not mean that we all do. And our census and equal opportunities reporting reflects such, listing options such as “British” or “English” in addition to the colour of the skin.
Oh and I am also Cornish and African.
Race is a myth, the concept, was only created to separate, us from them!
Since this is a colony ship rather than a refugee ship, it may have been on its way to Earth before the Squidbillies blew up the Alari home world. Sciona did say she had been in contact with them just a few days prior, so the Alari government may have sent an invasion force. This could in fact be why the Squidwards choose to attack now. The Alari having sent a large percentage of their forces off to invade Earth.
As Dabbler mentioned in a previous page, aliens are unlikely to invade a planet for its water since it would be far simpler to raid a stellar system’s Oort Cloud for ice than it would be to drag large volumes of water up out of a gravity well. However the Alari are likely to be more interested in Earth as a source of blood (magic power) than as a source of water. If Sciona had reported that Terran blood was particularly potent the Alari ruling class may have sent this ship intending for it to return with a stockpile of new blood sources.
There is a huge difference between a Colony Ship and an Invasion Ship
With tech differences this disparate, there isn’t really. The Europeans ‘colonized’ the Americas, after all.
Yes, after they had Invaded
You are not going to start shipping your females and offspring to a potentially hostile land until after you have made sure they will be safe
And the Europeans ultimately didn’t primarily use military power to dominate north america. Advanced agriculture, food storage, and medicine resulted in exponentially outbreeding the pre-existing populace. Intermarriage put another thumb on the scales (Pocahontas for example) as many indigenous people adopted the foreign cultures.
Concentrating on North America is deceptive. The conquistadors used exclusively military power on the rest of the Americas, and conquered much faster. The “conquest” of North America, if you style it so, took centuries rather than mere years.
For purposes of the conversation at hand, South America is irrelevant.
Nobody had hinted that military invasion wasn’t a threat to the preexisting culture.
The lesson North America gave was that advanced technology (even just food production and preservation or medicine) can supersede a cultural order centuries old.
It can be argued that there are potentially good and bad parts to that, but you can’t discount the appearance of a sizable population of an advanced culture as harmless merely because they don’t come in guns a’blazin.
Earth benefits to an extent from being a Pre-FTL world. With an Alari colony (even a small one) it won’t be a Pre-FTL world. And on the other hand, there is this giant ship full of kaiju hunting Alari…
Actually, it was the diseases, primarily small pox, the Europeans carried with them, to which the natives had no immunity, that did more to “conquer” the natives than everything else combined. This was the inevitable consequence of two separate populations coming into contact for the first time and something completely beyond the understanding of either civilization at the time. Today, we are aware of this problem and would take steps to avoid it when contacting an alien race.
Though there are recorded instances of spreading smallpox as being intentional by military personnel during the colonization period. Museums have even made those documents available online for reading if you’re so inclined.
Giving them smallpox infested blankets, was by the US Government.
True. It’s worth noting that North America’s native population was around a hundred million before the arrival of Europeans just over five hundred years ago.
You forget the concept, of Manifest Destiny. I do have some American Indian ancestrty and can recognize Genocide, having an IQ of 137, doesn’t hurt, BTW which is in top 2.69%.
That depends entirely upon relative military technology levels.
Will they investigate that ship or get Sydney home????
Yes
<3 ^_^
So the Alari are Wakanda.
Well most of the ones from the Alari planet we saw destroyed, don’t have bodies.
Possibly they may have been
harvesting donor bodiesseeking volunteers.If so it would certainly look like a bunch of Africans, who had been concealing having super advanced technology.
So, yea, Wakandians.
Wakanda, the gated community of Africa.
Sure, we could have interceded, or at least blunted, the slave trade. But that would have exposed us, so.. eh, the rest of Africa can just cope.
Sure, we could have interceded, or at least blunted, colonialism. But that would have exposed us, so.. eh, the rest of Africa can just cope.
Sure, we could have interceded, or at least blunted, in all these civil wars. But that would have exposed us, so.. eh, the rest of Africa can just cope.
I can respect Deus more, in this aspect at least, in that he is being open about elevating a slice of Africa above its neighbors.
Oooooh, the plot thickens (again)!
Didn’t take much to figure out it was the Alari “invading.” With the homeworld being decimated, the Alari refugees at the space station. Sciona saying something along the lines of “We will invade Earth, not as conquerors, but as refugees…”
It could be an invasion force or it could be refugee arrivals.
Two trains of thought here:
#1: Seeing their homeworld being decimated by invaders, Alari survivors boarded ships that were originally purposed for colonizing other planets & made it past whatever blockade the invaders might have set up. Indeed, this one ship might have been a number of ships initially but most of them were destroyed during the attempt to leave the planet. There wouldn’t have been very many of of those ships though because the Alari would have been more focusing resources for colonizing rather than trying to save the whole race from extinction.
#2: After the bulk of the Alari military vessels were destroyed, much of the surviving military personell commandeered whatever colony ships there was available. They couldn’t effectively fight the invaders, as such, but they could still plan to conquer another planet mostly without the ability to bombard from orbit. With a new plnat & its resources available, they might be able to hope for retaliation against the invaders that decimated their home planet.
Either way, we can’t rightly say if that particular ship is full of refugees or soldiers…Yet.
Zambia’s got some ‘splainin’ to do.
“We are proud to announce Zambia’s first space probe is nearing completion.”
Just keep the windows shut, when the press arrive to take photos.
“An Alari colony ship is not the size of Firefly. It’s just shy of a kilometer long and many decks deep. Chances are, someone noticed it landing.”
There are ways to disguise a large alien ship on Earth. You just need to start a media campaign that you are building something that looks like the thing that is heading this way. Then you set up a hologram of the object under ‘construction’ until it gets here and lands in that spot.
https://cdn2.macworld.co.uk/cmsdata/features/3489704/apple-campus.jpg
This was previously done in the 1940s when the ‘Pentazoid’ race landed their ship just outside of Washington DC.
So 9/11 was presumably just a cover-up to conceal when one of its engines destabilised and blew up?
Looks like they landed in South Luangwa National Park, Zambia
Or is it in Deuslandia?
So the invasion HAS begun!
Why Africa? In California the Alari not only would have sanctuary but could find immediate employment bundling votes.
America has very restrictive immigration policies. Africa does not.
It’s quite probably illegal to land a giant colony ship wherever it landed (unless Deus bought the area). However, the ability of the locals to do anything about it is probably more limited in that area.
Oddly enough, probably not actually. Airspace is widely controlled, around the globe. So flying it around, without air-traffic control clearance or at least filing a flight plan would probably be illegal. But those rules don’t cover parking.
Now if it was parked on a shore-line, then there are plenty of rules covering mooring a ship. But it is inland.
If it were moving around, on the ground, then it would fall under the laws covering motor vehicles. But I doubt that it will, now that it is on the ground.
Short of something rather mis-applied, such as “littering” the only kinds of laws which may apply would be “creating a public nuisance” or “not parking on the grass” (or whatever local equivalents they may have).
Of course failing to declare immigrants is likely illegal, but the ship itself? I’m pretty sure no country has rules about space ship parking. Yet.
Your comment about littering reminds me of a story from a town I’m near.
Way back when skylab was de-orbited some of it landed in the local shire.
The shire’s response? They fined NASA $400 for littering. It did eventually get paid, but not by NASA.
:-D
North America also has a rather effective military radar system for tracking and, if possible, intercepting incoming objects. The greatest attention may be across the Arctic to watch for hostilities from Russia and/or China, but the existence of aircraft carriers and submarine-launched missiles means it’ll be a fairly comprehensive coverage all round. Europe and Northern Asia might not be quite as co-ordinated, but they’re still watching each other (and the Americans). African countries, not being major protagonists in the Cold War (and in many cases having other pressing priorities when it comes to spending) don’t watch the skies to nearly the same extent.
The Alari may not know that those radar emissions they can detect are from military rather than civilian applications, and/or they may be confident that their ship could stand up to anything Earth’s leading military tech could throw at it. But if you have the choice between meeting the full blaze of potentially unwelcome attention head-on, or sneaking through a blind spot and establishing a base first, few if any tacticians would steer their entire fleet towards option 1.
It may be standing out in the open but that doesn’t mean it’s not disguised.
Well, from the context of the conversation (about cloaking) I took it to mean ‘that ship is not cloaked’.
Yeah I was thinking something along those lines as well. When I see it that just because it’s on the open doesn’t mean that it’s not disguise I was thinking the whole world’s fair thing from all those sci-fi shows and the movie Men in Black wear the two so-called fakes spaceships were actual spaceships and the World’s Fair was a cover-up
So, we’ve reached the right planet. Next, we’ll see if we’re in the right dimension. :)
Other than spotting differences on the ground, that is actually a really tough one to check. If everything you are personally familiar with looks the same (be that initially or over a longer period), then just how can you tell if it is ‘your’ home dimension?
I spent several years trying to find a way, and could not come up with one.
*looks at surroundings warily*
So… You have stared into the Abyss and the Abyss has stared into you.. and giggled…
Like the first remake of “Planet of the Apes”, where Marky Mark goes back through the wormhole and finds out some monkey got there first
Technical details work. Like Earth being measured to 7990 miles diameter and Venus to 7900 miles diameter. Or the 4th element in your home universe being #20 in this one, and Iron almost doubling in density. Unfortunately for me, the mapping details/discrepancies have been more noticeable/distressing.
(Although, the past 50+ changes have not been quite as bad as the proverbial “waking up all alone on an empty Earth”. I no longer go camping, though.)
Oh. Africa as in Zeus’ country. Because that’s where the most advanced technology on Earth is, thanks to Zeus’ smuggling.
Wakanda and Deus are taking us Africans into a golden age! Whoot!
Plot twist! This is in the same universe as District 9.
Right there, out in the open, in an area which has a civil war fragmenting it into lots of different factions. And this just going from what Sydney can see out the window, without doing any googling.
I think they will be able to cover it up, with a swift intervention.
WATCH OUT, SYDNEY!!!
Depending on how many ‘GRRL Power World’ hours Sydney has been separated from the group, be ready for Max’s reaction.
Be it subtle – a hand shake for coming back alive
or a full pick you up hug, with possible tear in one eye
Max may be tough … but she has shown some really good like/connection toward Sydney.
Often the issue isn’t whether anyone noticed, it’s whether whoever noticed is someone you need to worry about.
A few random civilians noticed? If you were sufficiently strange, then you’re probably golden as reporting strangeness would get them weird looks at best.
The local police? A little more scrutiny than above, but similar conditions apply.
A government agency? Well, now you might be in trouble depending on what government and what agency, but there’s also a good chance they’ll keep your existence under wraps for the time being.
A major media outlet? Unless said media outlet has a reputation for reporting garbage, you’re screwed.
There has not been even one media outlet without an earned reputation for reporting garbage since the nineteen sixties.
Well it could also be a sort of *Codgerspace* moment where it’s always been there for ages but nobody really recognized it for what it was.
Given the abysmal map location and the fact WW3 isn’t on the edge of starting I think it’s safe to assume that nobody noticed the giant spaceship landing.
Which is a pity because the Veil was a terrible idea from a story perspective.
Ok Let start the pool.. How long in relitive time has Syd been gone. It was implited that the portal took the team forward in time a bit (Harrems issues and Cora saying they were a little later then planned getting to planet) . So how much time has passed a day week year? and if a while how dose that effect her pay? or her shop?!! if she has been gone for months or years do here non arclight friends and family think she dead?
The reason Cora and crew took longer to get there was because they were already in the middle of something (or someone :wink: ) when Cora got the call
Should have landed in Australia, good chance it would take months to notice if it ever was.
Someone already landed their ship in Australia. They disguised it as a giant rock.
https://s1.at.atcdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Uluru_hero-768×369.jpg
The red lines obviously (to me) point to the ship location. It looks like it’s right near where Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique come together, that looks like Lake Malawi a bit to the east of it.
Looks like they also found something of interest in Ethiopia, which is pointed at by the arrow coming from the blue !. What it is, we don’t know yet, the grid next to it doesn’t convey any info to me.
I think that the bridge viewscreen manufacturers need to do some user-friendliness testing with human subjects. About half the comments take it as being where the red lines point. The other half being where the “i” points.
Hence some thinking it is Zambia, like yourself, whilst others take it to be in Somalia (or Ethiopia, as you say).
Instead of a colony ship or an invasion ship, could it be the former refuge ship? The refugees told Cora and Sydney, that the pilots took off with all their possessions and left them stranded at the space station.
So maybe they went to a low tech world their species had contact to before (Alari are one of the species that was mistaken for angels on Earth as we were told before) to live like kings there.
how long was she gone from earth’s POV
Dave B. hasn’t told us yet.
Couple decades