Grrl Power #738 – Don’t ask where cloud 9 is
Having your head in the clouds isn’t a criticism, it’s the goal!
I know what you’re wondering. In that third panel, Cora is standing in front of part of a fajita station. This party isn’t just the one sad table with the cake pops and a cooler of iced tea. And yes, I know what else you’re wondering. There is a vegetarian fajita option for Sydney and… probably someone else there is a vegetarian. Shiitake mushrooms. Sliced up nice and thin and roasted up with the fajita spices. I am not a vegetarian, but that’s still pretty good. Especially if you throw on a little chimichurri sauce? That’s good shit. I actually wish I had more cause to put chimichurri sauce on things. It’s not usually offered as a side with many dishes, at least here in Texas. I’m sure if you’re in South America, it’s more common.
I think it’d be good on any kind of meat really. Okay, probably not a hotdog or breakfast sausage, but on a steak or chicken or a pork chop? Yeah, I think I’m hungry.
But what you’re really wondering is, “Where is her hard light emitter in panel 4?” Well, it’s just past the curve of her back kind of hidden behind her shoulder blade… No I just forgot it. Pretend she’s turned about 15 degrees more toward the camera and then it would be reasonably be hidden by her back and shoulder.
Okay, for real, you’re probably wondering if Cora’s nimbus outfit reacts to wind. Well, obviously it does. It will start to look like it’s going to blow away and leave her bits out, but then the clouds reform on the other side out of nothing (like clouds do) so she stays Comics Code Approved at all times.
If she feels like being a bit more modest, (normally, not after Dabbler hacked it) she can adjust the coverage slider from light to moderate, all the way up to “thunderhead” if she feels like walking around looking like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man just exploded on her.
Edit: Whoops! Set this to post on Wednesday at 5 am instead of Thursday. Oh well, have a comic a few hours early!
Edit 2: Fixed Cora saying “P vs. NP” and changed it to “NP-Hard”
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. $1 and up, but feel free to contribute as much as you like.
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
So, I assume there’s a standard big black cartoony censor bar mode as well?
Chyeah, shaped like one of those tiny Brazillian thong bikinis.
Even better, a serendipitous blocking mode like they did at the end of the first Austin Powers movie.
Since the projection is observer-based & isn’t really any kind of real “cover,” Cora could go sunbathing & not wind up with any tanlines.
How do observer based holograms record on cctv cameras?
My guess would be that the camera counts as observer.
How many observers can the system keep track of, and from what distance? How does it account for conflicting angles of view? How fast can it react to multiple changes? This technology level is kind of frightning..
It wouldn’t really need to be observer-specific, it just needs to cover certain bits from all angles. Like a… tuft… of whipped cream, strategically placed, instead of a micro-cloud.
Like this. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:HA_WhippedCream.jpg
This is really a case where the illusion is far more difficult to do than the reality.
Just knowing about that picture shows your age. :-)
This is a more contemporary example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoT3AimKXmk#t=100s
I really hate the change to YT that requires people to click to start some videos
It finds sentient creatures within a small radius, determines the location of it’s visual sensors and then projects the illusion on them.
With enough observers, it begins to flicker as it struggles to project a separate illusion for each observer in turn.
At first I thought she meant the image was projected directly into the mind of observers, in which case it would of course always be in the right place. Looking through a phone or camera wouldn’t help, but recording the image and then looking at it after Cora was gone would leave a picture where she was obviously naked. But apparently that’s not how it works?
Since it’s a hardlight system I’d think it works by detecting observers and then manipulating light in a certain way rather than a psychic projection.
It’s actually possible (In principle, anyway.) to just project from each point around her for some modest distance the correct image in every direction. It “just” requires your system to handle a few hundred times as much data, as each point has a different luminosity/color in each of a hundred or so different directions.
You’d only have to locate the observers’ eyes if you were trying to economize on data or power devoted to illumination. (Emitting only the light that was eventually going to arrive at somebody’s eyes.)
This. If someone is outside the system’s range, then they don’t get a free show–instead, they get an increasingly diffuse and hazy image–instead of clouds, it looks more like TV static channel, with color.
Assuming her species tans in sunlight, possibly. It’s not been clearly established whether the hard light projection is opaque to light or not. But it is clear it *can* be opaque to light, or she’d faintly show through her hard light projected clothing. I’m going to make a guess that it is, in fact, a light impervious force field, and the areas where she shows up as bare is as much an illusion as the clouds. She manages to see because it also specifically projects a properly controlled amount of light to her eyes reporting what light was blocked, though possibly with dampening or amplification as needed.
Or the shower scene from Freefall the web comic. Specifically http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff2600/fc02586.htm
That’s probably the factory default you get for free, while all your other outfits are DLC
And of course pixelation to (kinda) cover up strategic points.
Forecast: Cloudy with a chance of fish.
Thunder. Feel the thunder. Lightning and the thunder.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKopy74weus
You’ve been… Thunderstruck!
If you’re gonna do Thunderstruck, do it all classy-like!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uT3SBzmDxGk
Thought you were meaning this Thunder and Lightning scene :(
Thunderbolt and lightning
very very frightening
me
— Gallileo
https://youtu.be/GpBFOJ3R0M4
I’m Only Happy When It Rains.
That, is a sexist remark!
How is fish sexist? o_O
theres a old joke about a blind man who walks by a fish market and tips his hat saying good day ladies!
if you cant get it from that, your too young to know
Understand the ‘joke’, still doesn’t explain why fish are sexist
Fish are sexist in the same way that polyamory is the answer.
Guesticus, the fish are not themselves sexist, the remark/joke involving fish is sexist (or at least politically incorrect). Don’t confuse your beer and gin with the glass you drink it in!
No need to be rude!
I’m so confused about this entire thread.
and old blind guy walking by the market tips his hat and says “Hello Ladies”
and if you did not get that reference, your too young to know.
Maybe the little finned chauvinist bastard is riding a bicycle.
So you just know…
Oh…brain reboot complete.
High tech clothing is nice, so is the wearer for that matter.
I don’t know what I should say to dabs
Hey, Cora’s new “outfit” would be very appropriate at the beach or poolside. She’ll doesn’t even have to go into the water to get her bikini wet !!
COME ON PEOPLE VOTE FOR GRRL POWER
“Routinely solves P vs. NP problems in her head” doesn’t make any sense. There’s only one P vs. NP problem, just like there’s only one Fermat’s Last Theorem, only one Riemann hypothesis, only one Collatz conjecture, etc. It would make more sense to say she routinely solves NP-hard problems.
Yeah I thought that might be kind of nonsense. I guess I meant that she solves the sorts of problems that get categorized as P vs. NP. I might try and edit that, but the word bubbles are already encroaching on the art in that panel, so maybe if it doesn’t bug too many people. NP-hard might work as well.
By “problems that get categorized as P vs. NP”, I assume you mean either “problems that get categorized as NP” (which, in layman’s terms, are considered “hard problems”), or computational problems in general.
Just change it to ” … solves NP-hard problems … ”
From Wolfram Alpha : “NP-Hard Problem. A problem is NP-hard if an algorithm for solving it can be translated into one for solving any NP-problem (nondeterministic polynomial time) problem. NP-hard therefore means “at least as hard as any NP-problem ,” although it might, in fact, be harder. “
That sounds kinda self-recursive.
NP-hard problems aren’t necessarily in NP, and (assuming P!=NP) there are problems that are in NP that aren’t NP-hard. (Those that are both in NP and NP-hard are called “NP-complete”.)
NP is, semi-formally, the set of problems solvable “efficiently” by a “Nondeterministic Turing Machine”, which is a theoretical computing device that can, at any given step, have multiple options as to what instruction is executed next. The NTM, upon encountering one of these “multiple option” points, always guesses “lucky” such that the option that ends in “Yes” is found if one such option exists. (All Turing Machines in Theoretical Computer Science eventually say “Yes” or “No” as an answer, or never stop. The “never stop” ones are usually useless.)
P, incidentally, is the set of problems “efficiently” solvable by a normal Turing Machine. One interesting quirk: Checking one possible solution to an NP problem is in P.
Yes, this means that P?=NP boils down to, essentially, “Do there exist problems that are “efficient” for computers to check the answers to, but not “efficient” for them to solve?”
(If you’re interested, by “efficient”, I mean “Has an algorithm for which the time taken is a polynomial of the length of the input.”)
Okay, I updated the comic to “NP-Hard”
What does that mean? o_O
Obviously it means “Naked P…”
Never mind.
In simple terms, it means the number of possible solutions grows faster than the complexity of the problem its self. The result is there is no “algorithm” to solve the problem, one can only just try every single possibility until one works. If the problem is very complex, the number of solutions becomes astronomically high very quickly requiring a very, Very, VERY long time to try all the possible solution. (Before any one complains, I know this answer glosses over a lot of the details.)
The point is: those who didn’t know what “P vs. NP problems” were aren’t going to suddenly understand what “NP-Hard” means, so why change it because of a few smarties (or at least those who use Google to make themselves appear smart) trying to be clever
The original point was simply to imply that Dabbles was super-smart enough to be able to hack something Cora didn’t believe was hackable
You don’t think there’s a point in fixing an error, just because most people can’t tell the difference?
If the point was to imply that Dabbles is mega-super smart, and that even the owner of machine didn’t realise how smart (and maybe her herself can’t tell the difference), then is it really an error? o_O
All else being equal, I think being correct is usually the best option.
I uh… totally know what NP-Hard means, but just so we’re both on the same page and I know that you know what it means, how about you tell me what you uh… think it means.
*looks around shiftily*
Well, I guess it’s observer-dependent: the wording either makes Dabbler sound smart, or Cora sound dumb, depending on the knowledge of the reader. If the point was to make Dabbler sound smart to all readers, instead of just those ignorant on the topic, then correctness would be preferable.
PEDANTIC CORRECTION POWERS ACTIVATE!
NP problems don’t always have a way to check solutions in P. That’s a particular subset of NP problems, called NP-Complete.
Another fun fact: The problems we make for encryption (including credit-card payments and online passwords) are NP-Complete. They have to be, since actually decrypting a message is how we check to see if we’ve figured out how to decrypt it, and we want the intended recipient of a message to be able to decrypt easily. In other words, encryption has to have a way of decrypting it in polynomial time if it’s going to be usable, but FINDING that method (if you don’t already know it) should be as hard as possible. If P=NP then there will always be ways for hackers to easily find that decryption method and decrypt the message. In other words, they could see all your “secure” credit card transactions and password logins, and online business would collapse, and we’d have another Great Recession.
MATH IS FUN!
The part about Dabbler being able to hack her wardrobe because she has physical access makes sense though. One of the fundamental rules of IT Security is that if a system is physically accessible it ain’t secure. It doesn’t take much in the way of hacker skills to gain root access to a system if you can actually lay your hands on it.
Or at least it takes way less skill to do it. On a system with good security it still takes quite some skill, at least as long the storage is encrypted.
To put it simply:
P problem – a decision problem (one with a yes/no answer) that can be resolved in a polynomial time (the relationship between the size of the input and the time needed can be expressed using a polynomial function). These are considered “easy” or “quick”.
NP problem – a decision problem where you can check the validity of a proposed answer in polynomial time.
NP-hard problem – an NP problem that could be used to solve every other NP problem. That is, for every NP problem there exists a way to transform it’s input in polynomial time in such a way that you can feed it to the algorithm for our NP-hard problem and get a correct answer.
P = NP is essentially a question of whether an algorithm solving an NP-hard problem in polynomial time exists. If yes, then all NP problems can be resolved in polynomial time (so, “quickly”).
That’s why saying that she meant “problems that get categorized as P=NP” makes no sense – there is only one such problem.
To make my post easier to understand just replace every instance of “in polynomial time” with “quickly” :)
And what the fuck does ‘P’ and ‘NP’ stand for?
There was no need to change it: those (like me) who don’t know would still be able to figure out it is something very very complicated and difficult
So, why exactly are you bitching? You won’t understand it no matter what is said, and those who do understand it will rest easy knowing that it is now more accurate. Win-win, unless you’re a whiny bitch.
Also, Google is your friend. It might be your only friend. Use it more often before posting and you’ll both learn something and won’t be posting as much irrelevant crap.
Because tired of Authors being forced to change their story due to people trying to be smarter than they are
Point is: didn’t need to understand what it was to know that it meant Dabbles was smart enough to hack something believed to be unhackable
Thank you! I don’t even know that much about CS, but I know generally what NP-hard means. Correcting it makes the story more immersive for people like me, with just barely more than average knowledge. It’s instance that someone could be so insecure about their knowledge that they demand an error be left uncorrected unless they personally notice it.
*insane
Implied by Cora drawing the P/NP distinction is that Galactic civilization has either determined that P=NP is false, or the problem is still unresolved.
Galactic civilization could really screw up the mathematics community. Aside from P=NP, they could probably resolve the Riemann Hypothesis, the Hodge Conjecture, the Birch and Swinnerton-Dye Conjecture, and lesser problems such as the Collatz Conjecture, the Goldberg Conjecture, and the Twin Prime Conjecture.
I assumed it was a joke, either in or out of the universe.
There is only one P vs NP problem, as we Earthicans have defined it. I suspect the FTL races look at it differently.
That explanation doesn’t really make sense, for two reasons. First: The phrase “P vs. NP problem” contains the things it refers to, so there aren’t really multiple ways to define it. The problem is, roughly speaking, “Does P = NP?” Other computer science problems exist, but they’re not P vs. NP problems, because they’re not about the relationship between P and NP. Second: Even if FTL races somehow have multiple problems that they have decided to call “P vs. NP problems”, Cora’s translator wouldn’t translate them as “P vs. NP problems”, because that’s not what we would call them.
Don’t be so sure about that last part… the genitals are unveiled.
Don’t know what ‘P vs. NP problems’ are (and don’t care), butt figured it meant Dabbles is able to solve complex problems in her head, so there is no reason to change it
Yeah, I’m not a super fan of having to Google “what does P stand for”.
Software ate my last post for being too long, so, here’s the short version.
It has to do with how quickly various algorithms work given how large a problem is. For example, when dealing with numbers of various lengths (where n is how many digits they have) adding them scales linearly with n and multiplying them scales quadratically with n. IIRC the formula is something like 2n for addition and 4n^2 for multiplication and that’s the point: You can actually find a math formula for how long problems take to solve as they grow larger. Normally when we we class problems like this we focus on the highest-order term and ignore other terms, and even ignore the coefficient. That’s because all other comparisons pair in significance with that one as n gets really large.
If that term is a power of n, then we say the problem can be solved in polynomial-time, because the formula is either a polynomial or just as fast as one. If not, it’s in non-polynomial time. (Usually that means exponential time, but some algorithms are really horrid and have factorial time or something even worse.) We call the set of problems that have polynomial-time solutions P. If you don’t have a polynomial-time solution, you have a non-polynomial-time solution, and solving you becomes much, much slower as you get bigger. Slower means it takes a lot more work to solve, and probably requires more resources like memory.
Some problems we can’t find a polynomial-time method for solving them, but maybe if we were smarter we could. We can’t (yet) determine whether such a solution exists. These problems are said to have nondeterministic polynomial time, and we call the set of these problems NP. We really really really want to know if we can solve these problems in polynomial time — meaning if there is a fast way to solve them. If there is, then all nondeterministic polynomial time problems have polynomial-time solutions, and P=NP.
Whether P=NP is true is an open problem. We don’t know the answer to it. Proving it or disproving it would win you a million-dollar prize and probably get you tenure at any institution you want.
One subset of NP is NP-Hard. These are the problems least-likely to have polynomial-time solutions. If we can show that these problems are part of P, then it’s proven that P=NP. Remember, NP means we only have slow ways of solving them, and slow means hard to do in your head (since there’s a LOT to keep track of), and these are the worst NP problems.
And slight correction. NP-Hard problems are not (necessarily) a subset of NP. The definition is basically “Problems that are at least as hard as NP problems”, meaning they could be harder.
Either way, Dabbler’s showing off. …. and maybe she has a quantum computer in her cybernetic eye.
It’s already been stated that she can access the interwebs anytime using her cyber-eye
Well, yes, but that just implies a computer with communications abilities. Quantum computing is something else.
All those formulae that we use for ranking the complexity of problems based on solution time assume that the computer falls into a category of things that are equivalent (in very broad terms of how they go about calculating things) to a theoretical model of computer called a Turing machine. That category includes almost (but not quite) every computer that humanity has ever constructed or employed, including the ones that run this comic’s server and the ones we’re logging onto the web with.
Turing machines do not, however, include quantum computers. Quantum computers can’t do anything that Turing machines can’t, but what counts as an operation is fundamentally different on a quantum computer. Glossing over the very ugly mechanics of how quantum computers work (partly because I’m not an expert, and partly because imaginary numbers for probabilities fucking terrifies me), that lets quantum computers employ different solutions that can’t be performed (or at least can’t be performed the same way) on Turing machines.
Short version: Some strategies that are non-polynomial time on a Turing machine can be polynomial time on a quantum computer. There aren’t many problems that we’ve worked out ways to leverage this advantage on, but one of the problems we HAVE found a quantum computing shortcut to is encryption-cracking.
….
Oh, I suppose that Dabbler could be networking with her eye to an external quantum computer. Is that what you meant? That introduces all sorts of security issues when you’re throwing the key to hacking your friend’s gear around the aether, and I think Dabbler (who, of all people, would know how easy it is to hack these things) would realize that could be a problem.
No, just meant, that she is wicked smart, and has access to the interwebs for things she needs help with (not ruling out she also having access to a quantum computer)
Hurray! <3
Comic in the morning instead of noon CET
Obviously Cora is very comfortable in her own skin. I don’t know too many people, female or male, who wouldn’t freak out if they suddenly found themselves mostly naked. Particularly with someone like Math ogling them.
I should hope that Cora feels comfortable in her own skin…After all, she was born with it & she’s been wearing it during her whole lifespan.
But I do have to admit that I’m feeliing the urge to slip into something comfortable right about now…
That is, not always true,
It also probably helps that, in all likelihood, this is far from the first time Dabbler has done this kind of prank before.
I almost feel sorry for poor Math – he might explode…
It looks like Math has lost his recently-acquired, hard-earned discipline against distraction…
He’s doing further training in his free time. All good martial artists are into that sort of thing.
He certainly seems rather overloaded by the visual inputs…
Something was bothering me about Cora for the longest time and I finally figured it out.
With how glossy her skin is, why is there no pink ambient occlusion from her hair?
Cause that requires another art pass. Each one adds more time. I don’t always even get to the AO pass depending on the page.
Yeah that makes sense, I mean you cant do updates twice a week with art this good and still have time to make every page perfect, it’s just unrealistic (and would probably give you a carpal tunnel if you aren’t Rohan Kishibe)
Panels 5 & 6: And there’s the warning indicator that people are facing danger from the Krackoom of Doom!
Looks like it’s time for Math to put up or shut up …
I’m having late 80s Defenders flashbacks.
I wonder how Sydney will react to Impossible Burgers…
Impossible Burgers are more of an attempt at making a vegan meat alternative that carnivores will like, and less “food for all vegans.” Thus, it’s not surprising that an awful lot of places that sell the Impossible Burger make it with cheese.
I’ve only been a vegan since about 2013, and yet the Impossible Burger is a bit too much like meat for my tastes. I don’t actually get sick from it, but it’s close enough to the real thing that I’ll be concerned that someone got confused for the first half or so of the burger. They’re more expensive than most other vegan burgers, so I just go with normal vegan burgers.
As Sydney has been vegan longer, … who knows? Different people are different, and she’s a comic book character drawn by someone who’s not vegan, so there’s no real telling.
I’ve been a vegetarian for about 45 years. I no longer really remember what meat taste like so I really can’t say anything about how faithfull a meat alternative is, and that doesn’t really bother me. It gets interesting when friends ask if this or that meat substitute really is any good.
Good? In what way? Often it turns out they wonder if it tates like the “original”, and I can’t answer that.
To me a good meat substitute is something that I can use replacing the meat in a recipe and it will taste good. And by that I mean it tastes good to me, not that it necessarily tastes like the original.
So far I haven’t tried the Impossible Burger. I’m not avoiding it, but neither do I have a real hankering for it. I am a curious though, as from what I’ve heard it’s really supposed to taste very close to a regular hamburger, which is something I’ve never eaten.
As a vegetarian who also eats egg and milk products I have a much easier time with food than vegans do. There are vegan alternatives to both milk and egg products, but so far I’ve not been very impressed with them. Besides I just love cheese way to much.
Apparently Maxima hasn’t noticed Cora’s new attire yet. You just know she’s going to have kittens when she sees this. Let’s just hope Hiro is smart enough to be elsewhere when Max finally notices.
Yes, definitely! :) BTW, I wonder if they have become closer over the last two months? Max took Sydney’s disappearance pretty hard, and while she’s not the kind of person to want a shoulder to cry on, wouldn’t Hiro be the one she might go to to share her troubles with? Or would she be more likely to go to someone else? Who is most likely to be Max’s confidant? Or is she more likely to bottle it all up inside?
Anyway, this cloud-ini look is not going to go over well with Max. (Even though she could totally pull it off herself.)
Max made it very clear that she wouldn’t hook up with Hiro until he got a promotion. Given the deliberate desire to not fraternize with junior officers, I’m pretty sure that means that Max would have sought just about anyone else’s shoulder, except Dabbler and Deus…
Admittedly, it’s been two months, so it could have happened. There’s also the possibility for Archon to have somehow set up an org structure that didn’t have Hiro reporting to Max without changing where he worked, but that would be pretty hard to work out politically.
With luck, ArcSwat will eventually grow large enough to have regional teams. Max remains in charge of the main team at ArcChon HQ, while Hiro gets promoted to LTC and put in charge of the West Coast team. At that point it becomes acceptable for Max and Hiro to date, and Max’s flight speed smooths out a lot of the road bumps inherent in a long distance relationship.
Parallel postings may well free Maxima and Hiro from the usual chain-of-command restrictions, but I would be surprised if that situation lasted long enough for them to take advantage. Currently, with only one team and one team leader, that leader can report directly to the General alongside the heads of the other divisions (Light, Dark, Support/Logistics, etc.). Splitting into multiple teams implies the creation of a ‘Head of Operations’ post, to be the unified voice of the Ops division in high-level planning and to co-ordinate between the leaders of the various regional and/or reserve teams. Maxima is almost certain to get that job* – having by that stage more experience than anyone else in leading ARC operations, plus her prior military experience – which would put her back above Hiro in the chain of command.
*Assuming it has to go to someone who can themselves be deployed, so that they can take clear command in the case of a major incident requiring multiple teams. We’ve seen no sign of Power Armour (e.g. Iron Man, Forever War, etc.) being available to ARC^, without which a Baseline Human probably doesn’t meet that level of fieldability.
^ Unless you count Icon, but [i] he’s a one-off (as far as we know?) and [ii] he’s an independent entity working for an allied but separate faction.
YES! GO MATH!
Note that she’s not exactly indicating any displeasure at his interest. That’s pretty blatant flirting, for anyone not a succubus. :)
Do you suppose that if she gave him a tumble, he would be a little bit less . . . well, Math?
Or maybe more?
after her, he might just be Algebra
That would mean Anvil will do even worse when sparring with him.
This must be like Highschool all over again for Cora; except Cora actually likes the person Hacking her. There is only one fitting punishment for Dabbler! Sex her up and then Metaphorically Blue Ball her! It worked in that one episode of, If the Emperor had a Text to Speech Device!
I doubt Dabbler would fall for that.
Remember, Dabbler has a Sexth Sense … she can sense actual arousal, and consequently the lack thereof, too.
The Daemonettes of Warhammer 40.000(like the blueballed one in TTS) do not have that kind of sense normally, they are just horny.
Essentially, even if the Deamonettes were succubi back in the days of the original Rogue Trader, they are not like the Succubi of the Grrl-verse, the PixieTrix-verse, or of several other “verses”.
They are merely constantly horny … if even that, as Slaanesh of WH40k has, the latest decades gotten less “pleasure” and more “excessive” …. a change i simply hate.
Sure, TTS’s Slaanesh is still as much of a pleasure-seeker as always, but that is sadly just TTs, currently.
Warhammer peaked early on, with Rogue Trader.
Their universe was slightly less grim, and game play was less about winning or losing and more about scratch built or kit bashed model building.
Blue skies above.
And below apparently.
Blue moons in the rear
Wait… What would happen if you set the Air Conditioner to such a Low Temperature that clouds couldn’t form?
What would we see then?
You would see the exact same thing because the clouds are projections and not physical manifestations of condensing water vapor.
Given DaveBarrack’s quote of:
Okay, for real, you’re probably wondering if Cora’s nimbus outfit reacts to wind. Well, obviously it does. It will start to look like it’s going to blow away and leave her bits out, but then the clouds reform on the other side out of nothing (like clouds do) so she stays Comics Code Approved at all times.
It seems that they do act in the same way as real clouds
This leaves soooo many options to play with! E.g. you could make it so that it looks like the wind tugs on the clouds and as it it just barely not manages to rip them away :D Or as if the clouds lean into the wind and try to form a barrier against it. Or you could make the clouds be somewhat transparent except in certain places. :-)
Oh my, I want access to the fine tuning options of this program.
The ‘clouds’ are part of the hologram, they aren’t real clouds!
Just because someone is a hard core meatarian doesn’t mean they have to be ‘tricked’ into eating vegetables (well, depends on the vegetables, some are just plain gross!)
that said, there’s some veggies that make meat taste better too, like onions and garlic!
No they don’t! That’s a matter of opinion.
I do like some vegetables, but most give me indigestion.
Like said: some a good, some are gross, which ones are what depends on the consumer
I refuse to ever eat anything that did not, at some point, have a face or part of a face.
Of if I am forced to do so, most likely because my enemies have gotten ahold of my loved ones and are holding them at crossbow-point, which happens far more often than I care to admit, I will hunt the food anyway. Hence why I always stab the baked potato and french fries before eating them, and I pour melted cheese on the cauliflower, much in the same way medieval warriors would pour hot oil on soldiers attacking a castle. Taste molten cheddar, infidels and enemies of the crown!
Nope, never eating cauliflower ever again, not even cauliflower in a cheese sauce
There are some vegetables will eat, and there are a lot won’t touch
Heh, liking the implication that the cloud cover is indicative of her… mood? (no, not mood, there is another word, that is currently not available right now :()
Arousal?
hey so long as its not an indication of fear….
Yes, ‘arousal’ sounds the correct word, thank you :D
And there are several possible items used to make vegetarian or vegan fajitas, besides the big mushrooms most people use. My personal favorite is the smoked dry tofu, regular tofu that’s been smoked until it resembles leather shoe soles. It has also been used as vegan jerky when it gets left in the smoker too long.
Something else I’ve heard of is zuchinni cut into strips and smoked until it has a meaty texture, but that one takes skill to stop the precise millisecond before it turns inedibly dry, a word Otto Korrekt keeps trying to change to indelibly.
tl;dr you don’t have to just use fungus.
Mushroom pieces, make me nauseated, however I can eat mushroom gravy.
The shoe leather tofu sounds nasty on multiple levels, but spagettified zucchini is great. Haven’t tried it in a fajita, but fry it with some olive oil, garlic, salt and Parmesan? Them’s good eats.
There’s even a special type of pumpkin whose flesh that falls apart into spageti-like strips when cooked.
I think it tastes terrible, but some people like it
Here in Denver, the noodles and Co people have been trying the zucchini noodles as a sub for the pasta. quite good for certain combos.
there is also Seitan (wheat based meat substitute) that I love (but avoid if you * actually * have Gluten sensitivity or be careful if have lysine deficiency, no i’m not kidding on that last one)
It does not seem like Cora entirely mind the attention from Math.
Well, its hardly surprising. She would not have a outfit like that if she were not a bit exhibitionistic, and liked being looked at.
And with Math, she does know she holds 100% of his focus wearing this :P
Daniel here. While we do know Cora has a gimp suit outfit, I’m curious if this is part of her “wardrobe” or did Dabbler program it in? Did Dabbler figure out what programming code the hardlight system uses & design it there & then (possible with Dabbler), or did she just come across it while scrolling through the existing outfits?
I’m guessing since Cora seems familiar with the outfits functions, it was already in her collection. Something I do know for sure is it’s too much for Screwball, he’s overheated and shut down looking at this. Some peace and quiet at last…
I would guess that Cora had that “cloudy with a chance of hooking up” option in her wardrobe options somewhere already. If Dabbler had programmed it on the fly, Cora would be far less likely to know all those details about how it works (viewer-dependent, the implication that the rain actually may be a visual indicator of . . . ahem . . . moisture, etc.).
It also seems like a cool option for the friskier sorts of costume parties, for instance. Not something she’d wear daily, or even often, but something Dabbler might have remembered from a previous get-together, perhaps.
Dabs needs a new codename: The Fan Servicer!
…. Yeah, it needs work, I know.
Hmm… never knew she had freckles and that last panel, she looked rather cute in.
Hard light/Hologram clothing fashion shows would be even more insane than normal fashion shows are.
I hope they happen during my lifetime…
I’m presuming there’s no word in Dabbler’s native language for “boundaries.”
…I’m not complaining. I’m just pointing it out.
Makes perfect sense for Dabbler. She just turned half the room into an ambient power source for her.
She does know boundaries, and enjoys discovering and exploring the individual boundaries of everyone she meets, and then subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) pushing them back
Hiro.
In the last panel:
Cora: “It’s not…indicative of anything going on behind the scenes. As far as you know.”
She sounds like there’s still room for a follow-up “At least, not just yet but hopefully soon” right about there.
I wonder how Maxima will react to this,maybe give Dabbler a cold, hard stare….!?!?
She needs to say only one word, Dabbler.
I love that she litterally has a silver lining.
Sploosh!! – Pam Poovie
Where in Texas are you? There’s enough South American restaurants in Houston, thanks to Michael Cordua, that chimichurri is fairly common.
I’m around Dallas. North of. It may be more of a factor with the restaurants I frequent. Me and the wife tend to find a half dozen restaurants we like and stick to them. If we know we like on place, we’re really bad about trying new places.
I’m way north of Dallas too.
Okay, I’m almost to Oklahoma.
You signing stuff at A-KON this year, or will you still be coping with the move?
Same here: why bother keep looking once you find a few places you enjoy (‘a few’ so you can change things up occasionally, depending on what you feel like eating or if one of the places is crowded, etc.)
Now I’m curious as to how the meatball size war ended up, I know one places up there did one of thoes silly 2k meatball and spaghetti with bread eat it an hour challenge, ( as in the meatball was 2 Kg, not counting the spagettii marinara and bread loaf)
Yeah, you can probably find just about any sort of food in existence in the Metroplex but is it worth dealing with the traffic? It’s not so bad out in some of the ‘burbs but you could end up with a two hour round trip. It had better be some good food for that.
For succubi, ‘P versus NP’ means being able to determine at one look, for an alien race of unknown biology, which things are Parts and which are Naughty Parts.
At first I was thinking that Dabbler would be looking at various aliens and determining “Penis versus No Penis,” but then I realized she’s not even slightly worried about the value of X where X equals the number of penises. Concave, convex, non-Euclidean . . . she’s pretty flexible when it comes to the geometry of sex organs.
(I’m assuming that X here is either zero or a positive whole number . . . but only because “fractional penis” sounds either painful or just unfortunate, and negative and irrational numbers of penises are really hard to wrap my head around . . . so to speak.)
Speaking of: we haven’t not seen X in a while, wonder how they are doing
X is right behind you.
They are the wall? Sit with back firmly against the wall (wondered why there is an occasional ‘lump’ when watching certain videos…)
1.57 Internets for you today. You may pick them up at the hat check counter.
If NP now stands for “naughty parts” then NP-Hard problems are even MORE suggestive.
@DaveB How about panel 3 without speech bubbles as an incentive?
Seeing this how is Math still alive?
His “stare at boobs till they get boring” therapy plan must be working. Otherwise he’d have either had an aneurysm or passed out from all the blood rushing to his pants by now.
that and its also possible that the artist is not into the nosebleed trope for reasons.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-545/
Or maybe he is.
I think that was more of the artist doing his usual humorous/ serious take on tropes.
Which actualy May explain the fan backlash on the earlier head thumping Leon took, when you think about it.
Today’s installment doesn’t advance the story or character development.
The next one will probably be a “Meanwhile….”
The refugees.
Deus.
The public.
The government.
Or…… “8 hours later…”
This page is fan service. Fan service happens to be an important part of this comic.
Complaint Rejected!
It’s setting up a Chekhov’s Gun. Don’t worry, it’s 100% plot related, just give it time. ;)
Which ‘story’ in particular are you talking about? And whose character hasn’t been developed by this page?
Remember: this isn’t an ‘action’ webic, this is a webic about the day-to-day life of an atypical super-nerd suddenly finding herself in a world of highly sexy supers
Kinda tired of the comments by folk saying Dave ain’t doing his comic right. You think you know better how the story oughta go? Well make your own damn comic then.
I just adore Cora. I know she isn’t part of the team, but I really wish she would stick around. I particularly liked her Naga mode. It looked very neat.
I assume it watches surrounding eyes. Bet if you have cybernetic eyes, or high-tech glasses, you could do something to make them untrackable.
Love the way the Lightning curves around her thighs. considering those are actually a thin layer of “clothes”. very nice attention to detail.
How serendipitous would it be if Deus’s laughter got added after the lightning effects.
I’d expect Harem to vorp out in a panic.