Grrl Power #908 – Bombast industrial complex
Ok, so that last panel, hopefully you can tell what’s happening there, but it’s a little small. I should have zoomed in more on Cora’s eyes. Basically she’d getting an alert. I think a lot of you have guessed the source at this point.
Honestly, if there was a real superhero fight happening in the middle of a city, I would be shocked if there weren’t a dozen people within fifty feet trying to not only film the battle, but selfie it. The only reason that’s not happening here is I don’t want to spend hours drawing a bunch of dumbasses at the fringes of each panel.
I don’t know what the conversion rate from Quatloos to Ameribucks is, but in that original ToS episode, the alien gamers started at like, 15 quatloos, and it maxed out at around 5,000, which seemed like pretty massive stakes. It could be like… 50 dollars to the quatloo? Or maybe it’s 10 quats to the buck, and those Triskelion gamers just thought they were high rollers. I like to think the quatloo has a high inherent value, and if you tried to buy a single tootsie roll with one the clerk would give you a dirty look, and have to give back a handful of Singloos, Doubloos, and Triploos as change.
Check the vote incentive to see Sydney in her jim-jams. Check Patreon to see her… not in her jim-jams.
So. It would seem rather a lot of you enjoyed Sydney’s pinup debut. Or at least thought the idea had enough potential that you’d check it out over at Patreon. (Yes, her mouth is probably a little big. It’s been pointed out, and I agree. Staring at a picture too long can make you forget what actual humans look like I guess. If I can tweak it without it looking odd I’ll try and do so in the next few days.)
Hopefully you decide to stick around and enjoy the high res comics in between the pinups. Obviously I will have to do a little bit of pandering to those of you who enjoy a slighter figure on a lady. Like it would be such a burden to have to do pinups of Pixel or Krona. Or Pixel and Krona. Hmm. Now I’m getting ideas.
![Lost Bonds (Binding Words Book 6) by [Daniel Schinhofen]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41f7okwGqNL.jpg)
One of my favorite novel series has a six-qual out. Binding Words 6 is available! It’s a doozy so far. Haven’t finished it as of writing this post, but it’s got some feels.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. 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.
And Sydney’s message finally arrives.
You mean, she finally remembered that her glasses could send messages…
No, keep in mind that this fight was happening while she was looking for a place to drop the stasis box. She just got nabbed by Concretia during the conversation above.
I’m wondering when this message (that Cora just received) was sent, relative to Sydney getting nabbed vs when cloaked guys showed up – there were a few minutes between those events, right?
pretty good chance the loud, “Now!” activated the glasses and she was pretending to be talking to an invisible AI to throw off those men that she was using a com device that Concretia missed. The things she was saying were coded like “punch them” informing Cora the people she is looking at are the enemy, getting Dabbler (who may be seeing this conversation with her cybernetic eye and might be able to use a gate spell (she is a demon sorceress that is a pretty standard spell for them) to get to Sydney quickly; and talking about ghosts when looking at Concretia.
Basically informing her rescue part of the situation, looking around a lot so they can see her situation; while throwing off her would be kidnappers by making them think she’s just crazy.
We should see in a moment, but I think the “Now!” occurred AFTER 2 way comm was established, so she could have a conversation to layer in the info you note.
Here I was thinking it was just her figuring out the prisoners kinks.
Good call, err, so to speak. :)
Seems like we almost have confirmation that Sydney did NOT talk to imaginary friend/orb AI/got crazy(ier), but to very real Cora. She just served it like that to confuse the bad guys. That’s should be worth level or two in Poker face mastery.
Speaking to her imaginary friend concealed her secret text messaging eye movements.
Halo uses secret text messaging! It’s super effective!
Maybe Max is just having fun.
Also I think that’s Sydney calling – or at least her hardware got some tripline tripped….
Remember that the Gamesters of Triskalon were just brains in domes, not really embedded in a larger economy. “Quatloos” were the equivalent of pennies in a penny ante game, just tokens so they could keep track.
We never did hear a conversion rate between quatloos and, for example, the value of a good fighter. Since there were only a half dozen warriors on the planet, you’d think it would be considerable.
DaveB is a proud member of the Webcomic/Industrial Complex.
Saying those two words, that’s a gagging.
Cora, over to you.
what kind of gag?- some are more useful than others….
For use of the ‘IC’ phrase? Sandpaper and broken glass.
that is the opposite of a gag. spider, dental, ball, knot, tape, and bridle these are gags.
Hood with integral inflatable butterfly gag.
For when you only get to pick one thing but want it to do many things. ;)
Ba-dm-tssh!
Gotta have proper mouth feel *snicker*
If we’re going to be doing a little S&M, just remember that my safety word is “Oww!”
Mouthfeel.
Great callback.
Well it sounds like these aliens live in “Space-America”.
Yet I expect just as most of the world doesn’t have many of these Industrial-Complexes pushing society in certain directions, it’s the same with the cultures throughout the Galaxy.
Which makes me wonder, which planet has “Space-Bobbies” patrolling it?
What’s “Space-Glasgow” like?
Etc.
I mean, even with super advanced tech and weapons, the area in which a set of rules can be effectively enforced is more or less inversely proportional to the number of rules that need to be enforced without resorting to a militaristic dictatorship that effectively enslaves the populace one way or another, and those don’t tend to last very long, especially on a large scale and with super advanced tech and weapons. As such it is pretty safe to assume that any galactic civilization is going to be fairly light on rules, with local municipalities (planets, colonies, etc.) having more or less rules to the taste of the locals. Even if there are a lot of rules, given how incredibly difficult it would be to effectively police an entire galaxy there isn’t likely to be particularly effective law enforcement for anything but the biggest crimes.
The default economic system is capitalism (as in, any economy that isn’t restricted by rules is eventually going to devolve back into capitalism eventually), so if there either aren’t many rules or isn’t much law enforcement (which has effectively the same result) then it is pretty safe to assume that capitalism is the system they use, and that it’s rather unlikely that there would be much in the way of restrictions on said system of capitalism. And as anyone living in the US and bothering to actually think about it can tell you, without at least some restrictions capitalism can very quickly run away with itself, especially in vital industries like those discussed in the comic above, but also health care, food distribution, shelter distribution, etc.
Granted, all of this assumes that alien societies would be even remotely compatible with our own, it is entirely possible that there could be aliens that have no concept of greed or corruption, but I find it highly unlikely that such a species would develop into a spacefaring one. Orange and blue moralities could also result in wildly different economic systems, but that’s kind of pointless to speculate on here (which shouldn’t stop anyone from doing so if they are so inclined, but my post is long enough already so I’m not gonna bother right now).
The time Sydney spent on that dyson sphere space station (I forget the name) suggests that DaveB came to a similar conclusion on what a galactic economy would look like, and this comic further confirms it. Most other scifi that I am familiar with also agrees that that is more or less the end result of a galactic economy. Not making any value judgements, saying that it’s right or wrong, or what an economy should or shouldn’t be (although I think my opinions might have leaked in a bit in some places, not awake enough to properly opinion-proof myself right now, sorry), just that it makes perfect logical sense that a galactic economy would look rather similar to the US economy, for better or worse.
When developing the Ju-el empire I though a great deal on that and ended up with the same sorts of levels of government you see in larger nations only extended further, city, county, state, federal, just add global, and then imperial.
A typical invasion motto, “your civilization shall be permitted to retain its culture and laws so long as they do not conflict with our greater laws and those our localization agents determine are needed for the long term advancement and betterment of your species as a whole”
-that last part mostly relating to true universal healthcare, housing, supply chains, equal treatment, equal rights, being free to do whatever you please within reason (reason being so long as the actions do not harm others or interfere with their rights) and so on.
The Ju-el like the soft sell a civilization when they can; but do have a manifest destiny approach to all human civilizations joining them and becoming them; even if they do adjust their technological levels per Earth/Human world invaded so the tech is recognizable and the next generation or two with life time exposure and reasonable operate and understand the basics of it; resulting in different Ju-el worlds looking very different from each other. But controlling a vast Empire is less “I am the Empress I rule all” and more “technically we are all one Empire as we follow the same guidelines, and had trade and resource and aid exchange with one another but at the local level we retain our distinct cultural identity”
really its the most stable way to have an empire.
on the orange-blue morality thing. I have always felt this idea doesn’t exist within a species but is always an outsider’s view point. Different species developing different norms and taboos, heck within the same species culture shock is thing…and usually affects you over small things you mistook for universal and the stress of being the outsider really gets to a social creature like a human. But at a greater level just trying to understand how say some giant fuzzy tentacle alien (Ki’an’ta) could regard you as only a clever animal and be kept as a pet; yet their pet laws and enrichment should clearly indicate they think you are sapient and deserving of full rights; yet they still regard you as a pet but not in a beneath them property way…while others (Ki’ran and Van’toase) do think that and may have trade with them and conflicts over treatment of “animals” as a result; but closer examination shows they are just so complicated that a human couldn’t hope to keep up with them on just daily though processes. But that mental uncanny valley where they think abducting you from a back road while driving, putting you in a mental adjustment pod to induce dream based socialization skills, and then sell you like a house cat; is all perfectly fine; but physical acts of cruelty are not; they regarded the former as an act of kindness even if for you it is not…and you see the comparison with taking in a stray cat. Which you may think I just said was a bad thing; but I didn’t. But did I just say human enslavement is a good thing? No, I didn’t, I also didn’t describe slavery, but imprisonment against your will by something that believes and may in a sense (health and physical safety) be doing you a favor even if socially from your perspective and that of your friends and family they just committed an atrocity.
In short, orange and blue morality is a product of perspective. Its all grey but at different angles.
Also, considering the ultimate response to refusal to follow a rule is summary execution of the offender (see what happens when you fight back against the enforcement arm), advanced societies would be hesitant to create too many rules at all since they would likely have advanced to a point where it’s abhorrent to essentially threaten to kill someone over cigarette sales or not getting permission from a code authority to install a light switch (two real examples from the US).
A society that relies on extensive centralized authority could never function enough to get to space in the first place as such a society will fritter away resources and manpower on rules enforcement.
Any society that only had the one level of “correctional action” would not last a week. Killing a young adult for harming young plants? That’s a waste of twenty years of training.
I got that reference!
That series was the biggest disappointment to me…
It had some great episodes. They were far between, though.
Yesterday’s Enterprise, for example. Completely redeemed the whole “kill Tasha Yar in the stupidest way possible just as she’s starting to become a competent security officer” event.
“A society that relies on extensive centralized authority could never function enough to get to space in the first place as such a society will fritter away resources and manpower on rules enforcement.” – “LaughingTarget
Depends entirely on the mindset of the People involved. For an excessively individualistic society such as the contemporary USA, you’re probably right. For a society whose people are naturally accustomed to strongly-led co-operation, and which has adequate (to them) feedback between levels of authority – easy to imagine even with Humans, let alone other Peoples – the sky is not the limit. They would probably be far ahead of us by now, simply through not wasting time and resources on showing off and petty one-upmanship.
I could imagine also any civilzation that has a relatively single minded focus on a goal that is not selfish – whether that’s put in their heads through:
– evolution
– programming (machine civilization or something manufactured to switch to GO TO SPACE NOW mode with some trigger they aren’t conscious of)
– a critical mass of the population feeling like they will die if they don’t do something now (huge asteroid, disease, climate catastrophe, etc.)
– or any other might-as-well-be-magic that can get a BUNCH of people all put on the same goal, even if their day-to-day lives aren’t affected very much
– a space faring opponent
– a competition to beat something or someone
– driving curiosity
SHOW US WHAT YOU GOT
In other words either requiring a species with an expand its territory drive, intense curiosity and need to explore, but a eusocial species with high intelligence has the advantage…to a point.
Intelligence and imagination are not the same thing. A highly intelligent species with great pattern recognition doesn’t necessarily always advance quickly due to lacking the ability to imagine something they’ve never seen and doesn’t exist as far as they know and then strive to make it exist. Likewise you remove intelligence from that imaginative species and you end up with something believing things they made up and never capable actually achieving anything.
It is possible it is one Hell of a balancing act to really advance beyond a certain point. Not even taking into account the dozens of other ways nature can just screw over a species that set the number of goals higher, put them in a situation that makes it harder (like an environment poor in resources or marine where a number of technology can’t be achieved resulting in an extra goal before the stars *dry and realize how to manipulate and insulate advanced tech*; or something as simple as (smart, imagantive, but your grasping limbs either suck or are non-existent), or short life span, or being tiny (although this may actually help if the environment isn’t too hostile early on in development…more free time to think and develop when your species requires less energy and space to grow food). But it can also make certain technologies to advance either less necessary so become common place later on, or too hazardous…social limitations.
Heck for humans the circumstances that allowed the Industrial Age to kick off were historically a fluke. Human society normally developed to a point and then either imploded due to rival political factions, isolated themselves, or natural disaster took them out, ect…heck the dark ages of Europe were because they intentionally threw out all the advancements made by pre-Christian Roman Empire, including hygiene and medical discoveries.
The soviets May not have persisted, but they went to space.
Technically speaking the NAZI’s were even the first to send something to space.
The Chinese have a very centralized government and photographed the dark side of the moon.
Yes, they all spend staggering amounts of man power to stay centralized, but going to space is appearantly not harmed enough by this financial restriction.
Even that is potentially selling the potential short. The Soviet and Chinese-Communist regimes are/were relatively new (only a few generations), and exist(ed) in a multilateral world with other regimes of very different philosophies. Given enough history that co-operation is simply ‘the way things are done’, and without the disruptive influences of ‘the West’ tempting into corruption, the need for expenditure on countering such corruption is minimised.
Just for my curiosity, why didn’t you name the NAZI-regime as relatively new. Technically it was younger than the Soviet-regime and seated in a less stable country than the Soviet-regime.
The temptation to corruption will always be there, especially in a situation were few people control most of the power, just as outside disruptive influences.
Don’t forget that, while it’s true the West was pretty disruptive, it got and gets disrupted just as hard or even harder by those regimes and yet thrives at least significantly better than the USSR.
Also while it was the disruptive power of the west that put Lenin on the throne and motivated Stalin to put Mao in charge the most destabilizing and unethical powers for their continued existence have thrived in situations “the West” had little power over their way of ruling.
Don’t misunderstand me I’m not stating that aristocratic/semi-democratic and/or monocratic governments always fail, they’ve effectively ruled for millennia, nor am I stating that communism is unfeasible or totally impossible to do stable, but I do argue that especially pure centralised governments risk destabilization. I do of ourse have historic precedent for my claim: in European history the kingdoms started destabalising the moment they started to centralize and in this case the only thing there was, were stabilizing forces and their countries were ridiculously old. “What kind of destablasation?”, you ask. First I will show you examples in their building: Charles V kind lost a war to his own vassals and Phillip II lost the Netherlands when he tried removed the grand privilege.
Second I will show you examples after their building: two generations after Louis the XIV’ centraliztion his centralized government was smashed by the people it controlled in the french revolution indirectly taking the entirety of Europe with it by the hands of Napoleon, short after which the Great war ended most of the power of the ancient regime.
I’d left out Nazi Germany on two grounds, based on the context for which I was taking examples.
The first is a question of technical definitions: what we count as ‘going to space’. They did lead the development of rocketry from kilogram-scale sounding rockets to ton-payload ballistic missiles, and may have briefly crossed the Kármán line in doing so, but they were still well short of the ability to put an object into stable orbit.
The second is a question of (potential) stability. I was aiming for examples of reasonably (meta)stable centralised systems which had demonstrated spacefaring capability, to show that centralisation need not be a barrier to long-term progress. Nazi Germany never really had the same chance to prove whether or not its system could be stable in the long term, nor how well the theory would remain intact when tested against reality. They lacked the resource base to make an autonomous go of it, and in attempting to expand to secure such resources instead secured their downfall. In theory, a Führer-state need not be any less stable than any other system (and in the best case, may be more stable and better-led than most). In reality, the man with the charisma to become Führer in 1933 lacked the capabilities or the priorities to make best use of the system.
I agree that an ‘especially pure’ centralised system can be more vulnerable to problems at the centre – that’s why two-way feedback between layers is necessary – but I’d say it’s a stretch to draw direct inference from those historical examples. Centralisation may have made the stakes greater, but generally it was the people in the top positions that were the problem rather than the existence of the positions per se. In many cases also, the ‘starting to centralise’ was in response to significant changes in technology allowing such; the true destabilising force was the rapid change in technology, and its knock-on effects on society.
We are lucky the previous popular social networking service got usurped. It would be weird referring to space-Myspace.
space-facebook isn’t much better. space-twitter and space-instagram have an ok ring to them
Friendstar’s servers are powered by tik-tokamak
its just Spacebook, don’t need the face in there, cuz some aliens don’t have faces after all.
It’s obviously called Spacebook.
Spacebook,
Spitter,
Spacetegram
Space-America is a weird place;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43LCg8F2T4k
To be honest Sydney’s collar being removed and her cut off call should just before this reached the other members of team with working collars; although the glasses are likely to include a location via quantum entangled or sub space communication systems being able to identify message sources without the use of satellites for GPS (I missed out on the conversation people had a few pages back on that but don’t think anyone mentioned those nifty options).
I am guessing the loud, “Now!” activated this communication. and as guessed everything Sydney said was coded with Cora on the receiving end such as “what does now mean” and Sydney mentions punching those people passing on the message to attack the people in front of her.
Sounds about right. I hope they have the means to get there in time. Sydney estimated 3 minutes till they arrive, but it may take longer if the flying super interferes or maybe the flying super will warn her bosses that they have incoming. I hope they get to Sydney in time.
So long as Dabbler isn’t totally out of commission she should have a gate spell to lock into Sydney and get them there.
I assume Dabbler got the ability to fly at least. I am assuming this thinking that is what the end of Sydney’s conversation was. Cora telling her she will get Dabbler and they will fly there, Sydney says Dabbler can’t fly, but Cora replying that she can now.
Last time we saw Dabbler fly, she was riding Hiro.
(I’m not sure that came out right ;-)
Yes, she was planning on charging her powers while he flew her.
Is that what they’re calling it these days?
If by “they” you mean succubi then yes.
It was originally going to be a more specific comment on the Air Force ‘flying her’, but Hiro joined ARC from the Army instead.
thinking the orb AI reference may be the remark of glasses clippy well probly when connected cora showed up in hard light augmented reality mode. thus not there like the comm orb ghost double. but played it off as orb AI instead.
thus the telling AI in orb to fly off and get dabbler so on
Just like Max’s collar being shredded by a grenade would have. They’ve been busy.
yeah but the team was there to see what caused that and if HQ called in about Maxima’s collar, quick report (it got blown off by a grenade); although overlapping time wise not clear how far apart the two collars being disabled actually are. But Sydney’s collar being disabled while calling in something is a tad more cause for alarm than Maxima.
Most law enforcement operates by “consent”. I.E. they do not have the personnel to deal with a populace that is straight up ignoring the law and being actively unhelpful to police.
When a region collectively withdraws its support of the law the police effectively become one gang amongst many other gangs. They might even not have the most “gang” members or be the most well funded.
There are regions of India (I am led to believe) where the police are regarded to be so corrupt that no-one will talk to them even to report crimes. In some of these regions the local business leaders pay a somewhat independent company to police the locality, thereby bypassing the “official” police department.
I guess the local business hasn’t been paying their local “independent company” that well for the unofficial policing: Local “Police” is nowhere to be seen, not even to deal with the bystanders.
And while we’re at it, the Capitol hasn’t been “paying” their “independent” company, too. “Some of these regions” with corrupt police seems to include an area called DC.
The police are always just another gang. Gangs have the ability to try to fulfill all of the roles that police do, they just normally don’t, because that’s hard. It may not even be something they’re interested in doing.
That said, a gang that really wanted to end the police because of thinking that the police were worse for the people than their other rivals would be well advised to co-opt all of the roles that the police take on that they do not feel are problematic. People talk about defunding police, but that won’t happen unless there’s an alternative. Camden, New Jersey provided that option by juggling government levels. But that’s not the only way to do it.
Of course, that only has any hope of actually working when the police are enough of a problem that a region has partially withdrawn its support of the police. It’s also worth noting that it could draw additional fire from the police, as it’s a bigger threat to their organization than killing cops. But that’s only a real risk if the police are engaged enough to notice. If the police are just being a problem because they’re overworked and taking short cuts, it could instead actually help to resolve the police problem more directly.
The differences between a gang and a law enforcement agency are thus:
Funding
Accountability
Institutional Support (which does matter when big problems arise; your local gang can’t call the FBI or National Guard for help.)
Equipment
And Facilities
In a country like America, I won’t comment on others, it borders on almost impossible for a gang to effectively replace a police force on any significant scale.
“they just normally don’t, because that’s hard. It may not even be something they’re interested in doing.”
Definitely the latter more than the former.
The average thug and/or thief has no real desire to be an alt-cop.
There are the occasional counter-examples, albeit rare. They tend to be cases where an existing large organisation is combined with exceptionally poor (or poorly-resourced) official services, plus some sort of ‘nudge’ to prompt the move. And they do, as noted, tend to operate on a relatively bottom-up ‘administration’ scale rather than having the larger-scale plans and connections to handle the very big ‘government’ stuff.
In many areas of Brazil, for instance, drug gangs are apparently far more able and willing to provide security and leadership than the official Government. While Bolsonaro et al dismiss the pandemic as “a little flu” and make absurd anti-vaccination claims, the Comando Vermelho in Rio organised and enforced a curfew on grounds that “We want the best for the population. If the government is unable to manage, organised crime resolves.” I’m sure they have their own reasons and expected benefits for doing so, but one need not be an angel to do good.
Funding, Accountability, Equipment and Facilities is something law enforcement SHOULD have, but there are cases where they DONT. Poor countries means little funding, equipment and facilities and corruption means low accountability.
Vehemence did get his arm incinerated so Cora isn’t that far off.
When it comes to a perp resisting arrest, police are authorized to escalate one level higher than the amount of resistance being shown by the perp.
When Vehemence was just standing around & watching, no one took time or effort to stop him.
When Vehemence announced that he was going to join the fight, ARCSwat responded by telling him that he would be arrested if he did.
When Vehemence started fighting, he also pointed out that he didn’t really want to see anyone killed…He just wanted to keep the violence going & he also knew that the Law Enforcers wouldn’t resort to killing if they could stop him without killing. However, as he kept getting stronger & escalated the fighting he ran the risk of getting maimed…Which is what Max did by blowing his arm off. Even after Vehemence regenerated his arm & said that he didn’t come to actually kill anybody except Maxima (because he realized that she was the only one who really could escalate enough to kill him).
Vehemence was lucky that Sydney’s team-plan got him captured & she gave him one last chance to stand down before Max really would kill him.
Escalation of resistance leads to escalation of force to stop the resistance.
It’s amazing how many seemingly trivial acts are such that the next level for police is apparently deadly force. Especially if your flesh has more melanin than mine.
Your connecting of imaginary dots is noted. The ratio of deadly interactions to total interactions, and deaths in similar circumstances, is not markedly in either direction when you account for the details.
One way you support your illusion is by counting things like Trayvon Martin into your mix… a violent black teen who physically assaulted a Hispanic neighborhood watchman and was shot in the resulting struggle. That’s not about police.
Yea, yea it is.
Whites and Blacks are killed by police is about equal numbers in the absolute, and whites are just just as prone to violence as blacks per capita. That *sounds* equal until you realize whites outnumber blacks 9 to 1. That means that blacks are nine times more likely to be killed by the police per-crime.
One need to look no further than the difference in the riots in Seattle vs the riots in DC.
Seattle cops got violent, multiple dead. Only one or two dead by non-cop hands. Riots by whites in DC got violent, multiple people dead, congress stormed, a bozo was shouting in the senate while the senetors and reps cowered in a bunker, and the predominately white rioters… peacefully escorted out by the police.
Detla vote incentive when? ^^
The Peel theory of policing, which Western police supposedly descend from, is that the police are just citizens doing full time what any citizen is entitled to do.
Of course, Cora’s track record doesn’t exclude her thinking regular citizens are entitled to melt femurs.
In a lot of places, especially in North America, the sheer distances involved make policing things problematic at best. When it takes 30 minutes for even the most disciplined and devoted police to respond to an emergency call due to lack of roads or access to landing areas for helicopters, things get dicey. That leaves aside a few places I have lived where you did NOT go out into the woods without a 12 gauge loaded with slugs. Shooting a grizzly bear with anything smaller just tends to make them mad.
We can argue about cops all day long and never agree. There are good ones, bad ones and indifferent ones. There are places law enforcement works and places it doesn’t. I see so many people advocating anarchy. Funny thing though. I bet few, if any have ever lived anywhere with true anarchy. If they had? They wouldn’t be so loud. Tends to draw fire.
The distances might well be an issue in the boonies of the Dakotas, but in NYC or some other big city?
in places like New York, Seattle, Portland, or Chicago, police response times can be drastically shorter, if you’re well connected and wealthy, while they expand geometrically if you’re not. It has nothing to do with distance and everything to do with the agency being just that corrupt and/or apathetic. When I lived on the south end of Camano Island we had to call the police to come collect a guy who was beating his girfriend in our driveway. took them 30 minutes-which is how long it takes to drive from the Island County annex. When I lived in Everett, I had to call the cops on a housebreaker, it took them thirty minutes to respond, and the police station was a five minute walk from my apartment. These were both in the same State, one was the cops coming as fast as they could (literally) and the other was coming when it was convenient. Had I lived in a better area of Everett, the response time might’ve been as fast as fifteen minutes.
Part of that difference in response times is likely to be down to the urgency and nature of the situation. For an assault in progress, minutes can save or change lives. For a slower-paced property crime such as burglary, the time factor is less important, and something with greater need of a fast response can easily take priority.
It’s basic queue theory, actually. A wealthier area has more tax base and more to steal, so they fund more police, and get faster average response time. But the response time itself is going to vary based on what other competing priorities there are at the moment of the call.
Also, an area that cooperates with and supports police is going to get better response time than one that doesn’t, because they have less worry about being attacked.
Cops in my very sizable city routinely require over 60 minutes to respond to emergency 911 calls, if they do at all. Remember that the police have no legal duty to protect citizens. The police exist to protect the Public Interest (i.e. city property) and keep the peace. They are not responsible if bad things happen to individuals that could have been prevented with faster response times. Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_of_Castle_Rock_v._Gonzales
Yup, people tend to forget that cops are not their to protect them but the community
You often see it when people call for the removal of the cops… until they need the cops personally
The Public Interest comprises not just City Property, but all property (the tax base). It’s just that the government or public property is a more direct responsibility.
Your comment reminds me of a science fiction short story written decades ago by Larry Niven. I forget the titlle, but in the story there were these parks where people could go and be free to do whatever they want, so long as they didn’t get violent with others. So there were lots of people walking around naked, having sex in public, experimenting with drugs, and whatnot.
It was all enforced by these floating drones equipped with stunners that could knock out anyone that got unruly. Then, some genius with more intelligence than sense created a jamming device that knocked down all the drones (and accidentally also disabled the exits to the park, locking everyone inside) as part of a “sociological experiment” about anarchy. Things very quickly got very bad indeed.
“Cloak of Anarchy” by Larry Niven.
Yep, that’s the one. It was in a book collection of some of his short stories when I read it: my father had a whole library full of old (from my perspective) sci fi like that.
I thought you were going to say the story of the alien invasion where an amoeboid race was coming down to earth to decide how dangerous humans were, so they could decide whether to invade.
Their scale was based on how big, how fast, how belligerent and how smart the species is. Any species that can beat another must be higher on the scale. And, of course, adults must be higher on the scale than juveniles of any species.
They land in the boondocks and one of them is attacked and killed by a grizzly bear. which is almost off their scale.
After killing that one with several ray guns, they locate and monitor another grizzly and witness a wolverine (which is small relative to the grizzly) take the grizzly’s food away. So the wolverine is totally off the scale, but at least it shows no sign of true sapience.
Now the wolverine goes home to the cottage where it has been raised as a pet by a little human girl. She bats it on the nose for disappearing, and it rolls over in loving submission. Given the size of the cottage door, this is just just a child of the local sapients, prevailing over a creature that is more deadly than they can measure.
The conquerors flee the planet in horror.
My favorite example of a ‘doesn’t understand Earth’ story is two junior space anthropologists get assigned to study Earth. They set up their cloaked observatory in a woods near a New England town around September with a strict ‘no contamination’ rule. Shortly after arrival one of the pair is walking through the woods to get a closer look at the town and snags his hazmat suit on a branch, causing a rip. He hurries back to their shelter to patch the hole and check himself for possible infection. All looks well until a few weeks later when all the leaves on the local vegetation start to change color and fall to the ground. They think to themselves “Oh no! We infected the planet with our germs and everything is dying! We are never going to get another assignment.”
I remember that one. They were from a planet with no axial tilt, thus no seasons. (Must have been a near circular orbit also.)
I believe they were actually called ‘Anarchy Parks”…
“No police” has been tried in real life too. A notable example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray-Hill_riot
One thing that everyone seems to forget-
The VERY first rule that was pounded into my head the very first day I started training as a paramedic was ‘If the scene is not safe, you do not go in!’. it is still the primary rule to this very day for very good reason. If paramedics or firefighters rush in and get hurt, who saves them?
It is all interconnected. if you want 911 response to an accident or fire, you BETTER make sure your scene is secure or they won’t come in. Lots of places they don’t go already because it simply isn’t safe.
Or do you want the wonderful future of the old Shadowrun games where EMS and firefighters were tactical teams with heavy weapons, body armor and armored vehicles. That was a fun RPG to play, but I wouldn’t want to live there.
The quote “The police are the public and the public are the police.” is about transparency in law enforcement, NOT and indicator that private citizens are empowered (or even generally allowed) to enforce the law.
I can just see the average citizen trying to correctly quote the Miranda Act… Bet there are VERY few judges that would take their word for it, if it came up in court (in the unlikely instance it ever went to court).
And most cops in real life have the MA on a ‘cheat sheet’ so there is no misunderstandings or faulty memory issues
Far too many people in the US see TV and movies as truth and don’t bother looking for facts. Hell, I grew up with ‘The Dukes of Hazzard’ and actually thought you could jump chasms, cars, rivers and other things in real life with regular cars and not destroy them. Then I found out how many cars they utterly wrecked in each episode. (@3) Then there was the depiction of the cops, which was about as realistic as the jumping.
My father used to say that the two things the US had the world cornered on were ignorance and apathy. He said that ‘I don’t know and I don’t care.’ should be the motto in today’s US. I think he was right.
I dread where we are going when open treason is broadcast on national TV and lauded by many as ‘right’.
The narrative you follow is understandable. However, if running intel ops against the sitting president of the United States, who you know is not h=and has never been under the control of a foreign power, is not treason, then trying to win an election using constitutional chicanery is also not treason.
Trump gathered a crowd ELSEWHERE when those yahoos (a mixed group of far-right and far-left, with some generic touristy types wandering in as well) broke into the Capital building. (Which has happened many times before.)
And, in case you missed the details in the middle of the media misdirection, the pipe bombs and molotovs were targeted at the RNC Headquarters nearby, not at the capital.
I knew that. My sister works in DC.
That said? I don’t CARE what a former president says or does. The fact that foreign powers routinely interfere in our elections is irrelevant since we just as routinely interfere in theirs. Turnabout is fair play and all is fair in love and war after all. The medal for second best in diplomacy/spying/war is a headstone.
But the very thought of a certain orange haired galoot actually caring about America or the American people is almost as ludicrous as Hench Wench actually having a chance of beating Maxima. Almost.
Funny thing. When people tell me lies and tell other people what THEY want to hear even if it flatly contradicts the lies that were said to me, I tend not to trust those people. Odd, I know.
If someone gives different, incompatible stories to different people, you don’t have to know whether any of those stories were true to know that they lied to somebody.
Not saying that Boss Hogg and Sherriff Roscoe P. Coltraine weren’t corrupt, but the Dukes were an entire family of criminals who would go around breaking the law even if Hogg wasn’t around
Hael, they even mention more than a few times that RPC almost caught them running ‘shine, which was (and possibly still is?) illegal in those hills
The USA is not exactly known for its adherence to Peelian principles…
1. To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment. (i.e. completely the opposite of a heavily militarised police force and excessively punitive justice system)
2. To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfil their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour, and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect. (i.e. “Black Lives Matter”, AND completely the opposite of a heavily militarised police force who harass and racially profile minorities until they have no trust in the police force)
3. To recognise always that to secure and maintain the respect and approval of the public means also the securing of the willing co-operation of the public in the task of securing observance of laws. (i.e. completely the opposite of a heavily militarised police force who harass and racially profile minorities until they have no trust in the police force)
4. To recognise always that the extent to which the co-operation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives. (i.e. completely the opposite of a heavily militarised police force who harass and racially profile minorities until they have no trust in the police force)
5. To seek and preserve public favour, not by pandering to public opinion, but by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws, by ready offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humour, and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life. (i.e. “Black Lives Matter” AND completely the opposite of a heavily militarised police force who harass and racially profile minorities until they have no trust in the police force)
6. To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient to obtain public co-operation to an extent necessary to secure observance of law or to restore order, and to use only the minimum degree of physical force which is necessary on any particular occasion for achieving a police objective. (i.e. “Black Lives Matter”, AND completely the opposite of a heavily militarised police force and excessively punitive justice system)
7. To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence. (i.e. corrupt cops should be fired & arrested, not put on paid leave and maybe moved to a different station)
8. To recognise always the need for strict adherence to police-executive functions, and to refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary of avenging individuals or the State, and of authoritatively judging guilt and punishing the guilty. (i.e. completely the opposite of a heavily militarised police force who shoot first & cover-up later, including planting evidence to frame their victims for crimes they did not commit)
9. To recognise always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them. (i.e. completely the opposite of a heavily militarised police force who shoot first & cover-up later, including planting evidence to frame their victims for crimes they did not commit)
I might point out that the USA is not the only country considered to be “Western” – even if it is one of the most influential
True, but it is the country that the events depicted in the comic are taking place in, and (as such) the one applicable to Cora’s current situation.
Point taken, but
1) I was responding in the context of Brett Bellmore’s comment, which makes a statement about Western countries and the Peel theory of policing, and then moves on to talk about Cora.
2) Cora doesn’t necessarily have any clue what country she’s in, or the particulars of the laws or policing theories that apply to it (especially in terms of how they compare to a different western country that she is extremely unlikely to have been briefed on, if dabbler or Maxima thought that would be wise should Cora be sticking around for a while and tagging along with the team)
3) Military Police will have potentially different everything (funding, laws, courts, training, etc) when compared to domestic police
It’s possible that Cora is still struggling with the concept of a planet with different individually governed countries
In all the stories about different planets, they are all singly governed (usually because they tend to be a planet with a single large surface area, rarely are they as ‘splintered’ geographically as Dirt)
NoNameFred wasn’t talking about military police, they were talking about domestic beat cops as being as heavily armed as front line soldiers
I know there were a few Star Trek episodes and a Stargate narrative or two that had planets containing two or three nations (although they were almost universally at war, or were otherwise obviously made to have multiple countries for the plot to continue)
but yeah, certainly most sci-fi simplifies things as having a planetary government
I also recall in the Speaker for the Dead series, that each country from Earth had one or more planets that were colonized and so the culture and languages of occupants were derived from those original colonists – it might make a certain sense that with enough planetary real-estate, each planet COULD become as homogenous as countries on Earth are today (which is to say, somewhat)
Oh give it a fucking rest!
The police are not the ones responsible for crime or violence as you would like to believe
You want to know why the police are now heavily militarised? It was because of an incident in the 80’s when extremely heavily armed robbers (ie armed with assault riffles and body armour) robbed a bank in a wealthy part of L.A.
The police are simply City Guards organised nationally rather than just locally, as such, they need to be more heavily armed and protected than the local population toprotect the local population from any threat, including the local population
Huh. So maybe the problem is that the population is so heavily armed and armored.
If individual people feel that they have the need and right to be able to win a fight against everyone else, the logical outcome is limitless escalation of force.
No, that’s not the “logical outcome”, that’s the “reductio ad absurdum” outcome. It’s ludicrous to claim and you know it.
First, you can’t have “limitless escalation of force” because tech has limits.
Second, you can’t have “limitless escalation of force” because force is not the only factor in society, and is used extremely rarely.
There are at least ten other reasons why it’s nonsense.
So… they have access to armaments sufficient to counter the occasional heavily armed perpetrator/suspect – that’s what SWAT teams are for. I can understand that, and that’s how it started. Great, but…
That doesn’t explain or justify such heavy armament and weaponry being deployed on a daily basis against citizens that are unarmed or armed with a knife or bottle or brick – things that CAN be very dangerous if used properly, but can largely be countered with a handgun to great effect, and don’t require automatic weaponry in the hands of most officers, responding to most calls for police presence.
See: Daniel Shaver [link to video – caution: graphic content]
Before that L.A. bank heist, there was no SWAT, and now, cruisers have a gun locker that holds something heavier than a shotgun, that is only used (allegedly) in an emergency when they are not able to call in SWAT (which is usually used for big operations that require more than just two officers)
When you have a crowd of twenty or more, armed with whatever they can find (including a few firearms), a single sidearm ain’t gonna do shit to deter them or to prevent them from attacking: and once one starts attacking, the crowd turns into a mob
This isn’t the place to go into a point-by-point rebuttal of all the libelous BS, gross overgeneralizations, and rhetorical sleight-of-hand in your post, but suffice to say the abuses you describe are the rare exception rather than the rule in the US, as has been borne out in study after study after study.
Yes, abuses occur in the US as they do everywhere, and in every profession. No, that doesn’t make them anywhere near endemic as certain division-sowing activists would have you believe due to their personal stake in stoking such propaganda.
Don’t help them; the resulting divisions, fear, and rejection of crime-control measures will only victimize far more “Black Lives” than it could ever allegedly help.
Facts?
Logic?
ON THE INTERNET?
Oh, come on! You know better than that!
I do agree. The whole thing has been pushed by media and way too many high ranking people with axes to grind. The society of injustice that the US has espoused since its founding has been shaken, but pushed back hard. And now? Open treason is allowed as long as it is ‘politically correct’. Sedition has been tolerated from way too many people, but treason? That is supposed to be different.
Funny how so many people think that breaking the law and hurting people will HELP anything at all.
point.
Your repetition of your defamation against US policing is noted.
The vast majority of the US police force do not harass and racially profile minorities at all. A small number of Democrat controlled cities have such problems. Many of the remaining incidents merely look that way because the preponderance of the people committing the crimes that need to be prevented in those locations happen to be PoC.
And, when the police pull back and do not suppress those crimes, the people most hurt by that absence are PoC.
The educational industrial complex gets a little bit sidelined with only the mention of one alien hoping to go to law school. Make drones, and make sure the less drone compatible don’t learn much besides how to act like a repulsively angry idiot. Make em work or make them thugs and rent a dates, in which case they can find work too.
I did enjoy Sydney in her jim jams but the main reason I liked this vote incentive is because it was funny. I have finally become old enough to enjoy comedy more than cheesecake.
The Deus industrial complex shall rule the world.
Ro Jaws, any misgivings we have ever had before have evaporated due to your most brilliant post. I no longer see you as a punster, I see you as a friend.
Am I no longer a punster? More like a FUNster am I right?
or possibly a Munster! :D
You are a proponent of Deus, and therefore we are forever bonded in acknowledgement of his greatness.
Ro Jaws never said I would be a good ruling
It was heavily implied.
In any case Deus can afford to pay me to say it’s a good ruling.
The D.I.C shall rule the world eh…
You share my taste in humor good sir.
Ah, superheroes and selfies…
One of my favorite scenes from the ‘Wearing the Cape’ series by Marion Harmon if from the second book, Villians Inc. It occurs when an amusement park is attacked by a Godzilla. Yes, an actual Godzilla made by an old school movie supervillian. Radioactive, thirty stories high, breathes fire, all that. Big, scary monster.
Superheroes fly into action and evacuate the park to fight the monster. As they begin to fight, they realize that a citizen is still up on the top of the Ferris wheel, filming the Godzilla’s rampage as it starts to tear the park apart.
None of them actually say ‘Can we just leave him there to get chomped?’ but we KNOW they were all thinking it.
Well at least now we know who Sydney sent a message to :).
Anyone who guessed Sydney’s fake conversation was a way to send a subtle message to Cora is probably a secret plant working for webcomic-industrial complex.
Or just genre savy
People who are genre-savvy are just part of the TV tropes-industrial complex.
After careful deliberation with the Architects of Hell it has been decided from now on you shall be referred to as Punder
I’m not making puns. I’m engaging in a run-on joke. You’re falling for the machinations of the pun-industrial complex.
SOS the Sydney Express messenger system.
Ping!
“You’ve got mail!”
Clippy: would you like help editing a response?
*pours one out for Clippy*
“hep cptrd immblzd”
Is this board heavily moderated or just this awesome? C? All the above?
Just awesome (most days, sometimes not though)
We’re just that good.
…and there’s no editing capability at all, so moderation is not in effect.
It’s just awesome. And not heavily moderated at all because most of the posters are also awesome.
Those who are not, you know good and well who you are. Shame.
(Hangs head in shame)
*raises hand* I for one would welcome pinups of the small pink punk.
Her name’s Pixel, and she’s not… always that small.
Maybe they meant Peggy
Maybe, she is a bit more punky. Still, DaveB has done a Peggy pinup.
Yes, I know her name is Pixel and she’s not always small.
I for one would like to see all three petites together in one pinup, krona, pixel, and sydney :D
I have to say I’m glad Sidney finally arrived on the patrion. It was finally worth subbing for that. It’s a real shame Dave decided that all superheros would be super muscley. I’m not saying that the super girls look bad in the comic but I personally don’t find that body type very attractive. That’s why I’m very glad Dave finally dropped Sidney. She the hottest girl that’s been released so far by simple virtue of not being ridiculous muscle bound. I’ll take a Rose Quartz over a Maxima every day. I hope Dave can figure a way to actually work some variety into his supers because his idea of the ideal body isn’t all that ideal to me, and apparently a lot of people agree since he announced about getting a lot more subs with Sidney. Well, her being the main character probably also had something to do with it, but still…
Ah yes, the Toph tingles. Also I can’t believe I’ve finally read up to recently published ones now. Its taken me a while reading from the beginning but wow. This is a phenomenal comic. Great job DaveB!
Honestly, I thought that ‘ping’ was Cora’s response to that villain wanting to be gagged…
That was my first response as well… with the color change in her eyes being an expression of internal response, rather than a reflection of an email arriving.
Oh dear soon we’ll have to stock those new fangled “lefty tighty, righty loosy” hextruc tri-thead bolts too. Gods i hate standards
dude. we live in a world with sex bolts. you have no idea to obscene variety of threaded connections we already have and make in quantities that would cause death if dropped on you.
DAve,
Regarding your comment about Sidney’s mouth. While it looks odd, ot also does a great job of conveying the look of someone who’s never sent a selfie of this nature trying too hard, which seems like it would be totally fitting for Sidney.
Yeah the facial expression really conveys the nervousness of it :D
“You got Space-Mail!”
Detla doesn’t like gags when they’re not for fun. Or bondage, for that matter.
Her big gray friend (Dredlok?) might be into it, tho.
I don’t know what Detla is worried about (and I had to go back 35 pages to find her name). Cora said the next person to say the bad words would be gagged, not that everyone would be gagged. Unless she’s just jealous and doesn’t want anyone gagging her sweetie but her.
Raymos understands Public Relations, and how it’s good to have it be positive? :thinking:
if you look at his response to the tourists really being a grab squad, it’s clear that he understands PR in terms of image maintenance. If you don’t make them understand the consequences, they will walk al over you, which is not profitable.
Some tourists may pay extra to walk all over you, or get walked over. (gag sold separately)
Well if anyone is going to be the target of Cora’s “Hey, I found a rib! No, wait, it’s a melted tibia…” guns, the jerk bossing Concretia around definitely qualifies.
Actually, I’d rather he be disappeared by Dabbler.
She’s more creative & has more, and likely more poetic, options.
Send him to the tentacle dimension with a note explaining “torture, not pleasure”
That poor Vindaloovian. Being denied his cultural right to lick his singular eyeball, by covering it with a blindfold.
He could sue them for cruel and unusual punishment, if only he’d had the money to take the class that covered that particular legal aspect.
Keep in mind that back in 1968 when that episode came out, the dollar had about 7 1/2 times more buying power. Even if we assume a 1 to 1 equivalence (which many watching probably would assume), their stakes were basically $112.50 to $37,500 a bet.
Is Cora getting a Sidney glasses text?
Yup.
Current Quatloo trading rate is $0.005225 per QTL. That’s about 191 quatloos per dollar. The Quatloo is down 65% over the last year, the galactic economy has been struggling to pay for exports of comic books and tiktok videos from Earth.
I take it that bizarre expression on Sydney’s face in the Vote Incentive is her trying to be sexy.
Kind of like my daughters smile when she tries to give a glamorous smile for the camera.
Pretty much the complete opposite of what was intended…
oh dear… i completely forgot that wan an option… the glasses with hi-thech advanced messaging options that has an really good (and really small) battery that can exchange extra-planetary messages.
I hesitate to believe it has anything most humans would consider to be a battery – most likely some type of micro fusion generator, assuming it doesn’t charge itself from ambient energy, kinetic, solar, RF, zero-point, whatever
Possibly, but not necessarily. The existence of high-tech options doesn’t mean that they will be any more effective (for a given application) than the low-tech ones.
Halo’s uncomfortable smile in the pinup is perfect; exactly how I imagine she would.
It’s nice that, aside from REALLY being into women, and maybe having deficient morals, Ray is actually quite the intellectual, and the only one who actually understands why Maxima hasn’t vaporized those two.
I would say that it’s odd that he is stupid when it comes to women when he seems to be smart in general if it wasn’t for the fact that I have met real men who are a bit like that.
Narcissism is a decent explanation – he’s well read, but doesn’t even have a basis for comprehension that someone may not fall at his feet it admiration
He probably understands it, but doesn’t care. If you don’t take a shot, you can’t hit that sweet sweet target.
Jerks get the girls because they put themselves on the line faster, harder, and more often than nice guys do. They try things, and go down in flames, or occasionally have a hot, hot time.
I knew a French guy named Andre in the 80s in California. He made a bet with my dad that he could make love to a different woman every night for a year. My dad conceded that bet at about nine months and over three hundred women.
Andre would pick the prettiest woman in the room, and ONLY the prettiest, go up to her and propose a date and sex. “I will pick you up, we will go to dinner, then I will take you home and make love to you ALL NIGHT LONG.”
Andre got his face slapped a lot. And a lot of sex. Sometimes from the same woman.
And it worked because he put himself on the line, hard, and literally did not care what each one decided. He didn’t really *like* women at all. I think Ray, on the other hand, does.
Epilogue: When I heard about Andre’s death, which I had always assumed would be at the hand of a jealous husband, it turned out that he had been happily married for a while and was killed by accident while cutting down a tree.
Moral of the story: even Jerks can find “The One” and live happily
Wouldn’t actually call people like that ‘Jerks’, more… forthright? And most of them actually do respect the answer, ‘nice guys’ tend to… not take rejection well some times. Those are the ones more likely to get violent and stalk the girl and rape her (or worse)
Again, not all ‘nice guys’ are like that though, some are usually too intimidated by women to even ask
Well, what kind of gag?
The people need to know.
According to tvtropes, the gag in question is classified as a Threat Backfire.
*runs for dear punning life*
but that one gags the wrong end