Grrl Power – Dabbler’s Science Corner #8
There’s no “System” on Earth, so delving a dungeon is really only good for loot, which, admittedly is nearly unique on Earth and probably hugely valuable, especially if you have access to a reasonably competent alchemist. A chemist could learn to do a lot with plants and slime cores and whatever else you could pull from a dungeon, but at some point you’d be leaving potential on the cutting room floor if they ignore the magic infused into those objects.
No one would gain XP/Essence/Mana/whatever by killing magically generated/enriched monsters or beating traps or labyrinths. Well, I should say almost no one would benefit from that, but some already magical or magically attuned beings could benefit from it. Vampires, who pull almost all of their energy and power from life force via blood could gain a little bit from a dungeon delve, as they vampirism is a magical parasite slash symbiote (depending on who you ask.) A mage could benefit from it, as practicing magic in an area with higher mana would improve their spellcasting and possibly allow them to accelerate the growth of their personal mana pools.
But Joey Shotgun won’t get anything from delving besides the experience. The experience of having done it, not experience points. Also possibly some loot, but while an immature dungeon will probably provide some interesting botanical specimens, Legendary Daggers are a long way off.
You know? I think I wrote that tachyon joke. I mean obviously I wrote it, that’s how all the words appear in the comic. I mean I think I actually… invented that joke. Or whatever verb you’d ascribe to that act. There’s a chance it’s cryptomnesia, of course. My memory is poor enough that I could have easily stumbled across that joke three years ago while looking up science jokes for another page, and I don’t remember. Or… I do remember, just, not well enough to know I remember it. Which… is the definition of cryptomnesia.
Next page returns to Peggy’s tale. Things have calmed down a little, there’s still lots to do, and unfortunately I am currently living in Houston with my Mom, while the wife is up in Dallas taking care of the house and cats. It’s likely I’ll be down here until… I don’t know. We settle everything, probate of the will wraps up, and we decide what my mom’s living situation will be. Probably it will involve selling her house and ours and moving to a new location, possibly around Buffalo, which would put us an hour or two from my sister in Toronto, but my parent’s house is big and full of nice stuff, some of which has emotional attachments, and I don’t want to empty out their house then get a house that’s big enough for the “mother in law apartment” then have to fill that house, so there will probably be storage involved and viewing houses on the other side of the country, then moving across the country. It’s… a lot.
Anyway, that’s all… none of you guys’s problem. Like I said, I don’t like using the comic as an agony aunt, I mean, generally my life doesn’t have much drama going on in it, but damn, the last… month? Yeah. Geeze. The last month has felt like 5 months. Not so much because it’s been emotionally draining, moreso because my normal routine is “draw comic, watch some TV, go to Pathfinder game every other weekend, maaaaaybe go to the gym, repeat” but for the last month it’s been like one big important meeting every two or three days, then lots of “not part of my routine” chores every day. Really, that probably tells me I need more variety in my day-to-day life, cause I do have a tendency to find a routine and then suddenly I look up and it’s been 4 years.
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Dungeon tourism is once thing, but you can’t tell me that once the public learns about dungeons, there won’t be some corporation trying to set up a dungeon zoo.
Unless having many delvers depletes the dungeon resources, why not allow dungeon tourism by, say, ex-special forces or anyone who can pass an “oh god my leg’s on fire” test? With enough supervision that you ensure they’re not trying to break the thing, of course.
Glad to hear things are looking up.
Fortunately Maxima is as much of a genre savvy nerd as Sydney. And we know she’s seen and likely read Jurassic Park.
No way she’s going to let fly with giving corpos access to dungeon critters for one. And the general over Archon seems at least moderately forward thinking and non-dumb in the best ways (including taking Maxima and the Archon eggheads at serious face value when they tell him something is a really bad idea).
Though, there’s nothing to stop Deus from setting one up himself out of petty spit for his less than bright exceedingly wealthy peers as a shady but “legal” way to thin competition.
Deus would set it up as a way to get rid of his shady and or incompetent peers. Downplay the dangers, upplay how much fun and exclusive it is. “A rocket to space? It’s been done. But this safari will be something you will never forget.”
The problem with Jurassic Park is they made every single possible mistake you could when setting up a zoological exhibit attraction involving large animals and deadly predators. There are long lists online about these over sights, which yeah if followed there wouldn’t be any movies. It would just be Dinosaur parks.
Zoos with magical creatures would be a major draw…of course that also requires the world to both aware these exist and this setting seems a ways off from that. To the point that even making a dungeon seems a tad premature and likely to backfire in the “thrill seeking inter clout and conspiracy hikers seeing blocked areas on a map and trying to sneak in so try to trespass” best case scenario Area 61 scenario where there is enough armed guiards to dissuade anyone from actually sneaking on. Worst case scenario its SO top secret that we get a “cave in the desert” that just has spooky vibrations to chase people off and some idiot goes in anyway. (So top secret that its clandestine so can’t even post enough soldiers close enough to the main entrance as even with nondisclosures they are still a security risk)…unless pulling a double blind and leak fake information to those guards so they go spreading things like “its an alien lab” rather than what is actually down there.
Also given this setting so far I wouldn’t doubt we already have black market magic critter menageries, and secret clandestine mage/alchemist colleges. Which I wouldn’t doubt might have their own “mana gardens” with things like screaming mandrakes, alraunes, man eating tomato plants, and attracts various mana construct small creatures to manifest.
I have donjon tourism in my country , don’t forget donjon is the main inner tower in a castle, the “keep”.
Don’ confound donjon an dungeon even if in first recorded instance of the word in English was near the beginning of the 14th century when it held the same meaning as donjon.
And dungeon is from the word donjon even in french the word geôle is a synonym of the present usage of dungeon.
Did you Advance in the pursuit of knowledge even if you’re not dragons. Perhaps after we will discus of the non usage of shield with plate harness in combat situation , even if shields are still used in jousting.
Dungeon has long been repurposed into something it definitely was not, starting in the 70’s with Gygax’s experiment in wargaming taking on a life of its own.
Such is the evolution of language.
In English and a longsword is used two handed , a one handed sword is an arming sword…
Shield and full plate harness are not used in conjonction in battle situation.
The primary weapon of a Knight was a poleaxe in England, and a lance* in France…
Sword is status symbol and secondary weapon , and since mid 14th century it’s a longsword – two handed – used in halfswording techniques.
D&D is the fisrt half of 15th century technology without gunpowder.
Don’t forget the first major battle won by artillery dates back to 1453.
*a steel-tipped spear carried by mounted knights or light cavalry
I could see dungeon tourism being a big thing.
Find people who are physically fit but who need money. Find millionaires and billionaires who want nifty one of a kind magical items.
The rich people pay the poor people to dungeon delve, while supplying them with normal weapons. Rich people keep any loot.
Some of the poor people who survive several delves use their winnings to set up dungeon tourism companies to escort rich assholes who want to experience the dungeon themselves. Rich guys kit out themselves. The loot is split according to whatever contract is signed.
Unless there’s something like a 50% casualty rate or a government steps in to stop the dungeon delves, the tourism should be self-sustaining.
Why would rich *ssholes pay nobody’s with guns when they can pay a super to bodyguard them.
Supers are rare and would presumably cost much more.
And I’d presume that government-employed supers would be prohibited from running tourists through a deadly dungeon in exchange for money. So many of the best supers wouldn’t be available.
I was under the impression that gender plays a much bigger role than race in the reporting of accidental and criminal death. That is, a woman who dies or is killed is much more likely to feature in a news report than a man, regardless of race but a white woman will receive more coverage still.
That said, perhaps I’m over analysing the fictional opinion of an alien.
I imagine it’s both, in some combination of minority man<minority woman<white man<white woman, shuffled around based on location and news station.
And poverty is likely also a factor there in terms of “who has the time and money to hound a news station to report on their lost loved one”
I found what I was thinking of, it doesn’t relate strictly to untimely deaths.I was thinking of Missing White Woman syndrome, where the predominant predictor of news coverage is gender (in favour of women), making the hierarchy minority man<white man<minority woman<white woman. I couldn't find similar stats for accidental deaths and homocides that strictly related to the victim and cross referenced the two factors.
Age and wealth definitely apply.
I’m not sure there’s a hierarchy of factors so much as a whole bunch of axes.
Sadly for DaveB the origin of that joke has not yet happened.
men die, women most affected.
Tell that to Native American women…
There’s a massive lack of investigation and reporting over their disappearances and deaths
Two helium atoms walk into a bar. HeHe.
Neon walks into a bar. The bartender says “hey, we don’t serve inert gases here!”… but neon doesn’t react.
An infinity of mathematicians enter a bar. The first orders a full pint of beer. The second orders a half pint. The third orders a quarter pint. The fourth goes to order but the bartender cuts them off, pours two pints, and says “you of all people oughta know your limits!”
A product tester walks into a bar and orders:
a beer
two beers
2^32 beers
0 beers
-1 beer
null beers
“beer” beers
The tester approves the bar.
A customer walks into the bar, and orders a cider.
The pub explodes.
I have to pull a Jabberwokky with this one.
Product testers are hired to try out new stuff (usually software), and they do this by basically messing around. The software developer probably checked his program to make sure it would deliver a beer when asked for a beer, but did he write robust enough code to be able to handle deeply improbable inputs like the list above?
And then did the tester completely overlook some really obvious situation like “cider”?
I’ve heard a different version of that joke before where the second customer asks where the bathroom is and the bar tender explodes. I kind of like 21st Century Peon’s version better.
You say “deeply improbable”, I say “bored teenager tries to break it”.
I SAID I WAS SORRY!
3 logicians walk in to a bar. The bartender asks if they’re all having beers.
The first logician says “I don’t know.”
The second logician says “I don’t know.”
The third logician says “Yes we are!”
Yeah, don’t let anyone delve into the dungeon who is overconfident, regardless of gender, race or whatever. I mean, you don’t let people just delve into warzones either, right? Using military drones would be a lot better for that. Also obviously we’d need to install cameras in various hard-to-reach places to keep track of what’s happening, gather data on monster weaknesses, and sooner or later the dungeon will work like a Mob Farm in Minecraft.
Btw: Will Sydney farm the dungeon to get EXP for her orbs?
I aggree, Sydney would totally grind that dungeon for xp, if she didn’t hate grinding in general, as she had stated the first time she realised, she had to grind to get off of Alari Prime.
Sydney’s joke was perfect.
HAH!
Causality, amirite?
The problem is simple… Convincing people to get nearly murdered by wild animals that are bullet proof so that the higher ups can grind the monster bits to get a magical potion that buffs their ‘strength’ by one stat would be messy.
You would turn anyone who isn’t rich into cannon fodder and after a generation or four you would get stuck with a medieval cast system.
The rich own the lands and potions and probably become potion makers or royalty. The warrior caste would be feed on potions since childhood so the adults could toss a truck at you if you ticked them off. Anyone not born within the limited categories above would be peasants at best.
Going into the dungeon would probably get you killed if not by the monsters then by the warriors. Grinding the monster corpses up wouldn’t be fast enough to get you the same level as the warriors due to the difference in how many you had chugged…
And social enforcement would be even further placed upon the gender divide so that whoever got the potions first would probably be the standardized army meaning if every woman was given potions and not men then it would be women lead eventually with sexism against men or voce versa.
And that is without super heroes to place restrictions, defenses, and able to one shot most of the threats. Then you would get the idiots when everything is stable wanting magical creature rights or claiming they should run freely across the land and not butchered for magical potions… Or you get the media hounds talking about how tragic Dumbo was when he went into the dungeon illegally and was devoured by a mimic in a treasure chest and that something stupid (dungeon being destroyed or they need to have mile high walls or something around the dungeon.)
Or am I just too cynical about the prospects of unregulated dungeons appearing on a modern day earth?
Joke is at least 14 years old.
https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/off-topic-discussion/physics-joke-of-the-day/28707/page1/
Dangit!
It’s an oldie but a goodie.
I don’t get it?
I take it that going faster than light is being equated to going backwards in time. But the character in the joke who is reacting to an event before it happens is the bartender, not the tachyon – isn’t it?
What am I missing?
OK, assuming that – by our frame of reference – event T01 occurs first, then T02, T03, etc :
T01: Tachyon leaves the bar on it’s backwards-through-time journey. The temporally forward-facing Bartender perceives this as a particle entering the bar but walking backwards. (This event is obviously not mentioned in the joke.)
T02: Bartender yells at tachyon.
T03: Tachyon, at the start of its backwards-through-time journey, enters the bar. Bartender perceives this as the particle leaving the bar, still walking backwards like some kind of weirdo. We, the recipients of the joke, also see the particle “leave” the bar, but we know enough physics to interpret it as a time-flipped entrance.
T04: I lie down with a damp flannel across my eyes, laid low by an absolutely bastard timegraine caused by trying to process it all.
Sometimes I really envy you educated people.
Maybe? Doesn’t that explanation just make it a *worse* joke?
Leaving aside the unimportant (and nonsensical, but we ignore that for purposes of the joke) issue of which way the tachyon is facing while going through the door, that makes the sequence of events (from our perspective):
1) Tachyon is in the bar.
2) Bartender reacts to tachyon’s presence in the bar
3) Tachyon is no longer in the bar
It’s actually a pretty simple joke to explain if you don’t wander off into the weeds.
Basically, because the particle (tachyon) is traveling faster than the speed of light (speed of causality), you get the effect before the cause. Everything else that’s slower than the speed of light has cause, then effect.
Yes, you get the effect before the cause – if the thing which is the EFFECT is going faster than light. That’s my point. Here, the effect is the bartender’s reaction, so the “effect before the cause” explanation only works if the *bartender* is going faster than light.
I haven’t heard it before. And it’s still funny.
A neutron walks into a bar and asks, “How much is a beer?” The bartender says, “For you, no charge.”
A proton walks into a bar and says to the barman “I hear there’s a special on beer?’ “Are you positive?” asks the barman…
An electron walks into a bar. “What a dingy place,” he says. “Stop being so negative!” replies the barman.
A Higgs boson walks into a bar. The barman says, “We haven’t seen many of you around here!”
An alpha particle tries to enter a bar, but can’t get further than the door.
A beta particle enters a bar… through the window.
A gamma ray comes into a bar through the window, and goes out through the floor.
The tachyon orders a beer. A tachyon walks into a bar.
Some helium floats into a bar. The bartender says, “Get out! We don’t serve your kind in this bar.” The helium doesn’t react.
A neutrino walks into a bar. The bartender says, “Get out! We don’t serve any neutrinos in this bar.” The neutrino replies, “Don’t mind me; I’m just passing through.”
A room temperature superconductor walks into a bar. The bartender says, “Get out! There are no superconductors allowed in this bar.” The room temperature superconductor leaves without putting up any resistance.
Two bacteria walk into a bar. The bartender says, “Get out! We don’t serve any bacteria in this bar. The two bacteria reply, “What? But we work here. We’re staph.”
Schrödinger’s cat walks into a bar… and doesn’t.
A parasite walks into a bar. The bartender says, “Get out! No parasites are welcome in this bar.” The parasite responds, “Well, you’re not a very good host.”
An egg walks into a bar, thinks about having a beer, but then chickens out.
A young Tritium atom walks into a bar and orders a beer. “Sorry”, says the barman, “but you have to be 18 years old to drink in here.” “But that’s more than half my life!” replies the Tritium.
A molecule of Carbon dioxide goes into a bar and orders a beer, looks down at all the bubbles, and says “Hi, guys!”
An infrared photon walks into a bar and says, “Is it hot in here, or is it just me?”
Copy / paste ftw
Behold the nerdiest comedian. +1 internet for you.
Given the subject matter, maybe you did invent it, but it reached their mind 14 years earlier!
Given the nature of the joke DaveB, just because we saw it 14 years ago doesn’t preclude you inventing it just now.
This whole thread reminds me of Janeway’s allergy to temporal mechanics. which I sure somehow predates something important.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZQk8Buamak
That particular physics joke goes back decades, they were telling it in physics classes when I was in college in the 70’s. They sell the t-shirt on Amazon.
Which is not to say that you didn’t invent it yourself. I invented universal joints when I was in elementary school, playing around with a couple of hinges. I was so disappointed when my father told me somebody else had beaten me to it.
I invented the Viola Organista (a piano, except instead of striking the strings it draws a “bow” across them) in a hypnogogic state, only to discover that Da Vinci had invented it in 1488-89.
I invented a catapult but soon learned that the romans invented a lot of cool things way before I did. With enough lego and rubberbands you can create some powerfull weapons.
Black men killing other black men is so common, it barely counts as “news”. “News” is unusual events that attracts viewers to sell advertising and support the current narrative.
Okay Bubba
I thing what Dave REALLY is worrying about is whether or not he invented the tachyon joke, or will have been inventing it.
as with all time-based humour, the answer is usually all three of those two choices.
I know what you are going through. I had to empty my parents’ house, my mother in law’s house, and my sister in law’s house. It’s not just the objects to decide whether to keep or not; it’s also the memories.
What if there’s one guy who’s superpower is a System.
Perusing message boards, combing social site etc. might show that he exists, or get a handful of likely candidates.
Weed out insane, and test magic etc.
Then, with literal Supervision, let them get kills on basic dungeon critters. Record and figure out their xp requirements and observe changes if they can self buff.
Genre savy council then figures out which way to best exploit the Systems and fine tune the new demi-super.
Go for balance or min max?
What if the guy can make save points where he can resurrect?
That type of spy or scout is as valuable as a certain annoying immune to everything Super we all know.
Funnier yet, he’s a govt. office worker that everyone ignores. A couple of week of killing ants and bugs and he levels up.
He then on break checks system notifications and sees he’s leveled. Can spend pts on stats. And gets gotcha or loot chest.
Which freaks out office and HR.
He has to hide prizes, so buys inventory to do so.
Denies it. But sec video shows it.
Arc swat finds out because a certain geek has automated spiders searching for this exact weirdness and well he’s got clearance to scan nearly every govt office in US anyways.
Would he report to arc light first? Arc dark? Or gather up his GF , Halo, and a certain pink were leopard to check the guy out?
Then everyone finds out he’s a great manager, if a bit out of shape.
What then?
Well, Sydney basically has a System already. In the sense that her orbs “level up” with skill points after so much usage.
We haven’t got the details on which actions are more productive of experience points, because that’s not really all that interesting compared to the rest of the comic.
On the other hand, if you’re talking about a guy who can impose a System, the answer to that is “kill it with fire”.
There really isn’t any good ending for a System apocalypse, if the starting point is our world today. The only people who would consider it a net positive would be solipsistic psychopaths who don’t consider other people real.
I think the criteria of the orbs leveling up is unclear. is it any usage, or do the orbs judge the difficulty she’s facing? Does killing kaiju count more than blasting drones. Does a fight count more than target practice?
Her adventures on the ruined Alari homeworld suggest that she has to be meaningfully challenged. She took out a gigantic number of simple drones and didn’t seem to gain anything for it…though it’s also possible that this was only because the onslaught of infinite drones meant she could never get enough of a breather for the orbs to actually acknowledge the levelup (given that when she did finally get a chance to rest after killing multiple kaiju, she was given two levels at once.)
I was under the impression that I may or may not have written the joke….
Genie: “You have 3 wishes”
Someguy: “I wish I had 4 wishes”
Genie: {Waves his hands as if performing a miracle}
Genie: “You have 3 wishes”
a Djinn is awakened from a long slumber by someone cleaning their house.
the intruder ask a favour, and gets angry when the Djinn misunderstands, so to make reparations, the Djinn offers 2 more favours.
the intruder then proceeds to ask for a larger favour, one that will unbalance the local economy, and the Djinn decides to teach them a lesson.
the intruder finally relents and wishes they’d never met the Djinn
you may now unread this joke.
“Why three wishes?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean the numbers that make sense are 0, 1, and infinity. Three is weird.”
“OK, I’ll give you zero wishes.”
“Now that makes sense.”
Is that better or worse than i wishes?
At least with “i”, you get to imagine that you have wishes.
But if you have an imaginary wish for imaginary wishes, you get a monkey paw.
Speaking on death in the family, Oh, how I know what that’s like. I’ve gone through it myself twice in the last decade… well, three times if you count a step-father… and a family friend is going through something similar to yours, where the family member is European and left a highly-dependent spouse behind… Won’t go into details but no matter who or where, it’s a stressful situation that just seems to run on forever before things settle down to a new sense of ‘normalcy.’ You’re doing well so far, so just keep moving forward and stay strong… You’re not as far away from resolving your issues as you may believe.
If anything Dabbler is underestimating the death rate. The historical Mt. Everest deaths vs successful summit rate is almost 4%, with some years in the high double digits. More recently it’s dropped to “only” around 1% due to the well-established camps, paths, and sheer number of climbers. With 2023 being an exception with 18 deaths. In 2015 there were zero successful summits and 13 deaths. Most other “8000er” peaks have even higher death/summit rates.
Note that this is somewhat skewed because there’s a third group not counted: the very large numbers of climbers who start up but don’t summit and also don’t die.
Now take Mt. Everest and add dragons.
“Now take Mt. Everest and add dragons.”
So… Skyrim?
Yeah, I could see characters like Brad trying the dungeon out. Or anyone who olays a fighter in hack n’ slash DnD; Knights if the Dinner Table, anyone?
I do hope the lawyer you have working your dad’s estate has warned you that probate can take months to finalize. It’s a lengthy process. Here’s hoping everything goes smoothly, though! If you want to start perusing homes available in Buffalo, there’s the MLS online, realty, and a few other sites. Also, there’s the possibility of finding a church or abandoned school that’s within your price range, since you’d be selling two houses. Both might come with hefty lists of things that need repairs, though (at least, I’m assuming the church Sydney’s store is now in wiuld have needed some kind of repair before they opened).
Given that earth does not have a “system” and thus no “experience points” here’s the question…
How would you transplant a “system” into a person so they COULD gain “experience points”?
As a follow up, why does that answer involve Nth tech and look like Sidney’s orbs?
Better question: How to you do this successfully with instantly getting agro from everyone with entrenched interests in the current capitalist status quo? Remember, capitalism demands large amounts of surplus labor, and if “Adventurer” suddenly became a viable career choice, there are literally millions of people who would give up wage-slavery in 1/100 of a heartbeat, and that’s just in the Capitalist Paradise of America.
Gods know, I’d much rather be an Adventurer. Especially if The System allows for customization. Psion/Alchemist/Courtier, building into Thrallherd/Master Alchemist/Spymaster, and then some Metamorph levels to round it out a bit.
The capitalists are always saying everyone who doesn’t want to labor for pennies should go out and start their own business. I wonder what would happen to their precious capitalism if everyone actually did that, and there was no proletariat to exploit.
Western civilization would collapse from the sudden destruction of economies of scale.
How long do you think it would take for some of us to just start setting up whole new societies inside of a Dungeon? How many generations do you think it takes before thaumion mutations start to alter those societies into various demihuman species?
I would just like to know if a race of creatures began in a dungeon, would they be known as Delves?
What you’ll get is one of those billionaires who thinks being rich makes him smart building a private diungeon and offering expensive tours until there’s a Titan submersible event.
More like a Jurassic Park/World event.
The Titan submersible only affected the people who got on the boat; Jurassic Park leaked.
I hope they’re setting up some serious pest control as they set up these dungeons. Imagine if a colony of rats formed a nest in a “level 0.1” dungeon, and magic-loophole’d into fitting the criteria of delvers. And in some overlooked shaft several generations of rodent murder-hobos developed.
That’s probably where (lesser) were-rats come from (The rats that become rat-people) The adventurers they run into will become (greater) were-rats (The people that become rats or rat-people)…
Death in the family can take a long time and a heavy toll.
My father died some years back. He was very organized, and had a simple will. But it still took years to wind everything up. Probate took months to get since the local court system was notoriously backed up.
Death/serious injury rates in activities can be quite high, yet people (yes, even or especially rich white people) will still do them. The Mount Everest example above is one; other examples are BASE jumping or cave diving.
Gah, no edit facility so I thought of this just after posting.
I would think that “demons” might actually be *more* conservative about risking themselves in anything that isn’t required.
After all, if every shift at your ordinary workplace has a chance of death or having your soul devoured because your boss is in a bad mood, I don’t think you’re going to go lava surfing in your off hours for fun. Assuming you’re not a fire elemental of course.
twitter dad jokes archive-
Martin
@Dad_Jokes_Dept
The bartender says, “We don’t serve tachyons here.” A tachyon walks into a bar.
12:24 PM · Oct 7, 2024
·126 Views
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And Sydney is just getting set up for a new Title “Dungeon Grinder”, so her orbs can be power leveled.
I am just waiting for her dungeon support team to show up, team Meat Shield. All former College football linemen who never made pro; each with large backpacks, two shields and body armor.
Welcome to Houston, although I can sympathize with the reason. Three great places to go if you want a great steak are Pappas Brothers Steak House, Taste Of Texas, or Ruth’s Chris Steak House. And, of course, this being Texas, there’s a BBQ joint on every corner. Goode Company BBQ repeatedly gets good marks in surveys of BBQ in Houston.
The tachyon joke is an old one, though it probably has been invented many times.
She’s not wrong about how “soft” we’ve become in regards to loss of life. I remember during the height of the Afghanistan campaign. Canada suffered 158 soldiers’ deaths over the entire war, but people were acting like it was one of the worst tragedy in history. Whereas in WW2 Canada lost around 45400 soldiers (low compared to some countries), and it was a tragedy, but people weren’t putting flags across the country at half-mast for each and everyone one of them like they were for Afghanistan.
Maxima, that’s only two decimal places. Leading zeros don’t count.
You’re confusing decimal places and significant figures. 0.00011% is 2 significant figures or 7 decimal places (the percentage hides two decimal places).
Of course, you can argue about whether decimal places or significant figures are a relevant measure of precision. For small numbers like this, the question is whether you can round them to zero or not – if zero is a possibility, then the number of decimal places of precision is a reasonable measure; if it’s not, then it’s the number of significant figures that matter.
The % only hides 2 decimal places if the value of which it is a percentage is 100.
If the value is 1000, it’s only hiding 1 decimal place.
My point being that a percentage is always a relative figure – it means little without an actual or predictive value to be altered by it.
What do you get if you cross a Mountaineer with a Mosquito?
Nothing of course. You can’t cross a scaler with a vector!
Just waiting for the guys who don’t understand that walking up to a buffalo is dangerous to try out dungeon delving.
Buffalo is obvious. Try a deer or even just a goat (given the right terrain).
Or a rabbit.
The Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog.
The bigger problem of walking up to a buffalo is not knowing that it’s a buffalo.
When my brother went to Yellowstone, he played a game called “Boulder or Bison?” when travelling. Hint: it was always a bison lol
Ow! Sounds like the “evil 3-ring circus” I described to you several weeks ago for what you will experience has graduated to 5-rings and a clown car bus! You still have my sympathies, but with a +5 modifier.
I feel like if we don’t want to use the comic or the comic Comments, as an Agony Aunt, that you should set up a Discord, and appoint a couple of regulars you trust to be mods, then do it there.
Digital Friends aren’t like Meatspace Friends. But their still friends, or at the very least a support system. And you need one of those, obviously. The trick is to outsource the gatekeeping so you’re not trying to do both.
I first read that particular tachyon joke at least two decades ago.
I suspect it has been around longer than that.
It was first invented three centuries from now and has been traveling back through time since/before then.
Take care of the family stuff we’re fine with Dabbler’s classroom.
Regarding that one time deer Hunter. He’s no doubt a city guy who visited his rural, self confident, white, middle class, brother, who IS an apex predator and hunts on a regular basis for whatever game is in season. Bro showed him how to shoot a 30.06 rifle, got him a deer tag, spent a couple of days in the field, bagged their deers and returned home to have dinner with kids, grandkids and other family members over the next few days.
Then there’s the ‘one percenters’ of those who have served in the military, Peggy comes to mind. Also the rural population who are well armed. I slot into both categories but ‘ya na hodnik’ though I do visit the range on a regular basis. FYI our range members are not all white men, we have people from all ethnicities and no few women as well. Interesting thing I’ve noticed is that while you see females shooting pistols and rifles, they mostly gravitate to the skeet range. The ladies love and prefer their shotguns for whatever reason.
I imagine any civilized “first world” nation has their ‘soft’ city sector. Would that not apply to alien civilizations as well? Or is Dabbler insinuating that all alien races are badasses across all levels of their societies. That would not seem to be the case with what we’ve been shown of the Grrlpower universe so far, I specifically note the Alari refugees. Then there are the various shop keepers, vendors and other alien citizens of that huge Dyson sphere station.
I imagine a well run Dungeon’ could be self sustaining by licensing out “Monster tags” to various hunters who could be escorted by professional guides. There could also be a specialty shop that would rent out weapons such as flamethrowers, RPGs, NLAWs and other heavy weapons for the bigger monsters.
How long before some corporations start sponsoring “Delving Competitions” where teams compete at delving, with body cams streaming the event live, with prizes for “Most Goblins Killed”, “Deepest Delve”, “Most chests opened”, “Fewest Party Deaths” and so on?
Well if they can bypass the higher risks like using avatar bodies. Or can control the real threats of the dungeon/post guards to prevent entry to lower levels. I could see this in some urban fantasy settings as a contest among wealthy mage families and others who signed the do not sue in case of death or injury papers, if this stuff were to go public.
Then yeah, treating it like a contest in a video game. This dungeon scenario already brings up discussions on if the life qualifies as life as it manifest from the dense mana (which brings up a whole other level of concerns that dense mana has predictable “mana mutations” results…life is a simulation kind of stuff. But relevant here the argument if they are really alive or programs set into the universe to manifest for players to kill.
On the Dungeon diving being publicly known and accessible I am of two minds.
One is I fully understand, in this setting and its placement in human history (contemporary now), it would be dangerous for most thrill seekers to go into these dungeons, or big game hunters, even if we had them sign non-disclosure agreements. Even if you could implement some “dungeons are a business” rules from such settings like “auto-teleport spells and items when the user experiences too much physical pain, mental anguish, or a command word…that last being the highest risk of death when mr “I am invincible with my equipment” gets himself mauled by a dragon-bear and can’t smash the bottle or yell the command to escape. As well as post guards and recovery stations between floors/levels to prevent anyone without an adequate pass from going further down (in the event you have a dungeon that gets more dangerous the deeper you go and whose top floors function as “easy pickings, send in the regular thrill seekers to gather mana herbs and slay some slimes and false bats”. Even then realistically, pretty good chance some thrill seeker would get themselves killed by aggressively ignoring the warnings (see causes of death in underwater cave divine).
That alls said you just know there would still be some rich lobbyist, or quasi-aristocrat from a prestigious mage/alchemist/sorcery family (see most Low fantasy/Urban fantasy settings) who would be hiring people to act as escorts…sure they could just hire someone to get a specific ingredient but no…you are going to get that annoying escort mission where the helpless wealthy merchant or heir to the prestigious royal in the magic world family is going to hire some supers, magic users, and/or supernaturals to escort them because they just NEED something specific like a blue flame orb from a blue fire salamander to show their family as a right of passage…
Likewise poachers using it as an oppertunity for their private mana gardens or personal menagerie, secret zoo, island hunting retreat (which this setting also wouldn’t be surprised if some monster islands weren’t already the island type dungeon set up long ago, this dungeon is just the first to be approved by the US, not first on Earth).
Which same thought process, the problem with national parks is there are countless points of entry and very few that have any real control over who comes and goes even on the main roads. Just rangers who patrol, which even the smaller national parks are big enough and have so many winding trails that even staying on those can take hours (took me over six to drive through the one near Gatlinburg Tennessee), I would say added danger to make it 3-D…but Dungeons don’t traditionally have big open miles of ways to get in, its generally a very bottlenecked entry (save some cave that opened up, but good mana sensors should detect a sudden new entry point and send someone to block that off before you get monsters spilling out into the nearby woods and towns). But in general. Make a dungeon entrance, place a castle or other fort ontop of the entrance *which if this gets haunted or overrun later you can think of as “the haunted ruins that serve as the entrance and ground level of the dungeon.
I may be a bit bias on the idea of adventurers and types of dungeons as I world built an entire society that makes them, having carefully controlled practice dungeons, safety regulated resource and sporting event dungeons, up to more serious and dangerous dungeons. Heck one of my giant projects right now is making levels for a Mega Dungeon…I am taking forever on Level 10 as floor 2 of Level 10 I gave myself the daunting task of creating 50 minibosses themed after kid shows and edutainment shows and games. Trying not to write like ten entries in a row of biting puppets LoL. A great thought experiment for making new homebrew boss monsters as well, especially proud of two I designed to reflect and exagerate on the two most annoying types of bosses to fight..(special weak points and how you fight alters the difficulty of the boss) and (oh god how many forms does this thing have?) LoL
but yeah, in contemporary world. Travis with his 500,000 dollars of hunting equipment, but still a regular squish body probably shouldn’t be allowed to freely go hunting among giant centipedes, rock golems, mimics, acid slimes, let alone anything below level 1 enemies. But this world is just super/magical enough to see Daryl of House Ritterswarftz whose father has a pet hell hound is going to lobby for access to the dungeon with a team to fulfill his house duty of slaying a snail dragon or something in a real dungeon instead of hiring an elf to drag a small hand raised one onto their property for him to shoot at as his family has done for the last 200 years.
I totally brain farted on something for the “outs” of dungeon crawling. In fact this comic hit the nail already.
Avatar bodies. Sending a bipedal robot, hard light construct, or even a bio-construct with a link to the original on the surface. May have a floor limit, which makes sense this type of thing would be more a “rental for first timers” kind of deal, zero risk to self (save some sensory backlash “discomfort”), but the rental body if lost can either biodegrade, or be recovered by a better equipped superhuman adventurer later. Perfect for *I want the thrill, but not the risk, and playing a video game isn’t good enough so the next best thing up”
1 in 20 is a lower death rate than climbing Mt. Everest.
“In 1996, 12 people died trying to reach the summit, the most in a single year to that date. The number reflects the large number of climbers that year rather than a spike in the death rate: before 1996, one in four climbers died making the ascent, while in 1996, one in seven died.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_who_died_climbing_Mount_Everest
::brays in appreciation of Sydney’s joke::
::waggles his ears humorously::
Quoting (sort of) Carl Sagan will always get my vote.
0.00011% is 1.1 * 10**-5. There’s only two significant figures, so “roughly” is appropriate.
yeaaah, you keep dunking on white men, succubus; hold on while I roll my eyes. Because somehow, we keep dominating every field around the world from war to science to economics to getting over past traumas. At least when not bowing to a gaslight-guilt-complex.
Way to be That Guy.
Please, explain to us how hard it is to be a white man, Meal Team Six.
Work on your reading comprehension, Bharda, he wasn’t saying anything about “how hard it is”. Try to follow the topic.
What he was implying, Icky, is that The White Man is naturally superior in every way, except when being “held down” by by his inferiors. It’s a standard, bullshit myth concocted by whiny-ass little saltine bitches to excuse themselves when they fail, or come in second, or just generally need to assuage themselves when they don’t get what they think they deserve, be it material resources, or deference & respect.
The logical trajectory of this particular cope, is that all of us subhumans and degenerates are also somehow powerful enough to suppress that god-given white man’s superiority, and making it too difficult for him to rise to his supposedly natural position of dominance. A Burden, you might say, imposed on that White Man.
Or, I suppose you could just try to pretend that words never exist in any context, and then try to “well, akshewally, he didn’t literally say that specific string of words,” as a weak-ass, sloppy, watery, transparent deflection.
It _would_ be in-character, after all.