Comic for Monday, August 10th, 2020
We still sort of have a buffer, as this is technically just the first half of the page, and the whole page went up on patreon… we’ll get that second half here next moday. I would like to put out the whole pages, but we are still floating around that 1 week buffer mark and that needs to go up.
Been getting a lot of good stuff done since I parted ways with the day job, but I think it’s sort of the classic problem with a tyrnical power being banished… after its rule of my schedule collapsed my schedule has become chaos as I work on ten different things across a week. Need to pick a few things to get more work on those done.
Finding a place to move was a little challenging what with the world still doing its best to implode out there, but a place has been found and I’ll be moving later this month. Currently not anticipating any impact to schedule, though it may mean the buffer will struggle to grow until things are set up there… though maybe if internet isn’t set up I’ll actually get more drawing work done 😀
We are nearing the end of the Chapter 15… it’s ended up a long one I suppose, as it’s got a bit more to go. Though I don’t really know that the Chapters mean too much besides archive organization at this point 🙂
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Comic will be up either late Monday or Tuesday. It’s done (it’s up on Patreon) but currently I don’t have internet to my computer until late Monday or Tuesday.
The internet godz, conspiring against you and our reading pleasure!
Oh, the hora!
I shall dance until our fate changes.
More specifically, it’s been up for a week. It’s a real doozy, too. Of course, Glider would probably point out that they all are if I didn’t beat him to it.
The Patreon page points out that the page was released 7 days early for patrons. As that was Aug 10, and it’s now Aug 18, does that mean the patreon page is visible somehow? Like if one of us shared the link to the post, and people went through an hCaptcha?
More politically, though: Past, would doing that have your blessing? I mean, I’ve verified it works, at least on my browser I don’t use to log into Patreon, which is how I know about the hCaptcha. I’m just hesitant to go and do that, considering that its your call on how you want this stuff presented to the masses. I apologize if this is a question you’ve answered previously and I’ve forgotten.
You shouldn’t in my opinion. As it seems like cheating. The Patreon fee is so small for The Far Side of Utopia. That those who absolutely must view the next one, should definitely just pay that. While we, who refuse to part with so much as a dollar, wait patiently for it here.
I’d not have considered it, except as a work around to the author’s update process. It also wouldn’t have been an option, except that Past had marked the page as ‘Public’ rather than ‘Patrons only’, just with a delay to its public availability. As such, it was in theory publicly available already, just not with any path to getting there.
But in any event, the new page is up, so go comment on it over there.
I think panel #4 is, in some ways, the distilled essence of this entire comic.
I see it. That’s slick.
Well said. I totally agree with your assessment.
With any great magician everything that the audience sees is just part of the show. So Peter’s hand holding the knife is just a means to keep its true owner a mystery.
The Consul at least seems to understand that she’s in the audience. Although it looks like she’s still unsure what the production is about.
You know, I don’t really think Peter’s holding the knife. I think he’s just friends with it, close enough that it’s consenting to him touching it. Also, the knife belongs to itself. This is true whether or not the knife you were referring to was an allusion to Mium.
I realize it boggles the imagination to think that *Peter*, of all people, would be leveraging the power of friendship. I mean, he’s clearly very autistic, and autistic people don’t have friends, everybody knows this.
It’s just that, well, I’m a bit autistic myself, so I understand that we *do* have friends. They’re just different sorts of friends than neurotypical people have.
(Just to be clear, the world is made up of more sorts of people than just autistic and neurotypical. I do understand that the typical politically correct way to say it is neurotypical versus neurodivergent. But neurodivergent includes a lot of different types of people in addition to autistic people.
For example, many skilled marketting people are very definitely neurodivergent, but still interact with people fine. Apart from their bizarre marketing campaigns, of course, which nobody understands. On that note, I’m still nervous about drinking Sprite. I mean, it’s been quite a while since they’ve advertized that it will destabilize your body making you prone to rupture into clear liquid with any jarring contact, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve *fixed* it yet. I’m not aware of an announced fix. [Also not driving Toyotas and nervous while driving near them, because they didn’t announce a fix, either.] I’m also not familiar with the source of that particular campaign, so I can’t say for certain that they’re one of these well adjusted marketting neurodivergents I mentioned. But I have seem some pretty trippy marketting campaigns that were implemented by well adjusted marketting execs. I’m not describing any of them, because the marketting execs I have personally met and gotten to know well enough to determine they’re well-adjusted marketted very niche products so their campaigns were very targetted and thus probably not generally known. But the Sprite thing was of similar trippiness.)
I think that Peter *could* be holding the knife, but chooses not to. Much like Conway’s game of life, he has set the rules and starting conditions, now is letting it run according to those rules without overt interference, in the expectation that will lead to the result he wants, despite there being many conflicting paths that lead to that destination.
I would be more inclined to use the term, “wielding” rather than “holding” the knife and I think that both Peter and Miko are doing so.
Unless Amy has been briefed about MYM, neither has Tyler, I guess – that development took place while he was out.
… but no reaction shots of either here? Maybe Amy did brief Tyler, after all …
I think Tyler got a fairly remarkable understanding of Peter in a fairly short amount of time. He’s also familiar with Kalisto’s assessment of Peter. This may be news to him, but it’s not too surprising. I mean, he chose Tyler to be his heir. While that might have seemed like a light choice, I think it wasn’t done lightly. Even knowing that Peter at least generally doesn’t use his own magic abilities (if he even has them), and knowing that his position he was handing to Peter assumed magic abilities, he still chose Peter.
Peter has made quite an impression on Tyler, yes, but nothing in what he said on the previous, and nothing in your analysis here, suggests Mium is MYM – an AI.
Unless Amy knew, and briefed him, I expect this would be a bombshell to him as well.
But on second thought …
The Malsans have little experience with AI. They might not realize the inherent “genie” danger. We’ve seen Miko and Kallisto are quite aware of it, and we’ve interpreted Kor’s world’s actions as if they see them as threats, but Malsans don’t seem to have had much bad experience with AI. Even the event which CI pegged as two AI fighting over the Navtrans network, local news described as “a possible cyber-attack on the west coast communications network” (and spun to might have postponed Avon’s release of a pocket “A.I.” butler).
(Arron even asked “who else has one? corporations? Peter?” and no one there appeared to be aware that Avon had one.)
So … maybe even if it was news to Tyler, it wouldn’t be a bombshell to him, for lack of context?
… of course, that just makes me all the more eager to see his reaction. 😉
Tyler definitely knows there’s something odd about Mium – he did straight up ask him if he was an artificial human back here .
He also seems to suspect Magnolia would be able to see something was strange about Mium, though I’m not sure that’s true (as Magnolia as met Mium and not reacted, but I don’t think she actively used her power on him).
I think Tyler wouldn’t be particularly surprised that Mium is AI… though I doubt Tyler truly understands what that would mean to same degree that people from Central do.
Ah. right – the “artificial human” thing. Rovak concluded Ila was one: http://pastutopia.com/comic/comic-for-friday-august-14th/
And Tyler suspected Mium might be one.
I have been suspecting that Rovak may have been right and Tyler wrong – as I see this in relation to the implication that Ila has a key, which Mium doesn’t: http://pastutopia.com/comic/comic-for-friday-may-1st/
And that’s a (pardon) key characteristic of “human”, it would seem.
But we don’t know much about these “artificial humans” to which Rovak and Tyler refer. It’s just speculation on my part that it has more (or at least as much) to do with keys as with intelligence.
I’ll note that the Consul, unprompted, used the phrase “artificial intelligence” when introduced to MYM, so “artificial human” would seem to be something else, unless Tyler and Rovak happened to use a different (foreign? Orish?) turn of phrase – which we can’t rule out, I’ll admit. :p
Add a few observations on storytelling (which I’ll spare you) – bottom line? – it looks to me like “artificial human” is something other than “artificial intelligence”.