Comic for Monday, December 25th, 2023
Dec25
Merry Christmas (and/or your local Equivalent Winter Holiday)!
We have a winner for the 2023 Santa Hat Poll!
See you all in 2024, next comic should be 1/8/2024, where I will inevitable forget to update the year on the comic post and people will make fun of me.
Don’t get used to the comic being up on a Sunday night, but for understandable reasons I’ll probably be busy tomorrow, so it was now or never in posting schedule.
Loading ...
Is it just me, or is this possibly the best picture of Kally thus far?
Also bonus picture of Fluffy in a Santa Hat on Kally’s shirt!
Awesome artwork!
Has there even been a mention of what A.A. stands for? It is presumably a computer system that can alter the data that defines objects. Neither Anti-Aircraft or Alcoholics Anonymous seems appropriate.
I assume it stands for Automated Awesomeness.
Mium, there are some ideas which are inherently bad.
For example, “Let’s defeat the evil SMAI by holding his friends hostage and threatening their lives.”
I mean, OK, you might like it, because it allows you to simplify some decision pathways in a permanent fashion. But looking at the idea from the perspective of the idea holder, it doesn’t have any possible good outcomes only bad ones, and therefore it’s a bad idea.
Well, OK, I will admit that there are some people who could hold that idea who might have some possible beneficial good outcomes. For example, if that one who claims to love his wife but keeps doing those things to her were to hold that idea and enact it, her life situation could significantly improve. But that’s probably not the way he’d prefer to have her situation improve.
(Disclaimer: yeah, I know, nothing has been even hinted in that direction in the comic. But there’s a lot of people in the IDS and a lot of them are decidedly irritable. Statistically speaking, at least one of them is probably going to take that irritation out on his wife sometimes. Also, statistically speaking, at least one of them is probably going to take that irritation out on her husband sometimes. But I’m talking about him, because, statistically speaking, it’s less certain that her husband is as adversely impacted as his wife. Further, it’s statistically certain that Mium knows *exactly* who I’m talking about, even if I don’t and Past doesn’t, because he’s like that.
…
Thinking about this more, it’s unclear if Sophie is married, and if so, to whom. I could easily see her spouse getting worse treatment than any theoretical wife to any unpleasant IDS men we’ve been introduced to. So I guess I should’ve said, “For example, if that one who claims to love their spouse but keeps doing those things to them were to hold that idea and enact it, their spouse’s life situation could significantly improve. But that’s probably not the way they’d prefer to have their spouse’s situation improve.” But I didn’t, and it’s too late to go back and change it now. What has been done has been done.)
PS: as an aside, men and women have been shown to abuse their partners at equal rates. The difference is that men are more physical and women are more psychological/social in their attacks, and one is more easily seen and recognized than the other. Also (in general) men are more geared toward protecting all women while being less concerned with men outside of their circle while women also don’t tend to care about men outside of their circle and are more likely to feel empathy and commiseration with other women (in general). Furthermore men are just expected to take more abuse without complaining (we call it stoicism, and society punishes men who don’t follow it) which does not actually change the amount of abuse they receive even if they are forced to tolerate it better.
“even if I don’t and Past doesn’t, because he’s like that.”
I had no idea Past was like that!
Merry Christmas, Post-Utopians!!!
Merry Christmas! ¡Feliz Navidad! Gut Weinnachten!
And a Happy New Year!
I want to also comment on something strange with the website. My post above was originally posted as just ‘LOOPHOLE’, but after five minutes or so I added the rest. Sometimes when I load the page it shows the first post, sometimes it shows the updated post. Just now I made it change by hitting the reload button.
I’ve found recently that I sometimes need to come back to the top level page and force a refresh in order to pick up all new comments, including my own.
I blame it on big tech. They’re probably doing something funky to suppress the Miami Mall Aliens story. Even though the website behavior predates the Jan 5 Alien Story.
Panel 2: You humans you humans ‘think’ <- only one 'you humans' is needed.
LOOPHOLE!
Mium being able to directly do magic here (which he cannot normally) is a huge future loophole.
I wonder if magic done here can affect the physical world. I suspect Mium knows the answer and will be evasive on the subject if asked.
What scares me right now is that Kor’s World can do any and all of the tricks Mium can think up and a bunch more besides – because they’ve been doing this for a lot longer.
I wonder how many calculation circles Mium is running at once. I think Ila had seven going at one time.
PS – Something strange going on here with Comcast cache or Past server accepting posts. Here is another attempt at a reply that “ghosted.” The previous reply attempt wasn’t seen on any of my computers.
Ila can canonically do six, according to an author comment years ago. I don’t remember which update. If she did more than six in any update, I missed it. That said, I definitely remember there were some where she packed them close enough together that, when combined with my old eyes, I needed to zoom in to 300% or more to be able to count them properly.
Magic on this plane does not normally affect the real world, not without “pulling” that magic back into the real world. This is what Elana and the other “summoners” of Pallindra do, they pull the living constructs into the real world from this plane. There is the possibility of creating a complex form of magic in the mirror world without having to pay the full upkeep cost during formation, only to bring the full spell into reality and only have to pay the magic cost once in a single lump rather than sustain it during the entire formation; but this doesn’t mean that the calculations will become any easier or that the caster won’t still have to do the calculations associated with the spell. All in all, an autocaster does the job better even if it isn’t as freeform in what it can do.
LOL, Tsundere Kally :’D
Had to look that term up.
From Wikipedia: “Tsundere (ツンデレ, pronounced [t͡sɯndeɾe]) is a Japanese term for a character development process that depicts a character with an initially harsh personality who gradually reveals a warmer, friendlier side over time.”
Yes, that describes Kally. Peter has been a good influence on Kally. It appears that the “cold” Kally is emotionally affected by the vote since she stutters a bit.