Comic for Monday, September 2nd, 2024
Sep03
on September 3, 2024
at 7:04 am
Comic. This one is pretty long. To be honest, this is probably as long a page will ever get, because this one crashed photoshop a whole bunch working on it.
I would note that Peter’s more long winged answers sometimes tell you as much about Peter as the thing he is answering.
Since the page has so much text and only two characters with speech bubbles, I color coded it.
As for it being late… uh… It was labor day? Yeah, we’ll go with that. That thing I definitely knew before hand and am not just using as an excuse.
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After saying I would try to miss less comics, I’m going to miss the comic this week. Still trying to get another project finished, and its at the point where it really needs to be done soon, so prioritizing that at the moment. Should be a comic next week, but not signing anything in blood over it.
I guess Vium is calling them a squishy grape, continuing the grape simile that’s been used the last few strips.
I had to really think about it to get that joke, though; it’s not totally clear what’s happening.
I guess from context, Control ordered an autonomous robot to set up an ambush in order to catch Peter in case he had a backup rescue plan, but Vium ambushed the ambushers and is about to squish that robot? And this was all part of the elaborate Control-Vs-Mium scheming contest alluded to in this strip, which Mium seems to have won.
I think I got it right, but if I have to actively decipher the comic like a science paper or a piece of obscure code, it’s probably not obvious enough for a casual reader…
Corrections:
Panel 9:
acting outside recklessly enough to be outside
->
acting recklessly enough to be outside
Panel 10:
He probably just didn’t tell you that, at least you plan something even stupider
->
He probably just didn’t tell you that, lest you plan something even stupider
Not an autonomous robot. Rather one of the people who was on the ship or just outside of it. Sounds like control just left them without support!
The theoretical chance of anything happening that does happen, if only normal cause and effect applies without any outside actors and when all variables are taken into account, is exactly 100 percent. The theoretical chance of anything happening that doesn’t happen, under the same stipulations, is exactly 0 percent. No matter how outlandish the result, that is the theoretical baseline created by a fully understood cause and effect chain followed through completely.
Any deviation in predictable results come from unforeseen causes or misunderstood effects. The bane of predictions, then, is not minor unforeseen causes but unpredictable actors and their effects. Someone with MIUM/Control levels of data access can see all the relevant inputs to predict a person’s behavior, even adjusting for normal things like spilling one’s drink and recognizing the possibility for truly unexpected things like car accidents and the like. What they cannot predict around are chaotic effects. A person who completely flips out when they spill their coffee could be completely fine or they could flip out minorly or they could flip out at the worst possible time creating escalating chaos. The escalating amount of data necessary to tell if the person will spill their coffee (or whatever their trigger) and when and how that reaction will chaotically interact with everything else; this makes the calculations orders of magnitude harder than it otherwise would be.
Therefore VIUM is the ultimate wild card, far more even than Peter. Peter’s unpredictability is fairly predictable: He will get in when he wants to (no predicting how), get out when he wants to (no stopping him), and know more than he should (no matter how well hidden); but that still means that you know the type of places he may go with that extra information he has and that he will succeed at getting in and out safely. It may not be full predictability, but it is a far cry from true chaos. VIUM, on the other hand, has no background that can be used to learn his habits, no clear goals and methods, and no defined limitations. He is literally a gremlin in the works, a chaotic actor tearing apart whatever he wills without rime nor reason, making all predictions potentially invalad.
Not that he will remain this way forever. Past choices predict future behavior, and that should still hold true for VIUM. But until that happens, or until overwhelming and unavoidable force is applied, he is the one thing that cannot be worked around.
(PS: And yes, overwhelming force works. No matter how perfect the “precognition”, no human has the reflexes to dodge a shotgun wielded by an expert at close range, any move you try to make will be followed and the scatter shot will still hit. The same applies here and is likely why Central was bombed out by Core’s world. Nothing stops the scheming like point blank annihilation.)
Now I really want to know what the actual transmission was. Probably something boring, but who knows?
I’m assuming something about grapes, given the upper half of the page.
Message content unable to be translated. Chance of metaphor 96%. Message refers to entity as a small seeded fruit.
With lack of punctuation unable to determine if it is the fruit that is small, or the seeds.
Vium is good at scaring Control.
I think it depends on who was giving the status. If it was Ila giving the status, then it was probably status grape. If it was Vium, then I’m thinking status raspberry.
Sure, I’m thinking that Vium is aware of the conversation between Peter and Ila. However, they’re also aware of the conversation between Control and whatever Kor’s World servitor was reporting on Team Peter, and it’s more important to communicate that they’re giving the finger to Kor’s World in a way that Kor’s World likely won’t understand than it is to convey that Ila is feeling as Ila feels towards humans in general towards Peter specifically, because he’s a human.
@PastUtopia: I’ve been through some computer problems myself, so i understand.. and you needed some time off to relax once in a while.
Shouldn’t Ila’s second to last bubble say:
“, lest you plan something *even stupider* and more reckless”
That’s how it sounded in my head. Mium has to be careful giving Peter too much rope to shoot himself with…
“Mium and their control will scheme against each other.” Peter pretty much confirms what I have suspected for a while now: Control is an AI, and, very likely, all of Kor’s World is run by an AI. . . .
Past,
Please do not apologize for such an excellent comic. It is perhaps worth three regular comics as if there were such a thing. It was well worth the wait to get such a wonderful surprise.
You have mentioned crashing Photoshop before. Would splitting the comic into multiple images be doable when you are getting really creative?
> You have mentioned crashing Photoshop before. Would splitting the comic into multiple images be doable when you are getting really creative?
Yeah, it isn’t too hard to fix, the main problems are resolution and layers I think. Each text bubble is a layer, each panel is a layer (so I can move them around to account for text bubbles). Combined with the image size and resolution, Photoshop craps out.
So I can either break it into multiple images, pages, flatten layers, or reduce resolution (since I save things out at ~25% the drawing’s resolution, there’s no real need for them to be so high resolution in photoshop; I don’t draw in photoshop, just add the text and bubbles and some effects).
It’s not a hard limit on page size, but I take as sign I’ve probably gone too far when photoshop crashes.
Couple questions.
* Are you running a 13th or 14th Gen Intel processor?
* If it’s a lack of RAM, that’s a straightforward fix, but I wouldn’t expect crashing from it alone.
* Have you considered another program. Either something like GIMP, or a paid alternative.
In video editing, there’s this method of using smaller, lower-resolution, videos for the editing part, then switching back to the full-resolution for the rendering stage.
It seems to me you could use low-res images to figure out layout and word balloon placement and size, then swap in higher resolution images, already flattened, for the final layout.
That doesn’t work in photoshop editing because the elements size and relation to each other would have to be remade. When you’re applying edits to the low res video version you are applying the edit to the entire frame not making spot edits and you still have to do fine placement of any objects on the original. The low res is good for timeline edits and applying Presets. Once you start doing fancy stuff though you need to be editing on the full size
Everyone has heard of gimp, but everyone who suggests using gimp instead of photoshop for complex work, has obviously not used gimp for any length of time. it is not intuitive from a design standpoint if you have 10 years or more PS experience.
My suggestion for PS would be to make all the bubbles in one layer and the text in another I don’t see what you get for having them in different layers. The only time I would imagine that having them on different layers would be useful is if you were going to be overlapping the texts and wanted to do blending between them for readability or lack thereof but as long as they are all separated I don’t understand how it gains you anything.
More precisely, your suggestion only makes sense in programs that use vector graphics, or that do object-oriented graphic design. It’s my understanding that both Photoshop and the Gimp use images as their data element layer, rather than stuff that’s easy to move around, and neither of them do actual vector graphics. They can import from vector graphics formats, but they do so by rendering the images and letting you edit the rendered images.
I would possibly suggest Blender, as I’ve heard it’s good, but I can’t make heads or tails of it and most of my computer graphics work has been raytracing. If I can’t figure out Blender, then how can I suggest someone with an even less appropriate background for it use it? I’m not going to suggest povray, I know people who spent most of their degrees learning how to use it, and while I didn’t, my understanding of it is pretty basic. Yes, it’s what I use for most of my graphics, but I’m not good enough to consider publishing.
Lol. Love the page!
Vium is trolling, but looks annoyed they didn’t decide to fight. I love that Code Double Red part. Like all Vium was trying to do was talk smack and it freaked Control out.
Kors world also having contingencies isn’t surprising. Especially since those cards do let them communicate across dimensions. So they still have a soldier and can just send another sky carrier. Heck, there’s a decent chance the Soldier on the ship was somehow saved.
Peter should also listen to Ila here. Mium does actually understand Peter better than he does himself sometimes. Interestingly this page also shows Peter is wrong about Control. Since Control cannot translate metaphors, it obviously has blind spots.
Control is freaked out by anything it can’t, uh, control. . . .
every metaphor is a cipher with the associated key being the context for the metaphor; metaphors and memes are only as understandable as the context that they are presented with, and if you don’t recognize the ingredients, it’s an abstract painting.
I’m curious what restrictions this brother operates under. Might the author enlighten us?
Also – Looks like there is some extremely greyed out text in the bottom right corner. Anyone want to post what it says for those like me with bad eyesight?
.
The message says: “Transmission Decoded. Unable to translate. Chance of metafor ninety six percent. Message content refers to Entity status as small seeded fruit.”
We know of several restrictions and priorities Muim operates under, but not all of them.
I may be missing some, but here are a few. He is not allowed to:
* Take over other systems without permission.
* Run more than one instance of himself at once.
* Possess or use military hardware without approval.
* Kill anyone. Atter doesn’t count.
* Do most things while the AA system is active.
* Remember certain things from while operating with elevated privileges.
* Lie
Almost every one of those has exceptions, and Mium has worked around almost all of them.
* When Miko gave him an extra server, her music computer.
*The F-5 asked to be integrated.
* He possibly anticipated creating Vium.
* There is an offline copy of him running on a computer Ms. Portunia has.
* He had Miko do the leg work to get around the AA restrictions.
* We saw him fail to get around the restrictions with the Kardus, but could imply things to Ila. Who did the dirty work.
* He noted that he could do quite a bit, including killing people to protect Aron.
* Asking questions with implications isn’t lying.
* All the ludicrous amounts of “not military” hardware.
Plus other things I know missing.
But this isn’t Mium. Not exactly anyways. Are we sure he has the same restrictions?
No we are not.
We can guess by his inability to do things when first created, requiring Miko’s help, that he has some restrictions. However, it’s hard to tell for sure. Especially since most of the time Mium’s restrictions aren’t visible to us or anyone in story.
Wow!
Yes! Wow! Wowser! Woo Hoo! Yah Hoo! One of the best ever comics.
Loved the Ninja Vium!