Comic for Thursday, January 10th, 2019
I did say that it would be another intermission character. Really, I suppose both of them are intermission characters, though I think we’ve seen Kyle in non-intermission comics, ultimately the difference between the two at this point (and, for that matter, at all points) is entirely academic.
I am going to be traveling a bit this month for work and stuff. I think the buffer is going to be fine though, so I don’t imagine any interruption. Tyler’s story is probably going to be a bit on hold till I’m traveling because it’s a good thing to work on when I am traveling and have time to kill on planes and hotel rooms and stuff where comic drawing doesn’t work as well, but it’s still scheduled for an update or two this month.
Probably entirely unrelated Comics:
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GEnetic predisposition to jailbreaking. Yet another thing that seems like a Kepler thing. I’m starting to wonder what the Kepler’s were (as a family or whatever) Pre-incursion.
I think the common conclusion of their pre-incursion places within the magical society is that they were spymasters of some sort. It does seem to make some sense with their common ways of doing things, including that “genetic predisposition to jailbreaks”.
I’m starting to suspect something closer to a politically active Mafia. Just a hunch
The real question is, what’s going on that they need an alibi for, and how does she know that they need an alibi?
Well, that’s technically two questions, but still.
Quite simply, they needed alibis because stuff went down, of course.
There does remain a question of whether the stuff that went down was something that would count as evidence on why the police’s concept of an alibi is hopelessly flawed, whether it was a third party actor who happened to be on their side (such as Mari’s Query clone), or if it was some action that someone hoped would be blamed on them (whether or not it was an actual attempt to frame them – but an actual attempt to frame them would probably not be so secure against the council meeting, as it’s likely their opposition knew about the council meeting.)
You had ONE NORMAL PERSON in your family!
Ah well. Now the collection’s complete, at least….
I more get the feeling that she’s helping Peter (probably through Query) with something, more than she has just started acting as a rogue agent on her own. It was implied with the previous appearances and the old Halloween sketch that she views keeping Peter out of trouble as her job… just not one she has done a good job at.
“Why is it I’m talking to MAri, but I swear I’m hearing Peter?” made me crack up. Well done.
Did we ever meet Mari before? Did we even know Peter had a sister/cousin/whatever-she-is?
I suspect we don’t know what she needs this alibi for. Yet.
We absolutely met Mari before. Intermission 1 and Intermission 4.
The reason Mari knows she needs a really good alibi is because she has been talking to Mium. Which depending on the exact time relative to current story line could be very significant.
On one hand she might be merely proving she is on Central and Not Palandra with Peter, Mikio, and an highly Illegal SMAI.
On the other hand if Mium is still trapped in single thread mode she could be talking to an (3rd?) unsyncronized instance.
I got arrested to establish an alibi, and don’t worry you’ve already got one… It’s comics like this one, short but amazing; this is perfect.
The… extra question I have is this conversation happening here -on camera- for some third party’s benefit? There can always be another layer when people are acting like Peter
Followup thought – ‘you have gotten an alibi’, *Zelda item acquisition music plays as Kyle holds a piece of paper over his head with a worried look on his face*
Um, seriously? Panel 1. Yes, it’s on camera. Although, I’m not necessarily sure it’s for the other party’s *benefit*, per se.
Wait. Um, does a momentary source of stress count as a lifespan reduction or as exercise and therefore a lifespan increase? I think I’ve heard it both ways.
Actually, there’s no question about it: Stress leads to a lifespan reduction.
I say that because there are plenty of scientific studies which links stress to all sorts of health issues. And stress can interfere with sleep patterns, which can also contribute to health issues.
All of these problems are caused by “too much stress”, not stress in general. Minor stress is generated through learning and can help with focus. And it’s a slightly different kind of stress that causes our muscles to develop.
Exactly. Chronic stress is different from single isolated stressful incidents.
Unless of course your life is a string of endless stressful incidents, at which point you’re back to chronic stress.
I think there is a chronic/pot joke in there somewhere.
We talk about the importance of a stress-free life, but generally that’s only because we all fundamentally seem to think that a truly stress free life is not possible, possibly isn’t even conceivable. I mean, I’ve talked with people who said they thought it was possible, but when questioned about what a truly stress-free life would mean, they admitted to some sources of stress that they didn’t think were even conceivable to remove.
I recall having come across a report of someone who felt that it was likely that a completely stress free life would be just as hazardous to ones health as chronic stress. The vast majority of the report seemed to focus on how completely unnecessary it is for most of us to concern ourselves with this, as they interviewed thousands of people with low stress lives to find just a few – like 3 or 4 – who had what they felt were sufficiently stress free lives as to provide a significant health hazard.
Having only found a single digit number of people who fit their criteria, I don’t think their results reported in their ‘results’ section were really meaningful. But I do think that conceptually, it’s likely to be true. I mean, without stress, I wouldn’t exercise or eat well. I probably also wouldn’t be able to identify a point to it all. I doubt that would increase suicide rates in that population, as there would likely not be any real point for ending the pointlessness. But developing survival skills would also not be at all a priority. In fact, I don’t think the word ‘priority’ would have any meaning.
Short bursts of stress, after which one gets to relax and recover from it, are not clearly documented as being harmful. Some of the evidence suggests it is, but it also seems likely that evidence is subject to a fair amount of selection bias. Also, I’m not sure if a short burst of stress that resulted in a fatal heart attack can truly be said to be one that one was able to relax and recover from, and at that point, the ability to check with the patient to determine whether or not they secretly had chronic stress or not is absent.
The issue seems to be having the /right/ amount of stress, as determined from person to person. Looking at low levels of stress is difficult for two reasons, however. First, it is almost always possible to artificially raise your stress level, either by hyping yourself up or by taking actions which cause chaos in one’s environment. And second, because the effects of boredom and lethargy that are the results of an “overly low-stress” lifestyle are individually experienced much the same, and may be referred to with the same words, as stress.
To give you an example of what that might look at you could ask a person “what was it like living an extremely low-stress lifestyle that time when you broke your leg and couldn’t do anything but wait till you recovered while insurance took care of all your bills?” (that being an example of a person separated from most of the normal stressful aspects of their life). But if you did they would most likely answer “it was really stressful, just sitting around like that” (an example of the “feeling” of stress from having too little actual stress) or they would say something similar to to “it was ok, I threw Cheetos at my sister till she got mad. It was funny.” (an example of creating stress artificially to approach the desired equilibrium).
All these things make it very difficult to scientifically test the low end of this variable, especially since your average stress level is taken over a period of days or weeks. The closest related, but not exact, data I can think of for “low stress” is from hospitals and jails. The first finds that distracting people from their injures reduces depression (which would be, for our purposes, about keeping them from creating the wrong type of stress; chronic destructive (negative without an output) vs variable constructive (positive with an output)). And the second tends to find that getting prisoners used to the low stress, and low chaos, routine significantly reduces issues of chaos and violence (which, to us, tells us about trying to “reset” or “fool” or possibly “suppress” people’s normal stress equilibrium). Neither is exactly focused on the same thing, but as far as I know they are as good as we have got.
Which reminds me, we have barely even talked about the difference between “Chronic” stress vs “Variable” stress and not said anything about the difference between “Negative” stress vs “Positive” stress (same “negative” and “positive” definitions from learning theory) or of the difference between having a constructive output for that stress or not. There is a lot more but, needless to say, this is a really complicated subject.
Escalation in every single panel except 6. Lols throughout. A+ script.
…No, panel 6 is escalation. She was compared to *Peter*.
I get the feeling that Kyle was implying that Peter put her to this, which would explain her mock offended reply.
Of course, Kyle is probably right.