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Grrl Power - Dabbler’s Science Corner #8
🕑 Added 2024-10-21 10:00:11 +0000 UTCThank you for the support! You guys are awesome!
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.
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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.
Comments
Reigys
Lol. that pie recipe sounds great
Martin Croft
Old joke, with one major flaw. If you throw velocities greater than c into the math you end up taking the square root of a negative number. Tachyons are imaginary! https://www.mathsisfun.com/numbers/imaginary-numbers.html
eddi_TBH
Pre-made characters with a requirement to bring back certain amounts and/or types of loot. Each with a hidden goal viv-a-vis thinning their rivals. Paranoia meets D&D.
Kevin Wright
I spy a Carl Sagan quote. Nice one!
Martin Drkoš
Maybe they could get reality hacking girl to equip visitors with save points. Think of the potential revenue! Or they could let visitors use avatar bodies.
Aaron Mauthe
Gonna add that to my next dnd campaign. “Guillotine or dungeon!”
Chaddaï Fouché
I don't think it's supposed to be "bad" as such, but rather it won't be allowed to persist for any reasonable length of time after a lot of bad publicity and berating of Arc for their irresponsibly. So Dabbler is figuring on just skipping the whole ordeal. Too bad because I'm rather sympathetic to your point of view that the population of billionaires is ripe for some thinning of the herd...
eddi_TBH
wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff
eddi_TBH
They seem to be based on how much and how hard Sydney uses the orbs. considering she ran the batteries down earlier, she may be due a bonus pip or two.
eddi_TBH
Considering the crowd we have been traveling with are all danger magnets, weirdness magnets of some combination thereof, 95% of galactic society, including demons, blood mages, body snatchers and others we haven't met yet, lead lives of quiet, if unusual to us, routines
eddi_TBH
My sympathies. Stay strong.
eddi_TBH
Plus the trials of all the bastards claiming a piece of their estates may replace reality television.
Person
And on the other side of the coin, all sentients have rights even the duneon-spawned ones. Delving is murder!
Opus the Poet
I think I remember that from one of Asimov's joke books and he died in the XXth Century.
John Van Stry
The spouse is the one who hates it, me? I like it. I grew up in NY, and I've been to Buffalo. Even in the winter. You are about to experience a very different life - trust me on this. Snow tires, Tire chains, good warm and waterproof boots, also parkas, these are going to be things you use a lot. Thermal underwear, wool socks, warm gloves, and keeping a shovel, sand, a heavy blanket and an old warm coat in the trunk of your car. The words 'Lake Effect' will become important, along with 'Canadian Air Mass' :-) Honestly? I liked it. But it is different.
AlpineBob
Panel two could use a "such". Either 'reached such a level' or 'safety such that'. Good luck with Buffalo - my dad was born in Rochester and I don't think he ever missed it...
Dave Barrack
I lived in St. Louis until I was about 8, an age when snow is awesome and I didn't have to drive in it and was too young to even really shovel the driveway. Then I moved to Houston and spent the next 40 years there or Dallas, so I have the opposite reaction to snow to you. I'd love some. Also I basically don't have to commute, just hit the grocery store, hit the gym etc. So bring it on.
Czarzhan
I agree. Nevertheless, I think he coined the term.
Reigys
neat joke lol
John Van Stry
Sorry to hear about your situation. Just, I don't know if you're familiar with buffalo or not - just understand - snow & cold. (Now if you do know what you're getting into - that's fine. I like snow myself but the spouse - who grew up in Michigan - made it clear that we were never living anywhere with snow ever again. Hence, Texas).
Dave Barrack
I'm not sure he intended it as a joke.
SantaTheHutt
2024 *Dave coins tachyon joke* 1980 *Richard Feynman laughs*
Aaron Mauthe
Psst! (He said “decimal places of accuracy” not figures!)
JasonAW3
Actually, that's a really good point! I think that Sydney should have gotten way more pips for single handedly taking out an alien dreadnought-robot, fighter carrier, apocalypse machine. (Yeah, not even in the most wacked out comic books from the 1970's did I ever expect to use THAT phrase, and those guys were on serious drugs! So congratulations!) But, in all fairness,gaining the interstellar travel ability was a pretty good perk, but I STILL think she deserved a few more pips for taking out the alien fighter fleet, and, briefly, taking on, not one, but THREE more! I do have to give her credit for knowing when she might be a touch overwatch and boldly running away, but still... SOME added exp should have been awarded. It's too bad that she didn't have a "helmet camera" to record the fight, but, I suspect, her communications orb probably has a log file/incident recording ability that she hasn't accessed yet. Worse, I have a feeling that some highly advanced aliens placed her orbs where she found them, simply to stream Sydney's antics as "Sol-3's Funniest Sentients" which is at present, the highest rated series in the Zaxndarian Confederation. (Don't worry, they're saving Sydney's wages and residuals in the Galactic Bank, which, when Syd accesses her account the next time she's out in the galaxy, and she does a DNA scan to find out what she can eat, she'll likely have more money that the whole of Earth's GDP for five years! But, you have to wonder... Would this start Sydney on her villian arc?)
Aaron Mauthe
… I’m sorry an increase in the death rate of middle age white “alpha male” types is supposed to be a bad thing in this case, right? Cause I gotta be honest… after oceangate I’m pretty solidly in the “let the dumb billionaires Darwin Award themselves” camp, and that sounded like a selling point to me
Richard Riley
Didn't I already say that?
JasonAW3
Dude, I know how you feel. I lost me father to a traffic accident over a dozen years ago on October 30. Found out about it that evening when friends were visiting. I about passed out when I realized that my sister wasn't trying to pull a tasteless Holloween joke. (She'd never done something like that before, so I should have known better.) To say I went through hell, puts it mildly, so I feel for you and understand your pain...
Greg Morrow
0.00011% isn't five figures of accuracy. It's two figures (the 11). The rest is order of magnitude, which doesn't have much to do with accuracy. Consider the federal budget, quoted as $6,750,000,000,000. That's not accurate to 13 places; it's probably not accurate to 3. The whole topic is called "significant figures" and it's really important in measurement and science.
Matt Parkent
I'm just gonna come out and say it. I've not been reading these science corners. But that's not Dave's fault. I've been dealing with a terminally ill mother with quickly declining health and it's making my already short attention span even worse so I don't have the patience for the WALLS OF TEXT. But maybe in a few years when I've finally managed to de-stress I'll come back and finally peruse them.
Evil Midnight Lurker
I have been wondering if all of galactic society is as rowdy as the parts we've seen.
Jon Gibson
I wonder how many pips Sydney can get from a dungeon? Did we ever get told if her pips are lvl based or earned from surviving hardships?
Justaguy
Like to the point that when I posted that joke on a Discord server with 3 of my friends, both the med student and he engineer student from the 90s replied with "An oldie but a goodie" :)
Tamás Kaposvári
That's only 2 significant digits of accuracy, Maxima. 🤓 The five decimal places just means that the quantity is small. Especially in percents.
Czarzhan
The tachyon joke is very old, I think it was originally coined in the mid 27th century...
Czarzhan
The apple pie recipe that begins "First, create the universe" is a Carl Sagan joke from the original COSMOS TV series.
Michael Obert
Indeed so!
Justaguy
Sorry Dave. I recall seeing it a decade or more ago, Heck I think it was in a HitchHikers guide book? A quick google has the top result as a Reddit post 6 years ago: "“Hey, we don’t serve faster-than-light particles in here.” A tachyon walks into a bar..."
Torabi
I've either heard the tachyon joke before, or it just seems obvious enough in hindsight to seem like it's been told before. Or maybe I'm remembering it from you writing it here! :) Though it does remind me a bit of Thiotimoline.
Anton Schleef
That must be one of the longest, and most labor intensive, apple pie recipes in creation. Still, I bet it results in some truly stellar apple pies.
Anton Schleef
Don't forget about the various activist groups that will want all dungeons in the entirety of creation to be wiped out so that they don't endanger anyone any more, and fuck the various worlds and cultures that are reliant on them for economic stability and/or maintaining their tech base.
KnightRider007
"More likely to gain attention"... unless they're in a situation where they're not portrayed as the ones most likely to die. Eg: death in custody, domestic violence victim. White male victims in those situations are very much "the demographic less likely to garner media attention for their various plights"
Anton Schleef
Only by about two dozen various authors. Once you start down that rabbit hole you almost have to join the dark side to escape.
JoeForest
'System', huh? Reminds me of Bruce Sentar's books, although I'm sure the concept has been explored plenty enough already in the LitRPG genre.
Matthew Dodgen
Thanks for the life update Dave. Losing a parent and then moving is never fun, let alone cross country. I hope it goes smoothly for you and your family.
Michael Obert
White privilege + dungeon delving + lack of experience = blood feuds. Trust me on this one.
Kile Mullen
I think the tachyon joke is old enough that Richard Feynman probably heard it from one of HIS professors.
john kraemer
I think I've heard the joke before. (But maybe it's just more of those darn tachyons!)
