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Grrl Power #857 - Patreon 2x
🕑 Added 2020-07-13 10:01:01 +0000 UTCThanks so much for your support!
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It has been pointed out that Cora and Dabbler are being very careful about technological pollution with the leg, or at least the incubator it's floating in, while at the same time, Cora granted some pretty high tech glasses to Sydney.
Cora could probably defend that if she really wanted to. The targeting function of the glasses could probably be replicated with our tech. It'd be more cumbersome, certainly, but with some good software and a high res CCD chip, I bet it could work. The comm function is also nothing special, really. Frix didn't send his message from deep space straight to the glasses. Cora left a hyperspace relay, not quite in Earth orbit, but close enough to Earth to be functional, while not being somewhere we're going to bump into on our way to Mars.
We're further from the one way screen inside the glasses, though letting us have the schematics for that probably won't directly endanger the global ecosystem. The power source for the glasses that allows it to do all that stuff is a different matter. That's the kind of stuff that can cause technological upheaval. Every portable device designed these days starts around the battery, because that's the thing that takes up a ton of space and contributes a lot of weight. If we had a fuel cell that could fit in the ear hook thingy on a pair of glasses, it would be a huge leap, especially if it could scale. If we suddenly had an electric car that could travel 10,000 miles off a power source the size of a VHS tape, there would be massive economic consequences.
Sylv isn't referring to an incident on Earth, but a well known near miss in the intergalactic community. It was one of those cases where the Xevoarchy (the Space UN) debated whether or not to intercede with a species struggling with a case of self extinction. You'd think it'd be a simple thing to want to swoop in and save a species, but imagine making that decision about humanity during the height of the Cold War. At least a century or two from achieving extra solar system space travel, hoarding nuclear weapons, an endless history of war and superstition and racism and socio-economic abuses, etc, etc, ad nauseum, etc.
Now imagine the representative of your race needing to vote to commit a corvette from your navy to swing by a planet and help sort themselves out while your constituents are calling to spend resources on more domestic matters. Again, it's nice to think everyone would be all "let's help and make the universe a better place" but the reality is that some people are selfish and short sighted and ideologically compromised, so the galaxy at large is only a slightly better place than most individual inhabited planets.
Comments
Damaged
Well, to be fair, the only worlds nearby that we can reach in the short term are kinda vacant. I can't see anyone getting pissed off with us setting up shop on Mars and maybe a few Oort objects.
Louis Richards
What are the odds of Terrans making it just far enough to try and start colonizing other worlds and pissing off the rest of the galaxy? And what are the chances of being able to collect on it...? Hmmmmm...
A Patreon of the Ahts
The one thing I'd ask for is the method of producing large sheets of Graphene fast and for cheap. Change everything.
Andrew Denton
I misread panel four as "antibiotic resistant superbus", which is an entirely different mental image.
A Patreon of the Ahts
"If you envenomat your first contact, you maybe a level 0 civilization"
Town Crier
Skynet for President in 2020!!!
Tim
Also, panel #5, should that be "anthropogenic"?
Tim
In panel #2, I'm a little confused about what Dabbler says. I'm not sure if it should be A) "automatically de-cryo itself when ready" or B) "automatically cryo itself until ready".
FeyOne
I also suspect there is a bit more leeway around the gift to Sydney given that Sydney already possesses technological artifacts that out tech pretty much the entire galaxy... So there is that aspect of things with Sydney as well.
Brad Kirkwood
i just realized that series came out almost thirty years ago and most people won't understand the reference, now i feel old and that makes me sad
Brad Kirkwood
i thought Genocyber was about a bioweapon created using two psychic sisters not a rampant AI
Ascender
It was funnier 5 months ago...
Nick Hodgson
The idea that aliens have death pools on the human race is hilarious to me! π
Christopher Walls
I love how much lore and background info you put into this comic. It's great.
Michael Obert
Akward!
