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I don’t think Walky is actually mad about the nachitos; if he really wanted some he would walk over and grab a handful before Amber eats them all. I think being mad about losing the nachitos is him “being on brand,” and he is not actually upset.
I think he’s just focused on Amber. He came here specifically to game and instead of that he’s asking about what she’s doing, looking at her, while the game he wanted so much for his brand is in his hands. Kind of starting to think he just wanted to hangout with Amber. Even getting upset about something as arbitrary as nachitos is just an excuse to engage with her. As many mentioned at the start he had other options to seek for gaming.
That feels a little naive to me. Maybe that’s what he wanted but I find it hard to believe he truly expected that he could walk away with an expensive piece of hardware. Plus he had other options, like Sal if he really wanted someone to loan him a console.
You’re reading things into the strip that aren’t there. In the Sept 1 strip, Walky said he wanted to borrow Amber’s because it was a “real Nintendo” – Sal just has a GameBoy. And on Sept 2 he promises to bring it back, and is clearly not thrilled that she won’t let him take it. The “walk away with an expensive piece of hardware” argument is silly – it’s not like he and Amber are strangers.
For one. This is all silly. Like dude is just slightly pressed about not gaming on the weekend. And if that argument isn’t valid why didn’t Amber let him leave with it?
Two. I don’t think I’m reading more into this than Walky is giving. He has agency, this isn’t a series of uncontrolled outcomes. He chose to come see Amber first. He chose to offer up his nachitos, and he’s chosen to get upset about her eating them.
I’m trying to give Walky credit actually because I don’t think he’d really be that upset a friend ate his chips, I think he just actually wants to see Amber and talk to her because up until fake girlfriend date their relationship was pretty cold, until she revealed she still likes him. I think that made him very happy and he actually wants to hang with her as friends because they have a lot in common. Cause ultimately he could just take his chips and leave.
Three. If I were reading too much into this I’d say he’s here because he knows he’s not into Lucy as much as he thinks he should be and pretending to care about his arbitrary gaming brand is just a convenient distraction from problems he doesn’t want to deal with. Which is his real brand because he said almost that exact thing and has done that several times, and he wants to fuck Amber.
TLDR: You don’t have to read all that. You’re probably right and I’m reading too much into it. Sorry.
if walky was gonna try to wrestle amber for chips he’d be bound and gagged pretty fast and there’d be a whole new level of awkward upon the walking in on
that’s what he said, that’s not what he planned or expected. he can’t both leave with the switch and stay and share the chips. He was inviting himself over to hang out with Amber, and came up with a contrived rationalization. That’s generally fine.
Reason #123456789 why I’m glad not to be into dudes: Apparently they’re supposed to enjoy being in the vaguest of sexual settings with two women, one of them taken, whole they themselves are taken???
One taken, the other his ex-..something. That didn’t achieve ex-itude on particularly pleasant terms. I’m mildly surprised she’s this cool with him at all.
Also he kind of already did his due diligence. I can imagine him walking back from the grocery store or however the kids buy their food these days thinking “this weekend’s gonna rule!” If only he knew the series of events would lead to such a sacrifice maybe he’d make different life decisions, like sucking up to Sal and Danny instead.
What if that was a fresh bag, intended for a weekend of hardcore gaming?
(Side note: what kind of animal eats nacho tortilla chips while playing on a borrowed console? You’re going to get oily flavor dust stuff all over it! That’s a surefire way to never be loaned things again. You have to think about the long game.)
“I am not invested in this information” is perhaps not the ideal title for a book, although admittedly I doubt anyone’s buying/reading Dumbing of Age compilation books without already being invested.
My special interest is videogames; I want to make my own game one day, and I love learning new things about how games make things work within it’s own world.
I don’t mind, though all I have at the moment is a list of elements and elemental combos that I want to include in the game, and an outline of the story. I need to get a hold of my copy of rpgmaker, and start working on the code.
Well, I love playing Worldle (worldle.teuteuf.fr) and its related games (Statele, Wheretaken, and Wheretaken USA), as well as Globle (globle-game.com). FreeRice has some in-depth geography games (play.freerice.com/categories) but they get a bit too fine-grained for me, sometimes. (Pun intended!)
So basically, I just love creating virtual maps online. I also play obsessively with the electoral vote maps over at the FiveThirtyEight blog, 270towin.
I used to paper my apartment walls with maps of all kinds. I still do, but the one I have by my bed — just showing all the countries of the world — is the one I love to look at while I am going to sleep. Naming all the countries and memorizing their shapes… it comforts me. Makes me happy.
Eh I think this as good a time as any, no worries.
Special interest? I’ve got lots, perhaps the biggest one at the moment being video game creation and coding. I’ve also loved science throughout my entire life, primarily physics and related sciences, I am (or used to be) very much like Dina for physics. I was the kid who would inject space and physics knowledge and pokemon into my veins.
Out of my special interests, my intense love of science right now feels, dormant? Or rather, not as strong as it used to be, I hope to regain my passion for it one day, and live like Dina with the thirst for science knowledge. 🥲
It means that learning can be just as overwhelming as sticking a straw in a fire hose! If you try to drink from it too deeply, you could get washed away in it! So we stick only a few straws in at a time, and then we can drink deeply and safely and fill our bellies with knowledge.
Yes, I concur. But like, the thing is, learning physics required no effort for me, and even provided energy precisely because it was a special interest. But not now, it seems, albeit the larger brain-worm that was a part of is still there, just dormant. It is my greatest hope to re-awaken my inner science love, my inner Dina, like that one day. 🥲
I’ve got a few, but I’m really into Gundam and insects/arachnids.
Also, I weirdly know a LOT of Barbie lore I don’t actually remember learning. Like, her middle name is Millicent. Why do I know this? I am not actually sure?
I like figuring out new ways of doing things above the individual level. So I like looking at how to organize and interact with human beings in terms of relationships, religion, politics, etc. and trying to figure out new and better ways of doing stuff. So I look at stuff like polyamory, polytheism, psychogeography, dingpolitick, relationism, et. al. and try to find lessons that are broadly applicable. The next thing I’m planning to learn about is polypolitanism.
Ohhh my dad had a few books of baby names and etymologies in his office, and as a kid waiting around for him, I read those books cover-to-cover.
To this day, it can be a nice unusual conversation-starter, like asking people about their names, or getting to tell a Michael that his name is a question.
Similarly I love coming up with character name gimmicks
For example My skunk triplet characters are named
Muffy
Mac
and Rori
After the scientific name “Mephitis Macroura
Ooh, yes! It’s especially fun to try to figure out where someone’s family is from based on their name. (For example, anyone whose name is full of ch, i, z, k, w, and j, is almost certainly of the Ibo tribe, and most likely migrated within the past 1-2 generations from Lagos, Nigeria.)
Well, it sometimes can be? Like a lot of folks are multiracial who’s ancestors come from all over, and also sometimes the guess can just be born of stereotypes?
Like for instance, one of my professors had the surname Wong, which lots of people in the US assume is Chinese when she’s actually Indian.
No worries tho, just letting you in on a bit of multicultural context.
Yeah, you’re right. I should be more careful. D’oh! (Philly is such a recent-immigrant city, seems like everyone has a story to tell about their family’s national origin, and an itch to tell it. But that doesn’t prove true everywhere.)
All the weird ways evolution has led to a less than ideal relationship between two specific entities. Examples include things like figs and fig wasps who are obligate mutualists in the worst way, hammer orchids and thynnid wasps where the flower is the parasite in an unusual way, in immunology the immune system’s efforts to fight neisseria led to three different pathways of the complement system being able to initiate a membrane attack complex, that really only matters for neisseria, and so in response at least one species of neisseria evolved a method to stop the membrane attack complex from being formed, jawed vertebrates developed recombination-activating genes to have on-tap immune cells with specificity to exact pathogen antigens, so Plasmodium developed antigen-rearranging to ghost memory cells that recognised it from previous infected, humans are one of two mammals I know of that stopped using a specific sugar molecule in our cells and even have immune mechanisms to attack instances of that sugar molecule, in response to Plasmodium and the malaria it causes, and dang if that archaea didn’t evolve a species that uses the new sugar molecule to get into our cells anyway. Also, Vibrio cholerae now floods our cells with an enzyme that preferences the new sugar molecules, and in exchange for this evolutionary feat, eating other mammals gives us inflammation and leads to a buildup of the sugar molecule in some of our tumors. Good job buddy! Showed them.
you’re right, the word I was looking for was “protozoan.” This is something I learned about last year and while archaea was introduced, not many solid examples seem to have been offered, and seems I conflated protozoan eukaryotes and amoeba with archaea. The reason for this seems to be because there are no known pathogenic archaea, which is really intriguing and now I’ll be going down a rabbit hole about that.
Religions. (I’m esp. likely to chime in here whenever Judaism comes up.)
And lots of other things.
I’m writing/illustrating a children’s novel about fairies.
It’s possible I’ve mentioned this here before (I totally have), but Discworld.
“Oh, you like the Discworld books? Well, lots of people do, that’s not really a…”
No, I mean I have a display of Clarecraft figures that I’m still adding to, even though they stopped making them decades ago. I mean I have a complete set of GURPS Discworld books, even though I’ve only played an RPG once in my life and it was D&D. I mean I collect Discworld stamps.
I have a special interest in mountains and topology. The fact there are these giant lumps of rock in the world large enough to change weather and ecosystems always seemed fascinating. Also finding obscure hiking trails to take pictures of less-often appreciated places.
I’m OLD, I have had and abandoned so many special interests in my life. I think the overwhelming arc is my special interest is knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Other than that it’s things that move, as in transportation. I like cars, bicycles, motorcycles, boats, sailboats, ships, airplanes, gliders, sailplanes, hang gliders, ultralights… And models of all of the above.
well it’s good they can ‘parallel play’/casually chill in the same room without hovering over each other lol. or amber does various things that she doesn’t bother narrating out loud/compelled to tell dina about unless it’d directly affect her
That isn’t a bad thing, unless she is doing it around Dina, and Dina is uncomfortable with it. If Dina isn’t there or doesn’t care, then she can go for it.
My understanding is that it’s actually not that trick in question is impossible for humans to do, but rather that its impossible for the NES hardware to do because it involves pressing left and right at the same time on an NES controller.
Like, if you made a robot with absolute perfect control to try to do the trick on the original hardware, it couldn’t do it.
It’s like trying to shoot the International Space Station from sea level using an M1911 pistol. It’s a failure of the equipment, not human ability, even if that human ability would be questionable.
Of course, it’s absolutely very Amber to be so absorbed in her obsession about doing the impossible to gloss over that >_>.
since this is my particular “special interest”, i can elaborate: there are two “perfect times”, or TASes, in smb1, no L+R and L+R. the no L+R time is “humanly achievable”, since it doesn’t require you to press L and R at the same time, something not possible on an original NES controller. if you play on emulator, this is possible because keyboards just work that way, but the smb1 community has agreed to ban the trick from their runs for console fairness. the current smb1 record was just set within the last week, and has every single optimization possible except for a few small mistakes in 8-4, the final level. this means that the runner, niftski, was computer-perfect up to that point.
now the L+R TAS time is (i believe) about two seconds faster than the no L+R time, which is massive for a game that’s less than five minutes long. this is *not* humanly achievable, because of above, so nobody is really competing to try and do it.
I guess this is still a small price to pay for an awkward favor, even if Amber did her fair share to make it more awkward than it especially needed to be. Oh well, all’s well that ends well.
Also just recently, somebody shaved a fraction of a second off Sethbling’s record for SNES Super Mario World, which involves using three controllers and some tape to just straight-up rewrite the game’s code in memory on the fly to break it and glitch to the credits.
I love that kind of stuff, as a person who was a child when those systems came out, and then 30 years later people that weren’t born yet when it was released figured out how to hack it in real time by doing extremely naughty and unexpected things with the game’s code as it was running.
was gonna make this comment but ya beat me to it! Amber’d better hurry up or if the next batch of time the comic comes back around to her & walky & dina’s misadventures, there’ll be no more player optimizations to make :’D
This will not end well. In a room with pantless girls. A noticeable aroma of sexual activity. An upcoming wrestling match with one of them. Too many Chekhov items to not result in a disaster.
Calling Walky complaining about someone else eating his chips an “information dump” is honestly pretty generous of Dina. It barely qualifies as information.
As someone who’s been to many California universities, AH this takes me back! 🥰
Thank you, really nice to encounter something to bring back the “back to school” feeling I’ve been longing for somehow?
As a disabled person hit really hard by the pandemic and it’s aftermath, it’s possible that for what may be over a decade for all I know, that the only way for me to experience a University setting is as a memory. 🥲
Do you feel comfortable just going to a University library, finding a quiet nook, and hanging out to read or work? Or grabbing an isolated quiet table outside a coffee shop?
Or, maybe, taking a class online? Or just auditing a class online, like a MOOC?
Sometimes, just hanging out in the sunshine on a quad or an open field that’s university adjacent, can give a person that “campus feel”. Most campuses I’ve seen are not fenced in, so anyone can visit. Also, some have arboreta or experimental gardens or outdoor agricultural projects to stroll through.
My current situation and my inability to vaccinate and other disabilites, as well as my neurodivergence altogether say no to a lot of those at the moment, unfortunately.
Those recently forced me to quit school in fact, nobody is testing anymore at a lot of places.
COVID has killed more people all over the world than eleven 9/11s, but people here are ever so eager to forget the pandemic ever happened it seems.
At least thanks to Willis I have met others who also in same boat, so I know I’m not alone. 🥲
Also, if I be honest not too comfy with “buddy”, right now? Sorry I don’t mean to be offputting, I guess I just not in a too good place right now. (trauma-related)
Thank you for affirmation, I… I guess I need sleep or hot cocoa right now, probably both, and luckily have what I need for both…
I am so sorry, NG. That’s the Philly in me — I call everyone “pal,” “bud,” “hon’,” “fam,”… it’s a bad habit. I apologize. I should DEFINITELY be more careful.
Thank you, but it’s not you it’s me when it comes to the “buddy” thing, I have trauma that you couldn’t have known about. No worries, “fam” and “pal” and “hon” are alright with me tho
okay okay -- spider-man reboot idea
the lizard is still dr connors, but he's dr PHIL connors, and he wakes up every day and it's groundhog day and he's a lizard
is this anything
a plague has hit our house
both children singing billie eilish's "what was i made for" but entirely in "meows"
we can't get them to stop
it's been weeks
please send help
The plantation burning reminds me of when the residential school burnt down in Shubenacadie.
I was very young. Not understanding why we were all there watching a scary looking building burning. Cars lined up all over both sides of the road. It seemed like the entire rez population (1)
Someone is citing the MA constitutional provision explicitly allowing the state to impede federal marshals enforcing the fugitive slave act, DAMN the average citizen is radicalized
you’re laughing. the largest antebellum plantation house burned down & there are brides who will not get to spiritually absorb the poisoned spectral energy of the land for their big day, & you’re laughing.
Rolling Stone @rollingstone.com ⋅ 4h
Dana Simpson 
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like, what do you expect when you want to bum someone else’s stuff, accept the terms or don’t
Walky just mad his ass wrote a check his chips couldn’t cash
I don’t think Walky is actually mad about the nachitos; if he really wanted some he would walk over and grab a handful before Amber eats them all. I think being mad about losing the nachitos is him “being on brand,” and he is not actually upset.
I think he’s just focused on Amber. He came here specifically to game and instead of that he’s asking about what she’s doing, looking at her, while the game he wanted so much for his brand is in his hands. Kind of starting to think he just wanted to hangout with Amber. Even getting upset about something as arbitrary as nachitos is just an excuse to engage with her. As many mentioned at the start he had other options to seek for gaming.
I question that, since he was explicitly planning to leave with the Switch, and is only still there because Amber wouldn’t let him.
That feels a little naive to me. Maybe that’s what he wanted but I find it hard to believe he truly expected that he could walk away with an expensive piece of hardware. Plus he had other options, like Sal if he really wanted someone to loan him a console.
You’re reading things into the strip that aren’t there. In the Sept 1 strip, Walky said he wanted to borrow Amber’s because it was a “real Nintendo” – Sal just has a GameBoy. And on Sept 2 he promises to bring it back, and is clearly not thrilled that she won’t let him take it. The “walk away with an expensive piece of hardware” argument is silly – it’s not like he and Amber are strangers.
For one. This is all silly. Like dude is just slightly pressed about not gaming on the weekend. And if that argument isn’t valid why didn’t Amber let him leave with it?
Two. I don’t think I’m reading more into this than Walky is giving. He has agency, this isn’t a series of uncontrolled outcomes. He chose to come see Amber first. He chose to offer up his nachitos, and he’s chosen to get upset about her eating them.
I’m trying to give Walky credit actually because I don’t think he’d really be that upset a friend ate his chips, I think he just actually wants to see Amber and talk to her because up until fake girlfriend date their relationship was pretty cold, until she revealed she still likes him. I think that made him very happy and he actually wants to hang with her as friends because they have a lot in common. Cause ultimately he could just take his chips and leave.
Three. If I were reading too much into this I’d say he’s here because he knows he’s not into Lucy as much as he thinks he should be and pretending to care about his arbitrary gaming brand is just a convenient distraction from problems he doesn’t want to deal with. Which is his real brand because he said almost that exact thing and has done that several times, and he wants to fuck Amber.
TLDR: You don’t have to read all that. You’re probably right and I’m reading too much into it. Sorry.
I think he was originally just interested in the Switch, but now that he’s in Amber’s room he seems interested in her as well.
Is this leading to Lucy or Dorothy walking in on them wrestling for chips? Though I’d personally be afraid of getting hurt. Amber’s got good reflexes.
if walky was gonna try to wrestle amber for chips he’d be bound and gagged pretty fast and there’d be a whole new level of awkward upon the walking in on
I mean, I wouldn’t be mad.
that’s what he said, that’s not what he planned or expected. he can’t both leave with the switch and stay and share the chips. He was inviting himself over to hang out with Amber, and came up with a contrived rationalization. That’s generally fine.
I think he was super invested in his whole “videogames+nachitos” shtick and feeling dejected he can’t have the whole thing.
Amber will surely beat the record, what with the Empress of Evolution there to help her ENERGIZE!!! 🤩🦖
🪐
*plays “Pac Rainbow” on ROM hack*
She’s a Nachi-ral.
Congratulations! When is the bundle of joy due?
Walky’s morning of playing video games on a dinosaur next to pantsless girls is less fulfilling than he expected.
Any other straight dude would actually be smiling.
Reason #123456789 why I’m glad not to be into dudes: Apparently they’re supposed to enjoy being in the vaguest of sexual settings with two women, one of them taken, whole they themselves are taken???
One taken, the other his ex-..something. That didn’t achieve ex-itude on particularly pleasant terms. I’m mildly surprised she’s this cool with him at all.
only uncomfortable smiles count.
^if
I do wonder if he’s still wearing pants himself, or he’s liberated himself of that burden. When in Rome, after all…
You knew the deal Walky. Don’t write a check your nachito empty stomach can’t cash!
i’m sure his p arents will order him extra servings if they’re still on for dinner
I have had a no good very rotten terrible day well several no good very rotten days in a row. This cheered me up a little thanks.
Here’s a cup of tea and a flower.
🥺 Awe. Here, have a cookie
Thank you!
You could always get McNuggets later, my dude.
You know you can buy more chips Walky
It involves him leaving the switch behind and he has a brand to maintain.
Also he kind of already did his due diligence. I can imagine him walking back from the grocery store or however the kids buy their food these days thinking “this weekend’s gonna rule!” If only he knew the series of events would lead to such a sacrifice maybe he’d make different life decisions, like sucking up to Sal and Danny instead.
imagine them being a limited edition flavor that no longer got stocked
What if that was a fresh bag, intended for a weekend of hardcore gaming?
(Side note: what kind of animal eats nacho tortilla chips while playing on a borrowed console? You’re going to get oily flavor dust stuff all over it! That’s a surefire way to never be loaned things again. You have to think about the long game.)
not thinking about the long game is also part of his “brand”.
Dina’s last line here would make an excellent book title.
“I am not invested in this information” is perhaps not the ideal title for a book, although admittedly I doubt anyone’s buying/reading Dumbing of Age compilation books without already being invested.
It’s a hilarious title for the umpteenth volume in a series though for the irony factor.
Walky, to you play, you pay.
I won’t be up long enough to wait the appropriate amount of time, but, should anyone be up for engaging in a question game, here’s the prompt:
Q. : What is your special interest? Or, in the alternative, what is something that you really love learning about?
My special interest is videogames; I want to make my own game one day, and I love learning new things about how games make things work within it’s own world.
So cool! You’re a world builder!
Thank you; if I ever finish my game I hope I can sell it on Steam. No idea if I’ll actually make a profit, but I want to do it anyway.
Awe that’s so cool!!! now I wanna hear more about this game you wanna make, if you don’t mind sharing.
I don’t mind, though all I have at the moment is a list of elements and elemental combos that I want to include in the game, and an outline of the story. I need to get a hold of my copy of rpgmaker, and start working on the code.
Awesome, good luck!
(See, the alt-text.)
I LOVE maps. LOVE ’em! LOVE LOVE LOVE ’em!
Ooooh. Share some of your favorites??
Well, I love playing Worldle (worldle.teuteuf.fr) and its related games (Statele, Wheretaken, and Wheretaken USA), as well as Globle (globle-game.com). FreeRice has some in-depth geography games (play.freerice.com/categories) but they get a bit too fine-grained for me, sometimes. (Pun intended!)
So basically, I just love creating virtual maps online. I also play obsessively with the electoral vote maps over at the FiveThirtyEight blog, 270towin.
I used to paper my apartment walls with maps of all kinds. I still do, but the one I have by my bed — just showing all the countries of the world — is the one I love to look at while I am going to sleep. Naming all the countries and memorizing their shapes… it comforts me. Makes me happy.
Eh I think this as good a time as any, no worries.
Special interest? I’ve got lots, perhaps the biggest one at the moment being video game creation and coding. I’ve also loved science throughout my entire life, primarily physics and related sciences, I am (or used to be) very much like Dina for physics. I was the kid who would inject space and physics knowledge and pokemon into my veins.
Out of my special interests, my intense love of science right now feels, dormant? Or rather, not as strong as it used to be, I hope to regain my passion for it one day, and live like Dina with the thirst for science knowledge. 🥲
One straw in the fire hose at a time, sometimes, pal! ;-D
Pika pika? I do not know what that phrase means…
It means that learning can be just as overwhelming as sticking a straw in a fire hose! If you try to drink from it too deeply, you could get washed away in it! So we stick only a few straws in at a time, and then we can drink deeply and safely and fill our bellies with knowledge.
Yes, I concur. But like, the thing is, learning physics required no effort for me, and even provided energy precisely because it was a special interest. But not now, it seems, albeit the larger brain-worm that was a part of is still there, just dormant. It is my greatest hope to re-awaken my inner science love, my inner Dina, like that one day. 🥲
*plays “Unforgetting” by Devin Church*
…Probably you’ve already listened several times, but I always found the Feynman lectures on physics to be soothing bedtime reading.
“All of life is a process of fermentation.”
I’ve got a few, but I’m really into Gundam and insects/arachnids.
Also, I weirdly know a LOT of Barbie lore I don’t actually remember learning. Like, her middle name is Millicent. Why do I know this? I am not actually sure?
Oh. Wow, so cool! Arachnids are so fascinating. And lovely, too!
I like figuring out new ways of doing things above the individual level. So I like looking at how to organize and interact with human beings in terms of relationships, religion, politics, etc. and trying to figure out new and better ways of doing stuff. So I look at stuff like polyamory, polytheism, psychogeography, dingpolitick, relationism, et. al. and try to find lessons that are broadly applicable. The next thing I’m planning to learn about is polypolitanism.
Wow! So many cool new words for me to look up! Thank you!
I have a strange fascination with name etymology. I have other interests, but this is probably the weirdest one.
Ohhh my dad had a few books of baby names and etymologies in his office, and as a kid waiting around for him, I read those books cover-to-cover.
To this day, it can be a nice unusual conversation-starter, like asking people about their names, or getting to tell a Michael that his name is a question.
Similarly I love coming up with character name gimmicks
For example My skunk triplet characters are named
Muffy
Mac
and Rori
After the scientific name “Mephitis Macroura
All my characters have some kinda gimmick.
That is amazing!
Ooh, yes! It’s especially fun to try to figure out where someone’s family is from based on their name. (For example, anyone whose name is full of ch, i, z, k, w, and j, is almost certainly of the Ibo tribe, and most likely migrated within the past 1-2 generations from Lagos, Nigeria.)
Uh oh… is that racist? It’s just, I’ve never misidentified an Ibo, and most folks I meet are happy to hear their ancestral group named and recognized.
Well, it sometimes can be? Like a lot of folks are multiracial who’s ancestors come from all over, and also sometimes the guess can just be born of stereotypes?
Like for instance, one of my professors had the surname Wong, which lots of people in the US assume is Chinese when she’s actually Indian.
No worries tho, just letting you in on a bit of multicultural context.
Yeah, you’re right. I should be more careful. D’oh! (Philly is such a recent-immigrant city, seems like everyone has a story to tell about their family’s national origin, and an itch to tell it. But that doesn’t prove true everywhere.)
o3o Sometimes I draw.
Also I like learning about animals. Been a biology nerd since I was a kid.
Rock on with that circle of life!
All the weird ways evolution has led to a less than ideal relationship between two specific entities. Examples include things like figs and fig wasps who are obligate mutualists in the worst way, hammer orchids and thynnid wasps where the flower is the parasite in an unusual way, in immunology the immune system’s efforts to fight neisseria led to three different pathways of the complement system being able to initiate a membrane attack complex, that really only matters for neisseria, and so in response at least one species of neisseria evolved a method to stop the membrane attack complex from being formed, jawed vertebrates developed recombination-activating genes to have on-tap immune cells with specificity to exact pathogen antigens, so Plasmodium developed antigen-rearranging to ghost memory cells that recognised it from previous infected, humans are one of two mammals I know of that stopped using a specific sugar molecule in our cells and even have immune mechanisms to attack instances of that sugar molecule, in response to Plasmodium and the malaria it causes, and dang if that archaea didn’t evolve a species that uses the new sugar molecule to get into our cells anyway. Also, Vibrio cholerae now floods our cells with an enzyme that preferences the new sugar molecules, and in exchange for this evolutionary feat, eating other mammals gives us inflammation and leads to a buildup of the sugar molecule in some of our tumors. Good job buddy! Showed them.
Mind. BLOWN. 🤯
Plasmodium is a eukaryote, not an archaeon.
you’re right, the word I was looking for was “protozoan.” This is something I learned about last year and while archaea was introduced, not many solid examples seem to have been offered, and seems I conflated protozoan eukaryotes and amoeba with archaea. The reason for this seems to be because there are no known pathogenic archaea, which is really intriguing and now I’ll be going down a rabbit hole about that.
Religions. (I’m esp. likely to chime in here whenever Judaism comes up.)
And lots of other things.
I’m writing/illustrating a children’s novel about fairies.
Fantastic! I hope you can share the novel with us once it’s done… we’d love to buy it!
Religions here as well – though particularly the origins and development rather than theology or current practices.
Fascinating!
It’s possible I’ve mentioned this here before (I totally have), but Discworld.
“Oh, you like the Discworld books? Well, lots of people do, that’s not really a…”
No, I mean I have a display of Clarecraft figures that I’m still adding to, even though they stopped making them decades ago. I mean I have a complete set of GURPS Discworld books, even though I’ve only played an RPG once in my life and it was D&D. I mean I collect Discworld stamps.
Stanley? Is that you?
Impressive!
I have a special interest in mountains and topology. The fact there are these giant lumps of rock in the world large enough to change weather and ecosystems always seemed fascinating. Also finding obscure hiking trails to take pictures of less-often appreciated places.
What an awesome hobby!
I’m OLD, I have had and abandoned so many special interests in my life. I think the overwhelming arc is my special interest is knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Other than that it’s things that move, as in transportation. I like cars, bicycles, motorcycles, boats, sailboats, ships, airplanes, gliders, sailplanes, hang gliders, ultralights… And models of all of the above.
Oh yeah, women. Can’t forget that.
Bicycles and gliders… what whirling freedom… just heaven. Just heaven.
Come on Walky, you knew the bag was lost to you as soon as Amber took it.
Also, of course Amber would try to do something impossible, or almost impossible at least.
Well: if it was easy, anyone could do it!
Ah yes, “Didn’t ask.” Dina-edition.
well it’s good they can ‘parallel play’/casually chill in the same room without hovering over each other lol. or amber does various things that she doesn’t bother narrating out loud/compelled to tell dina about unless it’d directly affect her
Parallel play with Dina sounds like the best thing in the world. 🥰
start talking about yoshi, thatll get her attention
“Yoshi is a male dinosaur who lays eggs, had a tongue like a chameleon and sometimes breathes fire.”
Oh, that’ll get her attention all right…
Hey now, surely it’s possible that some dinosaurs were also intersex?
Also wait ain’t the fire just from red-hot chili peppers? XD
Better than what her hand is normally in when she’s at her computer.
That isn’t a bad thing, unless she is doing it around Dina, and Dina is uncomfortable with it. If Dina isn’t there or doesn’t care, then she can go for it.
My understanding is that it’s actually not that trick in question is impossible for humans to do, but rather that its impossible for the NES hardware to do because it involves pressing left and right at the same time on an NES controller.
Like, if you made a robot with absolute perfect control to try to do the trick on the original hardware, it couldn’t do it.
It’s like trying to shoot the International Space Station from sea level using an M1911 pistol. It’s a failure of the equipment, not human ability, even if that human ability would be questionable.
Of course, it’s absolutely very Amber to be so absorbed in her obsession about doing the impossible to gloss over that >_>.
You’re just not believing in the pistol hard enough.
The original NES did not allow for the diagonal jump I guess?
since this is my particular “special interest”, i can elaborate: there are two “perfect times”, or TASes, in smb1, no L+R and L+R. the no L+R time is “humanly achievable”, since it doesn’t require you to press L and R at the same time, something not possible on an original NES controller. if you play on emulator, this is possible because keyboards just work that way, but the smb1 community has agreed to ban the trick from their runs for console fairness. the current smb1 record was just set within the last week, and has every single optimization possible except for a few small mistakes in 8-4, the final level. this means that the runner, niftski, was computer-perfect up to that point.
now the L+R TAS time is (i believe) about two seconds faster than the no L+R time, which is massive for a game that’s less than five minutes long. this is *not* humanly achievable, because of above, so nobody is really competing to try and do it.
Walky: Truly decadent that woman **Finishes off the last of his 100 McNuggets**
I guess this is still a small price to pay for an awkward favor, even if Amber did her fair share to make it more awkward than it especially needed to be. Oh well, all’s well that ends well.
Write the chips off as a total loss.
A day’s access to a Nintendo Switch costing a bag of Nachitos (plus exposure to pantsless women and lingering sex funk).
A bargain at twice the price.
Fun fact, a new world record was achieved 5 days ago by Niftski. Very little room between the human speedrun and the TAS.
So little room, in fact, that we’ve identified the 22 specific remaining frames left to save. I believe they’re all in 8-4?
Yeah, the game is THAT optimized.
Amber gonna need to bring out her autistic ultra instinct for her run, it’ll be spectacular when she beats the record, YEEEEE!!! 🤩
An amusing coincidence. For anyone interested, details are in an Ars Technica article .
Also just recently, somebody shaved a fraction of a second off Sethbling’s record for SNES Super Mario World, which involves using three controllers and some tape to just straight-up rewrite the game’s code in memory on the fly to break it and glitch to the credits.
I love that kind of stuff, as a person who was a child when those systems came out, and then 30 years later people that weren’t born yet when it was released figured out how to hack it in real time by doing extremely naughty and unexpected things with the game’s code as it was running.
was gonna make this comment but ya beat me to it!
Amber’d better hurry up or if the next batch of time the comic comes back around to her & walky & dina’s misadventures, there’ll be no more player optimizations to make :’D
Oops – I messed up the tag somehow (it’s there but not visible). Trying again, just making it explicit:
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/09/record-breaking-super-mario-bros-speedrun-approaches-robotic-perfection/
Yes, but can the robot do it with one hand shoveling Nachitos into its mouth?
She probably will, sorry dude.
ah yes, a straightforward villain, an excellent segue from the complicated grayscale of the previous setting
Your offering was tolerated
You made the trade mate, no taking it back.
This will not end well. In a room with pantless girls. A noticeable aroma of sexual activity. An upcoming wrestling match with one of them. Too many Chekhov items to not result in a disaster.
Who’s going to walk in? Lucy? Mom and dad?
Wrestling match? 🤨
Calling Walky complaining about someone else eating his chips an “information dump” is honestly pretty generous of Dina. It barely qualifies as information.
“Brain dump” then?
i mean this is really your fault walky for not bringing TWO bags of nachitos. like c’mon dude. manners
Arnold wouldn’t be eating his nachitos. nachitos kind of suck, and Arnold already has a can of Thringles.
Just in case anyone else is, like me, dealing with work anxiety right now, I’m’a play some rainy cool jazz on the hacked bakery cafe PA system.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJuSStkIZBg
(Today was a two-chocolate-croissant day…)
As someone who’s been to many California universities, AH this takes me back! 🥰
Thank you, really nice to encounter something to bring back the “back to school” feeling I’ve been longing for somehow?
As a disabled person hit really hard by the pandemic and it’s aftermath, it’s possible that for what may be over a decade for all I know, that the only way for me to experience a University setting is as a memory.
🥲
Do you feel comfortable just going to a University library, finding a quiet nook, and hanging out to read or work? Or grabbing an isolated quiet table outside a coffee shop?
Or, maybe, taking a class online? Or just auditing a class online, like a MOOC?
Just an idea… I know it’s not for everyone.
(( <3 ))
Sometimes, just hanging out in the sunshine on a quad or an open field that’s university adjacent, can give a person that “campus feel”. Most campuses I’ve seen are not fenced in, so anyone can visit. Also, some have arboreta or experimental gardens or outdoor agricultural projects to stroll through.
My current situation and my inability to vaccinate and other disabilites, as well as my neurodivergence altogether say no to a lot of those at the moment, unfortunately.
Those recently forced me to quit school in fact, nobody is testing anymore at a lot of places.
COVID has killed more people all over the world than eleven 9/11s, but people here are ever so eager to forget the pandemic ever happened it seems.
Sorry I so bitter, I guess I needed a bit of catharsis, hope this ain’t too inappropriate here or nothin 🥺
All good, buddy. I’m sorry it’s so tough right now.
At least thanks to Willis I have met others who also in same boat, so I know I’m not alone. 🥲
Also, if I be honest not too comfy with “buddy”, right now? Sorry I don’t mean to be offputting, I guess I just not in a too good place right now. (trauma-related)
Thank you for affirmation, I… I guess I need sleep or hot cocoa right now, probably both, and luckily have what I need for both…
I am so sorry, NG. That’s the Philly in me — I call everyone “pal,” “bud,” “hon’,” “fam,”… it’s a bad habit. I apologize. I should DEFINITELY be more careful.
I need to respect others’ boundaries better. (Laura ties a ribbon around finger to remind self.)
Thank you, but it’s not you it’s me when it comes to the “buddy” thing, I have trauma that you couldn’t have known about. No worries, “fam” and “pal” and “hon” are alright with me tho
OK fam fam.
In case it might help, here’s some soothing white noise. Calms me right down. Lowers my heart rate immediately.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIP3fNueJMA