Comic for Wednesday, Oct 29, 2025

[Darth Fluffy 377]

Comic for Wednesday, Oct 29, 2025

I like Vladia's character, she seems genuinely helpful. But she does not seem to view Grace as a sibling as she did in earlier comics.

Bishop is coming across as helpful as well, but in her case, I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

Regarding the commentary, Grace as a 200 lb squirrel would not leave an imprint in concrete. Concrete is not one substance, it is a class of similarly formulated substances, having a mineral based cement binding sand and gravel into a solid mass. In general, concrete has very good compressive strength. A 200 lb squirrel might struggle with its own weight, but the concrete under it would not.

If it did fail being walked on by a heavy enough creature, it would tend to fracture or chip rather than indent, assuming it had already hardened; newly poured concrete is easy to imprint. Hardened concrete does flow, however; a very heavy object resting in one spot for a very long time (years) will leave impressions. This is common in old shops with heavy machine tools.

Another 'solid' material that flows is glass. Glass is also a broad term; the key things I'd associate with something that was 'glass' is silicon and oxygen content, roughly one to two, often with other additives, and the mass has an amorphous structure, as opposed to crystalline. Very old glass windows will show signs of glass pooling at the bottom of the panes; we are talking century old or more. 

Some very old glass can dissolve in water. Corning, NY had a flood, in the early 1970s IIRC, and they lost some of their oldest pieces because they dissolved; Egyptian and Roman glass. 

 

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,663]

 

Tedd is so lucky that the circle of friends/test subjects/victims grew slowly.  Had anyone other than Elliot been zapped to launch the Sister arc, Tedd's research would have been exposed and the criminal charges may have followed him into adulthood.  Also, Will & Gill would not have their human forms and no amount of charts could have saved Edward's career. 

Instead, Tedd just needs to explain yet again how a pubescent pervert with alien and/or magical abilities played with the gender identities of other minors who could not legally consent to these activities. 

 

[Don Edwards 577]

Yeah, if proportions are kept, tiny creatures are absurdly strong relative to their size. I had to figure some of this out recently for a story, and found that Barbie, being 11 inches tall, should weigh 13.4 ounces and be able to carry 37 ounces.

And if you think that's bad, Tinkerbell - 5 inches tall - should weigh 1.3 ounces and be able to walk around (but not fly) carrying 8 ounces. Personally I think she'd have a tough time keeping that weight balanced.

(How does this work out? If you multiply the height by 1/2, keeping the same density and *all* the same proportions, you multiply the cross-sectional area of bones and muscles and a bunch of other stuff, and thus the strength, by 1/4 - and the mass by 1/8.)

But none of that would allow squirrel-Grace to move something weighing 500 pounds.

[mlooney 3,797]

9 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

But none of that would allow squirrel-Grace to move something weighing 500 pounds.

In at least one form, she can lift a car.

[Amiable Dorsai 74]

14 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Some very old glass can dissolve in water. Corning, NY had a flood, in the early 1970s IIRC, and they lost some of their oldest pieces because they dissolved; Egyptian and Roman glass. 

Trivia Time^TM ! Some of the oldest glass known was made by dissolving silica (quartz) sand in molten soda ash, producing sodium silicate, "water glass,"  which is water-soluble. More stable glass can be made by adding lime to the mix. You rhouse windows are made of soda-lime glass. This Trivia Time ^TM moment brought to you by my boredom and leftover professional knowledge that hasn't been of a whole lot of use since retirement.

[Darth Fluffy 377]

1 hour ago, Amiable Dorsai said:

Trivia Time^TM ! Some of the oldest glass known was made by dissolving silica (quartz) sand in molten soda ash, producing sodium silicate, "water glass,"  which is water-soluble. More stable glass can be made by adding lime to the mix. You house windows are made of soda-lime glass. This Trivia Time ^TM moment brought to you by my boredom and leftover professional knowledge that hasn't been of a whole lot of use since retirement.

The massive Gilbert chemistry sets in the early 19602 had a bottle of water glass, as sludgy translucent white liquid. I recall one experiment was to use it to coat an object to make it water resistant.

There are many kinds of glass, for the most part small amounts of additives modifying the properties. One of the more notable is borosilicate glass, once marketed by Corning as Pyrex. Corning divested their home kitchen brands, Pyrex, Corning Ware, and Corelle Ware, and now, the Pyrex name no longer guarantees borosilicate glass. 

What did you do with glass professionally?

[Amiable Dorsai 74]

2 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

What did you do with glass professionally?

That gets complicated. For most of my career, and rather to my surprise, I was working with various optical control systems in heavy industry. Generally, my job was the front end, that is to say the lens and detector system. Since our controls ranged for the infrared to the ultraviolet, many different materials, including optical-grade glass, were used and I needed to know all about them, not just their optical properties, but enough about their chemistry and physical properties to ensure they could survive the rather extreme conditions our instruments were exposed to.

In addition, unlike most of our technical staff, I rather enjoyed talking to customers about unusual application problems. The glass industry used a lot of our stuff, every conversation taught me a lot about glass of various kinds. My knowledge is eclectic, I'm not a glass chemist or engineer, but it's not hard for me to have a productive conversation with either. I miss it, but not the corporate BS that also went with the job.

[Amiable Dorsai 74]

Two of our rascally revolutionaries can now use their transformation abilities more fully. Does Colonel Sanders want them to be able to pass as unremarkable humans? To what end? 

[Darth Fluffy 377]

1 hour ago, Amiable Dorsai said:

That gets complicated. For most of my career, and rather to my surprise, I was working with various optical control systems in heavy industry. Generally, my job was the front end, that is to say the lens and detector system. Since our controls ranged for the infrared to the ultraviolet, many different materials, including optical-grade glass, were used and I needed to know all about them, not just their optical properties, but enough about their chemistry and physical properties to ensure they could survive the rather extreme conditions our instruments were exposed to.

In addition, unlike most of our technical staff, I rather enjoyed talking to customers about unusual application problems. The glass industry used a lot of our stuff, every conversation taught me a lot about glass of various kinds. My knowledge is eclectic, I'm not a glass chemist or engineer, but it's not hard for me to have a productive conversation with either.

That's vaguely where I am,

 

1 hour ago, Amiable Dorsai said:

 I miss it, but not the corporate BS that also went with the job.

Preaching to the choir. 

[mlooney 3,797]

Back when they were a running thing, Jammie and Adam did a 2-part series on glass. Granted, they were long-form ads for Corning, but it's still cool.

 

 

[Amiable Dorsai 74]

 

That was fun.

 

[Amiable Dorsai 74]

Also confirmed: Hope has no memory of Ellen's creation or her own part in it. 

[mlooney 3,797]

16 hours ago, Amiable Dorsai said:

Also confirmed: Hope has no memory of Ellen's creation or her own part in it. 

This means she doesn't have any memory of Mangus.  This has the possibility of coming back and biting the crew in the ass.

[Amiable Dorsai 74]

3 hours ago, mlooney said:

This means she doesn't have any memory of Mangus.  This has the possibility of coming back and biting the crew in the ass.

If nothing else, it will make the first conversation between Hope and Ellen very uncomfortable.

[Darth Fluffy 377]

3 hours ago, mlooney said:

This means she doesn't have any memory of Mangus.  This has the possibility of coming back and biting the crew in the ass.

Magus?

[mlooney 3,797]

16 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

Magus?

Yeah.  I'm not sure why I keep wanting to put an 'n' in their name.