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Diane seriously needs to learn Nerd is not a thing to be ashamed of, especially in this day and age. D'aww, I think this would be Elliot and Ashley's first kiss as boy/girl. Strange thing is, even though Sirleck is a detestable parasite, feel like that last panel makes me far more disgusted with this creature now more than ever.

That's what I'm expecting. Laser scan your feet, then 3D print a pair of shoes custom made, complete with adjustments for any medical/orthopedic issues. Could be five years, could be twenty, but it should be within my lifetime. :-)

Ah yes, the "Susan checks her email" series

At least part of the reason Ashley comes across so nice is that Susan had already seen through Tom. If she hadn't, well, jealous ex-girlfriend trying to mess up her ex's future relationship starts doesn't come across as a particularly nice person, even if she later proves to be right. She does seem to be a nice person, and to have a case of the same compulsion to save others Elliot suffers from, but even in the little we've seen she has character flaws.

that label only works if you treat Awakening as an altered state of being, rather than the activation of powers. Otherwise there's no underlying change of state.

Diane, Susan, and Nanase go out to lunch together. The title of the arc is "Mange à 3". (I originally typed "Natani" rather than "Nanase". Now THAT would be interesting!)

Well, it would be his actual neck, except for the fact that he doesn't have a neck.

It technically hasn't been ever brought up, though the characters do know about magic's flair for the dramatic. Knowing Moperville North (the school), characters might already not take the world "entirely serious", so I think most characters automatically don't really worry about it like we would in real life? It's like they know they are in a cartoon. Knowing the fourth-wall breaking aspects of the very early days, this may even technically be true. I don't think discussing whether the characters know that they are "perfectly safe" from the "dangers" of magic is a valuable discussion, other than philosophical "meta" discussions Characters would be more worried about being "stuck" in a form than about magic changing their brain or resulting in physical damage. I just realized Vladia falls completely out of this idea. I blame "the early days of the comic" again.

I think they were trying to get the topic back on the rails rather that comment on ancient science.

Wild Theory of the Day: Diane and Susan had to be separated for magical reasons. The idea of twins developing their own private language is well-known. Twins often share talents and encourage each other to develop them. Well, what if, together, Susan and Diane started manifesting their magical talents at a very early age? Neither one on their own was able to do it, but together they could create magical objects. And, like most toddlers, they had very little sense of what is and isn't appropriate behavior in public, so they started making magical objects appear in public whenever they were together. It might even have become dangerous -- again, toddlers don't know *what* not to summon as well as *when* and *where* not to summon. So, for the twins' own safety, they had to be split up.

"We aren't up w......." is what I thought, though "we fill'r up while you wait" might make more sense. There's a good chance that that guess is accurate, and if so, in the words of Strider: DAVE: thats a hell of a mystery no one thought was a mystery and didnt even really need solving DAVE: but damn if it didnt just get solved so nice work

Forum toxicity is much more fun imagined than experienced.

Aaaaaah! Giant snake! Oh, phew. It's satiated and probably in torpor. I might as well repost the quotes I put up last time... and some others. It is difficult to cherry pick the whole of the tree. -- Unique Identifier, Slate Star Codex comments on 'Black people less likely', 2015-02-12 Give a man a mask and he will show you his true self. -- Oscar Wilde I'm not well disposed to uncritical thought, particularly not from my own side. People opposing my viewpoint do, after all, have the excuse of being wrong. -- Eleas, on SDN It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place. -- H.L. Mencken The plural of anecdote is not “data”. But the singular of anecdote is “enough data to disprove a universal negative claim”. Scott Alexander, Slate Star Codex - 'Polyamory is boring' 2013-04-06 This post is true in spirit, in fact, in totality and in detail. It is inarguably correct and I can't see for the life of me how anyone is going to, OR COULD refute any point of it. I am aware that someone is going to try though. -- Tonot, on the Erfworld Forums, about something by Lipkin I consider that I understand an equation when I can predict the properties of its solutions, without actually solving it. —- Paul A. M. Dirac Quoted in F Wilczek, B Devine, Longing for the Harmonies On two occasions I have been asked by Members of Parliament 'Pray Mr. Babbage, if you put the wrong numbers in to the machine will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question. -- Charles Babbage They're not being mean to you because you're an outsider, they're just not going to handle you with kid gloves when you come along claiming your idea will overturn most of their lives' work. -- GMailvuk, XKCD, on a putative Theory of Everything, 2015-02-10 the mark of a civilized man is the capacity to read a column of numbers and weep -- attributed to Bertrand Russell Censorship is telling a man he can’t have a steak just because a baby can’t chew it. -- Mark Twain Remember, if it’s in the news don’t worry about it. The very definition of news is “something that almost never happens.” When something is so common that it’s no longer news — car crashes, domestic violence — that’s when you should worry about it. -- Bruce Schneier This is the only journal article I’ve ever read where, in the part of the Discussion section where you’re supposed to propose possible reasons for your findings, both authors suggest maybe their co-author hacked into the computer and altered the results. -- Scott Alexander, "The Control Group is Out of Control", concerning a study by Dr.s Wiseman and Schlitz on psychic effects In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.' I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms. -- Stephen Jay Gould If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations, then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation, well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation. -- Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1915), chapter 4 Nature is the ultimate bigot, because it is obstinately and intolerantly devoted to its own prejudices and absolutely refuses to yield to the most persuasive rationalizations of humans. -- J. R. Molloy Our government teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. -- Louis D. Brandeis As the would-be leaders of the French Revolution could explain (if they were still alive), the biggest problem with rabble-rousing is that if one succeeds, he will find himself surrounded by aroused rabble. -- Maggie McNeill, The Widening Gyre A politician thinks of the next election; a statesman, of the next generation. -- Paul Claudel Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies. -- Groucho Marx Overload the police with victimless crimes and other minutiae and eventually only creeps and bullies remain cops. -- Rick Gaber Unnecessary laws are not good laws, but traps for money. -- Thomas Hobbes The reason it's hard to learn new skills late in life is not just that one's brain is less malleable. Another probably even worse obstacle is that one has higher standards. -- Paul Graham (in Is it Worth Being Wise?) Everything you worry about will be many times better, but people will continue to feel just as bad. -- teleny, on Everything2, in reference to the passage of time. I am starting to think I was previously a little too charitable toward Marx. My objections were of the sort “You didn’t really consider the idea of welfare capitalism with a social safety net” or “communist society is very difficult to implement in principle,” whereas they should have looked more like “You are basically just telling us to destroy all of the institutions that sustain human civilization and trust that what is baaaasically a giant planet-sized ghost will make sure everything works out.” -- Scott Alexander, Slate Star Codex, book review: Singer on Marx First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi Dictatorships are never as strong as they think they are, and people are never as weak as they think they are. -- Gene Sharp Laura Ingalls Wilder had a “normal” childhood that happened to involve scarlet fever, teen pregnancy, and the systematic annihilation of the native peoples whose land she and her neighbours were homesteading. To her, this was a successful, well-spent youth. To us, it sounds like Thunderdome. -- Madeline Ashby, Jan 28 2009, on a whatever.scalzi.com comment thread Faith IS NOT knowledge, but evil of not measuring. -- Gene Ray, of Timecube.com fame When I look back upon what I have said in life, I find I envy dumb people -- Seneca I'd be a bum on the street with a tin cup if the markets were efficient. -- Warren Buffett No, my privilege is merely to not be subject to a certain type of egregious bullshit which no person should have to endure, and all I gain from this privilege is a blindness concerning what goes on around me. -- JediBear, at the Whatever, concerning 'privilege' as in 'the invisible knapsack' The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread. -- Anatole France Patriotism is supporting your country at all times, and your government when it deserves it. -- Mark Twain Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. -- Martin Luther King Jr. The reasonable man expects to conform to society. The unreasonable man expects society to conform to him. Therefore, without the unreasonable man, there would be no progress. -- George Bernard Shaw If you make a post defending rationalism on a rationalist blog, dozens of rationalists will suddenly show up arguing you’re not being sufficiently charitable to the person attacking them. -- Scott Alexander, comment on his 'Why I am not Rene Descartes' The point of having an open mind is to make it up occasionally. -- Marcello Herreshoff There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance--that principle is contempt prior to investigation. -- Herbert Spencer A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare's? I now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question -- such as, What do you mean by mass, or acceleration, which is the scientific equivalent of saying, Can you read? -- not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language. So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their neolithic ancestors would have had. -- C.P. Snow For if all goes well, the question "What is fun?" shall determine the shape and pattern of a billion galaxies. -- Eliezer Yudkowsky Metaphysics isn't about answers. It's about questions. The questions tell you everything about the person asking them, and nothing about the universe. -- Surgoshan (Sluggy.net) Wouldn’t it be much worse if life were fair and all the terrible things that happen to us, come because [we] actually deserve them? So now I take comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the Universe. -- Marcus, Babylon 5 The law of gravity, while disputed by few, has failed to convince most people that it is our moral obligation to lie on the ground rather than standing, jumping, or climbing as we see fit. -- snol, on Everything2 (in comparison to the law of evolution) Personally I find the idea of sex with another man to be kinda unpleasant-sounding and would never want to marry one. So I have coped with this by only sleeping with women and marrying one of them instead. It has worked out well for me as a coping technique and I heartily advocate it for those folks who oppose legalizing gay marriage. -- Don Whiteside™ (@donw) at the Whatever, 2014-02-10 A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things. -- G.K. Chesterton In lit, the protag is broken, and the story is about dealing with that; in genre, the SITUATION is broken; the protag generally isn’t, because that’s not the story. Lit readers look at a genre book and go huh? How can there be a story? Protag not broken! -- El, on 2009-jan-28, on a whatever.scalzi.com comment thread. Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point. -- C. S. Lewis You will never break the laws or commit violence against anybody while I’m alive, and if you try it, you won’t do it when I’m dead, either. -- Emperor Tiberius, to his son Drusus, paraphrased (obv since this isn't the kind of thing that gets written down by the principals) "Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery." –- from David Copperfield, Dickens Market exchange is a pathetically inadequate substitute for love, but it scales better. -- S. T. Rev We never bother running a computer program unless we don't know the output and we know an important fact about the output. -- Marcello Herreshoff I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times. -- Bruce Lee He's discussing morality, and thus couldn't care less how many dead bodies hit the ground. -- Weremensch Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe. -– Abraham Lincoln I can accept failure, but I can't accept not trying. -- Michael Jordan She uses the phrase ‘most people’ as the first person singular pronoun. -- Xopher, via the whatever at Scalzi.com (not its original use, though it is the original speaker) The purpose of training is to ensure a standardized response to a predictable situation. The purpose of education is to ensure a reasoned response to an unpredictable situation -- via OldCrow, Sluggy boards A good way to judge content in a game is to remove the rewards. If there was no reward for tackling the task you were given, would you ever bother doing it? If the answer is no, there's probably something wrong with your content. -- SirNiko, KoL forum I frequently remind myself, when the difficulties of dealing with other apes are getting to be too much to tolerate, that it's a problem so hard that we evolved brains capable of maintaining a global technological civilization and figuring out quantum mechanics as a side effect of trying to solve it, and I should maybe cut myself some slack. -- TheOtherDave, lesswrong.com, on Evolving to Extinction The concept of intellectual cowardice was not something she wanted to think about. -- Erfworld Book 0 (about princess Jillian) Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble. -- Samuel Johnson Whoever is already a monster should see to it that he fights monsters. And if I gaze long enough into the abyss, the abyss is gonna break eye contact first. -- Peter Seebach (apologies to Nietzsche)