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No, not at all. I hadn't even considered that. Yet. I was implying that if you are already abusing alcohol due to this storyline you will probably need to turn to black market substances when it turns 200 strips. The comic you linked, oh, it was the boobs one. First panel. Oh, that one. True. And evacuating the space station wouldn't be nearly as hard as evacuating some alternative units as stadiums. (Ok, stadiums are usually used as units of surface, not volume ... but still.) Remember it's Susan. She may mean Terok Nor (Deep Space 9). Which has diameter 1,451.82 m but volume is unknown and hard to guess considering DS9's shape. (Meanwhile, Death Star has 160 kilometers in diameter and is mostly sphere so volume will be about 2 144 660 cubic kilometers while ISS has 915.6 m3)

Really? I think we are mostly moving the discussion to more and more different topics ... but ok, I'll try to limit what I answer to as well. What do you propose as a better alternative? That question assumes there IS a better alternative. Specifically for human, the alternative would be to basically count as human anyone who insists on it and has money on lawyers. Is it better? Hard to say. Microsoft is highly adept at marketing. They are not primarily a technological company, they are a marketing firm. I don't have the time to tell you all the things I don't like about Microsoft products. I use them all the time because they are mandated in the workplace. I get paid well to do so. but not because their 'better'. But marketing is indeed a force of software evolution, and many innovative software packages go extinct because they are poorly sold. Hardware as well. Do you doubt that Commodore had a winner in the Amiga? And that only inept handling killed it? It was creating commercials and movie segments when the industry standard pc could barely print a letter. I don't think microsoft IS a technological company. But yes, their marketing is superior. It's just marketing is mostly NEGATIVE force. The product taking advantage from marketing usually isn't different direction of evolution, but basically stagnation, no significant change. On the other hand ... the way cats turned "being attractive to humans" to evolutionary advantage isn't that different from marketing ... Yes ... interesting case indeed. You are not saying so, but you are agreeing. I think it's mostly agreeing but not completely. The various human factions that want to own a piece of this future. Oh, those. Yes, unless someone manages to get monopoly on evolution humans (which would be VERY bad but unfortunately can happen) there will be different factions with different ideas about what goals to pursue ... and which of them would survive IS type of evolution.

Likely similar ones. In my area, non-essential services have pretty much shut down. But the ABC stores remain open. They understand priorities, man. You mean that the crime shut down? That black market disappeared? On a second read, I find it odd that a space station is being used as a unit of volume. Does she mean the ISS? Doesn't it vary, so you'd have to know what year, and even what is docked, assuming you'd count the connecting tunnel. Why not something more familiar, like a standard shipping container. Also, if you evacuate the space station, reseal it, then open the potion, you could fill it with one. It would be a sparse cloud, though. ... I think I missed something ... second read of what?

You raised the criteria earlier, if you can't breed with it, it's a separate species. Seems unlikely that as we spread and adapt, that we will be able to maintain compatibility. If most of our evolution will be done by nanotechnology and cybernetics, it's not only not going to change who we can breed with, it can actually help even with bridging the changes which WILL be in genes. Assuming we will want to, of course. Also, do you only count natural breeding (and what is considered natural for cybernetic organism?) or also breeding assisted with gene engineers who at that point would likely be able to breed human with can just for the fun? I already mentioned that this definition of species is not reliable. May be completely abandoned in future. You already listed lot of special things. Also, we have big brains (with lot of folds) in those big heads. And, because of such big heads, mother needs bigger ... hips and few other things, and for compatibility also fathers need something exceptionally big compared to other mammals based on body size ... And regarding the running: remember that we have exceptionally little fur. And that's not a mistake: it allows us to run longer without overheating. It's not (just) the distance itself: it's that in African savanna, we can pursue other animal so long they will cook themselves alive due to our superior thermoregulation. There is specific method of programming based on simulated evolution. The rest of those ... sure, there is evolution, but it's not entirely same as the biological one. In biological evolution, windows would be extinct long ago. The criteria are more complicated, and number of individuals hardly matter. (Actually ... for some plants, we already changed their BIOLOGICAL evolution that way. We can decide to change for example which kind of banana we grow, and clone millions of plants from single individual.) Yes, it's still evolution, but some general things said about evolution only apply to the biological one. New model of car may not have anything common with previous model of car from same company, yet it's survival depends on the company a lot. And fashion doesn't evolve, it's almost cyclical. Most of the rules about evolution and survival of fittest work better when you apply them on the companies and not the individual models of car. Cars basically shows a combination of evolution of companies making them and evolution of technology. It is in our nature to fear the unknown. There WILL be resistance to any attempts to evolve human. There already IS, actually. Now, can we completely prevent the evolution? I hope not, because it's definitely looks like bad idea. In a way. My point was that without a randomizing element, the evolution is not going to work correctly. Wait, who's goals?

I wonder what substances you will be using when the arc goes to second hundred. Plus she likes her long hair. She likes how they look but it's gotten impractical. Also, she specifically wanted to reduce her boobs. It's possible that she only choose short hair because she knows she can make them longer easily, which is not true in canon. Well ... actually, it is, now with her having the wand of her alternative forms, but making them REALLY longer and not just temporary enchantment would be lot of work if she shortened them and she may not like the idea of being enchanted all the time just like Nanase. To conclude, this may be real Susan but with different kind of limitations on her look than in canon. Neither real Susan nor this is showing how would she REALLY like to look. Better argument for this not being Susan would be how sparsely clothed she is, but even that can be explained by her not feeling embarrassed when NPCs are watching her. She DID mentioned that she would like to wear less but finds it embarrassing ... (note that while that is non-canon arc, it's probably still valid in canon just like Hanma is real despite never doing the goonmanji experiment in canon).

The assumption it's an element may be incorrect. I mean, considering all of the colors ... maybe the default Kryptonite is not the element itself, but it's oxide or more complicated mineral (again, look at sapphire - Be3Al2(SiO3)6), with other variants being different minerals containing the same transuranic element. And what other elements it's mixed with somehow modifies the effect. Maybe the pure metal form is malleable, but also safe for superman. There is precedent: Mercury. Pure metal mercury, while technically toxic, does very little damage before being eliminated from the body. Most of the compounds are much more toxic. Granted, this is mostly because the metal mercury is mostly not absorbed, but there may be different mechanism working similarly for the Kryptonite. Maybe the metal form re-absorbs most of it's radiation, while the various translucent crystals let it out.

Oh, #@%%, yeah; technology is the antithesis of evolution until you consider what makes it possible, then, it's just a branch of the big picture. If we are too stupid to prevent global warming/deflect the next asteroid/not nuke ourselves/survive pandemic/not cause pandemic, that's evolution in action, weeding the flower bed. Although, in the extreme, being the next Venus shuts down evolution, doesn't it? Hard to say, life has survived some major events, and lives in some unlikely extreme environments. I find very likely there is no evolution on Venus. There MIGHT still remain something here even if Earth ends up second Venus because there will be more life here and some may managed to adapt, BUT this is exactly the case of too big step: sometimes, the environment changes too fast for evolution to adapt, in which case evolution may fail. Evolution proved to be very effective way to solve the problem, but is not unstoppable. Sure, you can claim that it's weeding the flower bed, but if nothing remained, it's failure. It is theoretically possible our current form proves to be so great it will survive forever. It's very unlikely, though. Another, completely unrelated question however is if the form which will replace us will consider itself "still human, just with few upgrades" or separate species. I find very likely that sky.NET was not actually capable of replacing us and that after winning the war it would stop evolving and eventually existing. There doesn't seem to be much choice in case of Borg ... also note that Borg DID utilize nanotechnology. Biological evolution works with randomness - it's actually capable of using random mutations to effectively search for better solution and continue. For cybernetic systems, random change which is not fixed is extremely likely to simply destroy the system. Well ... actually, that may not be inherit property of biological versus cybernetic system, more like the biological systems being optimized in way that allows mutation and limit reach of defective mutations (cancer) versus cybernetic system too often having relatively few points of complete failure ... but still: unless someone deliberately designs cybernetic system capable of evolution using random mutation, it's not going to happen. Of course, it's possible someone will. Alternatively, evolution can continue indirectly, with our own opinion having big influence on what feature is considered positive but results eventually being tested for survival in classic way. If we colonize enough planets and won't do the mistake of all using same design (think windows), it can work. If not, well ... maybe there is some life we don't manage to destroy before we got to the point where our shortsightedness, laziness and comfortableness remove us from the evolution race. It should be. Universe is quite big. (Short answer: Yes, such systems can continue to evolve. If we let them.)

Well ... non-metal crystals tend to be. Kryptonite (default / vanilla form) looks similar to Emerald, and Emerald is not malleable ...

I think it's step in right direction ... but question is how big. Probably not much. Doesn't Susan have the clothes with huge attraction bonus? Maybe now with cheats off it wouldn't be SO effective to force her to roar at NPCs.

The point being, the leaf is dead. It is mostly a non factor in the evolution of the tree at that point. It is conceivable that the color of the leaves cold attract a parasite, like us, tapping maple trees, but mostly doesn't matter. The leaf is dead but it can't really get THAT far from the tree, which is still living. But assuming it IS non-factor, then the color is random. No "decision" happened on that. Well, ok, some colors are more likely due to which chemicals remain there, but there ARE multiple colors involved ... The point being the affinity and the benefit existed eons ago, providing opportunity, also eons ago. Evolution is nothing if not opportunistic. Actually there are plenty of opportunities evolution was not able to take advantage of, because the required change was too big step at once. Also lot of opportunities which took long due to how complicated they are. Unless ... well ... you CAN argue that evolution managed to get to the Moon using the brain as middle step due to not being able to evolve rocket engines powerful enough directly ...

Well, not every material is good for making bullets. Still, I would expect they at least try. Instead, they are using kryptonite knifes ... ... hmmm, on second though, sharp crystal ... maybe the bullet will go through? Which wouldn't really hurt Superman that much ; he's hurt the most if the kryptonite remains INSIDE him.

Doesn't seem like that would be something Lois Lane would want to have happen to Superman. I would assume the same, however, considering the potential lethality of sex ... ... but maybe Darth Fluffy had something else in mind.

That's different. Those leaves are dying and being shed. The color is the color of the underlying structure after the chlorophyll is reabsorbed by the plant. Yes, but this structure's color doesn't influence the photosynthesis, so ... The ability to see specific colors is much simpler than imaging. For color selection, you tune the sensor. For imaging, you need to build a processor. It is immediately useful too. The photosythesizing organism, reflects some color. When it is detecting light, it needs to know if the light is eat worthy. It's like a sense of taste for light. Yes, but that doesn't really tell us how long it took

I'll be the first to admit I don't have the Superman canon memorized, but is there such a thing as pink kryptonite? You don't need to memorize it. Quick google confirms that yes it is.

I tend to follow the idea that unless it shows in the comic, it's not canon. So there is no canon reason to assume that he is teaching magic to any one other than Noah. It's not canon. Doesn't mean it's not happening. But, like, I was thinking that he's currently evaluates the talents and plans to start teaching them when older. Or at least that what was he doing before Pandora showed up.

Huh, I meant Sarah, typed Susan, and realizing Susan was trained, too. And Nanase. Most of the characters are fully self taught, other than their spell books. (Which is actually also training, if you use it). Sarah did some self discovery, but she had her spell explained to her by Pandora. Tedd was doing well by himself, but Pandora had a session with him and enlightened him on details. Susan and Nanase, both had some counseling from the two immortals in France. They gave Susan the item retrieval skill. Well, ok, mostly self-trained. One session is not that much training. Ah. That's still a TBD. You are probably right, but until the reveal ... Well, yes. Hmm. For having that, he doesn't seem to use it. I wonder why? Possibly because only thing it can accomplish is to attract attention he doesn't want? That is true, but she would still know something was up at the party if she saw Nanase, a third magic user that she already know of, and that was the original point. I agree with that. Dan has a habit of nerfing antagonists. Not all of them, not aberrations, but many change from hostile to just friendly folks. But an story with no tension is dull. He may be seeing the need for someone with reasonable goals and motivations that don't align with the main characters' goals. That's not "nerfing" but yes ... Dan has habit of adding motivation to characters and in this often ends up "disabling" antagonist as an antagonist. In this sense, antagonist with motivation not in conflict with him being antagonist might be seen as evolution of Dan's writing. Those notions make sense. I'm holding out for 'Dan changed his mind about what it meant'. Too recently. It's obvious that when he wrote the "hello" he already had this in mind. Now, regarding what happened in Diane's story ... ... do most of the magic users not have a spell book? I though they all got one, but we've seen some handed out, so if not that ... IMHO most magic users are eventually found by DGB or similar organization, OR older magic users like Adrian, and get a spell book from them. Or they can get it from immortal who marked them. However, only one who got spell book from Pandora is Rhoda, and she presumably marked LOT of people. It's possible that Moperville specifically is an exception to general rule that most of the magic users have a spell book. Note that even from main eight, just half do have spellbooks. Justin doesn't because Edward had total brain fart about not testing him, Sarah doesn't because she's keeping her spell secret, Grace doesn't because noone knew until recently Uryuom might need one, and Tedd doesn't because he keeps his abilities secret and probably doesn't need it as he can't get spells of his own anyway. Now, DGB knows about Ashley being wizard. If she doesn't get a spellbook, we can assume that wizards are not expected to need one. But she is also very weak so they may wait with that. Or maybe they MUST wait for her to awaken ...

I just remembered the XKCD about how brain is faster than evolution, specifically related to COVID-19: We do indeed. I would call any conditional test and branch a decision. The computer is doing essentially what we or any other living thing does, branching behavior based on information. You could argue more effectively that a human made the decision through programming than you could argue that it isn't a decision. I suppose it's a case of to-may-to/to-mah-to. Yes, the human programming it made the decision how the program should be reacting to that condition. Well, to A condition. It's possible that he specified the condition incorrectly and there is bug in code which appears when different, unexpected condition appears and triggers the test despite the human not meaning that. What is caring? You know from experience what it is at a functional level, but what about when you pop the hood and examine the engine? What are any of your emotions? They may be more complex than tropisms, but they have a similar fundamental nature. What you experience is an emergent thing that affects that other weirdness Yes. There are neurotransmitters involved, but, well ... if our brains were simple enough for us to understand them, we'd be so simple that we couldn't. (Ian Stewart) Well, if "you" means ego, definitely. Ego is simulation of awareness done on hardware which needs to cheat a bit to manage it because it's not powerful enough for the real thing. I would argue that "I" am more than my ego, but I must admit it's my ego doing the arguing. It's a good thing you said animals, because that is sooooo not true of life in general. Color is relevant to absorption and reflection of wavelengths of light, and depending on the mechanism, all organisms that photosynthesize have color, even microscopic organisms, and, though we've never observed them, we can reasonably conjecture that applies to ancient ones as well, because it's part of the mechanism. Free swimming euglenas both eat and photosynthesize. Yes, that was deliberate. I'm not qualified to discuss how random is color of photosynthesizing organism. It's definitely less random than for animals, but I would need to know much more about absorption and more importantly the chemistry of photosynthesis to know if there is still place for any randomness. Although ... like, most trees have leaves which turn different color in fall/winter. I think this "different color" may be adaptation to animals with sight already. Just like color of trunk of tree. Except I'm not sure if those features - leaves, trunks - evolved before the eyes or after. Wiki: The first proto-eyes evolved among animals 600 million years ago about the time of the Cambrian explosion. However, not sure if there weren't light-sensing organs simpler than that. Also, not sure when ability to see color evolved, as that's actually separate to just light and dark, on the other hand not MUCH harder and you can guess something just by value, soo ...

I'm so used to there being cosmic or magical antagonist if EGS it didn't occur to me that they might have a mundane one, granted one that might have some magical powers. Strikes me as a bit off brand for EGS. Melissa, Bad Tom, ... Good point. If Diane, in fact, has a spell, this might have been her first time using it, and didn't know she was doing so. Much like Justin and his kicking of the not-fire dude. Exactly. This is also possible, as we know he has problems telling a physical adept (i.e. Justin) who is awakened from one that has a mark. Yes, although I would note that I don't think there is any distinction between "physical adept" and other magic user. Aside from Noah, who is his ward, have we seen any indication that he is teaching magic to students? Yes, of course we did. Edward Verres and Noriko. And Nanase's mother. Oh, you mean recently. No. But does it tells more about how many he is teaching or how secret he is with it? I suspect that Diane knows and her knowledge of Tedd's gender status will be shown in the next few comics. Or maybe in the next dozen comics, at any rate before the party is over. If she doesn't know yet, she will realize it before the party is over. Other than Susan and Tedd, they are pretty much all self trained; Elliot even has to be frequently prompted to read his spell book. Smoke could be motivated enough to keep up. Even Susan and Tedd are self-trained. She used a wand. I'm not counting that as 'on her own' because anyone can do that. Several have. I meant the "persuasion" spell. I don't recall he could do that. Do you remember where? I don't need to remember, I have wiki. Here he used it and here it was reminded and declared canon. Oh. I took it to be Uryuom tech. You could be correct. Hmmm ... well, it also might be. There are enough similarities between Uryuom tech and magic for Tedd's sight working on them and for Tedd to not realize he's actually researching magic for some time. Third option is it's actually augmented magic and Uryuom technology. However, I think that the idea you could detect if person awakened wouldn't appear without such spell being analyzed by seer in past. Like, Uryuom don't awaken (they detect as awakened all the time), so they must've used something to calibrate it if it was Uryuom origin. Ok. I can upgrade my estimate from few months to several months if you consider it different My point was that she knows ABOUT it, possibly even SAW it, but she wasn't able to COPY that spell because she wasn't awakened at that point yet. I'm not sure if those two parts of sentence are related. It seems to be one isolated rather specific bad example, though. And backward, 'Hello' should be normal, and 'I like your hair' should be fonted. No? Either it's hint that the spell is something little different from persuasion OR it shows how incorrectly she's using it. Good question. Grace is Uryuom AND has quite high magic resistance. ... and she probably reads her spell book. Actually probably not because where would she get one? It's possible that it's caused by hair fairies. Or it's artistic license. Hard to say in EGS.

Well, considering actually having sex with Superman might be lethal for her ... oh wait she DOES have superman child ...

You are looking at this top down, and it is giving you a wrong impression. I realized at one point that evolution was Turing complete. Much later, I realized that initial revelation was wrong. Evolution is a huge ensemble of massively parallel Turing complete activities. There are decision mechanisms all over the place in it, stochiastic trials taking place every moment. It may not be anything we recognize as sentient but decisions are being made all the time. We may have different definition of word "decision". Computer doesn't decide something. It just follows the program. Yes, it's very humanocentric point of view. And it will likely remain so unless we find alien race which would be able to convince us it's caring in different way. They don't get hurt feelings when they fail; they cease to exist. Call success and emergent form of caring. If it isn't happening often, the gene is failing. It isn't really random. There are significant biases. That's how the system works. If it were truly random, it wouldn't work; there would be no propagation of success. Read the condition. The propagation of success happens if the result happen. Before first eyes evolved, the color of animals was basically random, because it was not relevant to anything, it was not tested. Only after eyes started to be used animal colors and patterns started to be relevant to survival, some were defined as "successful" and started propagating more often. A good case for this is sickle cell anemia. It may be a strategy for combating malaria. It is good case for something else. Malaria and similar parasites exists for much longer than our civilization, so people started to adapt. ... well, ok, it IS being argued that agriculture made malaria more dangerous, but I mentioned that move to agriculture might be the freshest development our genes had time to react to. It's very imprecise and primary related to cancer, with aging stuff basically sideefect. Cavemen rarely died due to telomeres degrading. Or cancer. BECAUSE the telomeres mechanism was WELL adapted to cavemen livestyle. Of course we likes to think so, but remember what part of body is doing that thinking. And liking. The brain already proved it's worth. It made us superior to sabre-toothed cat, wooly mammoth, dire wolf, bison, california grizzly bear, eastern cougar, cascade mountains wolf ... sure, it may have some more long-term disadvantages, but I wouldn't say COVID-19, Putin and Trump to be between them. We are almost sure to survive all of them. It may reduce our numbers but that's GOOD for evolution, makes it faster. The long-term disadvantages of brain include global climate change - it SHOULD provide considerable advantage here but only the results matter - and nuclear weapons or maybe nuclear material in general, because to genes won't matter if we go extinct due to nuclear war, nuclear waste or some nuclear experiment gone wrong. And then the ultimate challenge: colonization of other planets. If we ever successfully colonize other planet, it will be ultimate proof that brain is superior to anything else ever appearing on Earth because it will SPREAD OUR GENES THERE. If we don't, well, nice try. I quite honestly do not know what to make of the Biblical claims for longevity. It is not impossible, but seems so highly unlikely. My first guess us that it does not mean what we think it obviously means, but I don't know what else to substitute. I suppose it might reflect an alternate calendar system that kept track of age in months, that was badly translated. If you buy that the flood is not a world wide event, an isolated clan of humans with extreme longevity could have co-mingled and been diluted down to where their longevity was no longer functional. More troubling than Methuselah is Shem, who is said to have lived for hundreds of years after the flood. The truth is, I don't know, I wasn't there, and I am skeptical that all the details and such were handed down accurately. We don't have any good theory what could make those claims to be true in OUR world. The same may be true for most of EGS scientist. However, it is very likely that in EGS universe, the cause of Biblical claims for longevity, as well as wide range of legends about gods, are fairies - simply because of Occam's razor. It's not proof, of course: Occam's razor is heuristic, not an irrefutable principle ... but is still useful tool with real results. "That could have been <handwave>." Sure. Whatever floats your boat. It looked cool enough. It definitely looked cool enough but without actually analyzing it with scientific equipment it doesn't tell us anything precise about immortals. Yes, it COULD also prove they are or can be incorporeal. But it's not only explanation. And we seem to be in agreement that it would be slowing enough to limit distribution of Adrian's descendants. But I don't think it's slowing enough to limit distribution of older elves genes. Ah, fair enough. I'm not sure I understand the immortal's logic to that, but I'm not a magical being residing in another plane of existence, so what do I know. Well, I'm also not sure how was that supposed to work, but on the other hand, it SEEMS it's mostly worked. It will probably be related to specific situation which happened in past and without that context it's hard to evaluate the logic of it. Adrian case MIGHT mean it was shortsighted, but despite their clairvoyance, Immortals might not see that in advance ...

The fact that Shadow guy didn't know about Grace's habit of nudity, yet expected Grace to be the hero of this "game" suggests Shadow guy ended up in the wrong person's dream. And even after confrontation with Susan, he didn't admit it and instead asks Susan to look for Grace? Unlikely. Maybe SUSAN entered Grace's dream as well, but got "lost" in it and no longer remembers it? Would explain how she get headaches when reminded of that. I think Grace's opinion of that statue was similar to ours. Which would likely means that Grace is titular head of those cultists but has no actual influence on them and is effectively their prisoner.

... maybe it means the barber episode is getting near end? There are theories that Superman is partially psychic and hypnotizes everyone. Also, theories that everyone notices the similarity but they don't believe it. And I'm not sure if those are the craziest ones.

Is there some limit on number of quotes? It stopped working so I started another comment ... So her earliest appearance as a wizard, assuming all of our conjecture is spot on, is as Smoke. At that point she seems to have a fair handle on what transformation magic is, and that Grace's magic isn't normal for their world - she's not a newbie. That was recent in terms of the current party. What would that level of competence suggest, how many months? How long has Nanase been more circumspect? Actually, her earliest appearance as a wizard would be in Diane's story, that was before the Smoke wasn't it? Meanwhile, Nanase is likely more careful for longer than half year. In fact, she was burned out for half year and she was definitely more careful afterwards. She may have few months of experience. Not a big bad, yet. She has potential. A seeming disregard for others, 'I'm right about everything', more interest in making excuses than in being herself. She'll probably do the second part shortly, whether she develops into a big bad or not. She has potential but she will likely be "solved" before she fully reaches it. Unless she's supposed to return after Lord Tedd or something. Uhm, a particularly persuasive 'Hello' still says 'hello'. You'd thing she'd have applied it to the second part, 'I like your hair', for any one of several reasons. Still going to start looking at that font as 'magic in use' and see if it becomes clearer. Well, she's not using it correctly Also, the effect might be LITTLE different than simple persuasion. But, well, yes I'm also not sure what it could've done, so the "not using it correctly" seems more likely. Yes exactly what I meant. And yes she learned to use it more effectively because she deliberately trained it, while Diane didn't had that much opportunities to even notice what she's doing.

Where? All Camdin eating a sandwich said is "This isn't Camdin." The only reason I think she might have copied it is we think Smoke likes to copy spells, and Camdin is the only other person we've seen with this ability. But two people getting the same magic mark isn't that much of a stretch, either. Do we know of ANY case where two people got the same magic mark? What you talk about is exactly the heavy implication. Well, what you talk about combined with Chekhov gun of Camdin being established as character before we saw smoke. So you're saying, it indicates the persuasion spell in use. That fits, fits well, in fact. Kudos. Pizza Gal uses it to cover her lies, and Diane uses it unknowingly to make a point. Mostly fits, 'Hello' is still weird. So Pizza Gal is right, Diane doesn't know how to use it. Yes. Everything fits. Not sure about exact nature of the spell, but it will be something like persuasion ... She seems to have both an affinity for magic and only a rudimentary awareness of it prior to the party. I would say she needs to awaken, she can't yet do magic on her own, but she's likely to have an easier time with it. Hmmm ... I would say that she CAN do magic of her own because she just did ... but it's true that Justin could use illusions before being awakened, so we can't rule out this is similar case. The noise and such, but if you are saying that he might have sensed something more about it, that now seems likely. Recall that as an infant, he did not understand it as a mere testing device and resisted it. That seems maybe a little more than just passive. That's not what I was talking about. I meant that some other seer before him analyzed spell like Luke's and created the scary magic analyzer wand by copying it.

It's all about the genes. They are the data system biologic evolution runs on. The rest of what we, ducks, and chipmunks are is just meat based machinery for the genes. Yes, they do decide when you are useless and no longer fertile. They don't care two wits about your goals, other than how your goals further the genes' agenda. When we loose sight of that we tend to shoot ourselves in the foot. In as much as your advanced lifespan furthers the genes agenda, you have an extended lifespan. For us, it is considerable. We are one of the longer lived species on the planet. And, in our case, it is as you say, we train others. But the genes are not sentient. They don't decide using any decision mechanism. They don't care about your goals, sure, but they actually don't care about ANYTHING. It's just that the more "selfish" genes survived longer. It's all emergent quality from basically simple mechanism applied in large quantities. Evolution works without anyone deciding anything. It's true that for humans, it gets simpler to think about physical processes in terms of intent and decision. Consider Fermat's principle: " the path taken by a ray between two given points is the path that can be traversed in the least time". Does it mean that the ray is somehow looking at possibilities and deciding which path would be best? NO. The physical principle of what's happening is completely different (and much more complicated, as visible if you read rest of article). But the original formulation of Fermat's principle works, and is easy to understand for humans. The same is true with genes. What is actually happening is hard to describe in human language, but the result is very similar to genes following goal of most propagation. Until it isn't. Because genes don't care, and if some result doesn't happen enough often, it doesn't get optimized and is basically random. Our current society is, from genes "point of view", just blink of an eye. There was little to none evolution of human species in last hundred years, because evolution simply isn't that fast. Yet the conditions changed a lot. When we look at what's happening, we don't see something already optimized by genes goal of propagation: we see how genes, optimized mostly for cavemens, with slight changes based on first agriculture societies maybe, work in conditions radically different from what they were optimized for. For example, why do we have "epidemic" of obesity? It's not because it would be advantageous for genes ; quite the contrary. But until hundred years ago, hardly anyone had enough food to become obese. Therefore, it's not optimized. It's all sideefects of something which made sense in completely different situations. We don't have precise biological clocks counting our lifespan. We have SOME clocks, but those are all tuned to something completely different. We actually live longer because we care about our bodies better than was possible in past. We have better nutrition, medication ... genes didn't have time to react to that. That's advantage we have against them. Our brain can react WAY faster than genes. After all, that's why the genes "decided" to create it: this ability to react faster than evolution was obvious advantage. Yeah, those are true. You'd think that if the longevity is inherited, that it would be noteworthy and widely known. And how far down the line would it extend? Maybe it is. It took quite a long time before we knew about the unusual colors of hair, despite everyone in-universe knowing about it. Similarly, there might be known fact that some people have hereditary longer livespan, but without any details. Might seem ti be little correlated to the unusual colors, but not enough to be statistically significant ... Of course, most of those people, like Susan, are tens of generations from the fairy. Diane is half-elf, second generation. Noone like that appeared since legends ... and, well, you know how long Methuselah for example was supposed to live? To 969. Voltaire did a Cheshire Cat fade out that says whatever they do, they can in a practical sense be as incorporeal as they want to be without significant difficulty. That could've been optical effect caused by him moving between planes of reality. Not that much, although that bit is on different article. It would have been especially rare to mate with somebody who lived in another country. However, Chang et al. found that a rare person who mates with a person far away will in time connect the worldwide family tree, and that no population is truly completely isolated. None of those barriers are impervious. But it's true they may slow the spread. It was common enough LOT of rules were established for that case. But you are right we have insufficient information. It's just ... even if it was rare, just the fact it happened few thousand years sooner had big effect. And we DO know that people from all parts of world have magical talents. There is no obvious correlation to anything. I suppose it is possible. Please cite why you think so. Because when Adrian was born, Pandora was already spreading the lie her previous incarnation told to her about elves being infertile. Lie which was SPECIFICALLY created as a reaction to immortals getting too involved in lives of their families. Steven Colbert assures me otherwise. I don't know him, but are you sure he is evaluating the bears from point of definition of species?