ChronosCat

Personally, Amazon's offers don't seem that obtrusive to me; they're like the sort of advertisement I completely tune out half the time and the other half just briefly glance at unless it actually looks interesting. Honestly, when I notice they're offering me something I already bought from them and don't need more of, I just roll my eyes and move on.

While this is likely the result of the low "intelligence" of the algorithms, it could also be a result of the algorithm being designed for the benefit of Amazon and Amazon not having complete profiles of people. After all, there are some circumstances where one might want to buy multiples of big items like that (for instance, if you liked it so much you wanted to give one to a friend (and had the money for that), or in the case of appliances if you owned a building with multiple apartments and needed to furnish them all), and if they don't know whether you're likely to want more it's to their advantage to offer it to you just in case.

Given that this is Arthur, I suspect two possibilities: One, "Living" magical artifacts are a known thing that happens, and Arthur just had to perform a standard test to find out if Kevin qualified. (In this case I expect that Dan will eventually get into all the details about what it means to be a living artifact.) Two, Arthur talked with Kevin, decided he sounded like a person, and decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. Intelligence isn't an either-or thing; there are many varieties and levels. Virtually all vertebrates (and some invertebrates, octopi being the most notable) show some form of intelligence. By most measures humans are probably the most intelligent animals on Earth (or the third most intelligent, if Douglas Adams is to be believed), the problem is they have insufficient wisdom (particularly collectively). As for searches, I've never really used Google much. For a long time I jumped around between a bunch of different search engines; Google was one of them but once I learned how they like to track people and gather information about them I started avoiding Google (to the extent that's possible). My current search engine of choice is Duck Duck Go; it doesn't always provide great results but it's usually good enough (and a lot of the time when I can't find what I'm looking for, the search was a bit of a long-shot in the first place). I have noticed a difference in YouTube suggestions over the years. A few years back the suggestions would be roughly half to two-thirds stuff similar to what I was watching, with the remainder related to previous things I'd watched recently. These days it's almost entirely stuff related to things I've watched in the past few months with the current video given no preference; there is often a lot of stuff I'd never watch in there but I can usually see the connection to stuff I have watched. I haven't really noticed a lot of videos I've already watched in my suggestions. With Amazon I usually have pretty good results if I'm very specific about what I'm looking for, but more general searches often lead to frustration. They do occasionally offer me things I've bought before, but (unless I'm actually searching for it again), always in one of their "other things you might want" sections rather than in the primary search results.

Grace does a much better job interacting with others than I ever did during my school years. I think she actually fits in better, and when she does stand out the attention she gets isn't nearly as negative as the attention I wound up with. As for backgrounds, I think mine is relatively ordinary - the "problem" was with me (well, the real problem was the other kids, but it took a long time to see it that way). As an adult I was eventually diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum (high functioning / Aspergers); this is presumably a big part of why the kids thought I was weird. (I was also a nerd before nerds were cool; I'm sure that didn't help things.)

Yay for star-spangled background in panel one! (Not to be confused with a starburst background)

Yeah, the trick is figuring out which email sources are legit. These looked it, which is part of why I took the chance, but I've heard there are some pretty convincing fakes out there.

The other day I checked an email account I don't check very often (well, technically I don't check any of them very often, but there's one I at least try to keep up on) and discovered my inbox had been flooded with political activism emails. I don't have the time or energy for such things these days, and I definitely don't need to be getting so many emails I can't find the important ones, but I was reluctant to report them as spam since they did actually more-or-less align with my political views. I took the risk of using the "unsubscribe" links on a couple of them, and for the moment that seems to have solved the problem; hopefully I don't come to regret it.

My experience playing video games suggests it ends by falling in a pit filled with spikes.

We had the biggest storm of the season so far yesterday (I believe it was officially a blizzard); it snowed from noon to midnight, dropping well over a foot of snow, and the winds were pretty intense too. Today, my family spent all morning and much of the afternoon clearing the driveway and yard. ...At least it was fluffy snow and it wasn't too cold out today, but I'm still exhausted.

I'll check it out the next time I have access to a non-metered internet connection (I'm looking forward to it).

Presumably it's setting up a mini-arc about the "rivalry" between them (my guess is we'll have a week or two of comics involving a ball-spiking competition). I'm guessing it's a result of her watching too much anime while not having entirely absorbed her local culture. My gym classes were of mixed gender (though the actual sports teams outside gym were divided into boys and girls) through middle school. As I mentioned recently, I was home-schooled for high-school, so I don't know how the high school I would have otherwise gone to did things. As for the jock, at first I assumed he was so sure of himself and so dismissive of a small not-obviously-muscular girl who wasn't known for her athletics that he just expected her to back down. Thinking on it further, I could see him also being prepared for someone who thought they had something to prove, and like ijuin said, it was the fact the she didn't think it was a big deal she might be able to beat him that surprised him.

He didn't say the women were more stubborn than the men, just that they were stubborn. Also, last we knew Mr. Verres believed (hopefully just assumed, but that remains to be seen) that Tedd was a young man who just sometimes chose to look like a woman. So I doubt he meant to include Tedd in that statement (I'd actually consider it progress if he did).

The important thing to remember about the Space Turtle is that Dan created it as an excuse to get Mr. Verres out of the meeting between Tedd and Arthur, and only decided to even show the scene at the last minute. So either the Space Turtle's information is not important in the near term, or it originally would have been revealed in a different (presumably less out of the blue) fashion. In either case, I doubt the Space Turtle itself will be important in this storyline.

I wouldn't be shocked if he showed up, but I can't imagine what his motive would be. As for other antagonists, a new foe could always be introduced (either setting things up for a future plot, or a one-shot foe like Not-Tengu). And while I don't expect them to be outright villains, Luke's former group and Jay all seem capable of causing trouble. (Also, I don't expect conflict with him any time soon and it would be pretty strange for him to show up right now, but Magus is still at large.)

Presumably she's embarrassed that the fact that Grace knows she want to see Grace spiking the ball hard. As to why that's embarrassing, it might just be because she hadn't been upfront about it and now her deception is revealed. Alternately, she really has a thing for balls being spiked.

While forcing a Magic Change was one of Voltaire's goals, the more important aspect of his plan was to convince the other Immortals to change their laws, and last we saw that part of the plan was still on course. He also didn't believe that it was Tedd who prevented the Magic Change. So I doubt he's going to be showing up looking for revenge anytime soon. (See: https://www.egscomics.com/comic/2018-02-19)

So, even with Dan's pacing, I can't imagine we're getting all this time spent on choosing the party to meet with the Griffins unless the party composition was going to be important, which makes me wonder why it would be. There's also been a lot of focus on making sure the party is ready for a battle, which also feels like it ought to be important. A few possibilities that come to mind: 1. The meeting will be interrupted by some foe attacking. 2. The griffins have some exposition to deliver regarding Grace (possibly relating to the mysteries surrounding Uryuoms). (Of course this on its own wouldn't explain the focus on being ready for battle.) 3. The griffins are going to object to someone being in the party (or to Nanase not being in the party) leading to verbal or physical conflict. I'm starting to worry it might be a combination of 2 & 3, with the Griffins considering Uryuoms enemies or something.

Except when baking, my family uses Smart Balance rather than butter. As far as I'm concerned it tastes just as good as actual butter, but I'm not a butter connoisseur.

I handled public school very poorly. I was very slow with my school work, had no more than one friend at a time (and often no friends), and was constantly being teased by other kids for every little thing; I absolutely hated the experience. However, it took my parents years to realize there was an alternative and then do something about it. I was too burned out after my failure at college to consider trying again for a while. And now it's been so long that I've forgotten much of what I learned and what I do remember is obsolete. So it wouldn't be "finishing" my degree so much as restarting it. Still, remote learning does have the benefits of not needing to find housing and not standing out for not being "college age", so I'll have to consider it. On the other hand I don't see myself getting a job that requires a degree, and it's relatively easy to learn things without being in school, so I don't really need a degree; it would just be so I could say (to myself and others) that I finished college.

My morning ritual these days involves checking twitter and these forums. (When EGS is posted on time, I usually read it in the evening just before I go to bed.)

If college had been anything like middle school, I wouldn't have been able to handle it as long as I did. Luckily, my classmates were friendly and well behaved, and the teachers had time to help out students individually. Unfortunately, I was going to a small college without dorms which didn't offer all the classes I needed for my degree locally. When in the space of a few months my chronic depression flared up, I discovered the hard way that browsing the internet when one is supposed to be doing school work is a good way to not get that school work done, the Aunt and Uncle I had been staying with told me they'd be moving and I'd need to find another place to stay, and I discovered that I'd need to travel halfway across the state to take my last few classes, things fell apart.

I was homeschooled from 8th grade through to the end of high school. During that time my only "classmate" was my younger sister, and I still see her roughly once a week so there's no need for a reunion.

Kindergarten was half a day for me as well. My memory of it is a little vague (I haven't thought much about it in years) but I'm sure we had chairs and either desks or tables (I remember finding depictions in fiction of kids sitting on the floor in school a bit odd the first time I encountered them). We also must have had recesses where we could do whatever we liked outside, as I don't remember recesses in primary school feeling novel compared to kindergarten.

Dan has said before that after a few last plot threads were tied up (the biggest being the return of the Griffons), there would be a time skip to around the time of their high school graduation. Based on this, and assuming we're nearing the climax of this story and there won't too many stories or any long stories between the time skip and College, I expect them to make it to college some time in 2023 or 2024. ...And if I'm correctly interpreting comments Dan's made in the past about expecting the kids to make it college pretty quickly when he first started the comic, that's when the "Prelude" phase of EGS will conclude and the real story will begin... I only read two web comics these days, and the other one updates slowly enough that I usually check back on it every few months. (I'm actually overdue to check back on it; hopefully it will have a nice chunk of material for me to read.)

I mostly watch science & futurism videos, and lets plays of Zelda games.