ChronosCat

I wouldn't go so far as to call it easy, but it's quite doable for an advanced enough civilization. In fact, I do it all the time. The thing is, time is like a tree with many branches, and each branch is a timeline. Most of the branch points correspond to events at the quantum scale, but some correspond to points where travelers might or might not arrive from the future, with one or more branches featuring arrivals but at least one branch continuing on without any arrival. (The timeline may branch further based on their actions in the "past" of course.) This means that those who attempt to change history may find themselves in a timeline they don't recognize, but they never actually "changed" anything - their old timeline is still there, "where" it's always been. The reason why there doesn't appear to have been any temporal tourists/researchers on Earth in recorded history is partially the result of some travelers choosing to blend in with the locals, and partially the result of those who talk about having traveled through time not being believed (you probably don't believe I'm a time traveler, either), but mainly the result of us happening to be in a branch where not many arrivals took place (yet). OOC: Actually, to be depressingly down to earth, I think it most likely that travel "backwards" in time is only possible at the quantum scale and even at that scale no useful information can make the journey. However, that's no fun, so I'm hoping something like what I said above it true. The Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics seems like a promising way to provide the right kind of multiverse for it, and as a bonus I also think it makes a lot more sense than Copenhagen Interpretation. And having entering the past be a quantum branching event not only provides a possible solution to the lack of time tourists (as alluded to above), but also solves the issue of the Grandfather Paradox. I am also rather fond of the idea that people can travel through time within a single timeline, but that history cannot be altered... However, while this may prevent the Grandfather Paradox, it doesn't really solve the problem of time tourists (unless you're satisfied with the answer "history said they weren't there, so they weren't able to be there", but I'm not satisfied with that). (Of course, the solution could be in the method of time travel rather than the theory - for instance, if as ijuin mentioned above the time machine cannot send you back before it's creation.)

One person each on Patreon and Twitter mentioned it publicly in reaction to the comic (I could tell you their names, but I'm assuming it doesn't really matter ). I expect there were others in other places Dan checks but I don't (like Facebook or Reddit), and in PMs/emails to him.

I think that was actually making fun of a poorly designed toy (and the artwork on the package). Shortpacked is set in a toy store after all (or at least it was back then, I haven't read it in many years) and if you look closely, it looks like that's an action figure package she's holding in the last panel.

Yay for polka-dot/TARDIS interior background in panel eight! (I'm counting the open space at the beginning as a panel.) ...I still wonder exactly what that background is supposed to signify... ... Well, I guess Sam must not have told Sarah he's not sure about dating...

We don't know if there are other things Uryuoms can transfer mentally, but we do know that the language transfer requires physical contact with at least one subject using their antennae. If all their direct-mind communication requires such contact, then it would make sense that they'd retain use of verbal communication.

When (and whether) the sun will render Earth inhospitable (by becoming a Red Giant or by other means) is entirely relevant to the discussion of how long intelligent life can survive on Earth (and by extension, how long alien races might be able to survive without moving to new planets). And to be clear, what exactly is it that you are claiming is incorrect, and do you have any sources for your claim? According to the Wikipedia article on the future of the solar system about 1.5 billion years from now, Mars will warm enough for ice (both water and carbon dioxide) to melt on its surface, possibly leading to a greenhouse affect. Of course (based on what I can read of the source for that claim) it will be billions of years before Mars grows warm enough by natural means for life as we know it to survive there... But the combined efforts of both "humankind" (and I use the term loosely, I don't expect homo sapiens to still be around by then) and nature will surely be able to produce results faster and more easily than either working alone... Of course, Wikipedia also claims that multi-cellular life on Earth will go extinct by 800 million years from now, and the oceans will likely boil away by 1.1 billion years from now, so it will require more than just the forces of evolution for our descendants to last long enough to see the point where rising temperatures make terraforming Mars significantly easier. (On the other hand, the article does go on to mention the possibility of the nitrogen cycle reducing atmospheric pressure enough to slow the rising temperatures, giving us until 2 billion years in the future before the oceans are lost, and presumably extending the reign of multi-cullular life as well.) As for building housing and an industrial base on Mars, I would expect that could easily be done in a few centuries - and when dealing with a catastrophe that takes hundreds of millions of years (or even a couple billion) to reach it's conclusion, that's nothing. ...Then again, maybe we won't bother terraforming Mars at all. Maybe we'll just build enclosed bases/homes/cities/etc. there and call it good. If those of us with dreams of space have our way, we'll be building such things on Mars in the not-so-distant future anyway.

This thread still needs a link: http://egscomics.com/egsnp/shs-02 There are some superheros who have noticeably tough skin, temporarily or permanently - but they tend not to be able to pass as ordinary humans when in these forms. (Examples that come to mind are The Thing and Colossus.)

Early on, keeping the Earth cool would probably be easier than terraforming Mars. However, over time as the suns output increases, it will get harder to keep the Earth cool and easier to terraform Mars (as Mars will get warmer too). I imagine there will come a tipping point where it's easier to just terraform Mars if it hasn't been done already, and the only reason for continuing to put the effort in to save Earth is sentimentality. Moving the Earth would be such a massive undertaking I doubt it would be any easier than terraforming Mars. Particularly if we don't want to kill off what's left of the biosphere in the process. As for surviving underground, there are only so many naturally occurring caves and most of them aren't appropriate for long-term human life, so we'd have to dig out new underground dwellings. We'd also need sources of food (underground farming?), water (aquifers might work at first, but my understanding is eventually most of the water makes its way to the surface and evaporates, so eventually you'd need a way to draw the water back out of the atmosphere and pump it back down to your dwellings), and breathable air (the farms might help with that). With current tech it might be possible for small numbers, but it would be expensive. With future tech it might be practical and worth the expense for large numbers, but I doubt there would be the resources to support billions of people underground, so if the population hasn't significantly dropped by then some people would probably still need to move off-world. Although I've heard some of the details of Earth's future overheating before, at the moment I'm going by the wikipedia article "Future of Earth." While it mentions that life underground might be able to survive long after the surface is uninhabitable, it seems to forget about those underground life-forms after that, mostly treating the point the surface becomes uninhabitable as the point where life on Earth ends. It also doesn't speculate on how intelligent life might react to these changes. So I can't really say how long human-descendants would be able to survive underground. Perhaps we would be able to survive until the surface went molten (in which case human-descendants and the other life forms in our shelters might well be the last living things on Earth), but even that might be sooner than when the Sun goes Red Giant; in one scenario a runaway greenhouse effect 3 to 4 billion years from now could heat the planet up enough to melt the surface. Reaching close enough to light-speed to fully take advantage of time dilation would require incredible amounts of energy; for all but the most advanced civilizations it probably wouldn't be worth the cost. However, without time dilation interstellar journeys take an incredibly long time - many human lifetimes in most cases. The most obvious solutions to this are sleeper ships, generation ships, or some form of immortality (including sentient machines). In the case of the generation ships and immortals, however, once you've been traveling the void of space for thousands or tens of thousands of years, why would you want to settle down when you found a planet? (And for a machine designed for space, Earth wouldn't even be any more appealing as a place to settle than a lifeless rock.) Chances are they'd have a look around, maybe replenish their resources (which in most cases could be done on uninhabited worlds as easily as inhabited ones), then continue their journey. As for sleeper ships, maybe no successful interstellar civilizations in our galaxy have decided to go that route, maybe they don't interfere with existing biospheres for moral reasons, or maybe they just came through our neighborhood so long ago there's no trace of them anymore (there's no reason interstellar civilizations can't fall just like any other). This is a bit of a stretch, but maybe they settled on Earth hundreds of millions of years ago only for the colonists to be killed off in one of Earth's mass extinctions (obviously this would require them not leaving behind any fossils in places we've looked so far, but it's not like we're even close to knowing all the species that ever lived on Earth). Or maybe they came through so long ago Earth wasn't habitable yet (heck, maybe this was before the Sun formed). It's also possible that the aliens that came through weren't the sort that would find Earth inhabitable. Or, (as with the machine intelligences I mentioned above), they might not find it any more habitable than any other rocky world that isn't so hot it would melt them.

Background watch: Starburst backgrounds in panels one and two. Fish-themed villains, presumably.

So, we've skipped over the Friday Night dates again... If I remember, Justin/Luke and Diane/Lucy had dates this Friday, right? Does anybody remember if Sarah and Sam were going to be meeting as well (I really want to see how their next date goes)? Angst was pretty common for Grace up to her birthday party; and Jerry pointed out that even after that her bubbly surface persona was partially a result of repressing a lot of her negative emotions. So I suspect a bit of angst is normal for her, and will remain so for quite some in-comic time.

Or maybe most species capable of intentionally broadcasting their presence aren't desperate enough to find other species to talk with to justify the expense of broadcasting long and loud enough to have much chance of anybody else hearing it... And those that have done so either are so far away that their signal still isn't strong enough for us to detect, or the timing of their civilization was/is wrong for us to detect them (either the civilization ended prior to the point where they would have to have sent the signal for us to hear it today, or the civilization is far enough away that the signal hasn't had time to reach us yet). ...It's worth noting that even on Earth finding the funding for such things is hard to come by, and we've mostly broadcasted for just a short time in a few directions we thought looked promising. As for TV (and Radio, and other over-the-air transmissions), these are generally aimed towards the Earth, not into space, so they're not nearly as strong as signals actually aimed at other stars - and radio signals do get weaker as they travel (thanks to spreading out, as well as the occasional obstacle). There's also lots of sources of interference out there... From what I've heard, it would be extremely difficult (if not impossible) for aliens outside our solar system to make out such a faint signal. And even if aliens did detect TV and radio broadcasts, I would think all the different stations broadcasting at the same time (and not all on different frequencies, as we're talking about the whole world here) would make the signal a jumbled mess - I wonder if it would be possible for them to decipher it? Actually, we probably will have to abandon the planet (or go through a monumental effort to keep the planet habitable) long before the Sun goes red giant; the Sun is increasing in luminosity over time, and in about 1 billion years it will become too hot for water to remain in liquid form on most of the Earth's surface. The most hardy life-forms might be able to last to 2.8 billion years from now on the surface and longer underground, but without advanced future technology human-descendants probably wouldn't be among them (and with advanced future technology it would probably be easier to move to another more habitable planet, like Mars). So if we speculate that our descendants will make it to the 1 billion year mark, and depending on how long the biosphere survives, that would be 14% to 20% of its lifespan.

After I made that post, someone mentioned "Netflix and chill" in response to the comic somewhere else (I forget where); that was actually the first time I ever heard the phrase.

That seems like quite the invasion of privacy. I mean, unlike Elliot I'm sure she consciously fantasizes about real people, but her simulations have more reality to them than something she completely made up in her head, as their starting positions copy reality precisely. Taking someone's clothes off in a simulation seems akin to peeping on them without their knowledge or consent while they're undressed. She might be tempted, and she might even do it with friends she knows wouldn't mind (specifically Tedd and Grace; though even then I think she might double check with them first), but I can't see her actually doing it with people she doesn't know well or suspects would have a problem with it.

Makes sense, but that still leaves the mystery of the missing leading "[Have/eat] a". Unless it's just an extension of the trend I've seen online of leaving words and phrases implied that just a few decades ago would have been considered required. However it's strange to see it in dialogue; no one I know IRL talks like that in person!

I like garlic bread... but I agree that garlic is not a relaxing flavor. Incidentally, the grammar of Kitty's last sentence there is kind of strange. Anybody know if she's referencing something?

If you told me why what? (If that was explained in the song, I missed it.)

*Throws hat in the ring.* No, wait, I need that. *Grabs hat.*

I suspect a large part of Elliot's lack of initiative with Sarah was due to his subconsciously seeing her as a sister. I mean if he's not attracted to her romantically or sexually, he wouldn't really have much incentive to do anything romantic or sexual with her.

Zazu attempting to entertain Scar. (I wish I had properly checked out the games area before, I looks like I missed out on a lot of fun! Too bad it seems as quiet as the rest of the EGS forums these days... Then again, from what I recall it wasn't very active even back when I rejoined the forums, otherwise maybe I would have given it more of a chance...)

It seems to me that Mr. Verres would be the sort to be uncomfortable with the idea of WMDs (magical or otherwise), and object to their use if he were in a position to do so, but not let those feelings get in the way of working for a government he knows has them. So idealism limited by practicality.

The McDonald's I've been to are rather inconsistent with their fries. The texture can vary from slightly chewier than a potato chip, to soft and floppy like a cross between a baked potato and a noodle. Meanwhile the salt can vary from barely noticeable to overwhelming. Once or twice I've felt the need to brush some of the salt off, but otherwise I usually find them an enjoyable snack (if a bit of a guilty pleasure).

Yay(?) for polka-dot/pepperoni/TARDIS-interrior background in panel one. Yay for fiery background in panel two! ...Kitty's argument, including not having tried it, reminds me of something, but I can't put my finger on it. Well, if you don't like cheese or tomato sauce, you could tell you wouldn't like pizza from the smell... Also, if you disliked grease, most pizza-shop pizzas I've had would be a no-go. So it's junk food (at least as it's normally made; there are healthier variations). I wonder, does Kitty go around complaining about cakes at bakeries, or ice cream at ice cream places, or hamburgers and french fries at McDonald's? (Actually, I have heard plenty of people complaining about McDonald's food - though not actually at a McDonald's...)

Seeing as now it's becoming a problem in and of itself, and it's not nearly as safe as advertised... Maybe the regulators in the EGS world were a lot more on the ball than the ones in ours?

http://egscomics.com/sketchbook/2019-012 Cute, but in my opinion that's about all it has going for it.

Starburst background in panel one. *yawn* There are many different types of tomato sauce; for home-made pizzas they sell "pizza sauce" which tastes different from "spaghetti sauce". Also, I have never had a pizza made with ketchup before; I never knew that was even a thing. No cheese? When I was a kid, we would sometimes make "English Muffin Pizzas" with spaghetti sauce and American Cheese. It didn't taste anything like real pizza, but it wasn't bad.