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ChronosCat

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Posts posted by ChronosCat

  2. Posted · Edited by ChronosCat
    Remembered that it was too much water, not too little, that interfered in the farming.

    From what I've heard, the prevailing view is that ordinary citizens worked on the pyramids (and other monuments) when the Nile was flooded and they couldn't do any farming, and it served as a way of paying taxes. (This is from memory so I might not have the details exactly right.)

  3. Posted

    21 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

    I would say that it's not technology until one individual will create the tool and other use it. In other words, when the group starts recognizing that the tool can be done worse or better depending on who does it and how thoroughly, which is only small step away from 1) division of labour, 2) trade and 3) research of how to teach everyone to make the tool better. Not sure if this includes any animal.

    Something about that doesn't sound right to me, but I can't put my finger on it. On the other hand, I was considering adding to my definition the restriction that for it to count as technology there should be a mechanism for passing on the knowledge of how to make the tool, which has a similar effect to your definition on what tools count as technology.

    To my knowledge, my revised definition would rule out all existing animal tool use except that by humans and chimps; yours would further rule out chimps.

    As for Australopithecus and other ancient hominids, we don't know enough about how they acted to know if their tool use met your definition of technology; the archaeological evidence that far back is so sparse and open to interpretation we may never know.

    17 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

    It is perfectly natural for humans to do something unnaturally. :)

    That sounds a lot like the point I was trying to make at the start of this conversation...

    If modern technology is "unnatural", but humans naturally do unnatural things, doesn't that mean that it's natural for humans to use modern technology? :)

    animalia reacted to this

  4. Posted

    29 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

    The definitions are not as neat and tidy as we would like them, but that doesn't always mean that those words lose all their meaning. Sometimes we just need to admit that the boundary is there even if we are not able to find it when we look too close.

    True. But sometimes we come across a situation where the exact boundary is important (such as this conversation), and then we have a problem.

    5 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

    But did Australopithecus used technology?

    By the definition I'm using, yes. And technically so do chimps (a very simple, pre-stone age technology, but it still fits the definition).

    The Wikipedia article on technology actually seems to count any tool use as technology, but I think perhaps that's going a bit far. I think I'd limit it to cases where the tool is actually created or modified by an individual or group for use as a tool. That still includes tool use by a number of animal species, including elephants, orangutans, crows, and as I already mentioned chimps and several million years worth of pre-sapiens human ancestors.

  5. Posted · Edited by ChronosCat
    Added a recap to the part about stone age tech.

    56 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

    I'm not sure this definition isn't too broad, but ok ... what about pre-stone age people?

    Or, at least, we can say that while discussing current human without tools is meaningless, pre-stone age human can be discussed without technology.

    In any case, I don't believe the first definition of "natural" is automatically excluding any homo sapient. It's not like homo sapient actually arrived on earth in spaceship: we evolved here naturally. But then WE started to use tools in way no other animal did - and there are lot of examples of animals using tools and sometimes it's hard to tell exactly what is the difference, where is the boundary ... but if you look around, there must be some somewhere. Because humans changed whole ecosystem in almost as radical way as the cyanobacteriea which started to use oxygen as weapon against others, and WE did it DELIBERATELY. Mostly. And much faster.

    And if the word "natural" is supposed to have any meaning which makes more sense than those labels on food, putting the boundary there makes sense.

    If you have a less--broad definition of "technology" that you prefer, I'd love to hear it.

    As for "pre-stone age people", if you restrict the term "people" to Homo sapiens, there weren't any - hominids at least as far back as Homo habilis are known to have made stone tools, and there is some evidence the creation and use of stone tools may go back even further, to members of the Australopithecus genus.  (Which gets us back to what I was saying earlier, that tool use is a part of human nature, and you can't really talk about what's "natural" for humans without taking it into account.)

    I agree that if we could figure out the "boundary" between the way we use tools and the way other animals use tools, that would be a useful basis for refining the definitions of "natural" and "unnatural". However, I'm not very confident it's possible to identify that "boundary".

    58 minutes ago, animalia said:

    On the topic of living creatures changing their environment has anyone else here ever heard of the Great Oxygenation Event?

    Yep, that's probably my third favorite mass extinction, after the Permian Disaster and the K-T event. :)

  6. Posted

    39 minutes ago, hkmaly said:
    48 minutes ago, ChronosCat said:
    2 hours ago, hkmaly said:

    She explicitly said that's NOT the part she liked.

    I don't remember that. Care to provide a link, or at least a general idea of where I should look for that statement?

    http://www.egscomics.com/egsnp.php?id=700

    Well, that shows that Susan objects to the stereotype that women with bigger breasts are more attractive, but it doesn't mean she isn't subconsciously influenced by that stereotype. She also mentions that not everyone likes them, but that doesn't mean she doesn't like them, and also for many people there's a difference between what one thinks looks good on someone else and what one thinks looks good on oneself.

    Of course it's entirely possible Susan either dislikes or is indifferent to having large breasts, I just don't think that strip proves it.

  7. Posted

    26 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

    Not true. The stone age humans were using tools, but not technology.

    In that case we need to define technology. Wiktionary's definitions are pretty vague, so I don't think they're helpful here; Wikipedia on the other hand says "Technology can be most broadly defined as the entities, both material and immaterial, created by the application of mental and physical effort in order to achieve some value. In this usage, technology refers to tools and machines that may be used to solve real-world problems. It is a far-reaching term that may include simple tools, such as a crowbar or wooden spoon, or more complex machines, such as a space station or particle accelerator."

    By this definition, stone tools (and other tools used by stone age people) count as technology; the Wikipedia article even goes on to list stone tools and fire in the history of technology.

    27 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

    Hmmm ... can ghost be result of natural death? :)

    Actually, if ghosts really existed they'd probably count as part of the natural world (at least according the broader definition); my mentioning them was a half-hearted attempt to make a joke on the term "supernatural".

  8. Posted

    1 hour ago, hkmaly said:
    On 12/25/2017 at 0:20 AM, ChronosCat said:

    And maybe like Sarah she's fantasized about being bigger in the chest even if Susan would never admit it (though I doubt it would be as persistent a desire as with Sarah).

    She explicitly said that's NOT the part she liked.

    I don't remember that. Care to provide a link, or at least a general idea of where I should look for that statement?

    1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

    So far, she's more coherent than I expected.

    BTW, Susan, are you sure that ASKING if it's Ditzy talking is reliable enough? It may be the "I'm not spy - That's exactly what would spy said" case ...

     I get the impression that enough of a person's normal personality is still there inside their head during Secret Identity spells that they usually won't do things under the influence of the spell that they would object to without the spell. (Elliot kissing Carol being an exception to this, probably a result of it being done thanks to a spur-of-the-moment impulse.) Susan probably thinks that by asking that she'll prompt the non-ditzy internal Ashley to think things through, and override the dizty outer Ashley if necessary. And until and unless we learn otherwise, I'm going to assume Susan's right.

    1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

    I don't think Dan would have problems with putting the petting on site ... the "stuff", on the other hand ...

    Well, I was thinking they might get enthused with the petting and take it into NSFW territory.

  9. Posted

    46 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

    Well, sure, you can say technology is natural. You can also say that anything made from crude oil is natural as crude oil is prehistoric plankton, making all those "100% natural ingredients" on food look stupid ... what would it need to be to not count as natural, dark matter? exotic matter?

    In many countries (the US included) those labels are stupid. Unless there are regulations defining the term (like with "organic") and enforcing it's usage, they can mean whatever the company wants them to mean, or nothing at all.

    Even beyond food labels, though, the definition of "natural" is a tough one. 

    Wiktionary mentions several, the most relevant being:

    Quote
    • That exists and evolved within the confines of an ecosystem. quotations ▼
      The species will be under threat if its natural habitat is destroyed.
    • Of or relating to nature.
      In the natural world the fit tend to live on while the weak perish.

    And they define "nature" (again omitting some irrelevant definitions):

    Quote

    By the first definition of nature, humans don't count as part of nature. In that case we can't talk about what is or isn't "natural" for humans, because by definition we're not natural. However, I don't like this way of thinking, as it makes it seem like we're alien to the Earth, and don't belong here.

    By the third definition of nature, it's hard to figure out what would be unnatural, other than perhaps ghosts and invaders from another universe.

    Ideally there should be a definition somewhere in between, that acknowledges that we are a part of nature without making the term nature meaningless, but I don't know if such a definition exists or what it would be.

    1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

    That's true. However, you can't reasonably expect they will go below 2. Also, spreading wealth doesn't automatically help people to feel safe and secure, you need to add lot of education to that ... which often helps with the wealth more than many charity programs.

    I think a combination of approaches is most likely to produce the best results...

    We probably shouldn't pursue this part of the discussion much further, though, as it's getting close to stuff that probably belongs in the politics thread.

    1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

    If I should choose between believing that practical FTL travel will be possible and believing that majority of people will behave logically or rationally, the FTL travel seems FAR more likely.

    Well, that depends on how you define "people". If we're restricting it to homo sapiens, I agree. However, a population of sentient robots & computers could probably manage it... Heck, if it provided enough of a survival advantage, a future species of hominid might even be significantly more rational than us.

  10. Posted

    1 hour ago, CritterKeeper said:

    I thought Tedd looked female in the first panel, too.

    Tail, coloring, snout, and outfit have changed from the previous one.  We can't tell when the leg configuration changed, but probably the same timeframe.  Anything else?

    Her feet are more like rabbit feet, and her hands are bigger. Given the way the boundaries between her pink and white colored parts are jagged, I suspect she's now furry; it may be that the snout, hands, feet, and fur all came together as part of a furry form (similar to what we've been seeing in NP but without the sneakers).

  11. Posted

    Also on patreon in two larger sizes: https://www.patreon.com/posts/milestone-comic-16050162

    (I don't think we really need two threads when it was released roughly the same time in both places. At least I'm not bothering to make a second thread.)

    I didn't notice at first on the Sketchbook version, but as the larger versions make obvious, Tedd is wearing makeup in this (including lipstick). I approve. I also like the look of his ponytail.

    I doubt canon Tedd is self-confident enough to do wear makeup while male, but I hope one day he is and we get to see it.

    4 hours ago, WR...S said:

    Huh... Dan says he's male (I had thought that the "he" might just have been an artifact of the survey/poll, but no, a Patreon comment makes it explicit), but that definitely looks like boobage in the final panel...

    I read Tedd as male until the final panel, but when I got to the final panel I started wondering if one of the remote's buttons had affected him, or if he had used his mark for some reason. Looking at the highest-resolution version carefully, he'd have to be much smaller breasted than usual if he were female in that panel; I think it's just a combination of the vest lying a little funny and inconvenient shadow placement.

  12. Posted

    Another thought: When Susan says she wants to look in the mirror because of "curiosity", I suspect she actually means "Curiosity". Or at least that's going to be my head-canon.

    11 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

    But we also know that she likes to watch.

    If she can watch herself in the mirror while transformed, then there is none of that messy ethical problem of actually watching other people.

    Under normal circumstances I'd agree with this completely. However, the non-canon versions of the characters seem more uninhibited than the canon ones (well, except for Ashely; I suspect this is normal for her) and I think as she gets into the game Susan is lowering her inhibitions even more.

    Ashley's invitation was pretty open ended. This being Susan she'd probably want to make completely sure before hand, but I'm betting the other three wouldn't mind her watching while Rhoda and Catalina pet Ashley, and under the circumstances I wouldn't put it past Susan to do so.

  13. Posted · Edited by ChronosCat
    Heavy petting is but one of the things the characters might do that Dan might not want on the site.

    http://www.egscomics.com/egsnp.php?id=710

    *jawdrop*

    Susan likes that form?! Boy was I wrong.

    I suppose can see how she might like certain elements... I mean, Susan does like being blonde even if she never chooses to keep it (technically I think her hair is black-and-white at the moment, but that's probably close enough). And maybe like Sarah she's fantasized about being bigger in the chest even if Susan would never admit it (though I doubt it would be as persistent a desire as with Sarah).

    As for the cow part, I had assumed that she'd object to the idea of a cow form just because of the associations that tends to bring. But even if she isn't letting such things sway her, I don't see how she'd actually like the cow aspect of the form... Unless she just really likes cows or something...

    At any rate, I really hope we get some insight into what she likes about the form in future comics.

    Meanwhile, Ashley has fully embraced her ditzy side and I love it. ...And I guess that petting is one of the things Dan was talking about when he said some things might happen he wouldn't want to put on the site!

    Oh, one last thing: Yay for starburst background of enthusiastically agreeing to pet someone in panel one!

  14. Posted

    14 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

    I just don't see how a little-girl Pandora would fit into the story.  Who would be her parent-figure?  Adrian?  Mr. Verres?  Hmm, perhaps the Dunkels?  They've coped so well with a previous unexpected child....

    Why does she need a parent figure? Zeus didn't need anyone to raise him. Just because Box chose to look like a child wouldn't mean she was any more immature than any other newly reset Immortal.

  15. Posted

    3 hours ago, hkmaly said:

    The rate we are making new humans is ok. What's unnatural is how many of those survive until adulthood. Naturally, the least capable ones should die long before that.

    If by "natural" you mean humans with stone-age technology, yes. (Seeing hominids have been using tools since before homo sapiens evolved, a human culture without any tools would be unnatural.)

    However, developing and using tools, and adapting to new environments and situations is part of human nature. So really, modern technology and society isn't all that unnatural for humanity.

    At any rate, people who are well off and are safe and secure enough to reasonably expect their children to make it to adulthood tend to have fewer children. So the solution to the problem of overpopulation is to spread wealth out more evenly and improve living conditions for as many people as possible.

    3 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

    Speaking of meteor eggs, shouldn't William's and Gillian's egg have hatched by now?

    It probably has, we just haven't heard anything from them in a long time (probably because Dan's focus is on Magic and Immortals now, not aliens and other sci-fi themes). I wonder if Tedd has had any visits from them off panel since the last time the readers saw them?

    animalia reacted to this

  16. Posted

    42 minutes ago, animalia said:

    About Tedd, are we talking Sex or Gender? Because despite common conception the two ARE different things.

    I'm talking about both. Tedd's sex at birth was male, but his gender has always been fluid (and now thanks to the TFG and Pandora's mark, her sex can change too).

  17. Posted

    1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

    Does the game even actually end immediately when player gets enough point? Maybe it plays to end of all players turn or something ...

    As far as I know, Dan hasn't elaborated on that yet. Having a bit of a delay would allow the player to spend some time in their final form and still have all the transformations end when the game does.

    I think the way I would do it would be after a player reaches 8 points, give the other players one more round to knock that player's points back below 8. If they fail, the game ends and the player in question wins. If they succeed, the game continues until someone else is able to hang on to 8 points for a round.

    While I don't want to see the game end any time soon, I am looking forward to finding out how Dan handles it.

  18. Posted

    1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

    Second cousins are still considered too close?

    After a few minutes of research consisting of skimming one Wikipedia article, I can't find any evidence that there is currently anywhere where it is illegal for second cousins to marry. However, there are places where first cousins once removed cannot marry, and the Eastern Orthodox Church does not allow second cousin marriages.

    As for the idea that such marriages are frowned upon, upon further reflection I don't have any evidence for that, just a general impression. That said, I suspect some people will frown upon any relationship where both parties can trace their linage back to a common ancestor. Heck some fans of the Archie Sonic comic objected to Knuckles and Julie-Su hooking up because Knuckles' 14th great-grandfather and Julie-Su's 2nd great-grandfather were brothers (I think that makes them 4th cousins 12 times removed) (there was an alternate reality where time moved at a different rate involved).

  20. Posted

    So, I've been studying the board and the player's points, and as of Susan's next turn, she'll have the possibility of winning if she lands on a 3-space and has the cards to buy it. And of course there are a few different ways she could win in two rounds.

    Meanwhile, if Ashley can buy whatever space she lands on in her next turn, then the round after that she'll also have the possibility of winning depending on what space she lands on and what cards she has.

    (EDIT: Of course, all of this assumes no one lands on one of Susan or Ashley's spaces and takes it away from them, which would result in the player loosing the space to loose the corresponding points as well.)

    Speaking of buying a space to win the game, I wonder if the winning player will need to stay in their final form for a little while? With all the other transformations lasting at least until the next player's turn, it doesn't seem fair to win the game by accepting a transformation only to have it undone a second later because the game is over.

  21. Posted

    12 minutes ago, Kazzellin said:

    Topic drift. Just don't get caught up and carried away by the drifts and you'll be fine. *shrugs* 

    I thought that might be the case, which is why I asked,

    2 hours ago, ChronosCat said:

    Or did the conversation move on from that point?

    In addition, looking over the thread again, I see that I was reading a bit too fast, and thought some statements were supposed to be related to one another when they probably weren't.

     

  22. Posted

    40 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

    The disguise that Raven created for Grace was specifically for her to pass as his niece. That's why it made her look like Susan. Remember at that point Raven hadn't met Susan. Or at least we hope he hadn't met Susan...

    Well, yes, I figured that much out. I just don't see how that has anything to do with the child of Nanase and Ellen having a child with the child of Tedd and Grace.

  23. Posted

    35 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

    To be more exact: Kid of Tedd and Grace would have kid with kid of Ellen and Nanase.

    But what does that have to do with the disguise Raven created for Grace looking like Susan? Or did the conversation move on from that point?

    Also, the children of Tedd and Grace would be second cousins of the children of Ellen and Nanase. Marriage between them may or may not be legal depending on where they live, but in much of the US it would be frowned upon.

    35 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

    Tedd can change default form now ...

    Let me try again. Tedd was designated male at birth, but is gender-fluid.

  24. Posted

    13 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

    True. This may still be before the reset. It's just half year before the cast gets to college, right? And it may take Pandora few years to get ready to her attempt on reset ...

    It never occurred to me it might be set at the college one or more of the cast was going to; I just figured it was some random sorority Pandora snuck into in the "present day" (probably weeks or months before Sister III).

    Also, I'm pretty sure that like NP the Pinups aren't canon unless Dan specifically says they are.

  25. Posted · Edited by ChronosCat
    Added footnote.

    O_O

    I was completely unprepared for the possibility Susan might be okay with the form. In fact, I still don't entirely believe it. I'm sure everything she says is true, but I strongly suspect she's being nice to make Ashley feel better seeing as Ashley's clearly distressed. Obviously she disliked the ditzy and furry cards more than she let on, so there's an element of "this is better than the form I was in" too, but that doesn't mean she actually likes the form. Finally, after all of those transformations (both to herself and those around her) in such a short time, her tolerance for transformation is probably higher than usual; if she was zapped into that form without warning outside the game* I still think she'd be pretty upset about it.

    Oh, and anyone paying close enough attention knew this was coming: Yay for starburst backgrounds in panels one and four!

    * Or if someone else had transformed her early in the game before she'd had a chance to transform herself.