ChronosCat

Here's Loudmouth, enjoying the first day (that we know of) of a new year as an inside cat:

Mrs' Prof took a good picture here, IMHO. If anyone would like a larger resolution for desktops or just for the hell of it, let me know. I shall gladly oblige, although we might have to go outside of the confines of the forum due to size limitations. No worries—I'll get it to you somehow, if you want it.

After a lot of arguing between Baker and Loudmouth in the mornings, we finally got them to have a moment of peace during a football bowl game this evening:

I would rather have gotten a Nanase and Ellen Christmas scene....

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.
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?

Ah, maybe.  Technology is using tools to make tools and fairly early on in the stone ages tools were made to make tools, i.e.  rock chippers made of bone or antlers.

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.
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?

It will be better in hindsight.

Pandora seems to be limited to either omniscience or being sane and caring about the welfare of her family.  If she let her sanity slip away, she'd likely be able to predict there being more aberrations, and maybe even who hired them and why, but she might wind up not caring who won the fight as long as it was entertaining.

Yay, I called it! ...Like many other people on the forums, but whatever.
Slightly more likely than Adrian being Susan's father, but still unlikely. Dan has been treating Pandora as a good & sympathetic character for some time; I doubt Dan would reveal something like that about her at this point.

Some of us (myself included) believe that the big revelation here is that human magic users are all descended from Immortals - which of course requires that Raven (and by extension Pandora) was misinformed. ("Box's" conversation with Sarah about her son provides more evidence for this theory.)
That said, I don't think Raven is Susan's father - he doesn't seem the sort to cheat. (Also, unless Pompoms is Susan's mother's maiden name, and Susan adopted it after the divorce, Susan's last name would probably be Raven in that scenario.) I do however suspect Raven is both Susan and Diane's ancestor (and possibly not all that far back if their identical looks isn't a result of them being half-sisters). If it was on Susan's father's side, he and Raven might even look similar - which would tie into Susan's current shock.
Nuclear weapons never seem to work when they're really needed in the movies.
Except in the Alien series for some reason... I mean, sometimes a single Xenomorph will escape from the blast zone along with the main characters, but if there's a whole lot of them around the rest will be incinerated. Then again, the Xenomorphs are a lot like ninja - alone they're nearly invincible, but in large numbers they're much more vulnerable.

My thinking is that in the 18th and 19th centuries, magic could do similar things to the inventions made in those centuries in our world, and as such many of those inventions were never made or never became well known. As a result of this the technological growth of this alternate world was stunted, and they're still decades or more away from developing the miniturized electronics required for cell phones (and PCs for that matter) - assuming anyone has thought to research such things at all.
For instance, if they already possessed a magical means of two-way audio & video communication (something which has to be set up in specific locations and cannot easily be moved, like say a pool with runes carved into its stone walls), they might not have invented the electric telegraph or land-line telephones. And if they could light their homes with magic lanterns instead of oil or gas based lanterns, there might not be any incentive to build an electrical grid. And so on.
...It occurs to me this is a lot of speculation built on the facts that we weren't told that Magus took Ashley's phone, and we haven't seen any modern technology in the brief flashbacks we've had to Magus world. I still stand by my claim that my scenario is possible, but knowing Dan it's more likely Magus world has modern tech and either Magus and Sirleck did take Ashley's phone and we don't know it yet, or they simply forgot. (We could even wind up with a scene of "I thought you took her phone!" "No, you were supposed to do that!")

Lucy's reaction there could also be interpreted as Lucy having been taking the whole "use boys to get free stuff" act more seriously than Diane. That would however have the potential of Lucy dumping Diane the same way that a number of the feminist club members dumped Susan after she attempt to rally people to help change the dress code.
That might also be a reason why Lucy treats Rhoda the way she does, Lucy might believe that Rhoda's making Diane soft.

It came up several times back in the old days, so I wasn't sure if it was worth repeating...  But if you think it's a good idea, I'll run through it again...
Nioi says that the main reason for the Second Life dreams is to age Ellen & Kaoli's souls. If Second Life was a magical simulation with compressed time, one in which they possessed free will and the ability to affect the outcome, Ellen and Kaoli really would be effectively living out a second life in their dreams, and it would make sense that the experience would age their souls. However, if it's simply a recorded memory they're passively watching, why does it age them when the memories they inherited from Elliot and Nioi apparently don't?
Furthermore, the second reason for including Ellen in the Second Life dreams was so Kaoli would have someone to share them with. Well, I suppose it gives them another thing to talk about when they eventually meet (though I wonder how much time they'll have to chat seeing as it'll probably be part of the big final conflict with General Shade Tail and Lord Tedd) but as it stands it's not all that different from knowing that someone else watched the same movie as you; main Ellen and Alpha Kaoli don't even know anything about each other besides what little Nioi passed on. It would have created a much more meaningful connection between the two of them if they had both been living within the same world, their real-life selves influencing their decisions.  
Finally, I really hope Nioi got SL Ellen & Kaoli's permission before copying their memories/lives, as if not that was a huge invasion of privacy. Of course given that Nioi didn't think it was necessary to get Ellen's informed consent before dumping over a decade of someone else's memories into Ellen's head (Nioi sort of asked for permission, but was so vague Ellen had no idea what she was agreeing to, which does not count as informed consent) I'm not all that confident Nioi got proper permission before copying the memories either...

Actually I was exaggerating. I'm not completely made up, I'm just highly fictionalized.
Hmm...I have to admit, I've never thought about this aspect of my idea in this much detail before.
You have a point about Ellen and Kaoli being able to compare the AIs to themselves and each other.
As for the question of souls, that depends on where souls come from, and how one acquires one. If anything with a certain level of sentience automatically receives a soul, the spell would have to thread a very thin line to produce convincing AIs that don't have souls - if it's even possible at all.
Of course, the reason for having the other people in the simulation "soulless" was to avoid the moral issues involved in ending the simulation if the only difference between the NPCs and normal people is the level of "reality" of their world. I suspect there might be other ways around this problem; I'll have to think about it.

Nonsense. Everything is real except me. I am just made up.

It came up several times back in the old days, so I wasn't sure if it was worth repeating...  But if you think it's a good idea, I'll run through it again...
Nioi says that the main reason for the Second Life dreams is to age Ellen & Kaoli's souls. If Second Life was a magical simulation with compressed time, one in which they possessed free will and the ability to affect the outcome, Ellen and Kaoli really would be effectively living out a second life in their dreams, and it would make sense that the experience would age their souls. However, if it's simply a recorded memory they're passively watching, why does it age them when the memories they inherited from Elliot and Nioi apparently don't?
Furthermore, the second reason for including Ellen in the Second Life dreams was so Kaoli would have someone to share them with. Well, I suppose it gives them another thing to talk about when they eventually meet (though I wonder how much time they'll have to chat seeing as it'll probably be part of the big final conflict with General Shade Tail and Lord Tedd) but as it stands it's not all that different from knowing that someone else watched the same movie as you; main Ellen and Alpha Kaoli don't even know anything about each other besides what little Nioi passed on. It would have created a much more meaningful connection between the two of them if they had both been living within the same world, their real-life selves influencing their decisions.  
Finally, I really hope Nioi got SL Ellen & Kaoli's permission before copying their memories/lives, as if not that was a huge invasion of privacy. Of course given that Nioi didn't think it was necessary to get Ellen's informed consent before dumping over a decade of someone else's memories into Ellen's head (Nioi sort of asked for permission, but was so vague Ellen had no idea what she was agreeing to, which does not count as informed consent) I'm not all that confident Nioi got proper permission before copying the memories either...

It came up several times back in the old days, so I wasn't sure if it was worth repeating...  But if you think it's a good idea, I'll run through it again...
Nioi says that the main reason for the Second Life dreams is to age Ellen & Kaoli's souls. If Second Life was a magical simulation with compressed time, one in which they possessed free will and the ability to affect the outcome, Ellen and Kaoli really would be effectively living out a second life in their dreams, and it would make sense that the experience would age their souls. However, if it's simply a recorded memory they're passively watching, why does it age them when the memories they inherited from Elliot and Nioi apparently don't?
Furthermore, the second reason for including Ellen in the Second Life dreams was so Kaoli would have someone to share them with. Well, I suppose it gives them another thing to talk about when they eventually meet (though I wonder how much time they'll have to chat seeing as it'll probably be part of the big final conflict with General Shade Tail and Lord Tedd) but as it stands it's not all that different from knowing that someone else watched the same movie as you; main Ellen and Alpha Kaoli don't even know anything about each other besides what little Nioi passed on. It would have created a much more meaningful connection between the two of them if they had both been living within the same world, their real-life selves influencing their decisions.  
Finally, I really hope Nioi got SL Ellen & Kaoli's permission before copying their memories/lives, as if not that was a huge invasion of privacy. Of course given that Nioi didn't think it was necessary to get Ellen's informed consent before dumping over a decade of someone else's memories into Ellen's head (Nioi sort of asked for permission, but was so vague Ellen had no idea what she was agreeing to, which does not count as informed consent) I'm not all that confident Nioi got proper permission before copying the memories either...

My theory:
Time in one universe is unrelated to time in another universe if there is no contact between them. Time flows in the same direction in both (in all, in fact) but possibly at wildly different rates, and not necessarily even at the same ratio of rates.
If a communication or matter-transference link is established between universes, time must flow at the same speed in both universes for the duration of the link. (Note: closing the link and then re-opening it always establishes a new link, not a continuation of the old one, no matter how brief the interval is in either universe.)
Also, the link is between a specific short period of time in universe A and a specific short period of time in universe B. It is then impossible to establish a link between a later moment in universe A and an earlier moment in universe B.

Germanium 32 already?
Darn my dependence upon the Gregorian system.  There are only 112 shopping days left to the First day of Krypton.  And you just know the stores are all out of Kryptonite before Bromine is half over.

Memories get hazy because human memory is unreliable. It doesn't have anything to do with merging of realities. No event is unimportant until SOMEONE assigns importance to it - objectively unimportant events can only exists in universe micromanaged by God. Also, butterfly effect: differences don't go smaller, they go bigger, and while lot of them don't MATTER, which matters is distinction which can only be made looking back from end of time. (Which, of course, doesn't end.)
Can work if you open a path with spell. If it's device, those can't detect what you perceive.
 

Susan is explaining that the pheromones stop being given off after a while; Ellen might never have had any because Elliot might have stopped giving them off before he touched the Dewitchery Diamond. This doesn't mean that Elliot never had them.
My thinking as well. In fact I began to suspect that when Sirleck/Ellen avoided the racoon in the road. Sirleck may have blamed Ellen's muscle memory, but unless Ellen has had to dodge a lot of things in the road I wouldn't expect her body to react to something in the road through muscle memory alone; I would think that some part of her mind (maybe conscious, maybe subconscious) would have to make the judgment "this is a thing I do not want to run into/over" first (even if that judgment is made in a split second).
It's strange though; Sirleck presumably has had many hosts over the years, so you'd think he'd know if his subjects were aware (and maybe even able to fight back) while he was possessing them. If so, why is Ellen different from his previous hosts? 

First of all, we knew that before we even knew Magus' name or that he came from an alternate universe, so it doesn't exactly match the scenario I was alluding to where I have one opinion and then new information makes me change my mind in time to be right when Dan makes the answer official.
Secondly, at one point Pandora said something to the effect of "You need two who are one". I've always assumed that any Dewitchery Diamond duplicate and the person they were duplicated from would work for Magus' resurrection, it was just that Ellen was the only living Dewitchery duplicate alive in the main EGS universe and arranging for another duplicate to be made would have been even more difficult than trying to get Ellen to zap Elliot.
If I found out they had been in a relationship for some time without the readers being informed, I would be highly annoyed. If we actually saw them form a trio I'd have a moment of giddy happiness. Either way, my next reaction would be "Okay, now give us cute scenes of them doing romantic things together."
...Which is all just to say that I'm not interested in the possibility of a Tedd/Grace/Sarah relationship for the speculation, I'm interested in it for what we'd get to see if it happened.
As for the Magus revelation, beyond being disappointed that I guessed wrong, a big part of my disappointment comes from one of the reasons I didn't think Magus was Elliot in the first place - in EGS (or any other story with alternate universes as a prominent element), the idea that a mysterious new character is an alternate of a known character is just too easy and obvious an answer.
It's been implied that Pandora has two mental modes (possibly without a clear boundary between them) - one in which she is a fairly kind human-like individual (and loving mother / widow), and one in which she is uncaring, nearly omniscient, and extremely bored. And until Sister III most of what we've seen of her has been in the latter mode; I suspect it's the state she's spent much of the past few centuries in.
I don't think Pandroa ever helped Magus out of the kindness of her heart; she was bored, and thought that warning Edward Verres about Magus then helping Magus to regain his body would alleviate her boredom.
(That said, I can't see any reason why Immortals couldn't impersonate one another, so your idea is possible.)

I always interpreted that scene as indicating Sirleck had been controlling the old man for quite some time, the Old Man was terminally ill, and Sirleck was providing some sort of magical life-support since he wasn't ready to change hosts just yet. It never occurred to me the lack of signs of illness in the Old Man's later appearances might have any significance; I just assumed Dan didn't feel the need to devote the time to reminding the readers the Old Man was sick.
I suppose it's technically possible Sirleck possessed the Old Man around the time of that strip (though that really doesn't look like the moment of possession to me), but why would he possess a man who is already sick and dying? Sure, he was rich, but there's plenty of healthy young rich men and women he could have picked from instead.

So many years of speculation.
And then "Tedd and Elliot are AU Parallels of Magus and Terra".
This is somehow disappointing for me.

The rules to Goonmanji are weird.