palordrolap

The universes where each and every would-be hero is terminally stomped for merely thinking about going on a quest are uncountable.

There are countable subsets where something other than that happens, and one of those subsets is where the universe rules provide enough wiggle room for a hero to win.

It is all but certain we live in one of the former. Stories about the latter give us hope that we might not be.

Compare: Why do the Power Rangers not simply create the Megazord in the first place and stomp the bad guy before its inevitable enlargement?

Is there a name for the trope of something topical but not strictly necessary happening incidental to a punchline like the microwave in the last panel?

I know I’ve seen it in other places, but the only other instance I can think of is the people saying “I am a consumer whore!” “And how!” in the Rejected cartoon, and I’m not even sure that qualifies.

Maybe a few things that happen in the asdfmovies too, but they often introduce a recurring gag or a different joke entirely.

Two. kbin.social and kbin.run (which was actually an Mbin by the time it vanished).

Well, no, it wouldn’t. The bods that make these decisions still live like it’s 1950 and dream of an authoritarian future of masters and slaves.

What good is The Google or The AI when you’re sipping champagne up an ivory tower or out on the ocean being waited on hand and foot on a gleaming yacht?

Could be worse. It could be the second version of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The one labelled “Panic”.

IYKYK.

So, there was this TV experiment where they served soup to a well-known scientist*, but, with his agreement, they stirred it first with an unused - and I stress unused - toilet brush.

He couldn’t bring himself to eat it.

Metaphorically speaking, our world is full of amazing things but they’re all stirred by clean toilet brushes. Sometimes, it’s worse than that and they’re used.

Do not want.

* Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, he was later cancelled for being old and out of touch on women’s issues among other things, which is kind of an example of this same trope when you think about it. His opinions and reactions on soup and food disgust aren’t linked to any of that but you might be tempted to ignore the result because of it.

But then, that puts him in the same category as Louis CK and that’s what I’m responding to. Food for thought.

Fun fact: “Aluminium” is the international / official spelling. But where Brits have to take the L, or rather the F, is with “Sulphur”, because the international / official spelling of that is “Sulfur”. The others aren’t wrong, but they’re not the standard.

Anyway, I wonder if the international spelling has anything to do with it. Or maybe it just follows better from Chromium.

Looks like DDR6 is due in 2027, so DDR5 prices will start to fall in 2-3 years when all the AI bros move over to DDR6 instead.

It might be sooner, but that would mean the AI bubble popped.

Meanwhile, here I am on a PC that’s less than two years old with DDR4 in it. Works fine for my needs.

The Internet seems to have learned from the real world that there must always be suffering somewhere, just as long is it’s not (obviously) wherever “here” is.

And then there’s the question of who gets to decide what “nice to each other” means.

The reason, or at least a significant part of the reason, if not the complete reason, that Arthur derives that question in particular is because he’s a result of the corruption of the calculation caused by the arrival of the B Ark of Golgafrinchams on Earth.

If Arthur had actually been a six foot tall Earth-ape descendant as described by the guide, his brain would have contained the actual answer rather than something almost but not quite totally unlike the true question.

His name was Robert Paulson.

Sure, they look like rodents, but they’re more closely related to hedgehogs (also not rodents) believe it or not.

And if you go back to find the most recent common ancestor of bats and rodents, you’ll end up including things as diverse as humans and tigers as being “the same” as well.

The posts that I’ve seen so far seem to be lacking context that’s available when visiting the original on the home instance.

That is, these posts look like the first comment made by the OP in a thread below their main submission, but the main submission isn’t visible.

Very disorienting. I hope there’s a fix on the way.

Previous solution:

“I don’t know.”

“Why”

“Because it is not possible to know everything.”

“Why”

And repeat until the judge declares stalemate, the baby takes up a more meaningful line of questioning, or the baby needs a nap.

Ennui is often suffered by people with a speech impediment when talking to French people called Henri.

…

I’ll see myself out.

On the one hand, the PDF editing feature could be useful, but on the other, it’s a sign of yet more feature creep and I don’t know whether I’m justified in feeling concerned about it.

Huh. I must be confusing it with “come ye onwards” unless you’re going to tell me that doesn’t work either.

Edit: “Hie thee to a nunnery” is in Shakespeare and the sentence as I had it can be parsed the same way. Can you explain why one works and the other doesn’t?

Simon Roper has better things to do with his time.

Obligatory grammar call-out, basically repeating something I said a while ago, the last time this showed up:

“cometh” is not grammatically correct in this context. The simple check is to replace “-eth” with “-es” which is what happened in English.

“Now comes onward!” is clearly missing a pronoun. And if you put a “he” or an “it” in there, it develops a very “it puts the lotion on its skin” kind of vibe, which almost works here, but not really. We could drop the -s and have “Now come onward!” which would be just fine, but it loses a bit of that medieval flair the artist is going for.

So, in panel two, she calls him “thee” which means they’re probably on familiar terms (I think I missed this last time, and its use and familiarity varies by era), but either way, it means she could use it again in panel three.

“Now come thee onward!”

Perfectly medieval-sounding. It even keeps that th, just in a different place.

There are certain things that I have to avoid thinking about in order that I don’t enter a depressive phase or become suicidal. You are asking me to think about those things.

You are asking a hungry man with no legs to walk a thousand miles for food. “Grow new legs!” you say. “Find a way!”

You are asking me to beat my head repeatedly into a wall until I get through it. I have literally and figuratively bounced my head off a wall. Both made me not want to do that again.

Maybe you’ve got yourself out of this exact situation. Good for you. I am glad you managed it.

I am not you.