Mystic Muse's Mostly Mildly Mediocre Random Banter #238

[BisectedBrioche]

I'm certain you'll look quite... strapping with those!

...

I'll see myself out.

Ayyyyyy!

(although I hope not)

[Form]

If it's good enough for logicians, I'm calling it good enough for the layfolk. Otherwise you have to throw out inference rules and no one wants that.

At least no one's pulling a Hume so far.

I've had four hospital appointments at three different hospitals over the past 2 days and I am one tired bunny...least I get a chance to rest for a week and a half before the five-day radiotherapy extravanganza they've got lined up for me!

That's quite the gauntlet you have to run there. Here's to hoping you'll pull through all of this.

Ayyyyyy!

(although I hope not)

In all seriousness I do hope you'll show us the final result when done. I'm impressed with the amount of effort you put into your costumes and the end result.

[Manga Shoggoth]

Technically everything that has ever happened occurred in a vacuum

This sounds like an ad for Hoover.

Not a Dyson Sphere?

[Peelee]

Not a Dyson Sphere?

I haven't seen a lot of advertising for Dyson Spheres. Besides, they'd really just be Dyson Oblate Spheroids anyway.

[Form]

I haven't seen a lot of advertising for Dyson Spheres. Besides, they'd really just be Dyson Oblate Spheroids anyway.

Would you purchase a Dyson Swarm instead? It can be built incrementally, so you'll get immediate* bang for your buck!

*Immediate may not be within current baseline human lifespan**.
**Or dragon lifespan.

[Rater202]

I haven't seen a lot of advertising for Dyson Spheres. Besides, they'd really just be Dyson Oblate Spheroids anyway.

Better than Dyson Obligate Carnivores. My uncle tried to vacuum his basement and lost a foot.

[Anonymouswizard]

Would you purchase a Dyson Swarm instead? It can be built incrementally, so you'll get immediate* bang for your buck!

*Immediate may not be within current baseline human lifespan**.
**Or dragon lifespan.

A swarm of Dyson spheres? I mean, it's cool, but I'm not sure what I'd do with the energy.

[Peelee]

I've had four hospital appointments at three different hospitals over the past 2 days and I am one tired bunny...least I get a chance to rest for a week and a half before the five-day radiotherapy extravanganza they've got lined up for me!

On the one hand, that really sucks. On the other, hey, aggressive response to it! Unless I get that gov job, if I ever get cancer my most likely response will be to just go ahead and die from it. Not a happy prospect.

Better than Dyson Obligate Carnivores. My uncle tried to vacuum his basement and lost a foot.

That just sucks.

[Rater202]

Are teachers still saying "you won't always have a calculator in your pocket?"

Because I think that theory has been disproven by the near-ubiquity of smartphones. There are homeless people with smartphones.

Like, knowing the actual process of how problems are solved is important, don't get me wrong, but if you're focused on practical math it's more likely that you'll have a calculator than not.

...Also, given that if you're doing math as part of your job you're going to be looking things up and double-checking things, know what something is called and why you do it might be more important than being able to do it from memory.

[Peelee]

Are teachers still saying "you won't always have a calculator in your pocket?"

Because I think that theory has been disproven by the near-ubiquity of smartphones. There are homeless people with smartphones.

Like, knowing the actual process of how problems are solved is important, don't get me wrong, but if you're focused on practical math it's more likely that you'll have a calculator than not.

...Also, given that if you're doing math as part of your job you're going to be looking things up and double-checking things, know what something is called and why you do it might be more important than being able to do it from memory.

I was pretty lucky in that I had good teachers (for the most part) who never really said stuff like that. Heck, even in college, I had at least one professor outright say that if we get a career in the field, this would be something we'd just look up, but we were being tested on it because we still had to know it to progress further.

[factotum]

A swarm of Dyson spheres? I mean, it's cool, but I'm not sure what I'd do with the energy.

Pedant mode ACTIVATE! A Dyson swarm isn't multiple Dyson spheres, it's a more reasonable way to actually build one than to have a solid shell enclosing the entire star--basically, it's having loads of power-generation and other satellites orbiting the star instead. We now return you to your regularly scheduled broadcast.

[Manga Shoggoth]

I haven't seen a lot of advertising for Dyson Spheres. Besides, they'd really just be Dyson Oblate Spheroids anyway.

Well, when you get to my age there's a certian thickening around the middle...

[Rater202]

Was dusting my room, realized that I'd never dusted an old family portrait I have, went to dust it...

...There was no dust.

I'm a little creeped out.

[Anonymouswizard]

I really need to get better at doing my washing. Seeing my girlfriend in about twelve hours and I only just realised that I have no clean knickers.

[Keltest]

Was dusting my room, realized that I'd never dusted an old family portrait I have, went to dust it...

...There was no dust.

I'm a little creeped out.

Depending on the angle it's positioned at, dust may have a hard time accumulating on it.



Alternatively, one of your family members dusts it periodically.

[Anonymouswizard]

Alternatively, one of your family members dusts it periodically.

It's clearly the ghost of his ancestor that does it.

[Rater202]

Sometimes I wish I could go without sleep indefinitely and sometimes I wish I could sleep for days at a time.

Alternatively, one of your family members dusts it periodically.

1: The portrait is in my room.

2: Even if someone was sneaking into my room to dust there hasn't been an opportunity to do so in the last two years.

[Peelee]

It's clearly the ghost of his ancestor that does it.

Sherlock Holmes was fond of saying that once you have eliminated the impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Which just lends further credence to the ghosts theory.

[Keltest]

Sometimes I wish I could go without sleep indefinitely and sometimes I wish I could sleep for days at a time.

1: The portrait is in my room.

2: Even if someone was sneaking into my room to dust there hasn't been an opportunity to do so in the last two years.

We're you not earlier complaining about the lack of respect for the sanctity of your room that your family had?

[enderlord99]

We are you not earlier

Were you not earlier

You definitely meant one of these. You typed an abbreviated equivalent to the one you probably didn't mean.

[Keltest]

You definitely meant one of these. You typed an abbreviated equivalent to the one you probably didn't mean.

The latter. I was on my phone and it made an assumption that did not pan out.

[Rater202]

We're you not earlier complaining about the lack of respect for the sanctity of your room that your family had?

1: That's just my stepfather.

2: He doesn't dust.

3: Again, there's not been an opportunity in the last two years where someone could dust without one noticing.

4: Also, it'd be really weird to dust only one thing.

[Bartmanhomer]

So anyway, my birthday is coming up very soon. I'm going to be 37,000,000 years old.

[Peelee]

1: That's just my stepfather.

2: He doesn't dust.

3: Again, there's not been an opportunity in the last two years where someone could dust without one noticing.

4: Also, it'd be really weird to dust only one thing.

All of which further strengthens Ghost Maid Theory.

[LaZodiac]

Some things don't collect dust the way others do. I'm pretty sure there's a real reason for it, like "just in a spot that doesn't get dusty", or "electromagnetic field variance means the item is just charged enough to not let dust settle or the dust misses it, drawn to other things".

But I think Ghost Maid is a pretty reasonable answer too.

[Rater202]

So I recently decided to write one of my characters as if he was voiced by Mako Iwamatsu, drawing influence from his depiction of Iroh.

Which made me go back into The Last Airbender for a bit...

...Yeah, looking back at Sozin's commit part 1, where Toph mentions how she never got a "life-changing field trip" with Zuko and tries to talk with him about her feelings regarding her parents in hindsight after finding out how her relationship with her kids went in Legend of Korra...

Yeah, probably could have used that field trip. Probably would have prevented some issues down the line.

(Admittedly, even if the timing wasn't terrible "my parents gave me everything I ever asked for but I never felt like they loved me" is kind of a **** thing to say to the boy who knows for a fact that his father never loved him and has the burn scar to prove it.)

[Peelee]

So I recently decided to write one of my characters as if he was voiced by Mako Iwamatsu, drawing influence from his depiction of Iroh.

Which made me go back into The Last Airbender for a bit...

...Yeah, looking back at Sozin's commit part 1, where Toph mentions how she never got a "life-changing field trip" with Zuko and tries to talk with him about her feelings regarding her parents in hindsight after finding out how her relationship with her kids went in Legend of Korra...

Yeah, probably could have used that field trip. Probably would have prevented some issues down the line.

(Admittedly, even if the timing wasn't terrible "my parents gave me everything I ever asked for but I never felt like they loved me" is kind of a **** thing to say to the boy who knows for a fact that his father never loved him and has the burn scar to prove it.)

The purpose of those trips was for Zuko to establish trust between them, though. Aang, Katara, and Sokka were all deeply involved with Zuko from the very first episode, and he had been hunting them specifically. Toph just showed up later and didn't have the same connections. She didn't even have the same connections that the others did to firebenders in general, since they wiped out all Air Nomads and decimated the Water Tribes, especially the Southern one. The other three all had deep-seated personal issues with both Zuko as Zuko and with Zuko as a Fire Nation prince, and those trips established that he was not who he was before and was indeed an ally. Toph didn't really need that.

[LaZodiac]

So I recently decided to write one of my characters as if he was voiced by Mako Iwamatsu, drawing influence from his depiction of Iroh.

Which made me go back into The Last Airbender for a bit...

...Yeah, looking back at Sozin's commit part 1, where Toph mentions how she never got a "life-changing field trip" with Zuko and tries to talk with him about her feelings regarding her parents in hindsight after finding out how her relationship with her kids went in Legend of Korra...

Yeah, probably could have used that field trip. Probably would have prevented some issues down the line.

(Admittedly, even if the timing wasn't terrible "my parents gave me everything I ever asked for but I never felt like they loved me" is kind of a **** thing to say to the boy who knows for a fact that his father never loved him and has the burn scar to prove it.)

Strong agreement, and I love how they even have a perfect contrast between each other. Family that loved too much vs family that didn't love at all, defector from decadence vs seeker of restoration, there's a lot of fun they could have done with it. The fact that they didn't, likely due to time, is unfortunate.

The way they took the fact that they didn't HAVE that time and built it into Toph's eventual story as the years went on is brilliant though. Korra gets a bad rap, for valid and not valid reasons, but overall it's a damn good show that properly carries forward the legacy of the first Avatar; a messy, imperfect but still wonderful piece of media.

The purpose of those trips was for Zuko to establish trust between them, though. Aang, Katara, and Sokka were all deeply involved with Zuko from the very first episode, and he had been hunting them specifically. Toph just showed up later and didn't have the same connections. She didn't even have the same connections that the others did to firebenders in general, since they wiped out all Air Nomads and decimated the Water Tribes, especially the Southern one. The other three all had deep-seated personal issues with both Zuko as Zuko and with Zuko as a Fire Nation prince, and those trips established that he was not who he was before and was indeed an ally. Toph didn't really need that.

A major aspect of those Zuko side missions is that it also developed our heroes in a great way too. Katara faced the literal bone-chilling rage inside of her and won, while also learning JUST how powerful she really can be. Sokka got a final sort of conclusion to his arc; he has become the man he thought he was, and others see it now- but there is a melancholy to it because growing up means a lot more than he thought. I don't rightly remember Aang's but it likely grew him too.

Toph is the only person to not get this. This is fine because Toph is near perfect, but as her teasing comment Rater quotes about implies, they do ACTUALLY have a fun contrasting element that could help them both grow as characters. Given how Toph ends up compared to the others, there is this palpable feeling of "you missed her loyalty mission, and so she gets a less than perfect ending", which I think is brilliant by the way.

[Rater202]

The purpose of those trips was for Zuko to establish trust between them, though. Aang, Katara, and Sokka were all deeply involved with Zuko from the very first episode, and he had been hunting them specifically. Toph just showed up later and didn't have the same connections. She didn't even have the same connections that the others did to firebenders in general, since they wiped out all Air Nomads and decimated the Water Tribes, especially the Southern one. The other three all had deep-seated personal issues with both Zuko as Zuko and with Zuko as a Fire Nation prince, and those trips established that he was not who he was before and was indeed an ally. Toph didn't really need that.

1: That was mostly a joke.

2: While that's true, each trip also involved the non-Zuko party working out a personal issue. when Toph goes off with Zuko to find Aang she actively tries to work out her personal issues regarding her parents only to be shut down to the urgency of the situation(and Zuko kind of seems annoyed by it.) This is played as a joke, but considering that Legend of Korra shows that her hands-off parenting style left her own children feeling neglected, unloved, and resentful... Yeah.

@Zodi Aang's was more subtle, and actually started when he was training to unlock his Chakras and was only completed with Zuko: Aang developed a fear of his own power, as represented by the destructive potential of Firebending, in Book 1 when his first experimental attempts at firebending resulted in severe burns to Katara's hands that would have left her permanently crippled if she hadn't discovered her own natural affinity for healing at the same time.

Overcoming this began when he unlocked his "fire chakra" but he was only able to overcome it completely when he and Zuko met the Sun Warriors and learned that the original (and far more powerful) form of fire bending was not hatred and destruction but a reflection of the life-giving energy of the sun.

[LaZodiac]

1: That was mostly a joke.

2: While that's true, each trip also involved the non-Zuko party working out a personal issue. when Toph goes off with Zuko to find Aang she actively tries to work out her personal issues regarding her parents only to be shut down to the urgency of the situation(and Zuko kind of seems annoyed by it.) This is played as a joke, but considering that Legend of Korra shows that her hands-off parenting style left her own children feeling neglected, unloved, and resentful... Yeah.

@Zodi Aang's was more subtle, and actually started when he was training to unlock his Chakras and was only completed with Zuko: Aang developed a fear of his own power, as represented by the destructive potential of Firebending, in Book 1 when his first experimental attempts at firebending resulted in severe burns to Katara's hands that would have left her permanently crippled if she hadn't discovered her own natural affinity for healing at the same time.

Overcoming this began when he unlocked his "fire chakra" but he was only able to overcome it completely when he and Zuko met the Sun Warriors and learned that the original (and far more powerful) form of fire bending was not hatred and destruction but a reflection of the life-giving energy of the sun.

Oh right Aang and Zuko's episode is where they do the dragon dance together right! That owned!