Questionable Content XVIII: "That's only sort of good news"

[Vinyadan]

I think AIs larping humanity might be an answer, without any further motive. I think we have seen something similar in QC in the past, although I can't really tell what it was.

[KillianHawkeye]

This leads us to the question; why does Cubetown have such a thing? Cubetown is pre-planned to have separate districts for people to live in, presumably there's enough room for people to live or they would stop inviting more people to come over? Not only that, but Cubetown is (from what we've seen) a couple of kilometers wide which is walking distance for just about everything one can think of, and would have to be because having cars and buses on a floating city would be prohibitively expensive and inconvenient. No one needs to live so close to a hat shop.

Similarly, they're not the product of 19th century exploitative capitalism, so there's no need for buildings to be sublet like this.... Except to cater to a very strange kind of poverty-LARPer who wants the 'authentic' experience of living in a crowded city while also paying extravagant rent and import fees on food, clothes, etc that have to be brought to a floating community.

WHY would anyone pander to such a weird, niche community? The answer is "random AI nonsense" as adorable pastel people pretend to be human beings in a weirdly sterile and cotton wool-swaddled version of real life. Cubetown is a half-way house between the AI's birthing crèche and fending entirely for themselves - they're 'playing' at living in poverty to acclimatise before experiencing the real thing when they move to the mainland. Its weird to think about, but by QC standards it makes a certain kind of sense.

That or Jeph just didn't think about it. He walked down his local high street, saw "people live above stores in apartments" and didn't think any further about it. That also makes a lot of sense and is consistent with the rest of QC.

I've got to give this post some appreciation for delivering both a Doylist and a Watsonian explanation for the housing distribution of a city built by AIs on an oil rig in a daily sitcom webcomic.

[Gnoman]

On the other, no one WANTS to live above a shop if they can help it. Living on a high street is noisy and polluted, and especially bad if your 'downstairs neighbour' has customers until the early hours of the morning like a bar or takeaway food. People only live in these places because they have to, and a two-room apartment is cheap enough that the sacrifice is worth it.

I know from experience that this isn't true. Many people have this attitude, but I've known a number of people who've sought out exactly those sorts of apartments from preference. Some because it gave them a business on the same odd schedule they are (several bar staff I've known happily lived above a bar, because it was quiet in their non-working hours), others because it was a way to get right in the heart of the "fun" district.

[Wraith]

I think AIs larping humanity might be an answer, without any further motive. I think we have seen something similar in QC in the past, although I can't really tell what it was.

Arthur and Melon? They live in an apartment and their idea of decorating is to draw a box on the wall and write 'art' inside it. Melon goes to work with a paper tie taped to the front of her T-shirt, carrying a briefcase filled with sheets of paper that have "important documents" (sic) written on them?

I've got to give this post some appreciation for delivering both a Doylist and a Watsonian explanation for the housing distribution of a city built by AIs on an oil rig in a daily sitcom webcomic.

I could be wrong. It could just be random AI nonsense and I'm assigning meaning to Jeph ham-fistedly slamming his paws on a keyboard out of sheer ignorance. But then I came up with something even more subtlety dystopian about AIs being infantile morons, and frankly, I stand by it

I know from experience that this isn't true. Many people have this attitude, but I've known a number of people who've sought out exactly those sorts of apartments from preference. Some because it gave them a business on the same odd schedule they are (several bar staff I've known happily lived above a bar, because it was quiet in their non-working hours), others because it was a way to get right in the heart of the "fun" district.

Fair enough. My "no one" should rightfully be downgraded to "the great majority of people, probably". Still, I don't think either of those apply to the example given in the comic - a hat shop?

[Keltest]

Fair enough. My "no one" should rightfully be downgraded to "the great majority of people, probably". Still, I don't think either of those apply to the example given in the comic - a hat shop?

I mean, presumably the hat shop owners have to live somewhere.

[Manga Shoggoth]

Fair enough. My "no one" should rightfully be downgraded to "the great majority of people, probably". Still, I don't think either of those apply to the example given in the comic - a hat shop?

It's quite common where I live - in the nearest main town it's split evenly between offices and accomodation (and some shops have multiple stories above); Closer in to London (where accomodation is even more at a premium) it becomes even more common. The people doing it are a minority, true, but that's more because there's a lot more other housing than "flats above shops".

[Gez]

Fair enough. My "no one" should rightfully be downgraded to "the great majority of people, probably". Still, I don't think either of those apply to the example given in the comic - a hat shop?

I'd imagine a hat shop is probably not excessively noisy nor open until ungodly hours at night. Bars, pubs, cafés, restaurants and other such places where people gather to chat with their friends will be noisy throughout their opening hours. Grocery stores, bakeries get a lot of traffic because those are places where people do daily shopping. Toy stores may get excited children screaming.

But a fancy haberdasher? Seems like the kind of commercial building that would be quite on the quieter side. But maybe these places are a lot more fun than they look like?

I personally spent several years living two stories about an auto repair garage. It was fine, since I was generally not at home during the garage's work hours, but even when I stayed inside while they were working, the machinery they used still made less noise than the neighbors anyway.

And especially the neighbors' dogs. Protip to everyone: if you live in an apartment flat, and you spend most of your days away from home because you work or study or hang out with Marten at a coffee shop or whatever it is you do, do not get a dog. Dogs are for if you live in the countryside and can actually get your dog to stay with you while you live your daily life. If what you're going to do is let the poor critter wait all day long cooped up all alone in a tiny flat, please, no, don't get a dog. All it'll do is cry all day long and exasperate the neighbors, who will hate you forever and still be angry several years afterwards.

[Mechalich]

I would note that the very existence of a haberdashery implies that either an awful lot of people live in Cubetown, or it attracts a lot of tourists. Hats are a luxury item that people don't purchase very often - it would be unlikely that any community purchases even 1 hat per person per year - and while the mark up on fancy hats is considerable, it still requires a huge customer base to sustain enough sales to maintain viability as a business. Similarly, the existence of an on-site school also implies a minimum number of permanent residents in the range of 1000+, otherwise there simply wouldn't be enough kids to bother.

None of these examples matches with the sort of extremely slapdash operation in which the director of HR comes out to meet a prospective hire personally and the operators have no idea they even need an information science department.

Overall, it's a scale failure across the board. It's not surprising, Sci-Fi Writers have no Sense of Scale, but it is frustrating, especially since QC is set in something close enough to the real world that actual, real numbers, which can be easily googled (ex. the height of a container crane, which I looked up to try and figure out scale for Cubetown based on the drawings) are available as opposed to entirely fictional constructs.

[Eldan]

I used to live in what was basically a semi-renovated attic above an antique store as a student for a while, and that was one of the nicest places I've ever lived. The shop owners were lovely people, too.

[Wraith]

"I don't want to run away screaming. Yet."

WHY NOT!?! In God's good and holy name, after everything you have seen so far including a ferry wishing death upon your boyfriend and a not-insignificant part of the city exploding, give us one reason WHY NOT!?! What is wrong with you, you crazy, mad fool!?

I would note that the very existence of a haberdashery implies that either an awful lot of people live in Cubetown, or it attracts a lot of tourists. Hats are a luxury item that people don't purchase very often - it would be unlikely that any community purchases even 1 hat per person per year - and while the mark up on fancy hats is considerable, it still requires a huge customer base to sustain enough sales to maintain viability as a business.

A haberdasher is a sewing and dressmaking shop - the word for a hat maker/shop is a milliner

Yes, I know that hats are at least partially sewn; go argue with the 17th century nerd who invented the dictionary if you don't like it.

I used to live in what was basically a semi-renovated attic above an antique store as a student for a while, and that was one of the nicest places I've ever lived. The shop owners were lovely people, too.

Please don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it doesn't or shouldn't happen and that above-shop apartments aren't a good place to live. My point was meant to be more along the lines of the practicality of such a thing in a futuristic, AI-designed city.

I was thinking more like, did you *want* - as in, actively seek out the opportunity - to live above a shop on a high street, or did you *want* to live in small, cheap accommodation that was reasonably close to local amenities? I think it was probably the latter, but you had the good fortune to have a positive experience with a combination of the two.

We in the real world combine the two because of archaic city planning and capitalistic maximazing of space-to-profit margins, but Cubetown was built within the last ~5 years, for an exclusive community of mostly AIs whose only concerns are specifically what they WANT because they have so few NEEDS. If they wanted small, accessible housing then they could just have built some instead of the potential inconvenience of combined store/apartments buildings, which implies that either they're emulating human communities and don't know why (see also, random AI nonsense) or they did it deliberately because they WANT to live specifically above shops for... reasons?

Does that make more sense in what I was thinking? Either Cubetown has to be completely unplanned and random, or someone designed it that way for a reason... And it's probably not the former, given that it hasn't sunk into the Atlantic and the denizens haven't starved to death yet.

And if that - or something like it - is the case, I just wish Jeph would build his world a little and maybe explain it, because its way more interesting than "It just does".

[Willie the Duck]

A haberdasher is a sewing and dressmaking shop - the word for a hat maker/shop is a milliner
Yes, I know that hats are at least partially sewn; go argue with the 17th century nerd who invented the dictionary if you don't like it.

'You're using this word wrong, if you have a problem with it, take it up with the dictionary.' is kind of one of those ur-examples of nerd-pedant toxicity on the internet (see: "ackshually"). This really the person you want to present to the rest of us?

Please don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it doesn't or shouldn't happen and that above-shop apartments aren't a good place to live. My point was meant to be more along the lines of the practicality of such a thing in a futuristic, AI-designed city.

I was thinking more like, did you *want* - as in, actively seek out the opportunity - to live above a shop on a high street, or did you *want* to live in small, cheap accommodation that was reasonably close to local amenities? I think it was probably the latter, but you had the good fortune to have a positive experience with a combination of the two.

We in the real world combine the two because of archaic city planning and capitalistic maximazing of space-to-profit margins, but Cubetown was built within the last ~5 years, for an exclusive community of mostly AIs whose only concerns are specifically what they WANT because they have so few NEEDS. If they wanted small, accessible housing then they could just have built some instead of the potential inconvenience of combined store/apartments buildings, which implies that either they're emulating human communities and don't know why (see also, random AI nonsense) or they did it deliberately because they WANT to live specifically above shops for... reasons?

IRL planned cities often still have things like this. Mixed-use (commercial-residential) zoning might be seen as having some kind of intrinsic value. Perhaps the intended use is people who work in said shops, it just doesn't always work out that way; or maybe 'that neighborhood' where the hip kids sometimes seek out apartments where things are happening as opposed to where there are easy access grocery stores and similar is seen as some form of fulfilled need (in my current city, there is definitely such a neighborhood, and it is actively sought out by a certain demographic).

Either way, I think the 'why' for the robots is that they are actively seeking to replicate the human experience. Certainly the overall dominance of upright biped forms seems to indicate that they are looking for a humanesque experience. Why they want that isn't really clear (no Noonien Soong installing an inherent desire or the like), but seems like as good a motivation for an artificial life form as any.

[Traab]

A hat shop could actually be very busy in cubetown. this is a place for experimenting and trying new things. Imagine how many hats the average AI here goes through just trying the different styles, or replacing from random hijinks, and the hat maker himself could be having a ton of fun designing new and interesting hat shapes for customers to buy. Or creating custom made hats for the ai parrot living on the shoulder of a robo pirate body.

Also, guys, I get it, its fun to just snark like crazy on every possible way that cubetown doesnt make sense from a realism standpoint but for crying out loud, writing an essay on why a town the size and location of cubeville wouldnt be able to keep a hat store in business is digging way too deeply into things. At no point has jeph tried to say he designed a perfect setting where everything makes sense and fits rationally in every way. Its a crazy ai research area full of strange people doing strange things, would it kill you to just roll with it? Do you really need to question its bus service schedules and the gauges of the wiring going into providing the whole place power?

[Vinyadan]

The funny part about milliner is that it means "dude from Milan". Job names occasionally come from cities renowned for their products, although I can't think of any other example in English right now.

[tyckspoon]

A hat shop could actually be very busy in cubetown. this is a place for experimenting and trying new things. Imagine how many hats the average AI here goes through just trying the different styles, or replacing from random hijinks, and the hat maker himself could be having a ton of fun designing new and interesting hat shapes for customers to buy. Or creating custom made hats for the ai parrot living on the shoulder of a robo pirate body.

If we're going to try to figure out how a specialty shop could operate in Cubetown, it's worth remembering that Cubetown isn't -that- isolated; it's close enough to Halifax to generally be part of Halifax's economic region, which is certainly large enough to support a number of niche businesses. Especially one where a lot of its normal operation could be coming from special orders/mail order/online ordering and not very dependent on walk-in customers.


(..also possible it's run by an AI who has very low living costs and may be getting a significantly below-market rate on the store space from Cubetown and so doesn't actually need much in the way of business for the store to be financially viable.)

[Wraith]

'You're using this word wrong, if you have a problem with it, take it up with the dictionary.' is kind of one of those ur-examples of nerd-pedant toxicity on the internet (see: "ackshually"). This really the person you want to present to the rest of us?

You know, it honestly didn't occur to me that it wouldn't be read as a joke - Who seriously and unironically refers to a 1700's literary critic as a nerd?

I appreciate the feedback. The page started with someone expressing genuine amusement at interesting words and I thought I was continuing the trend, but in future I will try to make it more clear that it was intended to be facetious.

At no point has jeph tried to say he designed a perfect setting where everything makes sense and fits rationally in every way. Its a crazy ai research area full of strange people doing strange things, would it kill you to just roll with it? Do you really need to question its bus service schedules and the gauges of the wiring going into providing the whole place power?

I find it amusing, and if I'm not even remotely taking it seriously (I theoried a city of dystopian AI indoctrination based on the prevalence of a single hat shop) I highly encourage you not to either

If we're going to try to figure out how a specialty shop could operate in Cubetown, it's worth remembering that Cubetown isn't -that- isolated; it's close enough to Halifax to generally be part of Halifax's economic region, which is certainly large enough to support a number of niche businesses. Especially one where a lot of its normal operation could be coming from special orders/mail order/online ordering and not very dependent on walk-in customers.

Fun fact; not a single person, AI or otherwise, living in or otherwise connected to Cubetown, has ever been shown wearing a hat. Not one.

[Eldan]

I was thinking more like, did you *want* - as in, actively seek out the opportunity - to live above a shop on a high street, or did you *want* to live in small, cheap accommodation that was reasonably close to local amenities? I think it was probably the latter, but you had the good fortune to have a positive experience with a combination of the two.

Uh, well, I'm very much in favour of intensified urbanisation, i.e. putting everything closer together. And if you don't put appartments above small businesses, there's probably going to be a lot of empty space. So yes, I'm very much in favour of ground floor shops, upper floor appartment blocks.

I'd call that anything but archaic, if anything, we need more of that. Much more.

[BRC]

Like, even with the cartoonish levels of funding, square footage of buildable ground is limited. One-story buildings in such a place are a massive waste of potential space.

But, considering the nature of the place, I guess if nobody wanted to live above a store, they wouldn't need to. AI recharging cubicles for those AI who don't need want more than a closet and a locker could be up there, or storage.

[Rodin]

Also, guys, I get it, its fun to just snark like crazy on every possible way that cubetown doesnt make sense from a realism standpoint but for crying out loud, writing an essay on why a town the size and location of cubeville wouldnt be able to keep a hat store in business is digging way too deeply into things. At no point has jeph tried to say he designed a perfect setting where everything makes sense and fits rationally in every way. Its a crazy ai research area full of strange people doing strange things, would it kill you to just roll with it? Do you really need to question its bus service schedules and the gauges of the wiring going into providing the whole place power?

The snark in this thread is a lot more fun than the actual comic at the moment. The comic is basically doing a rapid fire "here is funny character who will be a main cast member shortly, now here's a main location in this place that the comic will be moving to". That leaves not much to talk about other than Marten's commentary (which is hilarious) and the general nonsensical nature of the setting.

What I'm taking away from the setting thus far is "What if somebody built Northampton on a super cool floating island fully of wacky AIs?" All it needs is a vacant coffee shop and a short storyline about how Faye and Bubbles would get a lot more business and Jeph pulls the entire main cast over to Cubetown where he can draw nothing but wacky AIs.

[BRC]

My new theory is that Jeph ran out of ways to draw background/bit characters that were easy to come up with, couldn't be mistaken for any of the main cast, and were not so unique as to especially stand out. The increasing shift to AI is just to expand the range of physical traits he can give bit characters.

[Mechalich]

Also, guys, I get it, its fun to just snark like crazy on every possible way that cubetown doesnt make sense from a realism standpoint but for crying out loud, writing an essay on why a town the size and location of cubeville wouldnt be able to keep a hat store in business is digging way too deeply into things. At no point has jeph tried to say he designed a perfect setting where everything makes sense and fits rationally in every way. Its a crazy ai research area full of strange people doing strange things, would it kill you to just roll with it? Do you really need to question its bus service schedules and the gauges of the wiring going into providing the whole place power?

Not realism, verisimilitude (though these are admittedly similar since QC is set in a world that is very much like our own). And it matters a great deal because this plot arc is basically a giant, self-imposed verisimilitude test. Specifically: is Cubetown believable enough that Claire would legitimately make the in-character choice to move there. Right now, the comic is failing that test, and doing so embarrassingly badly.

Additionally, this arc highlights how Jeph appears to have completely lost sight of the balance between 'wacky comic relief' moments and situations that with sufficient support to carry the storyline and attendant character drama. Cubetown, as presented so far, is a suitable setting for a screwball animated comedy (Moray, specifically, feels like she belongs in some sort of slapstick Looney Tunes-style creation) not a character-based light dramedy about young adults.

If Jeph wants to do a comedy called Cubetown in which AIs juggle each other's heads, get into arguments with their arms, and blow up half their city every day, that's fine, he should absolutely do that. What he shouldn't do is try to graft that into Questionable Content, because the only possible result is a monstrous chimera.

Now, I suspect that the driving force behind all of this is money. Jeph is beholden to his patreon followers - he has enough of them to qualify as rich, but not enough, and not for long enough (yet), to retire in splendor - which means he essentially cannot conclude QC without massively tanking his income. Therefore, even if he doesn't want to do QC anymore and just wants to do a wacky-AI comic - something that seems highly probable - he cannot just do that. He's trapped extending one creation as long as possible.

[VoxRationis]

Why on Earth would security personnel sweep their own guest room for bugs? Surely, any bugs there would be the ones they put in (though I don't know why they would bother in any case).

[theangelJean]

New comic.

The important question: does Cubetown have bugs?

[Eldan]

Why on Earth would security personnel sweep their own guest room for bugs? Surely, any bugs there would be the ones they put in (though I don't know why they would bother in any case).

And if they have to sweep for bugs, can't they get thst done before guests arrive?

[Johanny]

About the hat shop, I have another possibility to consider:
Part time shop: opened once a week or irregularily. It could be that the owner has enough money not to care about needing to open it more, or that they have another work. I have both things in my town, a (surprisingly competent) guitar repair shop, and a small bar where the owner is a factory worker most of his time.
That could be a feature of cubetown that occupations are only part time, that the work load is less than in other systems.
That would also explain the comfort of living upon a shop that isn't used most of the time.
From experience, beside bars and occasional events like fairs and all, living upon shops isn't that noisy. Wouldn't one of these bars not have been a nazi biker's hideout, I would have mentioned living near a primary school or a food bank being noisier - but there aren't real social services nor children in QC (Roko's job as a social worker is much more related to union services, I'd say).

So it's not really about living directly above something, but in the vicinity (as Beethoven claimed Paris to be unfit for him bc there wasn't any street without a smith hammering something).

[VoxRationis]

It's also possible that the hat shop never really existed, but was just an example of Moray picking a random object as the product of a small shop without examining the economic implications of such a shop.

[theNater]

Why on Earth would security personnel sweep their own guest room for bugs? Surely, any bugs there would be the ones they put in (though I don't know why they would bother in any case).

You gotta sweep after each time anybody you don't 100% trust may have been in the room. This includes prior guests, cleaning and maintainence staff you haven't done full security checks on, and any ninjas who snuck in while the room was unused. So best practice is to sweep just before anybody moves in, to be safe.

And if they have to sweep for bugs, can't they get thst done before guests arrive?

Ideally, yes, but you have to wait until the crew that shampoos the carpets has been through; if they finish late, you start late. (There are various ways to ensure a room will be ready when a guest arrives, but they require planning and organization.)

[Manga Shoggoth]

Why on Earth would security personnel sweep their own guest room for bugs? Surely, any bugs there would be the ones they put in (though I don't know why they would bother in any case).

Unless the bugs were experimental self-replicating ones that got free.

The important question: does Cubetown have bugs?

You are never more than 6 feet from a bug...

About the hat shop, I have another possibility to consider:
Part time shop: opened once a week or irregularily. It could be that the owner has enough money not to care about needing to open it more, or that they have another work. I have both things in my town, a (surprisingly competent) guitar repair shop, and a small bar where the owner is a factory worker most of his time.

Ah. memories... Slightly off the subject - when I was living in Bradford we a fish and chips shop at the end of our street, which literally only sold fish and chips (and I'm not sure if they even gave much of a choice on the fish). It was open for about one or two hours a day during lunchtime, was closed at weekends, and was by far the best fish and chips in the entire area.

Oh, and to keep Wraith happy, it was run out of a bungalow.

[Wraith]

Ironically, the suite *is* bugged - by Yay, who has demonstrated that they can eavesdrop as and when they please so the security team's job is pretty useless even aside their neuroses.

And if they have to sweep for bugs, can't they get that done before guests arrive?

You're expecting MORAY to keep to a pre-determined schedule, to say nothing of every other random idiot AI in the world...?

Oh, and to keep Wraith happy, it was run out of a bungalow.

The "award-winning fish & chip shop with random opening times" near me was in the ground floor of a 3-story former-council terrace. Which at least makes sense, because the owner lived upstairs and it was too good a-location in a side-street beside the middle of town to give up for business or residence. I'm not AGAINST the idea when it makes sense!

But then they put a UKIP sticker in their window. I don't go there any more.

[Vinyadan]

You gotta sweep after each time anybody you don't 100% trust may have been in the room. This includes prior guests, cleaning and maintainence staff you haven't done full security checks on, and any ninjas who snuck in while the room was unused. So best practice is to sweep just before anybody moves in, to be safe.

Korea has a big problem with hotel or toilet taping of this sort. People enter hotels as guests, place hidden cameras, and leave, to then make money streaming or posting videos of the next guests, or blackmailing them.

[Rodin]

The "award-winning fish & chip shop with random opening times" near me was in the ground floor of a 3-story former-council terrace. Which at least makes sense, because the owner lived upstairs and it was too good a-location in a side-street beside the middle of town to give up for business or residence. I'm not AGAINST the idea when it makes sense!

But then they put a UKIP sticker in their window. I don't go there any more.

Small town English shops are weird. I used to go to a pizza joint located above a pharmacy accessible only via a side door in an alley. There’s a craft distillery on the ground floor of the old town hall (old being 1820), and both the dentist and a local pub take up what used to be residential row housing.

There are also residences above some of the shops - when I moved here the apartment above the fish and chip shop was available. Presumably now lived in by someone with no nose.