2019/12/13 - Pressing Buttons

[Amazee Dayzee]

That would end up sucking majorly which worries me that if it does go there and its NOT a happy ending like we all think it will I might not be able to look at the comic the same way. :\

[Nobody]

I have to admit, I've been wondering what the bible would read like in this world
"And seeing the multitudes, he taught them saying: Behold the fowls of the air
"And doth the birds interrupted: He's talking about us!"

Doth is a different tense of do, so it makes no sense for it to be there.
The proper interjection would be "yea."

[NHWestoN]

I'm not exactly religious myself, but I have read the whole Bible at least once (a long time ago) and what stuck out to me was a passage that said basically "no one but God will know the day or the hour that the world ends".
I always took that to mean that anyone who tries to figure it out will get it wrong, and the better way to go about it is to live each day like it might be everybody's last.

As I understand it, that's pretty much exactly what it means. Also, it's a warning to not be deceived. If someone is claiming to know when the end will come, you know they are lying.

Bishop Usshur was the primate of the British-sponsored Church of Ireland, a linguistic scholar, historian, philosopher, and theologian. He died around the year 1656-1657. For all of his political and religious works, he is most noted for calculating the month, day, and hour of the Creation. I believe he determined Creation occurred in the evening of October but don't remember the year (4004 BCE, I think) - and how he explained this determination before the Gregorian calendar was fixed, I don't know. His work, however, is often behind the belief of many Jews, Muslims, and of course Christians that the universe is no more than 6, 000 years old.

Today, people are much more interested in identifying the date/time for the end of the world/Apocalypse and the identity of the Anti-Christ, Satan's agent who will help bring about that cataclysmic event.
The results of these speculations sometimes have comical, tragic, or educational consequences. No one seems to have got it right yet. When they do, we'll probably know.

Oh. That guy. I knew someone did this thing, but I've never knew what his name was. I'm really curious as to how he calculated this, exactly. What did he put forth as evidence for his claim?

Usshur, besides being a Bishop, knew a whole range of useful languages - Latin, Hebrew, Greek, Arabic, and several others - and apparently had access to numerous ancient texts in astronomy, religious works (including some pretty esoteric ones), and philosophy. Now how he worked out the nuts and bolts of his theoretical date eludes me, but you can probably find sources somewhere. To those sympathetic to his pre-Darwinian perspective, his Grace is often regarded as fairly authoritative. (He wrote about psychology and perception, too.)

As to the Apocalyptical preoccupation, Vertigo Fox speaks my mind well enough.

[Champion Wallace]

Considering Great Kitsune rhetorically asks whether the temple or gold is more important after Marion fixated on the temple and Kitsune said they were fixating on the wrong thing, I'm going to take that as the treasure Pete cursed for Mr. Milton is the cause of the changes.

Certainly the scroll did. Or at least the words on the scroll.

Here's a theory. Sticking with Lana here, she reads one of the scrolls and POOF Marion wakes up a squirrel. It wasn't intentional or devious, it just happened without anyone realizing it. Marion tells King who tells Keene who tells Lana who is like Whoopsie but got an idea. An awful idea. The ferret got a wonderful, awful idea. Use the scroll or whatever to keep transforming people into animals. Maybe figure out how to work it so it targets someone specifically. Lois is talking Thomas, can't have that, pull out scroll and cast it. Keep using it to get people to join the ECP. The ferals don't want to but the humans were all for it.

A similar but less nefarious theory is the second transformation was Lana trying to understand the scroll to enough to undo it but accedently triggers it again.

What I said, the gold is still there, what was it, 11 billion dollars worth of cursed gold. It was cursed in and of itself, not part of the general temple shenanigans, because it needed a permanent curse to satisfy Henry Milton's requirements.

This is going to be harder to dispose of than nuclear waste.

Scientists have figured out how to dispose of nuclear waste. Finnland for example is really good at it. The reason it's such a kerfuffle in the US is because politicians got involved and messed everything up.

This is going to be harder to dispose of than nuclear waste.

Since the curse only affects humans, animals could safely be used to handle the treasure. Imagine how simple disposing of nuclear waste would be if there were sapient beings available who were immune to radiation.

That's not the main problem with disposal, though it would come in handy at other fields involving radiation like you say later.

I find it interesting that Kitsune quotes the Book Of Matthew here as I think this is the first time the Bible itself is mentioned (or at least referenced to) in the comic.

Only if you don't count Gabriel

Fortunately, gold doesn't literally vaporize people, that "root of all evil" stuff is a whatyacall metaphor.

The quote is "The love of money is the root of all evil." Money itself doesn't cause evil, loving money does.

Which is now leading me to think that the Miltons, specifically Lana, IS behind Lois and Marion's curse as I'm sure the Miltons are more interested in the financial gain of everything then legit helping out.

Making money isn't their priority. They inherited more money then they could spend in their ferret-sized lifetime and even still they happen to make money accedentally (repeatedly).

[VeryAngryDeer]

This is going to be harder to dispose of than nuclear waste.

Since the curse only affects humans, animals could safely be used to handle the treasure. Imagine how simple disposing of nuclear waste would be if there were sapient beings available who were immune to radiation.

That's not the main problem with disposal, though it would come in handy at other fields involving radiation like you say later

Waste fuel, sure, since reactors are designed to allow fuel rods to be replaced.

But... decommissioning reactors is a massive portion of the cost of nuclear power plants, because many of the components of the reactor are contaminated. Those are still nuclear waste. If you had people immune to radiation, decommissioning could be way easier and cheaper.

My bad for not being clear about what I meant in the first place.

[Vertigo Fox]

You would still need somewhere to put the nuclear waste once the reactor was decommissioned. It's not the sort of thing that can be effectively destroyed since even if you could incinerate it down to its component atoms those atoms would still undergo just as much radioactive decay as they did beforehand. And if you try to destroy the atoms themselves, well then I foresee a very large and very fiery mushroom in your future XD
So it would be cheaper but still probably pretty expensive.

Apply that same logic to cursed treasure and the situation actually gets more hairy, 'cause at least the dangers of radiation follow clear laws that people can completely understand. You don't know how a cursed treasure might or might not react to being moved or whether the curse would somehow remain even if the treasure could be destroyed. The unavoidably vague nature of the threat it poses could also lead to otherwise-sane adventurers, the sort of people who'd never go looking for radioactive waste, to actually go try to find it after you'd finally figured out a safe place to dump it, simply out of excited curiosity. Would not be the first time in history that people went looking for a treasure they already believed to be cursed.
And the other massive pitfall of hiring people immune to a curse to dispose of cursed treasure is that... it's treasure. How do you pay them, especially if they're fairly downtrodden folk like the forest creatures? You need to make sure you can pay each of them more than the treasure they'll be carrying is worth because if just one of them gets a little greedy and decides to take a few coins for him-or-her-self then the curse is going to become even harder to contain than it was if you just left it in the temple. It might actually be safer to hire only people you know are vulnerable because you know they can't do that without sacrificing something they probably see as much greater and I read far too much SCP Foundation.

That's not even getting into how, if the curse only works on humans, then in order to even begin to figure out if there is a way to dispose of the curse safely you would probably need a few years and some (probably unwilling) human test subjectsOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH THAT MIGHT MAKE SENSE!

[Amazee Dayzee]

At first I didn't get the comparison between nuclear waste and the treasure but after reading it over again I know see where you are coming from.

[Sleet]

Man y'all overthink things a bunch.

[Champion Wallace]

You would still need somewhere to put the nuclear waste once the reactor was decommissioned. It's not the sort of thing that can be effectively destroyed since even if you could incinerate it down to its component atoms those atoms would still undergo just as much radioactive decay as they did beforehand. And if you try to destroy the atoms themselves, well then I foresee a very large and very fiery mushroom in your future XD
So it would be cheaper but still probably pretty expensive.

That's what I was talking about before. Radioactive material effectively lasts forever but that doesn't make it undisposable. Funny that you mention grinding it down to its atoms. While permanent underground storage is most common, diluting it into the environment isn't as crazy as it sounds; countries like Japan did it with their waste. While you're correct incinerated material still undergoes as much radioactive decay as before, radiation danger isn't all or nothing. Your body is built to handle radiation as you're exposed to it every day. Heck, eating a banana gives you .1μSv. It's interesting to think how this would apply to magic. If you melted down the treasure and mixed it with enough regular gold, would there not be enough cursed material in newly minted coins to have the energy to curse someone?

And the other massive pitfall of hiring people immune to a curse to dispose of cursed treasure is that... it's treasure. How do you pay them, especially if they're fairly downtrodden folk like the forest creatures? You need to make sure you can pay each of them more than the treasure they'll be carrying is worth because if just one of them gets a little greedy and decides to take a few coins for him-or-her-self then the curse is going to become even harder to contain than it was if you just left it in the temple. It might actually be safer to hire only people you know are vulnerable because you know they can't do that without sacrificing something they probably see as much greater and I read far too much SCP Foundation.

That much loyalty from you workers would be a big deal. I think the best you could hope for is to find wild animals that don't care about heavy yellow metal, but do care about practical things, like sandwiches. I'm not sure how this would work with human workers as Thomas demonstrated the curse works even through gloves.

[VeryAngryDeer]

You would still need somewhere to put the nuclear waste once the reactor was decommissioned. It's not the sort of thing that can be effectively destroyed since even if you could incinerate it down to its component atoms those atoms would still undergo just as much radioactive decay as they did beforehand. And if you try to destroy the atoms themselves, well then I foresee a very large and very fiery mushroom in your future XD
So it would be cheaper but still probably pretty expensive.

That's what I was talking about before. Radioactive material effectively lasts forever but that doesn't make it undisposable. Funny that you mention grinding it down to its atoms. While permanent underground storage is most common, diluting it into the environment isn't as crazy as it sounds; countries like Japan did it with their waste. While you're correct incinerated material still undergoes as much radioactive decay as before, radiation danger isn't all or nothing. Your body is built to handle radiation as you're exposed to it every day. Heck, eating a banana gives you .1μSv. It's interesting to think how this would apply to magic. If you melted down the treasure and mixed it with enough regular gold, would there not be enough cursed material in newly minted coins to have the energy to curse someone?

And the other massive pitfall of hiring people immune to a curse to dispose of cursed treasure is that... it's treasure. How do you pay them, especially if they're fairly downtrodden folk like the forest creatures? You need to make sure you can pay each of them more than the treasure they'll be carrying is worth because if just one of them gets a little greedy and decides to take a few coins for him-or-her-self then the curse is going to become even harder to contain than it was if you just left it in the temple. It might actually be safer to hire only people you know are vulnerable because you know they can't do that without sacrificing something they probably see as much greater and I read far too much SCP Foundation.

That much loyalty from you workers would be a big deal. I think the best you could hope for is to find wild animals that don't care about heavy yellow metal, but do care about practical things, like sandwiches. I'm not sure how this would work with human workers as Thomas demonstrated the curse works even through gloves.

Not to take this too far off-topic, since this is a thread about a webcomic page, not thefeasibility of nuclear power... but there's also the option of reactor designs that can use a lot more of the fuel than current reactors do. If we wanted to get rid of nuclear waste, that's an option, but right now its cheaper to just dig up more uranium and only use 3% of its energy than it is to build whole new reactor designs.


We're assuming that loyalty is bought here. You could try to keep the forest animals on side by paying them more than they think the gold is worth... but as you say, that will only last as long as they don't get greedy. Loyalty usually comes from having aligned worldviews, and personal relationships. You couldn't just take regular forest animals, you would need animals who genuinely believe in the goodness of nuclear waste disposal, and they would need some ties to project management that makes them not want to let them down. Then you pay them well. Now you have three layers of loyalty instead of just one.

[Frank]

I have to admit, I've been wondering what the bible would read like in this world
"And seeing the multitudes, he taught them saying: Behold the fowls of the air
"And doth the birds interrupted: He's talking about us!"

Doth is a different tense of do, so it makes no sense for it to be there.
The proper interjection would be "yea."

I originally had "And Lo, did the birds tweet" but I thought "Hmm, not old-timey enough". Hypercorrectness for the win?

You could try to keep the forest animals on side by paying them more than they think the gold is worth... but as you say, that will only last as long as they don't get greedy.

And we do know at least one particular skunk who's greedy.

But this gives me an alternate idea: What if the cursed gold becomes an animal-only currency, allowing birds to sell off junk they find and use it to buy nuts off squirrels, or nest-building services from animals with fingers, for example

Making money isn't their priority. They inherited more money then they could spend in their ferret-sized lifetime and even still they happen to make money accedentally (repeatedly).

They also inherited the means to make money: factories, businesses, stocks, etc. (can't find the specific strip though)

[NHWestoN]

"Making money isn't their priority" but truthfully, Champ, the wealthy do tend to get caught up in acquisitiveness. There's the famous story of someone asking John D. Rockefeller how much money he'd need to be satisfied. His reply was "Oh, just a little more, always just a little more."

[Amazee Dayzee]

Isn't it always the case that "just a little more" seems to be the answer to everything?

[Champion Wallace]

You could try to keep the forest animals on side by paying them more than they think the gold is worth... but as you say, that will only last as long as they don't get greedy.

And we do know at least one particular skunk who's greedy.

But this gives me an alternate idea: What if the cursed gold becomes an animal-only currency, allowing birds to sell off junk they find and use it to buy nuts off squirrels, or nest-building services from animals with fingers, for example

The cursed gold does have a lot of the qualities desirable in a curency. It's scarce, hard to fake, durable, and already has denominations. That makes sense though as gold was literally used as currency by people. However, there's a reason the world uses paper money nowadays. When you consider that the animals also wouldn't be able to buy stuff from humans with that system, cursed treasure doesn't seem like a good idea. That's not to say there can't be an animal-only currency like you propose, it should just be something else. To sum up, if humans and animals aready participated in a gold backed economy, then the treasure would be a boon for the forest life, but as it is now adopting cursed treasure isn't worth it (unless you're a magpie).

Making money isn't their priority. They inherited more money then they could spend in their ferret-sized lifetime and even still they happen to make money accedentally (repeatedly).

They also inherited the means to make money: factories, businesses, stocks, etc. (can't find the specific strip though)

Twelve manufacturing plants.

[Amazee Dayzee]

I do have to wonder exactly what he manufactured in order to build up an empire like that because I don't think it was said though I am alright with being proven wrong though.

[NHWestoN]

I do have to wonder exactly what he manufactured in order to build up an empire like that because I don't think it was said though I am alright with being proven wrong though.

Given Ceclia's comment, real estate empires was not among Henry's more lucrative fascinations.

[VeryAngryDeer]

I do have to wonder exactly what he manufactured in order to build up an empire like that because I don't think it was said though I am alright with being proven wrong though.

To do it with only twelve manufacturing plants, he must have been making some serious luxury or high-tech items. This is the sort of money you usually either only get from intellectual property (so things that you develop once and can sell infinitely) or things you would need a lot more manufacturing plants for (in order to meet massive unit demand.) Aerospace manufacturing might explain it. Jetliners and rockets.

[Amazee Dayzee]

I'm thinking that it might be aerospace after all. Henry must have built them for the private sector and that is where his fortune came from. You would think that since that is most likely how he became a billionaire, that you would have seen the ferrets are their own private planes jetting off to one area of the world to another. If Henry did have engineering plants most likely he would have had a few airplanes for himself.