Page 478
Life in the Third Dimension
So I secured myself a 3d printer. Just for fun. And vengeance. So no one piss me off, or in about 2 months, i’ll have a really crappy, hot pink gun with no bullets. Cause i don’t think you can print gunpowder. Yet.
But that might be for the best. I like open source data, as in all intellectual property available to all, as a concept. But, when i take a good hard look at people as a whole, i think, yeah, maybe we shouldn’t all have access to downloadable firearms. That’s just my hot take on weapons. You heard it here first folks, cancel blackandblue, cause the writer and doodler says ‘maybe not everyone with a laptop and an amazon account should be able to download a kalashnikov.’ Controversy!
But… anyone who watched and enjoyed milla jovavich in ultraviolet might disagree. Let’s be fair, she had a legitimate beef. But who has wristpacks stored with 100 uzis? Mix it up. And why such a round number? At this point, I feel like i’ve already given more thought to the tech in ultraviolet than the creators did.
So, here we are. I’m printing out tokens and board pieces for games, that i can’t play right now, because being in a room with another human being is hazardous in 2021. I wish I could print whiskey. One day. Hopefully after they perfect printing new livers.
Hey now, Tom Bombadil is my role-model if I ever get godlike powers
god like powers, and you’d bop around the forest making up little rhymes? well, good to have god goals. i’ll say this, it’s at least less old testament smiting of enemies i think you’d see from most other people.
For some reason that reminded me of the international slow-speed DUI chase in Sault-Saint-Marie … the epic disgruntled former employee who stole his old Zamboni and lead the Mounties and Yomper coppers on an international slow speed chase as he polished off his case of Molson Golden.
Focusing on violent threats is evolutionarily favoured. So is men’s eyes going to … monkeys in commercials. What did you think I’d say?
On a more serious note about open source information, nukes are early 1940s technology, and very few have successfully copied them to date. It’s actually kind of remarkable how lazy people can be.
right right, reminds me of some 80s movie, where a kid made his own nuke. this was during the whole cold war thing, and people were more worried bout that kind of thing. but i mean, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that someone bright, determined, and with access to uranium could create a nuke.
then again, they’d probably just give themselves radiation poisoning, get lazy and resort to lighting a gerry can of gasoline on fire and chucking it into someone’s living room. it’s certainly easier.
(reply to the DnD thing)
As an NPC, I’m a DM. It’s a Star Wars setting and my players will visit Corouscant for the first time. I needed some NPCs, so I added her to a bar, Virgil leads a gang in the lower levels and they will rob Usterhall, who is with the Czerka cooperation.
haha, i think you accidentally tripped into something that will seem more prescient in… about a year.
I love Sandrine!
I will include her and a bunch of other characters in my next DnD sessions…
haha, what class would she be? hard to play an archer blind….
Clearly a bard – insightful, inspiring, and has a line of guys falling over themselves for her.
Not that I’ve given much thought to this…
oh yeah! duh, a bard. i always forget about bards. never cared for the class myself. too many nightmares of tom bombadil, i suppose.
I LIKE Tom Bombadil. He’s like a pothead hippie in Heaven … which is weird considering how Tory Tolkien was and his descants are.
I want one of those so bad! The printer, not the gun. I have no use for guns. If I’m mad enough to kill you I’m gonna get real up close and personal about it. Like a ball peen hammer or possibly and electric drill. At this point though I’d probably try to find a way to make organic material suitable for 3D printing. I’ll call you guys when I perfect the downloadable pizza.
haha, downloadable pizza! now you’re talking. but i think till it’s faster than delivery, it’ll be hard to beat.
“It’s not terrifyingly shadowy, it’s brightly lit!”
Zip guns have been available for as long as there have been files and hand drills. Custom guns have been available since the blacksmith, and now the machinist. Did you ever watch “Day of the Jackal” (1973)? You just need to learn basic machining, and there you have a nice weapon.
I remember the tests on the 3D-printed zip gun. It fell apart rather quickly, and became more of a hazard to the person firing it than the target downrange. A Glock has over 16oz of metal in it. The problem isn’t guns, it’s people. People with no morals or scruples. You know, CEOs, doctors, lawyers, judges, prosecutors, government officials, etc. We need to limit the damage people do to each other, so that means the top aggressors and the bottom predators need to go.
There was, a while back, an observational study of what happens when the top brutes get removed from a group. In a troupe of baboons, the top males all died from eating rotten meat thrown out by a restaurant. The troupe dynamics shifted, and went from being a terror-top-down, to a nurturing group mainly run by the females.
Old joke: Soviet and American negotiators couldn’t get a conversation started. Finally, one of the Soviet negotiators said, “Under capitalism, man oppresses man. Under communism, it’s the other way around.”
Ah good then you will understand this bit of Texas music trivia.
Almost *everyone* who covers “I Fought The Law” gets it wrong. The orginal lyric, written by a good ol’ boy from the Texas Panhandle, is *indeed* “zip gun”. As in, protagonist too damned poor to acquire a legitimate weapon by *any* means. Had to go find a piece of steel pipe and then someone with basic machine tools.
haha, that’s not a bad phrase. even still, your baboon analogy might work well as an anti capitalist tale. i don’t neccisarioy think it has to be that way, i just think the people who tend to seek power and status are they kind of people you don’t want to have it.
it wouldn’t make for great storytelling, but if you had a system that weeded out people who wanted authority of the sake of authority out of the system, you’d probably have a pretty high functioning scenario. then again, all it would take is one psycho to muck it up. he’d probably just make a zip gun, and be the only one.
That story would be … Ender’s Game.
That was a pretty amusing meander (and an unusually morally serious and deep strip) about the 3D printer.
Let us get practical about your mental meandering on the printer, just for funsies, though. Ehh … 3D firearms are so much more difficult to make than jury-rigging a garden hose or length of pipe … or … just buying a real, factory made firearm. The US and Canada import thousands of tons of highly illegal and and easily recognizable chemicals every year … one CAN buy the real thing almost anywhere. Or one can buy an automobile and kill someone with two and a half tons of hurtling steel, plastic, glass and high explosive … or … like our voice-box hero (with stars in his eyes!!!) … a knife.
Personally, I’d be like you, printing out pieces from the Milton Bradley Game, Shogun, and hoping for pals or grandsons … and “society” to pay me for being awesome, which, like yourself, I totally am. And you’re totally right about Ultraviolent … err … Ultraviolet.
Talked to someone about a liver transplant on Friday, actually – people who’ve drunk away their livers are now getting transplants because late last century we figured out that we can section livers from live donors (and corpses) because those things grow like … well … chopped liver. Gone will be the days of widespread outrage when someone like Jerry Garcia cuts the line ahead of people who might use their new liver wisely
see, i think musing about weapons is all well and good, but really, i wish we were focused more on the medical aspect of stuff like this. but that isn’t where our minds go first, not always.
and you’re right about how easy it’s been to make makeshift weapons. the technology is thereat our fingertips. then again, we could download the know-how to make a car, and we’re still buying those too. some things, you just want someone else with the training to put together. and even if you did, a car you made from scratch wouldn’t be street legal, with a license, and ready to go. you’d get figured out pretty fast, cruising down the street in a fully plastic green honda. then again, some things are easier to hide than a car, and you only need to use once for full effect.
i guess i’m just musing on the nature of open source information, and our new ability to make ‘whatever’. it could impact the world for the better, but we have a tendency to muck things up. at the very least, the world will get more complex.
It’s possible I might need a liver transplant. Me. Who’ve had maybe 10 bottles of wine in my lifetime. I have non-alcohol cirrhosis, also called fatty liver.
How the F? Almost 20 years ago, I underwent allergy panels, which found I’m very allergic to a lot of things, mostly ~foods. Cleaned up my diet, felt better for a while, now there’s THIS. And my Oregon doctors suck.
I really have no idea how to move on from here.
I had a meltdown yesterday.
I thought I was going to live much, much longer. Never partied, few drugs, yet I might as well have taken ALL the drugs…
(Please, no light hearted comments. Or smart ass ones. This is serious. I may be faced with a suicide drink. You do NOT want a liver death. It’s one of the hardest ways to go.)
jesus christ…. that’s intense. i’m sorry to hear that, truly. i hope it’s not as bad as all that, but it sounds like you’re getting hosed by reality. but i’d say all the focus you put towards your health, however this whole thing pan out, was not a waste. not only could it have been worse, if you weren’t as healthy as you are, you have a better shot at recovery if you’re in a better state. but none of this would be more or less tragic if you were a drinker. it’s just tragic either way. i don’t really think you can be blamed for having a meltdown.
i’m sorry you’re going through this. hit me up on email, or join the discord, and msg me there if you want a chat. plus there’s some good folk on there if you need a distraction.
Reading this so much later.. now I understand the nessage you sent shortly after this. Am still in the same space, only worse, since I’ve not been able to get a reaction from ANY doctor. Still. It IS depressing.
All I get from a doc is “lose some weight you’ll feel better”. (Wtf? THIS is WHY I gained the weight. I certainly didn’t eat my way here.)
Funny enough, I’m pretty depressed tonight, so thought I’d cone read some B&B, cheer myself up.
Lol
Seeing these poor fools at least makes me think maybe someone with a 3D printer could print me up something to get me by!
(Love Tom Bombadil!)
Also, Scientific American says that the new fat drugs (ozempic, etc) could be used to CURE fatty liver! Trials are being talked about. Hopefully I can find one, once they begin human trials. I prob just have to wait 20 years.. which I don’t have. I do have a shortcut tho. If I can get declared a diabetic, then I can have access to the drug.
Irony: give yourself a disease you don’t have in order to cure one you do.
It’s the American Way!
I’ll visit on discord, maybe, tomorrow. :)
this comic cheers you up? ooh boy….. now we’re both depressed! (kidding)
Nice eye flow there. Good tension in that first panel with tracking the run in the ‘open’ light. Felt the relief in the final box of the maze.
thanks so much! glad you liked this page!