I don’t remember which one Anna is. Was she one of the two women from the supermarket and is she specifically the one that she didn’t go on a date with? I think she’s either a dentist or a dental hygienist or a dental assistant or something like that? Maybe black, but I might be wrong there? They randomly bumped into each other and Leslie asked her to coffee which is why I remember the dental thing?
…yes I can remember all of this, but I can’t remember her name.
Also, I’d love to see the fringe characters get more appearances.
And Mike. Mike needs to show up more as well.
This comic has a distinct lack of Mikery going on.
The thing you don’t like about Mike is that he is flat, a part of the scenery, rather than round–a character. He always behaves the same way (chaotically and maliciously) and is never given interiority. He’s an NPC, basically.
I strongly suspect he is intentionally so constructed.
But at the same time, I kind of long for Willis to characterise Mike fully, or at least dissect him. What is it that makes him the way he is? Is he a realistic character? Is he a sociopath, or just an asshole? Can he change into a less destructive person? If he can, what would cause that change? I’d love to know.
Sounds like you don’t “get” Mike (rereading both Walky and Shortpacked can help with that). That aside, who cares about what other people comment, as far as it relates to your own experiences?
Mike adds a fresh, wild card dynamic to everything he participates in, and that kind of thing is always interesting to follow the development of.
Carla, while a much more inherently likable character, adds a similar “screw expectations, let’s do things my way” element, but she does so in a less self-involved way than Mike. Both of them tend to shove problems into the light where they can be fixed, but Mike tends to force people into deeper self-examination through the process.
Mike never does anything untoward- he never forces anyone into something they don’t agree to on their own. If someone cheats on their lover with Mike, then regardless of how much Mike likes revealing human flaws and hypocrisies, that responsibility falls on the person violating the trust of their partner, not on Mike. Mike is always honest about who and what he is- which is understandable, given his displayed dislike of hypocrisy and false pretensions.
Yeah, we’ve got Dina for honesty, and she’s far more adorable at it. But sometimes a bit of Mikery is exactly what a situation calls for..
..besides, the snarky characters always make for the best humor portions of the comic.
Regardless of all of that, Mike is a core Walkyverse character, who had a primary role in both preceeding comics. It’s a bit weird seeing him benched so much compared to the other primary characters. Everything else aside, he’s a distinct Walkyverse flavor, and having him both present in the comic but also relegated to the sidelines? Frankly, that doesn’t fit his dive-into-messy-situations character.
It’s clear the comic is exploring more in-depth romantic developments than previous comics, a process to which Mike would be overly destructive. At the same time, having all the drama broken up every now and then by Mike’s snide but no-BS commentary, isn’t a bad change of pace. Faz, on the other hand, never contributes anything but slapstick relief.
This isn’t It’s Walky or Shortpacked, so no, she doesn’t need to read or reread those to “get” Mike in this universe. And lots of people care what other people comment…that’s often why we discuss things.
You can like Mike or not; I’m personally not that invested in it. But you come across as condescending when you say the reason someone dislikes him is because they don’t “get” him.
Yeah, perhaps it’s being too invested in how he was in that other series that makes some not “get” how Mike is in this one. 🙂
I liked Mike in SP! by the end, not so much in IW!, but he doesn’t work the same way here.
Willis, himself, has said that Walkyverse!Mike and DoA!Mike are not the same person, because DoA’s universe is not the Walkyverse, therefor Mike’s antics lack the same absurdist context and are therefor just shitty behaviour. Which is why he uses him so little.
I could go for [relationship drama] well-mixed with [charming snark] myself; it’d be even better with a dash of [surreal coincidence] (or maybe [squirrel coincidence]?) thrown in.
Expecting [sweet positivity] in a Willis comic, though? I mean, yeah, it happens, but never where you expect it!
–Dave, also usually some [pith & vinegar] is involved
In small doses, yes. And when they have other settings than the snarky surly one. It becomes tiring fast, and if their interlocutor aren’t in the proper mindset, it can become harmful for potentially both parties.
I don’t hate Anna, I’m just reluctant to see her getting together with Leslie, because as of now, they look like they have entirely different mindsets when it comes to relationships.
FUN FACT, “NIMROD” WAS NOT ORIGINALLY AN INSULT. HE WAS A BIBLICAL MESOPOTAMIAN KING, DESCRIBED AS “A MIGHTY HUNTER BEFORE THE LORD”. BUGS BUNNY SARCASTICALLY CALLED ELMER FUDD NIMROD AS A REFERENCE TO THAT, BUT PEOPLE ASSUMED IT WAS AN INSULTING TERM, AND IT HAS BEEN USED AS SUCH EVER SINCE.
I DON’T KNOW WHY I’M SHOUTING ALL THIS, BUT IT MAKES ME FEEL LIKE MR. TORGUE, SO I’M OKAY WITH IT. ҉.
actually calling a person Nimrod when the usage started was a sarcastic way to say in what word today you use the whole sentence ‘real bright genius’ also in rebellion to all this silly shouting i refuse to use capital letters.
But… don’t you just think them up? Like is there a real thing somewhere on earth that we are counting?
I’m not being obtuse, I really don’t understand math.
Non-abstract numbers are attributes of collections of real things. For example, the attribute “five” is what a collection of five people in a group, five fingers on a hand, five socks in a drawer, five clouds in the sky, and five panels in a comic all have in common. Humans have an instinctive recognition (as in, we can recognize it from birth) of the numeric attributes “one”, “two”, and “more than two”. The remaining numbers we just define by succession, ie, “three” is “one more than two”, “four” is “one more than three”, and so on. (Counting, in other words.)
These attributes have certain numerical implications that we think of like arithmetic. For example, combining a group of 5 with a group of 2 will always give us a group of 7… no matter what those groups are made of.
From this we create abstract rules such as “5 + 2 = 7″… no matter what there are 5 of, 2 of, and 7 of. Similarly, dividing one group of eight into groups of two will always give us 4 groups of 2, so 8/2 = 4, regardless of WHAT the objects we’re divvying up are. It’s true for EVERYTHING, so we don’t have to specify one rule for fingers and another for rocks. (Well, actually, there are some things which DON’T obey arithmetic, but they’re rare enough that it’s still worth having a general rule.) At this point we can start talking about numbers IN THE ABSTRACT, without actually caring about what it is we’re counting. We start talking about general rules about quantities, rather than specific instances of quantities.
So 5 can be seen two ways. It can be seen as a quantifier, as in 5 fingers. Here it describes a property of a group of things, namely that it has THIS many things in the group. Then there’s the abstract number 5, which is just… well, 5. This isn’t counting a group, but is instead the concept or property of “fiveness” that all groups of five share. That’s what it means to be an abstract number.
As an aside, MOST people don’t understand this. (Well, they kinda do, but it never gets spelled out for them and they don’t realize that they understand it.) This is so very basic that it almost never gets taught… and as a result almost no one ever has it spelled out for them.
My favorite example is a pile of sand. One rock added to another rock is two rocks, one stick added to another stick is two sticks, but one pile of sand added to another pile of sand is just one (bigger) pile of sand.
Basically, you need things you can combine without them fusing together (or splitting apart).
Some collections are like rocks and some are like sand. Basically it comes down to how you count them. If you quantify water, for example, by how many distinct parts it’s in (droplets, puddles, etc), then that’s like sand. The same water grouped together becomes one thing. But if you’re quantifying it by something that doesn’t really change when you combine the groups (mass, volume, etc) then it’s like rocks.
Another way to view it is that this isn’t about the type of thing, but the method by which you combine groups of it. But since numbers are functionally defined by how they combine (remember, “five” is defined as “one more than four”), the distinction’s entirely semantic.
Ah, so it’s not like something fundamental to the universe that disobeys arithmetic, but rather an arbitrary method of counting/grouping (since it’s way easier to count piles of sand, but in theory you could instead count the individual grains, and counting water molecules precisely is likely a nightmare but there is an actual number of them, whether we can determine it or not). Damn, I thought I was gonna learn about some SCP-worthy physics peculiarity there!
Disagree, Reltzik; it’s about how YOU choose to describe what you have. If I have 100 different rocks on display, I have a rock collection. If Fred gives me his display of 75 rocks, I now have … a rock collection. It’s a larger collection, but it’s still just one collection.
It’s funny to me that this comes up as a mathematical concept, since the idea of countable vs uncountable nouns is something that I associate with linguistics, with that being where it came up in my learning.
It’s also funny that a pile of sand is your go to example, since that was how the idea was introduced in that class as well.
@Bicycle Bill: Except you’re shifting what’s being counted from the number of rocks to the number of collections. “Pile of sand” basically does the same thing, in all fairness, since you could, for example, have two piles of sand.
Basically, I think of the difference between countable and uncountable to mean you can’t add any other form of measurement. Like, rock+rock= 2 rocks; that’s countable. Water+water= water; that’s uncountable. Now, you could say that 1 gallon of water + 1 gallon of water= 2 gallons of water, but in that case, you’re counting gallons.
Yup. Rock + rock = 2 rocks is something where arithmetic works, and water + water = water is somewhere that arithmetic DOESN’T work. Exactly right, Yumi.
(Except in math, the word “countable” refers to the smallest size of infinity. So a bit of confusion-potential there.)
Another example of where arithmetic doesn’t work is the time on the clock. If it’s two o’clock, then one hour after that is three o’clock, two hours after that is four o’clock, and so on. Adding hours to the clock just adds to the time. But 7 hours after 6 o’clock is not 13 o’clock. … unless you’re on a military clock, in which case add 19 hours and same problem.
One of the most common ways of axiomizing positive integers has an axiom that if you keep adding 1, you keep getting new numbers, rather than looping around to somewhere earlier. With clocks, 12 + 1 = 1. We loop around. That violates the axiom. Now that doesn’t mean that the way we tell time on clocks is WRONG… but it does mean that all math that’s proven on the assumptions of that axiom (meaning all conventional arithmetic) is unproven and unreliable in cases like this where the axiom doesn’t hold.
Now we could make up some special rule for clocks, like “1 = 13 = 25 = 37 and so on and always use 1 to represent any of these”. But that’s modular arithmetic, which is a different from plain arithmetic. Plain arithmetic is still broken. We get around the math be broken by using DIFFERENT MATH, and seeing which axioms hold and which ones don’t tell us which math is the right tool for the job.
I’m not sure that Reltzik would agree with you. You point to a link to the empty set, but collections and sets seem to be two different things. Sets are well defined but a source of logical problems. Collections seem less well defined.
Logical problems: The set of sets contains itself because it’s a set. The set of rocks does not contain itself because it’s a set, not a rock. Does the set of those sets which do not contain themselves contain itself?
On the other hand if you start with sets, then you can define the empty set as the number zero and define the successor of a number in terms of operations on sets and define addition in terms of the successor operation and you wind up with the non-negative integers all defined in terms of sets. But not stopping there, you can also define ordered pairs in terms of sets which let’s you extend to all the integers and then into rational numbers as ordered pairs of integers and then you can construct a distance ordering which with a certain kind of cut set based on that ordering gives you the real numbers or under a completely different distance ordering gives you the p-adic numbers. Ordered pairs of reals lets you construct the complex numbers and a different type of trick with sets let’s you add infinitesimals which gives you the hyper-real numbers. There are actually several different inconsistent ways to do this, although there is a standard way of defining the hyperreals which gives rise to non-standard analysis, a different way to get calculus. Or if you go back and define numbers in terms a sets a different way, then you wind up with the surreal numbers which contain all the different hyperreals and much else besides. The complex surreals is as far as we know how to meaningfully extend the concept of numbers and it can all be done with sets. But sets have problems. So some mathematicians like to talk about collections instead.
I think that there are actually a number of very different ideas lying behind the word ‘collections’ and that they have there own problems, but that can be very difficult to argue unless you know exactly which collection of ideas lies behind a particular use of the word collections. And most people can be brought to appreciate those problems through a series of questions, though it can be an involved process depending on how sophisticated an understanding of collections there is.
Let me talk to you instead of Reltzik. I collect coins, stamps and comics. How many collections do I have? Three? But that ignores my empty collection of rocks, my empty collection of nuclear weapons and my collection of Dumbing of Age comics with you and I as Sue’s boyfriends. Is the number of collections I have even countable? How many collections would you say I have?
I suspect that Reltzik would not be so easy and I would eventually have to detour through the implicit mappings of the integers onto their formalizations (Godelizations) and a particular formalized variation of Lob’s paradox in order to show that his version of collections may not solve all the problems. And probably the comment section of a web comic is not the best place to try.
Cool!
Also, thanks & major props for explaining the basis of math to me, since I have a learning disability in it, but actually understood what you were saying, that’s rad.
Yeah, Dyscalcula may sound like a horror movie, but it is a real thing and a real impediment to getting a college degree. But at least people aren’t just saying, “You’re not trying hard enough!” anymore. Dyslexia and Dyscalcula are real things, and not “just try harder, you’ll get it. You’re smart just try harder” bulls* it.
Reltzik:: I have never in my (very) long life, ever heard such a cogent lucid explaination of the under-pinnings of Arithmetic. You can call me Stunned and Amazed. You used words (my happy place) to clearly explain maths (my life-long nemesis) in a non-threatening manner that didn’t send me screaming for the hills. In a recursive way, your explanation has brought me joy, or maybe in a reflexive way, I have EnJoyed your explanation.
Thank you.
Today has been brought to me by the letter R (rocks!) and the number 5 (five!).
Yeah, so far pretty much all we know about Anna is that she’s physically attractive, mean to passers-by, and mean to somebody she presumably cares about. Neither meanness is remotely endearing. Don’t date mean people, Leslie.
I should’ve specified — the art is stylized, so any character could be pretty or un-pretty, but most relevantly, Leslie finds Anna hella attractive. (And Anna’s and Mindy’s reactions lead me to believe that Leslie’s assessment is common.)
Kinda similarly, I’d always imagined Joyce as rather plain, girl-next-door, reasonably attractive but not particularly beautiful… except that everyone in-universe reacts to her like she’s very lovely indeed, which informs me that she’s beautiful.
That makes sense. I wonder if my own sub- or not so sub-conscious preferences made me see even a cartoon character in a certain light that blinded me to the textual evidence.
Great link! Specifically, Jacob’s “wow!” look at Roz in panel 4, which is really rare from him. Something to remember while we’ve all been posting on the subject of What Jacob Wants in a Companion Right Now.
I thought that Kreskin could only bend a spoon with his mind, but apparently he’s got some unresolved childhood issues cos his mom made him help with the housework.
Also that kinda sucks, to tell Mindy that she’s not ready for dating (truth) only to seemingly date Mindy’s coworker/roommate/friend. Even if she isn’t with Anna (boy I hope it isn’t Anna), still kinda crummy thing to do to Mindy.
They get together. They get a cat named Garfield. Then one night Garfield devours the relationship by asking for affection at the wrong time, and Leslie changes her name to Jon, becomes a comic author, and is forever alone. Her time-travelling uncle Jim publishes the comics on her behalf.
I’ve been trying to write a snarky comment, but Leslie’s happiness at finding someone else of her “type” – and what that “type” actually is…
I just can’t joke about that. It’s too sad.
That scene in the bar was two nights ago. If Leslie’s being literal, the SS Huge Drama has set sail, but it’s not to Stacy Island, rather headed to the Anna Shoals.
If it’s working out with Anna then I’m cool with it and happy for Leslie. However, my worry is that it isn’t working out, Leslie is just telling herself that it is because… I dunno, maybe the sex is good or something.
I imagine Anna being a super prick to everyone and everybody and Leslie is just romanticizing it the best her imagination can. Because as much as I do want Leslie to succeed in her love life I feel like her bad taste and naive tendencies will get in the way of that.
That’s my fear too. :/ Leslie is most likely in the “first love butterflies” stage where her inamorata can do no wrong. Whereas we, the audience, can see that Anna has all the hallmarks of the character type that has hurt Leslie before in the past and will likely do so again.
And of course, there’s also Mindy in this whole mess. Poor Mindy. 🙁
As far as I know, they haven’t even had one date yet. They’ve just happened to accidentally meet each other a few times and say a few words while Leslie is love struck.
They go out, leslie is given the Anna “I’m extremely blunt to whatever you have to say, disrespectful but itll turn you on more and more” treatment, they’ll both come home making out while making their way to Anna’s room, and Mindy will see them along the way as she walks out for a glass of water or something.
At first, she won’t say anything, then the morning after they’ll bump into each other as leslie wakes up and is ordered by Anna to get her some breakfast or one of those “you’re still here?” type post hookup moments.
And she’ll go, “yeah, I figured this would happen, even though you said you ‘weren’t ready for dating’. This is what always happens to people I like that get close, they always go to her. She then gets what she wants and them leaves them when they’re not useful to her anymore. I just wish you were honest back then and said you weren’t into me.”
Leslie will guilt, then leave after saying some type of defensive statement to salvage some sort of self dignity.
TBH, that strikes me as something Mindy should say, but probably won’t. Believing her own feelings are important enough to be worth expressing doesn’t seem to be how Mindy rolls.
now that I think about it, she’ll have such a telling off running through her mind, wish she could say it, but just say something sheepish, passive, and trying to help cook that breakfast in anna’s preferred style since she knows her so long. And deep down, will resent herself for it.
It was either that, or Mindy and Leslie go on a good couple dates, then anna bumps into them at home, and when they’re alone (while mindy uses restroom, goes into other room to grab something) she gives the “ditch the zero, go with the hero” flirting advice that’d make leslie bite her lip in going for the “fun” girl rather than settling with the safe one.
But hey, we’ll see how their coffee trip even goes.
*a week later, Leslie shuffles into class, dragging her bag behind her. Her hair is disheveled(sp?), clothes look slept-in, eyes are shrunk to points.*
*Trudges over to desk, plunks down in chair, starts to bang her head against the desk*
*Class looks at one another*
Roz: Leslie?
…Why are you banging your head against the desk?
Leslie: Oh. Sorry. You’re right, Roz.
My life outside the class needs to STAY outside the class.
Grr. I am Grumpily-Neutral Leslie.
Everything isn’t ashes and darkness because the supposed love of my life turned out to be an enormous ass who I had to leave for mental-health reasons.
*continues banging head on desk while sobbing*
Or, more accurate, she gets infatuated very easily and tells herself it’s love because, frankly, she’s too inexperienced to know the difference. It’s her psychological similarity to serial abuse victims that worries me sometimes.
I had a Discrete Computational Structures (really hard math theory about computers) teacher, who was ALWAYS pissed off and gruff. Stickler for the rules. Never gave an inch. Never smiled.
Next semester, he comes in lighthearted and happy. Cracking jokes. Smiling. Telling stories about some of the computers he’d designed at IBM.
You know, sometimes the sole moment of the day where I am smiling and cracking jokes is when I’m teaching. But when I’m allright, I’m rather nicely cold (or coldly nice, IDK).
By the time Leslie realizes that she needs to stop dating abusive chicks, she’s going to have some scars to look at every day to remind her to go for the nice girls…
That is, if she doesn’t just end up getting murdered by some abusive piece of shit before then.
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Pls no Anna strips incoming
I don’t wanna be mean or anything but…I second this. Pls Leslie, pls don’t mean Anna. I’m sure Anna is a fine woman but LESLIE… NOOOOO…
I don’t remember which one Anna is. Was she one of the two women from the supermarket and is she specifically the one that she didn’t go on a date with? I think she’s either a dentist or a dental hygienist or a dental assistant or something like that? Maybe black, but I might be wrong there? They randomly bumped into each other and Leslie asked her to coffee which is why I remember the dental thing?
…yes I can remember all of this, but I can’t remember her name.
So Google is a thing. That is her.
In the future, I suggest checking the tags! They’ve helped me quite a bit through the course of this strip.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/tag/anna/. (I hope I linked that properly.)
Personally, I’m hoping for Sierra strips and Sayid strips.
Context, HeySo. In the context of this strip, I don’t think any of us want Sierra strips.
Says you.
I sincerely hope nobody wants Leslie to be referring to Sierra in panel 7.
Personally I’m hoping for [sweet positivity] and [charming snark] [instead of relationship drama].
It’s not about context, but about subtext. 😛
Also, I’d love to see the fringe characters get more appearances.
And Mike. Mike needs to show up more as well.
This comic has a distinct lack of Mikery going on.
The comic can’t handle too much Mike at a time. Bad things will happen if you are exposed to too much Mike!
If I could have all of Mike’s appearances replaced with like any other character that’d be great.
Replace all characters with Mike, you say?
It’s daring, and potentially world-ending but- sure, why not!
The thing you don’t like about Mike is that he is flat, a part of the scenery, rather than round–a character. He always behaves the same way (chaotically and maliciously) and is never given interiority. He’s an NPC, basically.
I strongly suspect he is intentionally so constructed.
But at the same time, I kind of long for Willis to characterise Mike fully, or at least dissect him. What is it that makes him the way he is? Is he a realistic character? Is he a sociopath, or just an asshole? Can he change into a less destructive person? If he can, what would cause that change? I’d love to know.
It has possibilities.
The Great Faz is happy to oblige.
Even Faz is preferable to Mike because the comments don’t try to pretend he’s a remotely beneficial human being.
@Emily
Sounds like you don’t “get” Mike (rereading both Walky and Shortpacked can help with that). That aside, who cares about what other people comment, as far as it relates to your own experiences?
Mike adds a fresh, wild card dynamic to everything he participates in, and that kind of thing is always interesting to follow the development of.
Carla, while a much more inherently likable character, adds a similar “screw expectations, let’s do things my way” element, but she does so in a less self-involved way than Mike. Both of them tend to shove problems into the light where they can be fixed, but Mike tends to force people into deeper self-examination through the process.
Mike never does anything untoward- he never forces anyone into something they don’t agree to on their own. If someone cheats on their lover with Mike, then regardless of how much Mike likes revealing human flaws and hypocrisies, that responsibility falls on the person violating the trust of their partner, not on Mike. Mike is always honest about who and what he is- which is understandable, given his displayed dislike of hypocrisy and false pretensions.
Yeah, we’ve got Dina for honesty, and she’s far more adorable at it. But sometimes a bit of Mikery is exactly what a situation calls for..
..besides, the snarky characters always make for the best humor portions of the comic.
Regardless of all of that, Mike is a core Walkyverse character, who had a primary role in both preceeding comics. It’s a bit weird seeing him benched so much compared to the other primary characters. Everything else aside, he’s a distinct Walkyverse flavor, and having him both present in the comic but also relegated to the sidelines? Frankly, that doesn’t fit his dive-into-messy-situations character.
It’s clear the comic is exploring more in-depth romantic developments than previous comics, a process to which Mike would be overly destructive. At the same time, having all the drama broken up every now and then by Mike’s snide but no-BS commentary, isn’t a bad change of pace. Faz, on the other hand, never contributes anything but slapstick relief.
*cheap, groan-worthy slapstick relief, at that.
This isn’t It’s Walky or Shortpacked, so no, she doesn’t need to read or reread those to “get” Mike in this universe. And lots of people care what other people comment…that’s often why we discuss things.
You can like Mike or not; I’m personally not that invested in it. But you come across as condescending when you say the reason someone dislikes him is because they don’t “get” him.
Yeah, perhaps it’s being too invested in how he was in that other series that makes some not “get” how Mike is in this one. 🙂
I liked Mike in SP! by the end, not so much in IW!, but he doesn’t work the same way here.
Willis, himself, has said that Walkyverse!Mike and DoA!Mike are not the same person, because DoA’s universe is not the Walkyverse, therefor Mike’s antics lack the same absurdist context and are therefor just shitty behaviour. Which is why he uses him so little.
I could go for [relationship drama] well-mixed with [charming snark] myself; it’d be even better with a dash of [surreal coincidence] (or maybe [squirrel coincidence]?) thrown in.
Expecting [sweet positivity] in a Willis comic, though? I mean, yeah, it happens, but never where you expect it!
–Dave, also usually some [pith & vinegar] is involved
I want Sierra to strip for Mindy…
With the Lez? No way!
(Magic School Bus theme song too much of a stretch here?)
I’m open to anything, as long as Willis makes it funny.
Screw all y’all, I like Anna and think it’s weird that everyone decided immediately that they hate her. Snarky surly people can be fun, right?
In small doses, yes. And when they have other settings than the snarky surly one. It becomes tiring fast, and if their interlocutor aren’t in the proper mindset, it can become harmful for potentially both parties.
I don’t hate Anna, I’m just reluctant to see her getting together with Leslie, because as of now, they look like they have entirely different mindsets when it comes to relationships.
Yeah but we’ve seen her like five times? We haven’t seen her enough to really know any of that.
OTOH, we haven’t seen anything else from her. Maybe she’ll reveal hidden depths eventually. At the moment, she’s a pile of screaming red flags.
And the relationship with Mindy doesn’t help.
YES EVERYTHING’S PERFECT NOW THIS CAN’T GO WRONG AT ALL!
AND THEY LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER AND LESLIE GAVE THE CLASS COUPONS FOR 50% OFF A TOOTH CLEANING.
DON’T JINX IT, NIMROD!
FUN FACT, “NIMROD” WAS NOT ORIGINALLY AN INSULT. HE WAS A BIBLICAL MESOPOTAMIAN KING, DESCRIBED AS “A MIGHTY HUNTER BEFORE THE LORD”. BUGS BUNNY SARCASTICALLY CALLED ELMER FUDD NIMROD AS A REFERENCE TO THAT, BUT PEOPLE ASSUMED IT WAS AN INSULTING TERM, AND IT HAS BEEN USED AS SUCH EVER SINCE.
I DON’T KNOW WHY I’M SHOUTING ALL THIS, BUT IT MAKES ME FEEL LIKE MR. TORGUE, SO I’M OKAY WITH IT. ҉.
DON’T JINX IT, MIGHTY HUNTER BEFORE THE LORDS OF TIME. (Goes off to Google Mr. Torgue)
actually calling a person Nimrod when the usage started was a sarcastic way to say in what word today you use the whole sentence ‘real bright genius’ also in rebellion to all this silly shouting i refuse to use capital letters.
To be more complete – Nimrod was known as a mighty hunter, which is why Bugs compared Elmer to him, albeit sarcastically.
Welcome to the UP, home of the Nimrods.
http://www.watersmeet.k12.mi.us/
also the Flivvers and Speed Boys. Yup, the Yuppers are a bit weird.
Just FYI, it’s spelled “Yoopers”.
commence 200-comment thread trying to figure out what she’s humming
The Beatles’ “Good Day Sunshine” works.
Doesn’t scansion. 4 syllables where Leslie is singing 3.
It’s the Star Wars theme.
I honestly think it is. Specifically the Imperial March.
I gotta go with Imperial March too.
Does Leia even have a theme?
Yes.
“Lark’s Tongue in Aspic Part II.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vy3UiXb2uDQ
Leslie’s Theme from Dumbing of Age: the Movie.
The theme from ‘Firefly’.
Come and Get Your Love
This song plays ALL THE TIME in LEGO Marvel Super-Heroes 2, so of course it’s stuck in my head…
Du Hast
She’s not banging her head, though she is likely banging.
Patti Smith’s Gloria: In Excelsis Deo? It fits musically AND thematically!
I am going with Thunderstruck.
Here comes the bride. Or the imperial March. IDK they seem similar to me.
Well, we played both at my wedding, so.
Jingle Bell Rock. Check it, it works.
I think it’s rather clear that she’s humming Freaky like me.
I want off of Leslie’s love life rollercoaster.
I’d say “Same” but you know what if trial and error is what it takes for her to find what she really needs then so be it.
but it will attract artie, the strongest man in the world, like A GIANT FUNK MAGNET
Oooh, I LOVE rollercoasters! Just know, if one day your emotional state makes a complete 180, I’ll be holding my hands up and shouting WOOO!
Subtle.
aw that’s nice. I’d be happier if I trusted Anna more.
She has terrible eyebrows. Literally the WORST. She forgot Mindy like *snaps fingers* THAT. 🙁
So THATs why my math teacher was inexplicably so happy for two months before reverting back to “if you talk too much I’ll throw you out the window”
Nah, that was probably because they came to the unit where they had to explain imaginary numbers.
They’re ALL imaginary though
No, they’re all abstract. There’s a difference.
But… don’t you just think them up? Like is there a real thing somewhere on earth that we are counting?
I’m not being obtuse, I really don’t understand math.
… okay, here we go.
Non-abstract numbers are attributes of collections of real things. For example, the attribute “five” is what a collection of five people in a group, five fingers on a hand, five socks in a drawer, five clouds in the sky, and five panels in a comic all have in common. Humans have an instinctive recognition (as in, we can recognize it from birth) of the numeric attributes “one”, “two”, and “more than two”. The remaining numbers we just define by succession, ie, “three” is “one more than two”, “four” is “one more than three”, and so on. (Counting, in other words.)
These attributes have certain numerical implications that we think of like arithmetic. For example, combining a group of 5 with a group of 2 will always give us a group of 7… no matter what those groups are made of.
From this we create abstract rules such as “5 + 2 = 7″… no matter what there are 5 of, 2 of, and 7 of. Similarly, dividing one group of eight into groups of two will always give us 4 groups of 2, so 8/2 = 4, regardless of WHAT the objects we’re divvying up are. It’s true for EVERYTHING, so we don’t have to specify one rule for fingers and another for rocks. (Well, actually, there are some things which DON’T obey arithmetic, but they’re rare enough that it’s still worth having a general rule.) At this point we can start talking about numbers IN THE ABSTRACT, without actually caring about what it is we’re counting. We start talking about general rules about quantities, rather than specific instances of quantities.
So 5 can be seen two ways. It can be seen as a quantifier, as in 5 fingers. Here it describes a property of a group of things, namely that it has THIS many things in the group. Then there’s the abstract number 5, which is just… well, 5. This isn’t counting a group, but is instead the concept or property of “fiveness” that all groups of five share. That’s what it means to be an abstract number.
As an aside, MOST people don’t understand this. (Well, they kinda do, but it never gets spelled out for them and they don’t realize that they understand it.) This is so very basic that it almost never gets taught… and as a result almost no one ever has it spelled out for them.
THAT’S NOT A THING
IT’S JUST MAGIC WITH COUNTING
Wait, what are these rare things that don’t obey arithmetic? Nothing obvious comes to mind, at least this early in the morning, so I’m intrigued!
My favorite example is a pile of sand. One rock added to another rock is two rocks, one stick added to another stick is two sticks, but one pile of sand added to another pile of sand is just one (bigger) pile of sand.
Basically, you need things you can combine without them fusing together (or splitting apart).
So are collections of things like rocks or are they like sand?
Some collections are like rocks and some are like sand. Basically it comes down to how you count them. If you quantify water, for example, by how many distinct parts it’s in (droplets, puddles, etc), then that’s like sand. The same water grouped together becomes one thing. But if you’re quantifying it by something that doesn’t really change when you combine the groups (mass, volume, etc) then it’s like rocks.
Another way to view it is that this isn’t about the type of thing, but the method by which you combine groups of it. But since numbers are functionally defined by how they combine (remember, “five” is defined as “one more than four”), the distinction’s entirely semantic.
Ah, so it’s not like something fundamental to the universe that disobeys arithmetic, but rather an arbitrary method of counting/grouping (since it’s way easier to count piles of sand, but in theory you could instead count the individual grains, and counting water molecules precisely is likely a nightmare but there is an actual number of them, whether we can determine it or not). Damn, I thought I was gonna learn about some SCP-worthy physics peculiarity there!
Disagree, Reltzik; it’s about how YOU choose to describe what you have. If I have 100 different rocks on display, I have a rock collection. If Fred gives me his display of 75 rocks, I now have … a rock collection. It’s a larger collection, but it’s still just one collection.
It’s funny to me that this comes up as a mathematical concept, since the idea of countable vs uncountable nouns is something that I associate with linguistics, with that being where it came up in my learning.
It’s also funny that a pile of sand is your go to example, since that was how the idea was introduced in that class as well.
@Bicycle Bill: Except you’re shifting what’s being counted from the number of rocks to the number of collections. “Pile of sand” basically does the same thing, in all fairness, since you could, for example, have two piles of sand.
Basically, I think of the difference between countable and uncountable to mean you can’t add any other form of measurement. Like, rock+rock= 2 rocks; that’s countable. Water+water= water; that’s uncountable. Now, you could say that 1 gallon of water + 1 gallon of water= 2 gallons of water, but in that case, you’re counting gallons.
Yup. Rock + rock = 2 rocks is something where arithmetic works, and water + water = water is somewhere that arithmetic DOESN’T work. Exactly right, Yumi.
(Except in math, the word “countable” refers to the smallest size of infinity. So a bit of confusion-potential there.)
Another example of where arithmetic doesn’t work is the time on the clock. If it’s two o’clock, then one hour after that is three o’clock, two hours after that is four o’clock, and so on. Adding hours to the clock just adds to the time. But 7 hours after 6 o’clock is not 13 o’clock. … unless you’re on a military clock, in which case add 19 hours and same problem.
One of the most common ways of axiomizing positive integers has an axiom that if you keep adding 1, you keep getting new numbers, rather than looping around to somewhere earlier. With clocks, 12 + 1 = 1. We loop around. That violates the axiom. Now that doesn’t mean that the way we tell time on clocks is WRONG… but it does mean that all math that’s proven on the assumptions of that axiom (meaning all conventional arithmetic) is unproven and unreliable in cases like this where the axiom doesn’t hold.
Now we could make up some special rule for clocks, like “1 = 13 = 25 = 37 and so on and always use 1 to represent any of these”. But that’s modular arithmetic, which is a different from plain arithmetic. Plain arithmetic is still broken. We get around the math be broken by using DIFFERENT MATH, and seeing which axioms hold and which ones don’t tell us which math is the right tool for the job.
Let me ask the question about what your collections are like another way. Can you have a rock collection of zero rocks?
@Clif
My collection may have taken a few losses, but it still remains, within my heart- and one day, one day soon, it shall rise again!
Short answer: yes.
@HeySo
I’m not sure that Reltzik would agree with you. You point to a link to the empty set, but collections and sets seem to be two different things. Sets are well defined but a source of logical problems. Collections seem less well defined.
Logical problems: The set of sets contains itself because it’s a set. The set of rocks does not contain itself because it’s a set, not a rock. Does the set of those sets which do not contain themselves contain itself?
On the other hand if you start with sets, then you can define the empty set as the number zero and define the successor of a number in terms of operations on sets and define addition in terms of the successor operation and you wind up with the non-negative integers all defined in terms of sets. But not stopping there, you can also define ordered pairs in terms of sets which let’s you extend to all the integers and then into rational numbers as ordered pairs of integers and then you can construct a distance ordering which with a certain kind of cut set based on that ordering gives you the real numbers or under a completely different distance ordering gives you the p-adic numbers. Ordered pairs of reals lets you construct the complex numbers and a different type of trick with sets let’s you add infinitesimals which gives you the hyper-real numbers. There are actually several different inconsistent ways to do this, although there is a standard way of defining the hyperreals which gives rise to non-standard analysis, a different way to get calculus. Or if you go back and define numbers in terms a sets a different way, then you wind up with the surreal numbers which contain all the different hyperreals and much else besides. The complex surreals is as far as we know how to meaningfully extend the concept of numbers and it can all be done with sets. But sets have problems. So some mathematicians like to talk about collections instead.
I think that there are actually a number of very different ideas lying behind the word ‘collections’ and that they have there own problems, but that can be very difficult to argue unless you know exactly which collection of ideas lies behind a particular use of the word collections. And most people can be brought to appreciate those problems through a series of questions, though it can be an involved process depending on how sophisticated an understanding of collections there is.
Let me talk to you instead of Reltzik. I collect coins, stamps and comics. How many collections do I have? Three? But that ignores my empty collection of rocks, my empty collection of nuclear weapons and my collection of Dumbing of Age comics with you and I as Sue’s boyfriends. Is the number of collections I have even countable? How many collections would you say I have?
I suspect that Reltzik would not be so easy and I would eventually have to detour through the implicit mappings of the integers onto their formalizations (Godelizations) and a particular formalized variation of Lob’s paradox in order to show that his version of collections may not solve all the problems. And probably the comment section of a web comic is not the best place to try.
“Can you have a rock collection of zero rocks?”
Dunno. But I definitely have a collection of zero fucks.
Okay, well now I have a crush on you. So–thanks? I guess?
It’s funny how we’re all taking a math lesson from a Walky avatar.
I wish you and I were in the same Differential Equations class in college. You are good at this explaining math thing.
No one can explain differential equations.
Explain? Yes. Make it easier to figure out what method you’re supposed to use to solve them? No.
Cool!
Also, thanks & major props for explaining the basis of math to me, since I have a learning disability in it, but actually understood what you were saying, that’s rad.
Yeah, Dyscalcula may sound like a horror movie, but it is a real thing and a real impediment to getting a college degree. But at least people aren’t just saying, “You’re not trying hard enough!” anymore. Dyslexia and Dyscalcula are real things, and not “just try harder, you’ll get it. You’re smart just try harder” bulls* it.
… you shouldn’t be so quick to discount yourself!
Reltzik:: I have never in my (very) long life, ever heard such a cogent lucid explaination of the under-pinnings of Arithmetic. You can call me Stunned and Amazed. You used words (my happy place) to clearly explain maths (my life-long nemesis) in a non-threatening manner that didn’t send me screaming for the hills. In a recursive way, your explanation has brought me joy, or maybe in a reflexive way, I have EnJoyed your explanation.
Thank you.
Today has been brought to me by the letter R (rocks!) and the number 5 (five!).
Dear Equations,
Find your Ex yourself.
Gene
Maybe try looking at it from a different angle?
Man, I wish I liked Anna so that this could be cute, even if it would still be concerning.
Yeah, so far pretty much all we know about Anna is that she’s physically attractive, mean to passers-by, and mean to somebody she presumably cares about. Neither meanness is remotely endearing. Don’t date mean people, Leslie.
Wow, in my mind Anna is the one who is utterly unattractive, while Mindy is all shy and pretty. Goes to show different strokes etc.
I should’ve specified — the art is stylized, so any character could be pretty or un-pretty, but most relevantly, Leslie finds Anna hella attractive. (And Anna’s and Mindy’s reactions lead me to believe that Leslie’s assessment is common.)
Kinda similarly, I’d always imagined Joyce as rather plain, girl-next-door, reasonably attractive but not particularly beautiful… except that everyone in-universe reacts to her like she’s very lovely indeed, which informs me that she’s beautiful.
That makes sense. I wonder if my own sub- or not so sub-conscious preferences made me see even a cartoon character in a certain light that blinded me to the textual evidence.
STILL COUNTS AS A WIN FOR BECKY, DANGIT!!!!
God I wish that were me
That you got infatuated with a jerk? I’d rather be crushless, yo.
leslie really goes all in doesnt she
Did Roz forget her pants?
It may just be her nightmare, I mean I did wonder for a second why Robin was in Leslie’s class.
That doesn’t make much coherent sense does it? I mistook Roz for Robin at first.
Short skirt. This is Roz we’re taking about.
Roz always dresses in style.
Short shorts, but yes.
Not the first time Roz has rocked the sexy schoolgirl look.
Great link! Specifically, Jacob’s “wow!” look at Roz in panel 4, which is really rare from him. Something to remember while we’ve all been posting on the subject of What Jacob Wants in a Companion Right Now.
Well, he is a straight male teen, so a bit of wow isn’t surprising.
Don’t neglect his comments in the next strip though.
Jeez, Sarah embodies “crestfallen” there.
Sometimes it’s interesting to watch the first few rocks of an avalanche start rolling downhill.
That’s more of a sexy secretary look.
I’m going with the suite jacket as a dress. No skirt.
Short skirt, I think.
Short skirt, loooooong jacket. Hmm, someone should make a song with that line.
I’d love to be happy for Leslie, but I really don’t think Anna is good for her at all.
Even if Anna was good for her…man is that “love of life” comment coming fast.
*someone opens window*
*birds fly in and perch on Leslie’s shoulders*
*Two or three panels later, bird shits on Leslie’s head* (extrapolating from previous recorded instances of Leslie’s love life)
As Leslie is zooming into a Bizarro Disney scene, I expect mice and birds to start breaking dishes, soiling linens, and unmending clothes.
Chip the bottles and crack the plates,
Blunt the knives and bend the forks…
I thought that Kreskin could only bend a spoon with his mind, but apparently he’s got some unresolved childhood issues cos his mom made him help with the housework.
And the Dwarves were well known for stealing the silverware to make jewelery for the Elves. They just broke the plates as a distraction.
Oh geez. Leslie, take those rose-colored glasses off this instant.
p l e a s e
But keep on the rose-colored cardigan. It suits you.
I dig Roz’s tie.
The girl knows how to work a blazer and tie.
“Love of my life” status already?
That spells disaster.
D I S A S T E R
If she starts planning a wedding tomorrow, I’m calling an intervention.
Also that kinda sucks, to tell Mindy that she’s not ready for dating (truth) only to seemingly date Mindy’s coworker/roommate/friend. Even if she isn’t with Anna (boy I hope it isn’t Anna), still kinda crummy thing to do to Mindy.
i hope so too. anna is…. good. in doses.
Plus I got the impression that this has happened to Mindy & Anna before.
expecting leslie and anna(?) to not last long.
lesanna
I’m sure there are a lot of people that would appreciate less anna…
lasagna
They get together. They get a cat named Garfield. Then one night Garfield devours the relationship by asking for affection at the wrong time, and Leslie changes her name to Jon, becomes a comic author, and is forever alone. Her time-travelling uncle Jim publishes the comics on her behalf.
The hidden backstory of Garfield, tonight on TMZ.
those glasses are firmly fixed on leslies head.
Joyce is hoping that a big musical number isn’t about to break out, because her toe isn’t up to a lot of dancing.
Is everyone in the 4th panel looking at Roz because none of them want to ask that question?
look at the direction the text bubble is coming from. They’re following Leslie’s path around the room as she hums, not looking at Roz.
Dang, I missed that. For a second there I was wondering whether everyone thought of Roz as their representative regarding Leslie-matters.
I’ve been trying to write a snarky comment, but Leslie’s happiness at finding someone else of her “type” – and what that “type” actually is…
I just can’t joke about that. It’s too sad.
Please let it be someone she met while have refreshing beverages with Anna…
Yeah Leslie, stop being happy. This is college. No one is happy >.>
I go back on Monday and I feel this in my soul.
What the happened to not being ready to see anyone new- you know what no I actually want to see this play out. Come on let’s see what this brings.
This is why we ship with icebergs.
Calling it now. Someone here is going to write a book named Shipping With Icebergs.
NOT ROBIN
Watch it not be Anna
Perhaps Leslie picked up the Deli Lady. After all, that store does seem to be the place to go for lesbian hook-ups.
. . . Stacy? (whose elbow was seen next to Leslie at the bar)
Meaning, there will be huge drama with Leslie, Richard, Joe, and Amber?
What a curve ball that would be. And a source for a whole new can of drama.
That scene in the bar was two nights ago. If Leslie’s being literal, the SS Huge Drama has set sail, but it’s not to Stacy Island, rather headed to the Anna Shoals.
(My oops: “Literal” as in her saying “last night”.)
Stacy Island?
No Stacy is an island.
Well, if ever I wanted to know what Tsudere Leslie was like….
Subtle Leslie…really subtle…
Just watched The Shape of Water, tonight. First movie I’ve been to where people clapped when the credits rolled.
They were that happy it was over?
If it’s working out with Anna then I’m cool with it and happy for Leslie. However, my worry is that it isn’t working out, Leslie is just telling herself that it is because… I dunno, maybe the sex is good or something.
I imagine Anna being a super prick to everyone and everybody and Leslie is just romanticizing it the best her imagination can. Because as much as I do want Leslie to succeed in her love life I feel like her bad taste and naive tendencies will get in the way of that.
That’s my fear too. :/ Leslie is most likely in the “first love butterflies” stage where her inamorata can do no wrong. Whereas we, the audience, can see that Anna has all the hallmarks of the character type that has hurt Leslie before in the past and will likely do so again.
And of course, there’s also Mindy in this whole mess. Poor Mindy. 🙁
It’s not even so much “working out” or “not working out”, it’s at best a first date.
Mind you, there’s nothing wrong with riding that initial high, as long as you can still walk away if it all goes pear-shaped.
As far as I know, they haven’t even had one date yet. They’ve just happened to accidentally meet each other a few times and say a few words while Leslie is love struck.
Also, shut up, Roz. It’s none of your business, damn.
Is this a Willis stringing us along or a Leslie stringing than along?
Them!
I hate autocorrect.
Good afternoon Ms. Bean
I can see it now.
They go out, leslie is given the Anna “I’m extremely blunt to whatever you have to say, disrespectful but itll turn you on more and more” treatment, they’ll both come home making out while making their way to Anna’s room, and Mindy will see them along the way as she walks out for a glass of water or something.
At first, she won’t say anything, then the morning after they’ll bump into each other as leslie wakes up and is ordered by Anna to get her some breakfast or one of those “you’re still here?” type post hookup moments.
And she’ll go, “yeah, I figured this would happen, even though you said you ‘weren’t ready for dating’. This is what always happens to people I like that get close, they always go to her. She then gets what she wants and them leaves them when they’re not useful to her anymore. I just wish you were honest back then and said you weren’t into me.”
Leslie will guilt, then leave after saying some type of defensive statement to salvage some sort of self dignity.
But hey, at least it was a great lay.
TBH, that strikes me as something Mindy should say, but probably won’t. Believing her own feelings are important enough to be worth expressing doesn’t seem to be how Mindy rolls.
now that I think about it, she’ll have such a telling off running through her mind, wish she could say it, but just say something sheepish, passive, and trying to help cook that breakfast in anna’s preferred style since she knows her so long. And deep down, will resent herself for it.
It was either that, or Mindy and Leslie go on a good couple dates, then anna bumps into them at home, and when they’re alone (while mindy uses restroom, goes into other room to grab something) she gives the “ditch the zero, go with the hero” flirting advice that’d make leslie bite her lip in going for the “fun” girl rather than settling with the safe one.
But hey, we’ll see how their coffee trip even goes.
I assumed their coffee trip had gone and we could tell how it went from Leslie’s singing.
The request wasn’t phrased as a “sometime”, but implied right now.
Leslie, honey, no
Oh good lord.
Just as he gives one relationship to squeeee about, he doth gives us one relationship to facepalm about.
Oh hooray, now we get to see Leslie be put in an emotionally abusive relationship. That’s not going to be upsetting at all.
And THIS, folks, is why webcomic artists have a buffer.
Well, the GOOD ones.
Hope they don’t all take that long, Willis.
*a week later, Leslie shuffles into class, dragging her bag behind her. Her hair is disheveled(sp?), clothes look slept-in, eyes are shrunk to points.*
*Trudges over to desk, plunks down in chair, starts to bang her head against the desk*
*Class looks at one another*
Roz: Leslie?
…Why are you banging your head against the desk?
Leslie: Oh. Sorry. You’re right, Roz.
My life outside the class needs to STAY outside the class.
Grr. I am Grumpily-Neutral Leslie.
Everything isn’t ashes and darkness because the supposed love of my life turned out to be an enormous ass who I had to leave for mental-health reasons.
*continues banging head on desk while sobbing*
…. I fear that the idea that her crush will crash and burn (crush and burn?) within a single week is overly optimistic.
So who is the woman Leslie talks about here?
Did I miss a page?
Leslie’s last appearance was asking Anna out for coffee.
A thing to note: There was music in the air around
Leslie BEFORE she met Anna, which supports a Stacy theory .
… but Stacy would probably have mentioned to Stacy and Richard that she was the love-of-the-life of someone else than Richard.
… mentioned to Amber and Richard, of course.
I have this weird feeling Leslie falls in love too quickly.
Or, more accurate, she gets infatuated very easily and tells herself it’s love because, frankly, she’s too inexperienced to know the difference. It’s her psychological similarity to serial abuse victims that worries me sometimes.
Yes. 🙁
Wooooooot
Hahaha, this so hits the memories!!
I had a Discrete Computational Structures (really hard math theory about computers) teacher, who was ALWAYS pissed off and gruff. Stickler for the rules. Never gave an inch. Never smiled.
Next semester, he comes in lighthearted and happy. Cracking jokes. Smiling. Telling stories about some of the computers he’d designed at IBM.
Yup, you guessed it.
You know, sometimes the sole moment of the day where I am smiling and cracking jokes is when I’m teaching. But when I’m allright, I’m rather nicely cold (or coldly nice, IDK).
so /I/ wouldn’t date Anna or anyone like her, but… at least she’s not Robin?
A very slight improvement, in that she’s unlikely to move in uninvited.
But Leslie has apparently hired an emotional U-Haul, and mentally moved in with Anna already, so…not that much of an improvement.
I thought that was less a “met in the store” thing and more a “second date” thing.
I’m betting she got a cat.
For the love of Transformers Willis please give Mindy a good day.
By the time Leslie realizes that she needs to stop dating abusive chicks, she’s going to have some scars to look at every day to remind her to go for the nice girls…
That is, if she doesn’t just end up getting murdered by some abusive piece of shit before then.
Her taste doesn’t seem to run toward physically abusive, only emotionally/mentally. Which is…almost a good thing?