leftzero @ leftzero @lemmynsfw.com

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Obligatory warning that although this particular one isn't, most of the stripes in Oglaf, while still as funny and smart as this one if not more, tend to also be somewhat raunchy and not safe for work, so if you're in an environment where cartoon genitals might offend you might want to wait until you're elsewhere before you partake.

Operation paper clip

Operation paperclip was when the US government smuggled Wernher Von Braun and about sixteen hundred other nazi scientists, engineers, and technicians into America for to build rockets and kickstart the cold war.

You're thinking of operation snow white.

That's not a moral system, that's mere survival instinct.

A (Frieren's world) demon will always do what best serves their own interests; if a more powerful demon tells them to do something they'll do it out of pure self preservation, and bide their time until they can be the one on top, or at least get away and carry on on their own.

No morality is involved, because morality as a concept (as we humans understand it) is so alien to them as colours to someone born blind.

Frieren has known many demons, including Macht. She has studied them for a thousand years. She can and does know.

By definition, if a demon learned how to feel empathy, or compassion, or anything like that, it would no longer be a demon.

But the point is moot, because it's been demonstrated that they biologically can't feel those emotions, even if they wanted to.

We've seen the point of view of demons. They're not human, or human analogues, in any way, shape, or form.

They just look and act like humans, as a form of predatory camouflage.

They're a perfect example of blue and orange morality (warning, TV Tropes link, abandon all hope ye who enters here).

We've seen (in the manga) a demon spend centuries doing his best to learn how to experience empathy, sympathy, or guilt, so he and other demons can become something that can coexist with humans without one or both of them inevitably ending up extinct.

He failed.

There's no possible long term future in Frieren's world where both humans and demons exist, unless demons change so fundamentally that they stop being demons (which would be a paradox of sorts, as real demons would then be extinct).

Demons have one choice: remain true to their nature and eat or exterminate all humans, or cease to be.

Humans have one choice: let themselves be exterminated, or exterminate all demons.

No side is committing genocide, they're just fighting for their own survival, in a world that gives them no other option.

Just the one weird bathtub scene.

Well, and that time she almost accidentally flashes Ed, but they're practically dating by that point, they just haven't come to terms with it yet.

Watch season 2 when it comes out. Probably the second half. The Macht flashbacks.

Fair enough, yet unless I'm mistaken most planes don't rely on people throwing bricks at them (which would be quite risky anyway, for unless they throw them faster than escape velocity they're bound to come back down eventually).

Couple tidbits before you get to it:

• The first four episodes were released at once and it's recommended to watch them in one sitting.
• While season 1 has some great demon characters (and a lot of great non-demon ones), that fourth fan favourite one won't show up until season 2, which is currently in production and is expected to come out in January 2026.

Creatures with free will and intelligence who evolved those capabilities (and speech) with the sole purpose of being better at hunting humans.

Creatures with free will and intelligence who eat humans. Not because they need to eat humans, mind, they're perfectly fine eating other things, but because they genetically like to kill and eat humans.

Creatures with free will and intelligence who are biologically incapable of feeling emotions like empathy, sympathy, guilt, or remorse. Seriously, some have spent centuries trying to learn how to feel them, and have failed.

Creatures with free will and intelligence who'll be the first to admit that they're better described as savage deceitful beasts, and that it'd be foolish and suicidal to trust them as far as you can throw them.

And, that said, Frieren the character advocates (with extremely good evidence backed reason) for their genocide, but the book and the authors don't seem to do the same thing.

There's plenty of characters that try to get along with demons, or trust them (and often pay dearly for it), and plenty of chapters where we see the demons' point of view and can't fail but to somewhat empathize with them, even if they'd be unable to reciprocate.

At no point do the book or the authors try to make the readers hate demons. They make us fear them, sure, but mostly they make us feel empathy and pity for them.

Hell, the fourth fan favourite character is a demon (and what a fantastic character it is).

(Granted, the third are the mimics, but still.)

Is it confirmed??

Nah. Arasaka owns Japan, for fuck's sake.

It's safe to assume that the rest of the world is equally fucked, just probably with less guns, and with electric cars instead of those CHOOH2 guzzlers.

There's a remote possibility that the glue might have been on the wall or the pigeons for some unrelated reason and they got glued to the wall all by themselves when they landed on it, I suppose.

In Terry Pratchett's Discworld the wizards of the Unseen University built a possibly sentient supercomputer out of an ant farm (much faster and more powerful than previous druid-built computers based on standing stones, which were mostly limited to calendar calculations and required regular human sacrifices).

The Agathean Empire at the edge of the disc has little boxes with little imps inside which can paint a picture of what you point the box at in mere seconds.

Later, some Ankh-Morpork entrepreneurs trained imps to paint even faster on highly flammable nitrocellulose reels and, moving them very fast and lighting them from behind with excited salamanders, invented moving pictures (and promptly accidentally almost let the Things from the Dungeon Dimensions enter the disc).

Even later, some other Ankh-Morpork entrepreneurs created a continent-spanning network of semaphore telegraphs, even managing to send pictures through it.

All while some Dwarves in Ankh-Morpork invented movable type, while getting in trouble with the wizards, who're well aware that you can't use that to print magic books, for the type will remember...

And, all along, deep under their mountains, the Überwaldian dwarves have been digging up and using ancient Devices to power whole cities...

You don't want guns in a spaceship. Don't want to poke a hole in a wall and open it to space.

Swords make a lot more sense when fighting inside a spaceship. (Granted, short swords, probably, due to the limited space, but still.)

Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.

— Pratchett, maybe..?

Also this friggin' freak of nature:

the thing that was actually influencing Neptune's orbit, whatever that might be

Calculation error due to Einstein not being available (in Lowell's case, at least; Tombaugh should've known better) and margins of error in the measured masses of the planets at the time (the Voyagers took care of that bit), if I'm not mistaken.

Look, those damn things (Pluto / Charon, since they're basically a double bodied system) get closer to the Sun than Neptune, at certain points in their orbit.

There's dozens of similarly sized objects buzzing around in the same region, and probably thousands of not millions in the Oort cloud.

The only reason “Pluto” were ever called a planet is that they coincidentally happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when Tombaugh used Lowell's miscalculations to look for an hypothetical transneptunian planet (Lowell, at least, had the excuse of having died before Einstein published his theory of relativity, but Tombaugh should have known that Newton wasn't enough for this kind of thing).

Oh, they do care. That's why they do it.

Cats are definitely evil. Adorably so, sure, yet evil nonetheless.

Dolphins, too. Cruel, rapey bastards, the lot of them. Orcas in particular probably enjoy killing and hurting their prey almost as much as cats.

Most birds are evil in a stupid birdbrained sort of way, even the smart ones. Should've gone extinct sixty-five million years ago with the rest of the dinosaurs, the bastards.

Chimpanzees are almost as creepily evil as humans (not bonobos, though; they just want to get along and fuck as much as possible).

And then there's us.

anything over 1080p is a waste of resolution

For games, maybe.

But I also use my PC for work (programming). I can't afford two, and don't really need them.

At home I've got a WQHD 1440p monitor, which leaves plenty of space for code while having the solution explorer, watch window, and whatnot still open.

At work we're just given cheap refurbished 1080p crap, which is downright painful to work with and has often made me consider buying a proper monitor and bringing it to work, just to make those ~8h/day somewhat less unbearable.

So I can't go back to 1080p, and have to run my games at 1440p (and upscaling looks like shit, so no).