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Ulf manages to walk in and out of a nuclear base massacre, gets arrested for a phone call.
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Oct 18, 2014 13:10
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| # ? May 25, 2024 21:35 |
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101 I love how the other diners are pretending to ignore the guy in the ICBM shirt talking to himself about the police and brain chips and nuclear war and vampires and people going crazy and aliens.
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Oct 20, 2014 05:25
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Most people would just read today's comic and say "huh?" But we've read Thorsby comics before. Here we go again  .
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Oct 30, 2014 03:39
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For the first time, Ulf has thwarts three of the four start-points. Why do I have a feeling this conflict with Aisha is going to be interrupted by the evil mastermind going 'gently caress gently caress gently caress we're doing it NOW' and nuking the planet to glass?
BiggerJ fucked around with this message at 09:52 on Nov 9, 2014 |
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Nov 9, 2014 02:19
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I think there are two problems with that: 1. If he could just start the apocalypse at any time, what would be the point of waiting? 2. There probably isn't actually a mastermind, just numerous groups trying to kill everyone and thus a disturbingly high chance that one of them will succeed.
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Nov 9, 2014 02:28
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Carrasco posted:2. There probably isn't actually a mastermind, just numerous groups trying to kill everyone and thus a disturbingly high chance that one of them will succeed. It's strangely coincidental four likely sources of nuclear war - ticking time bomb - should spring up around the same time. And it's not the only coincidence in play - there's also the strange setbacks the cult experienced. Some manner of sci-fi tech beyond the Ulves' chips may be in play (although there being someone else with a brain chip could explain their ability to those 'accidents' happen to thwart the cult - but unless there's stuff we haven't been told about their respective inspirations, more brain chips don't explain how the nukers could have been manipulated). Edit: As for the point in waiting, the mastermind might be checking a crazy number of factors in order to ensure that Mutually Assured Desctruction is, well, assured. And, of course, the factors would be different in different universes. There being four start points - which, face it, seems slightly obsessive given how tough it is for even one nuker to get a nuke - is also consistent with this 'wait-until-the-stars-are-right' attitude. BiggerJ fucked around with this message at 09:10 on Nov 9, 2014 |
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Nov 9, 2014 08:42
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The Singularity has come, and its name is Ulf.
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Nov 9, 2014 09:01
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BiggerJ posted:It's strangely coincidental four likely sources of nuclear war - ticking time bomb - should spring up around the same time. And it's not the only coincidence in play - there's also the strange setbacks the cult experienced. It's been pretty foreshadowed, so I guess it's okay to really look at this line of speculation... So, it is established that there are multiple universes. The transdimensional brain chip allows communications after a divergence point. The divergences are weekly, from Ulf's point of view, but a split time of one week seems to suggest that this is artificially induced rather than riding some factor that goes off every so often. It seems more sane to assume that parallel universes split off on their own, rather than being induced by the chip. Let's go back to the start of the comic. We are watching from an ur-Ulf's perspective. Now, imagine that there are a bunch of parallel universes splitting off all the time since forever. There are a nigh infinite number of start possibilities for the comic. But the comic is called "Transdimensional Brain Chip", so it makes sense that we are going to look in on a particular branch that has one in it. It is necessary for civilization to exist in order for there to be a transdimensional brain chip. Clearly, it is possible for civilization not to exist in a parallel universe branch, as we have seen from the nuclear wars. Thus the hypothesis: the world gets into nuclear wars nearly all of the time, but Ur-Ulf's universe was, and is necessarily, one of the branches where it didn't. Welcome to the wonderful world of anthropics.
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Nov 9, 2014 11:40
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Cardinal Ximenez posted:Thus the hypothesis: the world gets into nuclear wars nearly all of the time, but Ur-Ulf's universe was, and is necessarily, one of the branches where it didn't. In short:  Highly relevant to this whole conversation would be this paper: http://www.nickbostrom.com/papers/anthropicshadow.pdf I love the concept of the anthropic shadow.
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Nov 9, 2014 12:06
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Cardinal Ximenez posted:Thus the hypothesis: the world gets into nuclear wars nearly all of the time, but Ur-Ulf's universe was, and is necessarily, one of the branches where it didn't. That makes a lot of sense, except... actually I forget, how long did it take for Ulfs to star getting nuked? And it started off slow, then got faster. I thought I might have been able to use this to disprove you, but the increasing number of linked Ulfs might actually be an explanation for the apparent delay and acceleration of nukings. I love you people and I love this comic.
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Nov 9, 2014 13:31
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Also, if we approach it from a storytelling perspective it's much more likely that there is an evil mastermind behind it all because that provides a neat end point for the Ulves to approach as the story reaches a climax and conclusion.
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Nov 9, 2014 14:34
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Pffffffoh my god Ulf.
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Nov 10, 2014 02:54
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Ulf is getting a lot of mileage out of interdimensional data gathering.
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Nov 17, 2014 12:50
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It is surprisingly easy to convince someone pointing a gun at you that you're an elf.
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Nov 17, 2014 17:02
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I would rethink a lot of my basic assumptions about the world if someone was able to accurately say something extremely specific, private and 'unguessable' about myself. Though it'd be a lot easier to convince me that you were a mind-reader rather than an elf 
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Nov 18, 2014 02:02
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http://brainchip.thecomicseries.com/comics/114 In the latest episode, Ulf is remotely hacking Chinese army computers to patch their nuclear missile control systems. This is the kind of scenario that can only end well. On the other hand, he did get out of an American nuke base full of corpses with both launch keys, in front of a witness, and nobody bothered him about that. So maybe the Chinese hacking gambit will really work.
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Nov 19, 2014 23:59
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Against all sense and norms established so far, I still want this arc to end up being an elaborate pastiche of Tron.
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Nov 20, 2014 01:21
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New comic. My prediction: The reading Ulfs will discover the concept of the anthropic principle, and realize that there are no aliens. The modern world has always been on the brink of nuclear annihilation from multiple sources and the only reason these Ulfs are still around is because it hasn't happened in their universes yet.
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Nov 21, 2014 03:42
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Prediction: Several Ulfs read Ayn Rand, go Galt
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Nov 21, 2014 18:06
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I guess the Ulf Hivemind was lamp-shaded when the two Ulves "merged" their minds during the FBI Elf Stand-Out. I wonder how long until Ulf decides to take over the multiverse.
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Nov 21, 2014 18:15
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Is there like a kickstarter or patreon for throwing money at Thorsby? I would actually pay what little I have to have Hitmen for Destiny
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Nov 23, 2014 18:06
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http://brainchip.thecomicseries.com/comics/116 Only three Ulfs go missing before week 18 and four before week 19. It almost looks like he's getting smarter, but he's still wearing a penis shirt.
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Nov 24, 2014 07:08
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I love all of Thorsby's shirts
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Nov 24, 2014 07:54
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ZearothK posted:I guess the Ulf Hivemind was lamp-shaded when the two Ulves "merged" their minds during the FBI Elf Stand-Out. The Ulves are almost certainly going to figure out that if thoughts can bridge the gaps between universes then physical matter can too. Which opens the door to non-anthropic Earths and the usual gamut of crazy Thorsbyian critters!
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Nov 24, 2014 11:42
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The whale thing has actually been seriously discussed before, and is called "Peto's paradox".
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Nov 24, 2014 14:48
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That took a turn for the weird.
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Nov 24, 2014 22:55
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Daktar posted:The Ulves are almost certainly going to figure out that if thoughts can bridge the gaps between universes then physical matter can too. Which opens the door to non-anthropic Earths and the usual gamut of crazy Thorsbyian critters! Yeah. Assuming the chips don't deal with any quantum jiggerypokery, their transmission of information must involve a transmission of matter and/or energy. Also, that whale thing sounds slightly similar to the whole 'but the world didn't seem unstable before' thing. And the freezer 'I thought it was a man-made mechanism but it's just a force of nature' thing too. Thorsby's setting up the dominos. BiggerJ fucked around with this message at 07:49 on Nov 25, 2014 |
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Nov 25, 2014 07:43
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New comicMr. Wednesday posted:New comic. My prediction: The reading Ulfs will discover the concept of the anthropic principle, and realize that there are no aliens. The modern world has always been on the brink of nuclear annihilation from multiple sources and the only reason these Ulfs are still around is because it hasn't happened in their universes yet. I totally called it 
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Nov 26, 2014 04:03
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Mr. Wednesday posted:New comic You where right.
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Nov 26, 2014 04:15
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ZearothK posted:You where right. Thorsby's poor English grammar and spelling usually don't bother me much at all, but this one was a little tough to read with the where/were.
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Nov 26, 2014 08:32
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ChairMaster posted:Thorsby's poor English grammar and spelling usually don't bother me much at all, but this one was a little tough to read with the where/were. Am I hallucinating or did he fix it between here and there?
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Nov 26, 2014 11:59
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I have no idea what Ulf is trying to say there.
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Nov 26, 2014 14:57
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ANIME MONSTROSITY posted:I have no idea what Ulf is trying to say there. That the world being destroyed by nuclear war is almost certain to occur in a universe where earth is set up anything like his (or ours). We just don't see it because it hasn't happened in Ulf's universe (or our own). If we could step back and see the entire multiverse we would see gazillions of dead nuclear apocalypsed worlds for each one that survives. Aside from the thought of near infinite dead planets with humanity wiped out, it is extra bad because the way this occurs as a natural development of having nukes and people loving about or making mistakes. This means that any universe could suddenly develop a new set of circumstances which result in a nuclear war and statistically it is almost certain to happen within a relatively short period of time. team overhead smash fucked around with this message at 15:20 on Nov 26, 2014 |
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Nov 26, 2014 15:08
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ANIME MONSTROSITY posted:I have no idea what Ulf is trying to say there. If Ulf had the brain chip installed in 1945, there would be quadrillions of Ulfs out there who had died in nuclear wars between 1945 and 2014. But they all split off from one timeline in which Ulf had it installed recently. In that timeline, obviously nuclear war didn't happen or there would be no Ulf and Vera to install the chip. So all the different Ulfs come from one central timeline where nuclear war didn't happen, and as a result they think nuclear war is really unlikely, and therefore if there are four different ways that nuclear war can start within a few weeks of their receiving the chip, there must be a huge conspiracy at work. But there isn't. It's just that nuclear war is way more likely than any of them realized, because they all started out in a timeline where nuclear war hadn't happened yet. That timeline could be the equivalent of flipping a coin 1,000 times and getting heads every single time (because every timeline where you flipped tails, you died), and so all the Ulfs think that every time you flip a coin you're going to get heads unless something interferes (because all the multiverse Ulfs who had tails get flipped died), but that doesn't mean that the next time you flip it you won't get tails anyway. Take a look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_suicide_and_immortality, there's a different thought experiment there that might help.
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Nov 26, 2014 15:16
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Thanks, guys. I think I recall the basics from Virtue's Last Reward
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Nov 26, 2014 15:37
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Turns out it's surprisingly easy to take over the world. Let's hope the Ulfermind remains benevolent.
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Dec 2, 2014 12:02
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I just checked it out of curiosity, by week 21 there should be 2,097,152 Ulfs total, but there's only 713,866. That's 2 dead Ulfs for every living one.
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Dec 3, 2014 08:36
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ChairMaster posted:I just checked it out of curiosity, by week 21 there should be 2,097,152 Ulfs total, but there's only 713,866. That's 2 dead Ulfs for every living one. Well the dead Ulf count is exponential too: For every Ulf that died x weeks ago, there are 2^x less Ulfs this week.
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Dec 3, 2014 13:54
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http://brainchip.thecomicseries.com/comics/120 Things couldn't be that simple
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Dec 3, 2014 15:26
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If they're really smart, most of the Ulfs didn't release their inventions, so they would have a chance to see how the world changes before doing it.
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Dec 3, 2014 16:24
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