Sufficiently-advanced compatibility is indistinguishable from a time traveler learning every detail about your life, then traveling back to the present to seduce you.
It should be noted that this is the Skin Horse universe. Just because they’re wacko conspiracy theorists doesn’t mean we can rule out the strong likelihood that their spreads are identical simply because that’s the mathematically optimal way to lay out their objectively accurate information.
Conspiracy Theorists, yes. Wacko? I’m not too sure. They may actually be the most sane of anyone. As we’ve seen, Mr. Green & A-Sig have their fingers in several different pies. Jonah & Nera may be the only people outside of Mr. Green himself to have figured out that there are this many connections between all of those points on the chart.
Touché. Their conspiracy theories aren’t wacko. As for themselves…
Jonah — to be certain — is quite more than a half a bubble off plumb. I seem to recall seeing him hiding in a dressing room wearing Nera’s swimsuit and hearing it speak to him. Of course that was after getting stuck in a time loop at A-Sig and being killed a couple dozen times. Hard telling what other effects the malfunctioning Second Gate had on him.
Nera, on the other hand, seems to be — at least for the time being — reasonably well balanced. And she also died a few times at A-Sig. But she didn’t get the major exposure to the Second Gate.
By now both of them are almost certainly immune to anything that might induce reality blindness in normal people.
This Nera didn’t die at A-Sig. The Neras in a whole bunch of parallel universes did. She doesn’t know anything except for the final, optimised route Jonah took her on through the labs.
Here are the ones I can read. Please help with the others.
Cool Cyborg Stuff
Fxxt-Space [Foot-Space? First-Space?]
The Man with the Macho Cave
Bees
xxxart [Inter]national
Second Gate
Anasigma
The xxxx Society [Story?]
Chupacabra
?
The Institute
Project Skin Horse
Area 51
Whimsy Corp.
Crystal Cxxxx
Poughkeepsie
Wxxxr [xxxx]
Invisible Island
The Wxxxr one looks like it might be “Weather”. Possibly “Weather Control”?
It’s interesting that Jonah’s positioned Skin Horse so far from A-Sig, and also that there’s no line linking A-Sig to the Institute. This suggests there’s a lot he doesn’t know, or possibly that there’s a lot I’ve misunderstood.
If (as I surmise below in a failed attempt to reply to this note) “The xxxx Society [Story?]” is “The 19th Story”, then “The Man with the Macho Cave” is probably “The Men With the Attaché Cases”
Thank you so much, Brian Swetland, VillageWizard, Daibhid C & Efogoto!
So the revised list is:
Cool Cyborg Stuff
Four-Space
The Men with the Attaché Cases
Bees
xxxart [Inter]national
Second Gate
Anasigma
The 19th Story
Chupacabra
?
The Institute
Project Skin Horse
Area 51
Whimsy Corp.
Crystal Entities
Poughkeepsie
Weather [Control]
Invisible Island
and from Panel Four:
Txxx Txxx
Mxxx Sxxx
The only three mystery notes are the ones that are partially obscured.
xxxart [Inter]national
Txxx Txxx [not sure about second T]
Mxxx Sxxx [not sure about M and S]
My son insists this is true, but I’ve only read some bits of the books (to him) and Miss Zarves was definitely a viewpoint character in one chapter. This is incredibly confusing…
But… but it’s so much harder to do a proper Wall Of Crazy using only flatscreens! A PROPER Wall Of Crazy has to have stab-marks in it somewhere and a big splatter-stain where a coffee cup was thrown at it at 3 a.m.
Don’t forget broken shards of mirror for that dramatic “psychotic break” touch. And I agree, it’s very disappointing; there’s always duct-tape, but ehh.
Just wait until you see the source code that generated that virtual wall of crazy. Then you’ll see all the evidence of a psychotic breakdown you’ll ever need.
To be fair, the decline of print media has made proper string-and-pushpins Crazy Walls difficult. Cutting articles out of internet printouts just doesn’t have that same certain objet non identifié.
So… anyone got a way to format a web page for, say, a wiki to display hyperlinks between pages like that? Displaying web pages as notes, maybe with short summary, and the hyperlinks being the lines?
These might do the trick… Free and reasonably easy is: https://insightmaker.com/ Not so intuitive but also free and useful for pretty presentations: https://kumu.io/
(tried to post this earlier – no tsure it went through because I included URLs…) These might do the trick… Free and reasonably easy is: insightmaker Not so intuitive but also free and useful for pretty presentations is: kumu
Makes me think of the difference between two of my favourite occult police proceedural novels. In “London Falling,” they put leads up on a whiteboard with bits of tape connecting them. In “Rivers of London,” on the other hand, it all goes in the HOLMES 2 database. Guess which book is angstier?
I like that they were conducting independent investigations, yet have all the same cards in all the same places. Off-the-charts compatibility.
Either that, or he just copied his from when he saw hers in the future last time.
Or her “cutting edged tech” is a photocopier or camera
Sufficiently-advanced compatibility is indistinguishable from a time traveler learning every detail about your life, then traveling back to the present to seduce you.
It should be noted that this is the Skin Horse universe. Just because they’re wacko conspiracy theorists doesn’t mean we can rule out the strong likelihood that their spreads are identical simply because that’s the mathematically optimal way to lay out their objectively accurate information.
Conspiracy Theorists, yes. Wacko? I’m not too sure. They may actually be the most sane of anyone. As we’ve seen, Mr. Green & A-Sig have their fingers in several different pies. Jonah & Nera may be the only people outside of Mr. Green himself to have figured out that there are this many connections between all of those points on the chart.
Oh, absolutely. But then there’s the colander with springs all over it, and the theme song.
“‘Wacko’ and ‘right’ are not antonyms” is like, the thesis statement of this universe, y’know?
Touché. Their conspiracy theories aren’t wacko. As for themselves…
Jonah — to be certain — is quite more than a half a bubble off plumb. I seem to recall seeing him hiding in a dressing room wearing Nera’s swimsuit and hearing it speak to him. Of course that was after getting stuck in a time loop at A-Sig and being killed a couple dozen times. Hard telling what other effects the malfunctioning Second Gate had on him.
Nera, on the other hand, seems to be — at least for the time being — reasonably well balanced. And she also died a few times at A-Sig. But she didn’t get the major exposure to the Second Gate.
By now both of them are almost certainly immune to anything that might induce reality blindness in normal people.
This Nera didn’t die at A-Sig. The Neras in a whole bunch of parallel universes did. She doesn’t know anything except for the final, optimised route Jonah took her on through the labs.
String Theory goes digital…
Does String Theory involve cats?
Only cats owned by a man called Erwin.
I am so happy to see Nera and Jonah again.
“Choose” is possibly my favorite SH storyline.
Here are the ones I can read. Please help with the others.
Cool Cyborg Stuff
Fxxt-Space [Foot-Space? First-Space?]
The Man with the Macho Cave
Bees
xxxart [Inter]national
Second Gate
Anasigma
The xxxx Society [Story?]
Chupacabra
?
The Institute
Project Skin Horse
Area 51
Whimsy Corp.
Crystal Cxxxx
Poughkeepsie
Wxxxr [xxxx]
Invisible Island
and from Panel Four:
Txxx Txxx
Mxxx Sxxx
@Stig “Crystal Entities”, I think (which they mention in the previous strip)
Isn’t the second one Four-Space?
Poughkeepsie? I’ve got relatives there.
The Wxxxr one looks like it might be “Weather”. Possibly “Weather Control”?
It’s interesting that Jonah’s positioned Skin Horse so far from A-Sig, and also that there’s no line linking A-Sig to the Institute. This suggests there’s a lot he doesn’t know, or possibly that there’s a lot I’ve misunderstood.
The link is coded to be an invisible hyperlink, I’m sure.
If (as I surmise below in a failed attempt to reply to this note) “The xxxx Society [Story?]” is “The 19th Story”, then “The Man with the Macho Cave” is probably “The Men With the Attaché Cases”
Thank you so much, Brian Swetland, VillageWizard, Daibhid C & Efogoto!
So the revised list is:
Cool Cyborg Stuff
Four-Space
The Men with the Attaché Cases
Bees
xxxart [Inter]national
Second Gate
Anasigma
The 19th Story
Chupacabra
?
The Institute
Project Skin Horse
Area 51
Whimsy Corp.
Crystal Entities
Poughkeepsie
Weather [Control]
Invisible Island
and from Panel Four:
Txxx Txxx
Mxxx Sxxx
The only three mystery notes are the ones that are partially obscured.
xxxart [Inter]national
Txxx Txxx [not sure about second T]
Mxxx Sxxx [not sure about M and S]
These may be just too blurry or hidden.
Thanks again!
Oh, and here I was gonna suggest that “The xxxx Society” may have been “The Thule Society”, but I guess not. What’s the 19th Story?
And “Denver International Airport” doesn’t work for “xxxart International” either. Hmm…
It seems to be a story in a series of children’s books and cartoons about “Wayside School.”
Txxx Txxx
Could that be Transporter T[echnology]? What does anyone think?
“The xxxx Society [Story?]” = “The 19th Story”
There is no 19th story, there is no Miss. Zarves
My son insists this is true, but I’ve only read some bits of the books (to him) and Miss Zarves was definitely a viewpoint character in one chapter. This is incredibly confusing…
But… but it’s so much harder to do a proper Wall Of Crazy using only flatscreens! A PROPER Wall Of Crazy has to have stab-marks in it somewhere and a big splatter-stain where a coffee cup was thrown at it at 3 a.m.
Also, digital devices seem disappointingly averse to the occasional picture being pinned with darts / Dundee knife / tomahawk etc.
Don’t forget broken shards of mirror for that dramatic “psychotic break” touch. And I agree, it’s very disappointing; there’s always duct-tape, but ehh.
What kind of flowcharts are you guys making?
Just wait until you see the source code that generated that virtual wall of crazy. Then you’ll see all the evidence of a psychotic breakdown you’ll ever need.
To be fair, the decline of print media has made proper string-and-pushpins Crazy Walls difficult. Cutting articles out of internet printouts just doesn’t have that same certain objet non identifié.
So… anyone got a way to format a web page for, say, a wiki to display hyperlinks between pages like that? Displaying web pages as notes, maybe with short summary, and the hyperlinks being the lines?
Asking for a friend.
These might do the trick… Free and reasonably easy is: https://insightmaker.com/ Not so intuitive but also free and useful for pretty presentations: https://kumu.io/
(tried to post this earlier – no tsure it went through because I included URLs…) These might do the trick… Free and reasonably easy is: insightmaker Not so intuitive but also free and useful for pretty presentations is: kumu
Uh-oh! The org-chart!
Jeez. This just puts me in my place; at least two levels below you, Sir.
Makes me think of the difference between two of my favourite occult police proceedural novels. In “London Falling,” they put leads up on a whiteboard with bits of tape connecting them. In “Rivers of London,” on the other hand, it all goes in the HOLMES 2 database. Guess which book is angstier?
Poughkeepsie = where science fiction writers get their ideas from.
Invisible Island = from Daniel Pinkwater’s Lizard Music