Unzerbrechlich

There's only a few hours left to back "Parenting - an SMBC comic collection" on Kickstarter! "Christmas" is one of the comics that will be included in the book.

Original comic : www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-05-25

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Tokyo’s subway system is arguably one of the most complex in the world. The map itself can be an immediate turn-off for any unfamiliarized straphangar. But exactly how do all these lines run underground, overlapping as they carry hundreds of thousands of passengers each day?

I invited him to continue to explain whatever nightmarish facet of British culture had just occurred to him, and he was like “it was actually called Knightmare. They would put a prototype virtual reality helmet on a child, so they were blind, and a panel of their friends would have to steer them around, and all the adult actors were chewing the scenery - it was mildly stressful! and the adults did NOT want the kids to win.”

I was like, “are you sure this isn’t some mis-remembered dungeons and dragons thing?” Neither of us have played it, and in his wild youth Dr Glass was far more likely to be lying about his age in a pub, but the more elaborate he became (“you had to put food in your knapsack - the dragon puppets were frankly terrifying - the more I think about it, the more alarmingly advanced the CGI must have been”), the more I was convinced, except surely this is the sort of thing everyone would have heard of, right?

No, apparently, he wasn’t making it up.

Knightmare was a OTT, strange, weirdly elaborately costumed 1980s-1990s British medieval fantasy game show, aimed at lightly tormenting a panel of schoolchildren, like this absolute mashed-up fever dream that feels like it would have been forbidden in America for encouraging cult behaviour in children. And the 1980s British schoolchildren who play it are strangely chill about it.

What a fever dream.

Severance // 9 to 5

The important thing about wool is that it continues to keep you warm even when it’s soaking wet.

Other natural fibers don’t do this. In fact, quite the opposite. Campers and boaters are usually familiar with the phrase, “cotton kills.” If you’re wet in cotton or linen, your clothes actually sap heat from your body.

If you sink in a lake in late October like I did today, staying warm is important. I was rescued long before I would’ve actually died, but cold makes your muscles seize up, which isn’t good if you have to swim to land.

Which brings me around to life jackets. If the water’s cold enough, you may only have five-ten minutes until your muscles seize (today I probably had 40-60, more than enough time to get to land if I hadn’t been picked up), and you’ll drown.

In a life jacket, even in extremely cold water, you can float semi-conscious for perhaps another 30 minutes or so before you actually freeze to death, which is usually when someone rescues you.

What’s more, you probably know that moving around on land warms you up. Jumping jacks, jogging in place, etc.

In water, moving actually makes you colder. You need to stay still curled up in a ball, which you can only do in a life jacket.

In wool AND life jacket, you’re warm, and your head’s above water, which is pretty much your only and entire goal.

Yep! A really simple “experiment” I learned as a kid and now use in my own courses is sticking your hand in ice water. Compare moving it around in the water to curling it up in a fist. The contrast is stark!

To increase your survival time in on cold water, you want to curl up! If you’re with others, you want to huddle!