Mothematician

“it’s chosen from a list of available tubes” and where do you think those tubes came from? The tube tree? Do you think the press to cut the metal is a natural occurring formation? That the company that made the wood that was bought bu this other company that was bought by the other company just appeared out of thin air without having to be grown, and all the processes that entails (like legal issues mentioned in the comic.) that glasses are shaped that way by coincidence and not literally centuries of trial and error testing to figure out the best vessel shape?

Because yes, maybe your glass from walmart didn’t redo all the testing and planning from scratch, but someone did it at some point. It didn’t appear in the air from nowhere.

Like, the thing is, those dumb design decisions actually do involve a lot of work that nobody ever thinks about and is completely invisible. We know about mining and logging and manufacturing, we don't know about the hours twenty people spent in multiple meetings making a tiny decision. I've been in those meetings! I've been in the meetings where people spend an hour discussing one sentence in a two hundred page document. The meetings are so tedious and the people involved care about the details so much. Just because you haven't seen the meeting doesn't mean it didn't happen.

And it's really important to think about that. When us consumers have a product with something that seems like a really dumb choice, we can assume everyone involved was an idiot and we'd do it better, or we can think about how maybe the manufacturer they sourced from didn't have the correct size available and it'd be three times as expensive to go elsewhere, or if they made the choice we wanted it would have caused other issues. We spend our lives thinking that we could do things better than an expert, because we don't take expertise seriously. But sourcing lumber is really fucking hard! Making sure products follow safety requirements is hard!

O-okay, let’s get into this, shall we?

*grumbling* Would you rather work for Lex Luthor or the Joker- *shouting* Lex Luthor, by like, a fucking mile!

Yes, yes, working for Lex Luthor is basically like being an Amazon employee that makes weapons of mass destruction, which is bad. Lex is like Donald Trump mixed with Mark Zuckerberg mixed with Jeffrey fucking Bezos, it’s not a great mix. He does not treat his henchmen well. Their lives still suck, and they are probably monitored on how long they take piss breaks for.

But let’s analyze what working for Lex Luthor is like versus the fucking Joker. With Lex you probably get a dental plan, a health plan, a paycheck, and the guy that you’re fighting really cares about human life. Superman will hit you just long enough to knock you out, so you’re not a treat, so he can stop the problem.

If you work for the Joker, your payment is you’re not fucking dead. You say one wrong thing? Bang. You don’t laugh at his jokes? Bang! You do laugh at his jokes? Bang! You think Joker gives a fuck about a henchman?

Who’s Lex Luthor’s right-hand-man? It’s a woman, you sexist, her name is Mercy, she’s awesome. Who’s Joker’s right-hand-man? Bob? Nah, he’s dead. Harley? Tried to kill her multiple times. Slappy? Who the fuck is Slappy?

The best case scenario of working for the Joker is that you fight the fucking Batman! And that presents its own fucking list of problems. If you stop Superman as a Lex Luthor henchman, Lex’ll be pissed, but he’ll be at least happy that Superman was caught. If you stop Batman as a Joker henchman, you better have a fucking coffin picked out yesterday.

This isn’t a fun hypothetical question, this is a screening technique that the doctors at Arkham use to determine your mental health! There is a right and a wrong answer to this question, and the correct one is Lex fucking Luthor. Thank you for coming to my fucking Ted Talk, have a nice day.

I have no idea where I was going with this, I was doodling during a conversation

Anyway yeah I'm glad for everyone who's able to ignore their CAGAB but I can't. I'm agender AND transfem, and being transfem affects my daily life in a specific way that I can't detach myself from.

New character I'm working on.

My vision here is less that Rocky is uniquely Weird, because I think it's way more fun if this is a cultural difference between Eridian cultures that Rocky doesn't bother to explain to Grace until they arrive on Erid.

Here, the Eridian equivalent of Project Hail Mary is an equally international one, with the best and brightest minds on Erid being brought together from across the world: of course. But representatives of one country/region on Erid kind of dominate - whoever has the most resources and geopolitical power is probably gonna be one of the heavy hitters! The director of the project and a lot of the important scientists, technicians, and decision makers come from the ♫♫♫ country. However, ♫♫♫ is in the northern hemisphere, and you can't build a space elevator anywhere but the equator. And Rocky is from the not-nearly-as-politically-powerful equatorial country where the space elevator was actually built - that's how he first got involved with the project.

So it's a culture clash thing: Rocky's equatorial country culture sees clothing as entirely optional, something you put on as necessary for weather conditions or to decorate yourself for an event. But in everyday life? Who cares who caaaaares if your carapace is out. You ♫♫♫ans are SO weird about this. But because ♫♫♫ culture dominates the Tau Ceti Project, wearing clothing is expected on the job even though Rocky thinks it's stupid and is not shy about saying so.

At the end Grace is living and teaching in Rocky's equatorial country ("near the space elevator" but also "do not separate them") so the Eridians he sees in daily life are generally not wearing clothes, but a Lot of the doctors and scientists he'd be working with from across the world are.

This also means that culturally it's the reverse of Grace only teaching Rocky American English: as they get closer to Erid, Rocky is like. Okay. There will be a lot of scientists who will want to talk to you. You should PROBABLY learn to speak at least a little 𝅗𝅥♫♫♫♩♩. And Grace is like what. I've gotten pretty good at Eridian! And Rocky is like no you've gotten okay at 𝅗𝅥♩♬♬𝅝♩♩. But uh the main language of the Tau Ceti project was 𝅗𝅥♫♫♫♩♩ and that's what most of the scientists speak, as a first language or otherwise. And Grace goes oh. I never considered Erid had multiple languages too. Maybe I'm a bad person. Why did you speak in 𝅗𝅥♩♬♬𝅝♩♩ then? And Rocky goes because that's my language?? When we met and I first started talking to you, I didn't exactly expect to be taking you home with me!

So cultural preparation focuses on another round of language crash courses, which Grace is not very good at because he can't really tell what makes 𝅗𝅥♫♫♫♩♩ sound any different from 𝅗𝅥♩♬♬𝅝♩♩ and Rocky is not the best at explaining because 𝅗𝅥♫♫♫♩♩ is his second language so like. He can't explain WHY any of it is the way it is, that's just how he learned it okay!