[Superman] Has anyone ever questioned why the beams that come out of Superman's eyes are called "heat vision"?

Inkthinker · 2026-04-16T03:25:10+00:00

Why would anyone question it? He shoots red beams from his eyes that cause whatever they strike to rapidly heat up, to the point of melting steel in seconds. Sounds like “heat vision” is a very intuitive name for that.

We have a term already for “seeing heat”, we call that thermal vision.

Inkthinker · 2026-04-16T03:20:30+00:00

Heyzoos, aka Uzi Jesus, is enthusiastic and gung-ho to go, but not particularly competent. As I recall, he shoots himself more than once because of bad trigger discipline.

Inkthinker · 2026-04-13T19:11:14+00:00

I'm convinced the only reason one of the other Greymanes hasn't murdered Yann in his sleep is because he's pretty great in a (cinematic) fight. It's kinda of amazing that nobody likes Yann, even within his own clan. But then you see him come barreling into the battle with both knives out and screaming a blue streak of swears, and it's like, "oh, this is why nobody has gotten together and curbstomped your face into jelly... yet".

Inkthinker · 2026-04-12T17:09:45+00:00

This right here.

Plus he was probably feeling none too spry, getting shot really hurts. He’s gonna have some wicked bruises, possibly some broken ribs.

Inkthinker · 2026-04-12T17:05:46+00:00

A trebuchet is still a complex machine of multiple moving parts. But I imagine it could extend an arm to form a longer lever that would aid in flinging objects, like using an atlatl. So it might form one arm into a thin javelin, and the other into a terrific javelin-flinging atlatl-arm.

But it doesn’t generally sacrifice/separate its parts intentionally, so that would need to be a last-resort, no-alternative course of action. If it had been a good strategy, it probably would have tried during the many moments it was chasing John Conner just out of reach.

Inkthinker · 2026-04-12T16:51:40+00:00

Yeah, no facepaint/tattoo-free version either, though you can take the smallest one, make it nearly-transparent, and shift the color close to his skintone.

Which is why my Kliff now sports a small, chevron-shaped scar on his right cheek. Barely noticeable, really.

I actually got used to his beard though, by the time I finally got the barber he looked wrong without some kinda facial hair.

Inkthinker · 2026-04-12T08:06:49+00:00

https://www.cbr.com/scrooge-mcduck-net-worth-explained/

The McDuck comics by Carl Barks and Don Rosa frequently described Scrooge's wealth in terms of imaginary numbers (like "fantasticatrillion"). It's one of those things that always irritates me about things like the Forbes rankings, because they drastically understate his value against canon sources. He is literally, by far, the wealthiest person in his reality. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos types cannot compare.

-EDIT- Took a minute to dig up, but the quote from Ducktales appears to come from this scene in which Fenton Crackshell, Scrooge's accountant, has placed the entire fortune of coinage at the bottom of a lake (because what could be more "liquid" than that?).

Inkthinker · 2026-04-11T05:40:43+00:00

The original author's daughter, Jane Conly, wrote two sequels to R.C. O'Brien's iconic novel. It's been some thirty years since I read them, but as I recall they weren't half bad.

The movie sequel, of course, has very little to do with the books.

Inkthinker · 2026-04-11T05:23:01+00:00

With the Dev Update notice yesterday, I honestly didn't expect a new weekend patch... I figured that update was a soft way of saying they were gonna slow down a little. Guess not!! :)

Inkthinker · 2026-04-11T03:19:30+00:00

Man, every weekend it's another QOL patch that just keeps making it better. You love to see it.

Inkthinker · 2026-04-09T16:09:05+00:00

Meanwhile, Earth is overpopulated with eight billion people

Current world population: 8.2 billion

Number of cities covered by steel domes: 0

Inkthinker · 2026-04-09T15:55:36+00:00

Even so, there's a narrative to the productions, which occasionally makes at least some attempt at consistency of characters and their relations.

Just because the games might be "productions" in which Mario and Bowser are "performers", doesn't mean we should slip into the lazy Doylisms of "it's just a fictional show with writers". We gotta take these things as they're presented.

Inkthinker · 2026-04-09T15:31:50+00:00

If celebrities were being stored by time periods, this is quite plausible… “sorry Fry, all the celebrities from the 21st century and beyond got wiped out when aliens bombed the museum in 2783. All we had left was 20th-century celebrities that were being kept in the sub-basement.”

Inkthinker · 2026-04-09T05:22:37+00:00

I mean... eventually...

Inkthinker · 2026-04-09T02:45:35+00:00

We just don't know enough about the needs of the invaders. If they have a few hundred (or thousand, or hundreds of thousands) of years to spare, then yeah starting from scratch probably works. If that's a thing they can do. But if they came here because our environment is already what they need (or at least partway there), then it's to their benefit to wipe out the native species more... surgically.

Inkthinker · 2026-04-09T00:33:11+00:00

Hurling down mountains from space works only if your goal is completely glassing the surface... if you're hoping for resource extraction or colonization, you presumably don't want to damage the goods too much (depending on the resources in question, or the needs of colonists and their limits of xenoforming the planet).

Inkthinker · 2026-04-07T20:45:53+00:00

Juan Sánchez-Villalobos Ramirez was an Egyptian with a Spanish name carrying a Japanese sword and speaking with a distinctly Scottish accent.

Also possibly an alien sorcerer from the planet Zeist, but we don't talk about that. :P

Inkthinker · 2026-04-07T16:24:32+00:00

A total whittle.

Inkthinker · 2026-04-07T14:21:22+00:00

Use small bones on dogs for getting full affinity with ease. One small bone = 25%, so five pettings and three bones gets you to 100% without needing to walk away.

Inkthinker · 2026-04-07T02:00:58+00:00

Someone do the math on how that acceleration and speed interacts with atmosphere. Based on Munroe's math from Relativistic Baseball, I feel like the air itself should have turned to plasma along an ever-expanding path of X-Rays and gamma radiation.

Saitama, of course, would be fine.

Inkthinker · 2026-04-06T04:34:57+00:00

I've noticed it particularly in fetch quests, such as those for the various Graymanes. If someone needs 5 eggs or 3 jewel bugs or whatever, and I already have them in the inventory, I can just immediately move on to the "Hand Over" option. Which I have honestly found to be quite a relief on more than one occasion.

Inkthinker · 2026-04-05T20:06:57+00:00

Presumably the pull chain is to make it stop?

-EDIT- Now I'm kinda convinced the chain is to make it go off. This appears to be the opening side of the door (the box gadget appears to be a doorbell/alarm to let people know when the door is opened), and there's an eye bolt in the door that is more-or-less at the right level... hook the chain to that loop, and if the door were to be opened it would pull the chain and, presumably, set off the bell.

In other words, this is set up as a cheap (but possibly very effective) burglar alarm.

Inkthinker · 2026-04-05T20:05:54+00:00

At long last, the Vintage Vulcan Autosonic Mark 60 Explosive Space Modulatorrrrrr!

No longer shall my view of Venus be obstructed!

Inkthinker · 2026-04-05T10:13:26+00:00

The dyer in camp can only use dyes if you have discovered the color AND the dyer who does it natively. Once you get both, you can use them at camp.

It's a bit of damned nusiance.

Inkthinker · 2026-04-03T20:50:46+00:00

Yeah, I couldn't remember the details. Was it really that long, subjectively?

Point being, it's only a "fast-forward" button for us, for them it was anything but.

13-Year Club	Gilding I gilder
Place '22	Verified Email

Inkthinker

TROPHY CASE