Socially Radioactive

It totally was, and was so worth it.

Byron Hardie

It would figure that I would have the 236th "like" as U-236, per Wikipedia, "is neither fissile with thermal neutrons, nor very good fertile material, but is generally considered a nuisance and long-lived radioactive waste." Welcome to my half-life.

kaitou

My questions have been answered

Dylan T

People all over the world are socially isolated and we have the Internet...

Brian

How can nuclear reactor AIs be socially isolated other by choice, especially if you have a simulation space like this?

z

Nuclear reactors are simply radiant at parties

Bagge

very much like 'Clifford's very bad, no good day (Wilde Life)

Tim Williams

Might enjoy it, I've heard it can be a real blast...

This entire story arc should be named: "Roko's very bad, no good day."

All that Cherenkov radiation makes them blue...

Andrew Diseker

If reactors can get depressed, I’d hate to see what happens when they go nuclear.

Andrea Andrew

Could be worse, could be existential bombs questioning external reality...

Andrew Diseker

May's been racking up some good karma recently. Maybe she and Roko could team up to provide peer counseling for the reactor AIs.

Bruce Steinberg

I am not sure I would want help from Azathoth

Brian

Riko is ok, thank God I really have come to like her. Good news she can have a fashion show and new look soon

Kyle Major

What is great about QC-verse is that they don't have all answers, and mainly winging it along the way, just like we do here. It is refreshing to see after many other sci-fi universes where all of it is just One Big Problem Waiting For One Good Solution.

Evgeniy Semyonov

So is this whole strip a set-up for the nuclear reactor party pun at the bottom? I would be so impressed if it was. :-)

Mooster

I have healthcare questions. Is the human healthcare system US-style, or some form of universal care? If the humans have universal care, why don't robots? (If robots had universal care, Faye and Bubbles would not be collecting cash, they'd be filling out insurance paperwork.)

David F

Rampancy is a Bad Thing with AIs controlling anything important.

Noise

Well, her current job appears to be (lemon) AIDE...

Geo (Overand)

Did you learn anything from Marathon? Not everything needs to be controlled by a fully sentient AI.

Turing Eret

"Depressed Sapient SCADA Systems" is a beautiful little worldbuilding nugget, and it just oozes implications. There are human analogs for that sort of role, like ER Docs and various industrial jobs. Most of those roles use shift and redundancy systems, so a single person doesn't carry all of the load or have to work 24/7.

I love these journeys into AI mindspace.

William Cole

Loving the more in-depth AI characters :)

RobTwinkyMcStinkyWinky

I wonder if Spookybot’s greyhounds double as therapy dogs?

Bruce Steinberg

While I agree I also recognize the impracticality of providing them with such powerful systems. In the long run it's probably smarter to give them the extra power but government agencies tend to be terribly short sited and greedy and I doubt that is any different in the QC verse.

Gregory Norris

Now I feel sorry for the depressed Nuclear A.Is. DAMNYOUJEPH!

Denise Webber

Such stationary AIs should be provided with telepresence holograms, like Ship up in orbit, to allow for off-site activities, and the processing power to multitask running the reactor and the telepresence.

Czarzhan

Also the reactor AIs have slow reaction times. For safety.

William Burns

Puntastic

MikeT

The problem is that the reactor AIs keep offering to provide the fireworks.

Dean Reilly

The last one I heard about had gone fission...

Leak

I do NOT want to live in a world that contains depressed nuclear reactors. Just... No.

BEST PUN

Mordaeus

Given I'd rather they continued running the nuclear reactor...no.

Chris Crowther

I mean, would you invite them?

ysth

I'm very worried about what a depressed nuclear reactor might do.

Erin Hartshorn

That pun. Jeph, you magnificent bastard <3

Tim Eldred

That pun XD

Frédéric B.

Industrial Strength Banana Smoothies?

Andrew

So...does that mean Crushbot supplied himself with that insurance policy? If his occupation is "Crushbot", why does that involve bananas? There's just too many questions.

Dylan T

When life gives you Lemon, make lemonade!

Kriss Pang