Technically, very technically, he’s not wrong.
Aug 2 2023: Comic delayed until tomorrow. Too much going on today, sorry.
Today's edition of the Secret Commentary is empty, because Dave failed to come up with something for it.
Technically, very technically, he’s not wrong.
Aug 2 2023: Comic delayed until tomorrow. Too much going on today, sorry.
Sooner or later Todd will need to start learning Sarnothi, too, just to keep up with what Selkie is doing
Has it ever been brought up that adoption is a Sarnothi thing also? That they even comprehend it? I remember when Selkie first saw Todd’s parents – that they are black – she immediately said, “YOU’RE ADOPTED TOO!”
I know that would probably be my first thought if I saw a black couple with a white kid, or a white couple with an oriental kid – adoption.
Selkie lived for 3 years at an orphanage, she would have learned a lot about adoption and how to tell if someone is probably adopted during that time. Those from Sarnoth may have a very different mindset about children who are raised by someone other than their biological parents.
It might even just be a language issue – the word she’s using might specifically mean ‘father by blood’.
Or, equally likely, he’s trying to make sense of the interspecies part.
You have to be careful about stuff like that though. Sometimes it is recessive stuff in the genes popping up, while other times it is a mutation. Albinism, for example, could cause a black couple to have a white child. Even with two blond or red haired parents, you still could have a mutation result in a black haired child.
Of course he’s not wrong.
He’s strong(k)!
Just had a thought. Her accent.
She spoke Sarnothi for 5 years. But for the last 4 years she has spoken English. I wonder what that has done to her accent? So not only does she have the vocabulary of a five year old, but she should not be pronouncing the words correctly. Hmmm.
Yes, humans can lay an egg.
The phrase “lay an egg” means: To produce a failure or flop; to do something which is unsuccessful.
Interesting use of that phrase, given that creatures who actually do lay eggs are doing the opposite of producing a failure. Eggs themselves are what allowed aquatic animals to adapt to land (if I’m correctly recalling that one annoying video about the history of the world… the one with the line “the sun is a deadly laser”), and eggs are famously good at protecting their contents from harm by virtue of how tough that shell is and the shape it is so it can withstand pressures that other shapes can’t.
IRL, eggs come in all forms and aquatic animals were (and still are) laying eggs long before anything came up onto the land. It’s eggs with “shells” that allowed animals to adapt to dry places, and even before that some found ways to protect the egg from drying out while still living on land with out needing shells.
EGGS pre date shells by a billion or so years. of course SEX predates eggs by a 100-200 million years or or so. DEEP time is a hobby of mine.
To an extent, this is both right and wrong (the idiom, not the biological sense). To ‘lay an egg’ (probably) comes from sports (under debate would be which sport [cricket or baseball are the main contenders], and which kind of animal the egg comes from), and the fail or flop would be for the team doing the laying (of the egg). For the team getting an egg, its great. Of course, if one team is laying the egg it doesn’t mean the other side is doing well, it just means the team doing the egg-laying is doing so badly they can quite effectively lose on their own. To lay an egg is, effectively, to fail so bad that others don’t really have to help them along. It was said Wall Street laid an egg on Black Monday, for instance.
Of course, there’s debate about even this origin, but the phrase was definitely in the parlance by the early 20th century.
Fun fact: even in humans, albeit for a brief time until the placenta forms, a fertilized egg depends on a yolk sac. It’s another wonderful and fascinating link we have to our distant evolutionary past.
It all hinges on the word “lay”.
So what I’m taking away from this conversation is that the Sarnothi language has its own word for “human”, but Selike doesn’t know it. Is that correct?