[1097] Worsening Safety Situation
└ posted on Thursday, 11 July 2019, by Novil
- Aid worker: The safety situation in the area around the refugee camp for the Germans has worsened dramatically. We have massive problems with dealing and related crimes.
- Sandra: What are they selling? Weed? Meth?!
- Aid worker: Neither.
- Dealer: Hey, girl, check out these high-precision ball bearings! First one is free!
- Thief: You won’t believe what fell off a truck this morning!
- Engineer: A solid state laser with a pulse duration of 550 femtoseconds and a maximum pulse energy of 50 microjoule?! That’s exactly what I need!
Is that a CNC turning center in the shadows of that tent?
It’s worse than we thought, they’re selling components measured in *metric*
What, no German chocolate?
Metric bearings are the least of your worries – wait until they make their own cars and insist on driving at 5/8 posted speed limit – until they hit the Autobahn of course then you will not see them for dust!
Sorry to ruin the joke, but…
Besides the demeanor, what’s illegal about ball bearings?
@ Jack:
The ball bearings are made according to DIN? 😉
BTW: Is there an ANSI standard for ball bearings, anyhow?
@ Jack:
it’s kinda illegal if you’re dealing things that are unlawfully caught. those lasers fell of from a truck, it’s stealing. the high precision bearings seems to be suspicious too
And this is how you take over a country . . .
MidoriLuna wrote:
So, basically Germans are the best possible refugees you can get:
(1) They are highly lawful
(2) They deal in high precision lasers
(3) Their worst religious conflicts are about soccer
-> If you are not careful, the whole country will descent into lawfulness, economic boom and utter peace 😉
‘Exactly what you need’ for What? Building a lightsaber?
They have to work on the marketing. A good engineer doesn’t make a good sales-man automatically.
@ joshua:
You joke, but one time I actually did receive some mail order cam bearings that were hotly fenced. Real shame…they were so precisely milled and rolled so smooth. But I can’ accept them in good conscience, who knows what bloody story led them to me. Probably something that would make a great sequel to “The Wire”…
There is a subtle hint in the last Panel that everything in this arc is fictional: A German engineer would never ever put a screwdriver in the pocket of his trousers! Trust me, I am one of these.
Damn, they’re worse than the Swiss clockwork dealers.
@ Crestlinger:
No, that’s for a blaster. For a lightsaber, you need a blade emitter shroud, the emitter matrix (DO NOT INVERT), a Kyber crystal, and a standard power cell. User preference: Choices of casing, handgrip, belt ring or retractable cord, number of blades, energy gate and modulation circuits (usually to adjust the blade length or a low-power setting for nonlethal/training mode.)
Sllimkered wrote:
You’ve never been over here, have you?
Crestlinger wrote:
50 µJ wouldn’t make a very powerful saber, I guess.
This reminds me of the Russians shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. You could get practically anything in exchange for vodka, there are speedbikes still using gigantic titanium chainrings to break 60 MPH today that were bought with a pint up front and a gallon on delivery. I just wonder what the refugees are swapping their tech for.
@ clickbait:
Not sure where “Here” is for you, but yes I have travelled extensively in both USA and Europe – Europeans and Germans in particular being by far the better drivers – or at least abiding by the rules.
Do I need to explain “travelling at 5/8 posted speed” to you?@ clickbait:
50 microJoules may not sound like much, but it’s delivered in an incredibly small amount of time. At 550 femtoseconds, that’s a power output of 9,000,000 Watts – or about four thousand times what my electrical power socket is rated to deliver without melting down. And – light travels at about 1 foot per nanosecond – that pulse is only about one micrometer long. High precision indeed!
But it’s also very important to know what the pulse *rate* is. In many research applications it’s useful to send a brief pulse through, then sit back and *wait* a while to watch what happened. Microseconds, possibly even tens of microseconds. So you may well be able to power that laser from a standard power point … and I think the full output of a power point is the right ballpark for a lightsabre.
Sllimkered wrote:
Nah. But my personal experience as a German is, that there’s not that many people in my home country that consider speed limit as anything but a kind reminder.
When you’re on the main road of a mid size city you can expect the *average* speed of traffic to be closer to 70km/h than to the allowed 50. In many cases even the traffic lights are optimized for speeds way above the officially limit. (In my home town, if you stick exactly to the limit you will get a red light on every other signal, drive 60 instead of 50 and you’ll see only green lights)
(For your convenience: 50km/h is about 31 mph, 60 would be like 37 and 70 km/h would be 43 mph)
Rachel Barker wrote:
I stand corrected. Somehow I was only thinking about single pulses with long intervals (like over a second or so) between them.
@ clickbait:
at MHz it would be plenty.
Arent wrote:
Which makes this a very, very ‘politically incorrect’ arc considering the actual refugee-situation in Germany (and Sweden) with religious conflicts, drugs, violent crimes, etc. Including increasing sex-crimes (at least in Sweden) and refugees supporting ISIS. I raise my hat to Novil for these elegant jokes, but you should all know that this arc would be condemned as alt-right in liberal and leftish groups in Sweden. 🙂 I actually think Germany might be more forgiving in this matter.
Opus the Poet wrote:
FOOD.
It’s hard to find decent bread in the US. 😉 (I’m talking about REAL bread, not the pale spongy stuff that’s used for sandwiches.)
If I ever had to move/flee/migrate to any country outside of central Europe, bread and some other kinds of food would be what I missed the most.
Marteri wrote:
This whole arc is clearly just satire. His playing with prejudices in a very over the top way. Just look at some of the outfits at the last panel of http://www.sandraandwoo.com/2019/06/27/1093-die-flut-the-flood/
The first three Germans in that “flood” are just hilarious (yes, you might be able to find people dressed like that, but you’d have to search for them, good luck with that)
I consider myself being rather “leftish” and I find this strip really, really funny so far.
@ clickbait:
I’m told real coffee is practically unknown in the US, also.
persia wrote:
Dunno. From what I’ve heard, German coffee companies buy the junk that other European companies wouldn’t touch. When I was in the states, I hadn’t been that much of a coffee junkie.
Well, from my experience what they call coffe in Germany and Austria is basically brown water with slight tinge of coffe. Common rule is to get your coffe shot before crossing the border. Weird though, the ground beans mix they sell in shops is perfectly normal (at least in Austria), they just dillute it massively when making the drink.
This bears no relation to actual Germans.
The majority don’t even know what a ball bearing is.
@ Bong:
Is nothing sacred? At least let us keep our stereotypes!
Arent wrote:
You know, at one time there were some German regugees who build a Saturn V rocket which propelled the Apollo spacecraft to the Moon. (Wernher von Braun and his team.)
New Number 2 wrote:
The German is the one selling the laser. The man with the screwdriver is not German.
Powree has put the screwdriver in his trousers pocket to show that from the German point of view he is already sub human so why not corrupt him with stolen goods.
hkmaly wrote:
You know, at one time there were some German regugees who build a Saturn V rocket which propelled the Apollo spacecraft to the Moon. (Wernher von Braun and his team.)
Calling him a “refugee” is … pretty far from the reality.
Einstein and some of the guys working on the A bomb might qualify as “refugees” since they did leave their homes before their situation became unbearable.
Von Braun was a “valuable asset” to both Nazi Germany *and* the post war US nobody ever forced him to “flee” anything.
@ hkmaly:
In for a paperclip,.. My understanding is Von Braun and crew, and their Russian counterparts, were offered clemency in exchange for their experience making rockets that worked.
You build us a Saturn, and we won’t look too closely at who you had building your last toys, or where they were pointed.
clickbait wrote:
If something goes wrong with the 90.91 megawatt power supply, it’s likely to make a very powerful something.
@ Marteri:
One side note: when talking about “increased sex crimes” you should take into account that the laws in many countries, including Sweden, Germany and the US have been drastically changed in the last few years. (I’m neither claiming they’re too strict now, nor that they were too lax then, just stating the fact they were CHANGED).
So should be no surprise that the numbers did change. That’s a shift in perception. There might be a shift in criminal activity too, but to see this you’d have to take the change to the law into account as well.
Marteri wrote:
You might be right! At first I assumed that Novil was making one of the usual liberal defenses of mass migration (see my comment on the last comic), but now I wonder whether he might be making a sly nationalist case against migration by invidiously contrasting his imaginary high-functioning German refugees with the hugely problematic flood of culturally alien adventurers that Europe is actually receiving.
Eh, probably not. Goodthinking liberals are notoriously unselfaware, and it’s more likely that Novil simply hasn’t noticed that this arc has an alternative interpretation that, if spelled out explicitly, would get him uninvited from all the best social events. Still, not entirely sure…
@ PsihoKekec:
You’re probably just asking for a coffee. In the Vienna area, especially if you’re asking in English, you’ll likely get a “Verlängerter” (extended with water). In Vienna, people will generally ask for a “grosser Brauner”, which is a double espresso with milk.
Sllimkered wrote:
Only some Autobahns have no speed limit, generally the older ones as I understand it.
Can I be a “goodthinking liberal”, too?
Pretty please with sugar on top?
Beats been called “rightwinged blockhead” which probably is the opposite, right?
Right?
Owen Smith wrote:
Let’s put it that way. Saying “a general speed limit would be a good idea” in a German political discussion is pretty much like saying “a stricter control over fire arms would be a good idea”.
You may have as many strong arguments in your favor as you like … the result is invariably the same every time:
Some people might openly say “(s)he might have a point there” …
But all in all you’re just asking for a massive shit-storm and being accused of making “unreasonable requests” and trying to take away the people’s freedom …
For example some one DARED to suggest a speed limit of about 110 mph (yes miles, 180 in km/h) just a few months back … I bet he’s still running scared.
So basically, the choices are brown water or espresso but with stuff in it. No actual coffee, either way. I’ll drink an espresso no problem, but for the love of the roast don’t put milk in it!
joshua wrote:
That’s assuming they were stolen. “Fell off a truck” is usually a euphemism for a knockoff that undercuts legitimate suppliers, not a literal description. The problem here would be that the German refugees are making and selling components on the street corner, presumably without sales tax or patents, and hurting the companies that would normally produce the components commercially.
@ clickbait:
Look for bakeries, supermarkets with their own bakery, and Jewish delis.
I found the same thing in urban France. Croissants that tasted like cardboard. Vietnamese bakeries had the best bread.
Germany in chaos, may come true. The Berlin prosecutor stated the city may no longer be governable. Fascist gangs, police infiltrated by religious fanatics.
@ New Number 2:
…Actually, That One Is Probably American.
interventor wrote:
You should take reports like these with a grain of salt.
Don’t forget that us Germans, we love to whine about how doomed we all are and stuff. Thus remember that angst and weltschmerz are words you borrowed from *us*. Of course there are problems. Of course Berlin has more than a fair share of those. 5 Million people always means there’s some chaos and a higher crime rate than compared to a small sleepy town …
All in all Germans have a well documented tendency to lament about problems other people would love to have.
Of course that’s a cliche, too.
interventor wrote:
Hm. Like sour-dough bread with at least some amount of rye in it? Bread that you can actually spread butter on without destroying it? A real bread should stay fresh for several days and still taste good …
@ clickbait:
Good heavens, where do all you gourmets live, Hoboken? Here in Portland I can find great bread, wonderful coffee and beer as good as any I drank in Germany.