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Publish Or Perish (Patreon)

Published:
2023-02-16 02:11:49
Imported:
2026-06

Content

goin' grrrrreaaaattttttttt

Files

Comments

Wynn Donivan

Yikes, that's a moral dilemma, alright

Chauncey

CDM is a “susy” apparently

Tannerbot

I can't help but think she'd do well with structure.

Matt Grayson

It's a question, and the answer is NO.

Bill Silvia

She needs therapy, a friend, and a supervisor, in that order.

Nilbog Nerw

So.. after all that, she just hopes that Claire turns down the job so she can avoid consequences, and at least stall long enough to die of rat born illness? I mean I knew she was terrible, but hell

Likeablejerk

oooooor Claire actually helps create enough order that a brilliant person gets some actual direction that leads to great things, rather than just letting them stew alone in a sub-basement with no plan.

Heli

She needs a responsible adult. 🙃

Chauncey

Maybe I just reached that point in life, but I don’t know what either means. Like, I understand “sus” but, “susy” sounds like a different thing.

Andrea Andrew

I feel for Liz. Being successful only to do nothing (basically, the last three years for the world). However, a lot of her situation was her own doing. She could’ve accepted Moray’s help, actually bonded with the other people/AI on Cubetown, and figured out a productive job. She probably avoided rent payment.

Matthew Rice

The pleasures and perils of flying under the radar.

Rich Holmes

Liz, if this helps you get on track: I don't know what you want to do with dark matter, but discovering what it is would be a good first step.

David Durant

Many thoughts on self-vs-group responsibility around all of this but mostly I'm confused that the people who hang out here haven't paired her off with anyone yet. Are we slipping...?

Chauncey

Really though. There isn’t much I can’t do or figure out, and I’m praised for it often. But, given nothing to do, I usually resort to burning time on YouTube or something. I need a direction. Sometimes I need it from someone else.

Walt Donovan

CDM is cold dark matter. The list below is for possible sources of it. Is it a scalar field? Is it an electroweak force (combination of electromagnetic and weak? And SUSY is supersymmetry, which the Large Hadron Collider was built to look for proof of existince, and it failed to find anything. Probably blocked by sophons.

Thisguy

She’s never embraced the Gene Et attitude of “no one knows what I’m doing, everything will fine.” But that guy is inexplicably lucky…

FeyOne

Yeah, this is my feeling for this. It sounds to me like her problem is that she's a kid who didn't know enough to ask for help on her own, and CubeTown doesn't have a structure that would have forced help onto her. I could easily see Claire fixing that simply by talking with her, finding out what's going on, and then just telling her that she is now working with someone who currently needs resources with this girls skills. Boom, all problems solved.

Seadrake

I feel for Liz so much now.

Rich Holmes

Matt: Top quark proponents kept doing the same thing, eventually someone found it just to shut them up.

Andrew Mitchell

The real question is why does cube down actually have a sub-basement? I mean, it's a floating city!!

Leaflemming

My feeling is she’s Claire’s new hobby, and possibly Marten’s new job.

Diptych

Why she lives in the sub-basement theory: She pushed people away hard enough that no-one was able to move her when they built a new building on top of her current one.

Greg R.

Marten should probably walk away from this situation, but he's probably going to try to help, and I hope it works out.

Ron Hamann

What she doesn’t know yet is that Claire is incredibly compassionate, especially to the neurodivergent. Claire could be her biggest ally, and is more likely to chastise leadership than Liz.

Rich Holmes

LHC was built to find Higgs, and it did. SUSY was supposed to be the sequel discovery.

Chauncey

Well, the more you know, right? My education is in mechanical engineering and I’m trained as a general technician. Anything to do with subatomic particles or advanced physics are a mystery to me lol

Brendan Jones

The thing is, Claire isn't going to cut people who are unproductive. She's going to storm into the Director's office and demand to know why these people have had inadequate mentoring and support.

Jack Allen

this has been a really good look so far at the problem with child prodigies, and how things often Don't Work Out for them. liz excelled at academic pursuits so quickly that she didn't develop the skills to work with others, a key aspect of proper scientific discovery. poor thing, claire giving some structure to the place could be the best thing for her, but she doesn't even realize it.

Populuxe

I genuinely feel bad for Goblin Scientist. But I also agree she needs structure and direction, and Claire is exactly the person to give it to her.

Katrina Urmson

Awwww goblin. She’s at least self-aware. This is promising.

salixOS

I wonder if Elizabeth is the only person there with that problem.

Nicolas Demers

I sympathise with Sub-basement Goblin Scientist, I really do, but the whole point of Cubetown is that they have all these amazing geniuses futzing around and sometimes -- by chance or by the Director's intuition -- making fantastic discoveries. Point is, SHE'S NOT ALONE. Claire The Librarian could can half the researchers... or gently nudge them in the right direction, so they know they're being watched

David Durant

Maybe she inadvertently created her own pocket-dimension sub-basement and didn't even notice?

Ben M

I've been that person - huge things expected, being overwhelmed by the pressure of said expectations. Sympathies on sub-basement-gobling-researcher Liz

Sean Kinlin

Marten is definitely in now; he drank the Koo- er, the coffee.

Ron Hamann

Well, she did get sucked into that management book she was supposed to re-shelve.

Tudza

I expect she moved into the least accessible space she could find so people wouldn't knock on her door anymore.

William Burns

I have been relegated to a small dank room to do my work, during a dark phase in my career. It housed an air handler which was set to chill the room to 50° F (10° C). There was a sign warning not to adjust the temperature. The walls of the room wept rivulets of water.

That Blair Guy

I've been thinking about this for a bit. It seems like Moray is the closest thing to a boss Elizabeth has. And there's a definite pattern of Moray being more than a little haphazard about things. Given that the Morays are extensions of the director, is it possible that this particular Moray (Moray-21) is, in effect, "the administrator" for Cubetown? It was also established that Moray-21 has been operating independently for longer than most other Morays. So, I think where I'm going with this, is to wonder if perhaps Cubetown's state of "advanced higgley-piggely" is connected to Moray-21's eccentricity.

Carl Fink

I still say she should meet some of the rest of the QC cast. Hannelore's dad, in particular, is probably one of the few people she wouldn't try to snob. Raven could probably talk physics with her as an equal (and being Raven, would be immune to social discomfort).

Nathaniel Tagg

I’m pretty sure SUSY models don’t work to explain CDM. But good whiteboard otherwise!

SilverbackRon

There is a whole trend on Reddit guessing that this is what the story is setting up; move Coffee of Doom to Cubetown.

Techdragon

I sympathize so hard with her right now. Left to my own devices and without any guidance I'll default to doing whatever obviously needs doing, and while I'm generally good at it that's not what most employers expect and many don't appreciate it. My last 2 contracts were both for hospitals and both doing similar work. The first just gave vague 'Go do stuff' instructions and couldn't provide anything more specific even after repeated requests so I spent a year doing the best I could, completing several projects that seemed to be obviously needed but resulting in a physical and mental breakdown (I was the only one left from a team of 6, the others had been pulled to work other tasks and they never hired replacements), and then termination immediately after I returned from medical leave so they could blame the original project failure on me to the client. I had literally been told by my manager in that morning's meeting that my job was safe and I didn't need to worry, then got canned while I was on my lunch break. The most recent employer gave me very clear information and direction about what they wanted and let me do extra work as I had time and initiative, and I got even more done in half the time. I'd still be there if they hadn't been hit by unexpected cost cutting and they're hoping to bring me back once finances settle down, and I'll jump to do it.

Zak Reichle

Time to summon Hanners, ender of messes.

Andrew

Would a walking Nobel prize generator win a nobel prize?

Rob The Mildly Perplexed!

I should figure out how to find the Reddit pages...I'm glad they're thinking what I'm thinking Pinky!

Captain Button

"Elizabeth Appleboom, eaten by rats." Sounds like an Edward Gorey picture.

Captain Button

And to get her the source of The (rat-bourne origin) Virus.

Gillian the Squid

Her terror is misplaced I think, but 'reasonable' from her limited experience of the world. But I think Claire would be more inclined to try and help her going forward than give her the boot, and Marten would know that. Would what's left of her ego be capable of taking help? Idunno, but that's a Dr. Appleboom problem. That said, her personality reminds me of a female version of Sheldon so much that I inherently want her to flame out and go anywhere else but continued pages of the comic.

Yelling Bird

Rat-borne illnesses are no fun. Doesn't matter if the rat gives it to you, or you give it to the rat.

Zak Reichle

Your love life continues to be terrifying

William Burns

Eventually, I persuaded the Safety Department to check out the conditions, the air handler was adjusted, and the room was renovated and used as a supply closet. It took a year. At that point, I helped bring in the union and was their first shop steward.

Captain Button

A submarine basement. She was actually hired to build it a cold fusion power planet for it. Or maybe a zero point power plant, the proposal language is vague.

Yelling Bird

I guess you don't wanna hear about what I did for Valentines Day then?

Daniel S

She is something of a failure, but only in that she’s given up. Claire would see a goblin in need of direction and give her *ideas* that would absolutely get this kid back on track. I didn’t have anything like those expectations, but I was a “gifted” kid.

OldGoat

But that sub-basement has a window looking out on the ocean.

Shawn Spencer

That's a ridiculously shallow and selfish reason not to want Claire to work there. Like damn, how much WORSE can this little goblin be? Claire could be a huge improvement for Cubetown and....her only thought is about her lack of progress could be noticed.

Todd Ellner

Marten before: "Claire needs to run from here." Marten now: "But Cubetown needs her."

Todd Ellner

Never put your tongue in that part of the puppy

MiqoRems

Pretty much the sole redeeming point of this whole backstory of hers is that she ends by explicitly stating that she does know it's her fault.

Tim Eldred

Left to her own devices, zero direction in instruction, of course she's doomed to fail. She has no clue what to be doing because they forgot to give her any actual task. Betting Claire finds whatever Moray forgot to tell her during orientation and gets this little goblin back to functional.

Bagge

It's so very Marten that he actually drank the coffee

legobil

Right?! Which is why I feel like this is actually going great…! Like, it is on that path. It has been nudged slightly in that direction at least..!

David Paul

It's like me at my job. I know a fair few "behind the scenes" processes at my place (like returns, stocktaking/inventory management etc.), and if given them to do or follow up on, I can do so in relatively short order. But if I have nothing to do, I default to my original job, which is warehouse work (receiving, packing deliveries, collecting customer orders).

David Paul

Turn your detectors slightly to the left.

Grace Serenity

This is why child prodigies shouldn't be a thing! So much pressure on a person when they should be, ya know, GROWING UP! Poor Liz!

Robert L

That's an odd way to spell "someone who has spent the last 2 years in a death spiral, who's gone from prodigy to feeling like her entire existence is a fraud, is so consumed by the fear that an entire town of brilliant scientists (and her family) will see her complete and utter failure, that she fails to see other perspectives", but you do you, Shawn.

Sleepy John

Sounds like Marten just found Claire's first assistant.

Pejo

@Heli - I feel like this applies to most of us here & indeed most everyone I know to a good extent

Pejo

What kind of Dickensian garbage is this?! I'm sorry you had to put up w/ that, even for a year.

SpookyPenguin

she doesn't understand the world outside of her own interests, are we to blame her for that? whole bunch of judging going on.

Sebastian

When I was a young whipper-snapper, Yelling Bird yelled...

Sero

I mean, harsh, but kinda on-point. I just hope Martin says some version of it being Claire's choice, and that doesn't bring up Just-Small in a way that influences her decision. (Not that I feel it would based on Claire's character, but.. ya.) However ... the goblin title made me think. What if Claire is to Liz what May is to Marigold, and someone just needs to be around call out her goblin side? (I say that affectionately since IIRC Mar openly agreed she could be a goblin sometimes, lol. :B)

Mad Marie

“Big Robo Dinosaur, died singing ‘Cats’.”

Mad Marie

Ohhhh it’s called “dark” because it’s “sinister”!

Mad Marie

@David: the mechanics aren’t properly lubricated, so one must take a jump to the left and then a step to the right.

Mad Marie

Definitely the security chief.

Mad Marie

That’s a great description of genetics!

Mad Marie

Icebergs float, and they have sizeable sub-levels.

Mad Marie

Claire has inherited mom vibes!

Mad Marie

Claire has inherited mom vibes!

Mad Marie

i’m imagining a vortex appearing as she bends too close to a page and is drawn in before she can properly react to the sudden darkening of the room around her, lighting flashing and wind swirling. The book spins slightly as it falls to the floor, and with the clunk of it landing the storm disappears as the book falls closed to reveal the title to the audience.

Clifton Royston

"Cubetown experiments, fatally careless."

Mad Marie

Perhaps in this universe?

Mad Marie

I would think a Nobel prize generator would be one who is so groundbreaking in their field that their work is awarded the first prize in a new category.

Mad Marie

Or “Walking Nobel Prize Generator” is just a funny term for the monarch of Sweden.

Clifton Royston

Hmmm. Evan? Either their individual anxieties would combine to produce a truly colossal trainwreck of a relationship, or their anxieties would be on such different vectors that they would each be immune to the other's anxiety and neutralize it.

Mad Marie

It’s a super high-res photo frame.

Clifton Royston

All the indications we have, including that whiteboard org chart, are that Moray-21 is the only person even *trying* to organize or stabilize anything in Cubetown. Come to think about it, this explains how that first phone call with Claire went, and why Moray was completely ecstatic about the prospect of hiring someone who knows what an IT department is and that they need one.

Clifton Royston

She needs a role model for how to *become* a responsible adult.

Mad Marie

“Electroweak” was the name of my wildly unsuccessful metal band. Due to a math error, our mantra was “Turn it up to 0.11!”

enchantedsleeper

He clearly needed it for that conversation xD

lazymagpie

Gifted Kid Burnout is real

Dean Reilly

She's a kid. Making dumb decisions goes with the territory, no matter how smart you are.

Jyrki Lahtonen

I very much relate to Liz's predicament. After completing my (good but by no means groundbreaking) dissertation, I felt similarly at sea, when the unfinished projects were either done or fizzled out, and there was no one really pushing me (like my advisor used to). May be she needs a team around here? Sounds like she would be (or would have been) a fine post-doc somewhere. Anywhere but at a place, where she is isolated.

Mad Marie

“Publish or Perish” was the title of our first (and only) album; it was a quad-cd monstrosity that contained one song, split up into four parts: a cover version of John Cage’s 4’33”—which, due to another math error, we performed in four hours and thirty-three minutes.

Mrpink

Called it. Selfish reasons.

David Paul

@Mad Marie I just put my hands on my hips to that comment.

David Paul

I wouldn't say imposter syndrome is a selfish reason. She contracted it by being selfish, yes, and isolating herself emotionally (saying "I'm smarter than all of you" does not really win friends) and physically (see above), but when other people have such high expectations of you, that you are expected to change the world, you either "fake it 'til you make it" (as in Jeph's best Twitter frenemy) or, more likely you "fake it 'til you break it" (see above). It doesn't even have to be at any sort of illustrious level. I studied IT at TAFE (Australia's equivalent of "community college", I guess) nearly 20 years ago now. I was no wiz kid or prodigy, but I was good at it. But getting a job in that field was nigh impossible (as one teacher put it "they're looking for 18 year olds with 50 years experience"), so I ended up landing where I am now as a warehouse monkey. But any computer problem (whether at work or at home) that I can't fix in like 5 minutes, the same fucking line comes out: "but you're supposed to be a computer genius!" and it's like 20 years ago, maybe!

Steve DeGroof

If that's the sub-basement, what do they call the place where the Director lives? I recall something about taking an elevator to "lightless, crushing ocean depths".

Joseph Loder

I dunno, I feel like organizing Cubetown would ruin it.

Foal Papers

Your apparent inability or unwillingness to empathize with the characters of this world is a recurring theme in your comments. It’s concerning, and quite frankly deeply tiresome.

Stephen Wells

Not everything written on a whiteboard needs to be correct because sometimes people are wrong about things.

Shawn Spencer

Not worried about it, fictional characters don't require empathy.

Shawn Spencer

Robert - Having her superiority complex busted doesn't really bother me for some reason.

John A. Aiken, Jr.

And it's a whiteboard so you can erase those mistakes...

Daryl Sawyer

If they brought in some business school protochad to organize it, then yes. If Claire starts trying to organize it, and everybody is resistant to the very idea, also yes... but it looks like people are actually enthusiastic about the idea. But if it gets organized *properly*, there are two things that will change: 1. If someone needs something to continue with whatever it is they're doing, *they will actually be able to find it*. 2. If someone has totally run into a wall, someone will be able to reach out to them and offer help, rather than having them languish in a sub-basement. She's never failed before. She's never really needed to ask for help before. If Claire knows her business, discovering this girl will result in her getting the help she needs... whatever that turns out to be.

Daryl Sawyer

Except they are a thing, and tying them to their age cohort can result in pressure from the opposite direction: peers who routinely bully them because they're *different*, along with resentment about being held back for the sake of people who don't like them much anyway. Everybody has to deal with this. It's just most people deal with it at a much younger age. The prodigy hits their first failure too late, and thus has to learn how to deal with it the hard way. Denying them opportunities to excel does not help with that.

panpolypuff

I wager Claire will find this struggle incredibly relatable to her post-grad conflict over becoming a barista. She'll easily recognize that struggles require support, not punishment. I bet Liz needs to be around other intellectuals who can challenge and inspire her. Academia is a sea of ideas, unlike a lonely sub-basement.

Paul Zagieboylo

It was established long ago that Marten actually has no idea what would make coffee good. As long as it's hot and relatively brown-colored, he's happy.

Matt Pedone

This is pretty much EXACTLY how I feel in my current job, except without the original expectations or early success. I was hired to fill a desperate need back when the company was pretty small. Since then, we've not only hired more people, but have been bought by a MUCH larger corporation with more resources to replace any piddling work I contribute. For whatever reason, this place keeps ME around, and I contribute little more than a warm body that does grunt work and some very rudimentary data processing. I am 100% certain that Claire would find a role for Elizabeth.

Ruth Merriam

Props to everyone who guessed what this was about beforehand. *sigh* Liz, you self-centered little goblin queen.

David Durant

Interesting how this forum represents the general public's split between it being the individual's fault for not fixing their own issues and it being society's fault for not supporting them when they needed help. Almost like we're a representative sample! Truth lies down the middle of course.

Mamadoc

I get that Claire’s good at organizing, but she’s a LIBRARIAN! Does she even want a job organizing a bunch of out-of-contro scientists and engineers? Will she feel obligated to stay to prevent them from, say, accidentally blowing up the planet? What if she just wanted a job in a nice, quiet, normal library, finding users the books and articles they need?

CaseyAEC

There's got to be lots of infrastructure, pipes, conduits that they might want to tuck into a sublevel or five. That and this place is run by an Elder God means it probably goes way deeper than you expect.

William Cole

I hope Marten doesn't start doing any pelvic thrusts right now. That would drive me insane!

Mad Marie

It was a grueling recording session…I think we did 37 takes, and we kept arguing about the balance during mixdown. Strangely, we opted not to include in the album any of our live shows’ most requested songs: “Get off the stage”, “For the love of God, please stop”, “Free Bird”, and “Perhaps if someone pulls a fire alarm box they will leave”.

Tim Keating

My money is on this is the thing that gets Claire to take on the job, because she can come in and fix all this bullshit.

William Cole

"And then there was Bront, who went where it was airless."

Mad Marie

The latter vocation sounds quite lovely as well as sufficiently world-saving.

William Cole

Good questions! Realistically, I'm quite sure this would be a nightmare situation for anyone in Claire's position, regardless of aptitude. In the QC-verse, she might be perfect at it.

Jessie Basham

Aw man, I think this kid needed someone assigned to them entirely to tell them "you're doing just fine, no one hates you, drink some water"

Mad Marie

They call it “North Orange, NJ”

William Cole

I feel like even putting it in terms of "fault" is a mistake. It's the sad but predictable outcome of a bunch of shitty preconditions that go far beyond any of the individual actors here.

Mad Marie

Hydration is seldom a bad idea.

Daniel Drazen

Exactly! Claire may be a Twilight Sparkle when it comes to organizing and running a library, but becoming Der Fuehrer of Cubetown is beyond anyone's skills set. Liz needs to see either a friend or a therapist, and I think Cubetown may have an overabundance of the latter.

Some Ed

@Mad Marie: You might expect that, but I'm thinking probably not. I mean, that's how I got here, and the universe doesn't seem like it's that into repeating bizarre stuff.

Some Ed

I don't think the Director would be on board with canning people, unless it was part of a study to determine the full effects of canning people. Possibly not even then.

Some Ed

@Shawn Spencer: In my experience, most characters are author inserts to an extent. This reads to me like you're saying this part of Jeph doesn't require empathy. Fans who express thoughts like your comments are part of why I've never published. All my characters are author inserts to one extent or another, even the villains.

Some Ed

Forgot is the wrong way to put it. Not giving direction was Cubetown's original design. It doesn't work so well, and Cubetown is clearly demonstrating that.

Justin

Yeah, I'm no expert in the field, but I don't think this is really the job of a librarian, even one granted expanded powers of bureaucracy. The librarian's job is to make sure everyone documents their work and puts it somewhere where they and other people can find it easily. That way you don't wind up with two different research teams working on the same problem without even knowing about each other. That kind of basic organization of research output might eventually assist future administrators in organizing personnel and projects by providing them with a starting point to understanding what everyone is doing. But making those high level changes probably isn't the librarian's job.

Some Ed

As a former child prodigy tied to my age cohort, I absolutely agree with Daryl Sawyer. Additional to this, being tied to my age cohort meant the school work I was doing was insanely boring. After a lesson on multi-digit arithmetic, I was good to go on that. I think there was something like five years of additional basic arithmetic before we finally got to algebra. When I was in the fourth grade, I snuck into my brother's room while he was out to read his algebra text book because I'd found out he was in a math class that was interesting. My brother struggled with algebra; that was how I found out about what it was: he had to talk about it with our father. Without instruction, just working through all of the problems in the sections where he put his bookmark, and then comparing my work to his after, I managed to do it better than him. When I could do math that well, how could I find motivation to work through yet another assignment doing stuff I could glance at and see the answer. Showing my work mean I'd spend a minute on something that should've been under a second.

Shawn Spencer

Assuming we even buy into the idea that every single bit character in this comic is an author insert, individual aspects of a personality don't require empathy either, as they are still not persons in their own respect. However, Also - I empathize with victims far more than villains. I'm more concerned about the people who are damaged by someone's behavior than the person engaging in the behavior. Because while it's true that we don't choose the things that we go through in life or the trauma's we suffer, we DO choose how we treat other people as a result of that. And thus far, her treatment of other people has been overwhelmingly poor. Which buys her very little sympathy from me.

Some Ed

Fake it 'til you make it is very difficult for people with obsessive compulsive honesty disorder.

Christopher Beer

This job is sounding like it would be perfect for Marten instead of Claire. He is laid back enough that people would not feel threatened but sensible enough to get people like Liz back on track. And calm enough to keep Cubetown from blowing up the world.

Some Ed

Even if those other people are those she considers morons, showing them how to do it right can be her inspiration. It's a very frustrating sort of inspiration, but it works.

Some Ed

I didn't quite. I had the idea that she was their former librarian. But no, she was just someone who needed a friend, a librarian, some therapy, and at least a couple of people around her to give her some interactions. But at least one update ago maybe two, I was to the point of saying, "Just because you were thrown into a situation with no preparation doesn't mean someone else with inadequate preparation will necessarily fail." Both Liz and Claire were given jobs that were ridiculously challenging simply for the lack of direction. Claire's education gives her some idea of what to do in such a situation. I don't think Liz' did. Science is too open ended. They depend on others to give them direction if they didn't come to the field with their direction already. The number of scientists who do come to the field with their own direction are probably a significant part of why the field doesn't cover this. People with dreams of studying specific things tend to chafe at being told "you need to find your path like so" in my experience.

Some Ed

This isn't a society's fault situation. Cubetown is a very special place. While I hate to say things in defense of society, I have the impression that people are more likely to have complains about being minded too closely rather than not closely enough.

Some Ed

Hydration *in moderation* is seldom a bad idea. Drinking 200 oz of water a day can be kind of lethal.

awgiedawgie

Here's a crazy thought, Elizabeth... Why don't you talk to Claire yourself. I have no doubt you'll become friends. And having friends is a good start to getting your mind back on track.

awgiedawgie

Well, Marten will have to get *some* kind of job in Cubetown if Claire takes hers. He could be the liaison between The Librarian and... well, everyone else.

Joe

not what a librarian does. she wouldn't be organizing, so much as documenting what's there.

Sean Kinlin

@Ed: for a second I was imagining a different meaning of "canning people" than firing.

Captain Button

She is probably one of those Bene Gesserit Truthsayer witches, and would see right through all the Very Small lies.

George Wilson

Too much pressure on such a young mind. Hope things work out for her.

Bagge

Yeah, it's very clear that Claire's job will be project manager, supervisor and team mom for the entire town Which means that whatever salary they offer, she should ask to double it, and whatever budget they give her she should ask to have it multiplied by ten. She'll need to build up a whole department for this, and the first thing she need is an HR person to handle the hirding process of the rest of the team.

Bagge

Honestly, he should run a place where people could come and chill - coffee shop, music venue, heh, even a library, and do a lot of informal networking with his ability to attract weirdos and help them feel better about themselves.

Bagge

I wonder what would happen if they space-dropped Tilly on Cubetown. Would they organize it in a month?` Or would they be part of the chaos. I kinda think the latter

William Cole

Irresistible force of order meets immovable object of chaos. The results would be cataclysmic.

Bagge

Wait, no, I solved it. Claire hires Tilly. With Clari's actual super powers of 'a modicum of common sense' and 'a not completely nonexisting sense of priorities' she could direct Tilly's unhinged 'EVERYTHING MUST BE ORGANIZED' powers in a way that's actually effective.

David Durant

It's just occurred to me that Cubetown isn't a place-of-work it's a *place* and therefore should have all the services provided by local government such as social workers and counselors.

Mad Marie

Dihydrogen Monoxide does indeed kill a lot of people.

awgiedawgie

I think the problem may lie in the lack of said “local government".

awgiedawgie

So, is the "hirding process" like a cross between "hiring" and "herding"?

awgiedawgie

Drinking 200 oz of water over the course of an entire day may not be bad (but it’s definitely more than what you need under normal conditions), depending on what else you’re ingesting (and how much you’re perspiring). If I’m working outside in the summer, I drink *at least* 200 oz per day, because I sweat profusely. But I drink it in the form of Gatorade so I don’t screw up my electrolytes. On the other hand, drinking 200 oz of water all at once could be *very* bad, since the kidneys can only handle around 30 oz per hour.

awgiedawgie

Au contaire. When you boil it down, a librarian’s basic job is to organize. They decide what to organize, and how. They are the overseer of the process, but not necessarily the one who carries it out. Within the confines of a library, there are prescribed rules for what, when, where, how, and why to organize. But you broaden the scope from a library to an entire town, and the "what" and "how" in particular are a lot less clearly predefined. It’s a lot to throw at a twenty-something, but a librarian has the perfect basic skills to do it. But she’s going to need an entire department of "library assistants" to handle the job of making sure people document their work properly. And she and her assistants will need to be given the authority to enforce the new guidelines. The real trick will be not going too far too fast and scaring people out of town. Or worse yet, causing a revolt.

awgiedawgie

I don’t think it’s her fault OR society's. I think think it’s her employer’s fault for not giving her clear direction on what she’s supposed to be doing.

Solomon Garland

So... this lil squirt doesn't want Claire to take the job, not because she'd be bad at it, but because Elizabeth is worried about being found out. When realistically if she just said "hey, give me a problem to fix", they could probably find one worthy of her intellect and the whole thing would be resolved?

dcy665 .

If only they could get ... organized. Ooo.

DVW

She just like me fr

David Paul

Given how much of a workforce she may actually need... yes.

Clifton Royston

It appears to me that she actually moved from the nice office with the window down to the smashed-up basement room, probably out of some combination of "I don't want anyone to find me and ask me what I'm doing", (stealth maxed out), and "this is what I deserve now because I'm a failure and a scum goblin."

Conrad Rogers

Yes, but she's not being interviewed to be a librarian. She's being interviewed to be The Librarian.

Conrad Rogers

HR also needs mecha suits in this town

Joe

this frikkin town ...