Home
Creators
Search Recent Missing Random
Posts
Search DMs Popular Hash Lookup Tags Random
Importer
Import FAQ
Register Favorites Keys Review DMs Logout
Community
Telegram ThePornDude
Home Creators Posts Import Register Favorites Logout

ADS/CFT (Patreon)

Published:
2023-02-20 02:06:14
Imported:
2026-06

Content

we now return you to your regularly scheduled awful goblin scientist

Files

Comments

schmod

She seems nice.

Chauncey

I feel like Evan’s squirt gun would be handy in this situation

NinjaZaku

You cannot out bullshit a bullshitter, Liz.

Josh Bacon

I'm sure she'll turn out to be adorable. ... Eventually.

Steve Boyko

I bet she is fun at parties.

MikeT

Oh I can't wait for Faye to get hold of this one...

Michael Boettger

If they get high together, Claire and Elizabeth would make great progress.

KSib

A goblin in a lab coat 😂 Also, she's very emotive. I love that.

Law the Fox

I want to get her wasted and find out.

Abhayakara

That was actually rather well said. Did you have chatgpt come up with it? ;)

Bee

I'm willing to bet a lot of money she hasn't been to many parties

Kyle Major

if she were high, she might actually chill

awgiedawgie

Just imagine what she can accomplish once she believes she can do it.

ValdVin

Now I'm wondering if that really *is* the best coffee on Cubetown.

Gary Huntress

Whoa!!! ADS/CFT!!! was not expecting that! (Juan Maldacena is my hero)

Matt Grayson

Please, Yay. Help her out here. She needs to find out NOW that she's not the smartest thing in creation. It will be a terrible blow, but that's her only way forward. You don't even have to invade her mind. Just rifle her computer, tell her three places where she's missed something, wish her luck, and vanish.

Andrew

I think we need to recalibrate the zero-chill-o-meter

Greg R.

She's right in panel 2, you have to give her that.

Todd Ellner

Goblin is her last line of defense. It will take gentle persuasion or a ding around the earhole to get past it.

Emma Humphries

Under no circumstance do we let her get high.

Sean Kinlin

The present is an illusion Of incandescent fusion It's not simply the time right now, now, now now...

Czarzhan

This shows that the whole "convince Claire not to take the job" was just a huge cry for help. The minute Marten suggested leaving her in the purgatory she made for herself, she changed her tune.

Pejo

she's having an extremely normal one

Pejo

The sun is a mass Of incandescent gas

Pejo

Forget the whole Cubetown AI mecca thing, the most unrealistic part of today's strip is how Elizabeth recognizes she was a jerk, owns it, & apologizes for it, & Marten instantly accepts it & moves on, & no I'm not cynical at all why do you ask

Marc Pengryffyn

Irish? Nah, he's Australian. We had a lot of immigrants from Ireland back in the early days of the colony, willing and otherwise. He graduated from the University of Melbourne. Awesome science communicator, I love him too!

Carl Fink

I like the subtle background thing: the glass being smashed out of the mirror. Not symbolic at all. Notice that Marten's power of Super Chill just saved the day again. She cannot panic or upset him.

Chloë Salzenberg

If she’s’ a right we may be able to create an effective theory describing the interior of her black hole of self-loathing. /bulky

Derek Hassell

Yes, but also I'm betting Jeph already has that outlined

Joel Bateman

I think we need to get science goblin high.

Abhayakara

This explains a lot, really.

Chloë Salzenberg

Ironically, a reasonable theory of cosmological time is one of the things AdS/CFT still doesn’t have.

Livy N

As someone who is an anxious babbler who gets quiet and chill when high....I think she would benefit 😅

chili sunrise

I’m really happy with the current direction of QC. Maybe it’s because I’m in my 30s, but there’s so much interesting drama around opening up and allowing yourself to be seen, and being in a place where people listen and help. It’s so easy to uphold drama for drama’s sake, but this feels like real shit I could go through. In a world with AI, I mean.

Joseph Bonnar

I appreciate that the real name is Elizabeth, or Liz, but for now and forever this human will remain "Just Small".

Joseph Bonnar

Meh. My money is on her becoming another "Corpse Witch." :)

Joseph Bonnar

@Bee Screams I am not willing to take that bet. :)

Joseph Bonnar

Aurelia would have to be invited to, um, chaperone? Yes, to chaperone her daughter. :)

Zak Reichle

Claire is going to call out Elizabeth on a number of things

Joseph Bonnar

I always thought Jeph used BUTTChat. I suppose that assumption was rather cheeky of me. (Yes, the puns here were DELIBERATE.)

Zak Reichle

She'll also tell you to call your parents/family!

Fart Captor

I don't care if she's awful, I still love the goblin. I wanna keep her 😤

Zak Reichle

Goblin in a lab coat made me think of "Fat Guy In A Little Coat" 🤔

MultiKoopa

dang Marten does NOT get this pissed off... ever

Zak Reichle

Are you prepared to adopt this goblin and take care of her?

Ben French

Knowing most of the audience, that answer would be a resounding yes.

Joseph Bonnar

I vote for a gentle flick of a finger on her ear lobe. Administered by Sergeant Detritus of Ahnk Morpork. (Pratchett AGAIN, drat it!)

Sean Kinlin

Cubetown has used up all of his chill points.

Yonatan Zunger

I can't believe I just encountered a 100% legit AdS/CFT joke in the wild.

Captain Button

Science Goblin High is my new superhero TTRPG campaign.

Yelling Bird

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

BobC

Shit, Jeph. Give the girl a spliff already!

Randall Norman Pick

This place is like some sort of emotional locus of stress.

BobC

BTW, I'm ABSO-F-ING-LUTELY loving all the AdS/CFT crap going on! Sabine? Are you here, Sabine? Please say SOMETHING, Sabine!

Blake Manor

Jeff you really have done a fantastic job of making such an awful character. not since early Sven have i felt so much consistent disdain for someone in this universe

wargrunt42

Personally, I'm a fan of the theory that the universe is a hologram on the surface of a black hole. This black hole could be a part of a much larger universe, which in turn is also a hologram of yet another black hole. I like to think the multiverse is just black holes all the way down; a black hole fractal-verse if you will!

mammalsounds

ok, so goblinchild gon' meet claire, this conclave will shatter reality, and then we loop right back around to QC #1.

Zak Reichle

Can confirm, it's nothing but turtles all the way down.

legobil

Wait. Panel 4. Was that a successful reverse psychology stunt by Marten on the Tiny Goblin Scientist? I am impressed.

Bill Silvia

It's a shame they couldn't have brought some of Aurelia's herbal inhalants over the border to reduce stress.

Bill Silvia

A nicotine addiction would not improve her attitude.

Some Ed

Actually, you can. With most bullshitters, it's not hard, actually. You just have to bullshit them with something they believe to be at least somewhat true, rather than something that they happen to have expertise that indicates you are completely wrong. To be clear, there exist a number of bullshitters who are somewhat more resilient to it. A large part of the difference is how conscious they are of their bullshit and how they craft it. If they're very aware, they're going to be really hard to snow. If, like most bullshitters, they are completely oblivious to it, it's pretty easy. I know because my dad's in the more common group.

Some Ed

Don't forget to include Emily.

Some Ed

It is. This is why Dora must move here and pay for all her employees to relocate.

Some Ed

And yet also horribly wrong.

Some Ed

Exactly how do you propose we stop her? This reminds me of all the times my coworkers tell me, "Just a moment, let me go get" blank. I'm not sure how I've managed to refrain from explaining to them, "You're arguably on a different continent. How am I going to stop you?" Maybe part of the way I've managed to refrain from that is because the blank is pretty much invariably something I want them to get.

Some Ed

I've been in Marten's position in this kind of interaction far too frequently. You accept it and move on because there's nothing else to do. Anything else you can think of will fail. Take backs are always on the table for these people. Also, in many cases, the recognizing they were a jerk and apologizing for it do not seem to be genuine - it's a learned behavior to pull out when someone calls them on their crap. There's no actual intention to change, and if they're genuinely sorry for anything, it's that you caught them at their game. ... no, I'm not at all cynical, why do you ask.

FruitbatStudios

Who said anything about nicotine? This is Canada, no need to observe European spliff conventions here.

Aussie Jim

I’m imagining that she has a quantum jumper setting that has her always high … it’s a glitch in her internal biome that has DMT leaking into places it shouldn’t be.

Some Ed

It's a superpower. It's one of those easily overlooked feats not possessed by ordinary people but "we all" assume everybody has it anyway. For example, I sometimes have the power to read my own mind. I mean, ok, it sounds funny when it's put that way, but that's basically what introspection is. A lot of people assume that others are capable of introspection, but introspection is hard enough that not even those people who assume others can do it actually do it. Of course, understanding exactly why one does a particular crazy behavior doesn't always allow one to change it. Being able to make real use of introspection is another one of those assumed superpowers, and it's one I rarely have.

Some Ed

Science Goblin High was where one of my friends went to high school.

Bill Silvia

A spliff is a cigarette mixed with weed. That's what makes it a spliff.

Some Ed

I've heard from a number of people that stuff isn't all that hard to come by up there. Back before it was quasi-legalized in Massachusetts, at least one of them had a contact from Canada who sourced most of hers for her.

Pejo

@Some Ed - Yeah, I've encountered those folks too, though the proverbial sand in my vagina these days is more the narcissistic sort who mistreat you & shrug it off. But every once in a while, there's that unicorn that owns their shit & takes responsibility for it, as well as the other person accepting it & not continuing to beat them over the head for it. Elizabeth's shit is being a condescending dick when she's stressed out of her mind. So hopefully she's sincere! If Pintsize of all folks can tone down goblin mode...

Pejo

@Joel - Oh GOD can you imagine the paranoia

Yonatan Zunger

The short version is that it appears that string theory - full-scale quantum gravity - on certain spaces, and conformal field theory - a much simpler (but still complicated) kind of relativistic quantum mechanics on different spaces - are related. Not just abstractly related, but very concretely, as in "for every possible configuration of the string theory, there's a corresponding configuration of the CFT, and if you let those two states evolve according to their respective theories, the match-up stays." And even more so, the set of configurations that's easy to understand in one theory is a set that's hard to understand in the other, so it's really useful. The original case this was conjectured for is string theory on a particular 10-dimensional space, an anti-de Sitter space (AdS_5 * S^5 to be precise) and CFT (specifically, N=4 super-Yang Mills) on the outer surface of that same space. The relationship of states is similar to that of a hologram to its image, thus its nickname of holography.

FruitbatStudios

Huh, you learn something new every day - I retract my objection.

Charlie Rose

Goblin Scientist's predicament reminds me way too much of me trying to write my these for 2 years during lockdown :')

Clifton Royston

Goblin in a lab coat, I know, I know it's serious.

Clifton Royston

Of course, she has a normal amount of social skills.

Fart Captor

She clearly needs to be kissed by another lady until her stress levels go down and I'm willing to take responsibility

Clifton Royston

Send us all pictures from your wedding, OK?

Zak Reichle

It's clear she will be in far more capable hands with you. Not everyone is responsible enough for feral science goblin rehabilitation, keep up the good work 👍

wargrunt42

You can confirm nothing! Well, other than it being a fine reference to a John Green novel, which is precisely why I phrased it that way. We can not prove that we or the universe in which we live actually exists. It seems intuitively obvious that it does, the universe is where I keep all my stuff, but we can not prove it. At the turn of the last century, one of the big mathematical questions of the time was known as The Continuum Problem. Mathematicians wanted to know if we could prove math to be consistent and whether there would be a complete set of axioms. Turns out the answer to both of these is no. Godel's Incompleteness Therum showed that you can not prove a system to be consistent using the system itself. For that we use the axioms, a simple set rules of logical things you can construct using a straight edge and compass. These set of rules do indeed show math as we know it to be consistent beyond reasonable doubt, but how do we prove the axioms to be consistent? Well, we made a more powerful and robust set of axioms that show the previous set of axioms to be consistent beyond reasonable doubt, but how do we prove these new axioms are consistent? This is why there will never be a complete set of axioms like mathematicians were hoping for, but the main take away you should get from this is that you can not prove a system to be consistent using the system itself. To phrase this slightly differently, you can not prove the universe to be consistent while being part of the universe. This is why all of our scientific theories remain theories and not theorems because we have no way of knowing whether or not they're true with absolute certainty. Our scientific theories are like our axioms; the best we can say is that they are consistent beyond reasonable doubt. The universe is a hologram theory is not one of those theories, for it does not live up to the rigorous standards of the scientific method. There is a philosophical razor know as Sir Issac Newton's Giant Flaming Lazer Sword which states that if something can not be tested, then it is not worth debating. In short, turtles are nice, but I'm free to believe in any unfalsifiable statement or idea I like.

Dean Reilly

Marten was at Minimum Operating Chill after the Ol' Boaty incident. He now has a chill deficit, and needs to spend a few hours discussing indie music until his chill recovers.

David Paul

Oh, the smirk comes as part of the package deal. Yay can't bring someone down off their high horse without it.

David Paul

She has to earn the title of "semi-decent humanoid" before she can upgrade to Elizabeth (or Liz).

Stephen Wells

Claire will immediately ask Marten "Can you help me find a doctor... Apfelbaum? She hasn't been seen for a while and Moray is freaking out in case an orca ate her too."

Carl Fink

Now I wonder about a scene in which she actually tries good coffee (at Coffee of Doom?) for the first time. I wonder if genius-girl would be the first human for whom tea is a hallucinogen, as it is for AIs.

Michael Boettger

Thanks for that. And Emily and Elizabeth could find alot in common, both kinda being kinda misunderstood geniuses. Help her develop some adult social skills.

Mark

So was Marten, though.

Mad Marie

I have trouble believing Godel’s Theorem can be definitively proven.

Sean Kinlin

Do you really think she'll pull through?

Mad Marie

a condescending dick is a lot worse than sand in there.

Mad Marie

T-minus fourteen strips until Elizabeth discovers she is a robot.

Mad Marie

My universe is best described as ADD/OCD correspondence.

Atashkada

But can she even get high when she's so short? :-D

legobil

Bahahaha. I blame autocorrect. It was meant to be a wait :D

David Durant

There's a merch idea right there

Sean Kinlin

She's wearing a quantum jumper under the lab coat.

Bagge

I wonder at what point Claire will realize that the interview ended a long time ago and now she's simply doing the job

Daryl Sawyer

lmao, she has the goblin eyes in that last panel.

Shawn K. Younkin

Or she makes the flow chart for everyone to follow and is then promptly told she is not needed anymore because the have "The Chart".

wargrunt42

To be fair, I am way over simplifying his work. There are much smarter people than I that can better explain: This Veritasium video: https://youtu.be/HeQX2HjkcNo Also, while not exclusively about Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, these books do a fantastic job of outlining our collective scientific knowledge; what we know, what we don't know and why we don't know it: Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension by Matt Parker The Outer Limits of Reason by Noson S. Yanofsky We Have No Idea by Jorge Cham & Daniel Whiteson

Ruth Merriam

Oh look. Marten already has a job description. Maybe Liz is high from something that's been growing behind the cabinets down there in the sub-basement?

Kid Meier91

Meeting Emily would utterly pulverize what little self-esteem yet remains within her

William Cole

That would likely be unspeakably dangerous!

enchantedsleeper

Absolutely no way that anyone would be able to read The Chart without her xD Only The Librarian can read The Chart.

Daryl Sawyer

That, or give her someone she can really talk to about her ideas. Maybe they could finally tackle that problem of entropy Emily has been wanting to deal with together. Which is to say, William Cole is correct. :p

Daryl Sawyer

You're behind on your literature, Pejo. Recent findings: The sun's a miasma Of incandescent plasma. Not gas, not liquid, not solid.

Miyaa

Or OR They start dating in 3 months, give or take TARDIS shenanigans.

Clifton Royston

Only The Librarian knows how to fix the things revealed by The Chart. (I was kind of in that position in one job at around 20.)

Chris Warren

Ouch. She's not a complete shithead. Go easy on her.

Clifton Royston

I apologize in advance for being so pedantic, wargrunt42, but as a failed mathematician I feel compelled to comment: You've given a great summary of some parts of the early 20th century sea-change in mathematics, but while Kurt Godel did work on the Continuum Problem or Continuum Hypothesis it's not related directly to his incompleteness theorems. The Continuum Hypothesis is a different problem, closely related to Cantor's infinities (another area where traditional mathematics got abruptly defenestrated.) It's essentially the question of what specific order of infinity the set of real numbers (or points on a line) correspond to, and AIUI it's still open as of today. (It's also independent of the Axiom of Choice, and of other modifications in set theory, which makes the question even more maddening.)

Stephen Wells

Not Elonesque because she's genuinely clever and has actual qualifications.

ValdVin

You know who ya could really get to fall for a scheme sometimes? Phineas Taylor Barnum. No lie.

Diptych

Yeah, an Elonesque character would have paid Cubetown to say he founded it, and would then spend all his time wandering around it, firing random people and turning off essential servers.

ValdVin

Good idea, but how about that being an endpoint? Are these Cubetowners ready for CofD coffee? Let's have them work their way up to that splendid brown nectar. They'll enjoy the trip more.

Adorbium

Oh thank god. I dreamed it was christmas and Jeph told us we'd have to wait 2 weeks to find out what happened next

Onedavewreckingcrew

Fair. I was mostly going off the 'intimidated by my intellect // misunderstood genius' bit.

wargrunt42

Thank you, I appreciate the insight! I shall apply this patch to my knowledge database immediately!

Jim Feldman

or for that matter, it's their resting face.

Brian Lort

I love the defintion of science!I've been there - in almost the same situation. Now I want to to know how Jeph manage to read my mind in such detail! I'm kinda freaked out how accurate this web comic is. Full disclosure : I used to be a particle physicist at CERN (in pre-LHC days)