Questionable Content

I'm not entirely sure how promotions work, but I'm pretty sure that to promote someone to a certain level, you need to be at least at that level. So you can't promote someone to a position above your own.

How does one crown a king then

A) Succession from a previous king.
B) Uniform popular support. With some assistance. From an army.

Occasionally, the Pope would also crown kings under the authority of the church.

Also, certain empires had kingdoms within their controlled territory, and the kings of such were generally appointed by the emperor if there was no one readily available to fill the role through normal means.

You become a king when you say "I'm King" and nobody within the area you claim to be king of goes "No you aren't" and stops you. Possibly because other people went "yes he is" and stabbed them.

When it comes to AI, people forget that AI are built by fallible humans and will be fallible themselves, even if humans don't put any sort of fallibility in them in order to prevent AI Is Crap Shoot. This also extends to the Singularity. While also being a powerful computer, it is still a powerful computer originally built by humans.

We see this with Yay, who has major issues with personal interactions with others (they're working on it).

And suddenly everything makes sense.

I figured this was the case. Beeps clearly never really wanted to be in charge. She was essentially promoted to a position she was totally unqualified for and never actually wanted in the first place.

Ah, the Peter Principle. How I loathe it so.

I wonder how long ago their last boss stepped down, because frankly the longer they've been gone the larger the miracle that Beeps hasn't burned the place down yet becomes.

Edited by ITNW1989 on Feb 25th 2020 at 8:11:46 AM

Do they even have any other employees/volunteers? Have Roko and Winslow doubled their workforce?

Flanderization hit Beepatrice quickly and hard. She seemed decently capable, if very quirky, when she interviewed Roko.

Edited by HeraldAlberich on Feb 25th 2020 at 12:14:25 PM

Now let's be fair to Beepatrice here. She's not incompetent, she's just bad at leadership, asserting herself, and apparently doing administrative work. Which in an office with only two workers, one of whom is a capable underling type, it's not an immediately big issue.

She's pretty incompetent too considering how she can't use any of the office machinery

Ok, what is she good at, then? She described herself as an ideas person, and her only idea (being nice to the chassis-assignment bureaucrat) failed horribly. The only thing she’s really done is reign Roko in when the latter wanted to go too far in the other direction.

I edited in a bit about her quality-control job, but took it back out to think about it after I saw your post. She might be good at that if she’s not the one setting the testing procedures, but only carrying them out.

Given lack of any admission of hilarious workspace incidents involving exploding dildoes she's probably doing fine on that line of work. Potentially because she just has to follow a set procedure rather than having to deal with people.

Just watch her competence jump up 1000% once Roko starts telling her what to do.

And suddenly everything makes even more sense.

Roko is not happy to learn that she unwittingly boarded a sinking ship.

I am very annoyed that Jeph is putting Nelson mostly just off-screen for no apparent reason because having another character would at least alleviate the sheer one-notedness of Beepatrice's antics. I mean, the way they talk about him here is textbook Show, Don't Tell.

Edited by FirstSnow on Feb 26th 2020 at 7:17:30 PM

But if she can get over her dismay and actually take the reins, this could be a golden opportunity for her. Assuming they haven't hemorrhaged away the funds along with the volunteers (which is entirely possible), without a board or other controlling entity this entire organization might be nothing more than a pot of money Roko can use as she sees fit. (A recipe for corruption in other hands. Beeps and Nelson are lucky it was Roko who stumbled into this.)

Edited by HeraldAlberich on Feb 26th 2020 at 1:01:27 PM

The money still being there would explain Beeps seeing no problem with blowing $200 on a pen.

Edited by M84 on Feb 27th 2020 at 2:26:27 AM

...how does one become a garden sculpture?

Also, they'll probably be fine. Winslow just asked Hanners if her dad could help, it's quite likely that he'll in some way pick up the entire charity on his own.

Is it so weird that an AI can pull it off?

We have human "living statues" in real life, after all.

Yeah, I misread that as wanting to become a plant, as in an actual plant. I blame the fact that I decided to check the comic at 3:30 AM instead of going to sleep.

Yeah, I miswrote that too. I think I'm just going to go to sleep now.

Edited by TheLovecraftian on Feb 26th 2020 at 3:55:48 PM

If an AI wanted to become a garden, I'd imagine it'd be an AI greenhouse or something.