#five dimensional chess

[sandybrett]

The idea that shrimp see colors we don't has been debunked--they have more types of color receptors, but they can't combine them nearly as well as we can so they actually see fewer colors.

But damn did that misconception lead to a useful way to describe things that are otherwise impossible to describe.

[sandybrett]

Mike mentioned at one point that he wished there were a tense for things that once had happened but have been undone by time travel (and I think I heard that there actually is such a tense in The Speech in the Young Wizards series, which I have not read.)

Now consider this: a tense for things that happen in at least one iteration of the future and are currently affecting the present via time travel, but are not necessarily still going to happen.

[sandybrett]

A quick internet search yields conflicting results on how long it takes an olive tree to start bearing fruit--anywhere from two to fifteen years, it seems.

Which means Mikey must have sent olive seeds back in time purely so he could annoy Jamilla by harvesting olives in their yard.

[sandybrett]

(spoilers for The Grotto episode 7)

Me listening to The Grotto after 13 seasons of WOE.BEGONE: "Wait, so Matt doesn't get his finger back?"

[sandybrett]

Here's something about the WOE.BEGONE timeline(s) I've been puzzling over--I brought it up on the Discord once but I don't think I articulated it very well and it'll be easier without cross-talk.

The timeline: post-Great Correction. The time: when Mikey has to kill Cannonball in Riga.

Mike and Michael are coming from points in time later than when the Great Correction happened. But for this version of the Riga mission to truly "rhyme" with the previous timeline(s), I would think they would have to be at the same points on their personal timelines that they had been--that is, earlier than when they reappeared after the Great Correction.

Do they remember the pre-101 timeline? Or did the post-GC timeline advance past the date of the GC multiple times before it actually caught up with the GC?

I feel like I'm doing shrimp geometry.

[sandybrett]

Spoilers up to season 5:

Let's say that during the time of season 5, someone used a calculator to transport back to the time of season 2.

Would Matt be alive?

If so, what would happen if someone tried to put him in touch with Mike?

[sandybrett]

I wonder if the... moral seems like the wrong word for something that can't actually be done in real life... thesis, I guess, of WOE.BEGONE is going to end up being that you can't actually escape the ramifications of the past, even with time travel.

Because, in the most recent episode (cut for spoilers)

Edgar says he and Mike are going to "put things back the way they were," but I don't think that's truly possible? Whatever new timeline is created, there will still be people who remember the current timeline. And they can't put things back exactly as they were, because as they were, the Hunters were planning to... well, do exactly what they did. So they'll have to get rid of Hunter somehow, and that will have consequences.

And you could argue the Hunters are making the same mistake.

[sandybrett]

Finished Episode 27 of WOE.BEGONE. Cut for spoilers.

Okay, so Mike teleported his past self into his cabin, and the result was that his present self ended up in the cabin, in the past, with full memory of the evening's events?

I'm feeling less and less hopeful that the time travel mechanics are going to make any sense. (Yes, I know exactly how I sound.)