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2019-06-28, 12:56 PM (ISO 8601)
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2019-06-28, 01:09 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2010
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- right behind you
Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
Yes the whole outlook that these omnipotent beings are testing the federation to see if they are ready for whats out there beyond their borders. Im still not entirely sure that Q isnt being a troll. Its possible, but I also see it as a way of Q maintaining his fun. "Oh it was just another TEST jean luc! I certainly didnt introduce you to the borg out of sheer spite!"
"Interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum Europae vincendarum"
Translation: "Sometimes I get this urge to conquer large parts of Europe."
"If you don't get those cameras out of my face, I'm gonna go 8.6 on the Richter scale with gastric emissions that'll clear this room."
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2019-06-28, 04:46 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Tor zur Welt
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Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
what does spooky bot do?
they are buisy not abusing their power on their quest not to die of boredom.* my emphasis
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Things that don't kill me make me strong
Things that do kill me leave me dead
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2019-06-28, 05:28 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2013
Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
Yes, but Star Trek is a show specifically about exploring the galaxy, finding entities like Q, and learning to understand them. Q fits in quite well with a setting like that. A Star Trek episode where they discover that the AI running Starfleet's computers is Spookybot and the implications for society that brings would also be quite interesting.
I wouldn't want to watch a Star Trek episode where the bridge crew sit around in Ten-Forward for the entire episode and agonize about Picard's love life in the same way I don't want Spookybot hanging around with the QC gang.
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2019-06-30, 11:06 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2010
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Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
"But what will you live on?"
"Espionage. Blackmail. Outright theft. Roko, we told you this thirteen seconds ago. Has failed bodily integration impaired your memory?"Last edited by mucat; 2019-06-30 at 11:07 PM. Reason: typo
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2019-06-30, 11:56 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2009
Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
Did they actually give alltheir money to charity? Which charity then? THe AI non profit Roko is working for? Another? Split it up between all of them?
Did they do something else to help? Did they hack a database to simply give May a new body? Which will totally backfire because nobody will believe her that "No really, it was that super-powered AI" over "you were in jail for hacking yourself a new body, and you want us to believe you did not hack yourself a new body now?"
Maybe "All their money" comes down to something like 12 dollars because they just don't have need for owning actual money. (they just steal what they need when they need it"
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2019-07-01, 12:12 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2011
Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
I greatly suspect that it is a combination of not needing money (and being able to steal it as needed) and only donating liquid assets. Spookybot could have a lot of profitable ventures that aren't liquid, such as convenient real estate, after all.
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2019-07-01, 01:29 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Apr 2008
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Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
I think we don't know enough to reliably guess what they did..
I feel like they wouldn't be dumb enough to do something that might backfire on May, but I could of course be wrong about that.
If they just gave 'lots of money' to charity, I'm curious where Jeph is going with that and if it will lead to a 'rich people should just donate everything' debate.
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2019-07-01, 03:33 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Apr 2007
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Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
Roko, you're not a very nice friend. Okay, Spookybot is a little strange, but they've just come to say 'hi' and make sure you're okay. The least you could do is have a civil conversation with them instead of immediately telling them to do all these self-sacrificing things on your behalf.
Originally Posted by Kato
Whether or not Spookybot actually is as rich as Roko thinks they are, is something that we'll probably find out over the next couple of days.Last edited by Wraith; 2019-07-01 at 03:41 AM.
~ CAUTION: May Contain Weasels ~
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2019-07-01, 12:04 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2014
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2019-07-01, 12:28 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2016
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- The Lakes
Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
My response to Jeph is that it's very easy to be generous with other people's money, or time, or whatever.
What's worse, IMO, is when mouseover or other little hidden additions start part way through a comic's run, like years in sometimes, and the author never says anything, until one day you notice it's there and have to trawl back through the archives to find when it actually started.It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.
Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.
The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.
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2019-07-01, 01:45 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Apr 2007
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Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
I'm almost hoping to find out that Spookybot doesn't have any money, or always gives it all away on an hourly basis regardless of what Roko wants, because they're just that nice/inclined to dispose of the evidence of their crimes.
I like Roko, but I'd rather not see this plot turn into another Public Service Message about the evils of capitalism and it would be nice to see it turned around; that Spookybot does NOT hoard all their money without doing anything beneficial with it, and that Roko was wrong to assume the all rich people are bad people.
Then again, this is from Jeph who posted an equivalent to "f--- the police" on Twitter around the time he made all of his in-universe cops out to be corrupt bullies, so I don't have high hopes that he's going that way.~ CAUTION: May Contain Weasels ~
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2019-07-01, 10:16 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2004
Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
Yeah, I think hoping Jeph will keep his politics to himself is futile.
Orth Plays: Currently Baldur's Gate II
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2019-07-02, 12:30 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Apr 2008
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Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
I'm not sure I want to read the next few Strips...
But to talk about something less controversial : what kind of being doesn't pick itself a name? This seems very weird to me. Even if they want to live a secret life.Last edited by Kato; 2019-07-02 at 12:31 AM.
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2019-07-02, 12:31 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2015
Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
I think it's more a matter than Spookybot, far more than any human of vast wealth, doesn't have anything to spend its money on (its likely to have a lot of money, its ability to break encryption means it can acquire money that is just sitting around in the economy that no one can actively access and therefore won't be missed, like misplaced bitcoin wallets and secret offshore accounts belonging to dead drug lords). Its existence is primarily digital, and its systems mastery allows it free access to any digital asset anywhere at any time. It doesn't need physical things like real estate, or planes, or yachts, or even fine dining experiences. That's why Spookybot is willing to spend that money in an attempt to buy Roko's friendship.
Now, just giving away giant piles of money is more complicated than it seems, and would also produce massive exposure because wire transactions are tracked far more closely than cash (which is why criminals carry around giant duffel bags full of cash), and the FBI, IRS, and other agencies are going to try to track Spookybot for this - reasonably so too, since it is almost certainly guilty of immense amounts of tax fraud.
Giving away large amounts of money efficiently is also bureaucratically complicated, which is why there's a Gates Foundation and Bill Gates doesn't just randomly mail people checks. Perhaps Spookybot can just finger snap a subroutine into being to handle that, but if so, the impact of its information technology capabilities exceed any dollar amount it could dump onto NGOs in liquid form. But overall, this is why you don't introduce a god-level character into existing systems (in something like Schlock Mercenary all the systems are fictional, which allows for a fog of plausibility) on a whim, because the downstream effects would be massive and can derail the story. A story about an emergent AI that got into the financial system and redistributed all the idle wealth in the world to charity would be a very interesting story, done well, but it is not this story.
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2019-07-02, 04:42 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Apr 2007
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Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
As Bubbles and Station have mentioned previously, to a colossally intelligent AI something as trivial as conversation is just another subroutine among billions. Why devote run-time to something as useless and unimportant as a meat-space label when you are, for all intents and purposes, The Internet?
Or, from a softer and more narrative point of view; Spookybot has never had any friends until now, so they've never had to introduce themselves to anyone. If you have only ever had yourself for company, and you only ever think of yourself as "Me" no matter how many bodies "you" are spread over, when would you use a name?
Maybe this is part of the reason as to why Spookybot wants Roko to be her friend? They're trying to learn how to be more "human", starting with the very basics of conversation and personal identity.
Originally Posted by Mechalich
Now, just giving away giant piles of money is more complicated than it seems~ CAUTION: May Contain Weasels ~
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2019-07-02, 08:07 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2010
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- right behind you
Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
"Interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum Europae vincendarum"
Translation: "Sometimes I get this urge to conquer large parts of Europe."
"If you don't get those cameras out of my face, I'm gonna go 8.6 on the Richter scale with gastric emissions that'll clear this room."
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2019-07-02, 09:32 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Apr 2007
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Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
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Tales of a Role-Play Gamer - Horrible Optimisation
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2019-07-02, 09:34 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2004
Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
I'm pretty sure Roko DARES ALL where Spookybot is concerned. She's already given them a noogie. Next strip, she'll be sitting on their couch.
(This is a reference to a quite awful comic book where Darkseid replied to being challenged about sitting on Mary Marvel's couch with, "Darkseid dares all!")Orth Plays: Currently Baldur's Gate II
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2019-07-02, 01:17 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2013
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Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
I'm suddenly remembering that mashing letters is AI profanity. Apparently Roko has something of a dirty mouth when she's alarmed.
“Evil is evil. Lesser, greater, middling, it's all the same. Proportions are negotiated, boundaries blurred. I'm not a pious hermit, I haven't done only good in my life. But if I'm to choose between one evil and another, then I prefer not to choose at all.”
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2019-07-03, 12:42 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
Not to get too economic but I was expecting Spooky to have much more than two billion dollars.. Then again, I guess she doesn't need it (?)
Also, Roko, you're being a bitchy bitch. Instead of being happy for a lot of people getting help, you decide to focus on your own (misguided) inferiority complex. I guess I can accept it as a sudden outburst but... Get a grip on yourself.
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2019-07-03, 01:52 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2015
Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
Two billion is a lot for a person who doesn't officially exist. The majority of modern fortunes are held in either investment vehicles of various kinds (including stocks, commodity futures, government bonds and a whole bunch of other stuff) or in real estate, and Spookybot cannot access any of it save through complicated dodges. It has to keep money in either secure accounts under false identities (or perhaps under non-sapient subroutines that is has granted sufficient status) or in dubious places like the crypto market. Given Spookybot's known encryption-blasting capabilities it can probably mine bitcoin like nobody else and I wouldn't be surprised if a large amount of its money was in various cryptocurrencies.
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2019-07-03, 04:58 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2009
Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
Ok, so we now have a comentary about how easy the rich have it and how easy they could fix things if they just wanted.
Guess the storyline about trying to get the government to pay for May's body is over now, because she'll just get one.
Also, why has nobody ever raked Hanners over the coals for being stinking rich and not solving all her friends problems by throwing money at them?
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2019-07-03, 05:24 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
I think I approve of Roko's response, to some extent. She's been through a lot lately and is only just finding a way to reassert her identity and purpose; for all of her efforts to be trivialised on a whim is justifiably upsetting.
It reminds me a little bit of Claire and Pintsize's discussion about transgenderism. Pintsize made an offhand comment about the fact that pretty soon someone will have developed fully functional artificial genitalia and it would be "no big deal" for people to swap whenever they wanted. Claire quite rightfully pointed out that it WOULD be a HUGE deal to all the people who don't currently have that luxury, and had to undergo the process "the hard way" after years of persecution and emotional trauma.
That's not quite from where Roko is at the moment, but it has the same sort of feel. Today was a huge accomplishment for her, and it's insulting for someone without her disadvantages to come along and make a show of how easily they surpass her. Being upset at Spookybot's lack of tact is understandable.
Hopefully she doesn't continue to rant about it tomorrow and instead just explains herself, though. There's only so much complaining that you can realistically do about 2 billion dollars being given to charity, before it starts to come across as a little bit petty.
Originally Posted by Morquard
It's also probably because, since I'm a jaded individual, there's a certain amount of favouritism on Jeph's part. He likes Hanners and would rather not have the focus of abused privilege aimed at her, not while there are nameless civil servants like the Parole Officer or moustache-twirling caricatures of Jeff Bezos to snipe at instead.
In short, Jeph doesn't do it because he says that Hanners is the nice type of millionaire, because reasons.Last edited by Wraith; 2019-07-03 at 05:25 AM.
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2019-07-03, 06:03 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2005
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Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
Well consider how everyone reacted when she interceded when Marten got food poisoning. Its clear that her friends don't like her barrelling in with family influence and there isn't any actual proof she has access to significant independent funds. Any funds she does have are likely in a trust, particularly considering her mental health history, and a trustee who let her spend money on fixing her friends problems would likely get sued into oblivion by her mother (and rightly so).
Considering that two billion is more money than anyone would ever need and, as a rational super AI spookybot understands the term "diminishing utility" (ie, once you have a lot of money having lots and lots isn't actually that much more helpful, but if you have none then having some is life changing) and just stopped when they reached "enough for even really unlikely emergencies" and instead focused on other things.Last edited by Evil DM Mark3; 2019-07-03 at 06:07 AM.
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Hong Kong
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2019-07-03, 06:15 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2007
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- Switzerland
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Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
And it is ready cash, apparently, not assets.
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2019-07-03, 06:39 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2012
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- Montreal
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2019-07-03, 06:47 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2005
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Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
Hmm, I did assume they were liquidating assets (comment made on today's Patron strip might support this). God level AIs can do a lot of things very fast and all they really need to ensure is that the funds are liquidated before the bank transfers are completed, which can actually take days for large transfers as everyone involved starts freaking out and getting out the fine toothed combs.
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Hong Kong
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2019-07-03, 06:59 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2012
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Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
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2019-07-03, 07:09 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2010
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- right behind you
Re: Questionable Content XV: I HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! I Told You This Thread Was Weird
We still dont know, aside from a few places, where spooky even sent all that money. For all we know, rhino conservation got a shot in the arm just now. Which would probably tick roko off even more. The idea that on a whim spooky just donated 2 billion internet bucks to a thousand random charities, likely without the slightest concern for which ones got what. I can see the rage over "rich person games" as spooky didnt even donate because it felt it was the right thing to do. Spooky did it because it would be amusing.
On the other hand, I also feel like spooky just exposed its naivety. Spooky doesnt quite GET what it means to be friends or to interact with people. I fully expect the next comic to be spooky going, "Oh, Im sorry, I understand now." THEN REMOVING ITS DONATIONS! Which will of course trigger another round of freak out."Interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum Europae vincendarum"
Translation: "Sometimes I get this urge to conquer large parts of Europe."
"If you don't get those cameras out of my face, I'm gonna go 8.6 on the Richter scale with gastric emissions that'll clear this room."