It helps that there's no actual coin for starters. But I'd say his "continued" consciousness is to blame. His handheld waifu half let him keep that misunderstanding because he wasn't considering much alternative to it. In a way it almost cheapens things and yet soma still manages to feel like such a sad game.
It's a depressing game because literally everything is fricked straight to hell. There's not even a good explanation why people have an undersea base 100 years from now but not, like, space colonies or flee to submarines or flee to antarctic bunkers to avoid the meteor or launch into space using other spaceships. It's just "earth is over, for real this time". What were those stupid c**ts doing from 2015-2104 that they made no progress at all in colonizing the moon and mars? What a bunch of fricking wankers.
Have you seen the current state of things? That's where we're headed too
there's been a decline of general intelligence since the late 1800s, the invention of modern medicine may inadvertently cause us to regress because low IQ people who would ordinarily not reproduce, do. And do so at a significantly higher rate than high IQ people. As society becomes more complex, a higher IQ is required to participate, meaning an increasing portion of the population is unable to contribute and instead becomes a detriment, operating at a cost despite best intentions.
Imagine society becomes more complex to facilitate space exploration, but simultaneously a smaller and smaller portion of the population is actually capable of contributing to this effort. Before you know it you reach a tipping point where the people with a high enough IQ to actually contribute are preoccupied solely with keeping society running. First you see stagnation, and as the issue continues to compound, decline.
4 months ago
Anonymous
>there's been a decline of general intelligence since the late 1800s,
Citation needed big time.
The average IQ is rising, as far as I'm aware, and it's rising pretty rapidly, too.
I think you're confusing a lowering of intelligence with an increasing lack of jobs for low iq people, which, afaik, is definitely happening. The reasons for this are manifold, as are the solutions. In the far future, I think an economical post-scarcity society is pretty likely, which would fix the issue of more and more people being shut out from the labor force. Right now, however, we are at a very tumutuous point in time, as we are transitioning to widespread automation, ai already being able to outperform high iq people in very specific scenarios. Just like during the industrialization, many jobs will be lost and a lot of people will be left behind, but after adjusting to it, humanity as a whole will be better off. As much as I enjoy criticizing the way society is headed, scenarios like you see in stories such as Wall-E or Idiocracy seem very unlikely to me. A decay of morals, ethics and values is more likely than a decay of intelligence, but even if that happens, history has shown this particular issue to be cyclical. Maybe in a 100 years everyone's a hedonist drunkard drug addict cuz there's no more work and there's no negative repercussions to that lifestyle, but in response to that, another 100 years later, it's possible that everyone is hyper religious and couth and devout or whatever.
Humans aren't going to destroy themselves. We've never even been close. Even if all of the nukes of the cold war had gone off, humanity would have survived with certainty.
4 months ago
Anonymous
>Citation needed big time.
NTA but searcing for "Flynn effect reverse" gives plenty of hits, including
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-iq-scores-decline-reverse-flynn-effect
4 months ago
Anonymous
The fact that the non-reversed 'Flynn effect' is in the name of this article should clue you in on how ridiculously wrong you are.
4 months ago
Anonymous
Did you go to the primary source?
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289623000156
4 months ago
Anonymous
I'm not contesting the findings. I'm saying you are extremely wrong about the trend over the last two centuries.
4 months ago
Anonymous
>I'm saying you are extremely wrong about the trend over the last two centuries.
So you failed to notice the three letters "NTA"?
4 months ago
Anonymous
You are wrong on so many levels I find it more likely that you are just making shit up for giggles than misinformed.
4 months ago
Anonymous
I think that's probably confirmation bias -- it's not so much that people were smarter; there was just a clearer delineation between the literate and illiterate so most of the people whose words stood the test of time would have had secondary education.
Listen to some history podcasts like The Dollop and you'll hear plenty of examples of people being feckless rubes.
4 months ago
Anonymous
>I think that's probably confirmation bias >Listen to some history podcast
OH
THE IRONY
Go drool somewhere else
4 months ago
Anonymous
What's wrong with history podcasts?
I've learned a lot from them.
4 months ago
Anonymous
IQ scores didn't start declining in the developed world until the 1990s, and they're still rising in the developing world. The 20th Century saw some of the greatest increases in general intelligence in human history because of dramatic improvements to nutrition and access to education for children pretty much across the board. One of the main reasons they think IQs are declining in the developed world actually relates to less nutritious food being more commonly given to children now, because it correlates pretty much exactly with the point where obesity started to blow up in the developed world as well.
4 months ago
Anonymous
This is completely wrong on every level and you should feel bad
4 months ago
Anonymous
same
>no counterargument
So his post made you upset, and your ego prompted you to reply, you can't formulate a rational response.
4 months ago
Anonymous
What an absurd post.
4 months ago
Anonymous
>no counterargument
So his post made you upset, and your ego prompted you to reply, you can't formulate a rational response.
4 months ago
Anonymous
What about the several people who did give a comprehensive response?
Go back to your mormon potluck, sit down and be quiet.
4 months ago
Anonymous
>You have no counterargument!
I don't need one, the base premise is blatantly incorrect (IQ tests didn't exist until 1904, well after the 1800s, and have done nothing but go up in average score until the last decade) and the rest is utter sophistry trying to rationalize the incorrect premise
Frick off forever you complete and total dipshit
4 months ago
Anonymous
QI is a medical test of mental illness, any "normal and up" score is worthless, you fricking drooling morron.
4 months ago
Anonymous
No
No it isn't
It's a timed test of very specific logical problem solving skills
Put your head in an oven and crank that shit up to 400
4 months ago
Anonymous
>It's a timed test of very specific logical problem solving skills
failing any of these SPECIFIC test show a problem and thus a disease. solving them shows... nothing special.
Your parents made you pass this shit because there are clear suspission that you are a moron, and not a genius.
4 months ago
Anonymous
>I don't need one
Actually, yeah, you kinda do. Doesn't matter if IQ was objectively measured or not. Before we even get into that, your post is so seething and dripping with insults and buzzwords, it's clear you're not thinking in a sound mind. As it was called earlier, you clearly had a visceral emotional reaction and leapt in to reply without having anything valid to say. Anyone who types the way you do does not need to be taken seriously.
4 months ago
Anonymous
>make a shitty post >get called on it >"nooo but i want to ride on the coattails of some OTHER post!"
nope
Are you seriously trying to restart this argument over 12 hours later, holy frick dude you have an ego the size of a manatee. Shut the frick up.
4 months ago
Anonymous
same
[...]
>Heh, if I just ignore the posts providing actual rationale and just focus on the ones calling me dumb, I wont have to address the valid points others have brought up and can continue to bury my head in the sand and not reassess my viewpoint! Gottem!
What a bizarre mentality.
4 months ago
Anonymous
>make a shitty post >get called on it >"nooo but i want to ride on the coattails of some OTHER post!"
nope
4 months ago
Anonymous
The idea that low IQ people would normally not reproduce without modern medicine is hilarious.
Beside being a bit stupid, he was also desperate after killing/abandoning his 'past self'. He's the one that brought up the coin toss concept and I think Catherine just quietly rolled with it, for fear that he'd abandon the Ark idea.
I just got talos principal on sale and I have a feeling it's probably not that far off from the same concept
Can't comment because spoilers, but Talos is a great game. It was fun to 100% too.
It's pretty solid so far, clippy just gave me admin privileges after getting snippy with my inability to quantify human consciousness as measurable quantity of physics
I watched a let's play back when it came out where the guys playing it also didn't get the concept of the coin toss and just got really mad that they predicted the "twist" that the mc would "fail" the coin toss
>there is no heaven or hell, and the "afterlife" is just another world full of living beings with different physical laws that can be bent and broken with science
>the way the afterlife works, only works that way because of the current people in charge there, and they can always be dethroned
Oh ,gee. Look at how interesting the comic is right now!
Look at all the discussion and debate about Gunnerkrigg that it sparked in the thread! And it's the first thread of the year too!
Kat's gonna build a machine/network that ghosts can ping and say "hey I'm dead come pick me up". Of course, nothing strange or reality-threatening will come about as a result of it, because this comic doesn't take chances.
Given how widespread the knowledge of the existence of "ghosts" and the rather mechanical functionality of "the ether" and the cycle involving it, there's literally no reason why dead people of any sort shouldn't be afforded at least a couple days reprieve in being able to tell all their loved ones "goodbye" or "the name of the person who murdered me is-" etc. Languish, shmanguish. We already know the "horrors" of ghostliness is just a sham thanks to the ROTD. This is yet another problem introduced by an author trying to be too clever for his own good. It's an all too common misfortune that an author comes up with a technological idea and then fails to fully consider the potential ramifications of it on society. Ghosts like Mort can casually chat it up with whomever they wish, so why is civilization not awash in dead people just hanging out?
Ghosts are an extremely rare occurrence in gkc. Mort only became a ghost because Jones was next to him when he died and she decided that he only died because of her being there. Jeanne only became a ghost because super-scientists who solved all of existence with a unified theory of spacetime managed to create a device that breaks the rules of death. It seems pretty likely, also, that time stops while a psychopomp is ferrying the soul of a deceased into the ether. It could be that the soul evaporates and gets lost instantly upon death and this psychopomp process is the only way to intercept this process.
I don't see how gkc in this specific instance is poorly written.
>ghosts happen frequently
Where is your evidence for that?
Why have we only encountered two ghosts in the story and why did both of them die under extremely specific and extremely rare circumstances that are both very different from each other? If your claim was correct, we should see ghosts all over the comic or we should have encountered a ghost at some point that died under very conventional circumstances.
The context of his claimwas ghosts being able to talk to the living. As we learned on the last page, if souls aren't claimed they simply vanish, so he has to be talking about ghosts.
4 months ago
Anonymous
The psychopomps only go after ghosts that do not end up where they belong.
Ghosts that do not want to move on or are trapped inside bubbles of irreality, for example.
Most ghosts relinquish their ether directly back to the source.
She'll automate the entire process. Her synths die, it pings the system, a digital assistant appears in the ether and guides them to a lovely waiting room in a pocket dimension until they can be processed by the system. There will be cold bottled water, snacks, free wi-fi, and probably a gallery of extremely tasteful nude paintings of Annie.
>cloud storage system >the dead are instantly transmitted to the heaven server where they can chose to remain or respawn >realized with a chip install, she can offer this service to everyone, not just the New People
Holly dooly, what happened to this thread? Heres a little something to distract a couple of you guys from this for a bit. Inspired by something one guy said last thread.
https://files.catbox.moe/nhjl18.png
Holly dooly, what happened to this thread? Heres a little something to distract a couple of you guys from this for a bit. Inspired by something one guy said last thread.
https://files.catbox.moe/nhjl18.png
I did the same picture and I'm also streaming the new fancards of the month, so come join.
NSFW:
https://files.catbox.moe/t5ovsk.jpg
https://pomf.tv/stream/imaajfpstnfo
Hey neat, I was the piercing-liking Jones requester, thanks! Did someone later in the thread say something about Annie entanglement or did you both come up with that?
Ah I see. Well once again appreciated, Jones easily the best GKC gal in my eyes. Have you ever watched community by chance? Seemingly random question if you haven't.
No seriously shut the frick up, I sincerely doubt any of those people are even still here. Nobody wants to argue about you being a homosexual 12 hours ago.
I just realized, the reason why the new people ghost stuck around was because it was too autistic to know where to go afterwards.
All the new people are like this.
Kat has quite a bit of work ahead of her.
They literally do. they guide every single departed soul they can, barring weird exceptions like Jeanne and Mort. That's why the question of who will guide the numans is such a big deal.
No they don't, it's literally explained a few pages back
Souls find their way to the ether themselves, the psychopomps come for those who refuse or can't find their way to the ether
>Kat invents Down Detector
>Kat is going to research how to control the afterlife with SCIENCE
Paz reconfirmed for top WIS score in the cast
>Kat creates the Ark from SOMA
What a fricking ending to that game, that was.
Still don't know how he didn't "get" the concept of the coin toss, though.
his brain was literally bleeding when he took the scan anon
he was fricking moronic
Oh, right, I forgot about that bit. I guess I should replay it, but man was it unnerving at times.
It helps that there's no actual coin for starters. But I'd say his "continued" consciousness is to blame. His handheld waifu half let him keep that misunderstanding because he wasn't considering much alternative to it. In a way it almost cheapens things and yet soma still manages to feel like such a sad game.
It's a depressing game because literally everything is fricked straight to hell. There's not even a good explanation why people have an undersea base 100 years from now but not, like, space colonies or flee to submarines or flee to antarctic bunkers to avoid the meteor or launch into space using other spaceships. It's just "earth is over, for real this time". What were those stupid c**ts doing from 2015-2104 that they made no progress at all in colonizing the moon and mars? What a bunch of fricking wankers.
Have you seen the current state of things? That's where we're headed too
there's been a decline of general intelligence since the late 1800s, the invention of modern medicine may inadvertently cause us to regress because low IQ people who would ordinarily not reproduce, do. And do so at a significantly higher rate than high IQ people. As society becomes more complex, a higher IQ is required to participate, meaning an increasing portion of the population is unable to contribute and instead becomes a detriment, operating at a cost despite best intentions.
Imagine society becomes more complex to facilitate space exploration, but simultaneously a smaller and smaller portion of the population is actually capable of contributing to this effort. Before you know it you reach a tipping point where the people with a high enough IQ to actually contribute are preoccupied solely with keeping society running. First you see stagnation, and as the issue continues to compound, decline.
>there's been a decline of general intelligence since the late 1800s,
Citation needed big time.
The average IQ is rising, as far as I'm aware, and it's rising pretty rapidly, too.
I think you're confusing a lowering of intelligence with an increasing lack of jobs for low iq people, which, afaik, is definitely happening. The reasons for this are manifold, as are the solutions. In the far future, I think an economical post-scarcity society is pretty likely, which would fix the issue of more and more people being shut out from the labor force. Right now, however, we are at a very tumutuous point in time, as we are transitioning to widespread automation, ai already being able to outperform high iq people in very specific scenarios. Just like during the industrialization, many jobs will be lost and a lot of people will be left behind, but after adjusting to it, humanity as a whole will be better off. As much as I enjoy criticizing the way society is headed, scenarios like you see in stories such as Wall-E or Idiocracy seem very unlikely to me. A decay of morals, ethics and values is more likely than a decay of intelligence, but even if that happens, history has shown this particular issue to be cyclical. Maybe in a 100 years everyone's a hedonist drunkard drug addict cuz there's no more work and there's no negative repercussions to that lifestyle, but in response to that, another 100 years later, it's possible that everyone is hyper religious and couth and devout or whatever.
Humans aren't going to destroy themselves. We've never even been close. Even if all of the nukes of the cold war had gone off, humanity would have survived with certainty.
>Citation needed big time.
NTA but searcing for "Flynn effect reverse" gives plenty of hits, including
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-iq-scores-decline-reverse-flynn-effect
The fact that the non-reversed 'Flynn effect' is in the name of this article should clue you in on how ridiculously wrong you are.
Did you go to the primary source?
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289623000156
I'm not contesting the findings. I'm saying you are extremely wrong about the trend over the last two centuries.
>I'm saying you are extremely wrong about the trend over the last two centuries.
So you failed to notice the three letters "NTA"?
You are wrong on so many levels I find it more likely that you are just making shit up for giggles than misinformed.
I think that's probably confirmation bias -- it's not so much that people were smarter; there was just a clearer delineation between the literate and illiterate so most of the people whose words stood the test of time would have had secondary education.
Listen to some history podcasts like The Dollop and you'll hear plenty of examples of people being feckless rubes.
>I think that's probably confirmation bias
>Listen to some history podcast
OH
THE IRONY
Go drool somewhere else
What's wrong with history podcasts?
I've learned a lot from them.
IQ scores didn't start declining in the developed world until the 1990s, and they're still rising in the developing world. The 20th Century saw some of the greatest increases in general intelligence in human history because of dramatic improvements to nutrition and access to education for children pretty much across the board. One of the main reasons they think IQs are declining in the developed world actually relates to less nutritious food being more commonly given to children now, because it correlates pretty much exactly with the point where obesity started to blow up in the developed world as well.
This is completely wrong on every level and you should feel bad
same
What an absurd post.
>no counterargument
So his post made you upset, and your ego prompted you to reply, you can't formulate a rational response.
What about the several people who did give a comprehensive response?
Go back to your mormon potluck, sit down and be quiet.
>You have no counterargument!
I don't need one, the base premise is blatantly incorrect (IQ tests didn't exist until 1904, well after the 1800s, and have done nothing but go up in average score until the last decade) and the rest is utter sophistry trying to rationalize the incorrect premise
Frick off forever you complete and total dipshit
QI is a medical test of mental illness, any "normal and up" score is worthless, you fricking drooling morron.
No
No it isn't
It's a timed test of very specific logical problem solving skills
Put your head in an oven and crank that shit up to 400
>It's a timed test of very specific logical problem solving skills
failing any of these SPECIFIC test show a problem and thus a disease. solving them shows... nothing special.
Your parents made you pass this shit because there are clear suspission that you are a moron, and not a genius.
>I don't need one
Actually, yeah, you kinda do. Doesn't matter if IQ was objectively measured or not. Before we even get into that, your post is so seething and dripping with insults and buzzwords, it's clear you're not thinking in a sound mind. As it was called earlier, you clearly had a visceral emotional reaction and leapt in to reply without having anything valid to say. Anyone who types the way you do does not need to be taken seriously.
Are you seriously trying to restart this argument over 12 hours later, holy frick dude you have an ego the size of a manatee. Shut the frick up.
>Heh, if I just ignore the posts providing actual rationale and just focus on the ones calling me dumb, I wont have to address the valid points others have brought up and can continue to bury my head in the sand and not reassess my viewpoint! Gottem!
What a bizarre mentality.
>make a shitty post
>get called on it
>"nooo but i want to ride on the coattails of some OTHER post!"
nope
The idea that low IQ people would normally not reproduce without modern medicine is hilarious.
It's the same universe as Cormac McCarthy's "The Road"
Beside being a bit stupid, he was also desperate after killing/abandoning his 'past self'. He's the one that brought up the coin toss concept and I think Catherine just quietly rolled with it, for fear that he'd abandon the Ark idea.
Can't comment because spoilers, but Talos is a great game. It was fun to 100% too.
It's pretty solid so far, clippy just gave me admin privileges after getting snippy with my inability to quantify human consciousness as measurable quantity of physics
I watched a let's play back when it came out where the guys playing it also didn't get the concept of the coin toss and just got really mad that they predicted the "twist" that the mc would "fail" the coin toss
I just got talos principal on sale and I have a feeling it's probably not that far off from the same concept
I hate that fricking game so much. It's just one long depressing slog about how everything is fricked beyond fricked.
What is that?
A computer running a simulated world, populated with the brain scans of the last remaining humans.
I think that was always obvious.
What does that mean?
https://twitter.com/mikefranchina_/status/1543730102541828096
>create machines that worships you
>kill them
>they still obey you
>conquer universe with an army of ghost machines
sounds like a logical plan to me!
Ah yes the powers of life and death, splendid
>there is no heaven or hell, and the "afterlife" is just another world full of living beings with different physical laws that can be bent and broken with science
>the way the afterlife works, only works that way because of the current people in charge there, and they can always be dethroned
>dooming robots to megahell because she can't just let annie take the c**t to robot heaven
Can't wait for them to need those tools and skills and have to ask for them in the worst moment possible.
>I'll figure it out.
And she will, effortlessly, because why would this comic ever have serious drama, tension, or consequences?
Oh ,gee. Look at how interesting the comic is right now!
Look at all the discussion and debate about Gunnerkrigg that it sparked in the thread! And it's the first thread of the year too!
It's either that or porn. The comic itself doesn't give much to talk about.
Nothing of interest ever happens in GKC anymore
All potential happenings get immediately undercut
Kat's gonna build a machine/network that ghosts can ping and say "hey I'm dead come pick me up". Of course, nothing strange or reality-threatening will come about as a result of it, because this comic doesn't take chances.
Given how widespread the knowledge of the existence of "ghosts" and the rather mechanical functionality of "the ether" and the cycle involving it, there's literally no reason why dead people of any sort shouldn't be afforded at least a couple days reprieve in being able to tell all their loved ones "goodbye" or "the name of the person who murdered me is-" etc. Languish, shmanguish. We already know the "horrors" of ghostliness is just a sham thanks to the ROTD. This is yet another problem introduced by an author trying to be too clever for his own good. It's an all too common misfortune that an author comes up with a technological idea and then fails to fully consider the potential ramifications of it on society. Ghosts like Mort can casually chat it up with whomever they wish, so why is civilization not awash in dead people just hanging out?
Honestly why bother they will fade into nothing on their own. So it is entirely irreverent job.
Ghosts are an extremely rare occurrence in gkc. Mort only became a ghost because Jones was next to him when he died and she decided that he only died because of her being there. Jeanne only became a ghost because super-scientists who solved all of existence with a unified theory of spacetime managed to create a device that breaks the rules of death. It seems pretty likely, also, that time stops while a psychopomp is ferrying the soul of a deceased into the ether. It could be that the soul evaporates and gets lost instantly upon death and this psychopomp process is the only way to intercept this process.
I don't see how gkc in this specific instance is poorly written.
Ghosts happen so frequently that the psychopomp for insects has to go and collect EVERY INSECT
In this case "ghosts" refers to souls NOT collected by a psychopomp who persist in the mortal world for one reason or another.
>ghosts happen frequently
Where is your evidence for that?
Why have we only encountered two ghosts in the story and why did both of them die under extremely specific and extremely rare circumstances that are both very different from each other? If your claim was correct, we should see ghosts all over the comic or we should have encountered a ghost at some point that died under very conventional circumstances.
I think anon is thinking of all departed souls as ghosts
The context of his claimwas ghosts being able to talk to the living. As we learned on the last page, if souls aren't claimed they simply vanish, so he has to be talking about ghosts.
The psychopomps only go after ghosts that do not end up where they belong.
Ghosts that do not want to move on or are trapped inside bubbles of irreality, for example.
Most ghosts relinquish their ether directly back to the source.
She'll automate the entire process. Her synths die, it pings the system, a digital assistant appears in the ether and guides them to a lovely waiting room in a pocket dimension until they can be processed by the system. There will be cold bottled water, snacks, free wi-fi, and probably a gallery of extremely tasteful nude paintings of Annie.
And a door that leads directly into the maw of a running metal crusher.
Hey man, that door is clearly labelled. If you're dumb enough to walk into it that's on you.
They all go in there eventually.
>kat redesigns the entire afterlife process
>it works even better, with arbiters no longer needed to guide souls
I cannot wait to see them seethe.
>cloud storage system
>the dead are instantly transmitted to the heaven server where they can chose to remain or respawn
>realized with a chip install, she can offer this service to everyone, not just the New People
Holly dooly, what happened to this thread? Heres a little something to distract a couple of you guys from this for a bit. Inspired by something one guy said last thread.
https://files.catbox.moe/nhjl18.png
I did the same picture and I'm also streaming the new fancards of the month, so come join.
NSFW:
https://files.catbox.moe/t5ovsk.jpg
https://pomf.tv/stream/imaajfpstnfo
Your service is appreciated
now do the same thing but make them flat
Your Jones is breddy gud and I feel like your style's already improving a bit, keep it up Annie Booba anon!
Based as per always!
Hey neat, I was the piercing-liking Jones requester, thanks! Did someone later in the thread say something about Annie entanglement or did you both come up with that?
Nice.
It was his idea and I wanted to challenge myself a bit with an odd idea.
Ah I see. Well once again appreciated, Jones easily the best GKC gal in my eyes. Have you ever watched community by chance? Seemingly random question if you haven't.
Jones is pretty great, ill continue to practice and draw more stupid sexy shit with a bunch of of the cast. Community is also one of my fave shows.
Based Jones fan, a fan of Annie's Boobs and Jones is assuredly based.
Nice. If you're down for any more requests, it's a nice season for Jones nonchalantly providing her breasts as hand warmers.
thats a good idea, ill put a pin in that one the next time I do another pic
I'm jonesin for jones.
No seriously shut the frick up, I sincerely doubt any of those people are even still here. Nobody wants to argue about you being a homosexual 12 hours ago.
I just realized, the reason why the new people ghost stuck around was because it was too autistic to know where to go afterwards.
All the new people are like this.
Kat has quite a bit of work ahead of her.
Are you stupid? It's stuck because they need psychopomps to guide them
Psychopomps don't need to guide every single ghost, anon
They literally do. they guide every single departed soul they can, barring weird exceptions like Jeanne and Mort. That's why the question of who will guide the numans is such a big deal.
No they don't, it's literally explained a few pages back
Souls find their way to the ether themselves, the psychopomps come for those who refuse or can't find their way to the ether