Frazz by Jef Mallett for February 09, 2025

That is some strong dialogue from that girl!

Just be glad you don’t freeze or melt. After all, you’re mostly water.

Don’t worry Lass, ten maybe fifteen years and you’ll be right as rain.

When you think deeply about how you came to be here, you quickly discover that even being ALIVE is incredibly unlikely and then add in ratiocination?? Wow. It’s really WONDERful.

Where I lived, all snow was powder, regardless of the temperature. Learned something new from today’s strip, temperature can affect the moisture content, too. Yay snow science.

A crackly puddle of existential angst! I love it!

There are other important situations, whose existence narrowly depend on precise conditions some of which are life sustaining.

Hey, it’s an ice day!

Read a report just now that Jan has been tagged as the ‘hottest month on record.’ Wonder which planet they were talking about. Like many states we had a dozen or more single digit days with 2/3 of the rest scattered between 40 and the teens. Nothing hot there except my coffee and that didn’t stay hot for long.

Kid is becoming aware. This thought will come back to her from time to time as she ages and she might begin to understand its message. As for us old guys, mostly as we get older we think How the Heck . . .?!!

If a kid is worried about existential angst, they have been reading too much Kierkegaard…

And yet you’re aware that there HAVE BEEN conditions just right for snowmen. One thing about life is that it is capable of adapting to environmental changes; snowmen can’t do that.* Our current (relatively stable) environment is not conducive to spontaneous generation of life. Billions of years ago, the system was volatile enough for biogenesis, and you only need to have self-replication and the possibility of variation arise once and you’re off to the races (of course, there’s no reason or need to assume it only happened once). Given a dynamic bios it was by no means inevitable that we’d end up with vertebrates, mammals, primates, humans, or you, nor is there any reason to consider any of these miraculous; if something/someone existed instead of you they would feel just as inevitable/miraculous as you might.

*Of course, once built a snowman will be able to survive a drastic drop in temperature (although not a dramatic rise); it can be sustained in an environment which is not conducive to building more snowmen.

I can believe that the current young generation is full of anxiety.

It is amazing just how narrow conditions have to be for a lot of things. For example, the range of temperatures for us to be comfortable, the amount of gravity to keep us from squashing into ourselves, et cetera, et cetera.

Just enjoy the winter for cripes sake.

Yesterday, with every foot fall and slow tire roll, the snow squeaked or crunched. Quiet and cold enough to hear them over a block away. Until the teeth chattering drowned them out.

At last! I now have the most accurate description of myself: “A crackly puddle of existential angst.”

What? It doesn’t take any magic for a snowman to form. It’s all just natural crystalline water. They must self-organize into existence all the time.

Considering that you live in a world where all the environments are either aqua, tangerine, of lavender clouds, why would you spend any time at all wondering about snow?

Bravo and well done!

Life as we know it is defined in very narrow set of physical conditons.