OPP 26 notes · 4:41pm Sep 20th, 2015
OPP 26 Blog Notes
I've got to give a huge thanks to my pre-readers and creative consultants—they spent two weeks working on this, up to after it was published: Humanist, AnormalUnicornPony, metallusionsismagic, AShadowOfCygnus, bitbrony, MSPiper, MrZJunior, Forderz, Woonsocket Wrench, and my parents.
Licorice tea is a thing. Licorice root has been used for a long time, dating back to the Egyptians, if not before. It has medicinal uses, and it's naturally sweet (although most licorice candies have sugar added, of course). It was used in traditional Chinese medicine, and—according to horse owners—a lot of horses like it. One of our customers has a horse who likes licorice whips, and some research online indicated that her horse isn't the only one who likes the flavor.
Bookbinding is a rather complex subject, so I'm only going to cover a few salient points here.
Books were traditionally made in 'folios,' which was a group of pages that were all printed together, folded, and then trimmed. In Western printing, they were usually sixteen pages. In some books, you'll actually see a letter at the corner of each folio labeling which one it is (since they obviously have to put them in in the correct order). "Sexternion" is twelve leaves per folio.
Moving type printing—what Gutenberg 'invented' (in quotes, because the Chinese beat him to it by over 500 years) was where you'd have little stamps for each letter, kind of like scrabble tiles. Just like scrabble tiles, you need to have enough to print all sixteen pages in one go. There were undoubtedly printer's formulas to cover that.
There are lots of different ink formulas. The Chinese have been using inks since at least 2300 BCE, using plant, animal, and mineral products. Tannin, from trees, was commonly used. Analyzing the type of ink used can help identify where a particular thing was written, since it was locally sourced.
Many of the historical ink formulas would be available to the ponies, and yet there is one part of me who wants to imagine they milk squid or octopuses for their ink.
The earliest glues were plant-based. Over the next 200,000 years, our ancestors experimented with all sorts of different ways to stick things together. Medieval monks, for example, used egg whites as glue.
Sometimes it's hard to fathom just how fast changes have been happening over the last couple of centuries, especially in the case of my younger viewers, so I want you to imagine this: when my grandfather was growing up, there wasn't TV. It hadn't been invented yet. When he was in the ROTC (it wasn't called that yet), he was responsible for a mule team which pulled an artillery piece. Cassette tapes hadn't been invented when my father went to college, and until high school, I did most of my typing on a Smith Corona.
Dale's grandfather could easily have been born in the 1880s, and—depending on where he lived—his local tech level might have been exactly the same as the ponies'. Hard to believe we've gone from there to where we are now in a hundred fifty years, but we have. Who wants to put a wager on where we'll be a hundred fifty years from now?
One of the genres of fiction I enjoy is science fiction, especially a lot of the authors from the Golden Age. What constantly amazes me is when I read a story and then step back and say “we can do that now.”
Dr. Forsyth is based on my high school English teacher. Words cannot express how good a teacher he was—he was the single most influential teacher I have ever had. I can promise you that if I hadn't had his English class, you wouldn't be reading this story.
He had an odd manner of teaching. He didn't bog us down with books, and he preferred quality over quantity. He'd make random statements at times: he said that he could walk through walls, but because we didn't believe it was possible, we would be unable to see him do it. Every day, he put a quote on the board, and wanted us to write about it in our journal. My journal was eighty pages, typed. He read the whole thing. I got an A+.
His was one of the few classes where I actually enjoyed writing essays, and where I'd put in an extra effort. I'd even throw in little jokes for him: random books in the bibliography, or in one case very carefully constructing my paragraphs so I could use a triple-embedded quote.
Thus, when I needed the name for an important professor . . . well, it didn't take me too long to come up with one.
You've probably seen it in movies—important government documents with stuff blacked out.
Oftentimes, that was done with a back marker. I'm not sure how they dealt with the typewriter impressions on the page—presumably, they censored copies, which would take care of the impressions, anyway. In the case of Moller blacking out the document, he's scanned the censored copy, and then either faxed or e-mailed it to Dr. Forsyth. Either method would make the original impossible to read.
I don't know this for a fact, but I am willing to bet that there are experts in our government who are skilled at uncensoring documents which are not properly prepared.
Kewadin is a small town in northern Michigan (technically an unincorporated community), near Traverse City. How small? The whole township has a population of 2,204, and the town is small enough that it doesn't even rate its own Wikipedia article. I have never been there, although I've been very near it. It's nine miles from Kewadin to the Torchport airport.
Dr. Seymour is a reference to Indiana Jones. She was Indiana Senior's teacher, and Indiana Junior's tutor.
Kate's getting her mythology mixed with the golden bridle . . . sort of. In the Greek myth, Pegasus could only be captured with a golden bridle, and Bellerophon did just that (for those of you who have read Xenophilia and wondered why the main character was named “Lero.” that's why). The golden bridle also figured in some Western mythology as a way to capture unicorns—a virgin girl could lure the unicorn to her, and then slip a golden bridle on its head. Or she could let it lay its head in her lap . . . there were actually a lot of different ways to do it.
That last image is actually the cover art on a book I own, but the title and author escapes me at the moment. I know the art is by Boris Vallejo.
(*nods*) This is one reason why I write the Equestrian future as high-tech. The show makes it obvious that Equestria is a technologically-dynamic civilization like the modern West, rather than a relatively-static one such as Dynastic Egypt. And even Dynastic Egypt made technological progress; it just did so slowly by Human civilized standards.
At our current rate?
500 gold pieces on Western Civilization and Culture not even existing. Leonidas died for nothing.
3406742
On the other side of the great filter, assuming we survive.
In Xenophilia, the main character is named Bellerophon, and Lero is the nickname he uses. This Bellerophon caught a much cooler pegasus than the one from mythology.
The most obvious choice I can think of for ink would be graphite, mixed with some binding agent like oil. Though that would only cover black ink. Minerals could also be extracted from rocks, for some other colours like browns, reds, yellows, and given the evident abundance of brightly coloured gems in Equestria, those could be used to make yet more colours. [1]
The idea to make ink from ground minerals also plays nicely with the concept of rock farming. Got to get it from somewhere and who better to extract minerals than the Earth Ponies? So in a sense rock farming would be more accurately described as mineral farming.
Earliest I can remember is working with those old grey and beige windows 2000 PCs in school and using floppy disks. It was also about the same time we got our first home computer (that stood in a specially built rack), and later singing along to the dial tones so we could use the dismal something-something-k dial-up connection.
We have certainly come far in these last twenty odd years.
Well how else would they recover after long since losing the original in an overly complicated filing system dating back over a decade?
Fascinating, I didn't know that.
(Has not yet read the chapter yet btw, I just found these points so interesting I had to comment on them.)
--Sollace
1. Ones that are tarnished, cracked, or otherwise worthless for magical application would be preferred.
From previous comments made by Kate I'm pretty sure she's not a virgin... Virgins don't tend to wake up naked in unfamiliar places without clothes often enough to shrug it off.
But... You know, she does see unicorns and apparently only virgins could do that... I blame the drugs, which I also hope she and Dale aren't alone when she can finally think clear. It wouldn't be unreasonable for her to think he's kidnapped her and kept her drugged and that the ponies were just a drug induced hallucination. Just for the love of god if that does happen if she says something like "of course they're fake they didn't even speak english." I will leap through the computer screen and into the story to slap her upside the head.
Now if you'll excuse me I have to go write an incident report for work for an man tripping over a curb and seriously hurting himself... I just wanted to read this first.
Where we will be in 50 years time?
In 30 years time, given the continuation of Moores Law, Outlook Chaotic.
In 50 years time, there is no possible outlook, the changes possible will be greater than the previous 4 Billion years.
If CERN etc work theoretically, well, Back To The Drawing Board.
Well another great chapter, and I have a couple of additional fun facts for you:
On censoring docs today there is also software that will do the traditional 'blackout' of text totally in the computer. Adobe Acrobat (the full version) actually has a censor feature called just that.
I also have to agree the history and 'science' of bookbinding really is fun and a lot more interesting than most probably think it is.
I had a photography professor in collage I TA'd for who hand made, sowed, and bound all of his own journals and other books he made. That was fun to watch and learn more about.
On the bookbinding, another term for the 'folio' is a signature. At least in my experience with printing and binding folio, has been mostly replaced I think by the term signature today. Or at least that was the term I came across most in software and when working with printers, and doing my own printing and binding. Maybe it's my background in visual art printing but I usually associate folio with a complete and bound work which could have multiple signatures in it, actually now that I think of it I wonder if that use of folio is what might have prompted the shift to the term signature in printing circles and software.
On the technology level in Equestria. . .
It would never be possible to pin an exact number on this, relative to Earth, because they would be more advanced in some areas and behind in others. Confusing things further, the TV show hasn't been consistent in what it shows us, with inventions appearing and disappearing at the whim of the writers.
Examples. . . They don't seem to have the telephone or even telegraph (thus increasing the reliance on Spike). They don't seem to have fountain pens -- except in the latest episode where I spotted a 1940s style desk pen in the background! They seem to use 1940s style press cameras with sheet film -- except in the latest episode where they all had compact (35mm?) cameras with roll film! There are no motion pictures -- except in that one episode, where they had a 1950s style training film (with color and sound!) for exposition. There are no electric lights -- except that one episode where ponies were running around with flashlights in their mouths! They have color printing for comic books -- except when they're using scrolls for everything. And then there's the question of whether those arcade games in 1980s-style cabinets were, in fact, video games. . .
I've become very gun-shy about ever claiming that "They haven't invented X yet." As soon as I do, either somebody points out a scene I'd overlooked in one episode where X briefly appeared, or else X shows up in the next new one that airs. Then I'm left feeling like an idiot.
And when it comes to FiMFiction. . . Whew! Interpretations in fics are all over the chart. (But the anarchy is part of what makes this place run. Viva Discord!)
HOWEVER, for my own part, I've always found it helpful to assume technology in the general ballpark of the USA in the 1880s. Steam is well established. Electricity is the new hotness. And it seems to mesh well with their sort of pre-WW1 attitude and social structure, as I tend to imagine it. (Although I've been flamed for sharing that viewpoint, too.)
So, let me see if I follow Kate's mind-set here. . .
1. None of this is real; it's all a dream or hallucination.
2. Dale is -- somehow -- the dreamer, and can be blamed for dreaming up anything Kate doesn't like.
3. Ponies are being nice to her because she continually bribes them with petting and brushing.
4. Her new mission is to get a horseback ride.
That must be some strong medicine. I wonder if anyone's thought about how embarrassed she's going to be after her head is clear and she really comes to grip with what's going on -- and what she's been doing?
3406707
I agree. I don't see that their technological advancement would be the same as our own, however. Obviously, they probably won't have too much interest in developing weapons of war, and I see them thinking through potential environmental impacts more than we do. The magic, of course, throws a wrench into things, as does the weather control. Simple windmills are a lot more practical and reliable when you can control how much wind they get, and when they get it.
I suspect that they'll move at a slower pace than we Westerners have--I imagine with Celestia as their ruler for the foreseeable future, they're more likely to think long term than Americans do . . . but that having been said, I think their pace of technology will be slow but consistent, while ours often rushes from crisis to crisis.
3406742
Or maybe it'll be the Greeks who rise up once again and save Europe from the Persians. Whatever happens, unless part of it substantially increases lifespan, I won't be around to see much more than the first third of it. Still, I bet there's going to be a boatload of innovations I never could have guessed were coming.
3406811
Also a possibility. Or we may have already passed through it.
3406914
20% cooler, I'd say.
3407461
The problem is I am just a little too old to see it. I am 46, most of the way to 47. If I were say 26 then I would have a reasonable possibility of seeing what the great filter actually is. I likely won't live long enough to have that answer, but you might.
3406917
Iron derivatives and tannin seem to be one of the most common early pigments for 'black' ink (really a rusty tan color). Kohl could have been used in ink (I don't know if it was), and charcoal's another pretty obvious source for dark ink.
Interestingly, the first known use of glue was, as I said, about 200,000 years ago--to make cave paintings stick on the wall. If your 'inks' are glue-based, you could presumably use anything you could grind up finely enough.
Here's a thought: going with the glue-based ink theory, or with our own historical methods of making some colors by crushing up appropriately colored bugs . . . how about finely-chopped horsehair? If they still get winter coats, they've literally got every color they could want at their disposal, free for the taking. FWIW, I think one of the reasons they still use quills is that they're essentially free in any mixed-tribe setting.
Our first computer was a TRS-80, with two disk drives and a cassette drive. When it got replaced with a Windows PC (a 386), we also got a 300 baud modem.
I always figured in those cases they just made things up.
It is even more impressive when you look at how much technology had progressed in the proceeding couple of millennia! There has always been technological progression but it wasn't such a breakneck pace we see today. Once we began to figure out how the natural world works we eagerly applied it to our lives. Its a cumulative effect with earlier discoveries leading to new ones, like a snowball rolling down a hill it starts slow but eventually it is a giant whirring ball of doom. After we figured out how to manage diseases and how to use energy sources that weren't dependent on muscle power or natural sources (sun, wind, water) there was no stopping us.
It is important to note that these technological developments, while widespread and second nature to civilized nations, are not universal everywhere in the world. First world nations have the knowledge and resources to develop and apply all this technology, while other parts struggle and advance much slower.
3407003
Well, the drugs help a lot, but . . . yeah, she's not. It'll probably never come up in the story, though.
While I luckily don't know what it feels like to detox from morphine, the ponies are obviously going to be a continuing presence throughout the entire process, which will give her a chance to get used to them as she's coming out of her haze.
My condolences. I've had to write them at Community Mental Health a time or two, and they're not fun.
3407043
Maybe that's what triggered the first big bang.
3407198
I seem to recall that fairly recently, the Brits screwed that up somehow, and people could un-censor a publicly-available document by changing font color. Hopefully, Adobe's is more robust . . . and hopefully, Adobe isn't what's protecting vital national security interests.
It is! I really only scratched the surface here. Maybe I should read up on it some more and write a related story involving bookbinding. I bet Twilight knows how--I'd figure that's a requirement to be a librarian (of course, it's anypony's guess how good she is as an actual librarian).
Yeah, the Wikipedia article said that some of the terms were American-only; presumably other people (and possibly professionals) use different terms. I know in traditional fencing (with swords) most of the terminology is Italian and French, because they were the ones who wrote the rulebooks, so to speak. There are English terms for some of it, but nobody serious uses them.
I also might have made some mistakes in the blog post. I actually re-wrote it from scratch on my laptop while I was at work, since I had a bit of down time while I was making lunch. I kinda skimmed the article the second time through. I'll have to go back and make sure I actually got it right.
3407403
Yes and yes. That does make things difficult, which is why I essentially set up a hierarchy of belief, so to speak. Basically, if it's used as a joke or in a song, it doesn't count. Only if it's frequent, or important to the plot of an episode, does it have to be there. I can handwave away the 'arcade games' (besides, we don't know what's in the box), while the train figures in too many episodes to ignore. I also set a particular episode start date (Apple Family Reunion), so I can ignore anything introduced after that point.
I am 70% sure a telegram has been mentioned in an episode or two. There's a telephone in Rarity takes Manehattan, IIRC.
They do have felt-tipped pens, for sure, as well as pencils, quills, markers, and probably crayons (can't remember if we've seen crayons).
Yeah, they've used a variety of different styles of camera.
Don't forget the movie theatre scene in One Bad Seed (although it's during a song, so it can be ignored by my rules).
etc.
It might be safer to say "X isn't in common usage yet." After all, maybe Manehattan does have some telephone lines . . . but Ponyville doesn't. And, of course, there's no reason that their technological progress paralleled ours.
Well, send the people who are flaming you in my direction, 'cause I see the same thing. I actually put them about the end of the U.S. Civil War, tech-wise, with outliers. And, of the innovations you mentioned: telephones, telegraphs, moving pictures, single-lens reflex cameras, and roll film were all invented by the end of the 1880s. Not all those technologies were common, sure, but they existed. Portable lamps that didn't run on filament bulbs existed (carbide lamps, etc)--no reason why the flashlight's couldn't be carbide. We generally don't know how much of their tech works--what makes it go--and the outside appearance of the thing could just be styling. Maybe they like the flashlight shape 'cause it's easy to carry in the mouth, or maybe it was invented by a species with hands.
That's fairly close, yeah.
3407604
Well, given that Supernova can be Industrial Accidents. You know, when the Kardashev 3 civilisation loses control of the high yeild elemental transmutator?
To me, computers havent really altered much over the last 30 years, if you take Moores law into account, relative to what common mid priced home computers could do back then, we are Vastly behind the curve currently.
That, and I finally found out the details of softwre mentioned several years back, a piece of code, terns out its a Microkernal, but noone of importance wants you to know such a thing exists, which was Mathematically Proved to be Safe, Secure, and Resistant.
L4 Open Source microkernal and proof method.
Just a bit better than Amiga Exec.
3407478
Well, you've only got ten years on me. Who's to say it hasn't already happened? I don't know if we ever can know, unless we discover enough alien civilizations and failed alien civilizations to get a good idea what happens.
But I was thinking about this recently, 'cause it relates to the story. SETI hasn't picked up any signals as far as I know, but how long has SETI been going? For the sake of this story, SETI could be pointed right at Equestria, and they wouldn't pick up a damn thing. If the ponies advance at the exact same rate we did from the 1860s on, and if they develop the exact same technologies, it would be almost a hundred years before they had enough radio signal emissions that we'd have a fair chance to pick them up, and it would be another fifty-some years on top of that before the signal got to Earth.
3407578
It's freaking amazing, to be honest, and it just seems to be getting quicker all the time. Today on the way to work, I was listening to an interview with a researcher who was genetically modifying flies to give them different types of insomnia.
Even in first-world nations, the dispersal of technology isn't universal, nor does it all happen quickly. When I was in high school, a couple of my classmates didn't have home phones . . . and this was in the 90s. In central Michigan. My high school librarian was born in a horse-drawn buggy.
3407618
Yeah now that I think about it I can easily see 'folio' having a British flare in usage. Like I said folio works, but I'm glad you described it well in the story since it initially threw me a curve ball in it's usage, but the story itself set that straight even without the notes.
Yeah I hear you there. I just got back into playing and learning an instrument after 25+ years last November and I instantly found myself looking up / brushing up on some Italian.
3407680
I sincerely doubt there are other post filter civilizations in the galaxy, and the odds of finding someone just pre-filter in geologic time are staggering. The other option is that we are already post-filter in which case the odds are even worse.
Other galaxies with class 2 and 3 civilizations -- sure. This galaxy -- nope.
In regards to the section on censoring, specifically, the image. It is, I believe, a photographic (photostatic) copy. In this case, no black magic marker was used. The censored area was marked with a yellow highlighter, then photographed with a contrasting filter over the lens. The yellow ink and the black ink blend together in the image, making it impossible to read.
, I'm sure it was done on a copy of the original (you never know when you'll need to prove that something did happen to the next administration).
And if they did use a black marker
Regarding the sexturnions and quaternions: I have a hard time figuring out, how that is supposed to work. After all, base 2 seems logically to use here, as folding always doubles the page count. Why would anyone go for six pages?
3407832 I've recently read an article where it was stated that so far no class 3 civilizations have been found in th 100k galaxies they looked at.
3407572
For me, it was an IBM PC, with two 5.25" floppy disk drives, that was part of a trial project at my father's office. That was returned. The first computer we bought was an IBM compatible with the same two floppy disk drives, but this one had CGA graphics!
I can also say that I placed my first order at Amazon.com using a 1200 baud modem and the Lynx text-based browser.
3407696
And in ten years, it will be common for students to have grown up without home phones, but not without phones.
3407853
You're actually probably right. I also recall there's a color of blue (I think) that older photocopiers don't see, so you could make notes in that color, and it wouldn't appear on a copy. Similar technology is used in banknotes, and of course in cinema's 'green screen.'
That's what Moller would have done. Printed out an extra copy, redacted it with a sharpie, then faxed it over to Dr. Forsyth.
3407873
Basically, imagine that you print a bunch of sequential pages on a piece of paper the size of a posterboard. Then you fold it over in such a way that there's one seam on the binding side, which you keep, and several others that you cut off after the book's bound. Back in Ye Olden Times, the purchaser of the book had to do that cutting; now it's done at the factory. So what you have is a group of pages which were all originally all one sheet of paper, and how many pages there are is what the count is (and don't forget, they're printed on both sides).
blogs.law.harvard.edu/hydeblog/files/2006/05/Uncut%20sheet.jpg
3408109
Very true. I should mention, in case it wasn't clear, that those people without home phones didn't have cell phones either. That was back before cell phones were very common.
Also, since I lived in a small town at that time, everyone was on the same exchange, so most people only gave the last four digits of their phone number. Now, with cell phones, we've got to give ten.
3407832
I find it hard to believe with how big the universe is that there aren't other intelligent life forms out there, or even whole civilizations. However, actually finding any of them with our current knowledge of science is a daunting task. For all we know, every earth-like planet we've found thus far has an intelligent Stone-Age civilization.
3408154
Geological time works against that. You are essentially talking about the real life version of Avatar -- a civilization that hits the tribal period and then stays there forever. But forever is a LONG time, and staying at that level through hundreds of thousands, millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of years, just doesn't cut it.
The stage of life we are in is a very finite place -- it is the neck in the hourglass. You are much more likely to discover the bones of an old civilization out there than to find an active one.
---
And I found the article interesting... All those galaxies and no signs of a class 3 civilization, or really even a 2+. It should have a heat disparity. It is kind of disheartening in an odd way. Not that if we found a significant anomaly it wouldn't also be.
Kewadin has 2,204 people and is unincorporated and has no Wikipedia article? Jeez. My home is in a town of 1,650 and has more than two dozen businesses ... and a Wikipedia article.
3408230
Kewadin doesn't have 2200 people--the township it's in has 2200. The town itself . . . I don't know. I couldn't find population estimates. I would guess, based on its location and the number of streets around it, it's probably only got a few hundred. Hell, Mi--which I'd assume is about the same size--has around 250 residents.
3407599 someone is likely to lose his job over my report. It looks VERY bad when security (and then the security supervisor) as well as the event staff supervisor object to something, basically get told to get lost then have an injury requiring a back brace and ambulance related to said complaints.
If that man or his family sues odds are good that not even the union will protect him.
I can. It's called a door.
That is a damn good question. And I don't know much about old-fangled writing utensils, but I do happen to have a nib pen (the kind with a metal nib that you have to dip and write) that has a very wide nib, which I imagine would've been used as a Sharpie.
3407403
Actually they do have telegrams. Scootaloo pretended to be a telegram... deliver-er, and in another ep, Applejack sent a telegram to her folks when she stayed in Dodge Junction (at least I'm pretty sure that was a telegram, maybe mail).
3407461
Assuming we survive the zombie apocalypse of 2016. And I guess- *checks notes* There's meant to be some kind of alien invasion of New York, sometime in the 2060s just after the fallout crises. Next is a 'planet of the apes scenario', another alien invasion of New New York, and then giant space crabs farm our sea life to extinction.
It's going to be a busy millennium.
Oh, and someone called Northcrotch Swasjunkie995 (future names are weird) discovers The Cure. No idea what The Cure is or what it's meant to do, but it's apparently impressive because it got him seven Nobel Prizes, an Emmy, an Oscar, a Pakmar, and eternal life through induction into the All Seeing AI of IGoogolsoftopolis. This rant has gotten incrementally more ridiculous...
3407572
That may be a possibility as well. I was actually undecided whether I should mention that.
3407659
Haven't we seen the CMC using crayons? Maybe check that episode with their 'comedy' routine.
There may also be crayon drawings in their clubhouse.
Could be that they have illuminating gems inside the casing. Like a smaller version of the one Dale had next to his bed in the hospital.
Such meta.
--Sollace
Hahahahahaha, unincorportated, theres places out here in Maine that are just number-letter combinations, no name whatsoever.
3407618
For what it's worth at the State Department anything tip top secret isn't kept on the computer system but in hard copies locked in safes.
3408137 So if a quaternion is sheet of paper, which lower part is folded up once, then a sexternion is sheet of paper which lower part (consisting of two third of the length) is folded up and then the now high part of the sheet is folded down?
Well I have to hand it to you. Thanks to this chapter, and notes, I found myself laying awake for hours last night thinking and speculating on my own about the state of Equestrian book binderies and some of the more ornate looking final products. I think at one point I even let out a frustrated cry of BIIISCUUIIIITTTT!!!!!
One other thought did occur to me on the printing side of things given the apparent complexities of the cover of a magazine seen in the last episode that perhaps in addition to the movable type press methods there could be magical imprinting options using color dyes etc for more complex imagery. Anything done that way might chemically test out as simple dyes and inks (modern color inks used in printing are anything but simple from a chemical standpoint), but under a microscopic examination I can see the colors being more a seamless mixing of lines, like a vector image, instead of the microscopic dot patterns or screen patterns you would see from modern inkjet or laser printers respectively. And yes, for any wondering, modern inkjet printers are still dot-matrix at their core, they just use much much smaller dots. Ink usage in modern printers is measured using a picoliter scale or 0.000000000001/liter, and they all print using proprietary dot patterns for generating the appearance of mixed colors. Edit: this would also lack any of the tell tale tool marks, for lack of a better term, from a traditional older press.
I also spent a little while laughing at the pun of ponies making books using a saddle stitch binding.
I can also thank you for crystallizing a couple things I didn't like about a few things here and there in the show (such as that awfully generic off the shelf looking hardback of a journal Celestia gave Sunset), mostly because I think hardback books are so much easier to draw than some of the more ornate hoof made books and journals I now see floating around especially in Twilight, Luna, and Celestia's libraries. not to mention the Canterlot archives.
3408735
No, nib pens couldn't generally stand the pressure needed to make a decent imprint through carbon paper (an invaluable pre-digital office tool). Instead most services would use an indelible pen for redaction /sanitization on processed intelligence and for general office use. Raw intelligence would be sanitized with redaction tape or some other non-permanent means prior to being copy/shared, then the redaction medium removed prior to filing and sealing. There's also a process involving razor blades for sanitizing mimeograph sheets.
Nowadays we generally use dedicated, specially designed redaction pens and tape (or sometimes just common post it notes for quick eyes only briefings) for hard copies and self-sanitizing software for digital intelligence (generally. There's always that one asshole who tries to make do with MS Office or Adobe and a sharpie. I swear to god. Every fucking time).
3408766
We've seen drawings which were meant to be crayon drawings (the one Sweetie made for Rarity in Sisterhooves Social, for example). What I am not sure about is if we've ever actually seen a crayon. I'm almost positive we have, but I hate to say that with certainty and be wrong. Given when they were invented on Earth (thousands of years ago; the word dates to the mid 1600s), I'd assume they do.
In my headcanon, that's exactly how they work, but not everybody goes for the illuminating gem idea, so I figured I'd toss out some other mundane explanations.
I was thinking along the lines of minotaurs, griffons, dragons, diamond dogs, sea serpents, chaos spirits, centaurs, or something like that. One of the species we've seen in canon which has hands or hand-like appendages.
3408900
Really? How do the locals put up with that? "Oh, yeah, I used to live in 1F4Z-54432-AA, but I moved to 1F3Z-58739-AB a couple of years back."
3408934
A reasonable precaution, especially with people like Edward Snowden out there. Harder to get to a paper copy.
3415625
You might be surprised.
3409084
I'm honestly not sure how the pages are folded. There may be multiple arrangements, depending on the type of press and the type of paper, and the size you want the finished book to be. I suspect those are the significant factors in the design. I think, since you want all the sheets to have a fold at the binding end, it would make the most sense to print the pages 2 wide by 3 high, fold the two ends into the middle, then fold that in the center, but that's just a guess on my part.
3409980
Thanks!
Certainly a possibility. There could also be cloning spells (basically, a magical photocopier) for things like that. Such a device (or unicorn) might be very expensive, but would be worth it for magazine covers.
Based on what we've seen in canon, I think that their current printing technology may have reached about 50's levels, although they don't have the volume capability we do. A large number of volumes would be printed the old-fashioned way. One thing that they also can do in this 'verse is add scent to printed products.
One idea I floated earlier was that their 'dyes' are very finely chopped pony hair. Assuming that they grow out winter coats (and in this 'verse, they do), they'd have a plentiful supply of colors.
With the 'clone' idea I mentioned earlier, some of their magazines would have literal photographs printed on non-photographic paper. That would likely give researchers a few headaches as they tried to figure out how the image transfers were done.
I didn't know that was a thing. Heh. It would obviously be their favorite way of making a binding.
One thing I think is important for writers is to tease out what the world must actually be like, as opposed to how it's animated. I think that just as in real life, they have books ranging from illuminated manuscripts to pulp fictions (Daring Do comes to mind), rather than just one style of book. Different printers use different machines--the well-off fashion magazines in Manehattan and Canterlot have top-notch equipment, while Apple Honey prints off her un-proofread newspaper on an old spirit duplicator with whatever paper she can lay her hooves on.
3410362
As late as 2005 (and maybe still), Firestone was using carbons for work orders. Which is why the front office still had dot-matrix printers.
That's interesting. So they make the copies first, then seal the original? I suppose that makes sense, but I'd never really thought of how they did it.
I'm assuming with the pens, you mean the ones where you can see through the redaction on the original copy, but the photocopier just makes it black?
3415663
Oh, I'm not that surprised that people can make off with paper copies, to be honest. Making off with them in the sheer volume as somebody can do digitally is probably difficult, though.
"Hey, Bob, what are you doing with that U-Haul truck?"
"Oh, nothing."
"Okay. Carry on, then."
3415669 yeah I also found myself starting again back at the start of Celestial Sleeps in the other day.
So many great details that I'd forgotten about. And you are great at really highlighting and bringing out a lot of those little details. (Really an insomniac bibliophile's worst nightmare at times. In the best possible way of course. 
).
As you've probably already looked it up this might be redundant. I think it definitely would be their favorite for lower page count bindings. Saddle stitching is basically the same thing you see with magazines just using thread along the spine instead of staples, i.e. only single signature bindings. Depending on paper stock weight most likely <= 60 pages, definitely under 100 I think before the gutter change from start to middle starts getting ridiculous. I'd have to look back up some of the specs from printers I've worked with in the past to be sure of harder numbers.
The funny bone tickler though might be that most perfect bound books are made from many signatures glued together as you know, but each signature in most cases would be saddle stitched before they are glued into the larger binding cover.
P.S.
As someone whose major was photography, digital imaging, and photographic printing, I can easily say it wouldn't be hard for me to imagine said researchers blowing more than a few fuses during said analysis, while looking like past Twilight declaring the impossibility of the future Twilight standing in front of them.
