I’d rather be nuked than starve to death.
I’d rather be nuked than starve to death.
A lot of those island colony-states aren’t self-sufficient and will have massive famines when the trade routes stop.
I had a Game Boy, that got a lot of use.
That assumes that interstellar travel is possible. Physically, economically, socially, there’s a lot of boxes to check for near-light extrasolar expansion (let alone FTL, which probably is impossible)
I think the easy solution to the Fermi Paradox is that we’re stuck in our fish bowl and so is everyone else.
Hey Withers, here’s 100 gold to turn a better character into whatever role I need.
I don’t think chickens are usually referred to as “dog-sized” even if it’s occasionally true.
PNW weirdo here. I like things to be green and alive, I like my skin unburned, and I like being able to poke around tide pools on a lonely beach. Clouds and rain help all of that.
It’s currently sunny and about 77°F, which is about as warm as I want it unless I’m going swimming. Late summer when it approaches 100° is miserable, but for now the bright weather is fine and good for the plants.
Raw mushrooms are borderline wasteful to eat. We can’t digest the chitin and cell walls so most of the nutritional value passes straight through.
The zest of an orange isn’t particularly acidic. A bit of lime juice or straight citric acid would do it, or use a different variety or less-ripe orange.
Which Communist government existed in a world where othet countries didn’t actively sabotage it?
Those speculators haven’t met the right cats. (Also, we’ve been living together for thousands of years and have bred some incredibly useless varieties, it’s a ridiculous claim.)
It’s a mutually beneficial relationship now, assuming responsible ownership. And excluding brachycephalic breeds, other predictable and preventable genetic illnesses or predispositions to injury, and other stuff that could reasonably be lumped into “responsible ownership” but deserve special recognition.
But yeah, dogs are happy as shit when they get to do the thing’s we’ve bred them to do.
That only applies to the movie, and anyway it’s easily explained by the The Ring not wanting to switch to Sam in that moment. In the book Sam totally puts on the ring to trick some orcs and it tries to tempt him with the power of gardening really well.
The Ring would reach out and influence people around the bag. The Ring would tempt whichever eagle carried Frodo. It had to be a being that had enough control to keep hold of The Ring but not enough ambition to be controlled by it. And even then IIRC it wasn’t actually possible to destroy it willingly, Eru Ilúvatar stepped in and gave Gollum a tiny nudge off the cliff.
Consciousness being tied to the physical body isn’t “unscientific”, it’s the only option that can be tested and studied.
Making languages is way harder than just writing a story, and fantasy isn’t trying to be an accurate reflection of real world geo-social stratification. Everyone speaks the same language because it often would be a worse narrative if the characters couldn’t communicate. (Not always, but plot-by-misunderstanding is at least as lazy as writing in one tongue)
There needs to be (imo) a reason beyond realism to make that part of the story. Tolkien was exceptional, but he was using different races and languages to make up a creation mythology for the UK. The history and culture and differences were arguably more important than a ring and some hobbits.
Tad Williams also made up a few languages for his Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series. There they serve to make the world feel bigger, with far-off exotic lands and ancient mysteries.
Oh and you brought up swearing in your first post. De-modernizing language is way harder than it seems. Taking out “god damn” is easy, but that also links to gosh, darn, dang, “goodbye” is from God be with ye, “gossip” from god-sibling, the days of the week all reference Earth myths and have to go, “knight” doesn’t make sense unless they had a French equivalent language to take words from…
Narrative shorthand is still important. Using existing accents, and leaning somewhat into stereotype, can communicate a great deal of context without spending a ton of time on fictional history. Is it lazy? Often, yes. But it works; just like shape language and color coding are useful tools for visual storytelling.
It’s so established in the way we tell stories that avoiding these tropes is a deliberate subversion that can be thought-provoking or distracting.
I miss when normies and politicians were scared and confused by it so they left it alone. When computers in general required some skill and knowledge to use so there was a natural barrier to entry.
“A version of” does not inspire confidence in me. I like Salt & Straw, it’s good ice cream. The Choco Taco was not good ice cream. It was a stale sort-of-waffle-cone shell, acceptable vanilla ice cream with fudge swirl, dipped in cheap chocolate with chopped peanuts. And they were perfect. This new thing will probably cost eight dollars and taste great but it will not fill the nostalgic space or my freezer.
Why assume that an illusion must have a constructor?