A little more appreciation for nuance, empathy, and chill when it comes to "hot" topics would be appreciated.

Like just about every day I check Lemmy, and I find some really awful, yet highly-voted take (usually on politics, sometimes on tech or something) that sends my eyes rolling so hard I could probably hook them up to a generator and get carbon-free power.

I can deal with downtimes, community drama, and needing to grow conversations. But the hostility I see almost daily turns visiting Lemmy into a stressful, not welcoming experience.

Candy Corn. Some people insist they taste like wax, and I'm like, "What?!" I will chew those things all day long.

This. "Overstressed" doesn't begin to cover it. It's an unimaginably stressful job even when things are going right.

Sencha is an absolute beast! A gorgeous one, though.

Yeah, I feel you. On both points.

That's a fair point too; if you go in anticipating a conversational slap, you're in a defensive posture from the start.

This reinforces my feeling that setting out to specifically create that no-slapping environment from the start is critical, but it also adds in another twist and problem: There's increasing evidence that political "language" between various groups is diverging. In other words, ~20 years ago people used the same words to mean the same things, even when they disagreed. Now people on different sides of an issue use identical words to mean totally different things - including some that can be perceived as a verbal slap.

Going to build on this to highlight something:

• Given the hyper-stigmatized, hyper-partisan approach to... well, a lot of things these days, not just US politics, engaging with those you politically disagree with is likely to not just produce calm disagreements but sharp, even vicious statements that your entire worldview/lifestyle/culture/ethnicity/whatever is literally the stuff of pure evil, and you are an absolutely terrible person for adhering to it. No nuance, no consideration, no empathy.

• On a different tack, consider that strong rejection/disagreement is shown to activate the same centers in your brain which are associated with sharp physical pain. To your brain, being slapped in the face conversationally and slapped in the face physically produce extremely similar results.

With these two points in mind, consider: Why would people choose to expose themselves to environments which promote something their brain interprets as actual, physical harm?

Unfortunately, the current palette of social media options don't really offer spaces for nuanced, thoughtful discussion which doesn't begin with people screaming their hostility to what they disagree with. It's a big of a chicken-and-egg question whether that's a cause or an effect, but the net result is creation of an environment which our pain-avoiding brains guide our choices away from people we disagree with.

Welp. Since Hasbro overall seems intent on running its properties into the ground, I have little doubt the next one will continue the cycle of enshittification. I'd love to be wrong, but I doubt it.

Yeah, I'm going to be in agreement with your friend.

It's also worth noting that even within "inorganic" species, there might be stark differences in their internal composition (and thus view of themselves). Are these an animate silicon crystal, or a "robot person"? The former might think of themselves as "the solid", in contrast to liquid-containing non-silicon life.

They might also (in either case) use a name which reflects their local name for whatever the dominant element or feature is their makeup, similar to how we refer to Earthly life as "cellular" life because it's made of cells. That said, "Mechanoids" as a foreign nickname or slur might be a fun thing.

Whoever said this doesn't know either setting very well. Borg become resistant, not immune to weapons they encounter. Starships were still perfectly capable of damaging Borg ships with the same weapons years later.

The problem is that the two settings operate on entirely different scales. Individual Turbolaser bolts are something like thousands of 24th century Photon Torpedoes? Even if we assume the Cube can resist 90% of the energy from each bolt, it's still having a very bad day.

"Blame England" is basically the "Blame Canada!" of history discussions.

Yawns are when your perfectly little cuddly ball of soft opens its mouth and reveals a dozen chisels of death.

(And then goes right back to being cute.)

No Wifi, as it simply doesn't have a wifi adaptor.

Ethernet is a possibility. I tested it right now and removing the Ethernet cable doesn't cause a wake-up, but I suppose it's possible that slight interference if the cable were just slightly moved might cause it to register traffic plus a continued connection, enough to cause a wakeup. I'll try tinkering with that, thanks!

My computer turns itself on when I walk through a certain spot nearby it.

"Ah, you must have your mouse or some other peripheral set to activate it and the vibrations from walking-" Nope, I know how to disable wakeup from peripherals. "Well, then the vibrations from walking must be disturbing a loose component inside-" Nope, problem existed through a near-complete teardown and OS reinstall. Also, putting the PC on vibration isolating foam did not help.

At this point, I'm down to two conclusions:

• The wire for the wall outlet runs under the floor, and vibrations are causing adequate power fluctuations to wake the machine up. Not sure how to test for this, though it does concern me about the state of the wiring.
• The PC is haunted.

I'm wondering if the remaining fuel in the lower segments of the ship gave those sections more momentum, causing the whole hull to pivot around those heavier sections (especially with the loss of thruster capability being discussed).

With the Space Shuttle, this tendency was largely offset by the delta wings also causing greatly increased drag at the rear of the hull, but with fins folded the Starship doesn't really have this. That plus the seeming loss of control due to thruster malfunction...

So, this is a bit of a "depending on the group & situation" thing.

Fudging HP is definitely a thing DMs (myself included) do. However, with an experienced group who can get a sense for how much HP is typical for mobs at a given level, and if the amount of damage done is quite clearly far enough that he ought to be dead, it can be hard to add HP without "showing the finger on the scales" - at which point the illusion breaks and it becomes "un-fun".

Look at the number of faiths in the world today. Look at the number of sub-groups under each of those faiths - Sunni, Shia, Sufi and Salafi Muslims. The three branches of Buddhism. The almost innumerable smaller faiths that exist in the shadows of the handful of massive ones. Consider how the implementation and legal rights of those faiths exist between various governments, sometimes even in the same region.

Now advance all that a couple hundred years in the future.

Add several dozen star systems and thousands of space stations, many of which could modestly-sized region on their own. Now think about how many faiths and interpretations there likely are out there.

That is the answer. It's nigh-impossible to count the views on it. Legally speaking, the UNHA's view is more that both mysticism and non-mysticism are permitted, so long as it doesn't prove harmful to onesself or another person. (The definition of "harmful" is, of course, subject to near constant legal interpretation.)

This is exactly why single chunky bosses drive me nuts. I once watched a rogue annihilate a major chapter boss with a single opportunity attack and some very lucky rolls.

I like this answer because, like... a lot of the others are "clever" misinterpretations of how powers classically work, trying to force real-life physics into superhero logic and stuff.

But no. Not this one. Your mind-reading powers can function exactly like how comic books say it should, and you can still be scarred by what you found rummaging through that one guy's head.

Yep. Someone else mentioned something called the "Typhon Pact", which I didn't know about but sounds reasonably close to what I was thinking.