Very neat, thank you! I wish we had more like that in the US.

What is the heritage railroad environment like in Sweden? Are these being run by the actual railroad owners, or by private groups over the railroads’ tracks?

If anything, Tahini - a separate spread common to the Middle East, made from sesame seeds - is vaguely closer to peanut butter.

You’re already asking good questions, which means you’re doing a lot better than many of the people who adopt without thinking. You’re also looking for an adult cat, which means you aren’t going to have to deal with a kitten’s destructive exploratory phase (although, fair warning, adult cats can still be destructive if you don’t prepare properly).

One thing I would say is that you should consider two versus one cats. Some cats don’t handle being alone for a long time well and can become unhappy, while others prefer not having feline company and would be just fine alone for ~48 hours. A good shelter or adoption agency may be able to tell you whether a cat prefers company or solitary.

Like some other commenters, I would strongly suggest going to local shelters and discussing with them. They should entirely understand if you aren’t able to adopt immediately and be able to discuss particulars with you.

I mean, you can argue some semantics about “peaceful”.

What it is undeniable is that it prevented global powers from going directly to total war, resulting in a much diminished number of casualties (both soldiers and civilians) compared to the World Wars. Nothing since then, even if we summed up all the wars going on around the world at any given moment, rival the unthinkable numbers of dead who piled up those conflicts, nor - if I can speculate a bit - would they have rivaled another worldwide industrialized conflict.

But.

Does that actually mean the world is “more peaceful”?

One can argue that the undeniable reality that you are much less likely to be killed in a war between nations today means “Yes.” One can also argue that peace should not be measured by cold mathematics: That the continued existence of smaller-scale conflicts around the world, internal conflicts within countries, or deaths from non-national conflicts such as the ongoing gun violence epidemic in the US or deaths caused by polluting megacorporations mean it has not gotten “more peaceful”; the risks have just changed.

I suppose it depends on how you are analyzing all of this, in the end.

Disclaimer, I am not a physicist, just a guy with interest in sci-fi, science, and too much free time.

is their any theory centered around our frame of reference having a past but not a future?

So, the answer is, yes, this is actually kind of a common theory on how time actually works. Maybe.

This has to do with physics, and the fact that no two observers have the same perfect frame of reference. For most of us humans, our frames of reference are close enough to be identical on a day-to-day basis. It’s even close enough for (most) science. But it’s not true on a perfect level. For instance, special relativity says that time passes differently for objects in motion; GPS satellites have to correct for the fact that their onboard clocks are experience “slower” time than us observers on Earth. Even astronauts “lose” about ~1/100th of a second for every year spent on the ISS.

What’s this got to do with the future not existing, though?

So we know no two observers have a perfectly identical frame of reference - there is no objective “truth” of when something occurred. Cool. Now what? Well, what we can talk about is historic light cones. Because the speed of light in a vacuum is a universal constant, we can reference how far from you a photon departing your actions would travel. Places that photon would reach are said to be within your historic light cone, and in common parlance, the past. The boundary of how far that photon is reaching at any given moment is, from your frame of reference, “the present”. But since nothing can exceed the speed of light, it is impossible for an observer to view past the present, into the future.

The catch, of course, is reference frames. You used a plural - “our frame of reference”, “we’re blazing a trail forward” - but the reality is that each of us has a minutely different reference frame and is blazing a minutely different trail. Again, for almost any day-to-day purposes this is irrelevant… but there are certain scientific experiments which exploit or even rely on this absence of reference frame.

Cool, what about time travel again?

In my first comment above, I mentioned something called closed timelike curves. Those are an actual thing: By severely bending spacetime, you can theoretically cause a photon to “curve” around and end up at the same point in time it was produced, now in its subjective past, while mathematically not violating quantum physics.

This is where things get kind of freaky and headachy; if a photon can be sent into its subjective past, doesn’t that imply a future now existing, in which that photon will be generated? The answer is, not in the frame of reference of that particular photon. A historic light cone of that photon being generated, now in that photon’s future, still exists; but that photon is now generating a new, detached lightcone…

Like I said, headachy. I also have to emphasize that while the math holds up, there’s ample reason to believe CTCs don’t exist, chief among them that our mathematical understanding of quantum physics may still be imperfect.

tl;dr: Yes, absence of reference frames means that each distinct observer is blazing their own trail, which spreads into the “past” at the speed of light. The future, exceeding the speed of light, is unobservable. This framework does provide a mathematical concept of how you could send something into your subjective past, but such a means is still theoretical at best.

This is fundamentally a variation on the question of a Temporal Paradox, also known as a Grandfather Paradox (“You go back in time and kill your grandfather. What happens?”). Although no killing happens in this variation, the basic idea is the same: Information is transmitted to the past from the future, but results in a situation where it cannot be transmitted in the first place.

Accordingly, there are several hypotheses to cover this. This isn’t even all of them:

• The closed loop theory: To maintain the loop, you will in the future build a time machine which will allow you to activate the machine in the past, maintaining the loop. Past you may even be unaware it was activated from the future.
• The Parallel Universe theory: When future-you sent information into the past, they did not send it into their own past but rather into a universe in which you do not send the information back in the first place.
• The Timelike Curve theory: Because there is no common reference frame for “time”, each quanta of “you” is experiencing a different reference frame. The historic light cone of your future self sending the information back exists, and if you could follow those photons backwards you would find him doing this. But future you, in your frame of reference, will never see the machine activate.
• The Emergent Time theory: Time is not a linear path, but a function of entropy. By inverting entropy, you have caused a reconfiguration of the universe into a version in which the machine is inactive.

We don’t know. Hell, we can’t even narrow it down to a specific place with certainty. There is strong evidence in human settlements for use of fire anywhere from a few hundred thousand to 1 million years ago. When, exactly, is hard to ascertain; for instance, some sites which are claimed to hold the oldest evidence have been criticized as resembling the aftermath of wildfires.

It is also depends on what you mean by “discovered”: Early proto-hominids were almost certainly aware of fire and the concept of burning, so are we counting from when they realized “hey, I can take a burning thing and put it where I want it, and it will spread burning there?” Or are we only counting from when fire began to be used as a tool (e.g., for clearing brush or cooking)? Or when humans discovered how to start fires in the absence of a natural source?

In fairness, Microsoft certainly has tried to get the next closest thing with Bedrock. The hosting of server backends through their architecture via “realms” allows them to lock you out of a whole lot, and I still see people getting randomly banned because of their profanity filter.

But yes, if Realms shut down right now, there would always be Java (and even privately hosted Bedrock servers).

I really wish there was a good airsoft group nearby me, but it seems like the only ones who are close by don’t play on a schedule that works for me. It’s really frustrating.

I think it was the cost.

It was this. In fact, it was awkward all around. The dollar cost was high, you were stuck with the arena’s schedule and openings, you had to add in time for travel to the site and waiting to get in, going through the suit up… or you could just log onto Call of HaloField Tournament 3 and get a similar hit but with more animated explosions and stuff.

I remember towards the end a few companies sold consumer lasertag kits for home use. I think one of them even had a “rocket launcher” with a little radio thing in the “rocket” to register hits? But they were also super expensive, never cross-compatible so good luck making a big team, and if one broke you were SOL because they only came in big packs.

When it’s posts you agree with, it’s honest users. When it’s posts you disagree with, it’s astroturfing.

I joke, but unfortunately that seems to be the most common metric for a lot of people. If it’s a position “no one would really support” (in their view), then support for it must be astroturfed.

The last few times this was brought up for discussion, one thing that many people mentioned - including quite a few who had interacted with publishers - was that publishers were strongly selecting for female authors. Some of this may have been in an effort to correct for lack of female presence in what was perceived as a male-dominated genre, some may have been trying to find the next wildly successful Rowling / Suzanne Collins / Sarah Maas / etc.

Several expressed that it was actually difficult to get a response as a male fantasy author, so this well-intentioned drive may have resulted now in some over correction bringing us to our current place.

So, if the meter has one of those old displays with all the little dials, it has some kind of a sensor that reads that and transmits it? Convoluted, but probably much reduces the price compared to retrofitting the actual meter itself.

Sorry, I think maybe my point was misunderstood. Trust me, I’m in full agreement with you: Like the comment I was responding to was saying, trying to simply frame “positive” masculinity in terms of feminine traits doesn’t seem like a good idea. There needs to be a positive reference for actually masculine role models and ideals.

Like, literally everything you said is something I totally agree with.

My concern is that, specifically, initiatives which idealize working-class providers and fail to recognize the way automation and computerization have significantly flattened the jobs market (especially well-paying, working-class jobs), are intrinsically doomed because we don’t have an economy which widely supports men acting as supporters for a family. If we idealize a working provider but simultaneously leave things in a state where a man can’t provide for his family, what I fear we’re actually left with is swaths of men feeling unfulfilled and angry at those in charge for bringing them to this point.

W-Wait, what is this? A well-thought out, constructive, sympathetic comment? Here? I don’t believe it!

Real talk, though: This is an incredibly solid post and I really appreciate you taking the time to actually write all of these points out. It’s rare (or, subjectively, it feels rare) to see an admission that a major shift in how this topic is approached is needed, and I feel just a bit more hopeful seeing someone else put in the time to go this deep on it.

I would only make two add-on comments to your points:

• With regard to point #6, I agree with the concept - but we have to be careful of how we phrase this. Unless it comes with a major effort to utterly restructure our economy in such a way that either a man’s value is no longer measured in his ability to be successful in a paid position, and/or we restructure our economy to make success more viable, I fear that efforts to support “working class heros” are doomed to become awkward failures as automation continues to steamroll the viability of those positions.

• One point I don’t see brought up here, though it is touched at in (1) and (8), is that we’ve got to modulate how we discuss so-called “toxic” behavior. When so many seemingly minor behaviors are met with the same levels of disdain, villainization, and even punishment as things like actual sexual assault, it ends up feeling deeply isolating, undermines the point that is trying to be made, and pushes men towards the worst actors.

Well, I mean I guess after a long day or working really hard it can get a little achey and-

But my lower back will randomly act up, sometimes it gets so bad that I about black out from the pain.

No. Holy shit, no. Not normal at all. Go see a doctor ASAP. If you’re ever in debilitating pain for no obvious reason, that is a colossal flashing “go see a doctor now” sign.

(Engineering)

According to movies:

1. We spend our entire workdays in the lab.

2. Whenever anything is turned on, there’s a loud whirring and a big shower of sparks. Computer screens with big flashing “WARNING!” signs are optional.

3. Something is inevitably spinning on the lab bench. It’s unclear if it does anything.

4. Fixing a major problem is solved when someone has an “Ah-hah!” brainstorm moment, wires up something on the spot, and it magically works perfectly.

5. Assembling a new thingymajig involves lots of power tools and pieces which fit together seamlessly. If they don’t fit, they can be made to fit with some elbow grease and definitely won’t fail horribly the first time you turn them on.

6. Labs are festooned in such random pieces of hazardous equipment as high-voltage power lines, random chemicals, blowtorches, and radioactive materials.

In reality, we spend a lot of our days at our desks, the equipment is surprisingly quiet (and that which isn’t, you stay well away from while it is operating), and spinny stuff largely went away in the 1980s. Assembling a new thing is 30 minutes of grumbling, 3 hours of pulling your hair out, and day(s) of waiting for a new part because someone screwed up tolerances or signal polarity. The most dangerous thing in the lab is stuff sloppily left laying on the floor, which I have tripped over and nearly cracked my skull before.

In fairness, #4 happens sometimes. It’s extremely rare, but occasionally you do get those moments where you figure out what the bug in the system is and can rectify it in an hour or two. Most of the time, a fast fix for one problem causes another.

This. I don’t understand why murdering your alt-self is “necessary”. Wouldn’t you actually want to preserve your alternate-self at all costs, to ensure you can continue to make return trips?

The real issue here is that - if your home reality works by the same rules - once you leave it, you can never return home ever, because no alternate version of yourself exists in the one you originated from after you leave it.

Before you say “hey, that sounds awesome, this place sucks!”, consider that finding a better reality is not guaranteed.

Finally, another “No magic zombies” person!

What are your thoughts on a “28 X Later” style scenario? Where the they’re still subject to injuries/starvation/etc, and the risk is more due to the sheer speed of the infected, ability to ignore pain in the short term, and asymptomatic carriers of the disease?