I wasn’t implying anything of the sort, but ok.

In this case, I think it was more indoctrination of a rule her dad set that she never questioned.

I had a similar conversation with a friend in college who alleged that waking up after 9am meant that you are lazy. In all cases. Period.

Stayed up until 3am partying with your friends? Better still be up by 9.

Took the Redeye which didn’t land until 5am? Oof, enjoy your few hours remaining but don’t sleep in…

Work a double shift through the night until 8am? Did I fucking stutter, you can only sleep until 9am, you useless fuck!

Idk… seems silly and arbitrary.

So I really like the Stargates. They’re a lot more limited/less flexible in where you can travel, but with that limitation comes unique challenges and intriguing stories. The biggest pro about them? It’s the fastest form of FTL there is. You can travel literally instaneously to any other gate. And there are innumerable gates to travel to.

But there are a lot of cons too.

Convenience… gates must already be where you’d like to go. The gates are relatively small, unable to fit even a car through, and the gate has a time limit on holding it open so there is limited ability to send large quantitaties of goods through and absolutely no large objects.

Risk… connections are blind, so you don’t know what’s on the other side until you or a probe goes through and relay back details. And it’s a single point of entry, and only one way, so it’s easy to be trapped or ambushed on the other side without escape. The gate can also be damaged or have its dialing device missing, disabled or destroyed, making it functionally useless from that end. If your gate is dialed into, the only way to stop anyone from traveling through is with a barrier so close to the wormhole event horizon to make molecules unable to materialize. But even then, they can hold your gate open from their end for the time limit of the wormhole, and then immediately redial and prevent you from using it indefinitely.

Unknowns… Certain anomalies like black holes affecting the destination gate can also pose a cataclysmic danger to planet of the gate of origin. Random happenstance with solar flares can cause the wormhole to travel through time as well as space. Gates may be too far to travel without extra power, and there may not be power available on the other side to get back. Gates can be dialed at random or you may have a list of addresses, but without someone who’s been to these gates before, you have no idea who or what you’ll find on the other side until you dial it.

The typical use for the gates is cool, but the really interesting stuff is when things go wrong, or when people get really creative with the mechanics. Things going wrong like heading home to Earth but being gated unexpectedly to an icy cave with no exit and no dial device to be found and everyone having to figure out where you went even though none of it seems to make sense. And creative things like overcoming the gates’ distance limitations/extra power needs to cross between galaxies by daisy chaining hundreds of them in the void between the galaxies and setting up a macro to pass the matter buffer from one to the next without rematerializing the objects and people within in between.

Of course, traditional FTL ships exist in Stargate, but they are much slower than the instantaneous stargates, and have other dangers associated with them, like other armed ftl ships, pirates, replicators… Most ftl ships in stargate use hyperspace travel, but I believe that the Ancient’s inter-galactic stargate seeding ship, Destiny, uses a classic warp drive.

Giancarlo Esposito is the embodiment of quiet menace and commitment to character

Behold, the field in which I grow my fucks, that I may give of them. Lay thine eyes upon it and ye shalt see that it is barren.

So, when talking about a film adaptation of a 60 year old book being derivative, remember that even though you are only experiencing it now, Dune has been around for a long time. It has inspired other creators, and their work has inspired yet more creators, and you have likely consumed much of these other inspired works before consuming the originator. The order you experience it in may make it seem derived by the other works you already enjoyed, but the opposite may in fact be true.

That being said, no work is created in a vacuum, and all works are derivative to some degree. Dune is no different. It is inspired by sci-fi pulp fiction and even fantasy works that came before it too.

Furthermore, the film is not an entirely faithful adaptation and brings its own interpretations, additions, and other alterations to the story. Those, likewise, are not always wholly novel ideas and share DNA with other works, novels and film, the creators enjoyed. They did plenty of unique things, particularly with the cinematography and aesthetics of the peoples and environments, but the story structure, superhuman abilities and political intrigue will still share a lot of commonalities with other works.

None of that makes Dune bad or lesser. There is nothing wrong with putting a new twist on a a tried and true formula or story element to make it your own.

My culture is not your costume!

Trans friends, this is the time to consider doing what you need to to protect yourselves. I would be looking at what it takes to emigrate somewhere safer.

Are the electronics not in a plastic casing? Is the board exposed? Wtf?

Gotta practice good posture. Those with chronic back pain will not make it long in the waste lands.

Let us never forget that wealthy “business men” can be tasteless white trash too. And pedophiles. Actually that overlap is practically a circle.

AI companies going to start generating fake claims and denying them for rewards, I guarantee it.

“You ever notice how _____ people do [insert common, innocuous, rational behavior]…”

Yeah, but not due to photosynthesizing pigments, afaik. Only other pigmentation in the leaf. Though it may still be an adaptive benefit.

You might be thinking, well wouldn’t it it better to absorb green too? Why didn’t chlorophyll evolve to absorb all colors, making plants black? The answer is because evolution don’t give a damn about the best way to do things, only the good enough way. Chlorophyll developed by random chance, and blue-green algea (with chlorophyll) beat red algae (with phycoerythrin) to evolving into complex plant structures.

I was gonna say like a funky pop, but same sentiment. That woman’s gourd is overgrown.

Just to be clear, limiting free speech is already allowed to a degree. The Supreme Court has long ruled that it’s legal to constrain the right to expression based on time, manner, and place restrictions, so long as those restrictions are content neutral, serve a legitimate public need, and are minimally restrictive to serve that need.

This law absolutely does not qualify. I’m sure they will argue it served some bullshit need to prevent disruption to campus activities, issues with policing, public safety, etc. But there is no chance that restricting all 1st amendment expression on a college campus for nearly 12 hours a day serves any legitimate public need in the least restrictive manner to serve that need. It will certainly be struck down as unconstitutional by a sensible judge somewhere along the way.

But the problem is that this law is not the goal. They want a judge to strike it down. That is the actual goal. That is why they keep passing such blatantly unconstitutional laws in red states pertaining to religion, free speech, lgbt rights, etc. They are doing it for 2 reasons A) They are trying to make the legitimate acts of the judicial branch out to be some sort of overreach on the will of Trump and conservative states to help remove stopgaps that they can’t control from their way entirely. That’s what the SCOTUS’ ruling against national injunctions for lower federal courts was meant to hinder. And B) when it does get ruled against, they just have to keep appealing until they get to the Supreme Court and let the right wing nuts redefine our 1st amendment rights to suit their desires for the entire country, not just Texas. Even if this particular law doesn’t survive their decision, again, that was never the point. You can bet your ass that even in striking the specific law down, they will set new precedent with the case that will fundamentally weaken free speech rights for all of us. It will make it easier to implement draconian laws like this on a national scale.

Gross

I live in Indiana in a hard red district. If I thought there was even a chance, I’d seriously be considering it. I couldn’t even manage to get to city council here though. Half of the local elections dont even have a Dem or independent running because there is no chance for it. Your name has an R next to it or you fuck off with your maybe 15 percent.