She appeared there because she really wanted to.

There’s a neat bit of two-part history hidden there:

Part 1:

(Taken from an interview with Michelle Nichols)

Sometime during the original run of ST TOS, Michelle Nichols wanted to step back from playing Uhura. Roddenberry asked her to think about it on the weekend.

During that weekend, she happened to be at some fundraiser, where the host asked her if she could spare a minute for “her biggest fan”.

She said “of course… but hold on, there’s MLK right over there, I’ve got to take the opportunity to talk to him first.”

Host: “Yeah… um, that is your biggest fan. He wants to talk with you.”

MLK told her how much of an impact her role had (for pretty much the same reasons Goldberg mentioned later).

Monday, she rescinded her resignation.

Part 2:

When the staff of TNG heard that Whoopie Goldberg wanted had asked for a minor role, they thought it was joke.

(TNG wasn’t yet the juggernaut it’d become and Goldberg was a top tier Hollywood star.)

But she told them explicitly that she’d been inspired by the Role of Uhura from the start and just wanted to be part of ST.

So they tailored that minor role to her.

To me, she always looks happy as a clam on screen with that.

Neither is bigger. Even “∞ x ∞” is not bigger than “∞”. Classical mathematics sort of break down in the realm of infinity.

I genuinely like this idea, because it would allow to reach both goals.

The problem I see is that this would probably go down the same as the bodycam idea, with inconvenient recordings vanishing due to “technical issues”.

You’d need an independent third party doing life recording and delayed release. Subjectively, the US don’t have a great track record with these.

Easier idea: Just publish last week’s encryption key. Probably won’t happen because some tech supplier will lobby for a more expensive solution.

??

I’m no expert on the technical side of the protocol, but my BT devices only ever connect to sources they’ve been paired with.

Why would this be more difficult for hearing aids than for headphones?

C3 talks are available online for quite some time after the actual event, so you might still be able to watch it then.

Anyone who hits enter on a dd command without triple-checking it gets exactly what they deserve.

My take:

Most things (especially abstract ones) that exists beyond the scope of the small-hunter-gatherer-tribe setup our brain is developed for: Quantum mechanics, climate change, racism, relativity, spherical earth, …

What separates us from the dogs is that we’ve developed abstract analytical tools (language, stories, mathematics, the scientific method,…) that allow us to infer the existence of those things and, eventually try to predict, model and manipulate them.

But we don’t “grasp” them as we’d grasp a tangled leash, which is why it is even possible for medically sane people to doubt them.

I’d argue that you can even flip this around into a definition:

If a person with no medical mental deficiencies can honestly deny a fact (as in: without consciously lying), then that fact is either actually wrong, or it falls into the “tangled leash” category.

This.

There are already people who are doing selfish/immoral/illegal things because they can get away with it.

And there are people who don’t.

Giving either of those superpowers would (mostly) only increase the magnitude of things they would or would not do.

That’s a fairly good point, but I’d argue that it’d depend on how subtle the application of your superpower is.

My overall assumption would be that any application that doesn’t raise red flags will probably require enough work and moderation that it’d be more like a job - but it could be a very well-paying job.

I.e. for the time freeze: You could acquire a well-paid reputation as a freelancer troubleshooter for a certain type of WFH desk job (analyst? translator?) that can finish any overdue project in record time. Or, easier, become a stage magician.

You’d probably still eventually wind up in a situation where you watch some sort of unacceptable crisis on the news and think “well, I could do something about this” - be it removing a mass-murdering dictator or dismantling a hostage situation.

I genuinely believe it’d depend on the person.

First: Most people who use cheats in video games eventually either stop using them or stop playing the game altogether, because it gets boring.

Many people who win the lottery get a bit of splurging out of their system, then invest the rest into financial security but keep living their loves mostly like before.

So there genuinely might be some people who will eventually settle into just fixing their most glaring problems and then just keep living “regularly”, possibly with the occasional minor indulgence.

Then there’s people who are willing to go to extreme lengths to enforce their beliefs even without superpowers - imagine super-powered criminals and terrorists, but also super-powered firefighters, doctors or scientists.

And then there’s everything in between.

So, if it’s just one (or maybe five) people getting superpowers, it’d probably be a roll of the dice. Maybe there’d just be one person going through life easier. Maybe we’d get lucky and someone solves a major problem for us. Maybe we get unlucky and every president that doesn’t reinstate segregation gets assassinated.

If it’s more people getting powers… well, there’s already a lot of fiction exploring that in-depth.

Good to know, thanks.

Whatsapp is encrypted. The problem is the Metadata they want - i.e. your whole address book.

I do not agree to Facebook having my phone number, but if you use WA and have my number, they have it, too - even if I don’t use WA myself.

If you can convince your family to switch, use Signal or Matrix.

Otherwise, use Shelter on your phone with a limited, WA-ony address book.

Well, it works well for some people.

Once you get used to it, it can be a dang powerful tool. For people doing a lot of config-wrangling on the CLI (i.e. admins working a lot ovet SSH), overcoming the learning curve will pay dividends.

If you’re working mostly locally and in a GUI environment environment, it’s probably not worth it - there’s a reason most devs use more specialized IDE’s.

Midnight Commander has been around for ages. It’s a straight ripoff/homage to the original Norton Commander, a full-fledged file manager and a godsend on week-kneed machines (like old netbooks).

ps ax?

As long as people keep voting for deregulative capitalists and engaging in the consumer mill, megacorps with too much power are all but inevitable.

I am frustrated with human nature, but hating Google is just like hating a tornado because it might hurt you.

Option 1: Take the plunge as a DM, announce before hand that you’re new at this. Everyone who thinks they can do better is free to give it a try.

Option 2: Local Game Store.

Option 3: reddit /r/lfg. Google how to turn a search into an RSS stream, set up a search, be ready to jump into worthwhile-seeming posts quickly. Be ready to go through a few bad/mediocre groups until you find something that clicks.

My players loved and hated it both, but made it through without any deaths (a few death saves, though) and even got the Lich proper.

I literally ran this for my group just now.

Background was a cave system with very limited resources (previously few dead bodies to spare) and the Lich was both rather low on the power scale and Artificer-themed (so no "just spellcasting the party to death) and a Kobold.

So he fought/thought more like an engineer, not a powerful necromancer.

Highlights included:

• Lair filled with Carbon Monoxide (I let the party notice symptoms and retreat, it was more of an area dental tool than a trap)

• freezing the flooded exit tunnel so the party had to tunnel through ice, making them vulnerable to an ambush

• installing an artifact that would flash-freeze said flooded tunnel with the party inside

• a “main entry” labyrinth to the lair that was rigged to collapse

• a side entry with a hidden, massive door that tried to crush the party and did manage to separate them

• one-time sigils that would create a zone of Web, Darkness and, again, flash-freeze the intruders (and the undead defenders delaying them)

• a remote body with his true body walled off in a tunnel behind the wall it can escape even if it loses

• a few, highly upgraded undead

A smart player will try to keep the owl out of LoS during most of the round, so sacrificing action + reaction for “I attack it once it comes out of cover” is the best most NPCs can do.