Seer of the tapes! Knower of the episodes!

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Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

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  • I want Roland Emmerich to make a movie out of the short story A Pail of Air.

    tl;dr/spoiler: ~20 years ago, a black hole passed through the solar system and captured the Earth, dragging it inexorably away from the Sun. This causes great earthquakes, tsunami, and other immediate civilization-ending catastrophes, but the real disaster comes when the atmosphere freezes and falls like snow to the ground. The original story follows a young boy born after the cataclysm whose chores include collecting buckets of frozen air.


  • Your replicator is probably too small to replicate larger components, which would be a major inconvenience at best or a showstopper at worst. And industrial replicators are even harder to come by than starships.

    Then there’s getting access to the replicator patterns for sensitive or dangerous components. Dilithium chambers, weapons, Mercassium composite for shield generators, etc. are classified by Starfleet.

    Then there are substances that can’t be replicated, such as verterium cortenide for the warp coils. I don’t think it’s explicitly stated that VC can’t be replicated, but we know that Voyager had to find some to refit their warp coils, they couldn’t just replicate it. Also dilithium.

    And finally, there’s antimatter. Building a starship won’t do you much good if you don’t have gas for the tank. Antimatter does not occur in large quantities in nature, and probably can’t be replicated (or at least not safely.) So you’d need some sort of industrial base to produce it, further complicating your plans.
















  • Because ultimately the problem with cars is how many of them there are, not what kind of engine they use. If there were only ever, say, 50,000 cars in the entire world we might not even notice the environmental costs. But Google tells me that there are over a billion.

    Put another way, a diesel bus carrying 50 people is better for the environment than those 50 people each driving a separate EV car. Not because the bus has less engine emissions, but because it’s a more efficient use of materials and energy.



    • The right to make medical decisions on behalf of the other
    • The right to visit the other in the hospital
    • The right to make funeral arrangements for the other
    • The right to survivor’s benefits (veteran’s benefits, Social Security, private pension, etc.)
    • Income tax breaks and credits
    • Tax breaks on inheritance and estate taxes
    • Tax breaks on money and property transfers between spouses
    • Immigration and naturalization rights
    • Can’t be forced to testify against the other (usually)
    • Communications between married partners are privileged from discovery in civil and criminal cases (usually)
    • Joint adoption rights
    • Bereavement leave
    • Joint bankruptcy protection
    • Automatic recognition of the relationship by every state, nation, etc.

    Etc. There’s something like 1,000 rights, privileges, and responsibilities that attach through marriage only.