Rhaedas

Unless some evil god is opening a portal to a dark dimension. Movies have taught me at that point, you throw everything you can at it, from crossed beams to houses to nukes to whatever you have handy.

I imagine pulling one of those blinds open and seeing that background of endless skyscrapers around your own, with no activity anywhere. Except when you briefly spy “something” in a far window, that suddenly turns and looks at you then runs out of sight. That was one of the most frightening scenes in all the Backrooms stuff.

“You can tell a lot about a place by how they treat their people.” – Amos Burton

I don’t like extra dots simply because pattern matching might get weird down the road. Keep dots for extension type and use Pascal to make it easier to read multiple words. Flatcase only if it’s short or I’m lazy for a temp file.

Larry Niven’s teleport pads would be cool. Except for the human tendency to stand at a doorway…keep moving!

I’m all for eternity with an opt-out choice. But forever without parole? That is hell.

Who wants to live forever?

I have a Tesla store near my work, and I’ve been seeing a few of them drive by lately. Each time, even seeing them coming, I still have a WTF reaction. That is a god awful looking vehicle. Even if it was of good quality. I drew better trucks in crayon when I was 5.

Wannabe Zorg. He better avoid luxury space liners.

It’s all about projecting confidence that you are the person in control. Don’t even need the right clothes or a clipboard. Some of my favorite scenes from the Beverly Hills Cop movies is when Axel does this kind of thing. Catch people by surprise, flash an ID without showing it, look pissed. “Is that your Porsche outside???”

Many root beers don’t have caffeine, or rather there are a few brands that introduce a small amount for taste or other reason. And there’s lots of variations in taste in those.

Springs go from dangerous to lethal. So much invisible energy stored, waiting for a weak point. Way too many videos out there of what not to do with car suspensions or garage doors.

On the picture topic, it depends on which end he was impaled on. It’s obviously the broken side, but they don’t say that’s the end that got him.

Having lots of copies does no good when your indexing is fucked up.

Still worth it, one of the best games, especially if you had a good joystick (Kraft). The amazing part about that game is how the movement “felt” fluid even though it was just a digital thing. I can’t describe it, but I think anyone who played it understands how it felt analog in its play, how you could jump and tap just so and do amazing moves.

Computer - Radar Rat Race on the C-64, bought it in cartridge when I got the computer just to have something to start with. Last cartridge game I bought too, the rest were either on tape, later floppy disk, or typed in from a computer magazine. On the latter, I think they were trying to develop a generation of programmers with those and intentionally put bugs in them to make them not work until you fixed them. Every one.

Arcade - that’s a harder one to remember, but I do know it/they would have been at a roller skating rink. Probably Asteroids as that would have gotten my attention first, or Turbo or Wizard of Wor.

Also plenty of room for various things like EMP generators and nuclear devices.

They obviously don’t realize how much resources you save in the simulation when you don’t draw what the player can’t see.

Only if it changes laws of physics. Which I suppose could be in the realm of possibility, since none of us could outthink a ASI. I imagine three outcomes (assuming getting to ASI) - it determines that no, silly humans, the math says you’re too far gone. Or, yes, it can develop X and Y beyond our comprehension to change the state of reality and make things better in some or all ways. And lastly, it says it found the problem and solution, and the problem is the Earth is contaminated with humans that consume and pollute too much. And it is deploying the solution now.

I forgot the fourth, that I’ve seen in a few places (satirically, but could be true). The ASI analyses what we’ve done, tries to figure out what could be done to help, and then suicides itself out of frustration, anger, sadness, etc.

It would be far different if the land mass of Africa had never existed. The whole tectonic movement would have resulted in different arrangements several supercontinents ago, with their own effects on climate and life itself.

But if Africa just blipped off one day, maybe. Then you have to explore what a sudden loss of land would do to the ocean waters rushing in, the change in Earth rotation due to its mass being shifted, lots of other things.

And the most common excuse when you point that out…“at least it’s something”. Which while true, since not everyone gets raises at all, is still robbery.