I do not envy those jurors, that sounds very hard to rule on.

Personally I think it’s okay so long as you give proper credit somewhere to the original artist, and are willing to stop if they ask you to.

Yes, there probably are. Is that important?

Don’t feel bad about it. He’s basically saying he thinks you’re too cool to actually be real, so you must be fake. Seems like a compliment to me.

No, it’s been around for awhile. In US law, any book over 95 years old is considered public property, and can be shared for free. So, there’s volunteers that take old books and scan them, then put the digital versions online for everybody.

If you’d like to make digital copies of things from your native language/culture and add them to the collection, I imagine that’d probably be fine. I’m not part of the project though, so I don’t know the details of how these are submitted/who you need to talk to/etc.

UN decided couldn’t possibly be a problem in the future

Less that, and more that the existence of the Security Council with permanent seats and veto powers was a requirement to get the major powers to actually want to join.

Otherwise it’d have been the post-WW1 League of Nations, which pretty quickly fell apart. The US never even joined the League if I recall, they couldn’t get it through Congress despite it being President Woodrow Wilson’s own pet project.

Ultimately it’s easy to get a small power to join an org that basically serves to limit the options of individual countries by applying international law to them. It’s hard to get a large, powerful country to sign up for that same thing. The smaller country gains from joining, but the strong country actually weakens itself by joining.

For space/astronomy news, I recommend Doctor Becky https://youtube.com/@drbecky and Fraser Cain. https://youtube.com/@frasercain

Becky handles mostly astronomy news, Fraser handles mostly space flight news. Both are pretty decent at staying more objective.

How do they treat those that are “beneath” them? Customer service workers, pets, kids, etc. Anyone that they should have some sort of authority over.

What counts and what doesn’t is pretty fuzzy. I’m just including everything that could reasonably fit, just to keep it simple.

25 years is pretty extreme, it’s not like we need to wait decades for whole fields of research to occur before we have our own opinions–we’re not academics with a responsibility to not spout random bullshit. Being randos on the internet, spouting bullshit is actually one of our primary activities.

4 years is probably sufficient to keep the volume reasonably balanced.

Depends if I can get my phone unlocked and call an ambulance or not. Unassisted I’m probably bleeding out, but if I can get to a hospital then I can probably make it. I do wonder how much skin I’ll even have left at this point, considering the sheer number of cuts, scrapes and burns I’ve had, but blood loss should be the only potentially fatal problem needing to be dealt with immediately.

Big if, though, my hands would be a busted up mess. Operating a touchscreen would be a pretty big ask, and I probably don’t have a lot of time fully conscious. I’d also have several broken bones preventing me from going anywhere to find help.

Pretty simple. Resist the urge to see people based on their membership in this or that group, and instead focus on each individual. People are not responsible for the actions of other people that may seem outwardly similar to them, they are only responsible for their own. Life is harder when you remember this, but it’s the honest truth.

If you’re not used to winter driving conditions, keep your speed to about half of the posted speed limit, AND allow about double the normal distance for any braking you have to do. Give yourself a little over twice the normal amount of time it’d take you to drive somewhere.

This is generous, and will generally keep you safe on the road even if you’re unaccustomed to the conditions. Ice can still cause (sometimes unavoidable) problems even with these extra allowances, but if you’re going slowly and giving the extra distance, any accidents will be at low speed and very minor.

Agreed.

I would also be curious if she has any areas of interest where she is actually very quick and knowledgeable. If not, that might be cause for concern, but for all we know she just hates the humanities and is actually a wizard at higher mathematics. Especially since she’s young, there’s no real way to gauge whether it’s a lack of general intelligence or just a symptom of complete and total disinterest in a particular subject.

Also let’s not forget that pretty people can often get away with more than average looking people can, so they don’t have quite the same degree of pressure to perform in areas where they’re uninterested. If a quick, dazzling smile can unlock the ability to copy someone else’s homework or get the teacher to grant extra time on an assignment, well, school might be a little easier.

Okay, fair enough.

I fail to see the distinction. By OPs prompt, we’re getting attacked no matter what once his plot armor expires.

Sea levels rise the same everywhere. And not in 10 yrs it won’t.

Ooh, I get to choose the location?

Fairly close to the North Pole. Our people are adapted to it, assuming the island has always been there somehow. Nobody else is, making the logistics of trying to invade an absolute nightmare for anyone on Earth.

Now we just have to feed ourselves somehow in the event of a naval blockade, so a lot of investment into ballistic missiles and submarines to make a blockade as difficult as possible and hopefully keep our trade open during the summertime. I assume we’re fully reliant on imports that can only come in during that seasonal window. Fishing alone probably can’t sustain a population that large, and nothing is going to grow up there.

Assuming an invasion has to occur in 10 years and cannot be delayed, whoever tries is kinda fucked though.

If North Pole is cheating, then in the middle of the Pacific with the same plan. Probably can’t resist something like the US though in that case.

Riding your bike is exercise, so I’ll give that one a pass as a healthier hobby. Reading just depends on what you’re reading I suppose. Going to restaurants is generally looked at as a bad habit in my experience. Waste of money basically.

Regarding what makes video games special, I will say that they can develop bad personal habits a little easier than a lot of other hobbies. I think they have greater addiction potential than say, reading or bike riding. More on par with sex or gambling. They also create a temptation to oversimplify/misunderstand things about real life in the same way tv/movies do.

But yeah, overall I don’t think its a particularly bad hobby if you don’t go overboard with them.

Just imagine if you ordered a jack and coke, and you had no way of knowing if they’re actually going to give you watered-down diet coke and the mildest single malt scotch they could find, or cherry coke and a really intense rye, or anything in between. And at every new place, it’s just a gamble what you’ll get.

That’s kinda what its like.

IPA wackos, I can’t stand this places IPAs because they don’t put a whole roasted chicken in the cup with the beer.

… yea okay, that’s fair.

Still though, IPAs run a huge gamut for some reason. I feel like the degree of variety you find in the IPA category is really strangely big. Like, if I order a stout or a porter I know about what I’m going to get, flavor-wise. But with an IPA it can run from fairly mild to way-past-grapefruit-juice.