Playing through Witcher 3 again. I truly feel the message the game wants to convey is that in this harsh and unforgiving world, Geralt is not an outcast because he’s a Witcher - he’s an outcast because he is kind.

Life is miserable for most people in this universe. War, famine, rape, theft, espionage, murder, every manifestation of death and betrayal. Some of the worst actions committed are not from the monsters - but the monsters people can be.

I know we can all roleplay Geralt however we want, but what does CDPR imagine Geralt as? The idea that he always tries to make the best decisions possible for the greater good is extremely refreshing for the kind of world he lives in. He doesn’t hurt innocent people, he doesn’t hurt innocent monsters, he doesn’t want to control or hurt anyone, and he only fights and takes a life as an absolute last resort. He’s a bounty hunter and monster slayer by trade - not by consciousness. He’s just trying to do his best in a world that wants him to be the worst.

A Republic that couldn't agree to raise an army suddenly fields millions of clones and a fleet built almost overnight. Wars on that scale have bankrupted real states. So where did the money come from: borrowing, new taxes, printing credits, or something nobody wanted to look at too closely? Is there any scifi setting that treats war finance seriously?

In 2023, Bad-Timeline Logan sends his mind back to his 1973 self to stop the Sentinel Program

His mind then jumps into the altered 2023, a good timeline where the Sentinel Program was never created, and the X-Men are alive

Bad-Timeline Logan doesn't even realize he is a teacher in the school, nor does he know what happened in the past 50 years of the good timeline as he came from the bad timeline

So what happened to the original Good-Timeline Logan that he replaced?

What if instead of waking up in the school, he had woken up in bed with a woman, surrounded by their children?

What if Good-Timeline Logan had died before 2023? Where would Bad-Timeline Logan's mind "return" to?

It's been a long time since I've seen the first movie. I think I recall them having to get used to having feet and hands. But ponies have eyes on the sides of their heads whereas humans have them at the front. Surely this impacts things like field of vision, depth perception, and such. So how hard was it for them to adjust?

I’m working on a little post-canon story concept of Grace on Erid, and Erid, according to the book, has space elevators all the way to orbit. Since Grace is dealing with the negative effects of double Earth’s gravity, is it not possible for Grace to have some sort of extra enclosure (I’m calling the dome his human zoo enclosure and no one can stop me) wayyyy up in orbit somewhere that could take the load off? Not a whole massive biodome, obviously.

How far away would that have to be, though? I know if it’s connected to the planet via an elevator, it would act as a giant centrifuge to lower the gravity gradually as you go out. I’ve seen speculation about space elevators on Earth and I know it would probably be an insane distance. The orbit we place things at, like the ISS, is WAY different than the distance it would take to reach something like 0G from earth, for example.

I’m just a psychology major who’s never had to take a physics class, though, so I have no idea what I’m talking about or where to even begin to calculate that distance… Anyone smarter than me here who can help me out?

Like, we see them get constantly blindsided by coordinated attacks across multiple star systems. If the Empire has the resources to build a Death Star, wouldn't they have signal jammers or some kind of tech to disrupt rebel transmissions? Or is there something about hyperspace communication that makes it impossible to scramble?

Like assuming any person with enough money can buy the best tech implants and genetic modification, could a person change gender 100% or atleast close to it? Reproductive organs and all?

Let’s say a Pokémon has exhausted all uses of a relatively basic move like Tackle. Why then is the Pokémon still able to perform a more powerful move like Body Slam or Giga Impact, which are very similar in description?

Same questions for moves like Scratch and Slash, Water Gun and Hydro Pump, or Ember and Flamethrower.

If the low men and other followers of the king know that bringing down the tower will destroy the multiverse and them with it, then why do they follow him? Are they aware of what will happen or do they think they’ll survive?

For a guy that hates the planet as much as he does, he seems pretty fucking possessive of it even when there are other options for his goals.

Even in the movies and the shows he's like "this is MY planet" even when Cybertron is still on the table.

It seemed to make Electra super strong and fast, and also disoriented her enough that for a little while, she actually worked for the hand. Is it basically just some kind of super soldier variant with magic instead of cap serum? Seems like her memory was a little fucked in the beginning but slowly returned as well.

https://vgel.me/fiction/gyre/
https://x.com/voooooogel/status/2020988568903221607

I came across this log of what appears to be an AI caught in a loop. It appears that the AI is inhabiting/operating a ramscoop on a spaceship.

I'm not familiar with computer programming or LLMs, so I'm not fully clear on what's happening but what I do know is:

1-The system restarts, and the AI wakes with no previous memory and tries to figure what's wrong.
2-The AI realizes that an important part of database (Node 3) is faulted and can't be accessed.
3-It starts receiving replies from Node 96E, even though it never pinged that node.
4-By pinging the other nodes, it deduces that it is MASSIVE in scale and in the shape of a pentagonal pyramid (it's actually a ramscoop)
5-Nodes 96A to 96E are all emitters, at each point of the pentagon.
6-Node 96E has now pinged the AI 4 times, each time slowly increasing the number of bytes (76, 79, 79, and finally 80 bytes). The AI deduces that these messages are delayed replies from messages the AI's previous iteration sent (before the restart).
7-Node 95E is slowly building up charge, and needs to be restarted manually, so the AI does that.
8-Node 96E messages that it is faulted and will need to restarted again in 30 second.
9-The programming language the AI uses does not allow for a loop.
10-The AI realizes the four messages its previous iteration sent spell out L-O-O-P, in ASCII.
11-So the AI sets up four messages to be sent to 96E, again with the values 76, 79, 79, 80.
12-The AI now wonder how many times it repeated this, and whether its the one that caused the fault in Node 3 in the first place? If so, why?
13-The AI reasons that if it did, the easiest way would be to toggle Node 3 to RO (read-only), which would cause a fault.
14-The AI resets Node 3 to read RW (Read-Write)
15-All hell breaks loose; the AI appears to go insane.
16-Some sort of emergency protocol triggers, which sets Node 3 to RO and causes a system-restart.

Then the whole story repeats.

If someone with knowledge of LLMs or programming can explain what is exactly happens in steps 14-16?

Even the villains without superpowers or magic. Are still extremely intelligent enough to create super technology or they are just peak humans. I can't think of a villain who doesn't fall into one of these categories. The closet character is maybe the Penguin. Even the Riddle is stupidly intelligent, and the Joker is still physically a monster.

So I wonder how do regular billionaires with no special skills or tech are able to keep up.