It’s deeper than that. It’s about defense of the Status Quo. No superhero looks around at the parts of society that we just accept without thinking about and says this needs to change.

That guy failed. It makes a big difference when they actually get killed.

The time to do this would’ve been immediately after it was discovered that Trump took classified documents and had them in his home during visits from foreign agents.

The Republicans would’ve howled about it, but I think it could have been done, at that moment. Like, have the first news about it not be talking about the documents, but simply that former President Trump has been detained and will not be allowed to communicate with anyone but his legal representation, because of suspicion of potential coded communication to enemy agents.

Sam aged, Frodo did not. I recall several mentions throughout the books that Frodo was considered unusually young-looking for a 50-year old hobbit, just as Bilbo himself was very young-looking for 111. Owning the ring seems to basically just pause your aging, even if you’re not using it.

Sam was also twelve years younger than Frodo, but since Frodo stopped aging for 17 years, he wound up effectively older, physically speaking.

Yes, I have always from the first time I saw the movies thought that’s what they needed. A five second clip of that and nothing else about the movie has to change!

If your only source is the movies, one of the annoying gripes about them is they have this deceptive editing that makes it seem like Frodo left the Shire within a relatively short timespan after the birthday party.

Frodo got the ring on the 22nd of September of 3001. He leaves Bag End on the 23rd of September…of 3018.

Ice sinks to a certain point. If being attached to the shelf was holding that ice up higher than it would float, it’ll sink.

Don’t know if the movie shows it sinking further than that though, but the general assertion that ice doesn’t sink at all is definitely mistaken.

It’s better if the police budget is spent on replacing tires rather than purchasing even more unnecessary surplus military equipment which they will then try to justify using.

Hey, deep fakes are awesome. They are a necessary step in the evolution of the technology that leads to holodecks.

I want holodecks, I bet you want holodecks, practically everyone wants holodecks, so we have to go through this stage of the tech to get there.

They aren’t using it, no, but that doesn’t mean the scientific method can’t study what they do and come to an understanding of it - probably a better understanding of it than they have, since as you say, they aren’t using it. It’d just take a few decades of study probably to have a much stronger understanding of how it works.

My point is just that people draw this weird line between ‘science’ and ‘magic’ as though they were incompatible. In a world in which magic is real and useful, science can study it.

Their reality doesn’t defy understanding by the scientific process. It has reliable, repeatable results, and therefore can be studied and empirically catalogued. The only way something could not be studied by science is if it’s totally random, if actions do not correlate, even slightly, with results. Of course, such behavior would make it completely useless as a tool, because one could never get desired results from it. Magic in the setting is very reliable and repatable, and as long as you do it right, results can be studied, so it’s easily catalogued by the scientific method.

This is why PS3 is the last PlayStation that I owned, and I didn’t even buy it retail.

After they discontinued the backwards compatible model I sought out and bought one secondhand, and swore never again to buy a PlayStation product unless they release one on which I can play all my PlayStation games all the way back to 1.

It might actually work if the requirement was a year instead of 30 days.

Also mandate minimum font size for it and that it must be displayed along with the current price anywhere the current price appears.

Well if one of the forms is going to become the neutral, how about making the feminine form the default neutral instead, eh?

Anything and everything that politicians propose to protect children, I am automatically against. It doesn’t matter how good it sounds, if they say anything about protecting children, I’m opposed to it.

This is because they know that ‘protect children’ are magic words that let them get away with almost anything, and that’s genuinely about the only time they say that anyway. Basically nothing the government does is actually to protect children.

Most companies are doing this, sticking arbitration agreements in their user agreements. Most of the time it benefits them hugely since arbitration is typically much more favorable to them than court (which is already incredibly favorable to them).

Once in a while it bites them; I recall reading some company where thousands of users started going to arbitration, and that costs them cause they pay the arbitration fees. In that case they tried to weasel out of the arbitration agreement, but last I heard a judge made them stick to it, forcing them to pay arbitration fees for every user that was asking for it.