Zonetrooper

This is fundamentally a variation on the question of a Temporal Paradox, also known as a Grandfather Paradox ("You go back in time and kill your grandfather. What happens?"). Although no killing happens in this variation, the basic idea is the same: Information is transmitted to the past from the future, but results in a situation where it cannot be transmitted in the first place.

Accordingly, there are several hypotheses to cover this. This isn't even all of them:

• The closed loop theory: To maintain the loop, you will in the future build a time machine which will allow you to activate the machine in the past, maintaining the loop. Past you may even be unaware it was activated from the future.
• The Parallel Universe theory: When future-you sent information into the past, they did not send it into their own past but rather into a universe in which you do not send the information back in the first place.
• The Timelike Curve theory: Because there is no common reference frame for "time", each quanta of "you" is experiencing a different reference frame. The historic light cone of your future self sending the information back exists, and if you could follow those photons backwards you would find him doing this. But future you, in your frame of reference, will never see the machine activate.
• The Emergent Time theory: Time is not a linear path, but a function of entropy. By inverting entropy, you have caused a reconfiguration of the universe into a version in which the machine is inactive.

Right? I try to stay away from it so a few unread pages can build up and I can devour them all at once, but I never manage to stay away for long...

Been following Jay for a few years now - he used to lurk the Worldbuilding community over on Reddit, so I ran into him a few times back before I migrated to Lemmy. Runaway is some really fantastic stuff, and the sheer effort of depth put into minor details of the world make it stand out. (Seriously, check for the small details of how the characters emote - it's fascinating.)

At this point I only wish more of it would come out faster, but again given the sheer attention to detail and quality of art, I'm just delighted to have it at all!

Haha, holy shit. Somehow I had never connected that Piratesoftware was Maldavius. Yeah, that explains so, so very much of this entire SKG debacle.

Like, what kind of dictator are we talking here? Is this a Lord Vetinari benevolent dictator, or your typical generic slimeball autocrat?

Personally, I'd like to think that if they did become the latter, they'd be so far different from the person I love that I would break from them. Thoughtfulness, intelligence, and consideration aren't usually things I see associated with dictators, you know? But people have an incredible capacity to isolate and put on different masks between their personal and professional lives...

It really is an interesting question, yes! Fires started by frictional heating are pretty uncommon in nature, but early humans could pretty readily see that objects placed near a fire would begin to smolder and burn just from radiant heat.

It really depends on when we were able to take intellectual leap of realizing that all heat is equivalent, and fire is not a prerequisite of making new fire.

We don't know. Hell, we can't even narrow it down to a specific place with certainty. There is strong evidence in human settlements for use of fire anywhere from a few hundred thousand to 1 million years ago. When, exactly, is hard to ascertain; for instance, some sites which are claimed to hold the oldest evidence have been criticized as resembling the aftermath of wildfires.

It is also depends on what you mean by "discovered": Early proto-hominids were almost certainly aware of fire and the concept of burning, so are we counting from when they realized "hey, I can take a burning thing and put it where I want it, and it will spread burning there?" Or are we only counting from when fire began to be used as a tool (e.g., for clearing brush or cooking)? Or when humans discovered how to start fires in the absence of a natural source?

In fairness, Microsoft certainly has tried to get the next closest thing with Bedrock. The hosting of server backends through their architecture via "realms" allows them to lock you out of a whole lot, and I still see people getting randomly banned because of their profanity filter.

But yes, if Realms shut down right now, there would always be Java (and even privately hosted Bedrock servers).

I really wish there was a good airsoft group nearby me, but it seems like the only ones who are close by don't play on a schedule that works for me. It's really frustrating.

I think it was the cost.

It was this. In fact, it was awkward all around. The dollar cost was high, you were stuck with the arena's schedule and openings, you had to add in time for travel to the site and waiting to get in, going through the suit up... or you could just log onto Call of HaloField Tournament 3 and get a similar hit but with more animated explosions and stuff.

I remember towards the end a few companies sold consumer lasertag kits for home use. I think one of them even had a "rocket launcher" with a little radio thing in the "rocket" to register hits? But they were also super expensive, never cross-compatible so good luck making a big team, and if one broke you were SOL because they only came in big packs.

When it's posts you agree with, it's honest users. When it's posts you disagree with, it's astroturfing.

I joke, but unfortunately that seems to be the most common metric for a lot of people. If it's a position "no one would really support" (in their view), then support for it must be astroturfed.

From what I understand, it's less about chasing a market than wanting to be perceived as correcting the previously highly male-dominated writing scene.

Subjectively, a little informal discussion among writer & fan groups to me suggests that men who read fantasy tend to slowly but steadily acquire new materials, often from word-of-mouth among dedicated communities; women, by contrast, tend to latch on to a particular breakout series or author, with awareness often propagated by social media such as "Booktok". This means that while both groups purchase in similar volumes, a book whose audience favors women can experience surges of popularity which make for prominent best-sellers over limited timeframes.

Admittedly, though, this is informal - so take that with a grain of salt.