In my superhero setting, most alien species are able to find an alternate means to orbit around their corresponding Steam age, and can achieve interstellar flight by the time they’ve developed vacuum tubes. Most species also don’t really have the superpowers humanity displays, our rate of technological advancement, or have Defender guardians blockading their home system - although all these traits have co-occurred with a few other extinct species known to the local intersteller empire.

As a result, humanity is largely confined to Earth; we have our satellites and a few moon bases, and some efforts at a Mars colony, mostly backed by Reed Richards type super geniuses.

Sometimes aliens will slip through the Defender blockade; hoping to smuggle out (relatively) advanced human technology, or even superheros to sell. Generally Defenders will intercept these, but sometimes they’ll slip through. And sometimes, humans will “acquire” their ship. Refugees from various interstellar incidents have also been allowed through a few times by the Defenders.

Humanity has so far been unable to work out how interstellar travel is achieved, but research continues. Every human-controlled interstellar ship has a story behind it, and most are the former property of interstellar slavers and smugglers. Some carry representatives of Earth governments and organizations interacting with their interstellar counterparts, and others are crewed by superhero teams who acquired a ship that was temporarily Earthside, or humans who overthrew their captors.

Eyelashes!

I think I see storm troopers over by the TIE too; guessing it’s another vignette. No idea about the Ewok though!

This was Amos’s preferred (planetside) ride for a while in The Expanse!

Sure, and such regulations should be reformed. We should not just start turning stuff off and seeing who breaks!

Kids tend to leave the crust because it doesn’t have all the texture and flavor of the cheesy, saucy main part. My kids will happily eat crusts if offered after they’ve left the table, but it doesn’t occur to them to eat it when there’s more pizza to eat!

There’s no businesses, large or small, set up to take advantage of the tariffs in most industries. And it’s difficult for new businesses to set up because there’s an air of uncertainty to everything right now, because Trump likes to roll things out major changes with as little warning as he can - which is not an environment conducive to investment of any kind. Further, the equipment that would be needed to start a new manufacturing business is, by and large, covered by tariffs!

As for accepting failure - we didn’t fail to keep those manufacturing jobs. We developed to the point nobody was willing to do those jobs for a cost effective price. That is not a failure.

Yeah, I’m all for proper attribution, but I think making it just a little smaller, or two lines so it doesn’t line up with the main message, could have made it more clear that it wasn’t part of the message.

…I am very unobservant. (Especially early in the morning!)

I didn’t have the impression that he is generally, I figured this was more a case of what you grow up with is normal - to the point that he didn’t even pick up on it!

They are both devils - his wife (the author) has a shoulder angel and shoulder devil, along with an occasional shoulder princess, shoulder cave woman, and a few others that have appeared once or twice. Obby here gets a relatively subtle devil and an overt satyr-shaped devil.

I’m not even sure how much evidence there is past the galaxyspinning evidence

There was another article posted recently I can’t find now, that talked about the discrepancy between the age of the universe based on the Hubble constant, and what’s observed of the CMB, or something like that. Apparently that discrepancy can be resolved if the universe itself is rotating.

Really hoping someone can track it down and post up a link, I’m probably making hash of the actual article…

They’re arguing from a religious perspective that understands God as providing intentionality

Everyone is busily selecting a fork, and I’m trying to figure out if the apostrophe was an intentional troll …

Sharks are supposed to be able to smell blood from a mile or more away - that’s why throwing chum in the water is a good way to draw them in.

I hadn’t thought about dolphins smelling though - I wonder if it’s closer to tasting, maybe?

Why do they even want to encourage cow milk consumption?

That is a fascinating take on the general reaction to LLMs. Thanks for posting this!

I’m still glad to see that the military, at least, is still respecting court orders.

It sounds like you can connect with your phone, which reduces the energy footprint quite a bit.

Honestly, I usually saw this alongside Wile E. Coyote style antics performed by someone literally twirling a mustache, so I was never looking for consistency!

And less charitably, the character tied rarely seemed to do more than protest delicately even when she wasn’t tied…