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Can you provide more details as to what technology defines each age, and the posited social, economic, and environmental impact of each? For example, what are the results of large scale data collection, plus the increasing dominance of relatively few corporations, plus the growing emergence of...

There is violence in gaming, but only up to a point. Hit points hide the sense of realistic damage: In few games do we deal with lingering injuries (cut nerves or tendons, badly healed bones) or issues of infection, or of malnutrition or insanity. For most games, the violence is of a sanitized...

Which fits. Although, Mocking Words is in PHB II, and seems to have generated some controversy. And, it has a keyword psychic, which would seem to make it at least partially magical. Is the keyword necessary? Thx! TomB

Shadows cause damage supernaturally, with inverted similarity to a paladin laying on hands. A Marshall bolstering a companion doesn’t have the same feel. Purely psychological effects have been modeled as fear, or as bonuses to checks, but not as adding or removing hit points — until 4E. I...

Some points about minions: I think the "1 HP" notion is an attempt to model a more general feature: Minions are intended to model creatures which die after one solid hit. A more accurate model would give minions about 1/2 the HP value of an average attack. As a simplification, that is changed...

Star Trek TOS episode The Mark of Gideon takes a direct look at overpopulation as a result of near immortality. You could view 40K’s Eldar Paths philosophy as a commentary on having potentially thousands of years of life. Haldeman’s Old Twentieth has immortality as causing key events in the...

This seems to be on point: https://web.stanford.edu/~oas/SI/SRGR/notes/SRGRLect10_2007.pdf Some main points are this, from page 3, regarding a non-rotating case: That "IRF" in "ever shrinking IRF" is short for "Inertial Reference Frame". Close to the infalling observer, spacetime is still...

This particular question has bugged me for a while. I don't have a clear answer, just what seems to be necessary for consistency. Very definitely, there would be perceivable effects of the curvature; that would be tidal effects, and red and blue shifting of light. What seems necessary is that...

Is this correct? If one were held still, perhaps, but an infalling observer should still see objects which fell ahead of them. In the infalling frame, the light proceeds outwards. From the perspective of a still frame of reference, the observer would seem to catch up to light emitted by the...

If they are inside the black hole, then either they are using their faster-than-light drive to keep from falling inwards, or they are falling inwards along with light any any other unlucky matter in their vicinity. (Light would be moving along a geodesic which terminates at the singularity; any...

Yes. Then: How old should he appear after 107 chronological years? Does his appearance in the movie match 107 "Cap" years? Could he be much older than 107? Thx! TomB

Re: Whether Cap is the original. My sense is that we don't know, but in the absence of a direct statement from the movie, to have him be from a different timeline feels unfair to the viewer. I'd prefer that he be the original Cap. What are Cap years to normal human years anyway? How old is...

Those are really great! Thx! TomB

That XKCD sketch looks off ... but I'm reading inconsistent things about the size: https://futurism.com/the-byte/big-m87-black-hole-compared-the-earth Either the numbers are wrong, or the "could just barely fit" comment is very off. I *think* I read elsewhere that the "size" of the event...

Naw, this would take a tiny spec of material. On a massive scale there would be problems, but the scale would have to truly massive. The bigger problem is getting the ship to survive, since it would be briefly overlaying core material. Thx! TomB

Last one is a hyperdrive flight through a planet that stutters the drive for a very brief instant to drop out of hyperspace and scoop up core material the go back into hyperdrive. Need very precise control and a very strong force field to hold the pressurized core material — which is high grade...

Swarm based weapons? Refractive invisibility for ships? Cyborg ship pilots? Improved planetary scale power distribution networks? Force field contained metallic hydrogen explosives? Planetary core mining hyperdrive stutter fields? Thx! TomB

Ok, found it: https://www.intellectualpropertylawblog.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/98/2019/03/Fourth-Estate.pdf Bold added by me. The central question which was decided is when a copyright is registered: When the application for registration was made, or when the registration was granted...

Are y’all reading this correctly? My read is that you already needed to register to recover damages. The ruling allows you to now recover damages retroactive to registration. Thx! TomB

Sure. But they don't have anything to do with what Toys R Us was selling. Financial miss-dealings are a hazard to all corporations. I agree that there is a misfortune in this case to the sellers that operated through Toys R Us. But that is a specific misfortune which ought not to be used to...