

“What’s big brown and sticky?”
“A big stick”
“What’s brown, and hurts if it falls on you from a tree?”
“A piano”


“What’s big brown and sticky?”
“A big stick”
“What’s brown, and hurts if it falls on you from a tree?”
“A piano”


It’s worth noting that combining the relativistic correction factor into mass is actually quite problematic. It’s a vector (directional), while mass is scalar(directionless). You suddenly need to ask what direction your mass is. Furthermore, a hypothetical person on the ship will still measure their inertial mass as normal.
As it stands, it would take an infinite amount of energy to reach the speed to light, but you can get arbitrarily close to it, with a finite amount (huge, but finite).


I was more referring to how they deal with the cream. They fully skim it out, then mix it back in to get the various types of milk. That processing is why you don’t need to shake supermarket milk to mix the cream back in before use. The oil droplets are FAR smaller, and it changes the mouth feel of the milt at the very least.
I’ve no proof, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t bother mixing the best parts of the cream back in. At least not in the ratios that came out originally.


They also mess with the milk in additional ways. I didn’t realise how bad it had gotten until I started getting milk delivered from a local dairy. It’s still pasteurised, but closer to natural. I dread to think how bad it must be for you yanks.
I can easily see someone trying “raw” milk and discovering it tastes amazing by comparison. The conclusion that raw is better is wrong, but understandable. The middle ground is where the sweet spot is, safe, but as natural tasting as it can reasonably be.
It gets extra fun if part tries to break away and elect a new spokesperson.
They also happen to be a (retired) nurse themselves. It’s uncommon, but not that uncommon. Most nurses would have seen it before. Its only for 5-10 seconds after waking up. Coming from a relatively skinny woman is quite a bit more unexpected. She also has unusually good aim.
I know someone who has had quite a few general anesthetics. They’ve taken to warning the nurses involved that they are a puncher. Several have not taken it seriously and ended up with some impressive bruises (including black eyes).


I saw a talk from someone working in the field a few years back. The “fusion is only 10 years away” had a small proviso “if fully funded”. The actual funding was barely enough to keep the lights on.
That has now changed. It’s gotten close enough that private investment has decided it’s worth investing in. I believe the only really big problem left is the wall material. The neutron flux transmutes the elements making it up. This makes it difficult to maintain a hard vacuum, since the wall can start leaking and/or outgassing, forcing a shutdown to replace them. On a minor plus side, if you dope the walls with mercury, it transmutes to gold, in commercially viable amounts!
Fusion has several advantages over fission. The biggest is the impossibility of a meltdown. The very difficulty in balancing the reactor means that it shuts down fast and mostly clean. This would let them be placed far closer to population centers. They could provide a base load supply, in the way nuclear could/should have.
The bacteria don’t need to be identical.
Think of it like rolling a dice. Any given roll can only have a single number. However patterns can be detected by combining multiple rolls. E.g. a biased dice.
As for larger things. It’s possible, but the speed required goes up with mass, and not linearly. In theory a person could go through. They would be moving a significant fraction of the speed of light however. Catching them alive on the other side would be… difficult.
Only 1 bacteria ever arrives. It’s the probability wave that interferes with itself.
With the Young’s double slit experiment, if you fire a single photon, you get a single photon arriving. It looks just like how a cannon ball flies. It’s only when you let hundreds go (either collectively or individually) that the interference pattern appears.

The end pattern is the probability that the photon (or bacteria) arrives at any given point on the receiver screen.
Anything moving has an associated wavelength. If that wavelength is long enough, you can do the young’s double slip experiment on it.
It was a few years ago, so the details are hazy. A scientific team accelerated a particularly small and sturdy bacteria fast enough that their speed produced a viable wavelength. They then sent the stream through 2 slits. They then captured the bacteria in aerogel (I think) to slow them back down.
Most didn’t survive, but some both survived, and ended up somewhere they couldn’t without interfering with themselves. They successfully reproduced afterwards. The debris also followed the classic ripple pattern of the experiment.
Basically, there is nothing special about “life” when it comes to quantum mechanical effects, other than it’s on the big side.
They have also experimentally tested an equivalent experiment with bacteria. They survived a trip through the double slit experiment.
There doesn’t seem to be an issue with it, other than it’s difficult and impractical.


There are 2 parts at work. The focus reflex and the blink reflex. The window between them is the dangerous part. If the pulse is fast enough ( a few ms) then the eye can’t focus, and it’s fairly safe (unless you were already focused on the emitter). If the pulse is low enough power then the blink reflex kicks in and protects your eye.
Hitting a mosquito is a hard task, tracking one is even harder. It’s better to use an ultra short pulse, with a bit more power. You can also shift the frequency. If it’s an infrared laser then the eye won’t lock onto it, and will struggle to focus it dangerously.


This idea was tried previously. If done right, it doesn’t take much energy to damage a mosquito’s wings.
Secondly, a laser is only a real issue for vision if the eye focuses on it. With a continuous beam, it would be instinctive, making it dangerous. If the pulse is short enough however, the eye won’t have time to focus and so the power will be safely spread out, even inside the eyeball.


I’m pro suicide. However, a lot of times suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.
There should definitely be at least a couple of doctors in the loop for an assisted suicide. There also needs to be a lot more in the way of support for people in that hole. Both the emotional support, and more practical guidance (it’s hard to break out of the cycle when your life is objectively shit and all you can get is “there there, it will get better”).


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachyonic_antitelephone
Basically, an “instant” communication device can create paradoxes.
E.g.
Earth sends mars a instant message. Mars the relay’s it via normal radio to a passing ship/probe moving at 0.99C. That probe then sends an “Instant” message to Earth.
The final message will (depending on alignments etc) arrive before the original was sent. If the message the voids the reason for the original message to be sent then a paradox happens.
You can make similar things happen with any form of FTL communication. C isn’t technically the speed of light, it is the speed of information. It just happens that light has no other speed limiting, and so moves at maximum speed.


I’d argue they didn’t, they just changed.
There are 2 groups worth noting. Government and private.
Government assassination is still a thing. Israel has used it aggressively over the last few decades. There are also signs that china has too. That’s just off the top of my head. It’s also worth noting that drone strikes etc can fill the same roll as an assassin.
Private has definitely changed. I suspect the high profile assassinations have stopped. Low level ones just had to get a lot better at not looking like assassinations. The ever classic boating accident being a good example.
The change is mostly from improvements in policing. You can no longer just move to another city to escape the law.
It’s also worth noting that a lot of society has changed. It used to be that a country pivoted on its leader. Now, it’s a lot more reliant on formal structures. Taking out a leader doesn’t have the same, devastating effect it used to. Iran being a good example.


Agreed on that. Though in the scale of the UK there aren’t that many cases. The ones there are however, are (deliberately) high profile. It has a chilling effect on the population, without needing to use it much.
They also hamstring the bobbies via the budget assignments. I know a lot of forces would love to get rid of some of the more overtly racist/sexist/other-ist officers. Their budget limits wages however, which limits the selection of replacements. They end up having to try and weed out the ringleaders (to fire or retire) and split the followers up.
The long and the short, most of the police are working class and do the job to try and make our country better. Some are even trying to counter the bullshit rolling down from on high.


So are a lot of scientists.
10m is deep enough to have to consider the bends (decompression sickness). That’s definitely into diving rules territory.
The particular risk is it cutting off, due to the battery dying, forcing a rapid ascent.