What fascinated me is that if you click on the article’s “probably not good for you” link you get another Gismodo article that doesn’t say anything bad about asparteme. It says it doesn’t cause cancer. It goes on to raise some issues with sucralose and Splenda, but nothing specifically against asparteme. So even their…

“ESA thinks they can do things on a shoestring” — the primary mission was the orbiter, and that was successful. Since they were going to Mars anyway for that, they took the opportunity to include a lander, but the lander was incidental. As long as it didn’t compromise the main mission, it hardly mattered what…

For me the question is whether it produces more power than solar cells. If it doesn’t, why not use solar cells instead? If it does, why hasn’t it already superceded solar watches?

Especially if it supports VR. Teleportation is a way to navigate in VR without triggering nausea. For example, Bethesda have demoed a version of Fallout 4 with VR that uses teleportation. (Then again, “GTA VI supports VR” would be a better headline.)

I hadn’t appreciated until this episode that the Saviours were unaware of the connection between Alexandria and Hilltop. That makes the previous season finale all the stranger. Negan didn’t know Maggie was ill, didn’t know Rick was taking her to Hilltop, didn’t know what routes he might use. So he had Alexandria…

If you want to keep someone safe, locking them in a house and then setting a fire isn’t the way to do it. Zombies are (sometimes) attracted to fire, so the fire could have spread.

Well, Carl never did murder a kid in cold blood for not lowering his gun fast enough. The kid was actually advancing towards him with said gun, and wouldn’t stop when told to. Carl was responsible for the safety of an old man and a young girl. He couldn’t let the kid get close enough to get the drop on him; he…

Although BSG wasn’t really coherent on that point. Supposedly they were indistinguishable from human, but then they are shown with glowing spines during sex, or plugging themselves into data cables via a cut in their forearm.

There’s plenty of scientific interest on Mars. For example, you can’t really understand geology from only studying a single planet.

That still doesn’t matter. Each state knows its own rules and should be capable of getting it done. That they don’t is because they don’t care enough (or else they actively want to disenfranchise certain groups of people).

No; voting scales. The more people you have voting, the more people you have to run it. You have as many polling stations as you need.

It partly depends on what happens next. Obviously a lot of people will die and resources will be scarce. It would be nice to think that everyone will come to their senses and stop fighting, but the opposite is possible. We might get a number of factions fighting to be the ones to survive, and making a bad situation…

If Daryl bends the knee, he’ll soon be ordered to do some despicable things. If he refuses, he’s at best back in the cell. If he does them, then he’s compromised forever. He’ll end up like Dwight. He won’t get a chance to attack for a long while, and by then he’ll have enjoyed the benefits of being in the elite.…

I think it’s guilt and shame. Dwight also feels he needs to prove himself to Negan; as a promoted runaway he’s going to be under suspicion so he needs to be extra zealous. Mostly Daryl triggers cognitive dissonance in Dwight by showing that there was/is another way.

Why drop the case now, though? Why not wait until after the election? Just keeping mum for a few more days would have retained more credibility, and do more damage to Trump, then arranging a press conference and not going through with it, or dropping the case entirely. Do you think it is some kind of double-bluff,…

I think if Negan were that close to Alexandria, they’d have encountered each other earlier. I’d put the Kingdom and Hilltop at about the same distance, and Alexandria another step further away. Alexandria only got surrounded because Negan found his men were disappearing and needed to find out why and deal with it. The…

I mostly agree. Mainly I feel Negan will pick his time. When we meet the Saviours they were in the process of taking over Hilltop. First they demanded tribute, then they kidnapped someone’s brother and sent the someone to assassinate Hilltop’s leader. Had that succeeded, presumably the next step would be to install a…

It is especially disturbing that the top (in the photo) matches her tail. Is it made from the tails of other mermaids? Or did she moult?

“would have made the Sansa Stark wedding night controversy look like a mean Tweet” -- on the other hand, the Red Wedding involved stabbing a pregnant woman in the belly. Given that precedent, I don’t get why people think Maggie was untouchable.

Rick isn’t the reason Abraham is dead. Negan’s policy is to kill one member of each community they encounter, as a show of strength, so someone would have died eventually regardless. And it was inevitable that they’d encounter Negan’s group. Negan was in the process of taking over Hilltop (started with tribute, then…