When Sagan explained the Cosmos as "all that is or was or will ever be", he was explaining the concept of the original Greek meaning of the word. The word Cosmos doesn't equate to the Standard Model or any concept that our current understanding of things is absolute - It is a blanket term for "the totality of all that…

Reminds me of something Zhuang Zi (daoist philosopher from the Warring States period in China) wrote about. He said basically that the idea/mental concept of a word wasn't intrinsically linked to the word itself. "If we refered to the sky using the word 'horse' and called the ground 'point', that wouldn't change the…

I remember an episode in the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon where they traveled to an alternate dimension where Shredder had won and taken over the world. Shredder hated it and was practically begging the turtles to go back and defeat him. "I *HATE* ruling the world! Everything is always breaking, and…

Something something Butlerian Jihad. Also, if any religious group starts financing mass production of androids pre-programmed to accept their beliefs in an effort to "boost their numbers", I think everyone (including other religions) can agree to write them off as crazies.

What, no Gelatinous "if you swing at me i'll absorb your body" Cube? Those are loads of assholery right there. Multi-stage trap: players miss the first one, they fall into a pit. The floor of that pit? Rigged with another trap that drops a Gelatinous Cube on top of them.

This is one thing I wish more people would realize. Some of the things that came to light bring up some important questions about what we're comfortable with as a society, but people's expectations of what is *actually* happening seem to be heavily colored by the overflow of dystopian themed books/movies.

In the real…

Read at work. Had to pinch nose closed and cover mouth to stop from laughing. There are tears. Your writing almost left me asphyxiated. You glorious bastard.

The only thing that concerns me about these comparisons is that they always seem to focus on the chance of going from the very bottom to the very top. Most who go from the bottom to the very top, aren't your average folks just trying to improve their circumstances, they're the ones who are wildly successful.

I think…

I'm looking forward to people bringing back the flapper look when we get to the roaring 2020's.

As for the bad? Everyone being obsessed with the 80's. We made fun of 80's fashion for a reason. Also, the women's hair style that pulls the center of the hair up and back and makes the forehead look huge. Just my personal…

I have a feeling some of that is due to a lot of folks in their 20's separating from the military. Me? I went the other route getting out - beard for days.

"It's rare to see Uighurs represented as heroes" - So much this. You could stopped at "represented" and still been right though. If the people on the coast hear about them at all, they're only ever mentioned as 'bandits' (classical chinese slang for anyone militarily opposing the current government, kind of like the…

If you think flat-Earthers are silly, you should read up on hollow-Earthers. Good for a laugh.

More Urbex inspired media? Yes please!

I'm gettin' 2 griffons flanking a beetle.

Besides the already mentioned "numbers vs. methods" arguments from other replies, consider this: if a non-allied country got the bomb before us, and used it as we did - do you really think we'd have been in a position to try them at the Hague?

Read the whole article in the WWII "radio voice" dialect.

Like many others, I jumped ship over to Pathfinder when 4e came out. 4e felt like WoW - the board game. Pathfinder has held onto a lot of the clunk of 3.5e, and I may pick up a 5e book to see if it managed to clear that out WITHOUT ruining the dynamism of the older systems. Mostly, I just don't want to see spell…

One theory I heard (which I'm inclined to believe) stated that the radicalization, particularly in Congress, has to do with opposition in individual districts. If a politician has no real threat to their seat from a member of the opposite party, then their greatest political threat is from other members of their own…

"I think therefore I am" is a good example of philosophy proving itself right by its own definitions. In the end, all it proves is that the "I" figure exists grammatically.

"And that was the day the Improbability Drive really ****ed me over" - Neil Armstrong, from "Memoirs of an Experimental Spacecraft Pilot"