The cost is less from the design and more from the safety regulations. Best case scenario the state just starts making nuclear power plants, it’s just not a good idea to mix profit incentive with nuclear.

I think so long as you maintain consciousness that issue is fairly null in this particular circumstance. There’s lots of tolerance for changes in thought while maintaining the same self, see many brain damage victims. So long as there is minimal change in personality, there are lots of other circumstances that have a stronger case for killing one person and having a new person replace them due to change of consciousness, imo, I don’t think most people would consider a brain damaged person killed and replaced by a new consciousness, or a drug addiction with radically altered brain chemistry, etc.

I don’t see an issue with that. A prolonged brain surgery that meticulously replaces each part with a mechanical equivalent in sequence. Could probably remain conscious the whole time.

Yes, the energy of the explosion is a function of the total energy between the output of the laser and the shield, specifically the shield energy being pointed at the laser origin. That’s why they randomly hid some maximum powered, monodirectional shields facing up when they fled the attack. So that even the relatively weak personal shields would still have a large impact. In general use, the shield energy is being projected in all directions, so the amount facing the laser origin is very small. IIRC, an average powered lasgun hitting a personal shield creates an explosion that can range between roughly an HE hand grenade and an HE naval shell. They only went up like nukes because the Harkonen were using the lasguns at max energy, and the shields were tweaked abnormally. And as another comment says, the actual point of the explosion is at a random point along the beam.

This isn’t the same. Host nukes is not owning nukes, they seems to be proposing housing US nukes that Poland would not have control of, or be able to launch. With no launch codes, they aren’t a valid deterrent to conventional war, unless the world is convinced the US would use them to protect Polish sovereignty, which would obviously not be on the table.

There isn’t really much about eternal torture or damnation back when Satan was still an agent of God, and he certainly wasn’t in charge of Hell. All the talk of gnashing teeth and lakes of fire was originally metaphor for how much it sucked, not literal.

Hell isn’t a place, it’s a state of complete lack of Grace. The idea is that everyone has a 2 way connection to God, and all good feelings and emotions must come from it. People are free to reject that connection by committing mortal sin, but “the line stays open,” as long as someone lives. Honest repentance is accepting the connection back. If one dies before accepting grace again, God shrugs and accepts they aren’t interested, and cuts his side of the line. This leaves an existence with zero positive thoughts or feelings, best case scenario is eternal meh. Of course, it was hyped up to be awful to help convert and maintain control. And, ofcourse, Satan did do a bit of torture here and there, but it was generally all on living folk to test them.

My favorite is the gif of the skubbah diver with a lassear beam on their frickin head.

Lawful>chaotic isn’t about better>worse. If anything, using the gear that came with the product is the definition of lawful in this context. Lawful is more about following the expectations of society. That’s not the full meaning, but close enough for this post. If anything, I would swap true neutral and chaotic neutral.

I’m a suckered for the suits. This episode and the one where he was “Diablo” have got to be my two favorites.

To fill in a bit, gathers information on target, formulates a well thought out plan, new development forces him to scrap the plan and improvise something else on short notice.

They were all celestial bodies. The rest just got more myth attached to them. The Norse names are all sort of kinda mostly the equivalents of the Roman counterparts, and those are famously where we get the names for the planets.

Sunday

Moonday

Mercuryday

Jupiterday

Venusday

Saturnday

Ther wasn’t a great Norse version of Saturn, so it just kept its name. Even as it is, some of those conversions are pretty flimsy.

What level of abstraction is enough? Training doesn’t store or reference the work at all. It derives a set of weights from it automatically. But what if you had a legion of interns manually deriving the weights and entering them in instead? Besides the impracticality of it, if I look at a picture, write down a long list of small adjustments, -2.343, -.02, +5.327, etc etc etc, and adjust the parameters of the algorithm without ever scanning it in, is that legal? If that is, does that mean the automation of that process is the illegal part?

Sentience is the little hump that we can at least sort of see some evidence of, judging by how similar regions of brains activate in certain circumstances. Sapience is the real tricky one.

That’s because your thermometer is upside-down. Try tur ing it right way round, then see how cold it is.

Kiss the sky.

They are called Mondegreens in English, after Sylvia Wright wrote an essay about how she misheard “laid him on the green,” as Lady Mondegreen.

I came here to “correct” you to that, yes. But then it’s not really IPA anymore, and the other character doesn’t make sense now. May as well stick to the more universal system.

Wait, Rocket? Where is Bradley Cooper, is he safe, is he alright?

Bah, I always forget eth is different in IPA than how it was used in Old English.

Yeah, but even if the chance per outing decreases a large increase in outings can still bring the average up. I was an avid skier growing up aND hit the slopes every year, the only surgery I’ve had was from a skiing accident in my early 20s when I was forced to wipe out or collide with another skier and snapped my ACL.