Maybe I just don’t know how bulletproof vests work, but shouldn’t there be some layers of energy dispersing material on top of that plate?

Is it a fair comparison without?

Dozens!

That’s almost an hour of soldiers at the current casualty rate

A conceivable way could be to disrupt the nuclear force of the target atoms, maybe like an anti-Pion/Gluon ray that self-propagates the reaction through the released energy.

(As we might remember, splitting the atom yields a bunch of energy, and uncontrolled such reactions go Hiroshima)

It might be controlled by sub-particle lensing, probably some kind of magnetic field, to be active at a specific distance.

For the reaction to be contained, either there’s a radially limiting component (air is not particle dense enough to propagate the reaction, or atoms not energy dense enough) or it’s a cascade triggered by the beam which stops when the beam stops (or the reaction gets too far away from it)

As I believe Pions and Gluons are their own anti-particles, I don’t know how we would go about doing this, but hey, that’s for Science!™ to solve.

What is this thread but people yelling at clouds?

Board games have been nearly ruined by kickstarter.

Instead of buying a well reviewed and recommended game from a store, you have to back a hyped up sales pitch, and then wait 4 months for delivery, if the producers don’t just bail with your money or go “oops, we couldn’t finish what we promised, and we already spent all your money…”.

And if you don’t back it to later read the reviews, the game is out of print and still waiting for the first wave of deliveries, meaning a second print is still at least a year off.

Also, the ratings are heavily skewed by people rating on the hype or early/review copies, meaning the rankings are heavily amazonified.

EtA: Also games are heavily bloated with social media candy: heavy and fragile minis, box stands, blingy crap periferals (branded dice holding toucan) and still needing organisers, player aids and mods from third parties who’ve gotten review copies to make said supplements…

Oh, and the stretch goal extras (get another 150 vanity minis/3D printed scoring tokens) for only $150 and an 18 month wait!

Are you suggesting that being atheist is unnatural?

Of course it is unnatural or do you believe apes have strong opinions about theism? Same goes for theism. Naturality is mostly irrelevant for complex sociocultural views, IMO. I find atheism beneficial, though.

I think this puts a point on your confusion with the descriptor.

Do you believe ducks are convinced a god exists? If not, they’re atheist.

Are rocks convinced a god exists? I’d argue they aren’t sentient and thus not able to - they’re atheist.

Atheism doesn’t require an act of will, isn’t an identity, it only describes one particular thing (which we have a need to describe as religious people get all tizzy about it), just like “blue”, “tall” or “dizzy”. And to belabour the point, it actually describes the absence of a thing, and thus covers all options but one.

An analogous term for someone not believing in aliens could be analienist, you can be analienist regardless if there are aliens or not (as it only addresses the belief). It doesn’t also mean you’re anything else (like tall, handsome, or mysterious). It doesn’t require you to campaign against aliens, throw rocks at the sky, or go to analienist meetings.

As long as you don’t believe in aliens, you’re analienist.

I wouldn’t expect them to, but it would be a hilarious trolling :P

I also have a hard time believing this to be intentionally meaning bearing, mostly due to this being a pop art meme overused in both social media and marketing.

Compare it to the ad poster, it can be art, but most of the time it isn’t meant to. (and to my mind the ubiquity of ad posters raises the noise that the intentional art needs to cut through)

I believe OP is trying to troll the comm, or at least confused about the ambition of the comm.

But for shits and giggles I gave it a good 5 minutes of viewing and quite some generosity, two themes pop out: Contrast between old and new play, and a generational shift in Escapism

On the left side the legos are beige, interrupted by a line of chargers before the right side with candies, and the console controller.

This could try to convey a motif of a generational shift from constructive, wholesome play to an instant gratification paradigm. Maybe with the advent of the informational age

There’s a difference in compositional choices I don’t understand, and with the background of this art style am prone to dismiss as for visual effect rather than intentional meaning.

The shapes on the left side seem mostly to draw the eye rightward. The curve in the top left which could have signified a softening of regimentality is in contrast to the straight and formal positioning of non-rectangular pieces in the lower left. This could be trying to convey the variations or turmoil within the old paradigm, but this level of skill isn’t expected neither from art form nor artist, and as it’s a staple of the pop art style I’m leaning towards it being only for visual effect.

I find no way of differentiating the choice from just starting it as a social media post and half way thinking of a cool contrast.

Looking closer at the pills on the right side, none of them can be identified as pharmaceuticals, but several of them are famous candy shapes. I conclude that they most probably represent only candy and no pills/drugs.

Also on the right side, the controller breaks the motif and catches the eye, both for a visual payoff. But I see no reflection or contrast of controller against candy, nor divider, nor against lego.

If I stop looking for deeper meaning in the relations of elements and just look at emotional impact, it could simply be a nostalgic representation of early millennial childhood . Where the dividing line isn’t a divider, but it’s own part of a tableau, and the choice of items being significant as a collection rather than as elements.

I find no layers of meaning hidden in the contrast or relationships of elements, no artful nods that usually give away mastery enough to wield subtle meaning.

(and the more I look at it, the less I admire the craftsmanship)

You help some from needing support, so that you can free up resources to help the next batch.

Oof, if only he’d been president

At least once you can

The 20% survive at least twice as long, it seems KN has some positive effect.

It’s not like there’s no attrition after the first 5 years. Also, the show started 15 years ago, so the stats are even better.

That’s good numbers, normally 80% of restaurants die in 5 years.

Precisely, so the Federation may be anarchist, even though the member races aren’t.

With what we know about how the Federation interacts with other races and planets, real world logic would indicate that the humans could be (and live) the model that the Federation is built upon.

All this is conjecture ofc, and is probably as much an exercise in understanding post-scarcity anarchism as possible Star Trek lore :p

Which is inherently anarchist :P

As it seems a common confusion in this thread, I repeat, anarchism doesn’t have to be without government or rules, several forms of anarchism are focused on not limiting individuals freedoms and/or not allowing power over eachother (while accepting government and rules not contrary to that). Both of which I believe describe how the Federation works.

The tech is called Window farm and had a quite large, global community developing the system for simplicity, climates and yield. I haven’t looked at it since pre-pandemic times, but the site seems to have been updated since.

Check it out, there’s a lot of cool solutions upcycling everyday objects!

As for NFT, I haven’t tried it yet, but have had Kratky, DWC, Ebb & Flow, window farm, and am currently designing an aeroponics system to play around with.

Haven’t ever chosen NFT as the simple setups require a lot more supports and/or floor area than I can comfortably accommodate. And DWC/Kratky with a bubbler seems to outperform it with less fiddling or effort.

I’m now curious to see if aeroponics will lower the water usage, and how it will affect yields.

For home use, I’d suggest DWC, with or without bubbler, as probably the most yield/fun for least hassle. Having multiple plants in the same system will always lead to complications and unnecessary mass death.

A typical window garden runs on an ebb & flow, with flooding happening at intervals according to climate and plant needs. Evaporation will be different in Finland than Cuba.

I’m curious as to how you come to think NFT would be more space efficient? The vertical window garden setup in the picture should be able to fit more foliage than the side-by-side configuration most NFT seems to use.

That’s one form of it, but there are plenty other schools of thought that overlap quite significantly with the Federation, check out the primer on Wikipedia.

Anarchist doesn’t need to mean without government, simply that no one is above another, which is echoed in how the Federation is structured towards the other races.

I’d say they’re post-scarcity anarchist. There’s no central/communal resource dispersal as needed for socialism, nor the central/communal resource allocation/planning needed for communism.

There’s seemingly no authority outside starfleet exerting any power, nor does anyone ever claim a motivation beyond exploration or study (to do something meaningful). The lack of money and unlimited access to replicated resources pending available dilithium also points to a society without exploitative discrepancies.

The humans also never are reported to have any resource hogging, the only tensions/stratification seem to be militarily (and against external parties also diplomatically), meritocratic, and even then the bottleneck seems mostly to be to not fall behind other races.

I don’t see neither capitalism, socialism, communism, despotism, theocracy, nor fascism, but many aspects of anarchism. If you’ve read anything about The Culture, they openly speak about being anarchist, and it’s very similar to Star Trek.