She appeared there because she really wanted to.

There’s a neat bit of two-part history hidden there:

Part 1:

(Taken from an interview with Michelle Nichols)

Sometime during the original run of ST TOS, Michelle Nichols wanted to step back from playing Uhura. Roddenberry asked her to think about it on the weekend.

During that weekend, she happened to be at some fundraiser, where the host asked her if she could spare a minute for “her biggest fan”.

She said “of course… but hold on, there’s MLK right over there, I’ve got to take the opportunity to talk to him first.”

Host: “Yeah… um, that is your biggest fan. He wants to talk with you.”

MLK told her how much of an impact her role had (for pretty much the same reasons Goldberg mentioned later).

Monday, she rescinded her resignation.

Part 2:

When the staff of TNG heard that Whoopie Goldberg wanted had asked for a minor role, they thought it was joke.

(TNG wasn’t yet the juggernaut it’d become and Goldberg was a top tier Hollywood star.)

But she told them explicitly that she’d been inspired by the Role of Uhura from the start and just wanted to be part of ST.

So they tailored that minor role to her.

To me, she always looks happy as a clam on screen with that.

This isn’t about guys’n’gals.

This is simpky about how people work:

If your peers (friends, colleagues, family) have an opinion (any opinion), their default expectation is that you share that opinion - this is what being a peer is mostly about.

You can demonstrate solidarity by agreeing - this is virtually always the safe option.

You can demonstrate backbone by disagreeing - this can generate respect or animosity.

You can refuse to weigh in - this is mostly a middle ground between the two above.

How it actual shakes out in reality will depend on a myriad of factors, many of which you’re not even consciously aware of.

Thus, this random internet stranger can give you only three pieces of advice:

• Trust your instincts on how to handle this. Your subconscious is very well wired to navigate social situations as best as possible.

• If you ever change your opinion or “change your opinion”, announce it clearly and give/make up a reason. People disrespect people who are inconsistent, but they respect people who can admit to mistakes / learn.

• Sometimes, you can’t win. Sometimes, someone will be pissed off, no matter what you do. It’s no fault of yours, some situations are just not salvageable to begin with.

Right.

??

I’m no expert on the technical side of the protocol, but my BT devices only ever connect to sources they’ve been paired with.

Why would this be more difficult for hearing aids than for headphones?

The ability to extrapolate what something would taste/feel like from mere looks is a learned one.

Toddlers don’t have it yet, which is why they’re stuffing everything into their mouths.

You might not consciously remember licking a carpet, but the part of you that’s holding up the “dusty”, “textured” and “CRUMBS!!” signs does.

I had something vaguely similar happen to me.

We got called out of the line for a manual luggage inspection because, as a surprisingly bored security agent informed us, X-ray showed a knife of about a foot length in our luggage.

We had no idea what they were talking about.

We were half-way through unpacking the whole pack when my SO lit up and asked “could it be my ice skates?”

Agent took a look at the X-ray, nods, and lets us pack it back up without any further checking.

Overall, turned out harmlessly, but the sheer confusion of where that supposed knife had come from, combined with how blasé that security person was about the whole affair from start to finish stuck in my mind.

Alien intelligence is not required to follow human reasoning.

The Lords of Alpha Centauri could run a long-term social engineering program on Earth because they believe capitalism, conflict and social darwinism are objectively Good for You and we need to be purged of the folly of humanistic ideology before we can be allowed to join the galactic civilization market.

Or because they find our struggles entertaining.

What I can tell you is that no rational spacefaring civilization would need to resort to social engineering if they just want to kill us. Just toss a bit (or a lot) of spare delta v on a sufficiently large asteroid (or five) and humanity goes the way of the dinosaur.

(Different story if they want us dead, but want to make it look like suicide because of the space police.)

My take:

Most things (especially abstract ones) that exists beyond the scope of the small-hunter-gatherer-tribe setup our brain is developed for: Quantum mechanics, climate change, racism, relativity, spherical earth, …

What separates us from the dogs is that we’ve developed abstract analytical tools (language, stories, mathematics, the scientific method,…) that allow us to infer the existence of those things and, eventually try to predict, model and manipulate them.

But we don’t “grasp” them as we’d grasp a tangled leash, which is why it is even possible for medically sane people to doubt them.

I’d argue that you can even flip this around into a definition:

If a person with no medical mental deficiencies can honestly deny a fact (as in: without consciously lying), then that fact is either actually wrong, or it falls into the “tangled leash” category.

This.

There are already people who are doing selfish/immoral/illegal things because they can get away with it.

And there are people who don’t.

Giving either of those superpowers would (mostly) only increase the magnitude of things they would or would not do.

That’s a fairly good point, but I’d argue that it’d depend on how subtle the application of your superpower is.

My overall assumption would be that any application that doesn’t raise red flags will probably require enough work and moderation that it’d be more like a job - but it could be a very well-paying job.

I.e. for the time freeze: You could acquire a well-paid reputation as a freelancer troubleshooter for a certain type of WFH desk job (analyst? translator?) that can finish any overdue project in record time. Or, easier, become a stage magician.

You’d probably still eventually wind up in a situation where you watch some sort of unacceptable crisis on the news and think “well, I could do something about this” - be it removing a mass-murdering dictator or dismantling a hostage situation.

I genuinely believe it’d depend on the person.

First: Most people who use cheats in video games eventually either stop using them or stop playing the game altogether, because it gets boring.

Many people who win the lottery get a bit of splurging out of their system, then invest the rest into financial security but keep living their loves mostly like before.

So there genuinely might be some people who will eventually settle into just fixing their most glaring problems and then just keep living “regularly”, possibly with the occasional minor indulgence.

Then there’s people who are willing to go to extreme lengths to enforce their beliefs even without superpowers - imagine super-powered criminals and terrorists, but also super-powered firefighters, doctors or scientists.

And then there’s everything in between.

So, if it’s just one (or maybe five) people getting superpowers, it’d probably be a roll of the dice. Maybe there’d just be one person going through life easier. Maybe we’d get lucky and someone solves a major problem for us. Maybe we get unlucky and every president that doesn’t reinstate segregation gets assassinated.

If it’s more people getting powers… well, there’s already a lot of fiction exploring that in-depth.

The superposition principle says “no”.

ps ax?

As long as people keep voting for deregulative capitalists and engaging in the consumer mill, megacorps with too much power are all but inevitable.

I am frustrated with human nature, but hating Google is just like hating a tornado because it might hurt you.

Option 1: Take the plunge as a DM, announce before hand that you’re new at this. Everyone who thinks they can do better is free to give it a try.

Option 2: Local Game Store.

Option 3: reddit /r/lfg. Google how to turn a search into an RSS stream, set up a search, be ready to jump into worthwhile-seeming posts quickly. Be ready to go through a few bad/mediocre groups until you find something that clicks.

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/happiness-spigot

Best summary to this topic I’ve ever seen.

People with legitimate service dogs usually have vests on them, not just to make it clear to business owners, but because they usually don’t want people petting and distracting the service dogs when they’re on duty.

One of the best sets of “work clothing” I’ve ever seen on a dog was on a large, leashed greymuzzle sleeping peacefully next to their owner in a very busy subway car.

Wore a harness with a text along the lines of “I’m a police dog and tired after a long day. Please do me a solid and don’t disturb me. Thanks.”

What about blind people with service dogs?

Isn’t banning them akin to banning wheelchairs?

I believe there is a certificate for professional trained service dogs like that. (If there isn’t, there should.)

A conversation along the lines of “Ma’am, we don’t allow dogs in here unless they’re a certified service dog.” “No problem, here’s my permit for Chester.” should be no problem.

And if Ma’am can’t get Chester to behave, she’ll be treated like any other unruly guest and invited to take her business (and her dog) elsewhere.

I’m fairly certain that’s the same area where wild hogs no longer find enough food in the wild and are currently enthusiastically reclaiming said golf courses.

I, for one, am rooting for the four-legged pigs on this one.

My players loved and hated it both, but made it through without any deaths (a few death saves, though) and even got the Lich proper.