Fediverse T156 • Now • 100%

What happened to Kbin.Social?

While kbin.social's site mentioned that they were migrating to a new provider, and as a result, the site might be experiencing some issues, kbin.social has been serving up a similar HTTP 50x errors, and that migration message for well over a month, if not more. What happened?

No Stupid Questions T156 • Now • 94%

How do you ask for a haircut?

While ordering a crew cut is easy, since it's on the menu, what about other kinds? Can you just go "I'd like a men/women's haircut" and leave it at that, or do you need something more specific, like saying you want a Charlestone done by a No. 3 to the sides, and a 4 up top?

In our world, the police going to a spirit medium for the DL-6 case, and being ridiculed might be logical, since spirit channelling isn't a real thing, but in the world of Ace Attorney, it is. Not only is it a known and established practice, with detectable physical effects, but the monarchy of at least one country is specifically sought out for their spirit-channelling powers by other governments, so that they can commune with the dead, and receive advice that way. However, it also seems to be disbelieved, and ridiculed as a pseudoscience, despite that.

Worldbuilding T156 • Now • 100%

What would inorganic species call themselves?

I've been using "mechanoid" as a classification (similar to humanoid, etc), but a friend pointed out that it's both too generic, and that said inorganics might just consider it biology, with organics being the weird outlier.

No Stupid Questions T156 • Now • 96%

Why is "Dear X" considered more formal than "To X" in e-mail/writing?

You wouldn't start off an e-mail with "My Dear X", or "Dearest X", since that would be too personal for a professional email, so "To X" being more impersonal seems like it would make the letter more professional-sounding, compared to "Dear X".

Doctor Who zips all the way up and down through time, popping in at any time and place. If you don't have a time machine to follow them around with, it should be impossible to keep track of which incarnation was where. And yet, the Doctor's enemies somehow manage to do just that, with the [Daleks being accurate enough to determine he was on his last regeneration](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVQSqm5djEo) on Trenzalore.

One of the options for students enrolling into Hogwarts, if they come from a wizarding family, is that they have the option of using a hand-me-down wand. But short of wands being damaged beyond repair, we don't see many people replacing them, even though it happens enough that hand-me-downs are a valid option for new students. So how long does one last? Does a wizard normally use one wand in their lifetime, or is it the kind of thing where an old, worn-out wand is fine for schoolwork, but you'd need something newer/better for adult life?

No Stupid Questions T156 • Now • 94%

What caused the change in electronic terminology?

What caused the shift from calling things like rheostats and condensers to resistors and capacitors, or the move from cycles to Hertz? It seemed to just pop up out of nowhere, seeing as the previous terms seemed fine, and are in use for some things today (like rheostat brakes, or condenser microphones).

Fitness T156 • Now • 100%

[Stupid Question] Why cut/bulk in cycles instead of doing it all in one go?

You often see people in fitness mention going through a cut/bulk cycle, or mention one, with plans to follow up with the other. Why is it that cutting and bulking so often happen in cycles, rather than said person just doing both at once, until they hit their desired weight?

While we hear of the TARDIS having engines that are implicitly essential to it working, we've also see a TARDIS work without the rest of the machine. ["The Doctor's Wife"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rfOs8sGHi8) and ["Inferno"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcNrCVYWHec) show that a TARDIS is capable of operating as just the console, which would seem to imply that they're just a power source to allow the console to do its thing and move the whole ship around, or to allow for the pilot to do silly things like tow an entire planet one second out of phase.

Daystrom Institute T156 • Now • 100%

Was the Federation right to grandfather in Earth's laws against genetic modification?

One of the recent laws in Trek that gets looked at a bit, is the genetic engineering ban within the Federation. It appears to have been passed as a direct result of Earth's Eugenics Wars, to prevent a repeat, and seems to have been grandfathered into Federation law, owing to the hand Earth had in its creation. But we also see that doing so came with major downsides. The pre-24th century version of the law applied a complete ban on any genetic modification of any kind, and a good faith attempt to keep to that resulted in the complete extinction of the Illyrians. In Enterprise, Phlox specifically attributes the whole issue with the Eugenics Wars to humans going overboard with the idea of genetic engineering, as they are wont to do, trying to improve/perfect the human species, rather than using it for the more sensible goal of eliminating/curing genetic diseases. Strange New Worlds raises the question of whether it was right for Earth to enshrine their own disasters with genetic engineering in Federation law like that, particularly given that a fair few aliens didn't have a problematic history with genetic engineering, and some, like the Illyrians, and the Denobulans, used it rather liberally, to no ill-effects. At the same time, people being augmented with vast powers in Trek seems to inevitably go poorly. Gary Mitchell, Khan Noonien-Singh, and Charlie X all became megalomaniacs because of the vast amount of power that they were able to access, although both Gary and Charlie received their powers through external intervention, and it is unclear whether Khan was the exception to the rule, having been born with that power, and knowing how to use it properly. Similarly, the Klingon attempt at replicating the human augment programme was infamous, resulting in the loss of their famous forehead ridges, and threatening the species with extinction. Was the Federation right to implement Earth's ban on genetic engineering, or is it an issue that seems mostly human/earth-centric, and them impressing the results of their mistakes on the Federation itself?

One of the ways that you can find out whether a child has magic or not, is to see whether they are able to use it subconsciously, such as by defenestrating them, and seeing if they stop themselves from being killed. But once they get their wands, that use of subconscious magic seems to stop entirely. Logically, you would expect students to fire off similar magic when their lives were at risk, or their emotions ran particularly high. Is it a function of having the wand that stops it, or is it just a matter of that only happening for really young mages, and that they learn to control themselves as they enter childhood?

When we're introduced to the Stargate, it's in the early-mid 90s, so them needing a big, bulky computer system would make sense, but as the show progresses, we see Tau'ri computer technology develop, either conventionally in the form of laptops like what the Atlantis team use, or computer crystals like what they fitted onto their starships. Through it all, however, the SGC continues to use the same computer with comparatively dated hardware. Why keep it, instead of upgrading it to something more modern? Especially since one of the main issues that the SGC kept facing was that their dialling computer was not sophisticated enough to respond to some of the status codes put out by the stargate, causing all kinds of unpredictable behaviour.

Worldbuilding T156 • Now • 76%

What's the food like on your world?

Can humans eat it? Do they have food at all? What do they have as a staple foodstuff?

The optics of the US using children of spies can't possibly be good, in addition to the risk of misuse, and all of that.

In the GTA series, the various cities that the games are set in are usually rampant with crime. If it isn't the player characters going on a rampage, then it is either the police, or the other citizens that will be easily driven into a homicidal rage for such minor things as being bumped into while walking down the road/minor collisions. Why would anyone bother to live there? It seems wildly unsafe, even before the various other criminal enterprises get involved.

One of Superman's known weaknesses, besides that of kryptonite, is that he's as vulnerable to magic as the average human (besides what he can avoid with his super-reflexes). So why doesn't he learn to use magic? His Super-intelligence and speed would make it much easier for him to learn magic compared to the average person, and he's already well aware that magic exists. Knowing magic would help him cover a major weakness of his, so it seems illogical that he doesn't pick it up, or look into it.

Daystrom Institute T156 • Now • 100%

Was the USS Discovery upgraded completely, or does it still keep its original technology?

Inspired by a bit of discussion over on discord, where there was an argument over whether the USS Discovery had been upgraded by the 32nd century Federation. On the one hand, the Discovery did undergo a vast overhaul, being fitted with an upgraded power/propulsion system, detachable nacelles and the works, however, we also know at the end of Discovery Season 3, that Burnham resetting the Discovery's computers effectively put much of the ship back to the 23rd century baseline (or as much of one as it could return to). We're also shown that the Discovery still uses microtapes in its computer room. So was the Discovery upgraded completely to 32nd century standards, or is it still a 23rd century ship underneath the 32nd century paint?

In Doctor Strange, the Ancient One knows that she is going to die soon because she cannot look past a point in the future, and believes it to be when she will die. However, we also know from Infinity War, that Doctor Strange was able to look past the point of his own death, and determine how to undo the "snap", but we can put that down to the assistance of the eye of Agamatto and the Time Stone. However, the question remains: Why is it that you can't look into the future past your own death?

Daystrom Institute T156 • Now • 94%

The Federation should not have been surprised that their holograms developed sapience

We already know from TOS that Mutlitronic computers are able to develop sapience, with the M-5 computer being specifically designed to "think and reason" like a person, and built around Dr Daystrom's neural engrams. However, we also know from Voyager that the holomatrix of their Mk 1 EMH also incorporates Multitronic technology, and from DS9 that it's also used in mind-reading devices. Assuming that the EMH is designed to more or less be a standard hologram with some medical knowledge added in, it shouldn't have come as a surprise that holograms were either sapient themselves, or were capable of developing sapience. It would only be a logical possibility if technology that allowed human-like thought and reasoning into a hologram. If anything, it is more of a surprise that sapient holograms like the Doctor or Moriarty hadn't happened earlier.