You know I new Jupiter had Trojen Asteroids, but I didn't really know there were these many and the shape of them, at the points. space.com/… - 6000 Asteroids in Jupiter's 'Orbital Space,' 1 Going 'Wrong Way'
I would still say they are "weird" according to my subjective view of the world. Of course they have their reasons and it's a fascinating culture, but it's in part so different from our culture that it regularly strikes me as "weird"
@Pete Woah, I always thought they only try to eat children because an average adult human would be too big
My radio is talking about making a heart out of decellularized spinach. This is cool idea. @JDługosz That sounds like an automated online store selling underwear to me. Might not be easy to call it a great big vending machine without measuring it for size.
I heard about an arachnologist who had problems with spiders, but only if they caught him unawares. Pet snakes! Erk! Some of us here are herpetophobes. WEll, me for one.
Typos. They must be catching. Looked at the dragon question. My reaction was the phrase was metaphorical and let it go that. The answers are mostly boring similar. I had hoped for a bit more interesting variety. usually answers to questions are generally more varied. Odd to see so many being similar.
I think it's funny that people who can't comment will note that fact while posting improperly as an answer instead. Now someone who can’t answer a protected post writes an improper Question post instead.
I read this topic and several asnwers here Create a world where Necromancy isn't considered as an "evil" type of magic
and one idea crossed my mind. Why necessarily make it bad or good. There were ideas to ressurect only humans, that were sinful in their lives. And so, why not do it as some kind...
I find explicable. I was annoyed when I found initially I didn't have the reputation to comment. It didn't make sense to me. As an adult I didn't wanted to treated like a child. This seems plain dumb to me. besides people will always find a way around apparently irrational restrictions like this. Frankly it's a natural consequence. No-one has given a rationale why this is done. Presumably people can post questions without much reputation, so why restrict comments?
While I understand the question above shifted to Meta, the pity is that's a poor question. Good rules will enable people to behave well and do the right thing. Install bad rules and you get bad behaviour. The social equivalent of action and reaction. It's easy to complain people doing the wrong. Sometimes there are reasons why do it and those reasons can be institutional. Like the low reputation comment barrier.
Hi Pete! That's me putting my two pence worth about people behaving badly the comment restriction. So how's the roller skating snakes going? Have you had good answers on your hornet question?
Hey there. Yes I've had a few good answers and it's still on page one of HNQ, so won't be stopping it just yet. Ideally I'd like some answers in how to breed in this extra venom as opposed to manipulating individual hornets.
I think with the comment restriction, it's an anti-spam measure. I guess it's this way because answers are easier to moderate than comments.
It's just one of the SE rules that confuses me. The other one is that unregistered users are allowed to submit edits to questions and anyone with enough rep can approve those edits.
Seems to me to be a matter of genetic engineering assuming we know how to modify hornets for extra venom or a more toxic neurotoxin. The antispam thing makes sense, but it really gets in the way of responding as a newbie. I didn't know about unregistered edits and that make doesn't sense either. Too much to expect perfection. Sometimes having enough of things being workable can be hard enough.
There's a theory that new users tend to forget their passwords, but still wanting to edit their questions. Moderators are able to match on IP address/email address to validate. I guess it happens enough for it to be a thing.
Very sensible. Although I have a bad habit of getting grumpy about things that don't make sense. Having been the decision making business some of the decisions on WB don't fill me with confidence. I should do more shrugging.
It's annoying that I thought of a good question over the weekend and now that thought is entirely gone from my head. Now the only thing I have left is "How do I attach razor-sharp blades to a snake?".
And why aren't there more questions about snake-bots?
The unkindest cut of all! I'd be snakey about that too. From memory there have been developments in the field of snake-bots. It may be less speculative now and more in the realm of practical engineering.
Should have read your link about snake-bots first. Quite interesting too.
Napalm is a gel and might not flow easily. Mustard gas could be used. Despite the name it's usually in liquid form and it's a nasty 'corrosive' substance. That's the word! It's a vesicant which means it causes blisters. But a fire-fighting snake-bot could be adapted into all sorts of nasty weapon. A wicked thought.
I think these days, a fine spray of VX gas would do the trick nicely. Tunnel into an enemy encampment, a nice hiss in the middle of the night, and no one wakes up....
or load it with explosives and lay it against tank tracks....
That's all too true. Pity WB doesn't favour brainstorming. To me brainstorming is an essential part of worldbuilding. Often the more ideas the better, then you have to winnow through them to find the good ones.
Well, the chat channel is pretty good for brainstorming, I guess.
"How could a mobile army defend against waves of VX snake-bots?" Snakebots in question being 3ft long and 3 inches in diameter, and deployed in about 200 per pack.
Hey that's right! Unfortunately, I'm on the wrong side of the planet to participate in many chats. So I can't get enough mileage from chat. That's not bad! But I might be easily satisfied with a question like that. Bounce it off the other chatters.
Excuse me, guys, time to go Have fun with the snake-bots. Magnetometric detection, they use it with land mines, could be used against snake-bots to detect them. Catch you next time.
I'd say burrowing would be a good idea. Otherwise I make a deeper trench around my soldiers, fill it with napalm and wait for the snakes to get stuck there and burn.
How are they controlled?
(I was thinking about them being programmed to simply go towards their targets, which is probably too easy)
And speed is probably something that has to be described too
Then it's important to say how long it will take them to run out of venom and how much explosives they have. Otherwise they could well detonate each other way before becoming a real threat just by the soldiers running away from them for a moment.
@HDE226868 Isn't it nearly the same as with How WorldBuilding works?. Some user didn't understand how the site works, so the question is migrated to Meta and people explain how to move on from there
How would an army defend itself against VX envenomed robo-snakes?
This is set in a near-future war where advanced remote technology exists, drones and other automated weapons fight alongside human fighting units.
One of the more deadly inventions is the robo-snake.
Description: 3ft long and 3 ...
@Pete Then instead of an explosive, have it poop out pellets of insect larva / bacteria / virus that attack the farms, heck might as well go for the water as well.
@HDE226868 The user couldn't answer as the question is protected and he doesn't have the required reputation, which is why he used the Question-format, the only other one he was aware of.
@James Somehow I've never D&D'd before... I blame it on a shortage of nerds in my vicinity growing up who were into it. It just wan't a big thing in my little town of 2400 people. Now that I'm older I still haven't met anyone that plays. Or at least none that will admit it.
@James unfortunately I don't think you live anywhere close to me. I suppose I should have phrased that as "I haven't met anyone around here that plays."
I think it would be interesting to have a semi self contained D&D kit with the absolute basics that you need to get started. Basically a pre written adventure, some characters to chose from, and a set of dice.
And then make sure that one of the characters is OP so the wife won't get discouraged to fast
Actually, that would be an interesting way to do it. Have 3 sets of characters, label them as Easy, Normal, and Hard, and then let the people playing decide what level they want to be
The first thing that comes to mind with D&D is the one line at the beginning of Stranger Things: "But mom, can't we just play 20 more minutes? We've been playing 10 hours and we're almost done!"
@AndyD273 Depends. IF you choose to use maps and stuff and get into the tactics of combat, you really probably need to be in the same place. My group plays face to face but we don't use maps or anything for battles, grids are annoying, mainly the DM adjudicates and says stuff like, you can hit 4 of the 12 bandits with your fireball.
@AndyD273 ...Really if you are just a player all you need are dice and the players handbook.
so you're talking probably 45 bucks if you get it all brand new...something like that anyway.
Alot of it is flavor though. So it has pages of deities and how the universe is built, and the artwork in the book is fantastic. I'd guess 50 ish pages is just spell descriptions
@James Yeah, that's what I'm saying... there should be a "I want to try it out but I won't be sad if I never play again, and there is no way I'm going to drop $50 on 300 pages I don't want to read" option.
I think they have a starter set that is really cheap, it comes with a prebuilt adventure and characters. So basically an abridged form of the content that goes from I think level 1-5
If there was a 6 page book. Page 1: two characters for each race with a short description of skils and motivations. Page 2: The basic story. Page 3-6 the detailed story, along with monsters and events.
I did see a starter pack for $20. Still to much in my opinion.
@Bellerophon Yeah, doing a google search for "d&d 5e player's handbook" brings up a few free versions... not that anyone should pirate it. And printing it would probably cost you a bit too.
@Secespitus They are one of several good models for what you want to do, I have been trying to remember the war between a frog species and a snake species that would work as wel..
@Secespitus No Insect Larvae, Bacteria, Virus vs Farm .... Bacteria Virus renders drinking water as contaminated.
@EnigmaMaitreya If you remember I would love to read up on those too. I am still trying to figure out if my proposal of cats with toxic claws could be a good question.
On this forum why not I suspect more than one version of Feline carry contaminats on their claw. If you do not know it, cats cary a virus that lulls Mice (and humans)into thinking the Cat is its friend ... for real when I have time and if you want I can find the link
@Secespitus This is something that people probably need to follow news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/03/… - "Critical step found in DNA repair, cellular aging" as in it has a high probability of going dark.
This cat looks like a normal Maine Coon to the unsuspecting victim. Except for one little detail:
Red claws that inject a neurotoxin into the victim onpon scratching it. What would be the most appropriate way a cat could evolve toxic claws?
I am looking for ways to explain why this cat evolved...
@James That article is great. "No one knows what this venom is doing inside the snake’s brain. But it’s obvious what it’s not doing: killing prey.". And the one about the slow loris having poison near his armpits is fascinating too
That thing is rubbing his armpits with its hands and then applying the poison to its teeth to kill prey. Or the armpit-poison is applied to the children to protect them from predators
@EnigmaMaitreya If I read that correctly it's only slowing the process down, so not really immortality. But it does sound a bit like it
@Secespitus yeah. Like one day, a slow loris was thinking about how it hurts to get sweat in your eyes, and decided he was going to use that to his advantage
@Secespitus The key is the old cells become young again and the telemores is lengthened. Shrug it doesn't matter vs the impact it will make. HA HA good question for the Q/A here .... On a 300% overpopulated planet, I discover a cheap way to make everyone immortal sans significant injury and illness. How do I go about doing that, such that everyone gets it.
If everyone in our current society was suddenly immortal (except for injuries and illness) we would have a huge problem. You would need to limit access to something like that or people would die from hunger pretty fast
I think intergenerational combat is going to be inevitable in that environment. Older people have more wealth, more status, more power. In order to get some for themselves, younger people are going to have to fight for it.
@Secespitus I'd recommend it if you know the names of all the places on Mars. Otherwise sometimes it's just pages of descriptions of stuff that ends up being useless unless you look it up
@Secespitus me neither, and it's a shame. They're interesting books, there's just so much useless descriptions in it, it's getting harder and harder to keep reading
@Secespitus That aristocracy better be careful then. Ivory towers come down eventually. Sure the people may be immortal but they won't stay that way if they overly oppress the normal people.
it'd be interesting how technology comes into play. Like these days, tech jobs are in high-demand, and it's the young people who seem to be best at them. If it's the old immortals vs the young, the old would have to actively oppose technology... which I guess is something they already do
@DaaaahWhoosh The way I settle this issue is I limit the procedure to people that live in space .... until the Earth's population is reduced sufficiently to allow immortality on Earth.
By the way Cities in Flight dealt with the Immortality thing that way, Those that left Earth had access to the knowledge those that didn't had to wait until the Earth's population was around 500Million to 1Billion
@Green Your "a single government can govern" needs to be clarified some what. Bureaucracy with a technological communications infrastructure should scale and not have an upper limit, but of course it all hinges on "The Peoples" acceptance of the Government. So you may be needing to deal with that side OR make it clear, the Government is Repressing the people.
How would an army defend itself against VX envenomed robo-snakes?
This is set in a near-future war where advanced remote technology exists, drones and other automated weapons fight alongside human fighting units.
One of the more deadly inventions is the robo-snake.
Description: 3ft long and 3 ...
This cat looks like a normal Maine Coon to the unsuspecting victim. Except for one little detail:
Red claws that inject a neurotoxin into the victim onpon scratching it. What would be the most appropriate way a cat could evolve toxic claws?
I am looking for ways to explain why this cat evolved...
The Factory Floor
The Factory Floor