Zeropoint

But we had a black president, so that means racism is over, right?

When you run the numbers, that doesn't sound so far-fetched. We can calculate the minimum energy needed for the Death Star to blow up an Earth-sized planet, and when we do, we discover that: 1) That shot contained more energy than you'd get by converting the entire mass of the Death Star directly to energy, and 2) Even at 99.99% efficiency, firing that shot would have generated enough waste heat to melt the Death Star (I want to say "vaporize" but I don't remember exactly). No wonder the engineers couldn't eliminate the thermal exhaust ports! Star Wars tech, at least in some areas, is PFM. We can't even start to describe how it might work in theory.

Today is special because it's MCU Nick Fury's birthday. Happy Fury Day, everyone!

So those earthlings threaten to put people into a bubbling vat of universal solvent, and then they wonder why no one responds?

Dang, someone hates trees.

To quote myself from a different context, "There is no god but John Moses Browning, and Barret is his prophet."

That's about where I am. Despite being a firearm owner, I do acknowledge that we have way too much firearm-enabled violent crime here in the US, and that Something Must Be Done. However, I also have serious qualms about whether the kind of laws popular among my fellow liberals would actually help. Many such laws focus on cosmetic features, and are thus useless. We also see that in many cases, shooters were already prohibited by law from having the guns they used, making it obvious that laws aren't an effective barrier. And finally, as Pattern Ghost pointed out, there are many ways for people to commit mass violence, if that's their goal, which don't require access to firearms. I'm in favor of actual solutions, and I'd be willing to accept some restrictions on my firearms ownership if I felt confident that those restrictions would actually save lives. However, I don't think the root of the problem is access to guns--I think it's cultural. There's some pervasive aspect of US culture that makes people think that enacting violence is a go-to solution, and I feel that until we address that, passing laws against specific tools of violence won't accomplish anything good.

With enough brains on board, it sure would be. You could fire it blind into an area where you're pretty sure the enemy is, and let it find its own target. I don't see any obvious reason why you couldn't have it disarm the payload and fly back to you if it didn't find anyone to blow up. (Well, okay, having a grenade fly back to you would make people really nervous.) Twenty minutes of flight time would let it cover a lot of ground, too.

I'm inclined to agree. At this point in US politics, anyone who believes in science and evidence, and in trying to make things better for the common people, is some flavor of "liberal".

People do seem to be more or less ignoring the fact that Tony Stark built a mother-hecking Infinity Gauntlet. The capability may not be wide-spread yet, but Earth has the ability to run with the galactic big boys, in terms of tech at least, if not economically.

I don't quite understand why it's such a problem. It's just a rock. Sure, it's too big to move at the moment, but the techniques for breaking up stone are well-understood. They should be able to get it out of there in a weekend.

Leonardo Dar'lyeh, surely?

That's a great picture. It makes the plane look like it's fast while it's standing still. I'm no photographer or visual artist, but let's see if I can analyze this: I think it's the way the viewing angle and relatively short lens emphasize the nose, giving the plane a weight-forward appearance. Also, the chosen viewing angle gives the plane a fairly smooth silhouette, with strong diagonal lines running along the plane's belly and along the fuselage top and wing leading edge. The composition follows the "rule of thirds", with the bottom third of the image taken up by the ground, and the top third by the sky. The slanted edge of the ground echos the strong diagonals of the plane, adding to the sense of motion. The large clump of plants hides the rear landing gear, lessening the sense that the plane is connected to the ground. The human figure lies entirely within the silhouette of the airplane, leaving its lines intact. Props to the photographer, even if it is a jet.

Neat. It looks like an opal or like a piece of artisan colored glass.

I simply assumed that he still had all his muscle under that fat. As much emphasis as the current media puts on looking good, it's still entirely possible to be in great cardiovascular condition and have large amounts of well-developed muscle and still have fat on top of all that.