Fair enough. This was an unnecessary side tangent.

About point 2: I would argue that you could convince any judge that these characters are sufficiently distinct in the legal sense. IRL, people might still confuse them, but that’s not the point here. Just look at some of the competing car designs to get a feel for what is legally distinct enough these days. You can come up with a cartoon character, car or a sci-fi warrior that copies over 90% from something else, and you can still get away with it.

That’s the point most westerners seem to miss. There are so many ways to use fingers to count, while the one common in Europe the simplest one possible. It’s like demo version, while some other countries get the full pro ultra max edition.

There should be a name for this kind of bias. Influencer bias, celebrity bias? Something else?

Yeah, that should work. If you stick with the definition provided by OP, “small buildings” would be technically allowed as well.

If the gasp are a problem, you could go with alternate pentagons too.

Another thing about the initial conditions. OP defined that there would be only three way intersections, but that’s clearly not the case here.

What do you intend to do with the gaps then?

The whole concept of even having a middle finger is a bit arbitrary. When you put your hands on a table, all 10 fingers spread out, the gap between the hands is the exact middle. If you include all 10 fingers, there is no middle finger, but there is a middle gap.

Andy why do we even count the fleshy fingers, when we could be counting the gaps between them? It’s the number of gaps that really matters when you’re holding on to a bunch of things like papers, magazines, forks, sticks, stones, strings, cables or whatever.

Most likely, you’ve just started noticing what the world has already been like for decades, if not centuries.

Taking care of yourself is of course important, but I think many people over do it in an unhealthy manner. It’s good to be clean and look nice, but you don’t have to make that the central theme of your life.

IMO, comfort and practicality are also important, but you don’t have to look like you’re still chilling at home watching a movie and munching popcorn. There are good compromises out three.

So, you mean like childish controls?

I’ve always found it really jarring when a book, tv series or a movie jumps around between several storylines. Pulling that off seems to be really hard.

The movie has slow pacing and odd structure, but it explores some interesting ideas. Definitely not everyone’s cup of tea, but I think it’s was ok. Still not a classic you would watch several times.

Wait until you hear about 12 monkeys. That’s a lot of monkeys, right? Should be like 12 times better than King Kong.

Just switch the wallpaper to this and watch your roommate have a total meltdown.

One friend keeps sending me some weird AI generated videos from time to time. I guess he gets those from Facebook, Instagram or some other trash pile like that. I have no idea how horrible it would be to see that sort of AI vomit all the time.

Over the past 200 years, chemistry has taken massive leaps forward. A lot of guesswork and mystery is now gone, but that doesn’t mean there are no perplexing problems to solve. Most of the simple cases are pretty clear, and you can predict the result with a few simple formulas. When you start talking about more complex cases, there’s still much to be done.

And that follow up question too. GPT is just way too chatty.

Maybe humans are an experiment to see what happens if you combine infinite greed and selfishness in the same species. Sounds like a recipe for a total disaster, but it could be interesting to watch how the whole thing implodes at some point.

Sounds like I should look into that.

Starting the anti-vaccine conspiracy would have been too cruel. I think any young punk would be grounded for a century for pulling that off.

Instead, I’m pretty sure humans are the only species capable of such self destructive behavior and aliens can only gasp in horror as we throw ourselves into the fire.

Also, climate change denial … oh, that’s just next level stupidity. No need to bring the doomlaser here. This species will be done sooner or even sooner. Maybe try planting a smarter species here next time around?

Totally forgot about that. 🙈