"Here There Be Nerds:" Fan Debates

For those two characters at least. Characters who have too many powers are just boring or frustrating to have around unless you get to spend the screen time explaining the limits of their powers to get a sense of the stakes.

The writers basically sidelined Wanda and Vision for most of the movies so everyone didn’t have to spend the whole time asking “why don’t these two characters just use their loosely defined but clearly godlike powers to fix the problem?”

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If the rest of the Cooper cash is still out there it’s not likely to be in spendable condition considering the state of the bills recovered in 1980. And that’s what they looked like BEFORE Mt. Saint Helens covered the whole area in ash and debris.

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There was enough snowpack at the time of the eruption that much of the area around the eruption (that didn’t wash away with the lahar) was protected by a blanket of packed snow. Anything on the ground was largely unaffected; but big trees were toppled.

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I’m a little surprised people are still coding in Pascal

I’d have thought the sort of people who’d be into Pascal would be using Java or Python now

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Python is okay, but for performance, especially on a Pi, a native code compiler blows the doors off of byte code virtual machines and there’s no need to add C libraries for the heavy lifting.

Ooh, I get signal! Main screen turn on!

COVID-19 Vaccines have arrived in York Region

Hm. The closest clinic is still fully booked. I might have to drill down further into the page, or maybe they’ll update that soon.

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Continuing…

While Python rules for quick web frameworks, for doing desktop app UI, Delphi-style RAD is very very fast. (It also encourages some bad habits, but they can be resisted/unlearned.)

I don’t know if I like the flexibility of Python. I’m usually pretty definite on wanting a variable to be a string, float or integer without the language helpfully changing them around. When I create a 2D array of packed bytes, I don’t want to have to remember to initialize it very carefully to avoid shallow array problems.

I’m sure that I’ll come to love Python’s hand-crafted artisanal case statements, and I’ll get to the top of the learning cliff of breaking code up into structured separate files. (I notice that those nice Python game creation on-the-fly videos tend to be all in one file.)

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It makes sense that an older language would be more efficient

Ironically I thought of Pascal as one of the first bytecode languages, so I was lumping in that category

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UCSD Pascal did use a p-code implementation, but after Turbo Pascal, that was the end of that. The base of the language might be older, but the object Pascal has most of the modern bells and whistles, equivalent to C#.

And when I’m coding in Python, I sometimes get this taste of AWK in the back my mouth… :wink:

Here’s two shots of the same app, displaying Markdown text in a HTMLViewer:

PC, Windows, MSSQL:

Raspberry Pi 3B+, Linux, SQLite3:

The nice part is that there isn’t a lot of speed difference. Without vast pixel-blasting or crazy browser buffers, Pi-class machines, in native code, are faster than given credit.

The next step is to get them talking and exchanging messages. That would make like an ad-hoc Usenet with no backbone. After that comes the tricky stuff.

eta: Oh yes, different localization on each machine too. That can create some surprises too.

My son was asking me questions about The Predator recently (apparently there’s a new Fortnite tie-in) and something just occurred to me.

What if the Predator’s species as a whole is not actually obsessed with trophy-hunting, but we think of them that way because those are the only ones who ever come to Earth?

For all we know most members of that species just lead normal lives working as accountants and bus drivers and farm workers and school teachers who spend their down time playing video games or relaxing on the beach. But their species, like ours, also happens to have a subset of rich assholes who like to go on safari and prove their machismo by stalking other species for fun.

Basically what I’m saying is the Predators we see in the movies might be the Don Jr. and Eric of their culture.

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It would be great to have an alien or fantasy species that works like humans do for animals. So you run into one…but what does that mean for you? Are they someone who’s planning to eat you, or kill you for sport? Are they someone who’d like to catch you and examine you, but then let you go unharmed? Are they someone creeped out by humans who might freak out and either try to hurt you or run away? Are they totally indifferent? Are they someone who just likes to watch humans do their thing, and might even offer you some delicious snacks, or help you if you’re injured? All possibilities, with absolutely no way to know in advance.

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It would be interesting to see what the Predator species’ version of Greenpeace looked like. Maybe they even have PETA (PETH?) activists who stage attention-grabbing stunts like nude protesters wearing body paint intended to look like human skin.

ETA: Looks like Robot Chicken already explored that idea…

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So in their case, just about any paint or even water, but heated to a temperature of about 37°C. :slight_smile:

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jurassic park mind blown GIF by Spotify

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Stob treks back across the decades to review the greatest TV sci-fi in the light of recent experience

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Playmobil crosses the final frontier with enormous, metre-long Enterprise playset

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Colin Jost Shrug GIF by Saturday Night Live

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