IP protections don’t protect anyone but the rich in any form, Disney have been caught selling T-shirts with art outright stolen from small artists online buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo and their only punishment was that they had to stop, no admission of liability and they got to keep all the money they made. Hell the guy who invented the underlying concept behind the TV never saw a penny because a radio company decided that it was their invention and managed to drag it out in courts until the patent expired.

Don’t forget basically all science, most of the actual groundbreaking work is done using public funds; private interests only step and once the underlying theory is already proven.

Alternatively it can just be any 3D shape depending on how thick the ‘slice’ of 4D space intersected by our 3D world is and wether the 4D thing is undergoing translation or rotation.

iirc there’s something called ‘depressive realism’ where depressed or otherwise overly pessimistic people tend to be more accurate at predicting outcomes. The implication being that to function as human beings we have to be at least slightly deluded at all times.

Most cyberpunk tends to handwave it, consider the sheer amount of crime in such settings but generally no one every has their implants shuttdown unless its by hacking. In many settings it doesn’t even need a wireless connection (shadowrun) but IRL we’re almost certainly going to end up with always online implants for the soel purpose of control.

Honestly its aspirational at this point, there’s no way we’d get cybernetics IRL without them being directly remote controlable by police, companies or just rich people who pay a small fee to watch poor people hit themselves.

Gotta get that magic sugar daddy.

The basic options for magic are:

• Sorcerers: Magic blood line or other innate gift of birth. Basically magic aristocracy.
• Wizards: Usually anyone can be a wizard, its the magic equivelent of studying hard in college.
• Warlocks: Anyone can be a warlock if they’re willing to make a deal with the devil; the magic equivelent of dropping out to become a stripper.

Pretty much every fantasy has the magical aristocracy but the latter two are available to regular people in a lot of fantasies too, though wizardry is often gatekept and magical pacts tend to be for villains only.

I got one!, there are only 3 trees in existence (only 1 mature enough to fruit and 2 cuttings) rn and the apples taste kinda like pears but with an apple texture.

I swear DPS players are just jerks:
Me: Applies continuous healing and damage resistance to DPS
DPS: Walks right through multiple DoT inflicting AOEs and into the middle of a huge group of enemies immediately dying.
DPS: How dare you not keep me alive!

Honestly the lack of balance is what I appreciated, throwing drones or skags at people or summoning a mech and firing off a huge volley of homing missiles. Given the series was already flanderized by BL2 it was nice to have more unique powers; though the timing of them felt a bit nasty as they were too frequent to be worth saving but had enough cooldown to be annoying in a tight spot. I think a good balance in future would be impactful powers with a much longer cooldown or some kind of conditional trigger that keeps guns the main focus.

We’re free from stupid shit like mandatory free warranties on electronics, or chicken that doesn’t taste like the physical incarnation of sadness, or fresh vegetables where you don’t have to throw half away right after you buy it!

IMO:
1 had the best vibes and the best gear scaling
2 had the best villain and boss fights
3 had the most fun character abilities.

A huge part of the problem is it becoming a classic heros vs villains story. It was way better when we were just mercenaries in it for ourselves.

iirc the UK has one of or the highest total donations of any induvidual european country (not sure if this still holds after the recent 40 billion aid package by the EU)

Yeh the shockwaves would just transition perfectly into the crews bodies and turn them into paste.

Microsoft have been doing this for decaces, they’re low key known for aquiring good IPs and then just shuttering them forever.

The placebo effect also works even if you know its a placebo… Though sometimes I wonder if that information is in itself some kind of benevolent false information campaign to create a second layer of placebo effect around placebos. A placebo effect of the placebo effect working even if you know about it as it were.

Honestly I thought Outer Worlds was really well made, it was also just very low on content. One thing it did super well was for optional quests to not be obnoxiously telegraphed but placed in a way where I just found them while wandering around which feels a lot better than running down a cheklist. It also prevented me from feeling like I’d missed out on content even after finishing the game and learnign there were a bunch I missed.

TLDR: Outer Worlds was a fantastic tech demo.

Given HS2 has already cost more than most European countries spend doing entire network expansions I’m pretty sure it was a massive success for its intended purpose.

Scotland is just not bike friendly, our ‘cycle lanes’ are just a thin often mostly worn away white line painted on a road of normal width (Which for americans is already way narrower than your roads) and trying to actually cycle on them is tantamount to attempted suicide.