Yup! Totally plausible - just more expensive and less repeatable. And harder to use against moving targets.

Although you are correct, this destroys the engine.

A good, efficient fusion engine just needs to point the exhaust end towards the enemy and the hyper-accelerated particles will punch a hole through the target for you. And then you point at the next target, etc. etc.

Also, it’s a butchered quote from Larry Niven’s Known Space books, referred to as the “Kzinti Lesson” - because the Kzinti thought humanity was unarmed and helpless until they discovered that humans are really good at improvising weapons.

The usefulness of a fusion engine as a weapon is directly correlated to its efficiency.

Cars shouldn’t jump up and down due to road quality.

I live in a hilly area. Any time someone with projector headlights is on even a slight downward curve that I’m facing, it’s the equivalent of brights in my eyes. Even with adaptive headlights, cresting a ridge would still blast anyone on the other side for the short amount of time it takes for your car to realize there’s someone there.

For point 3… You’re right, and you’re wrong. Light from point sources instead of diffuse sources is worse for your retina. The light gets focused by your eye’s lenses onto a much smaller area, which can potentially damage the sensitive photoreceptor cells. Ideally, there would be regulations that limit a headlight’s candles per mm^2 rather than just overall candles. Astigmatism makes it so the light glares across half your vision, which makes it worse for seeing other things on the road besides the headlight glare, but conversely makes it better for not murdering your retina because the light is spread across a wider area.

You misunderstand the point of an aircraft carrier. It’s not any more defensible than other large, floating objects - but first you have to reach it, and the aircraft it carries are capable of blowing up nearly anything to kingdom come before it gets anywhere close. Carriers aren’t for defense. They’re for projecting power.

Well, then the problem would be solved anyways!

If opening up is what caused the marriage to fall apart, it was built on a broken foundation and was doomed from the start. You’re only finding out now because emotional unavailability hides that sort of thing.

The owners of the largest military in the world will make it everyone’s problem before it gets better.

Chaotic neutral: Python

This. I will never support a language that uses tokenized whitespace as ‘Good’ aligned.

A big part of the experience is talking to your buddy about the movie after it’s over. Hard to do that when you go alone.

The problem is that incandescent lights are 1) warmer in tone, which is less harsh for the same candle ratings, 2) have a more gradual boundary than LED projector-style headlights, which means you aren’t suddenly blinded when the car coming towards you goes over a minor bump, and 3) aren’t a point light-source with the reflector design they have unlike LEDs, and thus are less painful. NONE of these issues are dealt with in a vast majority of new cars (adaptive-angle headlamps would do a lot to help, but would only fix one of the three issues - and only when the camera can actually figure out when they should be lowering the angle, which is far from foolproof).

If I could easily replace the LED headlamp in my new car with an incandescent lamp, I would - because I could still see decently with my old car’s headlights, and I wasn’t at risk of blinding everyone in the oncoming lane next to me.

I’m pretty sure astronauts are trained on the usage of garbage receptacles.

The air filters would capture it eventually. It’s not like the ISS has dead air.

Honestly, I’ll take it over those fucking ahegao hoodies that were briefly popular.