Right. It's hard to explain all those nuances in plain language, doubly so when it's not my native language.
Elements with an unstable nucleus - radioactive
Elements that break down when their nucleus is hit by the proper particle - fissionable
Elements that break down when their nucleus is hit by pretty much any neutron - fissile

Thanks, I got my alpha, beta and gamma all confused.

Indeed, "be yourself" is just nonsense, as interaction takes at least two people and we cannot define ourselves from nothing and in a vacuum. It's a static statement so it' useless for deciding changes. If you're intereted in the science of behavior I suggest looking at the metaethics sequence from LessWrong, it's a rational approach to rethinking the how and why of choosing and following moral principles.

It's a scary jump from crowd pleaser to taking a stand.

Not so much, actually, as in most people there is at least some latent want for refining trust and reasserting relationships. So there's a kind of continuum from one to the other.

Do they make them in adamantium yet ?

There is no such thing as "an objective sense of being useful". There are only things that we subjectively consider useful to us.

Well, except for delaying the heat death of the Universe.

I had a similar experience, though it went further. Because of some rare condition I considered myelf different from a very young age (~4) and that initially made me socially distant. In early childhood I would only allow myself to befriend the various misfits and otherwise rejected children of my age, while standing back and observing the 'normal' ones. But as I went to junior high school I decided being a loner wasn't very enjoyable, so I took advantage of the fact that most people didn't know me yet there, and practiced socializing. Basically, I reproduced what I was observing the others doing. When to be derisive, when to be conforming, when to side with the louder speaking kid or when to laugh at him, playing whatever games were 'in' and leaving behind the 'out' ones, etc.

By high school I had also become very good at body language. Eye contact engagement rules, leaning forward or backward during discussion, maintaining or diverting attention, mimicking the other's movements, etc. It became second nature. As a result I had many real friends, and could get new acquaintances fast and reliably. It was very gratifying, of course, so I was putting an honest effort into succeeding at it.

All along I was also observing myself and watching what it'd change in my behavior. It turns out I was becoming manipulative and two-faced as a result: pleasing a lot of very different people implies becoming very "fluid", shall I say, about who you are and who or what you like / dislike, trust / distrust. I didn't quite like what following the social game's rules and tricks and hack was making of me, so I just quit and instead started practicing vehement integrity in its place. I retained most of my true friends, surprisingly. Outside these close circles I'd be viewed more negatively though. And some funny thing happened: I noticed that people who were themselves manipulative developped a kind of allergy to me. It turns out the very worse thing you can do in their presence, is publicly and widely sharing social information with the highest honesty you can, epecially when people know you are principled about saying things straight. And I like the person it made me a lot better than the 'me' of high school years, too.

And part of these industrial uses are related to making the chips able to mine bitcoins faster.

I'm not sure you know what your final point is.

Minecraft isn't making the social side, its userbase is. That's why the myriad videos of let's-play are on youtube, the streaming sessions are on Twitch and announced on twitter, etc. and not on some huge (and bloated) "social network" service hosted on minecraft.net

I want to go electric so that we can quit sending our money to people that hate us

Ah, right. Because the people who hold the reserves of lithium and all kinds of rare earths necessary to produce those electric cars just love you right now, and will continue to love you even as your government takes all the same steps as they took with oil in the last decades in order to "secure" that production too.

Breeding means generating more nuclear fuel from stuff that is not fissile material in the first place. For example, in a classic nuclear fuel rod only a few percents of the uranium is of the 235 isotope variety, which is fissile (= radioactive, potentially dangerous and useable as nuclear fuel), the rest is the 238 isotope and is not fissile... but is intead "fertile", because once it gobbles up a passing neutron (= beta radiation), it quickly transmutes into the 239 isotope of plutonium - and this kind of plutonium, in turn, is fissile.

And, fortunately, you can have it so that while the 235 uranium "burns" it produces the right neutrons for the 238 to turn into 239, or "breed" into plutonium. Or breed the fertile 232 thorium into fissile 233 uranium, too. That's the principle of a breeder reactor. And you may use your fresh new fuel to breed yet some more fuel, too, so that potentially, all the uranium and all the thorium in the world may be converted into nuclear fuel - that's called "supergeneration", because then you are not even limited by the tiny amount of starting fissile material anymore.

For every amount of starting fuel you can have various ratios of breeding happening. In fast breeder reactors you can have three or four times more breeding than consuming, so that every unit of fuel spent generates, on the side, three or four units of additional fuel from fertile material. In molten salt thorium reactors this ratio is projected to be 1-on-1 to limit the risks of nuclear proliferation (= using the breeding process to make a lot more fissile material, in order to make weapons).

I initially read that as 'insensitive dad', that would have been interesting.

The $19 a month is likely just for covering the costs of hosting and distributing the source code, binaires and documentation. You'd be paying for the continued convenience of accessing those anytime, the studio's clearly not intending to get rich over those subscriptions.

Ever seen a morbidly obese wolf?

Yup. You just feed it grains, and it'll fatten up and eventually die of some cardiovascular disease. Much like humans, incidentally.

You're conveniently forgetting that humans are the only creatures on this planet who can, and often do, anticipate the feedback loops you're mentionning and take meaures to prevent the "bad endings".

We're not a "deadly disease", we're just more capable than other animals, and that high capability and efficiency applies to the good as well as the bad.