Technically, last I checked, about 20% of Americans live in rural areas, not 5%, but your point stands. A tiny number of Americans in predominantly rural states are, more and more, deciding everything because of their disproportionate impact on Senate seats. We desperately need to move to proportional allocation of Senate seats, period, and do a better job of allocating House seats for the same reason, not to mention annihilating gerrymandering. Also to change FPTP voting (the only thing keeping the 2-party system viable) to something more modern, like ranked-choice voting.

Listen... Not to be "that guy" but, well... What if I told you that part of a culture of diversity is that some things won't include you? I'm a straight white guy, but I've traveled enough and regularly interact with people of other backgrounds, ethnicities, sexualities, etc. to not have the American/Western European mindset of "pretty much everything I interact with is designed specifically around and for me". So what if the Hugo awards is becoming female-centric? There are many, many other sci-fi awards. You can pay attention to some that you feel represent you better than ones that don't. You're just used to, y'know, everything being about you by default. Just imagine for a minute what it's like, though, to be part of a demographic that isn't "the default" sci-fi reader: a straight white guy. For those people, which includes women, people of different races and nationalities, gay people, trans folks, and so on, everything feels like the Hugo award does to you, but all the time and for everything. As the world shifts, there will be more things that just don't include you, and that's fucking fine. You can choose to pay attention to them or not, because that's how things work. Don't be a damn snowflake just because not everything is about you all the time; it comes across as childish. And I think we all know that with your attitude, you'd be shitting on anyone that's not a white male if they complained about not being included in one of "your" things, so shush it.

As near as I can tell, this is probably a direct result of Damore's lawsuit. That is, Google almost certainly had a third-party firm come in and independently evaluate every point of Damore's lawsuit. The firm then would have determined the relative likelihood of any of Damore's claims standing up in court. If Tim's postings were toxic enough, and especially if he had been reported to H.R. in the past and H.R. had a notable bias where straight white dudes were punished but non-cis / non-white / etc. people got a pass, then that would have been a major point where the independent firm would have stepped up and said "Yeah you suckers are gonna get railed, there's an overt bias here and that's not going to go over well in court, and we explicitly recommend terminating the worst offenders to reduce future liability". And then Tim gets canned and starts crying, because his expectation up to that point was that he had special privileges and he's not adjusting well to ACTUALLY being treated equally. I'm basing this off of having had to pressure my own work H.R. to call in an independent firm because they were letting a manager get away with overt retaliation against me, and they refused to admit there was a problem until the independent firm said "Yeah, no, there was definitely retaliation, and probably a hostile work environment because of the upper management condoning this behavior as well". Suddenly, the senior legal team was VERY interested and suddenly everyone was very concerned about employees being treated fairly.

Of course, that neglects the fact that, if you were actually travelling at c, you would experience no time whatsoever.

As in, the beginning and the end of the universe (or at least your emission and absorption, if you're a photon) are instantaneous to you.

So to answer the question, no you wouldn't see your hi-beams come on, because there's NO TIME in your reference frame. But theoretically... [sigh]-sure. You would see your hi-beams come on just fine. But it's kind of a non-question, since it presupposes that time (and hence, change) exists at light speed; as in, it doesn't even make sense as a question.

And, as already stated, an outside observer would measure both you and your "emitted" photons traveling at c in their reference frame; partially or completely because you are in a completely timeless "freeze frame" state relative to any non-lightspeed observer.

That's the easy stuff. You really want to cause brainhurt? Look up the "ladder and barn" paradox. It notes that objects shorten as they approach lightspeed; so let's say that you're carrying a ladder going so near to c that your length is cut in half to an outside observer. Thing is, you're still your "normal" length in your own reference frame... Now let's imagine that the barn is only as deep as 2/3 the length of your ladder. An outside observer would see you get all the way into the barn before you struck the back wall (relativistic explosion notwithstanding). You, however, in your own reference frame should see yourself only get partway in before you strike the back wall.

So which happened? Both? Neither? In the universe we know, only one should have happened; you either got all the way in, or you didn't. Now cue a LOT of handwaving by physicists that both A)ties your brain up in knots, and B)basically says "We dunno.". It's a NASTY one, and probably means that we don't understand the relativistic universe as well as we thought. My theory is that the universe "flattens out" relative to a lightspeed observer, so they both see the same thing happen (it fits) in the same way that time "flattens" to nothing at you approach c, but I'm not a physicist- though it does solve the problem, and kind of makes sense inside of the framework.

Oh, don't worry, I can tell you're not a physician, and almost definitely not associated with any medical field in any way. Not to be insulting, but that patient had obvious massive intercranial pressure causing severe hemorrhage and compression injury to the cerebral tissue. I don't know where you're getting your information, but da-yum. We're not talking about how she looked on admission, we're talking about the continuous process of testing, assessment and evaluation that should have told the MD in question that his patient. Was. Brain. Dead. Didn't matter if she had a craniotomy; while you're right that initial amount of swelling is not really an indicator of actual damage, there's a poing at which the brain just crushes itself, cranial window or not. Sorry; and yeah, brain tissue can damn well hemorrhage out the ears if there's enough intercranial pressure. It's gross, and an indicator of a pretty piss-poor prognosis *eyeroll*. Anyway, I get what you're getting at, but that patient was just plain gone. Finito. Meat on a vent. And that doc needed a serious cockpunch. But please, be careful about giving out medical advice when you don't really know what you're talking about, especially with brain-injured patients. Way too many people get false hope that way, and needlessly put themselves through years of suffering and grief because of magical thinking about how the brain works and heals itself.

Um, reading this, doesn't it require specific software to be installed to be effective? This does not appear, from what little info is presented, to be a general "hackin' tool" to "pwn newbs". Or maybe it is. Let me know when you can actually get into anything with this. As for releasing it: give it to the devs first. Let them patch things up. Then release it after patches are ubiquitous and discuss how clever you are. Anything else is just plain stupid.

Wait... You never got past the first level?!? Jeez, what a noob.

You know, this actually might work out: 1) Use the repellent for X seasons, until no longer effective due to the bugs losing their fear of dead bugs. 2) Spread a known (bug-only!) disease the next Y seasons, until no longer effective due to the bugs regaining their fear of dead bugs. 3) See 1) Actually, the same would theoretically work with antibiotics - have the FDA remove all, say, penicillin-based antibiotics from the market (except special cases, like where someone is allergic to every other antibiotic, or the only thing a specific bacteria is susceptible to is penicillin-based drugs) for a few years. Studies show that bacteria quickly lose resistance to antibiotics (at least in the lab) when no longer routinely exposed - it takes more energy to produce the resistant proteins/plasmids, and the resistant bacteria are quickly outcompeted. Cycle in/out 1-2 major groups like this every few years, and the "superbugs" that have people so freaked out will be susceptible again. There, I solved that problem - 1 billion dollars, please. I'll take local checks. Really, it's simple. Use evolutionary genetic patterns to our advantage - it's like hacking for the biosphere! ...Cue: "what could possibly go wrong" here...

Heh, yeah. Get lost on Fort Carson in Colorado and just that kind of thing can happen. They are VERY unforgiving of people getting too close to the Aerospace Command centers up on/in Cheyenne Mountain. Almost everyone on base there has a story about something like that - my favorite one is where a guy pulling security near the top of the mountain called out for pizza and the delivery guy didn't have the little "Domino's" plastic identifier thingy on his car. So, the first guard to see him driving up put a couple of rounds through his engine block since he didn't immediately stop where he was supposed to. Then, according to legend, the poor pizza delivery dude got yanked out of the car, face-slammed into the ground, and hauled off to some detention area for half the day until his story got cleared. They probably didn't even tip him.