Every person in these movies is a blistering idiot. Like, the levels of stupid on every single person in these expeditions is insane.

The original Alien didn’t require the entire cast to be complete morons, unfit to even operate as an adult in society, much less be mission-critical crew on a colonization mission.

If it hadn’t been for the android in the original Alien, they would have observed reasonable quarantine procedures and there wouldn’t really have been a problem.

That’s one of the main reasons I think these movies are bad. The writers either did not care enough or were too incompetent to write intelligent, believable, relatable characters that I actually grow to care about.

No, but they should be public to everyone, and not hidden unless you jump through hoops.

“AI”, especially art. I’ve spent years trying to learn to draw on and off and have never gotten good at it, but now I can use words to create illustrations I want in a level of quality and detail I could never dream of.

Now I just want the interface to be easier and more able to understand natural language and be capable of making directed changes better.

That first edition version looks like a dog’s head with horns and pointy ears to me at least, and that’s kinda what I was referring to.

Admittedly the 2nd edition version looks a bit less doglike, but I still see similarities with some breeds.

It’s not a mistranslation that caused it, kobolds were both described and illustrated as doglike until 3rd Edition where with no explanation they simply changed it and decided they were lizard like/draconic.

I do think the new version of kobolds is an interesting creature, but truthfully they should’ve just come up with a new name for this new creature instead of just completely changing the kobold.

I never really thought about the fact that 3/5 scions, plus the twins, all have white hair before…

Nier Replicant?

You probably had the same damn book I did, with an illustration of him eating an orange and seeing the wings of a butterfly coming up over it and supposedly realizing they look just like the sails of a ship and so, gasp, the world must be round like this orange!

I don’t usually recommend movies in situations where the solution space isn’t already limited significantly by the context, but 2001 is the one I thought of first upon reading the title, so I suppose there’s at least two of us!

People use wrong terminology a lot, no reason to think people in the Star Wars galaxy are any different there.

For example, we have these powerful handheld computers we call ‘phones’ simply because they are the current generation of a technological line that began with actual phones.

So a beam weapon of any kind could very reasonably be called a laser even if it has been decades (or even longer) since the technology moved past that.

This is what I said to someone who asked a very similar question about the same thing a while back:

‘Females’ is, effectively, a ‘technical term’ you might say, that isn’t used in normal conversation. It’s used specifically in situations where distance from the subject being discussed is intentional. It is the sort of language used in police reports, medical reports and the like…when it’s even being applied to humans at all. Its use is perhaps more common referring to animals; it’s the sort of terminology you’d expect to hear in a nature documentary.

The people trying to push its use are intending to make the subjects - women - sound ‘other’ and separate and alien by referring to them as ‘females’. Not everyone who is picking up this terminology intends it that way, but the connotations are unavoidable because of how language works in common use, and therefore if you don’t intend it that way, you badly need to be made aware of it so you can stop.

Schlock Mercenary. Amazing webcomic, by one of only like 2 webcomic authors that I’m familiar with that have the simple capability of putting out a comic on time (although this no longer applies as the story is finished) and is a fantastic story from beginning to end.

Yet, none of the friends I’ve ever recommended it to have been willing to read it

This developed because it couldn’t be fixed in our world, long enough for these people to develop communities, culture, and literally their own language.

In a world where it could always have been fixed, such communities and cultures are not likely to have ever developed, since the only people who could not get it fixed would be poor, and the poor are in a bad position to gather together in groups based on their shared experience and thus be able to form their own culture.

Furthermore, people not wanting to be cured today exist in a world where there already are significant accomodations for their disabilities. It is not likely these people would be able to do this if our society had not made the collective decision to put in the effort needed to accommodate disabilities.

Honestly, I don’t know for sure since I’m not an expert; my reasoning was the hope that being able to examine the entire line of advancement would allow the necessary technical knowledge to be extracted and duplicated. I knew that just bringing the latest one would definitely do nothing.

That’s why most of the stuff is technical or scientific information for the researchers; things that aren’t subject to change, just technical info. The money stuff I would hope to manage in less than 6 months from my arrival, because even in that short time I’d expect a lot to change by the end of it.

It’d just be a question of getting that initial funding off the ground with which to set up my research institution. After that, the few things I don’t release for free should cover expenses.

Sidenote since I didn’t address it in the original reply, taking over the world is impractical even with future knowledge, but as the person in charge of this outfit that would quickly be the world’s most advanced research tank, I’d probably have a lot of influence, which is the best anyone can practically hope for, I imagine. A lot more than the last 25 years of advancement would be needed to actually take over I figure.

Get every flagship CPU and GPU from 2000 to today that I can get my hands on. Also as much open source code as I can get hold of. And especially AI stuff - there’s several fully open source models, so bring those, and as much technical writings on them as possible.

Speaking of which, download every science paper published since 2000 that I can get hold of, in every possible field.

Get as much info on the 2000 election as possible, to hand to Al Gore, see if he can win that election with a solid unassailable margin.

Research stocks, lottery, and everything else I can to get fast money within the shortest possible period of time after I get there, so I can get super rich before the butterfly effect makes predictions impossible, I need billions in seed money and I need it fast.

Then use that money to start a private research group, and hand them all the scientific papers I brought. Get those experts to work studying all this knowledge and figure out what can be turned into practical technology. Turn some of this into profit-making devices to fund continued development, but release as much as possible for free.

Essentially, deluge the world in as much new technology as possible, mostly free and open source, holding back only as much as necessary in order to fund continued research.

And oh jeez the pharmaceutical industry. Release for free every drug made since 2000, so the pharmaceutical industry can’t get their patents in them.

Big list of stuff there, but if I pulled off even half of it, the world would probably be a much better place in 25 years than in my original timeline.

Well the waste of land part doesn’t really matter much cause if we ever did need that land for other things, it’s still there. It’s not as though building a golf course makes that patch of land into an irradiated wasteland that can never be used for anything else again.

That animal companion thing sounds like the daemons in His Dark Materials, which is cool.

Lots of neat unusual concepts there too, I like. Though using familiar names like orc and goblin just makes things confusing. They should have come up with different names for their weird races.

Most likely, in my opinion:

Hold you for 24 hours to see if anyone reports a crime and describes you as the perpetrator.

When no one does, find a crime which seems plausible for you, and where they’ve gotten a description that could possibly fit you.

Interrogate you about it, giving you your lawyer of course. Assuming you do not have a solid alibi for that particular crime, there’s a real chance you’ll be charged and eventually convicted.

If you do have a solid alibi, they might keep looking for other crimes to charge you with, or they might give up.

If they give up, they’re likely to charge you with something related to wasting their time, for which you will at minimum have to pay a fine.

Recent times have shown two important things to me.

One: People want to create regardless of any reward related to it. The excuse that people need to be rewarded in order to do anything valuable is completely wrong. People, in general, want to do things that other people find valuable and beneficial and bring joy to other people. We are very social, and that desire is nearly universal. If one has no concerns over their continued comfortable existence, then the vast majority of people would dedicate themselves to something they enjoy which is also useful and helpful to others.

Two: People will very happily give rewards to those who create things that they want and enjoy. Even people who themselves have little, will give some to those who have brought them happiness and joy with their work and effort. We see this in all the people donating even when they receive nothing in return for it.

Point two suggests that universal income is theoretically unnecessary, but point two is unreliable. Yes, people will give, but they won’t give in a steady, reliable way that can be counted on to meet another’s needs regularly. And just as importantly, they don’t really give if the quality of the creations are low, which…fair enough, however, this limits the potential creator’s ability to practice and get better, since they cannot devote their efforts to the thing they enjoy that would, if they got good at it, be enjoyed by many; instead they are forced to devote their efforts to continued survival and comfortable existence.