I remember one of the tidbits I picked up from a psychology textbook was that people who were worse at knowing if their partner was lying were in happier relationships. Turns out that white lies are important.

I think the superhearing power is going to be different than you think. You can already hear your clothes rubbing against skin, the air conditioning blowing, etc. Your brain is pretty good at filtering those out. Now, the conversations will be more difficult, but think about your experiences at a party. Most of the time you can hear another group’s conversation if you listened and focused on them, but you can tune them out (most of the time, ignoring the cocktail party effect stuff for now). Unless you have focus issues already, it wouldn’t be a big deal. The issue would be the initial period where your brain has to learn what exactly to filter out. Right now, a rustle to my right would be a bad sign, and hearing a rat crawling through the wall would freak me out. After a few weeks though, I bet I’d have adjusted.

Insert: >Superman is actually a psychokinetic

Damn. You hit the nail on the head with that one. I don’t remember when I started referring to adults by their first names, but it was such an odd feeling. Now I call everyone from the 89 year old neighbor to the 9 year old across the street by their first name, and they’re okay with it, gack!

Lol, fast is nice, but my favorite bikes are smaller. My 125 scooter is my current favorite if I don’t need to go above 50mph, and I sorely miss my ninja400. As for the comfortable issue with cruisers, it’s supposedly an issue because of the leaned back, pressure-on-tailbone seating position. Neutral (upright) seems to be the most comfortable for the majority, and you know what’s king of those right now? ADVs ;) They’re basically the luxury bikes right now, with all the fancy electronics on the newer models, lots of suspension, and fast enough to do anything highway/street. Your goldwing types might technically be plushier, but ADVs are popular for a reason.

I have a supersport-lite: an older sport tourer with waaaay too big of an engine for what I want to do with it, but unless you find yourself acting silly now, you won’t have much to worry about. The occasional urge to catch that stupid muscle car blowing past with an exhaust tuned to sound loud passes you by just as quickly as you pass them by…

Ah, but which one do you have? Because you know, there’s this other motorcycle that can do X…

Slightly kidding, but “the correct amount of motorcycles is N+1, where N is your current amount” mentality is a real thing.

Completely agree. The first few zones are so fun because you’re just engaging with the game. Then it gets nutso.

Lol, you sold me. That’s been on my backburner for a while. Now I just need to download it.

Is that your only job? And is it career viable or just the current plan. Because, man, that sounds badass. Working outdoors and being Jack Frost? Fun.

Dang, I missed out. I applied for that job somewhere up in Maine, just to get away from hick-ville south USA. I think they thought I was crazy to want to drive that far.

I think there are two types of people who describe dreams: 1) Those who are essentially saying, “Listen to this absurdity, isn’t it hilarious/weird?” and 2) those who are trying to pick up insights and think their dreams mean something. It’s the difference between reading a fantasy novel that is all about characters, world building, and a cool story, and a fantasy novel where the author is trying to make some point about the real world and how something should or should not be.

I definitely fall in line with OP’s sentiments about that second category.

I think it would be good, but the whole ‘mental’ aspect of the magic would be impossible to convey well.

THE CHAIR!

Use of Weapons was definitely one of the best of that style I’ve ever read.

I could see the new enjoyers of Pern flat out giving it up when the twist happened. Plus, I wouldn’t trust the show’s makers to not trash the politics of the holds.

That’s the reason most books can’t be adapted exactly as written. Unless the writing is so horribly stilted (X went to Y, X said Z to α, X had β happen to him because of α…) that you wouldn’t want to read it in the first place, you’ll need a large amount of narration and/or characters speaking their thoughts out loud, which doesn’t work most of the time and gets worse if they’re doing it solely for the purpose of the viewer getting into their headspace.

I’ve had next to no luck with the dating apps. I think the longest relationship I got out of them was 2 months, and the majority of conversations ended before ever meeting. The dating app world doesn’t seem to accommodate my kind of person, where I want to get to know a person before we bed each other. It seemed like every match wanted to have a single date that ended in sex. Fuck that.

I still have a large folder of black boxes. One day they’ll be worth something!

Land. Sexual partners. Values/morality. Those are the big two (and a half) that I could see.

Until VR is perfected (to the degree touch/taste/smell/sight/auditory/proprioception/etc. all match exactly what reality would deliver), things like views (wouldn’t you want your house to be on the shore of Malibu?), proximity to activities (if everyone suddenly found themselves wanting to be a surfer, the beaches will become pretty crowded), proximity to others (whether that’s immense crowding of folks into massive cities, or the loners who would want space and again, views [like of forested hills]) and other similar concepts would still motivate people to be in conflict. There would definitely still be winners/losers in all of those areas.

I’d say the sexual partners idea speaks for itself. Even as we appear to be at the zenith of sexual freedom in the west, there are lots of problems (such as incels/the concept of incels) cropping up that cause conflict. Probably a small chance of giant, intercontinental conflict, but who knows.

And we already see the imposition of values or morality by laws. I very seriously doubt that would diminish. Perhaps unlimited energy and whatever-matter-on-demand-you-want would allow people to move to where others’ thoughts align with theirs, but if you could get away from local imposition of opposing values, it would be setting the stage for regions then being in conflict. Would a faction that believed homosexuality was the source of remaining human suffering allow their neighbor to engage in free love? I think we have our answer already in the form of genocides that have occurred in the world; ones where divisions were drawn based on nearly arbitrary lines. Throw pseudo-religious ideas/values into that mix, and you have yourself a war.

Yeah, that “technically no legal consequences” though is a thin thread that’s protecting you. It was being discussed on another thread.

It’s interesting how different people respond. I remember changing into the tunic/robe, and then nothing. I don’t even remember leaving the pre-op room, just waking up in the post-op hallway in one of about 20 beds.