You’re 100% correct, there’s plenty of hard unmoving objects that necessitate ski helmets. When I was in my 20’s I hit an ice patch while skiing and went into a tree sideways, hitting so hard I almost severed my quadriceps without breaking the skin. A ski patrol saw the incident and assumed my leg was broken, they were dumbfounded when I stood up, waved them off and skiied away. It wasn’t until the next day when I got out of bed and face-planted that I realized how bad it was. Was on crutches for over a year. Helmets, kids.

Fluffy snow vs. asphalt/trail

One of the defining characteristics of an arcology is compactness, which makes the inhabitants more vulnerable to disasters and terrorism.

If you could build mechanisms out of proteins and other large molecules you could fit a lot of processing and storage inside a bacteria. Clusters of these bio computers might display emergent intelligence like a hive of insects.

I think the size of a cell is determined by the size of microscopic bubbles lipids spontaneously form under the right conditions. Those complex molecules took up shop inside lipid bubbles to form the first proto-cells.

If they existed in a higher dimension they could see inside enclosed spaces the way we can see the inside of a circle drawn on a piece of paper.

But you are? :)

For an extended answer, read Blood Music by (the late :() Greg Bear. Biologist is designing intelligent bacteria at his job but gets caught, so he smuggled them out by injecting them into his arm. Wackiness ensues

No, seriously, their newer VR gear watches your eyes, what you look at in a scene and for how long, your pupil dilation… Meta could learn a lot about you by recording and processing this. For instance, there’s a scene of a young family. Do you look at the man, or the woman? Which parts? Or, god forbid, a child? See?

And this is exactly the kind of data Meta hopes to gather from users of its VR equipment.

Oh God then the shrieks of “Socialism” begin. If four trust-fund morons aren’t going home with 95% of the total payroll it’s straight Karl Marx

They were going to tear down the stand and put in a convenience store. The funniest part: when the store was done, he was going to put in a silly DVD rental box from a startup called Netflix.

I had a co-worker years ago who bought an ice cream stand where two roads met in the boonies. Shortly thereafter he learned that all the surrounding land had been secretly bought up by a developer to build hundreds of executive homes - with his convenience store smack in the middle.

I remember two brothers (Indonesian IIRC) started their own company making computer memory and eventually sold it for $200 million. They split half the proceeds and awarded the other half to their employees based on years of service. They seemed baffled why anyone would do differently since it was the employees that made the company possible.

I would love to know the cost to society of all the fires caused by smokers. I’m sure it’s horrific.