>And he lacks the necessary knowledge to extract the energy until Alice’s text arrives, so no effect travels faster than light.

This is the disappointing part to me. It's a shame it's all in metaphor.

We're totally working on fusion technology, and it's coming along at a nice pace. Every now and then we beat previous thresholds for how much energy it's generating.

In terms of "working together", that would indeed be idea. Just look at what the EU does for energy infrastructure across all the EU countries. Imagine if we gave the UN the mandate and funding to do that, but for the world. Just through economies of scale we'd have a much, much more efficient electricity system.

Unfortunately at this point the realist in my comes out and it becomes easy to pick that apart by what would really happen if we tried. "My country should get more and if you don't do x we'll pull funding!"

The problem with natural gas is we'll run out. Nuclear is great and environmentally friendly, but we absolutely need renewable sources to back it up. No one's putting a nuclear power plant on Niue for example.

I see what you did there!

You know NASA are using Starship for the Moon landing right?

Tyranny of the majority you mean?

But also no, because while you get rid of DST, doesn't mean everyone has to.

The practice of ensuring daylight occurs in the day reduces attacks on people in the early and late hours.

Without DST, it'd be dark outside when most people at mu lattitude finish work. They'd be walking home in the dark. What wonderful targets.

Try living closer to the poles.

No, it wasn't. It just feels that way because we won.

Precisely.

Makes sense. NZ has more women than men, so that would be represented in Parliament.

In NZ, it's an issue with low socioeconic groups, which so happens to be "natives".

Couldn't that be better targeted by saying "If we determine that you come to the emergency room for a non-emergency, you'll be charged the co-pay fee."

In NZ, we pay $40 for a GP consult ($80 if it's a GP you aren't registered to), but it's free if you go to the hospital and hang around in triage until they finally get to you.

I would very much like it if hospitals just said "This could have been a GP visit, so pay us $80." It would stop people just using emergency rooms as a free doctor's visit.

But free doctor's visits could also help that.

I was born and have healthcare. It was very easy.

Yeah Americans have this sort of pride in the idea that "socialist" countries have to sit in waiting rooms for hours, or on waiting lists for months. That the American system is some point of pride because you get healthcare when and as you need it.

The fact is though, that you get it so quick because most people can't afford it. If healthcare were affordable, a lot more people would use it and the waiting lists would be longer.

Some people will then make excuses to keep such a system.

Wouldn't that be the dream? A global power grid. Ridiculous levels of redundancy. Your local dam breaks that would otherwise cause a massive power outage? It'd be a blip on the global grid. Countries buying and selling to the grid, and a non-profit agency maintaining the grid based on fees taken from buying/selling.