In a way this naming makes more sense, because an important aspect of the virtual worlds in science fiction that many people seem to idolize is that they were as appealing as they were due to a large part because the real world was such a dystopia that they were desperate for an escape from it, even if it meant living inside a world that existed only inside a computer.

Even Buffy eventually moved away from the MOTW format, and after a while I got sick of the ongoing convoluted arcs and lost interest in it. (I still need to watch the musical episode though...)

That does sound like a reason to be hopeful for the future. Thank you for telling me about this.

We all use social media in different ways. For me, I use it primarily as a relatively mindless activity I can engage in when my brain is too tired to do something that I actually care about. For example, at work I often write comments when I am stuck or feeling burned out, and taking the time to rest in this way helps my brain recover and often after a while the solution to my problem pops into my head and I can proceed.

Yeah, I've had enough bad experiences with this that I actually ended up unsubscribing from many of the science subreddits.

When you buy a subscription to Reddit you get free coins you can use to give out these awards, so at least some of the time the award didn't actually cost anything above what they were already paying for their subscription.

Yeah, it really annoys me that at the water park I usually go to (not the best, but the closest one to me) there aren't any clocks around, even in the food stalls or places like that. Fortunately, when I look around I can usually find someone wearing a watch or looking at a phone that I can ask.

Completely agreed, though I'd also add that to get the most nutrition out of them you want to make sure that you are also eating the skins. (Personally I like the skins anyway, and not having to remove them makes them easier to cook!)

I took a course on the theory of programming languages, which spent a lot of time on type systems and introduced my to O'Caml. I then looked at Haskell, fell in love, and used it in all of my personal projects for the next several years. (I mentioned this once to the professor who taught the class, and he admitted that that selling people on typed functional languages was basically one of the unofficial goals of the class. :-) )

Should we send rescue missions up Everest to ensure the families of rich thrill seekers get to bury their loved ones, or should we maybe put those resources into saving real, living people?

It’s unfortunate that their risky joy ride went south, but it would be a actual tragedy if we used hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of dollars of public money to maybe find a few bodies. That money should be used more efficiently helping more people who actually need it.

The difference is that we already have the infrastructure to do sea rescue missions and the professionals involved need to train regularly, so they may as well use this as an opportunity to do that. It's not like the people and resources involved would necessarily just be sitting around if it weren't for this incident.

Planes have emergency exits that can be opened manually from the inside.

What irks me with all the coverage, however, is that no one is pointing out the potential harm to all the people involved in trying to rescue these people. The Coast Guard and other outfits undertaking the rescue attempts are put in danger the whole time they are out there. And of course there’s the cost involved as well.

These outfits need to spend time and resources training to stay sharp, and engaging in such activities always carries a risk, so the main arguable difference in this particular situation is that it lets them train using a real world scenario rather than something made up for the purpose.