Same! I ended up with a kinda stock answer (“all over the state!”), but that still leads to a story. Which is the point of the question, I guess.

(I’m a preacher’s kid, hence the moving!)

Can’t find it now, but I remember seeing an interview where George Lucas said it was very deliberate.

Nah, most of humanity at least is either living idyllic lives, or chose to live on a frontier world or research station or something. Starfleet’s just the exploratory arm of the Federation; but that’s where most of the fun stories are!

“No, what I’m doing is different!”

A lot of people know kids are expensive, but very few non-parents really grasp just how expensive - the nickels and dimes turn into fifties and hundreds pretty fast.

And that’s before you run into things like medical complications!

The question is what kind of stupidity that would even be. He’s already done so many things that if anyone else has even tried, they’d have shot themselves in the foot.

You’re not wrong, and I feel like it was a developing problem even before AI - everybody wanted someone with experience, even if the technology was brand new.

That said, even if you and I will be fine, it’s still bad for the industry. And even if we weren’t the ones pulling up the ladder behind us, I’d still like to find a way to start throwing ropes back down for the newbies…

No, but that’s the only way you get senior engineers!

Yeah, it sounds like the “escort an immigrant” drives have been pretty effective so far - it sounds like they’re pretty conflict avoidant when they don’t have overwhelming force. So far, at least.

My fear for the software industry is that we’ll end up replacing junior devs with AI assistance, and then in a decade or two, we’ll see a lack of mid-level and senior devs, because they never had a chance to enter the industry.

The difference being junior engineers eventually grow up into senior engineers.

I don’t think shooting the rain would help much…

Okay, I’m not a huge griller, but wouldn’t it be better just to build in a thermostat? Let it maintain its own temperature?

Ironsworn was my first exposure to a fiction-first game! I didn’t really gel with the setting, but still really like the mechanics. Ended up backing Starforged (and later Sundered Isles), that seems like a much better fit for me!

Crispy and juicy, now you’re havin’ a snack

Mine would crack up and switch to that

GURPS is my go-to system. It’s incredibly flexible, both in what it allows you to do as a player, and what kind of game you can run as a GM.

It’s an older system, and by default is rather simulationist - it grew out of the same tabletop wargaming that D&D did, and tends to take a more realistic approach to what players can do than more narrative systems. I like some of the more narrative systems as well - Starforged is my other go-to system - but the characters always feel a little more loosely defined to me. GURPS is perfectly happy saying “okay, you can fly, you can turn invisible, and you can’t be killed” - but if you want to make your character more nuanced, it’s not only possible, but encouraged!

On the other hand, if you just want to throw something together and go, you can do that too! One of my players has a character sheet that consists of their racial abilities, 5 or 6 regular skills, and a high level “Security!” wildcard skill. And 3 guns. They’re a nightmare in combat, because “Security!” is their all-in-one skill with pistols and melee combat, along with anything else a person with a security background would be expected to know - it’s been rolled against to evaluate patrol schedules, reading a foe’s body language, and shadowing a mark, among other things. That character plays alongside someone with three different templates (classes), a mount, a bevy of different equipment options, and something like 55 different skills - because that player -wanted- that kind of detail. And they’re both very effective in their domains, and play off of each other well.

That’s the thing that really sticks out to me about GURPS - it’s very playable with a very minimal ruleset (GURPS Ultra-Lite is free, and 2 pages - http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/ultra-lite/), and can seamlessly expand when you want more detail. And not only are there a lot of options for that detail, they also show their work - so if you’re still missing something, you can generally still come up with reasonable rules. It just gets a reputation for being super complicated because the people who discover it tend to get excited and throw everything in…

Some of them did, many voted against it. And of those who didn’t vote at all, many of them didn’t have an option to vote.

These seem more in an absurdist vein of comedy to me, rather than having or needing a particular punch line

They don’t need pushed, or influenced, or anything other than a safe space to be themselves, and find out what that means to them. People who are atypical already have plenty of pushback from everyday society, I don’t think we need to worry about making someone trans when they’re not.

I have two young male children, who both prefer playing with girls to playing with boys. When we casually mentioned that some boys have vaginas and some girls have penises, they separately decided that each of them is, in fact, a boy who like to play with girls. Because that’s who they are, and I doubt we could convince them otherwise.