There's a whole genre of sci-fi that has a major premise as "humanity is the most powerful/dominating/victorious species in the cosmos...and that's not a compliment". I always understood that to be a facet of HFY, but per this sub's description HFY should be "uplifting".

Like, a story where aliens try to invade Earth and we kick their asses is definitely HFY. But what if we then enslave the survivors of the alien horde? What if we reverse engineer their tech, go to their homeworld, and nuke their planet? What if we tailor a virus to their genome and purge the galaxy of their entire species, and their little alien babies die screaming in their little alien cribs?

Is that HFY?

Is it solipsistic in here, or is it just me?

The human body needs constant exposure to germs to keep its immune system healthy. Washing dishes, doing laundry, and taking showers all damage or destroy the bacteria that's keeping your immune system strong.

A lot of people worldbuild when they daydream and have the bones of a story kicking around in their brain, but have to pay the bills and raise the kids etc so they never flesh it out and write it down. What's your story's premise? Fantasy, sci-fi, alternate history, mystery, western, whatever genre.

>The Great Filter is the idea that, in the development of life from the earliest stages of abiogenesis to reaching the highest levels of development on the Kardashev scale, there is a barrier to development that makes detectable extraterrestrial life exceedingly rare. The Great Filter is one possible resolution of the Fermi paradox.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter

>The Fermi paradox is the discrepancy between the lack of conclusive evidence of advanced extraterrestrial life and the apparently high likelihood of its existence. As a 2015 article put it, "If life is so easy, someone from somewhere must have come calling by now."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox

Personally I think it's photosynthesis. Life itself developed and spread but photosynthesis started an inevitable chain of ever-greater and more-efficient life. I think a random chain of mutations that turns carbon-based proto-life into something that can harvest light energy is wildly unlikely, even after the wildly unlikely event of life beginning in the first place.

I have no data to back that up, just a guess.

(it's not a solar system because Sol is our star, specifically; we're the only Solar system)

>TRAPPIST-1 is a cool red dwarf star[c] with seven known exoplanets.

>Up to four of the planets – designated d, e, f and g – orbit at distances where temperatures are suitable for the existence of liquid water, and are thus potentially hospitable to life.

The red dwarf star TRAPPIST-1 has an estimated lifespan of pretty much the entire lifespan of the universe. If any of those planets are habitable, and humanity goes there, we could live there until the end of the whole universe, no worrying about our sun going out in about 5 billion years. It could be our forever home.

The planets in the TRAPPIST system are extremely close to each other, so the night sky on any of them would be awe-inspiring, with multiple bodies bigger than our moon rising and setting every night.

I was a non functioning alcoholic and ran with some rough types in my late teens/early 20s and have both kicked ass and had my ass kicked. Mostly drunken barfights.

One time someone legitimately mistook me for someone else and started cussing at me, so I started cussing back and pushed him to the ground. He got up and did a really neat move actually where he faked a kick and then socked me right in the cheek, knocked me on my ass. I apologized, got up, we figured out the misunderstanding and he bought me a beer.

Misread the title of the other post which made me think of this question.

I, as a male, have had multiple women ask me how we ride bikes without smashing our balls.

Always looking for new food ideas.

Three years ago, I bought a pair of Red Wing Irish Setter boots with steel toes. Two years ago, I got a new job that requires me to go through metal detectors pretty often, and it's a pain. I've been waiting for these boots to wear out so I can justify getting new ones with a composite toe. I generally wear through boots in about a year.

These fucking boots WILL NOT DIE. They are still WATERPROOF. I haven't had to so much as replace the laces. They're incredible. I bought a size larger than needed and made up the difference with a couple of insoles and it's like walking on a cloud plus I seem a couple of inches taller. My feet don't even hurt after a 12 hour shift.

my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart—you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I’m one of the smartest people anywhere in the world—it’s true!—but when you’re a conservative Republican they try—oh, do they do a number—that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune—you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged—but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me—it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are (nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what’s going to happen and he was right—who would have thought?), but when you look at what’s going on with the four prisoners—now it used to be three, now it’s four—but when it was three and even now, I would have said it’s all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don’t, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years—but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.

In my observation, a big part of social progress is each generation pointing out the hypocrisy of the previous. "All men are created equal" so how can you enslave black people? If men can vote, why can't women? How come straight people can marry but gay people can't? How is it fair to send an 18 year old to war but not let him vote?

A lot of these hypocrisies were so internalized that a lot of people of previous generations never even thought about them. It was like a mental blind spot. It took young people with fresh thinking to point them out and fight to fix them.

So, speaking as a Millenial, I'm asking what my generation's blind spots are. What injustices are we perpetuating without even thinking much about it?

For reference, Millenials are currently in their late 20s to early 40s. Not running the world, but also not fresh eyed college grads.

TL;DR: There is a company called Bridge International Academies trying to improve education in 3rd world countries by bringing in completely untrained teachers. They are following the typical start-up path, trying to scale up rapidly.

One of their main investors is the World Bank.

The World Bank has an internal team that investigates its investment for ethics, called the CAO (Compliance Advisor Ombudsman).

The CAO found evidence of large amounts of child abuse (sexual and otherwise). The World Bank responded by not renewing the contract of the head of the CAO, by attempting to fire the lead investigator into Bridge, and by signing a NDA with Bridge that makes it very difficult if not impossible to release any discovery of wrongdoing.

As a personal note, The Intercept is one of the last remaining news outlets that actually does meaningful investigations and shines light on the corrupt. If you can spare anything, send them a donation.

Have we entered the twilight zone?