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But yeah, they don't usually come up unless the author is nb themselves, or super liberal, or something like that. Or maybe when the Sue is part of a genderless race and the author somehow didn't forget that the race is genderless.

-Twistey

"...Did she?"

"She upset Derik," said Thoth. "However, that was a trick of fate. I do not begrudge a pawn for the use they are put to."

"...right, then that's a no." Tom grinned. "Nothing to be sorry for, Ix. Which I suppose means it's a good that by that sentence construction, you're technically not sorry at all."

My knowledge is mostly of pre-medival history, so I think I was applying the wrong idea.

Argument that I am in fact a Stu, and not a person, in a couple points.

1. I fit in everywhere I go.
(Or maybe I just feel like I do!)
I've studied acting and theatre for many, many years. I've also studied some psychology! I was an outcast through elementary and middle school, and I was horribly awkward and unsociable. Thus, I joined the local theatre programs near me, and I learned how people act like people. I also made a lot of good friends, and a lot of good tips on how to adapt to whatever situation I'm in, and how to make friends with (or mortal enemies with) near strangers, in about 10 minutes. I've fit in everywhere I've been to and made great friends, and haven't particularly stuck out like a sore thumb anywhere for the past couple of years.

2. I'm extraordinarily beautiful.
I'm very vain, wake up with great hair, and have never gotten acne.
(My ego talks here.)

3. Physical skills!
I'm strong, I'm fast, and I have a lot of endurance for being both strong and fast for long periods of times. I don't work out often either.
I'm tall and skinny, about 100 lbs. This is generally bad for people, but after long talks with my doctor making sure I'm getting the amount of nutrition I'm getting (I eat four meals a day when I can) it's just my fast metabolism, and not a major issue right now in my life.

Points against me being a Sue:
1. I make a lot of mistakes. I'm certainly not perfect at everything I do.
(2.?) I'm nonbinary. I don't think nb sues exist, and if they do, I have never seen one! (But if they do, please send proof! Also, what is the term for an nb Sue? Is there one?)

This, especially:

"Her incursions have been disruptive and aggravating, yes, but neither she nor any other individual has the power to ruin the PPC unless we give it to them by losing our cool over them."

This is something we should all keep in mind in general, IMO.

... Dilx had been glancing around them, seemingly unable to keep his attention on any one thing now that he wasn't talking. When Theo spoke, his attention snapped back to Theo, and he probably would have run into someone if he didn't periodically glance ahead. "I'm in DMS too," he said. "I don't know why they assigned me there, though."

... falling in step beside his newfound companion. "DMS," he said. For a moment he was silent, unsure whether the question was an invitation to ask a similar one in return. But finally he decided that staying silent was far too awkward. "What about you?" For a moment he was glad Sophie had convinced him to wear his cloak. It was a lot easier to subtly fidget with that than it would have been to subtly fidget with his jeans.

"Hm... honestly, I'm not even sure she can get electrocuted like humans," she said. "I've seen her pick up chunks of superheated metal with her bare hands before; I think she'll be fine." She nodded toward the food table. "I'm hungry, so I'm just gonna go pop off and get a plate. Be right back!"

She pecked Ix on the cheek and hurried away, leaving a very scared-looking Dread Pirate Roberts behind.

"...Look, if I did anything to upset you back on Halloween, I'm sorry," Ix blurted.

There's a particular radio in the Small Mammals building. If it's tuned in to a station and I walk too close, my body somehow reduces the transmission to static. It's only that radio, though.

I hadn't really considered this until I read Neshomeh's post, buuuuut I kind of can eat anything and stay thin. I'm maybe not super thin—130 pounds roundabouts—but the unavoidable physical activity of my job, coupled with a naturally high metabolism, mean that I eat and eat and eat and don't gain weight. While most of my coworkers bring one thing for lunch and spend the rest of lunch break talking or on their phones, I stuff a backpack full of foods and spend the whole break cramming stuff down my throat, because if I don't get enough food down, I wind up getting weak with hunger by the end of the shift. (And while I should hypothetically have a thirty-minute lunch with two fifteen-minute breaks during the rest of the day, the zookeepers in the past collectively decided to fold the whole hour's worth of break time into the lunch break so we can spend more time together. Which is a lovely sentiment, but it also means that if I get to lunch on time, I have no time left to eat later in the day.) The food I eat is mostly meats, cheeses, and carbohydrates. Oh, and actual junk food like gummy bears, Twizzlers and chocolate, because my metabolism is so fast, it basically doesn't matter. My pre-shift breakfasts are also ridiculous—either a big bowl of spaghetti with butter and parmesan, or a plate filled with tater tots—just to make sure I can make it to lunch break without losing steam due to hunger weakness. And I hate it. I hate that I have to spend so much time (and money, but mostly the time) on something so basic and meaningless as eating. I don't enjoy eating, I don't enjoy cooking or the taste. I would literally skip it all if I could, and just have more free time every day. But alas, my digestion rate won't allow it.

—doctorlit, whining about a first world problem most people would love to have

I'm fairly sure I remember a system from something (maybe fiction?) where you ride a bolo up into the upper atmosphere, then transfer to the space elevator which is moving past at upper-bolo-car speeds.

Regardless, this is still 'a space elevator if it was hung from the moon', and since space elevators are one of Randall's things, I'm surprised he didn't mention it. :)

The idea of building giant towers into space has been covered in other What Ifs, including Billion-Stor[e]y Building and Stairs.

hS

My understanding is that the European wars mostly weren't about moving your population into an area; they were about asserting your own control over the population already there. So for instance the English kings didn't want to wipe out the populace of France and send over settlers - they wanted to take in the taxes and tribute from France's current population.

In the days before my chart, I think you're correct; the Saxon and Viking invasions of Britain (and everywhere else) were driven by population pressure. But once you had a secure financial system and all-powerful kings, it seems to me that those factors mostly drove the wars.

Another piece of evidence in that direction is the number of XXXXX Succession wars bouncing around on the list. It wasn't about who lived on the land, but who ruled it...

hS

Wouldn't "a fireman's pole from [(stationary) orbiting satellite] to Earth's surface" be the description of a space elevator? Moving the fireman's pole's lower end to [orbiting satellite] doesn't solve the problem of different angular velocities; that's why we still would need spaceships (but "from [orbiting satellite] to the moon" is the easy part of the journey).

HG

Agrarian civilizations need to keep expanding to support population growth. There is only so much you can farm on any given amount of land.

The XYZZY awards (the annual awards for excellence in Interactive Fiction) have once again come around. Or at least, the finalists have been announced for this year: https://xyzzyawards.org/

So I'd like to take a moment to point to a few current finalists and previous winners, especially for those who don't play IF.

Firstly, a brief author highlight: Brendan Patrick Hennessy is amazing and so is all his stuff. Bell Park, Youth Detective is pretty good, but the star of the show is Birdland, which won six XYZZYs. I've played it, and it really is that good. It's funny and heartfelt and touching, and you should all just go play it right now if you haven't already. Don't worry: it's pretty short. His Known Unknowns is in the running this year, and it'll probably do well.

I didn't play a lot of last year's winners (you can go through them all on the site), but I did play 16 Ways to Kill a Vampire at McDonalds, which had a lot of fun puzzles and was pretty entertaining.

This year, we had Wizard Sniffer which is pretty funny, but it's also a more traditional bit of IF. True, it's not as Evil and Badly Designed as a lot of oldschool IF was (like Zork: oh man, that game actually WAS evil), but it still might be a bit intimidating.

Finally, Chandler Groover's stuff is almost always pretty good. But it can be kinda NSFW and weird.

Like Candy Crush. :-P

Although war is a slightly more serious problem than that...

In one of the bewilderingly long articles about Civ, they wrote this:

Since the end of World War II, the situation has been much different. While small wars have certainly continued to be fought, two proverbial “great powers” haven’t met one another directly on a battlefield since 1945: that’s 73 years as I write these words, a record for all of post-classical human history. As the political scientist Robert Jervis could write already in 1988, “the most striking characteristic of the postwar period is just that — it can be called ‘postwar’ because the major powers have not fought each other since 1945. Such a lengthy period of peace among the most powerful states is unprecedented.” The change is so marked that historians have come up with a name for the period stretching from 1945 to the present: “The Long Peace.”

Emphasis added. Say whaaaaat? Surely in 1500 years of history we've managed more than 70 years without two great powers directly fighting! More research was needed, clearly.

Well... I can't actually reach the Classical era. My understanding of power dynamics in pre-Norman Conquest Europe is severely limited. Actually I'm not too hot on the 500 years after that, but luckily there was this whole string of Crusades, which I figure count.

So I put together a spreadsheet, here. It's not complete. It focusses almost entirely on European wars, or wars between Europe and the Ottoman Empire/the Crusades. It's probably left out a lot of wars between countries that I don't know if they count as 'Great' (was Hungary a 'Great Power' in 1127 when they fought the Byzantines?) but it's enough to answer the question:

Between 1095 and 1945, the longest period of peace between Great Powers was 48 years, following the First Crusade. Between 1500 and 1871, we never went longer than 20 years of 'peace'.

War! What is it good for? Well, based on the data, apparently everyone loves it!

hS

What If? is a brilliant read from start to finish; I actually have the book, which includes even more fantastic articles. My favourite is 'what if you had a periodic table made up of the actual elements?'; the answer of course is 'boom', but at great length. (Which describes most of the content of the blog...)

What's interesting for this article is that Randall didn't really address the big point that 'a fireman's pole from [orbiting satellite] to the moon' is pretty much a description of a space elevator. An odd omission.

hS

He was rather thirsty, now that he thought about it. He hadn't had anything to drink since long before they left. He started walking towards the table, fidgeting with the fur... thing, whatever it was... to keep it from getting in his way. Now... what to say. What did people generally say at parties? He had no idea. Well, might as well start with what he was used to. "So where do you work?"

Theo returned a small smile and shook Dilx's hand. "Likewise. Do you want to get a drink?" He pointed over his shoulder, toward the refreshment table. Granted, he hadn't been to very many parties, but the purpose of a party without at least a little drinking quite escaped him.

I was in a cappella for a few months before the club disbanded due to drama (cough), but I got made lead soprano within a few weeks. I've been told in full seriousness that I sound angelic.

How's that for a Sue voice? :P

This may or may not count, but to the outside observer, I appear to have the ability to eat whatever I want and still be thin. I know because they tell me so: "Oh, you're skinny, you can eat anything!"

This is not actually true. While it is rare for me to turn down free chocolate or pastries or whatever if they're in the offing, the facts are that I'm usually sparing with portion sizes, I enjoy vegetables and salads sufficiently that outside observers also sometimes mistake me for a vegetarian, and I occasionally try to subsist solely on tea if I'm working on something and can't be bothered with solids. (Then Phobos scolds me and drags me out of the apartment to get a burger.)

I'm also not remotely fit, and I'm pretty sure my spine has an actual curve in it from my bad habit of leaning on my left elbow. I'm working on correcting this.

I'll cop to having a good singing voice, though, and have in fact used music in the process of wooing my love interest. ^_^

~Neshomeh

Apparently I missed Drama while I was at work today. Whee.

Looking at the aftermath, here's why I'm not worried about it:

1. It sounds like what they did was certainly shocking and unpleasant, but pretty impersonal. No one was directly targeted, and no one's safety is threatened.

2. The Nameless Admin handled it, the perpetrator has apparently left of their own free will, and the trolling attack has been prevented from reoccurring in the same form. It's over. We're all okay, and I see lots of people up-Board posting fun things so we can get back to business entertainment as usual.

3. Even if it had been zdimensia again, she's just one person. Her incursions have been disruptive and aggravating, yes, but neither she nor any other individual has the power to ruin the PPC unless we give it to them by losing our cool over them. If zdimensia or any permabanned person pops up again, the Nameless Admin will deal with it. If some new kind of trolling happens, the Nameless Admin will find a new way to deal with it. That's why we have the Nameless Admin, and they're pretty good at it.

4. Skarm, this is for you specifically: We are not that dA community you used to be in. Please stop relating every upset that happens here to that one seemingly isolated incident in your life. From where I sit, the way you keep working yourself into a panic over these things in the exact same way looks kinda unhealthy for you, and besides, that sort of emotional upset is exactly what trolls feed on. So, work on it, yeah? We're all okay, and we're all going to be okay. We're far from needing to build some sort of nuclear troll bunker to keep doing our thing. {= )

~Neshomeh

Does having (supposedly) brown hair that turns silver in certain lighting count? I also have that gray/green/blue color changing thing that Delta Juliette mentioned.

I definitely agree that stuff like this is fascinating to learn about on real people! Though, I'll admit that for me personally it's because I'm obsessed with mutation for comic-booky reasons. :P

My eyes do the color-changing thing too, between gray, green, and blue.

I also have the most tragic food allergy: I'm allergic to strawberries. A single slice of my particular forbidden fruit is all it takes to start my mouth itching, and an entire berry will leave me with breathing trouble for the evening.