What’s really weird is that the sun seems to be setting in the same place that the sun and moon are rising. Clearly their entire room is rotating as they sleep. (Along with their little miniature city skyline on their windowsill.)

I don’t recall the books well enough to be sure, but knowing Pratchett, there is almost certainly a direct reference to that quote in there.

*Artificial Hormones have been banned.

The natural hormones in milk still exist. The post looks mainly to be a response to the pearl-clutching that soy-milk contains a similar low-level of (plant specific) hormones.

Even without going full ‘free housing for everyone’ utopia, it would be nice if the rent students currently pay to landlords was recoverable when the space is no longer needed. The same way people paying mortgages can just sell their house even before it is fully paid off. We wouldn’t need to drastically reshape society in order to allow people to invest in their own futures rather than shovelling most of what they have into a landlord’s pocket.

Well the first step is to reduce or at least drastically eliminate the amount of CO2 that is being released in the first place. Removal of carbon from the air is necessarily going to have to be a down the road plan. It literally cannot happen to any scale if we are still relying on fossil fuels in the first place.

Of course, “always cheaper” in this case means less money up front, but much, much expensive more down the road than the initial cost.

Of course, the down the road cost isn’t usually that visibly connected to the “make it illegal” plan, so conservative governments love it.

It might be similar to a Motte and Bailey Fallacy. Though that one is more focused on distinct but related definitions than it is for distinct but related situations. Not the exact one that you are looking for, but the related concepts might be a path towards an answer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy

You don’t necessarily need to roleplay, but something like “I would like to play on their guilt by seeming hopeless.” or “I would like to bring up the horrible acts of the orc warlord to stoke their anger.” or “I would like to convince them to help by pointing out how their oaths may apply in this situation.” would really help sell the specifics. If you are just trying a flat check I have no real way to know what you are planning on doing other than just sort of charmingly asking “Please?”

“Most consumers want fast food companies to label when sawdust has been added to food - but trust restaurants less when they do.”

I’ve always assumed that the Borg were once a truly egalitarian faction. One that seeks out other points of view in order to invite them into a collective where every voice has a share in the overall direction of the whole.

I could see such a collective evolving into the current Star Trek Borg if things like fascism take root. A rabid xenophobia of thought that seeks to destroy any ‘wrong-think’ within the hive mind.

It would explain a lot of the problems that the Borg seem to have. Why they never seem to learn from their mistakes despite their adaptability, why they all share one mind despite their quest for distinctiveness, why they have a single load-bearing queen despite their usual priority of hyper redundancy in all things.

Honestly if I could just print up a new tablet instantly and without cost, I would have half a dozen around me when I am deep into a research fugue.

Being able to quickly and easily flip between books or articles (or even different sections of the same book) while at the same time keeping the existing information up on a screen that I can directly reference is great.

Exactly. Duplicating a person and destroying the original or truly transferring every atom from one location to another by teleportation results in the same level of continuity of consciousness as just going to sleep and waking up later.

So why does the cloning version seem so, so much worse?

Even without a gameboard, and even without finely tracking movement at all, you can still have players with movement builds and make them feel powerful. Describing opponents like longbow users and warmages as being within range of a move action "for you, but not for the others" is just one basic way to make them feel fast. Things like difficult terrain being an effective nonissue for them is good to keep in mind. Just remember to describe how fast they are in combat, and give them fun things to do with that speed.