AI might suffer from the same “mile wide, inch deep” problem that procedural generation already has.

Sure a computer can write 800 pages of dialogue, but can it tell a story? Can it keep the character personalities consistent? Can it make timely cultural and political references? Can it be funny? Can it remember its own plot?

It can probably handle side quest and enemy banter dialogue, but I have my doubts that it can take full creative control. AI is more regurgitating than creating.

I’ve heard some discussions about using AI for enemy chatter.

Main character chatter would have to be a little more scripted to keep it on task, but it doesn’t really matter what Stormtroopers are bantering about.

There were prehistoric lion species in north/central Europe during the ice age, as far north as the UK.

Scandinavia was largely covered in glaciers at the time so I don’t think their range extended that far north.

Just go behind the Aurora for peace and quiet.

If she likes the way WoW plays, an ARPG like Diablo, Torchlight, or Grim Dawn might be the way to go.

If she’s more about just sniffing around an environment, Minecraft or Subnautica.

The gigantic population certainly helps, they have four times the sample size as the US.

Then there’s the mix of medical care that’s good enough to keep these deathly ill infants alive but not good enough to fix them and an abundance of cell phones to capture it.

Places that are even more impoverished might not keep such an unlucky infant alive long enough to document it. Places that are wealthier will fix it surgically.

The entire crust, including the volcano, sort of “floats” on the Mantle.

The Mantle isn’t quite liquid, but it’s not quite solid either. It’s highly viscous molten rock under considerable pressure. It “flows” over very long time scales but you couldn’t swim in it.

Think of it like really thick tar. You could walk on it, but it’s not solid.

The problem is more of a cost/economic one than a construction one - there are already plenty of freight rail lines that go through nearly all of the US’s varied topography.

Making it competitive with the established airline industry and actually getting the infrastructure built without descending into a California High-Speed Rail money pit is the problem.

Cross country travel is a “solved” problem with extensive aircraft infrastructure. A system that is slower and requires additional infrastructure is a hard sell without some very obvious and immediate benefits.

Used to be a lot worse before (most) games started autosaving when you changed cells or did certain things. It’s been a long time since I can remember losing hours of progress in one fell swoop.

Americans have a long standing distrust of authority and government, including their own.

If the answers are truly distributed randomly, then any random selection of letters would produce roughly the same score.

Whether they’re actually random or not would depend on who wrote the test.

Whether you’d get a better score by guessing or not would depend on the way the test is graded - many standardized tests subtract 1/4th of a point for wrong answers so that a random guesser will get a zero.

A lot of the digestive system is also automated, although it too can be overruled by the brain.

Both.

Earth’s crust is 8% aluminum, so while there are certainly easy and hard sources to tap it is also the most common metallic element available.

We also recycle it in large volumes because it’s easy to rework and cheaper to rework than extract new.

It’s different because Russia doesn’t want to declare war on the US.

That’s the only distinction.

The Taliban did the same to Al Quaeda and the US definitely did consider material support an act of war, and retaliated in kind.

But they did so from a position of vast military strength. Russia will make the same accusations today about material support to their enemies, but they won’t act on it because they can’t afford to fight that fight.

“Valence” refers to the highest level of orbital(s) where electrons relatively freely wander between structures with similar energy levels. How many electrons this is will vary with atomic size.

1s is the lowest orbital, and has no friends - so helium’s valence shell is just two electrons.

Then there’s a big jump.

2s is similar in energy to 2p, and so electrons will move between the two. To fill this next valence layer you need eight electrons.

Then there’s a big jump

3s is similar to 3p, again giving you an 8-valence level.

Then there’s a big jump.

4s is where you’re now at energy levels high enough to generate a d-orbital, and 4s, 3d, and 4p form all sorts of wacky structures. This layer has 18 in the valence level.

Then… you guessed it… there’s a big jump.

“Full valence” is where these big jumps occur. Adding or subtracting an electron from a full structure is relatively difficult. You’re either forming an entirely new structure on top of the existing one or destabilizing a fully spin-paired configuration. Both are difficult, and so atoms and ions with full valence are highly chemically stable.

There is no 1p, 1d, or 2d structure. These atoms are too small and compact to support the more complex and diffuse electron configurations required to stuff dozens of them into the same space.

The 3d does exist, but it’s higher energy than the 3p and 4s and so doesn’t fill in until later.

Eventually you’ll fill an f-orbital too.

The heavier noble gases do have a full d-shell as well.

You can fill four successive s orbitals before a d-shell configuration becomes energetically favorable, so there is no d-shell for Helium, Neon, and Argon.

Krypton has a filled d-orbital. Helium only has a full 1s, no p or d.

The solstices are a function of Earth’s axial tilt, occurring when you’re pointed at the minimum and maximum angle.

This is independent of the Earth’s orbital characteristics, although the northern winter solstice does coincidentally occur near the Earth’s “perihelion” - the closest approach.

Any middle school algebra textbook I guess. The gravitation equation is thankfully very simple.

The moon’s (or any object’s) gravity is directly proportional to its mass, so yes.

If the moon was a hollow paper mache sphere you wouldn’t get nearly as much tidal effect here on Earth.

The force between the two is G(m1 x m2)/r^2

The moon does exert tidal drag on the Earth, slowly sapping rotational energy and making days longer.

The much more massive Earth has done the same to the moon, dragging it so hard that it’s now permanently fixed with one side facing Earth.

Yeah mother nature is more of a Thunderdome kinda woman. More social animals do sometimes get some help past their prime from their younger kin, solitary carnivores are pure kill or be killed.

Animal teeth last their entire lifetime, because they starve and die as soon as there’s a problem.

They don’t eat much acidic or sugary foods so rapid decay isn’t all that likely, but they definitely do have problems as they age. It’s a significant cause of mortality among aging carnivores since their teeth are also their primary survival mechanism.

That’s more a political and lobbying question than one of actual definitions.

They’re classified as “platforms” because they desperately lobby the world’s governments to be classified as such - removing most liability for whatever garbage people post.

Changing them to a “publisher” would be catastrophic for their business model, as they are now liable for everything that gets posted.

Bananas are fairly easy to cultivate in tropical climates, so large plantations have sprung up in Central America, Africa, and East Asia.

They can be grown year-round, and are fairly productive plants that start popping out bananas rapidly - you don’t have to wait years and years like many other fruit-bearing trees.

A lot of other fruits are seasonal, slow growing, or difficult to cultivate outside of their native range.

There are downsides though - banana farming is labor intensive and the plants are highly susceptible to some infections because they’re all clones.

You’re moving one way

The other car is moving another.

Your vehicles collide and transfer momentum, so now your vehicle is moving in some third direction.

You, however, continue moving in the original direction until something stops you.

If you’re smart, this is a seatbelt.

If you’re less smart, the now-deformed doors unlatch or the windshield pops out and you continue moving down the pavement.