The silver lining to the shit show of the last 9 months is that the Republican drama has finally gotten entertaining.

It is in one sense and isn’t in another. Someone saying “basic biology” is generally ignorant of the wide world of biology out there, either through lack of exposure or purposefully so.

The truth is that biology’s definitions are all humans’ ways of dividing up phenomena into neat little categories, but nature just exists as it is and doesn’t need to follow our linguistic rules.

For every definition we come up with, there are invariably multiple exceptions that don’t cleanly fit, because that’s just not how nature works. Even basic definitions like “sex,” “species,” and “life” itself start to get shaky the moment we try to eliminate all the exceptions.

The truth is that for humans there is no single, universally accepted definition of sex or gender. And even attempts to reduce them to something tangentially related like genotype quickly fall apart when you start looking at the exceptions. The person who says that there being two human sexes (usually to the exclusion of gender identity) is “basic biology” is not only categorically wrong, but they’re either ignorant of or ignoring the granularity of our own species. The whole of human sex and gender identity cannot be neatly summed up as “Boys have a penis, girls have a vagina” from Kindergarten Cop.

So are the slugs relevant? I would say yes, because if you’re not aware of the variation in nature on the obvious macro scale you have no prayer of appreciating it on the more subtle micro scale.

But it’s not, though. It’s the watered down children’s version of biology people half remember from elementary school. It’s not actual human biology.

Translation: Trump’s own party is worried that his tariffs are going to cost them elections and are threatening to 25th him if he doesn’t play ball.

Freezing cold

I’m playing it right now and enjoying it. Not sure what the person you replied to disliked.

I didn’t say it was HL3. I replied to a post implying the series hasn’t had an update in 20 years.

It’d be like a Star Wars fan wondering why there’s buzz about the movie coming out next year despite it being 42 years since Return of the Jedi. And the answer is that even if that’s the last one that particular fan personally cared about, there has been Star Wars media since then.

Also, Alyx did resolve the HL2E2 ending. It didn’t add a whole lot on past that, but the cliffhanger was very much addressed.

They’re trying Google Glass again?

No, they’ve actually been doing The Gods of Chaos (Surekh, The Toymaker, and some new ones) along with The Rani.

That cliffhanger got addressed in Half-Life: Alyx. And replaced with a different cliffhanger.

Half-Life: Alyx came out 5 years ago…

It was pretty obvious that was the weight of the choice: Sacrifice one person you know and care for personally to potentially save millions you’ve never met. It doesn’t hold much weight if it wasn’t going to work anyway.

36 minutes? No one’s got time for that.

Susan’s the Doctor’s granddaughter, who traveled with the First Doctor through Season 1 and the first two serials of Season 2. She was supposed to be about 15 years old.

She leaves the show after The Doctor saw her flirting with an older guy in post apocalyptic London. The Doctor, knowing what was best for her, came up with the pretense of going into the Tardis briefly to repair one of her shoes, then locked the door and took off so she could continue her relationship.

To recap, The Doctor left a 15 year old kid in a post apocalyptic hellhole with some guy she just met and no change of clothes, no toothbrush, and only a single shoe.

The First Doctor was kind of a dick.

I take it you didn’t read the article?

The showrunners have said that they won’t go beyond the source material, so once they’ve told the story of The Last of Us Part II video game, that’s it.

Terminator the Sarah Connor Chronicles: Oh c’mon, gonna cliffhanger me right after John and Sarah time jump into a post apocalyptic wasteland?

The Acolyte: I’d have loved to get Qimir’s backstory and find out what’s up with the Darth Plagueis tease.

As for abandoned arcs: Sliders with the alternate Professor Arturo.

There were multiple possible endings for both Geralt and Ciri, including endings where Ciri survives.

Kevin was in trouble at the start of the film. They could have very easily had his mom take his phone away before sending him to his room.

After arriving in Paris, Kevin’s mom frantically calls his phone… only for a suitcase to start ringing. Oops!

I grew up hearing, “The initial selling point of cable was that it was ad-free, then they started adding ads.”

But the reality now is that they’re offering ads for a couple bucks cheaper, and all my idiot neighbors are foaming at the mouth to subscribe, so in a few years there won’t be a market for ad-free anymore.

Changing

Yes.

The very basics of the universe is that there was a republic that lasted thousands of years, but then was toppled and a totalitarian regime was instituted (The Empire.) After 20 years, a group of rebels toppled The Empire and made a new republic.

Andor takes place during the 20 years of the empire, focusing on the formation of the rebellion. It is significantly lower fantasy than most of Star Wars, which features characters who can channel mystical powers (The Force.) The Force is almost completely absent from Andor. A lot of people who don’t really like the supernatural elements like Andor for that reason.