I see. Perhaps I misunderstood the format.

I’m not sure I’d use Bill Nye as the example of the asshole atheist, unless that’s the joke. Maybe Christopher Hitchens.

I just dug him out with my terrain manipulator.

Actually, I was kind of surprised I couldn’t talk to him anyway, given the propensity for NMS to allow you to interact with objects through walls and other objects from often a considerable distance.

Incorrect, only because you’re still tacitly assuming that science (or anything else) must have some kind of external cosmic significance outside of human thought.

Science is important to us – or at least it ought to be – because it’s the method by which we understand how the universe works. Being important to us is all that matters, because we can’t think with the minds of anything else.

The flaw in all of this sophomoric philosophic whinging is that it mostly tends to start off with the presupposition that all of these concepts aren’t just human constructs. The only reason anything has meaning to us is because we decided it does.

The purpose of life is life itself.

I addressed that in another comment here. The long and short of it (very long, as it happens) is that the volume you’d need is still the same. So your elongated balloon would have to be well beyond what most people would consider to be ridiculously tall. 325.5 meters tall, in fact, given the 0.75 meter diameter I assumed to start with. I figure most people could probably stand in a 0.75m circle provided they didn’t wave their arms around a bunch.

This I am fairly certain we do not have the technology to achieve. Anything vacuum filled that large would need to have walls so thick so as to completely negate any buoyancy effect. I don’t know of any modern material that would simultaneously be rigid, strong, and light enough.

Sure. You could do a cylinder of three quarters of a meter across which seems like a reasonable footprint for someone to stand in. That’d only have to be, uh, 325.5 meters tall to have the same volume.

Absolutely, but the scale of the balloons is a bit off. Nobody would be walking shoulder to shoulder like this. For a normal-ish 170lb/77kg individual your personal balloon would have to be a little under 6.5 meters across assuming it were filled with helium.

Yes, I did the math.

Just pick that fucker up and stick it on the other side of the Toblerone block.

And then revel in the inevitable fistfight with its owner that ensues. (Pro tip: Be sure to win.)

🐧🗡️!

Fair, but even when I play the expedition “live” I am usually late enough to the party that this is a non-issue for me anyhow. I just find a bunch of abandoned player bases and at that rate, I’d rather not see any evidence of other player activity at all.

When I did the last expedition I saw literally no one until the last waypoint location.

I guess the game is different things to different people. Honestly, when I’m not deliberately doing community content I just leave multiplayer turned off entirely.

Okay, that’s boss. I’m going to check that out later.

Thanks!

Arse.

I really wish they’d let you replay non-current expeditions on demand. The timed content thing is really the only aspect of this game that gets on my nerves.

They could pull some cover story like you’re doing it in a VR simulation or something, maybe via Nada’s otherwise largely purposeless (outside of very specific plot encounters) terminal in the back of the Space Anomaly.

PC.

Maybe I’m just extra lucky.

Key word being deliberately. I predict the majorty of people who wind up with either of those ghastly things did so because they were all that was available, easily filched from the supply closet, or it’s all their parents would give them because they are above all else cheap.

I have probably handled and used hundreds of the damn things in my life but I have never once spent a single penny on any of them; they were without exception foisted off on me by circumstance, not intentionally sought out.

I was a Staedtler nerd in school anyway, any time I was not allowed to use a fountain pen.

You rang?

I’ve never actually successfully made anything shiny with that type of “chrome” spray paint. But they can give it a shot.

You’re right that most car badges are plastic anyway, covered with a thin veneer of that flaky chrome effect stuff. I have no idea if it’s actually chrome or just some kind of shiny plastic, a hot-dip process, some kind of PVD or sputtering, or what.

This is one of those jobs that seems tailor made for 3D printing.

You may not find the font you need exactly, but you can probably doodle something up that’ll be close enough to get the point across, especially if you can get a good scan or image of the letters you have got, and copy them (and their style).

3D print your parts (in ASA/ABS or a fairly heat resistant material is probably a good idea) and use copper electroplating spray on it and then nickel plate the shit out of it to make it silver and shiny. Nickel plating is easy to do at home (unlike chrome plating) and pretty tough to screw up.

I already own that exact same Kuru Toga, so this one’s a no-brainer.

Anyone who deliberately picks the Sharpwriter or the Bic needs keeping an eye on; we need to keep those kinds of people on a list.