u/Ertata

Asking the question in the historical context, not to decide on nutrition in the modern day.

I know heating grains helped to unlock some nutrients and especially caloric content over just eating them raw. However did bread provide any nutritional benefits over just boiling the same grain as a porridge (a much simpler process), or was its popularity due to other factors?

Leprosy has been feared for the entirety of the history. I know it is curable nowadays, but I have a question about the "natural" course of the disease.

I remember reading a claim that Old World populations built genetic resistance to leprosy within the historic time - that even a 1000 years ago leprosy was more dangerous than it would have been today even if the drugs treating it disappeared. Does it have any basis? Alternatively is it possible that bacteria itself became less damaging like it happens with other infections sometimes? Or it is completely baseless and 2000 years ago it has been no more virulent than it is nowadays?

I am not new to GURPS but kinda avoided gadget-limited advantages as clunky. Likely my next campaign would absolutely need them.

What is commonly understood as "Unique"? The naive reading of the Basic Set suggests that it is "when the item is gone the points are gone" akin to a dead Ally. But application in books left me confused - Thaumatology clearly states that most "magic items" have Unique when statted as advantages unless they twist fate to return to you akin to Signature Gear, or Powers FAQ where it is stated "if power comes from the sword itself, add Unique" - supporting my naive reading - but RPM and Sorcery books provide discounts to point cost of abilities when enchanted into items without accounting for Unique - and yet provide no indication those gadgets are long-term protected investment. I understand that it is a small GMing headache - if you don't try to deprive players of Unique gadgets they get free points, if you do there is a possibility of resentment for screwing up with the character - but assuming people are sensible do you slap Unique on most magic items or not?

So the theoretical worldbuilding setup: a world that is somewhat similar to ours with hydrocarbon-and-water-based life, none of the theorized iron-and-sulfur or whatever. Also people live above the sea level and breathe the local atmosphere (whatever it is) and use iron or bronze tools.

In such circumstances is it possible to imagine atmospheric composition, density, or any other change in physical parameters of the entire planet making it impractical to use black powder as a propellant? It is fine if it explodes far more violently, or does not explode at all, the one thing it should not do is be useful to provide steady acceleration to projectiles of human-scale weapons. I don't think you can avoid basic elements of the black powder being available and have a life at the same time, so what can prevent it from working? I understand most people would be satisfied with "not invented here" or "a wizard did it" but it is interesting to try to solve it within real physics.

Stretch goal: Also make nitrocellulose non-viable as a controlled propellant too (fine if it explodes).

You have been given a task to travel into the past two thousands years ago and bring the light of the metric system to the world. You cannot bring any external object with you.

Assume you do not need to redefine the second, and astronomical observations give the best possible results given the limits of timekeeping back then. Given the technology of the time, what is the best you can do for other units - either right there and then or leaving instructions how to calculate them from the units you have established to the future scientists? Memorizing the lengths of your body parts probably is not the best way to define a metre, and kilogram defined as one liter of water is bound to be influenced by the local water to a perceptible degree.

P. S. Tagged as "physics" but any approach is welcome - whether you would recommend measuring height of the mountain peaks, or believe that carob seeds are actually uniform enough to offer the best approximation of a kilogram.

Heard the reference to people saying they did not see shitting and wanking in the Ep. 1, so what I've got is probably "Evil Dragon", but want to make double-sure

Acknowledgements: I know about his injury history and respect his struggle. This is not a critique of Tomokaze - it's wondering about his opponents.

So when you watch Tomokaze matches you basically know in advance what is he going to do - push forward for a while then pull back and use his height to slap his opponent down. It's not like the henka because you know it is coming sooner or later each match. I strongly suspect it is specifically his physical limitations that make hard for him to pull other moves, but in any case he does that one move over and over.

And yet the results speak for themselves - more than 3 years in a row in salaried ranks after his return, 6 basho in Makuuchi. I don't believe his opponents are scrubs by any measure.

So how they have not adapted to his ridiculously narrow style? Is it true you can hang in Juryo comfortably by practicing one slapdown 10 000 times? Or is it something that I am missing?

So I basically have no in-depth knowledge of horses but got interested recently (you can guess why).

I know that a lot of times if the chances of a horse's broken leg healing are slim or none it is euthanized. It has been that way for all known history. Yet for entirety of history people had "tripod" cats and dogs.

So in abstraction - if a well-off person wanted to keep a horse with non-functional or amputated leg alive can it be done in good conscience? Or would it suffer further health complications (if so, why)? In more general sense and without trying to take a stance here - is euthanasia for unhealing breaks mostly done for economical and cultural reasons or is it because of underlying biological reality and keeping three-legged horse alive would be considered fate worse than (painless) death?

Read Feersum Endjinn yesterday, deciphering the quarter of the book written "foneticly" to quote the book was an interesting distraction. Any other quality SF or Fantasy that employs significant amount (not just couple of characters' speech) of phonetic or otherwise non-standard spelling of English?