u/Own_Invite6340

It's clear that the hivemind doesn't behave like the average person (way too friendly and unselfish), or have the average person's value system (most people are fine with killing animals and plants in order to eat).

I had been assuming that the aliens imposed certain strict values on the hivemind like the no killing rule. Or maybe all of the humans are essentially braindead, just puppets of an alien who is remotely controlling them and has access to their memories.

But if it is just humanity, why won't they kill? Why do they love Carol's writing so much? Why are they so friendly? It doesn't seem to be a democracy in the plurb.

I think it's possible that whoever is the happiest, friendliest, and most peaceful and positive-sounding has control. If there's any level of individuality left in people, their opinions like "maybe we should farm food to stay alive" are being ignored. Only the happiest and most peaceful opinions get counted, no matter how much harm it causes.

The hivemind was created by a genetic code that's essentially like a computer program, and that program could come with certain rules that override the default behavior.

It reminds me of the Slylandro probes in Star Control 2, if anyone remembers that game. The friendly Slylandro aliens sent robotic probes out to explore the galaxy and make friends with other species. The probes could also collect metal and create duplicates of itself, and the Slylandro set that as a high priority so that they could have lots of probes and explore the galaxy much faster that way.

The result was that the probes would meet you (the player), say "we come in peace" and initiate a polite discussion, and then attempt to destroy your ship so they can use the metal to make more probes.

I wonder if a friendly alien wanted to make the human hivemind as happy and successful as possible, and had a disastrous programming error, not realizing that this could result in the hivemind refusing to feed itself.

Without getting into the whole debate here, I was on the side of "Joel did nothing wrong" because Ellie never gave consent for what Abby's dad was going to do. I was surprised that many people thought otherwise, and believed that the potential benefit to humanity mattered more than Ellie's consent.

In Pluribus, most of humanity is forced to join a human hivemind without their consent, with only a few people on Earth being biologically incompatible with it. The human collective mind claims to be happy about it, war and conflict and exploitation have ended, there's peace on Earth.

Again, my position is "this is a bad thing, people did not consent to it". I was curious if supporters of the Fireflies took the opposite view, that the end of all of those destructive behaviors of humanity is such a huge benefit that it matters more than consent.

Or are these situations not similar to you? Does it make a difference that it's billions of people's consent being ignored, while in TLOU it was only Ellie's?

Without getting into the whole debate here, I was on the side of "Joel did nothing wrong" because Ellie never gave consent for what Abby's dad was going to do. I was surprised that many people thought otherwise, and believed that the potential benefit to humanity mattered more than Ellie's consent.

In Pluribus, most of humanity is forced to join a human hivemind without their consent, with only a few people on Earth being biologically incompatible with it. The human collective mind claims to be happy about it, war and conflict and exploitation have ended, there's peace on Earth.

Again, my position is "this is a bad thing, people did not consent to it". I was curious if supporters of the Fireflies took the opposite view, that the end of all of those destructive behaviors of humanity is such a huge benefit that it matters more than consent.

Or are these situations not similar to you? Does it make a difference that it's billions of people's consent being ignored, while in TLOU it was only Ellie's?

For her overseas sales and distribution, she asks for 30%, I assume Walt agreed to that number.

That leaves 70% for Walt, but he has to pay the Vamonos Pest guys around $75k per cook, and he also pays Todd a significant amount as his lab assistant. Probably not a 50/50 split like Jesse got, but I think a reasonable guess might be 20% of the profit.

I'm just guessing of course, but I'd say Walt receives close to half of the total profit. And in only about 3 months, he had over 80 million dollars to put into those barrels.

So if Walt's 50% was worth 80 million, Lydia's 30% would be worth 48 million. Since no one ever found out that Lydia was involved, if she was smart with her money, then she's left her daughter well over $50 million. Kaylee Ehrmantraut got nothing, but Lydia's daughter ends up very wealthy.

If Walt had cooked for a full year, he could have made $320 million, meaning that the entire business makes $640 million per year. Assuming zero future growth, an online form that I found to determine the estimated value of a business shows that a company making 640M per year would be valued at about $3.2 billion.

Do you think Walt's decision to quit would be motivated by the fact that he out-did Gretchen and Elliott, even if he can't actually sell the company for billions?

Do you think my estimates on these numbers are close to accurate, or way off target? Did I miss anything obvious?

There's a power dispute, the associates aren't sure who to send their percentage to, and they're being threatened with death if they don't kick up to the right proclaimed boss.

Why not just pay both for a month or so? I get that Lorraine and everyone in this show is greedy, but giving up 10% of your income for a little while is worth it to avoid being caught up in the power struggle, isn't it?

I'm new to learning about car maintenance, all the online guides say "change oil once a year" so I assume that should be done, I'm just looking for some info on why that is from an actual person.

My retired mom has a 2004 Camry and rarely drives it anymore. Sometimes it sits untouched for 2 months in the winter. It's been driven around 250 miles since the last oil change exactly 1 year ago.

I checked the level on the dipstick which was fine, and the oil I wiped onto the paper towel was light colored like new oil, for what that's worth.

Does it really need to be changed when it's had so little use? I understand that the mileage isn't the only thing that matters, driving 5000 miles in 6 months is not the same as driving 500 miles a year for 10 years, that the quality of the oil declines over time.

But just how much does it decline? Is it really in terrible condition and in need of changing after a year no matter what? Does time really ruin the oil as much as thousands of miles of driving?

I don't mind changing it, I'm just looking for any more info beyond "change it once a year because we said so". Thanks

I'm a huge Alpha 2 fan, it's my favorite SF and I used to travel to tournaments for it, and I guess I'm getting old because I can't remember why no one seemed to be playing it on consoles back at that time.

Obviously this was back in the time when console ports were inferior and didn't have identical gameplay to the arcade, but most of them did all right on console. SNES and Genesis SFs were insanely popular, PS1 and Saturn had passable versions of Darkstalkers and Alpha 1, but I never heard about anyone playing Alpha 2 on a console at the time. And then every single person I know had Alpha 3 on PS1 when it came out, I remember being impressed at how much Capcom was able Alpha 3 look so good on that hardware.

Was there something wrong with the console versions of A2, bad controls, long loading times, missing content? Or was it widely played all around the world and it just so happens that every competitive player in my city avoided it for no logical reason? I'm just totally drawing a blank on why I and every other person who loved Alpha 2 didn't buy it on console ASAP like we did with Alpha 3 and other games.

I've done some DIY stuff but have been completely ignorant when it comes to cars and I'm trying to change that. My 2016 Honda CRV needs an oil change, and I might want to replace the brakes as well if/when it needs it.

If I use jack stands and put blocks behind the wheels to prevent rolling, is the basic jack that came with the car good enough? And yes I'm aware to never get under a car using only a jack alone. Thanks