An alternative is we are among the first. Third generation stars are the ones that have planets with enough heavy elements to allow for complex chemistry. Sol (our star) is thought to be among the first batch of third generation stars in our gallexy.

Light speed does seem to be the upper speed limit for the universe. Talking that into account we probably haven’t had a chance to see other early life as it would likely be spread pretty thin right now.

The main reason for there being so many varieties is that at some point in the past the plants genome tripled. With three copies of the genome not only was there a higher chance of mutation but a mutation didn’t deleted the original dna segment as it was in the other copies.

There are a subset of vegans who are very vocal an pushy about being vegan.

There are a lot people who think vegan food is just salads.

Vegans often don’t actually remember what meat tastes like. I have several very nice vegan friends. They sometimes that something tastes just like meat and you can’t tell the difference. In sorry but I can tell and vegan meat substitutes are often bad.

It’s too bad because there are a lot of tasty and satisfying vegan dishes but they are usually not trying to mimic meat. I love fried tofo or mapo tofu. I’ve never had a good tofu burger.

There are also a lot of vegans who are all or nothing. I eat meat but I also try to limit the amount. I don’t need meat at every meal. Some act like that’s the same as eating streak for the meals a day.

There is also a lot of complexity eating vegan. Just cooking for vegan friends can almost double the complexity.

I primarily limit meat because of environmental reasons. And frankly my backyard chickens are lower impact then that avocado at the store.

Naked Lunch.

“The boy looks into Mugwump eyes blank as obsidian mirrors, pools of black blood, glory holes in a toilet wall closing on the Last Erection.”

In other news Ben Franklin steals time machine hits all the best parties throughout time.

I remember that the location of the reaction is random and happens anywhere along the beam path. So they are safer to use at long range like from orbit as the reaction is less likely to be close to the shooter.

Berkshire Hathaway owns Geico the car insurance company. In one of his annual letters Buffett said that autonomous cars are going to be great for humanity and bad for insurance companies.

“If [self-driving cars] prove successful and reduce accidents dramatically, it will be very good for society and very bad for auto insurers.”

Actuaries are by definition bad at assessing new risk. But as data get collected they quickly adjust to it. There are a lot of cars so if driverless cars become even a few percent of cars on the road they will quickly be able to build good actuarial tables.

We have set up the world to be very usable and traversable by humans. A robot in that form would be able to go and do most things. Think of all the changes to places that needed to be made as part of the ADA. And those were for humans with relatively small changes such as wheels instead of legs.

Alex Baldwin as an actor pointing the gun and pulling the trigger was not what he did wrong. All of the was planned and part of the scene. Movie sets have different and strict rules about guns. You get the weapon from the armorer and only use it for the actions in the scene.

So if the scene doesn’t have you removing the magazine you don’t remove it. Even to check if it’s loaded. This prevents stuff like the actor goofing around and accidentally loading it.

What Alex Baldwin the producer did wrong was ignore multiple warnings and walkouts about the armorer not taking proper safety precautions. Like taking the guns off set to go shooting. He could and should have fired her.

Alex Baldwin would have been just as guilty if it was some other actor who had aimed and fired the weapon.

I did. My mobile keyboard sucks and changes things when I start a new word. I often miss it.

Simple answer is they are careful about what they say and have good lawyers that review it.

A few examples.

Calling Tom Cruise a fudge packer in the context of him being in a bathhouse could eaisly open them up to liability for calling him gay. But doing it in a fudge factory while showing him putting fudge in a box gives them a clear defense that they meant it literally.

Simmaraly telling him to come out of the closet while he is actually in a closet provides cover.

Making things so absurd that a reasonable person wouldn’t believe it and know it’s a joke also works. So having Barbara Streisand aquire an artifact that makes her into a giant robot monster works but something plausible wouldn’t.

Having Kanye open up and admit he is a gay fish is absurd enough to provide protection. However they probably couldn’t get away with him simply coming out as gay.

Of course the genius of south park is they use these legal protections in ways that make the story funnier and not just for cover.

I’ll add that the sun is a 3rd generation star which are the stars that have planets with lots of heavy atoms like iron and other important to complex chemistry atoms. The sun is thought one of the eariler such stars.

Combine that with it being highly probable that light speed really is the upper limit for the universe. So we are among the first planets likely to be able to support life and and all the others are very far away.

So we are probably among the first batch of life in the galaxy and all the other life is likely very far away. It’s not surprising we haven’t seen any signs of it even though there is probably a fair amount of it out there.