u/Simon_Drake

Also non-humidity related particulates in the air.

There's an episode of Mythbusters about using an industrial sandblaster to strip the paint off a huge length of PVC pipe used for protecting underground power cables or something. And supposedly the pipe was standing on insulating wooden stands that allowed it to build up a static charge. Eventually the sand blasting builds up enough charge to knock the man off his feet and throw him across the room.

So they tested it. Big piece of pipe, wooden stands, sand blaster, electrical equipment to monitor any charge. They had breathing equipment so they didn't choke and a sealed chamber so it didn't flood the workshop with dust. And to start they DID build up a static charge, quite quickly at first but then less and less until it stopped increasing no matter how long they kept sandblasting. It turns out the sand dust in the air carried away the static charge almost as fast as it was being generated so they couldn't build up a lethal charge.

Personally I think there's a long long long setup explanation for why Worldhoppers almost always use fake names on their new planets.

Maybe there's some sort of "homing spell" or magical tracking device you can use to pinpoint someone IF you know their true name. Or it's a Voldemort thing. You can hear everyone on Roshar that uses the name Vasher so if people call him Zahel it's much harder to track him.

Which would mean Hoid choosing to be called Hoid everywhere is him being a troublemaker and deliberately ignoring the regular process. Or he's got some other protection against the tracking spell so he thinks it's funny to keep using the name Hoid on every planet. That's the kind of annoying thing he would do. Everyone else is turning off their phones to avoid being tracked if their GPS gets tracked and Hoid tweets out his Find My iPhone details so everyone can track him.

Alternatively, it might be some kind of True Name magic. Hoid isn't his real name, the Shards know him as Cephandrius but Brandon has said that's not his real name either. Nor any of the other names he's been called along the way, Wit, Midius, Topaz, Lunu'anaki etc. So maybe he's keeping his True Name secret because he knows the people from Planet Blipblop can use True Name magic to control you. The second most prolific Worldhopper, Vasher, has almost as many names as Hoid.

So maybe they know something we don't. And in five years time we'll all be saying "Wow so all those fake names had a purpose all along, now we met the Blopboppians it makes more sense."

That's probably going to be hard to find by definition. For it to be an invasive species that is notable as an invasive species it needs to thrive in the new habitat which usually means not having any relevant predators. I guess technically a breeding pair of European Red Squirrels transplanted into the Amazon would count as an invasive species but they wouldn't be invasive for long before some snake gobbled then up.

You might be able to have an invasive species with a short lifecycle that thrives in the new habitat until a seasonal change brings a predator back. Perhaps some sort of Peruvian Locust that thrives in low temperatures could become an invasive species in Scotland in winter. Then in summer when the Scottish birds migrate back home they find a banquet of locusts to eat.

Or maybe something that relies on complex lifecycles. Something that is prey to a frog but inedible to tadpoles and can rapidly flourish while the tadpoles are swimming then get wiped out when the froggos start hopping. I was going to say those bugs that swarm en masse on prime number years. But I think they eat in their larval form and don't bother eating when they're flying about so that wouldn't matter.

My eBay account is 22 years old but it wouldn't let me buy a pack of utility knife blades unless I uploaded photo ID to prove I was over 18.

So I went to a regular store and bought them. I was ranting to the checkout girl about it and realised my eBay account is older than her. She probably told all her friends about the dirty old hobo that crawled out of the sewer to tell her stories of The Before Times.

Saladfingers

You can store static electricity in a Leyden Jar. You can make one out of jam jars and tin foil, even better if you use thicker metal like sheets of tin/copper from a plumbing or model making supply store.

Or he could make a Wimhurst Machine. Not great for carrying around with him but he could use it to charge a Leyden Jar.

To do it on the fly it's probably a matter of choosing the right shoes, underwear and trousers. Or maybe TWO layers of trousers of the right fabrics then running generates a charge.

Boiled leather is surprisingly tough, especially on top of a thick woolen gambeson.

The classic samurai armour was made of tiles of wood coated in a lacquer to reinforce them and then lashed together with thin chords of leather. Wooden shields were a similar construction and reminiscent of modern plywood. A thin sheet of wood is stronger in one direction than another because of the wood grain but if you stack two thin layers of wood with the grain at different angles it's a lot stronger. You can get something pretty strong out of just wood sheets, glues and lacquers made from animal products, choosing a suitably strong type of wood etc.

You could combine the two concepts into a sortof Brigandine setup. Panels of wood on boiled leather.

But the real question is what sort of weapons are they fighting against. Improvements in armour was an arms race against the improvements in weapons. If they're fighting people with flint-tipped spears they might not need strong armour. Which also means the elites / royal guards with steel armour would be almost indestructible unless you can knock him over.

IRL metallurgy progressed very slowly from the Roman era to the Victorian era, at least compared to the very rapid progression that happened after that.

One major breakthrough was the invention of the Blast Furnace. There was no technological limitation preventing the Romans from inventing a blast furnace, it didn't need some new mineral that was only available in the new world, it was about inspiration and ideas. A culture that has access to human flamethrowers can theoretically invent and refine the technology of blast furnaces a lot faster than in real life.

The next major breakthrough was the cyclical process of industrial metalworking tools. Roman smiths used hammers powered by their own arms, medieval smiths used bigger hammers raised by pulleys powered by waterwheels/windmills, Victorian smiths used even bigger hammers powered by steam pressure. Steam hammers meant they can work larger metal pieces, make bigger tools and stronger pieces of steel which means larger steam hammers. Hydraulic presses, brakes, sheers, drills, mills, lathes, all of them can be made bigger and stronger which allows you to make even bigger and better tools in the future. It's self-accelerating. So once the Fire Nation starts to benefit from the industrial revolution (As they undoubtedly did) they would dedicate more resources into improving this process and making better tools to make better tools.

So the tech level needed to make steam tanks and airships could easily have developed from there to even more advanced technology in the next couple of years. The biggest factor would be political change. The new Firelord is close friends with Sokka who is friends with The Mechanist and they can work together to develop new technology. Maybe they could work with the Avatar and Earth King to set up humanitarian efforts to rebuild the Earth Kingdom, including industrial efforts similar to the Old West railways project. But the exact opposite could also be possible, Zuko might deliberately de-industrialise and dismantle all the steam tank factories because they were engines of war. They might not see the civilian benefits and decide removing that military advantage is a benefit to world peace. So it could go either way.

Now do one of Nigel with Russian spies and people currently in prison for being paid to act as propaganda agents of Russia.

1. Don't be a prick

2. You're rambling incoherently about semantics as a cover for being factually wrong about stab wounds. Get a grip.

3. What country? Reddit is an international platform. I'm not from the same country as you.

4. You're now banned from this subreddit because you clearly can't be trusted to have an adult conversation. And nothing of value was lost.

He comes back to life after dying so I think it's safe to say his hormone and neurotransmitter levels are reset too.

That's not true. Not even close. Lots of people survived stab wounds before the invention of antibiotics. A lot didn't and infections were a big problem but to say they ALL died is absurd.

And you followed it up with a bizarre rambling philosophical rant about the nature of truth.

Are you actually serious or are you doing this as a prank?

There was a British plane that had to turn around because someone did an unholy poop in the tiny bathroom that stunk up the entire plane. There's news articles but no pictures thankfully.

He had a lot more to do on Babylon 5 than he ever did on Star Trek. The majority of his lines on Star Trek were "Yes Keptain" and the trivial fluff you could give to an extra about Klingons off the starboard bow. He gets a couple of funny lines about the great power of Mother Russia and some jokes about his accent. But that's about it.

What is Chekov's most iconic moment? The "Botany Bay?" realisation from Wrath Of Khan? That's a pretty good scene but if that line was given to Spock or Kirk or McCoy it wouldn't even break the Top 10. That's only a significant line because Chekov has so few memorable moments. He shouldn't even be in that scene because Chekov somehow recognises Khan despite not being on the show in Season 1 when they first met Khan. Koenig knew this and didn't tell the writers because he didn't want Kelley or Doohan to get the scene instead.

What is Bester's most iconic moment? It would be hard to narrow down a Top 10. Many of them have been posted here as GIFs in the last 24 hours. "Biologically impossible, Mr Garibaldi" or snatching the memory from the man as he's dying. "Weapons supplies... at least that's what I was told. I didn't find out the details until later." You could choose a scene with major plot relevance or a comedic scene like "I want your body", there's a whole range to pick from.

What does Chekov have? Nuclear Wessels?

Add Bester to the list.

It's wild how many B5 cast are gone and how much of the TNG crew are still around.

IIRC there's also a single frame of CGI animation from Captain Power included in a jump gate sequence in Babylon 5 somewhere. There's some bug in the rendering engine that the very first frame it spits out is merged with the last frame the software rendered, even if it's unrelated. Which is dumb but they just learned to purge whatever data was lingering before starting a new project. Well apparently someone forgot and one of them slipped through the cracks. I couldn't tell you which episode but JMS talked about it on an old Usenet post that was archived to a Geocities website that you could access from the Weyback Machine. Man the internet is weird with archiving these days.

I don't know about this. What was that?

Or most of the Sebacians in Farscape have Australian or New Zealander accents.

That would make an awesome setting for a spin off show. An unconventional spinoff prequel that changes the storytelling structure completely.

I call it Babylon 0. This is the administration hub overseeing construction of Babylon 1, a few years after the Earth Minbari war. All the Earthforce officers are having PTSD issues readjusting to a life of peace and managing construction projects.

The story alternates between mundane practicalities of building a giant space station and lengthy flashbacks to the war but told from the perspective of different characters. Later we see the arc plot of someone trying to sabotage the station and eventually construction of Babylon 2.