[–] 3 points 3 weeks ago*

I'm sure I'll be easily shown to be wrong, but I assumed that it's because the universe's mass is finite and that the all-powerful infinity stones only freely manipulate the substance of the universe, and therefore work with limited material. In that case, doubling resources in one place means repurposing equivalent mass from other areas.

The other problem is how you implement this solution across the universe: do you re-engineering biological systems to be twice as efficient? Do you double the input energy? What about non-biological resources: do you speed up geologic processes? Do you simply increase the size and mass of each world and assume twice the resources are available and accessible? How deep of an understanding of each ecosystem is needed to account for all potential target populations, and can a single mind hold all that information in place while giving the infinity stones such a command?

Most pertinently, Thanos was a cynic. He didn't trust any higher lifeform to not ultimately be shortsighted and selfish, and so his brute force solution was a culling.

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  • [–] 9 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    OOPs initial instinct was correct. You're supposed to answer truthfully based on your actual observed experiences, not answer questions about others' assessments your behavior with your own internal assessment of that behavior. Overthinking surveys can skew answers inappropriately.

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  • [–] 23 points 9 months ago*

    Afaik, English grammar requires utterances with predicates to have a stressed element in those predicates. Contractions of only a subject and an auxiliary verb - ex: I am > I'm, he has > he's, they will > they'll - eliminate that independent auxiliary as a prosodic segment and violate that grammar.

    A - "Who's going to the store?"

    B - "I am." [ok] or "I'm going." [ok] (or "I am going."), but not "I'm." [bad, obvs].

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago*

    That makes sense. I should have been more emphatic that if/when the subjunctive shows up in speech, it should exist for largely the same purposes it serves in other languages... granted, even in that case, it's less complex than in other languages.

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago* (2 children)

    There's at least the wiki article on the English subjunctive.

    Personal disclaimer: To me (though I'm not a perfect reporter), (American) English feels like it barely has a subjunctive mood in practice anymore. If you're familiar with the pragmatic application of the subjunctive in your own language or others, that may help, but YMMV for how often and how consistently you'll hear it used in everyday English speech (at least in the US).

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