All of my IRL friendships are based around activities - we play games together, we volunteer together, etc. When someone moves away and we try to keep the friendship going, it always just sputters out after a few weeks or months. It just seems to devolve into small-talk / catch-ups that neither of us are really interested in (I don't mind small-talk too much, but it can't be 100% of any meaningful relationship).

So: What is the point of a long-distance friendship for two people who have no plans to live locally again? What am I missing?

EDIT: I have close conversations in person that are deep and meaningful, just very rarely over text. Maybe I ought to phone or video call once in a while..

I misread the community name first time I saw it and now I can't get that name out of my head

If the remap is better in every way, why wasn't it just made like that in the factory? What am I missing?

Although the TARDIS is technically a time machine, for most episodes the Doctor could rock up in a bus and it wouldn't change anything.

The most obvious answer for me is Blink, with the conversation on the DVD Easter egg. Very cool use of time travel, and seeing it come together is brilliant.

I'll also add Waters of Mars. It's not really got any time travel in, but I feel like the foreknowledge which shapes the plot just about counts.

What are your favourites and why?

I think it's a tobacco trial. The main character is the wife of one of the jurors? I think the bad guy / big company is trying to buy the jurors out by using the services of the wife

An option for me to buy a house has come up very suddenly and it seemed like a good idea at first - but I look at a mortgage and think "that's 15 years I'll spend paying back, at absolute minimum. Probably more like 25 years" - how can I possibly plan that far in advance?

So, how did you feel about getting a mortgage and seeing such a serious commitment stretch so far into the future? I'm mainly talking about the emotional side of things rather than financial

Cooking my dinner, best set a timer because I'm bound to forget it's in the over.

Get bored and start reading book.

Timer's done - I'll turn off the alarm and just finish the page.

Ten minutes later ...Wait, what's that burning smell?

I've been driving a van for a couple of years now, but I'm much more used to driving a car. My van is heavier and has much less power than my car and I sometimes have trouble merging onto fast roads so I'm looking for any insight from more experienced van drivers.

I don't have rear windows or a rearview mirror (only side mirrors) so visibility isn't always great. The van's also pretty slow, so I'm usually only going 50-60mph as I merge. This isn't a problem on motorways because the slip roads are so long I can plan my spot to merge easily enough. On dual carriageways where the slip roads can be really short, it feels like all I can do is put my foot down and hope. There's sometimes only a few seconds where the sliproad and main road are lined up such that I can see traffic in my mirrors, and by then I'm pretty much stuck at whatever speed my poor van has given with my foot to the floor.

Bigger and heavier vehicles than mine merge safely all the time, so I must be missing something. I'm also fairly inexperienced with such slip roads because there are no examples near me. I only encounter them a couple of times a year.

Looking for songs where there's a very definite, regular beat that's played by a non-percussion instrument. (piano counts as non-percussion for this particular request).

The pertinent ruling is apparently

608.2g: If an effect gives a player the option to pay mana, they may activate mana abilities before taking that action. If an effect specifically instructs or allows a player to cast a spell during resolution, they do so by following the steps in rules 601.2a-i, except no player receives priority after it's cast. That spell becomes the topmost object on the stack, and the currently resolving spell or ability continues to resolve, which may include casting other spells this way. No other spells can normally be cast and no other abilities can normally be activated during resolution.

EDIT: the above rule is why you can cast spells with Gix. There's a ruling on Xanathar that says "Xanathar doesn't change when you can cast spells [...] You must still follow all normal timing rules"

Very fun, upbeat song about someone figuring out their life. I like this song a lot and it's one of the rare occasions where I feel the music video adds to the story in the song.

Let's imagine it's currently Wednesday the 1st. Does "next Saturday" mean Saturday the 4th (the next Saturday to occur) or Saturday the 11th (the Saturday of next week)?

Having diverse worlds and representing different types of people is a good thing. For something like skin colour, sexuality or gender it's very easy to just say that your character posseses those qualities because it doesn't necessarily change much about them. However, how do people feel about playing NPCs who are neurodivergent?

The main example I'm thinking of is someone with Down syndrome. I don't have that lived experience to draw from because I don't have Down syndrome, but I also feel that these people (like all people) can be valuable members of society and I don't like to see them excluded. Therefore, I would want to see them in my fantasy worlds too. The problem is, I worry I'd mainly be falling back on stereotypes in a potentially harmful and offensive way.

EDIT: I would especially like other neurodivergent people to chime in, of course. Personally I really like to see representation for my neurodivergence in D&D and other literature, but also it can really upset me when it's done badly and it's worse than nothing at all

Let's say that it's scientifically proven that ghosts exist. Would they then stop being supernatural and become natural, thus making it impossible to ever have proof of the supernatural?

I was rewatching the film recently and again I was impressed by the use of language. In the training scene with Gurney, there was a direct quote from the book - "you're not in the mood for fighting? Wtf?" (Paraphrase). Most of the film also used Dune language. But I felt that when Paul and Jessica were alone in the desert, they stopped speaking "Dunish" and started speaking English. Did anyone else notice this / feel this way too?

If it helps, it was Verstappen who did it on a British circuit. Based on a dream real events

I really love sci-fi novels and I read a lot of books. I read 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson a while back and that book is particularly interesting to me. Rather than each chapter advancing the narrative of the story, there were occasional breaks where a chapter would have a list of semi-random words which just gave the vibe of what's happening, or some history of a scene, or a recipe for how to build an asteroid.

There's another book that I have heard of but neglected to write the name down, where the reader of the book is a character within the book, and the narrator speaks directly to you (but not a choose-your-adventure style book).

All of this got me interested in finding other books, preferably sci-fi or maybe fantasy, where the concept of being a book is played with and new ideas are tried. Any recommendations?