There is also two books by Jacqueline Carey that take that premise; The Sundering and Godslayer. Basically the "Sauron" of the book gave a gift to mankind "Quickening" or lust so they end up procreating more and the other gods got jelouse and pushing him and started a war against him. He basically becomes the god of those lost and rejected by society. It's really good but very sad.

Except we CAN MAP dark matter in the universe, so we know it is there. MOND does a poor job of explaining that map. There are also a few good explanations for what Dark Matter is, my personal fav is Axions.

They really didn't seem like they wanted students to learn, they did the bare minimum in classes and weren't available to help students. I suspect they just didn't want people to make it to advanced math classes unless they were naturally talented at math. Most of my classmates relied on volunteer help for the class, these were people that would spend hours in the library helping students and it wasn't even their job. Was so bad that the physics and engineering departments had to teach the math. While I was in university there was an attempt to save money by grading each department to see what could be cut, and the math department got a failing grade with a note "if math wasn't essential to so many other degrees we would recommend cutting the department." I know this is anecdotal but from what I could tell they learned that their department's key job was to weed out students, not to teach.

Don't know what other countries are like but in Canada this year the prices on books stopped being discounted for almost all stuff. So, I have moved to using Book Depository or local stores instead. Can't say I'm mad cause I hated using Amazon and just didn't realize Book Depository was so good. That's on me for being ignorant

Agreed, with the exception for Mars. Let private companies go out and mine on asteroids and even on the moon. But I think the long term goal of Mars should be population and terraforming, I don't see rampant capitalism able to succeed there. A whole new set of treaties would need to be set up for that.

It's great for either bad movies or movies that everyone has seen before. Me and my friends do this a lot for old movies, I just came back from a Space Jam watching. We've all seen it, so we don't have to bother with missing plot points, just joke about the movie while we are watching.

I really liked Blindness, it's a lot more speculative fiction but it gives a lens as to how society can break down. I found it extremely depressing too, because I do think a lot of it is very likely how people would act if something that bad happens to the world.

I should have taken more time to think before submitting, but adding to this. They seem to take a lot of their talking points from social media. For example, they jumped on the idea of "Why would the Romulans needs the Federations help to evacuate people?" Now, if they had analyzed it properly they would criticize that Picard said MILLIONS of lives were in jeopardy, however the planet is earth like and we know the planets have much higher population than earth so that is clearly wrong. Looking it up, the planet is supposed to have 18 BILLION lives on it. Include the surrounding planets and solar systems; hell yeah they would need help.

no, they cherry pick what they want to see, just take the surface and don't actually analyze anything. Your point about the Picard banner is the perfect example. In the finale of ST TNG Picard joins the crew to play cards and says "I should have done this sooner." Meaning he is wanting to become closer to the people around him. Plenty of people end up looking back at things they judged and think differently about them, the banner very much could be one of those things Picard looks back on as "I should have done this sooner."

Another thing that makes radiation treatment so great is that when particles pass through a material they lose almost all their energy at the end of their path. So when tuning radiation treatment therapy they do the calculations and program the correct energy level so they can make the particle decay very close to where they need them too. So it's not just aiming a gun, you are drilling into a specific depth too.

Scientific comics are a growing medium, even CERN employs comic artist because in physics pictures are very useful tools of communication. There are also plenty of historical comics, mostly biographies. As for my favorite scientific comic that is easily Alpha...Directions by Jens Harder. It tells the history of the universe from the big bang to the beginning of Homo-Sapiens, but it doesn't just linearly tell it, it blends in images of how ancient cultures understood the universe, of how different religions depicted it, but the science is all detailed out.

"Note that gamma decay is about the only kind of radiation that actually emits something with any ability to penetrate beyond the outer layers of your skin." Neutron radiation is actually the worst kind cause it penetrates right through almost anything but lead, and because of the much higher mass of neutrons it cause far more damage than gamma.

"I'm guessing that whatever contract he signed with the publisher may have prevented him from doing that."

This is it. I had a prof that would just give the textbook as online PDFs, students could choose to download, print or just read them online. However, once his book was published the publisher REQUIRED him to make students buy it and was not even allowed to send out the PDFs of his rough draft he had before he had finished the book. He was not a fan of it but the book wasn't a crazy expensive one and if people found any way of keeping costs down by sharing he was happy for that. This all comes back to the publishers forcing profs and universities to make expensive textbooks a requirement for classes. Many textbook companies have already made it so you have to buy new texts every year even with the same text, they just change the online course that you are marked on, so you can't get 2nd hand books or else you lose marks.

I would be for this if there weren't better options that are not available to me because of the shitty music industry. I want to use Pandora because it already does tailor made playlists that use much better algorithms and show me new music. But the music industry has no interest in letting customers find lesser known bands and no interest in letting people listen to what they want to. Instead the music industry is entirely invested in a few brands they want to sell and they will MAKE you like them. This will be the same few hundred tracks looped to what they want to sell you, and not giving you what you would be interested in.

I got into comics pretty heavily about 5 years ago and have fallen in love with the medium, the power of pictures and words is something that is overlooked by many (including many comic writers). It is an extremely expensive hobby though, so here are some tips to manage that:

Use the library: I first started getting into comics though libraries, they are fantastic and you can get a huge selection. Plus it's a great way to explore the genre, grab a bunch and if you don't like something, no sweat, move on to another book. In Canada (at least where I am in Canada) they separate the adult graphic novels from the all ages stuff, which is great cause some of those adult books can get very sexually explicit and violent. But it's also a way to help you sort for stuff you like, if you want biographies and mature content you have a separate section than the all ages which is where you will find most of your Marvel and DC content (though both have some adult content too)

Bargain bins: Most comic stores will have bargain bins were you can get graphic novels for about $5 or floppies for $.25-$1. Those are a good place to sample new stuff and I have found most of my favorite books in those.

Piracy sites: I won't be specific here cause I don't want to advertise any sites but I do pirate a lot of stuff, especially all the new series from Marvel/DC. Not many have the money to buy every new number 1 from Marvel DC to find the new good series, nor do I think a person should have to buy a book to sample it. There is also the problem that Marvel has been relaunching books once a year, this is a terrible business practice and should NOT be supported. So I usually pirate the first couple issues and if I like it I will buy them.

Marvel Unlimited: This is a good way to get old comics. It's a digital subscription service that allows you to read a TON of the back catalog. I find that the 80s and the early 2000s are two extremely good era's for Marvel and there is lots of good stuff on Marvel Unlimited.

It took me a while to hone in on the types of books I really like and it took a lot of experimenting with new types of books and a lot of just straight up gambling with random books from the bargain bin. But I feel I have a pretty good grasp on what I like now. As for science fiction here are some good ones to start on:

Ocean/Orbiter by Warren Ellis: collects 2 stories, he is known as one of the best comic writers and these two stories are my favorite. Orbiter is an uplifting story of a dystopia that finds it's love for space again
Orbital by Sylvain Runberg: (yes, can get confusing with the above comic) European comic and a bit Star Trekian in it where it's attempting to solve conflicts between species with politics. Not 100% successful cause then there would be no action, a nice blend of action and politics.
Star Trek Broken Mirror: Speaking of Star Trek. Takes place in the Mirror TNG Universe where the Federation Empire has been pushed back to earth. Oddly, Barclay is one of the main characters.
The Metabarons by Jodorworsky: If you want a weird space epic this is the best of the best. It follows a lineage of Metabarons as they become the most powerful warriors in the galaxy and how the traditions have come to be. It is mythical and beautiful.
The Nikopol Trilogy by Enki Bilal: Distant future and Ra has returned to earth because he needs to procreate so his lineage is preserved. There was a weird movie based on it call Immortal, half animated and half CGI character but before they could do that properly, so it's very visually weird but very well made.

There is also TONS of Marvel sci-fi, with stuff like Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Guardians of the Galaxy. Too much for me too list. But I hope this starts you off well. Oh, at some point you should read Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud, it is one of the only good analysis's of the comic medium and is a must read for fans of comics. Happy reading!