Tieflings. The “alignment” section of the 5e PHB (before they decided describing alignments was racist and removed it) read:

Tieflings might not have an innate tendency toward evil, but many of them end up there.

Which is such a powerful storytelling device. It does what sci-fi and fantasy are so often great at: comment on real-world social issues with a step of indirection that makes the story feel less on the nose. Their internal innate selves are indistinguishable from humans, but because they have horns, a devil’s tail, and often reddish skin, people assume they’re evil and treat them accordingly.

It’s an element that is handled so excellently by Erin M. Evans in her Brimstone Angels series:

A woman stood in the doorway opposite the bench, watching Farideh with a wary eye, no subtlety in her distaste. Farideh shifted uncomfortably.

“You waiting for someone?” the woman said after an interminable time.

“My friend,” Farideh said. “He won’t be long.”

“Buying spices from another devilborn.” She sniffed. “Your kind do like to stick together.”

Farideh’s tail flicked nervously. She pulled it closer to lie along her thigh. “My friend’s human, many thanks.”

“Is he now?” Farideh met the woman’s skeptical gaze. Without the ring of white humans were used to, Farideh’s eyes were unreadable. Emotionless. Inhuman. The shopkeeper could stare as long as she liked and Farideh knew she wouldn’t see anything there, not without practice.

“Do you want me to have him show you?” Farideh said. “Or do you want to say what it is you’re getting at?”

Farideh knew perfectly well what the shopkeeper was getting at: she didn’t belong here. Whatever clientele the shopkeeper was used to dealing with, a seventeen-year-old tiefling trying to rein in the tendrils of shadow that curled and coiled around the edges of her frame was not a part of it

Longer excerpt available on author’s blog. (It’s book 3 of the series, but no significant spoilers here.)

Of course that’s only one small part of the characters, but it’s done so well. They’re well-rounded full people who, like any real human, have to deal with getting through life (in their case, fantasy action adventures) while other people react to them.

I think a colon would be the most apt punctuation here.

The tracks are now unruly and wild, the people tied to them: killed in crosswalks

But to be honest I was fine with no punctuation. The bit that most bothers me is the choice of preposition. You don’t go in a crosswalk. You go on it. Or maybe you’re at the crosswalk when you’re killed. But certainly not in.

Dark Cloud. A bit of a cult classic, a PS2 launch title that seems like it was supposed to be Sony’s answer to the Zelda franchise but never managed to take off. Still a great game with a banger soundtrack.

Age of Mythology, recently remastered & rereleased. See also [email protected]

More people exist who cannot drive than who have to drive due to disability. Car-centric infrastructure is incredibly ableist.

Cadbury Bubbly does it too, though sadly I haven’t seen any of it on shelves (apart from the mint variant, eww) for a few years.

Every one of Innuendo Studio’s videos are absolutely excellent.

Why would you say something so controversial yet so brave?

Oh I see, interesting. I guess they’re named after the fact that normally they’re at a restaurant?

The Wikipedia article was…interesting. The first paragraph of the “history” section seemed like someone had removed a sentence at random. “After that initial meeting”, without ever having described any first meeting, but having set the stage where such a first meeting might take place. If someone has knowledge & sources about that first meeting, that’d be a great opportunity to improve Wikipedia.

How does one munch at a library? Isn’t that usually frowned upon?

We could have used the tilde, which has been used in formal logic & maths for negation in very many contexts for a long time.

It’s used instead in C and many C-like languages for the far less useful bitwise negation. Of course, we could have had it work in the same way as bitwise vs logical and & or, by dialling up the symbol. Which would have massively improved its visibility compared to the bang.

But for some reason, no. They chose the bang instead.

It means slightly better than—but just slightly—America’s Democrats.

Though fyi in Australia we spell it Labor. It’s labour in any other context, but our political party is Labor.

I went on a long run on the 1st September. First day of Spring down here in the southern hemisphere. Basically still winter. And it was 32 °C by the time I finished at 10 am. Over 30. In the morning. Just one day after winter. Wtf.

Or that you’re going to pull back your shower curtain one day, and there’s going to be a bear in your shower?

Ha! Joke’s on you. I don’t have a shower curtain!

No, it is genuinely a good point. The fact that its use so far has been entirely limited to the two that ended WW2 was certainly not a given. Some US military leaders wanted to use nuclear weapons in Korea.

The Korean War was so soon after WW2 that the strong taboo against the use of nuclear weapons hadn’t yet taken hold, and the USSR had a miniscule stockpile, so the US could genuinely have done it with limited risk to themselves. The fact that they didn’t use them is a really important turning point that helped build in the taboo against their use that has so far held to this day.

I’m not going to deny that that might be true in some US states’ laws. But it is not true morally or philosophically. From the first sentence of the Wikipedia article on wage theft:

Wage theft is the failing to pay wages or provide employee benefits owed to an employee by contract or law.

Later in the same paragraph, it includes as an example:

not paying annual leave or holiday entitlements

It is pretty uncontroversial that not paying overtime bonus rates is wage theft, and that article goes to great lengths to describe how misclassification (e.g. classing someone as a contractor when they are in fact a direct employee) is wage theft not just philosophically, but at times in the US legally.

Here in Australia, a classic example of wage theft that we hear about companies getting fined for a lot is failure to pay superannuation. A US equivalent to that might be if they failed to pay into a 401k contribution match when their employment contract stated they would. It’s not “wage” per se, but it is part of the agreed compensation for work.

Leave entitlements are no different. Whether the law recognises it correctly or not, taking away people’s annual leave is wage theft.

Where I live, failing to give people their legally-mandated annual leave would be no different to failing to pay them their salary. If they resign or are let go, you have to pay out their annual leave (one day of annual leave = one day of extra pay).

They can reasonably instruct you to use your leave if it’s building up too much (but what’s “reasonable” or “too much” are not specifically legally defined), but they cannot just take it away. Annual leave is literally part of your legal entitlements.

US having laws that permit wage theft? Colour me entirely unsurprised.

Your leave resets? That sounds illegal.

The only country whose opinion should matter here is Taiwan. If and when they decide they want to be recognised officially, they should be. Not before, and not after.

A few problems with this. That requires a world experienced in 2D, with one axis being towards or away from the centre, and the other being clockwise or anticlockwise. Works great when discussing intragalactic travel, but OP specified intergalactic travel. Where there is neither an obvious centre point nor a single plane on which things predominantly occur.

Though fwiw, language very similar to that is legitimately used in some real world languages. Some Malayo-Polynesian languages, such as Manam, talk about direction in terms of seaward, inland, clockwise, and anticlockwise.