Laurentide

If I'm a plural system do we get to pick 3 for each of us? :)

If it's one set for everyone, I'm going with Shapeshifting, Healing, and the third kind of depends on how this stuff works.

Shapeshifting I'd take even if I was only allowed one power. I'd finally have a body that fits. Several of them, in fact. Some might even be human. We could swap between us physically, and turning into stuff for a while just sounds fun.

Healing because if I don't pick it I'm eventually going to regret it. Shapeshifting might already let me fix any damage that isn't incapacitating or instantly lethal, but that only applies to my own body. I'd want to be able to help others, too.

For the third power... Magic could mean a lot of things, including many on this list. Maybe it's a "jack of all trades, master of none" kind of deal, which I'd be fine with. A bunch of spells that cover a wide range of situations but aren't as strong as specializing in a single power.

Teleport is really appealing. Lots I can do with it if I can take people or things with me, or set up something long-range that doesn't require line of sight. If it also allows me to create permanent portals then we're really going to have fun.

Or I could take Invulnerability to remove that "incapacitating or instantly lethal" weakness and really lean into being some kind of unstoppable healer. Divine Powers? Depending on what that does, it could replace Healing while also giving a bunch of other benefits. Hell, if it lets me resurrect people too, and I also take Invulnerability, then I'm basically an emergency respawn point for the entire community.

Is this a trick question? You're you. No amount of bodily alteration will change that. Shapeshifting will, however, allow you to have the most you-like body imaginable.

From the article:

“Should we be supporting Independent candidates who are prepared to take on both parties?”

[Sanders’s question] was also influenced by the campaign of former union leader Dan Osborn, who ran this fall as a working-class independent in the deep-red state of Nebraska.

Against an entrenched Republican incumbent, and without big money backing or party support, Osborn shocked pundits by winning 47 percent of the vote.

Bernie Sanders: I think that what Dan Osborn did should be looked at as a model for the future. He took on both political parties. He took on the corporate world. He ran as a strong trade unionist. Without party support, getting heavily outspent, he got through to working-class people all over Nebraska.

It sounds like you can still get pretty far by just addressing the actual concerns of the working class and offering real solutions to problems. Still an uphill battle, definitely, but maybe not an insurmountable climb.

This was already explained to you earlier in the thread. "Male" and "female" are, biologically speaking, not distinct and mutually exclusive categories in humans. This is the case naturally, and the terms become even less useful once you account for those who modify parts of their biology, whether by surgery or by artificially triggering natural biological processes, to bring those parts into congruence with other parts of their biology.

"Biological male" is a slur. It has no basis in science. It's a term coined by bigots to misgender trans people with sciencey-sounding words so their abuse looks reasonable at a glance, in much the same way that proponents of Scientific Racism use pseudoscience in an attempt to legitimize white supremacy.

Also the term is referring to their original status pre-hormonal or other gender affirming care so no.

We already have a far less problematic set of terms for that: Assigned Male at Birth (AMAB) and Assigned Female at Birth (AFAB). "Biological male" is a scientifically misleading phrase that bigots invented to slander trans people and it should not be used by anyone.

Just as some AMAB (Assigned Male At Birth) men want to look more masculine and will work out at the gym or take testosterone supplements, some AMAB men are femboys and may temporarily take feminizing HRT to look less masculine.

Both are trying to change their bodies to better fit their gender identity, and femboy is clearly a different identity from gym bro, but they are both male gender identities.

The same reason anyone would be: because their current body doesn't match their gender identity and they want to change that. This person just happened to start inside the same arbitrary social category as their destination.

I'm aware that Purgatory isn't scriptural, and the community I was raised in believed a lot of stuff that wasn't found in the Bible. (It's one of the reasons I left.)

The point I was trying to make there is not "What is Heaven according to scripture?" I was speculating what heaven would need to be for me to consider it a paradise. And the answer I came to is that no place can be a paradise as long as I'm in it. Not because I think I'm a bad person, but because I have so much trauma and other mental baggage that I would be bringing with me. I would be too suspicious of a place with nothing bad in it to be able to enjoy it. I would unintentionally hurt those around me because of the pain I'm in. And those people would hurt me, and each other, because how many people actually manage to reach a state of complete emotional health before they die? No one is ready for paradise.

There would need to be a place and a time for healing the traumas of life before we could enter any kind of heaven. For this I borrowed the name Purgatory, because it seems to me a similar concept. And maybe the person who emerged from such a place would be so different that you couldn't really say they were me anymore, but I think I'm okay with that. I don't want to stay the person I am now; I want to become something better.

I guess that doesn't have much to do with your original point about people not understanding eternity, other than being in agreement that it wouldn't be a fun thing for humanity as we know it.

I made .iso files and mounted them in virtual drives to do the same thing. I could have used cracks but I didn't want a virus and I still had the delusion that doing things "fairly" actually meant anything.

As an ex-Christian I find it amusing that you chose to explain via parable. :)

However, I think there are some flaws to your story. You seem to assume that Heaven would be like getting permanently sealed into your own personal holodeck, alone, no contact with anyone but the entity that put you there, the computer loaded with complete records of everything that had existed up to the moment of your death but never updated beyond that. It's all so very static. Of course you would eventually go mad; what you're describing is just a more comfortable version of solitary confinement!

It's also not how Heaven was described to me when I still went to church. Some claimed we would all be sitting on clouds singing praise songs, forever experiencing a state of mindless ecstasy. (Which doesn't sound like much of an improvement.) Others claimed the Bible says we will be rulers in Heaven, and how can you be a ruler without something to rule over? (That seemed a little better, but I also don't really want to be some kind of king imposing my will on others.)

The most appealing concept of Heaven I've encountered so far is the one portrayed in the Housepets! comic. It's just another place, but one where everyone has agency and security and has been healed of whatever traumas ailed them in life. They are free to build, create, share, and grow as they like. You can still fuck off and become a hermit if you really want to, but most people choose to hang out in a big city. Some have jobs but there is no money or material needs; they work because they enjoy it or because they believe it's worth doing. One of the characters even chose to open a free massage parlor because they like helping people relax and wanted more opportunities to do that. And the mortal world still exists, so there are always new people to meet and new stories to read (or write!)

I could maybe spend eternity in a place like that. And if I had to change to make eternal existence possible, well, I'm not the same person I was five years ago and I have no desire to still be the same person five years in the future. I think if Heaven did exist, then Purgatory must also. Not as a place of punishment, but of healing. This world will crush your soul, and even the purest of saints (perhaps especially the purest of saints) carries too much pain and trauma with them for any place they exist to be a paradise. I think you're right that in order to be okay with eternity we would need to be changed into something unlike our current selves.

Sorry this got so long and rambley. I've spent a lot of time wondering what kind of hypothetical afterlife could possibly make this all worth it.

They're not talking about natural monopolies. A natural monopoly is when there's some barrier to entry that prevents competitors from entering the market, like a need for prohibitively expensive infrastructure.

What OP is talking about are situations like Walmart opening a store in a new location, operating it at or near a loss to drive the local competition out of business, and then jacking up prices once no competitors remain. The government isn't forcing them to do that.

I spent 30 years thinking I was cishet (and suffering for it). When I finally realized that I'm trans, it was like a dam bursting; suddenly everything about my identity was in question. I've gone from "Maybe I'm a girl" to "I'm a trans demi ND plural therian" in three years and I don't think I'm done discovering things about myself yet.