It’s been a couple of weeks since the last post. What can I say? summers are not easy to schedule a weekly post that take some not insignificant effort. Posting is not my superpower… which leads me to ask the LLM’s about the topic of Superpowers. So this week, thanks go to ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude for a bevy of questions I needed to sift through.
Let’s do this!

Onto the questions:

1. Which everyday task would benefit most from a useless superpower, like super-speed folding of laundry?

I think thermal control and cooking would be the go to.

2. What’s the most overrated superpower and why doesn’t it live up to the hype?

I think flight is. Flight without super strength or invulnerability or something like that would be near useless. Think about it.

3. If you could give your pet a superpower, what would it be and how would it change your daily life?

I think I would make my pet have the ability to be omnijocular (all funny, a la omnipotent, omniscient, etc…) When Chewie or Cesca would want to they would be able to snake anyone laugh.

4. Can a superpower be too powerful?

Yes. Next question.

5. Which obscure superpower would be the most useful in a zombie apocalypse? (e.g., super-fast knitting to make escape ropes?)

I think something like improved balance (even when unconscious), that way I could sleep in trees and on top of structures that Zombies could not get to. Zombies are not known for their agility.

6. How would your daily commute change if you had the power of flight, but could only fly three feet off the ground?

I work remotely from home, this would not do much to my commute, but I would love going to the grocery store.

7. If people had superpowers based on their worst habits, what powers would the world’s worst procrastinator have?

I think a procrastinator’s superpower would be the power of 75%. If the person waits until the last minute they get 3/4ths done or at a 3/4ths of perfect quality. (Honestly, you could just aim for 25% higher and get 93.75% every single time… or 89.06% depending on order of operations… percentages of percentages is confusing. Is it 75% of 125% or an additional 75% of the extra 25%… Anyway, I would game that system sooo hard.)

8. Would you prefer a power that makes you better at something you’re already good at or one that compensates for your greatest weakness? Why?

I would prefer powers that augmented something I am already good at. Why? Well, the things I am already bad at, I am probably bad at for a reason.

9. What’s the most embarrassing superpower someone could accidentally reveal at a dinner party?

Remember “The Spleen” from the movie “Mystery Men.” Yeah, a superpower of flatulence at a dinner party.

10. Would you rather have a superpower that makes you invincible to one specific thing, like office gossip, or one that allows you to control something really specific, like all the Wi-Fi signals in your house?

Since the house I am living in is basically a Faraday cage because of its construction materials, I like the idea of being able to control Wi-Fi signals. It would be great to boost the signal in the house.

11. If a superpower could be inherited like eye color, which ones would create the weirdest family dynamics?

Telepathy. Being able to read someone’s mind messes everything up. Especially family… thems some weird em-effers.

12. What superpower do you think would be the most difficult to control?

Time… the mathematics of it all. The Milky way is traveling at 2.1 Million KM/hr, and our solar system is traveling at 720,000 KM/hr and within the solar system the Earth is traveling at 107,000 KM/hr… To go back in time you would need to be able to calculate your correct position… or you are free-floating in the expanse of space.

13. Do you believe superpowers could ever exist in reality, or are they strictly fictional?

Totally fictional.

14. How do you think superpowers would change society if they were real?

I have no idea… it would be pretty crazy. Any true comicbook-esque superpower would alter how everyone looks at reality.

15. What ethical dilemmas could arise from having superpowers?

Equitability.

16. Could superpowers be used for evil purposes? If so, how?

Yes… just as they could be used for good. Powers are powers.

17. Should people with superpowers be held to a different standard of morality?

Of course. Because they could potentially affect so many more people. Just like politicians should be held to a higher morality because their decisions affect others greatly. Same with Police… if your job requires you to be armed, you have to be better.

18. How could superpowers be regulated or controlled to prevent abuse?

That is a very good question… I think it would depend on how strong the superpowers are.

19. Would superpowers be a test of character or a burden to bear?

Yes, to both.

20. How have depictions of superpowers in media evolved over the decades?

Well, the first real superpowers in stories go back to demi-gods and magic in ancient cultures, and powers depicted in those stories run the gamut of being used for good, being used for evil, being used for others or even as selfishly as possible. So… superpower stories started out similar to how they are being depicted now. There is a despite to portray superpowers as gritty and realistic right now, but if you go back 90 years when superman hit the scene, the idea of superpowers mutated into the idea of an ideal person. So, if we look at mythology as the original superpowered stories, or if we look at modern day superpowered stories as a modern mythology… it has always been a smattering of good, bad, altruistic, selfish, etc… with periods of time where the stories bend towards the concept of “ideal.”

To recap:

I have about 4 almost finished posts that I just couldn’t take over the finish line
One about the Olympics
One about generalized AI
One about my past
…But no one needs to learn about my past
And one that was just a bunch of random questions
None of them “felt” right
I had even gotten to the recap of 2 of the posts
So, all that was left was to format, create a title image, and post
But… nope
That was not going to happen
Of course it happens to be superpowers is what gets me over the hump
Posting is not my superpower
I’m not telling you what my superpower is though
Figure it out on your own
Okay, Imma try to be more punctual for my next post
Maybe I should start the post earlier than Tuesday morning?
Nah
Join the substack or read this on Medium
Instead of clicking on links like a barbarian
Have a great week everyone