Sorry for being so detached from the discussion and your actual point but if someone had made a dystopian sci-fi novel with the tagline following your sentence with "...or can they?", and made it all cheesy, I'd read it in one sitting.
In one part of Brave New World they bring up that they tried to do more automation, but people got restless without the drudgery. In another part, they bring up that they tried to have a society with only Alphas, but they didn't want to do the drudgery.
In the future, because of bad things we did to the atmosphere and stuff, miscarriages are the common ending of a pregnancy, instead of being the exception. One evil company finds a way to accelerate the process by using 10 women, lowering the chances of miscarriage simply by reducing the time in womb.
I thought, something like a medication helping the women develop the baby in 30 days, but seriously damages the host in a couple of days, so the fetus gets transferred from host to host. Some die, but the evil rich don't care. Your idea could also work though.
I realize that this is totally the wrong corner of the internet to post this but
I guess today I'll just go with it.
Yeah, that plot might actually work and is more believable than mine. (some women actually do feel like a baby is a parasite growing inside them - this would be a extreme version of it)
I'm too bad of a writer to be scared of giving my ideas away, but I'd explore a pupae stage, where (layman disclaimer, if it isn't abundantly clear from my incoming butchering of the science) the butterfly is basically melted down into a goop with no "brain part" or "feet part" of the goop existing until reformed, yet retain their memories. If you divided that goop up and imagined there was a gestation time reduction, before combining it for the final stage of formation, you'd have some "plausible" (loose definition here) venue for it.
There is a law in California that has been interpreted to mean that all clubbing weapons are illegal. So if you by a length of pipe and keep it around (e.g. under your bed) explicitly for self-defense purposes, you have committed a crime.
IANAL, but as far as I can tell, keeping a shotgun in your home for self-defense purposes would be fine, as long as you aren't planning ahead of time to use it as a club.
[edit]
My information is slightly out-of-date; there was an injunction against enforcement in 2024 from Fouts v Bonta. I have no clue the injunction is or is not still in effect, so ask your lawyer before carrying a club.
This isn't just California. A lot of states have laws regulating the carrying of weapons, and include bats and clubs in those statutes, the definition of which often hinges on the intent of their use.
This is why many may have heard lawyers say "if you're going to carry a baseball bat in your car, make sure to also carry a ball and mitt"
I think so many people in the US are so focused on the topic of guns as weapons that we sometimes forget that we have laws regarding other weapons as well.
Better yet, carry a mini shovel. Every car needs one anyway as part of the emergency kit (getting stuck in mud happens!), but a properly sharpened shovel also doubles as a very nasty weapon, much more so than a baseball bat.
Sir are you a licensed chef of good standing in OnlyChef's database? That knife is dangerous. We can issue you a government approved plastic version if you need to cut something, but SoylentGreen(tm) is Ready-to-Scoop(tm)!
It's the striker strip that can be used in producing meth. The strip contains red phosphorus. Strike anywhere matches are the only kind that don't need a special strip. The strike anywhere kind were probably restricted due to their sensitivity to shock and friction which makes them more useful and more dangerous than safety matches.
I am not aware of this being a regulatory matter in any state, California included. Retailers choose not to carry them because they are expensive to ship due to their hazardous materials classification and an attractive theft / crime target due to their (inaccurate) drug association, but it hasn’t led to any blanket regulation at any state level that I know of. I do think they’re banned from workplaces in California though, but that’s because they’re dangerous, not because of meth.
A single shopping to trip to Walmart or Home Depot can buy items that can be repurposed into bombs and physical and chemical weapons with only a little bit of know-how. Are we going to require mandatory ID and shopping cart analysis to all shopping too?
I like the approach of ladybird to provides as many native chrome as possible it gives peoples choice and let the browser feel native in whatever DE they choose to use :)
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