The absurd is the conflict between the human desire for meaning, order, or clarity in life and the indifferent, chaotic, or meaningless nature of the universe. To embrace the absurd means to accept this lack of inherent meaning without despair or appeal to false hope (like religion, ideology, or forced optimism)

In the aftermath of a global climate catastrophe, most nation-states have collapsed due to rising sea levels, extreme weather, resource depletion, and mass migration. What remains are isolated city-states—self-governing urban centers with limited natural resources and fragile ecosystems.
Your city-state is among the few that have maintained livable conditions by tightly controlling water, food production, air quality, and energy use. However, maintaining this balance requires constant regulation of individual behavior, strict rationing, and rapid response to ecological threats. Authoritarian Environmental Control includes policies such as:
forced relocation to reduce urban sprawl, state-mandated limits on reproduction, ban on private vehicles or meat consumption and surveillance to enforce eco-regulations. Democratic Freedoms may include: public participation in policymaking, freedom of speech and protest, individual autonomy in lifestyle choices.

Since the takeover of Afghanistan by Taliban in 2021, jihadist militancy has exponentially increased in Pakistan's northern areas in KPK including Swat, Bajaur Agency, Waziristan, other areas of FATA, etc. Militants from Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), ISIS-K, Al Qaeda and Afghan Taliban are known to impose to extremist ideologies in their areas of influence. Recently, Pakistan Army has initiated targeted, and intelligence-based operations in KPK, refraining from a full-fledged operation. According to experts, the conditions in KPK continue to worsen.

Glass Cliff refers to a phenomenon wherein women tend to be promoted to positions of power during times of crisis or downturn. Examples of this include Marissa Meyer for Yahoo, Ellen Pao for Reddit, and Theresa May when she was elected as Prime Minister of the UK.

You are one half of a couple that used to be perfect. Both of you are still in love with each other but after a series of mistakes - harsh words, accusations of infidelity (unsubstantiated), mutual career sacrifices that have bred mutual resentment - you no longer get along. You both desperately want for the relationship to work but can see that it does not anymore. You have been working through it for a year, trying everything, but have not seen any improvement. Apart from calling it quits, you have one option left - to go through the Lacuna procedure. You can only go through this procedure together. The procedure will selectively erase only your memories as a couple. Once erased, meetings between the two of you will be regularly orchestrated, allowing you to start over as a couple. For the purposes of this debate we will assume you will begin again

For the purposes of this debate, "Hollywood Morality" refers to a common set of ethical beliefs in Hollywood films and television. Hollywood Morality's three tenets are that:

1. "good guys" (people the media is portraying as morally praiseworthy) do not strike first unless imminently and explicitly threatened (e.g., Han Solo refusing to shoot Greedo first despite Greedo covertly pointing a gun at him in the newest edit of Star Wars: A New Hope);

2. good guys do not exact revenge (e.g., Peter Parker refusing to kill Green Goblin for killing Uncle Ben in Spider-Man); and

3. good guys do not use innocent people as means (e.g., Steve Rogers refusing to sacrifice hostages, even when it would be strategically useful, in Captain America: The Winter Soldier).

Project Cybersyn was a project in Chile comprised of an autonomous network of computers in state-run enterprises that relayed and accepted information to and from the government. Data collected included the supply of materials, labor levels, energy use, etc., and alerts were made to the enterprises and the government if imbalances arose. These data were processed and simulated to forecast possible outcomes of economic decisions. Some believe that this might have been a precursor to an AI-planned central economy.