Sounds like a good story. A lot of SF has a forerunner civilization concept, but I can only think of a couple that present anything about their early stages.

If you compressed a 14” pizza into a ball it would probably be about the size of your head, so you should not eat one.

Growing up in the 60’s I had a skateboard called a monster with a picture of a monster on the top. It had metal skate wheels on it. My uncle said they used to make something like that in the 40’s by nailing a skate onto a board, though it sounded more like a scooter since they usually added a handle to the front.

Venom? I thought they just mesmerized the victims with their eyes.

Informed? Did the infection rates start dropping lately?

Yeah, it is a bad tool for learning to speak a language.

You enter stage 2, and the leveling starts over, when it bleeds over into real life. Not documenting stage 1 stuff, but efforts to make it happen.

Many things that are solved by brute force could be greatly improved in a mathematical way. I have worked with a mathematician on one application to get past a speed bottle-neck, but that was a rare case.

Trash collectors on my street don’t empty the can into the truck, they just grab the bag I put in and throw that in. That dog shit bag would stay in my can until I moved it to the larger bag. I should not have to do that.

Physics books always say to assume the objects are points in doing calculations. Does the fact that the ball is thicker then the feather make a difference?