me too!

admittedly imo they are being overused now though

Mixed IMO. I think the intended audience is teens? Has a bit of a Prodigy vibe, so if you’re into that it might be up your alley.

IMO “woke” is a red herring when it comes to criticism of newer star trek. Some people hate things for this reason, but it obscues a more interesting discussion.

The real dimensions of value are the writing, the vision, what each series considers “action”, etc. I think it’s a distinction between what you’d expect from a Star Trek movie and a Star Trek TV show. They’re for different audiences, and I think Discovery, STA are going for a much wider market appeal (in varying degrees) and it changes the narrative structure, pacing, etc. I think they’re exploring the audience space with variations on Star Trek themes to grow the francise, and sometimes it’s to the detriment of what some people like about Star Trek - and sometimes it brings in new people.

I like Star Trek to be ethics porn about IDIC being more powerful than raw power. About the value of an education, team work, structure, and trust. I like it when the most tense action scene is a walk down a hallway - but I also like a bit of space pew pew sometimes. The new shows alienate me when they focus too much on physical action, individual exceptionalism, and a grimdark future.

I like the captain. The show is alright; I think I’m too old to be the target audience but that’s ok. Seems to be directed at teens.

Every scene is so busy and glossy. The robots going around bear an uncanny resemblence to the Star Wars prequels (“it’s so dense; every single frame has so many things going on”). The teen angst and romance doesn’t exactly fit into what star trek means to me, but we did get a bit of that here and there in earlier series. Like in Discovery, IMO there’s too much focus on exceptional individuals and less on teamwork. To me it seems like it’s trying to be many things at once. Star Wars, Marvel, and Harry Potter mixed up in a Star Trek setting. I’m a bit sad we aren’t pretending Discovery was a bad dream, but I can live with it.

… but, there is some star trek here, and I like those parts.

I forgot that it was playing about halfway through, it’s quite bland.

e: the show is less bland, don’t let my snarky comment or this intro stop you from trying the show

if you scroll down a little, it shows how an x.1.8 class solar flare caused a radio blackout a few days ago. it provides a heatmap and distribution of frequencies affected + the amplitude of the effect

you smashed your little ships

My partner hates this mug with a passion. Maybe I should get one 😅

I played the heck out of the Renegade demo, it scratched a FPS RTS itch I didn’t know I had. I wonder if it holds up?

Is the experience at all spoiled by the game’s popularity? It’s a great game in its own right IMO

I’m playing World of Goo, a physics game from 2008 that I bought in a Humble Bundle forever ago.

I tried it again on a lark and it holds up, I got sucked in. Classic physics game. One level takes me less than 15 minutes to complete, but it varies significantly.

There are interesting conflicting pressures in the game: you want to build with as little as possible, because the building material are your little dudes you’re trying to get to safety. Gravity exists, and weight distribution matters: sometimes you must harness this fact to win.

Some levels are about building methodically, carefully choosing where to use the corpse of a sacrificed little dudes, because it is an immutable choice.

Other levels are about dynamics and timing, and you can get tantalizingly close to saving your entire team in these levels.

Its old, its cheap, it should run on most things₁. Strong recommend.

1: not android: NetFlix did one of their closed market acquisitions making “free” games here

I like this idea! There might be an increased danger of a battery explosion: it’ll be near bright sunlight, away from where people will see it, with an old battery. I wonder if there are battery diagnostics that could provide an early warning?

I’m sure most of us have a fistful of old phones somewhere, the idea of using them for something is appealing.

My guess is their terminal got messed up with a mess of control characters in the output of a command. If true, running tput reset would fix it.

the cheeto of damacles swings, and we fear it not

if you have a brokerage account, you may be able to sell USD for your target currency in it. you could do this slowly over time.

if you can’t do that, you might be able to buy an ETF that tracks your target country’s stock market, but some of these are “currency hedged” and in this case you wouldn’t want that. the ETF would have a fee (MER) that is worth looking up. 1% is high.

tl;dr: it sounds like you want to hedge currency risk and there are products for that, but it requires a brokerage account and some decipline, ymmv

i’ve been too plugged-in to trump news. i’ve banned myself from my primary source of that unhappy chaos, and will get it from a news outlet instead which is much slower and less ragey

i’ve gotten into audiobooks again, and that has done a lot to lift my spirits. i’ve plowed through the lord of the rings and am now listening to the silmarillion. i’ve found the silmarillion difficult to read, but much more accessible as an audiobook - and it’s giving me a deeper appreciation of the lord of the rings

eucatastrophe, where art thou?

if i did two big social things in a week like that i would be pretty burnt out and possibly snippy with people. i’d need a bit of solo time to recharge before i could wear my social mask again

the statement by your friend here looks unkind without context

somehow this was required to switch me from “buy canadian” to “sell american” and i am ashamed it took so long

Same, workspaces are great!

Exhibit A: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/02/firefox-deletes-promise-to-never-sell-personal-data-asks-users-not-to-panic/

Exhibit B: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/legal/terms/firefox/

When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox.

I don’t agree to this as written; and I am not inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt given Exhibit A. I think an argument could be made that selling my data to advertisers would help me “experience” and “interact” with online content. Perhaps it would be a difficult argument, perhaps not. I think skepticism is warranted.

Firefox has struggled to find a profitable business model outside of Google paying to be the default search engine, and it looks like these changes are a pivot to address this. I don’t think it will be good for users.