All I know is that Sisko, Bashir, and O’Brien all identify Section 31 as non-Starfleet assholes that need to be stopped at all costs. Discovery has Pike practically saluting Section 31 genocidal Empress Georgiou and revering the black badges in a way I’ll never forgive it for.

I think DS9 did Section 31 right, as the bad guys to be foiled, as anathema to Starfleet’s ideals, but yeah every other show seems to miss the point.

Enterprise established it as a result of Klingons experimenting with human augment DNA and it getting out of hand. It probably didn’t need to be addressed in universe, but I thought it was a fun retcon.

Ugh, Discovery just made no sense in a million ways. My (least) favorite is how Control was sentient AI like a century before Data was a thing, or even M-5. That and every time Section 31 was acknowledged as Starfleet black ops instead of a rogue agency of assholes.

30 fold means 30x not 30%, but I agree the article could use some more raw numbers.

That said, I don’t think it’s in doubt that our education system is fucking up. The current gen of college students, my son included, got their high school experience seriously fucked by Covid and now LLMs are basically devaluing having skills at all. I feel bad for kids these days, their prospects are so much worse than basically any previous gen, even with degrees.

It means making yourself more attractive by smashing your bones and micro dosing meth while receiving payouts from Peter Thiel

Damn right.

I haven’t interviewed anywhere in nearly a decade, but damn, the human interaction part is so important. These are your potential future coworkers, a vibe check goes both ways.

I don’t think I’d even do the first automated interview, tbh. If a human is going to be involved in hiring me down the line, they can damn well be present while I’m answering their questions.

Thanks for the rec!

Upvote for Jesse Welles. I appreciate his music can be topical, but also humorous and chill. Maybe not the sort of protest songs you play to fire people up, but definitely ones that will get their message stuck in your head.

Fuck you, Ellison and Paramount. I’d rather watch the franchise die than turn into fanfic for fascists anyway.

Also been enjoying Pokopia and have totally fallen prey to the “I’ll just wander around and rebuild stuff” play style, completely ignoring the story until I feel like I have to get to the next zone.

10/10 would wander aimlessly spamming blocks with Pokemon friends in tow anytime. I can’t express how happy I am to have something to do other than beat the shit out of cute animals to capture them.

I really don’t have any problem with any of these types of achievements in general. Even the super basic ones that you get by starting a game are useful to determine what percentage of people who own the game have actually played it beyond the menu screen.

The best achievements are ones you get for being clever, skilled, or dedicated. Or when it’s an unhidden achievement for something you didn’t even know was possible. Like the BG3 achievement for saving the goblin Sazza - just seeing it was possible made my next play through more interesting.

I do appreciate long ending achievements, but only if they indicate a significantly different playthrough. Good ending vs. bad ending works when that’s the result of many decisions and not just an option you chose ten minutes from the end.

My dad likes Dire Straits, Clapton, The Police, Tracy Chapman, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison. I know a few more from what he’s told me later in life, but those were the casettes/CDs he had around when I was a kid.

When I was a teen I tried to introduce him to the Pixies, but he looked like I was making his ears bleed.

It was my mom that introduced me to Pink Floyd though, which is really the only musical common ground I have with my parents (although I will definitely get whiskey drunk and belt out Dire Straits on occasion, or sing along to Orbison).

Not that these are wrong, but I wonder about recency bias. Have these indicators been trending downward for 20 years, or is this just a response to our current crop of morons?

If Obama v2 was elected tomorrow, would these instantly reverse, like the international opinion seemed to when he took over from W?

Great episode, great finale, really strong first season. I had issues with some episodes trying to do too much in too little time, but for the last two episodes the writers focused on one story and did a damn good job tying up the season arc. Can’t wait to see where the show goes next season.

The one criticism I have of the finale, and literally everywhere else it comes up in new era Trek is: Stop moving the camera so fucking much! It’s unnecessary and really takes me out of it when the camera is wiggling back and forth, or spinning around in an arc, or acting like an unstable drone during the trial portion (particularly at the end). I want to drink in what’s going on, not be trying to puzzle out WTF I’m looking at, especially when stream compression turns a lot of motion into blurry pixels.

A little shaky cam when things are intense or exploding, sure, but overall I wish it was shot in a more conventional style.

Imo’s in St. Louis is my favorite overall. Thin, crispy crust, square cut, Provel as the base cheese. It scratches an itch that all other pizzas don’t. I’d eat it 7 days a week if I could, hot or cold.

I’ve had pizzas with superior ingredients, made in fancy ovens, served with wine instead of cold beer, but if I could get any pizza right now, it’d be Imo’s black olive or veggie pizza.

Have some links for the manipulation? I don’t think the Republicans really want to see either of them, frankly but I like Crockett.

I don’t have any issue with seeing young adults growing and dealing with trauma. This episode has a lot of pieces working together in the overall storyline, I just don’t think it was that compelling within the episode.

The drama class half of the episode didn’t really go off. Maybe because I only know the play from what the episode told me about it, but I think it’s more like the actual growth part got cut off. We spend time with drunk Tarima (yawn) and then short cut the cadets actually performing the play with each other. That would have been the climax of that story, them getting into character, relating to it, working through it and reaching some sort of understanding or catharsis but that scene gets hand waved. Probably needed a full 45 minutes to do right too.

Or the Sam story, which was closer to the mark but still failed to create tension or consequences and ended up getting resolved neatly with a happy ending. Give Sam half an episode to be dead, for people to be sad, and the Doctor half an episode to reflect on it, resolving to do better before tying it up with a bow and it could have been great.

I love that the show isn’t constantly balls to the wall action and we’re getting a lot of character focus but the story juggling bit this episode in the ass and it isn’t the first to be trying to do too much and fumble the execution.

Yeah, I think this one didn’t come together as well as it could have. Should have focused on the Sam story more and done more to make it feel like she was in real danger. When she was dead I involuntarily yelled “yeah right!”. Lo and behold a minute later it’s resolved happily. The drama class and Caleb/Tarima story could have more easily been cut short without losing anything.

Probably one of the worst eps, but I’m happy to say that’s actually a pretty high bar for this show so far and this is more meh than truly bad (here I’m flashing back to like 20 different Discovery episodes where the episode ended and I was tearing my hair out over how stupid they were - that’s the real trauma here)

Also happy to speculate that, with two episodes left, the pendulum seems likely to swing back to excitement next week and I’m here for it.