porthos

Paramount doesn’t even want to write about the Utopia anymore. All of the Picard series is about corruption, greed, power, and the Federation failing on all accounts. I hate them for it. Star Trek is supposed to be a glimpse into a hopeful future, not a reflection of our current problems but with phasers added.

I think there are many valid criticisms of new trek but I really just don’t see this, old star trek had the same shit

How about the fact that cars are so complicated now that working on them yourself feels next to impossible but you also have to somehow find mechanics that you trust to fix your vehicle when you really have no objective way to know if the mechanics are just bullshitting you or are actually genuinely investigating the problem, not just tossing away what you are saying with a mental note that you are clueless. Fixing a bicycle on the other hand is almost comically simple in comparison.

Also can’t forget the thrill that it only takes a second or two of distraction at the wrong moment to kill yourself and other innocent people and irrevocably send your life down a worse path. To be clear, this experience is happening when you are tired, grumpy and stressed about getting to work or getting back from work. It’s a nice little detail that we aren’t all driving boats around or something where hitting other boats requires a bunch of really stupid choices chained together, all we have to do in a car is go slightly in the wrong direction for 3 seconds and boom just murdered somebodies kid.

What about an electric scooter? Or honestly tricycles with a big cargo spot on the back are pretty sweet so long as you have the space and aren’t going up any crazy hills (could get an electric tricycle thoo).

At the end of the day though, I love bicycles but they can’t work for everyone… which is why the hope for most American cities at least is in busses. I know everyone hates busses and they are usually considered the least cool thing ever but honestly they are the future for mass transit in the US. We ripped out all the streetcars which is heartbreaking but I think busses are the closest practical replacement.

LONG LIVE THE BUS

95% of people don’t live or go to 85% of the country? The problem of mass transit has nothing to do with people driving cars around in the middle of nowhere.

Ok I know people will say this is weird but watch through Star Trek Enterprise with Captain Archer since that was supposed to be a reboot for Star Trek that pulled in new fans. It explains the origin story of how humans got into space which I think helps a lot of newer watchers ground themselves in the universe easier. Make sure to make fun of it when it gets too absurd and always have a lighter nearby to hold up during the theme song.

Then go through TNG, Voyager and DS9 jumping between them every episode so you move through all three at the same time. I have been watching Star Trek with my gf this way and it is really fun to compare between the shows and it makes the bad episodes of any one particular series less exhausting because you get to take a break from that show.

Whenever you feel like it watch newer trek and catch up on it, I like all of it and some of it is really good.

Sprinkle in TOS episodes as you go, especially when there are direct callbacks to specific episodes (the SNW episode that echoes a TOS episode is a blast to watch right after watching the associated TOS episode they did such a good job).

In fairness, it’s less controversial and more that the line is outright offensive. At the time, people were being murdered by acts of terrorismin in the troubles, so to wontonly say that those attacks are effective and will get results was extremely insensitive. It’s sort of like saying 9/11 was an effective use of terrorism shortly after it happened, or the 2015 Paris attacks.

I mean I get that it is a pretty touchy subject, but honestly at the end of the day the 9/11 attacks were stunningly effective at doing exactly what Bin Laden wanted us to do, get involved in a long drawn out war that undermined the stability of the US and accelerated its collapse.

The asshole literally wrote this all out in a letter and I am glad it made the rounds recently because we took the bait hook line and sinker. If as a society stories had trained us to think of terrorism not as some existential evil that comes from satan but rather a brutal political/military strategy enacted to accomplish certain logical political aims we might have been more equipped to deal with a 9/11 response more rationally. Specifically maybe we wouldn’t have just signed off on US warhawks throwing Iraq into the mix for absolutely no good reason than imperialism (Bin Laden must have been whooping and hollering happy when he heard the US decided to get itself stuck in TWO endless wars because of his actions).

You’d think after eating all that kale you wouldn’t be so rudee

It took me playing the classic masterpiece designs of board gaming like Agricola, Concordia and Dominion to make me realize how bloated most strategy video games are.

It ain’t about how complex the system is, it is about how meaningful and interesting your choices are and honestly some video games are just horrendous at making you do 1000 little tasks that don’t really matter.

I haven’t played stellaris though.

Something I find funny is that a lot of people who don’t know Star Trek that well and have only seen a couple of episodes assume Star Trek is the super optimistic view of humanity that is unrealistically positive about humanities future when if you actually look at the timeline in the 2000s and 2100s Star Trek is actually seriously apocalyptic. Humanity doesn’t turn to a good future out of some inevitable human kindness, it tries violence over and over again until some crazy guy makes a warp engine out of the rubble of destroyed civilization and the Vulcans show up.

I dunno but damn that Bell guy looks exactly like Sisko its weird