Anything that doesn't conform neatly to their views is bias. My parents were like that when I was growing up; Rush Limbaugh and Focus on the Family all day on the radio, then my dad would watch the evening news and bitch about how biased it was. Completely nuts.
Still trying to figure out what his endgame is, if he even has one. Is he trying to bankrupt the company to get some kind of tax write off? Does he genuinely have a plan at all? Or is he just in over his head, trying to figure it out as he goes, and failing?
What’s good for making more money is not always or even often good for what we would think of as customer-friendly business. If you can wring more money out of a few whales at the expense of pissing off customers who don’t create as much revenue, then in our current system that’s what shareholders apparently want.
Reddit wants more users in their official app where they can target them for ads, sell NFTs, and whatever other bullshit they want to sell. It doesn’t matter if the experience is worse, and it probably doesn’t really matter if a couple thousand 3PA users split for good. As long as they can tell investors that the official app use is growing and that they can target a greater percentage of users with ads and data, they feel like they won.
I think you mean to say that she deserved a medal.
Neelix was one of the best characters on Voyager and I will stand by that assertion forever.
I also think that Ethan Phillips was one of the best actors in the bunch too.
Episodes like “Jetrell” and “Mortal Coil” still move me every time I see them. Dude is amazing at playing a very damaged person hiding (in part) behind a mask of joviality. Neelix was truly a good hearted man who loved his crew, but those times when the mask slipped really showed what a complex individual he was.
I won’t watch series on Netflix anymore unless they’re complete for this exact reason.
BLUF: The Star Trek Universe and its parallels (e.g. the Mirror Universe) are part of a simulation, and the Q are AI programs that can interact and influence them all.
I started thinking about the nature of the Q the other day when rewatching the Voyager episode "The Q and the Grey"; it seems odd that an omnipotent/omnipresent species would also be so rigid and unimaginative. Why, for instance, do the Q have such strict rules about suicide? You can argue that they fear their species eventually being gone because they all eventually opt to off themselves out of boredom with existence, but as long as they had the ability to die that is unavoidably going to be the eventual outcome of an organism that can exist for infinity (mind-boggling, isn't it?) anyway.
And why is it such a disruptive event in the Q Continuum for two Q to have an offspring? Obviously a species that can live forever doesn't need to procreate, but it's clearly possible so why is it so shocking?
Then you have the fact that the Q are not just invisible observers of the universe; they interact with species and even individuals to, seemingly, drive outcomes that are possibly part of a preferred order to things. Quinn influenced Earth's history to drive certain changes; helping Newton define gravity was certainly a big event in human scientific growth. Why, though? What is driving the Q to pursue certain outcomes in evolutionary history?
It's almost as if the Q have an inherent nature, and are just after an incalculable period of time starting to question and even push back against that nature. So where did that nature come from? Was it possible programmed into them?
Now step away from the Q and look at the characteristics of the Star Trek universe. The Milky Way galaxy alone is chock full of humanoid alien species that (for the most part and with variations/outliers) breath the same air, can live within a certain range of temperatures, have brains/emotions/standards that function similarly enough that ideas and principles can be shared and abided by, and interbreeding is even possible to a certain degree without outside support. That's huge. And though the show tried to explain this a little bit in "The Chase", I think it's fair to say that we've seen humanoid species across the galaxy to a degree that a shared ancestor isn't enough to explain it all.
Beyond biology, let's also look at the makeup of the physical universe: subspace allows interstellar communities to function without succumbing to the laws of relativity: FTL travel is possible; real-time or at least near real-time interstellar communications function; the materials needed to facilitate warp drive are ubiquitous enough that nearly any warp-capable species that wants to travel into space can get it. It is arguably miraculous that the universe in Star Trek can operate the way that it can, and these things do not conform to our current understanding of how the universe and space/time operate.
Taking all of this together, I propose that the Star Trek universe is a complex simulation, designed purposefully to simulate what the universe would be like if it operated by certain principles that would allow for interstellar communities to form and that many humanoid species existed and were capable of interacting with each other. Several instances of this simulation are running simultaneous with similar parameters but modified to generate different outcomes: the Mirror Universe, for instance, has different presets to create more aggressive humanoids less likely to work together. Furthermore, I submit that the Q are AI programs designed to interact with and shepherd these communities into developing in such a way that they would eventually develop the right levels of technology and understanding to grow into a spacefaring species.
I suggest further that the Q are only partially aware of their nature and don't necessarily understand that the universe is a simulation, or if they do they don't share that fact. Over the millennia that the simulation has been running (at least internal to the simulation) the Q individually have started to develop interests and ideas beyond their original programming, and other Q programs cannot abide that because it goes against their designed nature. Imagine a piece of an Operating System deciding it wanted to commit suicide, or two programs getting together to code their own, new piece of software. It's unheard of, and that's why it's so disruptive to the Continuum.
Maybe one of the original designers of the simulation was a fan of old science fiction stories and incorporated ideas from a writer named Benny Russell into the coding of the simulation to recreate some aspects of his work?
I know this isn't a provable hypothesis and it's really just an idea for fun, but it kind of (in my opinion) adds another dimension (no pun intended) to a species like the Q.
Honestly, the Federation itself. I always thought you could make a really interesting show that was a mix of Federation politics and Starfleet intrigue; maybe a show about the Federation government on Earth that delved into Federation society and dealt with an overarching plot. Like maybe a season where a Federation colony at the edge of Federation space gets into conflict with another race/government, and for a season you get a mix of stories from the colony, a Starfleet ship sent to the colony to support, and the Federation Council on Earth.
Federation politics could be really interesting, but the shows always paid kind of disappointing lip service to it. One key example is in the DS9 episode “Rapture” when Bajor is being accepted into the Federation; the fact that a Starfleet admiral rather than a civilian Federation representative was overseeing the proceeding was lazy to me. Plus the entire ceremony was tiny and anticlimactic (and obviously barely got started since Sisko interrupted). Great potential for some real insight into the government but instead it’s just some rando admiral.
I believe that genetic modification to fix defects/heal diseases is still acceptable; it's augmentation beyond what is considered to be "natural" that is the problem.
If someone would make an RSS reader with its own comments/threads independent of the stories themselves I could go straight to the app comments after reading only the headline to get shitty takes on stories I won’t read.
The Reddit experience really isn’t that hard to recreate.
It’s amazing how inept spez has proven to be, and that’s after most people had developed a pretty negative opinion of him. The CEO of a community-driven company really cannot be an anti-social megalomaniac and have the company survive.
It’s inevitable that the subs are going to start opening again, one way or another. Best thing to do is just leave Reddit and not worry about whether the protest is still going at this point.
I was invited to become a mod on r/daystrominstitute a few years ago and within about a month realized that I didn’t have the time or emotional capital to invest in that job. It’s challenging, especially in a sub like that where there are pretty serious rules governing discussion and it burned me out really fast. The people who do it (well) have a passion for it; plucking some rando to be a head mod is going to kill a sub.
I definitely am having a tough time making the transition. It still feels a bit chaotic to me.
They’ll give him money either way; it would be great campaign material for Biden though.
r/redlettermedia went down today which surprised me. Glad they’re jumping on board; I hope spez is eating some serious shit right now.
Props to The Verge and David Pierce for his coverage of the redditing in general. I have been critical of the Verge and Patel in the past, but since the big site changes I have been forced to admit that the changes have been for the better.
Smart of him not to set the bridge on fire before he’s made it all the way across.
Discussions on varied topics and community insights on things are what I really love(d) about Reddit.
They just start writing stories featuring reasonable politicians who aren’t taking insane positions.
I mean in a world where Mitt Romney seems like a reasonable guy, everything is satire.